Polling Data Pointing to a Trump Landslide

Quick update on the election. First, if you haven't been around in awhile, I have been posting mainly at a Substack.

About three weeks ago, I made an election bet on Trump to win the popular vote. Here is my post-2016 post on the prior big election bet. Last week I YOLO'd the account on the bet. This is not a huge sum of money, but it's a high convinction bet and has me thinking a lot about the implications.

My default assumption is that a Trump landslide (it will be a huge landslide if he wins the popular vote) will turbocharge the stock market rally and set off a surge in the U.S. dollar. My view is the "smart money" isn't betting on a landslide. If they shift that way, we might see this rally unfold into the election. Normally, there is a dip ahead of the election that will bottom before the election actually takes place.

Why a landslide? From 5 days ago, look at the Biden and Clinton leads on this date versus Harris: Biden +9.7, Clinton +4.6, Harris +2.0 percent. Trump is also running about 4 percentage points ahead of Harris in almost all the swing states, such that he leads in most of them. In 2016 and 2020, Trump trailed in the swing states one month out. This, if history plays out as it did the past two cycles, and Trump further gains, he will win easily. I project 312 Electoral College votes. You can see my map at RealClearPolling. This is based on Trump adding a bit to his swing state totals. He actually doesn't need to gain as much as in 2016 or 2020, so if pollsters are doing a better job this time around, I think he wins.

A note on polling, which I made back in 2016. The polls have never been that bad as a whole. What happened in 2016 was "experts" interpreted poll numbers and drew very incorrect conclusions.

To wit, Republicans almost always rally late in elections because for whatever reason, more people who lean Republican will say they're independent than vice versa. That's the latest number pointing to a big Trump win that I saw yesterday. Pollsters can only go by what people tell them, and if people are shy-Republicans, the polls will always skew Democrat. Historically, Democrats have easy wins when running +8 in voter identificaiton polls. Republicans win when it's only Democrat +3. To repeat, Republicans win when the pollsters report Democrats are +3 in party identification. The current polls have Republicans at +1.

Finally, an anecdote. There are people called "low propensity voters" who don't hardly or ever show up to vote. These people do not care most of the time or all of the time. But sometimes they get motivated to vote. In Pennsylvania as of last week, there were already more than 300 votes from people who hadn't voted since 2004. It's a small number, but statistically significant. My hunch is people who haven't voted in 20 years are getting off their butts to vote Trump. Additionally, early voting by Democrats is down around the country from 2020. My hunch is the very high turnout number of 66 percent that year will head back towards the more normal level of around 60 percent.

In conclusion, all polling data points to a large Trump victory. It looks large enough that a "steal," if you believe that is possible, will have to be at a scale so large as to be blatantly obvious. Personally, I don't see anything like what happened in 2020 repeating. Going through the swing state vote data, the only state that seemed to buck the Trump rally trend was Georgia, which has been at the epicenter of claims of election fraud. As for polling, if pollsters have completely adjusted to 2016 and 2020 and are overstating Trump's support in response, then of course my interpretation will be proved wrong. If pollsters have improved a bit, but Trump still gains 1 to 2 percentage points instead of the usual 4 to 6 percentage points, then he might eke out a popular vote victory while winning an electoral college landslide. If he actually surged as much as he did in 2016 and 2020, he should win the popular vote by an easy margin.

Western Ruling Class Starts Reaping the Migrant Whirlwind

The open door of the West is about to slam shut.

For the past decade, Western ruling regimes pushed mass migration on a public that wanted immigration restriction. They iced out nationalist parties, calling them far-right, extremist and so on for desiring sane migration policies. After sowing the wind with this propaganda, they now reap the whirlwind. If they fail to tighten migration laws, the "far-right" wins. If they tighten migration laws, the "far-right" wins.

France seeks to break deadlock over controversial immigration law

A deal has been struck:

The latest deal also introduces migration quotas, makes it harder for immigrants' children to become French, and says that dual nationals sentenced for serious crimes against the police could lose French citizenship.

Manipulation to the Max?

I’ve been skeptical of claims the financial markets are manipulated by government. There had been evidence of banks manipulating indexes such as LIBOR, and in precious metals. There’s probably a lot of “legal” manipulation via HFTs frontrunning trades with the help of exchanges. I put legal in quotes because firms claim to be market making or providing liquidity, but market makers used to take risk, while some of these firms seem to never have down days. It'a a big red flag for fraud. Whether legal or not, when this era finally ends, Wall Street and financial markets will be treated similarly to how they were in the New Deal. Today’s heroes will become villains.

Still, until I see smoking gun evidence of fraud, it's an unverified claim. The markets are behaving as expected when there’s a relentless bid from retirement funds being invested in high risk securities through passive index funds, along with an endless bid from speculators who think the Federal Reserve’s number-one job is pumping the stock market.

After the bear market, firms such as Blackrock, Vanguard, Invesco and maybe companies offering 401k menus, the whole investment industry really, could be charged with fraud, criminal negligence and so forth. There won’t be any way to replace two generations of lost retirement savings, but all of these firms can be destroyed and their executives placed in jail. If this ends up being a bigger bust than 1929, expect a bigger response from government even if it is unfair, unjust scapegoating.

However. I saw this claim on Twitter:

If the Federal Reserve is manipulating commodity prices, it is engaged in criminal fraud. Everyone involved is committing criminal acts with no legal protection, only political cover if the current regime OK'd it. It is likely at the behest of the criminal regime in Washington, DC. If this is going on, and this is only a claim on social media, but at this point it wouldn’t shock given how the Federal Reserve has expanded its operations in the past decade. Nor would it shock considering all the criminal and seditious actions being taken by USG.

Widespread criminal activity at the heart of government and the financial system would be precisely the type of rot you’d expect ahead of or during a Fourth Turning. If the public ever move on from Trump, Kennedy and current outsiders, and found itself a real rival elite, and if such a man could win against a criminal regime willing to rig elections, he would become a defacto dictator for the simple reason that arresting most of the ruling class would be step one of any reform effort. Otherwise as with Trump, they would engage in seditious conspiracies to thwart any reform.

