But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down. 

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped. 

We still do not know how many billions of dollars of sophisticated new weapons were left to the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists’ marts.

Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our new Kabul embassy.

A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.

And gender studies programs—to the tune of $787 million in American subsidies—were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world.

Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have hung from our embassy in South Korea. 

Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first.

The woke Left has now weaponized the country’s diplomatic missions abroad to advance highly partisan and controversial agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters at home.

American foreign policy toward other nations seems now to hinge on their positions on the transgendered, LGBTQ acceptance, abortion, climate change, and an array of woke issues from using multiple pronouns on passports to showcasing transgendered ambassadors. 

The Biden Administration in January 2022 stopped the EastMed pipeline. That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel sought to bring much needed clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe.

Apparently, our diplomats felt it violated our own New Green Deal orthodoxies. So we imperialists interfered to destroy a vital project of our closest allies.

The White House manifesto called the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” offers a blueprint for how to massage nations abroad to accept our values that are increasingly at odds with much of the world’s.

Do Americans really believe that embracing drag-queen shows at military bases, abortion to the moment of birth, transgendered men competing in women’s sports, and the promised effort to ban the internal combustion engine are effective ways to ensure good relations with the United States?

No wonder the [illegitimate] Biden Administration’s new cultural imperialism is proving disastrous for a variety of reasons.

One, these imperialistic and chauvinistic agendas are pushed abroad at the very time the respect for the U.S. military is at an all-time low. It was humiliated in Afghanistan. It is now unable to recruit sufficient qualified soldiers. Its stocks of critical weapons are depleted.

The Pentagon leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, along with Joe Biden, do not radiate competence. 

But they do exude woke pieties.

While we offend Middle East oil exporters and Central Europeans, China allies with Russia and Iran. India and Turkey triangulate away from the United States. Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad combination.

Two, these warped standards are incoherent. Is an abortion-on-demand, totalitarian China therefore an ally? How can we damn supposedly non-woke Saudi Arabia as we beg it pump more of its non-green oil before the 2022 midterms?

Some of our most loyal allies are in Eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania—have experienced traumatic histories on the front lines against Islamic Ottoman expansionism, czarist and Soviet aggression, and German Nazi bullying and invasion.

They are democratic and pro-American. Yet they are now targeted by our woke imperialists because they remain steadfast as the most religious and traditional of our European allies.

Yet these nations would be more likely to dispatch credible forces for NATO’s defense than many of our left-wing, woke, and militarily less capable Western European nations.

Three, most of the 7.9 billion people in the world are not woke. They are aspiring to obtain a modicum of the luxury and affluence taken for granted in America.

The rest of the planet worries whether it will have enough food, energy, security, and shelter to live one more day. For most, the incessant, woke virtue-signaling from affluent Americans comes across as the whiny bullying of pampered, self-righteous—and increasingly neurotic—imperialists.

Four, traditionally the party that controls the State Department does not politically weaponize its embassies with wedge issues that have not won majority support among Americans. 

Such abject politicalization rattles and alienates foreign nations. They do not want to be drawn into the American Left’s internal propaganda efforts that they know are bitterly controversial inside the United States.

How odd that those on the Left who in the past decried “American imperialism” are now proving the greatest imperialists of all. (read more)

According to Henninger, Biden’s “non-compos” condition should give the “left wing of his party free rein” during his second presidential term, which is exactly what his party wants. A cognitively impaired, not particularly principled figurehead fits the needs of his handlers; and Biden obviously has no interest in doing anything to upset them. He will dutifully get behind his party’s latest woke project and ritualistically attack its Republican opponents as white nationalists, sexists, and homophobes.

Equally significant, Biden is the perfect front figure for an administrative state in which the chief executive provides little more than an ornament: “A beside-the-point president is the best thing that has ever happened to the progressive centralization project. That is why Washington’s Democrats would embrace a Kamala Harris succession.”

What I discern in Henninger’s compelling description of a second Biden term is the outline of my thesis in “After Liberalism“ (Princeton, 1999), which is subtitled “Mass Democracy in the Administrative State.” In this work I argue that modern Western regimes are not really about “democracy,” that is, meaningful self-rule, of the kind that existed historically in Swiss cantons or in Thomas Jefferson’s concept of popular government. The modern version of democracy is about public administration, in which citizens are called on periodically to give their rulers a stamp of approval through elections (which are now conducted in much of this country without voters having to identify themselves or even appearing in person at a voting precinct).

“Liberal democracies” have also ceased to be “liberal” in any real sense since that term now refers to the actions and policies of governments run by public administrators and their media backers. It’s now considered “liberal” for the state to approve of the sexual mutilation of children, even without parental permission, or to close down opposition speech, if our administrators decide that’s the “liberal” course of action.

There’s also a secular state religion that reigns in most Western countries, and that too dispenses “liberal” teachings. When I wrote “After Liberalism,” that state religion featured a more modest form of diversity than the one that’s now in place. In its more recent form, as taught by the media and academic priesthood, postliberal liberalism has turned woke and now urges discrimination against white people, particularly against heterosexual white males. It also discriminates against devout Christians of all races, in the name of transgendered identity, which represents the newest distillation of liberal orthodoxy.

