There’s something sketchy afoot in the world of high finance.  Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the most likely first contagion bank would have been First Republic Bank; both California banks carried similar vulnerabilities.  However, once the Treasury Dept agreed to cover all deposits, even those unsecured deposits over the $250k FDIC insurance protection, suddenly First Republic Bank survived.

After the FDIC announcement, a group of 11 larger banks lent First Republic a tranche of money ($30 billion) to secure its holdings and help stabilize it.  Approximately six weeks passed, suspiciously perhaps the burn rate for the tranche in combination with risk averse exits says I, and suddenly First Republic starts destabilizing again.  [Insert Suspicious Cat here]

The First Republic stock value collapsed further last week, and the FDIC is now trying to get a takeover bid secured before government regulators are forced into a position of receivership.   I’m not dialed in to the banking industry, but it looks to me like the six-week interim phase was an agreement to give the illusion of stability and afford time for highly exposed, ¹likely well connected, stakeholders to exit.

With the Treasury taking the prior SVB position, thereby securing all deposits regardless of scope, the FDIC is now on the hook if the collapse includes a govt takeover.  The FDIC seems to be playing hot potato and looking for a buyer.  Additionally, the FDIC is asking JP Morgan-Chase if they are interested.  JPMorgan holds more than 10% of all deposit funds in U.S. banking.  From a regulatory position, JPM cannot legally take any more institutional deposits.  So, what gives?  It is all sketchy, all of it.

(Bloomberg) — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has asked banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., US Bancorp and Bank of America Corp. to submit final bids for First Republic Bank by Sunday after gauging initial interest earlier in the week, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The regulator reached out to some banks late Thursday seeking indications of interest, including a proposed price and an estimated cost to the agency’s deposit insurance fund. Based on submissions received Friday, the regulator invited some of those firms and others to the next step in the bidding process, the people said, asking not to be named discussing the confidential talks.

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The Senate bill that permits Governor Ron DeSantis to run for the GOP nomination in 2024 has now passed the Florida House and awaits the governor signature after return from his overseas ‘book tour.’  The bill passed the House by a vote of 76-34.   DeSantis is expected to announce his official campaign mid-May.

Meanwhile, the details of DeSantis campaign team are starting to emerge along with details of how the Florida Republican Party has been paying for the team to assemble quietly without attention.

“The leadership roster remains subject to change since the campaign – which could launch as soon as the start of next month – does not yet technically exist and most salaries are being paid, for the moment, through the state Republican party.”  This construct once again, proves my 9-month-long point about the deception operation behind DeSantis.

I have long ago accepted this DeSantis construct has been several years in the making, and it is a demonstrable certainty that all of the action since late 2021 was done to lay the stage for a massive deception upon the voters of Florida.  This campaign operation, and the astroturf assembled to assist it, has been a GOPe operation for a long time.  The assembled team is a who’s-who of GOPe operatives and DC professional republicans.  There’s not a single outsider among them.

[FLORIDA] –  Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is quietly assembling a senior staff for an expected 2024 presidential campaign that will be headed by his top political adviser, Generra Peck, and around seven other Republican operatives serving as top advisers, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The leadership roster remains subject to change since the campaign – which could launch as soon as the start of next month – does not yet technically exist and most salaries are being paid, for the moment, through the state Republican party.

But some of the senior staff have started to move in recent weeks to the campaign’s base in Tallahassee, the people said, as DeSantis prepares to announce his presidential ambitions as perhaps the closest challenger to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.

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President Trump is interviewed by Steve Bannon about Trump’s new book “Letters to Trump” and the accompanying stories that are contained within the book.  Contrasting the history of events that surrounded Donald Trump against current events makes an interesting conversation. {Direct Rumble Link}

Skip the intro stuff, the interview begins at 00:20:44 of the video below.  WATCH:

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Comrade rebels, a remarkable bit of independent journalism by Lee Fang, who interviews a high-ranking Ukraine intelligence official named Ilia Vitiuk.

Within the interview the head of the Ukraine Cyber Information Security Service admits to how they use the FBI to pressure Facebook into removing content the Ukraine government doesn’t like.

[…] “Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine.

“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that,” noted Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia’s influence.'” (read more) 

Apparently, Ukraine is as strong a democracy as the United States. Where the strength of democracy is defined by the thin-skinned sensibility of the government that must censor any voice that speaks against their policy.

All correct and good thinking citizens speak favorably about their government comrades.

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To give scale to the growing insignificance of broadcast news networks, consider this fact-based analysis.

Tucker Carlson released a two-minute video on Twitter that had 72.7 million views in 24 hours.  The entire cable news industry combined, every show on every channel, over the corresponding timeframe had 53.1 million views.  [Graphic Source]

[ DATA SOURCE ]

Tucker Carlson had more viewers than the combined total legacy media cable news networks combined.

Yeah, there are more of us than them…. and Tucker Carlson is the most powerful man in the media right now.

