MAY 17/2023 · by harveyorgan · in Uncategorized · Leave a comment·Editi

GOLD PRICE CLOSED: DOWN $8.25 TO $1981.30

SILVER PRICE CLOSED: DOWN $0.02   AT $23.74

Access prices: closes 4: 15 PM

Gold ACCESS CLOSE 1982.90

Silver ACCESS CLOSE: 23.76

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Bitcoin morning price:, $26,656  DOWN 378  Dollars

Bitcoin: afternoon price: $27,324  UP 290 dollars

Platinum price closing  $1075.25 UP $11.05

Palladium price;     $1492.00 DOWN $9.05

“Our system is so stinkin’ corrupt that we owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.” … Trader Dan Norcini in 2009

GO GATA!

END

Due to the huge rise in the dollar, we must look at gold and silver in currencies other than the dollar to understand where we are heading

I will now provide gold in Canadian dollars, British pounds and Euros/4: 15 PM ACCESS

CANADIAN GOLD: $2,666.40 DOWN 12.00 CDN dollars per oz (ALL TIME HIGH 2,775.35)

BRITISH GOLD: 1587/80 DOWN 5.90 pounds per oz//(ALL TIME HIGH//CLOSING///1630.29)

EURO GOLD: 1829.39 DOWN 1.79 euros per oz //(ALL TIME HIGH/CLOSING//1861.21)//

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EXCHANGE: COMEX

EXCHANGE: COMEX
CONTRACT: MAY 2023 COMEX 100 GOLD FUTURES
SETTLEMENT: 1,988.400000000 USD
INTENT DATE: 05/16/2023 DELIVERY DATE: 05/18/2023
FIRM ORG FIRM NAME ISSUED STOPPED

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118 C MACQUARIE FUT 2
363 H WELLS FARGO SEC 1
737 C ADVANTAGE 3

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TOTAL: 3 3 

JPMorgan stopped 0/3 contracts

FOR MAY:

GOLD: NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR MAY/2023. CONTRACT:  3 NOTICES FOR 300 OZ  or  0.009331 TONNES

total notices so far: 5873 contracts for 587,300 oz (18.2674 tonnes)

FOR  MAY:

SILVER NOTICES: 0 NOTICE(S) FILED FOR nil OZ/

total number of notices filed so far this month :  2163 for 10,815,000 oz

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END

GLD

WITH GOLD DOWN $8.25..

INVESTORS SWITCHING TO SPROTT PHYSICAL  (PHYS) INSTEAD OF THE FRAUDULENT GLD

/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:///A DEPOSIT OF 0.87 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//

INVENTORY RESTS AT 934.94 TONNES 

Silver//

WITH NO SILVER AROUND AND SILVER DOWN 2 CENTS AT THE SLV// 

NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV; : INVESTORS ARE SWITCHING SLV TO SPROTT’S PSLV.

CLOSING INVENTORY: 469.448 MILLION OZ

Let us have a look at the data for today

SILVER//OUTLINE

SILVER COMEX OI FELL BY A VERY STRONG SIZED 992 CONTRACTS  TO 140,139 AND FURTHER FROM THE  RECORD HIGH OI OF 244,710, SET FEB 25/2020 AND THIS STRONG SIZED LOSS IN COMEX OI WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH OUR   $0.34 LOSS  IN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX ON TUESDAY. THIS HAS ALL THE HALLMARKS OF TRADE AT SETTLEMENT (TAS) MANIPULATION WHICH CRAIG HEMKE HAS POINTED OUT HAPPENS IN FULL FORCE DURING MID CYCLE IN THE DELIVERY MONTH. THUS WE HAVE TWO VEHICLES THE CROOKS USE FOR MANIPULATION AND BOTH ARE SPREADERS:  1) AT MONTH’S END/SPREADERS COMEX AND 2/ TAS SPREADERS, MID MONTH. TOTAL TAS ISSUED ON TUESDAY: A STRONG 538 CONTRACTS.  THE CROOKS LIQUIDATED SOME OF THEIR SHORT END OF THE SPREAD TRADE  MANIPULATING THE PRICE OF SILVER SOUTHBOUND!!

WE HAVE THIS YEAR SET ANOTHER RECORD LOW AT 117,395 CONTRACTS ///MARCH 29.2023. OUR BANKERS WERE SUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING THE PRICE OF SILVER DOWN (IT FELL BY $0.34). AND WERE  SUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING SOME SPEC LONGS AS WE HAD A SMALL LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES OF  364 CONTRACTS (SOME OF THIS LOSS WITH HIGH PROBABILITY IS DUE TO TAS LIQUIDATION).  WE HAD 0 CRIMINAL NOTICES FILED IN THE CATEGORY OF  EXCHANGE FOR RISK TRANSFER FOR 0 MILLION OZ// (  THE TOTAL ISSUED IN THIS CATEGORY SO FAR THIS MONTH TOTAL 4.250 MILLION OZ.)  WE HAVE FINISHED WITH OUR SPECS BEING SHORT AS THEY COVERED WITH THE RISE IN PRICE IN JANUARY .  WE HAVE NOW RETURNED TO OUR USUAL AND CUSTOMARY SCENARIO: BANKERS SHORT AND SPECS LONG.

WE  MUST HAVE HAD: 

A GOOD  ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS( 570 CONTRACTS) iiii) AN  INITIAL SILVER STANDING FOR COMEX SILVER MEASURING AT  13.105 MILLION OZ(FIRST DAY NOTICE) FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S E.F.P. JUMP TO LONDON OF 105,000 OZ (E.F.P. JUMP LOWERS THE AMOUNT OF SILVER STANDING)+0 EXCHANGE FOR RISK// TOTAL 4.25 MILLION OZ OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR THE MONTH(RAISES THE AMOUNT OF SILVER STANDING):THUS TOTAL OF 17.135 MILLION OZ OF STANDING FOR DELIVERY  V)   HUGE SIZED COMEX OI LOSS/ GOOD SIZED EFP ISSUANCE/VI) PROBABLE: SMALL NUMBER OF SHORT T.A.S. CONTRACT LIQUIDATION  MANIPULATING THE PRICE DOWN

 I AM NOW RECORDING THE DIFFERENTIAL IN OI FROM PRELIMINARY TO FINAL  -removed 58  CONTRACTS

HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS MAY. ACCUMULATION FOR EFP’S SILVER/JPMORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES/STARTING FROM FIRST DAY/MONTH OF MAY: 

TOTAL CONTRACTS for 13 days, total 9914 contracts:   OR 49.570 MILLION OZ . (762 CONTRACTS PER DAY)

TOTAL EFP’S FOR THE MONTH SO FAR:  49.57 MILLION OZ 

LAST 23 MONTHS TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED  IN MILLIONS OF OZ:

MAY 137.83 MILLION

JUNE 149.91 MILLION OZ

JULY 129.445 MILLION OZ

AUGUST: MILLION OZ 140.120 

SEPT. 28.230 MILLION OZ//

OCT:  94.595 MILLION OZ

NOV: 131.925 MILLION OZ

DEC: 100.615 MILLION OZ

YEAR 2022:

 JAN 2022-DEC 2022

JAN 2022//  90.460 MILLION OZ

FEB 2022:  72.39 MILLION OZ//

MARCH: 207.430  MILLION OZ//A NEW RECORD FOR EFP ISSUANCE 

APRIL: 114.52 MILLION OZ FINAL//LOW ISSUANCE

MAY: 105.635 MILLION OZ//

JUNE: 94.470 MILLION OZ

JULY : 87.110 MILLION OZ 

AUGUST: 65.025 MILLION OZ 

SEPT. 74.025 MILLION OZ///FINAL

OCT.  29.017 MILLION OZ FINAL

NOV: 134.290 MILLION OZ//FINAL

DEC, 61.395 MILLION OZ FINAL

TOTALS YR 2022: 1135.767 MILLION OZ (1.1356 BILLION OZ)

JAN 2023///   53.070 MILLION OZ //FINAL

FEB: 2023:       100.105 MILLION OZ/FINAL//MUCH STRONGER ISSUANCE VS THE LATTER TWO MONTHS.

MARCH 2023:  112.58 MILLION OZ//FINAL//STRONG ISSUANCE 

APRIL  118.035 MILLION OZ(SLIGHTLY GREATER THAN THAN LAST MONTH)

MAY 49.57 MILLION OZ/INITIAL (MUCH SMALLER THIS MONTH)  

RESULT: WE HAD A HUGE SIZED DECREASE IN COMEX OI SILVER COMEX CONTRACTS OF 992  CONTRACTS WITH OUR  $0.34 LOSS IN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX//TUESDAY.,.  THE CME NOTIFIED US THAT WE HAD A GOOD  SIZED EFP ISSUANCE  CONTRACTS: 570  ISSUED FOR JULY AND 0 CONTRACTS ISSUED FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS) WHICH  EXITED OUT OF THE SILVER COMEX  TO LONDON  AS FORWARDS./ WE HAVE A GOOD INITIAL SILVER OZ STANDING FOR MAY OF  13.105 MILLION  OZ//FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S E.F.P. JUMP TO LONDON   OF 105,000 OZ (DECREASES THE AMOUNT OF SILVER STANDING) +//  + 0.0 MILLION NEW EXCHANGE FOR RISK  TODAY (INCREASES THE AMOUNT OF SILVER STANDING) //TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK MONTH= 4.25 MILLION//NEW TOTALS 12.885 MILLION OZ + 4.25 MILLION = 17.135 MILLION OZ//  .. WE HAVE A FAIR SIZED LOSS OF 422 OI CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES AS WE HAD SOME TAS LIQUIDATION. THE TOTAL OF TAS INITIATED CONTRACTS TODAY: A STRONG  570!!

 WE HAD 0  NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR  nil  OZ

THE SILVER COMEX IS NOW BEING ATTACKED FOR METAL BY LONDONERS ET AL.

GOLD//OUTLINE

IN GOLD, THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST FELL  BY A HUGE SIZED 14,189  CONTRACTS  TO 521,832 AND FURTHER FROM  THE RECORD (SET JAN 24/2020) AT 799,541 AND  PREVIOUS TO THAT: (SET JAN 6/2020) AT 797,110.

THE DIFFERENTIAL FROM PRELIMINARY OI TO FINAL OI IN GOLD TODAY: ADDED + 35  CONTRACTS

WE HAD A HUGE SIZED DECREASE  IN COMEX OI ( 14,189 CONTRACTS) WITH OUR HUGE  $28.05 LOSS IN PRICE. WE ALSO HAD A STRONG INITIAL STANDING IN GOLD TONNAGE FOR MAY. AT 3.5085 TONNES ON FIRST DAY NOTICE // PLUS  4800  OZ QUEUE. JUMP :(QUEUE JUMPING = EXERCISING LONDON BASED EFP’S, ATTACHED TO COMEX CONTRACTS ) (EFP is the transfer of   COMEX contracts immediately to London for potential gold deliveries originating from London)/+ /A HUGE ISSUANCE OF 1000 T.A.S. CONTRACTS//CONSIDERABLE LIQUIDATION OF TAS TODAY////YET ALL OF..THIS HAPPENED WITH OUR HUGE $28.05 LOSS IN PRICE  WITH RESPECT TO TUESDAY’S TRADING.WE HAD A VERY STRONG SIZED LOSS  OF 10,692  OI CONTRACTS (33.286 PAPER TONNES) ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES.

E.F.P. ISSUANCE

THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALED A GOOD SIZED 3497 CONTRACTS:

The NEW COMEX OI FOR THE GOLD COMPLEX RESTS AT 521,832

IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A VERY STRONG SIZED DECREASE IN TOTAL CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 10,692 CONTRACTS  WITH 14,189 CONTRACTS DECREASED AT THE COMEX//TAS CONTRACTS INITIATED: 1000 CONTRACTS) AND 3497 EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON. THUS  TOTAL OI LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 10,692 CONTRACTS OR 33.256 TONNES.

CALCULATIONS ON GAIN/LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES

WE HAD A GOOD SIZED ISSUANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS (3497 CONTRACTS) ACCOMPANYING THE HUGE SIZED LOSS IN COMEX OI (14,189) //TOTAL LOSS IN THE TWO EXCHANGES 10,692 CONTRACTS. WE HAVE ( 1) NOW RETURNED TO OUR NORMAL FORMAT OF BANKERS GOING SHORT AND SPECULATORS GOING LONG  ,2.) GOOD INITIAL STANDING AT THE GOLD COMEX FOR MAY AT 3.5085 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S  QUEUE JUMP  OF 4800 OZ // NEW STANDING: 18.7713 TONNES   // ///3) ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION//4)  HUGE SIZED COMEX OPEN INTEREST LOSS/ 5) GOOD ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL PAPER///6/ T.A.S.  ISSUANCE: 1000 CONTRACTS AFTER WHICH THEY UNLOADED CONSIDERABLE CONTRACTS.)

HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS IN 2023 INCLUDING TODAY

MAY

ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF MAY :

TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED:  37,097 CONTRACTS OR 3,709,700 OZ OR 115.38 TONNES IN 13 TRADING DAY(S) AND THUS AVERAGING: 2853 EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE  SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS :  THIS MONTH IN 13 TRADING DAY(S) IN  TONNES  115.38 TONNES

TOTAL ANNUAL GOLD PRODUCTION, 2022, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD EX CHINA EX RUSSIA: 3555 TONNES

THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS  115.38/3550 x 100% TONNES  3.22% OF GLOBAL ANNUAL PRODUCTION

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S YEAR 2021 TO 2023 

JANUARY/2021: 265.26 TONNES (RAPIDLY INCREASING AGAIN)

 FEB  :  171.24 TONNES  ( DEFINITELY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN).. 

MARCH:.   276.50 TONNES (STRONG AGAIN/

APRIL:      189..44 TONNES  ( DRAMATICALLY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN//GOLD IN BACKWARDATION)

MAY:        250.15 TONNES  (NOW DRAMATICALLY INCREASING AGAIN)

JUNE:      247.54 TONNES (FINAL)

JULY:        188.73 TONNES FINAL

AUGUST:   217.89 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE.

SEPT          142.12 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE ( LOW ISSUANCE)_

OCT:           141.13 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE (LOW ISSUANCE)

NOV:           312.46 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE//NEW RECORD!! (INCREASING DRAMATICALLY)//SIGN OF REAL STRESS//SURPASSING THE MARCH 2021 RECORD OF 276.50 TONNES OF EFP

DEC.           175.62 TONNES//FINAL ISSUANCE// 

TOTALS: 2,578.08 TONNES/2021

JAN:2022   247.25 TONNES //FINAL

FEB:           196.04 TONNES//FINAL

MARCH:  409.30 TONNES INITIAL( THIS IS NOW A RECORD EFP ISSUANCE FOR MARCH AND FOR ANY MONTH.

APRIL:  169.55 TONNES (FINAL VERY  LOW ISSUANCE MONTH)

MAY:  247.44 TONNES FINAL// 

JUNE: 238.13 TONNES  FINAL

JULY: 378.43 TONNES FINAL

AUGUST: 180.81 TONNES FINAL

SEPT. 193.16 TONNES FINAL

OCT:  177.57  TONNES FINAL ( MUCH SMALLER THAN LAST MONTH)

NOV.  223.98 TONNES//FINAL ( MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUS MONTHS//comex running out of physical)

DEC:  185.59 tonnes // FINAL

TOTAL: 2,847,25 TONNES/2022

JAN 2023:    228.49 TONNES FINAL//HUGE AMOUNT OF EFP’S ISSUED THIS MONTH!!

FEB: 151.61 TONNES/FINAL 

MARCH: 280.09 TONNES/INITIAL (ANOTHER STRONG MONTH FOR EFP ISSUANCE)

APRIL: 197.42 TONNES ( MUCH SMALLER THAN LAST MONTH)

MAY: 115.38 TONNES (HEADING FOR ANOTHER SMALLER MONTH)

SPREADING OPERATIONS

(/NOW SWITCHING TO GOLD) FOR NEWCOMERS, HERE ARE THE DETAILS

SPREADING LIQUIDATION HAS NOW COMMENCED   AS WE HEAD TOWARDS THE  NEW  ACTIVE FRONT MONTH OF JUNE. WE ARE NOW INTO THE SPREADING OPERATION OF  GOLD 

HERE IS A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF HOW THE CROOKS FLEECE UNSUSPECTING LONGS IN THE SPREADING ENDEAVOUR ;MODUS OPERANDI OF THE CORRUPT BANKERS AS TO HOW THEY HANDLE THEIR SPREAD OPEN INTERESTS:HERE IS HOW THE CROOKS USED SPREADING AS WE ARE NOW INTO THE  NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MAY HEADING TOWARDS THE  ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF JUNE., FOR BOTH GOLD:

YOU WILL ALSO NOTICE THAT THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST  STARTS TO RISE BUT SO IS THE OPEN INTEREST OF SPREADERS. THE OPEN INTEREST IN WILL CONTINUE TO RISE UNTIL ONE WEEK BEFORE FIRST DAY NOTICE OF AN UPCOMING  ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH (JUNE), AND THAT IS WHEN THE CROOKS SELL THEIR SPREAD POSITIONS BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME OF THE DAY.  THEY WILL USE THE SELL SIDE OF THE EQUATION TO CREATE THE CASCADE (ALONG WITH THEIR COLLUSIVE FRIENDS) AND THEN COVER ON THE BUY SIDE OF THE SPREAD SITUATION AT THE END  OF THE DAY. THEY DO THIS TO AVOID POSITION LIMIT DETECTION. THE LIQUIDATION OF THE SPREADING FORMATION CONTINUES FOR EXACTLY ONE WEEK AND ENDS ON FIRST DAY NOTICE.”

WHAT IS ALARMING TO ME, ACCORDING TO OUR LONDON EXPERT ANDREW MAGUIRE IS THAT THESE EFP’S ARE BEING TRANSFERRED TO WHAT ARE CALLED SERIAL FORWARD CONTRACT OBLIGATIONS AND THESE CONTRACTS ARE LESS THAN 14 DAYS.  ANYTHING GREATER THAN 14 DAYS, THESE MUST BE RECORDED AND SENT TO THE COMPTROLLER, GREAT BRITAIN TO MONITOR RISK TO THE BANKING SYSTEM.  IF THIS IS INDEED TRUE, THEN THIS IS A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD AS WE NOW WITNESS A MONSTROUS TOTAL EFP’S ISSUANCE AS IT HEADS INTO THE STRATOSPHERE. 

The crooks also use the spread in the TAS  account  (trade at settlement).  They buy the spot TAS (e.g. June) and sell the future TAS two months out (e.g. August). Then they unload the front month so the price of gold/silver falls. This occurs in the middle  of the  front delivery month cycle.

First, here is an outline of what will be discussed tonight:

1.Today, we had the open interest at the comex, in SILVER FELL BY A VERY STRONG SIZED 992  CONTRACTS OI TO  140,139 AND CLOSER TO OUR COMEX HIGH RECORD //244,710(SET FEB 25/2020).  THE LAST RECORDS WERE SET  IN AUG.2018 AT 244,196 WITH A SILVER PRICE OF $14.78/(AUGUST 22/2018)..THE PREVIOUS RECORD TO THAT WAS SET ON APRIL 9/2018 AT 243,411 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS WITH THE SILVER PRICE AT THAT DAY: $16.53). AND PREVIOUS TO THAT, THE RECORD  WAS ESTABLISHED AT: 234,787 CONTRACTS, SET ON APRIL 21.2017 OVER  5 YEARS AGO.  HOWEVER WE HAVE SET A NEW RECORD LOW OF 117,395 CONTRACTS MARCH 27/2022 

EFP ISSUANCE 570  CONTRACTS 

OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS CONTINUE TO MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS  AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE:

JULY  570  and ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE:  570  CONTRACTS. EFP’S GIVE OUR COMEX LONGS A FIAT BONUS PLUS A DELIVERABLE PRODUCT OVER IN LONDON.  IF WE TAKE THE  COMEX OI LOSS OF 992 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE 570 OI TRANSFERRED TO LONDON THROUGH EFP’S,

WE OBTAIN A GOOD SIZED LOSS OF OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES OF 422 CONTRACTS 

THUS IN OUNCES, THE GOOD LOSS  ON THE TWO EXCHANGES  TOTAL 2.110 MILLION OZ 

OCCURRED DESPITE OUR $0.34 LOSS IN PRICE …..

END

OUTLINE FOR TODAY’S COMMENTARY

1a/COMEX GOLD AND SILVER REPORT

(report Harvey)

b, ) Gold/silver trading overnight Europe,//GOLD COMMENTARIES

(Peter Schiff)

c) Commentaries from: Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens

ii a) Chris Powell of GATA provides to us very important physical commentaries

b. Other gold/silver commentaries

c. Commodity commentaries//

d)/CRYPTOCURRENCIES/BITCOIN ETC

 2.ASIAN AFFAIRS//

 

WEDNESDAY MORNING//TUESDAY  NIGHT

SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 6.75 PTS OR 0.21%   //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 417.68 POINTS OR 2.09%      /The Nikkei closed UP 250.60 OR 0.84%  //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.49 %   /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN 6.9960 /OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN DOWN  TO 7.0140 /Oil UP TO 71.07 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT AT 75.01 / Stocks in Europe OPENED MOSTLY RED// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN  TRADING WEAKER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE WEAKER

a)NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA

outline

b) REPORT ON JAPAN/

OUTLINE

3  CHINA

OUTLINE

4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

OUTLINE

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

OUTLINE

6.Global Issues//COVID ISSUES/VACCINE ISSUES

OUTLINE

7. OIL ISSUES

OUTLINE

8 EMERGING MARKET ISSUES

9. USA

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1. COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS

GOLD

 LET US BEGIN:

THE TOTAL COMEX GOLD OPEN INTEREST FELL BY A HUGE SIZED 14,189 CONTRACTS DOWN TO 521,832 WITH OUR HUGE LOSS IN PRICE OF $28.05 ON TUESDAY,

EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE

WE ARE NOW IN THE  ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MAY…  THE CME REPORTS THAT THE BANKERS ISSUED A FAIR SIZED TRANSFER THROUGH THE EFP ROUTE AS THESE LONGS RECEIVED A DELIVERABLE LONDON FORWARD TOGETHER WITH A FIAT BONUS.,

THAT IS 3497  EFP CONTRACTS WERE ISSUED: :  JUNE 3497 & ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS:

TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 3497 CONTRACTS 

ON A NET BASIS IN OPEN INTEREST WE LOST THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: A VERY STRONG SIZED TOTAL OF 10,692  CONTRACTS IN THAT 3497 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS FORWARDS TO LONDON AND WE HAD A HUGE SIZED LOSS OF 14,224 COMEX  CONTRACTS..AND  THIS GIGANTIC SIZED GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES HAPPENED WITH OUR HUGE LOSS IN PRICE OF $28.05. AS PER OUR NEWBIE TRADE AT SETTLEMENT (TAS) MANIPULATION WHICH CRAIG HEMKE HAS POINTED OUT HAPPENS DURING MID MONTH IN THE DELIVERY MONTH, THE TOTAL T.A.S. ISSUANCE: A STRONG 1000 CONTRACTS.  THE SHORT SIDE WAS LIQUIDATED TUESDAY AND AGAIN TODAY. 

