Greenpeace to Ditch Greta


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate Re-Posted Aug 30, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Reports are circulating that Greenpeace may soon ditch their poster child for climate change, Greta Thunberg. The Swedish activist was pushed to fame as a child and became notorious for passionate speeches that she was likely forced to read and believe. Klaus Schwab even featured the young girl in his film, “The Forum,” to promote Agenda 2030.

Greta is now 19 years old and no longer the perfect child-like puppet with braids and innocence. I warned that her parents manipulated this girl for their own benefit. She suffers from autism and depression, and her parents publicly stated that parading her around the globe was “medicine” for her ailments.

As an adult, she is diverting from the script. Last year, she said that democracy should be prioritized over climate change in a move that angered her handlers. She accidentally shared an image of “suggested posts” that her handlers asked her to share across social media platforms. Greta even came under fire by the Indian government after being spotted with pop star Rihanna who began promoting the Indian farmer’s protest.

There are now talks that the climate change crowd plans to discard the teen. Other activists have begun publicly criticizing her, which would have never happened when she was surrounded by the likes of Al Gore and Jennifer Morgan. “Since the beginning, we have said that we want to be hierarchy-free – and yet many saw Greta as the leader,” Swiss Jann Kessler stated. Others have whined that she was not the first to protest the weather cycle.

To the adults who abused this innocent girl – how dare you!

California Begs Residents Not to Move to Texas


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Aug 30, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

California’s failed policies have led residents to flock to states like Florida, Arizona, and Texas. Now, California is begging them to stay by using disturbing rhetoricBillboards are appearing across Los Angeles and San Francisco warning against moving to Texas. The reason? The horrific Uvalde School massacre that occurred at Robb Elementary in May.

“The Texas miracle died in Uvalde,” the billboards states. It is in bad taste to use a school shooting to promote an agenda. The gunman was apprehended by a Texas resident with a gun. The police failed those children. None of this has anything to do with California’s policies; crime is not as prominent in Texas.

Between 2020 and 2021, over 25,000 fled California to Texas, according to the US Census data. Overall, over 360,000 people left California in 2021. Most cite that California has become completely unaffordable, with the median home price at about $797,470. Companies have fled California since the beginning of the pandemic to tax-friendly states. They lost huge job creators and revenue makers such as Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, SpaceX, and Tesla, to name a few. Another less discussed reason is the intense woke rhetoric spewed by Newsom and others. Theft has basically become legal. Despite the beautiful scenery and weather, people simply do not want to live in the Golden State for a plethora of reasons.

Analysts Begin Quantifying “Some Pain for Americans” as Monetary Policy is Positioned to Support Green New Deal Energy Transition


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 29, 2022 | Sundance

The financial pundits are slowly starting to drop the pretending and discuss the bigger economic picture. However, as they tread very carefully, they are being very cautious about admitting too much.

Reuters discussion of the comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, starts to dip the media toe in the painful pool; yet they will not admit the Biden energy program is the source of the inflation Powell is targeting with his policy moves to shrink energy demand. Thus, the pretending continues.

If you take the written words and extract the parseltongue, you can see a more fulsome picture of what is being outlined.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo., Aug 29 (Reuters) – The message from the world’s top finance chiefs is loud and clear: rampant inflation is here to stay and taming it will take an extraordinary effort, most likely a recession with job losses and shockwaves through emerging markets.

That price is still worth paying, however. Central banks spent decades building their credibility on inflation fighting skills and losing this battle could shake the foundations of modern monetary policy.

In other words, the U.S. economy is based on core U.S. energy systems and moving that construct to alternative energy, windmills, electric vehicles and solar panels; along with getting Americans to accept a lowered standard of living; is an “extraordinary effort.”

Yes, they are ‘all-in’ and if they lose “this battle,” the core foundations of modern monetary policy will “shake” along with the economic collapse that follows. The economic energy “transition” is the Biden policy, the federal reserve is trying to support that policy by lowering economic demand.

