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Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

The facts of a surreal yet broken (and hence increasingly controlled and desperate) financial system are becoming harder to deny and ignore. 

Below, we look at the evidence of control rather than the words of dishonest policy makers and ask a simple question: How long can lies supplant reality?

The Great Disconnect: Tanking Growth vs. Supported Markets

It’s becoming harder to keep up with the increasingly downgraded GDP growth estimations from the Atlanta Fed.

As recently as August, its GDPNow 3q21 estimates for the quarterly percentage change were as high as 6%.

But within a matter of weeks, this otherwise optimistic figure was cut embarrassingly in half.

Last month, their GDP forecast sank much further to 0.5%, and as of this writing, it has been downgraded yet again to 0.2%.

Needless to say, 6% estimated growth falling to effectively 0% growth is hardly a bullish indicator for the kind of strengthening economic conditions which one might otherwise associate with risk asset prices reaching all-time highs for the same period.

The growing yet steady disconnect between market highs and economic lows is getting harder to explain, ignore or deny by the architects of the most artificial, rigged and dishonest market cycle in modern history.

In short, it is no longer even worth pretending that stock markets are correlated to such natural measurements as a nation’s economic productivity.

After all, who needs GDP in the New Abnormal?

By now, even Fed doublespeak can’t hide the fact that the only market force which the post-08 markets require is an accommodative central bank—i.e., a firehose of multi-trillion liquidity on demand.

But as for this most recent GDP downgrade, it is being blamed on tanking US export data.

More Fantasy: Bogus or Real Taper?

The question facing investors heading into year-end is whether any of the foregoing realities will place pressure on the Fed to continue the now normalized fantasy of unlimited QE or stick to its equally fantastical “taper-talk.”

Toward this end, Powell could delay the planned “taper” or, as is likely, simply move ahead with what is essentially a bogus taper involving a nominally insignificant reduction in money printing offset by ongoing yet deliberately hidden liquidity from the Standard Repo Facility and FIMA swap lines.

Thus, whether we see a delayed taper or a bogus taper, the net result is still more fiat liquidity flooding the always dollar-thirsty (and QE-addicted) financial system.

This, of course, translates to increased currency debasement and thus rising tailwinds for gold, BTC, industrials and commodities.

Should, however, the FOMC announce a genuine taper, the net result for gold is still positive.

Yes, a real taper means slightly higher rates and increased volatility (bad for risk assets) along with a stronger dollar, but inflation rates will still supersede interest rates, favouring gold anyway you look at it.

Again, and as discussed in prior reports, gold can and will rise if rates rise, so long as inflation rises faster, which for all the reasons we’ve addressed elsewhere, convinces us that a future of negative real rates is the only future central banks can allow.

More Inflationary Tricks (i.e., Fantasy)

Why?

Because short of default, the only and time-tested trick left up the sleeves of debt-soaked policy makers to dig their way out of a nightmarish and historically unprecedented debt hole (which they alone created) is by pursuing policies of deeply negative real rates.

This twisted inflationary playbook, so familiar to rigged insiders yet unknown to the vast majority of retail investors, boils down to a policy play by which our “experts” solve debt with more debt and hide the truth behind more complex policy adjectives (i.e., lies).

Specifically, this means the “experts” will:  1) deliberately seek more inflation while 2) lying about true inflation levels and then 3) repress interest rates in order to partially inflate their way out of debt with 4) increasingly debased currencies.

Take the U.S. Dollar’s purchasing power, for example…

Keeping the Serfs Down—The Policy of the New Feudalism

Needless to say, more inflation is a direct tax on the increasingly poorer middle class.

Sadly, too many are too busy trying to make sense of months of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, movement restrictions, crime waves and inflating rent payments to notice that they have been made into serfs in a Brave New World where greater than 80% of the stock market wealth is held by the top 10% of the population.

Let’s be clear: I’m a screaming capitalist, but a pandemic world in which Bezos, Musk and other billionaire wealth has increased by 70% while 89 million Americans have lost their jobs is NOT capitalism, but a symptom of a rigged system in which the anti-trust rules I learned in law school, or the social and economic principles I learned in economics are simply gone.

Then again, when I was in school, we were once taught how to think, not what to think.

With each passing day, we see increased evidence of what I wrote (and described) elsewhere as a new feudalism marked by grotesquely distorted notions of truth, reporting, data, natural market forces and political/financial accountability.

In order to keep this report objective rather than an op-ed, let’s just consider the facts and case studies right before us.

Yellen & Dimon—Two Classic Lords Spinning Familiar Yarns

Take, for example, the aforementioned tanking of GDP, now being attributed to openly tanking export data out of the U.S. and the undeniable supply chain disruptions impacting the global economy.

To address this, none other than two of the most media prolific “lords” of the new feudalism, Fed Chairwoman-turned-Treasury-Secretary Janet Yellen and current JP Morgan CEO and 2008 bailout-beneficiary-turned-Fed-Crony, Jamie Dimon, assure us not to worry.

How nice.

Yellen, for her part, has recently said:

“I don’t think we’re about to lose control of inflation.”

 “As we make further progress on the pandemic, I expect these bottlenecks to subside. Americans will return to the labor force as conditions improve.”

Again: How nice.

But let’s not let warm words get in the way of cold facts.

Yellen, like every Fed Chair since Greenspan, has a long history of buying time with comforting words that have nothing to do with hard reality:

“You will never see another financial crisis in your lifetime.”
– Janet Yellen, spring 2018

“I do worry that we could have another financial crisis. ″
– Janet Yellen, fall 2018

Despite a long and well-documented history of outright dishonesty spewing from the mouths of financial media darlings and policymakers like Yellen and Dimon, both are now pushing a bullish “be calm and carry on while we profit and control” meme.

They recently seized upon Biden’s move to run the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on a 24/7 schedule to alleviate bottlenecks, which increased throughput by roughly 15% (3,500 containers/week v. 950,000 containers per month.)

That’s nice, and sure, it helps.

