Biden Asks Lame Duck Congress to Quickly Expedite Another $38 Billion for Ukraine Plus $9 Billion for Big Pharma


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 15, 2022 | Sundance

The White House is urging Nancy Pelosi to utilize the lame duck congressional session and construct a massive omnibus spending bill that will wrap Ukraine funding, COVID spending and a federal budget extension via continuous resolution.  The request for Ukraine funding is an additional $38 billion.

Federal funds to support FEMA and hurricane recovery efforts will likely be part of the bargaining chips. Essentially, the sausage ingredients are: if congress doesn’t give Zelenskyy more money, then DeSantis will not get federal financial assistance.

If you don’t support Ukraine, you’re a Russian operative.

WASHINGTON DC – The Biden administration sent a letter to Congress on Tuesday outlining nearly a $38 billion request to help Ukraine continue fending off Russian attacks.

The administration is also asking for $10 billion in emergency health funding, with more than $9 billion going toward Covid vaccine access, next-generation Covid vaccines, long Covid research and more. About $750 million would be spent on efforts to control the spread of monkeypox, hepatitis C and HIV.

Congress has so far provided about $66 billion for Ukraine and other war-related needs. The administration argues that about three-quarters of that funding has either been spent or is committed to specific purposes.

An administration official said the White House plans to request additional disaster relief in the coming weeks to help with hurricane and wildfire recovery but didn’t provide any tentative figure.

The administration’s request for emergency money comes as appropriators aim to clinch a year-end government funding deal that would stave off a partial government shutdown on Dec. 16 and increase agency budgets for the current fiscal year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already promised to provide more money for Ukraine in a government funding package, while some conservatives are arguing that the U.S. should cut off financial assistance and assess how funding for the country has been spent to date. (read more)

The Crypto Contagion – More Lows into 2023


Armstrong Blog/Cryptocurrency

Posted Nov 15, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

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This FTX scandal is the death nil for cryptos. At first, I assumed that perhaps they lost a ton of money because of the implosion of the bond market. But this was not the case. In fact, this is perhaps the worst I have ever seen and it comes from trading losses from kids that had no experience whatsoever with regard to trading. They obviously did not even understand fiduciary responsibility.  MF Global was taking client money to trade in London and got the market wrong. Bernie Madoff remains a mystery wrapped up in a political enigma.  From 1991 to 2008, Bernie and Ruth Madoff contributed only about $240,000 to federal candidates, parties, and committees. Madoff was not trying to buy influence as was taking place at FTX. Maxwell mysteriously died in 1991 when his trading scandal surfaced, but he was also secretly backing the communist coup against Gorbachev in 1991.

Then there were the accounting scandals of ENRON and Worldcom whereby to hide their losses and failures, they engaged in accounting fraud to cover up the true story. But there were not using other people’s money to trade, they were hiding their bad performance from shareholders hoping to make a comeback.

That is the common denominator. I have been called into many crises. The one thing that always runs through the problem is the refusal to admit a mistake. That seems to lead to losing trades continuing to be held in hope of the infamous COMEBACK. The motive seems to be the same and many of the problems I have been called into to help solve have been in corporations where some strategy went wrong. In these cases of ENRON, Worldcom that were allowed to fester. The trading scandals are perpetuated in the hope that the next trade will win it all back.

Crypto contagion instigated by FTX, has only gotten more interesting since Sam Bankman-Fried sent a series of cryptic tweets spelling out the words “What HAPPENED” after his wealth wipeout. After the collapse of FTX, we are looking at a collapse in confidence in all digital assets.

With this degree of collapse in even Bitcoin, there will be more bankruptcies lining up. Inexperience dominates this young field and facing a stiff recession ahead going into 2023, this meltdown is not over yet. The low in Bitcoin from 2021 high is not likely before 2023. Thus – as they say – it ain’t over until the fat lady sings (a reference to Opera).