Yes, they also now admit that people will lose their jobs, their livelihoods and the foundation of their economic stability in the process.

[…] “Regaining and preserving trust requires us to bring inflation back to target quickly,” European Central Bank board member Isabel Schnabel said. “The longer inflation stays high, the greater the risk that the public will lose confidence in our determination and ability to preserve purchasing power.”

Banks should also keep going even if growth suffers and people start to lose their jobs. “Even if we enter a recession, we have basically little choice but to continue our policy path,” Schnabel said. “If there were a deanchoring of inflation expectations, the effect on the economy would be even worse.”

[Energy inflation, the root of all supply side inflation] “is near double-digit territory in many of the world’s biggest economies, a level not seen in close to a half century.”

[…] Deglobalisation, the realignment of alliances due to Russia’s war, demographic changes and more expensive production in emerging markets could all make supply constraints more permanent. (read more)

Yes, the “realignment global of alliances,” as an outcome of the western world policy to fracture global markets based on energy use.  Notice they are now starting to admit what we have discussed here for over a year?

“The global economy seems to be on the cusp of a historic change as many of the aggregate supply tailwinds that have kept a lid on inflation look set to turn into headwinds,” Agustín Carstens, the head of the Bank of International Settlements, said.

“If so, the recent pickup in inflationary pressures may prove to be more persistent,” said Carstens, who heads a group often called the central bank of the world’s central banks.

All this points to rapid interest rates hikes, led by the Fed with the ECB now trying to catch up, and elevated rates for years to come. (read more)

Indeed, we are only now on the front side “cusp” of the transition which will force the continued lowering of economic activity within the aligned nations for more than a generation or two.   All economic activity, essentially all human activity, will have to be stalled and reduced until the levels of sustainable energy production can catch up to the levels of energy needed for the now smaller economy.

With current estimations of 50+ years before sustainable energy can generate 25 to 50 percent of the need, this is going to take a long time, and the bankers & financial control agents are going to have to simultaneously make the economies of the allied nations much smaller.

The planned energy oven is small, the size of the economic pizza must be shrunk in order to fit within it.

My last and important point is this…. The multinational corporations, banks and global finance folks, do not enter into these situations without a carefully planned way to retain their own wealth.  The job of a “hedge fund manager” is described in the title, to find a “hedge” against risk to continue increasing wealth.

The billionaire elites that have assembled their wealth on the old economic system will not trust anything to chance as this global cleaving of the world economy takes place. Being reactionary is not how they operate.  These groups pre-stage their wealth and assets outside the zone of collateral damage. They are proactive, not reactive to these global financial events.

With the foundation of the western economic system now being changed, look carefully at the political landscape to see what Wall Street risk mitigation maneuvers are taking place. My very strong hunch on this wealth preservation facet leads me back to domestic politics, and suddenly things make sense. I’m not wrong. I am open to being wrong, but I’m not wrong.

The Build Back Better Western Energy Policy is Making Russia Very Rich


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 29, 2022 | Sundance

As the global cleaving begins taking shape based on the new western energy system, the Build Back Better agenda, Russian energy exports are worth a lot more money.  As a result, the Russian economy has gained more wealth than before the western sanctions regime was triggered.  As noted by the Wall Street Journal:

(Via WSJ) – […] Demand from some of the world’s largest economies has given Russian President Vladimir Putin the upper hand in the energy battle that shadows the war in Ukraine, and has confounded the West’s bid to cripple Russia’s economy with sanctions.

Sales are booming in Russia’s export market, the world’s largest in crude and refined fuels. And new trade arrangements have given Mr. Putin cover to use natural gas exports as an economic weapon against Ukraine’s European allies. Before the war, Russia supplied Europe with 40% of its gas. It has since throttled flows through the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany and other conduits, driving prices higher and putting pressure on European households and businesses.

Oil revenue more than makes up the difference. “Russia is swimming in cash,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. Moscow earned $97 billion from oil and gas sales through July this year, about $74 billion of that from oil, she said.

