Category The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Aug 28 2022

Florida Judge Indicates Intent to Appoint Special Master to Review Material Seized by DOJ in Trump Raid


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

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has issued a two-page order [SEE HERE] indicating her willingness to appoint a special master to review the documents seized by the DOJ in the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Judge Cannon has asked the Justice Department to produce by Tuesday “a more detailed” list of items seized from Trump’s residence on Aug. 8 as well as the status of the government’s ongoing review of those materials, which includes the use of a “filter team” to screen for attorney-client privileged records.

[Source pdf Here]

Aug 28 2022

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!”

Aug 28 2022

President Trump Tried to Work Within the System


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

In the spring and summer of 2018 everyone became aware of the DOJ and FBI collective effort to target President Trump under the false guise of a Trump-Russia collusion claim.

It must have been extremely frustrating for a sitting president to know there was nothing to the claims yet be constantly bombarded by media and political people in Washington DC who held a vested interest in maintaining them.

By the time we get to September of 2018 the basic outline of the FBI use of the Trump-Russia targeting operation were clear.  However, the Robert Mueller investigation was at its apex, and anyone in/around Donald Trump was under investigation for ancillary issues that had nothing to do with Russia.

It was into this fray of constant false narratives that President Trump first made statements that he would declassify documents related to his targeting.  It was after Trump made those statements when the real motives of putting Robert Mueller as a special counsel became clear.

With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from anything to do with the Trump-Russia investigation, it was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who delivered the message to President Trump in September of 2018, shortly before the midterm election, that any action by him to release documents, now under the purview of the Mueller special counsel, would be considered an act of “obstruction” by the DOJ/FBI people charged with investigating him.

Immediately after meeting with Rod Rosenstein, Trump tweeted:

This was the first act of betrayal by political operatives within Main Justice who did not recognize or accept the concept of the ‘unilateral executive.’   According to Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director James Comey, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and even later (including recently) AG Bill Barr, the office of the president cannot exercise unilateral executive authority when he himself is the subject of their investigative power.

In essence the DOJ and FBI, along with white house counsel and a collaborating senate and media, kept President Trump from declassifying and releasing documents by threatening him with impeachment and/or prosecution if he defied their authority.  The threats created a useful Sword of Damocles, and blocked Trump from acting to make documents public.

In the months that followed President Trump frequently made public statements and tweets about the frustration of documents not being declassified and released despite his instructions to do so.  Many Trump supporters also began expressing frustration.

The external debate and consternation surrounded how the Administrative State has seemingly boxed-in President Trump through the use of the Mueller/Weissman counterintelligence probe, authorized by Rod Rosenstein, where President Trump was the target of the investigation.

A widely held supporter perspective was that President Trump could expose the fraudulent origination of the counterintelligence investigation; of which he is now a target; if he were to declassify a series of documents as requested by congress and allies of his administration. This approach would hopefully remove the sword of Damocles.

The core issue within the debate surrounded two contradictory reference points: (1) President Trump has ultimate declassification authority.  Yes; however, in this example President Trump is also the target of the investigation; so, (2) declassification could be viewed by elements within the investigation as ‘obstruction’. Both of these points were true.

Also true was the reality that both laws and politics were in play.

In November 2018 President Trump gave an interview where he discussed the situation as it was visible to him.  Democrats and republican opposition, writ large, were working earnestly to remove him from office.

Here’s a link to the General Principles of declassification [SEE HERE] Yes, the President can declassify anything; however, there is a process that must be followed. Executive order 13526 [Citation Here]

Following that declassification process the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, then Dan Coats, and the FBI Director, Christopher Wray, and the Attorney General, in this example Rod Rosenstein, needed to “sign-off” on the declassification.

The process reasoning is simple in the ordinary (non-corrupt) flow of events.  The intelligence agencies might need to protect part of the information, such as “sources or methods” of intelligence contained within the classified material.

Under ordinary declassification procedures the President would likely not want to compromise the ‘sources’ and ‘methods’ and would defer to the intelligence experts.

President Trump is aware of material that he can use to defend himself from the ongoing ‘impeachment’ plans of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.  However, President Trump is also seemingly aware of the issues within the process to gain access to the material and actually use it.  This is where the concentric circle of lawyers around the Office of The Presidency come into play.

