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Where Diabetes Burdens Are Rising

According to the International Diabetes Federation, 463 million people between the ages of 20 and 79 suffered from diabetes worldwide in 2019. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, this represents 9.3% of the world population in this age group.

The total number of adults with the disease is projected to increase to 700.1 million (10.9% of the global population) by 2045.


You will find more infographics at Statista

The regions with the highest shares of adults suffering from the disease are North America and the Middle East. South Asia – where diabetes cases are growing at one of the fastest rates – is set to nearly catch up with Western Asian and Latin America by 2045.

The International Diabetes Federation suspects that the number of newly diagnosed diabetes cases has actually been falling in some developed countries and that past and future increases in the share of people with diabetes can be attributed to people with the condition living longer lives.

In developing countries, however, more people could still be getting the disease because of the lifestyle changes typically associated with economic progress, like diets high in sugar and fat as well as more time spent with sedentary activities.

As type 2 diabetes is much more prevalent around the world than type 1 diabetes, changes in diabetes prevalence and incidence can be almost entirely chalk up to the second type. The federation also views the lack of diagnosis of diabetes as an ongoing problem. In 2019, the number of people aged 20 to 79 with undiagnosed diabetes was estimated at 231.9 million globally – almost half of all cases.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/21/2021 – 08:45

spid

Despotism Is The New Normal: Looming Threats To Freedom In 2022

BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, JAN 08, 2022 - 11:30 PM

Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution."
- Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America
Despotism has become our new normald
Digital tyranny, surveillance. Intolerance, cancel culture, censorship. Lockdowns, mandates, government overreach. Supply chain shortages, inflation. Police brutality, home invasions, martial law. The loss of bodily integrity, privacy, autonomy.
These acts of tyranny by an authoritarian government have long since ceased to alarm or unnerve us. We have become desensitized to government brutality, accustomed to government corruption, and unfazed by the government’s assaults on our freedoms.
This present trajectory is unsustainable. The center cannot hold.
The following danger points pose some of the greatest threats to our collective and individual freedoms now and in the year to come.

Censorship.
The most controversial issues of our day—gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support. Thus, while on paper, we are technically free to speak, in reality, we are only as free to speak as the government and tech giants such as Facebook, Google or YouTube may allow. Yet it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them. Unfortunately, censorship is just the beginning. Once you allow the government and its corporate partners to determine who is worthy enough to participate in society, anything goes.

The Emergency State.
Now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., “we the people” may well find ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves. Therein lies the danger of the government’s Machiavellian version of crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security. This is the power grab hiding in plain sight.

Pre-crime.
The government is about to rapidly expand its policing efforts to focus on pre-crime and thought crimes. Precrime, straight out of the realm of dystopian science fiction movies such as Minority Report, aims to prevent crimes before they happen by combining widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs to enable police to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage. The intent, of course, is for the government to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful in its preemptive efforts to combat domestic extremism, a broad label that can be applied to anything or anyone the government perceives to be a threat to its power.

The Surveillance State.
This all-seeing fourth branch of government, comprised of a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors, watches everything we do, reads everything we write, listens to everything we say, and monitors everywhere we go. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the government’s growing network of snitches and spies.

Genetic privacy.
“Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age. Yet the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning. Get ready, folks, because the government—helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Bodily integrity.
It doesn’t matter what your trigger issue is—whether it’s vaccines, abortion, crime, religion, immigration, terrorism or some other overtly politicized touchstone used by politicians as a rallying cry for votes—we should all be concerned when governments and businesses (i.e., the Corporate State) join forces to compel individuals to sacrifice their right to bodily integrity on the altar of so-called safety and national security. This debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and forced vaccines to biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

