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  1. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    S Paul loved his fellow Jews, his 'kinsmen' and believed "the gifts and call of God are irrevocable". He believed that at the End, those among them who had rejected Christ would be brought in to the chosen people. He believed that they were like olive branches which had been cut off so that the Gentiles, wild olive branches, could be grafted in. But, when the fulness of the Gentiles had entered Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com3
  2. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    Lex orandi lex credendi. I have been examining the Two Covenant Dogma: the fashionable error that God's First Covenant, with the Jews, is still fully and salvifically valid, so that the call to saving faith in Christ Jesus is not made to them. The 'New' Covenant, it is claimed, is now only for Gentiles. I want to draw attention at this point to the witness of the post-Conciliar Magisterium of theFr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com13
  3. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    We have seen that the Two Covenant Theory, the idea that Jewry alone is guaranteed Salvation without any need to convert to Christ, is repugnant to Scripture, to the Fathers, even to the post-Conciliar liturgy of the Catholic Church. It is also subversive of the basic grammar of the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments. Throughout  two millennia, in Scripture, in Liturgy, in her Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com7
  4. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    The sort of people who would violently reject the points I am making are the sort of people who would not be impressed by the the Council of Florence. So I am going to confine myself to the Magisterium from the time of Pius XII ... since it is increasingly coming to be realised that the continuum of processes which we associate with the Conciliar and post-Conciliar period was already in operationFr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com0
  5. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    In 1980, addressing a Jewish gathering in Germany, B John Paul II said (I extract this from a long sentence): " ... dialogue; that is, the meeting between the people of the Old Covenant (never revoked by God, cf Romans 11:29) and that of the New Covenant, is at the same time ..." In 2013, Pope Francis, in the course of his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, also referred to the Old Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com10
  6. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    Since the Council, an idea has been spreading that Judaism is not superseded by the New Covenant of Jesus Christ; that Jews still have available to them the Covenant of the old Law, by which they can be saved. It is therefore unnecessary for them to turn to Christ; unnecessary for anybody to convert them to faith in Christ. Indeed, attempting to do so is an act of aggression not dissimilar to theFr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com11
  7. Site: Henrymakow.com
    0 sec ago
    gates-coupon.jpeg
    During a trip to Hong Kong, the billionaire duo decided to grab lunch at McDonald's. To Gates' amusement, when Buffett offered to pay, he pulled out a handful of coupons.
     


    Warren Buffett is a billionaire. He gets his meaning from making or saving a dime. Most of the super-rich suffer from spiritual poverty.




    Whether we are poor or rich, money holds us prisoner. The rich feel poor because of GREED. No matter how much they have, their identity ("feeling good, important, secure") was forged by a society dedicated to making and spending more money. 



    Money is supposed to free us from material concerns. Paradoxically it does the opposite. We become its prisoners.





    "Enough is a little more than one has."    Samuel Butler


    Updated from May 4, 2022 and Oct. 6 2023
    by Henry Makow PhD

     
    Few people take a rational approach to money. 

    This would involve calculating how much money they need in relation to how much money they have, and how much money they make.

    Rather, people tend to focus on their last 2%. Did their "net worth" increase or derease on a given day?

    Depending on their tax bracket, this may involve their last $100, $1000, $10,000, $10 million or $10 billion. They ignore their big bank balance or stock portfolio. They always feel poor. 

    Money is supposed to free us from material concerns. Paradoxically it does the opposite. We become its prisoners.

    We are satanically possessed. This means we identify with money rather than our Divine soul. We are money rather than God's personal representative on earth. The more money we have, the bigger and better we feel. These values are inculcated by our satanist-controlled mass media.

    I am addressing the roughly 50% of my readers who, according to my Gab poll, have enough or more money than they need. I don't fault the other 50% who don't have enough or are broke for feeling oppressed.

    henry-david-thoreau-wealth.jpg


    Paradoxically the rich suffer from a spiritual impoverishment.

    The more they identify with their money, the smaller they are. The more money they have, the smaller they are.

    In the case of the Illuminati bankers, this inner poverty is toxic. They are a cancer that threatens to destroy mankind.

    They want to "absorb" (their word) all the world's wealth leaving nothing to support humanity. They want it all!

    We're indoctrinated to seek money. Within limits, money is a great motivator and measure.

    I know someone who doesn't have to work. He works because he has nothing else to do, and it makes him feel productive and rewarded.

    Another friend is independently wealthy from investments. He retired a couple of years ago but is returning to his old profession out of sheer boredom.

    PERSONAL

    I am as satanically possessed as anyone. I have had a lifelong struggle with greed. At age 74, I am just starting to master this demon.

    Recently I did the calculation above and realized that I have more money than I'll ever spend.

    My spending habits were formed during eight years as a graduate student living on roughly $10,000 per year. I really don't need or care about material things.

    Paradoxically, this lack of concern for money did NOT stop me from developing a gambling addiction. When I didn't have much money, I didn't care about it. When I sold Scruples to Hasbro in 1986, I became a money manager and thought my game smarts would extend to the stock market. MISTAKE.

    Scruples had been a labor of love. I did it because It was a workshop on everyday morality.

    After my windfall, I became satanically possessed (i.e. GREED.)  If someone asked how I was, I said, "I'll ask my broker."  

    We have to be on guard constantly because the voice in our head often is the devil!

    Then another voice arises from our soul and says, "Cool it, you greedy moron."


    You gamble with money you'll never spend. More or Less. What is the point? You don't even know your balance.

    We have a Mexican cleaning woman who supports an extended family. I have never met a woman whose smile exudes such warmth.

    Surely, these human qualities represent our true riches.

    Money is the lowest common denominator. People today are consumed by money. They are charmless. 

    YouTube is packed full of "how I got rich" stories.

    While the world descends into Communist tyranny or faces a nuclear catastrophe,  they act like money will save them.

    For people who have enough, freedom lies in eschewing money. Just not caring about it.

    Can you do that?

  8. Site: LES FEMMES - THE TRUTH
    2 hours 48 min ago
    Author: noreply@blogger.com (Susan Matthiesen)
  9. Site: AsiaNews.it
    2 hours 51 min ago
    Three Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in Pakistan have been hit in seven days. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharf is set to visit to China next month to boost the economic ties but, for analysts, new projects are not likely to materialise. While the latest suicide bombing has not been claimed, several groups have reasons to go after the Chinese.
  10. Site: Henrymakow.com
    2 hours 55 min ago

    squatters.png
    Please send links and comments to hmakow@gmail.com 


    "You will own nothing and you'll be happy." Using migrants to dispossess us.

    Surprise. Now that the Communists allowed millions of migrants into the country, housing is a problem. Prices are up and people are invading and squatting.  Comments to a video about this have drawn some pretty defiant remarks (see below.) Why aren't we be just as defiant in calling out the real interlopers, our traitorous subverted  governments? 



    HOME INVASION SELF DEFENCE IN CANADA


    Viewer comments: "gun in your hand is better than 1000 cops on the phone."

    "As a Canadian i know if someone breaks into my house then they need to disappear without anyone seeing. Shovel, map, full tank of fuel and a busy night.

    "In Canada, you're better off just not reporting it and hiding whats left of the intruders.
    When you get charged for defending yourself or you get sued because someone broke in and hurt themselves, the system is absolutely broken."

    "If someone breaks into my house, I'm not waiting to determine the level of threat."






    --"I am Canadian.. If someone comes into my home uninvited i consider that a threat.. At that point the law means nothing to me.. What means something to me is the protection of my loved ones and i will do what ever i need to do.. Plain and simple..

    --"In Canada, someone you don't know can walk into your home and ruin your life and YOU will be prosecuted more heavily than they would.
    That's our "justice system" in a nutshell...

    ----
    The senate in the state of Louisiana just voted to ban all rules and mandates from the WHO, WEF and the UN from being enforced.


    Louisiana's senate just unanimously voted to pass a bill that will ban any rules and mandates from the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum and the UN from being enforced in the state.

    Really weird that nobody in the mainstream media is talking about this...perhaps they do not want anybody knowing about it since they are part of the same agenda?

    --
    Dr. Mike Yeadon: "...The Motivation for the Injections Was To Injure, Kill & Reduce Fertility in Survivors."



    ----------

    Bill Gates Study 'Predicts' Sudden and Irreversible Global Population Collapse


    The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, found that 155 of 204 countries are set to experience population collapse by the year 2050 as fertility rates continue plunging. Sperm counts in men from North America, Europe and Australia are declining so quickly that most men in these countries will be infertile by the year 2060, according to disturbing new research from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

    Sperm count in men from Western countries plunged by 50-60% between 1973 and 2011, according to the new study, with the trend set to continue until men are completely infertile.

    --

    vp-rfk.jpeg
    Did RFK deliberately sabotage his campaign?


    -

    COVID vaccines have cause a real pandemic---Cancer


    Richard Simmons, 75, diagnosed with cancer and has procedure that 'burned his skin' one day after he admits he's 'dying'
    ---

    Scott Ritter shows the Crocus gunmen were mercenaries disguised as
    Islamic militants


    -----

    Russian FSB says US, UK and Ukraine behind Moscow attack


    --

    Secret documents reveal Germany's public health agency warned lockdowns cause more harm than good

    Germany is rocked by confidential RKI files showing the experts were warning against mandatory masks and mass lockdowns


    The documents have revealed that German politicians dramatized the situation, contrary to the opinions of experts. This was done presumably in order to implement coercive measures and restrict basic rights. There are now calls to release the rest of the documents, as more than a thousand passages are still redacted, representing a third of the total text dating from meeting notes from the "crisis unit" taken between February 2020 and April 2021.

    -

    Germany: Foreigners responsible for 100% of serious sexual assault cases in Frankfurt, 57.4% of all crimes
    The crime data shows that Frankfurt's sky-high crime rate is tied to mass immigration


    --

    gaza2.jpeg.jpg
    Tel Aviv unable to destroy Hamas after US 'turned its back': Report
    As intelligence officials admit that the Palestinian resistance is unlikely to be stomped out, members of the country's ruling party are saying Tel Aviv has failed to achieve nearly all its goals in Gaza after six months


    -

    Jordan: Thousands of protesters surround Israeli embassy for fourth consecutive day
    Jordanian security forces arrest around 200 activists, who say they will not stop their protest until the war in Gaza ends

    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordan-israel-embassy-protest-thousands-arrests

    -
    Majority of Americans disapprove of Israel's military action in Gaza, new poll shows



    American sentiment has significantly shifted against Israel's conduct in the war on Gaza, with 55 percent disapproving of Israel's actions, compared to 36 percent who approve, a new poll shows. 

    According to the Gallup poll, which shows the results from a survey done from 1 to 20 March, approval ratings have plummeted since November 2023. During that time, 50 percent of Americans approved of Israel's military actions in Gaza and 45 percent disapproved.


    -
    Polish General Killed in Ukraine?

    Russian missile strike on Ukr HQ


    -
    rfk-schmuelly.jpeg
    (RFK endorsed by Zio baboon) 

    Big Pharma Is More Woke Than You Imagine
    Big Pharma serves as a cash cow for the left and pushes woke ideas on its employees and the country. This may explain why Democrats, who act like they hate Big Pharma, serve the industry's interests.


    -

    Elon Musk accuses Trudeau gov't of 'desperately' attempting to delay election in Canada
    The billionaire X owner pointed out that polls show the Liberal Party falling significantly behind the Conservatives.


    -
    Replies to my comment on "Masonic Jewish Overreach" -- (From The Truthseeker.co.uk) 

    It is certainly Jewish overreach in this 2min video where the Israeli Zionists have surpassed the cruelty of even the Nazis. At 1m 30s there's an image of a child so thin he looks not like a camp survivor but one of the camp dead, where they used a caterpillar and shovel to push all the dead into mass graves. He has no muscle tissue left, his body has absorbed it all. He really is just skin and bone.

    It's crazy they think they'll walk away scot free from this atrocity.


    ---"One thing is absolutely certain in relation to our Jewish masters; they will overreach themselves.
    They have done this throughout their history owing to their infinite greed in a world of finite resources.
    In addition to this as the Jew Maurice Samuel wrote they can only destroy: "we will forever destroy."
    The world is always tending towards disorder whether in terms of physics or social affairs. Life for those who create rather than destroy is a constant struggle to hold order up against the inevitable collapse into disorder. So with destroying Jews ruling the roost it isn't going to last for ever; one way or another it's coming to an end and the sooner the better I guess.


  11. Site: LifeNews
    3 hours 12 min ago
    Author: S.A. McCarthy

    Democrats are centering their 2024 campaigns on abortion and IVF. In a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) announced that November’s election is all about electing Democrats “to codify Roe v. Wade into law.”

    Referring to the 2022 Supreme Court decision terminating Roe, Klobuchar stated, “This came out of Dobbs. We used to have protections for the women of this country. That was called Roe v. Wade. That Dobbs decision turned it on its head.” The senator noted that the Supreme Court is currently deliberating whether or not the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated federal law in approving almost unrestricted access to the abortion drug mifepristone. “This is just the beginning,” Klobuchar said, “whether it’s the Alabama IVF ruling, whether it’s these cases out of Texas, whether it’s the assault on emergency care, we’re going to continue to see because of the Dobbs decision.”

    “And the failure, sadly, of many Republicans to side with us on codifying Roe v. Wade into law, we are not able to do that right now,” the senator continued. “That’s why this is so important — not just this decision, but this election that’s coming up. Because we would have a bill to codify Roe v. Wade into law if we elect people who stand on the side of women making their own health care decisions.” Klobuchar concluded that Democrats “must step in, codify Roe v. Wade into law, and protect women all across the country with a simple idea that they should be able to make their own health care decisions — and not politicians.”

    LifeNews is on TruthSocial. Please follow us here.

    Democrats have made abortion a centerpiece of their 2024 campaigns, with recent messaging moves including a bill to “celebrate” abortionists and Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to an abortion facility. Incumbent President Joe Biden has also made abortion his top reelection priority, pledging to “restore” the provisions of Roe and commemorating Roe’s anniversary, weaponizing federal agencies to commit abortions, and aggressively prosecuting and imprisoning pro-lifers.

    After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics could be liable for the accidental destruction of unborn embryos, Democrats decided to add IVF to their 2024 campaign roster. Biden even claimed in his State of the Union address that Republicans and pro-lifers were trying to ban IVF. In fact, Democratic State House candidate Marilyn Lands just won a special election in Alabama, campaigning predominantly on abortion and IVF.

    However, recent polling has consistently shown that abortion is not a top or motivating priority for the majority of voters. This month’s Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that abortion was an important issue for only 8% of voters, while inflation, immigration, crime, and even climate change took greater precedence. Even among Democrats, only 11% rated abortion their top issue. Those numbers are only slightly up from last month, when 7% of voters rated abortion their top issue, including only 10% of Democrats. According to the left-leaning non-profit KFF, a slightly larger share (12%) of voters rank abortion as their top issue. The organization also notes that abortion-motivated voters are more likely to support Biden and congressional Democrats than Trump and Republicans.

    In December, The Washington Post warned Democrats that campaigning on abortion extremism may not be a “silver bullet” in November. With a majority of voters seeking to tackle inflation and illegal immigration at the ballot box and both Biden and congressional Democrats failing to do so, the Post’s prediction might just prove accurate.

    LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

    The post Democrats are Campaigning on Abortions Up to Birth, America Must Reject This appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  12. Site: Mises Institute
    3 hours 22 min ago
    Author: Marina Rocha
    Brazil’s carnival celebration is a huge event that also is heavily subsidized by government at all levels. Yet carnival would do very well if the subsidies were replaced with entrepreneurial investment.
  13. Site: LifeNews
    3 hours 23 min ago
    Author: Gayle Irwin

    The Fort Worth Pregnancy Center received a call last year from a former client requesting help in reversing her abortion pill procedure. Today, that client has a healthy one-year-old son.

    “She reached out to an abortion fund who paid for her to get an abortion,” said Jamie Bryant, development director for the Fort Worth Pregnancy Center. “This was after the heartbeat bill in Texas so she couldn’t get an abortion in Texas.

    “They paid for her flight, her hotel, and all of her abortion pill expenses,” Bryant said. “She got there, and she took the first of the two pills, and they sent her home with instructions to take the other one after she got back home.”

    However, something happened on the plane trip back to Texas.

    “On the plane ride, she started bleeding a little bit,” Bryant said. “I think it really just hit her what was happening, and she said she was just overcome by regret and sadness for her decision.”

    “Tania” (a pseudonym) contacted the Fort Worth Pregnancy Center.

    Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and videos.

    “She was my client a few years ago,” Bryant said.

    “She actually ended up choosing abortion for that pregnancy,” said Bryant, “but I think it goes to show how even our clients that choose abortion feel like we are a safe place, that we care about them because the second time she got pregnant she chose abortion, she did not contact us – she just used that abortion fund. However, she called us when she landed at the airport.”

    Tania didn’t know about Abortion Pill Reversal (APR), Bryant said. However, something prompted her to reach out to people she knew.

    “I hadn’t spoken to her in almost a year,” Bryant said. “Obviously, our services and our care for her made an impression because when she was overcome with sadness and regret and wanted someone to talk to, she called us.”

    Tania was invited to the center for an ultrasound, which she received in just a few hours.

    “We saw a very healthy, bouncy baby, about 10 ½ weeks old,” Bryant said.

    Deception at the abortion center

    The Federal Drug Administration recommends abortion pills use up to only 10 weeks. Therefore, legally, the two-pill regime of mifepristone and misoprostol was improperly recommended and started. However, the agency now allows abortion pills by mail and sales through pharmacies. Neither provides oversight to that 10-week limit. Additionally, as in Tania’s case, some abortion facilities push the pills beyond the 10-weeks of gestation.

    “I was in the sonogram with her,” Bryant said. “We told her, ‘Well we’re going to see if your baby is still alive and healthy. There’s a chance you might be able to reverse this abortion.’”

    “We told her about the Abortion Pill Reversal process, so she understood that that’s what we were doing with the sonogram,” said Bryant. “I expected her to be very happy that we were seeing this healthy baby on the screen, but she looked upset.”

    “So, after the sonogram, I asked her about it, about what her emotions were,” Bryant continued, “and she told me that she had had a sonogram at the abortion clinic but they didn’t show her the screen and they told her there was nothing to see. So that made her angry when she saw our sonogram, which of course revealed a totally different story.”

    Receiving help

    Bryant and her colleagues connected their client with Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Rescue Network® (APRN) and an APR doctor in the area. The physician prescribed the progesterone treatment, an updated application of a decades-old treatment to combat miscarriage that counteracts the first abortion drug. Fort Worth Pregnancy Center donors jumped in to pay for the prescription, and today Tania and Michael (a pseudonym) are making a life together.

    The pregnancy center’s donors helped the young mother in other ways, too, Bryant said.

          Tania’s son Michael

    “Our donors continued to walk with her and support her,” she said. “We got her a brand new, top-of-the line Spectra breast pump. When she called me and told me she had had her baby, and said she was unable to get a breast pump, I just put an e-mail out to our donors, and it was like, instantaneous! We gave her other baby items and stuff she needed. They just love to support these women!”

    Pregnancy help ministries like Fort Worth Pregnancy Center go beyond helping pregnant women choose life for their unborn children. Centers provide resources, whether in the community or at the center itself. Many offer housing and still others provide prenatal and post-natal care as well as women’s healthcare services, whether directly or through partnerships. And pregnancy help offers information on all options women have, including a second chance to choose life through APR.

    APR gives women another chance at life

    Earlier this year, Heartbeat announced more than 5,000 unborn lives had been saved because of APR and that more than 1,400 healthcare providers are part of the APRN. These statistics show APR works and that women seek that second-chance to save their pregnancies from the peril of abortion pills, despite critics of the protocol. Tania and her son are among those positive outcomes.