We have the constitution, we have laws, and we have politics.

Moving forward there are three background threads that are critical to understanding how this process has unfolded so far:

All three of these issues come into play.

Unfortunately, if you have not already invested the time in those three aspects it is easy, very easy, to get lost.

Because none of the legal linguistics took into account the reality of the actual process for declassifying information, many people were stuck thinking President Trump held sole authority to classify and declassify intelligence without understanding the process.

Declassification of intelligence is a process, and each person -within the executive branch- inside the process must agree to the process.  Making the process even more riddled with issues is the reality that President Trump was the target in a counterintelligence investigation. President Trump was being investigated by Mueller to see if he is under the direct or indirect influence of a foreign power. [In this example, Russia]

The Mueller probe is an originating counterintelligence investigation that ‘can find’ espionage (see Russian indictments) as well as violations of law (Papadopoulos, Manafort, Flynn).  It is critical to remember, the originating probe is not a criminal probe; but Mueller and Weissmann can charge criminality if the investigators encounter interference of their counterintelligence probe; these are the process crimes (perjury, obstruction, lying to congress); or if the probe uncovers direct criminal activity (tax evasion, money laundering, FARA violations etc.).

Yes, technically President Trump can declassify anything. However, it is also true that technically POTUS doesn’t actually declassify anything.  The Office of the President asks for a document to enter into a declassification review process.

Officials within that process (ODNI, DoD, DoS, FBI, DOJ-NSD, CIA, NSA, etc), based on their unique relationship to the interests within the document(s), can approve or refuse to sign-off based on their specific intelligence interests.  This is where compartmented intelligence comes into play.

Any officer who refuses the request for declassification must justify to the intelligence hub; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI, Dan Coats). The executive branch intelligence official tells the ODNI (Dan Coats) why they, their unique interests, cannot approve of the declassification request.

DNI Dan Coats then informs POTUS why the document is not cleared for declassification.

If he disagrees with the decision of the intelligence official, POTUS then would have to fire, replace and hope the next person in the chain-of-command would sign-off.  Given the nuance in the example of President Trump declassifying information that would show he was targeted, and considering the President is under a counterintelligence cloud it was unlikely any officer would break ranks.

President Trump would have to fire people, and keep firing people, until he gets to a person, inside that specific agency, who would comply.

Now stop and be reasonable.

Think about the general political ramifications to that decision.  And then think about the ramifications against the reality that President Trump is a target, under the cloud of a counterintelligence probe.

President Trump asks DNI Dan Coats (intelligence hub) to coordinate the declassification of [fill_in_blank].  If he agrees, in November of 2018 Dan Coats then asks all of the compartmented principles with interest in that specific document.  That likely includes the DOJ (after the midterm it’s Matt Whitaker), FBI (Chris Wray), and likely DoS (Mike Pompeo – because of the State Dept aspect to Chris Steele). Also, possibly the NSA and/or Cyber Command.

If FBI Director Christopher Wray refuses to declassify the document(s) because it is part of the current Mueller counterintelligence probe, of which Trump was a target, then President Trump would have to fire Chris Wray; and, while awaiting a replacement (Senate confirmation seriously doubtful), the request then falls on FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich.  [Who would also likely refuse]

As this hypothetical declassification example is unfolding you can imagine the political damage being carried out.  In addition, there’s the looming impeachment process waiting to start. Hopefully, you can see how President Trump could easily be accused of interference or obstruction of justice.  So, he had to wait for Mueller to finish.

Here comes the second betrayal and threat.

Mueller completed his investigation in April of 2019.

Within a few weeks, May 2019, the newly appointed and confirmed Attorney General Bill Barr tells President Trump to remove himself from the declassification issue and give him the authority to declassify and release documents because Barr has an investigator (John Durham) to look into the corrupt activity behind the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Ten days before he made the request, Bill Barr had enlisted John Durham to look into all of the issues surrounding the targeting of President Trump and the Clinton campaign involvement in the creation of the Trump-Russia collusion story.

At the time most people thought what Barr was doing was a good thing.  As a result, President Trump agrees to support Bill Barr and on May 23, 2019, delegates the declassification and release to the Attorney General.

