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Many claim the problem with fractional reserve banking is that it loans money into existence. It does, but under normal circumstances the money created by commercial banks disappears when loans are repaid or defaulted on, which therefore doesn’t create a permanent inflation of the money supply.

Government intervention, however, converts temporary money into permanent money through bailouts like the Troubled Asset Relief Program. They purchase loans that would have been defaulted on, preventing the evaporation of credit. When banks hold loans that are at risk of default, they face having to write them off, which would remove this part of the money supply. Bailouts turn such disappearing credit into permanent money, in effect giving banks free money.

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If it’s one thing that Eurocrats can agree on, it’s to leave no fortune nnplundered nor any pocket unpicked.

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Big Lots said in a June filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it plans to open three stores nationwide this year and close 35 to 40.

Prior to the announcement, Big Lots had 1,392 stores throughout the United States.

In its SEC filing, the Columbus, Ohio-headquartered company said the planned closures follow “macroeconomic challenges” within the U.S. economy, such as inflation, that had “adversely impacted” the buying power of its customers.

The retailer also warned in its SEC filing that, based on current cash and liquidity projections, it has “substantial doubts” about its ability to continue. It also cited a “significant likelihood” that Big Lots won’t meet the terms of a 2022 credit agreement.

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Lufkin believes lifestyle is key to preventing chronic disease and writes about his advice in the new book, “Lies I Taught in Medical School: How Conventional Medicine Is Making You Sicker and What You Can Do to Save Your Own Life.”

He doesn’t believe they’re intentional lies since medical knowledge is always evolving and doctors have to constantly re-evaluate things they thought were true. But he’s critical of what he calls the “currently accepted dogma” in medical school, which is often presented without any alternative theories, he notes.

Lufkin says these are three of the “lies” he taught in medical school. TODAY.com also reached out to medical specialists in each field for their take on his views. The interviews were edited and condensed for clarity:

Yeah, I’ll rush right out to buy a book by somebody who admits to teaching lies in medical school.

Reuters.

At the tap of a buyer’s smartphone, Chinese chemical sellers will air-ship fentanyl ingredients door-to-door to North America. Reuters purchased enough to make 3 million pills. Such deals are astonishingly easy – and reveal how drug traffickers are eluding efforts to halt the deadly trade behind the fentanyl crisis.

UPDATE: Markets in Everything: Fentanyl Precursors (Tyler Cowen)

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Princeton University is on the verge of promoting a professor who participated in the occupation of a campus building that disrupted university operations and led to more than a dozen arrests, according to an email reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The university has recommended that the classics scholar Dan-el Padilla Peralta, who along with 13 anti-Israel student protesters stormed Princeton’s historic Clio Hall in April, be promoted from associate to full professor, pending the approval of the university’s board of trustees. Peralta already has tenure, but the promotion would make him eligible for university leadership roles, including deanships.

“I’m sure you will want to join me in congratulating Dan-el on his promotion to a full professorship,” the chair of the classics department, Barbara Graziosi, wrote to her colleagues on July 18. “This is still ‘unofficial’ news, because the Board of Trustees will have to rubber stamp the recommendation made by the committee that oversees promotions, but I was told I am allowed to share the news internally and do so with glee.”

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One of the most damaging impacts of Illinois’ people loss to other states is the destruction of Illinois’ tax base. When people leave in a given year, they take their incomes (adjusted gross incomes, or AGI) with them, and that means the state’s tax base suffers.

A smaller tax base, everything else equal, means less tax revenues for safety, education, road repair and every other core government service – or, as is typically the case in Illinois, more debts and more tax hikes.

Unfortunately, Illinois’ out-migration problem is much bigger than just a one year loss: the state has lost people and AGI every single year since at least 2000, the first year of Wirepoints’ out-migration analysis. The AGI losses pile up on top of each other year after year, slashing Illinois’ tax revenue growth and destroying Illinois’ overall prosperity.

Time to leave.

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A North Korean military intelligence operative has been indicted in a conspiracy to hack into American health care providers, NASA, U.S. military bases and international entities, stealing sensitive information and installing ransomware to fund more attacks, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

The indictment of Rim Jong Hyok by a grand jury in Kansas City, Kansas, accuses him of laundering the money through a Chinese bank and then using it to buy computer servers and fund more cyberattacks on defense, technology and government entities around the world.