// WE HAVE A STRONG AMOUNT OF GOLD TONNAGE STANDING:    MAY  (18.733) ( NON ACTIVE MONTH)

TONNES),

 HERE ARE THE AMOUNTS THAT STOOD FOR DELIVERY IN THE PRECEDING 12 MONTHS OF 2021-2022:

DEC 2021: 112.217 TONNES

NOV.  8.074 TONNES

OCT.    57.707 TONNES

SEPT: 11.9160 TONNES

AUGUST: 80.489 TONNES

JULY: 7.2814 TONNES

JUNE:  72.289 TONNES

MAY 5.77 TONNES

APRIL  95.331 TONNES

MARCH 30.205 TONNES

FEB ’21. 113.424 TONNES

JAN ’21: 6.500 TONNES.

TOTAL  YEAR  2021 (JAN- DEC): 601.213 TONNES

YEAR 2022:

JANUARY 2022  17.79 TONNES

FEB 2022: 59.023 TONNES

MARCH: 36.678 TONNES

APRIL: 85.340 TONNES FINAL.

MAY: 20.11 TONNES FINAL

JUNE: 74.933 TONNES FINAL

JULY 29.987 TONNES FINAL

AUGUST:104.979 TONNES//FINAL

SEPT.  38.1158 TONNES

OCT:  77.390 TONNES/ FINAL

NOV 27.110 TONNES/FINAL 

Dec. 64.541 tonnes

(TOTAL  YEAR 656.076 TONNES)

2003:

JAN/2023:    20.559 tonnes

FEB 2023: 47.744 tonnes

MAR:  19.0637 TONNES

APRIL: 75.676  tonnes

MAY: 18.733 TONNES

THE SPECS/HFT WERE SUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE( IT FELL $28.05) //// AND WERE SUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING SOME  SPECULATOR LONGS AS WE HAD OUR VERY STRONG  SIZED LOSS OF 10,692 CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES BUT I SUSPECT THAT MOST OF THAT LOSS WAS DUE TO LIQUIDATION OF THE TAS.  

 WE HAVE LOST A TOTAL OI OF 33.256 PAPER TONNES OF TOTAL OI FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES, ACCOMPANYING OUR INITIAL  GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR MAY. (3.5085 TONNES) FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S  QUEUE JUMP OF 4800 oz (0.1493 TONNES)//NEW STANDING 18.7713 TONNES  ALL OF THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH  OUR LOSS IN PRICE  TO THE TUNE OF $28.05

WE HAD +added 35     CONTRACTS  TO THE  COMEX TRADES TO OPEN INTEREST AFTER TRADING ENDED LAST NIGHT

NET LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 10,692  CONTRACTS OR 1,069,200  OZ OR 33.256 TONNES.

Estimated gold comex today 232,467// fair

final gold volumes/yesterday   261,211//  FAIR

//MAY 17/ MAY  2023 CONTRACT

Gold	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory in oz	nil
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory in oz	nil OZ         .
Deposit to the Dealer Inventory in oz	NIL
Deposits to the Customer Inventory, in oz	10,165.388 oz Delaware
No of oz served (contracts) today	3  notice(s) 300 OZ 0.009331 TONNES
No of oz to be served (notices)	162  contracts    16200 oz 0.538 TONNES
Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month	5873 notices 587,300  OZ 18.2674 TONNES
Total accumulative withdrawals of gold from the Dealers inventory this month	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of gold from the Customer inventory this month	x

i)Dealer deposits: 0

total dealer deposit: nil   oz

No dealer withdrawals

Customer deposits:  0

total deposits: NIL oz

 customer withdrawals: 0

total withdrawals: nil   oz  

Adjustments; 0/

CALCULATIONS FOR THE AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR MAY.

For the front month of MAY we have an oi of 165  contracts having GAINED 46 contracts.  We had 2 contracts filed

on TUESDAY, so we gained 48  contracts or an additional 4800 oz (0.14933 tonnes) will stand for gold in this non active delivery month of May.

June LOST A HUGE 20,710  contracts DOWN to 226,358 contracts. (FROM WHICH A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT WAS DUE TO TAS LIQUIDATION)

July added 25 contracts to stand at 1770 contracts.

AUGUST GAINED 6210 contracts up to 239,418 contracts  (SMALLER ROLL //CONFIRMS TAS LIQUIDATION)

We had 3 contracts filed for today representing  300 oz  

Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from J.P.Morgan dealer account and  0  notices were issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equate to 3   contract(s) of which 0   notices were stopped (received) by  j.P. Morgan dealer and  0  notice(s) was (were) stopped   received by J.P.Morgan//customer account   and 0 notice(s) received (stopped) by the squid  (Goldman Sachs)

To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the MAY /2023. contract month, 

we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (5,873 x 100 oz ), to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of  MAY (165  CONTRACTS)  minus the number of notices served upon today  3 x 100 oz per contract equals 603,500 OZ  OR 18.7713 TONNES the number of TONNES standing in this NON-   active month of May. 

thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the MAY contract month:  No of notices filed so far (5,873 x 100 oz) x  165 OI for the front month minus the number of notices served upon today (3)x 100 oz} which equals 603,500 oz standing OR 18.7713 TONNES 

TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING: 18.7713 TONNES WHICH IS HUGE FOR A NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH.  

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

COMEX GOLD INVENTORIES/CLASSIFICATION

NEW PLEDGED GOLD:

241,794.285 oz NOW PLEDGED /HSBC  5.94 TONNES

204,937.290 PLEDGED  MANFRA 3.08 TONNES

83,657.582 PLEDGED JPMorgan no 1  1.690 tonnes

265,999.054, oz  JPM No 2 

1,152,376.639 oz pledged  Brinks/

Manfra:  33,758.550 oz

Delaware: 193.721 oz

International Delaware::  11,188.542 o

total pledged gold:  1,666,085.702  OZ   51.822 tonnes

TOTAL OF ALL GOLD ELIGIBLE AND REGISTERED:  22,592,643.413  OZ  

TOTAL REGISTERED GOLD:  12,401,304.774   (385,73  tonnes)..

TOTAL OF ALL ELIGIBLE GOLD: 10,191,336.639  O Z  

REGISTERED GOLD THAT CAN BE SERVED UPON: 10,735,219 OZ (REG GOLD- PLEDGED GOLD) 333.91 tonnes//

END

SILVER/COMEX

MAY 17//2023// THE MAY 2023 SILVER CONTRACT

Silver	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory	NIL oz
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory	169,194.180 oz CNT Delaware Int Delaware JPMorgan .
Deposits to the Dealer Inventory	nil oz
Deposits to the Customer Inventory	600,155.500 oz JPMorgan
No of oz served today (contracts)	0  CONTRACT(S)    (nil  OZ)
No of oz to be served (notices)	414 contracts  (2,070,000 oz)
Total monthly oz silver served (contracts)	2163 Contracts  (10,815,000 oz)
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Dealers inventory this month	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Customer inventory this month

i)  0 dealer deposit

total dealer deposits:  0

total: nil oz

i) We had 0 dealer withdrawal

total dealer withdrawals:  oz

We have 1 deposits into the customer account

ii) Into JPMorgan:  600,155.500 oz

Total deposits: 600,155.500   oz 

JPMorgan has a total silver weight: 140.724  million oz/271.911 million =51.74% of comex .//dropping fast

  Comex withdrawals 4

i) Out of   CNT: 5028.280 oz

ii) Out of  Delaware  4930.400 oz

iii) Out of int. Delaware:  60,212.850 oz

iv) Out of JPMorgan:  99,022.650 oz

Total withdrawal:  169,194.180    oz

adjustments:  0

TOTAL REGISTERED SILVER: 29.747 MILLION OZ (declining rapidly).TOTAL REG + ELIGIBLE. 271.911 million oz

we have now seen the movement of the registered silver comex into the 29 million column:

CALCULATION OF SILVER OZ STANDING FOR MAY

silver open interest data:

FRONT MONTH OF MAY /2023 OI: 413   CONTRACTS HAVING LOST 26  CONTRACT(S). WE HAD 4 CONTRACTS FILED

ON TUESDAY, SO WE LOST 22 CONTRACTS OR AN ADDITIONAL 110,000 OZ WILL NOT  STAND FOR DELIVERY ON THIS SIDE OF THE POND AS OUR BANKERS COULD NOT FIND ANY METAL OVER HERE SO THEY WERE E.F.P.d TO LONDON FOR FUTURE DELIVERY. 

JUNE HAD A 18 CONTRACT GAIN TO 1060

JULY HAD A 1335 CONTRACT LOSS TO 115,507 CONTRACTS

TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR TODAY: 0 for NIL  oz

Comex volumes// est. volume today  48,782  poor

Comex volume: confirmed yesterday: 65,994  fair

To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in MAY. we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 2163 x  5,000 oz = 10,815,000 oz 

to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MAY(414) and the number of notices served upon today 0 x (5000 oz) equals the number of ounces standing.

Thus the  standings for silver for the MAY/2023 contract month:  2163 (notices served so far) x 5000 oz + OI for the front month of May (414) – number of notices served upon today (0 )x 500 oz of silver standing for the MAY contract month equates to 12.885 million oz  + THE CRIMINAL 0 MILLION OZ EXCHANGE FOR RISK TODAY//NEW TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK: 4.250//NEW TOTAL 17.135 MILLION OZ// 

the record level of silver open interest is 234,787 contracts set on April 21./2017 with the price on that day at $18.42. The previous record was 224,540 contracts with the price at that time of $20.44

END

GLD AND SLV INVENTORY LEVELS

MAY 17/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.25 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .87 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 934.94 TONNES

MAY 16/WITH GOLD DOWN 28.05 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.57 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 934,07 

MAY 15/WITH GOLD UP $2.85 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 937.64 TONNES

MAY 12/WITH GOLD DOWN $.40 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 2.89 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 937.84 TONNES

MAY 11/WITH GOLD DOWN $15.15 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 934.95 TONNES

MAY 10/WITH GOLD DOWN $5.00 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.70 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 934.95 TONNES

MAY 9/WITH GOLD UP $9.70 TODAY:  HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A MONSTER DEPOSIT OF 5.88 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 937.64 TONNES

MAY 8/WITH GOLD UP $8.70 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.73 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 931.77 TONNES

MAY 5/WITH GOLD DOWN $30.30 TODAY:HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: AS DEPOSIT OF 1.74 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.04 TONNES

MAY 4/WITH GOLD UP $19.00 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 928.30 TONNES

MAY 3/WITH GOLD UP $13.90 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 3.47 TONNES INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 928.30 TONNES

MAY 2/WITH GOLD UP $32.70 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.45 TONNES FORM THE GLD/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 924.83 TONNES

MAY 1/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.85 TODAY:NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 926.28 TONNES

APRIL 28/WITH GOLD UP $1.45 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.76 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 926.28 TONNES

APRIL 27/WITH GOLD UP $4.00 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.04 TONNES/

APRIL 26/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.45 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 2.61 TONNES FROM THE GLD.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.04 TONNES

APRIL 25/WITH GOLD UP $4.90 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .86 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 927.43 TONNES

APRIL 24/WITH GOLD UP $9.45 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 926.57 TONNES

APRIL 21/WITH GOLD DOWN $27.80 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 926.57 TONNES

APRIL 20/WITH GOLD UP $12.70: HUGE CHANGES TODAY IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .87 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 926.57 TONNES

APRIL 19//WITH GOLD DOWN $12.00 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 925.70 TONNES

APRIL 18/WITH GOLD UP $12.15 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.03 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 925.70 TONNES/

APRIL 17/WITH GOLD DOWN $7.15 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.89 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 927.72 TONNES

APRIL 14/WITH GOLD DOWN $38.90 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.47 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.61 TONNES

APRIL 13/WITH GOLD UP$31.70 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 3.17 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 934.08 TONNES

APRIL 11/WITH GOLD UP $14.30 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 903.91 TONNES

APRIL 10/WITH GOLD DOWN $21.40 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.91 TONNES

APRIL 6//WITH GOLD DOWN $9.15  TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.91

APRIL 5//WITH GOLD UP 0 TODAY:NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.04

APRIL 4/WITH GOLD UP $36.30 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT OF 2.02 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 930.04 TONNES

APRIL 3/WITH GOLD UP $14.20 TODAY;NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 928.02 TONNES

GLD INVENTORY: 934.94 TONNES

Now the SLV Inventory/( vehicle is a fraud as there is no physical metal behind them

MAY 17/WITH SILVER DOWN 2 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 469.448 MILLION OZ//

MAY 16/WITH SILVER DOWN 34 CENTS TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF .643 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 469.448 MILLION OZ.

MAY 15/WITH SILVER UP 13 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 470.091 MILLION OZ/

MAY 12/WITH SILVER DOWN $.26 TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A DEPOSIT OF 3,123 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 470.091 MILLION OZ./

MAY 11/WITH SILVER DOWN $1.18 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 466.968 MILLION OZ

MAY 10/WITH SILVER DOWN 23 CENTS TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 1.286 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 466.968 MILLION OZ//

MAY 9/WITH SILVER UP 7 CENTS TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A TINY DEPOSIT OF .08 MILLION OZ OF SILVER INTO THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 465.682 MILLION OZ//

MAY 8/WITH SILVER DOWN 7 CENTS: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.194 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 465.602 MILLION OZ//

MAY 5/WITH SILVER DOWN 31 CENTS TODAY; SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 368,000 OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 466.876 MILLION OZ//

MAY 4/WITH SILVER UP 53 CENTS TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A SMALL DEPOSIT OF .174 MILLION OZ INTO SLV.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 467.174 MILLION OZ//

MAY 3/WITH SILVER UP 11 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.194 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 467.070 MILLION OZ//

MAY 2/WITH SILVER UP 37 CENTS TODAY;NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 468.264 MILLION OZ//

MAY 1/WITH SILVER DOWN ONE CENT TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 918,000 OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 468.264 MILLION OZ

APRIL 28/WITH SILVER UP 1 CENT TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 469.482 MILLION OZ//

APRIL 27/WITH SILVER UP 16 CENTS TODAY:HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.103 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 469.182 MILLION OZ//

APRIL 26/WITH SILVER UP 10 CENTS TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.102 MILLION OZ FORM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 470.285 MILLION OZ

APRIL 25/WITH SILVER DOWN 34 CENTS TODAY: THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE!!! HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 7.304 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 471.387  MILLION OZ.

APRIL 24/WITH SILVER UP 22 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 464.083 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 21/WITH SILVER DOWN 29 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 919,000 OZ FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 464.083 MILLION OZ//

APRIL 20/WITH SILVER UP 2 CENTS TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.021 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 465.002 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 19/WITH SILVER UP 11 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 467.023 MILLION OZ//

APRIL 18/WITH SILVER UP 18 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.757 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 467.023 MILLION OZ

APRIL 17/WITH SILVER DOWN 33 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.194 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 469.780 MILLION OZ//

APRIL 14/WITH SILVER DOWN 48 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 470.974 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 13/WITH SILVER UP HUGELY BY 48 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 2.389 MILLION OZ OF SILVER INTO THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 470.974 MILLION OZ

APRIL 11/WITH SILVER UP 27 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 468.585 MILLION OZ

APRIL 10/WITH SILVER DOWN 17 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 468.585 MILLION OZ

APRIL 6/WITH SILVER UP 2 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV; A DEPOSIT OF 4.643 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 468.585 MILLION OZ//

APRIL 5/WITH SILVER DOWN 4 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 463.942  MILLION OZ

APRIL 4/WITH GOLD UP $1.11 TODAY CRIMINAL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.47 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 463,942 MILLION  OZ

APRIL 1/WITH SILVER DOWN 14 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 465.412

CLOSING INVENTORY 469.448 MILLION OZ//

PHYSICAL GOLD/SILVER STORIES

1:Peter Schiff

end

2 Commentaries from: Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens//JAMES RICKARDS//JOHN RUBINO

end

end

3,Chris Powell of GATA provides to us very important physical commentaries

end

4. OTHER GOLD/SILVER RELATED COMMENTARIES/

This is good to watch:

Von Greyerz & Macleod: Insights On The Rotten State Of The Banking System

TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2023 – 08:25 PM

In this discussion between Egon von Greyerz and Alasdair Macleod, on the state of the current banking system and the importance of gold, the speakers express concerns about the system’s eventual collapse due to the excessive creation of “funny money.”

They suggest that gold is the only currency to have survived throughout history and is thus essential for long-term wealth preservation.

Egon and Alasdair also discuss the role of gold in the currency crisis and predict an eventual panic into gold.

Moreover, they stress that the value of gold should not be measured in worthless, fiat money and that higher gold prices are necessary to meet future demand.

Finally, they caution against wishing for the gold price to go up, as it would decrease the quality of life.

Watch the full interview below:  https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/von-greyerz-macleod-insights-rotten-state-banking-system

Timestamps:

• 0:00 Introductions
• 0:42 This weeks news – Banking collapse
• 2:32 Derivatives
• 3:07 What’s keeping the gold price high?
• 12:10 Property rights
• 13:30 What role does gold play
• 19:57 Gold price
• 22:44 Influx of wealth preservation

END

5.IMPORTANT COMMENTARIES ON COMMODITIES: PLATINUM

END

end

5 B GLOBAL COMMODITIES ISSUES/FOOD IN GENERAL

6.CRYPTOCURRENCY COMMENTARIES/

END

 1.YOUR EARLY CURRENCY VALUES/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN AND EUROPEAN BOURSE MOVEMENTS/AND INTEREST RATE SETTINGS// WEDNESDAY MORNING.7:30 AM

ONSHORE YUAN:   CLOSED  DOWN AT 6.9960

OFFSHORE YUAN: 7.0140

SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 6.75 PTS OR  0.21% 

HANG SENG CLOSED DOWN 417.68  PTS OR  2.09%

2. Nikkei closed UP 250.60 PTS OR 0.84%

3. Europe stocks   SO FAR: MOSTLY RED

USA dollar INDEX UP  TO  102.11 EURO RISES TO 1.0827 DOWN 39 BASIS PTS

3b Japan 10 YR bond yield: FALLS TO. +.362 Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese YEN vs USA cross now at 137.00 /JAPANESE YEN FALLING AS WELL AS LONG TERM 10  YR. YIELDS RISING //EVENTUALLY THIS WILL BREAK THE JAPANESE CENTRAL BANK

3c Nikkei now  ABOVE 17,000

3d USA/Yen rate now well ABOVE the important 120 barrier this morning

3e Gold DOWN /JAPANESE Yen DOWN  CHINESE YUAN:  DOWN//  OFF- SHORE: DOWN

3f Japan is to buy INFINITE  TRILLION YEN’S worth of BONDS. Japan’s GDP equals 5 trillion USA

Japan to buy 100% of all new Japanese debt and NOW they will have OVER 50% of all Japanese debt. 

3g Oil UP for WTI and UP  FOR Brent this morning

3h European bond buying continues to push yields lower on all fronts in the EMU. German 10yr bund UP TO +2.23000***/Italian 10 Yr bond yield RISES to 4.158*** /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD RISES TO 3.361…** DANGEROUS//

3i Greek 10 year bond yield FALLS TO 3.936

3j Gold at $1985.20 silver at: 23.66 1 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $30.00

3k USA vs Russian rouble;// Russian rouble DOWN 0  AND  46 /100        roubles/dollar; ROUBLE AT 80.856//

3m oil into the 71 dollar handle for WTI and 75  handle for Brent/

3n Higher foreign deposits out of China sees huge risk of outflows and a currency depreciation. This can spell financial disaster for the rest of the world/

JAPAN ON JAN 29.2016 CONTINUES NIRP. THIS MORNING RAISES AMOUNT OF BONDS THAT THEY WILL PURCHASE UP TO .5% ON THE 10 YR BOND///YEN TRADES TO 137.00  10 YEAR YIELD AFTER BREAKING .54%, FALLS TO .362% STILL ON CENTRAL BANK (JAPAN) INTERVENTION

30 SNB (Swiss National Bank) still intervening again in the markets driving down the FRANC. It is not working: USA/SF this 0.8998 as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF 0.9745 well above the floor set by the Swiss Finance Minister. Thomas Jordan, chief of the Swiss National Bank continues to purchase euros trying to lower value of the Swiss Franc. 

USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.522 DOWN 3 BASIS PTS…

USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 3.836 DOWN 4  BASIS PTS/

USA 2 YR BOND YIELD:  4.0626 DOWN 1 BASIS PTS

USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 19.76…

GREAT BRITAIN/10 YEAR YIELD: UP 2 BASIS PTS AT 3.817 DOWN 1 BASIS PTS

end

2.  Overnight:  Newsquawk and Zero hedge:

 2. a)FIRST, ZEROHEDGE (PRE USA OPENING// MORNING

Futures Rise Amid Renewed Hope For Debt Ceiling Breakthrough

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 08:13 AM

US stock futures crept higher on Wednesday and traded near the best levels of the session, as investors remained focused on debt ceiling talks while negotiators seek a framework agreement for Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy to review upon the president’s return from a truncated trip to Asia. Contracts on the S&P 500 were up 0.3% as 7:45am ET a.m. while Nasdaq 100 futures added 0.2%. Europe’s Estoxx50 little changed on the day; while Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed above the 30,000 for the first time since September 2021 a day after the Topix closed at its highest level in more than three decades. Treasuries are slightly richer across the curve with spreads broadly within 1bp-2bps of Tuesday’s close while the dollar is flat. Oil rebounded from an earlier drop concerns over demand in China and expectations of rising stockpiles in the US. Iron ore continues its week in the green, while gold and bitcoin declines.

