In February of this year Democrats and climate activists seized on a study published by a group called Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), and the conclusions of the paper sent alarmists into a frenzy – Claiming they had evidence that natural gas based appliances including gas stoves create emissions that are dangerous to human health, causing asthma and impairing cognitive development, specifically in children.  The Biden Administration's Department of Energy reviewed the study and discussion mounted over the possibility of an incremental ban on various gas appliances, including up to 50% of gas stove models.      

The RMI study turned out to be yet another example of the political co-option of science as a weapon for the Net Zero agenda regularly touted by the United Nations, Democrats in the US and progressive politicians across Europe.

Almost immediately the findings of the study were debunked.  As the American Gas Association observed in a responding statement, the RMI testing did not include real life appliance usage, and:

“Ignored [previous] literature, including one study of data collected from more than 500,000 children in 47 countries that ‘detected no evidence’ of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.”

Rather suspiciously, Biden's Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, met privately with the leader of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Jules Kortenhorst, in 2021.  Around a year later, the institute produced a study which defies all previous science on the health risks of natural gas appliances and which serves the interests of Biden's climate change policies.  Granholm would later throw support behind the findings of the RMI study, stating that:  

"We can and must FIX this...Through [President Biden's] Inflation Reduction Act, Americans will have greater access to Electric and Induction Cooktops: keeps pollution out of the home. Cooks food faster. Helps families save money."

It should also be noted that RMI has been the recipient of millions of dollars of DOE funding in the past, including a $4.4 million grant in March 2022.

As the truth about the RMI findings was revealed and the data found inadequate, pressure mounted from various groups, including conservatives, for the White House to abandon plans to restrict gas appliances.  The White House seemingly relented.  Democrats screeched about the “paranoia” of conservatives, asserting that no one was coming to take people's gas stoves.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that:

"This is about a decision about what may be sold and regulations in the far future, OK? So everyone, just take the temperature down a little bit. No secret government agency is going to bust down your door and take your gas stove away...”

This kind of gaslighting (no pun intended) has become the standard response by Democrats when they are caught in a compromising position.  When a strategy falls apart, they assert that the attack never happened and it was all in our minds.  However, after the failure of Democrats to implement restrictions at the federal level, they have simply moved on to other avenues.  

The reality is that the RMI study was never about public health, it was only a means to frighten Americans into accepting climate change controls on petroleum and gas.  The plan is obvious – Start with something small, such as gas stoves or gas heat, and then use that as a springboard to eventually ban or tax all carbon based energy.

Multiple Democrat controlled cities and states are now instituting restrictions or timed bans on natural gas appliances, including San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Seattle and New York.  These cities are phasing out gas in new homes within the next 5 years.  California is planning to phase out gas appliances by 2030.  The state of New York under Kathy Hochul is nearing a deal to ban gas appliances in new homes by 2025.  As is often the case, progressive cities and states tend to act as test cases for future bans at the national level.

To get insight into what climate change authoritarians intend for the US in the future, one need only look at Europe and the UK.  In Britain, households are to be financially penalized if they do not switch away from gas under net zero policies to be unveiled soon.

The UK secretary of state for energy security and net zero, said:  “If we want people to switch to an electricity-based economy, it would be better if [levies] were shifted onto the gas side of things...It automatically makes the economics of an electric-driven economy better.”

In the US, over 38% of all households rely on natural gas for energy.  In states like California it is estimated that energy usage would have to plummet (along with living standards) if all homes used electricity only.  For global carbon standards to be met, climate scientists argue that population growth will have to stop, and over time human numbers would have to be systematically reduced through birth control methods.  

Setting aside the fact that climate science is itself rooted in numerous inaccuracies and fallacies, the logistics of shifting the population away from oil and gas energy are impossible without placing massive strain on existing electrical grids and destabilizing the economy.  This is perhaps why Democrats and climate alarmists often lie about their intentions and use subversion and incrementalism to enact policy – They don't want to be forced to admit the true cost of their Net Zero world and risk a furious response from the public.  

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Twitter has restricted multiple accounts belonging to prominent conservatives in recent days after they posted about  an upcoming rally called the “Trans Day of Vengeance.”

On Tuesday, the Elon Musk-owned company restricted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) congressional account for seven days after she repeatedly posted an image of a poster about the rally. In the same post, Greene alleged that Antifa was organizing the event, which is being hosted by the Trans Radical Activist Network.

After her congressional account was restored by Twitter, Greene issued another post from the account that read, “My Congressional Twitter account was suspended today. @elonmusk, how is it ‘violent speech’ to expose the ‘Trans Day of Vengence’ [sic] a day after a mass murder committed by a transgender shooter? And to call on the DOJ to investigate it? I condemned the incitement to violence & demanded a federal law enforcement investigation in the Tweet.”

Her account was then promptly suspended for seven days.

Yesterday, my official Twitter account was termporarily suspended for warning about Antifa's Trans Day of Vengeance in front of the Supreme Court.

This planned event is being whitewashed by global brands and the left. Meanwhile, there’s still no acknowledgement of the innocent… pic.twitter.com/666WRD9EZX

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 29, 2023

“My Congressional account was suspended for 7 days for exposing Antifa, who are organizing a call for violence called ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’” Greene said in a post on her personal Twitter account on Tuesday. “The day after the mass murder of children by a trans shooter.”

Following the ban, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, said on Twitter that the platform is removing images of the poster due to concerns that it could incite violence.

“We had to automatically sweep our platform and remove >5000 tweets /retweets of this [‘Trans Day of Vengeance’] poster,” Irwin wrote. “We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. ‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.”

More Accounts Restricted

Elsewhere, The Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis was reportedly locked out of his account for allegedly violating Twitter’s rules regarding “violent speech.”

Prior to the account block, Davis had posted: “The cold-blooded mass murder at a Christian school in Nashville by an apparent transgender person came just days before a planned ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network.”

According to the publication, Twitter has already taken down the tweet but informed Davis his account will remain locked until he manually deletes himself.

Davis reportedly filed an appeal with Twitter to reinstate his account but the platform rejected it, meaning he is permanently banned from accessing his account until he removes the tweet in question.

“This is deliberate censorship and gaslighting designed to memory-hole the FACT that the Nashville shooter targeted and murdered Christian children and teachers just days ahead of a scheduled ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,” Davis said in a statement. “Twitter is lying about the facts and defaming those of us who reported on them.”

Sean Davis, our @FDRLST CEO who has been locked out of his account for reporting accurately about a rally writes about what the latest censorship campaign means. "Twitter Cannot Be Saved. It’s Time For Free Speech Proponents To Let It Die": https://t.co/iXlafNUDHp @elonmusk

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) March 29, 2023

Daily Wire journalist Luke Rosiak was also suspended from Twitter on Tuesday after he posted a link about the event, according to the publication.

Twitter removed a post from Rosiak linking to an article he wrote earlier this month about the activists organizing the event.

“The shooting of a Christian school by a transgender comes the same week that activists scheduled a ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’ with the group also raising money for firearms training,” the post read.

Twitter told Rosiak that the post violated “rules against violent speech.”

I was locked out of my account yesterday for tweeting a transgender day of vengeance ad. https://t.co/D9h0JOTiZW

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) March 29, 2023

We were locked out of our account for this tweet. It linked to our reporting about a “trans day of vengeance” that was being organized by far-left activists. @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/hns06UKKg0

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 28, 2023

Police Say Nashville Shooter Was Transgender

“He was told that he must delete the original post to regain access to his account; he appealed the decision, observing that he was not ‘advocating for violence’ but rather ‘stating a fact and noting disapprovingly’ that others had been calling for violence,” the Daily Wire reported.