    “[Tania] is just very grateful for the center, for the resources, for the hope we gave her when she was just hopeless after landing on that plane flight,” Bryant said. “We serve a God of second chances. It’s never too late for redemption. God can take your biggest mistakes and use them for his purposes.”

    LifeNews Note: Gayle Irwin writes for PregnancyHelpNews, where this originally appeared.

    The post Mom Changes Her Mind in the Middle of Abortion and Saves Little Baby Michael appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  14. Site: LifeNews
    4 hours 10 min ago
    Author: Skyler Lee

    When Sarah became pregnant for the first time, she was frightened. The baby was not her boyfriend’s, and she desperately feared for her safety and that of the baby’s father if her boyfriend found out.

    With what seemed like no way out, she had an abortion — an experience so traumatizing she never wanted to have it again.

    After the abortion, Sarah struggled immensely with guilt, and despite an abusive partner and toxic relationship, thinking it would make things right, she got pregnant again.

    Sarah would spend the next six-plus years raising her daughter as a single mother, a time that Sarah shared was difficult and full of trauma.

    That’s why when she found herself pregnant again in a similar situation, she was once again terrified.

    “Although this time was with different partners, those same soul-chilling fears came flooding back,” Sarah shared.

    Despite both men saying they wanted the baby to be born regardless of the scenario, she couldn’t fathom the possibility of being a single mother of two. So, despite being haunted by her first abortion, Sarah found herself contemplating whether it was the best decision.

    “This time the solution [that] the enemy placed in my mind as the ‘best for all of us’ was to abort,” she said. “I had convinced myself that it was the best answer and would ‘free’ all of us from this unplanned and unexpected life-altering change.

    SUPPORT LIFENEWS! If you want to help fight abortion, please donate to LifeNews.com!

    Terrified, Sarah believed in that moment that God had abandoned her because of her past sins, and she took the first abortion pill.

    Chemical abortion consists of two pills, mifepristone and misoprostol. Mifepristone blocks progesterone, the hormone in a pregnant woman’s body necessary to sustain pregnancy. Misoprostol, taken a day or so later, then causes her to go into labor and deliver her deceased child.

    Sarah informed some friends of her decision to proceed with a chemical abortion and although they were supportive, she felt regret.

    “I felt this deep sadness within me — deep sorrow and a knowing that I’d done the wrong thing,” Sarah confessed. “Even though I knew God still loved me and always would, I felt a deep aloneness and disappointment.”

    She did an internet search: “What happens if you took the first abortion pill then change your mind?” And that’s when she discovered the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN).

    Sarah described the experience of receiving support and comfort from the APRN nurse on the hotline.

    “I called the 1-800 number with tears stuck in my throat and running down my face and a deep longing in my soul to hear good news, saying there was at least a chance,” she said. “The love I felt through the phone from the woman on the other end of the line completely soothed my soul and put me at ease.”

    Sarah’s story of Abortion Pill Reversal

    (Sarah’s baby boy Isaiah Nicholas)

    Angela the APRN nurse calmly explained the next steps and then put Sarah in touch with the House of Ruth Pregnancy Care Center, which Sarah described as “just as loving, non-judgmental, and accommodating.”

    After the appointment at the pregnancy center, she received her prescription for progesterone and began diligently taking the reversal treatment.

    The Abortion Pill Reversal protocol is an updated application of a decades-old treatment used to combat miscarriage and consists of prescribing progesterone to counteract mifepristone.

    Sarah shared how the support she received from the APRN continued well after that initial contact.

    “I got text messages every several weeks with women from the APRN checking in, knowing I was cared for and supported,” she said, “and they were always there for me if I needed anything.”

    Sara and the baby’s father have since married, and they are excited to meet their baby boy, Isaiah, due on April 9.

    “I’m just so grateful to be pregnant still and carrying this baby boy,” she said. “I know God has a blessing on his life and it’s because of the women and staff of the APRN and House of Ruth and other organizations they’re partnered with that I’m able to tell this story and welcome my second child into this world with so much love!”

    “I’m beyond grateful for the women at the APRN who loved, cared for, and supported me,” said Sarah. “I felt more love from them than I had from so many others in my life — for they were there for me in my darkest time — they understood, they loved, they supported, and they didn’t at all judge.”

    Today, Sarah has a message for women facing an unplanned pregnancy.

    “My heart and love go out to you if you’re in this situation. It’s hard — but it’s so worth it — to maintain and keep hope,” she said. “Know that God does hear your prayers and loves you more than you’ll ever know.”

    If you or someone you know has taken the first abortion pill, please call the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) at 1-877-558-0333, email email help@apr.life or use the chat feature HERE. Just as Sarah’s story shows, there is hope.

    LifeNews Note: The column originally appeared at Pregnancy Help News. File photo of mother and baby.

    The post Sarah Regretted Taking the Abortion Pill and Quickly Saved Her Baby From the Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  15. Site: LifeNews
    4 hours 17 min ago
    Author: Alex Schadenberg

    The number of lethal poison prescriptions written under the Oregon assisted suicide law increased substantially with 566 lethal poison prescriptions written in 2023 up by 29% from 433 in 2022.

    The 2023 Oregon assisted suicide report indicates that there were 367 reported assisted suicide deaths up by 21% from 304 in 2022 which was up by 19% from 255 in 2021.

    The 2022 Oregon assisted suicide report indicated that there were 278 reported assisted suicide deaths meaning that the Oregon Health Authority received 26 assisted suicide reports after January 20, 2023; the date that the 2022 data was compiled.

    The Oregon report under reported the number of assisted suicide deaths by 26 in 2022 and corrected it in the 2023 report. I estimate that the 2024 report will say that there had been approximately 400 assisted suicide deaths in 2023.

    The 2023 Oregon assisted suicide report indicates that the ingestion status was unknown in 141 cases. This means that the 141 “unknown” people were approved and received the lethal drugs but the Oregon Health Authority does not know how they died. Some of these cases are assisted suicide deaths that will appear in the 2024 report. Some of these people died a natural death and some of these people died by assisted suicide but no report was submitted.

    Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and videos.

    Other important data is that 30 of the deaths in 2023 were people who received their lethal poison in 2022. Only 3 of the 566 people who were prescribed lethal poison, were referred for a psychiatric assessment.

    Complications are only known when a health care provider is present at the death. There were 10 known complications based on 102 of the deaths, representing almost a 10% complication rate. In 2022 there were 7 known complications based on 76 deaths, representing a 9% complication rate.

    The report indicated that 23 of the 367 reported assisted suicide deaths were out-of-state residents. There could be more than 23 out-of-state assisted suicide deaths. The report included the following disclaimer related to out-of-state assisted suicide deaths:

    Information on a patient’s state of residence is not collected during the DWDA prescription process. OHA does not receive death certificates from other states unless the decedent was an Oregon resident. Therefore, if an Oregon DWDA patient dies out of state and was not a resident of Oregon, OHA is unlikely to obtain notice of the death. The out-of-state deaths reported in Table 1 thus may not represent all DWDA deaths from out-of-state residents who obtained a DWDA prescription from an Oregon health care provider.

    As with previous years, the report implies that the deaths were voluntary (self-administered), but the information in the report does not address that subject.

    Oregon Governor Kate Brown, in July 2019, signing Bill SB 0579 into law to essentially eliminate the 15 day assisted suicide waiting period. This expansion of assisted suicide allows the physician to waive the waiting period, and if the patient is depressed, the patient loses the opportunity to change their mind.

    In 2023, in 154 deaths the physician waived the 15 day waiting period – in some cases the lethal poison was ingested the day after being first requested.

    An article by David Jones (ethicist) was published by the British Medical Journal of Medical Ethics on October 27, 2023. In his article Jones examines 25 years of Oregon assisted suicide reports and comments on what is missing in the data. Jones concludes that there are significant data gaps in the Oregon assisted suicide report which was not re-assuring.

    LifeNews.com Note: Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and you can read his blog here.

    The post Oregon Sets New Record for Assisted Suicide Deaths as More People Pushed to Kill Themselves appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  16. Site: Novus Motus Liturgicus
    5 hours 7 min ago
    Our first Palm Sunday photopost will be put up later today. In the meantime, as we traditionally do, we will plan on having a whole series of photoposts of your Holy Week liturgies, with individual posts for Tenebrae, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. As always, we are glad to receive images of the OF, EF, Eastern Rites, the Ordinariate Use, etc., including any part ofGregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
  17. Site: LifeNews
    5 hours 9 min ago
    Author: Steven Ertelt

    On Good Friday, March 29, pro-life advocates across the United States will hold prayer vigils outside of more than 70 abortion facilities. These “Way of the Cross for Victims of Abortion” services, organized by the Pro-Life Action League, will mourn for the tiny victims of the abortion pill mifepristone and other forms of abortion, and offer special prayers for the more than two-thirds of women who say their abortions were unwanted, not consistent with their preferences, or even coerced.

    “Women who take the abortion pill experience a series of horrors, from excruciating pain to severe bleeding, and ending with the question of what to do with the tiny embryo or fetus floating in the toilet once the abortion is completed,” said Eric J. Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League. “Making this whole ordeal even more miserable is the fact that most of these abortions would never have happened if these women had really had a free choice.”

    Scheidler pointed to research from the Charlotte Lozier Institute that finds nearly 70 percent of women, reflecting on their abortions, say they were “accepted but inconsistent with their values and preferences” (43%) or “unwanted or coerced” (24%). “I’m challenging my pro-choice friends,” Scheidler remarked, “to join me in fighting the epidemic of unwanted abortions in our country. And I’m asking those who are Christians to pray with me for that intention.”

    SUPPORT LIFENEWS! If you want to help fight abortion, please donate to LifeNews.com!

    Scheidler also pointed to the many disturbing first-hand accounts of women who have taken the abortion pill, including those cataloged by Live Action under the title, “I Saw My Baby.” “Whatever we think of the decision to take these dangerous abortion pills,” said Scheidler, “our hearts go out to the women who have had the courage to tell their stories as a warning to their sisters. That’s why we’re praying for them.”

    Thousands of pro-life Christians are expected to turn out for the Way of the Cross services outside more than 70 abortion facilities in 30 states. For many, these solemn prayer vigils have become a central part of their annual Holy Week religious observance. The League has coordinated this event nationwide since 2014.

    Find a location near you.

    To hold a service outside an abortion clinic in your area, we invite you to follow our detailed guide on how to host a Way of the Cross for Victims of abortion.

    The post Pro-Life Advocates Will Hold Good Friday Prayer Vigils at 70+ Abortion Centers to Save Babies appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  18. Site: LifeNews
    5 hours 19 min ago
    Author: Dr. Christina Francis

    ‘I’m very sorry, but you have an ectopic pregnancy.” As an OB/GYN hospitalist I find myself delivering these painful words to patients increasingly often. An ectopic pregnancy—when an embryo implants outside the uterus—is fatal for the baby and can threaten the mother’s life if it isn’t swiftly treated. It is the leading cause of maternal death in the first trimester.

    Rising ectopic pregnancy rates are more dangerous in light of the widespread use of the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, whose side effects include pelvic pain and bleeding—also the symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy. In Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider the FDA’s decision to relax safety protocols for administering those drugs. The changes increase the likelihood that a woman will mistake a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy for normal abortion-drug side effects.

    OB/GYNs have noted a dramatic rise in the number of women seeking emergency care for ectopic pregnancies. Kaiser Permanente documented it in a study of nearly a million pregnancies over a decade. It found a “significant increase” in ectopic pregnancies, “largely driven by increasing incidence in younger women.” Last month alone I treated six women with ectopic pregnancies; even a few years ago I didn’t treat that many in a year. The stark increase prompted me to ask the hospital where I’ve worked for the past 10 years if it had tracked this in its internal data. The recorded number of patients with ectopic pregnancies has doubled in the past eight years.

    Several factors likely contribute to the spike. Patients with a history of pelvic inflammatory disease, a condition whose primary causes are gonorrhea and chlamydia, have a threefold increase in the risk of ectopic pregnancy. Patients with intrauterine devices, while unlikely to conceive, are 600% more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy if they do. Advanced maternal age also increases the likelihood a woman will have an ectopic pregnancy. Gonorrhea and chlamydia rates have been rising, IUDs are increasingly the birth-control method of choice, and women are having babies later in life. It’s unsurprising that ectopic pregnancies are increasing.

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    Meanwhile the FDA, whose principal purview is safety, discounted the need to check for ectopic pregnancies when it revised its protocols for dispensing mifepristone, the primary drug used in a chemical abortion. Why should this matter? Because when a woman has an ectopic pregnancy but mistakes its symptoms for normal drug side effects, she will spend precious minutes or hours at home, which could be the difference between life and death.

    In 2016 the FDA allowed nonphysicians to prescribe mifepristone and removed the requirement that the prescriber see patients for follow-up visits to evaluate them for potential complications, making it far less likely that an ectopic pregnancy would be diagnosed before it became life-threatening. In 2021 the agency eliminated the requirement that women be evaluated in person by any medical professional.

    Yet the FDA’s label for mifepristone carries the warning: “Ectopic pregnancy: Exclude before treatment.” It also notes that “some of the expected symptoms experienced with a medical abortion (abdominal pain, uterine bleeding) may be similar to those of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.”

    A woman today can acquire mifepristone with no screening for an ectopic pregnancy, and she may not even realize she has one until it is a full-blown medical emergency. During oral arguments before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the lawyer representing the FDA was asked how ectopic pregnancy could be ruled out without any kind of medical examination. She replied that you can ask questions like, “Are you experiencing shoulder pain?” If a woman with an ectopic pregnancy is experiencing shoulder pain, she belongs on an operating table and may be within an hour from death.

    Given that the FDA warns of this risk in the drug label, its changes in protocol were arbitrary and capricious—the legal standard the Fifth Circuit applied in ruling against the agency. The justices should uphold that decision.

    LifeNews Note: Dr. Christina Francis is CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 

    The post OBGYN: I Know Abortion Hurts Women Because I’ve Treated Women Injured by Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  19. Site: AsiaNews.it
    5 hours 22 min ago
    Francis dedicated the homily of the Chrism Mass, which he delivered personally in the Vatican Basilica, to Peter's tears. In the life of the spirit, 'if we fail to weep, we regress and grow old within, whereas those' who 'wonder in the presence of God, grow and mature.' In the afternoon, he will visit the women's section of the Rebibbia prison to celebrate the Mass in Coena Domini and take part in the rite of the Washing of the Feet.
  20. Site: Steyn Online
    5 hours 22 min ago
    Greetings and welcome back to a new batch of Laura's Links. As I mentioned in last week's column, I was preparing for the holiday of Purim. Now that's done and we are moving onto Passover preparations (BIG YIKES LOTSA WORK). I do love the holiday,
  21. Site: LifeNews
    5 hours 54 min ago
    Author: Katrina Trinko

    How could America shift so babies were more welcomed, less dreaded?

    Tim Carney, author of the new book “Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be,” has a few ideas. He’d like to see corporations offer parents their child’s birthday off every year. He wants parents to not work so hard at parenting—and to never, ever, sign up their kids for a travel sports team. He’d like to see local governments prioritize sidewalks and denser housing, which would make neighborhoods safer for kids.

    But he also wants us to think about why we have a falling birth rate—and what it says about us. After World War II, America had a baby boom, while Germany experienced a baby bust. Now, we’re struggling with our own baby bust, even as we are hammered by relentless discussions of America’s failures, the threat of climate change, and more. “The spirit of the age now is what I call civilizational sadness,” says Carney. “And the sadness is a belief that we’re just not good or that humans were a mistake.”

    Katrina Trinko: Joining me today is Tim Carney, author of the new book “Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be.” Tim is also a senior columnist for the Washington Examiner and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Tim, thanks for joining the show today.

    Let’s start with the book subtitle. How did our culture make raising kids harder?

    Tim Carney: In all sorts of ways. For one, it made parenting culture way too intense and we’ve replaced, you know, local Little League where the dads are all volunteers with intensive expensive travel sports.

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    We’ve created these expectations and norms that parents are supposed to helicopter their child at every moment to make sure little Connor never skins his knee.

    We also have a mating and dating culture which is dysfunctional. I think a lot of that stems from the apps, a lot of it stems from problems with not just modern feminism, but the idea of the individual as this sort of super-autonomous bundle of rights and … commitment infringes on our autonomy.

    Also, the values of our culture are more individualistic and we don’t think that it’s the job of society to support families, but it is and it should be. That’s definitely something we should talk about today. And ultimately, our culture teaches us that we’re not good, that humans were a mistake—as I put it. And that’s obviously not going to encourage people to start families.

    Trinko: You talk in your book about lazy parenting. And I don’t have kids myself, but I was like, man, if I do have kids, this sounds great. So unpack what is lazy parenting, is it just you do nothing or is it a little bit more complex than that?

    Carney: No. But the question you’re asking, when you’re thinking, “How am I going to spend my time? How should my kids spend their time?” shouldn’t be a constant question of, “How can I maximize the enrichment for my child and and get them ahead?”

    So, one thing, one example I discuss in my book is how when we moved from Maryland to Virginia, for that first school year we had a fifth grader and a first grader in the same school that was walking distance from our house, but then my wife would have to drive and pick up the other, the older kids.

    And so there would be a period of time—well, first of all, the fifth grader … was walking the kindergartener to and from school every day. And they’re in their Catholic school uniforms and so of course that’s the cutest thing in the world. So that’s good for your neighborhood.

    But also, then, when they got home, she—the older one—would make a snack. They would sit and read together. And the time they spent, it made my fifth grader who has a learning disability, made her a better reader. … She’s a middle sister so it made her adopt more big-sister attitudes.

    None of this was, like, preparing her for AP courses. None of this was athletic. None of this was training her in anything. It was just really nice time with her little sister. And that was the right way to do it and it didn’t involve us at all. So we could have put her in tutoring, we could have put her in some intensive sport, but we thought you hanging out with your little sister is the right thing to do here, similarly with running around the neighborhood.

    And I spend a lot of time, actually, on walkability—which a lot of people think of as a liberal issue—but kid walkability, kid bikeability.

    Our kids don’t have as much freedom as we would want for them to walk and bike the neighborhood in part because we don’t have a sidewalk. Part because other kids, other families aren’t sending their kids out to walk and bike the neighborhood.

    But that’s another way where mom and dad get to sit at home, have a drink on the front porch while the kids might be five blocks away. And that’s good for the kids and good for the parents.

    Trinko: You talk a lot, and you address this a little bit in your first answer, about all the different areas in which our culture, our policies, our economics are unfriendly to kids. If a fairy showed up and it was like, “Hey, you’ve got one wish, Tim,” what policy or change would you do to improve America’s birth rate, what is the most urgent thing?

    Carney: My jokey answer is I would outlaw travel team sports and everybody would just play in the local rec league—from the guy who’s a future major leaguer, down to the kid who you’re a little worried the baseball is going to break his glasses. They would all play on the same local rec league.

    But the actual policy, if some mayor called me or any lawmaker and said, “What policy could we implement and it would help make parenting less stressful, children less anxious, the birth rate rebound?” I would probably go to the mayor’s and I would say, again, “Sidewalks, bike trails, crosswalks, playgrounds. Make every neighborhood where parents might live as walkable, bikeable for kids as possible to let kids roam free. And allow for more family homes to be built.”

    You know, duplexes for a starter home, modest single-family homes. They don’t need a big backyard. A front yard, front porch is probably better, more community-oriented, which is exactly what parents need. So in some ways that infrastructure of parenthood is the most acute policy question that I write about in “Family Unfriendly.”

    Trinko: So, you just mentioned travel teams. Let’s say that a parent is told little Connor has got a real shot at being an MLB player, and this isn’t completely crazy talk. And they’re told, in order to do that, Connor has to be on one of these fancy travel teams, they’ve got to give up their lives, yada yada. Does research bear out that there is a real conflict between excellence and lazy parenting?

