Today there was a much hyped congressional hearing, spearheaded by sub-committee chairman Mark Meadows, into issues surrounding the Clinton Foundation and the possibility of IRS tax avoidance schemes. The backstory is of particular importance because the hearing is being framed by the ‘tick-tock-boom club‘ as something it was not.

There is a policy within the IRS that any person can report fraudulent tax filings, or the lack thereof, by any American taxpayer – toward any individual or group that is avoiding the payment of taxes. The IRS has a process to receive “tips” and claims from anyone to their investigative unit.  If the tip ends up in the IRS being able to secure missing tax payments, the tipster can get a percentage reward based on the amount of the taxes the IRS can recover.  The reward percentage is from 10% to 30% of the recovered amount.

Mr. Lawrence W. Doyle and Mr. John Moynihan, are the proprietors of a firm called MDA Analytics.  They are two ‘tipsters’, financial bounty hunters, calling themselves ‘whistle-blowers’, who have researched the Clinton Foundation and informed the IRS that based on their research the foundation owes back taxes.  They duo are hopeful to receive an IRS award based on their estimation of missing tax payments of between $400 million and $2.5 billion. In addition to their patriotic duty, this is the financial motivation behind Mr. Doyle and Mr. Moynihan.

If the IRS were to agree with Mr. Doyle and Mr. Moynihan, the two “financial investigators” would likely gain substantial financial rewards.  As an outcome of their financial motive Mr. Doyle and Mr. Moynihan consider their investigative material to be of proprietary value.  They’ve done all the leg-work and they are hesitant to give the material to any other party that might exploit some of their information for a similar purpose or intent; so they guard their research closely (also didn’t give it to congress).

In 2017 Mr. Monynihan and Mr. Doyle submitted their Clinton Foundation tax research to the IRS in hopes the IRS would agree to millions, perhaps billions, of missing tax payments by the foundation; and by extension they would get paid.  However, in August of 2018 the IRS informed them there was no IRS case.  Mr. Doyle and Mr. Moynihan are appealing that decision by the IRS office.

Understanding that politics is likely part of the issue; and in an effort to give ammunition to their multi-year endeavor; Mr Doyle and Mr. Monynihan gave portions of their documents to journalist John Solomon. Mr. Solomon then began a lengthy process of reconfirming the investigative material given by Doyle and Moynihan.

Part of John Solomon’s research effort involved sharing the material with Representative Mark Meadows who chairs a sub-committee within the oversight committee that might have jurisdiction on tangentially related matters of government corruption.

Against the backdrop of several years of questions and suspicions around the sketchy Clinton finances, representative Mark Meadows recognized the political value of the research in addition to the factual concerns that might possibly be present.

Additionally, in the background of the timing; during the period when the IRS received the material from Monynihan and Doyle; there was presumably an investigation started into the Foundation opened by the Jeff Sessions DOJ through U.S. Attorney John Huber.  So Representative Meadows called a hearing to overlap inquiry about a DOJ investigation into the Foundation with testimony from Mr. Doyle and Mr. Monynihan.

Summary: Two guys did extensive research into the Clinton Foundation and believe they have found tax violations.  If correct the financial bounty hunters would gain millions.  The IRS looked at the material and disagreed. The two guys then turned to John Solomon; who in turn went to Mark Meadows; and against the possibility of an open DOJ investigation of Clinton, Meadows scheduled a hearing.  That hearing is what took place today.

Do not take my word for it.  Watch the last 20 minutes of the hearing for a perfect summary of findings, motives and current, well, rather goofy, status.  This video is prompted to begin at 02:18:40… [Prompted just hit play – WATCH ]

Another Inspector General Michael Horowitz report; ..another exercise in futility.

The DOJ Office of Inspector General has filed a 35-page report (full pdf below) outlining the issues with recovery of text messages from devices belonging to FBI attorney Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok.

Page and Strzok transferred to the special counsel team when Robert Mueller took over the counterintelligence investigation, ie. “muh Russia”.  Within the report the IG notes that after the special counsels office was notified of the biased text messaging identified by Strzok and Page; and after Mueller removed them from the investigative team; the phones issued to Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok were reset removing any communication during their time on the special counsel team from discovery.  Here’s the pertinent part:

The full IG report is below.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/395648623/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-dssAiE0iPHLLTfixvH0G

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At this point it really is an exercise in futility to hold out hope that any corruption within the DOJ and FBI will be brought to the surface by Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

As Horowitz goes through the details and circumstances surrounding the efforts undertaken by his office to retrieve the messages; and against the backdrop of almost identical conclusions within his prior two reports on McCabe leaking and FBI bias; the IG ends by saying all standard procedures were followed and there’s no evidence of bad intentions by the participants.

