Money-Supply Growth Accelerates as Wall Street Demands Even More Easy Money
Money-supply growth rose year over year in June for the second month in a row. This is the first time the money supply has grown for two months in a row since October of 2022. The current trend in money-supply growth suggests a significant turnaround from more than a year of historically large contractions in the money supply that occurred throughout much of 2023 and 2024. As of June, the money supply appears to be, for now, in a period of stabilization.
The money-supply growth of May and June ends an eighteen-month period during which the money supply repeatedly contracted, year over year. In June, YOY growth in the money supply was at 0.24 percent. That’s the same as the May 2024 increase, and was a large reversal from June 2023’s YOY decline of 12.5 percent. Until recently, the US money supply was experiencing a period of the the largest drops in money supply we’ve seen since the Great Depression. Prior to 2023, at no other point for at least sixty years had the money supply fallen by so much.
Those dramatic drops in the money supply appear to be over for the time being. Indeed, when we look at month-to-month changes in the money supply, we find that the money supply was flat from May to June, increasing by 0.002 percent. In month-to-month measures, money supply growth has been positive during seven of the last twelve months, further suggesting that the new trend in money supply is either flat or returning to sustained upward growth..
The money supply metric used here—the “true,” or Rothbard-Salerno, money supply measure (TMS)—is the metric developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno, and is designed to provide a better measure of money supply fluctuations than M2. (The Mises Institute now offers regular updates on this metric and its growth.)
In recent months, M2 growth rates have followed a similar course to TMS growth rates, although TMS has fallen faster than M2 in the year-over-year measures, and M2 has rebounded faster. In June, the M2 growth rate was 0.983 percent. That’s up from May’s growth rate of 0.58 percent. June’s growth rate was also up from June 2023’s rate of -3.8 percent. Moreover, M2 also shows more overall growth than TMS, with M2 increasing by 0.55 percent from May to June this year.
Money supply growth can often be a helpful measure of economic activity and an indicator of coming recessions. During periods of economic boom, money supply tends to grow quickly as commercial banks make more loans. On the other hand, two or three years before a recession begins, we tend to see periods during which money supply growth slows or turns negative.
It should be noted that the money supply does not need to actually contract to signal a recession. As shown by Ludwig von Mises, recessions are often preceded by a mere slowing in money supply growth. But the drop into negative territory we’ve seen in recent months does help illustrate just how far and how rapidly money supply growth has fallen. That is generally a red flag for economic growth and employment.
All that said, recessions tend not to become apparent until after the money supply has begun to accelerate again after a period of slowing. This was the case in the early 1990’s recession, the Dot-com Bust of 2001, and the Great Recession.
In spite of last year’s sizable drops in total money supply, the trend in money-supply remains well above what existed during the twenty-year period from 1989 to 2009. To return to this trend, the money supply would have to drop another $3 trillion or so—or 15 percent—down to a total below $15 trillion. Moreover, as of June, total money supply was still up more than 30 percent (or about $4.6 trillion) since January 2020.
Since 2009, the TMS money supply is now up by more than 185 percent. (M2 has grown by 145 percent in that period.) Out of the current money supply of $18.8 trillion, $4.6 trillion—or 24 percent—of that has been created since January 2020. Since 2009, more than $12 trillion of the current money supply has been created. In other words, nearly two-thirds of the total existing money supply have been created just in the past thirteen years.
With these kinds of totals, a ten-percent drop in the money supply only puts a small dent in the huge edifice of newly created money. The US economy still faces a very large monetary overhang from the past several years, and this is partly why so many months of negative money-supply growth, total employment has only stagnated while showing no large contractions. (For example, full-time job growth has turned negative while the total number of employed workers has been flat since late 2023.) Moreover, CPI inflation remains well over the two-percent target rate, and mainstream economists’ predictions of significant “disinflation” have been wrong.
Wall Street Wants More Money-Supply Growth
As economic indicators continue to weaken, we should expect to hear an increasing chorus of demands for inflationary monetary policy designed to accelerate money supply growth.
For example, last week’s weak jobs report led to numerous calls from Wall Street pundits for more dovish policy from the Federal Reserve. On Monday, economist and longtime Wall Street “expert” Jeremy Siegel seemed nearly hysterical as he demanded the Fed hold an emergency meeting and slash the target policy interest rate by 150 basis points over the next two months. This can only be described as “panic.” This followed a cloud of other establishment economists who declared on Friday that the Fed should have begun cutting rates many months ago.
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Even a small downward drift in the markets demands an aggressive policy response in the minds of Wall Street boosters. In other words, the Greenspan put remains as essential as ever in the minds of Wall Street’s “elites.” Now, of course, the Greenspan put has been replaced by the Bernanke put, the Yellen put and the Powell put. Even with the total money supply well above trend and still bumping around 19 trillion, people like Jeremy Siegel would have you believe the Fed has been aggressively hawkish. For the nation’s banker class, it is always the right time to push more easy money in order to keep asset prices as levels that keeps “the 1%” awash in riches.
The Fed and the Federal Government Need Lower Interest Rates
Part of the reason that banker class never tires of easy money, however, is that the wealthiest have many ways of dealing with mounting consumer price inflation. So long as prices in real estate, stocks, and other asset classes continue to inflate faster than prices for food and other basics, then inflation presents no real problem for the wealthiest among us.