The hacks on American hospitals and other health care providers disrupted the treatment of patients, officials said. He’s accused of targeting of 17 entities across 11 U.S. states, including NASA and U.S. military bases, as well as defense and energy companies in China, Taiwan and South Korea.

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Alameda County, home to Oakland, ranked No. 1 in homicides in the state per capita in 2023, according to a report released earlier this month, by the California Attorney General’s office.

Meanwhile, Merced County – in the central region of the state – which topped the list in 2022, showed a sharp decrease in homicides and fell out of the state’s top five.

Los Angeles County, despite accounting for more than one-third of homicides in the state, also was not on the top five list.

Statewide, 1,892 homicide cases were reported in 2023 – a nearly 16 percent decrease compared to 2022. This is the first time the number of homicides has dropped below 2,000 since 2020.

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Francis Fukuyama saw liberal democracy as the optimal political system because it allowed all to satisfy their “desire for recognition” but, he warned, absent an external threat, such a society could become moribund, the levelling of recognition dissuading any from pursuing it through the achievement of great deeds. “It would have little art or literature, music or intellectual life. It would be incompetently governed, for few people of quality would choose a life of public service. It would not have much in the way of economic dynamism; its crafts and industries would be pedestrian and unchanging; its technology second rate.” Look around and say it is not so.

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At least four Texas nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating on the U.S. southern border have come under scrutiny from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for their role in aiding illegal immigrants in recent months.

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Researchers from Columbia University, Brookhaven National Lab, and the University of Connecticut recently assembled a team to see if they could create a material worthy of Tony Stark. What they developed was a material four times stronger than steel and five times lighter. And they made it using only glass — and DNA.

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More and more Americans who use “micromobility” transport, such as electric bikes and e-scooters, are motoring their way straight into the ER, new data shows.

The hippy-dippy life can kill you.

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People are getting sick of being invaded.

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The first official report of the UK’s COVID Inquiry—which has cost the British taxpayer at least £300,000 (€355,000) a day over the last year—contains a number of predictable conclusions. Namely that the UK’s pandemic planning was riddled with “fatal strategic flaws” and, as reported in The Guardian, made all the worse by Brexit and Conservative austerity measures.

But, rather unexpectedly, it is also fairly critical of the policy of locking down the country for months on end—or, indeed, at all.

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Police responded to a call about gunshots shortly after 2 a.m. on the 1200 block of North Alden Street.

A 33-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene and two other men died at local hospitals, according to police.

Late Sunday night, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that police are investigating the shooting and she’ll have more to say on Monday.

She is, of course, a Woman of Color.

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Thank you, Joe Biden.

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It used to be high-status to hold a job and take care of your family. Not so much anymore.

Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant.

Ben Thompson at Stratechery.

I’ve long maintained that if the powers-that-be understood what the Internet’s impact would be, they would have never allowed it to be created. It’s hard to accuse said shadowy figures of negligence, however, given how clueless technologists were as well; look no further than an operating system like Windows.

Ben Thompson is one of the most respected voices in tech journalism.

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Residents of Nantucket, Massachusetts, spoke out on Wednesday at a town hall against a wind power company for a “turbine blade failure incident” that resulted in debris washing up along the beach.

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An 89-year-old comedian is recovering after being randomly punched and knocked to the ground while waiting to cross a street in New York earlier this month.

She was, how shall I say it, not a Person of Color.

Police on Saturday said the female suspect in the July 10 incident had a medium complexion and cornrow braids and was last seen wearing a tank top and shorts with a Jurassic Park logo.

Gee, I wonder how she ‘identifies’….

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Hundreds of Kenyan soldiers deployed to Haiti have begun patrolling the streets around key government installations. Gunfire was heard during the operation and an American armored vehicle broke down.

This week, Kenyan soldiers in American MRAP vehicles patrolled the streets of Port au Prince near the National Palace. The troops are in Haiti on a UN Security Council-endorsed mission to take control of the capital city from armed groups.

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The Olympic Games will be starting shortly in Paris, and it looks like the next few weeks will be a busy time for the Parisian police.

