What could possibly go wrong?

“Even if something is not a criminal case, a perpetrator being confronted by the city, whether it’s NYPD or another agency, and being told that what they’ve done was very hurtful to another person — and could, if ever repeated, lead to criminal charges — that’s another important piece of the puzzle,” de Blasio told reporters.

The Mayor failed to define precisely what he meant by “hurtful,” but since he framed it in the context of non-criminal behavior, he can only be referring to mean words.

De Blasio urged officers to “confront” people to tell them their behavior is “not appropriate,” urging alleged victims to make more reports to authorities.

He then even suggested that cops, instead of responding to actual crimes, should visit New Yorker’s homes to police their speech.

“I assure you, if an NYPD officer calls you or shows up at your door to ask you about something you did, it makes people think twice,” he said. “We need that.”

De Blasio made the comments in light of yet another contrived moral panic, this time over an alleged rise in “hate crime” towards Asians.

The narrative was bolstered after a gunman slaughtered eight people — including six Asian women — at massage parlors across Atlanta, Georgia.

The media has either glossed over or outright ignored the fact that two white victims also lost their lives and that the attack was motivated by the killer’s sex obsession and had nothing whatsoever to do with race.

The post Mayor de Blasio Tells NYPD to Pay People Home Visits For “Hurtful” Comments appeared first on Planet Free Will.

This isn’t the formula for a genuine economy. It’s the formula for a giant bubble.

During the Great Recession, consumers cut spending. This is what you generally expect during an economic downturn. The economy contracts, people lose jobs, money gets tight and consumers spend less. You can see this in the numbers. Spending on durable goods plunged by 19% from the peak in October 2007 to the trough in April 2009. Meanwhile, spending on nondurable goods (food and gasoline) dropped by 10% during the Financial Crisis, from the peak in July 2008 to the trough in March 2009.

This spending cutback during an economic downturn creates what economists call “pent-up demand.” This helps drive spending upward during an economic recovery. You can see how the pent-up demand drove spending on durable goods post-recession in this graph produced by WolfStreet.

You can also see that consumer spending during the pandemic downturn took an entirely different trajectory. After a sharp but brief drop in the first months of the pandemic, spending surged.

In January alone, spending on durable goods spiked by 18.6% from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. You might think this was the result of the mythical economic recovery as states loosen lockdown restrictions, but this spending spree has been going on since last June.

How can this be? How can millions of Americans be out of work while simultaneously on a spending binge?

The government has been handing out money, that’s how.

And Americans have dutifully spent it. WolfStreet sums it up this way:

Give Americans some free money, and tell them it’s their duty to buy some stuff with it, preferable stuff imported from other countries, and they’ll buy some stuff with it, big and expensive stuff too, and they did buy a lot of stuff with it, more than they’d ever bought before, and their homes are full of stuff they bought in this eight-month-long record rollicking free-money spending spree.”

Even with millions out of work, incomes in the US have risen during the pandemic – and a lot of that income came from Uncle Sam’s handouts. Income from wages and salaries in January came in at $9.7 trillion, a modest 1.1% year-on-year increase. But income from unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, and other government support payments exploded to $2.9 trillion. According to WolfStreet, “along with income from interest, dividends, rental properties, farm income, income from Social Security and other transfer payments, total income in January, all together, jumped by 13% from a year ago to a record $21.5 trillion (seasonally adjusted annual rate).”

On top of that, a lot of Americans had money freed up because they didn’t have to pay rent or mortgages, or make student loan payments. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, 4.3 million mortgages were in forbearance at the height of the pandemic. Currently, 2.6 million mortgages remain in forbearance.

Give people lots of free money and they’ll spend it. As WolfStreet put it, demand wasn’t pent up during the pandemic, it was let out.

This time around, households didn’t go through two years of cutting back on goods purchases, as they’d done during the Financial Crisis.

This time around, there is a shortage of supply, including the now infamous semiconductor shortage, due to the surge in spending on goods, and inventories are tight, amid production snags and supply-chain problems. And given this demand, and the supply issues, prices of goods are rising.

Consumers have been awash with this money they didn’t need to work for. And they paid down credit card debts with it. And they spent part of it on goods.

Now another stimulus package with more free money is being prepared in Congress. If it passes, more free money will rain on consumers over the  next two or three months.

This raises another question: if millions of Americans were not working but kept spending, who made all of the stuff that they bought?

That’s pretty clear from the numbers too. And it doesn’t exactly scream “booming US economy.”

The merchandise trade deficit is at a record level. In a nutshell, Americans are spending their printed money on imported goods. Peter Schiff summed up the US economy in a recent podcast.

We’re making so little that we’re importing a record amount of stuff. The world is basically, single-handedly supporting our economy by providing us with all of this stuff. How is it that we’re getting all this stuff? Are we making a lot of stuff and trading it for that stuff? No! We’re not making any stuff. The merchandise trade deficit is skyrocketing. We’re printing all this money and the Federal Reserve gives it out to Americans who aren’t productive, many of them who don’t even have jobs, but many Americans who do have jobs are in the service sector, so they’re not producing anything that they can trade, but they’re still using that money to buy the stuff other people that are living in actual viable economies, stronger economies that are saving and producing, and we’re buying all of that stuff with all the money that we’re printing. Meanwhile, we’re deluding ourselves into thinking that what we have here is a genuine economy. What we actually have is a genuine bubble.”

The problem with bubbles is they always pop.

The post Government Stimulus Is Blowing Up a Massive Economic Bubble appeared first on Planet Free Will.

“The current security situation of our country is largely unstable and uncertain,” Xi said in the address which comes two days after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave his own fiery warning to the same assembly saying the US is “crossing lines” and “playing with fire” on Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.

President Xi continued: “The entire military must coordinate the relationship between capacity building and combat readiness, be prepared to respond to a variety of complex and difficult situations at any time, resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, and provide strong support for the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist state,” according to the South China Morning Post. 