Gun control.
After declaring more than a decade ago that citizens have a Second Amendment right to own a gun in one’s home for self-defense, the Supreme Court has now been tasked with deciding whether the Constitution also protects the right to carry a gun outside the home. Unfortunately, when it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a “do what I say, not what I do” mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the government’s attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense. Indeed, while it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed.
Show Your Papers Society. With every passing day, more and more private businesses and government agencies on both the state and federal level are requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccination in order for individuals to work, travel, shop, attend school, and generally participate in the life of the country. By allowing government agents to establish a litmus test for individuals to be able to engage in commerce, movement and any other right that corresponds to life in a supposedly free society, it lays the groundwork for a “show me your papers” society in which you are required to identify yourself at any time to any government worker who demands it for any reason. Such tactics can quickly escalate into a power-grab that empowers government agents to force anyone and everyone to prove they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books.

Singularity.
Welcome to the Matrix (i.e. the metaverse), where reality is virtual, freedom is only as free as one’s technological overlords allow, and artificial intelligence is slowly rendering humanity unnecessary, inferior and obsolete. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that Elon Musk has announced his intentions of implanting brain chips in humans sometime in 2022. The digital universe—the metaverse—is expected to be the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one. Remaining singularly human and retaining your individuality and dominion over yourself—mind, body and soul—in the face of corporate and government technologies that aim to invade, intrude, monitor, manipulate and control us may be one of the greatest challenges before us.

Despotism.
Even in the face of militarism, fascism, technotyranny, surveillance, etc., the gravest threat facing us as a nation may well be despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money. The American kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

It is a grim outlook for a new year, but it is not completely hopeless.
If hope is to be found, it will be found with those of us who do their part, at their local levels, to right the wrongs and fix what is broken. I am referring to the builders, the thinkers, the helpers, the healers, the educators, the creators, the artists, the activists, the technicians, the food gatherers and distributors, and every other person who does their part to build up rather than destroy.

“We the people” are the hope for a better year.
Until we can own that truth, until we can forge our own path back to a world in which freedom means something again, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re going to be stuck in this wormhole of populist anger, petty politics and destruction that is pitting us one against the other.
In such a scenario, no one wins.

Remdesivir

spid 发表于 2022-1-9 14:05
Despotism Is The New Normal: Looming Threats To Freedom In 2022

BY TYLER DURDEN

强烈建议用谷歌翻译插件， 翻译得不错，完全看得懂。
新的一年前景黯淡，但并非完全没有希望。。
咔，救救本宝宝吧~

spid

Mapping The World's Major Religions
BY TYLER DURDEN
SUNDAY, FEB 13, 2022 - 07:30 AM
The world has become increasingly more secular in the last few decades. However, as Visual Capitalist's Anshool Deshmukh details below, religion remains an integral part of many people’s lives, and 84% of the world’s population identifies with a religious group.

The religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well as by people switching faiths.

With the help of data from Pew Research Center, we break down the religious composition of the major religions in countries worldwide.

Religious Makeup of the World by Major Religions
Determining the exact number of religions across the world is a daunting task. Many religions can be difficult to categorize or to tell apart for those not intimately familiar with their doctrine.

Pew Research Center organizes the world’s religions into seven major categories, which includes five major religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism), one category that broadly includes all Folk/Traditional religions, and an unaffiliated category.

Globally, Christianity has the largest following of these categories. Around 31% of the world’s population are Christians, closely followed by Muslims at 25%. Jews have the smallest population of major religions, with only 0.2% of the world identifying as Jewish.

Let’s take a look at the religious composition of the world when accounting for regions:


From Islam being the dominant religion in the Middle East to over 95% of Cambodians and Thais following Buddhism, here’s how prevalent every major religion in the world is.

Christianity
The world’s largest religion, Christianity, is practiced by about 2.4 billion people.

The country with the highest number of practicing Christians is the United States, with a Christian population of 253 million. Brazil and Mexico follow closely with 185 million and 118 million Christians, respectively.

Christianity has historically spread around the globe and today it remains a geographically widespread religion. Over the past century, it has become less concentrated in Europe while becoming more evenly distributed throughout the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Islam
Even though it’s the predominant religion of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, by sheer number, countries in Asia have the highest percentage of practicing Muslims in the world.

