Oops! Our Bad! IMF Director Admits “We Printed Too Much Money”

Mostly we get lies, spin and obfuscation from central bankers, politicians and bureaucrats. But every once in a while, one of these people accidentally wanders into the truth.

IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva did just that during a recent panel discussion hosted by CNBC. She conceded that central banks globally “printed too much money and didn’t think of unintended consequences.”

I think we are not paying sufficient attention to the law of unintended consequences. We take decisions with an objective in mind and rarely think through what may happen that is not our objective. And then we wrestle with the impact of it.

“Take any decision that is a massive decision, like the decision that we need to spend to support the economy. At that time, we did recognize that maybe too much money in circulation and too few goods, but didn’t really quite think through the consequence in a way that upfront would have informed better what we do.”

How this economic brain trust missed failed to consider that injecting trillions into the economy would cause prices to rise is a bit of a head-scratcher. This is economics 101. Expanding the money supply pushes prices higher than they otherwise would be. I knew this would happen. Peter Schiff knew this would happen. Heck, you probably knew this would happen. But the people charged with running the global economy didn’t?

These people are either wildly incompetent, or they are lying to you.

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Despite Being Heavily Debunked, Dept. Releases Video Claiming Cop Nearly Died from ‘Exposure’ to Fentanyl

In case you’ve been completely in the dark for the last decade, you’ve likely noticed that the United States is currently in the midst of an opioid crisis. This crisis knows no demographic, no race, no gender, no age limit, and no occupation—it hits them all. Due to the government-imposed lockdowns, 2021 marked the deadliest year in history for fatal drug overdoses with fentanyl claiming the lives of countless individuals.

Because the state enforces a drug war which outlaws far safer alternatives, fentanyl has grabbed a large portion of the illegal drug market and these synthetic opioids that are extremely dangerous are flooding the streets. Make no mistake, fentanyl is dangerous and kills people by the thousands but the government’s response to it is causing far more harm than good.

Instead of realizing the dangers brought on by enforcing a war on drugs which has led to the thriving illicit fentanyl market, much of law enforcement resorts to violence, fear tactics and propaganda to unsuccessfully scare people into compliance. A video was released this week by the Thomasville police department and it is nothing short of “scary propaganda.”

According to the Thomasville Police Chief Mitch Stuckey, one of his officers nearly died after working a drug bust and was “exposed to fentanyl.”

“Our officer did everything right” but was still somehow exposed to the opioid and could have died, Stuckey told WKRG.

According to the chief, after the officer was “exposed,” he drove all the way back to the department — after wrapping up the bust — and only collapsed once he got in front of the department’s surveillance camera. The officer was then given Narcan and rushed to the hospital.

“The officers [who aided the victim] were shook up” by the experience, Stuckey said.

The department released the subsequent video and dozens of media outlets have since picked it up and have been spreading it around. The department has not released the toxicology reports, nor what the hospital has said.

“Fentanyl is the most dangerous drug,” Stuckey said, saying the officer must have touched it or had it on his clothes. “An amount as small as a grain of salt can be fatal.”

While it is certainly true that fentanyl is extremely dangerous, simply being near it or even touching it, cannot hurt you. It has to be ingested.

In reality, where the Free Thought Project chooses to live, it is not possible to overdose from coming in contact with the drug without actually ingesting it. It is not absorbed through the skin nor does it have deadly “fumes.” Though fentanyl is certainly dangerous, unless the Thomasville police officer ate it, snorted it, or injected it, his collapse was either faked or completely unrelated.

But don’t take our word for it, listen to Dr. Ryan Marino, MD Medical Toxicologist, Addiction Medicine Specialist and Emergency Physician Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, who has called out reports like this before.

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DHS Disinformation’ Unit Headed by Woman Who Said Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Disinformation

The Department of Homeland Security’s new ‘disinformation’ unit will be headed by a woman who says free speech makes her ‘shudder’ and who falsely labeled the Hunter Biden laptop story disinformation.

Oh dear.

Just two days after it was revealed that Elon Musk had reached an agreement to buy Twitter, DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas announced the creation of a “disinformation governance board.”

The new board will focus primarily on “misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.”

The board will be headed by Nina Jankowicz, a former advisor to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry who oversaw related issued at the National Democratic Institute lobby group.

“Cat’s out of the bag,” Jankowicz tweeted. “Here’s what I’ve been up to the past two months, and why I’ve been a bit quiet on here.”

Jankowicz’s view of free speech is particularly odious. Free speech apparently makes her physically shudder.

“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities, which are already shouldering disproportionate amounts of this abuse,” she tweeted in response to Musk’s Twitter takeover.

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Reputed federal informant, whistleblower found dead in L.A. after he’s reported missing

A reputed federal informant and whistleblower who went missing after he was reported to have turned over a trove of secret files about Deutsche Bank was found dead at a Los Angeles school this week, a police official said Wednesday.

The body of Valentin Broeksmit, 46, was found Monday at Woodrow Wilson High School shortly before 7 a.m., Sgt. Rudy Perez of the Los Angeles School Police Department said in an email.

Records of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner do not list a cause of death. Los Angeles Police Capt. Kenneth Cabrera told the Los Angeles Times that authorities do not suspect foul play.

Broeksmit was last seen driving a red Mini Cooper on the afternoon of April 6, 2021, on Riverside Drive and was later reported missing by relatives, Los Angeles police said.

His vehicle was found, the department said, but Broeksmit remained missing.