Political labels are therefore in freefall, and often mean no more than what those who control our lives and consciousness want those terms to signify. Values and rights are also part of the common moral vocabulary, which is shaped through an exercise of will on the part of our “liberal democratic” leaders. Henninger may be actually understating this situation when he observes about policy wonks and social engineers running the Deep State that “their control of the bureaucratic levers today is unprecedented.” Even more ominously, we may now be at a loss trying to figure out how we can reverse this situation. With “passive presidents” like Biden technically at the helm and fronting for woke administrative elites, there’s no real chance of this ever happening. The bureaucratic control that Henninger bewails, unless upended, will likely reach further unprecedented levels.    

Henninger disappoints, however, in his inability to escape the limitations of a neoconservative perspective in his criticism of a Biden or Harris presidency. The major problem with this crisis in government, or so one might infer from Henninger’s commentary, is the fact of failing American world leadership. While President Harry Truman had a Dean Acheson and Richard Nixon a Henry Kissinger to advise them on foreign policy, Biden has the far less effective Tony Blinken at his disposal. Contrary to what Biden is doing, Henninger states: “The U.S. needs to increase spending on national security beyond 3% of gross domestic product. No matter what happens in the world, these Democrats won’t do that.”

Without in any way minimizing the importance of a more credible foreign policy than the one the Biden administration is pursuing, particularly after the disaster in Afghanistan, we might first note the domestic repercussions of the current presidency. A bleeding southern border that allows the country to be overrun by drug traffickers, terrorists, and waves of penniless illegal immigrants, crime-ridden cities in which police have been disempowered, reckless green economic measures, the persecution of parents and churches that resist LGBT and antiwhite indoctrination, and the total politicization of the surveillance state are for me more worrisome than America’s diminished presence in international affairs.

Would it be better if we increased the percentage of GDP spent on military expansion while allowing these other problems to fester and destroy our social fabric and constitutional order? Henninger’s brief would be even more compelling if he underlined the grave domestic results of Biden’s “perfect presidency.” (read more)

The government showed the jury a portion of the September 2020 presidential debate; goaded by Joe Biden and then-Fox News host Chris Wallace to condemn “white supremacists and militia groups” in an effort to downplay Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence, Trump asked them to “give me a name.” Biden quickly answered, “the Proud Boys.”

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said in response.

The offhand remark—Trump later said he did not know who the Proud Boys were—made the group “jubilant,” assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe told the jury on Monday morning. “These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what,” Mulroe said, referring to Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Enrique Tarrio, Dominic Pezzola, and Zachary Rehl.

Prosecutors have used the clip at other points during the nearly four-month trial—a not-so-subtle reminder to jurors from a city that voted 93 percent for Joe Biden that the men on trial supported Trump. But the Justice Department may have a more sinister reason to tie the Proud Boys to the former president. Any convictions in this trial would give Special Counsel Jack Smith, an independent prosecutor in name only, justification to pursue similar charges against Trump as a co-conspirator of sorts.

In fact, the Proud Boys face three conspiracy counts: seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and a conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging any duties. A conspiracy, according to the government, only requires the agreement of two or more individuals.

Prosecutors insist the conspiracy began on December 19, 2020—a date that should alarm Team Trump. At 1:42 a.m. on December 19, Trump tweeted this: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” According to the Justice Department, that prompted Tarrio and Biggs to formulate plans to “radicalize” the group.

The next day, Tarrio created an encrypted chat to discuss, among other things, plans to travel to D.C. for Trump’s speech on January 6. (The government obtained roughly 500,000 messages between dozens of accounts, including an unknown number posted by FBI informants.) As I explained in my Wednesday column, discussions resulted not in an armed, violent attempt to overthrow the government but a haphazard plan with no cohesive execution. (Some stopped at food trucks on the walk from the rallying point at the Washington Monument to Capitol grounds, like all good insurrectionists on a coordinated and deliberate mission do.) Tarrio, the group’s leader, wasn’t even in D.C. that day.

But reality and evidence don’t count for much before juries in the nation’s capital as the Justice Department—U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, a Biden appointee who attended the government’s closing argument on Monday morning, more specifically—racks up a near-perfect conviction rate in January 6 jury trials.

To be fair, Graves’ office isn’t alone in blaming Trump for instigating the Proud Boys’ actions before and on January 6. At least two defense attorneys also pointed the finger at Trump. “[A] nation of strangers gathered as the commander-in-chief sold a lie,” Norm Pattis, representing Biggs, said of Trump’s election claims. “It was a perfect storm. Come to January 6, gonna be wild, the commander-in-chief said.”

Pattis and Tarrio’s attorney, Nayib Hassan, cited Trump’s comment to “fight like hell” during his speech at the Ellipse as proof of Trump’s culpability in the events of January 6. That quote would be “exhibit one,” Pattis said, in any criminal trial against the former president.