Xi, who also serves as head of the Central Military Commission further affirmed the need for “high-level strategic deterrence and a joint combat system” and rapid defense tech innovation 

His words were in agreement with the assessment of Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe who on Saturday once again urged a boost in combat readiness across the armed forces, saying that national security had “entered a high-risk phase”.

“We are facing mounting tasks in national defense… and we must comprehensively improve military training and preparedness for battle so as to increase our strategic capabilities to prevail over our strong enemies,” the nation’s top general said.

A particular example that’s been front and center at the ongoing meetings are recent US and Western allied naval maneuvers in an near China-claimed waters. In the China FM’s comments, Wang pointed out, “The US and other Western countries frequently stir up troubles in the region, trying to drive a wedge using the South China Sea issue. They have only one purpose: to sabotage peace and disturb regional stability,” Wang said.

His remarks in particular emphasized a warlike tone of battling “hegemony, high-handedness and bullying” from the United Sates and its allies, and “outright interference in China’s domestic affairs” in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The post Xi Alerts Military “Be Prepared To Respond” In Current “Unstable & Uncertain” Situation appeared first on Planet Free Will.

Since taking office the Biden Administration has been offering myriad excuses for why they might scrap the peace deal, though officials now say that at the very least the pullout remains one of the options under consideration.

It’s not clear what that means, however, with “all options” open, because while the US is offering some new proposals to try to get the intra-Afghan peace talks going, they seem also to be aware that the Ghani government is going to oppose their proposals.

This talk of being unclear what direction they are going in just two short months may suggest that the US is trying to position the environment to justify what they intend to do, i.e. putting the peace process in more disarray so it isn’t just the US unilaterally scrapping the deal already reached.

The post State Dept: US Remains Unclear on Afghan Troop Levels After May 1 appeared first on Planet Free Will.

Millions upon millions of people can see that our society is literally melting down all around us, and they want to get somewhere safe while they still can. 

In recent weeks, I have written articles about the specific problems that we are witnessing in Chicago and San Francisco, but the truth is that virtually all of our major cities are coming apart at the seams, and this is motivating more people than ever to seek greener pastures.

With so many Americans looking to move, this has pushed up home prices in desirable suburban and rural areas to insane heights.

In fact, in some parts of the country it is difficult to find a decent home for sale at all.  In Bozeman, Montana one man has actually resorted to walking around with a cardboard sign asking for someone to sell him a house…

“I’m just asking for someone to sell us a home. My sign says please sell me a home,” said Sean Hawksford, a Bozeman resident.

You may have seen Hawksford strolling down Main Street with a cardboard sign, asking for leads on a house for sale.

This is not a homeless man that we are talking about.

Sean Hawksford is a family man that owns a successful business, and he has been approved for a mortgage.

He just can’t find a house to buy.

According to Hawksford, he has made 18 offers over the past 6 months, but none of them have been accepted…

“It’s been about 6 months, we’ve made I think 18 offers now on different properties and haven’t had one accepted yet,” said Hawksford.

“It’s been a little bit tough with them, and all of my first-time homebuyers to be honest with you,” said Jeff Bent, the Hawksfords’ realtor in Bozeman.

I warned that this would happen.

I warned that when things started to get crazy many Americans wouldn’t be able to move because there would be a crushing amount of demand for available housing as hordes of Americans suddenly sought to relocate.  NBC News has used the term “droves” to describe the mass exodus that we witnessed last year…

Americans fled big cities in droves to escape the coronavirus pandemic — and many of them are staying, permanently or indefinitely. But escape means something different depending on whom you ask.

We have never seen anything like this before in U.S. history.  According to the Pew Research Center, about one-fifth of all Americans either moved or know someone who moved in 2020…

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center while the pandemic was in full swing in June 2020 found that approximately a fifth of Americans moved or know someone who moved as a result of COVID-19. The reasons they gave for people moving were extremely varied — ranging from being called into active military duty to college housing being closed down to, of course, sudden financial constraints.

The corporate media keeps trying to blame COVID for the mass migration, but now the COVID pandemic is fading and Americans are still moving in large numbers.

In fact, one recent survey actually found that “20% more people are planning to move in 2021 than moved in 2020”.

If I was currently living in a major city on the east or west coast, I would be highly motivated to move too.

For example, just check out what is happening in Los Angeles…

Los Angeles, the state’s largest city and arguably the most populous now in the United States, has become a byword for violent crime and especially the stronghold of the enormous, ultraviolent and rapidly growing MS 13 organization, routinely mislabeled as a mere “gang” in media reports. MS 13 has up to 50,000 members worldwide of whom at least 10,000, officially, and probably twice as many according to the private assessments of many police officers are in LA.

Jeremiah Babe recently went into the wealthy areas of downtown Los Angeles, and the footage that he captured was mind blowing.

L.A. has never looked like this, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

Of course many would argue that San Francisco is in even worse shape…

San Francisco – America’s “anything goes” city – is in even worse shape. Its most famous, historically popular and beautiful stylish locations are now swamped with aggressive, unsanitary street people who openly urinate and defecate in the streets. Public services, long superb, are now appalling.

For much more on the tragedy that is playing out in that once beautiful city, please see my previous article entitled “The Reason Why A Lot Of People Are Leaving San Francisco Might Surprise You”.

Of course it isn’t just individuals that are moving.  In recent months we have seen large numbers of businesses choose to relocate.  At one point, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made headlines all over the globe when even he decided that it was time to leave California for good…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has left California and is now a resident of Texas.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Musk said that the move made sense, amid plans underway for a new Tesla factory in the Austin area.

I certainly can’t blame him.

What rational person would choose California over Texas at this point?

On the east coast, hordes of businesses have left New York as well.  If you can believe it, even the New York Stock Exchange is thinking of leaving…

The head of the world’s largest financial market, Stacey Cunningham, floated the idea of leaving New York in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal to avoid taxes.

When people think of Florida, they often picture restaurants and shopping, the kind of business you do on vacation. But more and more, people are choosing to move down to the sunshine state because there’s no income tax, and the cost of living is low.

Perhaps they will need to rename it “the Florida Stock Exchange” if they actually pull the trigger on such a move.