The President is trusting his cabinet officer, the highest law enforcement officer in the country, to do the right thing and expose the wrongdoing he has been the subject of for the past two years.

It was an easy sell, because the purpose of declassification was ultimately to facilitate a DOJ review of how the intelligence apparatus was used in the 2016 election.

However, because the DOJ review encompassed intelligence systems (DOJ, FBI, NSA) potentially weaponized in 2016 for political purposes and intents, a strange dynamic existed.

President Trump carries: (a) declassification authority; but also: (b) an inherent conflict.

In the DOJ endeavor using John Durham, candidate Trump would have been the target of corrupt agency activity; and therefore, Trump would be considered the target/victim if weaponization were affirmed by evidence collected by Durham.

To avoid the conflict President Trump designated the U.S. Attorney General as arbiter and decision-maker for the purposes of declassifying evidence within the investigation:

…”The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information.”

Additionally, AG Bill Barr did not need to assemble the intelligence product for approval by the executive (Trump).  Instead, the office of the president is granting the AG full unilateral decision-making as to each product being considered for declassification.

At the time we noted, this was a huge amount of trust from the President to the Attorney General, and a big responsibility for William Barr:

[Sec 2] …”With respect to any matter classified under Executive Order 13526 of December 29, 2009 (Classified National Security Information), the Attorney General may, by applying the standard set forth in either section 3.1(a) or section 3.1(d) of Executive Order 13526, declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading of information or intelligence that relates to the Attorney General’s review referred to in section 1 of this memorandum.”

The position-designate slightly works around custom insofar as the intelligence hub, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Dan Coats), is given conference – but the decision-making was designated to the Attorney General (Bill Barr).

Essentially the DNI will be following the instructions of the AG for this Memorandum.  This is slightly unusual; but given the purpose, necessary and expected.

Following protocol, the 2019 Memorandum was specific to the agencies carrying the documentation to be reviewed by the Attorney General: The Secretary of State (Pompeo); the Secretary of Treasury (Mnuchin); the Secretary of Defense (Shanahan); the Secretary of Energy (Perry); the Secretary of Homeland Security (McAleenan); the Director of National Intelligence (Coats); the Director of the CIA (Haspel), and the Attorney General himself (Barr).

Within the memorandum President Trump did not allow AG Bill Barr to delegate authority.  However, all agencies were required to respond to Barr’s authority.

The purpose of the Declassification Directive, as it was sold to President Trump, also appeared to permit the DOJ Inspector General to include classified material in the body of the (early 2019) pending report on FISA abuse; this memorandum was granting AG Bill Barr the autonomy to make that decision and declassify that content.

While the purpose of the authority was to empower AG Bill Barr to collect, process and declassify intelligence product that was part of the DOJ investigative review, President Trump did not preclude the public release of intelligence information in advance of the 2019 IG report on FISA abuse.

Much of the intelligence information may be collected external to the IG review parameters (FISA process) and may be released independently as part of stand-alone declassification that pertains to weaponized DOJ, FBI and CIA political activity.  Ultimately the decision to release, and the timing therein, was then in the hands of U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

On May 23, 2019, with the Mueller investigation in the rear-view President Trump tweeted:

Unfortunately, as time continued throughout 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr took no action that would declassify any material of interest to the targeting of President Trump.

AG Bill Barr used the “ongoing criminal investigation,” led by the man he appointed, John Durham, as a justification for non-release of documents.

Frustration continues to mount as impeachment efforts against President Trump and the painful reality of the Bill Barr motive starts to settle in.

Bill Barr replaced the obstruction and interference threat carried by Mueller special counsel, with the obstruction and interference threat carried by the Durham special counsel.   The ‘ongoing investigation‘ narrative created both swords of Damocles.  One created by Rosenstein/Mueller the other created by Barr/Durham.

Then Bill Barr did something even worse.  He made sure President Trump could never remove it.

The result?

The special counsel block of investigative material continued from May 13, 2019, all the way to today.  The Durham special counsel is an active and ongoing investigation.

This is the dynamic behind the declassification of records.

This is the dynamic where the law is used, structurally weaponized by the institutions who are sworn to uphold it, to protect the interests of the DC Deep State.

This is the dynamic that exposes how the DOJ and FBI are structurally corrupt.