The January 6 select committee made the [diverse & multicultural] Proud Boys a target of its work; the group is mentioned more than 90 times in the panel’s final report. “In the two and a half weeks since he first announced the January 6th ‘protest,’ extremists and conspiracy theorists plotted to make the unprecedented, presidentially announced protest against the peaceful transfer of power ‘wild’ indeed,” the committee wrote. “That mob showed up. They were armed. They were angry. And when Donald Trump pointed them toward the Capitol and told them to ‘fight like hell,’ that’s exactly what they did.”

Committee members voted unanimously in December 2022 to send criminal referrals to Smith’s office related to Trump’s conduct before and on January 6: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and “incite,” “assist” or “aid and comfort” an insurrection. 

But the committee also suggested Smith could pursue seditious conspiracy charges against the former president. “A jury has already determined beyond a reasonable doubt that a conspiracy existed under [seditious conspiracy statute], as the leader of the Oath Keepers and at least one other individual were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their actions related to the attack on the Capitol,” the committee wrote. “A trial regarding a series of other ‘Proud Boy’ defendants may also address similar issues.”

Which explains why Graves’ prosecutors pulled every dirty trick in the book to ensure convictions. Further, the burden of proof for the conspiracy charges is shockingly low. Consider the instructions given to jurors: “What the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt is that two or more persons arrived at some type of agreement, including a mutual understanding or meeting of the minds, to try to accomplish a common and unlawful objective.”

Mulroe, during his closing, even told the jury a “wink and a nod” represents agreement to join a conspiracy.

Preposterous.

With Smith’s probe apparently winding down—the last witness to testify before Smith’s grand jury appears to be former Vice President Mike Pence—the last piece of the Trump indictment puzzle could be the verdicts in the Proud Boys case.

No one should doubt for a moment that the most vengeful, partisan Justice Department in U.S. history would happily hand down a criminal charge comparable to treason against a former president it opposed. Without a shred of accountability for its abusive January 6 prosecution, which has resulted in charges against more than 1,000 Americans so far with perhaps 1,000 more arrests to come, there is no reason for Smith not to go for the golden ring— or, rather, the golden handcuffs—and indict Trump on most or all of the conspiracy charges.

“[There] was one final chance to keep Trump in power, January 6, 2021, and they knew the importance of that day,” assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Moore told the jury in her closing pitch on Tuesday afternoon. “These men’s purpose was to illegally keep Trump in power.”

And that will be the crux of Smith’s case against Trump. Guilty verdicts in the most consequential January 6 trial will be the green light the Justice Department has been waiting for to go after him. (read more)

What we can anticipate is that on/around May 11th something big will be delivered as part of that distraction.

The people in command and control of the Biden administration will need to coordinate something big to cover for their May 11th removal of Title 42, the public health authority currently being used to slow illegal alien migrants from entering the U.S.

They have already positioned Vice President Kamala Harris as the sacrificial lamb to take the blame, via her appointment as border czar.  Harris essentially representing a pre-deployment of a defensive narratives.

According to border patrol three weeks ago the number of migrants assembling in advance of the release date was 700,000, that number has certainly risen since then.

[Breitbart] “Border Patrol shared with us their intelligence that there are approximately 700,000, as of three weeks ago, in the shelters in Mexico waiting to come into the United States,” Lines said. “They also shared with us that at the Darian Gap which is at the Panama Canal, they’ve seen a 500 percent surge in people crossing over that gap on their way up to the United States.” (read more)

Keep in mind, the White House has positioned Mexico as the enemy of the Biden regime in North America. We keep saying watch Mexico because Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador is as disposable to the hands that control the ‘fundamental change’ mechanism as Kamala Harris.  AMLO has no motive to assist the U.S. with any of this; indeed, taken at his recent words, AMLO stands in direct opposition to the Joe Biden administration and the multiple crises his people have created.

TEXAS – […] The Biden administration plans to end Title 42 on May 11, and political leaders and immigrant rights advocates in El Paso and other cities on the southwest border are expecting a stream of asylum-seekers who have been stranded in Mexican border cities to cross into the U.S.

[…] An untold number of migrants are still waiting to make the same crossing and hoping that the end of Title 42 will allow them to seek asylum in the U.S. In preparation for a post-Title 42 border, the Biden administration has rolled out a series of policy changes that will create pathways for people to enter the U.S. legally, with the goal of reducing the rising number of illegal crossings on the southern border — immigration agents made a record-breaking 2.3 million apprehensions in the last fiscal year, which ended in September.

Last week, the administration also announced plans to open processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala to allow qualifying migrants to legally enter the United States, Canada or Spain without coming to the U.S.-Mexico border. It also unveiled a new family reunification program for people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia: People from those countries will receive background checks before immigration agents determine on a case-by-case basis if they are eligible to be reunited with family already in the U.S. (link)

Last week the team pulled out Susan Rice from the zone of collateral damage.  On Tuesday, the people in control of the Biden administration announced they were sending 1,500 U.S. troops to the border to help immigration agents on the ground as Title 42 ends.