But despite such band-aid measures, supply chains won’t normalize until early 2023, at the earliest…and that assumes no further disruptions, which frankly, is a naive assumption.

Folks, it’s not up to Yellen or Dimon to give us honest guidance as to whether supply chains will normalise in 2021. It is up to China and Biden’s entirely Orwellian vaccine mandate.

Speaking of Yellen, Dimon et al, aren’t we all a bit curious about the now undeniable marriage of the Federal Reserve (an illegal private bank) and the U.S. Treasury Department?

And as for bank CEO’s like Dimon, have we not forgotten other bank CEOs like Goldman’s Hank Paulson, who made a similar “marriage” to the Treasury Department just in time to bail his former bank out of the Great Financial Crisis that it helped create?

Are these the honest brokers we want deciding our economic fates or signaling/controlling our economic future?

Vaccine Passes and Mandates—The Great Smokescreen

And as to the mandate… Note Yellen’s careful yet semantic magic of hiding autocracy behind humanitarian lingo.

Her comment above regarding bottlenecks “subsiding” once “we make further progress on the pandemic” is very comforting, no?

But it’s just another veiled way (i.e., smokescreen) of pushing a vaccine mandate which defies every principle of the social contract our founding fathers achieved in that silly document I revered as a 1L and known otherwise as the U.S. Constitution.

As I’ve said many times before, I’m no source for medical advice, and my circle includes many who are vaccinated and un-vaccinated alike—with equal respect for the choices we’ve made and equal disgust for the notion that such choices should be imposed rather than voluntary.

Simple Questions, Cold Math, Global Control

But should we not at least be asking ourselves if the pandemic discussion is less about global health and more about global control?

Without seeking to offend anyone’s COVID stance, can we nevertheless agree that C.J. Hopkins makes an undeniably clear and common-sensical point by simply asking a few basic questions?

For example, why has so much political, social and economic power been given to a minority of policy makers to scare/distract the world into ignoring a now obvious global power-shift justified by a virus which causes mild-to-moderate symptoms in 95% of the infected and whose case fatality rate is quantifiably somewhere in the range of 0.1% to 0.5%?

Yet despite such simple math, tens of thousands of firemen, police officers, nurses and military personnel—the very heroes who have placed themselves on the front lines of our increasingly criminalized, sick and psychologically damaged population– are now being forced out of work for not agreeing to a forced jab imposed by anti-heroes?

One has to at least wonder why so much effort has been made by a government-influenced/co-conspired media to spend its time criminalising the unvaccinated rather than making front-page noise pointing out the obvious criminalisation of our global financial system?

The Real Criminals

By that, I’m thinking of the years of recently revealed insider trading at the Fed, the anti-trust violations of the non-tax-paying Amazon robber-baron or the open media-censorship and just plain shady that occurs daily at Facebook—an entity so blatantly shameful that it thinks a name-change can hide its dark past?

Or how about years of open price manipulation by bullion banks, the BIS and other dark corners of the OTCto deliberately force the natural price of gold and silver to the floor in order to illegally price-fix and protect globally debased currencies from the embarrassment of what a natural gold price would otherwise confirm, namely: Your currency has died, thanks to the white-collar criminals otherwise touted as experts.

In case you think this is mere sensationalism or speculation, I’ve written hundreds of pages and countless reports of graphical/mathematical/objective evidence of the same, and even an entire book on the rigged-to-fail system otherwise passing as normal to make this clear distortion of economic rules and political laws objective rather than pejorative.

Nor am I/we alone in pointing out the obvious. From the honest minority in markets to an honest minority in politics, plain-spoken truth is fighting for free expression.

More Honest Voices

Take, for example, the recent press conference (ignored, of course, by the main/muddy stream media) held by key members of the European Parliament to openly defy the insanely autocratic notion of a health pass to distinguish the compliant from the free or the “safe” from the “unsafe”.

As one brave parliamentary member from Germany, Christine Anderson, candidly observed, if you think the vaccine pass was made because the government cares about you, you are clearly ignoring its real motive, which is to control you.

And this is straight from the European Parliament.

Control, of course, only works if enough people are scared, tired or uninformed enough to be controlled.

As for the financial system, signs of its increasingly obvious attempt at more controls to mask increasingly shameful policies are literally everywhere.

And yet… and yet…the media, the masses and the majority of investors continue to follow their murky and shady lead.

Again, just keep it simple and factual rather than partisan or medically controversial.

Criminal Evidence

In the last 20 years, for example, policy makers have tripled the global debt levels yet made no commensurate progress with global GDP, which is literally 1/3 of this embarrassing debt pile.

That is shameful. Debt like this always destroys economies. Always.

Instead, those same “experts” have mouse-clicked more instant money out of thin air in the last decade than all the money ever created by all the combined central banks since their inception.

They actually want you to believe that a debt crisis can be solved with alas…more debt.

Such staggering money creation has led unequivocally and directly to the greatest and most inflated risk asset bubble in the history of capital markets.

Yet rather than admit to the open failure of such monetary expansion, which has simply crushed the natural purchasing power of fiat currencies…

…the architects of this failed experiment will now try to blame such excessive debt and currency destruction on a pandemic rather than years of their own pre-COVID policy crimes.

Today, politicians and their central bank masters are literally comparing the Pandemic’s 4.9M death toll to the unthinkable disaster which was the +75M killed in World War 2.

They then employ this pandemic narrative to justify another Bretton Woods-like reset.

To those who have studied, or far worse, experienced the Second World War, do you think it’s even remotely fair to compare it to the “war on Covid”?

The Carefully Telegraphed “Reset”

And what is this “needed” reset?

In a nutshell, it’s more fake money in the form of CBDC or even digital SDR’s from that shameless control center of failed monetarism otherwise known as the IMF and a central bank near you.

Those Who Control Money & Information

In an open and free system, rather than criminalising police officers, nurses, or even athletes who refuse a jab, should we not be pointing our headlines, adjectives and subpoenas at the bankers, experts and policy makers who put the global financial system at this horrific, debt-soaked and socially destructive turning point?