In premarket trading, Western Alliance Bancorp jumped as much as 9.8% after the regional lender reported growth in deposits this quarter, soothing concerns after it was caught up in the turmoil engulfing the US regional banking sector. Tesla rose as much as 1.7% in premarket trading on Wednesday, as CEO Elon Musk said the electric-car maker will “try a little advertising and see how it goes.” This is a major shift for the company that’s largely avoided traditional marketing to sell its vehicles. Manchester United gained after Bloomberg reported that Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad J.J. Al-Thani submitted an improved offer for the football club. Here are some other notable premarket movers:

• Doximity drops as much as 11% in premarket trading on Wednesday, after the health-care software company gave a weaker-than-expected 1Q forecast due to delayed product launches. Analysts note that the outlook puts a lot of pressure on the company to ramp in the second half of the year.
• Gates Industrial Corp. declined 1.4% postmarket after leading holder Blackstone offered 22.5 million shares via Citigroup, Evercore ISI, Goldman Sachs.
• Maxeon Solar Technologies dropped 6% postmarket after the solar-panel maker offered 5.1 million shares and leading holder TotalEnergies offered an additional 1.7 million via BofA Securities, Morgan Stanley.
• Intapp Inc. fell 5.2% postmarket after the software company offered 2 million shares and selling stockholders offered 4.25 million via BofA Securities, Barclays.
• Container Store tumbled 17% in post-market trading Tuesday after its full- year net sales forecast fell short of the average of analysts’ estimates.
• Vivid Seats dropped 12% postmarket as selling stockholder Hoya Topco LLC offers 16m Class A shares via Citigroup, Morgan Stanley.

A rally that lifted global stocks by almost 9% this year through the end of April reversed this month as the debt-ceiling standoff compounded fears about an economic slowdown and outweighed a better-than-feared corporate earnings season.  “That is leading to the reason why equity markets have stalled over the last couple of weeks because you are not really paid now to make big bets ahead of this event,” Grace Peters, JPMorgan Private Bank’s head of investment strategy, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

Still, the calm in equity indexes “hides a lot of movement under the surface,” said Marija Veitmane, senior multi-asset strategist for State Street Global Markets.“Our favorite trade is preference for growth stocks over value as we believe that recession is inevitable so earnings are likely to falter, while growth should get some support from falling rates.” 

Negotiators are seeking a framework agreement to review upon President Joe Biden’s return from a truncated trip to Asia. Any breakthrough in the talks would give markets cause to rally, dissipating one of the biggest tail risks weighing on sentiment. “Longer term, that would be a dip that we would buy if that were to come to pass,” Peters said. “The market does ultimately I think assume this will get resolved.” In the meantime, Treasury bills maturing after June 1 are under pressure, as costs to insure Treasuries in the credit-default swap market surge.

Meanwhile, strategists at Goldman Sachs Group said artificial intelligence offers the biggest potential long-term support for US profit margins, although they warned there’s high uncertainty around AI’s impact. AI can boost net margins by nearly 400 basis points over a decade, strategists led by Ben Snider wrote in a note.

European stocks are slightly lower as risk sentiment struggles to gain any real traction with US debt ceiling negotiations making only glacial progress. The Stoxx 600 is down 0.1% with real estate, financial services and retail the worst performing sectors while miners and travel stocks rise. Here are the most notable European movers:

• Argenx shares rise as much as 5.8% after Bloomberg reported several major drugmakers keen to expand in immunology have been studying the biotech and have it at the top of their wish lists
• Aegon shares climb as much as 5.6% after the Dutch insurance company’s 1Q capital generation before holdco costs beat consensus expectations, suggesting modest consensus upgrades, Citi says
• SAP shares rise as much as 1.9% after the software giant projected sales growth to accelerate beyond 2025, a bullish ambition as the firm’s transition to cloud bears fruit, according to analysts
• Watches of Switzerland shares fall as much as 12%, to the lowest since September 30, after the top seller of Rolex timepieces in the UK said it expects a decline in first-quarter sales
• Commerzbank declines as much as 7.9%, worst performer on the Stoxx 600 Banks Index, as analysts say an increase in guidance for FY net interest income is not enough, as it only matches consensus
• Experian shares decline as much as 5.7%, reaching the lowest since March, after the consumer credit reporting company’s organic revenue forecast for the year failed to match expectations
• British Land declines as much as 5.1% after the landlord’s FY results showed net asset values for the group fell more than expected. Jefferies noted the decline was worse than for rival Land Securities
• Ubisoft shares sink as much as 11% after the French video-game company’s quarterly bookings and outlook for the current quarter came in well below expectations
• Euronext shares decline as much as 5.5% as analysts point to limited room for consensus change after the French stock-market operator offered no adjustment to 2023 cost guidance
• JD Sports drops as much as 5.2% after the sports retailer reported a FY gross profit margin that missed estimates. RBC flagged the gross profit margin being below their expectations
• Zurich falls as much as 3.6% after the insurer’s presented “relatively solid” quarterly figures, with Jefferies flagging some weakness in its Farmers division and Vontobel notes a miss on Solvency

Elsewhere, the greenback remains on the front foot with the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rising 0.3% to its highest in over five weeks. Bunds and gilts are on the front foot with German and UK 10-year yields falling by 4bps and 3bps respectively.

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks retreated as weaker-than-expected data from China continued to weigh on sentiment concerning the country’s economic growth outlook.  The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell as much as 0.5%, with AIA Group, Meituan and Ping An Insurance Group the biggest drags. Shares in Hong Kong were the region’s worst performers after disappointing factory output and jobless data yesterday. Key gauges in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea rose.  The Hang Seng Index declined 2.1%, the most in a week, dragged lower by property and technology stocks. Tencent, which ended down 0.6%, saw large fund net outflow before its earnings report came after the market closed.

Japanese stocks gained for a fourth day after a better-than-expected GDP report, with the Nikkei 225 closing above the 30,000 for the first time since September 2021 a day after the Topix closed at its highest level in more than three decades. The Topix Index rose 0.3% to 2,133.61, while the Nikkei advanced 0.8% to 30,093.59. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. contributed the most to the Topix Index gain, increasing 2.2%. Out of 2,159 stocks in the index, 900 rose and 1,161 fell, while 98 were unchanged. “It’s fascinating time to be looking at the Japanese equity market at the moment,” said Bruce Kirk, Chief Japan Equity Strategist at Goldman Sachs, on Bloomberg TV. “What we are seeing is a perfect alignment between the interests of the government, the regulator, the exchange, and also the investors, both foreign and domestic.” 

Meanwhile commodity-heavy Australian stocks continued their decline, as the S&P/ASX 200 index fell 0.5% to close at 7,199.20, weighed by mining shares and banks.  Australian salaries rose at around half the pace of inflation in the first three months of 2023, suggesting the economy will avoid a wage-price spiral and bolstering the case for the central bank to stand pat in June. Read: Australia Pay Gains Suggest Economy to Avoid Wage Breakout In New Zealand, the S&P/NZX 50 index was little changed at 11,951.66

Stocks in India also dropped for a second session as investors continued to book profits after a recent rally in the key gauges. The S&P BSE Sensex fell 0.6% to 61,560.64 in Mumbai, while the NSE Nifty 50 Index posted a similar decline to close at 18,181.75. Stocks in the benchmark gauges are trading at 19.2 times their estimated earnings for the next 12 months, close to the 5-year average of 19.8x.  Infosys contributed the most to the index’s decline, decreasing 1.3%. Out of 30 shares in the Sensex index, 7 rose and 23 fell

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.3% to 1234.32 as the greenback rallied to a two-week high of 137.17 yen. In quiet trade, the dollar gained against all G10 currencies bar the New Zealand dollar, which rose as much as 0.4% to 0.6253. The yuan slid past the key level of 7 per dollar for the first time this year in a further sign the recovery of the world’s second- largest economy from its Covid restrictions is grinding to a halt; the offshore yuan slipped as much as 0.3% to 7.0201 per dollar, while the onshore currency dropped as much as 0.4% to 7.0026.

In rates, treasuries are slightly richer across the curve with spreads broadly within 1bp-2bps of Tuesday’s close. 10-year yields are around 3.515%, richer by ~2bp on the day, with bunds and gilts outperforming by 3bp and 1.5bp in the sector. The two-year Treasury yield rose 2 basis points to 4.10%, after climbing as high as 4.12% on Tuesday; Treasuries remained pressured after Fed officials appeared divided on whether to raise rates or pause its tightening cycle. Traders are betting on the possibility that the Fed will keep rates on hold at 5.25% at its June meeting; they are pricing around 19 basis points in cuts in September, and a total of around 60 basis points of cuts by year-end.

Bigger gains remain in core European rates after a strong 10-year German bond auction, which produced highest demand since August 2020. US session features 20-year bond sale at 1pm New York time.  For $15b 20- year bond auction, WI yield ~3.945% is 2.5bp cheaper than April’s stop-out, which tailed the WI by 0.2bp. IG issuance slate empty so far; Pfizer priced a $31b deal Tuesday, the 4th largest on record, while energy producer Ovintiv issued a $2.3b offering; Pfizer offered investors upwards of 20bps in new-issue concessions

In commodities, crude futures decline with WTI down 0.2% to trade near $70.70. Spot gold falls 0.2% to around $1,985. Bitcoin drops 0.4%.

UK MPs have warned that trading in Bitcoin and other speculative crypto assets should be regulated to prevent consumers from being lulled into a false sense of security about the risks posed, according to The Times.

Looking to the day ahead now, data releases include US housing starts and building permits for April, along with the final CPI print for April from the Euro Area. From central banks, we’ll hear from BoE Governor Bailey, ECB Vice President de Guindos, along with the ECB’s de Cos, Elderson, Centeno and Rehn. Finally, earnings releases include Target and Cisco.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures up 0.3% to 4,133.50
• MXAP down 0.4% to 161.25
• MXAPJ down 0.6% to 510.86
• Nikkei up 0.8% to 30,093.59
• Topix up 0.3% to 2,133.61
• Hang Seng Index down 2.1% to 19,560.57
• Shanghai Composite down 0.2% to 3,284.23
• Sensex down 0.8% to 61,445.80
• Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.5% to 7,199.24
• Kospi up 0.6% to 2,494.66
• STOXX Europe 600 down 0.1% to 464.11
• German 10Y yield little changed at 2.33%
• Euro down 0.2% to $1.0843
• Brent Futures down 0.3% to $74.67/bbl
• Gold spot down 0.1% to $1,986.63
• U.S. Dollar Index up 0.28% to 102.85

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

• Japan’s Q1 GDP comes in solidly above the Street consensus at +1.6% (the Street was modeling +0.8%) thanks to strong consumer spending. WSJ
• China’s new home prices for April comes in +0.32% M/M, down from the +0.44% number posted in March. WSJ
• UBS projects a massive accounting gain from its takeover of Credit Suisse, with the combined firms’ “negative goodwill” seen boosting reported profit by $34.8 billion. On the downside, UBS estimates litigation, regulatory matters and related liabilities may take $4 billion out of capital over 12 months. BBG
• House Democrats plan to begin collecting signatures Wednesday for a discharge petition to raise the debt ceiling, a long-shot parliamentary maneuver designed to circumvent House Republican leadership and force a vote. WSJ
• US oil/gas drilling is starting to dip amid subdued prices, creating headwinds for the equipment industry (and potentially leading to higher energy prices down the board). FT
• The FTC’s lawsuit to block AMGN-HZNP is the first time in more than 10 years that the gov’t has tried to stop a drug merger (the FTC warned on Tues that “rampant consolidation” in the industry was pushing up prices). FT  
• Western Alliance provided some encouraging statistics around deposit dynamics. Overall deposits stabilized during the final days of March and have resumed a growth trajectory since. QTD deposit growth is north of $2B as of May 12. In addition, insured deposits are now nearly 80% of the total, while the company is making progress repositioning its balance sheet. RTRS
• TGT: Stock is down in the pre-market on the 2Q guide but our desk thinks they did what they needed to do with 1Q good enough and 2Q possible conservative (we’ll see more on that from the call).  2Q EPS of $2.05 vs Consensus $1.77 and EBITDA 12% better. Total sales were in-line, with comps of 0% (traffic was +0.9% vs Consensus +1% (bogey was for around a 0% to +0.5%, so this was about in-line and while nothing special, is no worse than feared).  Gross margins missed by 40 bps but SG&A beat by a sizeable 150 bps.   Guided 2Q EPS below at $1.30-$1.70 (Consensus $1.91) and comps of down low-singles (Consensus +0.2%). Encouragingly, inventory down 17% y/t vs -3% last quarter, reaffirming the FY guide, which could be considered a bit conservative after today’s beat (but early to say). H/T Scott Feiler
• Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said the electric-car maker will dabble in advertisements, a major shift for the company that’s largely avoided traditional marketing. “We’ll try a little advertising and see how it goes,” Musk said Tuesday at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, in response to an investor’s question. BBG

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mixed with the region cautious after the weak handover from the US where risk appetite was clouded amid debt ceiling concerns, while the meeting between US President Biden and congressional leaders achieved no major breakthroughs although was said to be productive and has set the stage to carry on further conversations. ASX 200 was subdued amid losses across nearly all sectors and following mixed wage price index data. Nikkei 225 outperformed and climbed above the 30,000 level for the first time since September 2021 with sentiment also underpinned by stronger-than-expected Japanese GDP data. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were lower with price action contained amid a lack of fresh macro catalysts to detract from the recent streak of disappointing data releases from China.

Top Asian News

• Chinese embassy spokesman said the visit to Taiwan by former UK PM Truss this week is a dangerous political show which will do nothing but harm to the UK, according to The Guardian.

European bourses are in close proximity to the unchanged mark, Euro Stoxx 50 +0.1%, with fresh drivers somewhat limited and following a mixed APAC session though one that feature marked Nikkei 225 outperformance, above 30k. Within Europe, the DAX 40 +0.3% outperforms after heavyweight Siemens’ (+2.0%) Q2 update alongside strength in SAP (+1.6%) following a guidance update and buyback announcement; in contrast, Financial Services are pressured by LSE and Euronext while Commerzbank is the Banking sector laggard. Stateside, futures are modestly firmer in generally horizontal trade with the ES +0.1% around 4130 ahead of debt  ceiling updates with the overnight developments slightly constructive but the impasse ultimately remains. Tencent (700 HK): Q1 2023 (CNY): Revenue 149.99bln (exp. 146.29nlm). Net 32.5bln (exp. 33.2bln), Operating 40.43bln (exp. 40.7bln); Weixin and Wechat MAUs 1.32bln (exp. 1.32bln).

Top European News

• The Royal United Services Institute think tank warned that UK PM Sunak will have to find USD 42bln in tax hikes and spending cuts to pay for his pledge to boost defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, according to The Mirror.
• The Resolution Foundation has warned that the BoE’s decision to hike interest rates could limit Chancellor Hunt’s room to lower taxes in the Autumn, according to The Times.
• UK Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer calls for the UK’s current Brexit deal to be renegotiated, but declares the UK must not re-join the EU or single market, according to Sky News.
• ECB’s de Cos says the ECB is getting near the end of its tightening cycle; transmission remains strong.
• ECB’s Rehn says need to see core CPI slow substantially.
• BoE Governor Bailey says “If there were to be evidence of more persistent pressures, then further tightening in monetary policy would be required.”. MPC pays particular attention to indicators of inflation persistence, including labour market tightness and wage growth, and services price inflation. There are signs that the labour market is loosening a little.

FX

• DXY tops 103.000 amidst broad gains mainly forged at the expense of the Yuan.
• USD/CNY probes 7.0000 and USD/CNH approaches Fib at 7.0364 after a spate of disappointing Chinese data.
• Yen under 137.00 vs Dollar and relying on 200 DMA for a reprieve, Sterling sub-1.2450 and relatively unaffected by BoE’s Bailey.
• Euro teeters above Fib in the low 1.0800 zone.
• PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 6.9748 vs exp. 6.9750 (prev. 6.9506).

Fixed Income

• Firm bounce in core EU bonds and strong demand for supply along the way.
• Bunds and Gilts are both towards the top of ranges extending to 135.82 and 100.83 from 135.28 and 100.41 respectively.
• USTs relatively restrained with T-note tethered to 115-00 ahead of US housing data and USD 15bln 20-year sale.

Commodities

• Crude benchmarks are essentially unchanged after drifting in the first half of the session as the USD picked up and sentiment slipped; a narrative that has eased/lifted from respective session peaks since.
• Currently, WTI and Brent are incrementally firmer within circa. USD 1/bbl parameters with specific newsflow light and focus on geopols. amid reports that Iran’s Economy Minister discussed oil and gas projects with Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg.
• Spot gold is drifting with the USD firmer and sentiment improving throughout the morning, yellow metal below USD 2k/oz and approaching the USD 1981/oz 50-DMA.
• Base metals are more mixed, with the region attempting to recoup some of the recent China-induced pressures but with action capped on USD strength.
• US Energy Inventory Data (bbls): Crude +3.7mln (exp. -0.9mln), Gasoline -2.5mln (exp. -1.1mln), Distillate -0.9mln (exp. +0.1mln), Cushing +2.9mln.
• UBS lowers Year-End Brent forecast by USD 10/bbl to USD 95/bbl amid greater-than-expected supply.

Debt Ceiling latest

• US President Biden said they had a good, productive meeting on the debt ceiling and there is still more work to do, while he made it clear to House Speaker McCarthy that they will talk regularly over the next several days. Biden is confident they will continue to make progress on avoiding default and said that defaulting on debt is not an option, while he also noted it is disappointing Republicans refuse to consider raising revenue, according to Reuters.
• White House said President Biden directed staff to meet daily on outstanding issues and said he would like to check in with leaders later this week by phone and meet with them upon return from overseas. Biden also emphasised that while more work remains on a range of difficult issues, he is optimistic that there is a path to a budget agreement, according to Reuters.
• President Biden will no longer visit Australia or Papua New Guinea and will return to the US on Sunday to focus on the debt ceiling talks, according to NBC.
• US House Speaker McCarthy said they have set the stage to carry on conversations in debt talks and that President Biden agreed to appoint a couple of people from the administration to negotiate directly with his team. McCarthy also said there is a lot of work to do in a short amount of time and that they are still very far apart but added it is possible to get a deal by the end of the week and it is not that difficult to reach an agreement. However, McCarthy later said he is not more optimistic about getting a deal by the end of the week.
• US Senate Majority Leader Schumer said the debt meeting was good and productive, while he added that they all agreed a default is a horrible option, according to Reuters.
• US Senate Republican Leader McConnell earlier told Senate Republicans there had not been much progress on debt ceilings talks with POTUS and other leaders.
• House Democrats are to reportedly begin collecting signatures for effort to raise debt ceiling, according to WSJ.
• Punchbowl on the US debt limit, says “Initial discussions began Tuesday night, with full-scale negotiations set to kick off this morning, we’re told”, “Sources close to the talks expect any debt-limit boost to run well into 2025.”

Geopolitics

• Russia’s Kremlin says it will not enter a hypothetical discussion on what Russia will do if the grain deal lapses.

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Yesterday Henry and I published a chartbook entitled “A Time Capsule for the Future”. It imagines how those in the distant future might look at what the macro signals were telling us now in May 2023. Would it be obvious in hindsight as to what happened next? For us, this has been the most predictable US cycle of our careers from the moment the US money supply exploded. From then it wasn’t difficult to predict we’d get very high inflation, and from then that central banks would have to hike rates aggressively. The next stage continues to look clear to us: given aggressive rate hikes and curve inversions, we think there’ll be a US recession rather than a soft landing. Indeed, just about every leading indicator is now pointing to one. Does it look as obvious to you? Will future historians digging up this time capsule say the same thing? Or what are we not seeing that might prove us wrong? We’d be interested in hearing your views, especially those of you from the future! The presentation is here and tomorrow we’ll be hosting a webinar on it at 2:30pm London time. Please Register Here if you want to view.

Markets had a slightly tough session yesterday, as robust data and hawkish comments from Fed officials helped drive a selloff across bonds (mostly) and equities (a bit). Having said that the market was really waiting for the results of the latest meeting on the debt ceiling between President Biden and congressional leaders starting an hour before the US close. House Speaker McCarthy continues to say the two sides remain far apart. However, he acknowledged that “it is possible to get a deal by the end of the week” despite there being a lot of work to do. He also noted that the talks were “more productive” than previous meetings and that a smaller group of staffers from both sides are working toward a deal, with talks commencing as soon as tonight. President Biden announced that there was “consensus, I think, among the congressional leaders that defaulting on the debt is simply not an option.” Senate leadership from both parties exhibited optimism that a deal could be reached as well. Before the meeting even started there was news that President Biden was going to shorten his upcoming trip to Asia and return to Washington on Sunday after the G-7 meeting in Japan. This highlights the seriousness around Treasury Secretary Yellen’s June 1st deadline.

Ahead of the meeting, Treasuries had already been hurt by a collection of strong data releases, which knocked hopes among investors that rates would be cut later this year. For instance, retail sales (excluding auto and gas) were up by +0.6% in April (vs. +0.2% expected) following two consecutive monthly declines. Then industrial production grew by +0.5% in April (vs. unch expected), whilst the NAHB’s housing market index rose for a 5th month running to 50 (vs. 45 expected).

With those releases in hand and the hawkish Fed-speak discussed below, investors grew more doubtful that the Fed would pivot towards rate cuts this year, and the rate priced in for the December meeting was up +7.4bps on the day to 4.484%. In turn, that helped spur a rise in Treasury yields across the curve, with the 10yr yield up +3.2bps to 3.534% and 2yr yields +7.2bps higher. Meanwhile the 30yr yield was up +1.2bps at 3.854%, marking its highest level since March 8, just before SVB’s collapse led to market turmoil. Having said that yields are 1-2bps lower across the curve in Asia.

Before the slight rally back in Asia, the losses for Treasuries were given added support from various Fed speakers, whose tone was generally on the hawkish side. First, we had Cleveland Fed President Mester, who said that rates weren’t sufficiently restrictive just yet, and that “given how stubborn inflation has been, I can’t say that I’m at a level of the fed funds rate where it’s equally probably that the next move could be an increase or a decrease”. Later on, Richmond Fed President Barkin said that “if more increases are what’s necessary” to reduce inflation then he was “comfortable doing that.”