Elsewhere, Journalist and author Andy Ngo was reportedly locked out of his Twitter account for reporting on the upcoming event.

Trans Radical Activist Network still retains its account on Twitter, although its tweets are protected, meaning only approved followers can see content posted on the account.

According to its official website, the Trans Radical Activist Network is a “nationwide network of activists and community organizers for transgender/non-binary rights.”

“The Trans/Non-Binary/Gender Non-Conforming/Intersex communities are facing astronomical amounts of hate from the world. At least a 100 Gender Affirming care ban bills have been proposed,” the website states. “So far in 2023, 12 lives have been lost, [sic] 2022 we lost over 60 people. Our community has a stigma attached and significantly impacts marginalized communities at a higher intensity. There are members of our own communities that have turned against the true meaning of Pride,” it adds.

The Trans Day of Vengeance is scheduled for April 1, according to the website, just days after 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who police say identified as transgender, opened fire at Covenant Christian Academy, shooting dead three children and three adults.

However, the organizers note that the protest is “about unity, not inciting violence” and adds that it does “not encourage violence and it is not welcome at this event.”

Trans activists have also noted that the “trans day of vengeance” is a meme that has been around in the trans community for years and is not a call to violence, The Associated Press reports.

As required by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) auctioned oil and gas drilling rights across 73.4 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico despite the Biden administration's pledge to end new leasing as part of climate change initiatives. 

According to BOEM, 32 companies participated in the Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 259, submitting $309,798,397 in total bids. Reuters pointed out that Chevron Corp, ExxonMobil Corp, and BP Plc were among the top bidders. 

The Guardian said the size of Lease 259 is comparable in size to Italy. 

The auction was a requirement in President Biden's IRA, which safeguards federal oil and gas leasing and mandates lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of March. 

Revenues received from offshore oil and gas leases will be paid to US Treasury, Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) and local governments, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the Historic Preservation Fund. 

The auction comes weeks after Biden authorized a large ConocoPhillips oil project in northwest Alaska.

A little awkward, considering he has pledged during the election campaign: "I guarantee you we're going to end fossil fuels."

New oil and gas developments in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska have infuriated climate activists:

"For the first half of his presidency, Joe Biden led on climate with transformative vision but in the second half he seems to be signaling a disastrous climate U-turn," Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club and a prominent progressive, said.

For instance, Alaska's $8 billion Willow oil field development project has a 30-year lifespan. The projects in the Gulf also have years, if not more than a decade, lifespan. The notion that Biden wants to ban oil and gas is 'malarkey,' and his staunchest climate supporters are getting wind the president is failing on his word. 

"If he's making a political calculation, he's making a wrong one. He's breaking a major promise on drilling and by going back on his word he will inspire many young people to stay at home rather than voting in 2024. His decisions appear to be rooted in the political and economic calculus of the last century, not this one," Jealous added. 

Authored by Eric Utter via American Thinker (emphasis ours),

According to a depressing new poll from The Wall Street Journal, belief in the importance of traditional American values has plummeted in the United States in recent decades.

The poll queried U.S. respondents about the importance of patriotism, religious faith, having children and other traditionally American values in their lives. Only 39% of Americans surveyed said their religious faith is very important to them, and just 38% said patriotism is very important.

The Journal compared those numbers to the results from the first time it ran the poll in 1998… when 62% of Americans said religion was very important to them, and 70% said patriotism was. And that was during the Clinton administration!

So, apparently, a majority of Americans no longer believe either religion or patriotism is important.

If that is the case, Democrats will never be out of power again. They never tire of dissing the country, its founders…and the concept of objective truth, morality…and God. (“Male and female He made them? Screw that, I decide if I am male or female…or any other gender, including ones I make up out of whole cloth!”)

Remarkably, the survey also purported to find that a plurality of Americans believe the U.S. has not gone far enough in promoting equality between men and women, accepting people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, or in promoting racial and ethnic diversity in business and universities. If we go any further down that road, no one but members of the BIPOC LGBTQ Community will ever again be allowed to head a company or attend college.

The results of this poll, if they are reasonably accurate depictions of Americans’ values, or lack thereof, are disheartening to say the least. If, essentially, 23% of Americans lost their belief in a higher power, and 32% lost their belief in the goodness of their country in just the past 25 years…it is time to turn out the lights, as the party is unquestionably over.

The founders knew this was a distinct possibility at some point. John Adams famously observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This is one reason “progressives” disdain them so. They disdain the very concepts of morality and religion, as they tend to put boundaries on people’s behavior. A God would be competition for them, and that they cannot countenance.

Conservatives, on the other hand, wish to conserve the best of the past, and pass on the accrued wisdom and best practices of millennia past. (We are not reflexively against change, such as voting Democrats out of office, potentially eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, defunding National Public Radio, proposing school choice and voucher initiatives, or re-funding the police.)

It is no coincidence that testosterone and sperm levels have fallen during this same period. Or that IQs have declined, too. It all ties together. As Andrew Breitbart averred, it is true that politics is downstream from culture. And the current cultural cesspool feeds the stream that flows through—and poisons—our political class.

Objectively, this leads to one inescapable conclusion: sickeningly, the incessant lies that “progressive” Democrats—and their sycophantic lapdogs in the mainstream media—have told the American people…have been effective. Bullshit is viable.

Indoctrination works.

Former President Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan Grand Jury over hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels, according to the NY Times, citing four people familiar with the matter.

The still-sealed felony indictment, which comes as 2024 campaign season comes into focus, makes Trump the first former president in US history to face criminal charges.

The exact charges are not yet known, however the Times expects them to be announced in the coming days by the Manhattan district attorney's office. Prosecutors working for DA Alvin L. Bragg will ask Trump to surrender and face arraignment on said unknown charges.

[U]nlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

Mr. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and attacked Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of leading a politically motivated prosecution. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign. -NY Times

The move also comes just before the grand jury takes a one-month break until late April.

Interestingly, as The Epoch Times' Jack Phillips reported, this month-long delay came after an attorney in former President Donald Trump’s orbit who testified in front of a Manhattan grand jury earlier this month believes that there has been a shift in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against the 45th president.

“Well, I think I got through to them, because [Monday] I understand they called back another witness by the name of David Pecker, who used to run the National Enquirer,” Costello, a former Michael Cohen attorney, told Newsmax on Tuesday.

“Basically, what they’re doing is really gerrymandering this,” he said of Bragg’s probe into Trump.

Costello said he had represented Cohen, himself a former Trump lawyer, and told reporters last week that he does not believe Cohen is a credible witness against Trump.

Sounds like that wasn't the case.

The prosecution's star witness in the case is former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about sleeping with Trump. Cohen said that Trump directed him to buy her silence (contrary to a 2018 letter from his lawyer claiming the opposite), and says that the Trump organization helped cover it up.

Meanwhile, this didn't age well...

As we and others have observed recently, Western populations have grown weary of "sacrificing" their hard-earned money and tax dollars for Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky himself has this week acknowledged that 'Ukraine fatigue' is setting in, and waning enthusiasm and support for the war effort against Russia, which is clearly evident even to him, apparently.

This was also on display during Zelensky's latest speech. He addressed the lower house of Austria’s parliament via video-link on Thursday. Not far into the speech, a large group of Austrian lawmakers from the conservative Freedom Party (FPO), often dubbed in mainstream media as "far right", staged a group protest and walked out all together. They left placards on their desks with the words "space for neutrality" and "space for peace". They are not happy at the current European and US stance which has blocked negotiations.

"It is sad that the FPO is the only party in parliament that takes our ever-lasting neutrality seriously, thereby also standing up for peace,” FPO leader Herbert Kickl said just ahead of the Zelensky speech.

