by Antonio Graceffo via The GatewayPunditBy U.S. Customs and Border Protection – CBP Processing Unaccompanied Children, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51178808

Mainstream media and the administration are pushing a narrative that funding for the Ukraine War and illegal immigration is helping the economy, both of which are complete nonsense. In fact, a Washington Post story on this topic begins by saying that “the economy is roaring,” and then goes on to explain how this amazing economy is driven by immigrants who are responsible for job creation.

Although they have twisted the interpretation of the economic data to make it appear that the economy is doing well, the average American is worse off than they were five years ago. Biden claims job creation, but the number of full-time jobs has been in steady decline. The number of part-time jobs is growing, and this is because of an influx of millions of people for whom minimum wage and no benefits are better than what they left behind. Twitter is full of ironic posts by conservatives saying, “Biden created X number of jobs, and I have three of them.” The number of Americans working two or more jobs has increased by 28% under Biden.

Wages have increased only modestly, while prices are up a cumulative 21 percent. Biden claims inflation is falling, but what he actually means is that prices are rising more slowly than they were a year ago. That is not much of a help if you already cannot afford to make ends meet. Gas is still about 42% higherthan before the pandemic, and food is up 25%. The reasons why your dollar is buying less are because of government spending, credit expansion, deficits, debt, and money printing.

The funding for the Ukraine war is a perfect example. While there may be very legitimate national security reasons to defend Ukraine and oppose the expansion of Russia, it is not true that Ukraine funding is growing the US economy. The Wall Street Journal claims that the aid given to Ukraine benefits the US economy because much of it is actually paid to US defense contractors. And while this is true, that money represents government debt. The government is literally borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

Government debt-funded spending helps a few US firms, but debt causes inflation and currency devaluation, which hurt Americans now. It also hurts Americans in the future in the form of taxes needed to repay the debt.

Illusory economic growth stemming from debt-fueled government spending is temporary and unsustainable. The boom must end in a bust, which will be even worse than our current economy. Government debt must be repaid with interest, and interest rates are currently dramatically higher than in 2019. Currently, the Fed discount window interest rate is 5.5%, and the monthly interest rate on US government debt is 3.15 percent.

Another issue with increasing America’s debt to defend another country is the opportunity cost. Buying weapons for Ukraine is not an investment in productive assets. If you take a loan to buy a machine that allows you to earn income in the future, you calculate the income against the debt, and if you have a positive gain, you borrow the money. For example, you take a loan to buy a limousine and then charge people $300 an hour to ride in it. But the money spent on Ukraine will never produce an economic return.

If the same amount of money had been put into education, research and development, or border security, America would see a return on its investment.

Turning our attention to border security takes us back to immigration. The Washington Post recently claimed that “About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024.” All they are really saying is that 50% of the new jobs were taken by immigrants. This is not a benefit to the average American. The Congressional Budget Office claims that the economy will grow by $7 trillion over the next decade, and $1 trillion of this is attributable to immigration.

The $7 trillion figure is just a mathematical function of the average US annual growth times 10 years. And it is based on the highest Biden growth year, a one-time boost to the economy when Biden allowed people to get back to work after Covid. That $7 trillion will most likely take more like 15 years to materialize, assuming the US economy ever gets back to normal.

The additional $1 trillion attributed to immigrants is simply based on the projected increase in the size of the population. So, basically, what the data proves is that immigration makes the population larger, something we all probably knew. And these figures ignore the money spent on welfare, aid to immigrants and illegal immigrants, healthcare paid for by the state, the cost of educating immigrant children, the cost of courts and law enforcement, increased crime and drug use caused by open borders… all of which is funded by government debt which, as we have already covered, hurts the economy in the long term and diverts resources from other more productive activities or citizen services.

Dr. Antonio Graceffo, PhD, China MBA, is an economist and national security analyst with a focus on China and Russia. He is a graduate of American Military University.

This 80-minute documentary focuses on the growing “wealth gap” in America, as seen through the eyes of filmmaker Jamie Johnson, a 27-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Johnson, who cut his film teeth at NYU and made the Emmy®-nominated 2003 HBO documentary Born Rich, here sets his sights on exploring the political, moral and emotional rationale that enables a tiny percentage of Americans – the one percent – to control nearly half the wealth of the entire United States. The film Includes interviews with Nicole Buffett, Bill Gates Sr., Adnan Khashoggi, Milton Friedman, Robert Reich, Ralph Nader and other luminaries.