New York Fed President Williams said the committee was still waiting for the long lags of monetary policy while also noting that inflation is still “too high”. He did say that he sees supply-demand imbalances improving throughout the economy. Chicago Fed President Goolsbee reminded the market that service inflation remains too high and that “its far too premature to be talking about rate cuts.” Lastly, Dallas Fed President Logan tried to walk the line between the hawks and doves saying that gradual policy adjustment can help mitigate stability risks and that justifies the Fed slowing the pace of hikes or outright pausing.

This combination of news meant that equities struggled yesterday, with the S&P 500 (-0.64%) reversing its gains from the previous session and close near its lows on the day. The declines were generally broad-based (88% of the index lower), but tech stocks were the exception and saw the NASDAQ outperform slightly (-0.18%) . That was aided by a strong advance from the megacap stocks, with the FANG+ index rising +0.97% yesterday in a big outperformance. The latest moves further showcase just show top-heavy the equity gains have been this year. Indeed, the S&P 500 is up by +7.04% on a YTD basis, but the equal-weighted S&P 500 is now down -0.80% since the start of the year.

Back in Europe, markets followed a broadly similar pattern to the US, with the STOXX 600 down -0.42%, whilst yields on 10yr bunds (+4.4bps), OATs (+5.1bps) and BTPs (+3.5bps) all moved higher. Sentiment wasn’t helped by the latest ZEW survey from Germany, where the expectations component fell for a 3rd consecutive month in May to -10.7 (vs. -5.0 expected), so further reversing the more positive sentiment we saw around the turn of the year. On the other hand, there was some further good news from natural gas prices, which fell -1.53% to another 22-month low of €31.82/MWh.

Elsewhere, UK gilts were an outperformer yesterday following signs that the labour market might be softening. In particular, the number of payrolled employees unexpectedly fell by -136k in April (vs. +25k expected), which marked the first monthly decline in that measure since February 2021. Furthermore, the unemployment rate over the three months to March rose a tenth to 3.9% (vs. 3.8% expected). See our economist’s view on the data here. The release meant investors slightly downgraded the likelihood of a rate hike at the BoE’s next meeting in June, with the chances down to 78%, having been at 85% the previous day.

It was the reverse story in Canada, with 10yr yields up by +17bps after the country’s CPI reading unexpectedly rose in April. That showed inflation rising to +4.4% (vs. +4.1% expected), which ended a run of 5 consecutive monthly declines in headline inflation. In turn, investors dialled up the chances that the Bank of Canada might hike rates at the next meeting following their recent pause, with overnight index swaps now seeing a 35% chance of another 25bp move in June.

Asian equity markets are mixed this morning as US debt negotiations continue. Across the region, the Nikkei (+0.66%) is topping gains, moving beyond the 30,000 level for the first time since September 2021, as Japan’s Q1 GDP beat estimates (more below) while the KOSPI (+0.56%) is also trading up. Elsewhere, Chinese stocks are losing ground this morning with the Hang Seng (-0.48%), the CSI (-0.35%) and the Shanghai Composite (-0.24%) all edging lower. Outside of Asia, US stock futures are printing mild gains with those on the S&P 500 (+0.19%) and NASDAQ 100 (+0.25%) retracing some of yesterday’s losses.

Coming back to Japan, data showed that the economy grew +1.6% in the first quarter this year on an annualized basis (v/s +0.8% expected), recording the first increase in three quarters and following a revised -0.1% fall in Q4 last year (initially +0.1%). A strong rebound in service activity after reopening post pandemic was the main driver of growth.

To the day ahead now, and data releases include US housing starts and building permits for April, along with the final CPI print for April from the Euro Area. From central banks, we’ll hear from BoE Governor Bailey, ECB Vice President de Guindos, along with the ECB’s de Cos, Elderson, Centeno and Rehn. Finally, earnings releases include Target and Cisco.

2 b) NOW NEWSQUAWK (EUROPE/REPORT)/ASIA REPORT

Debt ceiling impasse remains, DXY bid & equities contained; TGT due – Newsquawk US Market Open

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 06:20 AM

• European bourses & US futures are incrementally firmer in somewhat limited trade with corporate updates factoring and the focus on debt talks
• DAX 40 outperforms amid strength in Siemens & SAP; region follows mixed APAC trade, though Nikkei 225 surpassed 30k
• Overall, debt ceiling updates were slightly constructive, but the impasse does ultimately remain
• DXY briefly topped 103.00 as the Yuan continues to slip on soft data to the detriment of peers with JPY and GBP lagging
• Core benchmarks have experienced a bounce on firm EGB/UK supply, while USTs are slightly more restrained pre-20yr
• Crude is essentially unchanged with specific drivers limited while base metals are mixed as the USD firms and after recent Chinese data
• Looking ahead, highlights include US Building Permits/Housing Starts. ECB’s de Guindos. Supply from the US. Earnings from Target, Cisco & TJX

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EUROPEAN TRADE

EQUITIES

• European bourses are in close proximity to the unchanged mark, Euro Stoxx 50 +0.1%, with fresh drivers somewhat limited and following a mixed APAC session though one that feature marked Nikkei 225 outperformance, above 30k.
• Within Europe, the DAX 40 +0.3% outperforms after heavyweight Siemens’ (+2.0%) Q2 update alongside strength in SAP (+1.6%) following a guidance update and buyback announcement; in contrast, Financial Services are pressured by LSE and Euronext while Commerzbank is the Banking sector laggard.
• Stateside, futures are modestly firmer in generally horizontal trade with the ES +0.1% around 4130 ahead of debt ceiling updates with the overnight developments slightly constructive but the impasse ultimately remains.
• Tencent (700 HK): Q1 2023 (CNY): Revenue 149.99bln (exp. 146.29nlm). Net 32.5bln (exp. 33.2bln), Operating 40.43bln (exp. 40.7bln); Weixin and Wechat MAUs 1.32bln (exp. 1.32bln).
• Click here and here for a recap of the main European updates.
• Click here for more detail.

FX

• DXY tops 103.000 amidst broad gains mainly forged at the expense of the Yuan.
• USD/CNY probes 7.0000 and USD/CNH approaches Fib at 7.0364 after a spate of disappointing Chinese data.
• Yen under 137.00 vs Dollar and relying on 200 DMA for a reprieve, Sterling sub-1.2450 and relatively unaffected by BoE’s Bailey.
• Euro teeters above Fib in the low 1.0800 zone.
• PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 6.9748 vs exp. 6.9750 (prev. 6.9506).
• Click here for more detail.
• Click here for the notable FX expiries for today’s NY cut.

FIXED INCOME

• Firm bounce in core EU bonds and strong demand for supply along the way.
• Bunds and Gilts are both towards the top of ranges extending to 135.82 and 100.83 from 135.28 and 100.41 respectively.
• USTs relatively restrained with T-note tethered to 115-00 ahead of US housing data and USD 15bln 20-year sale.
• Click here for more detail.

COMMODITIES

• Crude benchmarks are essentially unchanged after drifting in the first half of the session as the USD picked up and sentiment slipped; a narrative that has eased/lifted from respective session peaks since.
• Currently, WTI and Brent are incrementally firmer within circa. USD 1/bbl parameters with specific newsflow light and focus on geopols. amid reports that Iran’s Economy Minister discussed oil and gas projects with Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg.
• Spot gold is drifting with the USD firmer and sentiment improving throughout the morning, yellow metal below USD 2k/oz and approaching the USD 1981/oz 50-DMA.
• Base metals are more mixed, with the region attempting to recoup some of the recent China-induced pressures but with action capped on USD strength.
• US Energy Inventory Data (bbls): Crude +3.7mln (exp. -0.9mln), Gasoline -2.5mln (exp. -1.1mln), Distillate -0.9mln (exp. +0.1mln), Cushing +2.9mln.
• UBS lowers Year-End Brent forecast by USD 10/bbl to USD 95/bbl amid greater-than-expected supply.
• Click here for more detail.

NOTABLE HEADLINES

• The Royal United Services Institute think tank warned that UK PM Sunak will have to find USD 42bln in tax hikes and spending cuts to pay for his pledge to boost defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, according to The Mirror.
• The Resolution Foundation has warned that the BoE’s decision to hike interest rates could limit Chancellor Hunt’s room to lower taxes in the Autumn, according to The Times.
• UK Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer calls for the UK’s current Brexit deal to be renegotiated, but declares the UK must not re-join the EU or single market, according to Sky News.
• ECB’s de Cos says the ECB is getting near the end of its tightening cycle; transmission remains strong.
• ECB’s Rehn says need to see core CPI slow substantially.
• BoE Governor Bailey says “If there were to be evidence of more persistent pressures, then further tightening in monetary policy would be required.”. MPC pays particular attention to indicators of inflation persistence, including labour market tightness and wage growth, and services price inflation. There are signs that the labour market is loosening a little.

DATA RECAP

• EU HICP Final YY (Apr) 7.0% vs. Exp. 7.0% (Prev. 7.0%); X F&E Final YY (Apr) 7.3% vs. Exp. 7.3% (Prev. 7.3%); X F, E, A & T Final YY (Apr) 5.6% vs. Exp. 5.6% (Prev. 5.6%)

DEBT CEILING

• US President Biden said they had a good, productive meeting on the debt ceiling and there is still more work to do, while he made it clear to House Speaker McCarthy that they will talk regularly over the next several days. Biden is confident they will continue to make progress on avoiding default and said that defaulting on debt is not an option, while he also noted it is disappointing Republicans refuse to consider raising revenue, according to Reuters.
• White House said President Biden directed staff to meet daily on outstanding issues and said he would like to check in with leaders later this week by phone and meet with them upon return from overseas. Biden also emphasised that while more work remains on a range of difficult issues, he is optimistic that there is a path to a budget agreement, according to Reuters.
• President Biden will no longer visit Australia or Papua New Guinea and will return to the US on Sunday to focus on the debt ceiling talks, according to NBC.
• US House Speaker McCarthy said they have set the stage to carry on conversations in debt talks and that President Biden agreed to appoint a couple of people from the administration to negotiate directly with his team. McCarthy also said there is a lot of work to do in a short amount of time and that they are still very far apart but added it is possible to get a deal by the end of the week and it is not that difficult to reach an agreement. However, McCarthy later said he is not more optimistic about getting a deal by the end of the week.
• US Senate Majority Leader Schumer said the debt meeting was good and productive, while he added that they all agreed a default is a horrible option, according to Reuters.
• US Senate Republican Leader McConnell earlier told Senate Republicans there had not been much progress on debt ceilings talks with POTUS and other leaders.
• House Democrats are to reportedly begin collecting signatures for effort to raise debt ceiling, according to WSJ.
• Punchbowl on the US debt limit, says “Initial discussions began Tuesday night, with full-scale negotiations set to kick off this morning, we’re told”, “Sources close to the talks expect any debt-limit boost to run well into 2025.”

NOTABLE US HEADLINES

• Fed’s Bostic (non-voter) reiterated there is still a way to go to defeat inflation and said the pressure on the Fed will be enormous if unemployment starts to rise and inflation remains sticky. Bostic added that the Fed will have to stay ‘super strong’ in its inflation commitment and he doesn’t share the market view on how fast inflation will fall.
• Western Alliance (WAL) said Q2 deposit growth is USD 2bln+ as of May 12th, while Republic First Bancorp (FRBK) said has adequate capital and does not need to enter into transaction proposed by Norcross-Braca Group, according to Reuters. It was also reported that New York Community Bancorp (NYCB) announced the FDIC agreed to sell 39mln shares of the Co. in an underwritten public offering.
• Shein raises USD 2bln in the latest fundraising round at a USD 66bln valuation, which is around 33% lower YY, via WSJ citing sources.
• Click here for the US Early Morning Note.

GEOPOLITICS

• Russia’s Kremlin says it will not enter a hypothetical discussion on what Russia will do if the grain deal lapses.

CRYPTO

• UK MPs have warned that trading in Bitcoin and other speculative crypto assets should be regulated to prevent consumers from being lulled into a false sense of security about the risks posed, according to The Times.

APAC TRADE

• APAC stocks were mixed with the region cautious after the weak handover from the US where risk appetite was clouded amid debt ceiling concerns, while the meeting between US President Biden and congressional leaders achieved no major breakthroughs although was said to be productive and has set the stage to carry on further conversations.
• ASX 200 was subdued amid losses across nearly all sectors and following mixed wage price index data.
• Nikkei 225 outperformed and climbed above the 30,000 level for the first time since September 2021 with sentiment also underpinned by stronger-than-expected Japanese GDP data.
• Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were lower with price action contained amid a lack of fresh macro catalysts to detract from the recent streak of disappointing data releases from China.

NOTABLE ASIA-PAC HEADLINES

• Chinese embassy spokesman said the visit to Taiwan by former UK PM Truss this week is a dangerous political show which will do nothing but harm to the UK, according to The Guardian.

DATA RECAP

• Chinese China House Prices YY (Apr) -0.2% (Prev. -0.8%)
• Japanese GDP QQ (Q1) 0.4% vs. Exp. 0.1% (Prev. 0.0%); Annualised (Q1) 1.6% vs. Exp. 0.7% (Prev. 0.1%, Rev. -0.1%)
• Australian Wage Price Index QQ (Q1) 0.8% vs. Exp. 0.9% (Prev. 0.8%); YY (Q1) 3.7% vs. Exp. 3.6% (Prev. 3.3%)

2 c. ASIAN AFFAIRS

ASIAN AND AUSTRALIAN CLOSINGS//EUROPE OPENING TRADING:

WEDNESDAY MORNING/TUESDAY NIGHT

SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 6.75 PTS OR 0.21%   //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 417.68 POINTS OR 2.09%      /The Nikkei closed UP 250.60 OR 0.84%  //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.49 %   /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN 6.9960 /OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN DOWN  TO 7.0140 /Oil UP TO 71.07 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT AT 75.01 / Stocks in Europe OPENED MOSTLY RED// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN  TRADING WEAKER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE WEAKER

2 d./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA/

///NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA/

2e) JAPAN

JAPAN

END

3 CHINA /

CHINA//

END

4.EUROPEAN AFFAIRS//UK /SCANDAVIAN AFFAIRS

HUNGARY/EU/UKRAINE

Hungary Blocks €500 Million In EU Weapons Funding For Ukraine After Kiev Sanctions Hungary’s Biggest Bank

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 09:30 AM

Authored by Denes Albert via Remix News,

Hungary won’t agree to EU financing as long as Ukraine keeps its ban on OTP Bank…

Hungary will block funding worth €500 million for arms to Kyiv, which would be the eighth transfer from the European Peace Facility (EPF), business daily Világgazdaság reported.

Budapest has demanded guarantees that the EPF will maintain its global horizon in the future and not only be used to arm Ukraine.

The Council of Foreign Ministers of the EU member states approved on May 5 the joint purchase by EU countries of artillery ammunition and missiles for Ukraine worth €1 billion, the EU Foreign Affairs Council announced on Friday. The aid, approved as part of the European Peace Facility, will allow the Ukrainian armed forces to be supplied with 155-millimeter caliber artillery ammunition and rockets.

A day before the council’s decision, the Ukrainian National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NACC) included OTP Bank in the list of international war sponsors. This decision was justified by the position of the bank’s management on the continuation of its activities in Russia and the de facto recognition of the so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Friday in Stockholm that until Ukraine revokes the decision, the Hungarian government would be “hard pressed” to negotiate further sanctions that would require further sacrifices.

“It is scandalous that Ukraine has put OTP, which does not violate any laws, on the list of international sponsors of the war,” Szijjártó said.

Relations between Ukraine and Hungary have not been good for a while, dating back to before the war, mainly on account of Ukraine’s poor treatment of its ethnic Hungarian minority. However, Hungary’s decision to not send weapons to Ukraine, and its promotion of a peace deal and ceasefire in Ukraine have angered Ukraine and a host of Western governments.

Last month, Tamás Menczer, state secretary for bilateral relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said that Hungary will not support Ukraine’s integration into the European Union or NATO until the rights of the Hungarian community in Ukraine are restored.

It has also been revealed that Ukraine planned to blow up a vital Russian pipeline supplying oil to Hungary in order to cripple Hungary’s industry, according to leaked U.S. intelligence documents. The news has been met with shock in Hungary, with one security analyst saying it amounted to an attack on Hungary, and therefore an attack on NATO.

“This is an attack on Hungary and therefore NATO, according to NATO Article 5,” Hungarian security policy expert György Nógrádi told daily Magyar Nemzet in an interview.

END

5 RUSSIA//UKRAINE AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

UKRAINE//

Head of Ukraine’s Supreme Court arrested for large scale corruption.

What else is new>?

(zerohedge)

Head Of Ukraine’s Supreme Court Arrested For “Large-Scale Corruption” 

TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2023 – 11:05 PM

Yet another large-scale corruption scandal has come out of Ukraine as the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) have announced significant action taken against the highest court in the land. 

“NABU and SAP have exposed large-scale corruption in the Supreme Court, in particular a scheme to obtain undue advantages by the leadership and judges of the Supreme Court,” the anti-corruption bodies announced on their official social media channels Tuesday. It’s a huge embarrassment given this is the highest legal body in the land, and the nation’s top judge, responsible for interpreting and upholding the law.

The watchdog bodies stated they have “documented the head of the Supreme Court receiving a $2.7 million bribe.” An anti-corruption official revealed in a national press briefing that the head of the Supreme Court, Vsevolod Knyazev, has been arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes. The $2.7 million was seized in a raid on the top judges home.

“At this time, the head of the Supreme Court has been detained and measures are being taken to check other individuals for involvement in criminal activity,” a statement said further.

Knyazev, who was the equivalent of the US Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, has was elected to the position in October 2021. He has since been removed by a special session of other judges with a ‘no confidence’ vote.

Further, reports in Ukrainian media suggest that additional judges might be raided and arrested amid the ongoing corruption probe. According to more details which have emerged in Ukrainian media sources, the case could be the tip of the iceberg:

NABU Director Semen Kryvonos revealed that his bureau has documented a series of contacts between the owner of Finances and Credit Group, Kostiantyn Zhevaho, and one of the owners of an attorney group used to conceal criminal activities. These contacts involved an agreement regarding unlawful benefits in favor of high-ranking court officials for “rendering the necessary decision” in favor of the entrepreneur.

Businessman Zhevaho denies his involvement in the multimillion-dollar bribe, as stated in a press release issued by his spokesperson to Forbes.

“This is the most high-profile case during the tenure of NABU and SAP and the biggest exposure of a top-ranking official in the judicial branch of power,” said Kryvonos.

He said the suspects in the case also attempted to influence the appointment of members of the Higher Qualification Commission of Judges (VKKS), the body responsible for career-related matters within the judicial branch of power.

The past months have seen Ukraine, which consistently ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world, take public steps to root out its notorious corruption problem.

This as tens of billions in US taxpayer aid continues to flow through Kiev’s coffers amid the Russian invasion – also as Blackrock, the world’s largest manager of assets, has reached a tentative agreement with President Zelensky to coordinate major reconstruction investment in the war-ravaged country.

The emerging supreme court of Ukraine scandal isn’t the first major corruption revelation since the war began, and its unlikely to be the last.

Earlier in the year, a major scandal was revealed in the top ranks of Ukraine’s military…

END

“Saint Petersburg to Mumbai in 10 days…” | Putin, Raisi Oversee Russia-Iran Deal Signing – YouTube

Robert Hryniak	9:32 AM (2 minutes ago)
to

This is big deal and example of how supply chain efficiencies will change the cost and availability of goods.
35 days in transport is dead money for producers and it will increase the actual velocity of capital movement which is not in Federal Reserve dollars.

END

END

RUSSIA/UKRAINE/

Pepe explains Prighozin’s rant!!

(Pepe Escobar)

Escobar: What’s Behind Prighozin’s Sound & Fury?

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 02:00 AM

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Remember Putin: “We haven’t even started anything yet.”

“Whispers of an ‘evil power’ were heard in lines at dairy shops, in streetcars, stores, apartments, kitchens, suburban and long-distance trains, at stations large and small, in dachas, and on beaches. Needless to say, truly mature and cultured people did not tell these stories about an evil power’s visit to the capital. In fact they even made fun of them and tried to talk sense into those who told them.”

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

To quote Dylan, who might have been a Bulgakov epigone: “So let us stop talking falsely now/the hour’s getting late.” By now it’s quite clear the delusion of a “peace” deal in Ukraine is the latest wet dream of the “non-agreement capable” usual suspects, always hooked on lies and plunder while deftly manipulating selected liberals among the Russian elite.

The goal would be to appease Moscow with a few concessions, while crucially keeping Odessa, Nikolaev and Dnipro, and safeguarding what would be NATO’s access to the Black Sea.

All that while investing in rabid, resentful Poland to become an armed to the teeth EU military militia.

So any “negotiations” towards “peace” in fact mask a drive to postpone – just for a little while – the original masterplan: dismembering and destroying Russia.

There are very serious discussions in Moscow, even at the highest levels, on how the elite is really positioned.

Roughly three groups can be identified: the Victory party; the “Peace” party – which Victory would describe as surrenders; and the Neutral/Undecided.

• Victory certainly includes crucial actors such as Dmitry Medvedev; Rosneft’s Igor Sechin; Foreign Minister Lavrov; Nikolai Patrushev; head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Aleksandr Bastrykin; and – even under fire – certainly Defense Minister Shoigu.
• “Peace” would include, among others, the head of Telegram, Pavel Durov; billionaire entrepreneur Andrey Melnichenko; metal/mining czar Alisher Usmanov (born in Uzbekistan); and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
• Neutral/Undecided would include Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin; mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin; Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, Anton Vaino; First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential administration and media czar, Alexey Gromov; Sberbank’s CEO Herman Gref; Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller; and – special bone of contention – perhaps FSB supremo Alexander Bortnikov.

It’s fair to argue the third group represents the elite majority. This means they heavily influence the entire course of the Special Military Operation (SMO), which by now has metastasized into an Anti-Terror Operation (ATO).

The “counter-offensive” fog of war

These different Russian views at the very top predictably elicit frantic speculation among US and NATO Think Tankland. Hostages of their own excitement, they even forget what anyone with an IQ over room temperature is aware of: Kiev – stuffed with $30 billion in NATO weaponry – may come up with less than zero effects out of its much lauded “counter-offensive”. Russian forces are more than prepared, and Ukraine lacks the surprise element.