The times of standing ovations for @ZelenskyyUa are over. When he gave a speech to parliament in Austria politicians left in protest because Zelenskyy is wasting Ukrainian lives instead of seeking peace. The US proxy war propaganda isn’t effective anymore. pic.twitter.com/wYeD2Wz932

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 30, 2023

A similar movement is happening in Bulgaria too, which alongside Austria and Hungary has pledged not to send any lethal aid to Ukraine. These countries, led by Hungary's example, have expressed they want to "prevent further escalation" with Russia. Watch the Austrian politicians walk out on Zelensky's speech below...

By Scott Skyrm of Curvature

The stars might be aligned on Friday to create a unique situation in the Repo market.

Friday is quarter-end and Japanese year-end, which has the most market distortions for a quarter-end next to year-end. At the same time, there's still some crisis in the market, so we expect this Friday to be more volatile and have more bank window dressing than normal.

Could be a unique situation in the REPO market on Quarter-End. If O/N rates are above 5.00%, Primary Dealers might go to the SRF and borrow cash from the Fed at 5.00% at the same time Money Market Funds give cash to the Fed at 4.80% in RRP. Both programs used on the same day!

— Scott Skyrm (@ScottSkyrm) March 30, 2023

As of now, Repo GC (General Collateral) traded between 4.88% and 5.00% for Friday and the market is now at 4.98%/4.95%. GC is effectively trading near the top of the fed funds target range for the first time in three years. And that presents an interesting possibility!

There is still $2.2 trillion in the Fed's RRP earning just 4.80%. Those investors are giving up 5 to 7 basis points each day going to the Fed instead of the market. In fact, on Friday, GC rates could be above 5.00%, so at some point RRP investors will be giving up 15 to 20 basis points. There's supposed to be a natural market mechanism that pulls cash out of the RRP and into the general market when Repo rates are higher than the RRP rate.

However, due to the market crisis and quarter-end, we expect RRP volume to actually increase on Friday.

At the other end of the target range, the Standing Repo Facility (SRF) has not yet been used by the market because Repo rates have been at the bottom of the fed funds target range since the program was initiated.

This crates the unique situation. If overnight rates are above 5.00%, Primary Dealers might go to the SRF and borrow cash from the Fed at 5.00% at the same time Money Market Funds are giving cash to the Fed at 4.80%. Both programs could be used on the same day!

President Biden is calling on regulators to tighten the rules for mid-sized banks, making the political point to 'roll back Trump era rules', ensuring everyone knows - despite the fact that it is not true - that this bank failure is trump's fault (rather than the woke regulators' dismal follow-ups to red-flags)... and remember The Fed didn't stress-test for higher interest rates.

The changes include reinstating rules for banks with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion - the bucket in which SVB would have fallen - including liquidity requirements, enhanced stress testing and so-called “living wills” that show how banks that size could be wound down.

The White House also called for:

• annual stress tests for banks in that range, instead of every two years
• shortening the time to apply stress tests once banks reach $100 billion in assets
• strengthening supervisory tools to ensure banks can withstand rising interest rates.

Additionally, as Bloomberg reports, The White House called on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to replenish the fund without relying on community banks.

The Bank Policy Institute made it clear how they falt about this clearly political move to avoid accountability by the regulators:

"It would be unfortunate if the response to bad management and delinquent supervision at SVB were additional regulation on all banks that would impose meaningful costs on the U.S. economy going forward.

The Fed has barely begun its promised review.

This has a strong feeling of ready, fire, aim."

This call for tougher regulations comes as outflows from bank deposits into money markets (which hit a new fresh record highs of $5.2 trillion today - with 54.5bn of inflows last week) continue to accelerate (thanks to The Fed)...

Source: Bloomberg

The last 3 weeks (including SVB's exodus) has seen $304 billion of inflows, a record surge outside of the COVID lockdown crisis.  As TD Securities strategist Gennadiy Goldberg said regarding last week's data:

"This is consistent with ongoing deposit flight from the banking system as depositors indirectly invest their cash into government securities via money funds and shun bank credit," adding that,

"This answers the question of ‘where is the money going once it leaves the banking system?"

Meanwhile, the most anticipated financial update of the week, the  infamous H.4.1, or the Fed's weekly balance sheet update, showed that the world's most important balance sheet actually shrank modestly last week by $27.8 billion (helped by a drop in TSY and MBS of $10bn as part of the ongoing QT)...

Looking at the actual reserve components that were provided by the Fed, we find that Fed backstopped facility borrowings fell modestly from $164 billion to $153 billion (still massively higher than the $4.5 billion pre-SVB)...

Source: Bloomberg

...but the composition shifted, as usage of the Discount Window dropped by $22 billion to $88 billion (upper pane below) which however was offset in part by a $10.7 billion increase in usage of the Fed's brand new Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP, to $64.4 billion (middle pane) from $53.7BN last week. Meanwhile, other credit extensions - consisting of Fed loans to bridge banks established by the FDIC to resolve SVB and Signature Bank  - were basically flat at $180.1BN (lower pane)...

The Fed's USD liquidity swaps only remained at a paltry $585 million in the past week ($100mm to the SNB and $487.5 to ECB)...

But just like last week, this is meaningless since at least one bank parked a whopping $55BN in the Fed's foreign repo facility. The bad news: the dollar shortage continues; the good news: at least it's less than last week's record $60BN.

And finally, bear in mind what we detailed earlier, that according to Barclays, a second, slower-burning but even more powerful, bank run wave has now begun as "price sensitive" depositors are no longer dormant, but are not actively looking for the best place to park their money. Which is also why contrary to the narrative that the banking crisis is now over, because the S&P is back above pre-SVB levels, banks continue to plumb lows.

1/2

Narrative building that the banking crisis is now over because the S&P 500 has just about retraced all its losses.

Someone tell the bank stocks as they are unable to rally ... pic.twitter.com/2oBMuuSrNF

— Jim Bianco biancoresearch.eth (@biancoresearch) March 30, 2023

Still, there was some some good news: While we noted above that money market funds rose to a new record high, the weekly increase was down almost 50% from $117.4BN last week to "only" $66BN and the slowest since the bank crisis started.

Bottom line: for now at least, the deposit run is slowing.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The market and the government will continue to promote and support a neofeudal status quo until they are forced by society to restore the common good and opportunity.

Of the three primary dynamics of human endeavor--the market, government and society--we focus almost exclusively on the first two. Society is rarely considered as a force of its own. It is implicitly viewed as reactive to the market economy and government, the churning wake left as the market and government chart the course.

In other words, society is secondary to the economy and governance, the venue of fashions, trends, entertainment, culture wars, etc., fodder for media and social media, a reflection of what's happening in the market and government.

As I explain in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal, this is a misunderstanding of society's role as a force that changes the economy and governance in profound ways.

We give social transformation short shrift because it's not easy to study or understand. Social change is amorphous and doesn't lend itself to quantification like the market or the legal structures of government policy. We end up relying on snapshots such as opinion polls that are inherently limited in scope and accuracy. Respondents tend to give answers they they believe are expected or reflect their views of the moment. Other data is collected from groups that are self-selecting.

Despite these limitations, it's clear that American society is unraveling and undergoing profound changes that will eventually upend markets and governance. We will come to realize society is transforming markets and governance, not the other way around.

Charts of the stock market and economy in the 1960s do not reflect the social changes in values that made the 1960s so tumultuous and consequential. Three social movements--civil rights, the environment and women's rights--all changed the economy and governance in the 1970s, unleashing forces that continue to shape our economy and government to this day.

