Wag the Dog Archives - The Automatic Earth

Scott Ritter:

If Israel uses nuclear weapons against Iran, it only identifies itself as the most malevolent nation in the world today and should be the target of all the peoples of the world for immediate destruction.

We know that Israel is a genocidal entity based on its… pic.twitter.com/aSNo7vfSIJ
— Sprinter Press (@SprinterPress) March 8, 2026

https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2030960465799532639?s=20

German industrial production worsens again. And deeply.

All sectors are in real trouble.
New industrial orders slump by 11%

-1.2% drop in industrial production YoY in January. Worse than consensus, which expected a bounce.

Industrial production remains weak, slightly above… pic.twitter.com/U37lgIrxaN
— Daniel Lacalle (@dlacalle_IA) March 9, 2026

Will we see 1970’s oil shortages?

Thanks to Trump, America doesn’t need Middle East oil. But Asia needs it to survive.

India runs out in 1 month.
Thailand and Vietnam in 2.
China runs out in 3.

At which point they’ll start shutting down their economies. pic.twitter.com/O8iadoDQLD
— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) March 9, 2026

https://twitter.com/jackprandelli/status/2030598639559540917?s=20 https://twitter.com/SeongWooIQ300/status/2030682138589454625?s=20

“This republic will survive so long as it does not die by our own hand.”

• From Redcoats to Robots: AI is Challenging our Republic’s Future (Turley)

This week, thousands of workers are receiving pink slips. They are not being let go due to inflation or outsourcing to foreign countries. To the contrary, they are being fired because booming sectors of the economy no longer need them. Indeed, it is an economy that may need fewer and fewer humans. Amazon this week announced further job cuts due to robotics and AI. Recently, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, announced that his company Block would be laying off 40 percent of its employees. He cited AI as reducing the need for human employees. In my book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss not just the economic changes unfolding due to AI and robotics but also the political implications of those changes for the American republic.

These economic changes are unfolding all around us. We are looking at one of the greatest job losses in history. In a free-market system, such technological changes tend to offset losses with new jobs in emerging industries. And there will be such growth with the AI and robotic revolutions. But it is also likely that we are looking at a static class of unemployed and practically unemployable citizens as this new revolution unfolds. “Low-skill jobs are the most likely to be replaced by a robotic workforce,” I write in the book. “Amazon warehouses are now entirely mechanized with twelve different types of over seven thousand robots moving rapidly to collect and direct goods where hundreds of people were once employed.”
But what is most notable about the Amazon announcement is that these were white-collar jobs. The impact of AI is not confined to factory workers and truck drivers. The danger is that politicians will react predictably and try to subsidize jobs that are no longer viable and industries that are being dramatically downsized. At the same time, they are likely to expand model programs in Democratic cities for universal basic or guaranteed income. Democrats have moved forward with more than 60 bills creating such programs, and this week, Cook County, Ill. (the second-largest county in the U.S.) made permanent the universal basic income program it had originally launched with federal COVID-19 relief funds.
The problem is the creation of what I call a “kept citizenship” in a republic designed for people who are economically and politically independent from the government. That system is seriously undermined by a large percentage of citizens living off the government dole. The solution cannot be an “arts-and-crafts” population kept entertained by government programs to learn glassblowing and pottery-making. A different type of citizen would emerge that is unlikely to be sufficiently free of the government to counter its excesses or failures.] “Rage and the Republic” lays out what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.” It notes that this is not just the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence but the 250th anniversary of the release of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
The founders immediately embraced Smith’s economic theories as the perfect companion for their political theories. They believed that true freedom requires economic independence from government. That means accepting the economic changes and the loss of certain jobs. AI and robotics will largely wipe out certain jobs from taxi drivers to radiologists to warehouse workers. Meanwhile, we need to focus on homocentric jobs. In the book, I called these “Guinan jobs” after the bartender on the starship Enterprise in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” As a kid, I was always confused by Guinan (played by Whoopi Goldberg), who would mix a drink next to a replicator that could produce the perfect Romulan cocktail every time without fail or variation. Customers clearly wanted Guinan to make the cocktail, even if it is not perfect every time.
The question I ask is, how many “Guinan jobs” are out there. There are many, including teachers, psychiatrists and lawyers, who will be affected but likely not eliminated by AI. We will still want humans in these positions. All governments will face this existential crisis in the 21st Century. It will create growing instability globally. Although AI and robotics will make goods cheaper and more widely available, they are also likely to have a dramatic effect on populations. For example, as production costs drop with the new technology, there will be less advantage to moving factories to other countries with cheaper labor forces, such as China and Mexico.
Companies may choose to build near consumer markets to save on transportation costs while utilizing higher-skilled worker populations to maintain robotic and AI systems. That could produce massive unemployment in certain countries with low-educated, low-income populations. That in turn could destabilize governments and increase the chances of war in countries with large populations of unemployed young men. I also do not feel great optimism for global governance systems like the European Union. The EU has largely eviscerated the elements I identify in the American Revolution as producing the oldest and most stable democratic system. Although global governance is likely to increase, it could fail spectacularly due to its inherent instabilities.
In the U.S., this period of economic change is likely to fuel calls for socialist policies. Socialism has always thrived on economic upheavals. Indeed, socialists often use their own failures to further collectivize or centralize economies. Our republic is uniquely situated to not only survive but to thrive in the 21st Century. It was conceived in and designed for changing economic conditions. But if we are to survive, we must remain faithful to the constitutional structure that has afforded us stability for more than two centuries. Despite calls to trash the Constitution, pack the Supreme Court and change our political system, these protections are the very things that can get us through this century intact.
The Founders designed our Republic to prevent the tendency of democracies to become what one called a “mobocracy.” They knew that political and economic instability could create a form of “democratic despotism” in which democracies devoured themselves. We have a system that has overcome challenges — from redcoats to robots — that have crushed other countries. However, we must remember who we are. Our nation, created in the winds of change by a free and industrious people, need not fear change. It is a system designed for bad times, not good times. The true crisis is a crisis of faith being fueled by some in academia and in the media. This republic will survive so long as it does not die by our own hand.

“He’s flat-out refusing to sign any other legislation until the Senate passes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.”

• Trump Makes A Huge Move to Get The SAVE Act Passed (Matt Margolis)

President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell on Truth Social on Sunday. He’s flat-out refusing to sign any other legislation until the Senate passes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. With midterms looming this year, Trump calls it his absolute top priority, demanding it “must be done immediately” because it “supersedes everything else.”Trump couldn’t be clearer. “I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed,” he wrote, rejecting any watered-down compromise. The SAVE Act, which has already passed the House, has the votes for passage in the Senate, but not enough to overcome the 60-vote threshold to overcome the filibuster. The SAVE Act is overwhelmingly powerful because it requires real proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and enforces photo ID to vote.

This isn’t some radical idea. A photo ID is required for so many routine things that most people barely think about. You need one to buy alcohol or cigarettes, board a plane, rent a car, check into a hotel, open a bank account, purchase certain prescriptions, or enter many federal buildings. There are plenty of bars and clubs that won’t let you in without one, but nobody calls those policies racist. Nobody claims they suppress civil rights. Yet somehow, the moment the same basic form of identification is required to prove you are who you say you are when you vote, Democrats insist it’s a sinister plot to disenfranchise voters.The truth is far simpler: requiring ID to vote is common sense, and the hysterical comparisons to Jim Crow say far more about the weakness of the argument than the policy itself.
And Americans support it overwhelmingly. A Pew Research poll recently showed that 83% of Americans favor requiring government-issued photo ID to vote, with support cutting across political and demographic lines. That includes 71% of Democrats, 76% of black Americans, and 82% of Hispanics. Despite this, Democrats are playing hardball. “The SAVE Act is Jim Crow 2.0. It would disenfranchise tens of millions of people,” Chuck Schumer wrote on X. “If Trump is saying he won’t sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate. Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances.”
Well, the good news is that Trump’s threat really isn’t about forcing Democrats to pass the SAVE Act; it’s about getting wobbly Republicans on board to enforce a talking filibuster. Democrats are in the minority, of course; they have everything to gain by gridlock. Republicans, however, do not, and Trump is attempting to force their hand, not the Democrats’. And make no mistake about it, Trump’s not negotiating. He wants the gold standard: ID, proof of citizenship, minimal mail-ins. This forces accountability on a system Democrats have rigged for years. I know that Senate Majority Leader John Thune isn’t exactly a fan of tinkering with the filibuster, but Democrats will nuke it completely the second they have they control the House, Senate, and White House again, so from where I sit, it makes perfect sense to enforce a talking filibuster now because at least that’s what the filibuster is supposed to be.

