Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThinker.com,

Americans have common sense, so they can understand when they’re being played (for example, when politicians place Americans under house arrest and then ignore their own rules to party and travel). And they know that there is no way on God’s green earth that decrepit, demented, corrupt, and terminally stupid Joe Biden fairly won this election. This post assembles various election anomalies that don’t pass the smell test.

J.B. Shurk, who frequently publishes at American Thinker, wrote a knock-out article for The Federalist about Joe Biden’s magical performance in the election. You should read the whole article, but here are four things that don’t pass the smell test:

1. Biden allegedly got 80 million votes, which is more than Obama received at his peak, in 2008 – and Biden did this despite losing minority voters to Donald Trump and trailing Trump in voter enthusiasm.

2. Biden broke 60 years of precedent by winning nationally despite losing prodigiously in bellwether states and counties. The last time this happened was when the mafia got out the vote for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

3. Trump had extraordinary coattails, so much so that even the New York Times admitted that the “Democrats Suffered Crushing Down-Ballot Losses Across America.” Think about that: Biden had no coattails and no enthusiasm, yet he allegedly won a record number of votes. Smells fetid to me.

4. Biden barely made it through the primaries, while Trump soared, with Trump’s performance being a historically sure sign of voter enthusiasm and probable victory – yet Biden, again, allegedly scored an equally historically strong victory.

At The Spectator, Patrick Basham, a professional pollster, also felt that Biden’s alleged win cannot pass the smell test. Again, this is a summary, so you should read the original article:

5. Trump exceeded his original vote count by the largest margin for any incumbent in American history. He got 10 million more votes than before; by contrast, Obama, in 2012, got 3.5 million fewer votes than in 2008.

6. Trump’s support among blacks grew by 50%, while Biden’s fell below the important 90%-mark that Democrat candidates need to secure victory.

7. In the Rust Belt, Biden lost black support everywhere except in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. In those cities, every single black person apparently voted for Biden.

8. While pollsters can and do manipulate polling outcomes, non-polling metrics (historical norms such as the economy, enthusiasm, etc.) have never been wrong – only we’re being told that this year was the exception.

Then there are the indicia of fraud that Dr. Navid Kershavarz-Nia detailed:

9. The fact that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia simultaneously pretended to halt ballot counting while continuing to count is evidence of election fraud collusion.

10. Optical scanners were set to accept unverified, un-validated ballots.

11. The scanners were almost certainly programmed to fail to keep audit records.

12. In the contested states, the voting machines were alleged to have processed hundreds of thousands of ballots within a short time, which is a physical impossibility.

And here are a few more indications of fraud:

13. In Pennsylvania, statistically impossible numbers of late-arriving mail-in votes went to Biden.

14. Dominion and ES&S voting machines were created to have back doors and specific functions to manipulate votes either at the machine or over the internet.

15. Fox News’s behavior on election night (refusing to call pro-Trump outcomes while prematurely calling Arizona for Biden) was so abnormal that Vegas oddsmakers instantly assumed that the fix was in.

16. The allegedly late-arriving mailed-in ballots increased Biden’s equally alleged lead with statistically impossible perfection and stability.

17. There were anomalies in Virginia that suggested that computers were subtracting votes from Trump and, sometimes, giving them to Biden.

18. One analysis shows that voting machines in Michigan systematically removed votes from Trump and handed them to Biden. I saw a rebuttal (which I cannot locate now) that purported to debunk this but did so by using a different scale on the X-axis, which I found inherently suspicious.

19. Over 100,000 Pennsylvania absentee ballots were returned either a day after they were mailed out, on the day they were mailed out, or on the day before they were mailed out.

20. In all the contested areas, and at Dominion’s website, Democrats have been systematically failing to create or have destroyed all data that could be used to demonstrate fraud. This creates the legal presumption that the data do, in fact, show fraud. 

On behalf of all Trump voters, I say to the Democrats who are trying to gaslight us: Don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining.

 Authored by Patrick Basham via The Spectator,

Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling

To say out-loud that you find the results of the 2020 presidential election odd is to invite derision. You must be a crank or a conspiracy theorist. Mark me down as a crank, then.

I am a pollster and I find this election to be deeply puzzling. I also think that the Trump campaign is still well within its rights to contest the tabulations. Something very strange happened in America’s democracy in the early hours of Wednesday November 4 and the days that followed. It’s reasonable for a lot of Americans to want to find out exactly what.