Collective West hacks, after feverish head scratching, finally discovered that Kiev needs to go for a “combined arms operation” to get something out of its new deluge of NATO toys.

John Cleese has noted how the coronation of Charles The Tampax King looked like a Monty Python sketch. Now try this one as a sequel: the Hegemon cannot even pay its trillions in debt while Kiev P.R. goons complain that the $30 billion they got is peanuts.

On the Russian front, the indispensable Andrei Martyanov – a maelstrom of wit – has observed how most alarmed Russian military correspondents simply have no idea “what type and volume of combat information is pouring to the command posts in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don or staffs of frontline formations.”

He stresses that “no serious operational level officer” will even talk to these guys, joyfully described as “voenkurva” (roughly, “military bitches”), and simply will not “divulge any kind of operational data which is highly classified.”

So, as it stands, all the sound and fury about the “counter-offensive” is shrouded by a thick fog of war.

And that only serves to add more fuel to the fire of US Think Tankland wishful thinking. The new dominant narrative in the Beltway is that the leadership in Moscow is “fragmented and unpredictable”. And that may be leading to “a conventional defeat of a major nuclear power” whose “command-and-control system broke down.”

Yes: they actually believe in their own silly (copyright John Cleese) propaganda. They are the American equivalent of the Ministry of Silly Walks. Incapable of analyzing why and how the Russian elite holds different views on the method and the extent of the SMO/ATO, the best they can come up with is “protecting Ukraine is a strategic necessity, since the Russian threat increases if Moscow wins in Ukraine.”

What’s behind Prighozin’s sound and fury

Trademark American arrogance/ignorance does not erase the fact there seems to be a serious power struggle among the siloviki. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a siloviki, in fact denounced Shoigu and Gerasimov as incompetent, implying they only keep their posts out of loyalty to President Putin.

This is as serious as it gets. Because it’s linked to a key question posed across several educated silos in Moscow: if Russia is widely known to be the strongest military power in the world with the most advanced defensive and offensive missiles, how come they have not wrapped up the whole deal in the Ukrainian battlefield?

A plausible answer is that only 200,000 members of the Russian army are currently fighting, and about 400,000 to 600,000 are waiting in reserve for the Ukraine attack. While they wait they are in constant training; so waiting works to Russia’s advantage.

Once the famous “counter-offensive” peters out, Ukraine will be hit with massive force. There will be no negotiated settlement. Only unconditional surrender.

What goin’ on right now – the Prigozhin drama – is subordinated to this logic, running in parallel to a quite sophisticated media operation.

Yes, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) made several serious mistakes, as well as other Russian institutions, since the start of the SMO. To criticize them in public, constructively, is a salutary exercise.

Prighozin’s tactics are a gem; he manipulates a degree of public outrage/indignation to put pressure on the MoD bureaucracy by essentially telling the truth. He could even go as far as naming names: officers who are abandoning different sectors of the frontlines. In contrast, his Wagner “musicians” are pictured as true heroes.

Whether Prigozhin’s sound and fury will be enough to fine tune the MoD’s entrenched bureaucracy is an open question. Still, media coverage of the whole drama is essential; now that these problems are in the public domain, people will expect the MoD to act.

And by the way, this is the essential fact: Prighozin has been allowed (italics mine) to go as far as he wants by the Higher Power (the St. Petersburg connection). Otherwise he would be in a revamped-gulag by now.

So the next few weeks are absolutely crucial. Putin and the Security Council certainly know what everyone else doesn’t – including Prighozin. The key take away is that the ground will start to be laid for US/NATO to eventually turn rump Ukraine, the Baltic lap dogs, rabid Poland and a few other extras into a sort of Fortress Eastern Europe engaged in a war of attrition against Russia with the potential to last decades.

That may be the ultimate argument for Russia to finally go for the jugular, as soon as possible. Otherwise the future will be bleak. Well, not so bleak. Remember Putin: “We haven’t even started anything yet.”

end

RUSSIA//UKRAINE//USA

This is a must read!

Patriot Missile systems

Robert Hryniak

Everyone who has researched the subject understands that America has fallen behind in missile technology and lags even China in performance. One might even suggest that Iran will soon advance beyond what America has.
The more weapon systems go to Ukraine and are destroyed the less stellar they look. Even the British Storm Shadow missiles have been shot down 7 times so far.
It is really a simple mathematical calculation of what is need to stop hypersonic missiles whether defensive or assault types are used. And typically to have a remote chance or striking a missile inbound at least 10 missiles would be needed for ever one inbound missile.
Russia is constantly upgrading its’ weapon systems in real time learning from battlefield testing first commenced in Syria and now being done in Ukraine. Some of latest robotic systems are now deployed in Donbas for live testing before serial production having seen refinement and these systems are designed to be tank Killers and field clearing means of infantry. They are also now equipped with defensive means of addressing kamikaze drones. They have actually used their own Lancet missiles to develop a counter measure. Russians limited by manpower adhere to using strike weapons like artillery to protect manpower and battle line robotics is an extension of that same thinking. In Ukraine most Ukrainians are killed or maimed by artillery and never see a Russian soldier. Russian objectives in equipment call for a 8+ to 1 kill ratio per man lost. It is doubtful that Western companies plan out their hardware in the way.
Now compare this to what Western manufacturers are doing. Yesterday’s devices have no place on the current battlefield. Greed and graft is preventing real new equipment to be made.
One day, when this is over, this SMO will be immensely studied by all Western military planners as to what should be learnt from complete failure on the part of a combined weapons deployment.

END

6.Global Issues//COVID ISSUES/VACCINE  ISSUES/

GLOBAL ISSUES

end

Vaccine issues:

end

END

DR PAUL ALEXANDER:

Excess deaths in UK 2021, 2022, 2023; why? is it the COVID mRNA technology based gene injection? Was the Malone, Kariko, Weissman mRNA technology modified that much by Pfizer that Malone can’t fix it?

If so, he & they must explain for there is a huge sense of belief out there that they have failed to remedy what they invented & lives were lost; if they can’t, we must know why? what limits them?

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERMAY 16

SHARE

Will Malone, Kariko, Weissman tell us why they cannot fix or mitigate the deadly aspect of the mRNA technology?

END

Dr. Mike Yeadon isn’t just saying there was no true pandemic, he is saying there was no new NOVEL virus; I think I understand him; I will tweak that there was some pathogen released that caused ILI

respiratory symptoms; my tweak is that something was released that ‘they’ knew it, they detected with fraud PCR something that was already circulating way before 2019 even

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERMAY 16

SHARE

I do not think Yeadon is insane, I am in admiration of him, and think he is over the target, he is not wrong, I think that in the end we will learn that every single aspect of COVID, from the fraud COVID ‘pandemic’ itself to the fraud mRNA technology based gene injections…all of it was a lie, a hoax! They stole 3 years of our lives, our freedoms, liberties.

Medical malpractice at best and murder at worst.

It was all a lie, they lied about the magnitude of the public health emergency, the mass testing, social distancing, masks, lockdowns etc. All of it. They lied about the so called vaccines.

Listen to Yeadon at minute 5.30:

SOURCE:

‘There was No Virus’ Says The Former Vice President of Pfizer

end

What? The leftist Wall Street Journal (WSJ) rag finally talking smack on the fraud deadly COVID mRNA-DNA technology based gene injection vaccines? ‘Officials Neglect Covid Vaccines’

Danice Hertz and Brianne Dressen suffered severe neurological symptoms after receiving shots. Brianne Dressen was an energetic mom, an avid hiker and a preschool teacher—until she got a Covid vaccine.

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERMAY 17

SHARE

‘Ms. Dressen, 42, was among the first Americans to be vaccinated. She volunteered to participate in AstraZeneca’s trial, and she received her first dose on Nov. 4, 2020, at a clinic in West Jordan, Utah. “I am pro-science and pro-vaccine,” Ms. Dressen says. “I was more than glad to participate in the scientific process.”’

end

Ventilators: you will come to learn that even on that, POTUS Trump was misled and that ventilators did not help but rather killed, killed most people placed on them! Yes, with sedation (midazolam),

Remdesivir, DNR orders, no antibiotics, false positive PCR test, morphine, dehydration, malnourichment, ISOLATION of our elderly, we killed them & ventilators blew holes in already trauma lungs!

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERMAY 17

SHARE

Intubation and ventilation killed our elderly, our vulnerable people, nothing these bastards did from PHAC, CDC, NIH, SAGE, FDA, none of the fraud doctors, nothing, saved lives, just harmed and killed our peoples so we punish them.

end

Biden says what? That White Supremacy most dangerous terrorist threat in US? What? Not rapists & murderers you are allowing at the border POTUS Biden? Not them? Not the jihadist islamist among them?

Not the islamists like Tashfeen Obama and you Biden allowed in during Obama’s 8? Oh shucks, I got it all wrong then, my bad; I guess not Obama’s brown shirts like BLM and antifa? I guess!

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERMAY 17

SHARE

Not you Biden allowing Chinese spies to film US military stations with balloons? Not that? Crap, I am so wrong on these matters. Not Fang Fang?

DR PANDA

END

END

SLAY NEWS

he latest reports from Slay News

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Elon Musk Subpoenaed in Jeffrey Epstein Case against JPMorganREAD MORE…

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DOJ Reportedly Removes IRS Whistleblower & Team From Hunter Biden Tax InvestigationRead more…IRS removes investigative team from Hunter Biden probe in move whistleblower claims is ‘clearly retaliatory’Read more…DeSantis Signs Bills Cutting DEI Spending From Florida UniversitiesRead more…DeSantis Responds to Top Dem Governor’s Criticism, Reminds Him Where He Sent His Family During COVIDRead more…Former Trump Cabinet Member Considering 2024 Presidential RunRead more…Total Household Debt Soars Past $17 Trillion, Signaling Growing Financial BurdenRead more…Congressman’s Staff Attacked, Suspect Now in Police CustodyRead more…GOP Presidential Candidates React to Durham Report: ‘Shut Down the FBI’Read more…

VACCINE IMPACT

President Trump and Rudy Giuliani Sold Presidential Pardons for $2 Million

May 16, 2023 4:36 pm

At the end of President Donald Trump’s presidency in January of 2021, I reported how Trump not only did not keep his promise to “drain the swamp” when he became president in 2016, but that he proved that he was part of that very swamp based on who he pardoned in his last days in office. On his last day in office, Trump pardoned Israeli colonel Aviem Sella, the convicted handler of US-born Jewish-American intelligence analyst and traitor Jonathan Pollard, who stole US military secrets and sold them to Israel. Many of Trump’s supporters were hoping that he was going to pardon two whistleblowers who have risked their lives to reveal the workings of the deep state, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. In addition to not pardoning Edward Snowden and Julian Assange nor those arrested in the January 6th entrance to the U.S. Capitol, Trump pardoned several Big Pharma executives who had been convicted of medical fraud. And now we have reports that President Trump and his personal attorney and former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, in the true fashion of corrupt mafia criminal actions typical in NYC, offered Presidential pardons for the cost of $2 million dollars. While the Trump supporters will undoubtedly be quick to point out that the one making this claim of Presidential pardons being for sale for $2 million is part of a lawsuit by a woman who was a former aide to Giuliani and is accusing him of sexual harassment, and is not a trustworthy source, The Independent today has published an investigative report that corroborates her claim with a former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, who has stated the same thing; that he was offered a Presidential pardon by Trump for $2 million.

Read More…

---

MICHAEL EVERY

MICHAEL EVERY/RABOBANK//

Things Are Closer To Getting Lit Globally

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 10:20 AM

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Close But No Cigar

After Treasury Secretary Yellen spoke of “an unprecedented economic and financial storm” if the US hits its debt ceiling, we might be close to a deal. President Biden cancelled trips to Australia and Papua New Guinea to shore up the Quad and sign a key defense pact after the G7 in Japan this week in order to fly back to D.C. to negotiate. Yet close is still not time for a cigar. Not when the White House says it’s optimistic on a deal by week end but McCarthy says he isn’t; and not when we are talking about the four horsemen of the financial apocalypse.

Relatedly, the Fed’s Barkin just said he isn’t convinced inflation is defeated and would be “comfortable” with more hikes; Mester thinks rates aren’t sufficiently restrictive; Logan added a slower pace doesn’t reflect a lack of commitment to reaching the CPI target; Goolsbee said services inflation is more persistent than previously thought, and he wasn’t sure if the Fed had restrained the economy sufficiently yet; and Bostic added if unemployment rises and inflation remains sticky, the Fed will face enormous pressure but must maintain its commitment to fighting inflation. Only Williams was in any way dovish, projecting CPI to be down towards 3% by year end. So close to a rates peak, perhaps, but nowhere near the rate cuts the market wants to match the cigar already in its mouth.

Indeed, yesterday’s US retail sales data showed ex-autos and gas 0.6% m-o-m vs. 0.2% expected with upwards revisions to the previous month’s data, and the control group 0.7% vs. 0.4%. Moreover, industrial production was 0.5% in April vs. a flat expectation, manufacturing 1.0% vs. 0.1%, and the NAHB housing survey up from 45 to 50 vs. no change expected. Even Japanese GDP got in on the act, with Q1 at 1.6% q-o-q annualised vs. 0.8% consensus. The Q1 Aussie wage price index was also up 0.8% q-o-q vs. 0.9% consensus but 3.7% y-o-y vs. 3.6%: that’s too high for comfort, and was led by the public sector. Sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, when you think you see an imminent recession, a cigar is just a cigar.

However, things are closer to getting lit globally. This week’s G7 will focus on Russia and China. On the former, the Financial Times warns ‘Russia’s economic war with the West moves to a new frontline’, and Western firms risk losing their assets there with little or no compensation. What makes them think the same wouldn’t be repeated in China should sanctions be rolled out for it?

Indeed, Bloomberg says ‘Wall Street’s Biggest Banks Face a Harsh Reality Check in China’, and that they are: “scaling back ambitious expansion plans and profit goals as a deteriorating geopolitical climate and President Xi Jinping’s willingness to sacrifice economic priorities for security concerns rock the private sector and throttle dealmaking… there’s now a realization that they need a fundamental rethink on the world’s No. 2 economy because the business climate has weakened significantly and the best opportunities for making outsized profits in the country are over, according to the senior executives… Publicly, everyone’s saying the same thing: China is still a massive opportunity and they have no plans to pull out, especially since so much money has already been spent. Privately, Wall Street executives are saying it’s difficult to maintain good standing with both sides as tensions repeatedly flare” The article adds China is no longer a top-three investment priority for a majority of US firms, according to an American Chamber of Commerce survey; and China is also now closing down cross-border broker trading apps to prevent capital outflows.

If only these Masters of the Universe had read political-economy, economic history, or Marxism-Leninism: or read someone who had – recall we were warning of this outcome as far back as 2017.

Yet this is just the economic war that markets now pretend isn’t happening or think doesn’t require anything beyond waving flags at the Eurovision Song Contest. In the actual war, the UK is already providing Ukraine long range Storm Shadow missiles and France is to send SCALP-EG cruise missiles. Now we see the ‘UK and Netherlands agree ‘international coalition’ to help Ukraine procure F-16 jets’, as the AFR notes ‘Australia has 45 FA-18 Hornets it could give to Kyiv’. That’s further escalation to which Russia will respond in kind or, maybe, in the ‘grey zone’: internet cables and key EU gas pipelines could ‘fall off a yacht’. In short, anyone thinking this war is close to an end in terms of its market impact gets no cigar, just a rocket. Especially when the EBRD says Ukraine will require $250bn to rebuild: so double that, and add it to the list of multi-trillion dollar commitments being made by Western governments.

Lastly, some good news, unless you are from Sunderland. My hometown, Luton, won 2-0 last night to make it to ‘Wemberleee’ to play either Middlesborough or Coventry in the Championship play-off for promotion to the Premier League. Yes, that Premier League. Yes, that Luton. For those who follow Wrexham under Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, imagine if in 2032 they are one game away from playing against Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea, etc. That’s the journey here, and without any trace of Hollywood money or glamour. A town which a childhood friend recently tried to enthuse to me was “not as stabby as it used to be,” which fans of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea, etc., may soon have to test for themselves, knows all too well that close is no cigar. But to be able to imagine what one might be like in a place where they are never seen is already something special.  

end

7//OIL ISSUES//NATURAL GAS ISSUES/USA AND GLOBE

8. EMERGING MARKETS//AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND ISSUES

END

YOUR EARLY CURRENCY/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN CLOSING MARKETS AND EUROPEAN BOURSE OPENING AND CLOSING/ INTEREST RATE SETTINGS WEDNESDAY MORNING 7;30AM//OPENING AND CLOSINGS 

EURO VS USA DOLLAR:1.0827 DOWN 0.0039

USA/ YEN 137.00  UP 0.570  NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT .50% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…//YEN  STILL FALLS//

GBP/USA 1.2457  DOWN    0.0027

USA/CAN DOLLAR:  1.3491 UP .0014 (CDN DOLLAR DOWN 14 BASIS PTS)

 Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED DOWN 6.75 PTS OR 0.21% 

 Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 417.68 PTS OR 2.09%

AUSTRALIA CLOSED DOWN .49%  // EUROPEAN BOURSE: MOSTLY RED 

Trading from Europe and ASIA

I) EUROPEAN BOURSES  MOSTLY RED 

2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SENG CLOSED DOWN 417.68 PTS OR 2.09   %

/SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 6.75 PTS OR 0.21%

AUSTRALIA BOURSE CLOSED DOWN 0.49% 

(Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED UP 250.60 PTS OR 0.84% 

INDIA’S SENSEX  IN THE RED

Gold very early morning trading: 1987.65

silver:$23.68

USA dollar index early WEDNESDAY morning: 102.78 UP 38 BASIS POINTS FROM TUESDAY’s close.

WEDNESDAY  MORNING NUMBERS ENDS

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And now your closing WEDNESDAY NUMBERS 11: 00 AM

Portuguese 10 year bond yield: 3.122%  DOWN 2   in basis point(s) yield

JAPANESE BOND YIELD: +0.367 % DOWN 3  AND 3//100   BASIS POINTS /JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/

SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.389 DOWN 3 in basis points yield 

ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD 4.182 DOWN 4  points in basis points yield ./ THE ECB IS QE’ ING ITALIAN BONDS (BUYING ITALIAN BONDS/SELLING GERMAN BUNDS)

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: 2.333  DOWN 1  BASIS PTS 

END

IMPORTANT CURRENCY CLOSES FOR WEDNESDAY  

Closing currency crosses for day /USA DOLLAR INDEX/USA 10 YR BOND YIELD/1:00 PM

Euro/USA 1.0824 DOWN  0.0042 or 42  basis points 

USA/Japan: 137.48 UP 1.042  OR YEN DOWN 104 basis points/

Great Britain/USA 1.2469 DOWN .0014 OR 14   BASIS POINTS //

Canadian dollar UP  .0000 OR 13 BASIS pts  to 1.3476

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The USA/Yuan,  CNY: closed    ON SHORE  (CLOSED DOWN.(6.9968)

THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE:    (YUAN CLOSED (DOWN)…. 7.0091

TURKISH LIRA:  19.76 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WISH/HYPERINFLATION TO BEGIN.

the 10 yr Japanese bond yield  at +0.367…VERY DANGEROUS

Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 1 in basis points from TUESDAY at  3.563% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic

 USA 30 yr bond yield   3.836 DOWN 1  IN BASIS POINTS

USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 4.1435% UP 4  in basis points.

 USA dollar index, 102.83 UP 42  in basis points   ON THE DAY/12.00 PM

Your  12:00 AM bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates  WEDNESDAY: 12:00 PM

London: CLOSED DOWN 32.78 points or   0.42%

German Dax :  CLOSED UP 38.77 PTS OR 0.25%

Paris CAC CLOSED DOWN 10.51 PTS OR 0.14%

Spain IBEX UP 13.20 PTS OR  0.14%

Italian MIB: CLOSED DOWN 16.35 PTS OR 0.06%

WTI Oil price 71.71     12: EST

Brent Oil:  75.46      12:00 EST

USA /RUSSIAN ///   AT:  79,90/ ROUBLE  UP 0 AND   49//100       RUBLES/DOLLAR

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD; +2.333 DOWN 1 BASIS PTS

UK 10 YR YIELD: 3.865 UP 5  BASIS PTS

CLOSING NUMBERS: 4 PM

Euro vs USA: 1.0840 DOWN 0.0025   OR 25 BASIS POINTS

British Pound: 1.2488 UP   .0004 or  4 basis pts 

BRITISH 10 YR GILT BOND YIELD:  3.8715% UP 4 BASIS PTS

USA dollar vs Japanese Yen: 137.61 UP 1.175 //YEN DOWN 118 BASIS PTS//

USA dollar vs Canadian dollar: 1.3448  DOWN .0028 CDN dollar, UP 28  basis pts)

West Texas intermediate oil: 72.70

Brent OIL:  76.80

USA 10 yr bond yield UP 3 BASIS pts to 3.582% 

USA 30 yr bond yield UP 1  BASIS PTS to 3.876% 

USA 2 YR BOND:  UP 8  PTS AT 4.1498%  

USA dollar index: 102.70 UP 30 BASIS POINTS  

USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 19.77

USA DOLLAR VS RUSSIA//// ROUBLE:  79.86  UP 0   AND  53/100 roubles

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE: UP 408.63 PTS OR 1.24% 

NASDAQ 100 UP 163.25 PTS OR 1.22%

VOLATILITY INDEX: 16.77 DOWN 1.22 PTS (6.78)%

GLD: $184.23 DOWN 0.64 OR 0.35%

SLV/ $21.82 UP  0.01 OR 0.01%

end

USA AFFAIRS

1 a) USA TRADING TODAY IN GRAPH FORM

Banks Bounce Again As Massive Short Squeeze Lifts Stocks; Bonds Battered

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 04:00 PM

Having ignored Target’s clear signals that the consumer is in trouble, hopes for a Debt Ceiling debacle resolution and a PR statement from a regional bank about deposits (WAL), combined with a 0-DTE-inspired short-squeeze, sparked a big day for banks (and thus small caps) and as the broad stock markets squeezed higher, bonds were dumped along with gold.