The following report concerns a Senegalese culture-enricher in Paris who was shot dead after attacking a policeman with a knife.

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The study done by the university’s Center for American Institutions argued that there is a emphasis on training new soldiers about social issues like “unconscious bias” and “intersectionality” in a way the center says runs contrary to typical American ideals. The study examined DEI plan’s in different sector of the military, including DEI office staffing and education at academies like West Point.

The Other McCain.

Having written thousands of words on this subject — there’s a whole chapter in Donkey Cons about the damage that Democrats have inflicted on urban America — perhaps I mistakenly take it for granted that other people understand this problem as well as I do. But then I look at current trends and realize that white liberals continue to vote for Democrats who pursue the same path of destruction that made Coleman Young infamous.

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An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He’s diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn’t depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise.

Living as an international man has always been an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was no pressing reason to become an international man.

Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant – at least if you have a choice – is a suboptimal strategy if you wish to not only survive, but prosper. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America’s turn.

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In the bad old days, before G-Men took down the mob, were urbanites getting a better deal? Does the betting man receive worse odds from state run lotteries than Vinny gave on the corner running numbers? Did businesses shaken down for “protection” have higher hopes of survival in mob clutches than in municipal ones? Was there more or less anxiety about making rent or the mortgage in 1974 than in 2024? Which is the greater fiscal peril, organized crime or uber-societal-organization? It has become a valid question.

Sometimes the major difference between the government and the mob is the quality of their suits. Certainly the mob offers better protection from random street crime than, say, Gavin Newsom.

Reuters.

While new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer settles into No. 10 Downing St, Haidar is searching for homes in Greece and Monaco, because a proposed inheritance tax revamp will make Britain a ‘no go’ zone for the rich, he says.

Starmer says the overhaul will make Britain’s tax system fairer and raise funds for stretched public services.

Labour never saw a deep pocket that they didn’t want to stick their hand in. Politicians everywhere are firmly convinced that they can spend your money better than you can.

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Elon Musk is parting from his home state, publicly endorsing Trump minutes after the former president was almost assassinated at his rally in Pennsylvania. Musk also announced he will be donating $45 million to a pro-Trump political action committee and that he will be moving the headquarters of SpaceX and X from California to Austin, Texas.

He is among many other Silicon Valley billionaires who are announcing their support for Trump following the attack, including Bill Ackman, the Pershing Square Capital Management CEO.

Musk cited California governor Gavin Newsom’s new law that bars school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their child’s gender identification change as the “final straw,” as the law was “attacking both families and companies.”

California state senator Scott Wiener, a former chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, called Musk “a textbook example of why kids shouldn’t be forced to come out to their parents.” Musk said he made “it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.”

Well, yeah. This is a surprise?

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Fresh from her re-election campaign, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined plans for a new EU Housing Commissioner at a plenary session in Strasbourg on Thursday.

In a classic example of EU overreach, von der Leyen described how Brussels would develop a “European Affordable Housing Plan, to look at all the drivers of the crisis and to help unlock the private and public investment needed,” and that bureaucrats would create a new Housing Commissioner to administer the task.

While von der Leyen was short on details, pundits believe that the EU will direct additional funding to so-called ‘cohesion funds’ originally meant for underdeveloped member states. This funding will support the housing project, and the European Investment Bank will launch a new tool to attract more public and private funding for building projects.

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You can steal anything in NYC.

StrategyPage.

It’s been a decade since the last outbreak of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the adjacent Red Sea waters was suppressed. Now there is a new campaign by Iran-backed Somali Shia rebels, led by a local militia leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi. Houthi’s group decided to declare war in Israel after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israelis and other foreigners visiting a music festival near the Gaza Israeli border. Hamas killed over a thousand people, most of them civilians. The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soon arrived and Hamas has been on the run ever since. For over a decade the Houthi group has been supplied with weapons by Iran. This included missiles to attack targets in Saudi Arabia. The Yemen military was never able to suppress the Houthi violence but that changed when the Houthis began attacking commercial shipping.