For those who don’t own immense stockpiles of assets, however, consumer price inflation can be devastating.
Thus, the only real restraint on easy money is the fact public opinion will turn against the regime when easy-money fueled price inflation accelerate for ordinary people. Regimes fear high levels of price inflation because high inflation is known to lead to political instability.
One way that central banks fight price inflation is to allow interest rates to rise, but this means public dissatisfaction with rising prices must compete with incessant calls for lower interest rates coming out of Wall Street—as we see above—and also out of the regime itself.
Central banks are not expected only to keep Wall Street happy. A regime’s central bank is also expected to help the regime issue debt and engage in deficit spending. Central banks’ main tool in offering this help involves keeping interest rates on government debt low. How do central banks do this? By buying up the government’s debt, thus artificially boosting demand for the government’s debt and pushing interest rates back down. The problem is that buying up government debt usually involves creating new money, thus putting upward pressure on price inflation.
Given all these pressures from the easy-money interests, it’s rather surprising that money-supply growth did not turn positive sooner than it did and that the central bank has not been more aggressive in pushing growth rates up faster.
What the Fed is doing now is probably best described as a “wait and hope” strategy. The Fed is refusing to allow interest rates to rise, but the Fed is still proceeding slowly on forcing interest rates down even further.
While the Fed is certainly responsive to Wall Street historically, the Fed’s larger concern right now is likely the need to push down interest rates on government debt. It appears the Fed is holding the target rate steady just hoping that something will happen to bring Treasury yields back down without the Fed having to print more money to buy more Treasuries and risking a new, politically damaging surge in price inflation. “Hoping” is not much of a strategy, however, and the likely outcome is that the Fed will err on the side of keeping interest rates low so the regime can borrow more money. This will mean more price inflation for ordinary people.
Originally Posted at https://mises.org/
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2024 Echoes ‘1984’ | ZeroHedge
Authored by Victor Joecks via American Greatness,
The book “1984” is supposed to be a warning. Today’s leftists are using it as an instruction manual…
George Orwell’s classic novel is set in a dystopian world where Big Brother controls the population through information control and surveillance. See if any of this sounds familiar.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
During her career, especially when running for president in 2020, Kamala Harris took a number of radical positions. She praised efforts to defund the police. She once insinuated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was comparable to the KKK and suggested the agency should be rebuilt “from scratch.” She wanted to decriminalize border crossings. She co-sponsored the Green New Deal. She supported a mandatory gun buyback program, eliminating private insurance and reparations. She was in favor of banning fracking and plastic straws.
Those policies play great in San Francisco, but not in battleground states. Not to worry. She’s flip-flopped on at least five major policy positions since becoming the presumptive nominee.
Instead of exposing this duplicity, the national mainstream media is participating in it.
“Harris is calibrating her policy pitch for going to battle with Trump,” the Associated Press wrote about her reversals.
“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened — that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump happened just over three weeks ago. The iconic photo of a bloodied Trump defiantly standing and pumping his fist went viral. Outside of conservative sites and social media accounts, it’s barely been seen since. The national media has largely moved on, eager to fluff up Harris.
Less than two weeks ago, pro-Hamas rioters stormed Washington, D.C., to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to Congress. They tore down U.S. flags outside of Union Station and raised Palestinian flags. They burned an American flag, vandalized monuments and assaulted park police. Charges against some of the few people arrested have already been dropped.
An easy prediction: You’ll hear less about these two stories than Trump’s out-of-context “bloodbath” remark and Jan. 6. It’s like events that would make Trump look heroic and hurt the left never happened.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten …”
You can see this happening in real time. Last week, I googled “Trump rally.” The top result was “Kamala Harris rally in Atlanta.” The same thing happened to Elon Musk and many others.
Recently, Meta AI refused to acknowledge that Trump was almost assassinated. Meta is the parent company of Facebook. It inaccurately labeled a fist-pumping photo of a bloodied Trump as “altered.” When people used Google to search for information on Trump’s attempted assassination, its auto-fill wouldn’t even suggest his name.
Both companies claim they weren’t trying to rig search results. Those excuses would be more believable if almost all mistakes like these didn’t go in the same direction.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
Illegal aliens are merely undocumented migrants. Men who claim to be women are women. People voting for Donald Trump are a threat to democracy. Ramming scissors into the skull of an 8-month-old preborn baby and sucking her brains out is health care. Israel is the oppressor for defending itself against genocidal terrorists. Diversity requires ideological conformity.
2024 looks a lot like “1984,” but you get to help write the ending. Choose wisely.
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Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
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Exclusive — Trump Tells Breitbart He’ll Solve Ukraine-Russia War ‘Before I Get to the White House, After I’m President-Elect’
PALM BEACH, Florida — Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday evening that he intends to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine as President-elect before he even is sworn in as the next president of the United States.
Trump, in an hourlong interview with Breitbart News at his luxurious seaside resort and club, Mar-a-Lago, here in South Florida, said that he wants to see the war between Russia and Ukraine “settled.”
