As the Biden administration staggers toward default: State Department Spending Tax Dollars on Transgender Makeup Entrepreneurs in Nepal
News From The Shady Acres Nursing Home
So what was Old Joe Biden up to this week?
The Most Interesting Man In The World
They need you to go, Joe: Charges Against Hunter Biden May Be Imminent
Build Back Better
The experts are in charge, so relax.
The twin crashes in US commercial real estate and the US bond market have collided with $9 trillion uninsured deposits in the American banking system. Such deposits can vanish in an afternoon in the cyber age.
The second and third biggest bank failures in US history have followed in quick succession. The US Treasury and Federal Reserve would like us to believe that they are “idiosyncratic”. That is a dangerous evasion.
Almost half of America’s 4,800 banks are already burning through their capital buffers. They may not have to mark all losses to market under US accounting rules but that does not make them solvent. Somebody will take those losses.
“It’s spooky. Thousands of banks are underwater,” said Professor Amit Seru, a banking expert at Stanford University. “Let’s not pretend that this is just about Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. A lot of the US banking system is potentially insolvent.”
The full shock of monetary tightening by the Fed has yet to hit. A great edifice of debt faces a refinancing cliff-edge over the next six quarters. Only then will we learn whether the US financial system can safely deflate the excess leverage induced by extreme monetary stimulus during the pandemic.
It costs $17,500 to insure $1 million of US debt against default for a year (the contract is actually priced in euros.) That’s up roughly 10-fold since the beginning of 2023, and compares to less than $400 for Germany, per Bloomberg.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) May 4, 2023
It’s Probably Nothing
BREAKING: Regional Bank stocks are crashing after hours as PacWest, $PACW, says they are looking for a buyer.
– PacWest, $PACW, now down 57%
– Western Alliance Bank, $WAL, now down 30%
– Metropolitan Bank, $MCB, now down 20%
2 hours ago the Fed said the "system is strong."
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) May 3, 2023
More: This is unprecedented humiliation for the @federalreserve
Update:
US Regional Bank Stocks After Hours:
1. PacWest, $PACW: -60%
2. Western Alliance, $WAL: -30%
3. Metropolitan Bank, $MCB: -20%
4. Valley National, $VLY: -15%
5. HomeStreet, $HMST: -11%
6. Zions Bank, $ZION: -10%
7. KeyCorp, $KEY: -8%
8. Citizens Financial, $CFG: -5%…
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) May 3, 2023
No One Is Illegal
Illegal Alien Accused Of Murdering 5 Neighbors In Texas Was Deported 5 Times
The 2024 Election
Victor Davis Hanson examines the current strategies.
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
Hundreds of Army aviation officers who were set to leave the military are being held to another three years of service after they say the branch quietly reinterpreted part of their contract amid retention and recruitment issues.
The shift has sparked an uproar among the more than 600 affected active-duty commissioned officers, including some who say their plans to start families, launch businesses and begin their civilian lives have been suddenly derailed.
“We are now completely in limbo,” said a captain who had scheduled his wedding around thinking he would be leaving the military this spring.
That captain and three other active-duty aviation officers who spoke to NBC News spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
The Most Interesting Man In The World
President’s son says he can’t afford to pay child support, has been ordered to appear in Arkansas court on Monday
Y2Kyoto: Climate Of Frankenstein
Yikes!
This is very concerning, especially if their intention is to blockade attendees, including the President, in such large numbers to overwhelm police response. pic.twitter.com/C5PVu9ItfJ
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) April 28, 2023
Down The Primrose Path
Worth Asking: why is Tucker the only TV host (at least not on Fox) whom senior military leaders wanted off the air?
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
Joe Biden has held the fewest press conferences and interviews of any president since Ronald Reagan. And now we’ve learned that when he is allowed to take questions, they appear to be pre-selected, approved by White House staff and agreed to by reporters in the White House pool.
Yesterday, while appearing alongside South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol, Biden fielded a question from Courtney Subramanian of the Los Angeles Times. A photojournalist captured a notecard in Biden’s hand that showed an avatar of Subramanian, the words “Question 1” and a pre-written text of the question she asked…
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
Gradually, then suddenly.
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
Biden on Friday morning announced the U.S. government’s “first-ever Environmental Justice Scorecard,” a “new government-wide assessment of federal agencies’ efforts to advance environmental justice.” Included in the project is the Department of Defense, which Biden will grade on its work to address “environmental, climate-related, and cumulative impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns.”
The department’s first scorecard highlights some of that work. The Navy, for example, organized the traffic flow at one of its docks at Pearl Harbor in a way that “minimizes impacts on historically overburdened communities,” according to the scorecard. The Navy also adjusted a “modernization project” at its Fallon Range Training Complex, which hosts pre-deployment combat training for both air and ground forces, to “respond to several Tribal concerns,” the card says. The scorecard goes on to commend the Department of Defense for hosting “40 internal training(s) for staff on environmental justice” and hiring “at least 640 staff that work on environmental justice,” though it does ding the department for not updating its “environmental justice strategic plan” in the last five years.
“An all-time media blackout is in effect. We’re experiencing real-time Sovietization”.
The Michael Morell story is disposed of by press janitors
The Most Interesting Man In The World
Days after a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020, Sec. of State Antony Blinken, then a Biden campaign adviser, reached out to a former CIA official + “set in motion the events that led” to a statement from intelligence officials say House Republicans.pic.twitter.com/wYQ3uAYFQd
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) April 21, 2023
More at Post Millenial
The Most Interesting Man In The World
#HunterBiden IRS whistleblower letter “I represent a career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent who has been overseeing the ongoing + sensitive investigation of a high-profile, controversial subject since early 2020 + would like to make protected WB disclosures to Congress.” pic.twitter.com/1ICwsgVOCc
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) April 19, 2023
The Most Interesting Man In The World
For the past couple of years, we’ve been led to believe that the letter from 51 national security officials was some sort of spontaneous, grassroots effort by the intelligence community to warn us about the potential foreign influence behind Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The laptop has since been confirmed to be legitimate, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed that there was no foreign disinformation campaign involved. But new information from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and congressional investigators, with the help of two Obama-era CIA officials, has revealed a new twist in the story. The investigation has uncovered evidence linking the letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation during the 2020 election to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
News From The Nursing Home
So what was old Joe Biden up to this week?
