The U.S. economy will not achieve full employment – a key benchmark the U.S. Federal Reserve has said it will use in deciding when to raise interest rates – until at least the fourth quarter of 2022, Fitch Ratings predicted in a note to clients. To reach full employment, the economy needs to add about...
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SPENDING UP; INFLATION PUSHED IT HIGHER
The 0.5-percent gain in consumer spending in April resulted from a 1.1-percent jump in spending on services such as hair styling and gym visits, the U.S. Commerce Department reported. Spending on merchandise slid 0.6 percent during the month. However, the rise in the amount of money spent came as the result of inflation, which bumped...
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MAJOR U.S. BANKS STAYING AWAY FROM CRYPTOS
In 26 May testimony before Congress, the CEOs of three major U.S. banks said their institutions remain at arm’s length from cryptocurrencies. American banks face pressure from customers and consumers to open their doors to private digital currencies but worry about dealing in assets that are unregulated and regularly experience unpredictable gyrations in price. Cryptocurrencies...
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BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES
CRYPTOS VS. GOVERNMENT EDGING TO HOT CONFLICT. Cryptos continued to mostly trend down during last week. Bitcoin and Ether are now trading at nearly half of all-time highs achieved less than two months ago. The huge sell-off has happened even amid news of dollar inflation, and $6 trillion budgets. As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin has...
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AI MIGHT POWER “1984” BY 2024, SAYS MICROSOFT HEAD
In another signal that AI technology is threatening to break past human understanding and efforts to contain it, Microsoft’s president Brad Smith is now sounding the alarm. In an interview with the BBC, Smith said a dystopian scenario of thought control predicted by George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 might be powered by AI within the...
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APPLE BETRAYS CHINESE USERS FOR PROFIT
Apple, that bastion of user privacy, just sold out its users in China to the communist government. The U.S. tech giant handed over user iCloud access to Chinese authorities, to cement its opening of a mainland data center in a partnership deal with the Chinese state-owned firm Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD). The joint venture housing...
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THE “PROGRESS” OF LEAVING HUMANS BEHIND
The idea that cutting-edge technologies are providing widespread benefits to humankind is failing the test of observation. The prime current example is new mRNA and DNA COVID “vaccine” technology. They have been lauded for saving the world from a deadly virus. But the world wouldn’t have needed saving, if the virus were never created in...
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2019 PROTESTS TOPPLE CHILE’S RULING PARTY
As we reported last week, “CHILE VOTERS: OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW,” voters in Chile – especially the young – came out en masse earlier this month to deal a blow to the country’s entrenched political parties. They voted for a hard-left special assembly to draft a Constitution that is expected to...
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BELARUS STUNT = U.S. ABUSE
How many Americans know where Belarus is? Or, more appropriately, if considering the general public’s level of knowledge of international goings-on, most would ask, “What’s a Belarus?” In the true spirit of Washington – to hate all things Russian – Belarus, a Russian ally, was “breaking news” in America over the past several weeks. On...
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NO JAIL FOR PRECIOUS METAL MARKET FRAUDSTERS
Federal probation officers advise federal judges on sentencing decisions, and they can disagree with prosecutors on such matters. Such disagreement is on display in the case of two former Deutsche Bank traders convicted of wire fraud for a “spoofing” scheme that manipulated prices on a precious metals futures exchange. Trading is Brisk The rise in...