Inflation good news … Democrat-style By Ethel C. Fenig

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/inflation_good_news__democratstyle.html

Today’s inflation news will be something Joe Biden crows about, but only if you don’t need to eat.

As per its schedule, the U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report on the February 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI) at 8:30 a.m. (EDT) this morning, confirming what most of us have noticed.  

CPI for all items rises 0.4% in February as shelter increases

In February, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased 0.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 6.0 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy increased 0.5 percent in February (SA); up 5.5 percent over the year

“…less food and energy…” 

Oh.

Food, which all living things need, jumped on an annual basis to 9.5%.  For those who eat at home, food prices zoomed up 10.2 %.  If that is too much for some, be reassured that “food away from home” in the past 12 months gulped up “only” 8.4%.  

Yeah, yeah…I know.

But there was some better yearly news on energy; really.  Energy costs (only)  increased 5.2% as energy commodities (oil, gas) dropped 1.4%. 

Drill, drill, explore, and drill some more.

DeSantis, Newsom, and the Algae Apocalypse Vanquishing woke extremists is only half the battle. Right-sizing the environmentalist movement is equally important, and may be a harder battle. By Edward Ring

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/14/desantis-newsom-and-the-algae-apocalypse/

It would not be surprising if the final candidates for president in November 2024 were Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But if a younger generation of candidates prevails in their respective primaries, an equally unsurprising outcome would be Gavin Newsom pitted against Ron DeSantis.

While purists on both sides may find the California Democrat and the Florida Republican to be far from perfect embodiments of their ideals, a contest between these two governors would nonetheless be a contest between two very different visions for the future of America insofar as they govern two big states that diverge on almost every policy of consequence.

The prevailing perception of a hypothetical race between Newsom and DeSantis focuses on cultural issues, with both of them claiming their state is a beacon of freedom. But a comparison of equal consequence could be based on their response to environmental challenges.

Genuine Environmental Threats vs. Environmentalism, Inc.

One of the many tragic outcomes of overhyping the “climate crisis” is that for millions of skeptics, the entire environmentalist movement has lost credibility. In many cases, it is deserved. Organizations that used to have specific and relatively unassailable missions, such as Greenpeace back in the days when their mission was to save endangered whales, have now morphed into politicized caricatures that their founders wouldn’t recognize.

The environmentalist movement in the world, and in America in particular, has used the rhetorical bludgeon of an imminent “climate catastrophe” to terrify every child, intimidate every politician, and coopt every major corporation on earth—although, to be fair, monopolistic corporations have easily exploited the climate agenda to blaze a profitable pathway to even more market dominance and captive profits. Meanwhile, genuine environmental threats, lacking the sex appeal of surging seas and flaming forests, are not getting the attention they deserve. Examples of this are plentiful, and California is ground zero.

Prestigious Women’s College to Vote on Whether to Admit Trans Men By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/03/14/prestigious-womens-college-to-vote-on-whether-to-admit-trans-men-n1678211

Wellesley College, one of the most prestigious women’s colleges in the United States, will vote on Tuesday in a non-binding referendum on whether to admit transgender males.

Trans men are already attending Wellesley, having transitioned after arriving on campus. But this would be a step that would end Wellesley’s identification as a place of education for females.

Opponents, including the president, Paula Johnson, said the referendum changes Wellesley’s mission, which they say was founded to educate women. Last week, Johnson raised the ire of activists by saying in a statement that Wellesley is “a women’s college that admits cis, trans and nonbinary students — all who consistently identify as women.”

This Is Good Inflation News? Not If You Need Food, Heat, Or A Place To Live

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/15/this-is-good-inflation-news-not-if-you-need-food-heat-or-a-place-to-live/

Inflation eased again.” “CPI inflation rate slows to 6%.” “Inflation fell for the eighth straight month in February.” Those are the headlines that greeted the latest Consumer Price Index Report. Why aren’t those ungrateful families celebrating?

Prices in February climbed 0.4% from the month before and 6% from the year before. Both are down slightly from January.

President Joe Biden cheered the news, saying that “today’s report shows annual inflation is down by a third from this summer” and is “the slowest annual increase since September 2021.”

Huzzah!

OK, sure, that 6% year-over-year bump is still three times the average inflation for the past three decades. And sure, it comes on top of the 7.9% jump in prices in February 2022. And, yes, it means that the Consumer Price Index has now risen 15% in the short time Biden has been in office.

But fear not! Because Biden is on top of the situation, and his “inflation reduction act” is clearly working. Right?

The problem with the focus on the overall CPI – which measures cost changes in a “basket of goods” – is that people aren’t buying this basket every month. Most are just trying to make ends meet. They’re trying to feed their families. Keep the lights on. Avoid eviction.