Even as he was departing office, President Trump wanted those documents released.  Documents he declassified and outlined in this memo to the DOJ:

[January 19, 2021, Declassification Directive Link]

This is the heart of the battle over documents between the current DOJ/FBI and President Trump.

Again, the threats of a corrupt administration of justice are at the heart of the issue.

This four-year sequence of events, including all of the betrayals and threats made against Donald Trump, all intended to keep him from allowing the public to see the full nature of the corrupt Deep State operation that lies at the heart of our current political strife, is ultimately what led to an FBI raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago.

This is the scale of the issue.

The DOJ and FBI will do everything they can to stop the release of documents outlining how the system worked to target candidate and President Trump.

If the broader American public understood what tools and surveillance systems were used; if the broad American public knew what the DOJ, FBI, intelligence apparatus and aligned Senate committees have done; if the broad American public became aware of the scale and scope of the corruption in DC as it now exists; entire institutions within that framework would start to collapse.

This is what they are trying to stop.  That is the scale of their zero-sum approach.

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Aug 27 2022

EMERGENCY MEETING – THE MATRIX ATTACKS.


TateSpeech Published originally on Rumble on August 25, 2022 

Andrew Tate Attacks the Matrix — We took the RED PILL We are the Alpha beware of what you have done!

Aug 27 2022

How Convenient, Biden State Dept Says They Will No Longer Publish List of U.S. Weapons Given or Sold to Foreign Countries


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

Buried inside Section 5114(b)(4) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 was a repeal of 1994 law that required the U.S. State Department to publish an annual list of arms sales to foreign countries.  The “World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers” report (WMEAT) put sunlight every year on what weapons the U.S. was selling to foreign countries.

Conveniently timed with the $60+ billion aid package to Ukraine, the U.S. State Dept, now says the WMEAT report will not be published any longer.  If a person was to believe the Ukraine arms deals were essentially money laundering operations, well, this announcement by the State Dept. might be interpreted as a way to hide it. [LINK]

State Dept – WMEAT 2021, which the Department of State published in December 2021, is the final edition of World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT). Section 5114(b)(4) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 repealed the 1994 statutory provision that required the Department of State to publish an edition of WMEAT every year. Consistent with this repeal, the Department of State will cease to produce and publish WMEAT.

Copies of all editions of WMEAT dating from 1974 to 2021 remain publicly accessible as Adobe PDF or Excel spreadsheet documents  (LINK)

Aug 27 2022

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]

Aug 26 2022

US Embezzles an Additional $3 Billion to Ukraine


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Aug 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

America has pledged to embezzle (donate) another $3 BILLION into Ukraine. The Associated Press claims that this money will be used for equipment and training Ukrainian troops. Additional NATO countries are also offering additional funds, such as Germany who pledged an additional $500 million to the proxy war. Yet, America is donating more money than any other NATO country to a non-NATO country. How does this benefit American taxpayers? Answer – it does not. It steals resources from our nation as the average American grapples with record-high inflation amid a recession that is expected to worsen into next year.

This is taxation without representation. Joe Biden is not reaching into his personal wallet to funnel money into Ukraine. The defense contractors, US and Ukrainian governments are finding a way to line their pockets with these large “donations.” America has already sent 19 packages of weapons from the Defense Department’s arsenal to Ukraine. So far, the US has sent $10.6 billion to Ukraine to fund what many are calling the new “forever war.”

The last US census stated there were 123.6 million households in the US. At $13.6 billion total, this means that every household in the nation could have donated $110 directly to Ukraine. Zelensky is basking in the funding and fame. He has indicated that he intends to provoke Russia and worsen relations. He originally wanted to protect the Donbas region, but now he also wants Crimea to be fully within Ukraine. There is no winning this war as it has become too profitable for the people behind the curtain.

Aug 26 2022

Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Bribe


Armstrong Economics Blog/Education Re-Posted Aug 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

While many are praising Biden for maintaining his campaign promise to cancel student debt, others are furious that the costs will be passed on to the taxpayers. Even Mitt Romney accused Biden of bribing voters before the midterms. “Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan may win Democrats some votes, but it fuels inflation, foots taxpayers with other people’s financial obligations, is unfair to those who paid their own way & creates irresponsible expectations,” the perhaps most liberal Republican senator wrote on Twitter.