The United States is about to be crushed by the largest mass migration of illegal aliens in history. Yeah, you can guarantee there’s something planned to distract everyone from the reality of a purposefully collapsed border. The only question remains, what will it be? (read more)

Bear Stearns is not the banking system -- it is contained.

Subprime is contained.

"We're gonna OWN subprime lending -- Mozilo"

Uh huh.

Who remembers me over on the Countrywide Yahoo finance forums back in 2007 before it all blew -- when I was shorting into price ramps on that stock because from where I sat they were a zero.  They were a zero.  It was a nice trade.

Who remembers me calling out WaMu in early 2007 when they were paying dividends with money they didn't have, and regulators did nothing?  That article is still here, if you look for it.  They were also a zero.

But First Republic is isolated, just like SVB.  Uh huh.  Sure it is.

How's PacWest doing?

Oh, not so good.  Let's see...oh, looks sort of like an impending zero.

But wait -- First Republic was it, right?

Sure it was.

There's no real problem here, right?  The TNX was down a full percent yesterday because..... the Fed will save it all, right?

No they won't.

Not because they don't want to.

They can't this time.

Oh, you think not eh?  How's your homeowner's insurance premium?  Your car insurance?  Your food bill?  You know, all that stuff you have to buy?  Yeah, you're reading this and you're probably middle class or better.  You're doing mostly ok.  You're on the right side of the bell curve, right?

Half the people are on the left, and they're not ok.  For them that 20% increase means they are taking payday loans to buy food, effectively and sometimes literally.

That ends the game folks.

If The Fed tries it we get government and social collapse.

The ramp in asset prices can't just stop: It has to come back out.  All of it.  And yes, that will mean lots of firms -- and people -- blow up.

This is not fixable with any sort of deposit guarantee.  That's not the problem.  The problem is that the banks loaned out a lot of money at 2% and thus can't pay 4% or so or they will go broke.  But other, equally safe or more-so investments do pay that 4-5%; for example, a government money-market fund that has daily liquidity equal to that of a bank and only holds US Treasuries.

Having made those loans at uneconomic rates in the first place there isn't anything they can do about it now.  As was the case in 2006-2007 and which I pointed out in Leverage losses are made when bad loans are originated; they are often not recognized at that time but the loss has been incurred.  What's left to argue over is who is going to eat it, and unlike the 2008 blow-up trying to force the general public to eat it will not work because they are already under the inflationary pressure from the BS run during the pandemic that led to the problem and trying to force the rest of it on the public will cause enough of them to starve that a revolt is quite likely.

Clip 1 from "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan"

• Medical schools are continuing to drop Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) requirements in favor of alternative routes available to prospective applicants, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
• Dropping the MCAT in favor of holistic admission practices may negatively impact the medical profession by “eliminating” a “standard for schools to consider when admitting students who demonstrate the aptitude to be good doctors,” Laura Morgan, Do No Harm program manager, told the DCNF.
• “It’s not adequate because it is subjective, as opposed to standardized tests which are objective metrics,” she explained.

A developing medical school trend to ditch the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) requirement may not bode well for the future of the profession, medical watchdog group Do No Harm told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Approximately 40 medical schools across the country have dropped the MCAT, a multiple choice exam that determines an individual’s ability to problem solve, think critically, and understand concepts about medical study, as a requirement for some applying students, according to a list compiled by Inspira Advantage. Do No Harm alleged that dropping the requirement is another way schools aim to bolster diversity on campus but asserted that it is a “dangerous trend,” according to its analysis.

 (RELATED: Law Group Sues Texas Medical Schools For Allegedly Admitting Students Based On Race Rather Than Merit)

“The MCAT has been shown to predict who has the best chance to be successful in medical school,” Do No Harm Program Manager Laura Morgan told the DCNF. “Eliminating it removes a proven standard for schools to consider when admitting students who demonstrate the aptitude to be good doctors.”

The MCAT is developed and administered by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), according to its website. The association has pivoted to encouraging a holistic admission model that considers an applicants “experiences and attributes” alongside academic achievement and uses it as a factor on its Diversity, Inclusion, Culture and Equity inventory survey sent out to medical schools across the country to weigh their commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices.

“Standardized tests are backed by evidence and can be objectively evaluated. To conduct a ‘holistic review,’ some schools are requiring their admissions committee members to take training on how to evaluate applicants based on experiences and attributes,” Morgan told the DCNF, adding that the AAMC permits race and ethnicity to be used as an admission factor when it aligns with the school’s diversity-based mission and goals. “It’s not adequate because it is subjective, as opposed to standardized tests which are objective metrics.”

Javarro Russell, AAMC’s senior director of admissions testing services, told the DCNF that every “U.S. M.D.-granting medical schools require the MCAT exam” with some exception for alternative routes such as through joint BS/MD programs. Such programs are “designed for students to transition from an undergraduate to a medical degree through an eight year commitment, according to Inspira Advantage. 