“I want to see it settled,” Trump said. “I want to get it done.”
Trump said he knows Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and believes he can negotiate peace to end the “death” and “destruction” if elected again on Nov. 5.
“I know both heads of the countries,” Trump said. “I know President Putin very well. I want to see the death stopping. There’s death and there’s destruction. They are destroying the whole fabric of a certain part of the world. I want to get it negotiated, and get it done.”
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Trump said his Democrat opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, would keep the war going and keep flowing hundreds of billions of American tax dollars into Ukraine rather than ending it. He said Harris would do nothing, and because of her inaction “millions of people will die” if she were to win the election in November. He also said Harris’s ineptitude could drag the world into a global war.
“I don’t think she has any clue,” Trump said. “She wouldn’t handle it at all. I don’t think she’d do anything. I think it would just go on and millions of people will die. It could evolve into a World War also. She’s got no capability to get it done. I want to get it done. I’ve always had a very good relationship with both men and I think I’m in a very good position. It would have been easier to get done—it would have never started. If I were there, it would have never started.”
Trump also said he hopes he will be able to negotiate the peace deal ending the war in the timeframe between the Nov. 5 election and the Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration, should he win.
“You look at the heritage of the country—the cities are mostly knocked down,” Trump said, describing Ukraine. “They’re flattened. They’re just totally flattened. Have you ever seen some of these cities? There’s not a building standing. The country has been devastated. So I want to get it solved and I will be able to get it solved. And I’d like to do it before I get to the White House after I’m president-elect.”
Much more from Trump’s latest interview with Breitbart News is coming soon.
Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com
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House Republican Veterans Slam ‘Coward’ Walz Amid Stolen Valor Accusations
Many Republican veterans who are either in the House of Representatives or are running for the House are blasting Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz amid stolen valor accusations.
Walz, who served 24 years in the National Guard, including the Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion 125th Field Artillery, retired shortly before his unit went to Iraq. He did not see combat, yet, in a video shared by the Harris-Walz campaign, he said that he carried weapons “in war.”
Gov. @Tim_Walz: I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war,… pic.twitter.com/3IVaXi2RP2
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 6, 2024
He also faces harsh criticism from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Republican Vice Presidential Nominee JD Vance for not going to Iraq with his battallion. Cotton, a veteran who did two combat tours in the U.S. Army, says Walz “let his troops go to war” in Iraq “without him.”
The sentiments echo those of two Army command sergeants major who wrote that when Walz retired on May 16, 2005, he left “1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war” in a letter published in the West Central Tribune in 2018.
Walz notably filed to run for Congress in February 2005 before the unit was notified of potential deployment in March 2005. However, the alert came two months before his retirement.
Finally, Walz’s bio implied he retired at the rank of E-9 when he actually retired as an E-8. However, he did serve as an E-9 for a time before leaving as a master sergeant E-8.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), an Afghanistan veteran, ripped Walz on Wednesday as a “fraud” and remarked it is “Crazy that Kamala would pick a running mate who lied about his military service.”
Tim Walz is a fraud https://t.co/6CJqbtnCrC
— Jim Banks (@Jim_Banks) August 7, 2024
Crazy that Kamala would pick running mate who lied about his military service. Either her vetting process led by Eric Holder was very weak or she doesn’t care … or both!
— Jim Banks (@Jim_Banks) August 7, 2024
“Either her vetting process led by Eric Holder was very weak or she doesn’t care … or both!” said Banks, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Indiana.
Banks also posted a picture of himself from his time deployed in the Army as part of a larger trend on X.
🇺🇸 https://t.co/1ud7bp6FRo pic.twitter.com/sPT925dO5Q
— Jim Banks (@Jim_Banks) August 7, 2024
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a veteran bomb disposal expert of the U.S. Army who lost both of his legs to an improvised explosive device, hammered Walz.
“Tim Walz LIED about his rank. He LIED about serving in Afghanistan,” he wrote in a post on X. “And now, according to CNN, Walz LIED about carrying weapons of war in a war zone.”
Tim Walz LIED about his rank. He LIED about serving in Afghanistan.
And now, according to CNN, Walz LIED about carrying weapons of war in a war zone. pic.twitter.com/QWLmuvJYke
— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) August 8, 2024
U.S. Air Force veteran Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), whose husband, also a veteran, was shot in Afghanistan fighting al-Qaeda and received a Bronze Star, blasted Walz for “claiming to be a combat veteran.”
Today is Purple Heart day and we have a guy who is claiming to be a combat veteran as Harris’ running mate. Disgusting.
— Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) August 7, 2024
“Today is Purple Heart day and we have a guy who is claiming to be a combat veteran as Harris’ running mate. Disgusting,” she stated on X.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), a combat-decorated Green Beret, broke down the problems the Democrat vice presidential pick is facing in a 1:35 video posted to X. He focused on both Walz’s rank and his “walking away from his soldiers after they had been called to go to Iraq.”
I’ve seen the reports on Tim Walz’s military record and he has some explaining to do. pic.twitter.com/Qo6lhUbS4h
— Rep. Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) August 7, 2024
“I commanded Green Berets,” the Florida congressman emphasized. “Everything that you do prepares you for that moment when you have to lead your men and women into harm’s way. It’s kind of like the quarterback of a big team walking away from their team right before they go to the Super Bowl.”