FTX & Crypto-Implosion


Armstrong Economics Blog/Cryptocurrency Re-Posted Nov 14, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The collapse of the FTX Exchange is pretty straightforward insofar as this is the same lesson that constantly repeats in finance time and time again. Basically, FTX lent US$10bn of client funds to their trading arm Alameda, which used it for leveraged their own crypto speculation because the crypto market has been collapsing. Typically, someone like Sam Bankman-Fried had his whole life wrapped up in this venture. Lacking financial controls operating from the Bahamas, moving the money from client funds to his trading arm Alameda was possible. Historically, someone in this position sees his world collapsing but is not prepared to see that unfold for it requires admitting that he was wrong on crypto, to begin with. Consequently, such a person is not trying to actually rob clients’ money, they most likely see it as a temporary loan to save the company and the market will bounce back – or so they believe.

Our computer had picked the high in Bitcoin perfectly and has been projecting the collapse all along the way. But crypto has become a religion and in so doing it clouds the judgment of people who want to believe the story. Alameda blew up in a crypto meltdown because it did not want to accept that the crypto boom was over. The loan he probably thought would be temporary, vanished in the implosion. At first, I would have assumed they had actually invested the money and lost it on the bond market collapse. But that was perhaps too traditional. Here, it appears they were trying to defend their own cryptocurrency and trying to buy the low that kept moving lower. It appears he was allegedly simply using clients’ funds to trade keeping gains for his firm and the clients now suffer the risk.

It appears that they allegedly were trying to defend the crypto market and did not understand that the boom was over. The loans could not then be repaid. As crypto was crashing, some people needed to cash out. The attempt to pull out US$5bn from FTX exposed the fact that the cash was all gone. This is not so unusual. It has happened before. This time, the prosecutors are clamoring to be the one to charge him so they can become famous over his dead body.

FTX was a partner with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF). Of course, the WEF has suddenly removed the page and is desperately trying to hide their involvement with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. Naturally, eliminating paper currency has been the goal of the WEF because they support the end of not just capitalism, but also democracy. Schwab’s push has been his Great Reset and to control society to impose his economic philosophy inspired by Marx and Lenin.

Corsine-2

This is by no means the first violation of fiduciary responsibility that presents a custodial risk. MF Global Holdings Ltd., you might recall, was a firm formerly run by New Jersey ex-Gov. Jon Corzine was accused in 2013 of unlawfully using customer money to meet his firm’s funding needs. When MF Global went bust because of trading by ex-Goldman Sach’s Jon Corzine’s trading using his client’s money in London also outside the regulatory eye of the USA, he was NEVER prosecuted for illegally using $1.6 billion of 26,000 client’s money. That is not going to be the case this time. So what is the difference between Corzine and Bankman-Fried? Corzine was ex-Goldman Sachs.

Indeed, Corzine was well-connected right into the White House with Obama. Nobody went to jail and clients had to wait in bankruptcy to get their money – even cash in the accounts was taken. There are clear risks with the broker and clearer. As long as the SEC is run with former Goldman Sachs staff, there will NEVER be an honest regulator. Even when all the banks pled criminally guilty, the SEC exempted everyone from losing their licenses. They would NEVER do that with anyone outside of New York City. The SEC will never prosecute the banks – EVER!!!!

Indeed, several federal investigations had been launched into MF Global, including probes by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (its main regulator), the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Justice Department prosecutors in both Chicago and New York. The brokerage has also been the focus of several congressional hearings. Not a single one charged Corzine with trading with his client’s money. The losses that eventually drove MF Global into bankruptcy stemmed from high-risk bets on European sovereign bonds that Corzine made as he swung for the fences. Corzine bet big that the bond issuers would not default.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission simply fined Jon Corzine only $5 million over MF Global’s rapid descent into bankruptcy on Oct. 31, 2011, as an estimated $1.6 billion of customer money went missing. Anyone else would have been in prison for a minimum of 20 years.

Glenn

It was Martin Glenn who was the judge in New York on M.F. Global bankruptcy. He was the first one to engage in FORCED LOANS by abandoning the rule of law to help the bankers by protecting them from losses taking client accounts to cover M.F. Global’s losses. He simply allowed the confiscation of client funds when in fact the rule of law should have been that the bankers were responsible and M.F. Global’s losses should have been reversed as they did even when Robert Maxwell’s companies failed in London from his illegal trading taking employee pension funds.