Moreover, they are building an authoritarian, fascist system fusing government power with corporate operations. The government is the iron hand of tyranny, corporations the velvet glove that carries out what is still currently illegal for government. It's like a turnkey operation for a would-be Pinochet.

The government doesn’t openly use all its powers because it would be unpopular at this stage. Probably not as unpopular as it should be. About a third of the country seems to be on board with fascism as long as it's against their enemies. When the depression is in full swing though, and if the public revolts for real, they will cheer a President who makes full use of the national security state against the current ruling class. He can use military tribunals to wipe them out, and his face will be added to Mount Rushmore. Such is the scale of coming events. That, or the bad guys win and consolidate power. They are already using state power against political enemies and jailing supporters of rival politicians. If they keep going, the USA turns into something like modern China with permanently manipulated markets with a fig leaf of private ownership and rigged elections acting as the veneer for a totalitarian state.

Systemic Racism is Fake

If systemic racism was real, people wouldn't have to fake studies to prove it.

NYPost: Professor fired for ‘faking data to prove lynching makes whites want longer sentences for blacks,’ 6 studies retracted

Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart was a guru of the claim that “systemic racism” infests America’s police and American society.

Now he’s out of a job on account of “extreme negligence” in his research.

The academic was fired after almost 20 years of his data — including figures used in an explosive study, which claimed the legacy of lynchings made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives — were found to be in question.

Claim: Biden Bribed by Russian Intelligent Asset

If this is true, it's the kind of bombshell that could wreck the current government.

Red State: Burisma Founder Mykola Zlochevsky, Who Allegedly Bribed Joe and Hunter Biden, Is an SVR Asset

It was revealed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Monday that the “foreign national” mentioned in an FD-1023 form by a confidential human source (CHS) not only claimed to have bribed Hunter and Joe Biden but possessed a total of 17 audio recordings of his conversations with them about the arrangement. He created the recordings as a sort of “insurance policy.” It was not clear whether the FBI had copies of the audio recordings or not.

Last week Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Anna Paulina Luna, and Nancy Mace said that the foreign national identified in the FD-1023 form is Zlochevsky.

Unlear if this is true, and if true, if the source was a Russian asset from the start or turned later. If Biden was bribed by a Ukranian now working for Russian intelligence, I assume the American ruling class will try to spin it as Russian interference.

French Torch Pro-Immigration Politician's Home

Remix: French mayor in support of new asylum center in seaside town has his house burned down

The house of a left-wing mayor in France, who supports a controversial plan to establish an asylum center in the small seaside town of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, has been burned down in a suspected arson attack.

Immigrants to the USA are probably the safest because the USA considers itself "a nation of immigrants," but there will probably be some rough goings for those who are openly unassimilated and also observably anti-American. In Europe, I'm expecting things won't turn out very badly for the migrants and it'll spark a backlash that will hit long-term citizens such as Turks in Germany.

Preamble to War: US Hegemony and Its Perils

China is preparing for war with the United States, or perhaps more narrowly USG and the Baizuo. The document doesn't read like a foreign diplomatic cable, but something closer to a Trump speech. It is rhetoric preparing for more open and direct conflict.

 

I will leave aside many obvious comments, that I've already seen covered elsewhere. Instead, I'll comment on why I believe Russia remains the greater threat to the American ruling class even though it is the lesser economic power, and for that reason, the lesser military threat over the course of a long war. 

The document is heavily tainted by socialist ideology, but this is to be expected. Russia sets itself up as a Christian nation in conflict with the Satanic Baizuo. China is an ideologically Marxist country that frames most conflicts in terms of that ideology. Russia is ultimately the bigger threat to the Baizuo because it appeals to the Baizuo's domestic enemies, to Christians, to traditionalists around the world. China's message here is mainly to the rest of the world, whereas Russia's was directly aimed into the West itself.

For example, the U.S. has reserved its most abusive media manipulation campaigns not for socialist countries, but for traditionalist, Christian and nationalist governments. Hungary has been singled out for abuse and there was only this month or last, a new subversive media effort launched exactly as China describes below. My point is simply that Hungary would be a natural ally for this message, but China cannot make it because it comes with ideological thorns. Similarly, they cannot speak of the U.S. targeting traditional and fundamentalist Islam because they themselves similarly warred upon it in Xinjiang. 

This partially explains why Russia is demonized by Baizuo in a way that China is not, why the NBA plays games in China, but the NHL cuts ties with Russian hockey, why Hollywood changes its movies to meet Chinese content rules. Russia is the great enemy because it is culturally similar to the West and the war made upon it is very similar to the war made upon Christians and traditionalists inside of the USA. The Baizuo immediately accepted the absurd claim that Trump's victory was Russia's doing and some secret alliance existed because they consider the both of them enemies and they project their enmity for both into a non-existent alliance against them. They revealed their plot, and assume others must be plotting against them.

For similar reasons, USG won't require an extensive propaganda war against China along the road to war. Whatever doubts about the Ukraine conflict exist in the minds of many Americans, far fewer will doubt that China is "the real enemy." USG will tell the trannies that they are at war with Christ and Russia, while they will tell MAGA they're at war with commies in China. Make no mistake, war is coming in many forms, starting with escalation of economic, political, cyber and information conflict. 

The question for Americans is whether they will be fooled by Baizuo draped in red, white and blue, or whether they will, best case, remove them from power before a war escalates or, when conflict begins, leave them alone and surrounded by the Russian and Chinese enemies they called forth.

Any bolded text, aside from the headers, is my highlighting. 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China: US Hegemony and Its Perils

US Hegemony and Its Perils

February 2023

Contents

Introduction

I. Political Hegemony—Throwing Its Weight Around

II. Military Hegemony—Wanton Use of Force 

III. Economic Hegemony—Looting and Exploitation

IV. Technological Hegemony—Monopoly and Suppression

V. Cultural Hegemony—Spreading False Narratives

Conclusion

Introduction

Since becoming the world's most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage "color revolutions," instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation. It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a "rules-based international order."