Are you waiting for Mark Zuckerberg, Don Lemon, Wolf Blitzer or the censorship boards at YouTube or Google to guide you?

Sadly, those who control money as well as information have immense and undeniable power.

Thus, a media that controls deliberate COVID distraction, supported by the lords who created this financial serfdom, continues.

That is, the feudalists responsible for such grossly mismanaged financial markets are all too aware (and nervous) that they have equally created the greatest wealth transfer and wealth disparity ever witnessed, akin to the pre-revolutionary era of Bourbon France, Romanov Russia, Batista Cuba or Weimar Germany.

Such otherwise immoral and corrupt wealth disparity, wealth transfer and wealth creation explain why the very architects of the same would rather have the masses fighting about jabs, school boards, and “woke” SJWs gone wild rather than at themselves–the root cause of the fracturing we see all around us.

Why?

Because controlling serfs with lies, fear, and division is better than letting those serfs replace you with truths.

Truth Still Matters – Fundamentals, Too

For that select yet blunt and independent-thinking minority who thankfully prefer candor over propaganda, reality over fantasy and genuine rather than hyped solutions to the problems and problem-makers all around us, al l we can do is trust history, truth, natural market forces and each other.

As for us, our candid solution to the foregoing string cite of distortions, controls and historical tipping points remains the same.

Regardless of the tricks, resets, and digital new bluffs of the new feudalism, enough free-thinkers, nations, informed investors, and wealth managers understand that they hold a better (and golden) hand to combat the dirty hands and dirty currencies unravelling all around us.

If there’s one thing history and free market forces have taught us it’s this: In the end, broken systems die and real money returns.

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

Last night the news broke that former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, which has already metastasized to his bones.

The conversation has gone in two predictable directions.

On the one hand you have the predictable “out pouring of support” from fans of Team Blue, “liberal” journalists and celebrities.

On the other hand you have cynical commentary from Team Red, questioning the timing of the announcement and wondering how someone with such a high profile and (presumably) first class medical care could have cancer missed until such a late stage.

A third, quieter, option is to suggest a connection between this cancer and the Covid “vaccine”.

(A possibility I reject out of hand, because I don’t believe there is any chance at all he was really given the experimental shot.)

But all of these conversations miss the point.

The question is not “what caused Biden’s cancer?” or “why did they cover up Biden’s cancer?” it’s “why are they telling us Biden has cancer?”

Remember, the same media reporting “Biden has cancer” spent months reporting “Biden doesn’t have dementia” and “Biden’s as sharp as ever”, despite plain evidence to the contrary.

They lied. Over and and over again, for years. 

They quite literally told you to disregard the evidence of your eyes and ears.

Until they stopped, and suddenly Joe Biden’s “mental decline” was no longer a conspiracy theory, but totally real and the reason to put Kamala Harris on the ballot.

Joe Biden’s mental acuity did not change, all that changed was the requirement of the narrative.

Media reportage has no correlation with the truth. 

Not negative correlation, no correlation. They are unrelated.

If Joe Biden had cancer, and it was narratively convenient that he did not, they would say he did not.

If Joe Biden didn’t have cancer, and it was narratively convenient that he did, they would say he did.

If it becomes narratively convenient that Biden no longer has cancer, they will just say it went away – and that will have no bearing or relation on whether or not it did go away, or ever existed in the first place.

If Joe Biden died tomorrow, and it was narratively convenient he was alive, they would pretend he was alive. 

And with current video and photo editing software it wouldn’t even be that hard.

The news cycle has a purpose that is not related to facts or truth – again, not “opposed to” but “not related” – and as such our conversations about “the news” must be had, almost entirely, on the meta level.

Why this? Why now?

I really feel like I have said this a lot.

It is an interesting kind of horror that modern academia, an environment where objective facts should be most revered, has instead become an environment where objective facts are most reviled.  The complete denial of biological reality within the western academic community is an enduring source of social disruption.  Their continued promotion of gender fluid theory, based on zero concrete scientific evidence, is stealing opportunities from real women and turning western education into an embarrassing mockery.

The Trump Administration's efforts to reverse the cancerous growth of wokeness in public institutions is making a difference, but there are still many areas of American life that will remain infected for years to come.

The latest example is the recent announcement that Dr. Rachel Levine (formerly Richard Levine), a man pretending to be a woman, is  being awarded an honorary degree by Smith College in Massachusetts.  Keep in mind, Smith College is a historic private women's college. 

Today, beginning at 10:00 a.m. ET, @smithcollege will have its annual commencement ceremony.

Congratulations to all the female graduates of this historically women-only college!

During the ceremony, @smithcollege will award an honorary degree to Richard ("Rachel") Levine, who… pic.twitter.com/lOaRfBSgAa

Levine has also been given the honor of addressing graduates in a commencement speech with "words of wisdom" for women entering the professional world.  Rachel Levine served as the "first trans Secretary for Health" for the US Department of Health and Human Services under the Biden Administration.  Levine exploited the position to push trans propaganda on the American public.  He also widely advocated for the gender transitioning of children.  

Chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith and opened in 1875, Smith is a member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of women's colleges in the Northeastern United States.  It should be noted that Smith College has received extensive federal funding, which is something the Trump Administration might want to look into.

The school's decision to give an honorary degree to a man has led to some backlash, with women protesters speaking out on the hypocrisy.  The issue of men going trans and invading women's spaces has divided the feminist movement, with woke extremists on one side and "TERFs" (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) on the other side.  The "TERF" label is meant to be a pejorative insult to those women that refuse to accept trans women (men) as legitimate women.

A trantifa woman harassed and cursed out a group of women protesting @smithcollege, an extremely woke historical women’s college, for awarding Richard “Rachel” Levine an honorary degree. pic.twitter.com/UYwsXJ9y9f

The overarching problem with the trans movement is that it demands the normalization and even celebration of mental illness under protected group status.  On the totem pole of social justice, trans people are at the top, enjoying a venerated position even above black women and gays.  The level of hand holding and social coddling of transgenders hit almost worshipful heights during the Biden Administration's woke blitz.  It was a primary factor in the eventual fall of the Democratic Party.   