First, consider some facts.

President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.

Trump’s vote increased so much because, according to exit polls, he performed far better with many key demographic groups. Ninety-five percent of Republicans voted for him. He did extraordinarily well with rural male working-class whites.

He earned the highest share of all minority votes for a Republican since 1960. Trump grew his support among black voters by 50 percent over 2016. Nationally, Joe Biden’s black support fell well below 90 percent, the level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose.

Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35 percent. With 60 percent or less of the national Hispanic vote, it is arithmetically impossible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Bellwether states swung further in Trump’s direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America’s media polls with huge wins for Trump. Since 1852, only Richard Nixon has lost the electoral college after winning this trio, and that 1960 defeat to John F. Kennedy is still the subject of great suspicion.

Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor.

We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.

Victorious presidential candidates, especially challengers, usually have down-ballot coattails; Biden did not.

The Republicans held the Senate and enjoyed a ‘red wave’ in the House, where they gained a large number of seats while winning all 27 toss-up contests. Trump’s party did not lose a single state legislature and actually made gains at the state level.

Another anomaly is found in the comparison between the polls and non-polling metrics. The latter include: party registrations trends; the candidates’ respective primary votes; candidate enthusiasm; social media followings; broadcast and digital media ratings; online searches; the number of (especially small) donors; and the number of individuals betting on each candidate.

Despite poor recent performances, media and academic polls have an impressive 80 percent record predicting the winner during the modern era. But, when the polls err, non-polling metrics do not; the latter have a 100 percent record. Every non-polling metric forecast Trump’s reelection. For Trump to lose this election, the mainstream polls needed to be correct, which they were not. Furthermore, for Trump to lose, not only did one or more of these metrics have to be wrong for the first time ever, but every single one had to be wrong, and at the very same time; not an impossible outcome, but extremely unlikely nonetheless.

Atypical voting patterns married with misses by polling and non-polling metrics should give observers pause for thought. Adding to the mystery is a cascade of information about the bizarre manner in which so many ballots were accumulated and counted.

The following peculiarities also lack compelling explanations:

1. Late on election night, with Trump comfortably ahead, many swing states stopped counting ballots. In most cases, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers

2. Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed. They were unusually large in size (hundreds of thousands) and had an unusually high (90 percent and above) Biden-to-Trump ratio

3. Late arriving ballots were counted. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions

4. The failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots. The destruction of mail in ballot envelopes, which must contain signatures

5. Historically low absentee ballot rejection rates despite the massive expansion of mail voting. Such is Biden’s narrow margin that, as political analyst Robert Barnes observes, ‘If the states simply imposed the same absentee ballot rejection rate as recent cycles, then Trump wins the election’

6. Missing votes. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards are missing

7. Non-resident voters. Matt Braynard’s Voter Integrity Project estimates that 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia. Biden’s margin is 12,670 votes

8. Serious ‘chain of custody’ breakdowns. Invalid residential addresses. Record numbers of dead people voting. Ballots in pristine condition without creases, that is, they had not been mailed in envelopes as required by law

9. Statistical anomalies. In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch. It is particularly perplexing that all statistical anomalies and tabulation abnormalities were in Biden’s favor. Whether the cause was simple human error or nefarious activity, or a combination, clearly something peculiar happened.

If you think that only weirdos have legitimate concerns about these findings and claims, maybe the weirdness lies in you.

 Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThinker.com,

When Tucker Carlson attacked Sidney Powell, I was unhappy with him. However, I said that I would still watch Tucker because he’s mostly smart, brave, and funny, qualities I like. Some people (politely) disagreed with me. Having seen Tucker’s Monday monologue, though, I am glad that I stuck to my guns by sticking to Tucker. Tucker excoriates the real fraud in the 2020 election, which was the way the media and Big Tech manipulated the system to destroy Trump.

It’s hard to explain to people who came of age during the Trump era how differently the establishment treated his presidency. Even when the media loathed presidents – as they did with Nixon and Reagan – they at least went through the motions of showing respect.

With Trump, the media’s hate-fest is unbounded.

They ignored the usual 100-day honeymoon. Instead, from the moment Trump was elected, media hacks began to exhaust their limited vocabulary of insults: Trump is Hitler. Trump is worse than Hitler. Trump is a Hitlerly copy of something worse than Hitler.