“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” — General George S. Patton, Jr.

• Farther Along (James Howard Kunstler)

Don’t lose the plot. Embrace the suck. This is the world’s hard time, for now. The birth of anything can be a bloody horror. It can even look like death. Don’t be too afraid to see what comes on the other side of this awful spectacle. So many Americans are rooting and wishing for the Iran war to turn out badly for Western Civ. And why? Because Trump. And why? Because at the same time he is ending Iran’s long-running nuclear blackmail game, he is terminating the rackets of the Democratic Party. The incipient changes in operational order create new categories of winners and losers.

Now you know why Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists run on the same track as America’s Woke-Jacobin-Marxists, including the pitifully deluded wine ladies of posh West LA, Grosse Point, Beacon Hill, Fairfax County, et cetera, whose brains have been hijacked by the cable news demon factory (and their sponsors). Chaos does everything possible to avoid meeting order. And this is why passing the SAVE Act is as consequential as ridding the Middle East of its chief chaos agent. Do you realize how perfectly insane our country’s election procedure has become? The fraud is titanic and right in your face, and the remedy is so plain and simple. What possible excuse is there to thwart it?
Non-citizens have no right to vote. Mail-in ballots are patently subject to chicanery. Vote tabulation machines are demonstrably hackable. 80-percent of Americans know this is the truth. How is there controversy over this? How? Because among all the broken institutions in our country, Congress is the worst. The Congress of our time is demonstrating that we might not be worthy of governing ourselves. We are at a cycle-low for public rectitude. Anything goes and nothing matters as long as the campaign contributions keep rolling in. You see how this has been going.
But mark this: we are going to get election reform one way or another. It’s that urgent, and failure to accomplish it by legislation will warrant a national emergency. And when the election machinery has been fixed, we had better do something about the plague of corporate money that runs like poison through our politics because of the Supreme Court’s foolish decision in the 2010 Citizens United case. They decided (by a slim 5-4 majority) that limitless campaign contributions by corporations amounted to free speech under the Constitution.
I will tell you concisely why this was tragically fallacious. Free speech in our country is a God-given right of sovereign citizens. Corporations are not citizens. Corporations don’t have obligations, duties, and responsibilities to the public interest (a.k.a. the common good). Corporations explicitly, by law, have obligations, duties, and responsibilities solely to their share-holders. The interests of corporate share-holders and the nation’s public interest are manifestly oppositional. Perhaps now you can see why this was such a dreadful invitation to political chaos.
So, Mr. Trump, for all his flaws, attempts to bring order out of chaos at home and in global relations, and the agents of chaos mightily resent the shut-down of their precious chaos. With Iran, it has come to fighting fire with fire. It’s unlikely that most of the people in that country seek to become martyrs. The cult of martyrdom is strictly the business of the maniacs who seized power there in 1979, a reign of terror, extended by proxy around the whole Middle East and beyond.

” Budapest and Bratislava have repeatedly accused Kiev of blackmail. They also say Brussels has sided with Ukraine instead of backing two EU member states.”

• ‘Wagging the dog’: Putin Mocks EU-Ukraine rRelationship (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has likened the relationship between Ukraine and the European Union to “the tail wagging the dog,” saying that despite the aggressive behavior of the government in Kiev, Brussels keeps supporting it.The Ukrainian authorities are preventing vital Russian oil from reaching Hungary and Slovakia via the Druzhba pipeline, which runs through Ukraine, claiming it was damaged by Russian strikes – claims Moscow rejects. Budapest and Bratislava have repeatedly accused Kiev of blackmail. They also say Brussels has sided with Ukraine instead of backing two EU member states.

“The situation is very strange,” Putin said on Sunday in an interview with Vesti. “I get the impression that we are dealing with a case where ‘the tail is wagging the dog’, and not the other way around.” The Russian president called the stance taken by Kiev dangerous and aggressive. He stressed that Brussels is continuing to provide Ukraine with endless support, both in weapons and financial aid. Commenting on the energy market, Putin emphasized that halting transit could further undermine the energy security of EU member states, as happened after the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.
“Yet the EU prefers to continue the supply, effectively indulging the Kiev regime,” Putin added. Putin criticized Western countries for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, describing it as a “systemic mistake.” The president said the conflict began with Western support for a coup in Kiev, followed by the reunification of Crimea with Russia and unrest in southeastern Ukraine, including Donbass and Novorossiya. “These are not our actions,” Putin asserted, adding that European countries were now “reaping what they have sown.”

There is no good choice for war.

• Has Trump Made a Bad Choice of War? ((Paul Craig Roberts)

The propaganda that Americans are receiving about how hard Washington and Israel are hitting Iran does not seem to be backed up with evidence. It seems that the US Navy that Trump was going to use to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz has had to be moved away outside of the range of Iranian missiles. It seems that the American bases in the oil city states are no longer functioning and that the US will be operating out of far away Italy. Moreover Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t support the war propaganda. He is now speaking of the war in terms of months instead of a few days, but the US and Israel, stupidly expecting Iran’s quick collapse, did not inventory enough missiles for a war that last months. So Trump has started mentioning “troops on the ground” which he previously said was not in the picture.

Considering Iran’s large size– Iran is larger than France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom combined–the United States hasn’t sufficient troops, and it is doubtful that Israel would risk any of its own. The Israelis cleverly used western gentile troops against Iraq and Libya and Arab forces to overthrow Syria. Even the few commentators, many of them experienced military men, speak of Russia, China, or India mediating the conflict and bringing it to end with mediation. Apparently, they have never considered how a conflict can be mediated when one side, the Israeli American side, intends the destruction of the other side. How does Iran go about mediating its destruction? This is for Iran an existential conflict.
The survival of Iran as a sovereign nation rest entirely on an Iranian victory. An Iranian government that submitted to mediation would be submitting to the erasure of Iran as a country. It would be a government of traitors. I have never understood how the Iranian government could be so completely misinformed as to think that the issue was whether or not Iran enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. The nuclear issue was never more than a pretext to be used to destroy Iran. The real issue has always been to clear Iran out of the way of Greater Israel. The previous pretext was the “war on terror” that the Zionist Bush and Obama regimes used to destroy Iraq and Libya and that was used to destroy Syria. Zionists have been extremely clear that their agenda is Greater Israel. Netanyahu himself and several Israeli ministers have held up maps on television of Greater Israel, a territory that encompasses the Muslim Middle East.
This new phrase of the 21st century American war for Greater Israel has been launched by the Zionist regime of Donald Trump. How is it possible that the Iranian government thought Washington had any interest in negotiating a non-nuclear weapon agreement with Iran? Just as Russia and China seem incapable of comprehending the Wolfowitz Doctrine, Iran seems incapable of comprehending the agenda of Greater Israel. There is no possibility whatsoever of any Iranian government negotiating its way out of Greater Israel. But watch Iran again give up a winning hand and return to negotiation. According to information I have, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned President Trump not to initiate a war for which sufficient stockpiles of weapons had not been accumulated.
But Trump convinced by someone, perhaps Netanyahu, that it would only take a few missiles and bombs and the collapse of the Iranian government would allow the imposition of a puppet ruler such as the son of the former American puppet ruler of Iran. As my faithful readers know, my concern has always been that the Zionist neoconservatives allied with Israel, who have been in control of American foreign policy since the regime of George W. Bush, are pushing too hard against Russia, against China and against Iran. The Zionist American neoconservatives’ agenda of American world hegemony and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East are roads to nuclear Armageddon.
It is my opinion that Russia, China and Iran have been poorly led by leaders who prefer their hopes to reality, and therefore have failed to understand that they are targets in the way of American and Israeli hegemony. It is almost as if they have never read the Wolfowitz Doctrine or have any awareness of the Zionist doctrine of Greater Israel.
I try to hold onto optimism. But Russia and China, which are supposed to constrain American neoconservative aggression, have totally failed their responsibility. Consequently, Putin is at war that he refuses to win in Ukraine. China pretends that it can avoid war even as its oil imports are reduced 50% by war that China could have prevented. The Iranian government trying to avoid a war, which was obvious to any intelligent person was unavoidable, submitted a second time to American “negotiations” and was again deceived and surprise attacked. Russia, China and Iran do not seem to be led by competent people in touch with reality. By the time Russia and China wake up to reality, will their only option be nuclear?
[..] the “Peace President” has become the “War President.” It is losing Trump supporters. Trump’s base is split. Trump has lost Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey, his most effective supporters in Congress. Trump has lost Tucker Carlson, his most effective support in the media. If it turns out that Trump has allowed the satanic Israeli Prime Minister to goad him to start a war that Trump loses in a midterm election year, there is no one to defend Trump from impeachment. You tell me if this is a sign of an intelligent president of the United States.This war that Trump has started for Israel has many risks, one of which is that to avoid defeat Trump and or Israel might use nuclear weapons.
[..] Perhaps Donald Trump, Israel’s tried and true wartime operative, will be removed from office after the midterm elections. If so, the prospect of nuclear war lessens in the intermediate term. If not and Iran has staying power, the United States for the second time in history is likely to resort to the use of nuclear weapons. This, I think would finish America.