Under the plan, borrowers earning under $125,000 annually will receive a $10,000 debt cancelation, while Pell Grant recipients will see a $20,000 reduction. The Penn Wharton School conducted a study in which they believe this program will cost the average taxpayer $2,000. The study found:

"We estimate that a one-time maximum debt forgiveness of $10,000 per borrower will cost around $300 billion for borrowers with incomes less than $125,000. This cost increases to $330 billion if the program is continued over the standard 10-year budget window. Eliminating the borrower income limit threshold produces a 10-year cost of $344 billion. Increasing the maximum amount forgiven to $50,000 per borrower increases the total cost to as much as $980 billion."

Yet, this does nothing to prevent predatory lending, albeit dismissing some interest on loans. This does not reinstate Glass Stegall, the provision that Bill Clinton erased to make student debt non-dischargeable in the case of bankruptcy. In fact, Clinton’s top financial advisor, Larry Summers, believes that this measure will increase inflation. “It consumes resources that could be better used helping those who did not, for whatever reason, have the chance to attend college. It will also tend to be inflationary by raising tuitions,” Summers wrote on his Twitter page. He also warned against continuing the moratorium of benefits expected to last until the end of the year.

Some state that we should be happy for those who are receiving relief, but the true culprits are the predatory lenders offering asinine interest rates and the universities that continually raise their fees. It also causes a disconnect between classes as those who chose trade school or blue-collar roles to avoid college fees will not be too fond of this initiative. It certainly will not help America’s plea to recruit more military personnel either. This is a temporary solution to a deeper problem.

Aug 26 2022

The Inflation Reduction Act – A Change We Don’t Believe In


Armstrong Economics Blog/Inflation Re-Posted Aug 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

President Biden agreed to waste billions on the Democrat-supported Inflation Reduction Act. According to a survey of 1,500 Americans as presented by the Epoch Times, neither Democratic nor Republican citizens believe this expensive act will combat rising prices.

Respondents were asked if they believed that the bulk of the package, the $369 billion set aside for climate change initiatives, would reduce inflation. Only 13% said they believed fighting climate change would combat inflation, while 26% admitted they had no clue. Yet, 38% replied by saying it will increase inflation, and an additional 22% think it will have no impact.

Only 8% of Republicans polled agreed with the act (no voting Republican lawmakers supported the measure), while 23% of Democrats were in favor. Around 68% of Republicans warned that the bill would increase inflation; 40% of Independents agreed, as did 17% of Democrats.

This leads one to believe that the measure would never have passed if the taxpayers had the opportunity to vote on how their money was spent. The Congressional Budget Office admitted that the measure would have a negligible effect on inflation. Currently, American households are paying an additional $717 per month due to inflation. This act will only cause Americans to be treated as criminals by the growing and armed IRS, which is training to use lethal force against civilians. Audits will soar, small and medium businesses will suffer, and no one besides those supporting the Green agenda will benefit from the Inflation [Expansion] Act.

Aug 26 2022

Study, No Quantifiable Benefits from COVID Treatment Drug Paxlovid for People Aged 40 to 65


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 25, 2022 | Sundance 


In April 2022, the Biden administration ordered 20 million doses of Pfizer’s antiviral Covid-19 treatment called Paxlovid.

Now a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the medication shows “no measurable benefit” for the treatment of COVID-19 in patients 40 to 65-years of age.

WASHINGTON — Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill appears to provide little or no benefit for younger adults, while still reducing the risk of hospitalization and death for high-risk seniors, according to a large study published Wednesday.

The results from a 109,000-patient Israeli study are likely to renew questions about the U.S. government’s use of Paxlovid, which has become the go-to treatment for COVID-19 due to its at-home convenience. The Biden administration has spent more than $10 billion purchasing the drug and making it available at thousands of pharmacies through its test-and-treat initiative.

The researchers found that Paxlovid reduced hospitalizations among people 65 and older by roughly 75% when given shortly after infection. That’s consistent with earlier results used to authorize the drug in the U.S. and other nations.

But people between the ages of 40 and 65 saw no measurable benefit, according to the analysis of medical records. (read more)

“Huh, imagine that”…