If they’re not making Hitler analogies, you have Anderson Cooper calling the President of the United States an “obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun.” Stay classy, Anderson! Where’s that sophisticated guy who got drunk and talked about his mother’s sex life on air?

At the end of the day, what the media have done for the past four years is inane, shallow, vulgar, and mean-spirited to the point of evil, but the steady drumbeat works.

Although it’s hard to remember, before Trump came along, the media would at least occasionally report rather objectively about actual news, both foreign and domestic. Nowadays, the news is blatantly slanted in whatever direction benefits Democrats.

Black Lives Matter riots are racial freedom fests while the people who protest being locked in their homes and losing their livelihoods are white nationalist haters. Nor do the media ever report Trump’s accomplishments. Instead, taking in the media is liking listening to the two meanest girls in high school gossip about someone they hate. Again, it’s inane, shallow, vulgar, and mean-spirited, but effective.

Most significantly, it’s impossible to explain the effect of big technology to young people who, having been raised within its omnipresent ambit, are as unaware of its power as fish are of the water in which they swim. When Google hides search results and Twitter and Facebook de-platform people for being “mean,” that’s normal to the young. To them, that’s the appropriate elevation of “safe” speech – and please, stop nattering about “free” speech, which all these young people know is a secret code for saying “hate speech of the type a Hitlerly Hitler would use.”

Incidentally, it’s also impossible to explain any of pre- and post-internet concepts about journalism and free speech to stalwart leftists. Because the media and Big Tech align perfectly with what our leftist (aka, Democrat or progressive) friends believe, they too view bias, censorship, and manipulated information as a fish does water: They are normal, and only conspiracy theorists would believe that the water is toxic and deadly.

Enter Tucker Carlson’s Monday night monologue, with its bracing dose of reality about the way in which the 2020 election was rigged. We conservatives have every reason to believe in shadow rigging, in the form of cemetery votes, faked ballots, and election machine manipulation. All of that, though, requires investigation and a lot of work to establish.

However, Tucker points out that what the media and Big Tech did in the 2020 election is in our faces, it’s devastating, and it’s very frightening for the future of a free America. No wonder Trump pinned Tucker’s monologue to the top of his Twitter page.

The leftists are compliant, the politicians are bought and paid for, and we’re all that remains of an America that remembers the First Amendment. We better figure out what to do about this situation before our tech overlords ensure that we have no options left.

From Zero Hedge:

 This, in a nutshell, is how Wall Street works: just two months after JPMorgan was fined a record $1 billion criminal monetary penalty (to make sure not a single banker would end up going to prison) for rigging the gold and silver markets, Reuters reported that JPM - having clearly "learned" the tools of the gold rigging trade, has earned a record $1 billion in revenue so far in 2020 from trading, storing and financing precious metals, vastly outperforming rival banks.

The math simplified: JPM has spent $1 billion over the lifetime of its precious metals rigging, ensuring it has full indemnity from future manipulation claims, allowing allow it to make $1 billion in revenue in just one year. Truly a remarkable IRR, and proving yet again, that on Wall Street crime not only pays, but has a 1-+year payback period.

While the coronavirus has created a bonanza for investment banks dealing in gold, silver and other precious metals by triggering massive investor purchases and rupturing the normal workings of the market, JPMorgan has dominated, growing its share of the market according to Reuters.

Revenue generated by the largest US commercial bank by mid-November accounts for at least half of the $1.7 billion to $2 billion that consultancy McKinsey estimates the top 10 investment banks combined will make this year from precious metals, mostly gold.

And while Blythe Masters is now long gone (and oddly enough was never even once questioned for her involvement in JPM's massive gold manipulation scandal despite being in charge of JPM commodities during the peak of JPM's market rigging), JPMorgan's commodities division is on track to bring in more than $1.5 billion this year and could challenge Goldman Sachs for the title of top earner.

But surely after having been caught so many times rigging gold, JPMorgan is no longer manipulating the commodity market: after all all the regulators are watching it. Well, you decide: individual investment banks have rarely made more than $1 billion in commodities in recent years, and none has ever before earned more than around $600 million in precious metals in a single year, said George Kuznetsov at McKinsey CIB Insights. Yet for JPMorgan, it was child's play.