This report, by presenting the relevant facts, seeks to expose the U.S. abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields, and to draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.

I. Political Hegemony -- Throwing Its Weight Around

The United States has long been attempting to mold other countries and the world order with its own values and political system in the name of promoting democracy and human rights.

◆ Instances of U.S. interference in other countries' internal affairs abound. In the name of "promoting democracy," the United States practiced a "Neo-Monroe Doctrine" in Latin America, instigated "color revolutions" in Eurasia, and orchestrated the "Arab Spring" in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and disaster to many countries.

In 1823, the United States announced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an "America for the Americans," what it truly wanted was an "America for the United States."

Since then, the policies of successive U.S. governments toward Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with political interference, military intervention and regime subversion. From its 61-year hostility toward and blockade of Cuba to its overthrow of the Allende government of Chile, U.S. policy on this region has been built on one maxim-those who submit will prosper; those who resist shall perish. 

The year 2003 marked the beginning of a succession of "color revolutions" -- the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Department of State openly admitted playing a "central role" in these "regime changes." The United States also interfered in the internal affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 through the so-called "People Power Revolutions."

In January 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released his new book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the United States had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to force the Maduro government to reach an agreement with the opposition, deprive Venezuela of its ability to sell oil and gold for foreign exchange, exert high pressure on its economy, and influence the 2018 presidential election.

◆ The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law. In April 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would cut off all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the organization "supports, or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization." The United States quit UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017. In 2017, it announced leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2018, it announced its exit from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the organization's "bias" against Israel and failure to protect human rights effectively. In 2019, the United States announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to seek unfettered development of advanced weapons. In 2020, it announced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.

The United States has also been a stumbling block to biological arms control by opposing negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and impeding international verification of countries' activities relating to biological weapons. As the only country in possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the United States has repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has become the biggest obstacle to realizing "a world free of chemical weapons."

◆ The United States is piecing together small blocs through its alliance system. It has been forcing an "Indo-Pacific Strategy" onto the Asia-Pacific region, assembling exclusive clubs like the Five Eyes, the Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional countries to take sides. Such practices are essentially meant to create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.

◆ The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of "democracy versus authoritarianism" to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the United States hosted the first "Summit for Democracy," which drew criticism and opposition from many countries for making a mockery of the spirit of democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the United States will host another "Summit for Democracy," which remains unwelcome and will again find no support.

II. Military Hegemony -- Wanton Use of Force

The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world's total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.

According to the book America Invades: How We've Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been militarily involved with almost all the 190-odd countries recognized by the United Nations with only three exceptions. The three countries were "spared" because the United States did not find them on the map.

◆ As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world. According to a Tufts University report, "Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019," the United States undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.

Alex Lo, a South China Morning Post columnist, pointed out that the United States has rarely distinguished between diplomacy and war since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in many developing countries in the 20th century and immediately replaced them with pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its old tactics of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.

◆ U.S. military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the U.S. military, and left more than a million homeless.

The United States has created 37 million refugees around the world. Since 2012, the number of Syrian refugees alone has increased tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584 civilian deaths were documented in the Syrian fightings, including 3,833 killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them women and children. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on 9 November 2018 that the air strikes launched by U.S. forces on Raqqa alone killed 1,600 Syrian civilians.

The two-decades-long war in Afghanistan devastated the country. A total of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to the September 11 attacks were killed in U.S. military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced. The war in Afghanistan destroyed the foundation of economic development there and plunged the Afghan people into destitution. After the "Kabul debacle" in 2021, the United States announced that it would freeze some 9.5 billion dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, a move considered as "pure looting."

In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy war in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium field and heroin factory, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people of any country with underground resources.

The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war. During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, the United States used massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution.

III. Economic Hegemony -- Looting and Exploitation

After World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including "approval by 85 percent majority," and its domestic trade laws and regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar's status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting "seigniorage" from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America's political and economic strategy.

◆ The United States exploits the world's wealth with the help of "seigniorage." It costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations.

◆ The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the international financial market and substantial depreciation of other currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly what Nixon's secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that "the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem."

◆ With its control over international economic and financial organizations, the United States imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in line with America's strategy. According to the Review of International Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 additional political conditions had been attached.

◆ The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion. In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to control and use the latter in service of America's strategic goal of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese economy, leaving Japan to what was later called "three lost decades."

◆ America's economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and "long-arm jurisdiction," the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world's population. "The United States of America" has turned itself into "the United States of Sanctions." And "long-arm jurisdiction" has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.

IV. Technological Hegemony -- Monopoly and Suppression

The United States seeks to deter other countries' scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields.

◆ The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection. Taking advantage of the weak position of other countries, especially developing ones, on intellectual property rights and the institutional vacancy in relevant fields, the United States reaps excessive profits through monopoly. In 1994, the United States pushed forward the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized process and standards in intellectual property protection in an attempt to solidify its monopoly on technology.

In the 1980s, to contain the development of Japan's semiconductor industry, the United States launched the "301" investigation, built bargaining power in bilateral negotiations through multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair trade, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to sign the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement. As a result, Japanese semiconductor enterprises were almost completely driven out of global competition, and their market share dropped from 50 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, with the support of the U.S. government, a large number of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the opportunity and grabbed larger market share.

◆ The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools. Overstretching the concept of national security, the United States mobilized state power to suppress and sanction Chinese company Huawei, restricted the entry of Huawei products into the U.S. market, cut off its supply of chips and operating systems, and coerced other countries to ban Huawei from undertaking local 5G network construction. It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou for nearly three years.

The United States has fabricated a slew of excuses to clamp down on China's high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness, and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. In addition, the United States has also imposed controls on biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or technology to China.

