Joe Biden is in Canada visiting Justin Trudeau Friday and they held a joint press conference.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – We’ll be taking two questions from the American delegation, two questions from the Canadian delegation.  One question and one follow-up.

Mr. President, first question over to you.

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  All right.  I guess the first person I’m calling on is Josh.  Josh Boak.  Josh?

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.   Two questions, one for each of you.

Mr. President, you talked today about the security and economic partnership with Canada.  President Xi just went to Russia and expanded China’s economic commitment with that country.  Why do you think many leading countries are choosing to form competing partnerships?  And what does that mean for the world?

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Almost as soon as German Chancellor Olaf Schulz said, “The banking system is stable in Europe – Generally, I think we are in good shape,” shares of German-based Deutsche Bank began dropping.

After a Friday loss of 14%, the bank came back to close -9.8%, and on the heels of the Credit Suisse collapse and subsequent purchase, concerns are still reverberating.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders Friday played down the risk of a banking crisis developing from recent global financial turbulence and hitting the economy even harder than the energy crunch tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

After a meeting in Brussels, the EU government heads said lenders in Europe are generally in sound health and in a position to weather a combination of rising interest rates and slowing economic growth.

“The banking system is stable in Europe,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters after the summit. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: “Generally, I think we are in good shape.”

The EU deliberations came in the wake of U.S. regulators’ shutdown of two U.S. banks, including Silicon Valley Bank, and a Swiss-orchestrated takeover of troubled lender Credit Suisse by rival UBS.

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The ABC article is worded to engineer the most nefarious narrative possible.  However, if you read the actual story, there’s likely not only nothing to it, but it’s also a total conflation of different issues.

A white substance was found in the mailroom of a New York City building.  The building houses an office that District Attorney Alvin Bragg sometimes uses.  The powder was identified as coming from a letter that was addressed to “Alvin”.  Inside the envelope was a letter containing the typewritten message, “Alvin: I am going to kill you,” with 13 exclamation points.   The white substance was not hazardous.

(VIA ABC) –  A white powder was discovered in the mailroom at 80 Centre Street, where the Manhattan District Attorney has offices and where a grand jury has been meeting to hear evidence in former President Donald Trump’s case, according to a court official. The powder was determined to be non-hazardous, officials said.

The powder came in an envelope addressed to “Alvin,” an apparent reference to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, according to police sources.  Inside the envelope was a letter containing the typewritten message, “Alvin: I am going to kill you,” with 13 exclamation points, according to sources.

This envelope followed a series of unfounded threats that targeted municipal offices in New York this week.  “For three days we got four emails,” Susan Stetzer, district manager at Manhattan Community Board 3, told ABC News on Friday. (read more)

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If I did not know the background of Ron DeSantis; if I did not have an exhaustive research library on the activity behind Ron DeSantis; if I was not aware of how the professional Republican establishment creates the ‘illusion of choice’; I would watch this interview with a generally good sense about Ron DeSantis.

However, unfortunately for the professionally Republican political class, we do know how they operate, and we are able to see the strings on the marionettes.  So, when the selected and managed product of their three-year strategic plan says about fundraising, “I deal better with regular people,” we are able to call it as nonsense with accurate data to highlight the lie.

94% of all Ron DeSantis’ money comes from Wall Street, hedge fund managers, billionaires and multinational corporations.  Only 6% comes from small donors, or what you might describe as “regular people.” {LINK}  Additionally, you don’t spend 3-days with billionaire donors at Four Seasons donor retreat in Palm Beach, followed shortly by 3-days at a Club for Growth donor retreat in Miami, and then get to claim you “deal better with regular people.”  This is just a lie.

There are parts of this interview that many readers here will agree with.  There are also many parts of this interview that readers might take exception to.  But the entirety of the hour long, mostly softball, Rupert Murdoch organized interview, is based on three years of carefully managed constructs.  WATCH

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History tells us the French ‘do revolution’ quite well, the current status of the protests against President Macron’s unilateral pension reform cuts are no exception.

Worker strikes have hampered France for over a week in protest to: (1) the pension reform; and (2) the undemocratic way it was enacted via unilateral fiat by the French President, Emmanuel Macron.

Today the worker strike turned to massive protests in the streets throughout several regions.

As the day wound down, those protests then turned violent as the ultra-left-wing “Black Bloc” anarchists began attacking police.

(Reuters) – PARIS, March 23 – Police fired tear gas and fought with violent black-clad anarchists in Paris and across France on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the pension age.

The ninth day of nationwide protests, mostly peaceful, disrupted train and air travel. Teachers were among many professions to walk off the job, days after the government pushed through legislation to raise the retirement age by two years to 64.

Demonstrations in central Paris were generally peaceful, but groups of “Black Bloc” anarchists smashed shop windows, demolished street furniture and ransacked a McDonald’s restaurant. Clashes ensued as riot police drove back the anarchists with tear gas and stun grenades.

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No one knows for sure what the current issues are around the corrupt political case that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is trying to assemble.  However, given all the preparations that are known to have taken place this week, and given the overtime paid to police in order to staff security in/around the Manhattan courthouse this week, something big has shifted and delayed the entire fiasco.