It may surprise you to know that 14.2% of Indians are Muslim. As a result, the country is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations, surpassed only by Indonesia.

Islam is also the world’s fastest-growing major religion. The number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70%, from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. The fact that they have the youngest median age, at 24, also helps this population growth.

Judaism
While Jews historically have been found all around the globe, Judaism is highly geographically concentrated today. More than four-fifths of all Jews live in just two countries: the United States and Israel. Israel is the only country with a Jewish majority, with 76% of the population being practicing Jews.

The largest remaining shares of the global Jewish population apart from the U.S. and Israel are in Canada (about 3% of the country’s population), France (2%), the United Kingdom (2%), Germany (2%), Russia (2%) and Argentina (between 1% and 2%).

Unaffiliated
The religiously unaffiliated population includes atheists, agnostics, and people who do not identify with any particular religion. 720 million of the Chinese population consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, while 78% of Czechs feel the same way.

However, it is worth noting that many of the religiously unaffiliated hold some religious or spiritual beliefs. For example, surveys have found that faith in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of unaffiliated Chinese adults, 30% of unaffiliated French adults, and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults.

Hinduism
Hinduism is the third-largest religion worldwide, with approximately 1.2 billion Hindus in many countries. Interestingly, however, Hinduism is the dominant religion in only three countries, India with 79%, Nepal with 80%, and Mauritius with 48%.

Although Hinduism is rarely a country’s primary religion, it still enjoys a global presence. Many regions around the world support significant populations of Hindus, including the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, North America, and South America.

Buddhism
According to estimates, half the world’s Buddhists live in China. Still, they make up only 18% of the country’s population. Most of the rest of the world’s Buddhists live in East and South Asia, including 13% in Thailand (where 93% of the population is Buddhist).

Buddhism in Asia is a matter of both identity and practice. Scholars and journalists have documented that many Asian countries may engage in Buddhist practices without considering themselves part of any organized religion.

Folk Religion
Folk religion is any ethnic or cultural religious practice that falls outside the doctrine of organized religion. Grounded on popular beliefs and sometimes called popular or vernacular religion, the term refers to how people experience and practice religion in their daily lives.

As of 2020, an estimated 429 million people, about 6% of the world’s total population, were adherents of folk or traditional religions. Some notable folk religions include African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions, and Australian aboriginal religions.

spid

Many Viral Ukraine War Videos Flooding Social Media Are Fake
BY TYLER DURDEN
Authored by Eric Garris via AntiWar.com,

Noted YouTube "scambuster" Kitboga, who has 2.2 million subscribers, has posted the video below showing many examples of viral TikTok videos purporting to be scenes of war in Ukraine.

These videos are mostly clips from video games or from other wars. Many of these posts are being used to raise money for fake charities. Kit explains the various scams that are being used to raise money on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms.

There are actual videos of the war, but everyone needs to be skeptical and ask for sources.

Here are some other articles about fake or misleading Ukraine war videos:

Some Social Media Videos of the Invasion Are Actually From Mideast
Tiktok Sees a Surge of Misleading Videos That Claim to Show the Invasion of Ukraine
War in Ukraine Sparks New Wave of Misinformation
A number of weekend media articles began exposing some viral videos which were fake, many racking up tens of thousands of shares on Facebook.

According to one such report: "In fact, Gizmodo has found at least ten viral photos and videos currently being spread on social media that are completely fake."

"In some cases, the videos and photos are years old. In others, the images are clearly not from Ukraine. There are even two examples of videos on Twitter today that are actually from war-themed video games..."

"Nobody knows how long this invasion will last. But however long that may be, you can bet on one thing: There will be plenty more fake photos and videos passed around online before this conflict is over," Gizmodo concludes in its own review of some of the fake videos.

spid

Pentagon To Give Ukraine High-Precision Laser-Guided Rockets

Tyler Durden's Photo
BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2022
On Monday The Washington Post is reporting that for the first time the Pentagon will provide Ukrainian forces "high-precision laser-guided weapons" as part of the recently approved mammoth arms package amid Russia's invasion.