The United States has also practiced double standards in its policy on China-related technological professionals. To sideline and suppress Chinese researchers, since June 2018, visa validity has been shortened for Chinese students majoring in certain high-tech-related disciplines, repeated cases have occurred where Chinese scholars and students going to the United States for exchange programs and study were unjustifiably denied and harassed, and large-scale investigation on Chinese scholars working in the United States was carried out.

◆ The United States solidifies its technological monopoly in the name of protecting democracy. By building small blocs on technology such as the "chips alliance" and "clean network," the United States has put "democracy" and "human rights" labels on high-technology, and turned technological issues into political and ideological issues, so as to fabricate excuses for its technological blockade against other countries. In May 2019, the United States enlisted 32 countries to the Prague 5G Security Conference in the Czech Republic and issued the Prague Proposal in an attempt to exclude China's 5G products. In April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the "5G clean path," a plan designed to build technological alliance in the 5G field with partners bonded by their shared ideology on democracy and the need to protect "cyber security." The measures, in essence, are the U.S. attempts to maintain its technological hegemony through technological alliances.

◆ The United States abuses its technological hegemony by carrying out cyber attacks and eavesdropping. The United States has long been notorious as an "empire of hackers," blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft around the world. It has all kinds of means to enforce pervasive cyber attacks and surveillance, including using analog base station signals to access mobile phones for data theft, manipulating mobile apps, infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing through undersea cables. The list goes on.

U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied countries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by the United States such as "Prism," "Dirtbox," "Irritant Horn" and "Telescreen Operation" are all proof that the United States is closely monitoring its allies and partners. Such eavesdropping on allies and partners has already caused worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a website that has exposed U.S. surveillance programs, said that "do not expect a global surveillance superpower to act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules."

V. Cultural Hegemony -- Spreading False Narratives

The global expansion of American culture is an important part of its external strategy. The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world.

◆ The United States embeds American values in its products such as movies. American values and lifestyle are a tied product to its movies and TV shows, publications, media content, and programs by the government-funded non-profit cultural institutions. It thus shapes a cultural and public opinion space in which American culture reigns and maintains cultural hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma, an American scholar, exposed the real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion: the Hollywood, the image design factories on Madison Avenue and the production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.

There are various vehicles the United States uses to keep its cultural hegemony. American movies are the most used; they now occupy more than 70 percent of the world's market share. The United States skilfully exploits its cultural diversity to appeal to various ethnicities. When Hollywood movies descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them.

◆ American cultural hegemony not only shows itself in "direct intervention," but also in "media infiltration" and as "a trumpet for the world." U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.

The U.S. government strictly censors all social media companies and demands their obedience. Twitter CEO Elon Musk admitted on 27 December 2022 that all social media platforms work with the U.S. government to censor content, reported Fox Business Network. Public opinion in the United States is subject to government intervention to restrict all unfavorable remarks. Google often makes pages disappear.

U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media. In December 2022, The Intercept, an independent U.S. investigative website, revealed that in July 2017, U.S. Central Command official Nathaniel Kahler instructed Twitter's public policy team to augment the presence of 52 Arabic-language accounts on a list he sent, six of which were to be given priority. One of the six was dedicated to justifying U.S. drone attacks in Yemen, such as by claiming that the attacks were precise and killed only terrorists, not civilians. Following Kahler's directive, Twitter put those Arabic-language accounts on a "white list" to amplify certain messages.

◆The United States practices double standards on the freedom of the press. It brutally suppresses and silences media of other countries by various means. The United States and Europe bar mainstream Russian media such as Russia Today and the Sputnik from their countries. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube openly restrict official accounts of Russia. Netflix, Apple and Google have removed Russian channels and applications from their services and app stores. Unprecedented draconian censorship is imposed on Russia-related contents.

◆The United States abuses its cultural hegemony to instigate "peaceful evolution" in socialist countries. It sets up news media and cultural outfits targeting socialist countries. It pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night.

The United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries, and has built an industrial chain around it: there are groups and individuals making up stories, and peddling them worldwide to mislead public opinion with the support of nearly limitless financial resources.

Conclusion

While a just cause wins its champion wide support, an unjust one condemns its pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying practices of using strength to intimidate the weak, taking from others by force and subterfuge, and playing zero-sum games are exerting grave harm. The historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding truth with its power and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn growing, intense criticism and opposition from the international community.

Countries need to respect each other and treat each other as equals. Big countries should behave in a manner befitting their status and take the lead in pursuing a new model of state-to-state relations featuring dialogue and partnership, not confrontation or alliance. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and rejects interference in other countries' internal affairs. The United States must conduct serious soul-searching. It must critically examine what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.

Secession Accelerates in America

The Idaho House has passed a bill in favor of Greater Idaho. Parts of Oregon have voted to join "Greater Idaho" and the Idaho House welcomes them.

Even if this bill passes the Senate and is approved by the Governor, and even if Oregon agrees, it then goes to the Congress. There's reason to think this can pass Congress though: it won't affect the Senate. A lot of secession plans won't get off the ground because they change the make-up of the Senate, but this plan is mainly moving lines on a map.

Another factor working in favor of this secession attempt is that, as the vote shows, the neighboring state welcomes the addition. Adding a huge rural area doesn't bring much to Idaho, but because Oregon has permissive drug laws, it would move the border from under an hour from Boise to more like 5 hours away.

HOUSE JOINT MEMORIAL 1

OREGON AND IDAHO BORDERS – States findings of the Legislature and resolves that the Idaho Legislature stands ready to begin discussions with the Oregon Legislature regarding the potential to relocate the Oregon/Idaho state boundary.

If Greater Idaho succeeds, it leaves a small rump of a state of Oregon with under 4 million in population. There are many places such as New York where a split is far more compelling with larger populations and economies at stake.