The market and government didn't lead these changes, social forces changed the market and government. The market and government were perfectly happy to maintain the status quo of rampant industrial pollution and systemic restrictions of civil rights. Society forced economic and political change: the government was forced to enact environmental regulations limiting pollution and industrial waste, and enact legislation removing barriers that enforced an oppressive, unjust, two-tier society and economy.

In the 1970s, these environmental, women's rights and civil rights advances forced on the market and government transformed the economy for the better. Women entered the workforce en masse and women and minorities gained access to institutions that that had previously excluded them. Environmental and efficiency regulations transformed the American economy and landscape from an industrial dumping ground to a much cleaner, more sustainable, more efficient and productive industrial base.

I discussed this recently in The Forgotten History of the 1970s and The 1970s: From Rotting Carcasses Floating in the River to Kayak Races.

Much work remains to be done, of course, but much has been accomplished by the citizenry concluding the status quo is no longer acceptable.

In my analysis, the nation's social fabric is unraveling due to the breakdown of civic virtue, social cohesion and the social contract. The dominance of finance (hyper-financialization) and corporate self-interest (hyper-globalization) has fatally undermined civic virtue, social cohesion and the social contract. Rather than the market serving society, society now serves the market and finance in a painfully obvious two-tiered neofeudal structure in which the few garner the vast majority of the wealth and political power.

Locking in vast private wealth is now the Prime Directive of the elite, an elite which in previous generations understood that every elite ultimately serves at the behest of those they rule (i.e. consent of the governed), and so the elite must apply some of their wealth and power to pursue the common good rather than their own self-interest.

Soaring wealth-income inequality leads to vast concentration of political power. "The people" rule in name only. Any attempt to end the two-tiered neofeudal structure of our economy at the ballot box is futile.

As for the social contract of equal opportunity for all, in the real world, the rungs in the ladder of social mobility have been broken. Those who bought homes and assets a generation or two ago have acquired wealth in a credit-asset bubble economy, while those who borrowed a fortune for a college degree find the value is uncertain or marginal in all but the top-tier of credentials--and connections still matter.

The net result is people are dropping out, opting out or burning out. This is the result of what I call social defeat: the odds are now stacked against all but the super-achievers and the well-connected. Given the instability and inequality of the financialized, globalized "market economy" (heh), a family and home are out of reach financially for many, so they give up. Others see their hard-won gains wiped out by medical expenses (the leading cause of household bankruptcies) or a collapse in the speculative bubble-du-jour. We see the same trends in stagnant economies elsewhere (Japan, for instance): the decline of marriage, family and having children and the abandonment of social / community ties.

As this Wall Street Journal poll reveals, the traditional forces of social cohesion are collapsing before our eyes. As Peter Turchin has explained, social cycles of integration and disintegration occur every 50 years or so. In integrative phases, people find reasons to cooperate. In disintegrative phases, people find reasons to disagree and fragment into divisive, polarized camps. Clearly, we're well into a disintegrative phase, and what could bring us together is not even visible.

America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds (WSJ.com)

The rising emphasis on money reflects the insecurity and instability that characterize the economy. If history teaches us anything, it's that piling up private stashes of wealth can't buy social cohesion, restore the social contract or rebuild social ties. Speculative gain is the ultimate false god. The belief that if we all barricade our own private wealth, everything will be fine is the acme of social dissolution.

We have a great opportunity for national renewal, but there is precious little in the market or governance that offers common ground. The common ground must be found in social changes in what we value and what is no longer acceptable. The market and the government will continue to promote and support a neofeudal status quo until they are forced by society to restore the common good and opportunity.

*  *  *

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.  Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

For the third day in a row (ahead of tomorrow's month- and quarter-end and the big PCE print), bonds 'rested' while stocks went wild (this time up... and then back down). Gold rallied as the dollar and bitcoin sold off.

Regional bank stocks slipped back towards the post-SVB lows again, back into the red for the week (not helped by Biden pushing for tighter regs for this cohort) ahead of tonight's Fed bailout data...

FRC was weak today and SCHW fell on an analyst downgrade joining PACW in the red for the week...

Source: Bloomberg

Minnesota Fed's Kashkari opened his mouth around 1330ET and hawkish tones gushed forth, pushing stocks lower.

Richmond Fed's Barkin was more dovish at around 1400ET, hinting at credit tightening (which may reduce needs for hikes) and that policy has lags (hinting at a pause).

Nasdaq outperformed... again... with Small Caps lagging (actually closing in the red on the day). The Dow and S&P rebounded (after Barkin) back into the green on the day...

And as the quarter-end nears, it's clear what's driving the exuberance in long-duration stocks...

Nasdaq heads for one of its best quarters in a decade, up 17% in Q1. Second only to 2022’s Q2 30% rally on the monumental monetary easing during Covid. Both times, the Fed's balance sheet expanded. Latest 10% leg up on the Nasdaq coincided with Fed’s balance sheet adding $400bn pic.twitter.com/na34YcyIwr

— Valerie Tytel (@ValerieTytel) March 30, 2023

'Most Shorted' Stocks squeezed higher at the open once again (to key resistance) but were sold back to unch from there...

Source: Bloomberg

Options traders have priced in a lot of (relative) uncertainty for tomorrow (PCE), but then a jolt lower before rising again into next week's payrolls...

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were modestly lower on the day with the belly outperforming (5Y -3bps) but all yields are still up notably on the week...

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y yield continued to sleep after its explosion higher Friday thru Monday on the back of a suddenly heavy calendar of issuance...

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve (2s10s) flattened for the 4th straight day...

Source: Bloomberg

Rate-hike odds picked up hawkishly again today, with May now at 55% odds of 25bps hike...

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar dumped again to its lowest close since Feb 3rd...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin slipped back below $28,000 today (after spiking above $29 k overnight)..

Source: Bloomberg

Gold (June futures) topped $2000 once again, as spot jumped back above $1980...

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices extended their gains with WTI (May is front-month) back above $74 at two-week highs...

And finally, we note that US equities still screen as expensive vs. the alternatives despite the recent decline in Treasury yields...

Source: Bloomberg

And the S&P 500 NTM P/E of 18x ranks in the 82nd percentile since 1980...

Source: Bloomberg

Do you feel lucky punk?

Given that, maybe you should!

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

I recently wrote a column on how Democrats in California are being challenged to put their money where their mouth has been on reparations.

For years, Democrats have insisted that reparations are a moral imperative.

Now, however, the bill has come due and advocates in a Wednesday hearing confronted members of the California Reparations Task Force in asking “where’s the money?” Some are now demanding more than $5 million per resident as Reparations Board member Lisa Holder of the Equal Justice Society promised that the committee’s “recommendations will be breathtaking.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) created the Reparations Task Force, which just reached its own recommendations for $223,000 per person. Others have insisted the figure should be $350,000 for individuals and another $250,000 for Black-owned businesses. One California politician insisted the figure needs to be $800,000 per person, reflecting the average cost of a home in the state. In the meantime, a similar board has recommended $5 million payments to eligible residents of San Fransisco.

Notably, California’s law expressly states that this money should not be treated as compensation for federal reparations.

That raises the question of whether a resident could receive $5 million from San Francisco, $223,000 from the state, and additional payments from the federal government.

[ZH: As Eric Lundrum writes at AMGreatness, after economists estimated that California’s reparations plan could spend as much as $800 billion, the leader of the state’s “reparations task force” has refused to commit to such a staggering amount.

According to ABC News, the $800 billion figure would be paid to all black residents in the state in return for past historical circumstances such as slavery and segregation, as well as alleged “racism” in policing, incarceration rates, and housing.