[…] Russian energy sales have flourished by finding new buyers, new means of payment, new traders and new ways of financing exports, according to oil traders, former Russian industry executives and shipping officials.

“There came a realization that the world needs oil, and nobody’s brave enough to embargo 7.5 million barrels a day of Russian oil and oil products,” said Sergey Vakulenko, an analyst and former Russian energy executive.

After buyers in the U.S., the European Union and their Pacific allies cut back their Russian oil imports, much of it went to nations in Asia that have declined to take sides in the conflict.

An unexpected market has been the Middle East. Exports of Russian fuel oil, a lightly refined version of crude, now go to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, often stopping in Egypt en route.

The Russian oil is either burned in Saudi power stations or exported from Fujairah, a U.A.E. port and hot spot for blending Russian and Iranian oils to conceal their provenance. This is oil that before the war was shipped to U.S. refiners.

The Russian imports, purchased at a discount, free state giant Saudi Arabian Oil Co. to export its crude at market prices. “The Saudis are happy to take their oil and sell it rather than burning it,” said Carole Nakhle, chief executive at consulting firm Crystol Energy.

The arrangement adds supply to the global oil market, helping put a lid on prices. “This is a win-win situation for the Russians and even, I would say, for the Europeans and the U.S.,” Ms. Nakhle said.  (read more)

Ukrainians Forbidden From Accepting Russian Aid


Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Aug 29, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Ukrainians are not permitted to accept any humanitarian relief from Russian agencies. Civilians in a war zone could face life imprisonment for accepting relief, including food. Ministry of Internal Affairs Alyona Matveeva said each case would be analyzed separately.

“For example, if a person called to support the military of the Russian Federation or provided some information, took humanitarian aid (from the Russians – ed.) and distributed it – this is one punishment, if it is about some more serious actions of a person, for example, when a person’s collaborative activity had such an impact that someone died because of it – the term in this case can be more serious, even up to life imprisonment,” the spokeswoman said.

There are currently 815 ongoing criminal investigations for breaching national security, treason, and collaborationism. This is simply what is occurring in Ukraine, but anyone in a country that has joined the proxy war found aiding Russia could come under fire. I reported on the signs around Estonia’s border, asking people to report anyone suspected of collaborating with the enemy. We have not learned from history. This is another example of the government turning neighbors against one another. The Soviet Union once employed the same tactics, as did many other regimes. These measures simply cause distrust and paranoia to spread as the government expects the people to spy on their own family and friends. Your neighbor is now a potential enemy, and your own actions may be considered suspicious.

Sunday Talks, War Advocates McFaul and Stavridis Discuss Status of Ukraine


Posted originally on the conservative tree House on August 28, 2022 | Sundance

Retired Admiral James Stavridis was the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander who conducted Secretary Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya without congressional authorization.  Stavridis represents the military side of the State Dept war machine, while Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, represents the diplomatic side.

Hopefully, more Americans are awake now to the nature of U.S. foreign policy as it relates to who controls the use of our military.  Most modern interventions are conducted from within the U.S. State Dept using joint elements of the CIA that operate within it.  The State Dept and CIA now control all pentagon operations and direct U.S. missions.

Once we accept how this modern process of global influence works, then we understand how and why Mike Pompeo moved from CIA to State during the Trump administration.  Pompeo was the ‘mitigator,’ the person installed to block President Trump from interfering in this construct.  What Bill Barr was to the DOJ, Pompeo was for the State Dept.  It’s always uncomfortable to look at the Deep State with clear eyes.

As you review the propaganda; and there is no doubt this is pure propaganda as pushed by NBC today on Meet the Press; keep in mind that U.S. operators are deeply embedded inside Ukraine to facilitate goals of the State Dept proxy war against Russia.  New York Times – … [E]ven as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.

.

As noted in the interview, albeit with parseltonge to obscure the reality of the situation and keep the American public thinking sending more money and weapons into Ukraine will change the outcome – it won’t, Russia has dug in throughout Donbas and now controls eastern Ukraine.  Donbas was always the goal of Vladimir Putin as a buffer against Western use of Ukraine.