The problem for most secession plans is the local economy and national politics. Rural areas are poor. Most are subsidized by urban (corporate) taxpayers. As noted with the New York plan, instead of foregoing Wall Street revenue, upstate wants some type of reveue share. If a tax-eating area offers to leave, it has a far stronger offer for the rest of the state. At the national level, any plan that causes a shift in the U.S. Senate will meet resistance. Democrats push for DC statehood while in power because it gives them 2 more Senators. With the country split nearly 50-50 at the moment, any plan that gives one party an advantage will be opposed. Secession movements have to plan for this or they will go nowhere. With Greater Idaho, the main opposition will come from Oregon itself, followed by Congress who might oppose it simply because people fear "who's next?" If Oregon and Idaho can redraw the map, why not every state where there is agreement?

Bullish Reasons Stocks Can Rise in 2023

Here's the answer to them: Social mood rules all. The GOP can't even elect a speaker.

Within the past hour: McCarthy not backing down from speaker bid after heated meeting with GOP: 'I'm not going anywhere'

China will open pandora's box in 3 weeks.

Denmark's Identity Program in Focus

Quality immigration becoming a little more of a rare commodity every day, the key to success for Western countries will probably be like Denmark: being able to raise the birth rate, to accomplish the transition to modernity in a sustainable, to resolve the errors of past immigration policies, to propose a viable social model for active couples, to be able to preserve the identity and integrity of the population of origin.

Overview of Denmark's identity model

Jiang Zemin Dead at 96

The Western press has more detailed obituaries for Jiang, who led China during the most important phase of its rise in the 1990s. Making the leap from a rising power to a potential global hegemon during a period when the United States was at the apex of its power, Jiang integrated China into the American system while simultaneously laying the foundation to displace it as the premier economic power. He came to power with China an outcast following the Tiananmen crackdown and left with China in the WTO, rapidly gutting what was left of the West's industrial advantage.

AP has a long biography: Former President Jiang Zemin, who guided China’s rise, dies

Chinese coverage is remarkably terse.

China Daily: Jiang Zemin passes away

The letter says that Comrade Jiang Zemin was an outstanding leader enjoying high prestige acknowledged by the whole Party, the entire military and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups, a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, statesman, military strategist and diplomat, a long-tested communist fighter, and an outstanding leader of the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics. He was the core of the CPC's third generation of central collective leadership and the principal founder of the Theory of Three Represents.

My take: this is probably a non-event for China because Jiang wasn't heavily involved in current politics. He also isn't a beloved figure among the people. The June 1989 protests were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang in April because he was a popular figure for people who wanted China to open up politically. Given the current state of affairs, disgruntled citizens or CCP insiders could his death as a vehicle for criticizing the state.

I still don't think these protests have legs. I'm not basing that on superior on the ground knowledge, but the fact that I've seen this show play out before and it always ends the same way. Jiang's death adds a new variable that could fuel something larger, but that something hasn't happened yet.

GOPe and Dems Conspire to Make MAGA the Only Opposition

Back in 2015, I wrote a post titled This One Chart Explains the Next 10 Years of Political Change. It included this chart:

In a nutshell, the political establishment in the West has been exhibiting similar behavior across countries: alliances between nominally left and right parties aimed at excluding challengers. Additionally, the establishment supports extremist policies such as mass migration, risking nuclear war with Russia, funneling taxpayer money into banks, making lopsided trade deals with China, locking down their people, injecting them with experimental medicines and so on. This creates a setup where lots of popular positions are cast as extremist. It also leaves these positions to what the establishment calls "far-right," who the media then meme as enemies of democracy, Nazis, racists and similar epithets.

This creates a high-stakes binary game. If the ruling class can maintain power, they can crush their opponents, jail them, censor them and effectively rule without any opposition for years to come, maybe generations. Fighting them is a losing battle. Unless. Since all opposition becomes concentrated in a smaller opposition group and they hold the popular positions, there's a constant threat of the entire picture flipping. If by some chance there's an economic depression or a war lost, the public might want a change. The establishment has made clear who their opponents are and absorbed their "near" opponents on the left and right. Shock political outcomes become possible in these situations. This has already played out in Sweden, where the Sweden Democrats were iced out of power and then became the largest party. A shock to the establishment, but totally expected if you pay attention.

Now the U.S. is following in the footsteps of Sweden. Schumer: I’m Meeting with McConnell to Push for Ditching ‘MAGA Republicans’

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Monday on CNN’s “This Morning” that he was meeting with Senat Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the wake of midterm election results to convince Republican senators to ditch so-called “MAGA Republicans.”

Co-host Kaitlan Collins said, “Are you going to talk to Mitch McConnell? What does that look like?”

Schumer said, “I’m going to say to the Republicans in the Senate who are not the MAGA Republicans, stop letting them lead your party. Work with us to get things done. I intend to sit down with Mitch McConnell and express that.”

If you want to see real political change in the USA, then you want to see this happen.

There's also this. It's never going to happen, but speaks to the cluelessness of establishment talking heads. Liberals suggest Liz Cheney should be speaker of House but not everyone agrees.

If they want to eventually lead, the "MAGA" crowd should oppose McConnell. If they're lucky, they'll push him into open alliance with Schumer. Then only one political alternative will exist because the Democrats have their primary system locked up. No challengers will come from the left.

Pennsylvania Buys Fettercoin

My bets on the election won't pay off because unless there's some shock result coming (GA might go to a runoff), the Democrats will hold the Senate. They might even gain a seat, but who knows because it'll take days to roll in. Assume they do. I looked back to find the other years the President's party gained Senate seats: 1934, 1962, 1970, 1982 and 2002. Ultra-popular FDR, JFK, Nixon, Reagan and Bush riding popularity waves and in the case of Bush, the fear-echo from the September 11 terrorist attacks. This year is not like any of those years. I wondered, what year was similar? And I think I found one: the 1930 midterm election. You'd assume Republicans were smashed that year and you're right to a degree. The GOP held the Senate though, by the VP's tiebreaker vote.

Crypto cratered yesterday. Support is busted and there are huge losses all over. Solana was hot in late 2020 and early 2021, and now looks like it will retrace all its gains.