Virtue signaling among the academic elite suggests that progressives have still not learned their lesson when it comes to biological reality and the US has a ways to go before the trans issue is settled. 

Woke elites running Harvard University into the ground faced fresh controversy on Monday morning as House Republicans launched a formal inquiry into the school's reported ties with foreign adversaries, citing serious national security and ethical concerns.

The House Select Committee on China, joined by the House Committee on Education and Workforce and Chairwoman of House Republican Leadership Elise Stefanik, sent a letter to Harvard demanding transparency and accountability regarding the university's partnerships with foreign adversaries and entities involved in human rights abuses. 

The investigation focuses on the university's reported partnerships with Chinese military-linked institutions, sanctioned entities, and researchers tied to the Iranian regime.

House Republicans are demanding internal documents and testimony, adding to a growing list of challenges plaguing the university, including recent controversies over campus antisemitism and donor backlash.

Addressed to Harvard President Alan Garber, the letter sent by Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI), Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI), and House Republican Leadership Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) outlined Harvard's troubling partnerships and activities that raise alarm bells about national security and ethical concerns: 

• Harvard's repeated training of members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC)—a U.S.-sanctioned paramilitary group that plays a central role in the Chinese Communist Party's genocide of Uyghur Muslims

• Research partnerships funded by the Department of Defense with Chinese military-linked universities, including Tsinghua, Zhejiang, and Huazhong Universities

• Collaborations with Iranian-government-funded researchers, including projects financed by the Iranian National Science Foundation

• Organ transplantation research involving PRC-based collaborators, amid mounting evidence of the CCP's forced organ harvesting practices

Moolenaar stated, "Harvard trained members of a sanctioned Chinese paramilitary group responsible for genocide, and its researchers partnered with Chinese military universities on DoD-funded research and worked with researchers funded by the Iranian regime," adding, "These are not isolated incidents—they represent a disturbing pattern that puts U.S. national security at risk. The Select Committee's investigation will deliver answers, expose the truth, and hold Harvard accountable to the American people."

Chairman Walberg stated, "No American university or college should be assisting the CCP in expanding its influence, oppressing American citizens, or undermining U.S. national security," adding, "Unfortunately, we have found several instances in which Harvard University aided and even collaborated with the CCP – including helping Chinese researchers on military projects funded by the Iranian government. This is unacceptable and President Garber needs to provide answers to Congress for this colossal failure."

And Chairwoman Stefanik stated, "Harvard University must be held accountable. I demand full transparency and immediate cooperation with the Select Committee's investigation. We must ensure that no American institution enables the CCP's military modernization or the Iranian regime's technological ambitions — especially under the guise of academic exchange." 

The news of the House Republican investigation into Harvard's questionable foreign ties follows widespread layoffs reported last week following the U.S. government's termination notices for federally funded research projects. 

So far, the Trump administration has canceled approximately $2.7 billion in grants, with another nearly $1 billion in funding for Harvard's research partners at risk.

President Garber announced he would soon take a 25% pay cut after losing federal funding. He refused the Trump administration's simple request to comply with concerns over DEI and antisemitism.

"More than 80 faculty members — from several schools and academic units — have pledged to donate 10 percent of their salaries for up to a year to support the University if it continues to resist the Trump administration," The Harvard Crimson recently reported.

So brave.

Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman commented last week about the school's death spiral.

.@Harvard is dying from a series of self-inflicted wounds. https://t.co/gYhQhoxp9k

I have reached out to members of the @Harvard Corporation Board offering to help, but I have received no response.

I did the same shortly after October 7th and my offers to help were rejected. At least back then, I got a response.

Chair Penny Pritzker and the entire Harvard… https://t.co/JUpbhVV6I6

We suspect House Republicans won't stop with Harvard. These investigations are likely to expand to other Ivy League schools that have aggressively pushed toxic Marxist DEI agendas—initiatives that, in some cases, may have been influenced by foreign adversaries to undermine the nation. Some of these elite schools foster disdain for America, which is deeply troubling. This trend must be confronted and reversed.

*   *    * 

Full Letter to Harvard U. from House Republicans...

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

What kinds of attitudes do you bring to the prospect of political and social change? The answer matters more than we think. Those with hope and passion for improvement tend to win the day, especially if the other side merely wallows in grievance and despair.

This is true for writers and intellectuals too. We are all trying to find our way through in a thicket of confusion in what are truly treacherous times. In the backdrop stands a complex emotional template that can profoundly affect how we see the world and its future.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that he rejects both optimism and pessimism, preferring to look at reality itself, even in the darkest of times, with hope and not despair. It is equally important to look at the brightest times with trepidation that something might, alas, be broken underneath the surface and therefore they won’t last.

Those words have stuck with me. A naive optimism is as pointless as the fatalism of a perpetually downcast pessimism that sees every sign of improvement as a delusion.

The times call on all of us to adopt a more Chestertonian attitude toward the world around us, our expectations for the future, and our own role in it. The bias of eschatological certainty can blind in both directions, either by chaining us to dread of a doomed future or by luring us into complacency with visions of an eminently dawning utopia.

Many people are traumatized from the last five years. We’ve discovered that many of the conspiracy theories are true. There were memes passed around over these years that the wackiest theories last month seem to come true this month.

Elon Musk even confirmed it. When he took over Twitter and got a first-hand look at what was being censored and why, he told interviewers that every conspiracy theory is true and then some. His comment underscores the feeling of betrayal sensed by everyone in public and private life today.

When you go through times like this, the oldest spiritual battles confront all of us. We can join in the rot while throwing away all standards of decency and honesty. The presumption here is that the system is corrupt so we might as well join in, like rioters when the fires start to burn.

Another response is to throw yourself into being part of the solution in some way at some level. This could be in your own household or it could be in national politics, plus everything in between.

