It's time to hold the medical journals accountable

He decided to retract the Skidmore paper for reasons that do not satisfy the COPE criteria. All of his concerns could have been addressed by amending the paper. Retraction was unwarranted.

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Blue Ribbon Gaslighting

This NPR interview with Nebraska Senator Machaela Cavanaugh is one for the recordbooks.

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Judge Truncale went out of his way to decline to "take judicial notice" of Brook Jackson's Dec. 14, 2020 letter to DoD.

Orientation for new readers. Reconstitution starter pack. US Government Takeover Threatening Liberty - Part 1. Jane Ruby, Katherine Watt (22 min)

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Were Recent Bank Failures The Result Of Lax Regulation? In A Word, No

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Were Recent Bank Failures The Result Of Lax Regulation? In A Word, No

Authored by J.W.Rich via The Mises Institute,

With the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, financial markets all around the world are on edge. Despite promises from the Federal Reserve that a “soft landing” of the economy is on the way, all signs point to an imminent “crash landing”! While the full consequences of these bank failures are yet to fully play out, a prized and popular scapegoat has already been trotted out to explain the current crisis: deregulation of financial markets.

According to proponents of this view, the partial rollback of the famous Dodd-Frank Act that took place in 2018 enabled banks to engage in overly risky behavior that has now become those banks’ undoing. This perspective has even started to gain traction in Washington, DC, as well. On March 14, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Katie Porter introduced a bill that would undo the partial rollback of Dodd-Frank. In a statement released the same day, Warren writes, “In 2018, I rang the alarm bell about what would happen if Congress rolled back critical Dodd-Frank protections: banks would load up on risk to boost their profits and collapse, threatening our entire economy—and that is precisely what happened.”

This is hardly the first time that deregulation has been blamed for a financial crisis. Both popular consciousness and the economics profession has always pinned deregulation as one of the major factors leading to the 2008 financial meltdown (even though this is not supported by the data). If the current crisis continues to evolve into a full-blown recession, then fingers will doubtless be pointed once more at deregulation as a main cause.

But is this really the case? Was it truly because of deregulation that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank went under? To evaluate these claims, we have to know more about the specific regulation involved—in this case, the Dodd-Frank Act. What are the contents of this bill, and what portions of it were allegedly rolled back by the Trump administration?

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (colloquially known as Dodd-Frank) was a landmark piece of legislation passed in 2010 in response to the 2008 financial crisis. The idea behind the bill was that financial markets were in need of greater regulation, especially the largest banks. The bill resulted in the creation of:

• the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is tasked with overseeing the financial stability of the largest banking firms and ensuring that none of them are “too big to fail”;

• the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which ensures that mortgage lending and other consumer loans are nonpredatory and understood by customers;

• the Volcker rule, which prevents banking institutions from engaging in short-term trading of securities or derivatives, the purpose of which is to further separate the activities of an investment firm from those of a bank.

In 2018, the Trump administration loosened the requirements of Dodd-Frank specifically on small- and medium-sized banks. The justification for doing so was that the restrictions that Dodd-Frank had placed on the banking industry, especially the “stress tests” and capital requirements, had crippled the lending ability of these smaller banks. Because of their smaller size, they had much less freedom of action under the requirements of Dodd-Frank as opposed to their larger counterparts. Dodd-Frank’s regulatory framework had applied to all banks with a capitalization of over $50 billion, which the Trump administration raised to $250 billion—a number which effectively excludes all but the largest banks in the country.

Fast-forward to present day. On March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) after it was declared insolvent due to its inability to pay out depositors. On the same day, Signature Bank was also taken over by the FDIC over concerns about depositor withdrawals in the wake of SVB’s collapse. While both of these banks were large in their own right—with capitalizations of $212 billion and $88 billion, respectively—they were both under the $250 billion requirements to be under the full weight of Dodd-Frank. If they had both been subjected to the same regulatory scrutiny of the largest banks, would they have still failed?

Despite the protestations of Elizabeth Warren, the answer is yes. While the deregulation of these smaller banks might imply that they were eager to engage in very risky, casinoesque financial gambling, this was not the case. SVB had been dealing with a steady stream of deposit withdrawals for months as Silicon Valley more broadly has suffered financially.

