Archive for month: April, 2024

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog.  Are the financial markets headed for trouble? There was quite a bit of panic on Wall Street on Thursday after more bad economic numbers were released. But honestly, I simply do not understand why the financial markets responded with such surprise. By now it should be apparent to everyone that we have a “Weekend at Bernie’s economy” that is being propped up by unprecedented levels of government spending. If we actually tried to live within our means, we would immediately plunge into a depression. Our politicians definitely do not want that, and so about every one hundred days they are adding another trillion dollars to the national debt, and the vast majority of that borrowed money goes directly into the veins of the corpse that we call the U.S. economy. But even though we are absolutely flooding the system with cash stolen from future generations of Americans, economic performance has been extremely anemic. On Thursday, the government reported that the U.S. economy grew at a 1.6 percent annualized rate during the first quarter of this year… Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, grew by 1.6% on an annualized basis in the three-month period from January through March, the Commerce Department said in its first reading of the data on Thursday. That is much lower than the 2.4% increase forecast by LSEG economists and marks a sharp slowdown from the 3.4% pace seen during the fourth quarter. It is the slowest pace of growth in two years. “This was a worst of both worlds report — slower than expected growth, higher than expected inflation,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth US. “The biggest setback is the acceleration in core inflation, and in particular, the services sector rising above a 5% annual rate.” Even if the GDP numbers were accurate, and I don’t believe that they are, that would still be absolutely terrible. At this point, some pundits are using the term “slowdown” to describe what is happening to the economy… Some analysts believe Thursday’s weaker-than-expected report signals the start of a broader slowdown in the economy. Personally, I am entirely convinced that if honest numbers were being used they would indicate that GDP growth is negative. But in any event, pretty much everyone agrees that we are heading in the wrong direction. In response to this bad economic news, stock prices plummeted. At one point on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 600 points, and it closed the day down 375 points… Stocks tumbled Thursday after the latest U.S. economic data showed a sharp slowdown in growth and pointed to persistent inflation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 375.12 points, or 0.98%, to close at 38,085.80, weighed down by steep declines in Caterpillar and IBM. The S&P 500 dropped 0.46% to finish the session at 5,048.42, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.64% to 15,611.76. Not too long ago, the Dow was flirting with 40,000. Since that time, it has lost nearly 2,000 points. Will this “slide” eventually turn into an avalanche? What is happening in the bond market is of even greater concern. The release of the GDP numbers caused U.S. Treasury yields to go completely nuts… U.S. Treasury yields rose on Thursday after the first-quarter GDP report showed slowing growth and rising consumer prices. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed 4.8 basis points to 4.702%, while the rate on the 2-year Treasury gained 6.1 basis points to 4.998%. At their session highs, the yields on both notes hit their highest levels since November. Let’s keep a close eye on this. If Treasury yields start swinging too wildly, that is going to have enormous implications for those who trade derivatives. Shifting gears, we have also just learned that the median price of a home in the U.S. has just hit another brand-new record high… It is more expensive than ever to buy a home in the U.S., according to a new report from the real estate company Redfin. The median home price hit a record $383,725 during the four-week period ending April 21. That’s up 5.2 percent from a year ago, Redfin found, one of the largest leaps in home prices since October 2022. Sadly, home ownership is now out of reach for a very large chunk of the population. If you can believe it, Redfin says that the median monthly housing payment has risen “to a record $2,843”… The median monthly housing payment also jumped to a record $2,843, up 13 percent from the same period last year. Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, said prospective buyers should “accept that this year is probably not the time to find a dream deal.” Who can afford a mortgage payment of $2,843 a month? That is insane. Homeownership has never been more unaffordable than it is right now, and young adults who are just starting out are being hit the hardest. Earlier today, I just had to laugh when I came across an article entitled “So you may never own a home. Here’s why maybe that’s … a good thing?” To me, that sounds eerily similar to “you will own nothing and be happy”. That particular article is directed at young adults in Canada, but millions of young adults in the U.S. are also wondering if they will be renting for life. Yes, there are some advantages to renting, but you aren’t building any equity. And I think that is what the wizards on Wall Street would like to see. I think that they envision a future in which they own almost all of the homes and the vast majority of us are renters. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that I don’t think that things will ever get that far. Our entire system has started to come apart at the seams, and it won’t be too long before it completely crashes. A lot of the “wealth” that we see on Wall Street is just a mirage. For the moment, stock prices are absurdly high because there are people out there who are willing to pay those prices. But when conditions take a dramatic turn for the worse, the buyers will all disappear and so will the absurdly high stock prices. So enjoy the last days of the bubble while you still can, because the clock is ticking… Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here. About the Author : Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