Germany’s Coming Green Energy “Economic Miracle” Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-3-12-germanys-coming-green-energy-economic-miracle

I’m old enough to remember the German post-World War II “economic miracle.” (Their term was “Wirtschaftswunder.”). After more than ten years of government direction of the economy under the Nazis, followed by the devastation of the war, Germany after 1945, under economics minister Ludwig Erhard, adopted the model of low taxes and light regulation. The economy boomed for decades on end.

But Germany then gradually turned away from Erhard’s prescriptions. Today Germany is twenty or so years into the most aggressive green energy “transition” of any country with a large economy, with the government firmly in charge of picking the winners and losers in the energy sector. At this writing, Germany’s consumer electricity rates are in the range of triple the U.S. average. My January 3, 2023 post quoted a German energy market guru named Mirko Scholssarczyk forecasting yet further big increases:

“40 cents per kilowatt-hour [is] likely to be the new normal in 2023 and 2024, and . . . prices could even rise to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour after that.”

That would put German consumer electricity rates at about 4 to 5 times the U.S. average — assuming that the U.S. does not go down the same path and drive rates up the way Germany has.

Feds try to stop bank crisis of their own making Biden’s stimulus blunders compounded by Fed Reserve policy missteps put US banks in a vise: David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/feds-try-to-stop-bank-crisis-of-their-own-making/

NEW YORK – US bank regulators on Sunday announced a massive response to last week’s run on Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the risk of copycat runs against other regional banks.

The Federal Reserve will provide one-year loans against banks’ security portfolios through a new Bank Term Funding Program, eliminating the risk that banks might be forced to sell their US$4.4 trillion in government securities at a loss.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), meanwhile, will make whole all SVB depositors, as well as those of the Signature Bank of New York, closed by New York state authorities on “systemic risk” grounds.

Federal regulators have slapped a rather large bandage on a gaping wound that they cut into the banking system. By tightening credit to control a wave of inflation that had nothing to do with credit in the first place, the Treasury and Federal Reserve have created a credit problem where none existed before. There are few comparable instances of self-sabotage in the annals of bank regulation.

Although depositors won’t lose money, holders of bank bonds may take substantial losses. That augurs poorly for a recovery in credit markets already stressed by Federal Reserve tightening.

Sunday’s announcement will ease market fears that the run on SVB, which saw $45 billion in deposits leave the bank in little more than a day, might spread to other regional banks. The value of regional banks’ stocks collapsed on March 10 in response to the fear of a general run.

THE SILICON VALLEY BANK COVERUP – AND THE ROADS LEADING TO GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM The bank just deleted their Twitter account. So much for transparency from a bank that is now 100-percent backed by taxpayers.Adam Andrzejewski

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/the-silicon-valley-bank-coverup-and

Last Friday, when the Silicon Valley Bank quickly imploded and rocked the U.S. financial sector, it was taken over by federal regulators. The bank was known for backing tech start-ups, and had come under fire for prioritizing investments into climate change and social ventures rather than those that could make a predictable return.

The executive roster of the bank had a questionable track record. For example, SVB’s Chief Administrative Officer, Joseph Gentile, was the CFO of Lehman Brothers investment bank when it collapsed. SVBs Chief Risk Officer position was left vacant for nine months through January 2023.

The CEO, Greg Becker, was a director at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank from 2019 until termination on Friday. Becker’s also under investigation for selling $3.6 million in bank stock during a period when SVB was in the markets to raise $2 billion from investors— an effort to keep the bank solvent.

Silicon Valley Bank’s “Behested” $100,000 Gift To Newsom’s Nonprofit

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that California Governor Gavin Newsom, through a nonprofit organization his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom founded, the California Partners Project, has very close ties to the bank.

In 2021, SVB gave $100,000 in corporate gifts to the Newsom nonprofit. These gifts are so intertwined with the Newsom’s that they are listed as a matter of California ethics law on a state government website, California Fair Political Practices Commission.

False depictions of Israeli reforms and the fall of SVB By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/false-depictions-of-israeli-reforms-and-the-fall-of-svb/

You’ve heard about the guy who killed his parents and then wailed about being an orphan, right? Well, what’s going on in Israel right now is even more astounding, with the anti-government protest movement taking the metaphor to a whole new level.
Its masterminds—along with gullible, genuinely scared fellow travelers—are not only premeditating the demise of the very institutions they’re claiming to cherish. They’re staging mass dress rehearsals, replete with costumes from the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” for an I-told-you-so funeral of their own making.