“When honest people say what’s true … they become powerful. At the same time the liars that have been trying to silence them, shrink, they become weaker.  That’s the iron-law of the universe, true things prevail.”  ~ Tucker Carlson

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Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified yesterday that more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government. These search queries were based on authorizations related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

[OIG Testimony HERE]

Approximately 30% of those 3.4 million search queries were outside the rules and regulations that govern warrantless searches, what the politically correct government calls “non-compliant searches.”

Additionally, IG Horowitz also admitted that somewhere north of 10,000 federal employees have access to conduct these searches of the NSA database; a database which contains the electronic data of every single American, including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason.

If we were in a functioning system of government everything would be stopped right now, and no conversation would be taking place that was not about this issue. This is the total and complete surveillance state being talked about as if we were discussing what’s for dinner.

This is beyond jaw-dropping.

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This should be embarrassing, even for a seriously self-centered politician so filled with hubris and visions of grandeur that he cannot see anything except his own magnanimity.  Alas, for the Narcissus Top Gov and the branding organization behind him, no scale of hubris exclaimed is excessive enough.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was in Israel Thursday, doing the obligatory indulgency tour all Republican presidential candidates must undertake before they officially announce.  During his pre-planned events, DeSantis took credit for moving the U.S-Israel embassy to Jerusalem.

[…] DeSantis presented the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem as his own achievement, saying he worked to “cajole” the former president to make the move. He didn’t mention former President Trump by name. (link)

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had no independent source of wealth, prior to this 2024 endeavor and collaborative operation.  Together with the multinational financing operation around him, in combination with the Murdoch book deal and advance payment, the $300k Governor is now worth millions.  Funny how that happens.  It’s no wonder Casey is tiara shopping while Florida residents are crushed by skyrocketing housing, insurance, taxes, energy and other unavoidable costs of living.

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If you are deep in the political research weeds about the weaponization of government, there is a letter from lawyers representing President Trump to the chair of the House Intel Committee that is very interesting [pdf available here].

The letter is written to HPSCI Chair Mike Turner and copied to the other seven members of the gang-of-eight in the Senate and House.  The letter outlines the details of the documents that became the contested issue between the DOJ-National Security Division (‘NSD’, important distinction), specifically a DOJ-NSD official named Jay Bratt, and the attorney for President Trump, Mr. Evan Corcoran.

The letter is fascinating because it outlines how the process of moving documents from the White House was weaponized by a politically motivated National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”), and the letter also gives fulsome context to the types of “classified materials” that have been insanely over emphasized by media.

[…] “Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty, two of the undersigned counsel for President Trump, reviewed all 15 boxes at NARA earlier this year and based on that review, it is clear to us what happened. The boxes contain all manner of documents from the White House, are loosely grouped by date, and include newspapers, magazines, notes, letters, and daily schedules. Following its review of the materials, NARA inserted placeholder pages where it had removed documents with classification markings. That allowed Messrs. Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in the proximity of the marked documents when the White House staff packed them. The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”  (page 3, pdf link)

Additionally, get this part…  despite the standard process that has been in place for the prior four administrations, the NARA refused to participate in the collection of any documents from the White House during the transition phase following the November 2020 election.

The NARA refused to assist in the collection of the Trump records for national archive holding and review, and then the NARA triggered a sequence of events that led to the DOJ using a reference from the NARA, to weaponize a process they refused to engage in.  The NARA refused to do their specialized bureaucratic job, and then the NARA used what they defined as an incomplete job as a reason to refer the outcome to the DOJ.   The details are quite interesting.

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their first quarter estimate of economic growth [DATA HERE] and the result of 1.1% growth shows how the U.S. economy has become dependent on government spending money we don’t have. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculation is a valuation of all goods and services created within the U.S. economy, minus the value of goods and services imported.

Keep in mind that all calculations are in dollar terms. Personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices increased 4.2% in the first quarter after increasing 3.7% in the fourth quarter. Excluding food and energy, the PCE “core” price index increased 4.9% after increasing 4.4%.   Two-thirds of the increased spending on goods was driven by higher prices, only one third by consumers purchasing more stuff.

Looking at Table 2 (the percentage change by sector) the increase in prices provided 2.48% lift to the GDP but the actual purchasing of goods only delivered 1.45%.  Meanwhile the decline in inventories subtracted 2.26% from the GDP, a major factor, and domestic investment has dropped subtracting 2.34%.

Government expenditures (+0.81) drove more than 70% of the total GDP growth as national defense spending (Ukraine War) was a major federal component.  The local and state government spending increase was driven by higher wage rates.   Don’t forget there’s $2.2 trillion in Inflation Reduction Act (Green New Deal) spending that is also within the economy.

Overall, this is a dark picture.  Inflation is still raging. Inventories are dropping as consumer purchasing is squeezed, and replacements goods are not being manufactured. Companies are tightening their belts.  The federal government is spending to try and assist the economy, but the private sector is contracting economic activity.

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This afternoon President Donald J. Trump will deliver remarks in Manchester, New Hampshire.  Anticipated start time is 4:00pm, livestream links below.

RSBN Livestream Link – Donald Trump Campaign Livestream Link – Alternate Livestream Link

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