Why? Because as some have said, the $1 billion criminal manipulation penalty was really a bribe for the CFTC and SEC to look away next time.

Of course, in addition to manipulating the market, JPM also has unprecedented visibility into its every player. The bank sits at the heart of the global bullion market, and its activities span trading physical bars to derivatives, running vaults and clearing trades in London, the biggest trade hub.

Naturally, to avoid the spotlight, JPM had a ready narrative. As Reuters writes, "driving profit has been the clamour for gold and silver from investors, mainly in Europe and North America, worried the coronavirus pandemic and money-printing by central banks could devalue other assets. These investors pushed gold prices to record highs above $2,000 an ounce earlier this year."

To this add profits earned on the Comex futures exchange in New York, where supply issues earlier this year made it more lucrative for those with access to physical gold to trade precious metals. Gold custodian banks - such as JPMorgan - took advantage of opportunities on Comex and helped clients do the same, in some cases bailing out major ETFs and anecdotally, even one rather prominent central bank.

According to Comex data, show JPMorgan’s clients accounted for one-third of all trade in gold bars registered with the exchange in October, and more than two fifths in June. Like other big banks, JPMorgan was able to get and ship metal cheaply and in large quantities when other, smaller traders could not, sources said.

The revenue windfall will likely fade as trading on Comex reverts to normal patterns, but high gold prices and interest from investors mean this business will remain profitable. “2020 is going to be an outlier year,” said Kuznetsov at McKinsey, who clearly did not consider that the manipulation will only accelerate from here. 

From Zero Hedge:

Crediblock.com Second Sight Markets Analysis 11/24/2020

Summary

• LabCorp provides genetic tests which always name the father who is named in the legal document, not based on science.
• This creates a massive liability for LabCorp, as the results are used in legal cases and for other means.
• This liability alone is enough to significantly impact their future growth.
• New competitors in the field are providing legitimate science based tests.

We have done deep forensic research into LabCorp (LH) specifically on their paternity tests.  The conclusion is shocking; any mother who fills out a form naming John Doe as the father will be substantiated by a 'test' which is evidence in court.  The bottom line, these tests are providing women the opportunity to name any male the genetic father of their child, which locks the 'dad' into paying child support.  Failure to pay child support is the only known financial obligation that can land you in jail, in the United States.  All of this, based on a test that doesn't name the dad genetically, in a statistically significant way.  

The faulty tests

First of all, the tests provided are 'motherless' tests which means without the DNA sample of the mother.  Without understanding anything about genetic science, it's logical to understand why you would need all 3 samples of DNA to provide a statistically significant result (mother, alleged father, and child).

So what are some documented examples where the tests have been proven in court to be faulty? This is perhaps the most interesting case refuting the LabCorp tests, of another doctor that actually fathered 75 children with artificial insemination:

But defense attorney David Axelson asked Stuhlmiller whether some genetic markers he did not test for might have excluded Jacobson, and whether if Jacobson had a twin it would have been impossible to distinguish between the two. Stuhlmiller acknowledged those two scenarios might be correct. And he agreed with Axelson that if one of Jacobson’s genetic markers were incorrectly analyzed it could create a problem.

Then there are the many cases where someone takes 9 different tests and gets 7 different results - how is that possible with solid science?

Another is the significant case of Andre Chreky, who had to sue and fight his way to prove himself not the father, and in the process discredit the LabCorp tests.

The Andre Chreky Case

Celebrity hairstylist Andre Chreky was sued by a woman claiming that he was the father of her child, and thus was liable to pay child support.  Chreky knew he was right, because he was never with the woman, so he sued.  After years  and $800,000 spent, he finally won.  The reason?  Shoddy work:

In the case of Chreky, the judge ruled that LabCorp, one of the largest paternity labs in the country, had performed "shoddy" work. An employee testified that during his 10-hour shift, he issued an average of one paternity report every four minutes. Mislabeling, misinterpretation, and switched samples are not factored into the probabilities.

There are hundreds of other cases, most of which will never see a courtroom, as the demographic of the typical victim doesn't have the resources to stage a complex defense.  In the courtroom, LabCorp results are seen as irrefutable evidence, unless challenged.  Most would not dare challenge a piece of paper with the signature of a scientist on it.  Our assumption is that they know best.  But the facts state otherwise.