Yes, that was Ghislaine Maxwell’s father and the guy who was in control of the company that Bill Browder worked for before Edmond Safra. Never should the client’s funds be taken for M.F. Global’s losses to the NY Bankers. It was Judge Martin Glen who placed the entire financial; system at risk by trying to protect the bankers. Martin Glenn pampered these bankers making them the new UNTOUCHABLES. We have to be concerned that there really is no rule of law that will protect you in a crisis.

On Bloomberg TV, Sam Bankman-Fried explained why he even created FTX. He said he was experiencing his own frustration at Alameda Research, which was his crypto-focused proprietary trading firm. He was frustrated with the execution he was receiving at various crypto exchanges so he claimed that inspired FTX’s creation in May 2019. FTX grew rapidly to become the third largest crypto exchange in the world, with approximately $16 billion of customer assets under custody over 43 months.

Bankman-Fried stated that Alameda was making lots of money, but it could have been making more and he did not have access to venture capital. Claims of 100% annualized returns are not uncommon in a boom, but any experienced trader knows what goes up, also comes down. Alameda was relying on “cobbling together lines of credit” to expand its capital base. He then created FTX to solve his funding problem creating his own exchange that even the WEF cheered as a partner. He actually created a platform that was tailored for his own company, Alameda, to facilitate its trading needs. FTX coined the phrase “built by traders, for traders.”

There was an obvious conflict of interest questions regarding the close relationship between FTX and Alameda. Being operated from the Bahamas raised questions among those of us who are seasoned financial market observers whether the two were truly arm’s length from each other. However, people were so pumped up on adrenalin with crypto being the end of the dollar and central banks that this new free-wheeling crypto world believed what they wanted to believe and never looked too closely. FTX operated outside the reach of the US regulatory domain and there was a lack of any fiduciary confirmation. When the founder of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, Changpeng Zhao, openly questioned the soundness of the FTX/Alameda nexus on Twitter saying he would sell over $500 million worth of FTX’s token FTT, that was the kiss of death weather or not he realized he would unleash a crypto panic that would engulf the entire industry in a matter of days.

The collapse of FTX will now become a contagion for the crypto world. This 20-something group of inexperienced traders has signaled the demise of an industry that was getting all the hype with no substance. This crypto world will be seen as the DOT COM Bubble of 2000. With a recession on the horizon, the collapse of sovereign debt, and the monetary system as a whole, people will be looking for more of the safe bets rather than roll the dice on crypto. Nothing ever goes straight down. But by year-end, the volatility should perk up everyone’s view of the world.

Media Call Arizona Governor Race for Democrat Katie Hobbs


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance

Katie Hobbs, the valley girl uptalker who refused to debate, has been declared the winner of the Arizona Governor race against candidate Kari Lake.

I’m not going to try and impart some great wisdom over this, I am likely more disappointed than most, other than to point out the brutally and painfully obvious.  Any electioneering process that takes six days to determine the winner and permits weeks of ballot collection within the construct, is no longer an election based on votes.

I’m not sure what to call these multi-week ballot collection contests, but they do not resemble any election that I can reference in any other western nation.  Kari Lake was clearly the superior candidate, and Katie Hobbs is genuinely -no snark- a doofus.  However, in this new ballot collection electioneering process, you can make the argument that candidate quality is essentially irrelevant.

Here’s my question.  We know from the ground reporting and flawed election systems that thousands of ballots were moved into adjudication because they could not be tabulated by broken machinery and flawed election technology infrastructure.  Simple question:  Of the ballots that were moved into the “adjudication process”, what percentage of those ballots were for Kari Lake and what percentage were for Katie Hobbs?  Start there.

The Big Club Is Openly Reassembling


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance

When we are intellectually honest with each other, we accept the traditional Republican apparatus has always been in favor of Wall Street interests, multinational corporations, multination trade agreements, offshoring jobs, overseas manufacturing, open borders to provide endless supplies of unskilled service workers to fulfill their affluent needs, and, in the most general sense, economically no different than the traditional Democrat apparatus.   After all, both wings of the DC UniParty feed from the same trough.

The counter economic position to this multinational system has always been the America First outlook.  An economic outlook that puts the U.S. worker at the heart of policy. Perhaps encapsulated by saying ‘Main Street over Wall Street’ etc.

