NATION AND STATE

FDA Asks Court To Delay First 55K Batch Of COVID Docs; Pfizer Moves To Join Case Authored by attorney Aaron Siri via Injecting Freedom (emphasis ours),

As explained in prior posts, in a lawsuit seeking all of the documents the FDA relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, a federal judge shot down the FDA’s requested rate of 500 pages per month and instead ordered the FDA to produce at the rate of 55,000 pages per month starting on March 1. 

Since the government has trillions of dollars of our money, it is putting it to good use by

27 Russian Diplomats Expelled From US – Embassy Laments “Very Bitter Event”  27 Russian diplomats left the United States on Wednesday after a prior State Department order had set a deadline of Jan.30 for their departure, at a moment the showdown at the Russia-Ukraine border continues, and amid deteriorating US-Russia relations.

Calling it a “very bitter event at our embassy,” Russian Ambassador Antoly Antonov said in a social media video of the diplomats departing on a bus to the airport: “Our comrades were forced, at the request of the Americans, to leave earlier than the period for which they came

Will The UK’s Return-To-Normal Force Biden’s Hand? Authored by Thomas Buckley via AmericanThinker.com,

Tick, Tick, Tick…. Is the End Nigh?

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was facing an immediate political death sentence, so what did he do? He declared the pandemic over.

The question now on this side of the pond: Will Joe Biden—himself facing a political death sentence, though admittedly a few months away—learn anything from Boris Johnson? ...read more

US Pending Home Sales Puked In December, Realtors Blame Rising Rates Despite an unexpected surge in new-home-sales, pending-home-sales puked in December, tumbling 3.8% MoM (after falling 2.3% MoM in November)…

Source: Bloomberg

That is the biggest MoM drop since Feb 2021 and pushed the YoY drop back into the red (down 6.64%). ...read more

Surging Dow Erases Post-Powell Losses As Rate-Hike Odds Soar Who could have seen this coming?

The Dow and S&P have ripped higher overnight and are now higher post-FOMC…

One can’t help but wonder if this crazy stop-run is the turning point back down? But not if you ask the talking heads… ...read more

Welcome To Fedestroika: Powell Now Has Just Two Choices By Michael Every of Rabobank

Fedestroika

I have long made black humor comparisons between the structural malaise of the West and the late-stage Soviet economy. The latter could see things weren’t working even in the 1970s but drifted through a “novy normalny” of slower growth and rising shortages, with the easiest answer always to build yet another statue of Marx or Lenin, talk about the proletariat, and hope things somehow turned around. Today the easiest answer is always to build another high-end condo or business center, talk about the

US Avoided Main Question Of NATO Non-Expansion In Written Response: Kremlin As previously reported, Russia on Wednesday received a hand-delivered written response from the United States to the security proposals Moscow submitted earlier this month to both Brussels and Washington. Russia’s central demand has remained that it needs legal security guarantees of no further NATO expansion eastward. 

In a fresh statement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed that Moscow is reviewing the document, but suggested that the core issue Russia is demanding has been sidestepped in the US document. “There is no positive reaction on the main issue

Bipartisan Coalition Demands Vote On Legislation To Bar Congress From Trading Stocks Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A bipartisan group of more than two dozen lawmakers in the House is demanding that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) allow a vote on a bill that would bar members of Congress from trading on the stock market, which critics say is inappropriate due to Congress’ inside knowledge on financial and political affairs.

US GDP Soared In Q4 To 6.9% Despite Omicron, Driven By Huge Inventory Accumulation With attention increasingly turning to how fast the economic slowdown will hit the US economy in 2022, growth cheerleaders will have a favorable, if brief, diversion today courtesy of the Bureau of Economic Analysis which moments ago revealed that in Q4, US GDP grew at a remarkable 6.9% annualized Q/Q clip, nearly three times faster than the 2.3% growth recorded in Q3 and well above the 5.5% expectation, even if the components of GDP are an ominous confirmation that the US is engaging in aggressive restocking

Peter Schiff: This Is Going To Be Stagflation Via SchiffGold.com,

Peter Schiff was a guest on the Wharton Business Daily podcast produced by the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter talked about inflation and how it will impact the US economy moving forward. He said ultimately, we’re heading toward stagflation.

Peter said inflation has been a problem for a long time. A lot of people just weren’t cognizant of it. ...read more