You’re already paying more for groceries and gas. Here’s where consumers will feel the next round of ‘sticker shock.’ thumbnail

You’re already paying more for groceries and gas. Here’s where consumers will feel the next round of ‘sticker shock.’

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By Dr. Rich Swier

FAIRtax’s Market Watch reports:

Consumers may already be reeling from higher prices for things like groceries and energy, but S&P Global Ratings says inflation has more surprises in store.

“Packaged food and household products companies have yet to pass through all of their price hikes, and so consumers will likely face more sticker shock before prices stabilize,” wrote Sarah Wyeth in a note published Thursday.

“As grocery and gas bills increasingly squeeze budgets, we expect that consumers will defer some expenditures and switch to less-expensive brands in the second half of the year.”

The U.S. inflation rate has reached a 40-year high of 7.5%. With prices heading north, some shoppers are already tightening their belts with the help of off-brand everyday goods.

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COLUMN BY

 Tonya Garcia

RELATED ARTICLES:

JPMorgan now sees Fed hiking interest rates 9 times to combat red-hot inflation

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EDITORS NOTE: This FAIR Tax column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Supreme Court Confronts the Administrative State thumbnail

The Supreme Court Confronts the Administrative State

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By Peter Wallison

It could be a coincidence—or it could foretell a historic Supreme Court term. The Court has now accepted two cases for this term that could threaten the essential legal underpinnings of the federal administrative state.

The first is American Hospital Association v. Becerra, in which the plaintiff questions the Chevron doctrine—a rule fashioned by the Supreme Court itself in 1984 that requires lower federal courts to defer to administrative agencies’ interpretation of their delegated authorities, where the statute is ambiguous and the agency’s decision is “reasonable.” Under this rubric, lower federal courts have given administrative agencies wide leeway to interpret the scope of their authority. 

The second case, which has received less attention, is West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, in which the state is challenging EPA’s authority to impose restrictions on the emission of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. West Virginia has a number of objections to the EPA’s actions, but one of them raises a constitutional issue known as the nondelegation doctrine, which was last invoked by the Supreme Court in 1935. This holds that under the Constitution’s separation of powers, Congress may not delegate any of its legislative authority to agencies of the executive branch. Accordingly, if Congress gave so much discretion to the EPA in the Clean Air Act that the agency could create what was in effect a new law—without congressional authorization—the Act would violate the nondelegation doctrine.

Thus, while Chevron has largely been used to expand the authorities of administrative agencies over time—with the courts providing generous readings for agencies’ claims of authority under ambiguous laws—the nondelegation doctrine has the potential to narrow the range of administrative activity by requiring Congress to enact more tightly drawn legislation. If the Court should weaken or eliminate Chevron, and re-invigorate the nondelegation doctrine, it would mean—in a single term—a significant narrowing of administrative state authority and an historic shift in the Court’s jurisprudence away from precedents initially established in and after the New Deal.

Prior cases have laid the groundwork for changing the Court’s view of both doctrines.

Taking Chevron first, many commentators have noted that the lower federal courts have been generous in accepting claims by administrative agencies that their statutory authority is ambiguous and their interpretation of that authority is reasonable. As the Wall Street Journal has pointed out “By one estimate, appellate courts agree with an agency’s judgment that a statute is ambiguous 70% of the time, and then 94% of the time uphold [the agency’s] interpretation.” The result has been a continuing expansion of the powers of administrative agencies, and an invitation to Congress to enact ambiguous laws. This in turn has enabled Congress to avoid making difficult legislative decisions by granting unspecified powers to administrative agencies.

The first serious crack in the Chevron wall came in the 2013 case City of Arlington v. FCC. There, Chief Justice Roberts, together with Justices Alito and Kennedy, dissented from a majority opinion in support of Chevron written by Justice Scalia.

This in itself was a major change in the Court’s attitude toward Chevron, but it was followed in 2015 by Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association, in which Justice Scalia—long the Court’s strongest supporter of Chevron—formally recognized that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires the reviewing court—and not the administrative agency—to interpret the meaning of a statute. In other words, the courts, and not the agencies, are the final arbiters of an agency’s authority. As the Chief Justice said in City of Arlington, “We do not leave it to the agency to decide when it is in charge.”

Now the Court has the Becerra case before it, with the possibility of weakening or even eliminating the Chevron doctrine by re-asserting the authority of the federal courts under the APA. The issue is whether Health and Human Services (HHS) has the power under Medicare to alter the reimbursement rates that hospitals receive for outpatient drugs. The applicable law specifies two reimbursement methods—hospital acquisition costs and average drug prices—but HHS claims that it has authority to “adjust” reimbursement rates as necessary despite the language of the statute.

Although the district court agreed with the American Hospital Association, the DC Court of Appeals overruled the lower court and found that HHS was entitled to deference under Chevron that would allow it to vary the reimbursement for hospitals.

The Supreme Court has a range of possible responses. One, of course, is to agree with the DC Circuit, but that seems unlikely. Four justices must agree to take a case, so four justices already think the DC Circuit’s decision is questionable. On the other hand, following the APA, the Court might want to place its weight behind a district court that enforced the specific language of the statute. This would weaken Chevron. Further, the Court might want to restate or re-emphasize what the Chief Justice said in City of Arlington, “We do not leave it to the agency to decide when it is in charge.” A statement like this could put an end to Chevron.

What the Court says this term on either Chevron or the nondelegation doctrine, or both, could reverberate for years to come when courts consider the scope of statutes that confer authority on the agencies of the administrative state.

West Virginia v. EPA could also be decided on several grounds, but many on the left have expressed concern that the Court might invoke the nondelegation doctrine to overturn the DC Circuit’s decision. Because this doctrine grows out of the constitutional separation of powers, many constitutional scholars believe that the Court should step in when Congress seems to have given the agencies the power to make new rules binding on the private sector instead of merely interpreting what Congress has enacted.

In 2018, the Court took a case—Gundy v US—solely for its nondelegation implications. But at the time of argument, because Justice Kavanaugh had not yet been sworn in, there was no majority opinion. Now, with a bench of nine, a majority opinion is possible.

To be sure, West Virginia could be decided on non-constitutional grounds. The case arose out of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), pressed by President Obama in 2015. The plan, ultimately adopted by EPA, was intended to use the Clean Air Act as a vehicle for reducing carbon emissions by coal and gas-powered electric generating plants, even though Congress had never specifically given it that authority for stationary plants. Eventually, under new leadership in the Trump administration, EPA decided that it did not have the authority it was asserting in the CCP and rescinded the plan in 2019.  However, in January 2021, the DC Circuit issued a 2-1 decision vacating the rescission of the CPP and holding that the EPA did in fact have the authority to issue the CPP, and even to do more than the CPP had mandated.

West Virginia and several other states appealed that decision and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the DC Circuit’s opinion.

Thus, there are a number of possible positions the Supreme Court could take. It could of course find that the EPA had authority to pursue the Clean Power Plan, but this is unlikely. The Court had already issued a temporary stay on CCP implementation in 2016, after 27 states appealed. To issue that stay, at least four justices had to agree that the regulation exceeded the EPA’s statutory authority, and the Court’s composition is more conservative today than it was in 2016.

Congress has never rewritten the Clean Air Act to address concerns about climate change and greenhouse gases; the law was enacted before climate change was an issue. Today’s Court could look carefully at the EPA’s statutory authority and decide simply to overrule the DC Circuit’s opinion.

The Court also could use this case, and the DC Circuit’s broad view of EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act, as an example of a statute that unconstitutionally delegates legislative authority to an administrative agency, reviving the nondelegation doctrine for the first time since 1935.

What the Court says this term on either Chevron or the nondelegation doctrine, or both, could reverberate for years to come when courts consider the scope of statutes that confer authority on the agencies of the administrative state.

*****

This article was published in Law & Liberty and is reprinted with permission.

VIDEO: FDA Exec Exposes Close Ties Between Agency and Big Pharma thumbnail

VIDEO: FDA Exec Exposes Close Ties Between Agency and Big Pharma

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By Project Veritas

*CLICK HERE TO TWEET OUT THE VIDEO*

Project Veritas released Part Two of its video series on the FDA today, which features FDA Executive Officer, Christopher Cole, speaking about the inner workings of the agency — including the FDA’s conflicts of interest, overspending, and why it’s hard for those within the agency to speak out on such abuses.

Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:

  • FDA Executive Officer, Christopher Cole: “The drug companies, the food companies, the vaccine companies. So, they pay us hundreds of millions of dollars a year to hire and keep the reviewers to approve their products.”
  • Cole on FDA fees: “Congress approved user fees for [the] FDA. Basically, we charge the industry millions of dollars in order to hire more drug reviewers and vaccine reviewers which will speed up the approval process. So, they [pharmaceutical companies] make more money.”
  • Cole: “They [FDA] tone down the impact of the user fees on their operations because they know they’re dependent on the drug companies, and the vaccine companies, and these other companies for their agency to operate.”
  • Cole on blowing the whistle: “There’s not an incentive to speak out in government, surprisingly. You would think there would be, but there’s not. It’s better just to just not say anything and just ignore it.”

You can watch the full video by HERE.

Cole’s LinkedIn page lists him as an Executive Officer within the agency’s Countermeasures Initiatives, which plays a critical role in ensuring that drugs, vaccines, and other measures to counter infectious diseases and viruses are safe. He made these revelations on a hidden camera to an undercover Project Veritas reporter.

A spokesperson for FDA issued a statement yesterday saying, “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.”

This statement appears to contradict a phone call released Wednesday afternoon by Project Veritas wherein Cole reiterated that he is “a manager in the office that helps oversee the approval of the COVID vaccines for emergency approval.”

Will the FDA clarify this situation? Only time will tell…

*CLICK HERE TO TWEET OUT THE VIDEO*

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas video report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

When Will the Brutal Spike in Rents Drive Up CPI Inflation? How Much Will it Add to CPI? thumbnail

When Will the Brutal Spike in Rents Drive Up CPI Inflation? How Much Will it Add to CPI?

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By Wolf Richter

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The numbers are already baked in and will show up over the next 24 months.

Two rent factors account for 32% of the Consumer Price Index. Despite the massive spike in “asking rents” across the US, those two CPI rent factors have been much lower than CPI and have thereby repressed CPI so far. Unlike asking rents, these two rent factors track the average rent that tenants are actually paying across the entire stock of rental units in US cities, including in rent-controlled units.

On the other hand, “asking rents” reflect current price tags on units listed for rent that people have not yet rented, and it takes a while for people to rent these units and pay those rents in large enough numbers to where they move the needle of the average rent actually paid across the entire stock of US rental units, which then gets picked up by the CPI rent measures.

But those two CPI rent factors are bound to catch up with asking rents and they will then fuel overall CPI – which was already 7.5% in January, WHOOSH.

But when will the spike in asking rents drive up CPI? And how much will it add to CPI?

The short answer: The current spikes in asking rents that have already occurred through January 2022 will add more than 1 percentage point to overall CPI for the year 2022, and will add more than 1 percentage point to overall CPI in 2023, even if asking rents don’t rise further from here. This is already baked into the numbers. CPI is going to catch up with a painful reality spread over the next two years.

The asking-rent spikes are brutal.

Rents for single-family houses and condos on the rental market exploded by 12% year-over-year in the US, varying widely from city to city, the worst increase in the data which starts in 2004, according to CoreLogic today. Miami was on top of the list, with a 35% spike in rents. In the years between the Financial Crisis and the pandemic, rents of single-family houses in the US had been increasing in the 2.5% to 3.5% range.

Rents in apartment buildings – does not include single-family houses and condos for rent – jumped by 12% for one-bedroom apartments and by 14% for two-bedroom apartments on average across the US, according to Zumper data. In 20 of the 100 largest cities, rents spiked by 20% or more, and in 11 of them, rents spiked by 25% or more. This is based on median asking rents, which are the rents landlords advertise for their listings. They’re similar to price tags in a store.

By a different measure, the Zillow Observed Rent Index, rents in January spiked by 14.9% year-over-year across the US, varying widely among cities.

All these measures show the same thing: On average, rents across the US spiked by over 12% year-over-year, varying widely from city to city, with some cities experiencing astronomical rent increases.

Asking rents take 24 months to spread across CPI rent inflation.

Asking rents are the current price tags. They don’t show up in rent inflation until enough people signed leases for units at those rents, and are actually paying those rents in large enough numbers to move the needle for the entire stock of rental units in US cities.

This makes asking rents a leading indicator for CPI rent inflation. Turns out, according to a study by the San Francisco Fed, these surging asking rents that have already occurred will push up CPI rent inflation for the next 24 months.

The two rent measures in the Consumer Price Index that together account for 32% of the overall CPI show this lag, though they too have started rising. The CPI Rent of Primary Residence (“CPI Rent”) in January was up 3.8% year-over-year, and the CPI Owner’s Equivalent of Rent (“CPI OER”) was up 4.1%.

These two CPI rent measures track what tenants are actually paying in rent across the entire stock of rental units in the cities. This includes tenants in rent-controlled apartments where rents don’t rise sharply, and it includes tenants on still active leases where rents cannot be raised, and it includes tenants whose landlords are slow to raise rents for a variety of reasons, including to keep good tenants.