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

I think this made up word in the meme below perfectly captures the tyrannical billionaire psychopaths who seem to have gained control of the world using their billions, while portraying themselves as the saviors of humanity.

Whenever I see the term Foundation related to one of these psychopaths, I know that Foundation is nothing more than a front to achieve their evil agenda.

And if ever their was a poster boy for philanthropaths across the world, it would be Mister depopulation/vaccine pusher/farmer Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation.

Gates, Soros, Bloomberg and the Clintons represent the evil forces in this world, using their wealth, power, and control of the regime media to push their agenda of chaos, death, destruction, and depopulation. They all use their “Charitable” Foundations as a means to their evil ends, while being portrayed by the media they have bought off, as generous philanthropists improving the lives of the poor and downtrodden.

It is all a ruse, easily revealed to anyone willing to dig just below the surface of these Potemkin foundations.

Bill Gates has openly articulated his belief the world needs billions less people.

Everything he does, supports, and funds, actively promotes achieving his psychotic death wish for those he considers useless eaters. Gates funded Event 201 in October 2019, laying out the master plan for the Covid plandemic, while at the same time funding the vaccines for a disease that supposedly didn’t exist yet.

This psychopath was front and center in pushing billions across the globe to be injected with this untested toxic DNA altering concoction.

It is now unequivocally provable these vaccines killed millions immediately, millions more slowly and methodically, and stopped millions more from ever being born by drastically altering the fertility of young people who had ZERO risk from covid, but were forced to be injected by the authorities and their bought off lackeys. This psycho has also funded the introduction of GMO mosquitos into the wild. Suddenly, cases of malaria have risen. This mental defective has funded fake chemically produced meat, while buying up farmland across the country, with no intention of farming. He funds new vaccines, using Africans as his guinea pigs. He funds geo-engineering (aka chemtrails) to block the sun, because his high school degree makes him not only a vaccine expert, but a climate expert too.

Psycho Soros made his billions manipulating financial markets through insider information, so now he fancies himself as puppet master of politicians, the media, and NGOs across the globe. He is single-handedly responsible for the ongoing destruction of America and most of the western world. It has taken billions of dollars to transport the millions of invaders placed at our southern border. Soros is the psychopath funding this invasion under the cover of his foundation and the hundreds of “charitable” organizations he funds to make sure the invaders have the means to successfully enter our country and western Europe.

His sole purpose is to destroy American and western culture, create chaos, maximize societal strife, and destroy every vestige of community, normalcy, and peaceful coexistence. Soros is behind the selection of the DAs in every urban enclave in America, who refuse to enforce the law, encourage crime, and purposefully destroy the cities they were entrusted to protect. Soros wants rampant crime, illegal immigrants overwhelming cities, uncontrolled drug use, mass homelessness, rigged elections through mail-in ballot fraud, and the downfall of America. All done through “legal” means, and cheered on by the regime media he funds.

I could go on with examples about Bloomberg and the Clintons, but it gets repetitive, as these philanthropaths all have the same general purpose. They use their massive wealth, power, and control to gain more wealth, power and control, while inflicting their psychopathic beliefs upon an unsuspecting populace just trying to live their lives.

Most people are not psychopaths. Only this micro-fraction of truly evil people with massive levels of wealth are the true enemy of us all. They are relatively easy to expose.

If the plebs ever gained the courage to stand up to these psychopaths and made examples of a few, the tide might be able to be turned. I’m not optimistic, but it just takes one.

Let me translate into English for you. What he is saying is:

“The Supreme Court of the United States blocked me, but they didn’t stop me,” Biden said during campaign event in Las Vegas.

US President Joe Biden fondly recalls his recent meeting with French President François Mitterrand… who died in 1996.

by James Hickman via Schiff Sovereign

Yesterday the Treasury Department announced that they expected to increase the national debt by a whopping $760 billion this quarter alone… and another $202 billion next quarter.

In short that means almost $1 trillion added to the national debt just in the first half of this year. And, again, these are the Treasury Department’s own estimates.

Obviously, that’s a pretty horrible result; even a senior Treasury official acknowledged that they have “significantly increased” their bond sales and the national debt. Not that they’re doing anything to stop the trend.

But there’s an even greater risk that the Treasury Department faces this year that is hardly being discussed anywhere.