“The MCAT exam was created with the input of medical schools for their use in the admissions process,” Russell explained. “The AAMC does not – and cannot – mandate if or how medical schools use the MCAT exam. Every medical school sets its own criteria for selecting the students who will contribute to its mission and successfully complete rigorous medical school curricula.”

One of the schools that does not require all applicants to submit an MCAT score is City University of New York (CUNY) School of Medicine, Do No Harm reported. A school representative said during a seminar about STEM and medicine that students accepted into its BS/MD program do not have the MCAT “to gatekeep them from going into medical school.”

At CUNY, the program takes seven years and aims to “increase the number of physicians of African-American, Hispanic and other ethnic backgrounds who have been historically under-represented in the medical profession and whose communities have been historically underserved by primary care practitioners,” according to its website.

The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine exempted minority students from the MCAT if they completed a summer research program offered through five historically black colleges and universities. Exempted students must have maintained a 3.6 grade point average and showcase “character, leadership and motivation for a career in medicine.”

“Medical school admissions committees recognize that identifying and admitting students who have the potential to be good doctors requires more information than test scores, and consider the MCAT exam alongside the entire application to understand scores in context,” Russell told the DCNF. “Medical schools carefully consider each application using holistic admissions, considering the full range of each applicant’s background and portfolio.”

Our team is inspired by the strength and resolve of our members.

If you would like to submit a testimonial, click here: https://t.co/L1qdTbRxG1 pic.twitter.com/sycZFZlPeo

— Do No Harm (@donoharm) April 20, 2023

Dr. Stanely Goldfarb, Do No Harm chairman, has been aware of the growing trend of school’s dropping the MCAT requirement since before the launch of the watchdog group, Morgan told the DCNF. Goldfarb argued in a 2022 Newsweek op-ed that medical schools that opt to lower admission standards to boost diversity are putting students’ careers and patient wellbeing “at risk.”

“Rather than revisit the means by which they are pursuing diversity, however, the medical elite want to double down on their failing course,” Goldfarb wrote.

The U.S. Medical Licensing’s Step 1 exam, which is the first of three required for licensing, became pass/fail in January 2022, according to AAMC. Changing examination practices make it more difficult to determine whether graduates are prepared for their role in the medical field, Goldfarb argued.

“People of every race and background are fully capable of becoming world-class physicians. Medical schools should seek out the best candidates who are most likely to provide the best care for patients, regardless of what they look like or where they come from,” Goldfarb wrote. “Anything less jeopardizes the very purpose of these institutions. The medical elite may not want to admit it, but their current approach to achieving diversity has a steep cost, and it’s wrong to ask patients to pay it.”

The AAMC, CUNY School of Medicine and University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. (read more)

Over the last few years, the rallying cry of “woke” activists has become “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (often abbreviated to DEI). There is little reason to object to such principles on the surface. After all, America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal. Unfortunately, the meaning of words can change over time.  

Rather than the Founders’ vision of equal opportunity for all, the use of the word “equity” today denotes equal outcomes for all. The implementation of this “equity agenda,” however, will lead to terrible consequences. 

One of the prophets who warned us about the dangers of this understanding of equity was the great twentieth-century novelist Kurt Vonnegut. In his 1961 short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” Vonnegut imagined a society with perfect equity. “Nobody was smarter than anybody else,” the narrator says. “Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” 

As Vonnegut shows, a society looking to equalize outcomes for all citizens is no utopia – it is instead a nightmarish horror. The only way to guarantee equal results is to handicap everyone so that they perform at the lowest common level. In the terrifying world of “Harrison Bergeron,” for instance, the government burdens ballerinas “with sashweights and bags of birdshot” so they cannot move more beautifully than anyone else.

The push for “equity” in American society today resembles Vonnegut’s dystopia – but nowhere more dangerously than in the education system. 

At the university level, DEI bureaucracies have grown to absurd sizes, and they dominate much of campus life. A 2021 Heritage Foundation report found 163 DEI personnel at the University of Michigan, 94 at the University of Virginia and 94 at Ohio State, 86 at the University of California Berkeley, 83 at Virginia Tech, and 80 at Stanford (where Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach was recently put on leave for galvanizing an unruly protest by confronting a U.S. circuit judge who was trying to deliver a campus lecture). 

In a growing number of K-12 schools across the country, such as at Culver City High School in the Los Angeles area, honors classes are being eliminated so as not to “perpetuate inequality.” Proponents of this idea say that some students can still obtain an honors “label” by doing extra work. 

But more often than not, teachers are simply slowing down instruction for everyone. Students are increasingly taught at the lowest common denominator rather than being challenged to do their best. As one student recently told the Wall Street Journal, “There are some people who slow down the pace because they don’t really do anything and aren’t looking to try harder.” 

Current DEI regulations at the federal and state level, as well-intentioned as these regulations may be, are fostering this approach and handicapping our education system. For example, the Department of Education’s 2022 Equity Agency Plan goes so far as to connect DEI policies directly to federal funding for local schools. In their pursuit of “ensuring equity,” ideologues are killing opportunity for America’s students. 