US Sovereign risk retreated a smidge…

Source: Bloomberg

Regional banks surged (but stalled at a key resistance level)…

As ‘most shorted’ stocks squeeze hard (also up to a key technical level)…

Source: Bloomberg

Ignited by a big push from 0-DTE traders in the Russell 2000 at the open…

Source: SpotGamma

All of which lifted all the majors higher with Small Caps the biggest gainer…

After being rangebound (between the 50- and 100-DMAs), The Dow broke out to the upside today (but faded late on)…

Treasuries were sold again today with the short-end underpeforming (2Y +6bps, 30Y +2bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

The 2Y Yield soared up to 3-week highs and stalled (right before the regional bank crisis scare re-emerged)…

Source: Bloomberg

Fed rate change expectations continued to trend hawkishly (though only modestly), but rate-cut expectations later in the year are falling quickly…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rallied today, testing the early April highs before rolling over…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin surged today after testing down to $26,600

Source: Bloomberg

Oil soared today, despite a big crude build, as debt ceiling anxiety may have lifted optimism and pushed WTI back above $73…

Gold broke down below $2000 (Futs), back to six-week lows…

Finally, today we heard from Target about just what a shitshow the consumer is in Q1.. worse in March… and worserer in April…but the spin was that yesterday’s retail sales data proved they are resilient. That’s true except its noise as Bloomberg’s Simon White notes, the trend is not your friend at all for spending…

Source: Bloomberg

Banks are less willing to make consumer loans, and this points to retail-sales growth continuing to weaken fairly steeply through the rest of the year.

b) last night trading// DEBT CEILING commentaries

Good reason for not using the 14th amendment

(EpochTimes)

Why Biden Can’t Use The 14th Amendment To Raise The Debt Ceiling

TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2023 – 10:05 PM

Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times,

Some Senate Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to “use” the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit by executive decree. For example, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) stated:

“The 14th Amendment is not anyone’s first choice. The first choice is that the Republicans raise the debt ceiling because the United States government never, ever, ever, ever defaults on its legal obligations. But if Kevin McCarthy is going to push the United States over a cliff, then it becomes the president’s responsibility to find an alternative path.”

As a former law professor and a senator for more than 10 years, Warren almost certainly knows that keeping the current debt ceiling doesn’t cause default. It merely forces the government to run a balanced budget—something the government should be doing anyway.

And all Warren needs to do is read the 14th Amendment to learn that it gives the president no power to “use” it to create more debt.

Not Raising the Debt Limit Just Means Balancing the Budget

The debt limit is a law restricting how much the federal government may borrow. The current law says $34.4 trillion. If Congress refuses to change the law, it will remain at $34.4 trillion. Borrowing more than that is illegal. So the government will have to pay its debt obligations out of current revenue.

Could the federal government do that? Sure.

Current revenue is about eight times current interest payments. (In other words, debt service is about 13 percent of revenue.) Obviously, there’s enough money coming in to pay existing debt while retaining most government services. Of course, the feds would have to trim other parts of the budget. I’m sure readers have many suggestions on that score.

These facts are no secret. Moreover, they’re buttressed by experience: We have reached earlier debt limits on many occasions, but there has been no default. Mostly what happens is a few federal facilities close. (When that happened last time, the feds closed Rocky Mountain National Park. No problem: The Colorado state government took over the job.)

Still, every time we approach a new debt limit, unscrupulous politicians and their media propagandists claim we’re at risk of default. This is so patently false that we can only conclude that what concerns them isn’t default but something else.

What is that “something else”? That people might learn they really don’t need all that exorbitant federal spending. That they might decide they like the budget being balanced.

The 14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, soon after the Civil War. It’s the longest amendment ever adopted, because it addressed a multiplicity of issues. One reason for the amendment was to ensure that future Congresses, even if dominated by members from former Confederate states, would honor the Union Civil War debt.

The amendment has five sections. Sections 4 and 5 are relevant to our discussion. Here’s the pertinent language:

“Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned …

“Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

Notice what this language says:

• The validity of U.S. public debt shall not be questioned. This means that the federal government may not use any pretext for refusing to pay off debt instruments, such as savings bonds and Treasury bills.
• The amendment grants Congress the power to pass laws to ensure our debt obligations are met.

Now notice what this language doesn’t say:

• It doesn’t say the government must borrow more to pay off existing debt; Congress may meet its obligations from existing revenue.
• It doesn’t say Congress must change legal limits on borrowing.
• Although it grants power to Congress, it grants none to the president—other than to enforce the laws enacted by Congress. This is because the Constitution requires that the president “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3). One of those laws the president must enforce is the national debt limit.

This Isn’t a Mere Technicality

The principle that a government’s financial powers are lodged in a representative legislature rather than the executive is central to our political system. Many people died for that ideal.

When, in the 17th century, King Charles I exercised financial powers without the approval of Parliament, it led directly to the English Civil War. The king lost that war and his head (literally).

Then, in the 18th century, King George III and a Parliament not representing Americans tried to tax Americans. This led directly to the American Revolution. Again, the king lost. He did keep his head, but he lost all his power within the United States and most of it within Britain.

Biden would be wise to consult these precedents.

The fact that people such as Warren should even mention the possibility of the president’s violating the law and unilaterally taking on more public debt tells us what we need to know about them.

The Makings of Calamity

One of the talking points among those who want to raise the debt limit is that failure to do so would be a “calamity.” Or so claims Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. From experience, we know this isn’t true.

But here’s a real recipe for calamity: Imagine that to pay current debt without cutting spending, Biden tries to sell debt instruments on his own authority. (Call them “Biden Bonds.”) When the Supreme Court strikes down this autocratic edict (as it has struck down several of Biden’s other autocratic edicts), what then would be the effect on United States credit?

And since people in the bond market are risking their own money as Warren and Yellen are not, how many of them would be willing to purchase Biden Bonds? And if they refused to do so, what would that do to U.S. credit?

How Can We Avoid This in the Future?

For more than 50 years, a super-majority of the American people have favored a constitutional amendment forcing the federal government, except in rare cases, to run a balanced budget. That would stop the feds from piling up more and more debt.

In 2017, I wrote (admittedly, a first draft) of such an amendment. It isn’t overly technical. It merely says this: Before Congress may raise the debt limit—in other words, before it runs a budget deficit—Congress must get the approval of a majority of the legislatures of states containing a majority of the U.S. population (pdf).

There are two principal reasons we don’t have a balanced budget amendment: Congress refuses to propose one for the states to ratify, and apologists for the national oligarchy have been misleading Americans about the procedure for proposing an amendment through a convention of states.

Eventually, Americans will get fed up with the delay and force their state lawmakers to call a convention. Let’s hope it will not be too late.

end

In Desperate Hail Mary, House Dems Launch ‘Discharge Petition’ To Force Debt-Ceiling Vote

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 10:05 AM

House Democrats plan to collect signatures on Wednesday for a ‘discharge petition,’ a long-shot parliamentary maneuver designed to circumvent House Republican leadership and force a vote on the debt ceiling, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The top-ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Brendan Doyle (D-PA), says he plans to initiate the petition in the well of the House when the chamber begins session at 10 a.m., where he’ll be the first to sign.

“We only have two weeks to go until we may hit the x-date,” he said, referring to the anticipated default date. “We must raise the debt ceiling now and avoid economic catastrophe.”

Early Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) sent a “Dear Colleague” letter backing Doyle’s effort, claiming that the “urgency of the moment” justifies pursuing all legislative options in the event that negotiations fall through.,

“It is imperative that Members make every effort to sign the discharge petition today, which will be available at the Clerk’s desk on the House Floor beginning at 10 a.m.,” reads the letter.

The move comes as the White House is negotiating with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) over possible spending cuts to pair with a debt-ceiling increase. Talks currently center on potential spending caps in coming years, as well as rescinding unspent Covid-19 funds and toughening work requirements for federal benefit programs. The White House said Tuesday that President Biden would curtail a planned overseas trip to get him back to Washington sooner.

The Treasury Department reiterated this week that the U.S. could become unable to pay its bills on time as soon as June 1 if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit. -WSJ

In order to move a bill to the floor by discharge position, Doyle will need at least 218 House members to sign – however since Republicans control the house 222-213, at least five GOP representatives must sign on. 

The petition is structured so that Democrats can fill in the text of the bill later, with Boyle saying that Democrats want to keep their options open for now.

“I’ve always said a discharge petition is not a high probability move. But at this point, we must try whatever it takes,” said Boyle. “I urge my Republican colleagues, especially those who like to call themselves moderate at election time, to join us and ensure America pays its bills.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned on Monday that “time is running out” to avert an economic catastrophe, and that default could see financial markets “break” with worldwide panic that triggers margin calls, bank runs and fire sales.

“We are already seeing the impacts of brinksmanship: investors have become more reluctant to hold government debt that matures in early June,” Yellen said in remarks prepared for delivery to a banking conference on Tuesday, Bloomberg reports. “The impasse has already increased the debt burden to American taxpayers.”

Meanwhile, President Biden is shortening his trip to Asia for the G7 meeting in order to return early to continue debt limit negotiations with Republicans.

The White House had emphasized how Biden’s attendance at a summit of the Group of Seven major industrial countries in Japan this week would shore up optimism that the U.S. is able to resolve its differences at home. The president had next planned to travel to Australia for a “Quad” meeting on May 24, with China’s provocative actions in the region expected to be front and center in meetings with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan. –NBC

Biden will also cancel a trip to Papua New Guinea, where he was planning to stop on his way to Sydney to discuss regional security, as well as economic and climate support, whatever that means

II) USA DATA/

A good indicator showing the uSA economy is in trouble

(zerohedge)

Renter Nation Rout – Multi-Family Home Permits Plunged Again In April As Rates Rose

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 08:39 AM

Following March’s plunge in building permits (and drop in starts), analysts expected a mixed picture for April with starts lower again but permits unchanged. The reality was different with housing starts jumping 2.2% MoM (-1.4% MoM exp but March’s data was revised down massively from -0.8% to -4.5%) and permits fell 1.5% MoM (vs unch exp) but also a major revision (upward from -8.8% to -3.0%)…

Source: Bloomberg

Given the massive revisions, this data seems utterly useless, but this leaves the total levels for starts and permits back at pre-COVID levels (despite rates being massively higher)…

Source: Bloomberg

The unexpected drop in permits was triggered by a second straight monthly plunge in multi-family units, down 9.7% MoM (single-family unit permits grew 3.1% MoM)

Source: Bloomberg

On the starts side, single-family dominated…

• Single-family starts 846K SAAR, up 1.3% from 833K, and the highest since Dec 22
• Multi-family starts 542K SAAR, up 5.2% from 515K and in a narrow range over the past year

But on the permits side it was much more mixed…

• April Single-family permits 855K SAAR, up 3.1% from 829K, and the highest since Sept 22
• April Multi-family permits 502K SAAR, down 9.7% from 556K and the lowest since May 21

Finally, the re-rise in mortgage rates certainly doesn’t bode well for the next step in housing permits or builds…

Source: Bloomberg

We suspect The Fed wants more ‘pain’ for the housing market than we have seen so far.

end

III) USA ECONOMIC STORIES

A must read!! Escobar describes in detail by the uSA empire of debt is headed for collapse exactly what happened in ancient Greece and Rome

(Pepe Escobar)

Escobar: US Empire Of Debt Headed For Collapse

TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2023 – 06:05 PM

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Prof. Michael Hudson’s new book, The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point” is a seminal event in this Year of Living Dangerously when, to paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed.

Prof. Hudson’s main thesis is absolutely devastating: he sets out to prove that economic/financial practices in Ancient Greece and Rome – the pillars of Western Civilization – set the stage for what is happening today right in front of our eyes: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.

And that brings us to the common denominator in every single Western financial system: it’s all about debt, inevitably growing by compound interest.

Ay, there’s the rub: before Greece and Rome, we had nearly 3,000 years of civilizations across West Asia doing exactly the opposite.

These kingdoms all knew about the importance of canceling debts. Otherwise their subjects would fall into bondage; lose their land to a bunch of foreclosing creditors; and these would usually try to overthrow the ruling power.

Aristotle succinctly framed it: “Under democracy, creditors begin to make loans and the debtors can’t pay and the creditors get more and more money, and they end up turning a democracy into an oligarchy, and then the oligarchy makes itself hereditary, and you have an aristocracy.”

Prof. Hudson sharply explains what happens when creditors take over and “reduce all the rest of the economy to bondage”: it’s what’s called today “austerity” or “debt deflation”.

So “what’s happening in the banking crisis today is that debts grow faster than the economy can pay. And so when the interest rates finally began to be raised by the Federal Reserve, this caused a crisis for the banks.”

Prof. Hudson also proposes an expanded formulation: “The emergence of financial and landholding oligarchies made debt peonage and bondage permanent, supported by a pro-creditor legal and social philosophy that distinguishes Western civilization from what went before. Today it would be called neoliberalism.”

Then he sets out to explain, in excruciating detail, how this state of affairs was solidified in Antiquity in the course of over 5 centuries. One can hear the contemporary echoes of “violent suppression of popular revolts” and “targeted assassination of leaders” seeking to cancel debts and “redistribute land to smallholders who have lost it to large landowners”.

The verdict is merciless: “What impoverished the population of the Roman Empire” bequeathed a “creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world”.

Predatory oligarchies and “Oriental Despotism”

Prof Hudson develops a devastating critique of the “social darwinist philosophy of economic determinism”: a “self-congratulatory perspective” has led to “today’s institutions of individualism and security of credit and property contracts (favoring creditor claims over debtors, and landlord rights over those of tenants) being traced back to classical antiquity as “positive evolutionary developments, moving civilization away from ‘Oriental Despotism’”.

All that is a myth. Reality was a completely different story, with Rome’s extremely predatory oligarchies waging “five centuries of war to deprive populations of liberty, blocking popular opposition to harsh pro-creditor laws and the monopolization of the land into latifundia estates”.

So Rome in fact behaved very much like a “failed state”, with “generals, governors, tax collectors, moneylenders and carpet beggars” squeezing out silver and gold “in the form of military loot, tribute and usury from Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt.” And yet this Roman wasteland approach has been lavishly depicted in the modern West as bringing a French-style mission civilisatrice to the barbarians – while carrying the proverbial white man’s burden.

Prof. Hudson shows how Greek and Roman economies actually “ended in austerity and collapsed after having privatized credit and land in the hands of rentier oligarchies”. Does that ring a – contemporary – bell?

Arguably the central nexus of his argument is here:

“Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors – euphemized today as ‘security of property rights’. Public expenditure on social welfare was minimized – what today’s political ideology calls leaving matters to ‘the market’. It was a market that kept citizens of Rome and its Empire dependent for basic needs on wealthy patrons and moneylenders – and for bread and circuses, on the public dole and on games paid for by political candidates, who often themselves borrowed from wealthy oligarchs to finance their campaigns.”

Any similarity with the current system led by the Hegemon is not mere coincidence. Hudson: “These pro-rentier ideas, policies and principles are those that today’s Westernized world is following. That is what makes Roman history so relevant to today’s economies suffering similar economic and political strains.”

Prof. Hudson reminds us that Rome’s own historians – Livy, Sallust, Appian, Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, among others – “emphasized the subjugation of citizens to debt bondage”. Even the Delphic Oracle in Greece, as well as poets and philosophers, warned against creditor greed. Socrates and the Stoics warned that “wealth addiction and its money-love was the major threat to social harmony and hence to society.”

And that brings us to how this criticism was completely expunged from Western historiography. “Very few classicists”, Hudson notes, follow Rome’s own historians describing how these debt struggles and land grabs were “mainly responsible for the Republic’s Decline and Fall.”

Hudson also reminds us that the barbarians were always at the gate of the Empire: Rome, in fact, was “weakened from within”, by “century after century of oligarchic excess.”

So this is the lesson we should all draw from Greece and Rome: creditor oligarchies “seek to monopolize income and land in predatory ways and bring prosperity and growth to a halt.” Plutarch was already into it: “The greed of creditors brings neither enjoyment nor profit to them, and ruins those whom they wrong. They do not till the fields which they take from their debtors, nor do they live in their houses after evicting them.”

Beware of pleonexia

It would be impossible to fully examine so many precious as jade offerings constantly enriching the main narrative. Here are just a few nuggets (And there will be more: Prof. Hudson told me, “I’m working on the sequel now, picking up with the Crusades.”)

Prof. Hudson reminds us how money matters, debt and interest came to the Aegean and Mediterranean from West Asia, by traders from Syria and the Levant, around 8th century B.C. But “with no tradition of debt cancellation and land redistribution to restrain personal wealth seeking, Greek and Italian chieftains, warlords and what some classicists have called mafiosi [ by the way, Northern European scholars, not Italians) imposed absentee land ownership over dependent labor.”

This economic polarization kept constantly worsening. Solon did cancel debts in Athens in the late 6th century – but there was no land redistribution. Athens’ monetary reserves came mainly from silver mines – which built the navy that defeated the Persians at Salamis. Pericles may have boosted democracy, but the eventful defeat facing Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) opened the gates to a heavy debt-addicted oligarchy.

All of us who studied Plato and Aristotle in college may remember how they framed the whole problem in the context of pleonexia (“wealth addiction”) – which inevitably leads to predatory and “socially injurious” practices. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates proposes that only non-wealthy managers should be appointed to govern society – so they would not be hostages of hubris and greed.

The problem with Rome is that no written narratives survived. The standard stories were written only after the Republic had collapsed. The Second Punic War against Carthage (218-201 B.C.) is particularly intriguing, considering its contemporary Pentagon overtones: Prof. Hudson reminds us how military contractors engaged in large-scale fraud and fiercely blocked the Senate from prosecuting them.

Prof. Hudson shows how that “also became an occasion for endowing the wealthiest families with public land when the Rome state treated their ostensibly patriotic donations of jewelry and money to aid the war effort as retroactive public debts subject to repayment”.

After Rome defeated Carthage, the glitzy set wanted their money back. But the only asset left to the state was land in Campania, south of Rome. The wealthy families lobbied the Senate and gobbled up the whole lot.

With Caesar, that was the last chance for the working classes to get a fair deal. In the first half of the 1st century B.C. he did sponsor a bankruptcy law, writing down debts. But there was no widespread debt cancellation. Caesar being so moderate did not prevent the Senate oligarchs from whacking him, “fearing that he might use his popularity to ‘seek kingship’” and go for way more popular reforms.

After Octavian’s triumph and his designation by the Senate as Princeps and Augustus in 27 B.C., the Senate became just a ceremonial elite. Prof Hudson summarizes it in one sentence: “The Western Empire fell apart when there was no more land for the taking and no more monetary bullion to loot.” Once again, one should feel free to draw parallels with the current plight of the Hegemon.

Time to “uplift all labor”

In one of our immensely engaging email exchanges, Prof. Hudson remarked how he “immediately had a thought” on a parallel to 1848. I wrote in the Russian business paper Vedomosti: “After all, that turned out to be a limited bourgeois revolution. It was against the rentier landlord class and bankers – but was as yet a far cry from being pro-labor. The great revolutionary act of industrial capitalism was indeed to free economies from the feudal legacy of absentee landlordship and predatory banking — but it too fell back as the rentier classes made a comeback under finance capitalism.”

And that brings us to what he considers “the great test for today’s split”: “Whether it is merely for countries to free themselves from US/NATO control of their natural resources and infrastructure — which can be done by taxing natural-resource rent (thereby taxing away the capital flight by foreign investors who have privatized their natural resources). The great test will be whether countries in the new Global Majority will seek to uplift all labor, as China’s socialism is aiming to do.”

It’s no wonder “socialism with Chinese characteristics” spooks the Hegemon creditor oligarchy to the point they are even risking a Hot War. What’s certain is that the road to Sovereignty, across the Global South, will have to be revolutionary: “Independence from U.S. control is the Westphalian reforms of 1648 — the doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other states. A rent tax is a key element of independence — the 1848 tax reforms. How soon will the modern 1917 take place?”

Let Plato and Aristotle weigh in: as soon as humanly possible.

end

Contagion inside the Busch dynasty as the Bud light backlash shows no sign of letting up.

(zerohedge)

Bud Light Backlash Shows No Sign Of Letting Up, And Now There Is Contagion To Budweiser, Busch And Michelob

TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2023 – 05:05 PM

It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone – except some woke millennial Harvard MBA grad – but Bud Light volume and sales declines have worsened, according to the latest industry point-of-sales data, suggesting the tranny-influencer backlash is showing no signs of letting up.

As Bloomberg’s Janet Freund notes, the most recent third-party point-of-sales data from both Circana (formerly IRI) and Nielsen show that declines in Bud Light dollar share, volume share and sales have continued to worsen.

“Bud Light’s US market share slide continued in the latest Circana market scan to 8.3% in the 4-week period ended May 7 compared with 9.1% only two weeks prior,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kenneth Shea tells Bloomberg News, citing IRI data

“With other top AB InBev brand share also eroding as well, it appears that the company is in need of a pivotal marketing strategy to halt the trend,” he says, adding that Coors Light, Miller Lite and Modelo still appear to be “soaking up the lost share.”

Citi analyst Simon Hale examined the latest US Nielsen data through May 6:

Bud Light volume declines accelerated to -27.4% compared with -26.6% in the week ended April 29, while sales worsened to down 23.9% from down 23%, he writes

“Moreover, there continues to be contagion to the wider ABInBev brand portfolio, with Budweiser, Busch and Michelob all weak,” while competitors like Coors Light “continue to see share gains accelerate,” Hales says.

The latest data show “little sign that consumers are moving on from the Bud Light controversy.”

end

FREIGHTWAVES

Many small carriers heading for bankruptcy:

(Fuller/Freightwaves)

An Unusually Terrible Freight Market May Get A Lot Worse

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 06:30 AM

By Craig Fuller, CEO of FreightWaves,

“It’s the worst freight market since the Great Financial Crisis.” This statement is commonly heard on our channel checks among carrier and broker executives and often repeated on social media. Now we have some evidence to support it.

The National Truckload Index (NTI), available on SONAR, which measures the average national truckload spot rate, is $1.49 a mile, breaking below the 2019 seasonal equivalent.

While extremely low rates are bad enough on their own, the worse news is that operating costs for trucking companies (not including fuel) are up more than 30 cents a mile in that same period. Operating expenses include maintenance, insurance, driver salaries and equipment.

On a cash flow-adjusted basis, current spot rates are equivalent to $1.19 a mile, without including any increases in the cost of capital to finance operations.