“All forms of discrimination should be considered in reparations,” said Thomas Craemer, a public policy professor at the University of Connecticut, in testimony before the panel.

“The task force should feel free to go beyond our loss estimates, and determine what the right amount would be.”

But on Wednesday, the task force’s chair, Kamilah Moore, said the final decision on the exact amount will be left up to the California state legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.).

“The task force is pretty much done regarding the compensation component,” Moore said in an email.

“Our task was to create a methodology for calculation for various forms of compensation that correspond with our findings.”]

Some congressional Democrats have pushed for similar federal reparations and passed a bill out of the House Judiciary Committee in 2021 that failed to receive a floor vote. BET founder Robert Johnson has called for $14 trillion in federal reparations.

In the hearing on Wednesday, the growing expectation and impatience was evident among witnesses. Yet, some reparations advocates in cities with even smaller reparation programs admit that they do not know how cities will fund the payouts.

One witness described the payments of $5 million per person as “nothing” and “too little.” The correct figure was suggested as more like $7.6 million.

Reverend Tony Pierce asked “Where’s the money? Where’s the cash? Where’s the check?” “$5 million, San Francisco’s already made a move. $5 million is nothing.” Pierce mocked the notion of $5 million if it is “spread over 50 years would only amount to $100,000 year, and then with taxes, you’ll be lucky if you end up with $40,000 a year.”  He also rejected the notion of $223,000 for housing as woefully inadequate.

For her part, Holder is pledging breathtaking” reparation payments, including “monetary compensation to Black people who are descendants of enslaved and persecuted Black Americans.”

Those continued assurances are fueling demands for the money without further delay. After years of being told that the payments are moral imperatives, many are losing patience. In a prior hearing, one well-known California activist declared in a prior hearing that “It’s a debt that’s owed, we worked for free. We’re not asking; we’re telling you.”

Despite Gov. Newsom’s underestimating the state debt figures by billions, this bill has now come due and many critics are challenging the left to show that the prior pledges were not mere political opportunism or virtue signaling.

California is set to face the true costs of these pledges and many are in no mood to haggle over price.

In other words, California Democrats may have finally reached the “show me the money” moment.

The political fallout continues after President Biden's controversial and rare criticisms of Israel, which included on Tuesday his urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon his governing coalition's judicial overhaul policy which critics say will destroy any semblance of checks and balances and thus is a threat to Israeli democracy itself. The plan is now on "pause" as deep divisions in Israel simmer.

Biden had said he hoped Netanyahu "walks away from" the plan which has brought hundreds of thousands of Israeli protesters into the streets over the last couple weeks. But he really riled Israel-supporters by emphasizing that he has no intention of welcoming Netanyahu to the White House "in the near term." Typically newly elected Israeli prime ministers can expect to meet with the US president fairly quickly after entering office.

"Like many strong supporters of Israel, I’m very concerned, and I’m concerned that they get this straight. They cannot continue down this road," Biden had told reporters after a speech in North Carolina. "Hopefully the prime minister will act in a way that he can try to work out some genuine compromise. But that remains to be seen."

Again such a rebuke from an American president directed at close ally Israel, which receives over $3 billion a year in foreign and defense aid from Washington, is so rare as to be almost unheard of. But some argue that the funding and steady weapons pipeline to Tel Aviv is precisely why Washington must reign in Israel from time to time.

But pro-Israel hawks have historically treated the Jewish state like it cannot possibly do any wrong. Congressional Republicans were especially angry by Biden's criticisms, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday speaking up, issuing words of support for Netanyahu: 

"Prime Minister Netanyahu is an Israeli patriot, statesman, and most importantly, a great friend of the United States of America," McCarthy said in a statement.

"Free societies have vigorous and open debate. Israel is no exception. I support Prime Minister Netanyahu, and America’s support for Israel’s strong, vibrant democracy is unwavering. Now is an important time for Americans to stand together in support of our long, mutually respectful, and important friendship with Israel."

Interestingly, some Republicans agree that the judicial overhaul plan shouldn't be pursued, but have expressed that Biden shouldn't criticize Israel so out in the open.

For example, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey said Biden's words should have been conveyed through quiet back-channels: "The administration if they’re going to convey a message, it ought to be doing it through secure channels and not being so public about it," he said to The Hill on Wednesday.

New: President Biden urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a strong private message to halt his government's judicial overhaul just hours before Netanyahu announced the suspension of the controversial plan. My story on @axios https://t.co/EUtzlFkYAj

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 29, 2023

"An ally like Israel that absolutely needs a friend like the United States as part of its deterrence, we want to, in no way convey, any, no matter who’s prime minister, diminution of support. Talk it out on a secure phone or in a meeting, don’t do it through the press," Smith added.

More Israeli airstrikes rocked Damascus early Thursday morning, wounding two Syrian soldiers, according to national SANA news agency and international reports.

State sources say Syrian air defenses were "confronting hostile targets" over the capital at around 1:20am, during the aerial attack which came from the direction of the Golan Heights. This marks the fourth major Israeli attack on Syria this month, which included two prior air assaults which temporarily shut down Aleppo International Airport.

"At around 01:20 am (10:20 GMT), the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights targeting several positions in the vicinity of Damascus," Syria’s defense ministry said later, also noting material damage.

After a short lull following a pattern of several years that included hundreds of Israeli attacks on Syria, there's been an uptick and return to more frequent attacks so far this year.

"A group monitoring the Syrian civil war said the Israeli missile strikes last week destroyed a suspected arms depot used by Iran-backed fighters at Aleppo airport," Al Jazeera observes. "On March 7, three people were killed in the Israeli air strike on the airport that also halted flights for three days."

Israeli officials have long claimed to be targeting Iranian military assets such as weapons shipments, but civilians and city infrastructure have long been targeted. "Along with airports, Israeli warplanes have also aimed at other critical infrastructure, including Syrian seaports," AJ notes further.

One likely explanation for Israel's ramped up aggression in Syria is the Saudi-Iran deal to reestablish and normalize diplomatic ties announced this month. Israel has long relied on robust US-Gulf (and GCC) efforts to counter Iran. Couple with this is that Syria's Bashar al-Assad is being welcomed in Gulf capitals such as the UAE and Oman.

#UPDATE: Israeli strikes have reportedly hit a target in the Al-Midan neighbourhood in the Syrian capital, Damascus pic.twitter.com/cRXqzof1HZ

— ELINT News (@ELINTNews) March 29, 2023

US state-backed VOA has observed the post-earthquake diplomacy is part of "renewed efforts to bring Damascus back into the Arab fold." This scares Israel, which wants to see Syria perpetually isolated amid fears in Tel Aviv of deepened Iranian entrenchment in the region.

Via Political Calculations blog,

In late 2020, the policy makers of the Biden administration and its partisan supporters started crafting a new COVID stimulus package. What they wrought set off a chain of events that ultimately led to the cost of living and banking system crisis we face today.

It didn't have to be that way. When they started their discussions, the participants had modest goals for what an additional stimulus would look like. Considering the federal government had just enacted its fourth Covid relief package on 27 December 2020, totaling $900 billion, no one at the time was advising the Biden administration to pursue for another stimulus of similar size, much less one that was $1 trillion larger.

That changed quickly after 5 January 2021, when President Biden's political party gained control of the U.S. Senate after runoff elections in Georgia came out in their favor.

With control of the U.S. Congress in hand, the most rabidly partisan among President Biden's supporters quickly switched gears to exercise their new political power. Instead of linking the magnitude of any new stimulus package to the actual scale of the problem the U.S. economy was facing at the time, they decided they would "go big", putting their fringe political agenda ahead of sound fiscal policy.