So, the CPI measures will not spike in the same magnitude as asking rents. Between 2017 and 2019, the CPI measures tracked closely with the Zillow index. But in 2015 and 2016, there were large differences: In January 2015, the Zillow index showed rent increases of 5%, while the CPI measures showed rent increases of 2.6% and 3.5%.

When will these asking rents start fueling overall CPI?

So far, the rent factors in CPI have repressed overall CPI. Overall CPI in January jumped by 7.5%, despite the low readings of the two rent factors – rent of primary residence (3.8%) and owner’s equivalent rent (4.1%).

The San Francisco Fed has now come out with a staff report to estimate when these asking rents would filter into the CPI rent measures, and thereby into overall CPI. And this is going to happen over the next 24 months bit by bit.

The asking rents that have already occurred will likely push up the CPI rent factor by 3.4 percentage points in 2022 and then again in 2023, and given the 32% weight of the rent factors, will add 1.1 percentage points to whatever CPI will be by the end of 2022 and will add 1.1 percentage points to overall CPI in 2023, even if no further rent increases occur in the market.

So any leveling off or even declines in the CPIs for new and used vehicles will pale, because of their much smaller weight, in comparison to the coming surge of the CPI rent factors…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

VIDEO: Can Bitcoin Circumvent Economic Tyranny? thumbnail

VIDEO: Can Bitcoin Circumvent Economic Tyranny?

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By MERCOLA Take Control of Your Health

Today, I’m pleased to bring you two guests — finance guru Catherine Austin Fitts, whom I’ve interviewed before, and Aleks Svetski, editor of The Bitcoin Times magazine and host of “The Wake Up Podcast.” During dinner at an event in Miami, Florida, Svetski helped me understand why Bitcoin not only stands out head and neck above all the other cryptocurrencies, but is in direct opposition to them all.

I’ve strongly believed Bitcoin will be an important tool to get out from under the financial tyranny we’re in, where central banks are essentially robbing everyone blind.

Fitts, president of the Solari Report, disagrees. She knows the financial system inside and out, having spent decades exposing corruption and fraud, both within the banking industry and government, and she believes there are far better ways than investing our hard-earned money in cryptocurrencies, as the globalists have already inserted a number of control mechanisms within the cryptocurrency system.

Regardless of which side of the fence you’re on, you’re bound to learn something from this conversation. If you’ve dismissed Bitcoin as a passing fad, Svetski’s expertise may assuage your concerns. On the other hand, if you’ve been banking on Bitcoin being the answer to the impending financial crash, Fitts may inspire you to rethink how you protect your wealth.

Our Only Choice: Being Controlled or Being Free

If you want to understand what’s happening to our financial system, I encourage you to listen to this three-hour interview. I cannot cover all the details covered in this article, so to get the whole story, please set aside the time to listen to the whole interview, or read through the 95-page transcript.

In summary, Austin Fitts explains how the globalists — “Mr. Global” is her nickname for this secret system of governance — and the central bankers of the world in particular, have since 1998 siphoned out and stolen $21 trillion or more from the U.S. government in a financial coup d’état.1,2

Thanks to this theft by the central bankers, the American retirement (including health care benefits) and social welfare system are not adequately funded, leaving millions of aging Americans with diminished or no Social Security or Medicaid/Medicare benefits.

The primary reason for the theft, however, is to reengineer the U.S. government and political system as a whole. In short, the globalists’ plan is to take over the government by centrally controlling our economy, and then declare everyone who was promised health care and retirement as expendable.

According to Fitts, if we allow this financial coup to continue and consolidate, Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community may help pull that coup off. As explained by Fitts, slavery is the most profitable business in investment history. Digital technology now allows Mr. Global to return to a legalized form of slavery on a global scale. The theft that is underway is ultimately intended to control people.

“Mr. Global wants a culled, reengineered population,” she says. “He is going for the people because that is what has the most value, along with the other living things on the planet — including the planet itself. All value begins and ends with living intelligence and life whether it is expressed in financial and transaction tools or not.

Mr. Global has created scores of mechanisms to persuade people to sell out [other] people using fiat currency — pump and dump, pump and dump. Dealing with it is sufficiently frustrating and has us all trying to create workarounds.”

A Different Kind of ‘Reset’ Is Required

Fitts is convinced that the best, and perhaps only way out, of this situation is to deal with the secret governance system that is impacting and frustrating all of us and take action to ensure that we do not allow an all-digital financial system to go into place. If we believe Bitcoin is the optimal form of digital system, the problem is not Bitcoin: The problem is if it is part of an only-digital system.

Fitts also underscores that currencies cannot work without the underlying economy being in balance. That means we need to invest in the real assets we need to stay alive and free, things like local food production, local businesses or a personal water well.

She stresses that keeping cash is important — that we mustn’t enter into a wholly digital financial system, especially one monopolized by central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private crypto, which are in combination designed to strip us of both national and individual sovereignty.3

While Svetski agrees on some points, he still believes Bitcoin can be part of the answer,4 and that the focus should be on building a new financial system in such a way that it cannot be co-opted by anyone. The question, of course, is how.

As explained by Fitts, addressing taxation5 is perhaps the most important part of the puzzle. We also need to a) prevent vaccine passports and digital ID wallets and related blockchains from being implemented, as they are an integral part of the control system Mr. Global is trying to erect, and b) figure out how to get the money back that was stolen.

“There is $21 trillion missing from the U.S. government — we have no way of knowing what the real number is in terms of cash and credit. It could be smaller or bigger,” she says.

“I believe a successful transition requires both preventing the control grid from coming into place, and clawing back the money that has been illegally taken. A ‘reset’ in which the takers get to keep their winnings is a different world than one in which the equivalent value is returned.”

Can Bitcoin Safeguard Our Freedom?

Part of the globalists’ plan is to gain control of ALL resources, and they’ve made great strides toward that during the last two years. The question is, how do we get out of this situation and reclaim those resources?

As mentioned, while I’ve been convinced that Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency, was a major part of that answer, Fitts has some very pertinent concerns that we need to digest and fully understand. We also need to understand what money actually is, and what an ideal currency would actually look like and how it would function. All of these issues are reviewed in this discussion.

“In 2017, I did a very long and serious due diligence into Bitcoin,” Fitts says, “and I had two baskets of concerns, one related to whether or not the Bitcoin exchanges in the industry were doing a responsible job of communicating with potential investors.

I’m an investment adviser and there’s a world of regulation about how you make sure that an investor has full and fair disclosure. It’s the equivalent of informed consent, in financial terms. You want to make sure the investor knows what it is, and what their risks are, and that they are prepared to manage both the risks and the investment, the custodian issues, before they buy.”

The cryptocurrency market is currently a nonregulated space, which can give rise to the absence of best practices in education and disclosure as well as fraud. Another concern is whether or not Bitcoin will increase our freedom or simply facilitate our enslavement by a secret system of governance by “Mr. Global.” Fitts continues:

“What I’ve said is that it is absolutely important that we have a financial system and a currency system that is not 100% digital. So, where I think the current leadership and central bankers are going with the ‘Going Direct Reset’ is they’re trying to get a 100% digital control grid and literally end currencies as we know it.

They want to move us to, on the smart grid, a transaction system where they have 100% control. I call it the covert social credit system. They’ve been building that control system for centuries. But since the advent of digital technology, they’ve been building it much more intensively, and much more invasively.

They have three primary lines of control. One is financial carrots and sticks. One is the telecommunications and media alignment, it’s surveillance, mind control, propaganda and education. And then the third line is covert operations, which can be regulatory enforcement, taxation or it can be, literally, covert physical intervention.

So, you have these three lines and they’re coordinated. But whether they say they’re controlling assets or they’re controlling currencies, they really control people. They control everything through people. And if you look at some of the regulatory proposals now for crypto, that’s how they’re going to do it. They’re going to do it by controlling the people in their businesses.

Anybody who wants freedom wants transparency in and around what’s really going on in our world, and they want to be not controlled. If we permit a 100% digital controlled transaction system of any kind, we will concede control. Literally, it’s the end of human liberty in the West.

For everyone who’s interested in building a better digital transaction system — and I would argue that the current digital transaction system could be made infinitely better than it is now — it’s inherent … to address how we are going to get this technology working for us, but not allow it to control us.

And again, I don’t think the control will be controlling the technology. I think the control will be of the people using the technology. It will come through the people, because that’s how the control grid has been built.

So, I don’t see how we permit an all-digital transaction system and continue to have freedom, as long as the primary hardware and energy in and around the system, as well as the people, are controlled by a secret central governance system.”

‘Holy Grails’ of Technological Invention to Ensure Freedom

Svetski replies:

“Yes, I agree with you, wholeheartedly. Did you ever read the ‘Cypherpunk‘s Manifesto’6 written by Tim May in the ‘90s? The basic summation of that is, as the world becomes more technologically adept, technology trends toward concentration.

In that trend, we could end up with a world in which we have total panopticon surveillance and control of people’s money. So … we need to use encryption to maintain private communication. If you don’t have private communication, you can’t speak freely. Right? First Amendment.

That was sort of holy grail No. 1. Holy grail No. 2 was an independent monetary system. We need a money that is independent of a state, and unable to be censored, controlled, et cetera. Because if we end up with that, then who cares if we have free speech? You don’t have free action.

I mean, you see it in Australia. The government makes up a fake law so they can fine you for not wearing a fake mask. And then if you don’t pay your fake fine, they just take the fake money out of your fake bank account, without your consent. So, whoever issues and controls the money basically has the ultimate power. If I’m the issuer of the money, I can do whatever I want, basically.”

The Central Banking Warfare Model

A caveat to that, Fitts says, is the central banking warfare model. On the one hand, they can print money. On the other, they can also force people to use that money through military intervention. “That’s part of where the liquidity comes from, so you have to have both,” she says. In other words, they must be able to print with impunity and kill with impunity in order to maintain complete control of the system.

Svetski agrees, pointing out that these two control powers feed on and strengthen each other. He believes the monopoly on money is the easier of the two to defeat, though, “because what ends up happening is that when the monopoly on money can’t fund the monopoly on violence, things start to fall apart relatively quickly. So, if we had to pull a thread somewhere so that the shit-show unravels, that’s where we may have the strategic opportunity.”

Svetski also agrees that the Bitcoin exchanges are a disaster. “We all say that you should take your money off exchanges as soon as possible and hold your Bitcoin in your own custody, as soon as possible,” he says, “because then that moves supply out of these casinos, basically.”

“We’re totally aligned with this idea that the last thing we want is issued money from any authority who has the capacity to build up enough economic power such that they can deploy political power, or violent power, in order to maintain economic power and create this situation we have today, which is, ‘I can print all the money I want and you can’t do anything about it, because if you do, then I’m throwing you in jail.’”

Systematic Corruption Is a Core Problem

Fitts points out that the root problem isn’t necessarily the ability to create fiat currency. At its core, it’s the corruption of governance and the rule of law. And while we could create a well-functioning regulatory system for any currency, creating a government and judicial system free of corruption is far more difficult.

Because it’s believed to be too difficult, people focus on workarounds, such as using distributive ledger technology to prevent counterfeiting and fraud, or a money system based on commodities like gold and silver.

“Those are both workarounds to avoid the issue of how do we create a great governance system, and then a culture and a covenant that we’ll enforce?” she says.

“Traditionally, it’s never been a good idea to make a commodity the backbone of your currency, because then your currency can swing around and get hiccupped for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with its role as a currency. So, there’s risk in that, but it’s a workaround.

One of the things I think is the most important unanswered question before us is that we live on a planet where the governance system is secret … How do we stay free in the face of a secret governance system, and can a digital currency make a difference?”

Svetski argued that Bitcoin is not merely another ‘technology’, but actually a model of voluntary consensus that anybody in the world can participate in, whose rules are entirely transparent.

He called it a form of “constitution in code” which, like math, cannot be changed or distorted like constitutions of the past that depend on the protection of man have been changed. Bitcoin’s integrity is rooted in the laws of math and thermodynamics, while all previous models of governance have their Achilles heel in the ‘word of man’.

Defining Money

Svetski defines money as the “language of value.” It’s a way to encode or assign and communicate value to the product of our labor. Fitts points out that one of the most critical ingredients that makes this communication of value work is having an integrity-based pricing mechanism.

“Civilization is basically a story of discovering better objects and better mechanisms for exchanging the product of our labor,” Svetski says. “Humanity is a story of finding better money, basically.

The thing that organically becomes money is the tool, the object that is fungible. As many of the units as possible should be the same. It is divisible. A cow, for example, is not a great form of money because if you only need a banana, what are you going to do, chop the cow’s head off? It’s not going to work.

It needs to be recognizable … it needs to be portable and it needs to have some element of scarcity. You can’t just create it out of thin air. It’s the property of scarcity and unforgeable costliness that gives us debasement protection.”

In many cultures, gold was a cherished currency for the simple fact that there’s a limited supply and it’s not easily forged. Gold is not very portable or divisible, however, so as societies became more complex, fiat currencies (that governments declare as legal tender) like printed coins and paper bills emerged. With good governance, the fiat currency was still scarce, and it was protected from debasement by being difficult to forge.

The problem arises when governance becomes corrupt and the issuers of the currency start printing more, thereby diluting the value of the currency (i.e. inflation). As noted by Svetski, “No matter how excellent whatever money we’re proposing to use, that is secondary to who controls it and who decides.”