What increasingly concerns me is a different breed that has come to populate the dissident movement, especially these days and in light of all we’ve been through. These are people who have done vast reading and discovered that the problems around us are extremely deep, tracing to classified worlds of darkness and occult influences. They extend this analysis far back in time, even tracing this to the ancient world.

There is nothing wrong with that outlook as such except that it does feed into a conviction that there is no escape under any conditions. Rather than join in or fly into a hopeful opposition with constructive efforts to change, they construct an ideology of despair. This says that there is nothing to be done because the bad guys rule all things.

There is no chance for progress, says this view, and anything that looks hopeful is nothing but a sham. All seeming good news or admissions of wrongdoing are nothing but “limited hangouts,” probably pushed by “controlled opposition,” making concessions to distract us from the dark truths of our entrenched and depraved destiny.

In popular parlance, and tracing to the model presented in the movie “The Matrix,” these are people who take the Black Pill. This is different from the Blue Pill, which is what you take to go along to get along, or the Red Pill, which is what you take to be part of the reality-based solution. The Black Pill is what you take to wallow in despair and drag everyone around down with you.

I suspect you know someone who has taken the Black Pill. I have variously encountered them for years. Frustrated with such people, the pen name Midwestern Doctor recently wrote that the Black Pill leads people to say: “it’s futile to ever make things better so if you try to, you’re just getting scammed,” “all the things being proposed are actually distractions to keep us from fixing the real problem,” and “the person proposing this terrible proposal is actually an enemy trying to sabotage the movement.”

The Black Pill is seductive because it “It gives you a way to feel in control of your environment (by declaring it’s hopeless to do anything) and superior to others (by knowing a secret truth they don’t know).” Yes, it is easily rendered as a form of Gnosticism, a theory that only a few know the fullness of the esoteric truth while all exoteric knowledge is mere veneer.

The Black Pill is closely related to the problem of purity seeking. No change in social policy, law, or legislation will ever be enough, of course. For that reason, every hint of progress, even vast progress, is easily presented as a trick designed to hide more fundamental corruption. Nothing is ever good enough, and any attempt to make something better is itself part of the problem because it deceives people into thinking there will ever be a way out of the morass.

It’s inevitable that Black-Pilled purists will be meanest to those they are the closest to. This is because those are the people who will listen to them, and the social set among which they can make a difference. For this reason, they can be toxic to any attempt at community organizing, social cohesion, or basic demands of collegiality. When people figure out the game and block them or stop inviting them, they always have a ready excuse: the leadership of the group is clearly compromised and part of the enemy.

This only scratches the surface of the problems of Black-Pilled purists. Because they rule out the possibility of making a difference for good, they target those who try and put down every effort to improve the world. De facto, they always end up saying that the existing status quo, however bad it is, is actually better than the reformed world given to us by people who are compromised and playing ball with the elites. Perversely, then, the purists in every movement eventually become useful servants of the very elites they claim to oppose.

If you follow what I’ve written above, you can understand why some small minority of people that who worked to bring the Trump administration to power, or at least contributed to raising grave doubts about alternatives, are now putting down every effort at reform, even tangible victories.

The MAGA and MAHA movement has Black-Pilled purists in its ranks who will never be satisfied until condition X is met. Condition X could be an end to all hormones in livestock, a ban on all GMOs, an end to all foreign aid, a withdrawal and ban of mRNA shots or all vaccines, stopping all trade with China, or whatever other condition you name, which they always deem the top priority.

Nothing less will do. When that condition is met, there will always be more, because the point is not actually betterment but perpetual alienation from the idea of betterment itself.

As you can see, such people do not work and play well with others, make difficult colleagues, and end up as destructive forces within any attempted community of activists or intellectuals. Such people thrive on factionalism in every smaller unit of interest, all with the hope of being the leader of a community of their own creation, even if it is a community of one.

Such people invariably drive people off from any community, displacing productive and hopeful people with more followers of their dark worldview. Sadly, they are rarely blocked before they cause damage because they specialize in playing off the tolerance of others and the fear of leadership in being called censors or hidden assets of the bad guys.

The biggest problem with the Black Pill is spiritual. It is not possible to wallow constantly in despair and keep it from invading every nook and cranny of the brain, heart, and soul. It becomes an addiction to the point that such people will never be satisfied without the dopamine rush that comes with trashing everything and everybody no matter what.

Don’t take the Black Pill. Again, the attitude of Chesterton is the right one: Even in the darkest of times, hope is better than despair. A naive optimism is as unproductive as a perpetually downcast and paralyzing pessimism that sees every sign of improvement as a delusion.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

Inflation is not soaring, and economic growth is solid...

The Tariff Tantrum has proven that consensus was wrong about soaring inflation and an economic slump. Why? The exaggerated perception of tariffs’ economic impact stemmed from the belief that American consumers would bear the full burden of tariffs. Why were they wrong?

The first reason was that most analyses relied on a simplistic calculation of tariffs, treating supply chains as if they only involved buyers and sellers. Supply chains are very complex, and most exporters must deal with overcapacity challenges and working capital problems. Thus, the impact of tariffs is likely to be absorbed by numerous links in the supply chain, including transport, storage, distribution, manufacturing, retailers and purchasing chains.

Furthermore, most exporting companies face a significant problem of overcapacity and working capital; if they don’t sell their products fast and effectively, their debt soars, and the losses at warehouses can lead to a chain of bankruptcies.

Ignoring that the world of exporter businesses, particularly in China, has a structural overcapacity problem and mounting financial challenges due to working capital build was one of the mistakes made by excessively pessimistic analysts. Therefore, there is no sign of inflation soaring anywhere. The Export Price Index rose only 0.1% in April and 2.0% year on year, while the Import Price Index rose a modest 0.1% in the month and 0.1% year on year. Prices dropped by 0.5% in the final demand PPI (producer price index) for April. On a year-over-year basis, headline and core April PPI declined versus previous readings.

United States retail sales rose by 0.1% in April, up 5.2 % from April 2024, and following a large 1.7% increase in March 2025. Inflation hit a four-year low in April, a month that should have reflected a massive increase due to tariffs, according to consensus estimates, while wage growth rose to a four-year high.

