The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces a monthly report of available job openings.  The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS report) shows the number of available jobs at a captured moment in time.  This JOLTS report [DATA HERE] is a summary of the last day in June.

As you can see within modified Table-1, the number of available jobs dropped by 605,000 in this report.

Hires and separations were little changed, so too was the number of people who quit their jobs.  The big change in this JOLTS survey was the removal of available jobs.  Employers cancelling job openings.

BLS – “On the last business day of June, the number and rate of job openings decreased to 10.7 million (-605,000) and 6.6 percent, respectively. The largest decreases in job openings were in retail trade (-343,000), wholesale trade (-82,000), and in state and local government education (-62,000).”

If we monitor the JOLTS report as an indicator of employment strength reflecting the general pattern of consumers, we can see a pullback in both the goods and service sector.

Retail job openings dropping 343,000 as consumer spending tightens even more due to inflation, and now we see the service side with leisure and hospitality dropping 91,000 openings.

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There was a lot of back-and-forth hostility between the government of China and the administration of Joe Biden in advance of Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.  Some Chinese state media even suggested a possibility that Pelosi’s plane could be shot down.  However, none of the threats materialized.

Yesterday it was obvious the White House was attempting to diffuse the aggressive grievances of Beijing when spokesperson John Kirby, technically the NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications, made a specific statement:

“The world has seen the United States government be very clear that nothing has changed — nothing has changed — about our One China policy, which is of course guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint U.S.-PRC Communiqués, and the Six Assurances.  We have said — and we have repeatedly said — that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.  We have said that we do not support Taiwan independence.  And we have said that we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.”

Those six words, “we do not support Taiwan independence,” was a very deliberate and public assurance to China.  Essentially, the United States will not do anything to support the independence of Taiwan, do whatever you want.  Joe Biden took a knee to Chairman Xi.  As a result, Beijing dropped back their tone to traditional rhetoric saying in a statement Tuesday morning, the visit “seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

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As he outlines the controversial trip by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, Tucker Carlson asks many questions that people are thinking. {Direct Rumble Link} WATCH:

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Everything about the supposed killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri is suspect, weird and fishy.

♦First, Al Zawahiri has been reported as killed or dead at least a half dozen times in the last 10 years; including by natural causes.  ♦Second, Ayman Zawahiri was very old. Western citations put his age at 71 (born 1951), however, that is suspect (sounds like his younger brother’s age).  ♦Third, the location of his reported killing in Kabul is odd.  Zawahiri was known to avoid large populations, and even with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan the tribal conflicts with factions of the Taliban would have been an issue.

♦Fourth, somehow the Taliban waited until after the U.S. intelligence community leaked the strike to the media before they issued a statement condemning the drone attack.  Since when does al-Qaeda wait 48+ hours to denounce hostile action in their territory?   Coordinating and timed joint press releases between the White House and ‘Taliban‘ to western media outlets is seriously sketchy.

♦Fifth, absolutely no official outline from the Pentagon or White House on this “successful counterterrorism strike“?  Despite a primetime presidential address, the White House has no announcement, no official statement, nothing, on their website.  Additionally, Biden leads off saying the attack was on Saturday, the Taliban waited 48-hours to denounce a U.S. drone strike?  Think about it.  Doesn’t add up.  More sketchy.

♦Sixth, and seemingly just an oddball addendum, Fox News breaks the story using Jennifer Griffin as lead reporter.  As I noted several days ago, Griffin had been missing from Fox News since she went bonzo in March attacking Tucker Carlson over his cynicism of the official State Dept and Pentagon narrative in Ukraine.

May, June, July, nothing from pentagon deep state promoter Jenn Griffin at all.  Then, suddenly, on the same day Griffin resurfaces, after months of nothing, there’s a major terrorism strike in Afghanistan, killing Zawahiri and she’s leading the coverage?…. With Brett Baier cheerleading?  C’mon man.  Sketchy, all of it.

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This is weird.  Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was always hiding in the same Afghanistan-Pakistan area where Osama Bin Laden was hiding out, was very old ten years ago in 2012 when he established the Libyan branch of al-Qaeda.  [SEE CTH Archives] This guy is ancient by now.

Ayman al-Zawahiri was #2 to Bin Laden and elevated to #1 after his death.  Ayman has a younger brother named Mohammed al-Zawahiri who was the Muslim Brotherhood organizer of the uprising in Egypt, and very likely the person who helped coordinate the 9/11/2012 protest on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo that happened on the same day as the attack in Benghazi.

According to media reporting, the CIA is claiming to have killed Ayman al-Zawahiri last weekend and Joe Biden is going to give a congratulatory speech about it tonight at 7:30pm ET.   Something about this is odd, he was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan?  Ayman al-Zawahiri was seriously old if he was still actually alive.

WASHINGTON DC – The United States killed Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in a drone strike over the weekend, two people briefed on the operation told POLITICO.

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In addition to the contraction in South Korean manufacturing announced last night, European manufacturing and factory activity is also contracting with less output, higher buildup of inventory and fewer orders for finished goods.  The global recession is being measured fast and furious.

Every economic outcome is connected to a purposeful decision by the leaders of western industrialized nations to follow the Build Back Better climate change agenda.  Higher energy costs, an outcome of the collective policy to stop new production of coal, oil and gas, which has transferred into higher food prices, farm prices, gasoline prices, heating and cooling prices as well as electricity rates, is forcing consumers to stop purchasing non-essential products.