“Netanyahu is the dominant force in the world today, not Trump, not Putin, not Xi. They are not even players.”

• Israel, Netanyahu and Trump Preparing the World for the Anti-Christ? (PCR)

It seems that neither governments (with the exception of Israel), media, nor commentators understand what is transpiring in the Middle East. Governments are offering to mediate the conflict. Russia and China, either of which could have prevented the conflict, are calling for peace. An Iranian government official has apologized for attacking the Arab oil city-states that serve the US as air and naval bases for the Israeli-American attack on Iran. It seems that the Putin disease of never attacking those who facilitate attacks on Russia has spread to Iran. It is not clear, even to Iran it seems, that Iranians are in an existential fight for their existence, a fight that can only end in their victory or defeat. Israel and Israel’s American puppet will have it no other way.

Do Russia and China not understand that their calls for peace are ridiculous and suggest that the governments of both countries have no comprehension whatsoever of reality? And the same goes for the rest of the world and for all of the media and the many commentators. The bloviating is unbearable. I have read so many totally absurd explanations of what the Israeli American initiated war on Iran is about. Apparently, fewer Middle Eastern commentators have heard of the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel than Russian and Chinese commentators have heard of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. We are experiencing the foreign policy of countries that have no clue to the two agendas determining world events.
Just as Putin is unrealistic beyond belief by thinking that he can obtain a mutual security agreement with Washington prior to Washington abandoning hegemony over the world as the principal goal of its foreign policy, the governments of the world including Iran and the talking heads are unrealistic beyond belief in ignoring that Iran’s existence is incompatible with Greater Israel. War propaganda has 100% prevailed over facts since 9/11. The result is a completely mindless media that merely follows along whatever the official narrative is at the moment. The western media long ago ceased to be capable of any intelligent explanation or analysis or truthful reporting. Mainly the whore Western media is focused on getting whoever is the target of the moment.
So, where are we today? The world has yet again turned a blind eye to an Israeli-American war crime. A country engaged in peace negotiations was secretly attacked. This obvious war crime has been ignored by governments, except for one member of one European government. What will the consequences be? As far as I can tell, none of Israel and Washington’s targets are sufficiently aware that they are targets and continue to believe in negotiations, despite what has twice happened to Iran. The unrealism will encourage more provocations from Israel and their White House puppet.
It seems to me that a case can be made, perhaps it has been, that Zionists are Satan’s agents and from the Zionists ranks will arise the Anti-Christ. Perhaps it is Netanyahu. Netanyahu is the dominant force in the world today, not Trump, not Putin, not Xi. They are not even players. Netanyahu has used the Americans to destroy for Israel, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan Somalia, and now the targets are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Turkey. True to form these countries will not unite to protect themselves anymore than have Russia, Iran, and China. It seems that the world is at the risk of governments incapable of comprehending reality. Perhaps they are too busy appropriating taxpayers money, taking bribes, and making trade deals. Try and find serious people in the world. They are the ones you most hate. They disturb you in your comfortable world of official narrative in which others are evil, but not us, in which others have difficulties, but not us –except those caused by anti-semites, and racists, and homophobes, and right-to-lifers. Governments that cause wars are bringing democracy and freedom. As George Orwell said, “war is peace.”

“Hundreds of complaints from US service members report that commanders told them the war on Iran is part of biblical prophecy for Armageddon ..”

I saw this a few days ago, the prayer session in the Oval Office, and asked myself: how is this different from the religious crazies in Tehran?

• Pentagon Officials Saying Iran War ‘God’s Divine Plan’ (Cradle)

Dozens of US Democratic lawmakers have called for an investigation into allegations that military commanders are portraying the war on Iran as part of biblical prophecy, according to reporting by Military.com, citing complaints from service members and a letter sent to the Department of War inspector general on 6 March. The request follows hundreds of reports that officers told troops the campaign against Iran is “divinely ordained” and that President Donald Trump has been “anointed by Jesus.” Lawmakers warned that invoking religious prophecy to justify military operations could violate constitutional protections and War Department rules requiring religious neutrality.

The controversy began after an anonymous non-commissioned officer contacted the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) on behalf of several soldiers in a unit stationed outside the Iran combat zone. The individual wrote that a commander urged personnel to view the war as “all part of God’s divine plan,” while citing passages from the Book of Revelation. According to the complaint, the officer told troops that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told Military.com that the organization logged more than 200 similar complaints between Saturday and Tuesday afternoon, with reports coming from personnel stationed at 50 military installations across all branches of the US armed forces.
In a letter sent to Inspector General Platte B. Moring III, members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus and other lawmakers warned that “justifying a war based on interpretations of biblical prophecies” and telling troops they are risking their lives to advance a religious vision raises serious constitutional concerns. The lawmakers also asked investigators to determine whether statements by War Secretary Pete Hegseth or other officials have contributed to the spread of biblical rhetoric within military ranks, warning that such public remarks could promote similar messaging in operational briefings. Lawmakers asked investigators to determine if troops who reported the issue faced retaliation and whether additional safeguards are necessary to maintain religious neutrality in the military chain of command.
Independent journalist Jonathan Larsen initially reported over a hundred complaints from soldiers to the MRFF, claiming that commanders are describing the Iran war as divinely ordained and connected to biblical prophecy. One non-commissioned officer said the rhetoric was “so toxic and over the line” that it shocked troops and “destroy[s] morale and unit cohesion.” Weinstein warned the reports show commanders treating the war as “biblically sanctioned” and linked to the approaching “End Times,” while noting similar religious rhetoric has appeared in remarks by US political figures discussing West Asia.

“This is precisely why we need to cut off the head of the snake in Iran, because they do have terrorist proxies in dozens of countries..”

• Is Iran’s Regime Trying to Trigger Sleeper Cells in the USA? (Catherine Salgado)

A new report claims that the United States has intercepted communications from the Iranian regime attempting to activate terrorist sleeper cells within the United States. We have to take anything ABC News reports with a grain, or perhaps a shaker, of salt, but its report that the Iranian regime is hoping its terrorist proxies around the world are going to rise up and help it as they have been doing for so many years would almost be predictable rather than surprising. This is precisely why we need to cut off the head of the snake in Iran, because they do have terrorist proxies in dozens of countries. Fortunately, if there was such an encrypted message, the United States has intercepted it and is aware.

We know for a fact that tens of thousands of terrorists came into the United States under the Biden administration, including jihadis from Iranian-backed Hamas and Hezbollah. Almost as soon as the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, an immigrant from Senegal wearing a sweatshirt that said “property of Allah” and who had an Iranian flag and a Quran, murdered three young people in Austin, Texas. And last week, two Muslims with ISIS sympathies attempted to attack a crowd of New York City protesters with improvised explosive devices. The Islamic Iranian regime has built up a massive international network, and even many terrorists not directly connected to it are in sympathy with it.
But as for the new report from ABC News, it claimed the following: “The U.S. has intercepted encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran that may serve as “an operational trigger” for “sleeper assets” outside the country, according to a federal government alert sent to law enforcement agencies. The alert, reviewed by ABC News, cites “preliminary signals analysis” of a transmission “likely of Iranian origin” that was relayed across multiple countries shortly after the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was killed in a U.S.-Israeli attack on Feb. 28.
The transmission was encoded, the outlet added, and was supposedly going to “clandestine recipients” who would know how to decipher it. Such messages do not require the internet to reach “covert operatives or sleeper assets.”The federal government alert cautiously predicted that the encrypted message could “be intended to activate or provide instructions to prepositioned sleeper assets operating outside the originating country.”