You can have a perfect money system, but if the people who operate the system and those who use it are separate and independently controlled, it won’t solve anything because corruption by the controllers of the currency is a root problem. As noted by Fitts, a sound currency would serve an economy where the people and the real assets are in balance.

Two Sources of Currency Debasement

Debasement of the currency occurs when the real economy gets out of balance and you try and make up for it by debasing or diluting the currency. That’s what we’re seeing right now. Corruption isn’t the sole problem here. “Debasement can come from the governance system trying to cheat, but it can also come from a real problem in the real asset economy,” Fitts says. And those are two different problems.

One is based on trying to please constituents (or fraud), and the other is a structural issue that needs to be resolved. The manifestation and the deterioration of the integrity of the money ends up the same, though, so they’re frequently assumed to have the same root cause.

Fitts believes that our current problem is not so much a currency problem but a secret governance system that is harvesting the planet of extraordinary amounts of resources. By doing so, they’re creating a massive drain on the real economy.

Creating a crypto asset outside the system to protect ourselves from that drain can only work for so long, because it doesn’t solve the problem that there’s a drain on the whole economy. The question is, can we bring transparency to what is happening and prevent a secret governance system from draining the economy of resources?

Transparency Is Key

Svetski argues that currency issued by any form of entity, be it a monarch, a state or a hidden Mr. Global will simply bring any system back to where we are now. Fitts believes the solution lies in creating a decentralized market economy based on aligning living and financial capital and incentivising peace rather than war, and a requirement for that is transparency.

To get to transparency, we must first break down the system of mind control set in place by the secret controllers through the use of modern technology. She believes the entrainment technologies, subliminal programming and various mind control influences are an effort to protect themselves from transparency.

And just how do we break through the mind control that keeps us dumbed down and unaware of how the system works and how it’s being drained? Fitts believes it will require us to identify how the mind control works, and then set ourselves free, one by one. “Control happens one person at a time. Financial harvesting happens one person at a time. And freedom happens one person at a time,” she says. Svetski agrees, adding:

“I did a post the other day on Twitter. It said, ‘You’re very hard to control when you’re healthy. You’re very hard to manipulate when you’re clear. And you’re very hard to influence when you’re sovereign.’ So I think we definitely agree in that case.

I think it’s very difficult to control the minds of sovereign individuals because not only do they fundamentally have a disdain for what I call fiat authority, which is nonorganic authority, but they are interested in living as individuals, not as a component in some homogenous collective, which is basically how the world wants us to live at the moment, which is ridiculous.”

How to Foment Resilient Communities

But how do we inspire the others to follow suit and become sovereign individuals? First, we need a critical mass of sovereign individuals in a place. Fitts notes:

“The currency needs to be in balance with the real assets — food, energy and shelter. Let’s pretend for a second, to make this simple, we’re doing a community currency. How do we get the food, energy and shelter sufficiently independent and resilient in that place so that the currency can function?

You’d need a critical mass of people who are willing to do that so that they could outwit what satellites are going to do to stop them. So, I’ll just talk for myself because I can’t talk for everybody, but I think if you see where Mr. Global wants to take the system, you would do anything [to not go along].

We are better dead than going to where Mr. Global intends to go. So that means there’s nothing I will not do to stay out of Mr. Global’s trap. It’s clear you have to rebuild a healthy, responsible economy, and you can’t do it one person at a time.

Occasionally you’ll see a phenomenal person who can go do it themselves, but, generally, our civilization depends on cooperation and specialization — community.

Ten percent of people are what I call Net Energy Plus; 80% are going to follow whoever’s in charge, and then you’ve got 10% who are Net Energy Minus. The idea is that you keep the 10% Net Energy Minus in the corner, you get the 10% Net Energy Plus running things, and you get the 80% following them.

I think part of the key to a successful human society is that we have respect and love for all humans, but the Net Energy Minus has got to stay in the corner. When the 80% follow the 10% Net Energy Plus, the speed at which you can turn a company around [is tremendous]. It takes no time to turn it around, but you’ve got to get the 10% Minus in the corner. Put the 10% Plus in charge and it changes overnight.

The challenge that we have, and the problem I ran into when I was trying to do community development, is Mr. Global is great at finding the Net Energy Minus guys and having them do crazy things. So, the question is: How do we protect ourselves from that sabotage?

The Net Energy Minuses can be handled. The problem is handling them with Mr. Global’s minions, who are very capable and very professional at recruiting them, managing them, financing them.

I grew up in a very poor neighborhood, and it didn’t take long for Net Energy Plus people to find each other. Those leaders would just magically find each other, and they could control the neighborhood because if anybody misbehaved, they could cut off their money.

And then the government came in and made sure, whether by dealing the drugs or bringing in HUD subsidy, that they could subsidize the slugs. And then suddenly the Net Energy Plus people couldn’t do slug management because they couldn’t stop the drug dealing and HUD subsidies.

Predator evasion for not just ourselves but the whole community, whether it’s a network or a place, is where I’ve never seen us excel, and that’s where I’d like to see us excel … Good governance has to emerge from a covenant which is codified in formal law, but is embraced in a culture which does the primary enforcement.”

In Svetski’s model, the Net Energy Minus people are “the parasites, the jealous members of the masses or the failed remnants that instead of adding value to society try to extract whatever they can instead,” and the Net Energy Pluses are leaders and entrepreneurs. He weighs in:

“You mentioned, first of all, that transparency is important to counteract control. We need to build sovereign individuals in order to counteract mind control. We need to then take these sovereign individuals, enable them to build communities in order to become sovereign communities, such that they can better manage the delinquents and lead the 80% towards a better world.

You mentioned Mr. Global comes in like a wrecking ball and [destroys] it every single time, because that’s what he’s good at. He’s a parasite. He just wants something for nothing, basically. ‘You guys work and I’ll benefit.’

That’s the version of the world that Mr. Global lives in, which doesn’t align with the physical laws of the universe. That’s just not how reality works, although Mr. Global thinks we can somehow structure the world in that way so that we can suck from the productive people and get something for nothing. Unfortunately, that sends the world on a path to hell, which is where we are now.”

Why We Must Refuse Vaccine Passports

One solution that is very clear is that we must do everything in our power to resist vaccine passports and other forms of patent systems’ control, as they are a foundational piece of the digital control grid being erected around us. Fitts explains:

“I’m watching a control grid snap into place. The Russians and Americans have made announcements about regulating crypto. In the EU, they’re trying to morph the vaccine passport and now they’re calling it a ‘private digital identity wallet,’ and the tax authorities are adding biometrics.

So, you’re watching the financial system getting closer and closer to building a control grid, but that control grid is not so much control of the technology, money or cryptos as controlling the people. And it works right now. For the last 30 years, it works like a covert social credit system, but it’s invisible; it’s covert.

The covert operation lines are integrated and connected, but it hasn’t been made overt. And one of the reasons it hasn’t been made overt is they haven’t been able to bring the U.S. Constitutions down, although they’re trying. But at some point, they’re making enough progress with the vaccine passports and the QR codes, that they’re going to start snapping this thing into place, and that to me is what has to be stopped.”

Svetski, on the other hand, believes an incorruptible money like Bitcoin can play a central role in preventing or circumventing this control grid, because if the globalists can control your finances, they can dictate your actions:

“If your bank account is completely owned by me as an authority, and that same authority owns or controls what you say online … and if you say something I don’t like, and then I just turn off your money so then you can’t travel anywhere, you can’t eat, then I have the ultimate control over you …

The most important part in the control grid is: If I can just turn off your money based on what you said, or who you hung around with, or who you’re associated with, you have zero power as an individual. Zero. That’s the holy grail of what they want. They want to introduce the CBDC, tie it to your vaccine passport, to your movement passport, and then it’s game over.”

Reengineering Our Economy

Again, for all the details of this discussion, please listen to the interview in its entirety. In closing, Fitts argues that what we ultimately need is a complete reengineering of our economy into one that is built on health rather than disease, peace rather than war and transparency rather than secrecy, and the people must be in control of that economy. Economy built on disease, war and secrecy, controlled by a hidden cabal, is what leads us into a downward spiral in the first place.

“We have an economy that has a negative return on investment,” she says. “But if you reengineer the financial system, you align living capital and financial capital, and you run the economy to build health, the speed at which we could start to generate fantastic amounts of wealth that could begin to deal with some of our liabilities and obligations is fantastic.

They see that opportunity, too. And if you see what they’re moving to do, they’re just moving to do it with a very different framework that you and I might use to do it. But the wealth is there to be created …

My tactic has been to bring transparency and find out how to prototype decentralized economics that creates explosive new wealth. Where I keep falling down is I’m not able to get a critical mass of people to figure out how to protect themselves from the mind control and the sabotage …

The challenge I’ve had with many people who are enthusiastic about Bitcoin and crypto is they don’t see the control grid, and they don’t see the danger of the control grid. And that results in them trying to talk individual and retail investors into doing things, oblivious to the dangers of the control grid.”

Svetski agrees about the roots of the problem, but he is still convinced Bitcoin is a central part of the answer:

“The problem is waste. The problem is secrecy. The antidote is some sort of transparency, a covenant amongst people … I’m extraordinarily enthusiastic about Bitcoin and I’m extraordinarily pessimistic about crypto.

There is a universe of difference between the two for me. Crypto is exactly how we walk into the control group problem. Every single one of them is Mr. Global’s attempt to discredit Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only way to walk out of it. And I’ll explain why.

Crypto is the most effective attack by Mr. Global on Bitcoin. All these monkeys running around screaming about crypto, all they’re doing is they’re walking right into the trap, which is the creation of a new currency that is controlled by a foundation, an institution, a group, a company, and creates a central point of leverage that Mr. Global can get access to.

And mark my words, I said this two years ago on a podcast and people thought I was crazy and it’s happening right now with the World Economic Forum partnering with Ethereum Foundation.

I said, ‘Ethereum is going to be the best way for globalists to enact the central bank digital currency because they’re going to do it under the guise of innovation.’ Every single coin other than Bitcoin is run or operated or issued or controlled by some single group. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a constitution enforced by the individual. I’ll explain it like this.

What makes Bitcoin special is that it’s not a program, and it’s not a technology. It is actually a set of rules, a constitution that we voluntarily opt into. When I’m a node operator of Bitcoin, for example, all I’m doing is I’m just running the software that is Bitcoin. And the software that is Bitcoin is just a series of rules: 21 million coins, divisible to eight decimal places, blocks every 10 minutes.

It’s this set of transparent rules … I can change the rules of Bitcoin if I want to. But what happens is that I’m immediately out of sync with everybody else, and I’m no longer on the Bitcoin network. I’m on something else. I’m on Bitcoin Aleks version, and then I have to convince everybody to move their economic mass, or their economic gravity off to me.

In doing that, I’m then going right back to the original problem that Bitcoin is solving, which is Bitcoin says, ‘Hey, money is the tool that we use to encode time and energy. Let’s place it outside of anybody’s potential control. Let’s put it with the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, the speed of light. None of us can control those. They apply equally to all of us. Let’s place money in that realm, then let’s go and do other stuff.’

Bitcoin is not digital. Bitcoin is information. This is another layer that I wanted to illuminate. I could take a Bitcoin transaction, and I could write it on a piece of paper. I could write it in emojis, and I could post it to the other side of the world. And you could then broadcast the transaction. The only thing that makes Bitcoin digital is that the internet is just a useful communication medium.

Bitcoin transcends that because Bitcoin is purely just math and information. That’s all it is. Bitcoin is the law of large numbers being used to associate private and public keys in a way that the public key cannot be reversed. And the holder of the private key is the private property owner of the Bitcoin associated with that key.”

Fitts counters, “Right, but you still come back to the same problem I said about if the control grid controls people, no matter how perfect you can make something like Bitcoin, it’s simply not enough.” Svetski replies:

“It’s not enough on its own, but it’s the one thing that makes 99% of the difference. Because what it does is it does a couple of things simultaneously. No. 1, it gives us some money. I call Bitcoin free banking in gold in information form that anyone can run on a $100 piece of hardware at home.

Picture a world in which every bank is just a $100 node operating at home, running the Bitcoin network. And every single one of those nodes around the world are in sync.”

Fitts notes, “Right, but you need those people who can maintain themselves outside of the control grid. And they need to have the real assets to be able to do that and do that together.” Svetski replies:

“Totally, and this is why we need something like Bitcoin, because what it does is in its appreciation, it gives us the economic means to acquire the real assets; energy and food. Primarily, they’re the two that we need in order to start to make ourselves sovereign across every other dimension.

Bitcoin’s kind of the linchpin. If you can’t do that, you’ll never catch up to the other ones. But in doing so, we have the economic capacity to do so, and simultaneously. And this is where Bitcoin is simultaneously a defense mechanism and an attack mechanism.

Every dollar you put into Bitcoin is a dollar that is not in the existing system. And what happens is it starts to create a drain on the existing globalist form of money, which is predicated on the capacity of an institution to control it.”

Fitts disagrees, saying that’s not what she’s seen happening. What she’s noticed is that someone, likely the central bankers themselves, “primed the pump on Bitcoin,” basically, someone invested heavily into it to drive up the price. Where did that money come from? According to Svetski, the money came from millions of regular people who decided to swap their fiat currency for Bitcoin.