Inflation in April slowed to the slowest pace since 2021. Egg prices fell by 12%, and prices for bakery items, meat, and poultry also decreased. Americans are not suffering the apocalyptic inflation that interventionists predicted. The consumer price index (CPI) rose by 0.2% compared to the expected 0.3%—an annualised rate of 2.3%—and the lowest in four years. Furthermore, core CPI rose only 2.8%, showing no sign of inflationary pressures.

The first quarter’s gross domestic product was positive. Despite a 0.3% decline, the private sector increased by 1.6% annually. Government spending declined 5.1%. In the past week, JP Morgan has removed its call for a recession and the Atlanta Fed Nowcast shows a healthy 2.4% GDP growth for the second quarter, an estimate shared by Goldman Sachs and Capital Economics.

The key to understanding the lack of inflation is to look at monetary aggregates. Tariffs do not cause inflation. There are other reasons we can use to criticise tariffs, but not inflation causation. Market participants have realised that tariffs are a tool for negotiating better trade deals and facilitating the opening of markets rather than being used solely as a protectionist measure. The same reason why you need nuclear weapons to avoid a nuclear war: tariffs are required to force better trade deals.

The cause of inflation is the soaring government spending, which leads to an increase in both the money supply and money velocity. Deficit spending is down 35% between February and April 2025 compared to the same period last year. While money supply is rising, albeit at a modest pace, velocity of money is gradually declining. The public sector is slowly shrinking and the private sector is strengthening; hence, there is no real inflation risk.

The only thing that can make aggregate prices rise, consolidate, and continue is the debasement of the purchasing power of the currency due to uncontrolled government spending. Thankfully, government spending is starting to moderate.

The United States economy is stronger than it appears, and the negotiating power of importers is larger than estimated due to two factors: the previously mentioned overcapacity challenge of most exporters and the global relevance of the U.S. market. Exporters cannot substitute their U.S. sales with other markets. Even the European Union is relatively weak as a market.

In the following months, we will likely see more trade deals, and most concerns from market participants will probably vanish or at least be significantly reduced. Ultimately, the Tariff Tantrum has proven that Keynesian analysis is wrong and that successful trade deals were the goal of the administration.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Current FBI Director Kash Patel is closing down the agency’s Washington, DC, mothership office and moving at least 1,500 employees out of the DC area to regional offices.

The decision was not just Patel’s.

During the Biden Administration, it was determined that the 50-year-old Hoover building headquarters was structurally decrepit. More germanely, no prior FBI director had ever explained why nearly a third of the FBI workforce was centered in offices in Washington, far from where most of the serious crime in America occurs.

The news is welcome for reasons well beyond the safety of agents in an apparently unsafe headquarters.

It is no exaggeration to state that most of the FBI scandals of the last decade were born in the Hoover building headquarters, suggesting that the agency had long become top-heavy, politically weaponized, and deeply embedded in and compromised by the Washington apparat.

Former FBI Director, later appointed as special counsel, Robert Mueller ran a media-driven, 20-month, 40-million-dollar legal circus chasing the unicorn of “Russian collusion.” His left-wing legal team—replete with political conflicts of interest and scrubbed cell phones—was dubbed by the obsequious, giddy left-wing media as the “army,” “untouchables,” “all-stars,” “dream team,” and “hunter-killer teams.”

When called to testify about his investigation that had found no Russian-Trump collusion, Mueller implausibly denied any knowledge of the Steele dossier or FusionGPS. Yet they were arguably the very catalysts for his own special counsel appointment.

Two of his Washington FBI investigators were fired—the amorous Peter Strzok and Lisa Page—who had co-texted a deep personal antipathy toward Trump, the object of their investigations, and a desire to see him not become president, referred to as an “insurance policy.” 

Note that either the FBI or Mueller’s team also mysteriously lost the requested recorded texts and calls on the duo’s phones.

Mueller’s successor, James Comey, outdid his predecessor’s congressionally sworn amnesia. Now in the news yet again for allegedly threatening the president with an “8647” tweet, Comey, while under oath to a congressional committee, stonewalled questioning by claiming he did not remember or could not answer on some 245 separate occasions.

Somehow in 2016, Comey—suddenly acting as both an investigator and a de facto federal prosecutor, despite clear conflicts of interest—managed to interfere in the 2016 campaign by finding Hillary Clinton likely guilty of, but somehow not indictable for, a number of felonies, from unlawfully transmitting classified files to destroying subpoenaed evidence.

Comey also lied to the president that he was not a subject of his own ongoing FBI-directed investigation of Trump.

Comey hired Christopher Steele as an informant and thereby helped to birth Steele’s fabrications.

Comey, through a friend, leaked to the New York Times his own private conversations with the president, recorded on his own FBI device no less.

He set up National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and bragged about how easily the naive and ambushed Flynn foolishly spoke to his FBI investigators without an attorney.

His successor, interim director Andrew McCabe, was a kindred leaker and political partisan. 

He was fired for lying to federal investigators on four occasions, three times while under oath.

McCabe’s successor, Christopher Wray, infamously oversaw FBI agents spying on parents at school board meetings and supposedly also monitoring “radical traditionalist” Catholics.

Wray’s FBI conducted the now equally discredited Mar-a-Lago SWAT team raid on ex-President Trump’s personal residence. The performance-art operation was supposedly designed to find rumored mountains of improperly stored classified files. Despite all the leaks and fake news about troves of secret and classified dossiers, in the end, agents carted away 13,000 documents to find a mere 102 that were deemed classified—some .007 percent of what they confiscated.

In a now-infamous photo of the document trove released by the FBI, Trump’s classified papers were haphazardly strewn across the floor with nearby covers emblazoned “Secret” in red rubrics.

Agents later admitted the photos did not reflect the actual position of the documents when they had arrived, but were scattered over the floor and photographed by the FBI, along with the covers that they had brought along to the raid as photo props.