Nothing to see here…. move along, move along.

According to DOJ filings: “Tallahassee, Florida City Commissioner Scott Charles Maddox, 50, and Tallahassee political consultant Janice Paige Carter-Smith, 53, both of Tallahassee, have been indicted in a 44-count indictment for conspiring to operate a racketeering enterprise that engaged in acts of bank fraud, extortion, honest services fraud and bribery.”  Both were arrested yesterday.

The issues around the three-year investigation surfaced in the Florida Governors race when Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum was running for governor.  Part of the sting operation discovered Mayor Gillum taking trips with lobbyists and accepting perks from undercover FBI agents.  Outgoing governor Rick Scott has suspended Maddox.

Scott Maddox and Paige Carter-Smith, once power players in Tallahassee’s political scene, shuffled into a federal courtroom on Wednesday, their legs in shackles, to answer charges they shook down city vendors for bribes and pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars.  – Read More

[DOJ Press Announcement Here] – [Story Via Orlando Sentinel Here]

Interesting, very interesting.  As noted in the Flynn sentencing memo last night there were some curiously framed explanations of events surrounding his FBI inquisition.

Now Judge Emmet Sullivan wants expanded information, and wishes to see the actual notes (FD-302) that were mentioned by Flynn; and Judge Sullivan is directing the special counsel to provide all documents created by the FBI surrounding the Flynn interview:

(Source Link)

(Link to Defense Version of Flynn Sentencing Memo)

I apologize in advance for my shortcomings in trying to de-wonk multinational economics and the financial constructs that impact, at the core, the U.S. worker and consumer.  It’s a big issue to tackle in digestible portions.  However, that said some inflationary statistics are presenting an opportunity for expanded discussion.

Reuters has an article out today highlighting inflationary data as released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) [DATA HERE]. The overall summary is the Consumer Price Index is stable or flat reflecting low inflation on measured goods; however, that’s not the part that bears emphasis.   Instead I would direct attention to this:

The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the core PCE price index excluding food and energy, increased 1.8 percent year-on-year in October, the smallest gain since February, after rising 1.9 percent the prior month. It hit the U.S. central bank’s 2 percent target in March for the first time since April 2012.

At the heart of the controlled monetary system; at the epicenter of the multinational global control mechanisms; inside the offices of the global economic elites; there is a system of financial manipulation with tentacles that reach into your pocket.  This system seems hard to understand, but it is critical to do so… so we need to try and understand it.

Background: If you go back to when CTH first began discussing Trump’s MAGAnomic outlook and actual plans for policy, you might remember our discussion about the New Dimension inside our American economy [SEE HERE].  Specifically, one of the key indicators in the disconnect of Main Street and Wall Street is “inflation“.

Inflation has been used by the Federal Reserve as the primary trigger for their monetary control policy; but it is important to understand this is by specific design.

If  “monetary policy“, specifically interest rates, are primarily driven by inflationary measures; and if global financial elites need to use U.S. monetary policy to finance their endeavors (they do); then those same officials need to control what goes into the measures for inflation. This is a critical aspect to economic control.

Wall Street, writ large, supports corporate global expansion without appropriate regard to the downstream consequences to U.S. workers and Americans.   Low interest rates are a critical component of global financial expansion undertaken by these massive multinational corporations.  In essence, globalists need cheap money to spend on creating controlled markets for cheap durable goods.

Higher interest rates means savers benefit and borrowers do not.  Low interest rates means borrowers benefit and savers do not.  This is a simple truism.  However, there’s another dynamic.

Higher interest rates means less capacity for multinational corporations to utilize cheap money to expand their global enterprises.  Low interest rates means more easily attainable money; and that finances larger corporate expansion.

Wall Street thrives on low interest rates.  The global economic system, which included the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, is a benefactor of Wall Street.  As a consequence, the global economic system is also dependent on low interest rates.

Remember, there had to be a point where the influence of Wall Street exceeded the influence of Main Street.   The U.S. federal reserve could not justify lower interest rates (punishing savers) if inflation and U.S. economic growth was stable.  If price inflation is low, the Fed could not justify raising interest rates.   So the measures of inflation were adjusted to remove the highly consumable sector (food, fuel, energy).

As an intended consequence food, fuel and energy prices could skyrocket and the inflation index would *appear* artificially low because those sectors were no longer part of the equation.  This false inflation index permits low interest rates that benefit Wall Street.