Sadly, when things get really bad in this nation, no part of the country will be fully immune.

We will all feel the pain, and the suffering will be off the charts.

But if you do feel motivated to relocate, I would do it as soon as possible, because later this year global events will start accelerating at a very rapid pace.

The post We Are Witnessing A Last Minute Mass Exodus Before The Final Collapse Of Our Major Cities appeared first on Planet Free Will.

Government officials, in lockstep with big tech and nearly all major news outlets, have controlled the NPI narrative to such an extent that its proponents have simply sidestepped the burden of proof naturally arising from the introduction and continued support of novel virus mitigation strategies, happily pointing to the fact that their ideas enjoy unanimous support from the corporate media and government officials all over the world. This seemingly impenetrable narrative rests, of course, on the critical assumption that NPIs, or behavioral mandates, have protected us from covid-19.

The One Chart That Covid Doomsdayers Can’t Explain

If there is one visualization the reader should become familiar with to highlight the ineffectiveness of a nearly a year’s worth of NPIs, it would be the following chart comparing hospitalizations and deaths per million in Florida with those in New York and California, however we will be focusing solely on the comparison between Florida and California.

In light of everything our officials have taught us about how this virus spreads, it defies reality that Florida, a fully open and popular travel destination with one of the oldest populations in the country, currently has lower hospitalizations and deaths per million than California, a state with much heavier restrictions and one of the youngest populations in the country. While it is true that, overall, California does slightly better than Florida in deaths per million, simply accounting for California’s much younger population tips the scales in Florida’s favor.

Florida has zero restrictions on bars, breweries, indoor dining, gyms, places of worship, gathering sizes, and almost all schools are offering in-person instruction. California, on the other hand, retains heavy restrictions in each of these areas. At the very least, Florida’s hospitalizations and deaths per million should be substantially worse than California’s. Those who predicted death and destruction as a consequence of Florida’s September reopening simply cannot see these results as anything other than utterly remarkable. Even White House covid advisor Andy Slavitt, much to the establishment’s embarrassment, had no explanation for Florida’s success relative to California. Slavitt was reduced to parroting establishment talking points after admitting that Florida’s surprisingly great numbers were “just a little beyond our explanation.”

Does Compliance Explain the Discrepancy?

Invariably, the above graph will invoke responses pointing to Californians’ supposed lack of compliance relative to Floridians as justification for their poor numbers. On its face, this claim is patently absurd given that Florida has been fully open since September. But if we dig into the data a bit more, we find some relevant metrics that shed light on how frequently Floridians and Californians are engaging in behaviors that allegedly fuel covid-19 transmission. The following survey data—California is shown in blue, Florida in gray—is taken from Carnegie Mellon University’s Delphi Research Group. Beyond the red vertical line, Florida has had consistently lower hospitalizations and deaths per million than California.

Mask Compliance

Bar Visits

Traveling

Restaurant Visits

We can see that, relative to Floridians, Californians have consistently been doing a better job of avoiding social behaviors that allegedly fuel the spread of covid-19. Moreover, at no point was there a drastic change in behavioral patterns after December 17 indicating that Floridians had suddenly begun avoiding activities purportedly linked to covid transmission.

A quick glance at each state’s “social distancing score” also indicates, yet again, that Californians have been doing a better job avoiding activities meant to facilitate the spread of covid-19. Additionally, Google’s covid mobility reports, as of February 16, 2021, show that Californians partake in fewer retail and recreational visits—restaurants, cafes, shopping centers, theme parks, museums, libraries, and movie theaters—as well as fewer grocery store and pharmacy visits, which include farmers markets, food warehouses, and speciality food shops. Evidently, the whole “noncompliance” schtick is nothing more than a fraudulent excuse for explaining away undesirable trends.

More Metrics Rebutting the Mainstream Covid-19 Narrative

Moving on from the Florida-California comparison, national metrics also highlight the lack of correlation between the intensity of states’ NPIs—methodology for determining this can be found here—and deaths per million.

In fact, if we visualize case trends across all fifty diverse states, each state having varying levels of restrictions, you’ll quickly notice a pattern that presents itself quite similarly across all fifty states: a bump in cases early to midway through the year followed by a much bigger surge in cases during winter months. The following data was retrieved from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Similar case patterns across fifty states is hardly an indicator of a government capable of influencing the course of the virus. Instead, research published in Evolutionary Bioinformatics shows that case counts and mortality rates are strongly correlated with temperature and latitude, a concept known as “seasonality,” which, once recognized, largely explains the failure of the past year’s NPIs.

Meanwhile, we can look at seasonally congruent regions to see whether or not varying degrees of behavioral mandates have had any noticeable impact on cases. What we find, thanks to seasonality, is that regardless of the timing or existence of mask mandates and other behavioral mandates, similar regions follow similar case growth patterns.

For the firm believer in NPIs, these simultaneous and nearly identical fluctuations between cities within the same state and states having similar climates are inexplicable. After accepting seasonality as one of the driving factors behind case fluctuations, we can start speaking of “covid season” as pragmatically as we speak of “flu season.” A helpful visual of what covid season might look like, based on the Hope-Simpson seasonality model for influenza, can be found here.

Update on the Holiday Surge and Recent “Superspreaders”

Some of you may be wondering about the “holiday surges” that were supposed to have ravaged our hospitals following Thanksgiving and Christmas. Well, they never happened. Not only did the rate of covid-19 hospitalization growth decline after Thanksgiving, hospitalizations peaked less than two weeks after Christmas and have been sharply plummeting since! At the very least we should have seen a rapid increase in the hospitalization growth rate in the few weeks following Christmas.

As a bonus for those who like to keep up to date with the latest installments of The Media Who Cried Superspreader, Alabama recently came under heavy fire after thousands of maskless football fans took to the streets to celebrate their team winning the national college football title. FanSided, among others, was quick to label the large celebration as a superspreader event, and health officials were worried that the Alabama superspreader was going to result in a huge case spike. Here’s what really happened.