Ukraine is to the United States what North Korea is to China; both are fully controlled proxy states.  Western media keep pretending that Ukraine is not the playground for the U.S. government.  However, the larger reality is clear and accepting that reality explains why the U.S. government is funding the Ukraine government.  Meanwhile Vladimir Putin is clear-eyed and has no problem watching the U.S. go bankrupt trying to keep Ukraine afloat.

Once you understand the U.S. government strings and puppets, the pantomime is no longer fun to watch.

It’s all propaganda.

Essentially, our government are the bad guys.

We’re Controlling You Even MORE Now!


Awaken With JP Published originally on Rumble on August 27, 2022

Welcome to tonight’s broadcast, we can’t believe you’re dumb enough to keep watching, but here we go!

Neil Oliver, As the Elites Pivot Away from COVID, Now, Right Now, is the Time to Confront the Other Stuff


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 27, 2022 | Sundance

An excellent and righteously deliberate weekly monologue from Mr. Neil Oliver this week.  Oliver walks through recent examples of British governing officials now attempting to rewrite their history in pushing the COVID madness and panic and then he shifts to the more important issue of their bigger agenda.

Oliver correctly notes that now is the time to expose it all; expose all of the madness behind the grand plan to weaponize the false framework of climate change in a quest to take control and reduce the lives of people to subservient proles.  Now is the time for all the conspiracy theorists, tin foil hat wearers, Putin apologist, vaccine deniers and those who have been proven correct, to stand boldly amid the crowd of sheeple and defy the next effort.

The Ukraine narrative is a western created false ruse, a justification without merit, simply to inflict more pain and hardship in Europe around the bigger multinational energy program known as Build Back Better.  Now is the time to use the truth of COVID as a reference point and weapon to call it out and ridicule political leaders.  Now is the time to see who stands with the people upon policies of commonsense.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – Don’t be fooled into thinking this disaster movie is coming to an end.

Rishi Sunak was quick off the mark last week with his pitiful, self-serving claims about having known the lockdowns were a bad thing but that despite him drumming his tiny fists on the table until they were a little bit sore no one would listen to him.

He said his heroic efforts to avert disaster were deleted from the official records of meetings he attended.

If that’s true – if minutes of meetings affecting government policy were doctored – then Sunak’s claims demand criminal investigation and jail time for those responsible – including big wigs with letters after their names, who presumably knew the truth of it as well and kept their mouths shut while people needlessly died miserable deaths, endured miserable lives and the country was driven off a cliff.

Sunak squeaks that he was on the right side of history but powerless. What absolute twaddle. He was arguably the second most powerful figure in government. By his own admission, he went along with all that was done to us. If it had ever been about principles, he would have resigned the first time his dissent was ignored and erased. He would have made his way hot foot to a television studio and there delivered an honest statement about how doing the right thing was more important than keeping his job. He did none of those things.

For all that, there’s excitement in the air. The mere fact the former chancellor and would-be prime minister has broken ranks – basically opting for the tried and trusted playground tactic of claiming a big boy did it and ran away means many are scenting blood in the water.

I’m hearing a lot of people, desperate and hopeful that the whole truth will finally come out, saying things like, “the narrative is finally falling apart.”

It might be and it might not. But the Covid and lockdown double-act is expendable. They’ve wrung all the juice they’re ever going to get out of that rotten fruit and now it’s ready to be cast aside. Or maybe it will just go on the back burner while other, fresher concoctions are brought forward. Either way, someone, somewhere seems to have decided it’s time to move on.

Just don’t be fooled into thinking that stuff about saving Granny and the NHS was ever the point, far less the main event. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again:

“It’s never about what they say it’s about.”

Thousands of grannies and grandpas died anyway and the NHS is a vast money pit that sucks in billions and now shuts its doors against people dying of cancer. I don’t believe the last two years was ever about public health.

