Australian home values have marked a record decline in the first week of the new year, after peaking on May 7, 2022.
CoreLogic’s daily home value index slumped by 8.4 per cent in that time, breaking the previous fall of 8.38 per cent between October 2017 and June 2019.
And this new fall played out over a much shorter time frame of less than nine months compared to 20 months for the previous record.
Home values in Australia have recorded a record plummet.
CoreLogic warned further falls could be expected in the months ahead.
The property data company attributed the record slump to the recent cycle of rate hikes that, in comparison to the record fall, had risen at the fastest pace on record.
A collective hike of three per cent in the cash rate in just eight months not only saw borrowing capacity restricted, but could have put potential buyers off due to higher interest costs.
The downturn has been most apparent in Australia’s three biggest property markets.
Sydney home values have fallen 13 per cent from their peak, Brisbane 10 per cent, and Melbourne 8.6 per cent.
However, in Perth, prices are down just one per cent from their local peak in August 2022.
CoreLogic’s research also showed that the drop in house values had come from a historically high position.
Though the 8.4 per cent fall has been sharp, it followed a constant escalation that amounted to 28.9 per cent between September 2020 and May 2022.
At the end of 2022, despite the record drop, home values were still 16 per cent higher than five years ago, and a whopping 59.8 per cent higher than 10 years ago.
But market conditions are expected to remain soft in 2023 due to forecast further interest rate hikes.
Australians are also more indebted today than through historic periods of rate rises, with the latest Reserve Bank of Australia’s estimate of housing debt-to-income ratio sitting at 188.5 per cent.
A decade ago this figure was 162.0 per cent and in 2002 the ratio was 130.2 per cent.
Some Right Wing Incels are Talking Themselves Into Becoming Transsexuals
In America, a man who says he is a woman has special rights, including the ability to physically assault or rape real women with fewer consequences than if a heterosexual man does it.
This is a big draw to sociopaths.
Why are incels turning themselves into girls?
The 73-page manifesto contains many examples of boys who have ‘successfully’ transitioned
A new report from Sanjana Friedman at Pirate Wires documents a phenomenon that’s been a source of discussion among the extremely online for a little while, and has now made it into the open. “Transmaxxing” is a subculture of young men who embrace trans identities not because they believe they were ‘born in the wrong body’ but simply because they can, and because they think it’ll make their lives better.
It’s a phenomenon that reveals more nakedly than ever before the true face of the cyborg era: a culture caught between increasingly powerful technology, and the collapse of any coherent narrative about how best to use it for the good into a general sense that all narratives are interchangeable.
As Friedman tells it, the transmaxxers are strikingly post-ideological about their self-remodelling, at least compared to the official trans narrative, which draws heavily from 20th-century civil rights discourse. In this view, ‘gender identity’ is immutable and trans people are just ‘born that way’.
Many transmaxxers, though, modify themselves just because they want to (examples are shown on this 73-page ‘transmaxxing’ manifesto). Some report making up stories of gender dysphoria for medical professionals, while others then self-induce gender dysphoria by watching ‘sissy hypno’ — a type of video in which hypnotic (and sometimes also pornographic) stimuli are combined with messages encouraging the male viewer to embrace feminine looks or behaviour. The post-ideological feel of the phenomenon is underlined further by how often such individuals shift from embracing the ‘incel’ ideologies associated with the Right, to ‘trans’ identities associated with the Left.
For the most part, the contest between trans activists and their feminist opponents has been conducted on the field of ‘gender’: what it is, whether it has discrete categories, how (or whether) it relates to physiology and so on. A smaller handful of writers have drawn attention to the transhumanist implications of claiming a right to remodel one’s physical body based on an unfalsifiable inner feeling.
This vision sees medicine not as a restorative practice intended to return us to a shared understanding of ‘normal’, but as a potentially limitless method of upgrading ‘normal’ according to personal desire and preference. This has been openly advocated for some time as well by some trans activists, such as pharma entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt. But the debate has so far stayed largely within the pre-cyborg moral frame of equality, justice and rights.