The next moment of recognition could be coming to stocks. There will probably be divided government, but there won't be much of a brake on self-destructive foreign and economic policy. This was a very strong setup for the GOP and they barely gained ground. I do think the GOP might come back to win in 2024 because I think these midterms might be more like the 1930 midterm. The GOP lost the House and lost Senate seats, but held the Senate with the tiebreaker vote. The Democrats will lose the House and they might hold the Senate by the tiebreaker vote again or with a slim majority. The Republican President Hoover kept doing the same interventionist policies that kept failing, as the Baizuo admin will continue their failed policies into 2024. The hope around a Federal Reserve pivot, that there can be a soft landing or even no recession, is reminiscent of the market in early 1931, The Tragic Year.

Tomorrow's CPI report may or may not be a trigger for this realization, but it could be. The market has been very bullish. The market assumed a Red Wave would bring divided government, but it would also give hope that the bad policies collapsing the nation would be slowed or stopped. Now it doesn't look like there's any hope until 2025 at the earliest, and even that hope probably requires very bad things happenening between now and then because the surging crime and inflation to this point wasn't nearly enough. There are levels of crime and inflation that will change voting patterns, but they're far higher than today's levels. If the CPI comes in cool tomorrow, then no worries for bulls. The market will rally because inflation is solved. The Fed pivot story will gain steam and bears will be squeezed, perhaps into the end of the year.

If instead inflation comes in hot, there will be some realization by delusional bulls that nothing good is coming. There is no hope. They've been played the fool all year and it isn't going to end. The S&P 500 Index will start trading like BTC.

Will Germany Break Free from the United States?

Berlin goes to Beijing: the real deal

According to these sources, the Scholz caravan went to Beijing to essentially lay down the preparatory steps for working out a peace deal with Russia, with China as privileged messenger.

This is – literally – as explosive, geopolitically and geoeconomically, as it gets. As I pointed out in one of my previous columns, Berlin and Moscow were keeping a secret communication back channel – via business interlocutors – right to the minute the usual suspects, in desperation, decided to blow up the Nord Streams.

Cue to the now notorious SMS from Liz Truss’s iPhone to Little Tony Blinken, one minute after the explosions: “It’s done.”

There’s more: the Scholz caravan may be trying to start a long and convoluted process of eventually replacing the US with China as a key ally. One should never forget that the top BRI trade/connectivity terminal in the EU is Germany (the Ruhr valley).

According to one of the sources, “if this effort is successful, then Germany, China and Russia can ally themselves together and drive the US out of Europe.”

Another source provided the cherry on the cake: “Olaf Scholz is being accompanied on this trip by German industrialists who actually control Germany and are not going to sit back watching themselves being destroyed.”

Moscow knows very well what the imperial aim is when it comes to the EU reduced to the role of totally dominated – and deindustrialized – vassal, exercising zero sovereignty. The back channels after all are not lying in tatters on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Additionally, China has not provided any hint that its massive trade with Germany and the EU is about to vanish.

In the present, the U.S. ruling class seeks empire. Even Trump, who advocated for more nationalism, sought to use American power. He pushed Germany to wean itself from Russian energy instead of telling Germany that NATO is past its due date and American tariffs are coming for German exports. The immediate threat of war comes from the imperiliast attitudes of the American ruling class versus the Russia-China alliance. There is no nationalist political movement that can displace the imperialists yet, although there are growing movements such as the pockets of MAGA and Christian nationalism.

Zooming out in time, the U.S. was never supposed to be an imperial power. It was supposed to be the Shining City on the Hill, a Christian commerical nation that acted as a model to the world. It should rededicate itself to anti-socialism, abandon both empire and free trade, leave NATO, the United Nations, climate groups and all the other globalist NGOs. Reimplement nationlist economic policies and turn it into the fastest growing economy in the world again that play by its own rules.

Germany also has never really been an ally of the United States. It was a conquered territory and allied with the U.S. by force and because the alternative was communist oppression. As the EU commission said when Musk took over Twitter, "the bird flies by our rules." Europe and the United States were pushed into a marriage of convenience against communism, but they have different ideas of governance. The communist threat is gone. Europe and the United States share historic and cultural bonds, but the U.S. influence in Europe is keeping its nationalists from rising. The imperialist tyrants in DC oppress American nationalists along with European nationalists. It's time for the Americans to take power back in their nation and give power back to all the so-called allies that have been living under the thumb of an anti-American imperialist government for the past thirty years.

MAGA Surging Towards 4th Turning?

The MAGA Republicans are massively closing gaps all over the country. In New Hampshire, Bolduc is now in a dead heat with Hassan. She was plus 5 a week ago and it looked like maybe a close race, but a Dem hold. Now it looks like a GOP pick-up. In New Hampshire, only absentee voters can request mail-in ballots. In other states, I'm not sure if the GOP surge will end up less because many people may have voted a month earlier. Bolduc like many MAGA candidates (general term for the nationalist GOPers, not necessarily Trump guys) has received zero help from the national party. This is as much as victory over the GOP establishment as it would be a victory over the Democrats.

How bad are things for the Democrats? I saw one independent pollster saySenator Schumer could lose in NY because all the races there are converging and the GOP is surging. Let me state for the record that I believe that is nearly impossible because he is more than +10 in the polls, but that if it did, this would be a bigger shock than the trucker knocking out the leader of the New Jersey Senate. It would greatly up the odds that the GOP will produce this 4th Turning's FDR. I expect a major power sweep in the coming decade, most likely around 2028 or 2032. The GOP already dominates in the states and the House is always in flux. One third of the Senate is up every 2 years and this is the worst cycle for Republicans. If Schumer were to lose, the GOP would probably be knocking on 60 seats in the Senate with two favorable cycles yet to come. By 2026, the GOP could conceivably have the votes to amend the Constitution between the House, Senate, state houses and then then whomever wins in 2028.

Thread on Xi's Takeover in China

What we just saw was the making of an All Xi's Men team, the breaking of decade-long rules, and the birth of an unlimited supreme leader.

Is Powell Playing a Deeper Game?

Is Jerome Powell playing a far deeper game than most realize?