    Carney: That’s a good way of asking. So, I’ll answer your question directly after addressing it indirectly.

    The first thing I would say is, your kid probably isn’t going to be a professional at any sport. The best kids, especially if we’re talking about age 10 and 11, when they start specializing, those kids often aren’t the best kids even by age 14 or 15. It just has to do with when your growth spurt is.

    I changed the names of the kids in the book. This one kid I call Ricky, his dad, we met to talk about something else and when he saw me working on my book, he said, “Oh, I fell into the travel team trap hard.” And it’s because his son just had a growth spurt ahead of the other kids. “Oh, Ricky’s going to be great. Da da da.”

    So now Ricky’s playing baseball 10 months out of the year. He’s driving down to North Carolina from Northern Virginia for baseball tournaments and it eats up his whole life and makes him hate it.

    So you put your kid into a travel sport, there are a few possible upsides. A) they might get much better, professional coaching, much better fields, better competition. All of that stuff.

    The downsides are they really might grow to hate the sport sooner. They might get injured because if they’re specializing, if they’re giving up stuff like playing pickup basketball or being on the soccer team or going for hikes on the weekend or just riding their bikes around the neighborhood, they’re doing repeated stress on particular joints and on particular muscles.

    But the saddest part for me of the travel team trap was the sort of psychological harm to kids. They actually have a lower estimation of their own value and skill as athletes because they get exposed to the best athletes on the whole East Coast or the whole state of California and suddenly they realize, “Wait. I’ve dedicated my whole life to this one thing and I’m not even the one-hundredth best at my position in my age group in my state.”

    And so those are the reasons not to do it.

    If your goal as a parent was really to get your kid into Major League Baseball, well, yeah, you would probably pay the thousand dollars a year, a season for this coach. But also, you would let your kid do other stuff, cross-training.

    My friend, who I quote in the book, Pete Zoccolillo, who played a few months in the major leagues, he said he really has to tell these kids’ parents you can’t do baseball 12 months out of the year. A) you need rest, B) you need something else. And he has to talk the parents out of that.

    So if for some reason, and you shouldn’t do this, but if for some reason you decided your job as a parent was to get your kid into the major leagues, you wouldn’t specialize. …

    Part of the reason I call it a trap—my wife and I, we have six kids, we are not going to do travel sports, no matter what. We accidentally did and that’s where Chapter 1 begins. But we just can’t do it.

    Does our son suffer a little bit because he’s now on the bench instead of starting and the kids who are starting include kids who do this year-round with thousands of dollars? Yeah, you could say he suffers a little. And that’s one of the worst parts.

    The real worst part is the kids who are told, “Oh, well, you’re kind of shirking. You spend fall just hanging around the parking lot, just walking in the woods and catching snakes with your bare hands. You should spend fall also playing baseball.” No. Your childhood should be expansive.

    Trinko: Yeah, that makes sense to me. I think some of my best childhood memories were just hanging out in the backyard, not doing anything and yet having a wonderful time. I think it’s sad to me when I see how scheduled kids are nowadays.

    So you mentioned you have six kids. It cracked me up during the book that you talked about, I think you had your first kid in 2006 when Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, a few other celebrities had it. And you said there was a baby boomlet in that time but that did not really pan out. So what has happened to our birth rate in the past two decades and is this definitely something we should be worried about or is it just people are marrying and having kids older?

    Carney: It is definitely something we should be worried about. The most common birth rate statistic you’ll hear is a number called the total fertility rate, which can confuse people because it doesn’t have to do with biological fertility, it’s actual births that happen.

    And 2.1—it’s births per woman and it’s modeled to sort of take into account a woman’s whole life. 2.1 is what demographers call the replacement rate. That is if a population that was closed off to immigration, immigration was 2.1, in the long run it would maintain its population. Below that it would shrink, above that it would grow.

    So the birth rate was just above replacement in those years, 2006 and 2007, when Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and I were were having babies. And since then it’s been falling steadily. The number of babies born has fallen steadily since 2007.

    At first people thought it was a Great Recession but then it kept going. And it was much lower in the last few years, before and after the pandemic it was still much lower than it was during the recession.

    One of the consequences of this is we have fewer children today than we did a decade ago. Soon we will have a falling working-age population. So just economically that’s going to be a problem. More retirees than ever, fewer workers than in the past, that’s a problem. …

    Ten, 12 years ago, Jonathan Last wrote a book called “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting” and some of the response to that was, OK, yes, we have falling birth rates, but that’s just a statistical anomaly. What’s really happening is people are getting married later. Their marriages are thus stronger. They’re starting marriages, they’re starting their families when their careers are stronger and therefore they still get the two to three kids that they want and they’re more economically stable and more mature. I called that the “Happy Planning Story” and the last 10 years have blown that up.

    A lot of Gen X people aged out wanting kids, never got kids. A lot of millennials have said, “I want kids but I don’t think I’m ever going to get them.” And now, increasingly, Gen Z is saying, “We don’t want kids.”

    So that “Happy Planning Story” fell apart. So we really are going to have a shrinking working-age population. Elementary schools are already shuttering. High schools are feeling it. Now colleges are bracing for it. … Right now, next year will be the peak in high school graduates and then it will go down every year for the foreseeable future. The number of potential college kids will go down.

    Beyond the economic, I think there’s real moral and social harms because I think kids make people happy. In fact, I cite a lot of studies about having kids around making people happy.

    And then I think I should have just filmed, had my daughter wear a GoPro as she was walking her little sister to school and showed how even these like sort of mean old ladies around the block, when they see these two girls walking together, they can’t help but smile.

    I remember seeing this one woman who I called the Ice Queen, like, literally melt on Halloween. I mean, not literally, almost literally melt on Halloween when she saw my daughter dressed up as an orca.

    So … we are worse off when we don’t think about the future.

    … There was once this commercial I remember seeing about, like, if you were being spied on at all times by the public, would you behave better? Would you be less likely to drink milk from the carton? Would you be less likely to curse at people? Would you be less selfish? Then they’re like, it’s kind of what having kids is like. So kids make us be better people. They make us aspire to be better people, both our kids and other people’s kids around us.

    Trinko: You mentioned people smiling at your daughters, who sound very cute. I have a sister who lives in Spain, she’s got a little baby. And Spain is one of those countries where there’s not a lot of kids. And she talks about how she and my niece, there’s so much excitement and joy at seeing her.

    But I wanted to bring up Europe more generally because in the book, you look at some of these countries that gave quite a bit, whether through day care or other subsidies, to people who chose to have kids. And this is a big policy discussion of both Left and Right now, is government intervention the answer? And what does the data show from these countries that have really intervened to try to increase fertility?

    Carney: Now, I want to be careful because what we haven’t had is a lot of clear-cut experiments. It would probably be kind of cruel to conduct experiments on parents and that sort of thing. But we do have a lot of observational data, some quasi-experiments out there. And here’s a general thing that I found, government can nudge upward the birth rate by spending a ton of money and just giving it directly to parents.

    So the the caveats around that—subsidizing child care doesn’t work in the long run. In the short run, if somebody wants kids and is putting it off, subsidizing child care can allow them to speed it up, but it doesn’t reduce the number of people who are falling short of their family size desire.

    And in the long run, I think it changes the culture and the culture’s values by emphasizing work because subsidizing child care is subsidizing work. It’s saying, “Oh, the problem here is that work competes with family. So we’re going to take the family stuff off your plate and allow you to focus all your time on work.” So, again, that shifts the culture.

    We’ve seen this happen. Polls of the values of people in Northern Europe have become steadily less pro-family and more workist, careerist in the last decade as these supposedly pro-family policies of subsidizing child care have gone into effect.

    Giving lots of money to people—I argue in the book and I wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed about this a few weeks ago that a child tax credit that the U.S. has right now is a simple fairness measure. If you got rid of a $2,000 child tax credit, it would be discriminating against families, it would be counting children as non-humans. But if you double it or triple it, what happens? Again, there are some things that are kind of like studies in this regard and they show that it does drive up the birth rate. It also can discourage marriage.

    France spends a ton. One of the things that they do is they pay what’s basically a stay-at-home mom benefit. They call it maternity leave. But if you have three kids over a six-year stretch you can stay at home for basically four of those six years and get paid by the government to do it.

    That might actually be one of the best ways to drive up the birth rate because it increases stay-at-home moms and stay-at-home moms are good for community. But I would say, not if what you mean by stay-at-home mom is a single, unwed mother who isn’t working. Then her children grow up without the example of a working parent and that’s a whole welfare problem in the United States, right? That’s what intergenerational poverty is.

    So if somebody wanted to—and Hungary is trying this and they haven’t shown great success—but if somebody wanted to say, “We will subsidize one stay-at-home parent among married families,” that might be the most effective way to do it because one of the things I argue in the book is that stay-at-home moms and stay-at-home dads are good for communities and particularly they’re good for building that village. Remember, it takes a village, they are important to that.

    Trinko: You also talked in the book about one country, Georgia, that did have some success not using a fiscal method. Could you outline what happened there?

    Carney: Georgia—I don’t know if it’s nearly all the population but a huge portion of the population belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church. And it’s a very national church. There is a patriarch for the nation of Georgia for the church and he announced at one point, looking at the low birth rates, “If a couple has three kids, I will baptize their third child and their fourth and their fifth and however many they have after that.”

    That not only preceded an uptick in the birth rate, it specifically preceded and it only seemed to cause an uptick in the birth rate among married people and it increased, really, their third, fourth, fifth kid.

    So all the evidence suggests that if you have a very popular, national religious leader who would do the baptisms, that could drive it. But I don’t think that person exists in the United States. I mean, it’s not going to be Joel Osteen, it’s not going to be Pope Francis.

    Again, a huge portion of the book is on religion. Religion is definitely central to this story. The secularization of the United States and Europe is driving down the birth rate and I think driving up the childhood anxiety. Individuals who go to church regularly or synagogue or mosque, they do have more babies than Americans who do not.

    Trinko: Well, maybe we need Father Mike Schmitz to start offering baptisms for third and fourth. But no, I thought that was very interesting and how that was, yeah, a cultural thing, a religious thing.

    And you also talk in the book quite a bit about what corporations could do, what employees could do to set a good example. And then how work itself and our values of it are affecting this whole larger conversation and decisions.

    Could you unpack that a little bit? I thought especially interesting was your idea that every employee should get their kids’ birthdays off, which I was like, shoot, you’d rack up an extra six days there.

    Carney: Yeah, so, I’ll start with that, what you’re sort of pointing out there. It wouldn’t be totally fair and by some measures it wouldn’t be totally equal to institute the pro-family policies I’m talking about. But it would be taking a side, the pro-family side. So you could argue by the current definition of equity in DEI that equity is not treating everybody equally but accommodating some things. …

    You know if Seth Mandel, who is our magazine editor at the Washington Examiner, … nobody would ever expect him to work late on a Friday night because he had to be home to observe the Sabbath.

    So there’s all these things where you sort of can decide, “OK, faith and family are the most important things and we’re going to accommodate them more. We’re going to say your family is more important than your job and we’re going to show that we mean it with some of these things.” So I said, “You know, your kid’s birthday should be a day off.” And then after I wrote that I had to start doing it, but I’m burning vacation days to do it.

    I also say, hey, there’s this thing called the SNOO, which didn’t exist when I was having babies. It’s this magic rocking bassinette that puts your kids to sleep. Because the hardest part of each subsequent child for us was the period when you’re not sleeping because a baby’s not sleeping through the night and this apparently addresses it and it’s super expensive. So some people buy it and then try to resell it. Some people lease it. Some people buy a used one.

    And I said that sort of thing, that’s super useful for about four or five months and then would just take up space, and you paid for it, that’s a sharing economy thing. Heritage Foundation, AEI, they should go out and they should buy like two or three of these and then loan them out to new parents.

    And paternity leave, I say I should be allowed to use that any time in my first my child’s first 18 years because with my subsequent children, yeah, I really was just hanging out with the older kids and not with the baby because our dynamic is my wife really takes care of the baby. And I take care of her and the other kids when we have a newborn. But some people are giving out 20 weeks, what if I got to take some of those weeks on his 12th birthday to go on an awesome camping trip? That would be amazing and that would also build loyalty for employees who say, “OK, I’m here. I know that at any point in the next 12 years I can take off a week with my kids. I’m going to do that.”

    Trinko: To be clear, by the way, I think that, yes, someone like you, a father of six, might get more days off than someone like me or doesn’t have kids. But I also realize your kids are paying my Social Security in the future.

    Carney: Yes.

    Trinko: So there’s some farther-looking equality here.

    At the end of the book, you talk about how the United States had a baby boom after World War II, but you look at how Germany had the opposite. They had a baby bust. And you connect that to what’s going on in the United States. Now, can you unpack that a little bit?

    Carney: So, yeah, this is the end of the book because I do try to build up to something more, I mean, you could call it spiritual. It’s not not specifically religious, but the the spirit of the age. And the spirit of the age now is what I call civilizational sadness. And the sadness is a belief that we’re just not good or that humans were a mistake.

    The U.S. manifests itself primarily in discussion of of climate and pollution. But secondarily, in discussion of we’re fundamentally a racist nation, where we are a colonialist settler nation. And just trying to drive home this idea that people are bad, people were a mistake, or we particularly as Americans are bad. Or if you’re a white American, you’re irreparably racist. And if you’re a black American, you will always be the victim of a society that is irreparably racist.

    So I look at the numbers in the polls and, actually, a recent one just came out on Thursday about how America’s becoming sadder and sadder, less happy, less happy, and that that’s being led by Gen Z and the younger millennials—people who could be starting families but aren’t.

    So I connect the dots, I believe, between this civilizational sadness and the other maladies that I address in the book, which is childhood anxiety and the falling birth rates.

    And the baby boom is kind of the counterexample. The baby boom was not simply a makeup for babies that couldn’t happen because men were off at war, it was a massive generation-long increase in family formation.

    I argue that that happened because our men came home from war, got off the boats—just having defeated two evil empires—the women were on the dock—just having kept the economy going for four—years and they smooched on the pier, got married, went home, and had a ton of kids because never before or since have we really believed so clearly that we are good.

    And that belief that we’re good, that also can help explain why religious communities will have more kids. Because certainly, I’m a Catholic, I believe we’re fallen, we’re sinners, but I also believe we can’t be made perfect, but that God loves us.

    You see the the Mormon Church, they have a higher birth rate. Orthodox Jews have a higher birth rate. … But that fundamentally, it’s good to have us, that the world is better off for us, regardless of our sins individually or collectively.

    Trinko: Great. Well, again, Tim Carney is the author of the new book “Family Unfriendly,” gives you a lot to think about about our current culture. And Tim, thanks for joining us.

    Carney: Thank you very much.

    LifeNews.com Note:  Katrina Trinko writes for The Daily Signal. Reprinted with permission from the Daily Signal.

    The post America Has a Massive Baby Bust, What Can be Done to Fix It? appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  22. Site: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
    5 hours 58 min ago
    Author: James Bovard

    Last December, one of the most intrusive provisions in the federal statute book was set to expire. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes the National Security Agency to vacuum up trillions of emails and other data. A bevy of bipartisan members of Congress called for radically curtailing those nullifications of Americans’ privacy.

    But the effort to put a leash on the federal surveillance failed dismally. Congress voted for a four-month extension of FISA, which will likely be followed in April by a much longer extension. There was a bipartisan congressional conspiracy to entitle the Deep State to continue trampling the Constitution.

    In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to outlaw political spying (such as the FBI had committed) on American citizens. FISA created a secret court to oversee federal surveillance of suspected foreign agents within the United States, permitting a much more lenient standard for wiretaps than the Constitution permitted for American citizens.

    The FISA court “created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans,” the New York Times reported in 2013 after Edward Snowden leaked court decisions. The court rubber-stamped FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were “relevant” to a terrorism investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling National Security Administration (NSA) data seizures later denounced by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian.” In 2017, a FISA court decision included a 10-page litany of FBI violations, which “ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight.”

    FISA Section 702

    The latest controversy involved FISA Section 702, first enacted by Congress in 2008. That section authorizes the National Security Agency to surveil targets in foreign nations regardless of how many Americans’ privacy is “incidentally” destroyed. The NSA collects vast amounts of information as part of that surveillance and then permits the FBI to sift through its troves. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned more than a decade ago that Section 702 “created a broad national-security exception to the Constitution that allows all Americans to be spied upon by their government while denying them any viable means of challenging that spying.”

    Professor David Rothkopf explained in 2013 how Section 702 worked: “What if government officials came to your home and said that they would collect all of your papers and hold onto them for safe-keeping, just in case they needed them in the future. But don’t worry … they wouldn’t open the boxes until they had a secret government court order … sometime, unbeknownst to you.” Actually, the law in practice is much worse.

    A license for lying

    From the beginning, federal agencies brazenly lied about the number of Americans whose privacy was ravaged. In 2014, former NSA employee Edward Snowden provided the Washington Post with a cache of 160,000 secret email threads that the NSA had intercepted. The Post found that nine out of ten account holders were not the “intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.” Almost half of the individuals whose personal data was inadvertently commandeered were American citizens. The files “tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes,” the Post noted. If an American citizen wrote an email in a foreign language, NSA analysts assumed they were foreigners who could be surveilled without a warrant.

    FISA perils are compounded because, in practice, the FBI has a blank check for perjury in the name of Total Information Awareness. In 2002, the FISA court revealed that FBI agents had false or misleading claims in 75 cases, and a top FBI counterterrorism official was prohibited from ever appearing before the court again. Three years later, FISA chief judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented; that never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. So FBI agents continued to have a license to exploit FISA secrecy to lie to the judges.

    An abuse of power

    In 2018, a FISA ruling condemned the FBI for ignoring limits on “unreasonable searches.” As the New York Times noted,

    F.B.I. agents had carried out several large-scale searches for Americans who generically fit into broad categories … so long as agents had a reason to believe that someone within that category might have relevant information. But [under FISA] there has to be an individualized reason to search for any particular American’s information.

    The FBI treated the FISA repository like the British agents treated general warrants in the 1760s, helping spark the American Revolution.

    But Congress reauthorized Section 702 in 2018 regardless of the perpetual abuses of that power. Subsequent reports revealed that the congressional vote of blind confidence was misplaced. But Congress did oblige the feds to publicly disclose how often the FBI unjustifiably violated Americans’ privacy by snooping in the NSA catch-all archives.

    The FBI exploited FISA to target 19,000 donors to the campaign of a candidate who challenged an incumbent member of Congress. An FBI analyst justified the warrantless searches by claiming “the campaign was a target of foreign influence,” but even the Justice Department concluded that almost all of those searches violated FISA rules. Apparently, merely reciting the phrase “foreign influence” suffices to nullify Americans’ rights nowadays. (In March, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL) revealed that he had been wrongly targeted by the FBI in numerous FISA 702 searches.)

    Warrantless searches

    In April 2021, the FISA court reported that the FBI conducted warrantless searches of the data trove for “domestic terrorism,” “public corruption and bribery,” “health care fraud,” and other targets — including people who notified the FBI of crimes and even repairmen entering FBI offices. If you sought to report a crime to the FBI, an FBI agent may have illegally surveilled your email. Even if you merely volunteered for the FBI “Citizens Academy” program, the FBI may have illegally tracked all your online activity. In 2019, an FBI agent conducted an unjustified database search “using the identifiers of about 16,000 people, even though only seven of them had connections to an investigation,” the New York Times reported.

    As I tweeted after that report came out, “The FISA court has gone from pretending FBI violations don’t occur to pretending violations don’t matter. Only task left is to cease pretending Americans have any constitutional right to privacy.” FISA court Chief Judge James Boasberg lamented “apparent widespread violations” of the legal restrictions for FBI searches but shrugged them off and permitted the scouring of Americans’ personal data to continue.