This article was originally published by Ethan Huff at Natural News.  We often hear from politicians that things like raw milk, guns, the unvaccinated, and TikTok need to be banned in order to save We the People from harm, but then why do all of these same people support Big Pharma, the actual leading killer of Americans by a long shot? Prescription drugs are now  the  leading cause of death in the United States today, surpassing even heart disease and cancer. And within that category, psychiatric drugs specifically take third place as the top killer. Pharmaceutical drugs are supposed to be “medicine,” or so we are told, and yet they continue to top the charts as the most prolific life-enders in American society. Why are we putting up with this? Peter C. Gøtzsche, writing for the Brownstone Institute, looked at a consortium of research on this subject. His findings point to serious problems with the legal drug industry as regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Believe it or not, legal drugs as approved by the FDA and prescribed by doctors are one of the top killers of Americans. This means that doctors are technically the leading cause of death in America, making them more dangerous than criminals. Keep in mind that the studies Gøtzsche looked at are all antiquated. There is simply not that much up-to-date information about this subject, likely because it would expose the drug industry as the death racket that it is. (Related: Did you know that the pharmaceutical industry rebrands failed pharmaceutical products to generate new profit streams?) Deaths from “natural causes” are usually caused by pharmaceuticals Another interesting little tidbit dredged up by Gøtzsche involves hospital records and coroners’ reports, which are routinely manipulated to cover up the pharmaceutical drug death pandemic. Most deaths listed as stemming from “natural” or “unknown” causes can actually be traced back to pharmaceutical poisoning, especially pharmaceuticals that are prescribed for psychiatric ailments. “Even when young patients with schizophrenia suddenly drop dead, it is called natural death,” Gøtzsche writes. “But it is not natural to die young and it is well known that neuroleptics can cause lethal heart arrhythmias.” “Many people die from the drugs they take without raising any suspicion that it could be an adverse drug effect. Depression drugs kill many people, mainly among the elderly, because they can cause orthostatic hypotension, sedation, confusion, and dizziness. The drugs double the risk of falls and hip fractures in a dose-dependent manner, and within one year after a hip fracture, about one-fifth of the patients will have died. As elderly people often fall anyway, it is not possible to know if such deaths are drug deaths.” Another common cause of death in America is non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which are sold over the counter at drug and grocery stores all across the country “They have killed hundreds of thousands of people, mainly through heart attacks and bleeding stomach ulcers, but these deaths are unlikely to be coded as adverse drug reactions, as such deaths also occur in patients who do not take the drugs,” Gøtzsche adds. A 1998 meta-analysis based out of the U.S. estimated that at least 106,000 patients die every year in hospitals due to adverse effects from NSAIDs and other drugs. One can imagine how much higher that number is today with many more drugs now on the market. Back in 1998, it was rare for the average person to take pharmaceutical drugs of any kind. Today, pharmaceutical drug usage is so common that all newborns, as of 2019, are now expected to take prescription drugs for roughly half their lives. The latest news about Big Pharma can be found at BadMedicine.news.

This article was originally published by Ryan McMaken at The Mises Institute.  Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson sat down for a three-hour-plus discussion on the Joe Rogan Show last week, covering everything from UFOs to religion and artificial intelligence. But perhaps the most important topic they covered was the insidious and dangerous role played by the US regime’s intelligence agencies in America. Specifically, Carlson suggested the CIA continues to lobby for keeping the JFK files secret, possibly because the CIA had a role in the assassination. Tucker also brought up how the FBI’s second-in-command was responsible for taking down Richard Nixon. Carlson described how intelligence agencies hold immense power within Congress because members of Congress—who are generally disreputable people with many secrets—are terrified of being blackmailed. After all, in a post-Patriot Act world of nearly unrestrained spying by the US regime, there is no privacy in America. I’ll let you, dear readers, listen to the full interview and make up your mind for yourselves as to the details of the discussion. What I want to highlight here, however, is how remarkable it is that two major media figures—Rogan and Carlson—are announcing to their millions of listeners and readers that organizations like the CIA and the FBI are despicable agencies committed to undermining the legal and constitutional institutions of the United States. This is long overdue. Deep-state agencies like the CIA and the FBI have for far too long been considered reputable organizations just trying to “keep us safe” or somehow defend the United States from alleged foreign threats. Conservatives have long been among the worst offenders. Libertarians know this well and have observed for decades the breed of “small-government” conservatives who one minute claim “the government can’t do anything right” and then the next minute simp for “heroic” CIA and FBI agents. People such as these have long checked their critical thinking skills at the door as soon as the discussion turns to the regime’s spy agencies—or the Pentagon, for that matter. This is not to say that Leftists are guiltless on this. While historically it was the Left that actually made some efforts to expose intelligence agencies and their crimes in the 1970s, that is now ancient history. The Left in 2024 has rarely met a regime spook it didn’t like. This was made explicit last month when Adam Westbrook and Lindsey Crouse declared in The New York Times  that “the Deep State is actually kind of awesome.” The job of opposing these contemptible enemies of freedom at America’s intelligence agencies— especially the FBI CIA and NSA—falls to the minority of Americans who actually care about law and human rights enough to seek true restraints on regime power. Those of us in this minority must never miss an opportunity to disparage, doubt, question, and generally express loathing for these organizations and for every single agent and employee at these agencies who collects a taxpayer-funded salary. A Danger for Many Decades  Since at least the early 1960s, many have understood that post-war intelligence agencies have posed an especially dangerous threat to the people of the United States. For example, exactly one month after Kennedy’s assassination—surely, just a coincidence!