The current round of Houthis violence against commercial shipping heading for the Suez Canal or making deliveries to Red Sea countries has led to over a half a dozen NATO nations sending warships to protect cargo ships in the Red Sea by attacking the Houthis rebels and their Iranian missiles in Yemen. American warships and naval aviation have already used hundreds of missiles against Houthi targets in Yemen. This has diminished the Houthi attacks but not entirely eliminated them. That would take a ground war in Yene. For over a decade the Houthis have been leading a rebellion against the Yemen government. For a while Arab nations sent troops to assist in suppressing the Houthis and now the Americans are sending an assault ship with a battalion of marines on board.

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A SOGI czar is their independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Graeme Reid, who hails from South Africa, is a professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale, and former director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.

In Reid’s case, “independent” does not mean “nonpartisan,” as his political and ideological bona fides are decidedly progressive.

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The Polish Border Guard recently lost two legal cases brought by migrants who were injured during their attempts to enter Polish territory illegally from Belarus.

The rulings are controversial considering the extreme violence Polish soldiers and officers routinely face while protecting the border, including the recent stabbing murder of Polish border officer, 21-year-old Sgt Mateusz Sitek.

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The shorter school week, which first emerged in a few rural areas decades ago, is now expanding into suburbs and smaller cities. At least 2,100 schools in half the states have embraced the three-day weekend mostly as an incentive to hire and keep teachers, prompting cheers of support from instructors, unions, and many families.

Despite the growing popularity of the shorter week, some researchers and lawmakers are pushing back on the strategy. While its impact on teacher shortages appears to be mixed in different districts, its harmful effects on the academic growth of students – arguably the top priority of public education – is clear. Teams of researchers examining the program in a variety of states have come to a similar conclusion: The four-day week stymies learning in math and English when instructional time is reduced, as is often the case.

The most authoritative multi-state study to date found that students have suffered small-to-medium negative effects, learning “significantly less” than they would have in a traditional five-day program, says co-author Emily Morton of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

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A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is responsible for the global outage.

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The federal government suspended the operations of a wind farm located off the coast of Massachusetts after a massive turbine fell apart, sending debris into the ocean and forcing local officials to temporarily close nearby beaches.

Earlier this week, Vineyard Wind’s developer reported a “blade failure incident” at the facility and said it had dispatched crews to collect debris in the surrounding waters and on beaches in Nantucket, Massachusetts. According to Vineyard Wind, the turbine blade was undergoing testing when it unexpectedly broke about 20 meters from its root.

The incident is the latest black eye to both the offshore wind energy industry, which has faced a number of economic setbacks in recent months, and the Biden administration’s green energy plans. Vineyard Wind was the first large-scale, offshore wind project approved in the U.S. The Department of the Interior signed off on the project in May 2021, less than four months after President Biden took office.

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A sesame-street level video pointing out what I have pointed out throughout my adult life: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.

Property is something where, if I have it, you don’t. That is the essence of the concept of property from the beginning of the world until the government decided it could make money off of an artificial monopoly system in the 17th century, and came up with a name (‘intellectual property’) which is as fraudulent as ‘gay marriage’. Copying something does not impair the property right of the owner of the thing being copied. We have this massive system of legalized fraud built and operated by people who make a lot of money off of it, and have managed to convinced Low Information Voters that it is somehow legitimate.

UK Daily Mail

According to the TV personality, who appeared in the TLC reality series in 2020 and previously went viral for discussing her ‘awful’ experience dating an HBO star, she and the unnamed Senator would have ‘virtual dates’ that involved her consuming meals while he watched in exchange for money.

There’s a name for such a relationship, and it isn’t ‘dating’.

Well, let’s hope he’s learned something from this experience.

I must confess that we aren’t electing the sharpest pencils in the box to public office.

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Nantucket residents are watching their pristine beaches transform into “waste dumps” filled with floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards. This prompted officials to close beaches this week after a massive offshore wind turbine experienced a catastrophic failure.

I’m sure ‘climate change’ is to blame.

As I never tire of pointing out, corporations do not pay taxes, they merely collect taxes. Taxes, to a corporation, are merely another expense, which is rolled into the price of whatever goods or services they provide. The taxes are actually paid by that corporation’s customers (which in some cases, such as national defense, the government); all corporation taxes actually do is (a) raise the price of living (can you say ‘inflation’? I’m sure you can.) and (b) make the corporation less competitive with other corporations (say, from overseas) that don’t have to pay such taxes (or perhaps even receive subsidies from their own governments).

