Posted originally on Jul 24, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
Over 8,000 bank branches are expected to close worldwide in 2025. Approximately 3,200 of those closures will take place in the United States. Q1 experienced 148 net branch closures in the US, with all major banks slated to close branches throughout the year.
These are merely bank closures and not bank failures, although two smaller US banks did fail this year. People simply prefer online banking as we have made the switch from relational to transactional banking.
Bankrate conducted a survey that found 77% of Americans prefer online digital banking, yet other surveys believe the figure is closer to 89%. Digital banking has been rising in popularity in recent years, up from 203 million domestic users in 2022 to the 216.8 million projected users in 2025. The survey found that 34% of consumers use online banking on a daily basis, consistently checking their account and transactions. There has even been a 19% increase in use among the 65+ crowd who is least likely to use digital services.
The total number of bank branches across the US fell below 65,000 in Q2. Texas, New York, and California saw the largest decrease in brick-and-mortar locations. Many branches that chose to remain open are only offering drive thru services. One in three banks has closed in rural areas as there is no demand, and the Federal Reserve noted in its annual Banking Access Report that the number of “banking deserts” across the Midwest is rising.
Banks have no overhead with digital banking services and they do not need to hire staff. The cost-per-transaction for in-person banking is $4.00 compared to only $0.04 for digital. AI is rapidly replacing bank tellers with a 3 to 1 ratio.
The trend is global. The United Kingdom anticipates 370 to 450 branch closures this year. Germany and France are facing 1,100 closures combined. The Asia-Pacific region of the world saw a 16% reduction in bank branches from January to May 2025. Certain nations like Malaysia and Thailand also offer branchless micro-banking kiosks to substitute relational banking.
The money in your bank account is already just an electronic book entry. Not only is there less demand for face-to-face banking, but they are also preparing for CBDCs as bank branches are unnecessary without physical paper money. You can deposit a check on your phone or at a kiosk, but e-checks are rising in popularity. The only thing left for a branch is safe deposit boxes, and the government assumes you are hiding cash there anyway. Relationship banking is becoming a thing of the past, the latest casualty in the cycle of creative destruction.
Posted originally on Jul 23, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
The people of every Build Back Better nation have been suffering the repercussions of open border policies. Civil unrest has erupted in nearly every European nation as the people refuse to sit idle as their demographics forcibly change. A recent survey in Spain by El Mundo found that 70% of Spaniards support mass deportation.
Among the PP Party, 92% of respondents stated that the government needed to implement a mass deportation program. Even the Socialist Party, which supported open border policies, sees that it is no longer feasible, with 57% stating they now favor mass deportations. Only the far-left Sumar Party, far smaller than the main parties in the nation, would like to leave the borders open, with 67% rejecting deportations.
Spain was once a transit country for migrants to reach other destinations. As government policy shifted to be favorable to migrants, those illegally entering chose to stay in Spain. Since 2020, Spain has experienced an astounding 650% increase in family reunification visas, according to the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration. These are merely the people on record who were granted permission to stay and do not account for those illegally living within Spain’s borders.
Permits were granted to 43,848 people in March 2020. Exactly five years later, Spain granted permits to 328,841 people. These people claim to have family ties to legal citizens or residents, and the permits grant them temporary residency that can be renewed.
Spain experienced a 96% surge in illegal entries between January and June 2024. The majority (167%) of illegal migrants are finding their way to the mainland through the Canary Islands, with the majority of migrants coming from West African nations such as Mali, Senegal, and Morocco. The journey is extremely dangerous, and while figures are unknown, it is believed that 10,000 people died attempting to cross the Mediterranean or Atlantic to the promised land of Spain. There has also been a concerning uptick in unaccompanied minors, with over 6,000 finding their way to the Canary Islands by August 2024. No one can protect these children from exploitation and trafficking because open border policies are an illegal practice granted permission to operate by leftist governments.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s liberal government favors open border policies and approved a plan to grant 900,000 illegal immigrants legal status over the next three years. Those 10,000 people died because his policies state that people may stay if they find their way into the nation. He does not care that the people of Spain are demanding closed borders.
Spain’s birth rate is the lowest on record since 1941 at 1.19 per woman. The government believes that the nation will need 25 million new migrants over the next 30 years to maintain the workforce and social welfare systems. Mass replacement theory is real.