The FBI then showed far less interest in investigating Joe Biden’s three-decade-long illegal possession of classified documents, stored in at least three unsecured locations—and only revealed when the Biden White House had appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump for what Biden himself had done for far longer, with less security and with continued impunity.

Washington FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was indicted and convicted of doctoring a FISA application document in order to deceive the federal court into granting surveillance over an innocent but framed Carter Page.

FBI chief counsel James A. Baker, likewise Washington-based, allegedly was deeply involved in trying to shop the spurious Steele dossier to the media on the eve of the 2016 election.

In general, the Washington FBI sought to warp both the 2016 and 2020 elections and might arguably have affected either outcome. Besides finding Hillary Clinton likely culpable and then improperly exonerating her, later in 2020, the FBI sat tight and silent on the Hunter Biden laptop after authenticating it as genuine.

Yet almost at the same time, kindred ex-intelligence authorities—the now notorious “51 former intelligence officials” —rounded up by former CIA interim director Mike Morrell at the prompt of then Biden aide and soon-to-be Secretary of State Antony Blinken—brazenly lied to the public that the laptop was a likely creation of Russian intelligence.

This disinformation campaign, launched by the 51 “former” intelligence agents, included some who were still on the federal payroll as contractors. Their intent was to arm Joe Biden in the upcoming October 2020 presidential debate with the lie that the incriminating laptop (again confirmed in secret by the FBI as genuine) was fabricated by the Russians. And the ruse worked perfectly in deceiving the American people on the eve of the election.

Note as well that the FBI embedded agents in social media concerns like Facebook and Twitter to partner in censoring news by deeming it “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Yet, in truth, their jobs in the so-called “Twitter Files” scandal were better defined as suppressing any news considered problematic to the then-2020 Biden campaign.

Many FBI agents later rotated over to high-paying social media companies after their collaboration, among them former FBI general counsel Baker, who was then subsequently fired by the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk.

The list of ethical, moral, and legal misadventures at the top-heavy Washington FBI office could be easily expanded.

But suffice to say, the closure of the J. Edgar Hoover building and the dispersal of the toxic Washington-centric FB hierarchy is welcome news.

Hopefully, this historic closure will also mark the end of the most sordid and decade-long chapter in the history of a once-great agency.

Since December's Trump-optimism-driven surge in Leading Economic Indicators (the first since last February), The Conference Board's headline index has decelerated rapidly with April data released today plunging 1.0% MoM - the biggest drop since March 2023...

Source: Bloomberg

Once again, Consumer Sentiment (cough UMich Democrats) and Stock Prices were the biggest negative contributors, while New Manufacturing orders (hard data) and Credit were the biggest positive contributors...

Source: Bloomberg

That dragged the total index level down to its lowest since February 2016...

Source: Bloomberg

“The U.S. LEI registered its largest monthly decline since March 2023, when many feared the US was headed into recession, which did not ultimately materialize,” said Justyna Zabinska-La Monica, Senior Manager, Business Cycle Indicators, at The Conference Board.

“Most components of the index deteriorated. Notably, consumers’ expectations have become continuously more pessimistic each month since January 2025, while the contribution of building permits and average working hours in manufacturing turned negative in April. 

Widespread weaknesses were also present when looking at six-month trends among the LEI’s components, resulting in a warning signal for growth. 

However, while the six-month growth rate of the LEI went deeper into negative territory, it did not fall enough to trigger the recession signal. 

The Conference Board currently forecasts US real GDP to grow by 1.6% in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2024, with the bulk of the impact of tariffs likely to hit the economy in Q3.

Source: Bloomberg

So the economy is doomed (ish) because stocks and sentiment are down... because investors are pricing in a doomed economy...? 

Perhaps the word 'leading' in this index is misleading...

Update (1335ET): Confirming the optimistic readout from the Kremlin, President Trump just posted on TruthSocial stating that his call with Putin "went very well." (emphasis ours)

Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. 

I believe it went very well. 

Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. 

The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. 

The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later. 

Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic “bloodbath” is over, and I agree. 

There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. 

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. 

I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. 

The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. 

Let the process begin!

And cue the European leaders and US neocons fuming over the potential for peace.

*  *  *

Update(1300ET): Presidents Trump and Putin have ended their phone call, which lasted for more than two hours, according to RIA. This suggests some heavy lifting was done regarding peace in Ukraine, and restoring Washington-Moscow relations. Trump had reportedly phoned Zelensky just prior to speaking with Putin. It appears an overall 'positive' development, also given the emerging wire headlines:

• PUTIN CALLED HIS CONVERSATION WITH TRUMP USEFUL: TASS
• PUTIN: MEMORANDUM WITH UKRAINE MAY INCLUDE TRUCE TERMS: TASS
• RUSSIA READY TO WORK WITH UKRAINE ON FUTURE PEACE DEAL: TASS
• PUTIN SAYS HIS CONVERSATION WITH TRUMP WAS VERY MEANINGFUL: IFX
• PUTIN SAYS TRUCE IS POSSIBLE IF CERTAIN AGREEMENTS REACHED:TASS

But this Putin reference to "certain agreements" or conditions being reached will be the sticking point. Zelensky has repeatedly made clear "this is Ukraine's land" when it comes to the annexed four eastern territories and Crimea.

Very likely, Putin pressed this point with Trump - that Zelensky is refusing any level of compromise (which is precisely what Kiev is currently accusing Moscow of doing). 

As we await the call readouts from both sides, Vice President JD Vance's latest remarks upon returning to the US from Rome lay out where things stand:

JD Vance:

There's fundamental mistrust between Russia and the West. It's one of the things Trump thinks is frankly stupid, and we should be able to move beyond the mistakes that have been made in the past, but that takes two to tango. pic.twitter.com/o0UU9aSBOu

Meanwhile...

Guys, we are again allowed to admit that NATO's open door to Ukraine and integration with Kyiv was one of the causes of the war. Also that Russia is shaping its forces to counter NATO expansion. pic.twitter.com/jQZQ6Ca9CD

* * *

President Trump is expected to hold a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, followed by a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky - after they were first announced Saturday.