The American Dream is that all citizens will have an equal opportunity to achieve their goals based on their individual talents and hard work. The Declaration of Independence does not guarantee happiness to every citizen – it only guarantees the pursuit of happiness. 

But the pursuit of the modern idea of “equity” rather than true equality is simply a race to the bottom. Socialist regimes in Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and so many other places show that radical egalitarianism simply does not work. America is more successful than these failed experiments because we cling to the principle of equality rightly understood. We cannot let that slip away. 

The good news is that many parents are mobilizing against far-left excesses. At the ballot box, school board meetings, and even at the dinner table, parents are standing up and saying enough is enough. They do not want to sacrifice academic excellence for grand social experiments. They want their kids to become educated and ambitious, not indoctrinated and complacent.

Most Americans believe in equality. We want to make sure that everyone has, to the greatest extent possible, an equal place at the starting line. From there, each individual has the freedom to achieve what his desires, ability, and hard work make possible. 

Achieving that kind of equality is the American dream, the engine that enables people from any walk of life to realize their dreams. Equity, as activists preach it, trades away this American heritage for abstractions and fantasies. Americans should instead hold fast to the political principles that have guided us to marvelous success and prosperity for nearly 250 years. (read more)

The big news last week was Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious firing by Fox News. The reasons for Tucker’s firing are still unclear. And even Tucker’s emergence from his man cave on Tuesday for two minutes did nothing to quell the speculation.

What it did do was underscore just how much real power he amassed during his time in the prime time slot anchoring Fox’s entire evening.

I’m not the first to point out to you just how many views this thing has gotten, dwarfing his Neilson Ratings.

This was a serious needle scratch.  Something changed behind the scenes.  Within an hour Don Lemon was dumped by CNN.  Susan Rice left the Biden Administration that morning. Nate Silver was let go from ABC News.

Both Carlson and Lemon had stories planted about them harboring ‘toxic workplace environments’ to set the scene.  

Nuts and Sluts is a time-tested method of invalidating a public figure.

It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to play. Even if only for a day or two *cough* Abby Grossman *cough*

There is every theory imaginable about what happened here and all of them have a nugget of truth to them.  Dexter White and I recorded a podcast covering what we think is the beginning of the Death of the Time Slot.

And while the court politics of this are interesting, they almost feel like discussing 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination at this point. Does it matter who was behind or why Carlson was ousted from Fox? Could we not see this coming the further he went off the reservation?

In fact, I was amazed he was still on the air after all this time. I don’t think this is a Tucker-as-Icarus proxy story no matter which way you cut it. It was always about something far bigger than Tucker Carlson.

The confluence of major media and political figures leaving their posts, including now the head of the BBC Richard Sharp, over literal ancient conflict of interest issues that looks more like something taken off the shelf for the proverbial rainy day rather than some new, disturbing thing.

It never just rains when its time to change the board state. And that’s exactly what this feels like, an attempt to completely change the direction of information flow as we get ready for the next big psy-op…

… The remaking of the First Fungal President into the Next Garden Variety Wartime President.

Because this is the best chance the DNC has at this point of retaking the presidency with any degree of credibility given their approval ratings. Even if you believe our elections aren’t corrupt (sic) you at least have to admit to yourself that this is a plausibly deniable way to convince yourself of that ‘fact.’

Of course, as I said above, do any of the other whys about these events even matter? Of course not, they are, like Wartime presidents don’t lose, statistics which are simply chum for people to feed their confirmation biases and prevent any coming together of the center of the electorate to say no more.

This was Tucker’s real crime if any of us are being honest with ourselves.

And, in fact, it is the least interesting part of the whole story. Because the given proximate cause spoon fed to the ‘smart people’ in alternative media is the entire Blackrock angle.

Of course, this isn’t true but, again, it doesn’t matter. That said, there is a Blackrock angle to this story but it isn’t what people were led to believe for a couple of days.

Blackrock increased their ownership in FOX just before these events. This is symptomatic of Blackrock’s use of proxy to get what they want.

Larry Fink, BLK CEO, is notorious for his antics in forcing heads of state and CEO’s to do his bidding while hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘I’m just a guy investing your hard-earned capital on your behalf for the good of humanity.’

Now, this is some prime Grade AA Bullshit.

Blackrock is Davos’ main arm-twisting subsidiary in the C-Suites of the S&P 500 as well as the Euro STOXXX 50 (link will need translation from German).  He may as well change his first name to Don but there are some ethnic issues with this outside of Queens. 

As I’ve discussed in previous Private Blog posts for my patrons and interviews Blackrock bet the farm on Obama/Biden getting rid of Jerome Powell. They went all in on their CARES Act power to access the Fed’s Discount window to procure zero-cost seed capital to buy US stocks and, by extension, real estate and everything else.

The company’s growth was turbocharged during COVID by this but it was already growing by more than $1 trillion annually before that.