“..The charges include providing material support to a terrorist organization and using a weapon of mass destruction.”

• Bondi Charges Muslim Terrorists Who Tried to Bomb NYC Protest (Sarah Anderson)

In case you missed it, on Saturday, March 7, an anti-Islam protest gathered outside Gracie Mansion — the official residence of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — when two homemade improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were thrown toward the protesters. The devices contained triacetone triperoxide or TATP, a volatile homemade explosive often called “mother of Satan,” as well as nuts, bolts, and screws. They were ignited but failed to fully detonate, creating smoke and chaos. Thankfully, no one was injured. A third device was later found near a vehicle the alleged terrorists drove, sparking evacuations at nearby apartment buildings.

The suspects are 18-year-old Emir Balat and 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi, both of whom are from Pennsylvania. They were arrested shortly after the incident. Both the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force called it “ISIS-inspired terrorism.” According to Balat’s statement to law enforcement, he wanted to carry out an attack that was bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing. Here’s more from the official statement: =In the NYPD vehicle en route to the NYPD precinct, BALAT, without being questioned by the NYPD officers transporting him, made the following spontaneous utterances, in part and as captured on the transporting NYPD officers’ body-worn camera footage:
[..] ‘this isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet… We take action! We take action!’; and “‘I didn’t do it someone else will come and do it.’ After arriving at the precinct and being advised of, and waiving, his Miranda rights, BALAT requested a piece of paper and, after being given a paper and pen, wrote the following: ‘All praise is due to Allah lord of all worlds! I pledge my allegience [sic] to the Islamic State. Die in your rage yu [sic] kuffar! Emir B.’ Based on my training and experience, I know that “kuffar” is an Arabic term that refers to ‘non-believers’ or ‘infidels,’ and that ‘Die in your rage’ is a slogan used by ISIS and based on a verse in the Quran.
Law enforcement officers later asked BALAT if he was familiar with the Boston Marathon bombing, and if that was what BALAT had hoped to accomplish. BALAT responded: ‘No, even bigger. It was only three deaths.’ According to the New York Post, “[Balat] defiantly flashed an ISIS salute as he was led away in shackles during his perp walk. Wearing a black t-shirt and beige pants, Balat made the gesture before one of the officers detaining him slapped his hand down. Balat, whose parents are reportedly from Turkey but who became naturalized citizens in 2017, was arrested Saturday along with 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi after a homemade ‘Mother of Satan’ bomb was allegedly thrown at protesters outside New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Upper East Side residence.”

US, Britain and now Italy?

• Meloni Slams Italian Judges For Blocking Expulsion of Foreign Criminals (RMX)

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has sharply criticized judicial decisions blocking the detention of migrants transferred to Albania, citing the case of a Moroccan rapist with a long criminal record whom authorities say they cannot detain or deport after he applied for international protection. Speaking to RTL 102.5, Meloni said some court rulings preventing the continued detention of migrants transferred to Italian processing centers in Albania were “surreal” and undermined public safety. “I also wonder where the feminists are in the face of these events,” Meloni said during the interview, referring to the case of one of the migrants, Moroccan national Fathallah Ouardi, who had been transferred to Albania but was later returned to Italy after judges refused to validate his detention.

Meloni said the man had a lengthy criminal record. “The record of one of these migrants includes convictions for drug dealing, resisting a public official, conspiracy to commit sexual assault, and gang rape,” she said, as cited by Secolo d’Italia. According to the prime minister, the court rejected the detention order after the migrant applied for international protection. “This is someone who entered Italy illegally, started dealing drugs, and gang-raped a woman — we can’t detain him, we can’t send him to Albania, we can’t repatriate him, and we’re almost forced to grant him international protection,” she said, adding that such decisions raise serious questions about the protection of victims and public confidence in the justice system.
“How can we guarantee the safety of citizens like this?” she asked. “These decisions are surreal; they affect not the government’s work but citizens’ rights, first and foremost, the right to safety.”m“What trust can a woman who has been gang-raped have in the system if her rapist can’t even be deported?” she added. “I also wonder where the feminists of ‘Non una di meno’ are on these issues.”The Italian leader also defended her government’s migration policies, including the controversial use of offshore migrant processing centers in Albania. “I am determined to do what the citizens have asked me to do: a tough policy on irregular immigration, including with new tools like the centers in Albania,” Meloni said.
“Even though some are trying everything they can to prevent it, I am determined on this and am willing to work three times, four times, ten times harder if necessary.”Remix News provided reporting this week on another Moroccan national accused of raping a 26-year-old woman in Bottanuco in what was a sustained attack over the course of an evening. The suspect was born in 1987 and has accumulated a series of criminal charges and convictions in Italy over more than a decade. Authorities say he was investigated for drug trafficking between 2014 and 2015 and charged with illegal immigration in 2015. Records also list illegal entry and residence in Trentino in 2016 and theft in 2017.
Court documents further list convictions including resisting a public official and drug trafficking in 2014, as well as participation in sexual assault and gang sexual assault in 2018. A further drug trafficking conviction was recorded in 2025.

“..the Hungarian authorities see things very differently. Their customs agency says that the transport is suspected of being part of a money laundering operation. They also maintain that among those detained was a former high-ranking general of Ukraine’s combined intelligence service and secret police, the SBU. ”

• In A Sane World, Zelensky’s Mafia Regime Would Be Isolated (Amar)

Politics can be very rough. Yet, usually, as long as they don’t collapse into war, at least in public a certain minimum pretense of decorum is maintained. Especially by governments vitally dependent on others’ support. Ukraine under the rule of never-reelected Vladimir Zelensky, however, has anything but a normal political system.

It is in this context that Vladimir Zelensky’s latest folly needs to be seen: Zelensky has threatened Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban, telling him he will hand the prime minister’s address over to “our guys” in the military so that they could “communicate with him in their own language.” Obviously, this is not even a hint of violence anymore, but the equivalent of a mafia godfather placing a dead horse’s head on your pillow or leaving a bullet on your doormat. The reason: Orban is exercising his right within the EU not to agree to yet another insane “loan” – the kind that will never be paid back, at least not by anyone in Ukraine – for Zelensky’s astronomically corrupt regime.
Orban is right about that “loan,” of course. Yet that isn’t even the core of this particular scandal. That is the fact that Zelensky feels he can issue a direct, mafia-style threat against the leader of an EU member state. Regarding Zelensky, though, there is no surprise here. He has been at the top of a regime that combines a bizarre sense of entitlement, shameless demands, outrageously greedy corruption, and a repulsive record of sabotage and assassination operations, very much even against its Western backers. Ask Germans who still have a spine about the Nord Stream attack, for instance. Or, if you can’t find a German with a spine, ask Viktor Orban, who has correctly called it “state terrorism.”
What needs more emphasis than Zelensky’s depraved sense of impunity is that he has reason to feel that way. It is true that, in this instance, the EU Commission has publicly protested against his barbaric behavior. But let’s be realistic, that is a formality, nothing but a gentle slap on the wrist for appearances’ sake. What really matters is that first the West as a whole and recently the EU “elites” on their own have spent years emboldening Zelensky and his regime by feeding Ukraine’s corruption, accepting and spreading Kiev’s lies, and suppressing any criticism of this policy as “Russian talking points.”
Indeed, in the EU, Hungary and Slovakia as well have been harassed and treated as pariahs for their resistance to this coddling of the Zelensky regime. It is all the more remarkable that both countries have principally stuck to their guns, even while having to concede ground repeatedly.
Thus, it may be a coincidence, but it is a remarkable fact that just one day after Zelensky’s open mafia boss fit, Hungary hit his ultra-sleazy regime where it hurts by striking at its money: In a certainly deliberately spectacular operation – balaklavas, body armor and assault rifles included, and all carefully caught on camera – Hungarian anti-terrorism forces stopped a Ukrainian currency and gold shipment that was crossing their country in two armored transporters. Arresting and temporarily detaining seven Ukrainians, the Hungarian officials found $40 million, €35 million, and about nine kilograms of gold. While the detained have been released and are back in Ukraine, the money and gold as well as the transporters have stayed in Hungary.
Kiev has called the Hungarian measures “state terrorism,” which is as absurd as Orban’s assessment of the Nord Stream attack is compelling. The Ukrainian government and Oshchad Bank, that had organized the transport, claim that everything about it was perfectly legal, but the Hungarian authorities see things very differently. Their customs agency says that the transport is suspected of being part of a money laundering operation. They also maintain that among those detained was a former high-ranking general of Ukraine’s combined intelligence service and secret police, the SBU. Ukrainian journalists, in turn, have even named the general as Genady Kuznetsov, the former head of Kiev’s Center for Anti-Terrorist Special Operations.
Budapest’s customs agency has also made public some intriguing figures: In the first two months of this year, the total of currency and gold shipped to Ukraine via Hungary has already amounted to over $900 million dollars, more than €420 million, and 146 kilograms of gold. Clearly, the amounts finally stopped and, it seems, seized were only a small part of a much larger, ongoing flow.According to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, these funds may be linked to the “mafia,” here obviously meaning not just organized crime in Ukraine but Zelensky’s circles themselves, which may be one and the same thing, of course. Also, Szijjarto is a smart man; he may well have sent an implied message to Kiev as well: If you talk like the mafia, we will treat you as mafia. Rest of Europe: Watch and learn.