Someone asked about this article where Tom Luongo theorizes the Fed is playing a different game than most realize. Right off the top, I think it is very helpful to come up with these types of theories as thought experiments because they help crystallize interlocking parts of the market. Whether you end up agreeing with it or not, it can be helpful. The trouble with these theories is when they lean too much on conspiratorial thinking and not plain facts. You want to work back from the facts and then ask: how might the power players like to use this situation?

I've given examples before. One, Xi Jinping in China could have allowed a deflationary crash in the economy as a means of eliminating political opponents in the aftermath, since the public is always looking for scapegoats. He can also use a deflationary crash as an excuse for devaluing the Chinese yuan. He can also use the U.S. trade war as an excuse. A perfect retaliation for Biden's move on semiconductors would be letting the yuan drop, something that is inevitable anyway if the dollar continues rising with U.S. interest rates. If WW3 has started, retaliatory tariffs from the U.S. merely pushes along a tit-for-tat economic separation.

Conversely, we can play that same game with the U.S., which is where Luongo goes. The article is worth reading and the DiMartino Booth interview linked within is worth watching. Most of what follows is my riff on his article, as this article doesn't explain his position with much depth so I don't want to attribute things he may not believe.

When They Call For the Bailiff You Know You’re Winning

I haven't read Luongo all along, but my read of it is he's arguing the Fed is fighting against the Great Reset. He sees Truss getting knocked out as an anti-Brexit (can confirm reading all the people who think Britain will now return to the EU) and anti-Federal Reserve move. The Anglos are independent and aligned. He also notes which countries' banks are on the Fed's new commercial repo list: Anglos (he doesn't put it that way) and Japan.

Perhaps this is happening, perhaps not. Socialists love cheap money and any restrictive policy on credit will upset them. Since neosocialists (neoliberals, globalist, whatever) control most of the world's governments, they do not want tight credit policies and high interest rates. As commercial speculators, the Anglos are more comfortable with unleashing the wrecking ball of inflation to screw up their enemies and frenemies for fun and profit.

Another question is whether the U.S. will also exit as reserve currency. I've maintained for what seems like a decade now, that the dollar dies in deflation. All these foreign countries want to inflation. They don't like that the Fed is actually fighting inflation. The $100 trillion question is whether global capital would prefer to sit in socialist serial inflator countries or stay in the United States. The Empire Strikes Back if you know what I mean. It can all be boiled down to China and neverending belief that the yuan will become a reserve currency. Short of winning WW3 against the United States, China is still many decades away. Their capital account is closed! It's shocking that people still think China is in some kind of strong position here. A competitor to the U.S. dollar that is not gold is the Argentine peso in waiting. If gold, then the U.S. will depreciate more slowly versus gold.

The U.S. has already lost the trade war. The American worker is on the bottom looking up. He's being crushed by neoliberals in Washington, Wall Street, China, he's being overrun by migrant labor, he's watched his factories and then his neighborhood get packaged up and sold off to foreigners. Any shakeup in the global order has a high probability of helping the average American worker if only because everything has gone against him. That doesn't mean it will. Things can always get worse. Yet even if the dollar collapse scenario plays out, that would close the American consumer economy to the world because exports would be too expensive. Many products now imported would have to be made in the United States. A massive transfer of wealth from capital to labor would ensue. A massive transfer of employment from China and Germany to the USA. To think this through is to answer the question of whether any other nation wants reserve status. The U.S. has it. The Federal Reserve can gut other central banks like fish with rate hikes if that's their prerogative because whatever they say publicly, almost all the other central banks inflate harder than the USA. Only closely aligned nations that pull their security weight will be safe from retaliatory tariffs if currency devaluations start popping off.

Social mood is also negative and falling. The one out for a rising dollar would be Plaza Accord 2.0, but I've explained why this is impossible before. Social mood means nations will not cooperate. China has said it'll never go along with it. It's a dead story with the current geopolitical situation.

Where Can U.S. Policy Go?

America First was policy until around 1945. Critics of American foreign policy will point out that didn't exactly end, but it's also true that the much of the country was supporting what in hindsight is the American empire because they were confronting global communism. Many people were appalled with U.S. actions against Serbia and Russia in the 1990s. The nationalist, anti-communist mask dropped from the globalist traitors within the U.S. government. USG has been openly and brazenly imperialistic in its foreign policy since then, as well as going to war with domestic opposition. Journalists are in prison. Books are banned. Social media accounts are censored and shutdown. A return to the 1920s, when the United States was still a mostly neutral global commercial power, seems impossible because of this war. It seems like there's no support for it because the political constituency for it is being openly crushed. Whether Powell is consciously or unconsciously driving policy in that direction, I cannot say, but he sure could go a long way to giving outsiders a chance at power.

None of this is to say things can't go poorly. The U.S. government can print up treasury bills. Another election like 2020 could unleash double-digit CPIs. I'd expect the Federal Reserve would be all but captured at that point, with any idea of inflation-fighting rate hikes going out the window. The general intelligence of the ruling class is going downhill at high speed with Kool-Aid drinkers replacing the mercenaries who instituted identity politics. Competent people implementing evil policies are retiring and the rising generation actually believe in the evil ideas such as white privilege. To say nothing of their near total ignorance of math, economics and physics. The wheels can certainly fall off if the value of the U.S. dollar collapses after socialist economic policies are passed.

Conversely, whether he cares or not, Powell dropping a deflationary bomb (disinflationary if you like) on credit markets is going to damage the outlook for socialism. People say the U.S. is bankrupt at 5 percent or 7 percent interest, but this isn't true. They say that because they take it as a given that U.S. economic growth will slow and that the government will never cut welfare and warfare spending. high interest rates will be expensive for the imperialist USA and could push it into a fiscal crisis, but it'll be a different story for a nationalist government. The debt will become a budgetary weapon that some have always dreamed it could be. The U.S. government is far too large and spends way too much money. If high interest rates instead force a political shift to economic nationalism that tears the welfare-warfare state down, then the U.S. not only won't go bust, but it'll enjoy high inflation via a rapidly growing economy with wage inflation assuming tariffs and nationalist development are part of the package.