Its AUM — Assets Under Management — fell in 2022 because the value of the underlying assets fell as Powell put the interest rate screws to a lot of Blackrock’s ‘investments.’  The headlines have been full of governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis going on an anti-Blackrock/anti-ESG/anti-Woke tirade which has helped see some outflow from Blackrock’s funds. 

But that doesn’t do a whole lot in the face of $10 trillion in AUM.  A few billion is literally a rounding error.

No, the bigger effect came from taking the Fed Funds Rate from 0% to 5% in a year.  

In the late stages of the ZIRP years we saw really strong moves in the equity markets, especially coming out of COVID as the CARES Act money made its way into the economy.   Normie FinTwit is always going on about the Fed subsidizing the ‘wealth effect’ as their main argument for why Powell is just ‘one more meeting away from pivoting’ off his ‘higher rates for longer’ schtick.

The ‘wealth effect’ expands not only Blackrock’s AUM but also it’s political pull in the board room.  There is both coincidence and causality in my opinion, between things like Woke-a-Cola and genuflecting to every sicko with a gender fetish and the rise in Blackrock’s AUM.

So it’s no wonder that the standard FinTwit commentary on the Fed is that QE and ZIRP goose equity prices (which it does) but also that that is what the Fed wants to do all the time!

This is the part I disagree with and have been steadfast in my assessment as to why for nearly two years.

Powell was trapped by both COVID and the CARES Act to go along with extending this madness for another two years.  And in the process handed Don Fink-liosi the keys to the whole rotten candy store to ensure what we’re seeing today — maximal brand destruction that defies market logic — gets ramped up to 11.

Buying a huge stake in Fox is just one more brick in the New Media Stonewall for the upcoming war.

All they had to do to seal the deal was convince everyone the global economy was still suffering because of COVID and we needed even MOAR SPENDING!! at the zero bound to reflate the economy.

Powell was supposed to be deposed and Lael Brainard installed to ensure continuity of policy with them having moved Janet Yellen back into a position of power as Treasury Secretary under “Biden.”

That has failed.  Brainard is out at the Fed. She’s prepping to replace Yellen in Biden’s 2nd term.

Biden/Harris’s soft launch of their re-election campaign, was timed with Carlson’s is ouster from Fox and warning shots fired at every major media outlet to toe the line like never before.

So, now, let’s really talk what’s going on with Blackrock in light of this failure to replace Powell.

For a few years now Janet Yellen and Elizabeth Warren have brought up the idea of expanding the definition of SIFI – Systemically Important Financial Institutions — to non-bank entities, like Blackrock.

Blackrock has argued for years that it cannot be a SIFI because:

“The British commissioner who took over from Barnier, Jonathan Hill, wanted the commission to work hand-in-hand with the financiers and every time a debate or a hearing was organised, BlackRock’s people were there,” recalls Daniela Gabor.

“Then I realised that it was no longer the banks that had the power but the asset managers. We are often told that a manager is there to invest our money for our old age. But it’s much more than that,” she says. “In my opinion, BlackRock reflects the renunciation of the welfare state. Its rise in power goes hand-in-hand with ongoing structural changes; changes in finance, but also in the nature of the social contract that unites the citizen and the state.”

Daniela Gabor explains that the European Central Bank, which commissions BlackRock to audit banks, has no power over the company. “BlackRock’s argument is simple: we do not do leverage, we do not act like banks, so we do not need to be regulated as a systemic institution.” {emphasis mine}

In fact, BlackRock slips under all radars. “They can be regulated for reasons known as micro-prudential, to protect their customers, but not as a financial institution tasked with ensuring overall financial stability,” she says.

https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2019/blackrock-the-financial-leviathan-that-bears-down-on-europes-decisions/

This ‘conversation’ has been going on since at least 2019.  It resurfaced again this week as Yellen brought this up.  Now why would she do that if, as I’ve strenuously argued, she’s Davos through and through.

After all wouldn’t she continue arguing for the opposite per Blackrock and Don Fink-liosi’s instructions?

It goes back to what I’ve been saying about Blackrock for over a year now.  All of that AUM rests on a very slim pile of shareholder equity, $38.2 billion to be precise.

As longtime Patrons know, when I do a balance sheet analysis of a company I strip out things like “Goodwill” and “Intangible Assets” from the asset side of the balance sheet.  These are simply piles of ‘value’ leftover from previous M&A activity, brand equity, etc., that may or may not have any real value.

Stripping out the $33.6 billion BLK has in these two ‘asset’ classes that leaves Fink with less than $5 billion in shareholder equity.  

I’m not saying there is no value there, but it’s reasonable to think that the actual value of Blackrock’s balance sheet is somewhere between these two numbers. I’m even willing to entertain 100% valuation for argument’s sake.

It is also staring at more than $55 billion in “Other liabilities” which, is very likely derivative exposure that the company can play very fast and loose with since it was over $90 billion in 2021, and $120 billion in both 2019 and 2020.

These are some pretty big black boxen.

So I’m asking the question no one really wants asked, “Does Blackrock actually have any equity today?” Or is this all a big psy-op based on them voting our proxy for us?