Yet as Friedman notes, what’s striking in the transmaxxers is the way they’re cheerfully abandoning the civil-rights narrative, in favour of an open, wholesale embrace of the transhumanist outlook. Many transmaxxers report that the interventions have significantly improved their lives; why, such individuals might ask, does anyone need a ‘born in the wrong body’ story to justify something that works on its own terms?
And it’s here that we catch a glimpse of the real face of the cyborg era: an emerging cultural paradigm in which technology is the ideology. The opinions someone endorses while down an internet rabbit hole matter less than the cumulative psychological impact of spending all day every day in that rabbit hole: a condition of radical body dissociation and (increasingly measurably) real-world social isolation.
Once self is thus dissociated from body, there’s no obvious reason not to treat that ‘meat suit’ as an instrument to be optimised, whether via hormones, surgery or other interventions, in pursuit of greater happiness — and again the story matters less than the fact you’re simply doing it because you can.
>Financing a new or used car is more expensive than ever, new research shows.
>Amid rising interest rates and elevated auto prices, the share of new car buyers with a monthly payment of more than $1,000 jumped to a record high, according to Edmunds.
>The average price paid for a new car in December set a record of $46,382, according to a separate estimate from J.D. Power and LMC Automotive. While there are signs the market is cooling, sticker prices are up 2.5% from a year ago.
Is it better to lease these days?
This is called price anchoring and it’s a marketing technique.
The sign of the apocalypse was last month, when lending partners started to inform us they’re waiving the “no preexisting car loan” requirement.
Generally you don’t finance someone who already has an open car loan, which is logical because the risk of default increases by 100% for a guy with two car payments rather than one.
But now they’re waiving that and financing cars to people who are HUGE default risks, because they know the customer is going to default on the OTHER guy’s loan.
Nobody I’ve talked to has ever seen lenders starting to stab each other in the back before, and they’re all doing it now. And the end result is going to be a wave of defaults meaning a tsunami of repo’d low-mile cars hitting the market just as the job losses start, meaning dealers will be taking pretty much any price to move them.
Apocalypse.
Share of new car buyers with a monthly payment of more than $1,000 hits record high
– The share of new car buyers with a monthly payment of more than $1,000 jumped to a record high last quarter, according to Edmunds.
– “Sticker shock doesn’t begin to describe it,” one auto expert said. When you factor in rising interest rates, many car buyers face a significant affordability problem.
Financing a new or used car is more expensive than ever, new research shows.
Amid rising interest rates and elevated auto prices, the share of new car buyers with a monthly payment of more than $1,000 jumped to a record high, according to Edmunds. For the first time, just over 15% of consumers who financed a new car in the fourth quarter of 2022 committed to a monthly payment of $1,000 or more — the highest level on record — compared with 10.5% one year ago, Edmunds found.
The average price paid for a new car in December set a record of $46,382, according to a separate estimate from J.D. Power and LMC Automotive. While there are signs the market is cooling, sticker prices are up 2.5% from a year ago.
At the same time, the interest rate on new car loans reached 6.5%, up from 4.1% a year earlier, Edmunds data shows. As the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates to combat persisting inflation, auto loan rates could tick even higher, although consumers with higher credit scores may be able to secure better loan terms.
“Elevated pricing coupled with repeated interest rate increases continue to inflate monthly loan payments,” Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division at J.D. Power, said in a statement.
Now, more consumers face monthly payments that they likely cannot afford, according to Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ director of insights. Car buyers are hit with “shock and awe” as high prices and rising rates cause monthly payments to balloon, he said.
“Sticker shock doesn’t begin to describe it,” Drury said. “When you factor in the financing, it’s very jarring.”
Many Americans are also choosing more expensive SUVs and pickups with all the bells and whistles, he added, which can cost 30% more than the base price.
“Base models, while enticing in theory, rarely hit the street,” Drury said, cautioning car shoppers to ask themselves if they’re “buying too much car.”