““Since January, a total of $900 million and €420 million in cash has been transported through Hungary, and 146 kilograms of gold bars..”

• Hungary Detains Ukrainians Transporting 10s Of Millions In Cash, Gold (Brooke)

Hungarian authorities have detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized tens of millions of dollars, euros, and gold that were being transported through the country in armored vehicles, triggering the latest diplomatic dispute between Budapest and Kyiv. Hungary’s National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) confirmed on Friday that criminal proceedings had been launched on suspicion of money laundering following an operation carried out on March 5. Authorities intercepted two armored cash-transport vehicles traveling through Hungary from Austria toward Ukraine. According to the Hungarian authorities, the vehicles were carrying approximately $40 million, €35 million in cash, and 9 kilograms of gold.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said the case raised serious questions about the movement of large quantities of physical cash through the country. “Since January, a total of $900 million and €420 million in cash has been transported through Hungary, and 146 kilograms of gold bars have also been transported through the country,” he said, as cited by Magyar Hírlap.“We have a number of serious questions about this. First of all, this is a huge amount of cash, and we wonder why Ukrainians need to transport such a large amount of cash. If it is true that this is a transaction between banks, then the question rightly arises as to why the banks do not settle this between themselves by bank transfer, why it is necessary to transport such a large amount of cash, and why it has to be transported through Hungary,” Szijjártó added.
“These questions arise mainly because these cash shipments are accompanied by people who have clear ties to Ukrainian secret services.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, also commented on the case, raising concerns about the purpose of the funds. “Hundreds of millions in cash and gold moving through Hungary toward Ukraine — escorted by people linked to Ukrainian intelligence. Armored vehicles, suitcases full of money, staggering sums,” he wrote on X. “Whose money is this? What was it meant to finance? Who benefits from it? And why must such enormous amounts of cash travel across our country instead of being transferred through normal banking channels?”
He added that authorities would conduct a full investigation and argued that the Hungarian public had a right to know where such funds were coming from and what they were intended for. Ukraine, however, has strongly rejected the allegations and accused Hungary of illegally detaining its citizens and confiscating bank property. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the seven individuals were employees of the state-owned Oschadbank who were conducting a routine cash transfer between financial institutions. “Today in Budapest, Hungarian authorities took seven Ukrainian citizens hostage. The reasons are still unknown, as well as their current well-being, or the possibility of contacting them,” Sybiha said in a social media post cited by Ukrinform.
According to Kyiv, the vehicles were transporting currency and precious metals between Raiffeisen Bank Austria and Oschadbank Ukraine as part of standard banking operations. Sybiha accused Hungary of acting unlawfully. “If this is the ‘force’ announced earlier today by Mr. Orban, then this is the force of a criminal gang. This is state terrorism and racketeering,” he said. Oschadbank also confirmed that two of its armored vehicles and a seven-member transport team had been detained in Hungary while carrying out what it described as a routine transfer of funds and banking metals. “The value of the assets in the seized vehicles amounted to $40 million, EUR 35 million, and 9 kg of gold,” the bank said in a statement, adding that the transport had been documented in accordance with international banking and customs procedures.
According to GPS tracking data cited by the bank, the vehicles were last located in central Budapest near one of Hungary’s law enforcement agencies. Ukrainian officials said the whereabouts of the bank employees were not immediately known. Ukraine’s foreign ministry has also issued a warning advising Ukrainian citizens to avoid traveling through Hungary following what it described as the “kidnapping” of the bank employees and seizure of state bank assets. The incident marks the latest escalation in already strained relations between the two countries.
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sparked outrage among European nationalist politicians by suggesting that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s address could be given to Ukrainian armed forces so they could “speak to him in their own language.” Hungarian officials interpreted the remark as a threat directed at Orbán amid ongoing disputes over Hungary’s opposition to a proposed €90 billion EU loan package for Ukraine.

Good battle.

• Vance Vs. Rubio? Trump’s Pals Have a Preference. (Sarah Anderson)

It feels like we’ve been talking about who the 2028 GOP nominee will be from the moment Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2025. Even Trump himself has thrown his opinions out in multiple interviews. Ultimately, it seems to come down to either Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, possibly even a combination of the two. Vance feels like the natural MAGA heir, and he performs best in polls by a mile. He’s extremely intelligent, he’s a veteran, and he has major relatable Middle America appeal. His story is the ultimate proof that you can pull yourself out of any bad situation, and he’s been a great advocate for people of faith and family values. But he’s also young, and some say he needs more experience under his belt, plus some of his ties to certain right-wing influencers come across as unappealing to certain voters.

Rubio definitely has the experience, and his star has risen in his current position as secretary of State, National Security advisor, and pretty much head of everything. He’s proven his competence on foreign policy 100 times over in just one year, he’s made the case for American exceptionalism most eloquently, and he’s the subject of what may be the most popular meme on the internet — I know that sounds silly, but it matters. He also appeals to Hispanic voters, which the GOP needs desperately, and could pull in some moderates and independents.
But he doesn’t poll nearly as well — though he’s gaining some momentum in 2026 after Venezuela and Iran — and many voters still focus on his past and file him under labels like “neocon,” “establishment,” and “RINO.” Based on his 2016 presidential run, they don’t think he’d be a good candidate. According to NBC, Trump has been polling his pals and donors at Mar-a-Lago dinners in recent weeks, and they have pretty strong opinions about who they want to see as the nominee. On the night before the conflict in Iran began, Trump was actually hosting a dinner at his home base in Florida “with a group of roughly 25 GOP donors, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and billionaire Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson.”
Trump asked the crowd who he should support in 2028, and according to someone who was there, the crowd shouted “Rubio” and cheered almost unanimously. However, another person in attendance told NBC that the room was more evenly split. (And these are not named sources, so, as usual, take that with a grain of salt…) NBC also reports that another former Trump official said that you have to remember that Mar-a-Lago crowd is not all that representative of the United States. The Mar-a-Lago donor crew are not JD people. He did not get picked [to be vice president] because of the Mar-a-Lago crowd. If you remember, that crowd was lobbying the president to pick Marco.
White House spokesman Steven Cheung responded and said this isn’t the administration’s current priority: “The president has assembled an all-star team that has achieved unprecedented success in just over one year. No amount of crazed media speculation about Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio will deter this Administration’s mission of fighting for the American people.” A lot of people have made a big fuss over the fact that JD Vance was in Washington, D.C. when we struck Iran, while Trump was with Rubio in Florida, believing it was proof of some sort of favoritism. But a White House spokesperson said this the reality is that it was a matter of security — it’s probably best not to have the president and vice president in the same place when you’re militarily going after one of the country’s biggest enemies.
Vance hasn’t announced whether or not he plans to run, but I can’t imagine he won’t. Rubio has said that if Vance does run, he’ll step aside and support him. Many have floated a Vance-Rubio ticket. My personal opinion on that is that Rubio is much more useful where he is — being the vice president almost feels like a step down. Then again, maybe he can make history again and be the vice president and secretary of State and National Security advisor and head of everything else.

Because she’s conservative.