As expected, defense contractors will continue seeing a windfall of profits: "The Pentagon is expanding delivery of commercially available weapons and military equipment to Ukraine, detailing on Friday its $136 million in purchases of aerial drones, laser-guided rockets, binoculars and other items set for shipment soon."

The WaPo details further that "The weapons and equipment, to be purchased from U.S. companies, represent a separate category of military assistance than the vast quantities of armaments that the United States already has provided Ukraine from existing Pentagon stocks."

Pentagon undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment Bill LaPlante has vowed to utilize "all available tools to support Ukraine’s armed forces in the face of Russian aggression."

This is but the latest in the ramped-up continuing saga of it's not a proxy war simply because we insist it's not a proxy war... Many Western military analysts have pointed to the game-changing nature of US weapons and intelligence-sharing on the Ukraine battlefield, saying it's greatly slowed and even stalled the Russian advance, also in the east, where Russian forces have focused their current objective on taking the Donbas.

According to further details of a system called the "advanced precision kill weapon system":

This round includes $22.6 million worth of 70mm rockets — known as the advanced precision kill weapon system — that can be fired from helicopters

...the advanced precision kill system, for instance, works by converting low-cost ammunition into guided weapons. U.S. forces have used it to supplement the firepower inherent to a variety of aircraft, including helicopters and fighter jets.

Below: what was reported as of last week, part of the massive US weapons pipeline to Kiev. Infograph: Breaking Defense
(Picture)

Last month Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin bluntly admitted of US policy aims in Ukraine: "we want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." He also sought to stress before the American public during an interview that the US is not fighting a "proxy war". However, there's clearly a contradiction in these two statements, especially given Biden administration actions in the form of unprecedented military assistance.

spid

The Battle For Control Of Your Mind
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/battle-control-your-mind

In his classic dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell famously wrote, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” This striking image served as a potent symbol for totalitarianism in the 20th Century. But as Caylan Ford recently observed, with the advent of digital health passports in the emerging biomedical security state, the new symbol of totalitarian repression is “not a boot, but an algorithm in the cloud: emotionless, impervious to appeal, silently shaping the biomass.”

These new digital surveillance and control mechanisms will be no less oppressive for being virtual rather than physical. Contact tracing apps, for example, have proliferated with at least 120 different apps in used in 71 different states, and 60 other digital contact-tracing measures have been used across 38 countries. There is currently no evidence that contact tracing apps or other methods of digital surveillance have helped to slow the spread of covid; but as with so many of our pandemic policies, this does not seem to have deterred their use.

Other advanced technologies were deployed in what one writer has called, with a nod to Orwell, “the stomp reflex,” to describe governments’ propensity to abuse emergency powers. Twenty-two countries used surveillance drones to monitor their populations for covid rule-breakers, others deployed facial recognition technologies, twenty-eight countries used internet censorship and thirteen countries resorted to internet shutdowns to manage populations during covid. A total of thirty-two countries have used militaries or military ordnances to enforce rules, which has included casualties. In Angola, for example, police shot and killed several citizens while imposing a lockdown.

Orwell explored the power of language to shape our thinking, including the power of sloppy or degraded language to distort thought. He articulated these concerns not only in his novels Animal Farm and 1984 but in his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” where he argues that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

The totalitarian regime depicted in 1984 requires citizens to communicate in Newspeak, a carefully controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual’s ability to think or articulate subversive concepts such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will. With this bastardization of language, complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms conveying only simplistic meaning.  

Newspeak eliminates the possibility of nuance, rendering impossible consideration and communication of shades of meaning. The Party also intends with Newspeak’s short words to make speech physically automatic and thereby make speech largely unconscious, which further diminishes the possibility of genuinely critical thought.