“There could be a perfectly good substitute at about half the cost,” he added.
A customer looks at a vehicle at a BMW dealership in Mountain View, California, on Dec. 14, 2022.
Shelling out more to finance a car today puts car buyers at greater risk of going underwater on those loans down the road as used car values decline, Drury cautioned.
“At the onset of the pandemic, consumers benefited from low interest rates and elevated trade-in values, helping shield even the more questionable financing decisions from resulting in negative equity,” he said.
“But as we shifted toward an environment with diminished used car values and rising interest rates over the past few months, consumers have become less insulated from those riskier loan decisions, and we are only seeing the tip of the negative equity iceberg.”
Mass Layoffs and Bankruptcies Happening… The Market Wants to Trap you Before the Next Big Move… The Public is in the Dark, This Could be the Worst Financial Event Anyone has Ever Seen
A ‘volatility event’ will plunge the stock market to new lows in the next 6 months, Fairlead’s Katie Stockton says
– The stock market is poised to plunge to new lows in the first half of 2023, according to Fairlead Strategies’ Katie Stockton.
– Stockton told CNBC on Tuesday that a “volatility event” could send the VIX soaring to 50.
– “The seasonal influences are sort of petering off here in terms of that Santa Claus rally, so we’re losing that tailwind,” Stockton said.
Investors should brace for more pain in 2023 if a forecast from Fairlead Strategies’ co-founder Katie Stockton proves correct.
Stockton told CNBC on Tuesday that she expects a “volatility event” to plunge the stock market to new lows in the first half of 2023, as the VIX Index, known for measuring fear among stock market investors, punches through resistance in the mid-30s and soars to as high as 50.
“We’re looking for a volatility event potentially this month into next month. The seasonal influences are sort of petering off here in terms of that Santa Claus rally, so we’re losing that tailwin,” Stockton said.
While Stockton didn’t theorize what fundamental factors could be behind a volatility event, plenty of Wall Street strategists remain concerned about stubbornly high inflation, the Fed continuing to hike interest rates, and the likelihood of companies seeing an earnings recession.
Stockton sees an 80% chance that the stock market falls to new lows in 2023, and said “new highs are not likely this year” as the market consolidates and finds its footing from last year’s steep sell-off.
“I do expect this year to be an inflection year, and that makes it really hard to predict where we might see the S&P 500 at year-end,” Stockton said. “But we do look for some kind of major low to be established on the back of a volatility event… maybe in the next four to six months.”
Of course, there is a chance hat instead of plunging to new lows the stock market simply chops sideways and consolidates. But Stockton doesn’t see that as a likely scenario because capitulation is usually what’s needed to end a bear market.
“It could be sideways action. I think it’s less likely though because I do think that the market needs that kind of capitulation that tends to be associated with bear market lows,” Stockton said.
“We need that volatility event. We need the VIX perhaps even close to 50 before we can really get out of this down trending mode. The long-term momentum is still very much to the downside.”
Stitch Fix plans 20% job cuts as CEO steps down, founder Katrina Lake to reassume post
– Stitch Fix founder Katrina Lake announced the company will be cutting 20% of its salaried workforce.
– Lake will also reassume her post as CEO. The brand’s current CEO, Elizabeth Spaulding, will be stepping down effective immediately.
– Stitch Fix has seen waning sales and failed initiatives after a Covid pandemic boom.
Stitch Fix founder Katrina Lake on Thursday told employees the company will be cutting 20% of its salaried workforce and she will reassume her post as CEO as the fledgling apparel company continues to grapple with low sales, a dwindling customer base and a reduced market cap.
The brand’s current CEO, Elizabeth Spaulding, who joined the company as president in 2020 and took over as CEO in August 2021, will be stepping down effective immediately, Lake said.
“I will be stepping in as interim CEO and leading the search process for our next CEO,” Lake said Thursday. “Despite the challenging moment we are in right now, the board and I still deeply believe in the Stitch Fix business, mission and vision.”