• Why the Left Suddenly Hates Gwen Stefani (Queen)

At the tail end of my college years, a band from Orange County, Calif., burst onto the national scene. MTV News called this group a “ska-punk band” — it seemed like a lot of new bands in that era received that moniker — but No Doubt’s music was a true fusion of ska (along with rocksteady and reggae) and rock with more of a punk edge than a punch sound and a sparkling pop melodic sensibility. But what set No Doubt apart was its charismatic frontwoman, Gwen Stefani. She had a unique combination of that aforementioned punk edge and SoCal glamor. Add her boundless energy and truly unique voice into the mix, and a rockstar was born. “Just a Girl” was a fun hit, but No Doubt won me over with “Spiderwebs.” And then “Don’t Speak” launched them into the stratosphere; somebody (I don’t remember who) said several years later that if the record label had released a physical single for “Don’t Speak,” it would’ve become the biggest number one hit of all time.

No Doubt had a few more years of success, and Stefani began a massively successful solo career. Additionally, she married Gavin Rossdale of the band Bush and had three kids. When they divorced, she married country singer Blake Shelton. Side note: After she divorced Rossdale, she was supposed to marry me. I guess she didn’t get the memo.In recent years, Stefani has been more out front about her Catholic faith. She has been a practicing Catholic for years, but she currently partners with Hallow, a Catholic prayer and Bible study app that also markets to non-Catholic Christians. She and Shelton also lead traditional lives, which is unusual for a pair of longtime professional musicians.
Stefani’s openly faithful life and loyalty to her marriage have apparently made her a target of leftist ire. The Telegraph, the center-right (or should I say centre-right?) UK news outlet, published a feature over the weekend about how Stefani has become “an enemy of the left.” Of course, part of this stems from Stefani’s faith and her partnership with Hallow, which is — GASP! — pro-life. The Telegraph’s Poppie Platt writes of how Stefani is wadding panties everywhere: Stefani recently found herself in hot water over her decision to partner with the popular American “prayer and Bible study” app Hallow, which is anti-abortion and counts major Trump donor – and PayPal founder – Peter Thiel among its investors. Its other prominent celebrity backers include two of Hollywood’s most famous Christians, Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt.
After Stefani shared a video encouraging her fans to download the app and join its Lent prayer challenge – “Hey everyone, I just got my ashes, and I’m ready for Lent… Check it out. God bless,” she gushed – her more liberally minded followers went into meltdown. “This ‘Maga makeover’ thing is really gross,” one wrote on Instagram, while another said Stefani’s “pandering to the racist rednecks in this country is really disappointing to see.”Platt points out that Stefani has engaged in what the left would consider “cultural appropriation” for years: hip-hop affectations, nods to Latin culture, the Harajuku girls. Yet Stefani has never uttered the first mealy-mouthed apology for any of it.
And while Stefani hasn’t made any overt political statements that I can find, she did share an interview that Tucker Carlson did before he went full antisemitic Qatari stooge with The Chosen star Jonathan Roumie, another devoted Catholic. That was a problem for leftist pearl clutchers. Stefani has traded the Los Angeles-area life for something more settled with Shelton. My friend and colleague Sarah Anderson sent me a video Shelton made of the garden that he and Stefani are planting. He refers to her as “my wife — her name’s Gwen.” Her desire for a more traditional life is nothing new. After all, she wrote No Doubt’s single “Simple Kind of Life,” in which she contrasted settling down with a family against the nomadic life of a musician. But living that simple kind of life in reality is too much for leftists.
Platt writes: In 2024, she released the country-influenced album Bouquet, filled with songs that swapped the feminist-friendly, girl-boss messaging No Doubt was famous for – on angsty hits such as Just A Girl – for odes to marriage and settling down; it was duly slammed by critics. The fact it was recorded in Nashville with help from her country star husband Shelton only added further fuel to the fire for her liberal former fans, who felt like she had replaced independence with subservience. In response to the fuss over the Hallow advert, one X user said: “She’s married to a God-loving Southern country singer, what do you expect?”
Here’s what it all boils down to: the left despises normalcy. The kind of people who faithfully worship, plant gardens, and live quiet lives with spouses and kids are the kind of people leftists hate. Stefani is part of this segment of Americans who become targets of left-wing vitriol — whether she’s actually MAGA or not. And that tells you far more about the left than it ever tells you about Stefani. If you’ve noticed that faith, family, and living a normal life increasingly make you a target of the cultural elites, you’re not imagining it. At PJ Media, we’re committed to calling that out and defending the values that built this country.

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Debt Rattle April 9 2017

Apr 092017

April 9, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:32 am Finance Tagged with: austerity, Banks, bubble, CIA, credit, Greece, intelligence, Rorschach, Syria, Wag the Dog 7 Responses »

Paul Gauguin Avenue de Clichy 1889

• Central Banks “Took Over” Markets In 2009; In December “Unwind” Begins (ZH)

• ‘No Bubble, No Pop’: Why Banks Are As Safe As Houses (WAus)

• Greek Gloom As Economy Stalls Amid Latest Bout Of EU Wrangling (G.)

• The Picture Of Our Economy Looks A Lot Like A Rorschach Test (NYT)

• Steve Keen And Michael Hudson: Fixing The Economy (EI)

• Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment (Robert Parry)

• Former DIA Colonel: “US Strikes On Syria Based On A Lie” (IntelT)

• Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard On Syria (Fox)

• How Marine Le Pen Could Win (Pol.)

• Privacy Experts Say CIA Left Americans Open To Cyber Attacks (IBT)

• Rising Waters Threaten China’s Rising Cities (NYT)

“What do credit traders look at when they mark their books? Well, these days it is fair to say that they have more than one eye on the equity market.”

• Central Banks “Took Over” Markets In 2009; In December “Unwind” Begins (ZH)

Citigroup’s crack trio of credit analysts, Matt King, Stephen Antczak, and Hans Lorenzen, best known for their relentless, Austrian, at times “Zero Hedge-esque” attacks on the Fed, and persistent accusations central banks distort markets, all summarized best in the following Citi chart… have come out of hibernation, to dicuss what comes next for various asset classes in the context of the upcoming paradigm shift in central bank posture. In a note released by the group’s credit team on March 27, Lorenzen writes that credit’s “infatuation with equities is coming to an end.” “What do credit traders look at when they mark their books? Well, these days it is fair to say that they have more than one eye on the equity market.”

Understandable: after all, as the FOMC Minutes revealed last week, even the Fed now openly admits its policy is directly in response to stock prices. As the credit economist points out, “statistically, over the last couple of years both markets have been influencing (“Granger causing”) each other. But considering the relative size, depth and liquidity of (not to mention the resources dedicated to) the equity market, we’d argue that more often than not, the asset class taking the passenger seat is credit. Yet the relationship was not always so cosy. Over the long run, the correlation in recent years is actually unusual. In the two decades before the Great Financial Crisis, three-month correlations between US credit returns and the S&P 500 returns tended to oscillate sharply and only barely managed to stay positive over the long run..

Rudolf E. Havenstein@RudyHavenstein
Replying to @zerohedge
Here is a chart of the well being of the American middle-class and poor over the same period.

“Tell a European you think there’s a housing bubble and you’ll have a reasonable discussion,” Grantham said. “Tell an Australian and you’ll have World War III…”

• ‘No Bubble, No Pop’: Why Banks Are As Safe As Houses (WAus)

The housing sector is therefore picking up the slack, and as far as the Westpac chair can discern the underlying demand is real. “That’s why I believe there is no bubble — there is huge demand from local and offshore buyers,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not looking at things like the capacity to pay interest and repay principal, so we don’t have any issues with the measures announced (on March 31). “APRA has its mandate; we have ours. But we have no interest in lending to people who can’t repay.” That’s the reasoned analysis from Norris and Maxsted, and Henry mostly concurs. If you’re after the full Catherine wheel experience, try taking the alternative position as a market-leading fund manager or economist and warning the public about an inflating property bubble. Legendary US investor Jeremy Grantham did just that, vowing in 2012 he would never do it again. “Tell a European you think there’s a housing bubble and you’ll have a reasonable discussion,” Grantham said. “Tell an Australian and you’ll have World War III. Been there, done that!”