Perez said Wednesday that he appeared to be homeless.

According to a 2019 profile in The New York Times, Broeksmit was a musician and the son of a Deutsche Bank executive who died by suicide in 2014.

After his father’s death, Broeksmit gained access to his father’s email account and found hundreds of files related to the bank, including board meeting minutes, financial plans, spreadsheets and password-protected presentations, the newspaper reported.

Federal and state authorities were scrutinizing allegations of criminal misconduct and the bank’s long relationship with former President Donald Trump, the newspaper reported.

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The Inflation Draining Your Wallet, Grocery Cart, And Gas Tank Is Far Steeper Than 8 Percent

The Labor Department’s March inflation numbers released this month skyrocketed past February’s, hitting a 12-month increase of 8.5 percent and the steepest annual increase since 1981. That’s no small figure, but most Americans know the inflation they encounter at the grocery store checkout, the gas pump, the car lot, and the leasing office is far higher than that.

Just look at basic items like groceries and gas, and you’ll see how much higher those necessities are climbing than the generic inflation figures slapped across headlines.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in the average U.S. city, ground beef is up 14.9 percent since last March, boneless stew beef is up 24.3 percent, bacon is up 23.1 percent, boneless chicken breasts are up 17.6 percent, eggs are up 25.9 percent, milk is up 17 percent, frozen orange juice concentrate is up 18 percent, and ground coffee is up 15.8 percent. Meanwhile, fuel oil has jumped a whopping 71.5 percent, and utility gas is up 23.3 percent.

Many of these urban numbers don’t even capture how steeply prices have risen for middle America, however. In the Midwest, ground beef has risen 24.5 percent, almost 10 percentage points more than the urban average.

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Vaccine-derived polio is on the rise. A new vaccine aims to stop the spread

Is polio making a comeback?

The world has spent billions of dollars over the last 15 years in an effort to wipe out the virus through vaccination efforts – with encouraging results.

Rates plunged from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to just several dozen by 2016.

But in recent years, polio incidence has started to inch back up. The reason has to do with the type of vaccine used in many parts of the world, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. While the United States and other Western countries inject an inactivated virus that poses no risk of spread and are now polio-free, other countries rely on an oral vaccine. It’s cheap, it’s easy to administer and two or more doses confer lifelong immunity. But it’s made with living, weakened virus. And that poses a problem.

Those who’ve been immunized with live virus can shed it in their stool, which can then spread through sewage in places with poor sanitation. If the virus stays weak, it can even expose the unvaccinated to polio and give them immunity. But if it mutates and regains virulence, someone who isn’t vaccinated can become sick with vaccine-derived polio after contact with the contaminated wastewater.

And now countries that had previously eradicated polio in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia are seeing new outbreaks of vaccine-derived polio.

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US Local Governments Helped Chinese Firms With $1.7 Billion in Subsidies: Watchdog

U.S. state and local governments have provided about $1.7 billion in subsidies to Chinese companies since 2010, a trend that must be reversed, said Robert Atkinson, president of Washington-based think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“The official U.S. policy is to try to slow down China because they’re playing unfairly, if you will. So here we are trying to slow down China but at the same time, state and local governments are providing subsidies to speed up China,” Atkinson said in a recent interview with NTD.

China is known for engaging in a number of unfair trade practices, such as dumping cheap products in foreign markets, providing excessive government subsidies to Chinese companies helping them to gain market share, and stealing intellectual property (IP) and technologies. The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimated in 2017 that the U.S. economy suffers an annual loss of between $225 to $600 billion from China’s IP theft each year.

The subsidy amount is tabulated by Washington-based watchdog Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that promotes corporate and government accountability. It found that China-based companies received over $1.8 billion in subsidies from U.S. government bodies from 1991 to 2020. The majority of the aid, about $1.7 billion, started flowing out of the United States in 2010.

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Biden asking Congress for $33 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine against Russian invasion

President Biden will ask Congress on Thursday for $33 billion in new funding to support Ukraine as it fights off a renewed Russian assault, while simultaneously pushing a plan to make it easier to seize and sell the assets of Russian oligarchs.

A senior administration official said the funds will ensure Ukraine has the weapons it needs to fight its Russian attackers as well as replenish the U.S.’s own stockpile of weapons that have been rushed to Kyiv.

The amount, which is a combination of U.S. military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, is expected to last through September, which is the end of the government’s fiscal year.

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It’s Time We Get Answers About the FBI’s Involvement In the OKC Bombing

This past week marked the 27th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. As the worst terrorist act committed on U.S. soil at the time, we all know the reported facts of the horrific event well: a 27-year-old Desert Storm-vet, Timothy McVeigh, acting with minimal help from Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, detonated a 7,000-pound fertilizer bomb from a parked Ryder truck outside the federal Alfred P. Murrah building, killing 168 people, 19 of them children.

Two years later, in 1997, McVeigh was convicted of “Using a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death,” among other federal charges. For a time, he was held on the same cell block as the Unabomber and WTC-bomber Ramzi Yousef (who tried to convert him to Islam), before being put to death by lethal injection in 2001.

There is much we still don’t know about the case, however. Thanks to years of heroic work by people like Salt Lake City-based attorney Jesse Trentadue, writer and researcher J.M. Berger, and independent investigative reporter Wendy S. Painting, the American public is slowly learning more and more key (and disturbing) facts about the case. Facts involving the FBI’s possible incitement of McVeigh and the subsequent cover-up of these facts by Newsweek magazine.

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