Shares of the company surged roughly 9% Thursday after the announcements and its market cap hovered around $386 million. Shares closed more than 9% higher at $3.50.
Stitch Fix, which sells curated boxes of clothing on a subscription basis, won big during the Covid pandemic after stuck-at-home consumers, newly flush with cash, took advantage of the service to update their wardrobes. But as shoppers ventured back out into the world, sales dropped and new strategies led by Spaulding failed.
Shortly after taking over as CEO, Spaulding led the rollout of a direct-buy option, called Freestyle, that allowed customers to purchase items directly from the company with the hopes they’d be won over as regular subscribers. But the initiative stalled and in June, the company announced it’d be laying off about 15% of salaried workers, or about 330 people.
The cuts left Stitch Fix with about 1,700 salaried employees, as of June.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData and a retail analyst, said in a statement Thursday that the company looks to have “lost its way” and that the issues it’s facing are neither temporary nor immediately solvable.
“This is one of the reasons why the company has announced the termination of around 20% of its salaried positions – an action it hopes will help to stem losses and put the company on a better financial footing,” Saunders said.
Stitch Fix employees learned about the job cuts Thursday morning and were told the brand’s Salt Lake City distribution center, which has been open for just over a year, will also be shuttering. Approximately 150 employees at that center will also be laid off, according to an employee at the facility. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about internal matters.
Staff at the Utah distribution center, which opened three months after Freestyle was launched in December 2021, got the news during their all-hands monthly meeting on Thursday morning, the worker said. Staff were “caught off guard” and surprised to hear about the layoffs because the facility hadn’t been open that long, the employee said.
“They did good in my opinion. We had [an] all hands right before work and [they] gave us a packet with all the info we needed from final dates to severance. They even had a translator for our Spanish speakers,” the worker told CNBC, adding they felt “overwhelmed” by the news.
When Stitch Fix shut down another distribution center in the past, some workers were given the option to relocate to different facilities within the company. It wasn’t an option this time around for workers at the Salt Lake City center, the worker said.
Salaried employees affected by the cuts will receive at least 12 weeks of pay, which increases with tenure, and health care and mental wellness support will continue through April 2023, Lake said.
Lake told staffers she was “truly sorry” for the cuts and thanked them for their “hard work” and “dedication.”
As founder, Lake has a unique perspective on the company and its potential, but she will have to contend with a consumer environment that has significantly shifted over the last year and a looming recession that’ll see shoppers reduce their spending on discretionary items like new clothes.
Amazon says it will cut over 18,000 jobs, more than initially planned
– Amazon, one of the largest employers in the U.S., is scaling back more than it had anticipated.
– Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, said an employee leaked the plans, prompting him to make a public announcement.
– “Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Jassy wrote in a memo.
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
Amazon said Wednesday it will cut more than 18,000 jobs, a bigger number than the e-retailer initially said it would be eliminating last year.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the cuts earlier, which Amazon said preempted its planned announcement.
“We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted,” CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that the company published on its blog. “However, because one of our teammates leaked this information externally, we decided it was better to share this news earlier so you can hear the details directly from me.”
Tech companies are picking up in 2023 where they left off last year, preparing for an extended economic downturn. Salesforce
said Wednesday it would reduce head count by 10%, impacting more than 7,000 employees. Both Amazon and Salesforce admitted they hired too rapidly during the Covid pandemic.
Amazon specifically acknowledged that it had added workers too quickly in warehouses as consumers shifted to online ordering. The company employed 1.54 million people at the end of the third quarter.
In November, Jassy said Amazon would eliminate roles, including at its physical stores and in its devices and books divisions. CNBC reported at the time that Amazon was looking to lay off around 10,000 of its employees. Now the number is higher.
“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Jassy wrote. “These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure; however, I’m also optimistic that we’ll be inventive, resourceful, and scrappy in this time when we’re not hiring expansively and eliminating some roles.”
Amazon plans to inform employees who will lose their jobs starting Jan. 18, Jassy wrote, noting that most cuts will come in the stores and People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) groups.