Other famous cases include Hollywood celebrities, a Missouri case which was overturned during a reality show "Paternity Court", and a 2018 case Powell v. Lab Corp, stating:

Specifically, plaintiff seeks the following relief and alleges the following claims against the specific defendants: (1) LabCorp: twenty-five million dollars for "paternity fraud, illegal random testing, and conspiracy"; (2) NYSUCS: ten million dollars for "paternity fraud, false arrest, conspiracy, omitting evidence from transcript, denial of justice, defamation of character, unsigned and unstamped dismissal for a DNA test for my son, and speedy trial";

Relationship Reports

To illustrate how obvious this is, LabCorp doesn't call these paternity tests, they call them 'relationship reports' - that's because whoever is named as the father in the document mothers fill out, is going to be 99.99% the father, according to the test.  See this example:

Ask yourself, if this is a real DNA identification test, why is it called a 'relationship report' and not 'DNA test' - the answer is in the liability and insurance.

Insurance Policies

As you can imagine, LabCorp carries large insurance policies for liability on these tests.  The premiums paid are in the millions but the potential liabilities are in the billions and/or are incalculable.  Every case which was based on a LabCorp test would need to be revisited.  Here is an example policy from a contract with Alameda County, CA:

18

Click to enlarge

You can download a copy with this link. 

There are a number of policies, with a $1,000,000 limit for each occurrence.  

From LabCorp's own site, they claim to have performed more than 2 Million DNA tests for paternity.  Simple math multiplication shows $2 Trillion in potential liability.  Obviously that's a huge number, but it does show the gravity of the liability problem LabCorp faces.  And they have charged as low as $25 per test (now they are charging individuals $210 per DNA test).

And that's not all.

When you get a LabCorp DNA test they keep your DNA in a database, to be used for potential third party uses down the road.  Competitors like Ancestry.com and 23andMe have been sued and investigated by the FTC for this privacy violation practice.   Many consumers don’t realize that their personal info may be shared with third-party companies (or used internally) and there have been complaints raised that the companies’ terms of service are not always clear about their unique policies in these matters. 

Reports of inaccurate tests from unrelated sources

Based on our research, LabCorp is not the only provider of the faulty tests, there are even websites and user forums dedicated to this topic.  Articles such as "Problems with Home DNA Testing" explain some of the issues we have mentioned in this article.  We do not have evidence that LabCorp is maliciously providing fake tests as part of a criminal conspiracy - it may be human error, stupidity, or lack of testing standards.  Perhaps LabCorp just didn't evolve with the changing times.  For example, Abbott Labs (ABT) was able to deliver a cheap and fast COVID-19 test, beating LabCorp in a market where they traditionally dominate.  Reports on local news such as this ABC10 talk about 'heartbreaking' results of faulty tests:

The family is suing the two companies involved in the original 2001 DNA test, Bio-Synthesis, Inc. and DNA Testing Centre.  In court filings, the family alleges the two companies that took their DNA samples and analyzed them were "negligent in obtaining, labeling, handling, testing, and reporting tests results."

So this clearly is a pattern in the DNA testing industry.  Perhaps this science is just too new to be trusted?  But even if that is the case, what is the liability for companies like LabCorp that may need to revisit thousands of tests done for court cases in the past?

The law and regulation

What is the law surrounding this issue?  The short answer is there is none.

Scientific Testing is regulated by the AABB, a private organization that charges members $270 per year.  But who regulates the regulators?  Like on Wall St. that is a problem.  And genetics is far outside the scope of the scientific domain of AABB, an acronym that stands for American Association of Blood Banks.  Collecting blood and testing for white blood cells is far different than genetic testing, a new science that was really only started circa 2000.

The Grandparent element

In most cases, grandparent tests are performed to determine paternity—whether or not the biological son of a tested individual is the biological father of a child—in situations where the possible father is deceased, incarcerated, unwilling or otherwise unavailable to participate in a paternity test.  The issue is that this weak genetic link is being abused by would be scammers.  Here is the testimony of one case worker we interviewed about this petty scam:

"Mothers bring in an obituary from the news paper claiming the alleged father was deceased. We would often figure out the conception time period and find it was impossible for the person named to be the father."

https://socialwork.utah.edu/research/reports/posts/learning-from-the-front-lines.pdf

Another version.. 