Miraculously, cases immediately plummeted after Alabama’s “superspreader” event and continue to plummet to this day. If that wasn’t enough, Mississippi, Alabama’s next-door neighbor, followed a nearly identical case pattern despite hosting no superspreader events.

Finally, in our most recent installment of The Media Who Cried Superspreader, we see that two weeks—two weeks being the establishment’s baseline lag time between superspreaders and their consequences—after millions of people gathered with friends and family to watch Superbowl LV, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to plummet.

Despite the scary warnings and grim predictions of Superbowl gatherings, we find, yet again, a gaping hole in the mainstream covid-19 narrative. It would appear safe to conclude that the worst of covid season is behind us.

Data show that from the few weeks prior to February 4, cases have fallen 45 percent in the United States—cases are still declining at a rapid pace despite mid-January warnings that the new variant would create a surge in cases—30 percent globally, and hospitalizations have dropped 26 percent since their mid-January peak. Yet there appears to be a general confusion as to how we’ve achieved these numbers. Did populations around the world unanimously begin complying with covid regulations? Did governments finally get serious about enforcing their mandates? These are some explanations we might hear, but only so long as cases and hospitalizations continue to trend downward.

It is very unlikely, however, that health officials will start pointing to seasonality as an alternative explanation for our continually improving numbers. To do so would be a tacit admission that nearly a year’s worth of heavily politicized behavioral mandates, life-destroying lockdowns, and devastating business closures were all for naught. But the data have spoken, and it is abundantly clear that attempting to socially engineer a respiratory virus out of existence is nothing short of a fool’s errand.

The post Almost a Year Later, There’s Still No Evidence Showing Governments Can Control the Spread of Covid-19 appeared first on Planet Free Will.

“That so many people needlessly lost their lives because of the failed policies of Governor Cuomo’s administration – an administration that many have lauded over the past year – is tragic and deserves a full investigation and accounting,” reads the letter sent to Sen. Dick Durban (D-Ill), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The letter is signed by nine GOP Senate Judiciary Committee members, including Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Marsha Blackburn, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton , and Thom Tillis .

Last week the New York Post reported that Cuomo top-aid, Melissa DeRosa, told a group of lawmakers that Governor Cuomo and his senior staff engaged in a deliberate cover-up of New York’s nursing home COVID-19 death numbers out of fear that it would be “used against us” by the Trump Justice Department.

“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” DeRosa reportedly said during a private zoom call.

It was also revealed in a separate report by the Associated Press that the Cuomo administration sent over 9,000 elderly coronavirus patients back to their long-term care centers while the administration reported these facilities had only admitted 6,000 patients.

At the onset of the pandemic, a Cuomo directive ordered nursing homes to accept residents recovering from COVID-19 after they were discharged from hospitals, a decision many blame for spreading sickness and a high death toll among residents.

“These new revelations, however, that Governor Cuomo’s administration withheld information from the Department of Justice and intentionally misled federal officials to avoid political accountability is more than irresponsible: it is very possibly criminal,” the GOP letter goes on, adding:

“Those who deliberately withheld—or directed others to withhold—material
information from the Department of Justice may be guilty of obstruction of justice, violating the
False Claims Act, and numerous other criminal violations.”

The letter calls on Durbin to open an investigation and hold hearings on the matter because the “American people deserve to know the extent to which Governor Cuomo and his senior staff violated the civil rights of New York seniors, lied to the Department of Justice about their actions, and violated federal civil and criminal laws in the process.”

The GOP letter comes on the heels of reports claiming the FBI and US attorney’s office in Brooklyn have begun an investigation into the governor and his administration’s handling of nursing home death data. The investigation was opened shortly after Democratic state Assemblyman Ron Kim, whose uncle died of COVID-19 in a nursing home, accused the governor of threatening him over his criticism of the handling of state nursing homes during the pandemic.

Read the entire GOP letter below:

********

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The post GOP Senators Demand Probe Into Cuomo’s “Possibly Criminal” Handling of COVID Death Data appeared first on Planet Free Will.

With Tenev scheduled to testify on Thursday, alongside the CEOs of Citadel, Melvin Capital and Reddit, the apriori mea culpas have started to emerge – if a little too late – the former HFT trader spoke late on Friday on the All-In Podcast hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, who had strongly criticized Robinhood over the trading restrictions, and Jason Calacanis, a Robinhood investor, and said that “no doubt we could have communicated this a little bit better to customers.”

What he is referring to, of course, is Robinhood’s outrageous decision to restrict the buying of 13 heavily shorted stocks on Jan 28 that had been driven to record highs, including GameStop, whose shares had surged more than 1,600%.

Tenev said the restrictions were necessary due to a large increase in collateral/deposit requirements by the DTCC, but that was not spelled out in automated emails sent to Robinhood customers early on Jan. 28.

And then he decided to pull the oldest trick and deflect attention from his own mistakes by blaming “conspiracy theories.”

“As soon as those emails went out, the conspiracy theories started coming, so my phone was blowing up with, ‘how could you do this, how could you be on the side of the hedge funds,’” he said.

What Tenev did not say, or explain, is why his company – which is merely a client-facing front of Citadel, which buys the bulk of Robinhood’s orderflow to use it perfectly legally in any way it sees fit – was so massively undercapitalized that the DTCC required several billion more in collateral to protect Robinhood’s own investors against the company’s predatory ways of seeking to capitalize on the gamification of investing making it nothing more (or less) than a trivial pursuit to millions of GenZ and millennial investors, a point which Michael Burry made so vividly.

Incidentally we know why Tenev did not mention it: it’s because Robinhood’s back office is a shambles of a shoestring operation, one which never anticipated either such a surge in trading not a multi-billion collateral requirement; had Robinhood been a true brokerage instead of pretending to be one, and run merely to open as many retail accounts as it could in the shortest amount of time, thus generating the most profit in the quickest amount of time to allow its sponsors a quick and profitable exit, it would actually have been on top of this.

It’s also why Tenev’s ridiculous pleas for immediate settlement instead of the usual T+2 arrangement, which has not been an issue for any other brokers, is nothing but a strawman argument which he hopes to present in Congress.