Another Florida combat veteran, Rep. Cory Mills (R), blasted Walz while speaking with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on her eponymously-named show The Ingraham Angle.
“I think it’s very clear when your job as a leader is to continue to try and fight and deploy alongside your troops that the idea of running for politics should be the last thing on your mind,” Mills, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and received a Bronze Star, said.
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), a retired U.S. Navy SEAL commander, weighed in as well, with criticisms of Walz and Harris. Zinke notably served in Iraq, leading special operations.
My statement on Kamala Harris’ runningmate Tim Walz’s stolen valor and abandoning his unit. pic.twitter.com/5xWFgJ9kya
— Ryan Zinke (@RyanZinke) August 8, 2024
“In 2005 Walz abandoned his unit just like Kamala abandoned Americans in Afghanistan and she abandoned our closest allies in Israel,” he wrote.
“Tim Walz didn’t fight for us then. He didn’t fight for Minnesota when she burned in 2020. And he won’t fight for you now,” Zinke said.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), a Navy veteran and former physician to multiple U.S. presidents, ripped Walz as a “lying coward.”
“Your ‘war stories’ disgust me and disgust most other veterans that actually deployed in defense of this country!” he wrote, addressing Walz. “SIMPLY PUT, YOU ARE PATHETIC AND A NATIONAL DISGRACE!!!”
Fraud Tim Walz is a lying coward who NEVER deployed and was NEVER in harms way.
He never deployed to Iraq.
He never deployed to Afghanistan.
Your “war stories” disgust me and disgust most other veterans that actually deployed in defense of this country!
SIMPLY PUT, YOU ARE…
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) August 8, 2024
Veteran Rep. Derick Van Orden (R-WI), who saw five combat deployments and retired as a Navy SEAL senior chief, called Walz “a coward” as well.
@Tim_Walz Abandoned his Soldiers, sent them to Iraq in his place and hid under his couch.
As the actual longest serving enlisted member of Congress in the history of our nation, I am disgusted by this and would shun him from any military function.
He is a coward. https://t.co/XD46C2FUoz pic.twitter.com/QCtPLwZw9j
— Derrick Van Orden (@derrickvanorden) August 7, 2024
“As the actual longest-serving enlisted member of Congress in the history of our nation, I am disgusted by this and would shun him from any military function,” he wrote.
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA), who served in the Marines and Navy with service in combat zones, said, “Georgia’s military community will find it rather repugnant that Walz opted to retire from the National Guard right when he found out his unit was headed to Iraq.”
I think Georgia’s military community will find it rather repugnant that Walz opted to retire from the National Guard right when he found out his unit was headed to Iraq… https://t.co/xgiPyAF76U
— Dr. Rich McCormick for Congress (@RichforGA) August 7, 2024
https://t.co/PVjBL4UB6X pic.twitter.com/38Jn6yjqQ5
— Dr. Rich McCormick for Congress (@RichforGA) August 8, 2024
Laurie Buckhout, a candidate for North Carolina’s First Congressional District and a decorated Army colonel combat veteran, also ripped Walz as a “coward” who “quit” on his unit.
I understood the full extent of my commitment to this country when I served in the Army for 26 years.
My unit was deployed to Iraq in 2003. I left without hesitation and led a battalion of 800 soldiers to carry out our mission.
But when @Tim_Walz heard his unit was mobilizing… https://t.co/wCCPyqb0Be
— Laurie Buckhout (@lauriebuckhout) August 7, 2024
“I understood the full extent of my commitment to this country when I served in the Army for 26 years,” Buckhout wrote in a post on X. “But when @Tim_Walz heard his unit was mobilizing to Iraq…he quit.”
“Walz quit on his unit, his soldiers, and his country. That’s what we can expect from him as VP, too. Coward,” she wrote.
This is a photo of me not being @Tim_Walz and actually answering the call to serve my country overseas.
I put my life on the line for this country then, and I’d do it again now in a heartbeat. https://t.co/QThg7sRdjF pic.twitter.com/WVMJyYti0G
— Laurie Buckhout (@lauriebuckhout) August 8, 2024
Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com
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Exclusive—Seamus Bruner: Seven Troubling Tim Walz Connections to Communist China
Minnesota Governor and Vice-Presidential hopeful Tim Walz has an abnormal relationship with China.
“No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again…it was an excellent experience,” Walz said upon his return from the first of many trips there. Walz claims that his Chinese hosts lavished him with “more gifts than I could bring home.”
Walz and his supporters would like us to believe that his cozy ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are not unusual. In fact, he is “hawkish” and staunch critic of the CCP’s human rights abuses, his media allies say. The Chinese have an expression for the practice of providing cover for the communist regime while issuing the occasional muted critiques: it’s called “big help with a little bad mouth.”
As Breitbart News reported, Walz first visited China in 1989 under the auspices of a now-shuttered Harvard program called WorldTeach. Walz and became so enamored with the country that he and his wife honeymooned there after their marriage on June 4, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Walz “wanted to have a [wedding anniversary] date he’ll always remember,” according to his wife.