Local economist Steve Keen entered the fray in 2009, likening the experience to “having my genitals cut off”, while hedge fund managers have lost so much money short-selling Australian banks because they expected the bubble to pop that it’s been called the “widow maker’s” trade. True to his word, Grantham failed to respond to an email inviting him to trigger World War III. Keen, who has relocated to Britain but was in Australia this week, has no such hesitation, saying it is abundantly clear that we’re in a debt-fuelled housing bubble that has only a year or two to run before it pops. “We’re in hock to the banks and we depend on endless rising levels of credit,” the economics professor says. “Credit can continue rising but eventually you reach a peak and the gas runs out.”

Denmark, according to Keen, reached its world-record peak in 2010 at a household debt-to-GDP ratio of 139 per cent. While Australia is currently at 123 per cent, the country has some headroom because the corporate sector has deleveraged and the RBA still has some policy ammunition with the 1.5 per cent cash rate. Keen reckons we have two years, at most, before unravelling in a similar, catastrophic way to Ireland in the financial crisis. However Phil Ruthven, the experienced forecaster and founder of IBISWorld, says low interest rates mean that debt servicing is the lowest it’s been in 50 years. “But we do need to increase supply, and we do need to warn home buyers of the dangers of going too deep into debt when interest rates are rising,” Ruthven says.

“They no longer have the means to meet basic needs, with consumption of milk and bread right down and payment of electricity bills at an all-time low.”

• Greek Gloom As Economy Stalls Amid Latest Bout Of EU Wrangling (G.)

Eight years into Greece’s ordeal to escape bankruptcy, thousands of Communist party sympathisers packed into Syntagma Square in Athens on Friday to protest at the latest concessions made by Alexis Tsipras’s leftist government to keep the country afloat. Massed before parliament in the fading light of day, they did what they had come to do: rail against the cuts that loom in return for further disbursement of the emergency aid now needed to avert economic collapse. The serial drama of Greece’s debt repayments will reach a climax again when loans of €7.5bn mature in July. That communist-aligned unionists can still muster such protests is testament to the party’s zealous determination to make itself heard. Most Greeks gave up demonstrating long ago.

Two years short of a decade in freefall, and with little prospect of recovery, the nation has succumbed to protest fatigue. With the exception of pensioners – the great losers in Greece’s assault by austerity – anger has been replaced by malaise, the lassitude that strikes when loss becomes commonplace. Friday’s protest, one of more than 60 nationwide, came within hours of Europe escaping another dose of Greek drama after eurozone finance ministers announced that bailout talks – stalled as Athens bickered over the terms of its latest compliance review with lenders – could finally resume. International auditors representing the bodies behind the three bailout packages the country has received since May 2010 are expected to return to Greece on Monday. Once technical issues are addressed, the delayed bailout payment will be disbursed, ensuring default is averted in July.

In exchange, the once fiercely anti-austerity Tsipras has signed up to further reforms worth €3.6bn, the equivalent of 2% of GDP, to be put into effect once the current programme ends next year. “It is in the nature of every agreement for there to be compromises,” said Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos, who faces the thankless task of having to sell the prospect of more pension cuts and tax rises to sceptical leftists in the ruling Syriza party when it convenes on Sunday. “There are things that will upset … the Greek people.” After more than a year of hard talk and bluster – the review was meant to have been concluded in February 2016 – the government once again conceded on its own red lines, reflecting Athens’s overarching policy of keeping Greece in the heart of the eurozone. Tsipras, who fought hard to ensure countermeasures can also be taken to offset losses if economic indicators are better than expected, was quick to sound optimistic. “The Greek economy,” he announced, “is ready to leave the crisis behind it.”

But the breakthrough falls far short of the all-inclusive package the government was hoping for. Once again, promises of reducing the country’s staggering debt pile – at 180% of GDP, the biggest impediment to real economic recovery – will have to wait. [..] Unemployment has increased from 23.2% to 23.5%, with investors – the only guarantee of soaking up such an oversupply of labour – staying away. In a repeat of the chaos that beset the country’s financial system at the height of the crisis in 2015, an estimated €2.5bn of deposits left Greek banks in January and February. Consumption is also down. “The 37% of Greeks at risk of poverty and social exclusion really cannot make ends meet,” said Aliki Mouriki, a leading Greek sociologist. “They no longer have the means to meet basic needs, with consumption of milk and bread right down and payment of electricity bills at an all-time low.”

That’s what you get for publishing made-up reports all the time, NYT.

• The Picture Of Our Economy Looks A Lot Like A Rorschach Test (NYT)

Economics has a foundation in hard numbers – employment, inflation, spending – that has largely allowed it to sidestep the competing partisan narratives that have afflicted American politics and culture. But not anymore. Since Donald J. Trump’s victory in November, consumer sentiment has diverged in an unprecedented way, with Republicans convinced that a boom is at hand, and Democrats foreseeing an imminent recession. “We’ve never recorded this before,” said Richard Curtin, who directs the University of Michigan’s monthly survey of consumer sentiment. Although the outlook has occasionally varied by political party since the survey began in 1946, “the partisan divide has never had as large an impact on consumers’ economic expectations,” he said.

At the same time, familiar economic data points have become Rorschach tests. That was evident after the government’s monthly jobs report on Friday; Republicans’ talking points centered on a 10-year low in the unemployment rate, while Democrats focused on a sharp decline in job creation. “I find it stunning, to be honest. It’s unreal,” said Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “Things that were less politicized in the past, like how you feel about the economy, have become more politicized now.” Indeed, the night-and-day views underscore yet another front on which Americans remain polarized five months after the election, and with President Trump nearing his 100th day in office.

[..] The University of Michigan researchers have their own way of measuring the gulf between the two viewpoints and how quickly it has flipped. Among Republicans, the Michigan consumer expectations index was at 61.1 in October, the kind of reading typically reported in the depths of a recession. Confident that Mrs. Clinton would win, Democrats registered a 95.4 reading, close to the highs reached when her husband was in office in the late 1990s and the economy was soaring. By March, the positions were reversed, with an even more extreme split. Republicans’ expectations had soared to 122.5, equivalent to levels registered in boom times. As for Democrats, they were even more pessimistic than Republicans had been in October.

As at the voting booth, the split in perceptions could have real-world consequences. If behavior tracks the recession-era sentiment among Democrats, who account for 32% of respondents in the survey, prophecies could quickly become self-fulfilling by affecting spending and investing decisions. “If one-third of the population cut their consumer spending by 5%, you get a recession,” said Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist who served in the Clinton administration and advised Al Gore and Hillary Clinton on economic policy during their Democratic presidential campaigns. “I don’t think it will happen, but it’s not beyond the realm of the possible.”

To be sure, even if Democratic consumers pulled back, that wouldn’t necessarily bring on a recession. A burst of spending by bullish Republicans, who equal 27% of those polled by the Michigan researchers, could counteract much of that drag. And independents, who are the largest cohort in the survey, at 41%, remain fairly optimistic about future growth. It is rare for “rising optimism to coexist with increasing uncertainty,” said Mr. Curtin, the Michigan expert. “The current level of optimism clearly indicates that no economywide spending retrenchment is underway, but the prevailing level of uncertainty will limit growth in discretionary spending.”

Great conversation between two great economists. Very much worth a full read.

• Steve Keen And Michael Hudson: Fixing The Economy (EI)

Michael Hudson: If you don’t cancel the debts, they’re going to keep growing, and all of the growth and national income is going to go to the creditors. So the fact is that the debts aren’t owed to the “we” – the 99%. The debts are owed to the 1%. 1% of the population has 75% of the financial assets. All their growth has occurred since 1980. So the question is, who are you going to save? The economy or the banks? If you don’t cancel the debts, they’re going to keep growing, and all of the growth and national income is going to go to the creditors. When President Obama came in, he promised that he was going to write down the debts – especially the junk mortgages – to the actual real value of the homes that the junk mortgage people had taken out.

Or and set the debt service – the money you have to pay every month to pay the mortgage, amortization, and principal, and interest to what the normal rental value of this would be. Well, as soon as he was elected, he dropped it all. He invited the bankers to the White House and said, boys, I’m the only guy standing between you and the pitchforks out there. Don’t worry, I can deliver my constituency to you. So, basically, the Democratic Party broke its voters into a black constituency, a women’s constituency, a LGBTQ constituency, and they’re all for Wall Street. Instead of saving the economy, Obama bailed out and saved the banks by keeping the debts in place. And once you have to pay that, it’s curtains. In the end, everybody’s going to end up in Greece. Greece is where you’re going, if you don’t.