Which brings us to a totally separate topic, and one which Teven will one way or another have to address: the fact that Robinhood is a de facto subsidiary of Robinhood, whose entire business model is to sell retail orders to a handful of HFT market makers first and foremost… Citadel. In doing so the only ones who benefited from the surge in retail trading are Robinhood itself, by pocketing millions more from selling orderflow to Citadel, Virtu, Two Sigma, Wolverine and other HFT frontrunning “market-making” venues, as well as Citadel which made billions by having an advance look at the biggest surge in retail stock and option orders flow in history, and being able to trade ahead of and around it.

And no, it’s not a conspiracy theory Vladimir – it is the stone cold truth, as Jeffrey Gundlach suggested last week when he said “Robin Hood (sic) should be forced to change its name to Hood Robbin’.  I grow so weary of lies through nomenclature, which are ubiquitous these days” adding “To be clear, the name change would reflect Robinhood robbing the little guy, nothing else.”

As an aside, how dare we allege that Citadel was buying orderflow to frontrun it? After all, that very allegation…

… which is what allowed Robinhood to provide “free” trading in the first place, that nearly destroyed us when last June Citadel’s lawyer army threatened to sue us into the ground for suggesting precisely that?

Some key phrases of note from the above text:

• “‘Frontrunning’ is an industry term of art that refers to an illegal form of trading.”
• “Citadel Securites does not engage in such conduct [i.e., frontrunning] and there was no factual basis whatsoever for ZeroHedge to publish such an incendiary, false, and reckless allegation to its 742,000 Twitter followers” [it’s 771,000 now].
• “ZeroHedge’s statement obviously disparages the lawfulness and integrity of Citadel Securities’ business pratices.”
• “Quite obviously, this most recent iteration of this same harmful allegation was not made in jest.”
• “We demand that ZeroHedge immediately retract this tweet by deleting it from ZeroHedge’s Twitter page… A refusal to promptly take down these remedial steps will be seen as further evidence of actual malice and will only increase the already substantial legal risk faced by you and ZeroHedge.”

Well, we now officially know all about Citadel’s modus operandi because just a few days after we received that letter, none other than financial regulator FINRA, revealed that Citadel Securities was censured and fined for engaging in – drumroll – “trading ahead of customer orders” as Letter of Acceptance No. 2014041859401 revealed:

Now we admit that our financial jargon is a bit rusty these days, but “trading ahead of customer orders” sounds awfully similar to another far more popular “term of art“, one which we know very well: frontrunning!

Jargon aside, some of the other highlighted words we are very familiar with, such as “hundreds of thousands”… and “559 instances” in which Citadel traded ahead of customer orders.

And while we may be getting a little ahead of ourselves here, it was Citadel’s own lawyers that informed us on more than one occasion that:

“frontrunning” is an unethical and illegal trading practice.”

So, what are we to make of this? Could it be that Citadel was engaging in at least 559 instance of what its lawyer called “unethical and illegal trading practice.” Surely not: after all the lawyers would surely know very well how ridiculous and laughable their letter and threats would look if it ever emerged that Citadel was indeed frontrunning its customers.

But wait, it gets even funnier.

Back in April 2004, long before Citadel became the dominant market maker – and buyer – of retail orderflow controlling a whopping 27% of total US equity volume market share in 2020 according to Bloomberg and a staggering 46% of retail orderflow, it was Citadel’s own General Counsel, Adam Cooper, who urged the SEC to ban payment for orderflow because it “distorts order routing decisions, is anti-competitive, and creates an obvious and substantial conflict of interest between broker-dealers and their customers.“

As Cooper also revealed…

“broker-dealers accepting payment for order flow have a strong incentive to route orders based on the amount of order flow payments, which benefit these broker-dealers, rather than on the basis of execution quality, which benefits their customers. Furthermore,  the  parties  making such payments (either voluntarily or through an exchange-mandated program) are forced  to  find  other  ways  to  recoup  the  amounts  of  such  payments,  whether  through  wider  spreads  or  a  reduction  in  other  benefits  that  otherwise  could,  and  should,  be  provided to customers.”

And the punchline:

Payment  for  order  flow  is  a  practice  that  on  its  face  is  at  odds  with  a  broker-dealer’s obligations to its customers.  A broker-dealer has a fiduciary obligation to obtain the best execution reasonably available for its customers’ orders under prevailing market conditions.    We  do  not  believe  that  a  broker-dealer  that  accepts  payment  for  order  flow  and does not pass such payments on to its customers (either directly or through reduced execution fees or commissions) can consistently fulfill its best execution obligations.

Which leads us to the one time Citadel was actually telling the truth:

Because  payment  for  order  flow  creates  fundamental  conflicts  of  interest  that  cannot  be  cured  by  disclosure,  the  Commission  should  ban  payment  for  order  flow  altogether.  It is crucial that this ban include not only exchange-sponsored programs, but also  payment  for  order  flow  arrangements  entered  into  privately  between  order  flow  providers   and   market   centers. 

Little did Citadel know that just 15 years later it would be the single biggest beneficiary of paying for orderflow, a practice which has allowed Citadel founder to amass a trophy collection of some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

We also know all this is true because we were also among the first to expose Robinhood as a client-facing front for Citadel back in 2018, when we wrote “Robinhood Is Said To Get 40% Revenue From HFT Firms Like Citadel” in which we said that…

“Stealing from millennials to give to the rich. Robinhood app sells user customer data to make a quick buck from the high-frequency trading (HFT) firms on Wall Street,” that is what we wrote last month, in one of the first articles that expressed concern over the popular Robinhood investing app for millennials, which has shady ties to HFT firms and undermines its image of an anti-Wall Street ethos. 

The conclusion was a searing prediction of what would happen a little over two years later:

A few anonymous venture capitalists told Bloomberg that Robinhood has already begun to see the consequences of their cozy relationship with Wall Street firms, which has degraded the company’s image. 

With six million clients, most of whom are millennials — seeking an anti-Wall Street investing culture, could soon find out, that, they too, have been conned by Robinhood founders into thinking the app offers free investing. The lesson at play: nothing in life is free, even if it is from Silicon Valley.