The pro-democracy protest movement of students in Tiananmen Square ended in a blood bath during the night of June 3 to June 4, 1989. Between 1,500 to 4,000 demonstrators were killed and 10,000 wounded when the Chinese Communist Party ordered a military crackdown on the protesters, and the People’s Liberation Army rolled their tanks into the square and opened fire on the crowd. The students were demonstrating to demand more democracy and freedom of thought from the Chinese government. (Jacques Langevin/Getty Images)
The pro-democracy protesters watch as the Chinese communist regime’s tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square during the bloody military crackdown of the democracy demonstrations on June 3 to 4, 1989. (Jacques Langevin/Getty Images)
The pro-democracy protesters are seen on Changan Avenue during the CCP’s bloody military crackdown on June 4, 1989, in Tiananmen Square. (Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The pro-democracy protesters are seen after the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3 to June 4, 1989. (Jacques Langevin/Getty Images)
People transport a wounded woman during the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square on June 3 to 4, 1989. (David Turnley/Getty Images)
Family members try to comfort a grief-stricken mother who just learned that her son was killed during the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. (David Turnley/Getty Images)
A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading towards Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, one day after the Tiananmen Square massacre. This courageous unknown man became known to the world simply as “Tank Man.” (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)
The Walz newlyweds brought sixty students with them on their honeymoon, kicking off the first of many student exchange trips to the communist country. Walz and his wife set up a company, Education Travel Adventures Inc., to facilitate the trips to China. They ultimately ended up taking more than thirty trips there.
Walz’s last known trip to China was in 2015, but he continues to meet with communist officials and headline CCP-backed events. Walz’s deep and abiding ties to China—including multiple connections to CCP intelligence front organizations—present troubling national security questions about a potential Harris-Walz administration.
Here are Walz’s top seven connections to the CCP that demand explanation.
1. The CCP approved and even subsidized Walz’s student exchanges.
After his first trip to China in 1989, Walz returned to his teaching job in America and hung a “Chinese banner” in his school office. By 1993, Walz was taking American students on visits to China where he told his students to “downplay their American-ness.”
When asked about why he was so interested in China so early on, Walz stated “China was coming, and that’s the reason that I went.” According to U.S. national security expert John Schindler, “no American would be allowed to run academic exchanges for a couple of decades, on the CCP’s dime, without [Ministry of State Security] approval. It just wouldn’t happen.”
Shockingly, Chinese authorities reportedly covered “a large part of the cost” of the 1993 summer trip. The next year, Walz and the Chinese government jointly sponsored scholarships for American students to visit China. Between 1989 and 2003, Walz travelled with hundreds of students to China.
Did Walz or his travel company, Education Travel Adventures Inc., receive any money from the Chinese government? His public financial disclosures do not go back far enough to know.
2. A CCP diplomat and other CCP government officials attended Walz’s gubernatorial inauguration in January 2019.
A translation from a Chinese government source reveals that, “Acting Consul General Liu Jun congratulated Governor Waltz and expressed his expectation to strengthen cooperation with the new Minnesota government to jointly promote the friendly and cooperative relations between Minnesota and China.”
Why were CCP members at the inauguration of a Minnesota governor and would Chinese diplomats congratulate a sincere critic of China’s human rights abuses?
3. The CCP Diplomat left the Walz inauguration to meet with Walz cronies at Minnesota’s premier globalist non-governmental organization (NGO), Minnesota Global.
According the translated Chinese government press release, “Acting Consul General Liu congratulated [Global Minnesota] on the successful holding of the China Theme Year event and said that the Consulate General looks forward to continuing to strengthen communication with [Global Minnesota] in the new year to promote friendly cooperation between Minnesota and China.”
Global Minnesota is close with Walz and has sponsored at least one his foreign trips (to Finland). Last December, Walz awarded a Global Minnesota nominee for a business award.
Global Minnesota is affiliated with globalist entities like the United Nations and frequently invites Walz for speaking engagements (in 2020, 2021, and 2022).
4. Walz has close connections to a Twin Cities-based organization that houses an alleged secret CCP police station—one of only seven secret CCP police stations in the U.S.
In 2022, Minnesota Global partnered with group called the Chinese American Association of Minnesota (CAAM) to send delegations to China.
CAAM has been accused of housing a CCP intelligence agency “Service Center” (which is effectively a secret CCP police station) in Minnesota. The Daily Caller reported:
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD) — which at least one U.S. government commission has characterized as a “Chinese intelligence service” — operates so-called “Overseas Chinese Service Centers” (OCSCs) that are housed within various U.S.-based nonprofits. OCSCs were ostensibly set up to promote Chinese culture and assist Chinese citizens living abroad, according to Chinese government records.
In April 2023, the Justice Department busted an alleged CCP Ministry of Public Security outpost, which the DOJ called a “secret police station” used to “monitor and intimidate dissidents” and other critics of Beijing.
Why has Walz failed to shut down this Overseas Chinese Service Center operating out of Minnesota?
5. Then-Congressman Walz praised a CCP-backed event that he attended with CCP diplomats in 2018.
According the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Chicago, the event Walz attended was “The Greatest Spirit: Embrace China—Beautiful Sichuan” hosted at Minnesota University’s Northrop Theater.