“I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.”

“People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict..”

• Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment (Robert Parry)

On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province. But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid. One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.

The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus. In this telling, the earlier ouster of retired Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and this week’s removal of Bannon from the National Security Council were key steps in the reassertion of neocon influence inside the Trump presidency. The strange personalities and ideological extremism of Flynn and Bannon made their ousters easier, but they were obstacles that the neocons wanted removed.

[..] Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media. Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.” Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike.

“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.” Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public. “People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”

The picture is pretty clear by now.

• Former DIA Colonel: “US Strikes On Syria Based On A Lie” (IntelT)

Donald Trump’s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened.

• The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.

• The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.

• The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.

• There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.

• We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called “first responders” handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through “Live Agent” training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

• There are members of the U.S. military who were aware this strike would occur and it was recorded. There is a film record. At least the Defense Intelligence Agency knows that this was not a chemical weapon attack. In fact, Syrian military chemical weapons were destroyed with the help of Russia.

This is Gulf of Tonkin 2. How ironic. Donald Trump correctly castigated George W. Bush for launching an unprovoked, unjustified attack on Iraq in 2003. Now we have President Donald Trump doing the same damn thing. Worse in fact. Because the intelligence community had information showing that there was no chemical weapon launched by the Syrian Air Force. Here’s the good news. The Russians and Syrians were informed, or at least were aware, that the attack was coming. They were able to remove a large number of their assets. The base the United States hit was something of a backwater. Donald Trump gets to pretend that he is a tough guy. He is not. He is a fool.

Tulsi is being drowned out by the trigger happy Democrats. But she actually served in the Middle East.

• Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard On Syria (Fox)

The cost of war is profound. I’m opposed to the escalation of the counterproductive regime change war in Syria because it will lead to the deaths of more innocent men, women and children. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, the strongest forces on the ground in Syria, will continue to increase their strength and influence over the region in the vacuum of a central government.

The French detest their political system even more than Americans do theirs. It’s very possible abstentions will decide the elections. And Le Pen voters WILL go to the ballot box.

• How Marine Le Pen Could Win (Pol.)

Could Marine Le Pen become France’s next president? A quick look at polling trends suggests that at first blush at least, the answer is “no.” [..] But for Serge Galam, a French physicist who predicted Donald Trump’s election in the United States, polls are missing out on an important factor: abstention — and specifically, how it affects voter turnout for different candidates. He argues that abstention, which a poll by CEVIPOF showed could be as high as 30%, is likely to be decisive in a “dirty” campaign dominated by scandals. “Obviously, nothing is done yet but her election is becoming very likely,” said Galam, a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research who also studies public opinion at the CEVIPOF political science institute. “I’m taking a scientific view of this — she needs a turnout differential of about 20% to win.”

[..] If Le Pen is projected to lose the runoff by 41 to 59%, for example, Galam argues that Le Pen could still win if the turnout rate for her voters is 90% versus 70% for her rival, for an overall turnout rate of 79%. In other words, the National Front leader could benefit because a substantial number of people who say they will vote for her rival may not actually go to the polls. Equally, if Le Pen is projected to lose by 45 to 55% in the runoff, she could win if turnout for her is 85% versus 70% for her rival, for an overall turnout of 77%. If overall turnout is 76%, then Le Pen would need a turnout of 90% versus 65% for her rival, and so on.

Some polls have Le Pen lagging behind Macron or Fillon by more than 30 percentage points, which would make her victory near impossible. But others show her within striking distance, with a lag of less than 20 points. If she can shrink the gap, then the challenge for Le Pen will be to mobilize a greater proportion of her supporters than her rivals. In this regard, Galam argues that Le Pen has a shot. For different reasons, he says, both Macron and Fillon aroused intense feelings of “aversion” among some voters, with a large proportion of Macron voters saying they could change their mind on election day. Negative or ambivalent feelings could translate into weaker turnout for them on election day.

Newsweek wakes up to a 2 week old report from IBT.

• Privacy Experts Say CIA Left Americans Open To Cyber Attacks (IBT)

WikiLeaks release of the latest cache of confidential C.I.A. documents as part of an ongoing “Vault 7” operation exposed some of the U.S. government’s hacking and digital espionage capabilities—this time having to do with iPhones and other smart devices used by hundreds of millions of people across the globe. But cyber security experts and computers scientists are raising concerns over the C.I.A.’s disregard of safety measures put in place for discovering these dangerous flaws in smart gadgets. The federal agency has kept its discovery of many exploits (software tools targeting flaws in products, typically used for malicious hacking purposes) a secret, “stockpiling” that information rather than reporting it to multinational corporations, throwing millions of Americans into the crosshairs of a dangerous, intergovernmental spying game in the process.

“What’s critical to understand is that these vulnerabilities can be exploited not just by our government but by foreign governments and cyber criminals around the world, and that’s deeply troubling,” said Ashley Gorski, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney working on the civil rights group’s national security project. “Our government should be working to help the companies patch vulnerabilities when they are discovered, not stockpiling them.” The C.I.A. knew its own classified documents had been floating around the dark web for at least a year and was well aware the hacking capabilities it was using to break into everyday tech could also have been employed by hostile foreign networks. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin reportedly orchestrated a sprawling governmental operation in an attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which featured several cyber attacks on email servers and devices used by members of the Democratic Party.

The government enacted the Vulnerabilities Equities Process to reduce the unnecessary stockpiling of exploits. The procedure was meant to provide guidelines for agencies like the C.I.A. for notifying companies when dangerous issues are discovered in their devices. The measure was put in place during the Obama administration to prevent cyber attacks from terrorist networks and foreign governments, including Russia and China. But the C.I.A. completely ignored the Vulnerabilities Equity Process, instead exploring ways to use exploits for their own purposes, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international nonprofit digital rights group that reviewed a copy of the practice after filing a Freedom of Information Act request. “It appears the CIA didn’t even use the [Vulnerabilities Equity Process],” said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That’s worrisome, because we know these agencies overvalue their offensive capabilities and undervalue the risk to the rest of us.”

There is so much wrong in China’s urbanization it’s hard to decide where to start.

• Rising Waters Threaten China’s Rising Cities (NYT)

The rains brought torrents, pouring into basements and malls, the water swiftly rising a foot and a half. The city of Dongguan, a manufacturing center here in the world’s most dynamic industrial region, was hit especially hard by the downpour in May 2014. More than 100 factories and shops were inundated. Water climbed knee-high in 20 minutes, wiping out inventory for dozens of businesses. Next door in Guangzhou, an ancient, mammoth port city of 13 million, helicopters and a fleet of 80 boats had to be sent to rescue trapped residents. Tens of thousands lost their homes, and 53 square miles of nearby farmland were ruined. The cost of repairs topped $100 million. Chen Rongbo, who lived in the city, saw the flood coming. He tried to scramble to safety on the second floor of his house, carrying his 6-year-old granddaughter. He slipped. The flood swept both of them away.

Flooding has been a plague for centuries in southern China’s Pearl River Delta. So even the rains that May, the worst in the area in years, soon drifted from the headlines. People complained and made jokes on social media about wading through streets that had become canals and riding on half-submerged buses through lakes that used to be streets. But there was no official hand-wringing about what caused the floods or how climate change might bring more extreme storms and make the problems worse. A generation ago, this was mostly farmland. Three vital rivers leading to the South China Sea, along with a spider’s web of crisscrossing tributaries, made the low-lying delta a fertile plain, famous for rice. Guangzhou, formerly Canton, had more than a million people, but by the 1980s, China set out to transform the whole region, capitalizing on its proximity to water, the energy of its people, and the money and port infrastructure of neighboring Hong Kong.

Rushing to catch up after decades of stagnation, China built a gargantuan collection of cities the size of nations with barely a pause to consider their toll on the environment, much less the future impact of global warming. Today, the region is a goliath of industry with a population exceeding 42 million. But while prosperity reshaped the social and cultural geography of the delta, it didn’t fundamentally alter the topography. Here, as elsewhere, breakneck development comes up against the growing threat of climate change. Economically, Guangzhou now has more to lose from climate change than any other city on the planet, according to a World Bank report. Nearby Shenzhen, another booming metropolis, ranked 10th on that World Bank list, which measured risk as a percentage of GDP.

Shenzhen was transformed in a few decades from a small fishing village into a city of millions.