Over the next twelve months, more than $6 trillion in existing US government debt is set to mature… and will need to be paid back somehow.

So, to give you an example, back in 2014, the federal government issued $264 billion in 10-year Treasury notes.

Well, it’s now 2024, i.e. ten years later. Meaning that $264 billion worth of 10-year notes issued in 2014 will become due and payable this year.

In 2017, they issued $368.8 billion worth of 7-year notes. And those 7-year notes issued in 2017 are due and payable this year.

You get the idea. The point is that the total sum of Treasury Bonds, Notes, and Bills outstanding that will become due and payable this year exceeds $6 trillion.

So, in ADDITION to the $1 trillion in NEW debt that they’re forecasting just in the first six months of 2024, the Treasury Department is also going to have to pay back $6 trillion of existing debt.

Naturally the Treasury Department doesn’t have $6 trillion lying around to pay back its bondholders. So instead of paying anyone back, they just borrow new money to repay the old money.

Now, this doesn’t actually increase the national debt. If they borrow $6 trillion in new bonds, but then pay back $6 trillion in old bonds, the net change to the debt is ZERO.

So, what’s the problem?

The problem is that interest rates are MUCH higher than they were 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10 years ago when those old bonds were first issued.

In 2021, for example, the Treasury Department issued almost $1 trillion in 3-year bonds back when interest rates were nearly 0%.

But since those 3-year bonds from 2021 are due and payable this year, the Treasury Department will have to borrow new money at today’s interest rates… which are hovering around FOUR percent.

And higher interest rates mean that the government’s annual interest bill will soar.

Think about it like this– $6+ trillion of existing debt needs to be refinanced. And given how much higher interest rates are, this will likely cost the government more than $200 billion per year in additional interest payments.

PLUS, they’re expecting $1 trillion of new debt in the first six months of the year, plus probably another $1 trillion in the second half of the year.

Altogether, the government’s total interest bill could easily increase by more than $300 billion per year in 2024.

And this same trend will continue in 2025, 2026, and beyond.

Right now, gross interest on the debt is already roughly $1 trillion per year. But in three years’ time, annual interest could surpass $2 trillion annually. And in 10 years, annual interest could reach $4 to $5 trillion.

Anyone who thinks this isn’t an obvious, catastrophic problem in the making (which demands immediate attention) needs to have his/her head examined.

And yet the government is full of people who shake hands with thin air and happily ignore the present and future carnage that they’re creating.

Don’t hold your breath for the Inspired Idiots in charge to fix this; I’ve written before that there is a VERY narrow window of opportunity to solve this problem… but they’re doing absolutely nothing about it.

But that doesn’t mean that you or I have to be held hostage by their incompetence.

I’ve argued that one of the highly probable consequences of this mess will be SIGNIFICANT inflation. After all, most likely it will be the Federal Reserve that facilitates all this new debt.

This is what the Fed has done for most of the past 15 years. Just look at the huge run-up in the national debt between 2020 and 2022; over 80% of that money (~$5 trillion) came from the Federal Reserve.

And if creating $5 trillion in new money resulted in 9% inflation, how much inflation will we see if the Fed creates $15 to $20 trillion of new money? No one knows for sure, but it probably won’t be 2%.

But if we can make such a strong argument for inflation… and anticipate a steep rise in prices over the next 5-10 years, there’s no reason why we can’t take steps NOW to reduce the impact of future inflation, or even benefit from it.

This doesn’t even necessarily require a lot of capital. For example, one could invest in long-term options on certain assets (including gold or silver futures), so that a small amount of money could pay out very large returns down the road.

The key point is that there are plenty of sensible ways to plan for future inflation, which we will continue to discuss in future letters.

But this isn’t even Plan B thinking anymore. Anticipating inflation should be Plan A.

by OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding

While Wall Street is setting records, those on Main Street claim to be barely scraping by. Many citizens even maintain that they are “living paycheck to paycheck,” according to the latest Issues and Insights/TIPP Poll.

According to an Issues and Insights/TIPP (I&I/TIPP) Poll that was released on Wednesday morning, 64%, or two-thirds of American voters, stated that they are “living paycheck to paycheck.”

I&I/TIPP is known for reporting “timely, unique, and informative data” every month regarding a wide range of topics that interest the general public, according to their website.