In the novel, character Syme discusses his editorial work on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak [standard English] will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Several terms of disparagement were repeatedly deployed during the pandemic, phrases whose only function was to halt the possibility of critical thought. These included, among others, ‘covid denier,’ ‘anti-vax,’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’. Some commentators will doubtless mischaracterize this book, and particularly this chapter, using these and similar terms—ready-made shortcuts that save critics the trouble of reading the book or critically engaging my evidence or arguments.

A brief comment on each of these may be helpful in illustrating how they function.

The first term, ‘covid denier,’ requires little attention. Those who sling this charge at any critic of our pandemic response recklessly equate covid with the Holocaust, which suggests that antisemitism continues to infect discourse on both the right and the left. We need not detain ourselves with more commentary on this phrase.

The epithet ‘anti-vax,’ deployed to characterize anyone who raises questions about the mass vaccination campaign or the safety and efficacy of covid vaccines, functions similarly as a conversation stopper rather than an accurately descriptive label. When people ask me whether I am anti-vax for challenging vaccine mandates I can only respond that the question makes about as much sense to me as the question, “Dr. Kheriaty, are you ‘pro-medication’ or ‘anti-medication’?” The answer is obviously contingent and nuanced: which medication, for which patient or patient population, under what circumstances, and for what indications? There is clearly no such thing as a medication, or a vaccine for that matter, that’s always good for everyone in every circumstance and all the time.

Regarding the term “conspiracy theorist,” Agamben notes that its indiscriminate deployment “demonstrates a surprising historical ignorance.” For anyone familiar with history knows that the stories historians recount retrace and reconstruct the actions of individuals, groups, and factions working in common purpose to achieve their goals using all available means. He mentions three examples from among thousands in the historical record.

In 415 B.C. Alcibiades deployed his influence and money to convince the Athenians to embark on an expedition to Sicily, a venture that turned out disastrously and marked the end of Athenian supremacy. In retaliation, Alcibiades enemies hired false witnesses and conspired against him to condemn him to death. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte violated his oath of fidelity to the Republic’s Constitution, overthrowing the directory in a coup, assumed full powers, and ending the Revolution. Days prior, he had met with co-conspirators to fine-tune their strategy against the anticipated opposition of the Council of Five Hundred.

Closer to our own day, he mentions the March on Rome by 25,000 Italian fascists in October 1922. Leading up to this even, Mussolini prepared the march with three collaborators, initiated contacts with the Prime Minister and powerful figures from the business world (some even maintain that Mussolini secretly met with the King to explore possible allegiances). The fascists rehearsed their occupation of Rome by a military occupation of Ancona two months prior.

Countless other examples, from the murder of Julius Caesar to the Bolshevik revolution, will occur to any student of history. In all these cases, individuals gathering in groups or parties to strategize goals and tactics, anticipate obstacles, then act resolutely to achieve their aims. Agamben acknowledges that this does not mean it is always necessary to aver to ‘conspiracies’ to explain historical events. “But anyone who labelled a historical who tried to reconstruct in detail the plots that triggered such events as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ would most definitely be demonstrating their own ignorance, if not idiocy.”

Anyone who mentioned “The Great Reset” in 2019 was accused of buying into a conspiracy theory—that is, until World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab published a book in 2020 laying out the WEF agenda with the helpful title,Covid-19: The Great Reset. Following new revelations about the lab leak hypothesis, U.S. funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, vaccine safety issues willfully suppressed, and coordinated media censorship and government smear campaigns against dissident voices, it seems the only difference between a conspiracy theory and credible news was about six months.

spid

Visualizing Interest Rate Hikes Vs Inflation Rate, By Country
Tyler Durden
SUNDAY, JUL 03

Imagine today’s high inflation like a car speeding down a hill. In order to slow it down, you need to hit the brakes. In this case, the “brakes” are interest rate hikes intended to slow spending. However, as Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross explains, some central banks are hitting the brakes faster than others.