Where are the bankruptcies?

With the soft market conditions and low rates, where is the surge in 2023 bankruptcies? 

While we know that thousands of small carriers have revoked their operating authority, we have yet to see a rash of bankruptcies in the truckload industry. 

So far in 2023, FreightWaves has reported on only seven bankruptcies, a little more than one a month. The worst trucking market prior to the current one was in 2019, the “Trucking Bloodbath.” At one point, FreightWaves reported on 10 trucking bankruptcies in a single week. 

New England Motor Freight’s (NEMF’s) bankruptcy opened the year (3,000 employees) and Celadon’s shuttering (5,500 employees) ended it. There were hundreds in between.

Is this a function of trucking companies doing so well during the COVID economy that they were able to pad their balance sheets and prepare for a massive downturn? 

If so, it may mean that capacity stays in the market longer than in a typical down cycle. 

Tender rejections show how dire conditions are in the freight market 

Tender rejections have dropped to an all-time low of 2.53%. The previous record low was set during the COVID lockdowns at 2.57%.

What is a tender rejection? 

A tender rejection measures the balance of supply and demand in the trucking market.

A high rejection rate means that trucking firms have a lot of discretion on what loads they will take. Carriers want a high rejection level. It gives them a lot of choices on loads and drives up rates. 

A low rejection rate is the opposite. It means that the carriers have few loads to pick from and are taking almost anything, without consideration of where it is going and at what price. 

A rejection rate that is this low is significant because it means that carriers are struggling to find load opportunities and have lost pricing power. 

Even though we are talking about freight, let’s look at this in the context of dating

When feeling desperate — you swipe right on everyone, without considering the quality of those prospects — you have a “low rejection rate.”

When feeling “hot” — you swipe left often and are highly selective — you have a “high rejection rate.”

It’s the same idea, just applied to “freight tenders,” not “Tinders.”

There are reasons to expect things could get worse

We know that a lot of the weakness in trucking is related to the expansion of capacity over the past few years.

The total number of registered Class 8 vehicles in the over-the-road truckload industry grew from 1.47 million in February 2020 to 1.7 million as of April 2023. This 16% increase in capacity is a primary reason that freight feels so soft in the carrier community.

Volumes, on the other hand, are relatively stable, at least for now. 

After coming down significantly over the past year, outbound tender volumes have shown a greater degree of seasonality than we’ve seen since 2019. The Outbound Tender Volume Index, which measures volumes in the truckload market, is down 18% from a year ago but up 6.8% since May 2019. 

The softness that the market is currently experiencing is related to too much capacity that chased strong market conditions during the COVID economy that has now come back to earth.

If volumes were to fall further, it could get even more challenging for the trucking industry

The conditions in the freight market are dependent upon the balance of supply and demand.

Any slowing of freight demand will have a negative impact on the economics of the industry. During the COVID economy, government stimulus drove a lot of goods consumption, and thus freight demand. 

The government debt ceiling debate currently hangs over Washington, with no real visibility on whether this will get resolved or how painful it will be. Federal government spending is 25% of GDP, so any delays to resolving this matter will most certainly be felt in the economy. Government employees, contractors and vendors will be significantly impacted, along with entitlement program payments. 

This isn’t the worst outcome.

The nightmare scenario — one that causes the U.S. government to default on its debt — would roil financial markets, potentially causing one of the worst financial crises in history. This is such a doomsday scenario that it defies forecasting and prediction and isn’t even worth diving into.

But there’s something looming over the economy this summer with a far more certain impact. 

A FreightWaves analysis found in March that federal government programs boosted personal income by an estimated $2.3 trillion from March 2020 to December 2022. According to The Motley Fool, consumers received an average of $3,450 in stimulus during the COVID economy. This included direct payments into bank accounts, an expanded Child Tax Credit and an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit.

We know from our freight data models that freight demand saw substantial increases in the weeks following government stimulus payments being transmitted.

Consumers with student loan debt were able to save, on average, more than $15,000 since March 2020 — and that’s about to end

One of the biggest COVID-related stimulus programs is not factored into our analysis or Motley Fool’s numbers: student loan forbearance. Since student loan payments were put on hold and not forgiven, neither FreightWaves nor Motley Fool calculated these as part of its consumer stimulus estimates. 

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the student loan deferment program will end no later than June 30, 2023, and payments are expected to resume by Sept. 1, 2023. The amount of money we are talking about, in excess of a trillion dollars, is staggering. Student loans represent 7% of U.S. GDP. 

Sixty-four percent of the $1.7 trillion in student loan debt remains in forbearance, amounting to $1.1 trillion. Many of the 25 million Americans who have deferred payments for student debt are aged 18-44 years old, one of the most important demographic groups that drive consumer spending. 

According to a New York Federal Reserve Study, the average student loan payment is $393 per month. The original forbearance program was instituted by President Donald Trump at the beginning of COVID in March 2020. 

For consumers taking advantage of the program, they have deferred 39 months worth of payments, resulting in more than $15,327 in additional discretionary income during the period, much larger than the amount most consumers received from other COVID stimulus programs. 

The forbearance program, when originally conceived, was intended to be a short-term program to protect consumers from the COVID black swan event. But many consumers made financial decisions based on this short-term cash flow boost, treating the cash as permanent. 

The Biden administration has been working to forgive up to 30% of outstanding student loans, but that is currently in doubt, with the Supreme Court expected to rule within the next month that the president lacks the authority to cancel the debts.

Because the president has been signaling a desire to cancel student loans and consumers have not had to make payments for over three years, the resumption of payments will come as a personal cash flow shock to many households. 

This couldn’t come at a worse time

For the past few months, we’ve heard carrier executives predict that the second half of the year is going to be much better than the first half. 

They often base this assumption on the expectation that the excess in retail inventories accumulated in the supply chain bullwhip will have burned off by the end of the summer. 

There is good reason to endorse this view. Most of the excess inventory was ordered at least 18 months prior, and retailers have been pulling back significantly since they recognized they had a problem in Q1 2022. 

But consumers are facing financial stresses from a lot of different directions. 

Inflation has the biggest impact on the same consumer segment that holds the majority of student loans. These consumers have already maxed their available credit. 

A sudden increase of $393 per month will force consumers aged 18-44 years old to cut back on discretionary spending. Since portions of this demographic have a tendency to prioritize experiences over goods consumption, we can expect this will have a much bigger impact on freight demand in the coming months. Last week’s April senior loan officer opinion survey indicated that lending standards continue to tighten and loan demand is weakening, both of which augur poorly for future consumer spending as well. 

Colder temperatures are coming for the freight market — just in time for July. The “worst freight market since the Great Financial Crisis” may get worse.

end

Target notes softening sales trends but they signal going woke????

(zerohedge)

“Softening Sales Trends” – Target Stores Go Woke As Consumer Slowdown Signals Accelerate

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 09:50 AM

Analysts and traders have been questioning whether the robust consumer spending trend observed early in the season would sustain, or if a slowdown in spending was imminent. Their answer arrived over the past few days as Home Depot cut its forecast due to sliding sales as the home improvement boom appears to be waning. Additionally, Target, one of the biggest retailers, voiced concerns about “softening sales trends.” 

Comparable sales from brick-and-mortar stores and digital channels operating for at least 12 months were flat for the three-month period that ended April 29 compared with the same quarter last year. That is lower than the previous quarter’s 0.7% increase. 

Target executives told reporters that consumers are dialing back discretionary purchases and switching to staple goods as price rises and higher interest rates crimp household budgets. They said food and beverage, household essentials, and cosmetic sales were strong. 

The Minneapolis retailer beat Wall Street expectations and maintained annual profit guidance above industry analyst projections. However, warned about faltering consumers:

“We came into 2023 clear-eyed about what consumers are facing with persistent inflation and rising interest rates.

“We were determined to build on our guests’ trust by unifying as one team to deliver affordable joy each and every day as consumers and businesses navigate a third straight year of dynamic challenges,” Target chairman and CEO Brian Cornell told reporters. 

Target expects earnings in the current quarter to range from $1.30 to $1.70. Data from Bloomberg showed that it would trail the $1.91 average of analyst estimates. 

Its first-quarter net earnings slid 5.8% to $950 million because of increasing labor costs, inflation, and ‘shrink’ — the loss of merchandise due to theft. 

“We continue to contend with a significant headwind caused by inventory shrink, building on a worsening trend that emerged last year,” said Cornell. 

Specifically, Target pointed to a worsening blow from organized retail theft, which is expected to erode profit by an additional $500 million compared with last year, when Target was already contending with rising theft.

“We are making significant investments in strategies to prevent this from happening in our stores and protect our guests and our team,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell said in the statement.

“We’re also focused on managing the financial impact on our business so we can continue to keep our stores open.”

Finally, Christina Hennington, Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer, dropped the hammer on the ‘strong consumer’ narrative:

In many ways, the themes of the first-quarter operating environment were very similar to what we’ve outlined in recent quarters. So it likely comes as no surprise that we continue to face elevated volatility and see a reprioritization of spending away from discretionary categories in the face of persistent inflation in groceries and essentials.

…

American consumers continue to face difficult trade-off decisions as they as they juggle the wants and needs of their families. Consumer saving rates are down, and while inflation rates are finally declining, so is consumer confidence. The fear of a looming recession weighs heavily on many American families…

…total sales were strongest in February, began decelerating in March, and softened further near the end of April…

Target’s mixed picture underscores a slowdown in consumer spending that Home Depot first showed on Tuesday. The next earnings report will be from Walmart on Thursday, with Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Nordstrom later this month — all will provide valuable insight into consumer health. 

On Monday, we shared the latest monthly Consumer Checkpoint report published by Bank of America, which showed signs of a slowdown in consumer spending. 

Target shares were flat after the earnings report. 

Other retailer shares range between up 5% to 10% year-to-date. 

It appears Target’s taken a ‘new’ angle to addressing this consumer slowdown… go woke!

Oops. 

This likely won’t end well for Target.

USA COVID//

END

SWAMP STORIES

the origins of Russia-Gate

(zerohedge)

“Damn, That’s Thin”, “I Know”, “It Sucks”: The Untold Story Of The Trump-Russia Investigation

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 08:50 AM

Authored by Susan Schmidt via Racket News,

Special Counsel John Durham’s “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” trickled out yesterday afternoon, hitting journalist inboxes just after 3:00 p.m. A quick read revealed the following key takeaways:

1. There was no valid predicate for the investigation, and the FBI knew it.

From the report:

It is the Office’s assessment that the FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia. Similarly, the FBI Inspection Division Report says that the investigators “repeatedly ignore[d] or explain[ed] away evidence contrary to the theory the Trump campaign… had conspired with Russia… It appeared… there was a pattern of assuming nefarious intent.” An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, it did not.

The entirety of the evidence the FBI used to launch its investigation of the Trump campaign is contained in what came to be known as “Paragraph Five,” because it ended up in that spot in a FISA warrant application on Trump volunteer Carter Page. The information in Paragraph Five came from Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and was derived from an interaction he had at a London wine bar with young Trump foreign policy volunteer George Papadopoulos, ostensibly concerning Russia.

Australian diplomats told Durham that the impetus for passing the Paragraph Five info to the U.S. government in late July 2016 was the release of hacked DNC emails by Wikileaks. The entire case came down to an abstract of a diplomatic cable, quoted here in full:

Mr. Papadopoulos was, unsurprisingly, confident that Mr. Trump could win the election. He commented that the Clintons had “a lot of baggage” and suggested the Trump team had plenty of material to use in its campaign. He also suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton and President Obama. It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly of sic through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.

On the strength of that tiny bit of information, the FBI opened full investigations into four Trump presidential campaign aides, seeking to determine whether they were “witting or and/or coordinating activities with the government of Russia.”

2. “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground.”

As soon as the FBI received Paragraph Five, Counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok and a supervisory agent rushed to London, where they met with an FBI legal attaché (UKALAT) and interviewed diplomats at the Australian High Commission. In a taxi on the way to the interviews, Strzok reportedly said, “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground,” as the attaché later told the FBI’s inspection division.

One of the Australian diplomats told the FBI team that “the Paragraph Five information was written in an intentionally vague way because of what Papadopoulos did and did not say,” and, because of their uncertainty about what to make of it. The report says Downer told the FBI that Papadopoulos “simply stated, ‘The Russians have information…’ He made no mention of Clinton emails, dirt or any specific approach by the Russian government to the Trump campaign team with an offer or suggestion of providing assistance.”

British intelligence officials, the FBI attaché said, “could not believe the Papadopoulos bar conversation was all there was.”

3. “It’s thin”; “There’s nothing to this.”

A message exchange on August 11, 2016 between the attaché and the supervisory agent shows the Americans were as skeptical as the British.

UKALAT-1: Dude, are we telling them [British Intelligence Service-I] everything we know, or is there more to this?

Supervisory Special Agent-1: That’s all we have.

Supervisory Special Agent-I: not holding anything back

UKALAT-1: Damn that’s thin

Supervisory Special Agent-I: I know

Supervisory Special Agent-I: it sucks

4. The Trump campaign investigation was premised on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” and U.S. intel agencies possessed no “actual evidence of collusion” when the probe began

According to Durham, the senior FBI officials who ordered the probe did not look at the Bureau’s intelligence databases, or consult its experienced Russia analysts, who could have told them they had seen no information about Donald Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials.

Nor did they seek such information about Trump and Russia from the CIA, the NSA or the State Department.

“Neither US law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion” when the investigation began, the report said.

Further, the FBI opened a full-scale investigation “without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information.”

5. Sensational stories published in the New York Times in February and March 2017 claiming Trump associates were in contact with Russian intelligence agents were false.

Declassified FBI documents from the period surrounding publication of two influential New York Times articles include Strzok’s annotated refutations of the Times stories, which cited as sources “four unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials.” Strzok wrote that there was no information “indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials.”

Durham’s report disputed the Times accounts that saying US law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted communications of Trump associates and campaign officials showing repeated contacts with “senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election”; that the intercepted communications had been captured by the NSA; and that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been heard on intercepted calls. The Times has repeatedly said it stands by those stories, including as recently as February of this year when former Times reporter Jeff Gerth wrote about Strzok’s rebuttal of that reporting in the Columbia Journalism Review.

6. FBI Director James Comey pushed heavily for an investigation of Carter Page, starting in April 2016 when Page was a government witness in an espionage investigation of Russian diplomats in New York.

Getting a bead on Page was “a top priority for the director,” one intelligence agent said. The attorney who prepared the first of four FISA applications on Page “recalled being constantly pressured to move forward by FBI management.” The report cites Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in stating that McCabe and Comey were agitating for lawyers to complete the Page FISA. McCabe told interviewers that, “Comey repeatedly asked him ‘Where is the FISA, where is the FISA? What’s the status… with the Page FISA?”

The FISA was found by the IG to be deeply flawed, riddled with false information and errors. Comey declined to be interviewed by the Durham team.

7. At the direction of the FBI, confidential human source Stefan Halper recorded lengthy conversations with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, in which each denied the campaign had any involvement with Russian officials.

These tapes were in the possession of Crossfire Hurricane investigators, who discounted their denials and ignored exculpatory information they provided in seeking FISA warrants. From the report:

The FBI chose to adopt an interpretation of Papadopoulos’s denials of any knowledge of the Trump campaign’s involvement with the Russians in connection with the DNC computer intrusion and subsequent publication of certain DNC emails as being “weird,” “rote,” “canned,” and “rehearsed.”

The Bureau ignored assertions by Papadopoulos that assistance from the Russians would be “illegal,” and that “espionage is treason.” Agents were so determined to elicit incriminating comments from Papadopoulos that they pressed one of his friends into making 23 separate recordings of him, challenging him with “approximately 200 prompts or baited statements which elicited approximately 174 clearly exculpatory statements.” None of this information ever reached either the FISA court or the news media.

8. Durham was highly critical of the FBI’s “startling and inexplicable failure” to investigate the so-called “Clinton Intelligence Plan.”

In late July, 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies “obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis” alleging Hillary Clinton approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Trump, by “tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

Then-CIA Director John Brennan thought the information was important enough to brief the President, Vice President, Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI director  and other senior officials. On September 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to Comey and Peter Strzok, but the two have said they don’t recall hearing about it. Numerous others at FBI were informed about it, the report said.

The report concludes the FBI:

Failed to act on what should have been—when combined with other incontrovertible facts—a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.

The report notes in detail how false information intended to damage Trump – the Steele Dossier and the Alfa Bank claims – was provided to the FBI by people tied to the Clinton campaign. Had the FBI investigated what Durham termed the “Clinton intelligence plan” as it pursued its “Crossfire Hurricane” probe, it “would have increased the likelihood of alternative analytical hypotheses and reduced the risk of reputational damage both to the targets of the investigation as well as, ultimately, to the FBI.”

Durham added that if the FBI looked into the “Intelligence Plan,” it might at least have cast a critical eye on the phony evidence it was gathering in Crossfire Hurricane, and/or questioned whether it was “part of a political effort to smear a political opponent and to use the resources of the federal government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies in support of a political objective.”

Both Clinton campaign Chairperson, John Podesta and Senior Policy Advisor Jake Sullivan called the information “ridiculous,” but the failure to investigate it in real time had a lasting impact.

Subscribe to Racket News here…

end

It seems that Bruce and Nellie Ohr had much bigger roles in the Steele dossier than previously known according to the Durham report

Paul Sperry/

Bruce And Nellie Ohr Had Bigger Roles In Dossier Than Known: Durham Report

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 12:06 PM

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClear Wire,

While it’s bad enough the debunked dossier the FBI used to spy on the Trump campaign was paid for by the Clinton campaign and authored by a foreign FBI informant and his carousing researcher, the newly released report of Special Counsel John Durham strongly suggests a top Justice Department official and his wife had an early hand in shaping the political rumor sheet. 

According to the 306-page report, former Justice Department prosecutor Bruce Ohr’s wife Nellie Ohr first plowed the ground for the dossier with a series of a research reports she wrote for Fusion GPS, the D.C.-based opposition research firm the Clinton campaign commissioned to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia.

Obtained by Durham, her reports zeroed in on Sergei Millian and his connections to Russia and Trump, falsely portraying him as a key intermediary between the Kremlin and the Republican candidate. They would later provide the foundation for the dossier’s many fictions.

“Fusion GPS records demonstrate that Nellie Ohr first identified Millian,” Durham states in his report. “All told, Ohr prepared at least 12 reports that discussed Sergei Millian.“

She wrote her first Millian report in April 2016, the month before Fusion GPS hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to put his imprimatur as a supposed former “spy” and “Russian insider” on the dossier.

“This report was prepared just ten days after Fusion GPS was retained by [Clinton campaign law firm] Perkins Coie to conduct opposition research on Trump,” the Durham Report states, “and prior to Steele being retained by Fusion GPS.”

Durham suggests Nellie Ohr planted the seeds of sourcing for the most explosive allegations leveled by the dossier against Trump, including the oft-cited notion that he and his campaign were engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin. The dossier attributed this, falsely, to Millian. Durham found that the Belarusian-American realtor was never a source for the dossier and was simply invented as one, along with the allegations attributed to him.

In fact, Durham says that Millian initially wasn’t even on the radar of Steele and his dossier “collector” Igor Danchenko, a former Brookings Institution analyst who’s admitted much of the information he provided Steele was alcohol-lubricated gossip. Millian was called to their attention by Nellie Ohr, who the prosecutor said “implicated” Millian through her own reports. Durham suggests Steele and Danchenko merely followed her leads.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor added, Bruce Ohr, an anti-Trump Democrat, pushed his wife’s reports that cited Millian — 12 in all — onto the Crossfire Hurricane team at FBI headquarters that was investigating Trump and his campaign for possible espionage. Agents used her reports as a source of corroboration for the Steele reports they received in the summer and fall of 2016, even though it was circular reporting.

“The reports prepared by Ohr and others at Fusion GPS were ultimately provided to Crossfire Hurricane investigators by Ohr’s husband, Bruce Ohr,” according to the Durham Report.

Durham notes that Danchenko was tracking leads on Millian from Nellie Ohr within “approximately one week” of Fusion GPS retaining Steele to compile the dossier. He concludes that this “strongly supports the inference that Fusion GPS directed Steele to pursue Millian.”

In other words, Steele was not the catalyst behind the dossier’s central claims. Rather, it was Clinton’s contractor Fusion GPS — but more specifically, the wife of a senior DOJ official who worked for Fusion. So the FBI wasn’t really investigating “Crown reporting,” as officials referred to Steele’s dossier, implying it was British intelligence. More accurately, it was investigating information from inside its own department that was laundered through Steele and his dossier.

On page 97 of their book, “Crime in Progress,” Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch maintained that it was Steele who identified Millian as “one of the key intermediaries between Trump and the Russians.” Durham’s report shatters their claim.

The special counsel also found that Simpson worked with Bruce Ohr to pressure the FBI to investigate the dossier allegations.

On Aug. 22, 2016, Simpson asked Ohr to call him. About an hour later, Ohr emailed the FBI agent handling Steele as an informant to, as he said, “check in.” Ohr and the agent, Michael Gaeta, spoke over the phone on Aug. 24. During their call, Ohr inquired if the FBI was going to do anything with the dossier reports that Steele had passed along to Gaeta in July. In response, Gaeta “told Ohr that a group at FBI headquarters was working on them,” according to the Durham report. This undercuts the official FBI timeline of when HQ first received the dossier. For years, the bureau has insisted it did not receive the reports until a month later — Sept. 19, 2016.

Fusion GPS also pitched the press the false narrative that Millian was a key intermediary between Trump and Russia. For example, on June 27, 2016, Fritsch sent an email to Franklin Foer, a reporter at Slate magazine, stating “this dude is key” and claiming “he is clearly kgb.”

The next month, Simpson reached out to ABC News producer Matthew Mosk about Millian. Mosk emailed Simpson and reported back that he was “making arrangements to interview Millian on camera” and that he and Simpson “should chat.” On July 29, 2016, Millian ultimately was interviewed by Brian Ross, formerly of ABC News, who asked Millian whether he was a Russian spy.

On Sept. 13, 2016, Mosk emailed Simpson and asked, “What’s the most official thing we have showing Millian tied to Trump? That would make it hard for the Trump org to disavow Millian?”