Fitts, however, is convinced that someone is artificially pumping up Bitcoin. She believes the central bankers or their owners are pumping Bitcoin in order to prototype options for their control grid and to attract retail investors into digital assets out of precious metals and real assets, making it easier and cheaper to establish centralized monopolies of real assets.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide how you feel about Bitcoin. It certainly has strengths, but Fitts makes a good argument for understanding the control mechanisms and the risks of an all-digital financial system. Again, for more, please listen to the whole interview, as I’ve only skimmed over some of the highlights in this article. You can follow more of Svetski’s work at:

To see more of Fitts’ work, go to her website at The Solari Report.

EDITORS NOTE: This MERCOLA video and column are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Company Contrast: Compassion Tea

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By 2ndvote .com

Each week 2ndVote takes a look at popular companies that either score well or score poorly  and then try to provide alternatives that either better align with the 2ndVote values or should be avoided to the best of your ability. This series is called The Company Contrast, and the company we will be focusing on this week is Compassion Tea Company.

Compassion Tea Company (3.32) was founded in 2011 by members of CompassioNow, a Christian mission organization serving the medical needs of rural Africa. They hold true to their message of faith; “At Compassion Tea Company, we recognize God as our CEO. To Him be the glory in all that we do.” Thank the lord that I had the good fortune to find them before running out to buy another box of middling quality tea from Starbucks (1.73). While it is true that tea is not as popular as coffee in the US, (maybe something to do with our sordid history with the British), you can peruse a selection of both at Hope Coffee where Compassion distributes their tea. Hope Coffee also happens to be a Christian mission organization focusing on charitable works around the world.

Starbucks owns both Tazo Tea (1.00) and Teavana (1.00), two of the biggest names in tea in the US. Both of these brands have an abysmal track record on all 2ndVote issues, from donating to Planned Parenthood to supporting cap-and-trade. Starbucks and its subsidiary brands all have strong support for all the major liberal initiatives, earning them the lowest score possible. Starbucks donates large sums of money to each of these issues in addition to their public stances and company policies. Moving your spending away from these tea brands will have a big impact on how much these players can contribute to the pet projects of the left. There is no reason to forgo or feel guilty about your morning pick-me-up. If instead of bean caffeine you’ve been considering the enlightened choice of leaf energy, Compassion Tea Company Is the best choice for those of faith and a discerning palate. Tea has an amazing history and culture all its own, and followers of Christ are adding their passion for serving the lord to that history. So make a hot cuppa then reach out to Starbucks here and let them know that if they don’t change their ways you’ll switch brands for good.

COLUMN BY

Jacob Sparrow

Researcher.

EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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The Last Free-Thinker in Corporate America

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By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

This week brought the story of a courageous woman who sailed against the prevailing winds blowing through corporate America.  Jennifer Sey was ousted from her position as president of Levi’s for her outspokenness against school closures and mask mandates.  The company offered to make her CEO if she would just shut up.  When that didn’t work, they offered her a million dollar severance package in exchange for her silence.  She refused, in order to be free to speak her mind.  She told a news show:

“Well, for me, this whole thing [Covid-19 public health measures] has culminated [into] really being about the silencing of dissent and really not being able to hold a viewpoint that is outside whatever the mainstream narrative is – the ‘orthodoxy.’ I was very outspoken that closed schools were harming children – in my city, San Francisco, and in cities across the country – and that seemed like a very sensible position to me. It seems folks agree with that now, but it was unacceptable and I have to be able to say that. 

I don’t think schools would be open if parents like me weren’t saying that all along. So it’s a broader issue in the culture – it’s not a Levi’s issue, it’s not specific to Levi’s – the silencing of dissent is [a widespread issue].”

She pointed out that the Levi’s brand stands for rugged individualism, which suggests the company has turned its back on its long-held values.

There’s a lot of that going around these days, as corporate America has gone woke.  The latest examples include M&M’s going genderless, green for example losing the high heels and sultry voice.

Brother printers giving pro-LGBT books to preschoolers in Memphis.

Kraft Peanut Butter promoting preferred gender pronouns to kids.

Disney seeking to “transform culture” with its woke diversity and inclusion program.  Disney, it seems these days, never misses an opportunity to gratuitously insert a gay character into what is supposed to be family entertainment.  Critics call it ‘rainbow capitalism’.

American Express rolled out what is now standard issue Critical Race Theory training for its employees full of the usual microaggression and privilege blah-blah.  Workers are being told capitalism is inherently racist and, therefore, they are engaged in racist activity every day they show up for work.  CRT derives from Karl Marx whose goal was to replace all private companies with state ownership of the means of production.  I wonder if American Express executives know that.  I also wonder if woke corporations regret their contributions to the trained Marxists of Black Lives Matter now that its leadership has disappeared and $60 million has gone missing.

Then there’s Bed Bath & Beyond dropping MyPillow because they didn’t like Mike Lindell’s politics or his lack of confidence in election results, a view which just happens to be shared by one out of three Democrats.

The Kellogg Foundation is bankrolling a $500 a month guaranteed basic income to hundreds of illegal aliens in New Mexico. That’s a lot of corn flakes.

Don’t get me wrong. I like free markets. So do what you want.  If you want to play at left-wing activism instead of building shareholder value, fine.  Whatever sells.  If your soul sells, sell that, too.  Just don’t ask me to support you or buy your products when you’ve shown your contempt for me and millions like me on the political Right.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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Climate Tyrants’ New Tactics

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By Richard Morrison

Chief Justice John Marshall’s observation, “[t]hat the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” has become part of American political lore. Marshall understood that the state’s revenue-extracting power can be weaponized—even against those who have committed no crime. We are now seeing a corollary to that notion in finance, with fossil fuel companies as the target. It turns out the government may not need to tax your company into oblivion if it can isolate you from all sources of commercial financing.

It has become an article of faith among climate activists that it is not enough for ethical investors to voluntarily divest themselves from hydrocarbon holdings. Governments and central banks must intervene in capital markets to eventually drive such companies out of business. This strategy is not new—previous generations of activists sought to restrict capital to firms that produce military hardware, nuclear power, cigarettes, firearms, and other politically disfavored products. But never before has government policy so forcefully been part of the plan.

In that spirit, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing last year, titled “Protecting the Financial System from Risks Associated with Climate Change,” where members of the committee and witnesses were asked what the Federal Reserve was doing to save our planet from hydrocarbon-fueled climate disaster. One witness invited by the committee’s minority, however, had a different view. Economist John Cochrane of the Hoover Institution pushed back on the hearing’s premise that the federal government needs to be “protecting the financial system” from climate risks, suggesting that what climate policy advocates actually had in mind was to “steer funds to fashionable but unprofitable investments and away from unfashionable ones” via “regulatory subterfuge rather than above-board legislation or transparent environmental agency rule-making.”

Many policies favored by climate activists are out of line with prudent policymaking. Worse, they may arrogate entirely new powers to the agencies involved. In his congressional testimony, Cochrane pointed out that the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System—which the Federal Reserve recently joined—has a stated goal to “mobilize mainstream finance to support the transition toward a sustainable economy.” But that is not how financial regulation works. Agencies like the Fed don’t get to pick the policy goals that their leadership happens to like, pressuring private parties to immanentize those outcomes. The Fed has a specific statutory mandate regarding unemployment and inflation—it does not have plenary authority over the entire U.S. economy.

Fortunately, more people are recognizing that the Fed is about to get dangerously out of its depth on climate policy. For instance, in November, Joshua Kleinfeld of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and Christina Parajon Skinner of Wharton wrote in National Review of the effort to transform the Federal Reserve into a climate regulator: “It is democratically illegitimate for the Fed to engage in freelance activism. The Fed has no legal right to do so.” In a 2021 Vanderbilt Law Review article, Skinner pointed out that the allegedly pressing nature of a societal problem doesn’t magically expand the legal powers of a given government entity. She explained, “despite the substantive importance of climate change, the U.S. Federal Reserve presently has relatively limited legal authority to address that problem head-on,” concluding that “many aspects of climate change sit outside the Fed’s legal remit today.”

It would be a mistake in any case for the Federal Reserve Act to bestow on the Fed the expansive powers some think it needs to address climate change. The American Enterprise Institute’s Ben Zycher has discussed this in detail, emphasizing that the expertise one would need to do this prudently is entirely lacking at the Federal Reserve—and other agencies. Moreover, this problem could not be solved by convening a conference of professionals with doctorates in atmospheric physics. The uncertainties inherent in multi-decade climatological forecasts are not amenable to the supposed financial risk mitigation strategies that proponents want the Fed to employ.

Policymakers would be called on to make assumptions, not just about greenhouse gas levels or changes in the global energy mix, but also about detailed—and contested—scientific issues like the dynamics of cloud formation and regional climate oscillations. How will a given content of aerosols in the upper atmosphere combine with a La Niña event 20 years from now, to influence the value of corporate bonds sold to finance energy infrastructure five years ago? Will warmer winters and melting permafrost in Siberia threaten Citibank’s balance sheet? Will the greening effect of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere benefit developing nations by helping increase food production? No one knows for sure, but banks are already being pressured to cancel loans based on the assumptions of a handful of non-expert regulators.

Just because climate change is the hottest topic in progressive policy circles today doesn’t mean that other issues won’t command similar attention in the future, as anti-nuclear and anti-firearms campaigns have in the past.

Advocates of climate finance regulation might retort that they don’t need to be sure about things like the average air temperature on Earth in 2100. We already face more immediate risks that will affect the economy and banks’ solvency. Therefore, regulatory institutions like the Federal Reserve should attempt to steer capital flows away from carbon-intensive investments to deal with those immediate risks. That’s true—but only because climate activists themselves have intentionally created and amplified those risks.

When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued its first guidance on how public companies should disclose potential climate-related risks in 2010, it identified four sets of circumstances under which firms might be expected to have a disclosure requirement. They were 1) the impact of legislation and regulation, 2) the impact of treaties, 3) the “indirect consequences of regulation or business trends,” and 4) the physical impacts of climate change. In other words, any actual changes to weather patterns, sea levels, or natural disasters were an afterthought to the real financial threat to shareholders: government policy aimed at intentionally sabotaging hydrocarbon energy investments.

Thus, climate activists have managed to work both ends of the field. They publicly attack companies for being involved with oil and gas production, lobby for punitive policies to disadvantage those companies, and then turn around and label those efforts as a “climate risk” that corporations must disclose—and be further targeted by government policy. None of this has anything to do with climate change itself. No stakeholders are being saved from hurricanes or floods by any of this activity. It is a purely political attack on a legal industry that produces the vast majority of the energy that powers the United States and the world. Yet the proponents of this strategy claim that they are “protecting shareholder value” and reducing financial risks to investors. As my Competitive Enterprise Institute colleague Marlo Lewis recently wrote, the real point of all of this is not to identify banks’ climate risks but to intensify fossil fuel companies’ legal and political risks. It’s a self-fulfilling shell game.

This all leads observers to wonder which other industries will see similar attacks in the future. Just because climate change is the hottest topic in progressive policy circles today doesn’t mean that other issues won’t command similar attention in the future, as anti-nuclear and anti-firearms campaigns have in the past.

Unfortunately, we need not even make the case for a slippery slope; federal officials have already done exactly the same thing to other industries. In the mid-2010s, the Obama administration undertook a coordinated enforcement effort called “Operation Choke Point” to delegitimize and de-bank legal businesses that the administration had deemed politically incorrect, choking off their access to capital and financial services. Under the guise of protecting banks from the reputational risk of being associated with unsavory clients, federal officials warned banks that they should reconsider doing business with companies that offered everything from dating services and collectible coins to firearms and payday loans. Not surprisingly, many firms in such a heavily regulated industry took the hint and dropped those suddenly-controversial clients.

When the details of Operation Choke Point became widely known, it met widespread public blowback and was eventually discontinued. But the fact that senior officials within the Department of Justice, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) all thought this was a reasonable approach to enforcement is alarming. It also raises the question: Why did they go about it in such a non-transparent way? If the businesses in question were so problematic, why not simply pass new laws that disciplined them for their alleged transgressions?

The answer, of course, is that any such public effort would have been unpopular and very unlikely to be approved by Congress. Most Americans don’t think that the small businesses targeted by Operation Choke Point should be exiled from polite society–but the progressive-left bureaucrats in the Obama administration did. Moreover, if Congress had decided to criminalize certain previously legal financial transactions, payday lenders and gun stores would have been entitled to due process in an Article III court. But that is not what the Choke Point architects wanted. They preferred a system of vague and unaccountable “regulatory dark matter,” whereby government lawyers threaten private parties with enforcement actions via guidance documents, letters, and blog posts. It is easier to pressure a regulated firm to cut off another business from services than it is to prove in a court of law that the business in question has actually done anything wrong. The effort to expel oil and gas producers from the financial system is following a similar playbook.