This graphic uses data from central banks and government websites to show how policy interest rates and inflation rates have changed since the start of the year. It was inspired by a chart created by Macrobond.


To understand how interest rates influence inflation, we need to understand how inflation works. Inflation is the result of too much money chasing too few goods. Over the last several months, this has occurred amid a surge in demand and supply chain disruptions worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In an effort to combat inflation, central banks will raise their policy rate. This is the rate they charge commercial banks for loans or pay commercial banks for deposits. Commercial banks pass on a portion of these higher rates to their customers, which reduces the purchasing power of businesses and consumers. For example, it becomes more expensive to borrow money for a house or car.

Ultimately, interest rate hikes act to slow spending and encourage saving. This motivates companies to increase prices at a slower rate, or lower prices, to stimulate demand.

Rising Interest Rates and Inflation
With inflation rates hitting multi-decade highs in some countries, many central banks have announced interest rate hikes. Below, we show how the inflation rate and policy interest rate have changed for select countries and regions since January 2022. The jurisdictions are ordered from highest to lowest current inflation rate.





The Euro area has 3 policy rates; the data above represents the main refinancing operations rate. Inflation data is as of May 2022 except for New Zealand and Australia, where the latest quarterly data is as of March 2022.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has been the most aggressive with its interest rate hikes. It has raised its policy rate by 1.5% since January, with half of that increase occurring at the June 2022 meeting. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said the committee would like to “do a little more front-end loading” to bring policy rates to normal levels. The action comes as the U.S. faces its highest inflation rate in 40 years.

On the other hand, the European Union is experiencing inflation of 8.1% but has not yet raised its policy rate. The European Central Bank has, however, provided clear forward guidance. It intends to raise rates by 0.25% in July, by a possibly larger increment in September, and with gradual but sustained increases thereafter. Clear forward guidance is intended to help people make spending and investment decisions, and avoid surprises that could disrupt markets.

Pacing Interest Rate Hikes
Raising interest rates is a fine balancing act. If central banks raise rates too quickly, it’s like slamming the brakes on that car speeding downhill: the economy could come to a standstill. This occurred in the U.S. in the 1980’s when the Federal Reserve, led by Chair Paul Volcker, raised the policy rate to 20%. The economy went into a recession, though the aggressive monetary policy did eventually tame double digit inflation.

However, if rates are raised too slowly, inflation could gather enough momentum that it becomes difficult to stop. The longer high price increases linger, the more future inflation expectations build. This can result in people buying more in anticipation of prices rising further, perpetuating high demand.

“There’s always a risk of going too far or not going far enough, and it’s going to be a very difficult judgment to make.”

- JEROME POWELL, U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIR

It’s worth noting that while central banks can influence demand through policy rates, this is only one side of the equation. Inflation is also being caused by supply chain issues, a problem that is more or less outside of the control of central banks.

spid

US Consumer Prices Soared In June, Americans' Real Wages Fall For 15th Straight Month
BY TYLER DURDEN
With The White House having desperately tried to front-run this morning's inflation print, analysts were expecting a jump higher led by food and energy costs. They were right in direction but it was way worse as the headline CPI soared 9.1% YoY (vs 8.8% exp and 8.6% prior)...

Under the hood, energy costs dominated the rise, but the rent index rose 0.8 percent over the month, the largest monthly increase since April 1986.

The motor vehicle maintenance and repair index increased 2.0 percent in June, its largest increase since September 1974.

The index for dental services increased 1.9 percent in June, the largest monthly change ever recorded for that series, which dates to 1995.