But in ditching sound fiscal policy, they opened a rift among those who had been crafting the new stimulus measure. That rift took the form of an academic controversy that erupted while they were developing what would ultimately become the American Rescue Plan Act, which the Biden administration rammed through Congress and signed into law on 11 March 2021.

The controversy involved an economic concept known as potential output, or potential GDP. Here's a quick primer:

Potential output is an estimate of what an economy could feasibly produce when it fully employs its available economic resources. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates potential output by estimating potential GDP, which it describes as "the economy's maximum sustainable output." The word "sustainable" is important — it doesn't mean that the entire working-­age population is working 18 hours per day or that factories are operating 24/7. Rather, it means that economic resources are fully employed — at normal levels. Potential output (estimated as real potential GDP) serves as an important benchmark level against which actual output (measured as real GDP) can be compared with at any given time.

The difference between the economy's potential output and its actual output is called the output gap, which economic policy makers must consider when shaping major fiscal policies. If they adopt policies that undershoot the gap, they will fail to obtain the full positive results they seek at the cost of greatly adding to the nation's debt. If they overshoot the gap, they risk creating adverse economic conditions, like inflation, that can fully undermine whatever positive results they hoped to achieve.

These scenarios were known risks at the time the Biden administration was pushing the American Rescue Plan Act forward. In fact, because the stimulus package they were considering had swelled to $1.9 trillion, the risk of creating inflation became a primary concern among the more fiscally responsible members of Biden's policy making team. But they lost the internal argument when President Biden sided with the most extreme elements among his supporters.

That victory didn't make the likelihood the enormous new stimulus package would almost certainly overshoot the output gap and create persistent inflation go away. By Inauguration Day, the progressive activists who hijacked the stimulus development still needed to dispell that risk to ensure they could get the massive stimulus through a still closely-divided Congress. Their chosen path to achieve their political agenda would hinge on an assumption cooked up by the Biden administration's most rabidly partisan supporters: that the nation's potential GDP and output gap were much larger than the CBO estimated and thus, would not create inflation. That assumption would become the focal point of the controversy for how the stimulus bill could negatively impact the economy.

On 3 February 2021, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget discussed how the assumptions of the size of potential GDP and the output gap being put forward affected the forecasts of how much the stimulus could overshoot the output gap:

The output gap could differ from CBO's projections. Many forecasts and experts suggest the economy will grow faster this year than CBO estimates. A one percentage point increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth would reduce the output gap to less than $200 billion, in which case the American Rescue Plan would be large enough to close eight to ten times the output gap based on the Edelberg and Sheiner numbers. On the other hand, many have argued that CBO is underestimating full employment and potential GDP. If potential GDP were 1 percent larger than CBO's estimate, the output gap would total $1.3 trillion through 2023 and the America Rescue Plan would close 115 to 145 percent of the output gap.

The "Edelberg and Sheiner numbers" refer to a 28 January 2021 analysis of the Biden administration's proposed stimulus produced by the nonpartisan Brookings Institute's Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner. Just a few weeks later, Sheiner would join with Brookings' Tyler Powell and David Wessel to report on the controversy related to potential GDP that had erupted among those who were giving input to the Biden Administration's first major economic policy initiative:

As President Biden and Congress negotiate the next fiscal stimulus package to aid the COVID-19 economic recovery, they will implicitly be making assumptions about the output gap. Analysis by one of us (Louise Sheiner) and our Brookings colleague Wendy Edelberg suggests that Biden’s $1.9 trillion package would result in GDP reaching its pre-pandemic path by the end of 2021 and exceeding it in 2022. In other words, some of the economic activity lost during the pandemic would be made up after the virus subsides.

Based on the CBO’s recent estimate of potential GDP, though, this would leave a large positive output gap—peaking at 2.6 percent in the first quarter of 2022. Some critics — including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers — argue that pushing output this far above potential could drive up inflation.

Others, including Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, warn against putting too much emphasis on a projected output gap in determining the riskiness of a large fiscal stimulus. They note the significant uncertainty that surrounds any estimate of potential GDP. Indeed, by CBO’s estimates, the U.S. economy was operating above potential in 2019, yet inflation remained subdued and below the Fed’s 2 percent target. Moreover, there is little historical precedent to predict how the pandemic will affect potential output or consumer and business demand once the virus recedes.

With hindsight being 20/20, we know that Larry Summers' view was correct. President Biden's COVID stimulus overshot the output gap and created significant inflation, which quickly became evident after its enactment. Mainstream economists using different methodologies indicate the American Recovery Plan Act played a "sizable role" in causing inflation, adding anywhere from 2.6% to 3.5% on top of the inflation rate that would have been recorded without President Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus.

That inflation was allowed to fester for a full year because of a commitment the Federal Reserve made to hold rates near zero percent for as long as possible. It took Americans seeing prices inflate faster than their incomes to finally force the Fed to address the inflation they allowed to gain traction with a series of interest rate hikes beginning in March 2022. Flashing forward one year later, the actions to fix the inflation unleashed by the stimulus measure has had negative impacts on large sectors of the U.S. economy, such as the housing market, and directly contributed to the bank failures that became front page news during the last few weeks.

The Biden administration cannot say they were not warned. Here's the prescient commentary from Larry Summers' 4 February 2021 op-ed in the Washington Post:

... while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability. This will be manageable if monetary and fiscal policy can be rapidly adjusted to address the problem. But given the commitments the Fed has made, administration officials’ dismissal of even the possibility of inflation, and the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply. Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown.

In another op-ed just two months later, Summers provided the epitaph for the inflationary failure of the Biden administration's first major economic initiative with just a simple, understated clause:

Excessive stimulus driven by political considerations was a consequential policy error...

The Biden administration and its extremist political supporters chose to purposefully overshoot the output gap and pretend it would not create the adverse economic conditions that are undermining whatever positive results they hoped to achieve with their $1.9 trillion stimulus. Today, they're expending much effort trying to avoid accountability for their roles in causing the catastrophic consequences of what is becoming the biggest policy error in generations.

Then again, if they weren't honest about it from the beginning, why would they start being honest and take responsibility for their failings now?

References

Martin Wolf. Interview with Larry Summers: ‘I’m concerned that what is being done is substantially excessive’. Financial Times. [Online Article]. 11 April 2021. Here's a video of the full interview:

François de Soyres, Ana Maria Santacreu, and Henry Young. Demand-Supply Imbalance during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Fiscal Policy. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. First Quarter 2023, 105(1), pp. 21-50. [PDF Document]. DOI: 10.20955/r.105.21-50. 20 January 2023.

Francesco Bianchi and Leonardo Melosi. Inflation as a Fiscal Limit. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Working Paper No. 2022-37. [Online Article]. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4205158. 21 September 2022.

Doreen Fagan. Understanding Potential GDP and the Output Gap. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Open Vault Blog. [Online Article]. 4 August 2021.

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. How Much Would the American Rescue Plan Act Overshoot the Output Gap. [Online Article]. 3 February 2021.

Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner. The macroeconomic implications of Biden’s $1.9 trillion fiscal package. Brookings Institute Up Front. [Online Article]. 28 January 2021.

Tyler Powell, Louise Sheiner, and David Wessel. What is potential GDP, and why is it so controversial right now? Brookings Institute Up Front. [Online Article]. 22 February 2021.

Shares of payment company Square are edging back toward territory it traded in prior to Hindenburg Research's March 23 report on the company. Today, shares are higher by about 3% after the company issued a more detailed response to the report. 

The company said in a response publicized on Thursday that its "compliance and risk teams placed just 2.4% of Cash App accounts on a watch list last year", according to Bloomberg on Thursday. 