    Alas, there was no bureaucratic repentance. The feds revealed in 2022 that “fewer than 3,394,053” Americans’ privacy had been zapped by FBI warrantless searches using Section 702. Why didn’t the feds use an alternative headline for the press release: “More than 320,974,609 Americans not illegally searched by the FBI?” That report was issued by the Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But there was scant transparency aside from a raw number that raised far more questions than it answered.

    Almost two million of those searches involved an investigation of Russian hacking. Yet there aren’t that many hackers in the United States. The State Department’s Global Engagement Center presumed that anyone whose tweets agreed with a position of the Russian government should be banned by Twitter for being a Russian agent. Did the FBI use a similar “catch-all” standard to justify pilfering two million Americans’ email and other online data?

    Exemption from the Constitution 

    In May 2023, a heavily redacted FISA court decision revealed that the FBI continued exempting itself from the Constitution. For each American that the FISA court authorized the FBI to target, the FBI illicitly surveilled almost a thousand additional Americans. The FBI admitted to conducting 278,000 illicit searches of Americans in 2020 and early 2021 (the period covered by the FISA court ruling released in May 2023).

    The FBI conducted illegal secret searches of the emails and other data of 133 people arrested during the protests after the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

    The FBI conducted 656 warrantless searches to see if they could find any derogatory information on people they planned to use as informants. The FBI also routinely conducted warrantless searches on “individuals listed in police homicide reports, including victims, next-of-kin, witnesses, and suspects.” Even the Justice Department complained those searches were improper.

    The FBI seems to have presumed that any American suspected of supporting the January 6, 2021, Capitol ruckus forfeited his constitutional rights. An FBI analyst exploited FISA to unjustifiably conduct searches on 23,132 Americans citizens “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence,” according to FISA Chief Judge Rudolph Contreras. The FBI also routinely conducted warrantless searches on “individuals listed in police homicide reports, including victims, next-of-kin, witnesses, and suspects.”

    For 20 years, FISA judges have whined about FBI agents lying to the court. As long as the FBI periodically promises to repent, the FISA court entitles them to continue decimating the Fourth Amendment. Chief FISA Judge Contreras lamented: “Compliance problems with the querying of Section 702 information have proven to be persistent and widespread.” The FBI responded to the damning report with piffle: “We are committed to continuing this work and providing greater transparency into the process to earn the trust of the American people and advance our mission of safeguarding both the nation’s security, and privacy and civil liberties, at the same time.”

    The FBI crime wave

    FBI officials stress that any violations of Americans’ privacy is “incidental.” Since the FBI didn’t intend to violate Americans’ rights, it was a no-fault error — or millions of no-fault errors. There is no chance that police will adopt the same standard for absolving drunk drivers who did not intend to kill anyone they crashed into. Even when a media star such as Tucker Carlson may have been pulled into the 702 mire, the system manages to whitewash itself.

    The FBI’s perpetual crime wave created a hornet’s nest on Capitol Hill. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) asked: “How much longer must we watch the FBI brazenly spy on Americans before we strip it of its unchecked authority?” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) declared, “We need a pound of flesh. We need to know someone has been fired.”

    House Republicans, led by House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), pushed a bipartisan reform of 702 named he Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, which would have required the FBI to get a warrant from a federal judge for most of its queries to the NSA database. Jordan’s proposal would have also sharply reduced the number of FBI officials with access to the NSA trove. Jordan’s bill included the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which “stops law enforcement from buying data that should require a court order,” a scandal tagged in a New York Post op-ed headlined “Feds are buying your life with your tax dollars.”

    Congressional impotence

    FISA epitomizes the mirage of constitutional checks and balances in our times. When Congress returns to FISA with the short-term authorization, the House will consider a FISA “reform” bill the Intelligence Committee unanimously approved. The House Intelligence Committee acts like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State. Unfortunately, these are the members of Congress with special access to federal dirt — and they have largely chosen to ignore the crimes committed by the spies they champion and bankroll.

    Former Justice Department lawyer Marc Zwillinger is one of a handful of FISA court amici allowed to comment on cases or policies in the secret court. He issued a public warning that the House Intelligence bill expands the definition of “electronic communication service providers” covered by FISA compliance obligations to include “business landlords, shared workspaces, or even hotels where guests connect to the Internet.”

    In other words, the FISA expansion could affect your next visit to Comfort Inn — and you thought Wi-Fi service was already bad! Former Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Goitein warns, “Hotels, libraries, coffee shops, and other places that offer wifi to their customers could be forced to serve as surrogate spies. They could be required to configure their systems to ensure that they can provide the government access to entire streams of communications.” The bill could also cover any repairman who works on such equipment. That bill should be titled, Biden Big Brother Better Act.

    The FISA reauthorization was included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024, a 3000-page “must pass” bill that Congress considered in December. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who led the opposition to the bill in the Senate, urged fellow senators not to “trust any bill so large that it has to be delivered by handcart.” But to no avail.

    The tyranny of the FISA court

    The FISA court has perpetually dismally failed to defend Americans’ constitutional rights. Washington must finally admit that there is no secret “doing God’s work” clause in the Constitution that entitles FBI agents to trample Americans’ privacy and liberty.

    Will Congress show more gumption when the short-term FISA reauthorization expires in April? When FISA was up for renewal in 2012, I tweeted, “Only a fool would expect members of Congress to give a damn about his rights and liberties.” Unless Congress puts me to shame, FISA should be renamed the “‘Trust Me, Chumps!’ Surveillance Act.”

    Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

  23. Site: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
    6 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Andrew P. Napolitano

    “That God, which ever lives and loves,
    One God, one law, one element,
    And one far-off divine event
    To which the whole creation moves.”
    — Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

    When American colonists were oppressed by British governance, the word most frequently uttered in pamphlets, editorials and sermons was not “safety” or “taxes”; it was “freedom.” Yet, two intolerable acts of Parliament so assaulted personal freedom that they broke the bonds with the mother country.

    The first was the Stamp Act of 1765, which required colonists to have government stamps on all documents in every household. It was enforced by British agents who used general warrants, issued by a secret court in London, to rummage through colonists’ possessions, ostensibly looking for stamps.

    General warrants — like those issued today by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C. — authorized government agents to search wherever they wished and seize whatever they found.

    The second intolerable act was the Revenue Act of 1767, the proceeds from which the king used to pay the salaries of colonial officials and the king’s clergy, thereby securing their loyalty.

    The Stamp Act assaulted the right to privacy in the home, and the Revenue Act forced colonists to pay for a religious establishment. These two British laws caused many colonists to realize they needed to secede from Britain and form a new country, in which the government would protect freedom, not assault it. Ten years later, they did so and won the American Revolutionary War.

    Today, the loss of freedom comes in many forms.

    Sometimes it is direct, as when the government dictates the wearing of a mask and the reception of an experimental vaccine and punishes those who don’t comply.

    Sometimes it is subtle, as when the government borrows $4 trillion a year and, as a result, our money and assets lose much of their value and our descendants will be taxed heavily to repay the loans.

    Sometimes it is secret, as when the government reads emails and text messages and follows the movements of cellphones, all without search warrants; or when it uses drones to kill people the government hates or fears, without a declaration of war or any due process.

    Freedom is the ability of every person to make personal choices without a government permission slip — to exercise free will. Free will is the natural characteristic we share in common with God. It is His unconditional gift to us. He created us in His image and likeness. As He is perfectly free, so are we. We are free to become saints or monsters.

    When the government takes away freedom — whether by fiat or legislation — it steals a gift we received from God, it violates the natural law and the Constitution, and it prevents us from seeking the truth.

    Freedom is the essence of humanity. No one can achieve happiness or truth without it. Government negates freedom.

    We know from events 2,000 years ago this week — in the Roman Empire police state of Judea — that freedom is also the essential means to unite with the truth. To Christians, the incarnation and the perfect manifestation of truth is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

    To believe in Jesus is to take Easter seriously.

    Taking Easter seriously means accepting that on the first Holy Thursday, Jesus attended a traditional Jewish Passover Seder where He performed two miracles so that we could stay united to Him. He transformed ordinary bread and wine into His own body, blood, soul and divinity, and He empowered His disciples and their recognized successors to do the same.

    That Jewish Seder was the first Catholic Mass.

    The next day — the first Good Friday — the Roman government crucified Jesus because it feared that by claiming to be the Son of God, He might foment a political revolution. He did foment a revolution, but it was in the hearts and minds and souls of men and women.

    Taking Easter seriously recognizes that Jesus had the freedom to reject His horrific death, but He exercised His free will to accept it so that we might know the truth. The truth is that He — and we who have faith and hope and perform good works — would rise from the dead.

    On Easter, that “far-off divine event,” as Tennyson wrote, Jesus rose from the dead. By doing that, He demonstrated to us that while living, we can liberate our souls from the slavery of sin because, after death, we of faith, hope and selfless good works can rise to be with Him.

    Taking Easter seriously recognizes that the Resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of human existence “to which the whole creation moves.” With it, life is worth living, no matter its painful costs or losses. Without it, life is meaningless, no matter its fleeting joys or triumphs.

    Easter has a meaning that is both incomprehensible and simple. It is incomprehensible that a human being rose from the dead. It is simple because that human being was and is God.

    Taking Easter seriously means that there’s hope for the dead. And, if there’s hope for the dead, there’s hope for the living.

    But like the colonists who fought the oppression of the king, we the living can achieve our hopes only if we have freedom. And that requires more than faith and hope and good works. It requires a government that protects freedom, not one that assaults it.

    America today is dreary, divided and fearful. The government is broke, overbearing and unworthy of belief. It threatens World War III, has produced wild inflation, destroyed happiness and now wants our guns.

    A revolution for freedom is coming. And, faith in Jesus’ Resurrection — which is also hope for our own — infuses the souls of the faithful with a joy that only God can give.

    Happy Easter!

    To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

    COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

    DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

  24. Site: Zero Hedge
    6 hours 17 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    FInal Q4 2023 GDP Revision Comes In Red Hot 3.4%, Beating Estimates

    It's ancient history by now, but moments ago the Biden Bureau of Economic Goalseeking Analysis reported that in its third estimate of Q4 GDP, the US was estimated to have grown by 3.4% (3.440% to be precise), above the 3.2% reported last month and above the 3.2% estimate.

    The increase in the fourth quarter primarily reflected increases in consumer spending and state and local government spending that were partly offset by a decrease in inventory investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

    The update from the second estimate reflected upward revisions to consumer spending, business investment, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by downward revisions to inventory investment and exports. Imports were revised down. Here is a more detailed analysis:

    • Personal Consumption contributed 2.20% to the bottom line GDP of 3.4%, or two-thirds of the total, up from 2.00% in the previous estimate and up from 1.91% in the first calculation.
    • Fixed Investment added another 0.67% to the bottom line, also a solid improvement to the 0.43% previous estimate
    • The change in private inventories subtracted 0.47% from the bottom line print, a deterioration to the -0.27% first revision and far below the positive +0.07% contribution in the first estimate.
    • Net exports were little changed at +0.25% (consisting of 0.55% exports less 0.3% imports) vs 0.32% in the first revision (0.69% exports less 0.37% imports).
    • Finally, government consumption increased modestly to 0.79% of the bottom line, up from the 0.73% estimated previously.

    Here the biggest contribution was personal spending, which increased even more than initially suspected, and reflected increases in both services and goods. Within services, the leading contributors were health care (both outpatient and hospital services), other services (led by professional and other services), as well as food services and accommodations. Within goods, the leading contributors to the increase were other nondurable goods (led by pharmaceutical products) as well as recreational goods and vehicles.

    Here is a visual summary:

    The BLS also provided a breakdown of GDP by industry, noting that the value added of private goods-producing industries increased 7.0%, private services-producing industries increased 2.6%, and government increased 3.1 percent. Overall, 18 of 22 industry groups contributed to the fourth-quarter increase in real GDP

    • Within private goods-producing industries, the largest contributors to the increase were nondurable goods (led by petroleum and coal products and chemical products), durable goods manufacturing (led by machinery), and construction.
    • Within private services-producing industries, the increase was led by retail trade (led by motor vehicle and parts dealers), health care and social assistance (led by ambulatory health care services), utilities, and professional, scientific, and technical services (led by computer systems design and related services).
    • The increase in government reflected an increase in state and local government as well as federal government

    Turning to prices, the Q4 2023 numbers are completely irrelevant especially with the latest Feb monthly PCE data out tomorrow (when markets are closed), but here goes anyway:

    • GDP prices increased 1.9% in the fourth quarter after increasing 2.9% in the third quarter. Excluding food and energy, prices increased 2.1% after increasing 2.5 percent.
    • PCE prices increased 1.8% in the fourth quarter after increasing 2.6% in the third quarter. Excluding food and energy, the all-important - if extremely delayed - PCE “core” price index increased 2.0%, the same increase as in the third quarter. The core PCE came in just below expectations of a 2.1% print.

    Finally, looking at corporate profits, these increased 4.1% at a quarterly rate in the fourth quarter after increasing 3.4% in the third quarter. Corporate profits also increased 5.1% in the fourth quarter from one year ago. More details:

    • Profits of domestic financial corporations increased 1.3 percent after increasing 2.0 percent.
    • Profits of domestic nonfinancial corporations increased 5.9 percent after increasing 4.1 percent.
    • Profits from the rest of the world (net) decreased 1.7 percent after increasing 1.7 percent.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 09:05
  25. Site: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
    6 hours 21 min ago
    Author: Melkulangara Bhadrakumar

    A controversy arose needlessly over the advisory issued by the American embassy in Moscow on March 7 to the effect that “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts” and warning US citizens to “avoid large gatherings.” It took the form of a diplomatic spat and momentarily at least, the American claim that they shared the ‘information’ with the Russians hinted at the ineptness of the security agencies in Moscow while the latter hit back saying there was nothing specific or actionable that the Americans conveyed.  

    Clearly, Washington was in possession of some information which was at the very least credible enough in terms of its source but was not specific enough for Moscow. Interestingly, the UK embassy in Moscow also issued a similar advisory cautioning British citizens against visiting shopping centres. The US and British intelligence agencies work in tandem. 

    However, in a strange pre-emptive move, as it were, the State Department also scrambled within two hours of the horrific attack on the mall in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22 with a statement declaring that Ukraine was not responsible for the attack. The US’s European allies also began parroting the same line. As can be expected, the Americans got a head start in the propaganda war and that in turn enabled them to craft a narrative — also in real time — naming the Islamic State as the culprit in the horrific crime. 

    Yet, the very next day, President Vladimir Putin went on to reveal in his address to the nation that what happened was “a premeditated and organised mass murder of peaceful, defenceless people,” harking back to the Nazis “to stage a demonstrative execution, a bloody act of intimidation.”

    Importantly, Putin disclosed that the perpetrators “attempted to escape and were heading towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary information, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.” But he stopped short of finger-pointing as the investigation was a work in progress. 

    That is to say, from Putin’s disclosure, it appears that the perpetrators’ mentors / handlers gave them instructions to exit Russian territory after their mission by using a particular route for border crossing into Ukraine where they were expected by people on the Ukrainian side of the border. What now remains in the realm of the ‘known unknown’ is really about the chain of command. This is the first thing.

    Second, a storyline has been propagated by Washington that this was an ISIS attack. Indeed, it has been effectively propagated by the western media and was intended as a red herring to confuse dumb-witted folks abroad. 

    However, in reality, the perpetrators did not behave like ISIS killers on suicide missions who would have sought martyrdom but in this case behaved like fugitives on the run. Nor were they answering the call of ‘jihad’. They were reportedly ethnic Tajiks who admitted that they were hirelings lured by the money in it. 

    The expert opinion from released videos is also that their movements inside the mall did not show battle skills attributed to well-trained fighters, and they had ‘poor muzzle discipline’, which means they had only minimal rifle training. In sum, theirs was quintessentially an act of motiveless malignity — that is, except the money part.  

    That said, the US military has been ‘retooling’ erstwhile ISIS fighters lately. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) alleged in a statement on February 13 that the US was recruiting the jihadist fighters to carry out terrorist attacks on the territory of Russia and the CIS countries.

    The statement said, “Sixty such terrorists with combat experience in the Middle East were selected this year in January… they are undergoing a fast-track training course at the US base in Syria’s Al-Tanf, where they are being taught how to make and use improvised explosive devices, as well as subversive methods. Particular emphasis is paid to planning attacks on heavily guarded facilities, including foreign diplomatic missions… In the near future, there are plans to deploy militants in small groups to the territory of Russia and the CIS countries.”

    The SVR also noted that “special attention was paid to the involvement of natives of the Russian North Caucasus and Central Asia.”

    Significantly, on March 26, Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in an interview with Rossiya TV channel that from the interrogation of the detainees so far, there is a political background to the incident. He said radical Islamists alone could not prepare such an action on their own, they were assisted from the outside.

    Bortnikov stated: “The primary data that we received from the detainees confirm this. Therefore, we will continue to refine the information that should show us whether the participation of the Ukrainian side is real or not. But in any case, so far there is every reason to say that this is exactly the case. Since the bandits themselves intended to go abroad, it was to the territory of Ukraine, according to our preliminary operational information, they were waiting there.”   

    Bortnikov added that the terrorist attack had the support of not only the special services of Ukraine, but countries such as Britain and the United States are also behind the massacre. According to him, the prime mover of the incident has not yet been identified, and the threat of a terrorist act in Russia still persists. 

    Bortnikov’s remarks hint at a classic predicament: Russia possesses evidence of Ukrainian involvement but no ‘proof’ remains inadequate as yet. This is a predicament that countries often face in countering the cross-border terrorism, especially when it happens to be state-sponsored terrorism. Of course, no amount of evidence will be accepted as proof by the adversary ultimately — while in Ukraine’s case, often there is an eagerness to claim credit for bleeding Russia by staging operations on its soil, such as assassinations. 

    As for the US or the UK, Russians assess that without intelligence inputs, satellite imagery, and even logistical backing by the western powers, Ukraine does not have the capability to undertake operations deep inside Russia or the sort of complex attacks targeting Russian war ships of the Black Sea Fleet. But the western powers are invariably in a denial mode when confronted with such accusations by Russia. 

    There is no question that the Crocus City Hall attack will have profound geopolitical consequences and will impact the trajectory of the Ukraine war. The incident has rallied world sympathy massively for Russia. It is a huge challenge of statecraft now for Putin to act decisively, as the Russian public will expect, to completely uproot the dark forces entrenched next-door. 

    Conceivably, that may involve Moscow shaking up the very foundations of the house that Washington built in Kiev after the 2014 coup. The New York Times recently disclosed that the CIA keeps a string of intelligence outposts all along the Ukraine-Russia border regions. 

    Make no mistake, the US is determined to hold on to the extensive infrastructure it created in Ukraine to mount covert operations and destabilise Russia, no matter what it takes. The bottom line in the western strategy is to weaken Russia and prevent it from playing an adversarial role on the global stage.  

    TS Eliot’s lines from the play Murder in the Cathedral come to mind: ‘What peace can be found / To grow between the hammer and the anvil?’ The war is slated to escalate dramatically and it is a matter of time before western combat deployment takes place in Ukraine to salvage that country’s residual potential as a frontline state for NATO in the proxy war against Russia. On their part, Russia may have no alternative but to seek a total military victory. The multi-layered Russian reaction will unfold depending on the outcome of the ongoing investigation.

    Reprinted with permission from Indian Punchline.

  26. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    6 hours 27 min ago
    Author: pcr3

    Biden is the pot calling the kettle black

    Biden calls Putin ‘a butcher’

    https://www.rt.com/news/594985-biden-calls-putin-butcher/

    Biden is supplying the weapons and military and diplomatic protection for Israel to complete Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and theft of their entire country, and the White House Fool , a partner in Genocide, calls Putin a butcher.