In the most recent I&I/TIPP Poll, which was conducted from January 3rd through January 5th of this year, among 1,401 registered voters, representing nearly two-thirds of Americans, stated that they are “living ‘paycheck to paycheck’ these days,” despite the fact that the United States is still considered to be a wealthier nation in comparison to other countries.

The margin of error for the poll was +/-2.6 percentage points.

Democrat politicians appear befuddled by the overall disregard for what they perceive to be “Bidenomics’ achievements” regarding the economy. However, Americans are still facing extreme financial hardships, even if the economy has recovered slightly since the COVID-19 era.

The surprising outcome comes at a time when many politicians and members of Wall Street are praising new data that claims strong growth in the fourth quarter, as well as a slowing rate of inflation.

However, in the poll, 63% of Democrats, 67% of Republicans, and 62% of Independents said that they are “barely getting by” with each paycheck they receive.

Additionally, 53% of poll-takers in the wealthiest income bracket, which include those who make at least “$75,000 or more” annually, also maintained that they struggle to make ends meet on a monthly basis. The wealthier earners blamed childcare, housing, food, travel, and entertainment expenses.

68% of American voters with lower incomes, defined as those earning less than $70,000 annually, also said that they were struggling to make ends meet. Nonetheless, that polling result was less surprising.

In terms of race, 62% of White Americans and 69% of Black and Hispanic Americans similarly admitted that they are facing “financial difficulty with each paycheck.”

The I&I/TIPP Poll posed an even more dire question, “How much money do you have in savings that you could use in an emergency?” in an effort to bring more attention to this issue.

Individual responses were used to group the answers, which were according to dollar value:

The following categories available were: “$0,” “less than $1000,” “1,000 to $4,999,” “5,000 to $9,999,” “10,000 to $19,999,” “20,000 to $49,999,” and “$50,000 or more.” An alternative response would be “prefer not to answer.”

As a result, the answer of this question was a worrisome 24% of all Americans who responded “$0.”

At the same time, 14% responded with less than $5,000, and 20% gave a response of less than $1,000. Of the respondents, 44% had less than $1,000 or had none at all. Even after accounting for the wealthiest citizens of the United States, the median savings amount was only around $1,586.

In conclusion, Americans seem to be unprepared for any sort of financial emergencies, at least in economic terms.

The data is shocking to many, especially considering the fact that politicians on both the right and left continue to tell U.S. citizens that “they’ve never had it so good,” which is far from the truth, according to economists.

“Experts, from the time I got elected, were insisting that a recession was just around the corner. Every month, there was going to be a recession,” President Joe Biden said on Saturday, chuckling as he mentioned the fourth quarter’s 3.3% GDP growth.

Due to this, Americans lack a safety net to shield them from sudden drops in the economy.

Realy fascinating to see life is possible even with single digit IQ.

Medulla oblongata function  is enough for heart beat and breathing

Who did this? pic.twitter.com/1XQZuSClbJ

— Kiu (@06Kiu) December 14, 2023

The Western financial system is becoming outdated because of new technologies and could lose its dominant global position in the near future, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

Addressing the VTB Investment Forum in Moscow, Putin pointed out that modern tech solutions, such as blockchain, are increasingly being used in international payments.

“According to experts, in the coming years this will lead to a real revolution that will finally undermine the monopoly of large Western banks,” Putin said, noting that some of those financial institutions are currently “not in the best condition.”

The Russian president added that the interbank messaging system SWIFT has been discredited because it cut off Russian banks and is being replaced by payments in national currencies.

Global economic relations are changing, and the previous model of globalization is being replaced by a multipolar model, according to Putin.

by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Excerpts

It was announced the other day that Saudi Arabia and China are opening a $7 billion local currency swap line.

[ . . . ]

Moves that occurred 10 years ago are instructive of why we are where we are today and where we may be headed.

The announcement of the swap lines is likely a pre-announcement of an Economic Hitman-style attack on Saudi Arabia by the US. It’s not really that difficult to foresee.

For historical context, Russia was hit hard in 2014/15 by the collapse in oil prices. In retaliation for “stealing Crimea” an attack on oil prices was organized by President Obama and the gaggle of usual suspects to trash the oil price.

In June of 2014 oil closed at $112.36. And the price began dropping the first trading day of July 2014 and didn’t stop until the end of 2015.

Saudi Arabia helped that process by expanding production, thinking they would take Russia’s market share as the Russian ruble collapsed and Russia’s foreign exchange reserves were drained.