As part of the response, the company also admitted that it had 39 million unique users by social security number, differing from the 51 million user number they have highlighted. 

So $SQ just admitted that actual confirmed (unique SS #) Cash App users was 39M at 12/31, vs the 51M they keep highlighting? That seems like a material difference. pic.twitter.com/BZDhCH1wg2

— Diogenes (@WallStCynic) March 30, 2023

The company also said "that transacting actives have conducted at least one financial transaction through the app during the specified period, unlike other companies that count any account that opens their mobile app or loads a webpage as an active account," Seeking Alpha reported. 

Addressing allegations of fraud, Block wrote:

"While it’s challenging to arrive at definitive estimates of the amount of fraud and illicit activity, we measure the number of accounts that we “denylist” (a control that prevents, among other things, sending and receiving funds, using a Cash App Card, buying stocks or bitcoin, or taking a loan)."

 "We have additional controls to help prevent known bad actors from returning to the platform," it added. 

Recall on March 23, Hindenburg Research published a report called "Block: How Inflated User Metrics and “Frictionless” Fraud Facilitation Enabled Insiders To Cash Out Over $1 Billion". 

"Most analysts are excited about the post-pandemic surge of Block’s Cash App platform, with expectations that its 51 million monthly transacting active users and low customer acquisition costs will drive high margin growth and serve as a future platform to offer new products," the short seller wrote.

The report alleged: "Our research indicates, however, that Block has wildly overstated its genuine user counts and has understated its customer acquisition costs. Former employees estimated that 40%-75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual."

"Even when users were caught engaging in fraud or other prohibited activity, Block blacklisted the account without banning the user," Hindenburg writes. "Block obfuscates how many individuals are on the Cash App platform by reporting misleading “transacting active” metrics filled with fake and duplicate accounts. Block can and should clarify to investors an estimate on how many unique people actually use Cash App."

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Renowned author and journalist James Howard Kunstler (JHK) has been complaining and pointing out that the American public is told one lie after another by the Lying Legacy Media (LLM), the government and the medical community. 

This kind of lying, according to JHK, is pure treason by all parties, from the 600 million CV19 bioweapon/vax injections, to the crumbling banking system, to the war in Ukraine.  Let’s start with the genocide of the CV19vax.  JHK says,

“They are pretending that they didn’t cause any damage, and they are ignoring their own assembled statistics, and they don’t want to paint a realistic picture for the American public to see what the consequences were for their vaccination program...

I don’t think they can suppress the reality of it that much longer.  There are just too many people who know too many people who have been injured or killed by the vaccines.  The basic problem is dishonesty puts you in a place of weakness, and the truth puts you in a position of strength.  Eventually, if you are not being honest with yourself and the other people around you, you are going to be found out...

They have to keep doubling and tripling down on narratives that are manifestly untrue, and pretty soon I think people are going to be super pissed off about how all this went down.”

With the banking crisis, JHK says the lie that everything is under control is going to be exposed too.  JHK says,

“When you are compelled to liquidate like Silicon Valley Bank, they are liquidating their assets below their supposed value and they become insolvent.  I would imagine there is a great deal of damage waiting to express itself out there, and we haven’t seen much action in the derivatives racket so far, and that’s going to be a big deal when that happens because of the completely reckless contracts that are made...

It’s really a bad bet, and the people taking the bet can’t pay off the bet, and the whole thing is really a disaster waiting to happen.”

JHK says the so-called reset is going to happen, but not the way Klause Schwab wants it to happen. 

All will go extremely local, and JHK says, “Social discourse will make it all much worse.”

The lies about Ukraine and the losing war started by NATO are summed up by JHK,

“In retrospect, we could see why Donald Trump would want to have a phone call with Zelensky over the Biden family activities in Ukraine...

The whole Ukraine portfolio is just a big bag of crap. . . . Because of those activities, there is a war against the people, and that includes a war against Donald Trump.  They are trying every way possible to shove him off the playing field...

I think it is safe to say the U.S. government is not your friend.”

In closing, JHK says,

“This is an extremely socially and politically perverse period of history...

.I grew up in the hippie period... It was quite based compared to the baseless nuttery and lunacy that this country is involved in now.  The fact that there has to be any debate about drag queen story hour for children is amazing... That’s okay?  Deliberately, demonstrable male imitation of a female.  That’s supposed to be good for kids and not scare them?

...There is a uniform craziness across the culture, and people are being asked to swallow increasingly absurd propositions.  That’s where we are now.  We are being asked to swallow absurd ideas one after another.”

There is much more in the 52-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with author and journalist James Howard Kunstler.

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

James Howard Kunstler (JHK) is a prolific writer, and you can enjoy his work and analysis for free at Kunstler.com. If you want to buy one of the 23 books JHK has written, click here to shop.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has returned to Brazil on Thursday for the first time since far-left rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the presidency, and at a moment no less than five Supreme Court investigations linger over his head, any one of which could send him to prison.

As AFP outlines, this includes "four for alleged crimes during his term (2019-2022), and one over accusations he incited a riot by supporters who invaded the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court on January 8, protesting his election loss."

He spent three months in Florida, quiet and keeping a low profile, as politicians in both Brazil and the US (Democrats) called for him to be booted from the US amid questions over his visa status. He had flown to Florida days prior to Lula's Jan.1st inauguration, residing in a posh resort community residence outside Orlando provided by a friend, on an A-1 visa which is only issued to diplomats and heads of state.

Democrats as well as pro-Lula officials accused Bolsonaro of inciting riots and political violence from afar, and the White House had even multiple times been asked about extradition. 

The State Department's Ned Price denied to extradition was on the table, and explained in early January: "If an A visa holder is no longer engaged in official business on behalf of their government, it is incumbent on that visa holder to depart the US or to request a change to another immigration status within 30 days."

And after three months of the Florida Man lifestyle, Bolsonaro is back in Brazil.

(Unrelatedly, I need to know more about who makes the music choices for his TikToks) pic.twitter.com/Nf7HvcZESq

— Vera Bergengruen (@VeraMBergen) March 30, 2023

Additionally, group of 41 Democratic members of Congress had sent a letter to the Biden White House demanding action against the former Brazilian president. "We must not allow Mr Bolsonaro or any other former Brazilian officials to take refuge in the United States to escape justice for any crimes they may have committed when in office," the lawmakers wrote.

Bolsonaro had submitted an application for a for a six-month visitor visa, so while it at first appeared he would extend his stay in the US through legal means, that could have been called off due to the mounting political pressure both within and outside the US.

The former president was greeted by a large crowd upon return:

Bolsonaro is back in Brazil!!! pic.twitter.com/NdY7YesM7j

— Michael Burea (@MichaelBurea) March 30, 2023

He never actually formally conceded defeat to Lula, and is expected to help bolster the political opposition in Brazil, but says he doesn't plan to lead it. CNN describes of his return:

Instead, Bolsonaro said he planned to help his party "as an experienced person," collaborating with "whatever they wish," CNN Brasil quoted the former president as saying. He added that he will tour the country in preparation for next year’s municipal elections.

"We have turned a page, and now we will prepare for next year's election,"  he recently said to CNN Brasil. "You don't have to oppose this government. This government is an opposition in itself."

Authored by Luke Huigsloot via CoinTelegraph.com,

United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler says the regulator is spread thin and needs additional funding to keep up with the “increased complexity in the capital markets.”

United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has thrown his support behind U.S. President Joe Biden’s request to allocate a record $2.4 billion in funding for the regulator, highlighting the ongoing need to crack down on “misconduct” in the cryptocurrency industry.