  27. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    6 hours 28 min ago
    Author: pcr3

    Don’t give your money to politicians. I realize that Trump is our only choice, but even if Trump or Robert Kennedy were elected, both are firmly in Israel’s pocket and little would change. How could Trump build a wall when the principal NGO recruiting and financing immigrant-invaders is a Jewish one?

    Give your money to those who are truly fighting for us, such as Freedom Watch:

    Zach Rehl is an honorably discharged Marine with a 100% disability rating from the VA.

    As you read this email, he’s serving 15 years in federal prison for crimes he didn’t commit on January 6. He was held without bail for over two years before that in the infamous D.C. Gulag.

    Zach was railroaded by U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly.

    (If you’ve read my newest book, It Takes A Counter Revolution: Wake Up America!, you know Judge Kelly is one of the very worst D.C. judges I talk about there.)

    During Zach’s show trial, Judge Kelly even had the gall to claim:

    “There Is No Evidence of Government Misconduct, Let Alone Misconduct Warranting Dismissal, a Mistrial, or Other Sanctions…”

    Nothing could be further from the truth!

    Zach’s trial, like the trials of all other January 6 Peaceful Protesters, make a mockery of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law.

    Before he was sentenced, Zach wrote this to his wife, Amanda:

    They are jailing innocent people on bogus and trumped-up charges because those people simply supported the sitting president at the time; which is absolutely insane. If you think it can’t happen to you, look at me, because if it can happen to me, trust me, it can happen to you.

    Let me tell you, that’s a warning for you and me, our family and friends … for all Americans who cherish our rights and freedoms.

    But there’s something you can do about it.

    I’ve filed crucial lawsuits to FREE January 6 peaceful protesters. Including a critical new lawsuit that PROVES the FBI and other agencies carried out ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE on January 6 patriots. That means their criminal convictions can be THROWN OUT. And their criminal trials MUST STOP.

    I’m Larry Klayman, founder and general counsel for Freedom Watch.

    I’m a former federal prosecutor and trial lawyer who’s fought for the American people for 41 years.

    You’ve seen me on CNN, Fox News, and other cable news outlets.

    I’m the only lawyer in American history to have a court rule that a sitting President had committed a crime. I guarantee Bill Clinton still remembers me!

    And I successfully represented the victims of other Clinton scandals, like Filegate, Travelgate, IRS Gate, Chinagate, and many others.

    I know what it takes to take on federal agencies, politicians, even presidents, and win. And with this critically important case, I can PROVE IN COURT that Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, their departments and agencies at the U.S. Department of Justice ordered and carried out ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE OF LAW-ABIDING AMERICAN CITIZENS!

    And I’m taking other hard-hitting legal actions to protect our fellow Americans and other endangered rights and liberties.

    Patriot, PLEASE help me fully fund these critical fights with your very best gift of $25, $50, $100, $250, or more immediately.

    You see, very few lawyers are fighting for January 6 peaceful protesters. Some of them have even folded under the intense pressure, and pushed their clients to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit.

    But I will FIGHT BACK peacefully and legally, with your vital support.

    I beg you to help me defend these abused Americans with your crucial gift of $25, $50, $100, $250, or more right now.

    Thank you!

    In Justice,

    Larry Klayman Signature
    Larry Klayman
    Founder, Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch
    Chairman and General Counsel, Freedom Watch, Inc.

    https://freedomwatch.revv.co/warns-from-prison-mb-bm?utm_source=warns-from-prison&utm_medium=bm&utm_campaign=mb&amount=25&utm_term=tdy

  28. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    6 hours 29 min ago
    Author: pcr3

    If this report is correct, the media is doing a good job of covering it up

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/03/michael-snyder/pawn-shop-inventories-are-exploding/

  29. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    6 hours 30 min ago
    Author: pcr3

    How Democrats Steal Elections

    https://slaynews.com/news/registered-voters-26-states-fake-investigation-finds/

    https://www.judicialwatch.org/jw-exposes-voter-participation-center-scandal/

    In previous times it was 50 cents and a half pint of whiskey for a vote. Now it is a pre-paid credit card.
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/crime-pays-new-york-city-begins-distributing-pre/

    
But remember the Democrats and presstitutes assure us that there is no election theft.

  30. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    6 hours 32 min ago
    Author: pcr3

    Here is Gilbert Doctorow’s follow-up to his interview about which I reported yesterday. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/03/27/washington-crossed-a-fatal-red-line-with-the-crocus-attack/

    Doctorow is a careful analyst who does not overstate the seriousness of situations. The Crocus attack could be a turning point in Putin’s attitude toward the US. Putin has been low-key in Russia’s response to Washington’s provocations so as not to inflame the situation. Putin’s policy has been to wait for the West to come to its senses and to accept reality. I have emphasized that this is a mistake as Putin’s toleration of provocations results in more provocations of increasing severity. With 319 dead and wounded Russian civilian casualties in a suburb of Moscow, it appears that the provocations have crossed a red line. The head of the Federal Security Service was given a green light to identify to the Russian media Washington as the suspect. As Putin has publicly declared that all responsible will be punished, I agree that Doctorow’s characterization of the situation is akin to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    It is possible that Putin will rethink the situation and use the Crocus attack to meet political and media demands that this time he do something. He can limit the blame to Ukraine and use the attack to use the level of force he should have used two years ago to level Ukraine and end the conflict.

    If Putin again convinces himself, or is convinced by pro-Western factions in Russia, if any still exist, that eventually the West will come to its senses, and fails again to act, the provocations will continue to worsen. Indeed, I would say that one more of the magnitude of Crocus would light the fuse of World War III.

    Here is Doctorow’s report:

    Yesterday’s remarkable statements to journalists by Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB)

    Gilbert Doctorow March 27, 2024

    https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/03/27/yesterdays-remarkable-statements-to-journalists-by-alexander-bortnikov-director-of-russias-federal-security-service-fsb/

    To the uninitiated, I explain first that the FSB is the successor organization to the Soviet Union’s well-known and much feared KGB. However, the FSB today might be better compared with the FBI in the United States. It deals with domestic criminality of all kinds and with threats to Russian civilians such as terrorism. The agency and its head are rarely in the news.

    In this respect, the FSB is less visible both at home and abroad than the Foreign Intelligence Service headed by Sergei Naryshkin, a state figure who spent five years of this millennium as chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of the legislature, and also three years as head of the Presidential Administration. In both positions Naryshkin was very often seen on television performing his duties.

    By contrast, Bortnikov spent the past 15 years in his FSB offices out of sight. However, the spectacular attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue has propelled him to center stage and yesterday he met with the Russian state television journalist Pavel Zarubin for an interview and then allowed himself to be questioned further by a gaggle of other journalists on his way out along a corridor. This spontaneous Q&A was later broadcast on the television news. What Bortnikov had to say was extraordinary and bears directly on whether you and I should now be looking for bomb shelters. Regrettably you will not find any of it in the lead stories of today’s mainstream media. The Financial Times, for example, features an account of Xi’s meeting with CEOs of American businesses to mend ties: interesting, but not very relevant if we are at the cusp of WWIII.

    Bortnikov is by definition a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of advisors. He, Putin and Naryshkin are all roughly the same age. At 72, Bortnikov is just several years older.

    I was struck in particular by his poise and prudent, carefully weighed choice of words while setting out where the investigation is heading with transparency and a ‘let the chips fall where they may’ unaffected demeanor.

    The journalists were all probing the question of who stood behind the terror attack. Bortnikov told them…and us: standing behind the terror act committed by Islamist extremists are the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine.

    Bortnikov said that the preliminary findings indicate that the four perpetrators of the slaughter were headed by car to the border with Ukraine where they were awaited on the other side. He very calmly explained that the involvement of foreign powers is being clarified and that he will say nothing out of pure emotion now but will wait for the facts to be solidly collected before being presented.

    Nonetheless, it was entirely newsworthy that he named the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine as the likely puppet masters of the terror act. Let us remember that following the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the most significant attack on critical civilian infrastructure globally in the last 50 years, Russian officials did not point the finger directly at any country. There was innuendo but no direct accusations such as we heard from Bortnikov yesterday.

    Meanwhile, quite apart from Mr. Bortnikov’s chat with journalists, a lot of new elements to the terror attack at Crocus City Hall were posted yesterday on the Russian state television news and analysis program Sixty Minutes. In particular, we learned that in the last days of February and first couple of days of March two of the four attackers were in Istanbul. The departure and arrival of one at a Moscow airport was recorded on video. We were told which hotels they stayed in, and the selfies and other photos taken by one in Istanbul were put up on the screen. It is still not clear with whom they met in Turkey. However, the timing itself is very important, because the point was made that they returned to Moscow to carry out a terror attack on 8 March, International Women’s Day, a sacred date on the Russian calendar. Had they done so on that day, the effect would have been catastrophic for the presidential elections in Russia one week later.

    However, per Sixty Minutes, it was determined that Russian state security on 8 March was too tight for the terrorist mission to succeed and the United States decided to pull the plug on that operation. Note that this is approximately the time when Victoria Nuland tendered her resignation at the State Department (5 March). The possible causal link here surely deserves attention by my peers in the U.S. ‘dissident’ community.

    In any case, the scenario which was explored later in the day on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show is that the Ukrainians decided to proceed with the terror attack a week after the Russian presidential elections, when it lost most of its rationale. They did so over the objections of Washington.

    From time to time, readers ask why I pay attention to talk shows like Vladimir Solovyov’s. These skeptics tend to ignore that Solovyov invites not just the usual irresponsible academics and journalists who can amuse the public but also some very serious statesmen who are close to the center of power in Russia and exert influence on the conduct of foreign and domestic policy, including in particular committee chairmen and other key personalities from the State Duma.

    So it was last night when we heard from a member of the Committee on Relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States (Former Soviet Union). With reference to the never ending terror attacks on civilians in the Russian border region of Belgorod coming from nearby Kharkiv (Ukraine), he said it is time to raze Kharkov to the ground: issue a warning to the population to get in their cars and head West, then blow it all to bits. Kharkiv is, by the way, Ukraine’s second most populous city after Kiev.

    In general, the mood of panelists and of the host Solovyov himself is now changing in a cardinal manner: Ukraine is seen as an enemy state and the sooner it is finished off the better. There was talk last night on the need for missile strikes to flatten the presidential palace in Kiev along with all military and other decision making government centers in the capital.

    As we have observed repeatedly over the past two years. President Putin has been a voice for moderation and restraint, resisting actions that might precipitate WWIII. That is clearly coming to an end when his own FSB director names the United States and the UK as planners of the biggest terror attack in Russia in 20 years.

    ©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

  31. Site: Mundabor's blog
    6 hours 35 min ago
    Author: Mundabor
    I have written very recently about the enormous size of the Evil Clown, and the fact that he might soon have to be hauled with a truck to allow him to get anywhere. This is, in itself, sad enough, though I hoped it kept him from his Maundy Thursday antics. It appears it will. So […]
  32. Site: Zero Hedge
    6 hours 37 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Facebook Secretly Wiretapped Competitors: Documents

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Facebook secretly obtained proprietary data from competitors, including Snapchat, according to newly unsealed court documents.

    At the request of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook officials developed a program called In-App Action Panel (IAAP) that they deployed in 2016 and which was in use through mid-2019, according to the documents, which include internal emails.

    The program utilized cyberattacks to intercept information from Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon. The program then decrypted the information.

    “Facebook’s IAAP Program used nation-state-level hacking technology developed by the company’s Onavo team, in which Facebook paid contractors (including teens) to designate Facebook a trusted ‘root’ certificate authority on their mobile devices, then generated fake digital certificates to redirect secure Snapchat analytics traffic (and later, analytics from YouTube and Amazon) from Snapchat’s servers to Onavo’s; decrypted these analytics and used them for competitive gain, including to inform Facebook’s product strategy; reencrypted them; and sent them up to Snapchat’s servers as though it came straight from Snapchat’s app, with Facebook’s Social Advertising competitor none the wiser,” lawyers said in one of the documents.

    The lawyers, representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit that accuses Facebook of anti-competitive behavior, were describing emails they obtained through discovery.

    In one email, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote that there was a need to receive information about Snapchat but that their traffic was encrypted. “Given how quickly they’re growing, it seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them. Perhaps we need to do panels or write custom software. You should figure out how to do this,” he wrote.

    After Facebook employees started working on figuring it out, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan wrote that the program could pay users to “let us install a really heavy piece of software (that could even do man in the middle, etc.).”

    Man in the middle refers to a type of cyberattack where attackers secretly intercept information.

    “We are going to figure out a plan for a lockdown effort during June to bring a step change to our Snapchat visibility. This is an opportunity for our team to shine,” Guy Rosen, founder of Onavo, later wrote. Onavo was started in Israel and bought by Facebook in 2013.

    In a presentation on the program when it was being finalized, it was stated that there would be “'kits” that can be installed on iOS and Android that intercept traffic for specific sub-domains, allowing us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage.”

    Documents and testimony obtained in the case showed the program was launched in June 2016 and continued being used through 2019.

    The program initially targeted Snapchat but was later expanded to Google’s YouTube and Amazon, according to the documents.

    The information gained by the program helped inform Facebook’s product designs, according to Facebook employees. Those products “hamper[ed] Snap’s ability to sell ads,” one Snap executive said in a deposition for the case.

    Snap, Google, and Amazon did not return requests for comment.

    Mr. Zuckerberg, in another deposition, refused to answer questions about the program. Mr. Zuckeberg indicated he might answer questions if he was given an opportunity to review the documents.

    Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who are advertisers, have asked the court handling the case, the U.S. District Court in northern California, to grant them three additional hours with Mr. Zuckerberg so they can ask him more about what happened. They also asked for sanctions against Meta, which owns Facebook, because Meta did not disclose the program when initially asked for all information and data that Facebook derived from Onavo’s work.

    Violation of Law?

    Facebook’s actions amounted to wiretapping and violated federal law.

    The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, sometimes known as the Wiretap Act, bars people from intercepting any “wire, oral, or electronic communication” and from intentionally disclosing the contents of information that was illegally intercepted.

    Facebook’s IAAP program conduct squarely meets the statutory proscriptions ... within the meaning of the statute,” lawyers for the plaintiffs told the court.

    Facebook’s program does not fall within exceptions outlined in the law, particularly because Snapchat did not approve the interception and decryption of its information, they said. Further, Snap’s contact with users prohibits the behaviors in which Facebook engaged.

    Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

    Netflix Nexus

    Reed Hastings, chairman of Netflix’s board of directors, also served on Facebook’s board for years.

    Plaintiffs have attempted to secure documents and a deposition from Mr. Hastings, but he has refused so far, according to other filings. The plaintiffs asked the court to force Mr. Hastings to comply with subpoenas.

    The plaintiffs separately said that it asked Netflix for materials but that Netflix had only produced 54 documents, “all of which are collateral (at best) to the issues Advertisers asked for documents on, and none of which fall within the clearly defined categories of documents that Advertisers repeatedly told Netflix were at the core of what was sought for Advertisers’ case.”

    Netflix and Facebook have a yearslong relationship that includes Netflix spending tens of millions of dollars on Facebook advertising and Facebook granting Netflix unique access to its data, the filings noted.

    The plaintiffs asked the court to compel Netflix to produce relevant documents.

    Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 08:45
  33. Site: Zero Hedge
    6 hours 42 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Jobless Claims Continue To Hover (Miraculously) Near Record Lows

    Layoff announcements continue day after day and WARNs are on the rise, but initial jobless claims continues to trend along in very smooth manner (too smooth)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    NSA initial claims dipped notably last week...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And continuing claims have been flat around 1.8mm Americans for months...

    Source: Bloomberg

    This data continues to confound.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 08:40
  34. Site: LifeNews
    6 hours 51 min ago
    Author: Steven Ertelt

    When the UN’s NGO Committee on the Status of Women changed rules and procedures a couple of years ago that effectively barred pro-life and pro-family NGOs like Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) from hosting parallel events during the annual Commission on the Status of Women in New York, we did not give up. In response to this blatant form of censorshop and discrimination, a coalition of pro-life-and-family groups organized an alternative forum for NGO’s to host parallel events without being forced to sign a pro-abortion, pro-LGBT attestation. The two-day conference, which took place this year on March 13-14, was called The Conference on the State of Women and Family (CSWF). With a focus on life and family perspectives, the CSWF emphasizes the importance of empowering women by recognizing and strengthening the family. The two-day forum hosted a dozen parallel events organized by NGO’s from around the world.

    Attending this year’s CSWF were an impressive array of leaders from the pro-life-and-family movement.

    Campaign Life Coalition Youth had the privilage of being co-hosts for an event titled “Supporting Women and Girls During Unplanned Pregnancies,” organized by the International Youth Coalition, a Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) program. This event showcased the remarkable efforts of speakers who are making significant strides in assisting women facing unplanned pregnancies.

    Emily Berning, founder of Let Them Live, shared a powerful narrative illustrating the organization’s mission to provide financial support to women considering abortion. She emphasized that 73% of women in the United States opt for abortion due to financial strain. Let Them Live steps in to bridge this gap by offering direct financial assistance, ensuring that women have the means to choose life. Emily’s personal story of helping a pregnant woman living in dire circumstances highlighted the tangible impact of their work. Let Them Live’s comprehensive approach includes not only financial aid but also educational programs, counseling, and community support, addressing the root causes of unplanned pregnancies. The organization has helped almost 1000 mothers.

    Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

    Abby Johnson, CEO and founder of And Then There Were None and Pro Love Ministries, shared her journey from working as a director at Planned Parenthood to becoming a staunch advocate for life. She shed light on the exploitative practices within Planned Parenthood, revealing their true agenda of targeting minority populations and perpetuating the abortion industry for profit. Abby’s organizations focus on providing holistic support to women, including financial assistance, counseling, educational scholarships, and access to legal aid. The Love Beyond Borders initiative exemplifies their commitment to humanitarian aid, supporting women and families in crisis situations, regardless of political affiliations.

    Both Berning and Johnson emphasized the importance of addressing the underlying issues contributing to unplanned pregnancies and offering compassionate, non-judgmental support to women in need. Their organizations prioritize transformational assistance over transactional aid, aiming to empower women to make life-affirming choices and build brighter futures for themselves and their families. Through their dedication and innovative approaches, both women are instrumental in making abortion unthinkable and fostering a culture of life and support for all women.

    CLC Youth Coordinator, Maeve Roche, also gave a statement at the event emphasizing the importance of supporting pregnant women and protecting the natural family. She highlighted the role of Crisis Pregnancy Centres in providing essential resources and support and expressed concerns over the Canadian government’s condemnation of these life-affirming centres, threatening their charitable status. She argued that such actions limit options for women in crisis pregnancies and advocated for comprehensive maternal healthcare and support systems instead of abortion. “Without these organizations, women in crisis would have fewer options and fewer supports for them in their pregnancy experience. In fact, most would feel they have only one choice: abortion. And one choice means no choice at all,” she said.

    One of the side events at CSWF, titled “Development Corrupted: Gender Ideology at Odds with Empowerment for Women and Girls,” which was organized by the Heritage Foundation, featured speakers who critically examined the concept of gender ideology and its implications, particularly concerning women and girls. The speakers raised concerns about the distortion of biological realities and the potential harms of “gender-affirming care” practices.

    Dr. Jay W. Richards from the Heritage Foundation delved into the historical evolution of the terms “sex” and “gender,” highlighting how gender ideology has redefined these terms and shifted the focus from biological differences to subjective “gender identity.” He emphasized that this ideological framework denies the biological basis of sex and replaces it with concepts like “gender identity,” which are divorced from physical realities. Dr. Richards also discussed educational materials, such as the “Gender Bread Person” and the “Gender Unicorn,” used to promote these ideas, illustrating the widespread influence of gender ideology in various institutions.