Finally, we must consider the long-term political impact of financial agencies like the Fed, SEC, FDIC, and OCC expanding their portfolios to include topics like climate change and risks like those targeted by Operation Choke Point. As University of Alabama law professor Julia Hill wrote in the Georgia Law Review in 2020, “because reputation risk is largely subjective, regulators can use it to further political agendas apart from bank safety and soundness.” That politicization, she goes on, “undermines faith in the regulatory system and correspondingly erodes trust in banks.” Brian Knight of the Mercatus Center has warned about turning financial agencies into “universal regulators,” noting that it is “dangerous for our system of government to have administrative agencies, rather than our elected representatives in Congress, setting policies to address important social problems.”

Leadership at these agencies can step back from the brink and confine their enforcement to the powers actually granted by Congress, but if they do not, a future Congress will need to nudge them back into their corners.

Furthermore, financial regulators’ freelance initiatives on social and environmental policy might not survive a federal court challenge. Consider a similar recent case of agency overreach. Last July, the Supreme Court struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium, with the majority writing, “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts,” and adding that, “If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.” Would-be climate finance czars might hear similar admonishments soon.

*****

This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

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Is marrying later always better? New report says No

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

‘State of Our Unions 2022’ shows little evidence that those marrying over the age of 25 have stronger marriages than those in their early 20s.

Marriage works best if the guy and girl both have a degree, a job, financial security, and plenty of life experience, right? Early marriage leads to divorce, right?

Wrong. A major new American report finds no empirical reasons to favor later “capstone marriages” (over the age of 25) over “cornerstone marriages” (those who married between the ages of 20 and 24).

The State of Our Unions 2022 report, a joint initiative by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the Wheatley Institution and the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University, used three recently collected datasets with large, nationally representative samples to examine marital outcomes for both cornerstone and capstone marriages.

“We know that teenage marriage continues to be a significant risk factor,” says Alan Hawkins, a professor in the School of Family Life at BYU and the primary author of the report. “But, after that, age is not the strong indicator of success in marriage that many believe it to be, and yet many couples who marry in their early and mid 20s are swimming against a cultural tide that says they are too young and immature to be taking such a consequential step. Instead of accepting this as preordained, society ought to consider that cornerstone marriages can be just as nurturing, stable and satisfying as capstone marriages – if not more so for many couples.”

Highlights of the report include:

  • Many young Americans are marrying and desire to marry in their early and mid-20s. In the United States, 20% of young adults currently marry for the first time between the ages of 20 to 24 and another 25% of young adults report that they desire to marry by those ages.

    Blank space
  • Early-married husbands report they are more satisfied with their marriages than later-married husbands (81% vs. 71%) and report greater sexual satisfaction (63% vs. 49%).

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  • Similarly, early-married wives report they were a little more satisfied with their marriages (73% vs. 70%) and reported greater sexual satisfaction (62% vs. 51%).

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  • There were no significant differences between capstone and cornerstone marriages on reports of household division of labor and a sense of teamwork. Comparisons on financial values, relationship worries, and couple distress were also minimal, and early-marrieds were not more likely to be getting financial help from their families.

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  • There were no pronounced demographic differences between early-marrieds and later-marrieds, although early-marrieds tend to have less education. Religious differences are also not as wide as might be expected. Not surprisingly, however, early-marrieds are more likely to report that they feel like adults and feel ready to marry at earlier ages than later-marrieds.
  • While current generations are delaying marriage, they are not delaying the age of first residential union or sexual coupling. Young people today are living together as couples at the same age as older generations – they are just doing it outside of the setting of marriage.

The median age at first marriage has increased dramatically over the past 50 years in the United States, from 23 in 1970 to about 30 in 2021 for men, and from 21 in 1970 to 28 in 2021 for women. There is no evidence that this upward trend is leveling off.

Dangers of procrastination

Delaying marriage may be widespread, but the report raises some red flags. For example, the capstone model fosters individualism in young adulthood that may be challenging to flip at marriage. Some research associates delayed marriage with behaviors that are associated with an increased risk of future divorce, like multiple sexual partners before marriage and pre-engagement cohabitation.

The report also explores research-confirmed links between delayed marriage patterns and declining marriage rates and high levels of nonmarital childbearing, both patterns that have disproportionally risen among disadvantaged Americans. They appear to be important drivers of economic inequalities in our society.

“There are legitimate reasons for wanting to delay marriage – financial concerns being the most prominent – and

getting married later in life certainly works well for many,” said co-author Jason Carroll.

“But we believe that there should be greater cultural acceptance and support of couples who wish to marry in their early 20s, especially as our research and other studies have found no significant differences between early-marrieds and later-marrieds in terms of relationship instability and proneness to divorce. Contrary to the accepted narrative that marrying in the early 20s should be avoided, early marriage can be a solid cornerstone that some couples use to build a meaningful life together.”

“Twentysomething marriage is not for everybody,” adds Brad Wilcox, Director of the National Marriage Project. “It requires an extra measure of maturity and intentionality. But, surprisingly, this report finds that those who marry in their early twenties are somewhat more likely to report that they are happy and sexually satisfied compared to those who marry later.”

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Woke Capitalism Is a Monopoly Game

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By Michael Rectenwald

In 2018, Ross Douthat of the New York Times introduced the phrase “woke capital.” Essentially, Douthat suggested that woke capitalism works by substitut­ing symbolic value for economic value. Under woke capitalism, corporations offer workers rhetorical pla­cebos in lieu of costlier economic concessions, such as higher wages and better benefits. The same gestures of woke­ness also appease the liberal political elite, promoting their agendas of identity politics, gender pluralism, transgender rights, lax immigration standards, climate change mitigation, and so on. In re­turn, woke corporations hope to be spared higher taxes, in­creased regulations, and antitrust legislation aimed at monop­olies. Although woke capitalism alienates cultural conservatives, the Republican Party remains pro-corporate, making woke capitalism a win-win strategy for corporations.

Business Insider columnist Josh Barro suggested that woke capitalism provides a form of parapolitical representation for workers and corporate consumers. Given their perceived political dis­enfranchisement, woke capitalism offers them representation in the public sphere, as they see their values reflected in corporate pronouncements.

Others have suggested that corporations have gone woke only to be spared cancellation by Twitter mobs and other activists, that wokeness is a good “branding tool,” or that progressive shareholders also demand corporate activism.

But woke capitalism cannot be sufficiently explained in terms of placating coastal leftists, ingratiating left-liberal legislators, or avoiding the wrath of activists. Rather, as wokeness has escalated and taken hold of corporations and states, it has become a demarcation device, a shibboleth for cartel members to identify and distinguish themselves from their non woke competitors, who are to be starved of capital investments. Woke capitalism has become a monopoly game.

Just as non woke individuals are canceled from civic life, so too are non woke companies canceled from the economy, leaving the spoils to the woke. Corporate cancellations are not merely the result of political fallout. They are being institutionalized and carried out through the stock market. The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Index is a Chinese-style social credit score for rating corporations. Woke planners wield the ESG Index to reward the in-group and to squeeze non woke players out of the market. Woke investment drives ownership and control of production away from the noncompliant. The ESG Index serves as an admission ticket for entry into the woke cartels.

Research suggests that ESG investing favors large over small companies. Woke capitalism vests as much control over production and distribution in these large, favored corporations as possible while eliminating industries and producers deemed either unnecessary or inimical.

The investment approach of BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager; Vanguard, the second-largest; and others lends credence to this interpretation. BlackRock and Vanguard are solidly behind stakeholder capitalism—the corporate ethos of benefiting “stakeholders” in addition to or in lieu of shareholders.

In his “2021 Letter to CEOs,” BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, made his position on investment decisions clear, declaring that “climate risk is investment risk” and “the creation of sustainable index investments has enabled a massive acceleration of capital towards companies better prepared to address climate risk.” Fink promised a “tectonic shift” in investment behavior, an increasing acceleration of investments going to “sustainability-focused” companies. Fink warned CEOs: “And because this will have such a dramatic impact on how capital is allocated, every management team and board will need to consider how this will impact their company’s stock.” In thus throwing down the stakeholder gauntlet, Fink echoed the menacing words of World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and chairman Klaus Schwab, who wrote in June 2020: “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

But unlike Schwab’s rhetorical gesturing, Fink’s dictum of “go woke or go broke” should not be dismissed as the conspiratorial rantings of Dr. Evil. It has the direct force of capital behind it. Fink carries out what Schwab can only promote with propaganda.

Fink’s “2022 Letter to CEOs: The Power of Capitalism” continues the promotion of stakeholder capitalism, suggesting that stakeholder capitalism has always been the modus operandi of successful capitalist corporations:

Over the past three decades, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with countless CEOs and to learn what distinguishes truly great companies. Time and again, what they all share is that they have a clear sense of purpose; consistent values; and, crucially, they recognize the importance of engaging with and delivering for their key stakeholders. This is the foundation of stakeholder capitalism.

According to Fink, stakeholder capitalism is a not an aberration. He goes on to declare, rather defensively: “It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism.”

Klaus Schwab erects the straw man of “neoliberalism”—which he equates with the free market—as the source of economic and social woes for the masses. But corporatism, corporate and state favoritism differentially benefitting chosen industries and players within industries—and not fair and free competition—has been the real source of what Fink, Schwab, and their ilk decry.

Corporatism, otherwise known as “economic fascism,” involves the coordinated production and the running of society by a consortium of dominant interest groups. If anything, stakeholder capitalism is a form of corporatism. Furthermore, despite Fink’s assertion to the contrary, the corporatism he promotes exercises corporate power and relies on state sanctions to achieve a particular ideological and political agenda. That agenda is wokeness. Woke capitalism is thus more accurately called woke corporatism.

Unsurprisingly, stakeholder capitalism has been seen by some conservatives, and even by a few socialists, as a new approach for advancing socialism. Yet woke stakeholder capitalism does not advance state socialism as such. Rather, it tends toward corporate socialism. In extreme versions, it amounts to capitalism with Chinese characteristics—an authoritarian state ultimately directing the for-profit production of state-sanctioned corporate entities.

Corporate socialism has a long history, dating back to the end of the nineteenth century. I’ve written about this history in connection with the monopolistic and socialist ideals of one King Camp Gillette, the founder of the Gillette Razor Company. Gillette authored and funded the writing of several books to promote a corporation-based socialism. He argued that socialism is best established by the corporation. Incorporation, mergers, and acquisitions would continue until all production is finally subsumed under one “World Corporation,” with all “citizens” holding equal shares. While this is not exactly the vision of contemporary corporate socialists like Fink and Schwab, they are no less presumptuous or contemptuous of the free market, and they use the rhetoric of diversity, equity, inclusion as a cover for their economic fascism.

Likewise, contrary to “correct” opinion, it is not reactionary to oppose woke capitalism. Economic fascism, in whatever form, is authoritarian and totalitarian. And, as Xi Jinping acknowledged in a recent address to the World Economic Forum, it is not “egalitarian.” It vests economic and political power in the hands of corporate and state elites, and it uses coercion and state power to concentrate the control of wealth in their hands—however much they promise to redistribute it through “social justice.”

In addition to building parallel cultural, economic, and social structures, in the short term, woke corporatism can be challenged by divestment from ESG-abiding corporations and by opposition to the politicians who promote these corporations through legislative favoritism.

*****

This article was published by the Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Inflation Is Costing Households $250/Month, Moody’s Analysis Finds thumbnail

Inflation Is Costing Households $250/Month, Moody’s Analysis Finds

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

As economist Ludwig von Mises colorfully put it, inflation is when ‘money, like chocolate on a hot oven, [is] melting in the pockets of the people.’

Inflation is making headlines again this week. The federal government’s latest data show that consumer price rose 7.5 percent from January 2021 to 2022. That’s the highest rate of price inflation we’ve seen in nearly 40 years!

What does this mean for everyday American families?

A new analysis from Moody’s Analytics reports that the average US household is paying an additional $250 a month thanks to this inflation.

“A lot of people are hurting because of high inflation,” Moody’s senior economist Ryan Sweet told the Wall Street Journal. “$250 a month—that’s a big burden. It really hammers home the point of ‘what is the cost of inflation?’”

This disturbing revelation brings into focus something we already knew about inflation: it hurts the working class the most. While $250 a month is hardly a noticeable increase for millionaires, that could easily strain a working-class or even middle-class family’s budget past its breaking point.

Price inflation also erodes Americans’ hard-earned savings in a way that’s just as painful as the government directly hiking their taxes. As economist Ludwig von Mises colorfully put it, inflation is when “money, like chocolate on a hot oven, [is] melting in the pockets of the people.”

That’s exactly what we’re living through. But this leaves us with a more important question: Why are we seeing this surge in consumer prices? Is it some abstract economic phenomenon beyond our control? Is it due to “corporate greed?”

On the contrary, inflation directly traces back to decisions made by our elected (and unelected) government officials.

“The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague,” Mises famously explained. “Inflation is a policy.”

The primary cause of today’s inflation is the decision by the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank which controls the US dollar, to create trillions of new dollars out of thin air to ostensibly “stimulate” the economy during the pandemic.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell openly admitted as much in an interview with CBS.

The mystery of Inflation.

“You flooded the system with money.”

“Yes, we did.” pic.twitter.com/2ClRf97fg7

— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) January 17, 2022

“[Is it] fair to say you simply flooded the system with money?” a reporter asked.

“Yes,” he responded. “We did. That’s another way to think about it. We did.”

“Where does it come from? Do you just print it?” the journalist followed up.