That said, we were not the first to expose Robinhood’s ways. That honor falls to our friend Joe Saluzzi and Sal Arnuk, who for over a decade have led the crusade against high frequency trading, and who in November 2014 wrote “Beware of Those Offering Free Retail Trades.”

We are always suspicious when somebody offers us something for free.  Usually, the one offering the free service has other ways of making money.  For example, Google offers lots of free services like Gmail, Google Maps or Youtube. While the services are free, Google is still making money by targeting ads and selling data. The latest free thing which is creating quite a buzz (the hot term for this is “disrupting”) is free retail trading by a company called Robinhood.

What is Robinhood?  According to an article in the Irish Times yesterday:

“Founded by Stanford mathematics graduate Vlad Tenev and  Baiju Bhatt last year, Robinhood is a stock brokerage that charges no commission.”

Robinhood is offering free stock trades and no-cost real time market data.  How do they do it? According to the company:

– They don’t have brick and mortar companies and don’t spend millions on Superbowl ads.

– Technology has allowed them to eliminate much of the human intervention and paper confirms.

And how do they make money?  According to their website:

“Robinhood has two key revenue streams; charging interest for margin trading, and collecting interest on cash balances.”

Call us crazy but relying on generating revenue from margin interest and collecting interest on cash balances (where the account minimum is $0) sounds a bit risky and overly ambitious in a market which has been saddled with zero percent interest rates for the past 5 years.  That’s why we think Robinhood must have another way of making money. Could it be that the founders, Vlad and Baiju, are planning on taking advantage of the rebates and payment for order flow that are embedded in the equity market?  But how could two guys who graduated from Stanford in 2008 know that much about the market structure of the US equity market? From their website:

“After graduating from Stanford, roommates Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt moved to New York, where they built high-frequency trading platforms for some of the largest financial institutions in the world. They began to realize that electronic trading firms pay effectively nothing to place trades in the market yet charge investors up to $10 for each trade — and thus the idea for Robinhood was born. They soon ventured back to California to begin solving the problem of democratizing access to the markets.”

Seems like Vlad and Baiju know a lot more about US equity trading than we thought.  Heck, they may even know that when a retail limit order is sent to the DirectEdge stock exchange, that order could qualify for a special rebate if it is attributed and displayed as a retail order.  Here is how DirectEdge describe their retail attribution program​ :

“With this improvement, Members sending Retail Orders may elect to display those orders on the EdgeBook Attributed data feed with the generic retail identifier “RTAL” rather than their Market Participant ID (MPID).  Including a standard retail identifier gives retail brokers greater flexibility and choice to participate in the attribution program that has helped improve execution rates for retail orders.”

Talk about leading the lambs to the slaughter.  Retail orders that are being attributed are basically flashing bright lights telling the world that they are retail.

We’re not sure if Robinhood is planning on selling their order flow but it is certainly something that their customers should be asking them once they do start trading. While their website does not say anything about payment for order flow, in a CNBC interview from earlier this year, Vlad Tenev did say the company would be accepting payment for order flow:

“So, Robinhood has many revenue streams on Day One. Those include margin lending, payment for order flow, interest on cash balances. We’ll have those on Day One,” Tenev said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report”.

Right now, Robinhood is still busy attracting some high profile investors which include Snoop Dog, actor Jared Leto, the venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures (Robinhood raised $13 million in their latest financing round).

Two points here: Vlad Tenev’s entire background is HFT – he knew from day one that he could create a “free brokerage” if only he were to quietly sell all the orderflow to a generous sponsor, say Citadel. It’s also why we find laughable his recent tweet asking, obviously rhetorically, “What exactly is high-frequency trading? And is it evil?”

Tenev then went on into a rambling, nonsensical defense of HFT and why it is not evil, concluding that “high-frequency trading is just what you get when you apply technology to trading and getting data moving faster between trading centers will enhance trading for us all”…

… what he did not say is that HFT is just a perfectly legal and widely accepted way of frontrunning retail orderflow (usually by the order of a few milliseconds, explaining the presence of lasers at the New York Stock Exchange in Mahwah), and then selling it to the highest bidder, something he knew almost a decade ago when he launched Robinhood. We almost wonder if he did so in some low-lit Chicago backroom while sitting across from Citadel’s Ken Griffin (this would be the other Citadel, not the one from 2004 which found payment for orderflow loathsome and deserving to be banned, but a Citadel which now considered PFOF a source of almost unprecedented riches and profit).

The second point we would like to address from the Themis Trading 2014 post is that while back then it was unclear if RH sold their orderflow, we now know that not only is Robinhood selling your orders to other internalizers, but that sale represents the biggest source of RH revenue by orders of magnitude. And thanks to the company’s just filed latest Disclosure Form 606 we know just how much Robinhood made from selling your orderflow to Ken Griffin.

The chart below shows Robinhood’s monthly revenues for the full year 2020, broken down in the three key categories: i) S&P500 stocks, ii) Non-S&P500 stocks and iii) Options. And while Robinhood made a not-too-shabby $247 million in 2020 from just selling access to your retail stock orders to such non-directed orderflow venue as Citadel, Vitru, Wolverine, Two Sigma, G1X, Morgan Stanley and others, it is the sale of option orderflow that has emerged as Robinhood’s golden goose, having generated an impressive $440 million in revenue in 2020.

Which then brings us to the punchline: Robinhood is kind enough to break down not only revenue by product (going down to such granular detail as market orders and limit orders), starting several years ago the company also started disclosing who its biggest clients were. And here it will come as no surprise that in 2020, Citadel accounted for more than half of all Citadel revenues, or $362.5 million, exactly 53% of the company’s total revenues of $687.1 million.

Would it therefore be farfetched to say that Robinhood is nothing more than a client-facing subsidiary of Citadel, one which pretends to offer free trades to tens of millions of young, naive traders, but in reality merely allows Citadel Securities to trade ahead and/or against this orderflow for which it paid over $300 million… and to generate record revenues of $6.7 billion!