    Dr. Miriam Grossman, an advocate for evidence-based medical care, criticized “gender-affirming care” practices, particularly their impact on young girls. She highlighted the risks and consequences associated with interventions like breast binding and puberty blockers, emphasizing the lack of scientific evidence supporting their safety and efficacy. Dr. Grossman argued that these interventions can have long-term physical and psychological effects, including infertility and irreversible changes to the body. She also raised concerns about the ethical implications of promoting such interventions to minors.

    Dr. Seyoum Antonios from Family Watch International discussed the issue of individuals falsely claiming transgender identity to gain advantages in women’s sports, scholarships, and grants. He highlighted the importance of protecting the integrity of women’s spaces and opportunities while ensuring fair treatment for all individuals. For a more detailed report on this event, click here.

    On the final day of CSWF, Campaign Life Coalition hosted a special screening of the independent documentary Roe Canada: The True North in a Post-Roe World produced and directed by Canadian film maker Kevin Dunn. The film also features CLC’s very own Josie Luetke and Ruth Robert as the lead investigators. Following the screening, Dunn moderated a panel discussion with Josie and Ruth, where both pro-life activists encouraged attendees to build on the momentum of the overturning of Roe, and work towards enshrining legal protection for children before birth in their own countries.

    LifeNews Note: Story courtesy of the Campaign Life Coalition. Photo: CLC’s Maeve Roche speaking during parallel event, CSWF,  New York. Credit: Brad Wixom

    The post Pro-Life Group Holds Its Own Event After UN Kicks It Out of World Forum appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  35. Site: Zero Hedge
    6 hours 58 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Stocks Set To Close Blowout Week, Month And Quarter At All-Time High; Gold Soars To Record

    Stock futures are pointing to a flat open on the last trading session of the week, month, and quarter, following a late-session spike that took the S&P 500 to yet another record as the much anticipated quarter-end pension dump (as big as $32BN according to Goldman failed to materialize, but may very well show up today). As of 7:45am ET, both Nasdaq and S&P futures were down 0.1% after Fed Governor Christopher Waller poured cold water on the path to lower interest rates, saying there’s no rush to cut rates given recent “disappointing” inflation figures.

    The broadest equity index is set for a gain of 10% for the first three months of the year, with the Nasdaq 100 just short of a 9% rise. Europe’s Stoxx 600 benchmark also notched up another record as Arnaud Cayla, deputy CEO at Cholet Dupont Asset Management, said: “Investors have no reason to sell", and sure enough, a look at either the weekly S&P candle chart which is up 19 of the past 22 weeks...

    ... and the monthly, up five straight months.

    In premarket trading, RH shares jumed 7.8%, reversing a 10% plunge, after the furniture retailer reported fourth-quarter results. While the company missed on adjusted earnings per share for the period, its guidance update, which showed expectations of accelerating demand throughout fiscal year 2024, led to a positive reaction among analysts. Here are the other notable premarket movers:

    • Akebia Therapeutics shares jump 20% after the biopharmaceutical company said the FDA approved vadadustat, an anemia medicine already available in other countries as Vafseo.
    • Estee Lauder shares gain 2.0% as Bank of America upgrades the personal care products maker to buy from neutral, saying that the company’s earnings have now bottomed.
    • MillerKnoll shares slide 17% after the office furniture maker issued guidance for fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share that missed estimates. Additionally, the company reported third-quarter sales that did not meet consensus expectations.
    • Snowflake shares are up 3.1% after Chief Executive Officer Sridhar Ramaswamy reported the purchase of about $5 million in shares late Wednesday.
    • Sprinklr shares rise 9.5% after the application software company gave a full-year forecast that is stronger than expected. It also reported fourth-quarter results.

    10Y treasury yields rose 4 basis points to 4.22% and the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rises 0.2% to its highest since mid-February after the Fed's hawkish governor Christopher Waller said the Fed still needs to see lower inflation before easing monetary policy in a speech titled, "There’s Still No Rush.” As a result, Brown Brothers strategists Win Thin and Elias Haddad wrote in a note that “market easing expectations for the Fed still need to adjust.” 

    Waller pointed to a strong US economy and robust hiring as further reasons the Fed has room to wait to gain confidence that inflation is on a sustained path toward the 2% target. “In my view, it is appropriate to reduce the overall number of rate cuts or push them further into the future in response to the recent data,” he said in prepared remarks Wednesday before the Economic Club of New York.

    Stock markets are on cusp of closing out blockbuster gains for the quarter. MSCI’s global equity index has soared 8% in the past three months, supported by rallies in the US, Japan and the frenzy for artificial intelligence. Data on US economic growth and jobless claims are scheduled later today. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — the core personal consumption expenditures price index — is due on Friday, when markets will be closed.

    European stocks rise to another record high and are on track for the best quarterly performance in a year. The Stoxx 600 climbed 0.3% marking a four-day winning streak, led by gains in travel, consumer product and retail shares. The rally in European stocks has broadened out this month beyond the biggest names on the benchmark such as ASML Holding NV and Novo Nordisk A/S, unlike the US where the gains remain concentrated in big tech stocks.

    Earlier in the session, Asia stocks steadied as gains in China countered declines in Japan, with the regional benchmark on course for its biggest first-quarter gain in five years. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped as much as 0.6% before paring most of the loss. TSMC and Toyota were among the biggest drags on the gauge, while Chinese internet stocks including Tencent rose and Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision climbed to a record on AI expectations. Many markets will be closed for holidays on Friday.

    • Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were underpinned by tech strength and after another firm PBoC liquidity operation, while China's 3rd highest-ranked official Zhao Leji stated at the Boao Forum that China's economy will provide a strong driving force for a world recovery and that China will reduce the 'negative list' for foreign investors.
    • Nikkei 225 was pressured after the JPY bounced back from 33-year lows amid intervention risks.
    • ASX 200 rose to a fresh record high with the broad-based gains in the index led by strength in the mining industry.

    In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rises 0.2% to its highest since mid-February after Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said there is no rush to lower interest rates. Meanwhile, the euro fell to a five-week low and traded below $1.08 as the dollar strengthened.

    In rates, treasury futures traded off lows into early US session, although cash yields remain cheaper by up to 6bp across front-end of the curve after comments from Fed’s Waller after Wednesday’s close, who said that data warrants fewer cuts or a later start to monetary-policy easing. Treasury yields are cheaper by 6bp to 1bp across the curve in a bear flattening move, with front-end led losses flattening 2s10s, 5s30s spreads by 2.5bp and 3bp on the day; 10-year yields around 4.215%, cheaper by 2.5bp vs. Wednesday close with bunds and gilts marginally outperforming in the sector. Additional hawkish comments seen from BOE’s Haskel in early London session, who said rate cuts are a long way off, according to a Financial Times report. US session focus includes GDP, jobless claims data in a shortened trading day, with SIFMA recommending a 2pm New York cash close.

    In commodities, oil prices advance, with WTI rising 0.9% to trade near $82.10. Spot gold rises another 0.7% to trade at a fresh all-time high above $2,200.

    Bitcoin reversed Wednesday's losses driven by another round of futures manipulation, and jumps 2% to around $70,500 after the latest bitcoin ETF data showed continued inflows.

    The US economic data slate includes 4Q final GDP, initial jobless claims (8:30am), March MNI Chicago PMI (9:45am), February pending home sales, March University of Michigan sentiment (10am) and Kansas City Fed manufacturing activity (11am). Fed speaker slate empty for the session; Daly (11:15am) and Powell (11:30am) are scheduled to speak Friday

    Market Snapshot

    • S&P 500 futures little changed at 5,305.00
    • STOXX Europe 600 up 0.1% to 512.47
    • MXAP down 0.4% to 176.24
    • MXAPJ up 0.3% to 535.76
    • Nikkei down 1.5% to 40,168.07
    • Topix down 1.7% to 2,750.81
    • Hang Seng Index up 0.9% to 16,541.42
    • Shanghai Composite up 0.6% to 3,010.66
    • Sensex up 1.3% to 73,961.36
    • Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 1.0% to 7,896.86
    • Kospi down 0.3% to 2,745.82
    • German 10Y yield little changed at 2.31%
    • Euro down 0.3% to $1.0792
    • Brent Futures up 0.5% to $86.54/bbl
    • Gold spot down 0.0% to $2,194.58
    • US Dollar Index up 0.24% to 104.59

    Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

    • Fed's Waller (voter, hawk) said still no rush to cut rates in the current economy and the Fed may need to maintain the current rate target for longer than expected, while he needs to see more inflation progress before supporting a rate cut and needs at least a couple of months of data to be sure inflation is heading to 2%. Waller said he still expects the Fed to cut rates later this year but added the economy’s strength gives the Fed space to take stock of the data and data suggests fewer rate cuts possible this year.
    • S&P affirmed the US at AA+; Outlook Stable, while it stated the US outlook remains stable indicating its expectation of continued economic resiliency, as well as proactive and effective monetary policy execution. S&P said the stable outlook reflects the US's institutional checks & balances, and free flow of info contributing to stability and predictability in economic policies but added that ratings are constrained by fiscal weaknesses such as high net general government debt and deficits.
    • Several board members at the BOJ called for a gradual path towards policy normalization when the central bank last week raised interest rates for the first time since 2007. “The bank would need to emphasize its cautious stance in the case of terminating the negative interest rate policy, as Japan’s economy is not in a state where rapid policy interest rate hikes are necessary,” said one board member, according to a summary of opinions at its March meeting released on Thursday. FT
    • The BOE is probing how UK businesses would be hit by the reversal of a long-running private equity boom, officials said, as they escalated warnings about leverage, transparency and valuations. FT
    • German retail sales fell more than expected in February, showing consumers remained cautious and a first-quarter rebound was increasingly unlikely in Europe’s largest economy. Spending on goods by German consumers fell for the fourth consecutive month, dropping 1.9% from the previous month and 2.7% from a year earlier, according to data from the federal statistics agency. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a monthly rebound of 0.3%. FT
    • Christopher Waller said there’s no rush to lower US interest rates, adding that recent eco data warrants delaying or reducing the number of cuts this year. Price trends are “disappointing” and he wants to see “at least a couple months of better inflation data” before easing. BBG
    • Thames Water shareholders refused to provide the first £500 million needed for a turnaround plan to tackle chronic leaks and sewage spills around London. Parent company Kemble said it will be unable to refinance or repay a £190 million loan maturing on April 30 without an extension. BBG
    • Blockbuster deals more than doubled in the first quarter of this year, signaling a nascent recovery in the mergers and acquisitions market following a lengthy drought. The number of takeovers worth at least $10bn jumped in the first three months of 2024 compared with the same period last year, driven by large US deals in the energy, tech and financial sectors, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. Eleven such transactions, with a total value of $215bn, were struck during the quarter, up from five takeovers worth a combined $100bn in the first three months of 2023. FT
    • Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman said the private credit industry will expand further even as critics warn of a bubble. “Our default rate on these types of loans is three-tenths of 1%,” he said. The firm is also planning more retail-investment products in Japan. BBG
    • Insurance payouts for the Baltimore bridge collapse may be among the largest ever in marine insurance, Lloyd’s of London CEO John Neal said. “It’s a multi-billion dollar loss.” BBG
    • Sam Bankman-Fried faces a 40-to-50 year prison term in his fraud case sentencing due today. The FTX co-founder’s lawyers are asking for leniency, arguing that the crypto business was solid and the company expects to repay $8 billion in missing customer funds. BBG
    • Home Depot (HD) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SRS Distribution for a total enterprise value (including net debt) of approximately USD 18.25bln

    A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

    APAC stocks partially sustained the momentum from the late ramp-up on Wall St heading into quarter-end. ASX 200 rose to a fresh record high with the broad-based gains in the index led by strength in the mining industry. Nikkei 225 was pressured after the JPY bounced back from 33-year lows amid intervention risks. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were underpinned by tech strength and after another firm PBoC liquidity operation, while China's 3rd highest-ranked official Zhao Leji stated at the Boao Forum that China's economy will provide a strong driving force for a world recovery and that China will reduce the 'negative list' for foreign investors.

    Top Asian news

    • China's top legislator Zhao Leji said at the Boao Forum that Asian countries should inject a strong impetus for world economic growth and that China's economy will provide a strong driving force for world recovery. Zhao also stated that they oppose trade protection and decoupling, while he added that China is willing to collaborate with other countries on tech innovation and will reduce the 'negative list' for foreign investors.
    • China's Commerce Minister discussed with Dutch counterpart lithography machines and strengthening semiconductor industry cooperation, while the Commerce Minister stated that China hopes the Netherlands will uphold the spirit of the contract, support companies in fulfilling their contractual obligations, and ensure the normal conduct of lithography machine trade.
    • BoJ Summary of Opinions from the March 18th-19th meeting stated that a member said YCC, negative rate and other massive stimulus tools have accomplished their roles and that the BoJ must guide monetary policy using short-term rate as main policy means in accordance with economic, price and financial developments. Furthermore, a member said shifting to 'normal' monetary easing is possible without causing short-term shocks and may have a positive impact on the economy in the medium- and long-term perspective, while a member warned that changing policy now could delay achievement of the BoJ's price target.
    • Citi raises China 2024 GDP growth forecast to 5% (vs 4.6% reported in Jan).
    • China's Commerce Ministry is lifting anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs on Australian wine as of 29th March

    Mixed sentiment across Europe, Stoxx600 (+0.2%), with a modest upward bias following a mostly-firmer APAC handover; the FTSE 100 (+0.5%) benefits from the weaker Pound. European sectors hold a strong positive tilt; Travel & Leisure propped up by Evolution (+1.8%), whilst Construction & Materials is found at the foot of the pile. US Equity Futures (ES -0.1%, NQ -0.2%, RTY -0.2%) are subdued following yesterday's late rally and ahead of the long weekend. A busy docket ahead will dictate price action today.

    Top European news

     

    FX

    • DXY picked up strength in early European trade as participants digested hawkish remarks from the influential Waller at the Fed. DXY now at levels not seen since mid-Feb. Currently eyeing the YTD peak at 104.97. PCE tomorrow looms large.
    • EUR has been dragged lower by USD strength; EUR/USD below the double-bottom at 1.0802 and the 1.08 level with a session trough at 1.0775. Next large is the 20th Feb low at 1.0761.
    • GBP is outmuscled by the dollar with Cable tripping below the 1.26 level in quiet newsflow, where it eventually found support at its 200 DMA at 1.2588; since, it reclaimed 1.26, where it currently resides. Haskel remarks are hawkish but not necessarily a consensus view on the MPC.
    • JPY is one of the better relative performers vs. the USD but ultimately softer. Fresh Yen-specific drivers light ahead of CPI later. Currently contained within yesterday's 151.02-97 range.
    • Antipodeans lag against the majors as the uptick in the USD saw AUD/USD trip below last week's low at 0.6503 and the 0.65 mark, with softer Australian Retail Sales also a factor.
    • PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 7.0948 vs exp. 7.2259 (prev. 7.0946).

    Fixed Income

    • USTs are pressured and dragging fixed benchmarks lower after Fed's Waller stuck to his hawkish bias and made clear that there is no need to rush towards rate cuts.
    • Bunds ticked higher on the region's retail numbers, though proved fleeting, with Bunds now probing 133.00 to the downside conforming to the post-Waller pressure seen in Treasuries.
    • Gilt price action is in-fitting with peers; specifics light after an interview from BoE's Haskel who underscored his hawkish credentials and made clear that while he is no longer voting for further tightening he is in no rush to vote for easing. Gilts currently at 99.57 and will find support at 99.41, 27 & 16 from the last three sessions.

    Commodities

    • A positive day thus far for the oil complex despite the strengthening Dollar and quiet newsflow, though has been edging off best levels in recent trade. Brent reside within 86.30-60/bbl parameters.
    • Precious metals vary with spot silver feeling the pressure from the firming Dollar, whilst spot gold is more resilient, potentially supported via geopols/recent BTC strength. XAU briefly printed a fresh weekly high at USD 2,200.75/oz before pulling back under USD 2,200.
    • Mixed trade across base metals with copper futures relatively flat; 3M LME copper trades on either side of the unchanged mark and towards the bottom of a USD 8,830.50-8,930.50/t.
    • Russia's Kuibyshev mid-sized oil refinery is at a complete halt following a drone attack on March 23, via Reuters citing sources.

    Geopolitics

    • US military said it destroyed four long-range drones launched by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, according to Reuters.

    US Event Calendar

    • 08:30: March Initial Jobless Claims, est. 212,000, prior 210,000
      • March Continuing Claims, est. 1.82m, prior 1.81m
    • 08:30: 4Q GDP Annualized QoQ, est. 3.2%, prior 3.2%
      • 4Q Personal Consumption, est. 3.0%, prior 3.0%
      • 4Q Core PCE Price Index QoQ, est. 2.1%, prior 2.1%
      • 4Q GDP Price Index, est. 1.6%, prior 1.6%
    • 09:45: March MNI Chicago PMI, est. 46.0, prior 44.0
    • 10:00: Feb. Pending Home Sales YoY, prior -6.8%
    • 10:00: March U. of Mich. Sentiment, est. 76.5, prior 76.5
      • March U. of Mich. Current Conditions, est. 79.6, prior 79.4
      • March U. of Mich. Expectations, est. 74.7, prior 74.6
      • March U. of Mich. 1 Yr Inflation, est. 3.1%, prior 3.0%
      • March U. of Mich. 5-10 Yr Inflation, est. 2.9%, prior 2.9%
    • 10:00: Feb. Pending Home Sales (MoM), est. 1.5%, prior -4.9%
    • 11:00: March Kansas City Fed Manf. Activity, est. -4, prior -4

    DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

    Welcome to the last business day of Q1 for a sizeable chunk of the global financial market. I'm going on holiday for a couple of weeks tomorrow so see you on the other side. Henry and Peter will be keeping the EMR in safe hands while I'm away. Tonight I'll be doing the usual negotiating dance with my wife as to what time we start off on our 14-hour drive to the ski slopes tomorrow. I am an early person and worry about falling asleep at the wheel on the last leg of the journey where I always drive, so I'd be quite happy leaving at 5am. My wife is a night person and doesn't want to get up too early so she's happier leaving at around 9am. So the bid-offer is always 5-9. Before you trade I should say we have never left before 845am so that tells you all you need to know about my powers of persuasion.

    As we approach the end of Q1, it's fair to say that is has been a very good quarter for risk and less so for government bonds. In equities some highlights include (price only) the Nikkei (+20%), the DAX (+10.3%), the S&P 500 (+10.04%) and the Magnificent-7 (+17.79%) on the upside, but with the Hang Seng (-2.16%) the standout on the downside. Elsewhere 10yr USTs and Bunds are +32bps and +27bps respectively and we've moved from pricing in 158bps of Fed cuts by YE to c.75bps. US HY credit is -22bps tighter and WTI oil is +13.54%. All with a few hours of trading left in the quarter.

    As trading floors resemble ghost towns tomorrow, we'll see the US core PCE print. DB expects +0.27% vs. 0.42% last month. In Powell's press conference, he remarked that the month-over-month print for core PCE could be "well below 30bps" at the end of the month. Taking him at his word does offer downside risk to our economists' forecast. They believe upward revisions to the January healthcare services prices could square these two numbers. We'll also see French and Italian inflation tomorrow so a busy day for a holiday!

    As we await these events, yesterday was another day where technical factors related to quarter-end appeared to dominate, with a late rally leading to strong close for the S&P 500 (+0.86%) and with it to a fresh all-time high. Treasuries saw a steadier rally, with 10yr yields down -4.2bps across the day. Overnight though we've heard notably hawkish comments from Fed Governor Waller. He suggested that “it is appropriate to reduce the overall number of rate cuts or push them further into the future in response to the recent data”, specifically referring to the recent inflation data as “disappointing”. So expressing clearly more concern about the upside in January/February inflation than we heard from Powell last week.