—former President Harry Truman expressed alarm about the CIA’s meddling in domestic affairs. He wrote in  The Washington Post : “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas. …I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.” Then as now, however,  The Washington Post  was an arm of the deep state and the editor buried Truman’s op-ed on Page A11. The CIA was outraged enough by the column, however, that CIA director Allen Dulles lied and claimed that Truman had been “quite astounded” when he saw his own article and that the whole thing was really the work of a Truman aide. This bizarre attempt by CIA operative to “retract” Truman’s article was nonetheless contradicted by Truman himself who reiterated in a 1964 letter that Truman had only intended the CIA to be an informational service for the president, and that “[I]t was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.” Truman would later tell an interviewer that “[I]f I’d known what was going to happen, I never would have [created the CIA.]”1 Of course, Truman may have known about many of the CIA’s “strange activities” by the late 1950s, such as MKULTRA, and related “mind control” experiments with LSD and other drugs. The CIA was known to drug the agency’s victims against their will, such as seven black inmates in Kentucky who were fed “‘double, triple and quadruple’ doses of LSD for 77 straight days.” One might also mention the very suspicious case of Frank Olson, a bioweapons expert who was given LSD by CIA agents without his knowledge. Olson later “fell” to his death from a hotel window in 1953. The agency lied about drugging Olson for 22 years. The CIA faced some scrutiny in the wake of the Vietnam war as the Left began to rein in the deep state which had spent years attempting to destroy American opponents of the war through a variety of dirty tricks. Yet, the agency had hardly been “reformed” by the time the US’s “war on terror” was launched in late 2001. The CIA returned to its illegal medical torture—assuming it had ever stopped—with new medical experiments on regime prisoners. Documents uncovered by the ACLU have shown that CIA doctors are still used to provide a veneer of scientific legitimacy to CIA torture programs. In the age of vaccine passports, this alliance between doctors and the CIA should alarm any defender of human rights. In spite of all this, the CIA continues to fail spectacularly at its original mission of collecting useful information. The CIA failed to see the Iranian Revolution coming. The CIA was clueless about Soviet Missiles shipped to Cuba in 1962. The CIA believed the Soviet Union was an economic powerhouse in the 1980s. And, of course, the CIA let 9/11 happen right under its nose. Given all this, even conservative stalwarts have seen the light on the CIA in recent years. The late Angelo Codevilla, for example, penned a 2020 article calling for “breaking up” the CIA.” The CIA, Codevilla notes, is now so “ideologically partisan,” so “obsolete,” and its record of failure so undeniable, that the agency is now “inherently dangerous and low-value.” End the FBI The CIA isn’t alone in its war on American freedom and decency, however. The FBI is almost equally dangerous, which is why Codevilla also calls for the FBI to be “restricted to law enforcement.” Unknown to many Americans, the FBI doesn’t even consider itself to be a law enforcement agency anymore. The FBI is now a “national security” agency, and that means the FBI is an arm of the American spy regime. This, of course, is why the Department of Justice can now be used for blatantly political purposes such as when the FBI spied on candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Here at mises.org, we’ve already reported on the mixture of abuse and incompetence that characterizes the FBI. The FBI expends countless hours tracking down harmless “enemies” of the regime—such as little old ladies prosecuted for the January 6 riot—while ignoring real criminals like Larry Nassar. Not surprisingly, local police will tell you it’s the state and local police who do the real work of tracking down real criminals, and then the FBI swoops in to take the credit. Moreover, the history of the FBI lends substantial plausibility to Tucker Carlson’s claim that intelligence agencies are in the business of blackmailing members of Congress. This is a known tactic employed by J. Edgar Hoover during his 48-year reign at the FBI. Hoover, of course, was lauded for decades as a hero, but in reality, he was, in the words of historian Beverly Gage, a “one-dimensional tyrant and backroom schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission…the most influential federal appointee of the twentieth century.” Hoover and his army of compliant FBI agents spied on anyone and everyone—especially elected officials and other public figures—who might be useful as a target for blackmail. So, what to do with these agencies? There is nothing that these agencies do that could justify their continued existence. Both agencies—neither of which in their present forms are authorized among the enumerated powers of the US Constitution—were sold to the taxpayers as agencies to be used only against hardened criminals and foreign dictators. Today, these organizations spend their time exploiting the taxpayers for ever larger budgets, for ever more power to spy on Americans and new ways to trick those same Americans into supporting the regime’s latest wars. They are, simply put, the regime’s secret police, devoted to building the regime’s power. One answer is to eviscerate their budgets, repeal their enabling legislation, and encourage aggressive lawfare against the regime in retribution for these agencies’ many crimes. That’s probably a best-case scenario. Other scenarios likely require the bankruptcy of the regime, or perhaps its dissolution. That is likely to come with substantial and negative economic effects in the short term. Unfortunately, many Americans are still enthralled to these organizations thanks to relentless state propaganda that tells us this American version of the KGB exists for our own good. Abolition will clearly take time. Now is a good time to start.