Top bureaucrat Hillary Clinton admitted the concept: “It’s all in there—the return to the nuclear family, the return to being a Christian nation, return to producing a lot of children, which is sort of odd since the people who produce a lot of children are immigrants.” This ties into the Marxist concept of terminating the nuclear family and undermining religion.
Spain and every other open border nation will become unrecognizable if policy does not change.
Posted originally on CTH on July 20, 2025 | Sundance
Apparently, the best the Democrats could come up with to defend themselves against the truth provided by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, was to put Connecticut Representative Jim Himes on TV to push a series of lies that leftists are sworn to believe.
Four lies immediately stand out below. (1) Marco Rubio was not chair on the SSCI investigation of Trump-Russia, Richard Burr was. (2) John Durham was not appointed by Donald Trump. He was appointed by Bill Barr. (3) There is no evidence that “Russia hacked” the DNC servers. Even the FBI said there was no evidence. (4) Russians did not “buy reams of Facebook ads”, there was an indication that someone, who was likely Russian, spent $4,500 dollars on one ad promoting Jill Stein.
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION. We are continuing our conversation now with Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, who is the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee.
Congressman, I want to pick up on that topic.
Just a statement of fact here. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation found that the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election was correct, they deemed it to be so on a bipartisan basis. I’m saying that because today, and yesterday, the director of the intelligence community, Tulsi Gabbard, has said that she is referring for prosecution former American officials she accused of treasonist conspiracy, a year’s long coo against President Trump because they assessed Russia had tried to influence the election. This is weeks after the CIA director issued a report critiquing the tradecraft that went into that 2016 assessment.
Is there any legal basis for any kind of prosecution here?
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES (D-CT): None. Absolutely none, Margaret. What you saw from the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was not just a lie, but a very dangerous lie. Because when you start throwing around language like sedition and treason, somebody’s going to get hurt.
Now, you pointed out that the Senate committee, then led by Marco Rubio, a Republican and now secretary of state, found unanimously that Russia medaled in the election to try to assist Donald Trump. John Durham, special council appointed by Donald Trump, investigated this, fund that the Senate report was correct.
Now, what Tulsi is doing, it’s a little slight of hand but it’s worth focusing on. She is saying that the Intelligence Committee early on said that the Russians could not use cyber tools to mess with the voting infrastructure, the machines that tally our votes. That was true then and it is true now. Though the Russians tried to break into a couple of states’, you know, election technical infrastructure, they didn’t do it. But it is well known and well established that the Russians hacked into the DNC and undertook any number of influence operations, including buying reams of Facebook ads, to discredit Hillary Clinton. That is not in contention, right?
And what is horrifying about this whole lie out of Gabbard is, number one, it puts people at risk. And right now, you know, the mouth breathers on MAGA online are just going out of their minds based on a lie. And, number two, the intelligence community is full of very, very good people who do their jobs every single day and now they’re watching their leader do something that each and every one of them knows is dishonest and it is a really, really bad thing for the safety and security of the American people when that dynamic is – is – is out there.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That Senate report is online. The findings are – are there. But I understand your distinction there. It’s an important one in influence verses physical hacking.
You are –
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: But, by the way, Margaret, if I may.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: If I may. You asked about the referral.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: Here’s the test. This is Epstein all over again. Criminal referrals. We’re going to prosecute Barack Obama. You know, treasonist and seditious. Here’s the thing. And I hope that four, five, six weeks from now. Don’t take it from this Democrat. Four or five, six weeks from now, let’s see if this administration, Tulsi Gabbard accusing a former president of treason, let’s see if they bring charges. They won’t. They won’t, because there’s not a judge in the land, not a single judge, who will treat this with anything other than laughter that will be heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific in this country.
So, the test of this is, four, five, six weeks from now, is the DOJ bringing charges.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: And the answer to that is no. And now we’re going to be in Epstein world. We’re like, wait a minute, treasonist conspiracy by a former president. Why isn’t the Department of Justice bringing charges? And the answer to that question is that it is a lie.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood.
On the other topic I want to ask you about, as a Democrat, “The New York Times,” the DNC – is reporting the DNC’s examination of what went wrong in the last election is going to steer clear the decisions made by the Biden turned Harris campaign.