Much of SVB’s portfolio was held in US Treasury bonds, which they purchased near the start of the covid-19 pandemic—a point when bond prices were very high because interest rates were low. As interest rates have risen in recent months, bond prices have correspondingly fallen. Because SVB was forced to liquidate its assets to pay depositors, it had to sell these bonds at a loss. When the news of these sales reached investors and depositors, more panic ensued which resulted in the eventual bank run that followed.

In the case of Signature Bank, its closure can be largely attributed to the failure of SVB. The contagion from its failure had spooked Signature’s depositors into withdrawing funds from their accounts. To help stave off a total run on the bank, as had happened with SVB, the FDIC stepped in and closed the bank to prevent any further drawdown of reserves.

In neither case would the Dodd-Frank regulations have prevented the bank from failing. US Treasury bonds are commonly viewed as the safest asset that one can buy, meaning that SVB’s portfolio would have likely passed any “stress tests” that regulators would have thrown at it. Signature closed its doors as a result of a good old-fashioned bank run, which Dodd-Frank—nor any other regulation—could ever truly prevent. This fact was attested to by Barney Frank himself, who was on the board of directors at Signature! As convenient an explanation as it might be, the exemption of these banks from Dodd-Frank had nothing to do with their ignominious collapse.

If regulation was not the cause, then what or who is the guilty party? The true culprit is something much more insidious: bad monetary policy. For years, the Federal Reserve has maintained artificially low interest rates—far lower than what would otherwise have been set by unhampered markets. The result is that financial institutions were misled into believing that there were far more savings in the economy than was actually the case. As a result, they were more willing to purchase bonds and make other investments based on this assumption.

However, these artificially low rates cannot last forever. As the Fed has raised interest rates in response to rising inflation, the investment decisions made by these banks were revealed to be mistakes. Because SVB’s depositors came looking for their money, they had to realize these losses and close their doors, which also led to Signature’s demise. It remains to be seen the effect that these malinvestments will have on the broader financial system, but the outlook is murky at best.

The full implications of the Fed’s malicious monetary policy are yet to fully manifested, but one point is already clear. If we are to prevent these or other crises in the future, the problem must be pulled out by its roots: the cheap-money policies of the Fed must be ended once and for all.

While centralized control over interest rates and the money supply persists, we can expect continued recessions and crises into the future. Dodd-Frank—or any similar legislation, for that matter—misunderstands the problem entirely.

The solution to financial distress is not in regulating markets but in removing interference in them. No regulation, large or small, can save us from the consequences of bad monetary policy and economic illiteracy.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/10/2023 - 10:45

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Alarm sounded over scheme to eliminate parental custody of children 12 and older

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(Photo by Aedrian on Unsplash)

A commentary by Katrina Trinko, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, is warning of a California scheme that would, in essence, remove parental custody for children 12 and older.

It explains that a legislative plan, AB 665, concerning mental health care for lower-income people, would let a stranger give permission to children "as young as 12 years old to consent to being placed into state funded group homes without parental permission…"

The law wouldn’t even require that parents be informed of the situation.

"As long as a mental health professional signs off on it, the kids can go to such a group home – and it doesn't matter what their parents think," the report explained.

Erin Friday, a California mom of two teens, told the Daily Signal, "This bill gives a stranger, a school psychologist, power to decide whether a sixth or seventh grader comes home from school that day, and that’s terrifying.

"This bill is essentially stating that parents are criminals that have to prove their innocence to get their child back."

The plan already has passed out of the California Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Trinko explained the scheme builds on an existing law that already allows children 12 and older to be given "mental health care" without their parents' knowledge if a "mental health provider" finds that best.

WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews

That had been promoted by the leftist Center for American Progress as a way to promote LGBT ideology to youth.

That group reported then, "LGBT youth are likely to avoid using public mental health services if they believe that doing so will cause them to have to reveal their LGBT status to their parents or peers."

One of the typical arguments is that LGBT youth must be affirmed or they'll commit suicide. But the report explained that when the earlier law was adopted 92 minors in California committed suicide.

"From 2011-2020, the last year for which data is available, 106 minors a year on average committed suicide in California," the report said.

While testifying on the plan, licensed clinical social worker Pamela Garfield-Jaeger explained the additional dangers children face in residential facilities, from drug use and violent behavior to fleeing into the hands of sex traffickers.

The report also identified the suddenly exploding ideology regarding transgenderism as a reason to keep parents in the dark.