BREAKING NEWS:
CREDIT DEFAULTS ARE SET TO MORE THAN DOUBLE IN EUROPE THIS YEAR TO LEVELS APPROACHING THE WORST DAYS OF THE GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
Major Food Company in France Reduces Production by 80 PERCENT: Energy Costs Just Too High to Stay in Business
By Ethan Huff
Half of the food production plants owned and operated by Cofigeo, a large French food conglomerate, have shut down as the company says its energy costs are just too high to stay in full operation.
Four of Cofigeo’s eight food production plants are now closed, reports indicate – these amounting to 80 percent of the company’s total production capacity. This means that Cofigeo will only be producing 20 percent of its normal amount of food for the foreseeable future.
Cofigeo owns several other major French food brands including William Saurin, Garbit and Raynal, and Roquelaure. (Related: Back in the fall, French glass maker Duralex halted all operations because it can no longer afford to pay for overpriced energy.)
With this 80 percent scale-down in operations at Cofigeo comes a 66 percent reduction in the company’s workforce. We are told that 800 of Cofigeo’s 1,200 workers are affected by this partial closure of the company’s production facilities.
An announcement was made about all this on December 6 of last year, and it just came into effect on January 2. Cofigeo plants in Capdenac, Pouilly-sur-Serre, Camaret-sur-Aigues, and Lagny have all since shuttered, according to French news outlet Le Figaro.
“This decision aims to cope with the spectacular increase in its energy costs (gas and electricity necessary for cooking and sterilizing cooked dishes and recipes), which will be multiplied by 10 from the beginning of the year,” the company announced in a statement this week.
“Significant” amount of food spoilage expected as France enters dark winter marked by power cuts and blackouts
According to Cofigeo president Mathieu Thomazeau, energy costs are skyrocketing to such a high degree in France that it is simply no longer possible to do business as usual.
“It will go overnight from four million to 40 million euros,” he told the media.
This is fast becoming a problem across many sectors of the French economy as energy prices continue to skyrocket. Not just producers but also retailers are being affected by it, with Perifem, a federation of French supermarket chains, announcing at the end of 2022 that expected power cuts and blackouts this dark winter threaten to cause widespread food spoilage.
Many supermarkets lack the ability or even just the time to prepare for these outages, which government officials initially downplayed as “unlikely” before later admitting that there will probably not be enough power available to keep the lights on in France in the coming months.
“We have never experienced this situation … stores are very poorly equipped today with generators,” said Perifem general delegate Franck Charton about the dire situation his country faces.
“We will not throw away frozen products that have for the most part more thermal inertia. On the other hand, for fresh products that do not last two hours, there will indeed be a significant waste.”
Then there are the ongoing “problems” and “issues” with France’s nuclear power generation fleet, which is already halfway out of operation due to “routine maintenance.” More nuclear power plants in recent days are having added issues, which could result in government officials having to ration what little energy remains.
After January 15, warned Emmanuelle Wargon, France’s Energy Regulation Commission president, France could be in dire straits at the first sign of a cold snap – current weather conditions are unseasonably warm, we are told, which has given France a temporary reprieve from what is soon to come.
Production of fertilizer, an energy-intensive process necessary to grow food, is also threatened by the ongoing energy inflation situation. Will there be enough food to go around once all is said and done here?
The Federal Reserve should continue its efforts to lower prices, deputy head Gita Gopinath told FT.
Inflation in the US has not subsided sufficiently enough to abandon last year’s restrictive monetary policy, Gita Gopinath, the deputy head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has told the Financial Times.
According to Gopinath, it is “important” for the US Federal Reserve, which acts as the country’s central bank, to “stay the course” in efforts to lower prices until there was a “very definite, durable decline in inflation” across the sectors not related to either food or energy.
“If you see the indicators in the labor market and if you look at very sticky components of inflation like services inflation, I think it’s clear that we haven’t turned the corner yet on inflation,” she told the news outlet, adding that there is also a “very narrow path” for the country to avoid a recession in the coming months.