Focusing on the roof over your head factor, shelter inflation +5.61%, up from 5.61%, highest since 1992, and rent inflation +5.78%, up from 5.22%, highest since 1986

Real wages fell for the 15th month in a row... (Americans' purchasing power domestically fell by a record 3.6% YoY in June)

Finally, the S&P has ended the day lower on 5 of the last 6 CPI days...

spid

Here's The Warrant: DOJ Investigating Trump For Potential Violations Of Espionage Act, Obstruction Of Justice

Update (1537ET): Politico reports that based on the search warrant, the FBI is investigating former President Trump for "removal or destruction of records, obstruction of an investigation, and violating the Espionage Act," while Breitbart has the actual statutes from the warrant.
The documents, which are expected to be unsealed later Friday after the Justice Department sought their public disclosure amid relentless attacks by Trump and his GOP allies, underscore the extraordinary national security threat that federal investigators believed the missing documents presented. The concern grew so acute that Attorney General Merrick Garland approved the unprecedented search of Trump’s estate last week.

Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, said the FBI’s move was “not just unprecedented, but unnecessary -- and now they are leaking lies and innuendos to try to explain away the weaponization of government against their dominant political opponent. This is outrageous.” -Politico

Sean Davis
@seanmdav
This fishing expedition is so insane that under the federal legal definition of "Presidential Records," a McDonald's menu that Trump scrawled his lunch order on during a meeting in the Oval would be included (44 U.S.C. 2201).
The FBI raided Trump's house for that. INSANE.

An interesting point:

Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
WSJ: "Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that the former president used his authority to declassify the material before he left office."
But as @charlie_savage points out. NONE of the 3 crimes cited in the warrant turn on whether the information is classified.
https://nytimes.com/live/2022/08 ... 8301?smid=url-share

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has called for AG Merrick Garland to release the information which predicated the warrant.

Lindsey Graham
@LindseyGrahamSC
They can redact the names and other sensitive information, but DOJ must lay their cards on the table.
Media speculation is rampant and many of us remember the Mueller investigation and the rampant misinformation surrounding it.
Let America see the affidavit.

According to Human Events' Jack Posobiec:
The warrant details the address and locations to be searched, including that “The locations to be searched include the ‘45 Office,’ all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by FPOTUS and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate.”
The warrant did not include a call to search parts of the property that are in use by members of the Mar-a-Lago club, or rentals.
It further reads that the “Property to be seized” includes “All physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime or other items illegally possessed in violation” of legal codes, including:
“Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers/boxes (including any other contents) in which such documents are locations, as well as any other containers/boxes that are collectively stored or found together with the aforementioned documents and containers/boxes:
“Information, including communications in any form, regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material;
“Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017,” the day Trump took office, and the end of his term.
Additionally, the warrant demands the seizure of “Any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment of and government and/or Presidential Records, or of any documents with classification markings.”
A receipt of property for dozens of boxes follows, with that receipt signed by Trump attorney Christina Bobb on August 8, at 6:19 pm.
The reason for the search warrant was not made public, and the probable cause is not noted as part of the documents.

Update (1512ET): President Trump had more to say on Friday about Monday's FBI raid on his residence at Mar-a-Lago.
"Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to “seize” anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

"They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK. The bigger problem is, what are they going to do with the 33 million pages of documents, many of which are classified, that President Obama took to Chicago?"

Pundit Mark Levin makes some great points via Twitter:
Mark R. Levin
@marklevinshow
A. Sorry, but what the government is saying about seeking and executing this warrant doesn't cut it.
1. The FBI was at President Trump's home in June and had access to all the boxes.

@marklevinshow
B. Wouldn't the FBI had known there was "classified" information at that time -- either before they arrived at the home or during their search?  The most sensitive national security documents are supposed to be tracked by the relevant agency or department.

C. Did they look in June?  If so, didn't they see the documents?  If they did not look, why not?

D. 2. If the FBI felt the Trump lawyers were not cooperative, all they had to do is go to court to enforce their subpoena or get a second subpoena.

E. Instead, there was a TWO-MONTH gap between the June meeting and the seeking/execution of the search warrant in August.  Why was there a two-month gap if there was an urgent necessity for a search warrant?  Why wasn't a search warrant sought immediately?

F. 3. Once again, I make the argument that this was pretextual for the purpose of grabbing anything they could find, using the plain view doctrine as an attempt to find anything related to January 6, among other things.