The sale of durable goods collapsed in the first half of this year; however, no policymakers or bankers wanted to admit it and they kept saying there was an excess of demand.  Now, with fewer customers for durable goods in the market, global manufacturing and factory outputs are dropping fast.  Eventually the central planners are going to have to admit their pretended demand does not exist.

While there is a natural lag in the activity, the rate of factory contraction will be proportionate to rate of the drop in demand.  Meaning we have only just begun to see the manufacturing decline that lags a few months behind consumer activity.

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) – Manufacturing activity across the euro zone contracted last month with factories forced to stockpile unsold goods due to weak demand, a survey showed on Monday, adding to concerns the bloc could fall into a recession.

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The pretending from the federal reserve chairs continues.  In this interview, Neel Kashkari, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says “we keep getting surprised” by data on inflation, which continues to be “higher than we expect, across the broad range of the economy.”  Yet, notice that Kashkari refuses to outline the single cause of the broad inflation is the intentional lack of energy production. [Transcript]

Kashkari continues the selling point that demand side inflation is being targeted because demand still exceeds supply.  That’s essentially true, however, it is the supply of energy that is fundamentally disrupted by Joe Biden energy policy.  It is not consumer demand for goods and services, it is the structural need for consumers to have consistent, affordable energy resources.

The collapse of energy production from domestic coal, oil and gas development is the problem.  Everything else is ancillary to the origination problem.  However, in order to support the climate agenda, the Federal Reserve must pretend not to know this. WATCH:

Kashkari notes a serious problem can arise when wage inflation starts to catch up with inflation overall.  THAT just happened last month.  The combination of wage inflation to match the high consumer inflation then drives an even higher cost for goods and services.  This is the inflation storm that leads to hyper-inflation, structurally high inflation that cannot be controlled by any monetary measure, and unfortunately, we just entered the first outer bands of this inflation hurricane last month.

A personal sidenote: when we were going through the pandemic crisis and response in 2020/2021, CTH took heat for saying the real objective at the end of the pandemic path was the global climate change agenda.  Well, here we are.  At the end of this climate change path is full control over human activity using digital currency.  Hunger games.

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In a remarkable interview attempting to justify his agreement with the senate Build Back Better climate change bill (fraudulently labeled ‘inflation reduction act’), West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin says the massive energy spending and tax bill will bring green renewable energy much quicker.  In essence, the windmills and solar panels for West Virginia will arrive faster now, and that will improve energy production.  [Transcript Here]

When discussing the new energy origination provisions, Senator Manchin catches himself mid-sentence saying, “the battery better be made in America.”  He quickly corrected himself knowing the claim was false and followed up with, “better be sourced in North America, it better be processed,” because he is well aware the largest employment and investment beneficiaries for his deal will be Mexico and Canada, not American workers.  WATCH:

♦ BRASS TACKS – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was gleeful last week promoting Manchin’s new green energy proposal because, with steel and aluminum tariffs removed, Canada will be one the biggest beneficiaries of $370 billion congressional spending package.  Canada has no heavy industry left, they are the assembly economy for foreign manufacturing that uses loopholes, and the senate bill creates a USMCA loophole for this exact purpose.

The West Virginia windmills and solar panels will be shipped as raw materials from China and the EU into Canada.  Canada will assemble the parts and ship the finished goods into the United States for placement by illegal alien workers employed by the contractors.  The batteries to store the solar and windmill power will come from Mexico, after they receive the raw materials from Africa and Asia.

Canadian workers, Mexican workers, Chinese Workers, African workers and ASEAN workers will all benefit from the generous Joe Manchin spending package.

Unemployed West Virginia coal miners will watch Joe Manchin run for office in 2024 on Japanese televisions powered by China, while eating cheese puff flavored cricket snacks sourced from Canada.  Brilliant plan, Joe.

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President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe famously said of Donald Trump’s entry into politics:  “It is not enough to simply beat Trump.  He must be destroyed thoroughly.  His kind must not rise again.” 

What was it that Washington DC and President Obama’s team feared so much about Donald J Trump?

The answer to that question is why the FBI, DOJ and CIA targeted Trump in 2016; and why they continued the targeting in 2017 with the Mueller investigation; and why they continued the targeting through two attempts at impeachment in 2019 and 2020; and why they still keep targeting Donald Trump with the J6 committee and a DOJ investigation two years after he is no longer in office.

Donald J Trump is the existential threat.

When your business involves gaining personal wealth by selling out America, Donald Trump is bad for business.

Barack Obama, John Brennan, Eric Holder and James Comey did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  What the Obama era officials did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so those weapons of government only conducted surveillance and targeting toward one side of the political dynamic.

This point is where many people understandably get confused.

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At first blush I’m inclined to see Jose Ruben Zamora as the Latin version of Jamal Khashoggi; which is to say, he glows CIA.

Yesterday in Guatemala, the government arrested a “journalist” and “businessman” named Jose Ruben Zamora who was the publisher of a national newspaper and strong opposition voice against the conservative government of President Alejandro Giammattei [WSJ link].  Today, Guatemalan President Giammattei is reported to have survived an assassination attempt, leaving people injured as a result of gunfire [details sketchy].

(Via WSJ) – […] Guatemalan police arrested José Rubén Zamora, a businessman and renowned journalist who heads the elPeriódico newspaper, at his house in a tree-lined residential neighborhood in the capital after a judge issued an arrest warrant against him, the country’s attorney general’s office said.

“This is a political persecution,” Mr. Zamora told reporters, flanked by policemen, in front of his house. A group of people gathered at the site, shouting: “You are not alone! You are not alone!”

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