The people who said lockdowns would kill many more than Covid, have been proved right. I’ve listened, ad nauseam, to all that stuff about:

“It was so scary in the beginning – those images from China – our leaders were just doing what they thought was right …”

Yada, yada, yada – I barely bought it then and now it seems obvious that from the beginning, whatever Covid was or wasn’t, wherever it came from, it was blatantly exploited in pursuit of long planned goals. From the beginning I say it was about fear and control.

The good ship Pandemic is holed below the waterline and all the rats are scuttling towards the life rafts. All the lies about Covid, all the lies about vaccines, more and more exposed every day.

On the other side of the Atlantic, micro megalomaniac Antony Fauci is making for dry land as fast as his little paws will propel him. There are so many rats on that sinking ship, however, that they know there won’t be enough rafts. They are aboard the Titanic and many won’t make it. Here’s hoping.

Now that some of the great and the good are changing their tune … now that more and more of the mainstream media are pirouetting like ballerinas and finally contemplating questions some of us have been asking, shouting indeed, on a desperate loop, for months and years, there’s a narrow window of opportunity for getting some other stuff out into the open. And so now seems like the right time to think more of the unthinkable and say more of the unsayable.

Things are unfolding now exactly as the so-called conspiracy theorists, us with the tin hats on, said they would. And while everyone else – those who poured scorn, and ridiculed and hated – surely have to face the fact that we, the outcasts who lost work and reputations and much else besides – were right all along about the unforgivable damage of locking down, about harms to children, about being determined to refuse the Covid injections – in this brief moment while those who had nothing to offer but spite, and vitriol and undisguised loathing for those of us who first suspected we were being sold a pup – and who felt something wrong in our guts and so bothered to do our own reading and learned we were absolutely right and so spoke out and kept speaking out – right now before those smug smarty pants regroup behind the next line trotted out by the establishment, we can state some more of the blindingly obvious.

Let me, on behalf of my fellow conspiracy theorists, put more of the truth out there. After all, in a few months’ time it’s what those same smarty pants will be saying they knew all along as well.

Here’s what I make of the bigger picture – and what some of us so-called Covidiots, anti-vaxxers, Putin-apologists, fascist, far-right extremist swivel-eyed loons want to talk about next.

Whatever is happening in Ukraine, to that country and to its people, both are undoubtedly being used by those who also need something and someone to make their own populations look the other way. The horror show in the Ukraine is being exploited.

Here at home last week, Boris implied that while only lesser mortals are fretting selfishly about heat and food, his attentions are focused on the lofty heights of saving the world. The little people of Britain must endure cold and hunger for … guess what … the greater good.

Anyone with even the faintest grasp on, at least an interest in, geopolitics knowns it is utterly bogus and he is a fraud – along with Biden, Trudeau, Macron, Von der Leyen and the rest of a list so long I don’t have time to read it out.

The imminent cold and hunger were made inevitable not by Putin in 2022, but years ago by the adoption of ruinous, ideologically driven nonsense presented as world-saving environmental policies that only denied us any hope of energy independence, the profitable exploitation of all the resources beneath our feet and seas and condemned much of Europe to dependence on Russia.

What we are paying is the cost of going Green, when those polices are not green at all but predicated upon some of the most destructive and toxic practices and technologies ever conceived.

Wind and solar will never provide the energy we need to keep thriving as societies, to grow and flourish. The situation is so insane I find it easiest to conclude we are simply meant to do without.

Stop thinking we’re all going to have cars, and international travel, and warm homes – just different than before. What seems obvious is that we are being groomed to live small lives, to make way for the grandiose expectations and entitlements of the elites that are working so effectively to hoover up the last of the wealth.

Smaller lives, colder lives may actually be the best we can hope for, given the plans evidently laid out for us by those with their hands on the levers of power. Our leaders used to tell us we needed them in order to be free. In future they will have us believe we need them to be safe. Caged animals are safe, but it’s not much of a life.

