A quietly released study from the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner [See Here pdf] looking into allegations of war crimes conducted during the Ukraine -vs- Russia conflict, specifically looked into allegations of Russian military targeting a nursing home facility in the eastern region of Luhansk.

What the UN investigation revealed was that Ukraine military soldiers had intentionally used the nursing home as an active base to launch military strikes against Russian forces. The Associated Press was forced to reveal, “Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.”

The issue of the Ukraine military, intentionally and with purposeful forethought, using civilian locations to embed their military units, highlights the inherent dangers associated with western propaganda during the conflict.  In fact, the effort to create civilian casualties seems more purposeful as a strategy to gain western media support and create stories that can be used to advance sympathy toward Ukraine, even if it means putting their own civilians in harm’s way.

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Barrons has an interesting article on an increase in bank auto repossession rates connected to defaults [see here].  Essentially, used car prices have surged significantly and the timeline seems to indicate the temporary covid-19 stimulus spending had a lot to do with the increase in demand.

According to data assembled by CoPilot, used cars are currently priced approximately 10,000 higher than they would be without any pandemic related influence, supply side or demand side.  Banks and financial institutions loaned money into the climbing market price.  However, the artificially inflated car prices now create a bubble where the liability on the books is significantly higher than the repossessed asset is worth.

A higher rate of auto loans are now defaulting for both sub-prime and prime borrowers (double for both), indicating the former buyers are under financial pressure and can no longer make their car payments.  The loan to value ratio was as high as 140% when the banks made the loans, a more traditional or normal ratio is 80%.

The banks have a vested financial interest in limiting the number of repossessed vehicles they allow into the used car auction market in order to keep the book value of the cars as high as possible.  Those banks and financial institutions have recently rented more storage space for the vehicles being repossessed.

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Unfortunately, (a) she’s not talking about energy or oil production/supply; and (b) she believes it.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a comprehensively incompetent and unqualified person selected to run the commerce department, blames, without hesitation, a “fundamental lack of supply” for the cause of U.S. inflation [04:38].  She’s not pretending, Raimondo genuinely believes this.

I have struggled with the question of whether it’s incompetence or intentional ideology that drives some of these cabinet members to say stupid stuff.  In the case of Commerce Secretary Raimondo, it is clearly incompetence.  In order to believe that a lack of supply is driving inflation; which is not coincidentally the same demand-cause opinion held by the federal reserve; a person has to ignore the dozens of key economic indicators that show consumer demand has contracted, inventories are climbing, and orders to manufacturers have dropped.

Even Samsung, one of the largest producers of electronics sold in the United States, has told all their suppliers to stop sending the component goods used to manufacture their products because orders for finished goods have plummeted.  Hell, consider this…. THE COMMERCE DEPARTMENT, yes, that’s right, the Department that Raimondo is in charge of, has collected the data showing RETAIL SALES have DROPPED.  Yet here she is blaming a lack of supply for inflation.  WATCH:

It is not a lack of supply driving supply side and producer inflation. It is the massive increase in material, processing and transportation costs associated with Biden’s energy policy that are impacting supply-side inflation.   Demand has contracted, inventories are climbing, manager orders have plummeted, and consumers are squeezed.  Yet this knucklehead thinks recession is unlikely.

Gina Raimondo was also on Meet The Press, with another knucklehead, Chuck Todd.

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Despite the U.S. media not giving any time, attention or discussion to the rise of farmer protests in Europe, everyone should pay attention because the same climate change goals being enforced in the European Union are coming to North America.

The global food manipulators within the World Economic Forum have established the farming policy that aligns with their climate change goals. As noted in this Sky News discussion this is the Great Reset. It’s not just Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte pushing the agenda, in 2020 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave an identical outline, with an identical timeline, for the exact same process [SEE HERE]. The collective WEF political leaders are all singing from the same hymnal.

In this discussion and interview segment, the spokesperson for Netherlands, Agricultural and Horticultural Organization Wytse Sonnema, outlines why there is such a broad sense of “frustration, anger, even despair” amongst farmers amid proposals for nitrogen reduction target plans.  This will be coming to North America soon. WATCH:

In very simple terms, the politicians cannot reduce the farming process for industrial food production without reducing the farming yield.  It is just commonsense.

You do not need to be a farmer to understand that nitrogen/phosphorus-based industrial fertilizer has been the reason why farm yields have generated massive amounts of food on a global basis.  The United States, U.K. and places like the Netherlands have massively increased their ability to generate food for export, in large part due to the success of improved fertilizer and crop saving modern pesticides.

Larger discussion continues below….

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It was not long ago when we noted the absence of food will change things.   While Dutch farmers are fighting the government and trying to keep producing food, in Sri Lanka the shortages of food and fuel have reached a boiling point.  Angry citizens have taken control of the presidential palace, set fire to the Prime Minister’s house, and overwhelmed government offices.

Fearing for his life, “Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he would resign after just two months in office after protesters stormed and occupied the president’s residence and office amid public anger over the country’s deepening sovereign-debt crisis.” (WSJ link)

The U.S. State Department and the ambassador to Sri Lanka, Julie Chung, are asking for protestors to remain peaceful as if their hunger is ‘transitory’.  However, videos from the country highlight the futility of platitudes amid tens of thousands of angry citizens who are desperate.  It is a hot mess that’s likely to surface in other nations quickly.

(Via WSJ) – Braving tear gas and water cannons in the capital, Colombo, protesters—many waving the national flag and wearing helmets—also entered the president’s office on Saturday, in one of the largest antigovernment demonstrations in the country this year.