The key to the anticipated win was that Russian companies, mostly the big State Owned Enterprises like Gazprom and Rosneft, had a lot of dollar-denominated debt which was about to mature and needed rolling over. So, the US sanctioned Russia such that companies like Gazprom couldn’t roll the debt over, because they couldn’t sell the bonds to US or European investors anymore. The current bondholders had to be paid off… to the tune of north of $50 billion in Q4 of 2014, and another $50 billions in Q1 2015.

This “rollover risk” would plague the Russian government’s finances for the next 18 months as the price of oil dropped relentlessly.

The Russian ruble dropped from the high 20’s/low 30’s versus the dollar rose to a high above 80 in late November, but it only happened after Putin personally ordered Bank of Russia President Elvira Nabiullina to let the ruble float. Before that there had been a soft peg to the US dollar in place, which was easy to maintain while oil was trading above $100 per barrel.

China stepped in at the height of the ruble’s collapse to give Russia a swap line between yuan and rubles. China paid off Gazprom’s debt. Russia paid them back in yuan, which they were going to get freely because of these swap lines then and Power of Siberia in the future.

The US didn’t dare sanction China for this because of both the blowback onto our economy and would have been tantamount to declaring war. It’s also why China didn’t get even threatened with sanctions after Russia “invaded” Ukraine last year.

That sweetheart deal for the gas now flowing to them through the Power of Siberia pipeline now makes a lot more sense. Personally I had misremembered it being signed in 2015, as a response to the crisis, but it was before the crisis even broke out.

That implies a few things: 1) the combination of of events of early 2014 prompted the formulation of a coordinated attack on oil prices aimed at Russia for later that year and 2) that Putin anticipated it and opened up negotiations with Xi Jinping to get Power of Siberia built quickly.

Nearly everything that’s happened since then is downstream of the events tracing back to early 2014

Russia survived that period of ‘rollover risk’ and in doing so created the blueprint for other countries to do the same.

[ . . . ]

Et Tu, Riyal?

So, now, start thinking about what the US and Davos will do to the Saudis in a similar scenario. The Saudis have been defiant of the US’s demands to go along with US foreign policy excursions like Ukraine and Gaza while simultaneously working in tandem with Russia to keep OPEC+ together in the face of the West’s full court press to what….? Bomb the price of oil.

What most folks do not understand is that the Saudis have a similar problem today (and have had for over a decade), that while their costs of pulling oil out of the ground are extremely low, the amount of money Saudi-Aramco has to pay to the government to cover the government budget balloons that price.

[ . . . ]

Every year Thanksgiving week here in the US is marked by some kind of volatility in oil prices because OPEC+ holds their winter meeting this week every year. Thanksgiving week is a great time to screw with markets because the US is really distracted by holiday travel and logistics.

So, the other day infighting within OPEC+ by African nations including the dutiful Davos-controlled nation of Nigeria postponed the meeting and was met with a washout in oil prices.

The Saudis need/want a put under the oil price of $80 per barrel. They need that to maintain their budget (see above).

China offers the Saudis a swap line to ensure breaking the peg goes smoothly. In other words, China will loan the Kingdom dollars to be repaid in yuan, just like they did for Russia and are currently doing today for their Southeast Asian trading partners trying to defend their currencies against the Dollar’s milkshake suction.

If we look back to history with Russia and Power of Siberia guaranteeing a big flow of yuan and rubles between Russia and China, might we see something that would grease the skids of riyal/yuan flow?

[ . . . ]

This OPEC+ meeting meant [to fight against] a whole lotta schmoozing by Davos through the Biden administration to break the cartel and let the price of oil drop. It’ll be the same tired ploy as what they pulled with a willing KSA in 2014 and Trump worked them over for in 2018:

“We’re taking oil lower. Everyone else will suffer unless you pump like mad to us and we’ll reward you with increased market share in the US. After we let the price rise, you’ll be the new king.”

In the end all 2018’s attack did was finally get Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to realize that the US is an unreliable and vindictive partner. He hitched the KSA’s and OPEC’s future on Putin and the Russians. He’s been rewarded for that choice to date.

The Saudis are preparing for an attack on the oil price to punish them for their lack of vision by the Neocons who never learn anything from their past failures.

Guess what? If Nigeria, Angola and Congo are hearing the sweet nothings of the West today I’d say they about to get rolled by Russia and China, but this time they will be joined by MbS and the Saudis, who are getting ready for the inevitable.