Energy prices will keep going up. This will obviously hurt the poorest countries and poorest people first and worst. What is obvious about the Green warriors making war on affordable, reliable energy is that they care not a jot about the poor – at least not the actual poor alive in the world today.

Those real flesh and blood people are to be sacrificed, by the millions, utterly denied the energy that might have lifted them out of poverty, so that imaginary people as yet unborn might thrive in a Utopia that exists only in the imaginations of pampered protesters. China will just burn more coal to compensate and seize more control but, shh, best not mention it.

That corrupted thinking comes from Communism – or perhaps Communism’s idiot cousin Socialism. Green warriors don’t care about the poor, in the same way socialists don’t care about the poor … they just hate the rich.

Which is ironic, given that with their infantile protests they are doing the work of the very richest for them.

Ukraine produces a fifth of the wheat crop, required by the poorest. Not this year though. Whatever has been grown will be hard to store and harder to export – so that hunger and full-blown famine becomes a looming threat for hundreds of millions of the world’s hungriest people.

In richer countries, life is being made deliberately impossible for farmers. Spiking costs of fertilisers and fuel are one thing but governments in the Netherlands, across Europe, in Canada and elsewhere around the world are persecuting those who grow our food. Farmers are being made to endure restrictions that destroy their businesses, being driven off their land altogether. They will have to watch as fields they have known and cared for over generations are hoovered up by transnational organisations with other ideas about what that land might be used for.

If you think mass migration and immigration are difficult problems now, wait until the unavoidable famines cause a hemorrhage of humanity out of the poorest countries of Africa and the Middle East. Perhaps hundreds of millions of people with nothing more to lose.

Where do you think they’ll go?

And here’s another inconvenient truth: money and weapons keep flowing into Ukraine, but despite months of war and sanctions, the Russian ruble remains strong and an end to hostilities seems as far away as ever. Maybe no one wants that war to end. Wars don’t determine who’s right anyway; wars determine who’s left.

Ultimately this is all about wealth and power. Not money, remember. Money is to wealth as a menu is to a steak. One’s a worthless bit of paper, the other something that will keep you alive. This is about actual wealth and its acquisition. It’s about the already super-rich getting hold of even more of the real things. Land, buildings, natural resources, gold. While we are supposed to be frightened out of our wits, squabbling among ourselves, and just hoping that one day it will all be over, a relative handful of others are hoovering up all the wealth, as planned.

Whichever way you slice it, an economic and societal shock on a scale that has not happened in lifetimes, if ever, is on its way. The world we live in is built in its entirety upon unimaginable, and now unsustainable, levels of debt. Trillions … quadrillions of dollars’ worth. There is always much more debt in the world than money – so that it is never possible to settle the debt. Now that debt, all that created money, is about to come crashing down.

Don’t be fooled by Sunak and the rest and their about face – their pretense that they were with us all along. Covid and lockdown carried them only so far – but they plan to go much further. Disease, War, Famine, Death – the same people always ride on the same four horses.

Now is not the time to take our eyes off the ball. Not by a long chalk. Keep watching the usual suspects.

As I say, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

[Transcript]

…”It’s time!”

Lots of FBI Officials Work at Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 27, 2022 | Sundance

The suspicions surrounding Jack’s Magic Coffee shop are not new.  {Go Deep} Indeed, the recent whistleblower claims of data insecurity seem to align with the overall theme that U.S. government interest are more than a little deeply involved in the domestic surveillance system known as Twitter specifically, and big social media in general.

In the latest datapoint assembly, a solid dive by MintPressNews into the number of former FBI officials working at Twitter, shows just how enmeshed the federal police are with the social media platform.  The scale is really quite remarkable. [SEE HERE]

Big picture – the number of FBI officials working for Twitter indicates some strong connective tissue behind both enterprises.

[MintPressNews] – […] The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace. “The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies,” the “About” section of its website informs readers. “The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence [and] cyber crime,” it adds. (read more)

How would it damage the U.S. government if claims about the Chinese government having access to all user data on TikTok, are shown to be identical to the U.S. government having access to all user data on Twitter?