Probably not, but we won’t have a definitive answer until we find out just how much profit Citadel made from buying all this critical data, which gives it an early glimpse into not only each discrete individual trade but also a sense of which way the retail horde is moving, critical and extremely valuable data which until last August was public and available to all (with a slight delay) courtesy of Robintrack, and which last August was inexplicably halted.

We are confident that this week’s Congressional hearings will quickly get to the bottom of this critical question of just how profitable this orderflow – which it paid Robinhood $362 million to procure – is for Citadel, because anything less will confirm that this latest hearing is nothing but a kangaroo court meant to appease retail investors that someone in Washington is doing something… when in reality everyone knows that what Citadel wants, Citadel gets and there is no sign that Citadel will ever tire of making billions out of the same orderflow for which it paid subpennies on the dollar to Robinhood.

As for Robinhood’s trite virtue signaling of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, all it took was 30 billion subpenny rebates from Citadel for the firm to remember who really calls the shots.

The post Exposing The Robinhood Scam: Here’s How Much Citadel Paid To Robinhood To Buy Your Orders appeared first on Planet Free Will.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a floor speech following his vote to acquit, unleashed his harshest criticism for the former president:

“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

“There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people that stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” McConnell said.

“And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on the earth,” McConnell added.

McConnell also suggests that Trump can still be held to account in a court of law:

“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he’s in office. He didn’t get away with anything yet.”“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.“

Was this the concession that Democrats demanded in order for them not to call witnesses? Or is this normal Washington gaslighting and the ongoing effort of establishment GOP to “unify” their party AWAY from Trump?

If the latter, judging by the twitter response, it’s having the exact opposite effect:

*  *  *

Update (1605ET): Former President Trump has issued the following statement following his Senate acquittal (emphasis ours):

I want to first thank my team of dedicated lawyers and others for their tireless work upholding justice and defending truth.

My deepest thanks as well to all of the United States Senators and Members of Congress who stood proudly for the Constitution we all revere and for the sacred legal principles at the heart of our country.

Our cherished Constitutional Republic was founded on the impartial rule of law, the indispensable safeguard for our liberties, our rights and our freedoms.

It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree. I always have, and always will, be a champion for the unwavering rule of law, the heroes of law enforcement, and the right of Americans to peacefully and honorably debate the issues of the day without malice and without hate.

This has been yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country. No president has ever gone through anything like it, and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago.

I also want to convey my gratitude to the millions of decent, hardworking, law-abiding, God-and-Country loving citizens who have bravely supported these important principles in these very difficult and challenging times.

Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun. In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people. There has never been anything like it!

We have so much work ahead of us, and soon we will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future.

Together there is nothing we cannot accomplish.

We remain one People, one family, and one glorious nation under God, and it’s our responsibility to preserve this magnificent inheritance for our children and for generations of Americans to come.

May God bless all of you, and may God forever bless the United States of America.

*  *  *

Update (1542ET): To absolutely no one’s surprise he Senate has acquitted former President Trump of incitement with a final vote of 57-43, with seven Republicans breaking ranks to vote with the Democrats.

This marks the second time in twelve months that Trump has survived impeachment.

*  *  *

Update (1300ET): After a couple of hours of ‘negotiations’ during which Sen. Cruz threatened to subpoena Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Trump’s lawyers said they would call “100s of witnesses”, a deal has been reached that means no witnesses will be called.

House impeachment managers dropped their request to obtain testimony from Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler after senators agreed instead to enter into the record an account of her secondhand account of a phone call between Trump and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy.

This agreement has averted the prospect of an avalanche of requests for testimony from both sides that would have extended the impeachment trial beyond its expected conclusion later today (and perhaps delayed any attempts at reaching a stimulus agreement).

As a reminder, Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been advising Trump’s legal team, said that if the Senate agrees to the request by House impeachment managers to depose Herrera Beutler, he’ll insist on “multiple witnesses”…starting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

He said she should be required “to answer the question as to whether or not there was credible evidence of pre-planned violence before President Trump spoke? Whether Speaker Pelosi, due to optics, refused requests by the Capitol Hill Police for additional resources like the National Guard?”

*  *  *

Just when you thought Donald Trump’s second impeachment trials was over, five Republicans have joined their Democratic colleagues in a Saturday morning vote (55-45) to call witnesses – an unexpected development in this snap impeachment over Trump’s alleged role inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

GOP Sens. Collins, Graham, Murkowski, Romney and Sasse were the five.

The move – which was originally opposed by several Democrats, will allow them to strengthen their case. It is unclear what kind of delay this may cause, after impeachment managers and Trump’s defense team estimated it would be over on Saturday.

In response to the vote, Trump attorney Michael van der Veen answered that if witnesses are going to be called, “I’m going to need more than 100 witnesses, not just one,” adding “we should close this case out today,” but if that doesn’t happen, “Do not handcuff me by limiting the number of witnesses I can have.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-5&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1360631995030790145&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmcconnell-says-hell-vote-acquit-trump-democrats-have-votes-call-impeachment-witnesses&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=889aa01%3A1612811843556&width=550px

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested that a debate on the number of witnesses should not take place, saying “I don’t think there’s any limit right now, and that’s part of what will be debated.”

As Axios notes, Trump himself is Democrats’ most desired witness, however the former president has already quashed that – saying he would not comply willingly. The Senate could subpoena him, however it’s unclear whether they would have enough support.

Instead, Democrats plan to call GOP Rep. Jamie Herrera Butler of Washington, who the NY Times reported on Friday said Trump ‘sided with the mob’ during a phone call as the attack was unfolding. Herrera Butler, who voted to impeach Trump in the House, was requested to testify by House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin.

In a statement on Friday night, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, Republican of Washington, recounted a phone call relayed to her by Mr. McCarthy of California, the minority leader, in which Mr. Trump was said to have sided with the rioters, telling the top House Republican that members of the mob who had stormed the Capitol were “more upset about the election than you are.”