"It is apparent that one result of this bill will be the removal of trans-identified children from the family home,” Garfield-Jaeger said in her testimony. “In the dystopian nightmare we are in, if a parent doesn’t use the child’s chosen pronoun or name, they are labeled dangerous."

EDITOR’S NOTE: Question: Why do the political and corporate leaders of America – long the freest, most successful, most prosperous and most Christian nation in history – bow and scrape before China, a ruthless, communist, totalitarian and explicitly atheistic dictatorship openly committed to ruling the world, including America?

The astonishing answers come into focus only when one contemplates both the unprecedented level of political and financial corruption in America’s ruling class (multiple Biden family members received $31 million in payola from China), and simultaneously the communist Chinese government’s brilliantly devious methods of unconventional total warfare, by which China is stealthily infiltrating, subverting, corrupting and colonizing the United States of America.

The China threat has rarely been more dramatically or pointedly documented than in the sensational March issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “HOW CHINA IS CONQUERING AMERICA.” Whistleblower is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.

For 25 years, WND has boldly brought you the news that really matters. If you appreciate our Christian journalists and their uniquely truthful reporting and analysis, please help us by becoming a WND Insider!

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.

The post Alarm sounded over scheme to eliminate parental custody of children 12 and older appeared first on WND.

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SHOCKING UPDATE: FBI Now Admits to 40 Undercover Agents Infiltrated the Crowds on Jan. 6 #Fedsurrection

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Federal operative takes down fencing on January 6 before Trump supporters arrived in mass at the US Capitol.

Previously The Gateway Pundit identified 20 different confirmed incidents and operations involving federal, state and local government operatives who infiltrated the massive Trump crowds on January 6, 2021.

Each one of these incidents has been confirmed by the far-left press or the government in court documents.

SHOCKING REPORT: DOJ Embedded an FBI Informant Inside the DEFENSE TEAM of Non-Violent Jan 6 Prisoner and Former US Marine Zachary Rehl

We currently have no idea how many federal, state and local government operatives were working undercover on January 6 but it looks like it is close to 100 operatives leading the charge on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

And now this.

Recent court documents reveal the Biden Department of Justice admitting to at least 40 undercover operatives with the Proud Boys on January 6.

In September 2022 we learned the FBI was running operatives inside The Oath Keepers on January 6th. The DOJ sprung this on the Oath Keepers members before their trial in Washington DC before a Kangaroo Court. The US government finally admitted in this letter they sent out before the trial that they were running Confidential Human Sources (CHS) inside the Oath Keepers organization on January 6.

In November 2022 the FBI finally admitted they had 8 informants inside the Proud Boys organization on January 6 and likely more.

The FBI had as many as eight informants inside the Proud Boys in the months around the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, recent court papers indicate, raising questions about how much federal investigators were able to learn from them before and after it took place. https://t.co/vfMPExBNW3

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 14, 2022

And now the DOJ is admitting to 40 government CHS agents were undercover on January 6th.

Proud Boys defendant Dominic Pezzola recently reported this admission.

SHOCK: The DoJ now admits that another 40 undercover agents were with the Proud Boys on J6 – from HSI – Homeland Security Investigations. The vast majority of the group was paid by the government as either W2 employees or CHS. pic.twitter.com/tCKZubpJmq

— @amuse (@amuse) April 6, 2023

The post SHOCKING UPDATE: FBI Now Admits to 40 Undercover Agents Infiltrated the Crowds on Jan. 6 #Fedsurrection appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Necessity

Once I realised that childhood vaccination was not safe and effective, I realised that safe and effective was language designed to “construct ignorance” [a subject I’ve only recently understood]. The ignorance constructed in that framing was that of “necessity”.

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The US Attorney in Utah has given the anti-vax movement in America the greatest gift ever

The US Attorney has given Dr. Kirk Moore the right to request the state and federal public health records. Now the truth will finally be exposed. Dr. Moore can single handedly do something nobody else has been able to do: expose the corruption and end the COVID vaccination in the US and worldwide.

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Did your doctor recommend the COVID shot after it was known it did not prevent catching or transmitting the illness?

My testimony to the New Hampshire legislature in 2021 includes many links regarding vaccine efficacy, including an August 5, 2021 interview of Rochelle Walensky by Wolf Blitzer and a similar pronouncement at the same time by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Yet the shots continued to be pushed.

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