*  *  *

Update (1325ET): The DOJ leak-fest continues, this time with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the FBI "removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant to only be available in special government facilities" (much like the 7 'top secret' email chains on Hillary Clinton's computer)

One set of the recovered documents were marked as "Various classified/TS/SCI documents," referring to sensitive or top-secret information.

The agency also claims they collected four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents.

According to the Journal's subheadline, Trump allies insist the documents were declassified by the former president.

The search and seizure warrant, signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, shows that FBI agents sought to search “the 45 Office,” as well as “all storage rooms and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by [the former president] and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate.”

The former president and his team don’t have the affidavit, which would provide more detail about the FBI’s investigation, according to people familiar with the process. His lawyers have asked for a more specific account of what was removed from Mar-a-Lago. -WSJ

Meanwhile, guess who didn't get raided for doing the same thing?

On Friday, Trump called out former President Barack Hussein Obama for keeping "33 million pages of documents, much of them classified."
A debate over whether Trump could have declassified the documents has ensued:
Stephen McIntyre
@ClimateAudit
I don't know the validity of this claim, but the argument (unlike the implausible nuclear secrets) is worth parsing.
Needless to say, FBI squealed about "sources and methods" when corrupt sources Halper and Danchenko were exposed.

it says that President has right to declassify whatever he wants and that, under separation of powers, Congess cannot limit his authority.

So the claim that Trump lacked authority to declassify documents on "sources and methods" (because of statute) looks totally bogus.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday called a Thursday report in WaPo that he took classified documents related to nuclear weapons "a hoax," and compared it to the FBI's use of the discredited 'Steele Dossier' - a notorious fabrication used during and after the 2016 US election to discredit Trump as a Russian asset.

"Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Mueller investigation was a Hoax, and much more," Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding "Same sleazy people involved."

"Why wouldn't the FBI allow the inspection of areas at Mar-a-Lago with our lawyer's [sic], or others present. Made them wait outside in the heat, wouldn't let them get even close — said 'ABSOLUTELY NOT."

"Planting information anyone? Reminds me of a Christofer Steele Dossier!"

On Thursday, Trump demanded the "immediate release" of materials related to the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence.

"Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in of my home in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago, I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents, even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats and possible future political opponents, who have a strong and powerful vested interest in attacking me, much as they have done for the last 6 years…" Trump said in a Thursday night post on Truth Social.

Meanwhile, Twitter is full of hot takes and reactions...
Chuck Ross
@ChuckRossDC
Beschloss is one of the half dozen historians Biden has been meeting with on a regular basis. Here he is casually floating the idea that Trump be executed for treason

The Post Millennial
@TPostMillennial
Former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Terry Turchie says Merrick Garland would not sign off on a warrant to raid the Unabomber, but signed off on a warrant to raid Trump.

Michael Knowles
@michaeljknowles
“And these ‘stolen nuclear codes,’ are they…are they in the room with us right now?”

Merissa Hansen????????‍♀️ ????????
@MerissaHansen17
So the same guy who “blew the whistle” on Trump for “stealing boxes” leading to the Mar-a-Lago raid (David Ferriero) was sued in 2015 for failing to preserve Hillary Clinton’s emails.
https://causeofaction.org/wp-con ... hibits-7-8-2015.pdf

Dan Gainor
@dangainor
By Monday, the New York Times will be running a story about how Trump had the Ark of the Covenant

Bonchie @bonchieredstate
Crack-addled Hunter Biden leaving a laptop at a repair shop? Completely improbable.
Trump stealing nuclear secrets and the FBI waiting 18 months to seize them without arresting anyone? Totally legit.
The mind of Jonah Goldberg. Almost as if it’s undergirded by bias.

Mollie @MZHemingway
The agency that ran the Russia collusion hoax, the Whitmer kidnap hoax, went to war against the parents of school-age children, and did nothing during the violent summer of 2020, the attacks on Supreme Court Justices, churches, and pregnancy centers, has thoughts.