With the lower interest rates (Wall Street supported), the multinationals could then begin the process of using cheap-to-borrow money, investing overseas in the process of cheap durable goods.  This became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Outsourcing American jobs meant cheaper goods; those cheaper durable goods were quantified in the feds measure of inflation; the prices of those goods were deflationary (getting cheaper); the U.S. economy was shrinking but the justification for lower interest rates (cheap money that benefited the global expansion) remained.

Conversely those same Wall Street multinationals expanded their control market influence into highly consumable goods (U.S. food) and began merging.   No longer only influenced by domestic supply and demand, the prices of U.S. food, along with fuel and energy, skyrocketed…. but remember, the fed no longer used those prices in their monetary policy decision-making.

This was how the system was rigged.

Inside this rigged system we all lived through the results: U.S. workers were being screwed; manufacturing of durable goods was shipped off-shore; jobs were lost; wages were held down by low job growth; and to make matters worse – the prices for food, fuel, and energy were skyrocketing.

The U.S. middle class was essentially squeezed by the cheap money policy that was benefiting the multinationals.   Can you see what was happening?  This was all by design.  It wasn’t necessarily purposefully intended to hurt you, me, us, per se; we are the proles.  The goal was to gain money and power… we, you, me, us, were just collateral damage.

Now, here comes Trump.

Trump walks in with a plan to reverse that process through MAGAnomic policy.  Wall Street is no longer driving the political policy of the President; Main Street is.

But here’s where the rigged system is stealthy and sneaky.

After a year of Trump putting pressure on the multinational control mechanisms through U.S. regulatory, economic and trade policy, ie. his leverage; the prices for highly consumable goods begins falling.  Domestic supply and demand becomes a bigger influence; food, fuel and energy prices start slowly dropping; but remember, those sectors are not being quantified for inflation measures as used by the Fed via monetary policy.  This is by design.

Conversely, and absolutely intentionally, there is slight upward price pressure on durable goods because Trump is confronting the controlled global system of  cheap-good manufacturing.

As we navigate in the space between a de-emphasized Wall Street economy and a re-emphasized -and more balanced- Main Street economy, the prices on durable manufactured goods will begin to rise; and over-time the domestic production of those goods will return as the total cost of production (including shipping costs) are re-estimated and equalized.

The sneaky Fed, those financial agents who set up the rigged system, are no longer measuring the prices of stuff going down; they are only measuring the prices of the stuff that will naturally go up.  Durable goods prices rise, the fed quantifies increased inflation, and the Fed raises interest rates – this can stall domestic growth.

The rigging is designed that way.

This is what’s happening now.

Now you might say that Wall Street doesn’t like that…. and in part you are correct… check the markets… however, there’s a bigger aspect that Wall Street dislikes more… the elimination of their rigged global system is a bigger threat.  So in the long-term Wall Street is betting against the U.S. Main Street economy in an effort to go back to their preferred multinational system. [ie. cheap money, cheap goods, U.S. service-driven economy]

The system is currently rigged with a favorable lean toward the multinationals.

This is structurally Wall Street -vs- Main Street and President Trump constantly telling the Fed to stop messing with the economy.  MAGAnomics is the reestablishment of an economic system that naturally balances itself over time; it does not need intervention.

Did you get your yellow vest yet?  The recently elected New York Attorney General, Letitia James, makes a public declaration that she intends to fully weaponize her office to target the Trump family.

On the bright side, democrats can no longer claim their preferred approach of weaponizing their offices for direct targeting of their political opposition as a “right-wing conspiracy theory”; they are specifically outlining their intent to do exactly that.

New York – New York Attorney Gen.-elect Letitia James says she plans to launch sweeping investigations into President Donald Trump, his family and “anyone” in his circle who may have violated the law once she settles into her new job next month.

“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well,” James, a Democrat, told NBC News in her first extensive interview since she was elected last month.

James outlined some of the probes she intends to pursue with regard to the president, his businesses and his family members.

[…] She’s also enlisting help from some prosecutorial heavy hitters, like former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, as a part of her transition to help her identify important hires for her office with an eye on bringing in experts for its Trump-related investigations.

New York is home to the president’s namesake business, the Trump Organization, and it is where Trump’s presidential campaign was headquartered and his reelection campaign as well. And it is where a number of key events under special counsel Robert Mueller’s microscope, such as the controversial June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, took place. All of that falls within James’ jurisdiction.  (read more)