    After this markets have dialled back expectations of Fed cuts by -4.6bps to 74.9bps at year end adding to a 1bps decline yesterday. 2yr and 10yr yields are +3.9bp and +1.4bps higher in Asian trading. US futures haven't responded though and are flat. On a similar note the BoE Haskel has just been quoted in the FT, as we go to print, that "wage growth remains too high" and that interest rates cuts are a "long way off". He is a known hawk and until last week's meeting was voting for BoE hikes.

    Equity market moves had become very subdued as we moved past last week’s major central bank meetings, but some volatility has returned in the past couple of sessions. In a near mirror image of Tuesday’s close, the S&P 500 rallied more than half a percent within the final hour of trading to narrowly exceed the record level it posted last Thursday and bring the YTD gain to above 10%. The VIX index of implied equity volatility fell to a 2-month low, down -0.46 points to 12.78. Earlier in the day, European equities also saw a positive if less eventful session, with Stoxx 600 (+0.13%), Dax (+0.50%) and CAC (+0.25%) all closing at record highs.

    In a sign of potential sector reweighting playing out, rate-sensitive and domestically-oriented stocks led the gains, with utilities (+2.75%) and industrials (+1.60%) outperforming within the S&P 500. This also led the Dow Jones (+1.22%) and Russell 2000 (+2.13%) to outperform, with the latter seeing its strongest day since mid-February. By contrast, tech mega caps lagged behind, with the Magnificent 7 up a marginal +0.03%. Reweighting effects may have even played out within the Magnificent Seven, with Nvidia seeing another major decline (-2.50% after -2.57% on Tuesday), while Apple (+2.12%) and Tesla (+1.22%) outperformed, having lagged YTD.

    The Treasury rally yesterday was helped along by a solid 7yr auction, as $43bn of bonds were issued 0.8bps below the pre-sale yield with the indirect bidder share its highest since October. But quarter-end positioning effects may have also contributed to the bond rally – in a note earlier this week, our US rates strategists highlighted how the strong equity rally seen in Q1 pointed to potential significant quarter-end rebalancing into long-dated Treasuries. Consistent with this, long-dated Treasuries outperformed yesterday, with 30yr yields down -4.7bps. It’s a shortened session today in US bonds so expect activity to mostly grind to a halt in the European afternoon.

    On the ECB side, yesterday we heard from Cipollone (one of the more dovish voices), who said that “if incoming data confirm the scenario foreseen in the March projections, we should stand ready to swiftly dial back our restrictive monetary policy stance”. The more hawkish Kazaks said he didn’t “have any objection at the moment” to market pricing of a June rate cut, while noting that “we need to be very cautious”. This backdrop saw slight dovish repricing of near-term ECB expectations, with a 25bp June cut fully priced by yesterday’s close (vs. 94% the day before), the first time this has been the case since March 8. Bonds posted a solid rally in Europe, with 10yr bund yields down -5.8bps, while OATs (-4.5bps) and BTPs (-3.7bps) saw slightly smaller moves.

    In other central bank news, Sweden’s Riksbank became the latest G10 central bank to signal it’s approaching the start of rate cuts. While keeping rates on hold, it indicated that it saw “a 50% probability of a 25bps cut [at the next meeting] in May”. In large part, this was catching up to market pricing, which further inched up expectations of a May cut from 63% to 67% following the decision.

    Elsewhere in Europe, we had the first taste of March inflation data, as Spanish inflation came in a touch below expectations at 3.2% (vs. 3.3% expected) on the EU-harmonized measure. We will get prints for France and Italy tomorrow, followed by Germany and the euro area aggregate next Tuesday. For more, see our European economists' preview here. The March inflation prints are the most important remaining data points ahead of the next ECB meeting in just two weeks’ time. Similarly to the US, the euro area has seen upside surprises in domestic inflation at the start of the 2024, after a sizeable slowing in the second half of 2023. Whether this upside persists may prove crucial to whether the central banks deliver the starts of their easing cycles that they’ve increasingly signaled for Q2.

    In other European data, surveys showed a continued gradual improvement in momentum in March. The European Commission's economic sentiment picked from 95.4 to 96.3 (va. 96.2 expected), while France's consumer confidence index rose to 91 (vs. 90 expected), its joint highest since February 2022.

    Asian equity markets are seeing divergent trends this morning. The Nikkei (-1.63%) is the biggest underperformer across the region mostly on Japanese stocks going ex-dividend but perhaps a little on rising expectations of possible intervention in the FX market. Elsewhere, the KOSPI (-0.12%) is also lower while the Chinese stocks are outperforming with the Hang Seng (+1.63%), the CSI (+1.12%) and the Shanghai Composite (+1.09%) all comfortably higher. Meanwhile, the S&P/ASX 200 (+0.98%) is extending its gains for a second straight session, hitting an intraday record high of 7,901.20.

    To the day ahead now, data releases include jobless claims, final March University of Michigan consumer survey, March MNI Chicago PMI, Kansas City Fed manufacturing activity, and February pending home sales in the US. In Europe we’ll have March unemployment claims and February retail sales for Germany, February money supply for the euro area and Q4 current account balance for the UK. Among central bank speakers, we have ECB’s Villleroy and Panetta.

    And while the EMR and most markets are off on their Easter break, Friday will see the important February March PCE inflation print in the US, as well as March flash inflation prints in France and Italy. And we are also due to hear from Fed’s Powell and Daly.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 08:23
  36. Site: Zero Hedge
    7 hours 7 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried To Be Sentenced For Fraud Today

    Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times,

    The long-running legal saga of Sam Bankman-Fried will come to an end on March 28 when Judge Lewis Kaplan announces the sentence of the FTX founder during a 9:30 a.m. hearing at the U.S. Courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

    In November 2023, jurors decided to convict Mr. Bankman-Fried on all seven of counts of conspiracy and fraud with which government lawyers charged him.

    Mr. Bankman-Fried and his attorneys have repeatedly argued that he didn’t intentionally do anything wrong and that he deserves no more than 6 1/2 years in jail. In his trial testimony in October 2023, Mr. Bankman-Fried insisted he used sophisticated analytics to try to keep track of the state of FTX’s finances and suggested that subordinates acting without his knowledge or imprimatur made costly mistakes.

    But prosecutors, citing testimony from Alameda Research head Caroline Ellison, who was at times romantically involved with Mr. Bankman-Fried, vehemently disagreed with the more charitable view and are pressing for a sentence of half a century or longer.

    The government’s tough stance has found support from the current CEO of FTX, John Ray III, the former chair of the recovery corporation in another high-profile insolvency: that of Enron, which imploded in December 2001. In a letter to Judge Kaplan, Mr. Ray denounced the “categorically, callously, and demonstrably false” claims that Mr. Bankman-Fried and his lawyers have put forth in the hope of getting a lighter sentence.

    Occupying a middle ground between the defense position and the prosecutors, Jeffrey Hooke, a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business in Maryland and former investment banker, said that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s transgressions are serious but nowhere near on par with those of convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff, for instance, who received a 150-year sentence for his $65 billion Ponzi scheme and died in prison in 2021.

    Mr. Bankman-Fried deserves a lighter sentence than either Mr. Madoff or the senior Enron executives responsible for the calamity of December 2001, Mr. Hooke said.

    “Now, stuck with a guilty verdict, an appropriate sentence seems to me to be at least 10 years. The Enron guys essentially got 12 years after appealing longer sentences, and I might argue that they were truly aware of their crimes, whereas Bankman-Fried might have been somewhat less aware or deliberate,” Mr. Hooke told The Epoch Times.

    Dominoes Fall

    The verdict in November 2023 came exactly one year after a Nov. 2, 2022, report in the cryptocurrency publication Coindesk began to stoke wide concern about the state of FTX’s finances. The report cited a leaked balance sheet of FTX’s hedge fund trading affiliate, Alameda Research.

    According to Coindesk’s analysis, a bulk of Alameda’s $14.6 billion of assets was in the form of FTX’s own crypto token, FTT, rather than a fiat currency. This not only suggested that Alameda’s wealth was potentially less fungible than many had assumed but also pointed to extensive commingling of FTX customer deposits with the hedge fund affiliate.

    Whether or not Coindesk was correct to impute instability and weakness to FTX on the basis of its position in FTT, the reaction in the market was swift. On Nov. 6, 2022, Changpeng Zhao, then-CEO of Binance, one of the other leading cryptocurrency exchanges, sent out a sharply worded post on Twitter.

    Mr. Zhao alluded to the fact that Binance had been distancing itself from FTX over the past year and had received the equivalent of about $2.1 billion in U.S. dollars in the form of both cash and the FTT token.

    “Due to recent revelations that have come to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. We will try to do so in a way that minimizes market impact,” Mr. Zhao wrote.

    Despite that assurance, Binance’s move, and forthright public announcement, immediately helped fuel a run on the bank during which customers pulled $6 billion from FTX in three days.

    The exchange would never recover; some $9 billion of customer funds are still lost through the commingling of funds and Bankman-Fried’s lavish spending.

    Damian Williams, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, details the indictment of Samuel Bankman-Fried in New York City, on Dec, 13, 2022. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

    The Feds Move In

    U.S. federal prosecutors were quick to take action. On Dec. 13, 2022, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury had returned an indictment charging Mr. Bankman-Fried with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, campaign finance violations, and fraud against the Federal Election Commission.

    The last allegation relates to Mr. Bankman-Fried drawing upon customer deposits to make large donations to both Democrats and Republicans with whom he wanted to curry favor.

    But it was mainly Democrats who benefited from Mr. Bankman-Fried’s largesse, including a reported $5.2 million donation to then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020. According to The Wall Street Journal, this gift made Mr. Bankman-Fried second only to Michael Bloomberg among top-spending backers of President Biden.

    Government lawyers briefly dropped the campaign finance charges on the technical grounds that Bahamas authorities hadn’t included them among their stated grounds for extraditing Mr. Bankman-Fried from the Bahamas to New York to face trial in December 2022. Then, in August 2023, prosecutors did an about-face and announced that Mr. Bankman-Fried was still on the hook for campaign finance violations.

    Story continues below advertisement

    “The Justice Department has filed charges alleging that Samuel Bankman-Fried perpetrated a range of offenses in a global scheme to deceive and defraud customers and lenders of FTX and Alameda, the defendant’s crypto hedge fund, as well as a conspiracy to defraud the United States government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

    Michael J. Driscoll, assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, was blunt about Mr. Bankman-Fried’s misuse of FTX deposits to pay Alameda’s expenses and to make other investments.

    “If you deceive and defraud your customers, the FBI will be persistent in our efforts to bring you to justice,” Mr. Driscoll said.

    In this courtroom sketch, Sam Bankman-Fried watches as defense lawyer Mark Cohen makes his opening remarks in Mr. Bankman-Fried's fraud trial over the collapse of FTX, at Federal Court in New York, on Oct. 4, 2023. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)

    A Fatal Move

    Bankman-Fried didn’t gain any sympathy from the media, the public, or prosecutors by situating himself and nine FTX colleagues in an 11,500-square-foot suite in a $35 million Bahamas mansion.

    Mr. Hooke suggested that some people still may not fully appreciate the extent of the error that Mr. Bankman-Fried made in agreeing to waive his right to formal extradition hearings and undergo transfer to the United States.

    “He should never have left the Bahamas. He could have dragged out the extradition request for years, and by the time he was back in New York, a lot of this controversy would have blown over, and he could cut a decent plea deal,” Mr. Hooke told The Epoch Times.

    Once taken into custody in New York, Mr. Bankman-Fried underwent a lengthy ordeal, during which both a federal appeals court and Judge Kaplan repeatedly ruled against granting him pre-trial release.

    Judge Kaplan said that, given the seriousness of the charges against him, Mr. Bankman-Fried posed a flight risk, and the judge overruled arguments from the defense team that his dietary needs went unmet in prison and he was unable to confer properly with his lawyers in preparation for trial.

    Mr. Bankman-Fried’s personal life also became the subject of extensive media scrutiny in the weeks leading up to the trial’s commencement.

    The Epoch Times reached out to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s legal team for comment but received none by press time.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 08:15
  37. Site: Zero Hedge
    7 hours 37 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Leaked Document Reveals Amazon To Dump Office Space, In Cost-Cutting Move Amid CRE Tower Crisis

    Readers are well aware that the office segment of the commercial real estate sector has been in turmoil for the past year with soaring vacancy rates, a record amount of available sublease space, and rising defaults.

    Cost-cutting strategies by major corporations will accelerate the office downturn. This will be in the form of lease expirations and/or the early termination of leases. 

    A leaked document by Business Insider reveals that Amazon is trying to save $1.3 billion over the next three to five years. A person familiar with the new strategy said the company plans to "let certain leases naturally expire, stop the use of some office floors, and negotiate early lease terminations for some buildings." 

    The person said Amazon's current office vacancy rate is 33.8% but expects it to drop to 25% by the end of the year and decrease to 10% over the next three to five years. According to the document, this move to shrink Amazon's corporate footprint will save the company $1.3 billion in annual operating expense savings. 

    On Tuesday, BI reported that Amazon initiated another round of layoffs, this time 160 employees from its advertising unit, extending its 18 months of job cuts. The current high office vacancy rate is a direct result of slower growth and continued layoffs. 

    Like Google, Meta, and many other big tech companies, Amazon overhired in the run-up to and during Covid. Now, the hiring cycle is reversing as artificial intelligence threatens white-collar jobs. 

    In an email to BI, Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson, said: 

    "We're constantly evaluating our real-estate portfolio based on the dynamic and diverse needs of Amazon's businesses by looking at trends in how employees are using our offices.

     "In some cases, employees may move buildings to increase collaboration and drive better utilization of our workspaces. In other cases, we may take on additional space where we're currently limited or make adjustments where we have excess capacity. The changes we've already made are improving vacancy rates, and we expect to see further progress as we continue to learn and iterate on our portfolio."

    Amazon is one of many companies that have been shrinking its corporate footprint. Many other big tech firms have been slashing square footage as office space floods the market, pressuring tower values lower and leaving owners with a difficult decision to either refinance (if they can) or default. 

    The rating agency Fitch recently warned that the sliding tower value could exceed GFC's real estate crisis, as the bottom has yet to be found. 

    One week ago, Goldman told clients that office commercial mortgage-backed securities were being extended and modified rather than refinanced, which has "helped mitigate a default wave and a sharp pick-up in losses on CRE loan portfolios." But this only means the can is being kicked down the road until after the presidential elections. 

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 07:45
  38. Site: Zero Hedge
    8 hours 2 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Bad Is Good

    Via PraCap.com,

    Everyone thinks of inflation as being purely a financial phenomenon. However, it is much more than that. It is also a social phenomenon. As the inflation accelerates, an opportunist class rises to the top of society, and the productive class is impoverished. Inflation re-orients all economic activities, encouraging speculation at the expense of work, and forever changing the people who experience it. This societal aspect is rarely discussed.

    Fortunately, my buddy, Erik Renander, recently wrote a blog post on the topic. As he did a better job of it than I would ever hope to, with his permission, I’ve re-posted his entry in its entirety.

    For disclosure, I’m a paid-up subscriber to YWR. If you enjoyed this blog post, I recommend you also check out his recent podcast with my friends at the Market Huddle.  

    The following was originally published on YWR on March 23rd, 2024…


    Disclosure: These are personal views only and not investment recommendations. For investment advice seek professional help.

    We’ve learned a lot from Project Zimbabwe.

    We’ve learned that as inflation takes hold, the prices of everything rise unimaginably. Daily goods, stock prices, real estate, everything.

    We reviewed the example of Delta Breweries, a beer company where volumes were unchanged over a 7 year period, and yet the share price rose 1000x.

    Source: Project Zimbabwe presentation and company filings.

    We learned that in high periods of inflation, inflation becomes the dominant factor. It becomes less about what you own (value vs growth or tech vs banks) and more that you own something.

    We learned that in times of high inflation the risk is not so much to the left (20% stock market correction), but to the right.

    It’s the risk that prices rise unimaginably and you are left behind.

    We learned from from Zimbabwe that paradoxically, Bad is Good when it comes to the stock market.

    There can be power outages, crop failures, people walking around with no money and yet the market goes to the moon.

    Stocks, property, precious metals; everything goes up as people scramble to escape cash.

    But that’s Zimbabwe. It’s Africa.

    We study it because it’s a useful exaggeration. It’s a way for us to understand how markets dynamics change as inflation rises.

    But that type of a market environment is rare in this day and age. We have to study obscure countries in Africa, or Latin America to understand what happens.

    Thankfully, that would never happen here. Right?

    We don’t have to worry about high inflation. The Fed has raised rates, inflation is moderating and things are under control.

    Still, it might be useful to be able recognize the signs if things were shifting towards a hyper inflationary environment. And what would those signs be?

    Of course there would be monthly economic statistics to show us CPI was running structurally higher, but maybe if inflation numbers were bouncing around a lot it might be hard to tell the trend, especially in the beginning.

    But maybe there would be other signs along the way, which would warn us inflation was going to get a lot worse. Maybe there would be cultural signs that things were going to spiral out of control.

    The best account I’ve come across of the cultural signs leading to inflation is ‘Fiat Money Inflation in France’ by Andrew Dickson White, a history professor and founder of Cornell. It was written back in 1896 as a historical review of the Assignats and France’s slide into inflation in 1789.

    As with Zimbabwe, we learn that the worse things seem to get, the more the market rises.

    It’s another example of the Bad is Good theme.

    So what were some of the signs along the way from France’s slide?

    It always starts the same way. Business is slow and the government is looking for a shortcut.

    EARLY in the year 1789 the French nation found itself in deep financial embarrassment: there was a heavy debt and a serious deficit.

    There was a general want of confidence in business circles; capi- tal had shown its proverbial timidity by retiring out of sight as far as possible; throughout the land was stagnation.

    Statesmanlike measures, careful watching and wise management would, doubtless, have ere long led to a return of confidence, a reappearance of money and a resumption of business; but these involved patience and self-denial, and, thus far in human history, these are the rarest products of political wisdom. Few nations have ever been able to exercise these virtues; and France was not then one of these few.

    There was a general search for some short road to prosperity: ere long the idea was set afloat that the great want of the country was more of the circulating medium; and this this was speedily followed by calls for an issue of paper money.

    In the beginning there is resistance to large issuances of debt. It is seen as being financial imprudent. But, gradually the politicians and the people learn to crave it, and the debt increases exponentially. There is no more resistance.

    France was now fully committed to a policy of inflation; and, if there had been any question of this before, all doubts were removed now by various acts very significant as showing the exceeding difficulty of stopping a nation once in the full tide of a depreciating currency.

    The first inflation bills were passed with great difficulty, after very sturdy resistance and by a majority of a few score out of nearly a thousand votes; but we observe now that new inflation measures were passed more and more easily and we shall have occasion to see the working of this same law in a more striking degree as this history develops itself.

    US Treasury Debt, corporate bonds and bank loans outstanding. Source: FRED

    The economy rebounds after every stimulus, but the rebounds get shorter and shorter.

    The great majority of Frenchmen now became desperate optimists, declaring that inflation is prosperity. Throughout France there came temporary good feeling. The nation was becoming inebriated with paper money. The good feeling was that of a drunkard just after his draught; and it is to be noted as a simple historical fact, corresponding to a physiological fact, that, as draughts of paper money came faster the successive periods of good feeling grew shorter.

    Inflation starts to change the culture. There becomes an obsession with luxury and speculation.

    But these evils, though great, were small compared to those far more deep-seated signs of disease which now showed themselves throughout the country. One of these was the obliteration of thrift from the minds of the French people. The French are naturally thrifty; but, with such masses of money and with such uncertainty as to its future value, the ordinary motives for saving and care diminished, and a loose luxury spread throughout the country.

    There is an obsession with trading and speculation.

    A still worse outgrowth was the increase of speculation and gambling. With the plethora of paper currency in 1791 appeared the first evidences of that cancerous disease which always follows large issues of irredeemable currency,—a disease more permanently injurious to a nation than war, pestilence or famine.