Many predicted the U.S. dollar would crash when China started dumping treasuries, and instead the opposite happened because China was dumping to defend the yuan. The new common wisdom predicts high interest rates and an eventually lower U.S. dollar will wreck the U.S. Instead, it could power a rebirth of the U.S. domestic economy, rising wages, high nominal GDP growth and shrink the government's footprint in the economy. It depends in part on whether its done intentionally. It depends on who is in power. Is it a flailing incompetent government or a Machiavellian one that uses great turmoil to reshape the future? Will the Machiavellians be globalists or nationalists? Never let a crisis go to waste as they say. Whether Powell is kicking off that domino I doubt it, but it doesn't mean he isn't kicking it over accidentally.

Going back to Luongo's piece, one of the most important points is that the Federal Reserve will not pivot. I've said I could see them pausing and stock market bulls treating it a pivot, but looking at stocks and crude oil lately, I'm not sure they can pause anymore. The market is still extremely bullish, sentiment indicators be damned. For investors, that's the main point. The Fed will disappoint financial markets and global central banks alike until something really major breaks. Everything else is downstream of that.

Election Comment

I bought some GOP Congress contracts in the prediction market sometime early last year I think. I see orders in May and August 2021. I tried putting in large bids, but didn't get filled. I have GOP Congress and a smaller amount of Republican Senate contracts.

This year it looked dicey for Republicans. They're still on the outside looking in on the Senate. The House also looked weak for awhile with a potentially very small lead for the GOP. That has changed in recent weeks.

I don't like polling after the experience of the past few years, but one can glean something from the trend in the polls. Even biased polls with large Democrat samples, for example, will show movement towards or away from one side. As long as they aren't hyper-biased polls that goal seek results. With that in mind, look at the toss-up category. There are 35 toss up seats and of those, only 6 are Republicans. If this is a wave election, the GOP could sweep most of those seats and pick up some lean Democrat seats. Odds are the House is a win.

The Senate looks dicier, but if the House breaks big for the GOP, the tight Senate races should break for the GOP. However, the Democrat toss-up seats are all in very favorable territory or with very weak GOP candidates. I see a path for 51 Democrat Senators as well as 51 GOP Senators if AZ, NC and PA go to the GOP. WI is also considered a toss-up, but I don't think it will be. The two I'm doubful of are NC and PA, and those are the two swing seats. The Democrats could maybe get to 53 if the polls are wrong or maybe if you believe in election fraud, but I see that as a stretch. On the other side, the GOP could theoretically run the table on the 7 tossups and end up wtih 54 Senators, but that's also a stretch requiring polls being way off on the size of the wave.

No matter the result, I expect dysfunction in DC. GOP warmongers will probably be sending more cash to the Ukraine. My only hope is that candidates such as Masters and Vance win, and then become extremely vocal leaders who can pressure the party into changing policy. Perhaps they would also shame a backbone into some of the Democrats who are anti-war.

Good-bye Again Great Britain, Bond Market Dictatorship Begins

The market popped to 3700 this morning on news the bond markets are back in control of Western governments.

ZH: Truss To Fire Kwarteng, Make Major U-Turn On Tax Cuts

Shades of the 1970s:

Instead of tax cuts, rumor has it there will be tax hikes. Various sides of the political circus will have their say about spending and policy, but lets be perfectly objective about deficit spending. Credit growth fuels economic growth as measured by GDP. We can debate up and down about the quality of that GDP, but we cannot argue that higher credit growth generates higher GDP. Even in extreme situations where the government is imploding the economy via hyperinflation, stopping that inflation will cause incredible short-term deflation. Slower credit growth will cause slower growth in the short term. Lower deficit spending will in the longer-term generate higher quality growth as government shrinks in the economy, but that will take time.

Politically speaking, one doesn't want to take office ahead of this collapse unless you have campaigned on doing it. Reagan survived a major recession early in his first term because he unleashed massive deficit spending at the same time inflation had finally peaked and the public was in the mood for reform. Thatcher came into power after the cuts had been made. Truss will end up like Kwarteng.

Only "revolutionary" leaders can handle the current situation. Almost the entirety of the ruling class wants to preserve the existing order. Most of the supposed outsiders are empty suit pretenders or losers who cannot handle the situation. I even include Trump in here because he surrounded himself with clowns and toadies. He came in with a good cabinet and strong advisors, and most were gone within a couple months of his election. Then he put some good people in at the last minute after losing the election. In between was a clown show with warmongers like John Bolton.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

There is a gap up at 3773 on the ES. It is the same gap visible on SPX at 3750. If this is nothing more than a bear rally bounce, that's a very likely spot for failure. Sooner is possible as well if the market is more bearish. Conversely, a move higher would also start raising the possibility of a much larger rally, but need to clear 3820 for that.

There's not much of interest elsewhere for the same reason. It's too early to call a major reversal. Moves in various assets such as crude oil also suggest that any rally will invite a more aggressive Federal Reserve, rather than a more timid one. The Fed is trapped in a way most people do not understand because they have no respect for Nature or Nature's God.

If you look at the price of crude oil the past two days, you can hopefully understand why it's over for financial assets. The financialized West relies on cheap energy. The Baizuo-run, financialized West has gone to war on common sense, on cheap energy at home and on energy exporters abroad (Russia). The financialized West bombed the Nordstream pipeline. What can the Federal Reserve do? Not much. What will it do? Will it save the currency by definancializing the West or will it be fully absorbed by USG and destroy the currency system? More proximately, do you believe the Federal Reserve will be happy with the higher inflation readings that the market is telling them are 100-percent guaranteed if they don't cause mass bankruptcies among the speculator class? With the speculator class including pension funds and major investment banks?

The game ended in March 2020 when the governments of the West and their central banks lost their minds along with most of the general public. Mentally ill people cannot sustain prosperity and the mental rejects currently in charge in the West have already moved on to bombing their own infrastructure. What won't they destroy in their quest for power?