I do not know how to describe this with the Through The Looking Glass absurdity it deserves.

The ability of financial media and national economists to suspend accepting current reality, while making claims about the possibilities for next year, is ridiculous. Ask me why this era of great economic pretending is underway, and I have no answer. The intellectual dishonesty is beyond my comprehension.

The first and second quarters of the U.S. economy showed negative Gross Domestic Product valuations (GDP). We just finished the third quarter (July, Aug, Sept) and the likelihood of another negative GDP is high. Production is down, demand is down, consumer spending is down, inventories are climbing, and the economy is contracting. We are in a literal, technical and structural recession. Considering the Q1 and Q2 outcomes, we have been in a recession all year.

The Wall Street Journal publishes an article citing several notable economists who are putting the likelihood of a 2023 recession at 63%.

(WSJ) – […] On average, economists put the probability of a recession in the next 12 months at 63%, up from 49% in July’s survey. It is the first time the survey pegged the probability above 50% since July 2020, in the wake of the last short but sharp recession.

Their forecasts for 2023 are increasingly gloomy. Economists now expect gross domestic product to contract in the first two quarters of the year, a downgrade from the last quarterly survey, whereby they penciled in mild growth.

[…] Forecasters have ratcheted up their expectations for a recession because they increasingly doubt the Fed can keep raising rates to cool inflation without inducing higher unemployment and an economic downturn. Some 58.9% of economists said they think the Fed will raise interest rates too much and cause unnecessary economic weakness, up from 45.6% in July. (read more)

They are analyzing a pending recession in 2023 without even admitting we are in a recession right now. AT THIS VERY MOMENT.  We have two consecutive negative quarters of economic growth behind us (another Q3 result pending), and these economists are discussing a recession “next year“?

(more…)

Closing arguments wrapped up on the trial of Igor Danchenko, the primary source who delivered fraudulent information to Christopher Steele for transmission to the FBI.  The jury now has the case and it’s likely they will not convict.

When you accept the FBI knew the Steele Dossier was a fabricated assembly of political dirt against Trump, the trial of Danchenko becomes more about the FBI corruption than lies by the defendant.   How can the same DOJ who willingly and willfully benefitted from the lies, now turn around and prosecute the liar.   Hillary Clinton lawyers providing the defense for Danchenko used this angle to criticize the prosecution in closing arguments.

(Via CNN) […] Danchenko lawyer Stuart Sears said prosecutors brazenly cast aside information that “doesn’t support their narrative that he’s a liar.” Sears pointed out how Durham turned on his own witnesses after they provided evidence that helped the defense.

“The special counsel attacked them mercilessly,” Sears said. “They attacked the credibility of the very witnesses they called in here, because they didn’t say what they wanted them to say.”  Sears added: “The government’s own evidence in this case proves that the defendant is not guilty.”

Durham’s team urged jurors to convict Danchenko on Monday, telling them to “look at his own words” in emails from 2016 that they believe prove that he later misled the FBI about his ties to a possible dossier source.  “You didn’t check your common sense at the courthouse door,” prosecutor Michael Keilty said. “You need to use it.”

(more…)

Appearing with Jonathan Karl for an interview Dr. Anthony Fauci now claims his advice had nothing to do with the closings of schools during the government response to COVID-19.

This pontificating pustule of political pomposity has the nerve to claim all of his COVID-19 dictates and recommendations from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) were not responsible for what he calls unanticipated “deleterious effects” to students and young people.  WATCH: 

.

The full interview is below:

(more…)

John King’s ex wife on CNN, narrative engineer Dana Bash, was well prepared to target Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Sunday.  However, with a solid foundation grounded in pragmatic common sense, Mrs Lake eviscerated the effort of Ms. Bash.   Kari Lake continues to impress.

Dana Bash began the interview with a constructed strawman argument about how Kari Lake as governor would address the Joe Biden inflation crisis.  Kari Lake swatted the issue away with a strong policy position to eliminate state rental tax and taxes on groceries in Arizona.  Bash didn’t expect it, and never quite recovered. WATCH: 

.

(more…)

This might be the most important outline to understand this whole sordid mess…

During the Friday testimony of witnesses put on the stand by Special Counsel John Durham, there were two key witnesses, FBI Analyst Brittany Hertzog and FBI Special Agent Amy Anderson.  Both witnesses testified they were part of the Mueller investigative team with a primary mission to investigate the claims in/around the Christopher Steele dossier.  [See Technofog Substack for transcript excerpts HERE]

The testimony of FBI agent Anderson and FBI analyst Hertzog (about their role in the Mueller probe) leads to one inescapable conclusion, Robert Mueller lied to congress when he testified the special counsel did not investigate Chris Steele, the Steele Dossier, Fusion GPS and/or Glenn Simpson.   Mueller claimed it was “outside my purview.”

While Anderson and Hertzog are tied to the case against Igor Danchenko, it appears the primary purpose of their being called as witnesses in the trial is not about Danchenko.  It appears John Durham presented them for testimony to ‘gently‘ and ‘diplomatically‘ expose the corrupt intent of the two-year Robert Mueller investigation.  However, before getting all excited about Durham exposing Mueller be aware: There’s an outrage trap in here!

To fully comprehend the dynamic, we first need a background context, then a review of the witness statements, then an understanding of the outrage trap.

(1) Background Context:

AFTER originally interviewing Danchenko in January and February 2017, in March the DOJ/FBI then reinterviewed him before refiling the second FISA renewal in April.   With Danchenko on their payroll they FBI did not need to worry about him undermining the Trump-Russia narrative or speaking the truth about the dossier.  This approach protected the fraudulently obtained title-1 surveillance warrant.  The surveillance warrant was renewed in April.