Gopinath’s comments come as US inflation figures have started to subside in the past couple of months, leading analysts to suggest the price surge may have passed its peak. Prices in the country rose by 7.1% year-on-year in November, for instance, compared with 7.7% in October, according to the US Labor Department.
On December 14, in its most recent attempt to rein in inflation, the Fed hiked the key interest rate by 50 basis points – up to 4.25-4.5%. According to Gopinath, the regulator may need to raise the rate to about 5% and keep it there throughout the year in order to avoid further price increases.
“It’s another challenging year for monetary policy, but it’s a different kind of challenge. The last year was about quickly tightening monetary policy and how far to go. Now for lots of countries, the question is how long to stay on hold,” she noted.
Gopinath also warned that Europe may take longer than the US to battle rising prices, saying that “we are looking well into 2024 before we start seeing inflation coming closer to the ECB’s [2%] target.”
Let’s Hope That The Irrational Optimists Will Be 100 Percent Correct About 2023
By Michael
I hope that I am wrong about our immediate economic future, and I hope that all of the other respected voices that are warning of economic doom in 2023 are wrong too. It would be wonderful if things turn in a positive direction at some point during the next 12 months and 2023 turns out to be a year of peace and prosperity for the entire world. Of course virtually nobody is expecting the year to start well. As I discussed yesterday, there is a growing consensus among the “experts” that the months ahead will be quite rough. But even though it has become exceedingly obvious that short-term economic conditions will not be good, some optimists are still trying to put a positive spin on things. For example, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi is trying to convince us that we will only have to endure a “slowcession” before things finally turn around…
Many CEOs, investors and consumers are worried about a recession in 2023. But Moody’s Analytics says the more likely scenario is a “slowcession,” where growth grinds to a near halt but a full economic downturn is narrowly avoided.
“Under almost any scenario, the economy is set to have a difficult 2023,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi wrote in a report on Tuesday. “But inflation is quickly moderating, and the economy’s fundamentals are sound. With a bit of luck and some reasonably deft policymaking by the Fed, the economy should avoid an outright downturn.”
Let’s hope that he is right on target.
And if he does turn out to be correct, let’s hold a big celebration next December celebrating what a wonderful year 2023 was.
I would be up for that.
But I don’t think that is the way that things will play out.
Even now, all of the “mega-bubbles” are starting to burst all around us and the chaos that we have witnessed in the financial markets is unlike anything that we have seen since 2008.
The “bubble economy” that we had been enjoying for such a long time was dependent on a very rapidly growing money supply, but thanks to the Fed the money fountains have now been turned off.
In fact, the growth of M2 has just turned negative “for the first time in 28 years”…
Money supply growth fell again in November, and this time it turned negative for the first time in 28 years. November’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the “high” levels experienced from 2009 to 2013.
Since then, the money supply growth has slowed quickly, and we’re now seeing the first time the money supply has actually contracted since the 1990s. The last time the year-over-year change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November of 1994.
At some point, economic conditions will force the Fed to reverse course.
But for now Fed officials remain deeply afraid of inflation, and so we will remain on the current path.
What this means is that the early portions of 2023 are likely to look a lot like late 2008 and early 2009. We have already started to see a very alarming wave of layoffs, and this has particularly been true in the tech industry…
Tech-driven companies are embarking on a layoff spree the likes of which not seen since the pandemic, a new report has revealed – laying off more than 150,000 workers within the course of a year.
The concerning numbers were laid bare in a recently released analysis from Layoffs.fyi, which tracks firings in real time through information gleaned in media and company releases.
Through these means, the firm found that the technology sector – which had been largely spared in 2020 amid the mass wave of firings when Covid-19 first surfaced – are now among those with the largest numbers of job cuts, with rates increasingly rapidly over the past few months.
Sadly, it is likely that there will be even more tech layoffs in the months ahead.