The United Kingdom has announced its “largest ever” military aid package for Ukraine. This new shipment will include more long-range missiles, dozens of boats, and hundreds of armored vehicles. This comes as the Biden administration assures Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that he will get more from the United States as well. The package coming from the UK is valued at £500 million ($617 million) and will include more than 400 vehicles, 60 boats, and an undisclosed number of long-range Storm Shadow missiles, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said in a statement, calling it the  “ largest-ever provision of vital munitions.” “Defending Ukraine against Russia’s brutal ambitions is vital for our security and for all of Europe,” Sunak claimed. “If Putin is allowed to succeed in this war of aggression, he will not stop at the Polish border.” “Today’s package will help ensure Ukraine has what they need to take the fight to Russia,” Sunak added according to a report by RT . “The United Kingdom will always play its part at the forefront of European security, defending our national interest and standing by our NATO allies.” The announcement comes as the US is expected to approve a $61 billion military and aid package for Kiev. The US House of Representatives approved a long-stalled emergency spending bill that includes $61 billion in additional Ukraine aid. US ruler Joe Biden pledged on Monday to quickly ramp up weapons shipments to Kiev once the spending legislation is approved by the Senate, which could happen as soon as Tuesday. The US ran out of military funding after using up $113 billion in congressionally approved aid packages. Disruptions in support from Washington, by far Kyiv’s biggest benefactor, led to ammunition shortages that were blamed for battlefield setbacks in recent months. Ukraine’s ruling class continues to blame Western rulers for not giving them enough in the war with Russia. The new US aid will help Ukraine “maintain financial stability, build back critical infrastructure following Russian attacks, and support reform as Ukraine moves forward on the path of Euro-Atlantic integration,” the White House said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised eyebrows earlier this month, when he emphatically told reporters at a NATO briefing that Ukraine “will become a member” of the Western military bloc. -RT U.S. Says It Will Not Fight For Ukraine Like It Will For Israel The world seems to be forgetting about Ukraine as Israel ramps up a war in the Middle East.

United States dictator Joe Biden claimed on Friday that Iran’s attacks on Israel were coming “sooner than later” and once again issued a stern public warning, saying that his message to Tehran was simply: “Don’t.” The U.S. previously warned that Israel would get attacked in retaliation for striking an Iranian embassy in Syria. Iran has so far, failed to live up to the U.S.’s expectations and has not yet retaliated. It could still happen, but right now, it appears as though there’s a lot of fear-mongering from all of the ruling classes about what could happen. According to a report by CNN , the beginning of a state-on-state conflict between Iran and Israel would mark a serious escalation in the region. This is a scenario that the U.S. has hoped to avoid since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October. As of late Friday, the US believed that Iranian proxies could also be involved in the forthcoming attacks, according to a senior administration official and a source familiar with the intelligence, and that targets would likely be both inside Israel and around the region. The US’ readiness to intercept weapons launched at Israel marked a clear indication of the level of ongoing cooperation between the two militaries. – CNN “We are devoted to the defense of Israel,” Biden said during a press conference. “We will support Israel we will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed.” Iran has also been continuing to warn Israel with what can only be described as “empty threats” because nothing has been done yet. The only thing that’s really intensified here is the rhetoric. Iran Continues To Warn Israel After Bombing The Iranian Embassy In Damascus Army General Erik Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, discussed a possible Iranian attack with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Israel on Friday according to the Wall Street Journal. “We are prepared to defend ourselves on the ground and in the air, in close cooperation with our partners, and we will know how to respond,” Gallant said, according to Israel’s Defense Ministry. The U.S. has also rushed warships into position to protect Israel and American forces in the region, hoping to head off a direct attack from Iran on Israel that could come as soon as this weekend. Before, the ruling class claimed that Israel would be hit within 48 hours of the end of Ramadan; an attack that has not yet materialized. It could still be all rhetoric, but the ruling class seems intent on ginning up the fear over this potential attack, so anything is possible. It’s hard to say what tyrants are going to especially when it comes to wars they know they won’t be fighting.