Let that question settle in for a few moments, because that is exactly what I have been alleging since, well, 2011, when the U.S. State Dept first collaborated with Twitter in a joint public-private partnership to use the platform as a communication tool exploiting the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, Libya and beyond.

The issue of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is an issue of financial viability.  The business model of Twitter just doesn’t exist as a free social media discussion platform while running the ultra-expensive data processing system needed for millions of simultaneous users.  A global chat that requires exponential database responses as an outcome of simultaneous users is just ridiculously expensive. {Go Deep} However, if the computing system and massive database were being subsidized by the U.S. government, then the viability of the ‘free coffee‘ business model makes sense.

“Cloud computing is one of the core components of the strategy to help the IC discover, access and share critical information in an era of seemingly infinite data.” … “A test scenario described by GAO in its June 2013 bid protest opinion suggests the CIA sought to compare how the solutions presented by IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) could crunch massive data sets, commonly referred to as big data.” … “Solutions had to provide a “hosting environment for applications which process vast amounts of information in parallel on large clusters (thousands of nodes) of commodity hardware” using a platform called MapReduce. Through MapReduce, clusters were provisioned for computation and segmentation. Test runs assumed clusters were large enough to process 100 terabytes of raw input data. AWS’ solution received superior marks from CIA procurement officials”… (MORE)

The integration between Twitter and the United States Intelligence Community has been hiding in plain sight:

July 26, 2021, (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (more)

A shared hashing protocol is a form of data system integration.

The databases of the identified social media platforms appear to be integrated with the U.S. intelligence system.  This relationship makes the U.S government a stakeholder in the financial sustainability of the enterprise(s).  Thus, a collaborative effort to subsidize the underlying data processing fits the mutual benefit scenario.

Jerome Powell Says Fed Effort to Make U.S. Economy Smaller Will Create “Some Pain” for Americans During Biden Transition to Clean Energy


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 26, 2022 | Sundance

When Chairman Powell says things are really, really going to suck as monetary policy tries to support Biden’s goals to reduce energy supplies, will people believe him?

The agenda of the federal reserve was clearly outlined today in the remarks from Chairman Powell in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  The Fed chair is trying to manage the economic policy transition by reducing economic activity to match intentionally diminished energy supplies.  Lowering economic activity drops demand for energy. Unfortunately, as admitted by Powell today, this means a period of “some pain” for Americans as the central banks join together in an effort to lower consumption.  WATCH:

What does “some pain” mean?  It means lower incomes, higher prices, lowered standards of living and more scarce resources.   During this transition to owning nothing and being happy about it, the pain is your wealth being stripped as the economy is intentionally diminished.

We will not be able to afford much; we won’t be able to afford the foods we want; we will not be able to purchase anything except the essentials, and those essentials will cost much more; we won’t be able to vacation, travel, or enjoy recreational activities; we won’t be able to afford any indulgences; but at the end of the process, we will learn to live more meager existences based on lowered expectations needed for sustaining the planet.   Pay no attention to the elites who don’t have those concerns, comrade.

[Transcript] – POWELL: “At past Jackson Hole conferences, I have discussed broad topics such as the ever-changing structure of the economy and the challenges of conducting monetary policy under high uncertainty. Today, my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower, and my message more direct.”

The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) overarching focus right now is to bring inflation back down to our 2 percent goal. Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone. In particular, without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all. The burdens of high inflation fall heaviest on those who are least able to bear them.

Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance. Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth. Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions. While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.

The U.S. economy is clearly slowing from the historically high growth rates of 2021, which reflected the reopening of the economy following the pandemic recession. While the latest economic data have been mixed, in my view our economy continues to show strong underlying momentum. The labor market is particularly strong, but it is clearly out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. Inflation is running well above 2 percent, and high inflation has continued to spread through the economy. While the lower inflation readings for July are welcome, a single month’s improvement falls far short of what the Committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down.