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The extra 2 cents per gallon added July 1 was announced earlier this year by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. The department is required to adjust the gas and diesel fuel tax rates on July 1 each year, based on inflation.

For diesel, the state’s tax rose from 44.1 cents a gallon to 45.4 cents.

In all, the state charges about 60 cents a gallon now, which bumps up the already high cost state consumers pay at the pump during summer months, when gas stations are required to sell a special eco-friendly summer blend.

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A billion-dollar insurance company in Texas threw a “Drag Queen Bingo” event for up to 300 employees during Pride Month, and it featured a drag queen who performs for corporate giants Google and Amazon.

Skyward Specialty Insurance invited employees to attend a virtual bingo game at 11 a.m. on a work day, led by a man dressed in drag and using the name Schwa Works.

The company’s LGBTQ employee resource group, dubbed Soaring Skyward, hosted the event June 13, a company source familiar with the event told The Daily Signal.

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The suspected drug-smuggling tunnel found last week in Tijuana, in northern Mexico, is so long that authorities haven’t been able to find the exit point without oxygen tanks. Baja California’s Secretary of Public Safety, Leopoldo Tizoc Aguilar Durán, said his team is in the process of getting the tanks to finish the investigation.

Aguilar did confirm that the tunnel is connected to another one found two years ago that does run into U.S. territory. American authorities have been notified of the finding and are looking for an exit point in the country, he said.

Previous tunnels found in the area could provide hints about the nature of this latest discovery. One found two years ago (although unclear if it’s the one Aguilar was referring to) had the length of six football fields and featured rail and ventilation systems, electricity and reinforced walls. Concretely, it was a third of a mile long, four feet in diameter and about six stories deep.

Thank you,  Joe Biden.

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A neo-Nazi from the country of Georgia was indicted on Monday for planning mass casualty attacks against Jews in New York City.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, also known as “Commander Butcher,” planned to distribute poisoned candy to children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn and other attacks against minorities, prosecutors said

Chkhikvishvili, 20, a leader of a white supremacist extremist group known as the Maniac Murder Cult or MKY, was indicted on four counts at the federal Eastern District Court of New York in Brooklyn. He was arrested in Chi?in?u, Moldova, on July 6 on an Interpol arrest warrant.

Chris Williamson.

“Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence.”

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a law barring school districts from passing policies that require schools to notify parents if their child asks to change their gender identification.

Time to leave.

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The founding fathers of the Green revolution are not well-known. Despite their instrumental role in environmental catastrophism and the Net Zero imperative, mention their names on the Clapham Omnibus and you will get a blank look. They have mostly worked off the margins of public attention to instil the structures and systems of a global coup d’état. Their project was never really about science, or nature conservation, but a technocratic power quest profoundly influenced by eugenics. These men (and a few women) were of the liberating twentieth century, but they prepared the ground for a totalitarianism in the twenty-first.

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The Sacramento City Attorney’s Office allegedly warned Target, located in Land Park, that it could face public nuisance charges if it continues to call the cops when its merchandise is stolen, according to the Sacramento Bee.

An official with the Sacramento Police Department confirmed the location to the publication. But the City Attorney’s Office denied that it was aware of any litigation threats.

However, city officials reportedly met with Target during a meeting following the report to come up with a “safety plan” to mitigate future retail theft. During the meeting, city officials allegedly aired their grievances against Target, which agreed to beef up its own security measures—including “alarms, cameras, and security personnel” along with the implementation of “light fixtures, landscaping, wayfinding and space activation measures,” according to the Bee.

Associated Press.

Secret Service agents fatally shot the suspect, the agency said, after he opened fire from the roof of a building about 150 yards (140 meters) from the stage where Trump was addressing supporters. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle used in the shooting was recovered near his body, according to sources.

That’s pretty good shooting for that distance by a kid with no background in shooting. Well, he fucked around and found out.

UPDATE: “Malice Or Massive Incompetence”: Erik Prince Gives Detailed Assessment Of Secret Service Failure

UPDATE: Trump Blesses GoFundMe Page for Shooting Victims

UPDATE: Sniper Victim at Trump Rally Identified, Died Shielding His Family