AFTER Robert Mueller is appointed special counsel in May 2017, with Danchenko on the FBI payroll and under control.  When Danchenko is interviewed on June 15, 2017, he is being interviewed as part of the Mueller operation. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann now submit the FISA application for another renewal on June 29, 2017.  The fraudulently obtained title-1 surveillance warrant was again renewed.

(more…)

This is very weedy but also very interesting to me, perhaps you.  Completely unrelated to my own years of research into “Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop,” aka Twitter, and the intelligence community use of the platform to shape public opinion, another research group has looked at the tentacles & data points and come to the exact same conclusion.

For years CTH has outlined how the Obama administration leveraged social media networks as part of a larger objective to shape public opinion, ultimately leading to the shaping of U.S. elections.

It’s a long arc of modern assembly, but the bottom line reached by EDIFY, an independent research group, is that the ‘Arab Spring’ was the beta test for deploying the same system to shape U.S. elections.

Remarkably, that is the exact same conclusion reached by CTH several years ago as highlighted in the story of how Obama shifted the mission of new agencies (ODNI, DHS, DOJ-NSD) and assembled the fourth branch of government.

Writing in his Substack [SEE HERE], Dr Robert Malone draws attention to the EDIFY research.

EDIFY – […] “”At the time, Egyptians and Tunisians were rising up, facilitated by technology, in what the media dubbed a Twitter Revolution. “It was a no-brainer for me, because I wanted to be part of a company that was really dramatically changing the world,” Gadde says. She credits her boss at Juniper, General Counsel Mitchell Gaynor, for being supportive.”   – NYU Law Magazine [1] 

What are the chances that then President Obama did nothing to promote and ensure success for the Arab Spring because its true purpose was to serve as a beta-test for the use of the Twitter platform in future censorship and color revolution applications in the U.S.?

The application of Occam’s reveals that this is likely the case and Vadde’s testimony here is evidence suggestive of this position.

(more…)

It appears our friend Neil Oliver has the week off. So, we will visit another, albeit saltier, U.K. voice who is also grounded in pragmatic common sense.  Russell Brand recently discussed how “President Trump is Right” about the issues around the Ukraine war and the conflict with Russia.

Mr. Brand notes a few bold nuances that are mostly lost in the media conversation and uses his sarcastic humor to point out the current reality. WATCH:

.

(more…)

You often hear me talk about how financial pundits and economic analysts are disconnected from Main Street.  Today we get a prime example of that from the Wall Street Journal.

The topline of the WSJ article is essentially that people are not spending money on anything except essential goods (housing, energy, fuel, food, etc), which is somewhat of a ‘duh tell us something we don’t know‘ type article.   However, the analytical part of the article is where you find the insufferable disconnect.   Here’s one example:

[Data Point 1] “Gasoline prices dropped in September for the third month in a row, falling 4.9% from August.”  [Data Point 2] Sales at gasoline stations, a proxy for spending by car owners, declined 1.4% last month.” 

If gasoline dropped 4.9% in price, but sales only declined 1.4% that would indicate more physical gasoline was purchased at a lower price than the month before.   It’s not a hard concept to understand.

This is a retail sales reality even identified in the article itself, “Unlike many government reports, retail sales aren’t adjusted for inflation, so some swings reflect price changes rather than shifts in the amounts purchased.”

However, now look at this:  “Spending at restaurants and bars grew 0.5% in September from the prior month. But prices at restaurants grew 0.9% in the same month, according to a separate Labor Department report released Thursday, meaning that consumers are getting less for their spending.”

No, that’s not what this means.

(more…)

As the third day of the trial of Igor Danchenko took place a Clinton campaign operative named Charles Dolan was called to the witness stand to explain his relationship to the accused fabricator of information used within the Christopher Steele dossier.  [TechnoFog has a deep dive on the testimony – HERE]

Charles Dolan has deep ties to the Democrat party. He has been a long-term advisor to Hillary Clinton, served as state chairman of Bill Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, and was a key player in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.  Dolan is an operative within the larger democrat machinery, a leftist version of Karl Rove.

Dolan was also a source for the Steele Dossier by providing information to Igor Danchenko who then sent the information to Chris Steele for inclusion in the Trump-dirt Steele Dossier.

When Charles Dolan was called to the witness stand, he admitted under direct questioning that he “embellished” and manufactured information provided to Igor Danchenko. He also noticed when the Dossier was made public that information he provided was included.  In essence, Dolan was one of the many people who generated nonsense lies, which became fabrications within the Steele dossier that the FBI later used to gain a FISA warrant.

It is infuriating, albeit not surprising, to see leftist media like Politico report on the Dolan lies as if the held no consequence.  This, after years of pushing the dossier material in order for leftist media to engineer completely fabricated narratives.

(more…)

Joe Biden’s economic and energy policies have resulted in another record matching former President Jimmy Carter.  The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced an inflation driven increase in SAA benefits of 8.7% beginning in January 2023.  This is the largest cost of living adjustment in 40 years.

(Social Security Administration) – Approximately 70 million Americans will see a 8.7% increase in their Social Security benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments in 2023. On average, Social Security benefits will increase by more than $140 per month starting in January.

Federal benefit rates increase when the cost-of-living rises, as measured by the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index (CPI-W). The CPI-W rises when inflation increases, leading to a higher cost-of-living. This change means prices for goods and services, on average, are higher. The cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) helps to offset these costs.

(more…)