And when we look at the stock price I have to wonder if Wall St. isn’t also asking that question with growing confidence?

I note on the chart the 2022 bottom in October.  What else bottomed in October 2022?  The Euro at $0.956 while the USDX made an important high. But look at that chart.  A two-bar reversal in Oct/Nov, followed by a triple-top around $775 which turns into a one-bar reversal in February, when Powell finally turned the corner on convincing the market the Fed Put is dead.

Now we’re looking at this as a possible ‘dead cat bounce’ which needs a lot of help here to create a rally.  

So, if Blackrock is in real trouble here because of falling asset prices, ESG backlash, rising [interest] rates, and falling cash flow, then that would necessitate a change in the rules to allow it to be bailed out?

Remember, last year when the UK pension crisis developed which took out Prime Minister Liz Truss and forced the Bank of England to intervene, the one holding the bag on the failing assets there was none other than Blackrock. 

They were the ones in trouble who sold these leveraged CLOs — Collateralized Loan Obligations — to the UK state pensions which ran out of money to pay pensioners.

Now, is Blackrock, which was built on the same premise as Silicon Valley Bank, using non-balance sheet activity to resist being regulated as a SIFI, is staring at a crisis if yields keep rising?

Who is protected by the big inversion of the US yield curve we keep staring at?

So, in swoops Yellen to demand Blackrock should be a SIFI once the FUD surrounding it reaches a fever pitch.  Who is everyone afraid of now? Blackrock.  

Why?  Because they “own the world.” 

Why aren’t they regulated like the big banks?  Because they sit at the High Table.

Who gets screwed if they go tits up?  The little guy.

Who’s fault will it be if Blackrock went tits up?  The Fed.

You can hear Elizabeth Warren setting the political stage for this now. We have to protect US workers from the evil Wall St. fat cats.  So, we’ll bring them under the auspice of increased government regulation by labeling them as a SIFI.

Who sits on the Financial Services Oversight Council who will make this decision?

And then we have Jim Rickards’ Ice-9 scenario.  (Link to tweet with video).

In short, Blackrock as a SIFI becomes a protectorate of the Treasury department and it circumvents a bankruptcy.

Since Blackrock is just a pile of AUM on top of a relatively small balance sheet it can be carved up pretty easily. Its book of business can be bought by the rest of Wall St. licking their lips at the thought of all those asset management and consulting fees that generate the lion’s share of the company’s cash flow.

So now, does Blackrock want to be regulated as a SIFI after having built itself into the monster it is by evading that designation?  

You can see the game here, Janet Yellen can force Jerome Powell to bail them out when their balance sheet implodes for real, holding the holes in the pension funds hostage as blackmail.

Why would they do that?  Why would Fink do this?  Well, if you want to nationalize the US pension system and end the old US dollar system then you do that during a major crisis.  

How did they tie Powell’s hands during COVID?  The CARES Act.  

How will they tie Powell’s hands during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis? Making Blackrock a SIFI before it happens.

What would you expect to happen between now and then?  Snuffing out any major selloff in US Treasuries by managing credit spreads between US and European debt.  This relieves the pressure on Blackrock’s balance sheet and that of others.  

Now let’s talk about the blowout in US Credit Default Swap Rates as well as the massive plunge in the 1-month T-Bill rate last week creating an historic 1 month/2 month spread of over 160 basis points.  Yellen has been ramping up the rhetoric about the US defaulting once the Treasury General Account is empty.  

“Biden” and Davos are serious about trying to stop any kind of spending cuts, because they want to balloon the US deficit to the moon to save the EU.  Blackrock is more heavily exposed to Europe than the US pension systems, but still heavily exposed to both.

What did Lagarde at the ECB put in place last July?  The TPI – Transmission Protection Instrument — designed to protect credit spreads within the EU, nominally, but also internationally.

What’s been happening during this major rally in the euro to $1.10 and Powell convinced the markets he’s serious about not pivoting? A collapse of US/European credit spreads indicating preferential capital movement into the US and out of Europe.

In short, I think Blackrock’s deteriorating balance sheet as well as Yellen’s intention to stiff US bondholders to save pensioners is setting us up for the biggest Lucy with the Football moment in history. It is the biggest threat to Powell’s “higher for longer” rate policy and the future of the US.

And it comes down to playing hard ball over the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts. If that happens then Yellen is winning and Powell is checkmated. If McCarthy and the GOP hold the line then the US banking interests will tear Blackrock apart and take their business in bankruptcy.

Making Blackrock a SIFI short-circuits this completely and puts the onus directly on the taxpayer, per Rickards’ analysis.

I can easily see Blackrock sacrificed on the altar of the Great Reset once it’s control over corporate interests has been turned over to the Treasury and the ECB.

In fact, it is the best play for them to nationalize all the assets they have.  $9 trillion in AUM is a lot of win for the commies.

And Fink, as I said, already has his seat at The High Table.

Which is why Tucker Carlson’s firing is important but really the side show in all of this. (read more)