“We print it digitally,” Powell replied. “So as a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally… that actually increases the money supply. We also print actual currency and we distribute that through the Federal Reserve banks.”

To understand what “flooding the system with money” looked like, just consider the following graph of the money supply—and how dramatically it soared at the start of 2020.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MONEY SUPPLY GRAPH

How does increasing the amount of money out there lead to higher prices?

As FEE economist Peter Jacobsen has explained, “If more dollars chase the exact same goods, prices will rise.”

We’re watching this Econ 101 lesson play out before our eyes. And it’s a painful lesson indeed for the millions of American families that have hundreds more out of their monthly budgets just to tread water. Here’s hoping our policymakers learn from their mistakes before it even gets worse.

WATCH: Brad Debunks the WORST Inflation TikToks

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

RELATED ARTICLE: New Hampshire Is the Freest State in America. Here’s Why

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WHOOSH Goes the Dollar’s Purchasing Power in January as Inflation Now Infests Services thumbnail

WHOOSH Goes the Dollar’s Purchasing Power in January as Inflation Now Infests Services

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By Wolf Richter

Inflation burns out of control, but the Fed is still pouring fuel on it. You can no longer just blame supply chains. This is far bigger.

OK, the Fed and American consumers and wage earners have, excuse the technical jargon here, a serious-ass problem on their hands that has just gotten worse. The broadest Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) jumped by 0.6% in January from December, and by 7.5% from a year ago, the worst since February 1982, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today.

The narrower “core” CPI-U, which removes the volatile commodities-dependent food and energy components from the measure to show how inflation has seeped into the broader economy, spiked to 6.0%, the highest since August 1982:

But back in 1982, Volcker was cracking down, interest rates were in the double digits, and inflation was heading lower.

Now, Powell has the foot still on the gas by still buying assets though at a slower pace, and by still repressing interest rates to near-zero.  The last time inflation spiked in this glorious manner was in 1978, but the Fed back then was pushing the federal funds rate toward 10%. Now the Fed is still repressing the federal funds rate to near 0%, which makes this Fed the most reckless Fed ever.

And folks, it’s no longer just supply chains, labor shortages, chip shortages, factories in China, used cars, and new cars.

It’s services that have begun to spike. The CPI for services spiked by 4.6% year-over-year, with big price increases now infesting every part of the economy:

The loss of the purchasing power of the consumer’s dollar – the politically incorrect term for inflation – worsened by 0.8% in January from December, and thereby the purchasing power of wages and salaries dropped by as much. The purchasing power of $100 in January 2000 has dwindled to $60.10, losing another 50 cents over the past 30 days:

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

Report Shows How Top U.S. Companies Endanger The World By Transferring Tech To China thumbnail

Report Shows How Top U.S. Companies Endanger The World By Transferring Tech To China

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By Helen Raleigh

A new report reveals how U.S. companies’ Faustian bargain with the Chinese Communist Party has endangered all of us.

Communist China kicked off the Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday, giving the Chinese Communist Party a center stage to broadcast its propaganda to a worldwide audience for two weeks. What will be hard to miss at the Olympics are the logos of some of our nation’s best-known companies, which remind us of their shameless kowtowing to Beijing for the sake of their bottom line.

A new, comprehensive report by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, titled “Corporate Complicity Scorecard,” reveals what these companies have traded away and how much their Faustian bargain with the CCP has endangered all of us.

The report, produced jointly by VOC and Horizon Advisory, evaluates eight well-known American corporations — Amazon, Apple, Dell, Facebook, GE, Google, Intel, and Microsoft. It presents “broad-ranging assessments of the nature of American corporations’ involvement in China” based on a set of indicators, including compliance with Chinese data regimes and supply chain exposure to forced labor risk. The report assigns a letter grade between A to F to the companies, with Facebook and Google receiving the highest score of “B,” while GE, Intel, and Microsoft got the lowest score of “F.”

According to the VOC report, these American companies’ complicity endangers everyone else for several reasons. It exposes U.S. indus­trial supply chains to China’s forced labor and other human rights atrocities. It empowers a strategic competitor while hollowing out U.S. industrial capacity. It also makes U.S. industry a conduit for the Chinese gov­ernment’s vast information collection (i.e., surveillance programs). Lastly, it makes U.S. industry a channel for Chinese influence and pro­paganda abroad.

All eight companies’ complicity is also endangering their long-term survival because through the “Made in China 2025” initiative, the Chinese government has been developing domestic competitors, intending to become “self-reliant” in strategically essential technologies. Shockingly, these American companies seem to fail to recognize that their technology transfers and billions of dollar investment in China will end up creating their own eventual replacements in this market.

Furthermore, some of these companies have engaged “in political lobbying in the U.S. in ways that ultimately serves Beijing’s interests while potentially undermining the values and principles that undergird the western democratic order.”

Intel sent a letter earlier this year to suppliers advising them not to source from Xinjiang, without mentioning either forced labor or genocide committed by the CCP against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in the region. Still, the company promptly apologized to China after its letter drew backlash from state media and Chinese nationalists.

The VOC report provides insights into Intel’s engagement in China. The company has a prominent presence in the country, including 17 campuses, at least two production sites, and “a series of innovation and R&D centers across China.” The company has built extensive ties to Chinese government agencies. For instance, the company has partnered with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation (CASIA), a “core contributor to China’s military and military-civil fusion programs.”

Intel also collaborated with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT), a “leading state entity charged with implementing China’s military-civil fusion national strategy.” The report finds “Intel executives continue to engage with MIIT rep­resentatives in fields relevant to military-civil fusion, even as tensions between the US government and China escalate and risks posed by Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy become more evident.”

Intel’s partnership with Chinese companies is also problematic. The company is a long-time major supplier to Hikvision, a Chinese state-owned manufacturer and sup­plier of surveillance equipment. The two companies launched a com­prehensive partnership in artificial intelligence in 2017.

After the Trump administration added Hikvision to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List and barred it from buying restricted components from the United States in 2019, former Intel Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan reportedly vowed to use “Intel’s global operating capabilities to reduce the impact on customers.” Later that year, several U.S. technology firms, including Intel and Microsoft, issued a joint statement “calling for then-President Trump not to impose tariffs on Chinese lap­tops and tablets.”

The VOC report also finds that “Intel technology was being used in surveillance systems in Xinjiang” and “Intel had invested in and provided technologies to a company embedded in Xinjiang and supported by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.” Intel essentially plays a critical role in enabling the Chinese government to build a digital prison in Xinjiang and monitor every move by millions of Uyghur Muslims.

Microsoft Also Gets an ‘F’

Microsoft also received a grade of “F.” The VOC report finds that “Microsoft has a significant, and growing, network of innovation centers, data centers, joint laboratories, and other technology hubs in China. Many of these have been established in partnership with the Chinese government or gov­ernment-tied entities.”

For example, Microsoft has built at least 10 data centers in China, all operated by a local Chinese partner, 21Vianet. In compliance with China’s data security laws, all data collected at these centers are accessible to the Chinese government.

Microsoft has also partnered with Chinese companies to tailor its products to meet the Chinese government’s needs. A 2021 report from Top10VPN found that many Chinese government surveillance and censorship organs “use Windows prod­ucts in their security and surveillance systems.”

Like Intel, Microsoft has established strategic cooperation agreements with Chinese companies that “the US government has identified as tied to the Chinese military or as an export restriction concern.” For example, one of Microsoft’s strategic partners is Dajing Innovations (DJI), a leader in civilian drones and imaging technology. The Trump administration put DJI on the Department of Commerce’s sanctioned Entity List in 2020. Microsoft has yet to sever its business ties with DJI.

At least three Chinese suppliers of Microsoft were found to involve forced labor in Xinjiang. However, Microsoft has maintained business relationships with these suppliers. In addition, the company continues to invest in R&D in China “even as tensions between the US and China escalate—and Beijing’s technological ambi­tions have become broadly recognized as posing risks for global human rights and security.”

Why GE Received an ‘F’

GE is the third company that receives an “F.” Similar to Intel and Microsoft, GE’s many partnerships in China “appear to involve technology-sharing, including with core players in China’s military, military-civil fusion, and surveillance system. Those partnerships have also granted military-tied Chinese players positions of leverage in GE’s supply chains, critical to both America’s national security and its manufac­turing base.”

Since GE is also a key contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense, these partnerships and technology-sharing agreements are especially troubling.

Losing Strategy

The VOC report gave the other five companies slightly better scores than “F.” But make no mistake, all of these companies have similarly “supported Beijing’s military modernization, the surveillance state, and human rights violations in exchange for access to China’s market.”

As the great power competition between the U.S. and China intensifies, corporations cannot pretend this is business as usual. Whether they like it or not, corporations are increasingly at the center of the Sino-U.S. geopolitical conflict. These American companies should never forget what made them successful in the first place.

In the words of former Attorney General William Barr, American companies are beneficiaries of “the American free enterprise system, the rule of law, and the security afforded by America’s economic, technological, and military strength.” China’s authoritarian regime is not a “hospitable one for institutions that depend on free markets, free trade, or the free exchange of ideas,” Barr said.

The VOC scorecard reminds these American companies that acquiescing to Beijing is a lose-lose strategy and will endanger all of us in the long run.

*****

This article was published in The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

URGENT: New Research Turns Up Yet More mRNA Vaccine Dangers thumbnail

URGENT: New Research Turns Up Yet More mRNA Vaccine Dangers

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By The Geller Report

A preprint in Cell finds vaccine-driven original antigenic sin is deeply powerful. Also: vaccine-generated spike protein circulates in the blood and vaccine mRNA persists for months in lymph nodes

mRNA from the Pfizer and Moderna shots can be found in lymph nodes for at least 60 days after injection.

By: Alex Berenson, February 11, 2022:

Free-floating spike proteins circulate at high levels in the blood after vaccination.

Vaccinated people infected with variants of Sars-Cov-2 produce antibodies biased toward the original and now extinct variant – rather than the one that has actually infected them.

Conspiracy theories from Dr. Kennedy-Mercola’s We Hate Vaxxxines Digest?

No.

Findings from a preprint in Cell, among the world’s leading scientific journals. Almost 50 researchers worldwide collaborated on the work, which Cell released online two weeks ago.

The preprint has received little attention, possibly because it discusses the potential implications of its findings only obliquely. In discussing the fact that the mRNA hamper the immune response to new variants, the researchers offer extra doses as a potential solution, for example:

Additional booster doses may be able to compensate for relatively decreased binding to new viral variant antigens, potentially decreasing the public health impact of antibody response imprinting.

Nonetheless, the preprint’s findings destroy comforting fictions about the mRNA shots, including that the body quickly destroys the genetic material in the jabs – as Reuters and other “fact-checkers” have long insisted.

In fact, researchers found vaccine mRNA in the germinal centers of lymph nodes for 60 days after the shots (as long as they checked).

The germinal centers play a crucial role in the immune system, where B-cells – which help produce long-term immunity – mature and learn to make antibodies to infection more efficiently.

The researchers also reported finding vaccine mRNA outside the germinal centers, though rarely.

The mRNA shots cause the body to make huge amounts of spike protein. Vaccine advocates have generally argued that those proteins remain bound to the cells where they were produced.

But the researchers also said they had found spike protein in the blood following mRNA shots at levels as high as those produced by coronavirus infection itself:

At least some portion of spike antigen generated after administration of BNT162b2 becomes distributed into the blood. We detected spike antigen in 96% of vaccinees in plasma collected one to two days after the prime injection, with antigen levels reaching as high as 174 pg/mL. The range of spike antigen concentrations in the blood of vaccinees at this early time point largely overlaps with the range of spike antigen concentrations reported in plasma in a study of acute infection.

Aside from that, everything is fine and we have nothing to worry about.

LINK TO PAPER

The 3 Greatest Economic Threats Facing America in 2022 [and Beyond] thumbnail

The 3 Greatest Economic Threats Facing America in 2022 [and Beyond]

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

An academic and an entrepreneur outline three of the most problematic issues of 2022.

As 2022 unfolds, there’s much concern regarding the US economy and our geopolitical standing. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States was once again the world’s largest economy in 2021, producing an estimated $22.94 trillion or 24.4 percent of global GDP. The number is especially impressive given the population of the US. at just over 333 million people, which is a per capita GDP of roughly $68,700, among the highest in the world.

However, we are concerned with the size, growth, and state of the US economy when comparing its transition from 1960 to date. In 1960, the US produced $543 billion in GDP, or just under 40 percent of the world’s $1.367 trillion global economy. When adding Canada and Mexico, North American GDP totaled $597.42 billion or 43.7 percent of the world’s GDP. In comparison, China in 1960 produced a GDP of $59.72 billion or 4.39 percent of global GDP.

Today, North America comprises only 27.9 percent of global GDP while China, now a country of 1.445 billion people, generates a GDP worth $16.86 trillion (17.8 percent). Including India, Japan, South Korea and all of Asia, total 2021 Asian GDP was 33.7 percent of the $94 trillion global economy. Clearly, North America has been outpaced by Asia since 1960.

While the reasons US competitiveness has declined since 1960 are many, we’ll focus on three of the issues that have been the most problematic, and if not remedied, will continue to be for decades to come.