Ross later left ABC after being suspended for erroneous reporting on Russiagate, while Mosk has moved to CBS News.

Throughout the summer and fall of 2016, Fusion GPS also promoted to the Washington media the false allegation the Trump campaign maintained a secret hotline to Moscow through Russia-based Alfa Bank. In an attempt to tie Millian to the Alfa Bank allegations, Durham found that Fusion GPS sought the assistance of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in turn contacted D.C. tech executive Rodney Joffe to determine if Millian had any ties to Alfa Bank.

On Aug. 20, 2016, Joffe emailed federal computer contractors at Georgia Tech a document titled “birdsnest-1.pdf’ that contained “known associates” of Trump. Included in the attached document was a description of Millian along with his past mailing addresses; various email addresses; websites; and IP addresses that were associated with him. Joffe, who was recently fired as an FBI informant, described Millian as “the most likely intermediary” between Trump and Russia.

On Sept. 27, 2016, Simpson and Fritsch emailed IP “look-up” information for one of Millian’s websites to then-New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau, whom Fusion was pressuring to write a story about the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations. In the email, Fritsch pointed out that “Alfa” was the website service provider for Millian’s website. However, Durham determined that the relevant IP information did not indicate that “Alfa Bank” was the service provider, but rather Alfa Telecom — a Lebanese-based telecom company, which appears to have no affiliation with Alfa Bank.

Fusion GPS and Steele also provided the substance of the Alfa Bank allegations to Bruce Ohr, the DOJ official, who passed the false tip on to the FBI. The Crossfire Hurricane team used Ohr as a conduit to continue to receive information from Steele about Trump throughout 2017, even after the FBI had to terminate Steele as an informant for leaking information about its investigation to the media. 

end

FBI Leadership Sabotaged Clinton Foundation Investigations: Durham Report

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 – 02:05 PM

Remember the Clinton Foundation? Which, took millions in foreign donations when everyone thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 US election, only to see donations plummet by 90% after she lost?

To review:

• FBI Informant Testifies: Moscow Routed Millions To Clinton Foundation In “Russian Uranium Dominance Strategy”
• FBI Informant “Threatened” After Offering Details Linking Clinton Foundation To Russian Bribery Case
• FBI Raids Home Of New Clinton Foundation, Uranium One Whistleblower
• Leaked Memo Exposes Shady Dealings Between Clinton Foundation Donors And Bill’s “For-Profit” Activities
• DOJ And Clinton Lawyers Struck Secret Deal To Block FBI Access To Clinton Foundation Emails: Strzok

Now we learn, thanks to the Durham report, that the FBI had three concurrent investigations into the Clinton Foundation, which were shut down during the 2016 election year by top brass.

As attorney and political commentator Techno Fog notes at The Reactionary (emphasis ours);

Durham’s scope included the FBI investigations “directed” at the Hillary Clinton campaign. It seems the purpose of that review was to assess and compare the favorable treatment received by Clinton to the targeting of Trump.

The first investigation involved an FBI tip from a CHS that a foreign government was sending a person “to contribute to Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign, as a way to gain influence with Clinton should she win the presidency.” (Which country?!) An FBI field office sought a FISA against the foreign contributor and made that request to FBI headquarters, which ignored it for four months due to the fact that they were careful that Clinton was “involved.” According to one FBI Agent, “They were pretty ‘tippy-toeing’ around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next president.” The FISA was approved on the condition that the FBI give defensive briefings to Clinton.

The second Clinton investigation involved the same CHS, who in November 2015 reported to the FBI that another foreign government was looking to contribute to the Clinton campaign “in exchange for the protection of [that country’s] interests should Clinton become President.” That CHS would end up making a $2,700 donation to the Clinton campaign on behalf of a foreign insider, in violation of federal law which bans contributions by foreign nationals. The CHS told their handling FBI agent that “They [the campaign] were okay with it. […] yes they were fully aware from the start” of the contribution being made on behalf of the foreign interest.

Who was the FBI’s confidential human source that caught the Clinton campaign in illegal activity? Thanks to great work by the talented Fool Nelson showing a $2,700 contribution from Patrick Byrne, we have this admission from Byrne himself:

Somehow, the FBI did not obtain copies of the illegal payment and the CHS’s FBI handlers “could not explain why this apparent illegal contribution was not documented in FBI records.” Instead, the FBI handling agent “told the CHS to stay away from all events relating to Clinton’s campaign.” Later on, the CHS, who had essentially caught a member of the Clinton campaign facilitating illegal contributions, was admonished by the FBI:

“do NOT attend any more campaign events, set up meetings, or anything else relating to [Clinton’s] campaign. We need to keep you completely away from that situation. I don’t know all the details, but it’s for your own protection.”

Durham questioned how the FBI could reconcile giving defensive briefings to the Clinton campaign while denying defensive briefings to the Trump campaign. He compared the FBI and DOJ’s “measured approach” to the Clinton campaign investigation to the speed at which the FBI ran with Crossfire Hurricane. He also contrasted how the FBI made almost “no effort to investigate the possible illegal campaign contribution” to the Clinton campaign “or the Clinton campaign’s purported acceptance of a campaign contribution made by the FBI’s own long-term” source.

The other Clinton investigation Durham reviewed – the investigation into “possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation” – demonstrated, yet again, favorable treatment received by Clinton from FBI leadership. According to Durham, the Clinton Foundation case opening communication:

referred to an intelligence product and corroborating financial reporting that a particular commercial “industry likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence.”

Additionally, the FBI Little Rock and New York Field Offices investigations “included predication based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.”

Despite this evidence, DOJ and FBI leadership essentially sabotaged the Clinton Foundation investigation. The DOJ was “hostile” to the Clinton Foundation presentations from the FBI Field Offices. And at a February 2016 FBI meeting to discuss the Clinton Foundation investigations, Assistant Director Andre McCabe ordered the cases to be closed. He would reconsider that demand following objections. However, any overt investigative steps needed McCabe’s approval. In May 2016, FBI Director Comey would, through an intermediary, demand the New York Field Office “cease and desist” their Clinton Foundation investigation. And in August 2016, as the presidential election approached, the US Attorneys’ offices in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York declined to issue subpoenas to the FBI New York Field Office in support of their Clinton Foundation investigation.

We highly recommend subscribing and reading the entirety of Techno Fog’s report, which goes far deeper into Durham’s bombshell findings, including; The DNC hack, Crossfire Hurricane, spying on President-Elect Trump, Clinton’s plan to smear Trump, and other prosecutorial decisions.

THE KING REPORT

The King Report May 17, 2023 – Issue 6992

Independent View of the News

China’s Waning Economic Recovery Spurs Calls for StimulusIndustrial production, retail sales missed forecastsYouth unemployment rate surged to record high of 20.4%Disappointing data suggest China’s recovery is losing momentum after consumer spending and industrial activity grew slower than expected in April… https://t.co/QdU8w4nFFC   NY Fed: Business Leaders Survey – A monthly survey of service firms in New York State, northern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut, conducted by the New York Fed.     The survey’s headline business activity index fell seven points to -16.8. The business climate index was little changed at -45.8, suggesting the business climate remains much worse than normal. Employment edged slightly higher despite the decline in activity. Wages and input prices increased at about the same pace as last month, while selling price increases picked up… firms expect conditions to improve only somewhat over the next six months… https://www.newyorkfed.org/survey/business_leaders/bls_overview   Dimon Says It’s Unlikely JPMorgan Will Buy more Struggling Banks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-16/dimon-says-it-s-unlikely-jpmorgan-will-buy-more-struggling-banks#xj4y7vzkg   Speaker McCarthy on Monday night said it was unlikely that a debt ceiling deal could be made this week.   @zerohedge: Something distinctly odd about Janet “NO FINANCIAL CRISIS IN MY LIFETIME” Yellen warning a US default could see “financial markets break with worldwide panic, margin calls, runs and fire sales”   Pfizer Kicks Off Jumbo Bond Deal, Joining Ranks of Largest Ever ($31B) – BBG Debt offered in eight parts, with 40-year portion the longest (1.8 percentage pts above Treasuries) Sale could be the largest since WarnerBros Disney in 2022   BBG: Pfizer Dollar Bond Order Book Tops $85 Billion (There is too much liquidity in the system!)   US April Retail Sales 0.4% m/m, 0.8% expected; Ex-Autos 0.4% as expected; Ex-Autos & Gas 0.6%, 0.2% expected.  May NAHB Housing Market Index 50, 45 expected and prior.   US April Industrial Production (released at 9:15 ET) 0.5% m/m, unchanged expected; Manufacturing Production 1.0% m/m, 0.1% consensus; Capacity Utilization 79.7% as expected.   USMs traded flat to -2 ticks from the Nikkei opening until they began to rally at 21:00 ET.  USMs hit a peak of 130 12/32 (+ 19/32) at 4:02 ET.  They then traded sideways until they commenced a tumble after the US repo market opened at 7 ET.  USMs hit 128 22/32 (-1 3/32) at 10:09 ET.  After a modest rally, USM traded sideways until a modest afternoon rally appeared.   Despite softer than expected US economic data, US bonds have declined over the past 4 sessions.  Is it the debt ceiling impasse or something else?  If it’s the debt ceiling, why did gold sink 1.6%?   ESMs commenced a decline when the Nikkei opened that persisted until a rally developed after the 3 ET European open.  A 16-handle ESM rally made the daily high of 4151.50 at 3:51 ET.  ESMs then gently rolled over until a violent upward spike appeared at 8:28 ET.  Within seconds, it quickly reversed into a decline.  Once again, someone traded on impact economic data (April Retail Sales) two minutes before the official release time.  The softer-than-expected headline number induced manic buying; the stronger-than-expected core number (Ex-Autos & Gas) engendered selling.    Bottom line: The stronger than expected Core Retail Sales and Manufacturing Production in April, plus the more robust May housing data dispelled notions that a Fed pivot was on the horizon, and increased concern that even after the largest Fed rate hikes since Volcker the US economy is still trucking on.   Fed Yet to Reach Sufficiently Restrictive Rates, (Cleveland Fed Pres) Mester Says – BBG 10:10 ET   Fed’s Barkin Says He’s Willing to Back Further Hikes if Needed – BBG 11:24 ET   NY Fed Pres Williams comments, per Bloomberg Economy Facing Unacceptably High Inflation 12:25 ET Economy Starting to Get Back to More Normal Patterns 12:26 ET Starting to See Demand, Supply Move Back into Balance 12:27 ET Williams: Expect the Economy to Grow This Year 12:27 ET Inflation Too High but Moving in Right Direction 12:29 ET Takes While for Fed Decisions to Fully Affect Economy 12:32 ET Low Inflation Is ‘Critically Important’ 12:44 ET We don’t know what the effects would be if the US defaulted, it’s never happened before 12:48 ET Banking System Sound and Resilient 12:56 ET   ESMs soared after the NYSE opened; but the rally peaked within 15 minutes.  ESMs and stocks then sank to session lows at 10:11 ET.  ESMs and stocks then vacillated wildly, in a large range, until the range narrowed at midday.  A modest jump higher occurred at 12:42 ET; ESMs quickly turned lower.  The ensuing decline ended at 13:43 ET.  After a 7-handle rally, ESMs reversed course and headed south at 14:00 ET.  Reports during midday indicated that there was no movement in the debt ceiling talks.   Furthermore, The Big Guy will travel to Japan today to meet with Japan PM Kishida on Thursday, ahead of the G7 soiree that runs from Friday to Sunday.    Ergo, The Big Guy will not be available for meetings with McCarthy until late Friday or Saturday – unless Joey stays for the G7 or heads to his beach house for his mandatory R&R.   @RNCResearch: Karine Jean-Pierre says Biden wants Kamala Harris “to be a part of” debt limit negotiations “so they can continue to consult, but now, of course, she’ll be a part of the meeting with the four congressional meetings.” (Not a parody!) https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1658544769377656863   @CBSNews: President Biden will go to Japan for the G7 summit, but the rest of his overseas trip may be altered due to the ongoing showdown over the debt ceiling. “We’re going to evaluate the rest of the trip and we’ll see what happens,” the NSC’s John Kirby tells CBS News’ @edokeefe. https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1658549183513591809   GOP Rep. @RepLuttrell: Joe Biden was at the beach last weekend. He’s leaving on Wednesday for an eight-day trip to Asia and Australia. Meanwhile, Americans are staring down an unprecedented border crisis and debt crisis. Biden creates disasters at every turn — and then runs away. (Bad optics for Joey)   ESMs hit an afternoon low at 14:32 ET.  It was time for the late manipulation.  Alas, the rally ended by 14:52 ET.  ESMs and stocks went inert until they broke down at 15:34 ET and sank into the close.   Home Depot posts worst revenue miss in about 20 years, lowers forecast as consumers delay big projects – Home Depot said it now expects sales and comparable sales to decline between 2% and 5% for the fiscal year. It had previously predicted roughly flat sales for the period. Its operating margin rate is also expected to come in lower for the year, in a range of between 14% and 14.3% compared with a previously expected 14.5%, including the effect of a $1 billion investment in employee wages…    Home Depot reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $3.87 billion, or $3.82 per share, down 8.5% from $4.23 billion, or $4.09 per share, a year earlier. Revenue fell 4.2% to $37.26 billion from $38.91 billion… https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/05/16/home-depot-hd-earnings-q1-2023.html   Positive aspects of previous session Fangs rallied smartly, a staple of the expiry week manipulation; AMD +4.19% on big hedge fund buying   Negative aspects of previous session Bonds and stocks declined sharply Fed officials issued a more hawkish message than expected or wanted             Ambiguous aspects of previous session Why are bonds and gold declining – if the Fed is on hold? Does the voracious appetite for PFE bonds indicate that there is too much liquidity in the system?   First Hour/Last Hour Action [S&P 500 Index]: 1st Hour from NYSE open: Down; Last Hour: Down   Pivot Point for S&P 500 Index [above/below indicates daily trend to traders]: 4118.44 Previous session High/Low: 4135.54; 4109.88   Fox News producer caught on tape saying Tucker Carlson was ‘ousted’ as part of Dominion settlement, network beholden to Pfizer, big tech money “He did things that cost [the company] a lot of money,” Langille said… Langille stated that the lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, which Fox settled for $744 million, was a big component of why Carlson was “ousted.”… “When it’s corporate media you’re beholden to advertisers … we take money from Pfizer.”… The video shows Langille discussing former Biden White House employee Michael La Rosa, whose consulting firm worked for Dominion. “Someone who worked for the Biden White House was literally crafting the message for Dominion,” he said. Then he laid out the connections…     “So he left working for Jill Biden… to start this PR firm or work for this firm, whose sole client was Dominion… So it’s like when you know those little moving parts, you’re like ‘everyone’s shady.’ Left the White House to literally go take down the news outlet that was being unfavorable to his boss.”… https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-fox-news-producer-caught-on-tape-saying-tucker-carlson-was-ousted-as-part-of-dominion   @TheChiefNerd: Biden plans to nominate Dr. Monica Bertagnolli as the new head of the NIH. From 2015-2021, Bertagnolli received more than 116 grants from Pfizer, totaling $290.8 million. This amount made up 89% of all her research grants. https://t.co/AUGGN6XkzT   Google, Meta, Amazon hire low-paid foreign workers after US layoffs: report https://trib.al/PaNUwNt   About 37 minutes after the NYSE close: Biden cancels planned visit to Australia, Papua New Guinea to focus on debt limit talks – Biden still plans to depart on Wednesday for Hiroshima, Japan, for a Group of Seven summit with leaders from some of the world’s major economies. He will return to the U.S. on Sunday… https://apnews.com/article/biden-papua-new-guinea-australia-debt-limit-b2b82fbb82d829f0b8bae87bef741d63   Biden, McCarthy Voice Cautious Optimism on Debt Deal Talks – BBG 17:42 ET   @RNCResearch: Biden says it’s “disappointing” Republicans “have not been willing to discuss” raising taxes on the American people. (While Hunter is under investigation for tax evasion) https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1658618690940833794   Elon Musk warns of tough economy, says Tesla may try advertising to boost demand https://trib.al/dKWjdWW   Six on FBI terror watchlist arrested on US border in two days – bringing 2023 total to 88 https://trib.al/vDvFDGW  (How many slipped through?)   Tom DiNapoli @NYSComptroller: State tax collections for April 2023 totaled just over $10.9B, -$7.2B, or 39.9%, lower than a year ago. (Stunning but not surprising) https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/finance     @AnnCoulter: I wonder if releasing all the criminals was a good idea.   Today is Weird Wednesday, which usually contains the peak intensity of the expiry manipulation.  With The Big Guy in transit to Hiroshima, Japan, it is unlikely that there will be any debt ceiling negotiations reports.  In the short-term world of day traders, concern about the debt ceiling will be deferred.   There is no important economic data due, and no Fed officials are scheduled to speak.  Ergo, the usual suspects have a window to manipulate stuff higher.  The major factor for today: Will institutional players and large speculators, unnerved by the debt ceiling impasse, thwart the designs of pattern traders?   ESMs are +5.75 at 20:10 ET on buying for Weird Wednesday and debt-deal talk ‘cautious optimism’.   Expected econ data: April Housing Starts 1.4m, Permits 1.434m; Expected Retailer earnings: TGT 1.80, TJX .71, CSCO .97   S&P 500 Index 50-day MA: 4061; 100-day MA: 4026; 150-day MA: 3975; 200-day MA: 3975 DJIA 50-day MA: 33,143; 100-day MA: 33,342; 150-day MA: 33,136; 200-day MA: 32,759 (Green is positive slope; Red is negative slope)   S&P 500 Index – Trender trading model and MACD for key time frames Monthly: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4514.50 triggers a buy signal Weekly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 3919.40 triggers a sell signal Daily: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4184.25 triggers a buy signal Hourly: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4141.24 triggers a buy signal   FBI whistleblower claims retaliation for raising concerns about accuracy of Wray’s J6 testimony Lawyers for intelligence analyst Marcus Allen have brought his concerns to Congress     At issue is testimony Wray gave in March 2021 at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when, under questioning Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., he left the impression to some that the FBI or law enforcement had not infiltrated certain groups like the Proud Boys that were blamed for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  “They show up, we now know in this complaint, with encrypted two-way Chinese radios in military gear,” Klobuchar said in questioning Wray. “There must be moments where you think, “If we would have known, if we could have infiltrated this group or found out what they were doing . . .” Do you have those moments?”… Allen warned his supervisors in writing that “there is a significant counter-story to the events of 6 January 2021 at the US Capitol. There is a good possibility the DC elements of our organization are not being forthright about the events of the day or the influence of government assets.”… https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/fbi-whistleblower-claims-retaliation-raising-concerns-about-accuracy   Daily Mail: PR exec who called Trump a ‘mad man’ was behind false ‘golden showers’ claims: Durham report reveals Donald never stayed in Moscow suite at center of salacious story – and how FBI wanted to keep paying Steele dossier source $300K AFTER he lied – Irish-born PR exec and Clinton ally Charles Dolan as the likely source of the infamous ‘golden showers’ rumor… At the time, Dolan was already establishing a working relationship with Igor Danchenko (Dossier primary source)… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12087117/Trump-did-NOT-stay-presidential-suite-Moscow-Ritz-says-Durham-report-source-probe.html   Ex-DOJ Official and Wife Had Bigger Roles in Dossier Than Known: Durham Report According to the 306-page report, former Justice Department prosecutor Bruce Ohr’s wife Nellie Ohr first plowed the ground for the dossier with a series of a research reports she wrote for Fusion GPS, the D.C.-based opposition research firm the Clinton campaign commissioned to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia…  https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/05/16/ex-doj_official_and_wife_had_bigger_roles_in_dossier_than_known_durham_report_899718.html   @paulsperry_: Special Counsel John Durham never interviewed former FBI Director James Comey    Special Counsel Durham also never interviewed FusionGPS founder Glenn Simpson, who contracted with the Hillary Clinton campaign to produce the fake dossier on Trump and Russia     Igor Danchenko, Steele’s collector of dirt for his dossier, tricked the FBI’s top counterintelligence investigators into believing he fled the US in 2010, when in fact the whole time he was living in the DC area. Fooled, the FBI closed its probe of him as a Russian spy.   Durham Report: FBI Proposed Paying Russia-Collusion Hoaxer Igor Danchenko To Silence Him After Learning He Lied   https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/15/durham-report-fbi-proposed-paying-russia-collusion-hoaxer-igor-danchenko-to-silence-him-after-learning-he-lied/   @GeorgePapa19: Charles McGonigal, head of the FBI’s counter intel division, who ran the crossfire “investigation” was arrested two months ago.  This was one of the consequences of Durham’s probe His report also strategically omitted critical players: Mifsud + Halper.  Fall out is just beginning!   Former top FBI official Charles McGonigal arrested over ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-fbi-official-charles-mcgonigal-arrested-ties-russian/story   NY Post’s @mirandadevine: Durham (Report) easily is 100x worse than J6. Decent Democrats should be ashamed and furious. The heartbreaking divisions in this country were created by these corrupt gangsters in the FBI and CIA in partnership with a supine media in service to the Democratic Party.   @thebradfordfile: “Nobody is above the law” except Democrats who conspire to take down the President of the United States.   @JackPosobiec: The national security agencies ran a soft coup against the sitting President of the United States, disrupting 3 years of his administration but promise they had nothing at all to do with Jan 6   @HansMahn>https://buff.ly/42FnI93   (GOP Rep) Taylor-Greene Submits Impeachment Articles Against D.C. U.S. Attorney (For non-prosecution of DC violent criminals and overzealous prosecution of Jan 6 trespassers) https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/16/taylor-greene-submits-impeachment-articles-against-d-c-u-s-attorney/   Republicans set to hold Blinken in contempt over Afghanistan subpoena, would be first for a secretary of state https://trib.al/CDTgzXi   Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat, raised eyebrows with his choppy Senate Banking Committee hearing questioning on Tuesday. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fetterman-raises-eyebrows-with-borderline-incoherent-questioning-senate-hearing-like-riddle   Brawl breaks out at Disney World after family refuses to move for photo op https://trib.al/rtfocN8   Florida teacher defiant after showing ‘woke’ Disney movie in class: Parents rights ‘are gone’ in public school  https://www.foxnews.com/media/florida-teacher-defiant-showing-woke-disney-movie-class-parents-rights-gone-public-school

GREG HUNTER 

I will see you on THURSDAY