We are moving our policy stance purposefully to a level that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent. At our most recent meeting in July, the FOMC raised the target range for the federal funds rate to 2.25 to 2.5 percent, which is in the Summary of Economic Projection’s (SEP) range of estimates of where the federal funds rate is projected to settle in the longer run. In current circumstances, with inflation running far above 2 percent and the labor market extremely tight, estimates of longer-run neutral are not a place to stop or pause.

July’s increase in the target range was the second 75 basis point increase in as many meetings, and I said then that another unusually large increase could be appropriate at our next meeting. We are now about halfway through the intermeeting period. Our decision at the September meeting will depend on the totality of the incoming data and the evolving outlook. At some point, as the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases.

Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time. The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy. Committee participants’ most recent individual projections from the June SEP showed the median federal funds rate running slightly below 4 percent through the end of 2023. Participants will update their projections at the September meeting.

Our monetary policy deliberations and decisions build on what we have learned about inflation dynamics both from the high and volatile inflation of the 1970s and 1980s, and from the low and stable inflation of the past quarter-century. In particular, we are drawing on three important lessons.

The first lesson is that central banks can and should take responsibility for delivering low and stable inflation. It may seem strange now that central bankers and others once needed convincing on these two fronts, but as former Chairman Ben Bernanke has shown, both propositions were widely questioned during the Great Inflation period.1 Today, we regard these questions as settled. Our responsibility to deliver price stability is unconditional. It is true that the current high inflation is a global phenomenon, and that many economies around the world face inflation as high or higher than seen here in the United States.

It is also true, in my view, that the current high inflation in the United States is the product of strong demand and constrained supply, and that the Fed’s tools work principally on aggregate demand. None of this diminishes the Federal Reserve’s responsibility to carry out our assigned task of achieving price stability. There is clearly a job to do in moderating demand to better align with supply. We are committed to doing that job.

The second lesson is that the public’s expectations about future inflation can play an important role in setting the path of inflation over time. Today, by many measures, longer-term inflation expectations appear to remain well anchored. That is broadly true of surveys of households, businesses, and forecasters, and of market-based measures as well. But that is not grounds for complacency, with inflation having run well above our goal for some time.

If the public expects that inflation will remain low and stable over time, then, absent major shocks, it likely will. Unfortunately, the same is true of expectations of high and volatile inflation. During the 1970s, as inflation climbed, the anticipation of high inflation became entrenched in the economic decisionmaking of households and businesses. The more inflation rose, the more people came to expect it to remain high, and they built that belief into wage and pricing decisions. As former Chairman Paul Volcker put it at the height of the Great Inflation in 1979, “Inflation feeds in part on itself, so part of the job of returning to a more stable and more productive economy must be to break the grip of inflationary expectations.”2

One useful insight into how actual inflation may affect expectations about its future path is based in the concept of “rational inattention.”3 When inflation is persistently high, households and businesses must pay close attention and incorporate inflation into their economic decisions. When inflation is low and stable, they are freer to focus their attention elsewhere. Former Chairman Alan Greenspan put it this way: “For all practical purposes, price stability means that expected changes in the average price level are small enough and gradual enough that they do not materially enter business and household financial decisions.”4

Of course, inflation has just about everyone’s attention right now, which highlights a particular risk today: The longer the current bout of high inflation continues, the greater the chance that expectations of higher inflation will become entrenched.

That brings me to the third lesson, which is that we must keep at it until the job is done. History shows that the employment costs of bringing down inflation are likely to increase with delay, as high inflation becomes more entrenched in wage and price setting. The successful Volcker disinflation in the early 1980s followed multiple failed attempts to lower inflation over the previous 15 years. A lengthy period of very restrictive monetary policy was ultimately needed to stem the high inflation and start the process of getting inflation down to the low and stable levels that were the norm until the spring of last year. Our aim is to avoid that outcome by acting with resolve now.

These lessons are guiding us as we use our tools to bring inflation down. We are taking forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply, and to keep inflation expectations anchored. We will keep at it until we are confident the job is done.” [Transcript End]