The month of December saw US consumer price inflation at 7 percent on an annualized basis and the Producer Price Index up a record 9.7 percent on the year. As 2022 begins, many experts predict food inflation will increase 5 percent for the year. US holiday sales were partially fueled by stimulus checks and the child tax care credit that will no longer exist in 2022, thus presenting a potential major decline in retail sales in Q1 2022, but not necessarily accompanied by lower prices.

In addition to food inflation, we expect a high level of wage inflation across all labor markets in 2022. There is a clear shortage of labor in the United States, as evidenced by rising wages in 2021 for jobs from truck drivers to airline employees and $180,000 bonuses for many Apple employees. Perhaps the telltale sign of higher wages to come in 2022 is that the US unemployment rate has declined to 3.9 percent with 6.3 million Americans unemployed, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and roughly 11 million job openings available. We believe the US chip shortage will improve in 2022 but remain an economic factor through early 2023, continuing to put upward price pressure on automobiles and electronic devices.

Our preliminary estimate for inflation in 2022 is 8 percent as inflation indicators like the 10-year Treasury Bond Yield, gold and oil are up in January. We believe, as did Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, that inflation is caused by government monetary policy. The Federal Reserve, through its open-market operations, must eliminate its years of quantitative easing by tightening the US money supply to bring inflation under control before it becomes an even larger and more difficult problem.

The US federal government continues to threaten to break up America’s largest companies. Should it?

Consider: On Jan. 4, 2022, the stock market value of Apple was worth more than Walmart, Disney, Netflix, Nike, ExxonMobil, Comcast, Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, McDonald’s, ADT, Goldman Sachs, Boeing and IBM — COMBINED. For a brief period during the trading of Apple stock on Jan. 3, 2022, Apple’s market cap or stock value surpassed $3 trillion … marking the first time in the history of global stock markets a company achieved a value at or above $3 trillion. Is the fact that only a few stocks — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Nvidia — seem to control the size, scope, and fate of the S&P 500 a problem? Is the index concentration of the S&P 500 itself a risk for the market? Is it a problem that the seven largest mega cap stocks account for nearly a third of the entire S&P 500 market value? Or are these companies simply among America’s finest companies in the areas of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurial leadership setting the stage for growth and change within the economy, making them companies government should laud and encourage rather than break up?

Simply stated, the top seven S&P 500 Stocks outperformed the remaining members of the S&P 500 by 33 percent in 2021 because American consumers and consumers around the world felt they had more to offer and purchased their goods, services, and stocks at record levels. Apple alone represented roughly 7 percent of the S&P 500 estimated market value of $42.5 trillion on Jan. 3, 2022. This market share was due to many factors, including the millions of devices, such as phones, watches, and iPads in use around the globe and the broad range of entertainment provided by Apple streaming services.

For the most part, we believe the “magnificent seven” are evidence of the best and brightest ideas and minds business has to offer. It would be counter to the short- and long-term best interest of the US to break these companies up. It is outdated for US antitrust laws to only regulate a company’s size, scope, and influence in the US rather than globally. As noted earlier, America no longer dominates the global economy as we once did.

Still, US companies should compete without government protections, favors or subsidies, to promote successful entrepreneurial activity, improve lives, and safeguard America’s position as an economic powerhouse.

As the US national debt has grown over the last 50 years, interest on the national debt is now among the top 10 items in the annual US federal budget.

The national debt recently eclipsed $30 trillion, which is almost $90,000 per US man, woman, and child, and roughly $239,000 per taxpayer.

Today, the US national debt is 127.55 percent of today’s roughly $23.4 trillion GDP, up from 53.33 percent in 1960 and even higher when compared to 34.5 percent in 1980. In addition, the current debt figures do not include the more than $3.25 trillion in state and local government debt.

Much of our current national debt is due to excessive government spending on unnecessary items. If the massive spending continues into 2022 and beyond, U.S. credit ratings will decline, while adding trillions of dollars to an already unsustainable budget deficit.

In 205 years, from 1776 to 1981, the total US national debt went from $0 to $998 billion. With an accumulated national debt of less than $1 trillion over the first 205 years of American history and a debilitating additional $29 trillion since 1982, perhaps there are lessons for Congress to learn related to a.) budgeting; b.) public policy; and c.) Consensus building in Congress prior to 1982 — lessons that will help restore the American competitive, free enterprise system and enhance opportunities for an ever wider range of Americans and investors from abroad.

COLUMN BY

Timothy G. Nash

Timothy G. Nash is the Director of the McNair Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Northwood University.

Donald S. Gottwald

Donald S. Gottwald is an entrepreneur based in Indianapolis, Indiana.

RELATED ARTICLE: Harvard Medical Prof. Says the Government’s Pandemic Response ‘Failed Miserably,’ Ignored Consequences of Its Policies

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Company Contrast: Valentine’s Shopping Guide

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By 2ndvote .com

February is upon us once again and that means shopping for that special someone in your life. Although it can feel overwhelming to find just the right gift, don’t let the moral  weight on your conscience hinder you from making an educated choice on where to shop this year. Let us take the guesswork out of the equation for you as we compare companies for flowers, jewelry and candy this Valentines Day season!

Flowers

The two most popular flower delivery companies are 1-800-flowers and ProFlowers (owned by FTD). Taking a look at 1-800-flowers (2.49), we came across a mixed batch of information. Leaning left, we find that since 2007, the company has directed nearly $200,000 in monetary funds and in-kind donations to support the work of GLAAD – the leading LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization (source). They do, however, offer discounts for military and service members through Veterans Advantage. They also demonstrate reasonably environmentally conscious actions by supporting responsible sourcing and reforestation practices and by  participating in various recycling programs. .

Pro Flowers (3.00) (owned by FTD) was also researched but very little information was available concerning their philanthropic support and monetary donations and as such, can only be expressed as a neutral organization until more information is made available.

An alternative to these two organizations is Bloomsy Box who supports a “farm-to-table” style of service while also advocating and partnering with over 48 family farms and small businesses. By working with specific certified farms they ensure that toxic chemicals are used and by eliminating the middleman mentality that typically exists in the flower business, they are able to reduce waste. To see what they have to offer, click here.

If you are interested in a directory of Veteran Owned florists while shopping locally, VeteranOwnedBusiness.com allows you to search for specific businesses for a variety of your shopping needs all while supporting Veterans! Click here to see what the website has to offer for florists in your area:

Jewelry

Signet Jewelers Limited (1.57) – the parent company to big names like Kay Jewelers (3.00), Zales (3.00) and Jared The Galleria Of Jewelry (3.00) is a popular choice when it comes to jewelry shopping. It is not, however, a great choice if you want your retail support to go to organizations that support a conservative mindset. Just a few of the actions that caused us concern are listed below:

Included in their 2020 Sustainability Report:

  • Signet Jewelers Limited openly states the incorporation of “Unconscious Bias” training for all team members.
  • Signet Jewelers Limited discloses $100,000  donation to Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) organization to raise awareness and continue to support LGBTQ+ rights and activism.
  • Signet Jewelers Limited discloses $100,000 donation to NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
  • Signet Jewelers becomes a member of the Human Rights Campaign’s business coalition for the Equality Act – a national sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) accommodation mandate that would undermine 1st Amendment protections for religious liberty.
  •  Signet enhanced and expanded health-plan benefits for same sex domestic partners/spouses and expanded the parental leave policy to include parental leave for all genders.
  • In 2020, Signet donated $53,000 to United Way of Summit County as part of an annual giving campaign. Since 1997, Signet has donated more than $3.23 million from annual team member giving campaigns. United Way of Summit County supports Planned Parenthood through monetary donations typically ranging from $100,000 to $200,000 per year.

Of course we were able to locate a few good qualities from Signet. For example, they “led a community outreach drive to collect donations in partnership with Valor Home -, a housing program of Family & Community Services that offers supportive, therapeutic housing for homeless and at-risk veterans. Team members raised more than $2,000 and filled two truckloads of donated emergency supplies, which included winter coats, bed pillows, comforters, sheets, gas and grocery cards, and toiletry items.” Their subsidiary, Zales does offer a 10% discount to active duty military and veteran service members. But when comparing the pros with the cons, it is easy to say which way this large company tends to lean.

Another frequently used jewelry retailer is Tiffany & Co. (2.57) (owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. But, unfortunately, they aren’t much better when it comes to moral and ethical high ground.

To start, Tiffany & Co. scored a 100 on the 2021 Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index which is used as a national benchmarking tool on corporate policies, practices and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees. Just like Signet, Tiffany & Co. is also a member of the HRC’s business coalition for the Equality Act. To take it a step further, Alessandro Bogliolo was a signatory to the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion pledge, which includes the incorporation of mandatory unconscious bias training for employees, which is linked to critical Race Theory (CRT).

Since 2000, the Tiffany and CO Foundation has awarded over $90 million in grants, with $4-$6 million in average annual grantmaking over the past several years seeking to preserve the world’s most treasured seascapes and landscapes. However, they do take a strong stand to support the Paris Climate agreement in their Sustainability statement  and by being a signatory of the We Are Still in Pledge. They do offer 10% to military and service members but I would hardly consider that a reason to have my business – especially considering the various other companies that offer the same, if not better, discount.

There are other jewelry options out there with ethically sourced diamonds and materials that are made in the U.S.A. and provide military discounts like Wonder Jewelers, Qalo and Blue Nile Jewelry. But if you want to take it a step further why not shop with those that are also Veteran owned that supports Veterans in need?

Sword & Plough (3.14) is veteran owned or partially staffed by veterans. Owned by two sisters, one of which was an U.S. Army Captain who served in Afghanistan, this patriotic duo donates 10% of profits or 2% of revenue (whichever is greater) to veteran nonprofit organizations such as Got your 6, Team Red, White & Blue, Team rubicon and Pets for Vets. They also donated more than $45,000 worth of Sword & Plough products to veteran organizations and continue to partner with other veteran owned companies. They boast a conservative and valiant effort to reduce waste and minimize their carbon footprint by incorporating thousands of pounds of repurposed military surplus materials in our product line, manufacturing exclusively in the United States, and using recycled materials in our packaging. And as if you needed more of a reason to give them your business – they make more than just jewelry, offering handbags and other items for those who may not be big into jewelry. For more on Sword & Plough visit their website here.

Brass & Unity is another option if you are still looking for something a little different in the bling department. Also owned by a U.S. Veteran and Afghanistan deployed survivor, B&U donates 20% of net profits to help rehabilitate soldiers & First Responders.These funds go directly to mental health programs, prosthetic limbs, therapy/rehab programs, food/shelter/clothing for homeless Veterans, and many more – including help for their families. More on Brass & Unity can be found here.

Chocolates

Last, but definitely not least is my favorite part of Valentine’s Day – chocolate! Don’t bother with MARS or Hersheys this year – they both score poorly in most of our focus areas. You may be tempted to go looking for other frequently purchased brands Like Godiva and Lindt but let’s take a closer look just to be sure.

Godiva (3.00), owned by Turkish company Ulker, supports the Paris Climate Agreement. They have taken an active role in sustainability by  supporting the “A Breath for the Future” campaign of the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry since 2019. In 2020, Ulker planted 31,000 trees in total, throughout Turkey and in the last six years, their water savings (through various water management practices) amounted to 360,000 tons – equivalent to the daily water consumption of approximately 2.5 million people. Of course, being a foreign based company, there is not much information outside of environmental efforts that is pertinent to those of us here in the United States.

Owned by Lindt & Sprüngli (3.00), we look at two other very popular candy companies – Russel Stover Okay (3.00) and Ghirardelli (3.00). Based out of Switzerland, but with headquarters here in the U.S. as well, Lindt also expresses support for the Paris Climate Agreement in their 2020 Sustainability Report, while still supporting a strong and ethical approach to sustainability, such as reforestation, conservative water management techniques and reducing C02 emissions. But being a company based outside of the U.S. makes it difficult to assess where they would stand on American issues.

For this section I have two fantastic suggestions for sweets made in the U.S.A. and Veteran owned.

Firstly, Extra Ordinary Delights Fudge , which is owned by Aaron Hale – a 14 year veteran, military chef and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (E.O.D) team leader. In December of 2011, after a traumatic injury from an unseen IED while serving in Afghanistan, Aaron returned home blind. But with a resilient heart and motivation to do it all, Aaron and his wife started EOD Fudge and have since been featured on multiple networks such as FOX Business and ESPN. To see what amazing treats they offer such as fudge, candy apples and even pies, click here.

Second, we have Lift Chocolate where “Candy Man” owner and Chocolatier Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Busch offers all-natural, handmade gourmet chocolate treats. Brandon served as a heavy-lift helicopter pilot in the United States Marine Corps and two combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and continues to serve as a Forward Air Controller in the Marine Corps Reserve. To see Lift Chocolates exclusive Valentine’s Day lineup, click here.

I hope this article has provided you with several options to consider this Valentine’s season. If there are other brands you are considering, we urge you to search our scores before you venture out for that special something. Every little bit counts to making conscious choices for the moral and ethical support of our American standards.

COLUMN BY

Alisa MacQuinn

EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘We Can’t Expect Them To Tell Us How To Live’: NYT Writer Questions ‘Follow The Science’ Guidance thumbnail

‘We Can’t Expect Them To Tell Us How To Live’: NYT Writer Questions ‘Follow The Science’ Guidance

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By The Daily Caller

David Leonhardt, a writer for The New York Times (NYT), questioned some of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidance in a Friday article amid a rollback of several coronavirus restrictions across the country.

