Not good.

Microplastics Found in Human Blood for the First Time

. . . or CBDC’s as They’re Called

From Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com:

“You might assume that you are already using ‘digital currency’ regularly if you rarely use physical cash anymore and instead buy almost everything with a credit card or a digital payment app. In truth, the process of moving money from A to B is vastly more complicated than that. It involves a tangle of payment processors, banks, financial clearinghouses, and, if your money is crossing borders, international communication and exchange systems, such as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). The money itself doesn’t move anywhere fast, so each intermediary institution must assume risks to fulfill your transaction by accepting promises, sending transfers, verifying receipt of funds, and so on. Many fees get collected along the way for such services.

“A CBDC system would be radically simplified. A customer would open an account directly with a country’s central bank, and the central bank would issue (create) digital money in the account. Crucially, this makes the money a direct liability of the Fed, rather than of a private bank. Using a simple smartphone app or other tools, the customer can then initiate direct transactions between Fed accounts. The digital money is deleted in one account and recreated in another instantaneously. Moving money across borders no longer requires something as complex as SWIFT or wire transfers, and currencies can be exchanged instantly as long as friendly central banks have agreements to do so. No promises or trust are necessary; every transaction is permanently recorded on a digital cryptographic ledger in real time—a bit like Bitcoin, but exquisitely centralized rather than distributed.”

No more banks but your CENTRAL BANK.

If we’re going this route — and it looks like we are — WE SHOULD VOTE THIS WAY AS WELL.

DIRECTLY WITH DIGITAL BALLOTS.

Courtesy Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

BOY, that must have been ONE LABOR OF LOVE!  I mean, did MIKE compile it himself?

Or was it DONALD?

. . . and Against Crypto

From Alasdair MacLeod:

“Attempts at finding alternatives to money, which is only gold and silver coin and bullion, and currency, which is a central bank liability along with bank credit entries, are based on avoiding the discipline of a gold exchange standard. Even bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have set themselves up as a better medium of exchange, claiming to be in tune with our technological times. Instead, they lack the crucial lex mercatoria exemption and so cannot replace metallic money. Instead, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are liable to collapse entirely if metallic money is reintroduced to back existing currencies. To varying degrees, central banks have the gold to back their currencies, but with few exceptions such as El Salvador they do not possess bitcoin and never will.”

On the whole, I agree.  Crypto is speculative and, thus far, extremely VOLATILE.  Gold is MONEY and, despite continuous price suppression by the world’s leading banks, keeps steadily rising versus currencies.

Because inflationary fiat CAN’T LAST.

THINK COMING DOUBLE-DIGIT INFLATION.

Don’t look now.

You tell me.

The skinny.

Can the EU replace what it’s been getting from Russia: more than A QUARTER of its crude; almost HALF of its coal; and almost 40% of its natural gas?

Dependency by country:

Not only is the average dependency almost 60%, but there are also 13 countries with needs IN EXCESS OF THAT, with three of them over 80%.

Where EU energy imports come from:

CRUDE

COAL

NATURAL GAS

Where’s the EU’s action plan to replace these key fuel sources?   

Other than to TRY TO END THIS WAR.

From Mike Shedlock.

LA Spends up to $837K Per Unit to House Just 5,600 of Over 40,000 Homeless

Plenty of graphics here, but here’s just one:

I ask you, what price “COMPASSION?”

The two groups’ votes they need to remain in power — Independents and Moderates — are both feeling materially less well off.

I’ll venture that the anti-Woke backlash should be CRESCENDOING by the midterms.

Resistance Is Rising to Woke Colleges’ Race and Sex Discrimination

From the  above linked piece in reference to UM economics professor, Mark Perry:

“Typical and frequent” Title IX violations “that have gone unchallenged for many decades,” he says, include “female-only scholarships, fellowships, awards, study spaces, mentoring, tutoring, special freshman orientations, industry meetings, summer STEM programs, summer STEM camps, coding clubs, leadership programs, entrepreneurship programs, gym hours, etc. that operate exclusively for women while illegally excluding and discriminating against boys and men.”

WHAT — WOMEN CAN’T COMPETE?

Or as surveys in Sweden have shown,  maybe WOMEN JUST AREN’T AS INTERESTED AS MUCH AS MEN ARE IN CERTAIN THINGS AND VICE VERSA.

And it’s not just gender.  There’s the accompanying racial aspect to this ILLEGAL SO-CALLED REBALANCING, particularly as it pertains to corporates.  Quoting again from the piece:

The “American Civil Rights Project forced Coca-Cola’s general counsel’s office to stop an openly discriminatory and illegal program of racial quotas. Coke had said it would only hire outside law firms that met its standards for racial makeup. Law firms doing business with Coke were supposed to present quarterly reports on the racial background of the attorneys doing Coke’s legal work — and risk losing the account if the numbers didn’t reach the quotas.

“This was clearly illegal race discrimination barred by 42 US Code Section 1981 as well as other anti-discrimination laws. As the ACR Project’s Dan Morenoff put it, ‘It’s amazing that neither the general counsel of a large corporation like Coke, nor the large, prominent law firms the policy involved, seem to have considered its direct conflict with American civil rights laws. It’s even more amazing that so many other sophisticated American corporations have similarly disregarded obvious legal problems to adopt comparably ‘woke’ policies.’”

What did the WOKE MOB think?  That it could simply OVERTURN a RULE OF LAW society in a FIT OF OFTEN POORLY RESEARCHED AND EXPRESSED GRIEVANCE?

Tocqueville warned against a TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY.  What he failed to mention was the threat of a TYRRANY OF A MINORITY.  Or minorities.  And it can happen.  Most notably, the Marxist Bolsheviks were a minority within Russia’s multi-party revolutionary front.  And where have the WOKE looked to for strategic and ideological guidance?

CULTURAL MARXISM.