But don’t take my word for it. Radio broadcaster and social activist Aybee Binyamin, a member of opposition leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party and a founder of the previous hate-fests against Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, proudly articulates the plot.

“The protest is progressing on several axes,” he tweeted on March 6. “The central axis is the Saturday-night demonstrations. The sub-axis is the ‘days of disruption’ and daily demonstrations. The second axis is the crushing of the economy. The third axis is the crushing of the [Israel Defense Forces] reserves. The fourth axis and the one that will deal the knockout blow is international isolation from democratic countries in general and European Union and United States sanctions in particular! Together we will win!”

Under this manifesto is a photo of a giant banner reading: “The government of the destruction of the Third Temple.” This is intentional projection—with the cynical abuse by secularists of ancient Jewish history to engage in it—at its finest.

The ghost of Ancient Rome haunts America Its great cities are on the path to decay BY Joel Kotkin

https://unherd.com/2023/03/the-ghost-of-ancient-rome-haunts-america/

The death of Ancient Rome wasn’t so much a collapse as a slow, interminable decay: between the second and sixth centuries AD, its population declined from a million people to just 30,000. Since then, 15 centuries have passed and thousands of cities have been built. And yet, as Rome’s greatest chronicler Edward Gibbon warned in 1776, a similar fate awaits our modern metropolises. This time, however, their decline will radically alter our perception of what “urbanism” really means.

London, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles — these urban centres epitomised what Jean Gottman described in 1983 as “transactional cities”. Based on finance, high-end business and IT services, they were defined not by production and trade in physical goods, but by intangible products concocted in soaring office towers. For years, academic researchers, both on the Left and Right, envisioned a high-tech economic future dominated by dense urban areas. As The New York Times‘s Neil Irwin observed in 2018: “We’re living in a world where a small number of superstar companies choose to locate in a handful of superstar cities where they have the best chance of recruiting superstar employees.”

Yet even before the current downturn, the data defied the bravado. For decades, the ultra-tall towers that once symbolised urban greatness have been as anachronistic as the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Office occupancy has been declining since the turn of the century, along with the construction of new space. In 2019, before the pandemic, construction was one-third the rate of 1985 and half that of 2000.

More serious still has been the movement of people. Migration to dense cities started to decline in 2015, when large metropolitan areas began to see an exodus to smaller locales. By 2022, rural areas were also gaining population at the expense of cities. The pandemic clearly accelerated this process, with a devastating rise in crime and lawlessness: notably in London, Paris, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago. In some parts of Chicago and Philadelphia, young men now have a greater chance of being killed by firearms than an American soldier serving during the Afghanistan or Iraq wars.

Who Is Poisoning Iranian Schoolgirls? The attacks, which have sickened thousands, are the latest evidence that the regime is losing its grip. By Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-is-poisoning-iranian-schoolgirls-khamenei-mullahs-irgc-protest-mahsa-amini-control-regime-9e17109b?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Iranian news outlets began reporting three months ago that schoolgirls were falling ill with headaches, dizziness, nausea, fatigue and breathing difficulties. The shrine city of Qom, historic seat of the clerical establishment, appears to have been ground zero, but 25 of the country’s 31 provinces have reported similar outbreaks. A parliamentarian who is part of a fact-finding commission said that upward of 5,000 students and teachers might have been poisoned.

Official reaction ranged from surprise and denial to grudging acknowledgment. Last week the Interior Ministry reported the arrest of several suspects. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called the poisoning “a major and unforgivable crime.”

The threats to global stability and the US homeland are growing. How will the war in Ukraine end? Can China and the US develop a less combative relationship? Join historian and Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead and editorial page editor Paul Gigot for an interactive conversation on the threats to US security.

Yet there is little doubt that the clerical regime is responsible for this assault. The only two organizations capable of undertaking an operation of this scale are the Intelligence Ministry and the domestic intelligence service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The question is why the cagey supreme leader would opt for a course of action that was bound to unsettle further his wobbly theocracy. It’s hard to imagine his hand-picked men moving without his consent.

Since the outbreak of the “women, life and freedom” protest movement in September, which was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, the regime has tried to assert control over the streets without “excess” brutality. Beyond Iranian Baluchistan and Kurdistan, where the government has bloodily repressed dissent, the theocracy has veered away from firing automatic weapons on crowds, as it did in 2019 to suppress a near-insurrection. Authorities prefer to arrest Iranians by the thousand. That way fear spreads without massive bloodshed, burials and religious commemorations that invite more protests. The attack on the girls’ schools—most secondary schools in Iran are single-sex—was probably an effort to intimidate without killing, to create a paralyzing fear in parents and their children.