You were very direct early on in calling for then President Biden to drop out of this race. You don’t parse your words normally. Do you actually think it is possible for your party to self-diagnose problems without looking at the presidential race itself in terms of the candidates?
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: Look, we – we – we need to acknowledge, and every – and all of America saw it on the night of the disastrous debate in the July before the election, that Joe Biden was not going to win the election. That was not just evident in the debate, it was evident in the polling that his people were keeping from him. OK, so that is a fact.
Now, Democrats are a big tent party. We go from Joe Manchin, who’s practically a Republican, to AOC, we is a Democratic socialist. So, we always have a struggle in coming up with sort of one set of policies, one set of messaging. And it’s particularly hard to do when we don’t have a presidential candidate. You know, a presidential candidate, of course, attracts the attention, is sort of the one person who must run nationwide and speak for the party as a whole. Right now we’re having a lot of conversations with a lot of different views. And I understand that’s enormously frustrating to Democrats who are so upset over the result of the election.
But, you know, other than fight back with the tools that we have right now, we’ve got to be introspective about what we have done wrong that resulted in a dramatic win by Donald Trump in 2020.*
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: There’s an awful lot of rage in the Democratic Party. And my message to my Democratic friends is, fine, I get the rage, believe me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: I was in the chamber on January 6, 2021, and worried for my own life. But the thing to do right now is to be introspective and ask yourself –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM HIMES: What can we do better to appeal to more people, including those people that we have lost time and time again in elections?
Posted originally on CTH on July 20, 2025 | Sundance
The response from Chairman Tom Cotton and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to the action of DNI Tulsi Gabbard was predictable.
The SSCI has now framed the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 [LINK] to modify the “responsibilities and authorities of the Director of National Intelligence.” [Section 402]
We knew this was coming. The Intelligence Community does not like rogue actors amid their ranks, especially if those people have cross-silo access. The silo system is designed to protect the Deep State. Any entity who can cross reference the inserted information becomes a risk to the enterprise.
Senator Cotton cannot directly oppose Tulsi Gabbard without exposing himself. Thus someone, not the SSCI, writes the legislative changes to the Intelligence Community rules and procedures and Tom Cotton simply advances them. That’s the way DC operates.
Additionally, Chairman Cotton does not want the DNI to investigate or generate its own intelligence. Cotton demands the ODNI just accept and regurgitate the intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would be given by the other agencies; no independent review of analysis permitted. All of these actions push the Intelligence Community power center back into the CIA and away from the prying eyes of the DNI. That’s the SSCI motive.
WASHINGTON DC – A top Republican senator is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, slashing the workforce of an organization that has expanded since it was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Under a bill by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, the ODNI’s staff of about 1,600 would be capped at 650, according to a senior Senate aide familiar with the proposed legislation.
ODNI’s workforce was about 2,000 in January, but National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has already overseen a reduction of about 20% as part of the Trump administration’s drive to shrink the federal workforce. The reduction in the staff Gabbard oversees could weaken her role in the intelligence bureaucracy.
[…] The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, exposed a failure to share information across spy agencies with catastrophic results. As a result, Congress established the ODNI to oversee all of the country’s 18 intelligence services, including the CIA, and manage bureaucratic turf wars from a complex outside Washington, D.C.
What started as a relatively small office under the national intelligence director in 2005 has expanded over the last 20 years to include in-house analysis teams and centers focused on counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Cotton has described the ODNI as a bloated bureaucracy that should return to its original mission of coordinating the work of other spy agencies instead of producing its own reports and duplicating other agencies’ efforts.
“Congress in no way wanted yet another unruly bureaucracy layered on top of an already bureaucratic intelligence community,” Cotton said at Gabbard’s confirmation hearing in late January. “Unfortunately, 20 years later, that’s exactly what the ODNI has become.”
Gabbard herself expressed support for downsizing the ODNI’s workforce at the hearing, saying she would work with Cotton and other lawmakers to eliminate “redundancies and bloating.” (read more)
In the lead up to the election I outlined what the DNI could do with untapped power already given to the office. DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been following a path close to that outline. Now, we see Washington DC responding to that affirmed power structure and actively working to neuter the DNI. A very predictable outcome.
The only intelligence silo more corrupt than the CIA is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that oversees it.
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