Leonhardt opens his piece by noting how the CDC warns against medium-rare hamburgers because they were “undercooked” and therefore could pose a threat. He also notes how eating raw cookie dough is ill-advised among, other apparently common things.

“If you happen to be somebody who engages in any of these risky activities, I have some bad news for you this morning: You apparently do not believe in following the science,” Leonhardt wrote.

Leonhardt said the “instinct” to follow the science “is both understandable and profoundly decent” especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, “but it has led to a widespread misunderstanding.”

“Many people have come to believe that expert opinion is a unitary, omniscient force. That’s the assumption behind the phrases ‘follow the science’ and ‘what the science says.’ It imagines science almost as a god -Science- who could solve our dilemmas if we only listened.”

Leonhardt said individuals are forced to make trade-offs about science, pointing to COVID-19 restrictions as an example.

“Covid restrictions – mask mandates, extended quarantines, restrictions on gatherings, school closure during outbreaks – can both slow the virus’s spread and have harmful side effects. These restrictions can reduce serious Covid illness and death among the immunocompromised, elderly and unvaccinated. They can also lead to mental-health problems, lost learning for children, child-care hardships for lower-income families, and isolation and frustration that have fueled suicides, drug overdoses and violent crime.”

Leonhardt noted how the CDC sometimes can “miss the big picture,” pointing to the CDC’s reluctance to urge mask use and slowness “to admit that outdoor masking has little benefit.”

“As you think about your own Covid views, I encourage you to remember that C.D.C. officials and other scientists cannot make these dilemmas go away,” Leonhardt wrote. “They can provide deep expertise and vital perspective. They are also fallible and have their own biases.”

Democratic-led states, like New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Connecticut, lifted their mask requirements recently, but President Joe Biden voiced disagreement with the decisions.

“It’s hard to say whether they’re wrong, here’s the science saying now that masks work, masks make a difference,” Biden said. “And there’s a relationship, I think there’s only one governor drawing back immediately and most of them are somewhere in the end of February, March, April. They’re set[ting] a time limit and I assume it has something to do with whether the Omicron variant continues to dive in fewer and fewer cases.”

“I committed that I would follow the science,” Biden continued. “And the science as put forward by the CDC and the federal people and I think it’s probably premature but it’s a tough call.”

The CDC recommends individuals wear a mask indoors regardless of their vaccination status.

COLUMN BY

BRIANNA LYMAN

Reporter. Follow Brianna on Twitter

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INFLATION EXPLODES: Consumer Prices Skyrockets 7.5% Higher, Worst Inflation in 40 Years thumbnail

INFLATION EXPLODES: Consumer Prices Skyrockets 7.5% Higher, Worst Inflation in 40 Years

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By The Geller Report

After they stole the election, the Democrats declared asymmetric war on the American people. They are killing us. literally and figuratively.

So 39 percent of Americans approve of this? As well as skyrocketing crime, and a chaotic Southern boarder, and mask mandates, and the stability of the world in a freefall. Bull S***! Millions of Americans voted against President Trump, because the corrupt media elites told them to do so. Today, millions of Americans are paying the price. Literally.

Americans are paying more for just about everything.

Gas: +40% since last year

Electricity: +10.7%

Bacon: +18.1%

Eggs: +13.1%

Chicken: +10.3%

Fresh Fish: +12.7%

Shoes: +6.1%

Dresses: +11.1%

Furniture: +17%

Used Cars & Trucks: +40.5%

Car & Truck Rentals: +29.3%

— Jacki Kotkiewicz (@jackikotkiewicz) February 10, 2022

Consumer Prices Explode 7.5% Higher, Worst Inflation in 40 Years

By Breitbart, February 10, 2022

U.S. consumer prices jumped by the most in nearly four decades as the new year started, sapping the savings of American families, diminishing the purchasing power of worker paychecks, and putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates beginning in March.

The consumer price index climbed 0.6 percent from a month before, the Department of Labor said Thursday. Compared with January of last year, consumer prices are up 7.5 percent.

Economists had expected prices to rise 0.4 percent on a monthly basis and 7.2 percent above a year ago’s prices.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW CUSUMER PRICE INDEX CHART #1 AND CHART #2

In December, consumer prices rose 0.6 percent compared with November. For the full year, prices were up seven percent in 2021, the worst annual inflation since 1982.

Excluding the volatile food and energy components, so-called core prices rose by 0.6 percent. The measure soared six percent from a year earlier. Both exceeded economist estimates.

Although many economists and anti-Trump journalists claimed President Donald Trump’s tariffs would raise prices, consumer prices remained low throughout his administration. Trump’s tariffs turned out not to be taxes on consumers. Instead, they were absorbed by Chinese producers and exporters and the profit margins of most large U.S. companies.

Inflation only began to accelerate last March after years of coming in below the Fed’s two percent target. The Fed had decided to keep interest rates low although the economy was recovering at a faster than expected rate. What’s more, the Biden administration pushed through billions of dollars of deficit spending in the American Rescue Plan. These combined to fuel demand for goods and services faster than supplies could expand, pushing up prices.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell, following the advice of many of the economists on the central bank’s staff, initially claimed that inflation was due to transitory factors. Fed officials forecast that inflation would fall in the latter half of 2021, predicting that supply chains would swiftly unsnarl and a rebalancing of consumer demand from goods to services would relieve pricing pressure. The Biden administration, under the tutelage of former Fed chair and now Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, largely followed suit and continued to press for even more spending.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

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Arizona Lawmakers Hear Dire Warning About Exploding Home Prices thumbnail

Arizona Lawmakers Hear Dire Warning About Exploding Home Prices

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By Cole Lauterbach

Arizona’s housing market is at the edge of a cliff of affordability that a local economist said could lead to more homeless and stifle the state’s booming economy.

Elliot Pollack, CEO of the Scottsdale-based economic and real estate consulting firm Elliott D. Pollack and Company, spoke to lawmakers this week in the respective chambers’ commerce committees.

Pollack’s warning was simple: the state’s growing workforce won’t have homes unless Arizona and its local governments do not better facilitate the construction of tens of thousands of new homes annually.

“Crisis is an overused word but when I look at these numbers, I just shake my head and say, ‘Where are people going to live?’ ” Pollack told the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday. “To get a month’s supply of single-family homes back to normal, you need another 20-25,000 units. You need another 15,000 apartment units just to get vacancy rates back to what has historically been the norm.”

Home sale prices in Arizona have risen dramatically in recent years. According to Attom Data Solutions, median home sale prices in the Phoenix metropolitan area rose 26% over 2021.

Pollack said the rapid increase in values is pricing many core professions out of the market for homes.

“There are going to be an awful lot of people priced out of housing,” Pollack said. “Fewer buyers will be able to afford the median-priced home and they’ll keep on going down until they can’t afford anything. Fewer people will be owners. More people will be renters. There will be more rentals of single-family units where people double up. There will be more millennials living with mommy and daddy and more parents living with kids. Homes are going to get smaller and more dense. There will be more homelessness.”

The solution, he posited, was to streamline the process of new home construction.

“There is no solution other than building more units,” he said.

Some lawmakers told Pollack about local resistance to multifamily zoning or increased density.

Home Arizona, a pro-housing organization formed in 2021, said adding new affordable housing must happen or the state’s economy will slow.

“Without ample housing for the workforce, we are going to lose our ability to recruit top employers, who bring good, high-paying jobs,” Home Arizona said on its website. “For the employers that are already here, they will lose their ability to recruit and retain top-talent. This isn’t hyperbole. We’ve all watched what has happened in several other previously desirable cities in California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.”

New legislation filed Wednesday would if enacted, create uniform statewide zoning rules that sponsors say would make it simpler and faster to build new housing.

“Arizona’s available housing supply hasn’t kept pace with demand, making it harder for Arizona families to find affordable places to live,” said Rep. Steve Kaiser, R-Phoenix. “The single biggest barrier to increasing the housing supply are municipal regulations and restrictive zoning laws which impede growth. Our bill makes the home building process easier and faster to help ensure statewide housing supplies meet rising demand and Arizona families are able to find a home that they can afford.”

Kaiser’s co-sponsor, Rep. César Chávez, D-Phoenix, said the housing shortage is driving people to homelessness.

“Whenever Arizona has been faced by crises, the best and only solution is to step up to the problems with a bipartisan approach,” Chávez said. “Not only will this bi-partisan bill address issues identified through a wide stakeholder process, we will make a historic investment to the Arizona Department of Housing Trust Fund to address homelessness and affordable housing for Arizonans most in need.”

*****

This article was published in The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

Why Tucson Lags Phoenix Economically thumbnail

Why Tucson Lags Phoenix Economically

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By Craig J. Cantoni

It has nothing to do with the local Chamber of Commerce but a lot to do with culture and governance

The Tucson Chamber of Commerce just selected a new CEO.  His background is similar to the background of the CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce.  Both have extensive nonprofit and government experience but not corporate or entrepreneurial experience, or international experience, or experience in other regions of the country.

One would think that the Phoenix Chamber is doing a bang-up job compared to the Tucson Chamber, given that Phoenix is a boomtown and a magnet for big business while Tucson seems like an economic backwater by comparison.

To that point, business news in Tucson is often about the opening of a new fast-food restaurant, while business news in Phoenix has such stories as Taiwan Semiconductor building a $12 billion plant in Phoenix, and Intel investing $20 billion in the expansion of its existing semiconductor operations in the Phoenix suburbs of Chandler and Gilbert.

Having lived in both metropolises, my contention is that the economic differences between metro Tucson and metro Phoenix have nothing to do with their respective Chambers but mostly to differences in culture and governance.

With reference to culture, many Tucsonans don’t like metro Phoenix’s size, congestion, fast pace, and hundreds of miles of freeways.  Preferring Tucson’s smaller size, laid-back culture, milder climate, and prettier natural setting, they don’t care that metro Phoenix has a more dynamic economy, better opportunities for young people, and better infrastructure and upkeep. 

Of course, a metropolis doesn’t have to be the size of metro Phoenix to be prosperous.

At the same time, some Tucsonans are frustrated with metro Tucson’s crumbling roads, unkempt property, and low income.  They lament that the City of Tucson has a poverty rate twice the national average, as well as what comes with poverty:  human misery, crime, and poor K-12 test scores.  They sense that something is amiss with local government but can’t put their finger on it.

They’re right that something is amiss.  What’s amiss is that metro Tucson doesn’t have the political diversity, municipal diversity, and government coordination and planning of metro Phoenix.  Let’s look at specifics.

In all, metro Phoenix consists of 27 incorporated cities and towns and four Native American communities.  Some are predominately Democrat, some are predominately Republican, and some, like Scottsdale, have nonpartisan elections.  Several are large cities in their own right, with their own character, amenities, and town centers.

The table below shows the top seven municipalities, by population, in metro Phoenix.

Top Municipalities

Metro Phoenix

 Population
Tempe 195,805
Glendale 257,233
Gilbert 266,714
Scottsdale 268,839
Chandler 269,123
Mesa 538,146
Phoenix 1,759,943

This diversity brings about economic competition but a competition that is tempered by the Maricopa Association of Governments, which was formed in 1967 to enable the 31 different jurisdictions, as well as the county, to cooperate on transportation planning and other issues affecting the quality of life of the entire metropolis.

By contrast, nearly 90% of the population of metro Tucson is in only two jurisdictions:  the City of Tucson and unincorporated Pima County, both of which have been controlled by one party, the Democrat Party, for decades.  Also, the metropolis is still struggling to fund a metro-wide planning and coordinating agency as effective as the Maricopa Association of Governments, which has been operating effectively for 55 years, albeit with a few boondoggles, as all government agencies are prone to do.

The table below shows the top jurisdictions, by population, in metro Tucson.

Top Jurisdictions

Metro Tucson

 Population
Oro Valley 48,231
Marana 51,908
Unincorporated

County

 381,600
Tucson 554,503

Not only does metro Tucson have less municipal and political diversity, but it is hampered by so much of the metropolis is an unincorporated county.  Even if the county were well-run, it could not provide the level of services of a well-run municipality.  That’s because an unincorporated county is better suited for rural areas than urban ones. 

To that point, consider the Foothills.  It is the wealthiest part of the Tucson metropolis, with a median household income of approximately $90,000, which is about the same as the median household income in the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale.  But being in the unincorporated county, the Foothills does not have the amenities, upkeep, and services of Scottsdale.  For example, within its roughly 30 square miles, there is not one public park, one civic center, or one ball field or sports court, except for sports facilities at public schools.

The bottom line is that monopolies have little incentive to improve. 

The Tucson metropolis doesn’t have to be as big as the Phoenix metropolis to be more prosperous, to have better opportunities, to have more amenities, and to be better maintained.  It just needs political diversity, the incorporation of the county, and an effective metro-wide planning and coordinating agency.

Of course, those who control the monopoly and benefit from it will claim that this can’t be done.  For sure, the head of the Tucson Chamber isn’t going to try to overturn the political and governmental status quo.

*****

Mr. Cantoni is an author, activist, and former management consultant and executive with leading international and domestic corporations.

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