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During his opening monologue Friday evening, Fox News host Tucker Carlson went into great detail outlining the current evidence of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated.

As a direct consequence of the COVID-19’s global impact, a geopolitical reset has taken place.  Carlson asks the questions of whether this reset was done purposefully, and why is there no one looking at how the virus originated?   WATCH:

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Elon Musk has notified Twitter and the SEC [SEE LETTER HERE] that he is exercising his “right to terminate the merger agreement and abandon the transaction contemplated” due to the social media company not providing transparent access to background data that would allow authentication of “monetized daily active users” (mDAUs).

It appears that Twitter Inc did not want to reveal how Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop was able to sustain operations, at an extremely high cost, without making money.   That’s the essential source of the issue.

The social media company did not want anyone looking at the data stream inside the communication platform.   Musk was not allowed to authenticate the number of real users and identify the number of ‘spam’ or ‘bot’ accounts within the platform.

From the SEC Letter: […] ” Specifically, in the Merger Agreement, Twitter represented that no documents that Twitter filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since January 1, 2022, included any “untrue statement of a material fact” (Section 4.6(a)). Twitter has repeatedly made statements in such filings regarding the portion of its mDAUs that are false or spam, including statements that: “We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter,” and “After we determine an account is spam, malicious automation, or fake, we stop counting it in our mDAU, or other related metrics.”

Mr. Musk relied on this representation in the Merger Agreement (and Twitter’s numerous public statements regarding false and spam accounts in its publicly filed SEC documents) when agreeing to enter into the Merger Agreement. Mr. Musk has the right to seek rescission of the Merger Agreement in the event these material representations are determined to be false.

Although Twitter has not yet provided complete information to Mr. Musk that would enable him to do a complete and comprehensive review of spam and fake accounts on Twitter’s platform, he has been able to partially and preliminarily analyze the accuracy of Twitter’s disclosure regarding its mDAU. While this analysis remains ongoing, all indications suggest that several of Twitter’s public disclosures regarding its mDAUs are either false or materially misleading. 

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University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business, Finance Professor Jeremy Siegel, takes a closer look at the June jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Professor Siegel notes a .01% drop in average hours worked is the labor equivalent of losing 450,000 jobs.

With factory demand dropping, and with inventories climbing, and with FTE’s (Full-Time Equivalents) dropping, the jobs report takes on additional context that aligns with the overall decline we feel in Main Street activity.  Essentially, regardless of how many jobs are “created” within the economy, the overall economic activity -as measured by the value of products & services generated- is declining.

Additionally, as noted by Professor Siegal, the current best estimate as reviewed by the several data points, is a current drop in overall GDP in the -2% range.   Seigal points this information out because the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates into an economy that has declining (demand side) consumer activity, which, correctly as he states, only makes the contraction more severe.  WATCH:

The core supply side costs (all based on energy policy) continue to increase and drive consumer prices upward.  Simultaneously, consumer demand is dropping because the goods and services impacted by the increased costs (most of which are unavoidable) are more expensive.  This creates a downward spiral.  Consumer prices are increasing on housing, energy, food and gasoline (supply side impacts), at the same time discretionary spending contracts.

In this scenario there is no way to avoid a steep recession.  However, the real priority of Joe Biden surrounds whether Jill will allow his favorite pudding, and if the shoes on the pancake mix keeps making sparkly rabbit noises.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released the June jobs report [Data Here] showing 372,000 job gains on the establishment survey of businesses.  However, the April and May reports were revised downward by 74,000 jobs, and there is an odd disconnect between the survey of businesses and the survey of households.

The survey of businesses (BLS establishment report) shows job gains of 372k for the month of June, but the survey of households (BLS household report) shows that fewer people are working.  The labor-force participation rate slipped to 62.2% from a previous high of 62.4%, fewer people are working.

This odd disconnect has many people wondering what is going on?

Wage growth comes in at 5.1% on an annual basis, which is far below the current BLS calculated rate of inflation at 8.6%. Meaning wage growth is not keeping up with inflation despite workers entering the labor force at a higher entry level wage.

Economists overall are flummoxed as job gains would indicate a strong economy. However, the actual economic activity, the creation of goods and services, is not growing.  Quite the opposite appears.  Orders for factory goods have dropped, inventories of currently available goods are climbing, and sales figures across a broad spectrum of companies are negative.  The economy as measured by the creation of goods and services is stalled, but the economy as a measure of employment is firm.

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The Energy Information Agency has finally updated “on road” diesel prices after a month of frozen data [SEE HERE].  Conspicuously, the technical “glitch” correction is resolved [statement here] as the price for diesel starts to drop a little.

Oil prices are showing a drop in price, and subsequently gasoline prices are starting to moderate.  Unfortunately, as noted at The Hill, the drop in price is not related to an increase in production, but rather a decline in consumer demand.

WASHINGTON – The price of U.S. crude oil was hovering around $98 per barrel on Wednesday afternoon, down from about $108 late last week. Brent crude fell to about $101 per barrel, down from about $111 late last week. 

[…] “We’re on the cusp of seeing more savings,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at gas price tracking site GasBuddy. “I’m trying to be a little bit optimistic here that this relief could make its entire way to the pump in the weeks ahead.” 

[…]  “The average price per gallon could fall 40 to 65 cents over the coming weeks,” he said, adding that the drop could be over a three- to six-week period. 

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