The event was sponsored by the CCP’s All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC). According to the Chinese government website:
US Congressman Waltz commented that 30 years ago, he celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival for the first time in Foshan, Guangdong. As Mid-Autumn Festival stands out in Chinese culture as a special day of family reunion, it was his pleasure to enjoy this performance with everyone together. China and the US have a solid tradition of cultural exchanges, and hopefully both countries can maintain this tradition and amicable relations.
6. Less than one year into his first gubernatorial term, Walz was an honored guest speaker at multiple CCP-backed influence operation events in 2019.
Ten months after his inauguration, Walz accepted a speaking gig from a CCP-backed event, joining the president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) on the short list of speakers.
Walz was invited to “speak about his experiences [in China] and Minnesota’s connections with China.” Walz also was a guest speaker at the U.S. China Peoples Friendship Association convention in 2019 (alongside CPAFFC President Li Xaolin).
The CPAFFC is effectively a CCP “United Front” cutout that is accused of “directly and malignly influencing” state and local politicians in the U.S., according to the State Department. The CCP’s United Front influence operation is specifically tasked with “co-opting and neutralizing threats to the party’s rule and spreading its influence and propaganda overseas.” Beijing view United Front operation “magic weapon” to advance CCP objectives around the world.
Why is Walz so cozy with obvious CCP intelligence operatives and are they paying him for these speeches?
7. Walz has a long history of making outlandishly pro-CCP comments.
Walz has said that “going [to China] was one of the best things I have ever done” and that if the Chinese “had the proper leadership, there are no limits to what they could accomplish.” He claims that his teaching position Macau Polytechnic University “helped develop his knowledge of China’s unique international status.”
In 2011, Walz said he developed “a great admiration for and a close connection with the Chinese people” after teaching there. He indirectly praised the CCP’s brutal police when he said that China had “almost no crime.”
Walz has also claimed the U.S. does not need to have an “adversarial relationship” with China and that “there was no anti-American feeling [in China] whatsoever.”
Notably, Walz’s gentle criticisms often ignore the aspect of the Chinese system responsible for the brutality: communism. And he recently compared socialism to “neighborliness.” Walz seems to view human rights abuses as events that all countries commit from time to time and move on.
On the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre, Walz said that “every nation has its dark periods that it must come to grips with.” And that “this Nation [the US] is no exception.” While this is true, Walz refers to events in American history that happened over a century ago with far less bloodshed.
Meanwhile, the CCP’s ongoing “break their lineage, break their roots” persecution of ethnic minorities in China is rightly characterized as a crime against humanity and even a genocide.
Why does Tim Walz seem to downplay the undeniable bloodshed of communism and socialism?
This is a developing story.
Seamus Bruner is the author of Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life and Peter Schweizer’s Head of Research at the Government Accountability Institute. Follow him @SeamusBruner.
Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com
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Harris Refuses to Comment on All Three of Trump’s Debate Challenges
Vice President Kamala Harris refused to answer on Thursday whether she accepted former President Donald Trump’s challenge to debate three separate times.
Trump offered on Thursday to debate Harris on September 4 on Fox News, September 10 on NBC News, and September 25 on ABC News.
Harris agreed to debate on September 10 on NBC News but refused to comment on whether she would participate in the other two.
“I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump and we have a date of September 10. I hear he’s finally committed to it and I’m looking forward to it,” she said Thursday in Wayne, Michigan:
VP Harris to NBC News in Wayne, MI:
“I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump and we have a date of September 10. I hear he’s finally committed to it and I’m looking forward to it.” pic.twitter.com/PlogS652o3
— Shaquille Brewster (@shaqbrewster) August 8, 2024
Kamala also refused to directly address the allegations against her running mate, Gov. Mike Walz, of “stolen valor. “I praise anyone who has presented themselves to serve their country. And I think that we all should.”
Throughout the week, Republicans widely mocked Harris for failing to hold unscripted media events.
“Excuse me, what are we doing right now? Trump questioned during a Thursday press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “She’s not doing any news conference … She doesn’t know how to do a news conference. She’s not smart enough to do a news conference.”
Trump’s comments might have irritated Harris and encouraged her to schedule an interview “before the end of the month,” she said Thursday after speaking with her team. It is unclear if the interview will take place in the last three weeks of August or whether the interview’s scheduling will take place before August ends.
“I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” she said when asked when she would sit down for her first interview since entering the presidential race.
Harris failed to give one unscripted press conference since joining the presidential race 18 days ago. A longtime Harris ally told Politico’s West Wing Playbook on Wednesday that she may continue to avoid the press until Labor Day, 25 days away.
Harris might not be partial to unscripted events for two reasons. First, she has a habit of delivering silly word salads. Second, she appears to be trying navigate policy debates within her own party. Anonymous campaign aides reportedly flipped flopped on five of her radical-left policies.
More is here on Harris’s radical record.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com
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Value Of US Housing Hits Record $50 Trillion, Up 7% In Past Year, Just In Time For Fed Rate Cuts
The Fed’s rate hikes were supposed to slow down the economy and, thanks to soaring interest rates, lower prices and make housing more affordable. That did not happen, and instead housing is now the least affordable it has been in US history.