It was also the economics of the thing that created the Bernie Bros (Bernie Sanders) and the MAGA team (Donald Trump) commonality.

As a result, the Big Club distraction and distinction game has always been played on the field of social issues.  Social issues continually used as a wedge to keep the working class from recognizing their common assembly.

Skilled politicians, those tenured in the ways of the club power retention, play up the social stuff publicly, while both wings of the UniParty give a wink and a nod to each other as they pass through the halls.  The “reach across the aisle” code of Omerta exists.

I have no idea how the pragmatic and angered view of President Trump, with full intent to fracture this UniParty apparatus, is going to play out.  Fighting both enemies simultaneously has proven to be a massive whac-a-mole undertaking. However, that said, what is abundantly clear is the reassembly of the group trying desperately to block the populist upheaval.

The Multinational corporations are all-in within the process of this inverted Fascism. Corporations now determining the political agenda, and it’s not just here in the United States.  We are seeing in in North America, Great Britain and throughout Europe.  The larger “western democracy” assembly is expanding the corporate dynamic, while media run cover for the totality of modern expansion.

Specifically in the United States, we can clearly see the K-Street multinational lobbying groups trying to exploit the outcome of a midterm election they helped construct.

(Politico) The conservative Club for Growth is sending a warning shot at former President Donald Trump on the eve of his expected 2024 campaign launch — and indicating it might back his chief potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. […] provided POLITICO with a polling memo showing the former president trailing DeSantis by double digits in one-on-one matchups in Iowa and New Hampshire. (read more)

The transparency of the timing, amid an election outcome they helped create, is remarkable.

The CfG corporate folks are not good people, and CTH will battle them at every level as we have every moment in the past decade.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is not my/our enemy; however, if he aligns his political interests with the attempted refooting of the multinationals in the Republican party, then he has made a choice.

I am not going to draw a distinction between a group of multinational corporations who wants to diminish Main Street USA, and a potential ally who would align with them for political convenience.  Pick up a weapon from inside the multinational armory and you become an America First enemy.

Align with The Big Club, and you are aligned with The Big Club.

Align with The Big Club, and you have chosen to align with The Big Club.

Business Insider) – Plans for a Super PAC supporting a Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis presidential run are back on after a weak showing for former President Donald Trump’s favored candidates. 

This is a reversal from just a few months ago. GOP strategist John Thomas, who is leading the soon-to-be unveiled super PAC called Ron to the Rescue, told Insider in August that DeSantis should not run for president against Trump. He’d even paused plans for the super PAC this summer after the primaries, in which Trump’s endorsed candidates did well. Trump, apparently pleased, shared the Insider interview on Truth Social.

But Thomas, founder and president of the political advertising and strategy group Thomas Partners Strategies, told Insider on Friday that the midterms have reset the calculus. Even in August, he’d said the one caveat for DeSantis pursuing a 2024 presidential run would be poor performance for Trump-favored Republicans in the midterms. 

That caveat became reality on Tuesday. In addition to Trump’s weak showing, DeSantis won Florida by a historic, nearly 20-point margin that Thomas called “the perfect cascading of events politically for the governor.” Now, Thomas told Insider, his plans for the Super PAC are back on “full throttle with seven-figure gifts” and the group is ready to “get this show on the road.” (read more)

A presidential Super PAC does not exist without the approval of the candidate who it represents.

“Ron to the Rescue” does not exist without the group representing the interests contacting the people in/around Ron for approval of the creation.  It’s just how the system operates.   Super PAC’s cannot go out and solicit funds from supporters without gaining prior approval from the candidate network to make those contacts.  It is a basic rule of fundraising, even amid the nudge, nudge – wink, wink, of Super PAC creation and plausible deniability.

If a Super PAC was fundraising for a candidate objective – and that candidate did not support the objective – the Super PAC doesn’t happen.  Quite simply, this unspoken code exists so that donors do not get bilked out of their money by Super PAC’s being deceptive in their representation.

If a multinational Wall Street DeSantis 2024 Super PAC launches, it is with the support of Ron DeSantis, period.

New readers should be well aware, CTH is not going to play the pretending game.