In prepared testimony for the March 29 budget hearing with the House Appropriations Committee, Gensler said the additional funding was needed to keep up the pace of innovation, adding:

“Rapid technological innovation in the financial markets has led to misconduct in emerging and new areas, not least in the crypto space. Addressing this requires new tools, expertise, and resources.”

The additional funding would allow the SEC to hire 170 additional staff, most of whom would work within its enforcement and examination divisions, said Gensler.

The SEC chair said that the prior year’s budget increase allowed it to bring staffing levels above what it was in 2016 for the first time, but said the regulatory agency was still stretched thin, adding:

“As the cop on the beat, we must be able to meet the match of bad actors. Thus, it makes sense for the SEC to grow along with the expansion and increased complexity in the capital markets.”

Gensler again described crypto as the wild west, suggesting the nascent industry is “rife with noncompliance,” and that crypto investors were putting their “hard-earned assets at risk in a highly speculative asset class.”

According to Gensler, the regulator “received more than 35,000 separate tips, complaints, and referrals from whistleblowers and others in FY 2022,” which helped it bring more than 750 enforcement actions and “resulted in orders for $6.4 billion in penalties and disgorgement.”

Thirty of these actions were related to the crypto industry, which resulted in $242 million in monetary penalties and represents a 36% increase over the 22 actions announced in 2021.

China is warning of a severe response if Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen meets with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) while she tours the United States as well as Central America over the next week. Tsai's plane touched down in New York City late Wednesday, and after a brief tour of the city on Thursday she's expected to head to Guatemala and Belize.

But the Associated Press confirms of the schedule, "She is expected to stop in Los Angeles on her way back to Taiwan on April 5, when a meeting with McCarthy is tentatively scheduled." Predictably, this has outraged China, with the AP continuing: "The spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhu Fenglian, denounced Tsai’s stopovers and demanded that no U.S. officials meet with her."

The spokesperson warned that if Tsai "has contact with US House Speaker McCarthy, it will be another provocation that seriously violates the one-China principle, harms China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait."

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby defended the trip, saying that "It is Taiwan’s decision to make these transits based on their own travel, transits are not visits, they are private, and they are unofficial."

But China's embassy in Washington fired back, saying a Tsai-McCarthy meeting is likely to trigger confrontation, and that the US "should not use past mistakes as excuses for repeating them today," according to the words of Xu Xueyuan, chargé d’affaires of the embassy.

"[Whether] it is Taiwan leaders coming to the United States or the US leaders visiting Taiwan, it could lead to another serious, serious, serious, I repeat, confrontation in the China-US relationship," Xu added.

It must be recalled that China's PLA military had launched its largest-ever 'encircling' live-fire exercises around Taiwan when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island in August. Likely ahead of April 5, when Tsai is expected to meet the Republican House Speaker, China will ratchet its muscle-flexing around the self-ruled island once again.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Columbia University law students and alums are in an uproar over an Instagram post that showed students in the Federalist Society meeting with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the Court.

It would ordinarily be a singular experience for law students to spend time with one of the nine justices.

That is not how it went over at Columbia where some are outraged by the meeting and Columbia’s posting the picture on its social media account.

The Empowering Women of Color group announced it was “withdrawing our participation from Columbia Law School recruiting events.”

Columbia’s own Center for Engaged Pedagogy, simply declared “WTF is wrong with you.”

With the posting, Columbia offered the following description:

“On February 23, members of the Columbia Federalist Society (@clsfedsoc) visited the Supreme Court of the United States to engage in conversation with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. During the visit, they learned about the human side of being a justice, the Court’s deliberation process, and how to be an effective advocate. Justice Kavanaugh also answered questions about a few of his most famous opinions.”

That would seem precisely the type of opportunity that a premier law school seeks to make available to its students. However, Kavanaugh remains persona non grata due to his conservative jurisprudence and allegations from his confirmation hearings. It does not matter that Kavanaugh (who was later the subject of an assassination attempt) was never charged with any crime and vehemently denies the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford.

Those opposing any engagement with Kavanaugh raised both his legal viewpoints and the assault allegations.

The Black Law Students Association wrote on behalf of a large number of groups to oppose the posting and to “put the administration on notice” that it is unacceptable for law students to meet with the justice — or for the law school to support it.

“We believe that our school’s choice to platform Justice Kavanaugh is symbolic of a pattern of behavior that our organization does not and will not support and will not be affiliated with. We thank LALSA, NALSA, EWOC, OutLaws, QTPOC, IfWhenHow, APALSA, SALSA, and others, for joining us in this advocacy and struggle. We look forward to continued collaboration. By joining us in this effort, you have all helped put the administration on notice that we have a strong and growing collective.”

The objection to “platforming” Kavanaugh is telling. Deplatforming is a major tool used by the anti-free speech movement.

As discussed earlier, former Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray is the author of a book entitled “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” and one of the chief enablers of these protesters. Bray describes Antifa as “a pan-left radical politics uniting communists, socialists, anarchists and various different radical leftists together for the shared purpose of combating the far right.” However, the broader anti-free speech movement shares the same underlying opposition to “platforming” of those with opposing views.

Bray speaks positively of the effort to supplant traditional views of free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase… that says I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He defines anti-fascists as “illiberal” who reject the notion that far right views deserve to “coexist” with opposing views.

Bray says that the protesters do not “see fascism or white supremacy as a view with which they disagree as a difference of opinion.” Their goal is not co-existence but “to end their politics.” Bray and other academics are liberating students from the confines of what they deem the false “allegiance to liberal democracy.” Once freed of the values of free speech and democratic values, violence becomes merely politics by other means. When pushed, Bray stressed that Antifa is only a threat to one side and one party:

“There is a certain political lens that — agree or disagree with the lens — there is an element of continuity in terms of the types of groups targeted. I don’t know of any Democratic Party events that have been ‘no platformed,’ or shut down by anti-fascists. So there is a political lens, people will quibble about what the lens is, who designs the lens, but I don’t think the slippery slope is actually, in practice, nearly as much of a concern as people imagine it would be.”

The Empowering Women of Color group rejected the position of Columbia that it should maintain a neutral and tolerant position on such events or speakers:

“We cannot condone complicity with a man who is credibly accused of sexual assault. The insinuation from the Communications Office that the post was neutral and just the Law School’s way of highlighting activities students are participating in is laughable and untrue. A post of this kind, with its caption, is a terrifying stamp of approval.”

In other words, there is no neutrality. Columbia is expected to refuse to participate or recognize any event with the justice, who has never been charged, let alone convicted, of any crime.

However, it is the posting of the Center, as an official office of Columbia University, that is most alarming. The Center account was used to object:  “WTF is wrong with you. Ah yes. Every day I wake up wondering what is the day in the life of someone who strips people’s rights away.”  The Center helps design curriculum and methods of teaching for Columbia and states a mission of instilling “abolitionist” values:

“The CEP invites faculty, students, and staff to participate in a spring discussion group and incubation space focused on using abolitionist thinking to challenge our existing pedagogical practices and the way we live our lives. Participants will use abolitionist values to create personal and pedagogical praxes, come up with actionable plans toward a meaningful material transformation of the world.”

Those “plans” apparently do not involve principles of diversity of thought, due process, or free speech. Unless this is an unapproved posting, the Center is suggesting that law students should not meet with Kavanaugh and that the law school should not support any events with the justice.

I have no problem with the protesting of these groups, though I strongly disagree with their position.

However, the involvement of an office or department of the university is deeply concerning. If this was an unapproved posting, Columbia should make that clear. If it was a statement on behalf of Columbia’s Center, the university should explain how this is consistent with its commitment to free speech and tolerance for opposing views of its students and faculty.