And while an entire generation of potential buyers will be forced to rent indefinitely, the flip side is that anyone who has been lucky enough to buy a house, is celebrating on a day real-estate brokerage Redfin reports that the total value of U.S homes gained $3.1 trillion over the past 12 months to reach a record $49.6 trillion.
In percentage terms, the total value of the US housing market grew 6.6% year over year, laughing in the face of a Fed chair who kept on hiking rates in hopes of lowering prices. Zooming out further, the total value of U.S. homes has more than doubled in the past decade, climbing nearly 120% from $22.7 trillion in June 2014.
“The value of America’s housing market will likely cross the $50 trillion threshold in the next 12 months as there are not enough homes being listed to push prices down,” said Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao. “Mortgage rates have started falling, but many potential sellers and buyers are waiting to make a move, meaning we are likely to continue seeing a pattern where prices slowly tick up. That’s great news for the millions of American homeowners who see their equity rising, but first-time buyers are going to keep finding it tough to find an affordable home.”
That, of course, is an understatement: what Zhao meant is that for millions of Americans, the dream of owning a home is now gone for ever, because if they couldn’t afford to buy a house during the most aggressive rate hike cycle since Volcker, the coming rate cuts will certainly not make it easier.
The number of metros where the total value of homes topped $1 trillion grew to eight—doubling from four a year ago—with Anaheim, CA, Chicago, Phoenix and Washington, DC, joining New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Boston in the trillion-dollar club. San Diego and Seattle look like they will join them in the next 12 months if home values keep increasing at a similar pace.
It’s worth noting that while San Francisco’s aggregate home value is roughly $700 billion, when combined with neighbors Oakland, CA, and San Jose, CA, the combined Bay Area housing market is worth nearly $2.5 trillion. Likewise, the combined Dallas ($734 million) and Fort Worth, TX ($294 million) metro area also surpasses the $1 trillion mark.
Rural home values outpaced those in urban areas and the suburbs, jumping 7% year over year to $7.8 trillion. The total value of homes in urban areas rose 6% to $10.3 trillion, while the value of homes in the suburbs cracked the $30 trillion mark for the first time, increasing 6.8% to $30.1 trillion.
There are around 57 million homes in the suburbs, compared to 22 million in urban areas and 21 million in rural areas.
Thirteen major metros posted double-digit percentage gains in total property value over the last year, led by relatively-affordable New Jersey metros within commuting distance of New York, where property is more expensive. The value of properties in New Brunswick, NJ rose 13.3% to $582.6 billion, while Newark, NJ climbed 13.2% to $406.2 billion. Anaheim, CA (up 12.1% to $1.1 trillion), Charleston, SC (up 11.8% to $188.9 billion) and New Haven, CT (up 11.8% to $91 billion) rounded out the five metros with the highest gains.
Cape Coral, FL was the only metro to record a fall in total home value, dropping 1.6% to $204.2 billion. Sun Belt metros—especially those in Texas—grew slower than those in other regions, with New Orleans (up 0.8% to $128.2 billion), Austin, TX (up 1.9% to $392.8 billion), North Port, FL (up 2.1% to $251.8 billion) and Fort Worth, TX (up 2.3% to $293.7 billion) rounding out the bottom five metros.
Broken down by age group, the total value of homes owned by millennials rose 21.5% year over year to $8.6 trillion in the first quarter of 2024—the most recent period for which generational data is available—nearly four times as fast as any other generation.
The increase is partly due to the overall growth in home prices, but also because millennials are now the largest generation by population and have reached an age and financial position where they make up a larger share of the homebuying market. Around two-thirds of the mortgages taken out in 2023 were issued to homebuyers under the age of 45.
Meanwhile, the total value of homes owned by the Silent Generation fell for the fifth straight quarter, dropping 1.6% to $4.6 trillion. The value of homes owned by baby boomers increased 6.1% to $19 trillion, while Gen X home values rose 5.9% to $13.6 trillion.
Finally, Asians once again made the best decisions, and after falling in 2022-2023, the total value of homes in neighborhoods that are majority Asian bounced back over the past 12 months, rising 9% to $1.4 trillion. The increased value is being caused by price growth in West Coast cities—where many Asian neighborhoods are located. In comparison, majority white neighborhoods experienced a 6.6% increase in value to $39.4 trillion, while majority Black neighborhoods saw a 5.4% increase in value to $1.4 trillion. The value of homes in majority Hispanic neighborhoods increased 6.4% to $2 trillion.
More in the full report available here.
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Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
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Trump: Harris ‘Not Smart Enough to Do a News Conference’
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday mocked Vice President Kamala Harris’s apparent strategy of avoiding unscripted interviews as the Democrat nominee.
Harris has not given one interview or press conference since she joined the presidential race 18 days ago and may continue to avoid the press until Labor Day, 25 days away, a longtime Harris ally told Politico’s West Wing Playbook on Wednesday.
When was the last time Kamala Harris held a solo press conference? Nov. 12, 2021 in France?
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) August 8, 2024
“Excuse me, what are we doing right now? Trump questioned during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “She’s not doing any news conference.”