In fact, one expert is ominously warning that we will see “a continued cutting of heads in Big Tech because they’re getting ready for the Category 5 storm” that is rapidly approaching…
Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives shared a similar sentiment about the 2023 economy on “Mornings with Maria” Tuesday, cautioning that Big Tech companies still need to “rip the Band-Aid off” in terms of layoffs as a “Category 5 storm” threatens the macroeconomic landscape.
“Look, a lot of Big Tech, they were spending money like 1980s rockstars. And I think that really shows,” Ives explained. “Sometimes they were increasing 15, 20% per year. I still think it’s a ‘rip the Band-Aid off,’ still some more headcount cuts. We think potentially another 8 to 10% headcount cuts in Big Tech. You look at what happened with Meta, and that’s a good example. Once Zuckerberg finally read the room, cut in terms of what he needed to, stock ultimately lifted. I think, be that as a catalyst, I think you will see a continued cutting of heads in Big Tech because they’re getting ready for the Category 5 storm in terms of what we’re seeing with the macro.”
I don’t like the sound of that.
Could we really see a “Category 5” economic storm in 2023?
Yes, we could.
But once again, let’s hope that the irrational optimists will be correct and that such a storm can be avoided somehow.
Ultimately, many of the irrational optimists are entirely convinced that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our system and that just a few minor adjustments are all that is needed to get us back on the road to endless prosperity.
On the other hand, there are people like me that are entirely convinced that our system is fundamentally unsound and that it is inevitable that the entire Ponzi scheme will eventually come crashing down all around us.
Normally, most Americans tend to be quite optimistic about the coming year, but this year is different.
According to a Gallup survey that was just released, approximately 80 percent of U.S. adults believe that “2023 will be a year of economic difficulty”…
When offered opposing outcomes on each issue, about eight in 10 U.S. adults think 2023 will be a year of economic difficulty with higher rather than lower taxes and a growing rather than shrinking budget deficit. More than six in 10 think prices will rise at a high rate and the stock market will fall in the year ahead, both of which happened in 2022. In addition, just over half of Americans predict that unemployment will increase in 2023, an economic problem the U.S. was spared in 2022.
But maybe 2023 won’t be so bad after all.
Maybe our leaders will be able to find a way to reinflate all of the old bubbles one more time.
We better hope that they have one final miracle up their sleeves, because the alternative will not be pleasant at all.
JPMorgan Sued By the Virgin Islands Over Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged Sex-Trafficking Operation
JPMorgan Sued By the Virgin Islands Over Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged Sex-Trafficking Operation
Epstein was discovered dead in his jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on federal charges accusing him of running a sex trafficking operation. Now, JPMorgan is being sued by Virgin Islands over Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking operation.
JPMorgan Chase is being sued by the US Virgin Islands for allegedly profiting from Jeffrey Epstein’s pedo sex business and neglecting to report questionable banking operations.
“Over more than a decade, JPMorgan clearly knew it was not complying with federal regulations in regard to Epstein-related accounts as evidenced by its too-little too-late efforts after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and shortly after his death, when JPMorgan belatedly complied with federal law,” said US Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George in a Thursday complaint reported by CNN.
The new action was filed less than a month after Epstein’s estate reached a $105 million settlement with George, as well as an agreement that the estate would liquidate Epstein’s islands and stop conducting business there.
“Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan,” reads the filing.
The lawsuit comes after two unnamed Epstein victims filed civil claims against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, alleging that the banks allowed and profited monetarily from Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise.
According to the civil suit, JPMorgan is accused of having “provided special treatment to the sex-trafficking venture, thereby ensuring its continued operation and sexual abuse and sex-trafficking of young women and girls.”
“Without the financial institution’s participation, Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme could not have existed,” the filing continues.
Epstein was discovered dead in his jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on federal charges accusing him of running a sex trafficking operation between 2002 and 2005 spanning many properties.
Epstein’s huge estate was secured by surveillance cameras, secure gates, and fences during his lifetime. These are the photos from inside Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch where the pedophile abused young girls.