    For at the great metropolitan centers grew a luxurious, speculative, stock-gambling body, which, like a malignant tumor, absorbed into itself the strength of the nation and sent out its cancerous fibres to the remotest hamlets. At these city centers abundant wealth seemed to be piled up: in the country at large there grew a dislike of steady labor and a contempt for moderate gains and simple living.

    Now began to be seen more plainly some of the many ways in which an inflation policy robs the working class. As these knots of plotting schemers at the city centers were becoming bloated with sudden wealth, the producing classes of the country, though having in their possession more and more currency, grew lean. In the schemes and speculations put forth by stock-jobbers and stimulated by the printing of more currency, multitudes of small fortunes were absorbed and lost while a few swollen fortunes were rapidly aggregated in the larger cities.

    Speculation and inflation lead to corruption.

    Nor was this reckless and corrupt spirit confined to business men; it began to break out in official circles, and public men who, a few years before, had been thought above all possibility of taint, became luxurious, reckless, cynical and finally corrupt. Mirabeau himself, who, not many months previous, had risked imprisonment and even death to establish constitutional government, was now at this very time—secretly receiving heavy bribes. When, at the downfall of the monarchy a few years later, the famous iron chest of the Tuileries was opened, there were found evidences that, in this carnival of inflation and corruption, he had been a regularly paid servant of the Royal court.

    The artful plundering of the people at large was bad enough, but worse still was this growing corruption in official and legislative circles. Out of the speculating and gambling of the inflation period grew luxury, and, out of this, corruption.

    Trust in politicians and the media declines.

    The artful plundering of the people at large was bad enough, but worse still was this growing corruption in official and legislative circles. Out of the speculating and gambling of the inflation period grew luxury, and, out of this, corruption. It grew as naturally as a fungus on a muck heap. It was first felt in business operations, but soon began to be seen in the legislative body and in journalism.

    Like in Zimbabwe the Speculators realize they should borrow to buy assets.

    As manufacturers had closed, wages had fallen, until all that kept them up seemed to be the fact that so many laborers were drafted off into the army. From this state of things came grievous wrong and gross fraud. Men who had foreseen these results and had gone into debt were of course jubilant. He who in 1790 had borrowed 10,000 francs could pay his debts in 1796 for about 35 francs.

    The rise of the Debtor Class

    There appeared, as another outgrowth of this disease, what has always been seen under similar circumstances. It is a result of previous, and a cause of future evils. This outgrowth was a vast debtor class in the nation, directly interested in the depreciation of the currency in which they were to pay their debts. This body of debtors soon saw, of course, that their interest was to depreciate the currency in which their debts were to be paid; and these were speedily joined by a far more influential class; by that class whose speculative tendencies had been stimulated by the abundance of paper money, and who had gone largely into debt, looking for a rise in nominal values.

    The Debtor Class become celebrities and mix with the politicians.

    Soon demagogues of the viler sort in the political clubs began to pander to it; a little later important persons in this debtor class were to be found intriguing in the Assembly—first in its seats and later in more conspicuous places of public trust.

    Before long, the debtor class became a powerful body extending through all ranks of society. From the stock-gambler who sat in the Assembly to the small land speculator in the rural districts; from the sleek inventor of canards on the Paris Exchange to the lying stock-jobber in the market town, all pressed vigorously for new issues of paper; all were apparently able to demonstrate to the people that in new issues of paper lay the only chance for national prosperity.

    J0H10R Washington, DC, USA. 12th Apr, 2017. Laurence “Larry” Fink, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock, Inc., speaks during an Economic Club of Washington event in Washington, DC, on April 12, 2017. Credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar/Alamy Live News

    This great debtor class, relying on the multitude who could be approached by superficial arguments, soon gained control. Strange as it might seem to those who have not watched the same causes at work at a previous period in France and at various times in other countries, while every issue of paper money really made matters worse, a superstition gained ground among the people at large that, if only enough paper money were issued and were more cunningly handled the poor would be made rich. Henceforth all opposition was futile.

    As the wealth disparity increases there are calls to expropriate wealth from the rich.

    But now another source of wealth was opened to the nation. There came a confiscation of the large estates of landed proprietors who had fled the country. An estimate in 1793 made the value of these estates three billions of francs.

    and on June 22, 1793, the Convention determined that there should be a Forced Loan, secured on the confiscated lands of the emigrants and levied upon all married men with incomes of ten thousand francs, and upon all un- married men with incomes of six thousand francs. It was calculated that these would bring into the treasury a thousand millions of francs.

    As daily goods get too expensive, people start to loot the stores.

    Marat declared loudly that the people, by hanging shopkeepers and plundering stores, could easily remove the trouble. The result was that on the 28th of February, 1793, at eight o’clock in the evening, a mob of men and women in disguise began plundering the stores and shops of Paris. At first they demanded only bread; soon they insisted on coffee and rice and sugar; at last they seized everything on which they could lay their hands—cloth, clothing, groceries and luxuries of every kind. Two hundred such places were plundered. This was endured for six hours and finally order was restored only by a grant of seven million francs to buy off the mob.

    Politicians and financiers start to think they can solve everything by issuing more debt. It’s not necessary to balance budgets or pay for spending through taxes (which would be unpopular).

    And now was seen, taking possession of the nation, that idea which developed so easily out of the fiat money system the idea that the ordinary needs of government may be legitimately met wholly by the means of paper currency; that taxes may be dispensed with. As a result, it was found that the assignat printing press was the one resource left to the government, and the increase in the volume of paper money became every day more appalling.

    It’s natural to think the financiers in 1789 France must not have known what they were doing or been uneducated, but they were actually some of the brightest in Europe.

    All this vast chapter in financial folly is sometimes referred to as if it resulted from the direct action of men utterly unskilled in finance. This is a grave error. That wild schemers and dreamers took a leading part in setting the fiat money system going is true; that speculation and interested financiers made it worse is also true: but the men who had charge of French finance during the Reign of Terror and who made these experiments, which seem to us so monstrous, in order to rescue themselves and their country from the flood which was sweeping everything to financial ruin were universally recognized as among the most skillful and honest financiers in Europe.

    Smart speculators buy up the personal property of the working class.

    The hopes of many were revived by the fact that in spite of the decline of paper there was an exceedingly brisk trade in all kinds of permanent property. Whatever articles of permanent value certain needy people were willing to sell certain cunning people were willing to buy and to pay good prices for in assignats.

    At this, hope revived for a time in certain quarters. But ere long it was discovered that this was one of the most distressing results of a natural law which is sure to come into play under such circumstances. It was simply a feverish activity caused by the intense desire of a large number of the shrewder class to convert their paper money into anything and everything which they could hold and hoard until the collapse which they foresaw should take place. This very activity in business simply indicated the disease. It was simply legal robbery of the more enthusiastic and trusting by the more cold-hearted and keen. It was the “unloading” of the assignats upon the mass of the people.

    An enormous wealth disparity develops between those who saw what was happening and levered up to purchase more assets, and those who didn’t.

    The question will naturally be asked, On whom did this vast depreciation mainly fall at last? When this currency had sunk to about one three-hundredth part of its nominal value and, after that, to nothing, in whose hands was the bulk of it? The answer is simple.

    Financiers and men of large means were shrewd enough to put as much of their property as possible into objects of permanent value. The working classes had no such foresight or skill or means. On them finally came the great crushing weight of the loss. After the first collapse came up the cries of the starving.

    Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances 2022.

    Those are some of the key warning signs from Fiat Money Inflation in France, and I recommend reading the whole story, but as I said… it’s not something we need to worry about.

    Have a good weekend.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 07:20
  39. Site: Vox Cantoris
    8 hours 6 min ago
  40. Site: Vox Cantoris
    8 hours 10 min ago
  41. Site: Vox Cantoris
    8 hours 12 min ago
  42. Site: Eccles is saved
    8 hours 13 min ago
    Donald Trump has sent out the message, Happy Holy Week! Let's Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.

    The author (no, not really).

    I supposed at firat that this would be a Bible written by Mr Trump, in which case it would have the following features: All in capitals. Silly made-up names for people he doesn't like (I would never do that, would I?) All the disciples wearing red hats. God referred to as "Donald". "Make Heaven Great Again" the main message of the Gospels. But, I admit that I was wrong. It is simply a King James Bible with a few add-ons.

    After all, the new Pope Francis Bible includes extra books - the books of Laudato Si', Amoris Laetitia, Traditionis Custodes, and Fiducia Supplicans - and I can't imagine anyone objecting to that!

    "Not only did he sack me, but he gave me a copy of his book."

    What Donald actually adds are things such as the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. Mere Britons may wonder why the US Constitution is so sacred that it keeps getting amended, but again I refer to Pope Francis's treatment of the Gospel...

    Uncle Joe is working on a God Bless Biden Bible, with innovations like the Ten Commendments being deleted, and the inclusion of extra documents, such as advertisements for Planned Parenthood and Graeter's chocolate chip ice-cream.

    Recommended to all DEVOUT Catholics!

    So finally, we come to the God Bless Eccles Bible. Only $50 so it should outsell the God Bless The USA Bible (which costs $60). With the popular advertising slogans Make Eccles Rich Again and Become Saved By Reading This Book! this is a Douai–Rheims Bible with some of my most popular blog posts (more than 3 readers!) added as bonus chapters to be read out at Mass. These include Why the Pope is right about everything; How to preach a royal wedding sermon; The toxic tradition of the Latin Mass; The World Cup of Bad Hymns; and Is Pope Francis a Trad? So I'll stop there, as I have to do a few Bible-signing sessions today - Westminster Cathedral, Waterstones, etc.
  43. Site: Mises Institute
    8 hours 22 min ago
    Author: Wanjiru Njoya
    While progressives tout foreign aid to poor countries as socially and economically beneficial, in truth it makes poor nations even poorer. Foreign aid is a poor substitute for free trade and free markets.
  44. Site: non veni pacem
    8 hours 26 min ago
    Author: Mark Docherty

    Holy Thursday marks the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist. What an incredible gift, and yet how very much it is ignored, or worse. Get to Confession, folks. Sorrowful Mysteries these three days. Blessed Triduum, all. -nvp

    “Holy Thursday celebrates especially the institution of the Mass at the Last Supper as the Sacrifice and Sacrament of Christian unity. On this day also, Jesus first shared His priesthood with men by ordaining the Apostles. Then He uttered the command that is the reason for every Mass: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” This is a day to think of the great love Jesus showed in instituting the Eucharist and to return that love by receiving Him in Holy Communion. Through Holy Communion we are united to Christ and to one another.”

    THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS
    During the Stripping of the Altars, the celebrant recites the following antiphon and begins Psalm 21.

    They have divided my garments among them, and for my vesture they have cast lots.

    Psalm 21: O God my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins. O my God, I shall cry by day, and thou wilt not hear: and by night, and it shall not be reputed as folly in me. But thou dwellest in the holy place, the praise of Israel. In thee have our fathers hoped: they have hoped, and thou hast delivered them. They cried to thee, and they were saved: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
    But I am a worm, and no man: the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people.
    All they that saw me have laughed me to scorn: they have spoken with the lips, and wagged the head.
    “He hoped in the Lord, let him deliver him: let him save him, seeing he delighteth in him.”
    For thou art he that hast drawn me out of the womb: my hope from the breasts of my mother.
    I was cast upon thee from the womb. From my mother’s womb thou art my God,
    Depart not from me. For tribulation is very near: for there is none to help me.
    Many calves have surrounded me: fat bulls have besieged me.
    They have opened their mouths against me, as a lion ravening and roaring.
    I am poured out like water; and all my bones are scattered. My heart is become like wax melting in the midst of my bowels.
    My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue hath cleaved to my jaws: and thou hast brought me down into the dust of death.
    For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have dug my hands and feet.
    They have numbered all my bones. And they have looked and stared upon me.
    They parted my garments amongst them; and upon my vesture they cast lots.
    But thou, O Lord, remove not thy help to a distance from me; look towards my defense.
    Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword: my only one from the hand of the dog.
    Save me from the lion’s mouth; and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns.
    I will declare thy name to my brethren: in the midst of the church will I praise thee.
    Ye that fear the Lord, praise him: all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him.
    Let all the seed of Israel fear him: because he hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of the poor man. Neither hath he turned away his face form me: and when I cried to him he heard me.
    With thee is my praise in a great church: I will pay my vows in the sight of them that fear him.
    The poor shall eat and shall be filled: and they shall praise the Lord that seek him: their hearts shall live for ever and ever.
    All the ends of the earth shall remember, and shall be converted to the Lord: And all the kindreds of the Gentiles shall adore in his sight.
    For the kingdom is the Lord’s; and he shall have dominion over the nations.
    All the fat ones of the earth have eaten and have adored: all they that go down to the earth shall fall before him.
    And to him my soul shall live: and my seed shall serve him.
    There shall be declared to the Lord a generation to come: and the heavens shall shew forth his justice to a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made.

    They have divided my garments among them, and for my vesture they have cast lots.

    https://tridentine-mass.blogspot.com/2022/04/holy-thursday.html

     

  45. Site: Zero Hedge
    8 hours 27 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    The Declining Value Of The US Federal Minimum Wage

    This graphic illustrates the history of the U.S. federal minimum wage using data compiled by Statista, in both nominal and real (inflation-adjusted) terms. The federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25 per hour in July 2009, where it has remained ever since.

    Nominal vs. Real Value

    The data Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu used to create this graphic can be found in the table below.

    What our graphic shows is how inflation has eroded the real value of the U.S. minimum wage over time, despite nominal increases.

    For instance, consider the year 1960, when the federal minimum wage was $1 per hour. After accounting for inflation, this would be worth around $10.28 today!

    The two lines converge at 2023 because the nominal and real value are identical in present day terms.

    Many States Have Their Own Minimum Wage

    According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 30 states and Washington, D.C. have implemented a minimum wage that is higher than $7.25.

    The following states have adopted the federal minimum: Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

    Meanwhile, the states of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee have no wage minimums, but have to follow the federal minimum.

    How Does the U.S. Minimum Wage Rank Globally?

    If you found this topic interesting, check out Mapped: Minimum Wage Around the World to see which countries have the highest minimum wage in monthly terms, as of January 2023.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 06:55
  46. Site: AsiaNews.it
    8 hours 38 min ago
    The Chinese president reassures of 'ample room for development' even for US companies, which are worried about the implications of the increasingly tightening mesh imposed by 'national security' laws and the crisis in the Chinese economy. Meanwhile, Beijing itself only plans 'national options' for the operating systems of government computers and servers.
  47. Site: AsiaNews.it
    8 hours 47 min ago
    The conflict with Hamas and the question of hostages is one of the "sensitive issues", but not the only one. From Jerusalem - the day after Pope Francis' letter to the Christians of the Holy Land - the patriarchal vicar for Israel recalls the tensions surrounding military service for the ultra-Orthodox, violence in Arab society, and growing anti-Semitism abroad. Political isolation also adds "suffering upon suffering". ...
  48. Site: Zero Hedge
    8 hours 52 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Baltimore Bridge Collapse May Cost Billions, Dramatically Disrupt Supply Chains

    By Noi Mahoney of FreightWaves

    The collapse of Maryland’s Francis Scott Key Bridge Tuesday after it was struck by a cargo ship continues to block access to the Port of Baltimore and could disrupt shipping flows across the U.S.

    The Singapore-flagged MV Dali container ship collided with the bridge around 1:35 a.m. on Tuesday. At least six people remain unaccounted for, CNN reports. With rescue and recovery operations ongoing, it’s unclear how long debris from the bridge will block the Patapsco River, which leads to the Port of Baltimore.

    For the shipping community, the accident will affect maritime lanes as carriers must seek alternative ports of call while the collapsed bridge continues to block the river, experts said.

    “Are any container vessels currently trapped in the bay? That is question No. 1,” Sanne Manders, president of international at Flexport, told FreightWaves. “Right now, there are two vessels trapped: the ship that caused the collision and another general cargo container vessel that is currently trapped.”

    The Port of Baltimore is the deepest harbor in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, with five public and 12 private terminals. The port administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Port officials posted on social media that they do not know how long ship traffic in and out of the port will be suspended, although trucks are still being processed.

    Manders said another important consideration is the scores of commercial vessels that regularly call at the Port of Baltimore.

    “In the next few weeks, 107 vessels will not be able to call that port and will have to divert to other ports,” Manders said. “The question is, are other ports able to absorb that capacity? The reality is that Baltimore is an important port, but for containerized trade, it is relatively small.”

    In 2023, the Port of Baltimore handled $80.8 billion in trade, including 1.1 million twenty-foot equivalent units, 1.3 million tons of roll-on/roll-off farm and construction machinery, 11.7 million tons of general cargo, and 847,158 shipments of cars and light trucks.

    A number of major companies have distribution warehouses and other facilities at or near the port, including Amazon, FedEx and BMW.

    In Maryland, most of the freight is regional, with about 36% of trucking tender volume staying in the state. An additional 22% goes to Pennsylvania and 15% goes to Virginia.

    Rachel Shames, vice president of pricing and procurement for CV International, a Norfolk, Virginia-based international logistics and transportation company, wrote in a market update that the collision is expected to create a temporary increase in cargo volume at other East Coast ports.

    “The full impacts of this disaster are not yet known, but it’s likely that nearby East Coast ports, including Norfolk, Philadelphia, New York and others will absorb cargo traffic from Baltimore in the short term,” Shames wrote. “This sudden increase in volume may strain operations at other ports.”

    Manders said what makes the Port of Baltimore unique is the volume of roll-on/roll-off cargo it handles, such as passenger vehicles, along with agricultural and industrial equipment.

    “Then you’re also getting into agricultural exports — rice, sugar, fertilizers, forestry products. It’s pretty big in Baltimore. Then there’s also a big paper industry there and construction materials,” Manders said. “I do think in other commodities and cars, this will have a major impact. There are also some metal exchange warehouses for nickel, tin and copper in Baltimore. Now those can also be moved to other ports, but those are bulky materials, and they don’t move them very easily.”

    Jeff Leppert, executive vice president of modal operations at Redwood Logistics, said some of the company’s shipper customers have several ships currently stuck at the port.

    “Other impacts include the Port of Baltimore’s fueling depot, which is currently unable to take fueling shipments for the near future,” Leppert told FreightWaves. “The stretch of I-695 that collapsed with the bridge is the only hazmat-approved bridge in the area, so those shipments will have a large diversion in the region and beyond.”

    He said all deep-water ships, vessels with a controlling depth of 50 feet, will have to be diverted to ports such as Norfolk and New York/NewJersey.

    “We are currently working with all of our shipping customers to find solutions now and for the coming months,” Leppert said.

    The Mediterranean Shipping Co. and Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. are two of the Port of Baltimore’s largest shipping lines. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment from FreightWaves.

    Paul Brashier, vice president of drayage and intermodal at ITS Logistics, said the priority right now is to ensure clients are making plans for containers that were originally routed to Baltimore.

    “These shipments will be discharged to other ports on the Eastern Seaboard,” Brashier said. “This also means that we must prepare trucking and transload capacity to be able to transport the impacted freight to the appropriate initial location.”

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 06:30
  49. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    9 hours 12 min ago
    "We do not presume to come to this thy table (o mercifull lord) trusting in our owne righteousnes, but in thy manifold and great mercies: we be not woorthie so much as to gather up the cromes under thy table: but thou art the same lorde whose propertie is alwayes to haue mercie: Graunt us therefore (gracious lorde) so to eate the fleshe of thy dere sonne Jesus Christ, and to drynke his bloud in Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com0
  50. Site: Padre Peregrino
    9 hours 22 min ago
    Author: Father David Nix
    When your son asks you in time to come, "What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?" then you shall say to your son, "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. [...]

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