“You know why she’s not doing it? Because she can’t do a news conference,” Trump said. “She doesn’t know how to do a news conference. She’s not smart enough to do a news conference.”
“I’m sorry,” Trump continued. “We need smart people to lead this country because our country has never been in this danger before, both economically and from an outside from an outside perspective.”
NOW – Trump says Kamala Harris is “not smart enough to do a news conference.” pic.twitter.com/rQKVKDZ6zI
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 8, 2024
Avoiding media questions appears to be Harris’s strategy, Democrats admitted last week, and the media appear to be becoming frustrated, Politico Playbook reported Thursday:
Harris is starting to face more questions about why she isn’t doing more press, which are only bound to grow louder. Our West Wing Playbook colleagues report that her campaign is thinking about setting up a big joint interview with her and Walz — but they’re generally skeptical that such moments provide much electoral value.
Harris, known for word salads, committed two gaffes in August when speaking off-script. She accidentally called herself “president” during the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s eulogy and delivered a word salad during an unscripted comment about a hostage deal with Russia.
“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy…” she rambled.
More Harris word salads are here.
Harris could be avoiding the media out of fear of answering questions about her radical-left policies. Harris already appears to be backpedaling on many policies she previously championed, raising concerns about whether voters can trust her. Neither Harris nor campaign aides have yet to fully embrace the changed policy positions in on-the-record, public statements.
President Trump addresses sanctuary cities in final question of Mar-a-Lago press conference pic.twitter.com/wxNPUn7M0b
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) August 8, 2024
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com
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Trump, at Press Conference, Calls Out ‘First Loser” Kamala Harris For Winning ‘No Votes’ En Route to Nomination
Former President Donald Trump attacked the way in which Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee during his remarks at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on Thursday afternoon.
A reporter asked Trump to clarify what he meant when he had said on Truth Social that Harris’s ascent to replace President Joe Biden on the ticket was against the Constitution.
He replied:
We have a Constitution. It’s a very important document. And we live by it. She has no votes. And I’m very happy to run against her, I’m not complaining from that standpoint. And I hate to be defending [Biden], but he did not want to leave. He wanted to see if he could win. They said, “You’re not going to win,” after the debate, they said, “You’re not going to win. You can’t win. You’re out.” And at first they said it nicely, and he wasn’t leaving, and then — you know it better than anybody — right, so when you think about it, they said, at first, they were going to go back to another vote, they were going to go through a primary system, a quick primary system, which it would have to be, and then it all disappeared. And they just picked a person that was the first out. She was the first loser. OK, so — We call her the “first loser.” She was the first loser when, during the primary system, during the Democrat primary system. She was the first one to quit. And she quit. She had no votes, no support, and she was a bad debater, by the way. Very bad debater. And that’s not the thing I’m looking forward to, but she was a bad debater. She did, obviously did a bad job. She never made it to Iowa. Then, for some reason, and I know he regrets it — you do, too — he picked her, and she turned on him, too. She was working with the people that wanted him out. But the fact that you can be, get no votes, lose in the primary system — in other words, you had fourteen or fifteen people, she was the first one out — and that you can then be picked to run for president? It seems, to me, actually unconstitutional. Perhaps it’s not.
Harris has not held a press conference or an interview in 18 days since becoming a presidential candidate.
Trump described Harris as “worse than Biden” though “not as smart.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com
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Flying’s never been safer, says MIT study
Flying can be a nerve-wracking experience for many people — but a new study out Thursday finds commercial air travel keeps getting safer, with the risk of death halving every decade.
The fatality rate fell to 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018-2022 period, a major improvement from 1 per 7.9 million boardings in 2008-2017, according to a paper by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
It’s also a far cry from the dawn of commercial air travel: fatalities per passenger were 1 per 350,000 boardings in 1968-1977.
“Aviation safety continues to get better,” said MIT professor Arnold Barnett, who co-authored the research that appeared in the Journal of Air Transport Management, adding the chance of dying “continues to go down by a factor of two every decade.”
Barnett compared the trend to “Moore’s Law,” the famous prediction by Intel founder Gordon Moore that the computing power of chips doubles roughly every 18 months.
From 1978-1987 the risk of dying was 1 per 750,000 boarding passengers; from 1988-1997 it was 1 per 1.3 million; and in 1998-2007, 1 per 2.7 million.
The last major commercial airline disaster in the United States was in 2009, when Colgan Air flight 3407 crashed, killing 50 people.
Barnett cautioned however that ongoing progress is not assured. Recent near-collisions on US runways this year have made headlines, while federal investigators have been pressing Boeing on why a door-plug aboard a 737 MAX 9 aircraft came off mid-flight on an Alaskan Airlines plane in January.
Headline numbers also obscure vast global disparities in air safety, with the study dividing countries into three tiers based on their safety records.
The top tier includes the United States, European Union countries and other European nations including Montenegro, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan and New Zealand round out this group.
Tier two consists of Bahrain, Bosnia, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Hong Kong — counted distinctly from China — India, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
The world’s remaining countries fall into tier three. Encouragingly, although the risk of dying is far greater in these countries, their air travel fatalities per boardings were also cut roughly in half during the 2018-2022 period.
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