On Thursday morning, CNN was first to report that Alvin Bragg had once against cancelled the grand jury review of the case he was been building against Donald Trump.  The grand jury did hear other evidence in unrelated cases, but the case presumably pushing toward a Trump indictment was pushed into next week.   President Trump responded to yet another delay via Truth Social:

CNN – The Manhattan grand jury investigating Trump’s alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to an adult film star will not hear that case when it convenes today, according to two sources familiar with the matter, pushing the Manhattan’s district attorney’s probe into next week. After today, the Manhattan grand jury will next convene on Monday, when it is possible they could hear additional testimony from a witness.

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At a certain point in the economics of the great pretending cycle, one must wonder what circles they live in.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced another quarter-point interest rate hike and simultaneously noted the banking crisis will likely lead to tighter credit and borrowing for businesses on Main Street…. thereby further reducing the U.S. economic output.  Yet here we are again, and not a single economic or financial pundit is even talking about the origin of the inflation the Fed action is pretending to address, the spike in energy prices.

At the core of the Biden policy issue that creates inflation, is the energy policy that has driven oil, gas, home heating, electricity and manufacturing/farming costs through the roof.  The blocking of energy resource development/production is the top issue leading to massive increases in consumer prices overall.  The Biden energy policy is entirely ignored by a federal reserve attempting to shrink inflation.

Follow the bouncing ball of consequence.

Biden restricts energy development [Main St Suffers].  Prices skyrocket [Main St Suffers]. The fed raises interest rates in an effort to reduce the economic activity to meet the lowered production of energy resource development [Main St Suffers].  The result of the interest rate hike creates liquidity issues for banks holding treasury securities [Main St Suffers].  The banks then reduce credit lines, reduce lending and tighten borrowing to match their lowered liquidity [Main St Suffers].

The Fed then notes further increases in rates may pause as they await the outcome of restricted banking credit and lending from the rate hikes previously installed.  Nowhere in any of this is anyone talking about the nucleus of the issue – the stupid energy policy.  The great pretending continues in the West, while smiling panda lunches with Vladimir Putin.

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Throughout the process of explaining events, situations, contexts, people and ultimately motives, I always try to introduce metaphors, analogies and comparative situations as reference points to understand the premise behind the interpretation of events, data and analysis as it surfaces.

Treepers in general, likely by the outcome of our association, also do the same thing in the comment section.

That’s why reading the comments is always enlightening as it expands the thoughts and considerations.

In the comments section here, as with some other voices in social media, there are some exceptionally brilliant minds that review events and have fantastic ways to distill complex issues into the core essence of the thing.

Ziiggii said something today that is so perfectly succinct, it is worth emphasizing.

Overall, we can see the fingerprints of Mitch McConnell in the background of the Ron DeSantis campaign. It’s not that McConnell is attached directly to the campaign, but rather is aligned with the overarching theme of DeSantis as being the acceptable Republican candidate.

Wall Street and the multinational corps, along with K-Street writ large, are the mechanisms that support the philosophy of the professional GOPe, those are the same entities supporting DeSantis. The core objective is in synergy. Trump represents a loss of control for the financial operators, DeSantis retains the system.

This was a point I was making when I said McConnell’s outlook is essentially DeSantis’. Then Ziiggii replied with a mic drop. It’s not McConnell per se’ that is in alignment with the RdS ’24 objective, it’s John Thune!

THAT is a brilliant note.

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After attempting to navigate through the politics in order to curry favor with the base Republican voters on a Ukraine position, when confronted by Piers Morgan who is a pro-NATO war voice, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis now says his former position on Ukraine has been “mischaracterized” and Vladimir Putin “is a war criminal.”

The walk back highlights once again that Ron DeSantis is an empty vessel using poll testing to formulate his policy stances.

The reversing comments on Vladimir Putin and Ukraine come from the interview DeSantis gave to Piers Morgan as noted in a recent New York Post article:

(Piers Morgan, NY Post) – Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has branded Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and demanded he be “held accountable” for his barbaric invasion of Ukraine.

Taking a tougher tone from his statement last week appearing to dismiss the year-long war as a “territorial dispute,” DeSantis now says Russia was WRONG to invade Ukraine and was WRONG to invade and take over Crimea in 2014, and won’t win the war. And he’s made his strongest attack yet on Russia’s dictator, calling him a loser who is “basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons.”

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The alarming provocations and escalations continue as the U.K. has pledged to send depleted uranium anti-tank rounds into Ukraine.

During a four-hour public meeting which included international press, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted the NATO intent to use depleted uranium artillery and tank missiles against Russian forces would be met with countermeasures.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu noted the British decision leaves fewer and fewer steps before a potential “nuclear collision” between Russia and the West.  “Another step has been taken, and there are fewer and fewer left,” he told reporters in remarks cited by domestic agencies.

(Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday condemned British plans to send tank ammunition that contains depleted uranium to Ukraine, saying Moscow would be forced to respond accordingly.

Speaking in London on Monday, Minister of State for Defence Annabel Goldie said some of the ammunition for the Challenger 2 battle tanks that Britain is sending to Ukraine includes armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium.

“If all this happens, Russian will have to respond accordingly, given that the West collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component,” Putin said in remarks after a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He did not elaborate. (read more)

Keep in mind, all remarks by the heads of state during these sessions are known in advance by both nations.  Chairman Xi knew what Vladimir Putin was going to say. Additionally, at the end of their three-day summit, Chairman Xi made comments that were strategically positioned publicly to be overheard by international media.

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