She pleaded with witnesses to step forward and share what they knew about Mr. Trump’s actions and statements as the attack was underway. –NY Times

“To the patriots who were standing next to the former president as these conversations were happening, or even to the former vice president: if you have something to add here, now would be the time,” said Herrera Beutler in a statement.

According to her account, McCarthy ‘frantically’ called Trump on Jan. 6 and asked him to “publicly and forcefully call off the riot,” and that Trump replied that it was Antifa, not his supporters, who were responsible. When McCarthy pushed back saying that wasn’t true, Trump allegedly said “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

Senate Democrats who initially opposed witnesses include Kristen Gillibrand of NY, who said on Thursday: “We’ve heard from many witnesses based on their interviews and their video presentations, so, I feel like we’ve heard from enough witnesses.” Sen. Angus King of Maine said “I think the case has been made. I don’t know what witnesses would add.”

Once witnesses have testified, impeachment managers and Trump’s defense team will present closing arguments – with each side allotted two hours. A full vote on whether to convict or acquit will follow.

To that end, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has told his fellow Senate GOP in an email that he will vote to acquit the former president – writing “As I have said for some time, today’s vote is a vote of conscience and I know we will all treat it as such,” according to Politico‘s Burgess Everett.

The post McConnell Says Trump “Responsible For Provoking” Attack After Voting To Acquit; Trump Says MAGA “Has Just Begun” appeared first on Planet Free Will.

In the past, compiling all of that information would take a great deal of time. But now tech giants such as Microsoft, Motorola, Cisco and Palantir are selling “fusion systems” to governments all over the planet.  These “fusion systems” can instantly integrate surveillance data from thousands of different sources, and this has totally transformed how law enforcement is conducted in many of our largest cities.

Arthur Holland Michel is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and he was given a tour of a “fusion system” that is used by the city of Chicago called Citigraf…

He clicked “INVESTIGATE,” and Citigraf got to work on the reported assault. The software runs on what Genetec calls a “correlation engine,” a suite of algorithms that trawl through a city’s historical police records and live sensor feeds, looking for patterns and connections. Seconds later, a long list of possible leads appeared onscreen, including a lineup of individuals previously arrested in the neighborhood for violent crimes, the home addresses of parolees living nearby, a catalog of similar recent 911 calls, photographs and license plate numbers of vehicles that had been detected speeding away from the scene, and video feeds from any cameras that might have picked up evidence of the crime itself, including those mounted on passing buses and trains. More than enough information, in other words, for an officer to respond to that original 911 call with a nearly telepathic sense of what has just unfolded.

But these systems are not just used to track down criminals.

In fact, they can be used to investigate literally anyone.

On another occasion, Arthur Holland Michel got the opportunity to test out the “fusion system” that Microsoft had built for New York City…

The NYPD official showed me how he could pull up any city resident’s rap sheet, lists of their known associates, cases in which they were named as a victim of a crime or as a witness, and, if they had a car, a heatmap of where they tended to drive and a full history of their parking violations. Then he handed me the phone. Go ahead, he said; search a name.

A flurry of people came to mind: Friends. Lovers. Enemies. In the end, I chose the victim of a shooting I’d witnessed in Brooklyn a couple of years earlier. He popped right up, along with what felt like more personal information than I, or even perhaps a curious officer, had any right to know without a court order. Feeling a little dizzy, I gave the phone back.

If this is what is going on in major cities such as Chicago and New York, can you imagine the technology that the alphabet agencies of the federal government must now possess?

Of course this isn’t just happening in the United States.

On the other side of the Atlantic, a joint European surveillance project known as ROXANNE is causing a great deal of concern…

An acronym for Real time netwOrk, teXt, and speaker ANalytics for combating orgaNized crimE, it was announced in November the Republic’s involvement in the project currently being developed in Switzerland.

A biometrics based platform ostensibly to monitor and crack down on organised crime, an additional application of ROXANNE which its creators advertise freely is the ability to monitor those guilty of alleged hate speech and political extremism.

Strict new laws against “hate speech” and “political extremism” are being instituted all over Europe, and this new tool will help to track down “thought criminals”.

In particular, this new tool will be heavily monitoring “social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube as well as normal telecommunications platforms”…

A product of the EU funded Horizon 2020 to foster new surveillance technology, ROXANNE works across social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube as well as normal telecommunications platforms to identify, categorise, and track faces and voices enabling authorities to paint a more in depth picture of the network being investigated, whether it be in relation to criminal activity or those deemed politically extreme.

Enabling authorities to draw on raw data from a variety of sources and platforms in order to recognise common speech patterns, facial features, and geolocation, the end result is both to identify suspects and paint an intricate picture of the networks being put under the microscope.

So if you live in Europe and you think that you might be guilty of “thought crime” at some point, you might want to get rid of your phone and your computer.

Seriously.

Things really have gotten that bad over there, and it is just a matter of time before the madness gets to the same level in the United States, because we are going down the exact same road.

Here in the U.S., more political voices are being “deplatformed” with each passing day.  Progressive reporter Jordan Chariton originally cheered when conservatives were being deplatformed, but at this point he regrets his calls for censorship now that YouTube has taken down one of his videos…

However, after YouTube pulled video from his own channel featuring footage of the January 6 riot for violating the platform’s policies against “spam and deceptive practices,” the Chariton reversed his position.

“With time to reflect, & seeing Silicon Valley’s censorship onslaught, I regret this tweet made in [the] heat of moment,” the progressive journalist wrote. “Whether certain cable/YouTube outlets mislead audiences w/ dishonest claims lacking real evidence, they shouldn’t be targeted.”

It is all fun and games when it is happening to “the other side”, but when it happens to you suddenly it becomes real.

They really do want to control what all of us do, say and think, and the Big Brother surveillance grid is becoming more suffocating with each passing year.

If we do not put limits on this technology while we still can, it is just a matter of time before our society becomes a dystopian nightmare far more horrible than anything than George Orwell ever dared to imagine.

The post Big Brother Is Spying On You In Thousands Of Ways, And All Of That Info Now Goes Into Centralized “Fusion Systems” appeared first on Planet Free Will.