Writing in all caps, the president posted over the weekend to Truth Social, "The subjects of the call with be, stopping the 'bloodbath' that is killing, on average, more than 5000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade."

He continued in the statement by saying "hopefully it will be a productive day, a ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war, a war that should have never happened, will end." His highly optimistic note ended with "God bless us all!!!" - again written in all caps.

Via AFP

Trump has further indicated he'll be in contact with "various" NATO leaders related to these ceasefire efforts, coming on heels of the Friday meeting between Russian and Ukrainian delegations - the first such direct engagement since efforts at talks ceased within the opening months of 2022 and the war's start.

The NY Times has previewed:

The call, which Mr. Trump said would take place at 10 a.m. Eastern, would be the third known phone conversation between the two men since the American president’s second term began. The first two, which took place in February and March, were celebrated in Moscow as signs of weakening Western resolve to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

And the Kremlin issued the following Monday:

"The conversation is important, taking into account the negotiations held in Istanbul," Peskov said. "As for the talks, we [in the Kremlin] have already said everything we could, we underscored the basic points," he added. "We will now wait for it. We will give the maximum information possible based on the results of the conversation," he stated.

There was little concrete which came out of the meeting, other than a new POW swap - which is to involve 1,000 captives returned on either side - and declarations that each side is open to meeting a gain.

Still, the warring sides are far apart in terms of conditions, with Zelensky having reasserted on Friday, "In all discussions – and I emphasize this – and this is my unwavering position – we do not legally recognize any of our temporarily occupied territories as Russian. This is the Ukrainian land."

Just ahead of the Putin-Zelensky calls at the White House on Monday:

.@zerohedge reporter gets the first question during today's White House press briefing.@cosgrove_iv does not disappoint: question about financing foreign wars, comments on the "Clinton body count," and further probing of the Jeffrey Epstein files. pic.twitter.com/YjXQBpNAK9

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed the US administration's thinking on how things are really going at this point. He reiterated to CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday that the White House will not tolerate endless negotiations which simply drag the war and killing on further.

"On the one hand, we’re trying to achieve peace and end a very bloody, costly, and destructive war. So there’s some element of patience that is required," he began by acknowledging.

"On the other hand, we don’t have time to waste. There are a lot of other things happening in the world that we also need to be paying attention to. So we don’t want to be involved in this process of just endless talks. There has to be some progress, some movement forward," he then emphasized.

The US is currently examining competing ceasefire proposals offered by each side. "If those papers have ideas on them that are realistic and rational, then I think we know we’ve made progress," he said.

The following is reportedly among Moscow's top list of demands, which can be described as maximalist (at least from the West's perspective), per a recent Bloomberg report:

• Ukraine agreeing to neutral status regarding NATO
• No foreign troops in Ukraine
• No nuclear weapons in Ukraine
• De-facto recognition of Crimea and lost eastern territories as now Russia's
• Withdrawal of Kiev forces from these territories before a ceasefire takes effect

But Ukraine has rejected the Kremlin's demand of de-facto recognizing the loss of its territories. Zelensky has time and again vowed to fight on, despite mounting losses and serious manpower issues. 

Getting Trump on side is not about Russia. UK/EU want the US bogged down in Ukraine, which means US bogged down in Europe, and US money continues to flow. They don't care about Ukraine, they care about the US remaining in Europe, invested in the globalist agenda.

They… pic.twitter.com/p3mM1T7hDc

The White House is likely to latch on to anything positive regarding these talks that it can; however, President Trump has clearly been exerting pressure for more speedy resolution, and is growing impatient.

The Europeans are ready to slap more sanctions on Moscow, and Washington has also warned that this would essentially be plan B if Russia doesn't cooperate. But Russia's fresh maximalist demands will be a hard sell.

*  *  *

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Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Defense has directed commanders to identify service members with a history of gender dysphoria who have not come forward under a new policy that bans transgender troops.

“Commanders who are aware of Service members in their units with gender dysphoria, a history of gender dysphoria, or symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria will direct individualized medical record reviews of such Service members to confirm compliance with medical standards” under the military’s readiness program, Jules W. Hurst III, a Pentagon official, wrote in a memorandum dated May 15.

President Donald Trump has said that people who express a “false ‘gender identity’” cannot meet the standards for military service, and defense officials later promulgated a new policy that bars troops who have or are experiencing gender dysphoria from serving.

At least some of the troops with gender dysphoria, which refers to when people believe they’re a gender that does not match their sex, are undergoing or have completed transgender procedures in an attempt to alter their gender..

The Supreme Court recently stayed a district court order that had been blocking the policy. 

Officials said on May 8 that about 1,000 members have come forward to identify themselves as having gender dysphoria.

Active-duty troops have until June 6 to identify themselves as being unable to serve due to gender dysphoria. The deadline is July 7 for reserves.

During that period, military departments will seek to identify affected troops who choose not to identify themselves, a senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters in a call on May 15.

“Commanders who are aware of service members in their units who meet the criteria of this policy will direct individualized medical record reviews. Any individuals who meet the criteria of the policy and do not voluntarily identify themselves and go through the voluntary separation process will be processed involuntarily unless they are granted a waiver,” the official added later.

Troops who are involuntarily separated may lose certain benefits that they would receive if they come forward, according to the Department of Defense.

An estimated 4,200 troops have gender dysphoria. The force has about 2.1 million troops.

The military uses its readiness program to make sure troops are qualified and fit for duty. Medical evaluations are done through the program periodically, including an annual health screening.

When asked about concerns that commanders could abuse the process, the official told reporters in the call that leaders are confident in commanders’ exercising their discretion and protecting the privacy of troop health information.

“Any negative action that they would take to one of their assigned service members that would be retaliatory would be completely unacceptable regardless of whether it concerned this policy or any other policy,” the official added later.

Troops who are discharged under the new policy are eligible for up to $125,000 in separation payments, depending on their rank and how long they’ve been serving.