Bait elderly recently lost their son into a defective test which will place the parents into an awkward and dangerous position

(1) Denial calling the female a fraudster

(2) After the test -  This dynamic flips as the parents are “falsely told" that they cannot be excluded as Grandparents” and that the only way of seeing their “so called “grandchild “ is through this mother they just accused of fraud.

(3) Get Money

Why would anyone do this?

Reap the financial rewards both short and long term, such as:

• Social Security from fake father (including disability, or other due benefits)
• Estate from fake grandparents
• Everything in between

SCIENCE: The simulated grandparentage test indicates that commercially available test batteries containing the 13 CODIS STR loci are typically sufficient to achieve acceptable levels of exclusionary power in grandparentage analyses when the mother of the child in question is tested. In contrast, an almost untenable number of genetic markers is required to achieve similar levels of confidence when the mother is not tested.

Conclusion: Only a test that involves the mother, father, and child is statistically significant to a sigma level as to determine with 99.999% probability parentage.

Orchid Cellmark

Then there is the unusual case of Orchid Cellmark.  This was a DNA testing company that was acquired by LabCorp in 2011.

In 2004 they fired a scientist for falsifying results:

Many of the cases were performed for the Los Angeles Police Department. The alleged tampering has prompted the Los Angeles County public defender's office to begin reviewing all pending cases involving Cellmark.

"What [the employee] did was commit fraud," said Jennifer Friedman, a forensic science coordinator for the Los Angeles County public defender's office. "We now need to figure out ways ... that we and our experts can help to detect these types of problems that we never imagined would exist."   Some of the 20 tests were performed for the FBI. Special Agent Ann Todd, a spokeswoman for the FBI lab at Quantico, Va., would not comment on the matter, and it could not be determined where those cases originated. 

Why would LabCorp acquire a company with such a history?  What's interesting in the SEC report, Orchid Cellmark says that claims of testing fraud do not have a material impact on their bottom line:

We may be held liable for any inaccuracies associated with our services, which may require us to defend ourselves in costly litigation.

We provide forensic, family relationship and agricultural testing services. Claims may be brought against us for incorrect identification of family relationships or other inaccuracies. Litigation of these claims in most cases is covered by our existing insurance policies. However, we could expend significant funds during any litigation proceeding brought against us and litigation can be a distraction to management. If a court were to require us to pay damages that are not covered by our existing insurance policies, the amount of such damages could significantly harm our financial condition, and even if covered, damages could exceed our insurance policy coverage limits. We currently maintain professional liability insurance with a maximum coverage limitation of $10 million. We have been named a defendant in a number of minor suits relating to our DNA testing services, including claims of incorrect results. None of the outcomes of these suits have had a material adverse effect on our business to date.

The point here is that this isn't just connecting the dots - when you begin to research this topic there is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence.  And remember also that unless circumstances warrant it, most false fathers would not have the knowledge, resources, or understanding to take such a case to court (they may believe the test, that they are the father, or not understand how a test can be faked - people believe in Science and what they see on TV over facts).  But as science advances, and more accurate DNA tests become widely used, the faulty LabCorp tests will have more chance of being exposed.  Once lawsuits and complaints reach a critical mass, that's when the stock is going to drop.

LabCorp stock and ownership

The LabCorp stock chart last few months

LabCorp chart last few years

Institutional ownership of LabCorp is high, here is the breakdown according to NASDAQ.com:

According to retail broker-dealer https://www.levelx.com, the average trading volume is about 800,000 shares a day.  The stock has moved up recently as a COVID-19 positive play, but we don't see that at all.  Other Seeking Alpha authors agree - this is a head fake.  

Paternity tests are not LabCorp's core business, they are a testing provider from things ranging from common blood work, to pregnancy related testing, and hundreds of other things (literally).  But if the paternity tests were seen to be invalid in even a percentage of cases (such as 1% or 3%) that would mean thousands of lawsuits, case re-openings, and other factors which would create a ripple effect for their liability.  This would have the psychological impact on the company and it's brand - if the paternity tests are inaccurate - what else is inaccurate?

Conclusion

LabCorp is a short.  The only thing that is driving the test issues being exposed is awareness, and that doesn't happen overnight.  In fact, it can take a long time.  We aren't saying this is going to happen tomorrow or next week.  But the liability is there waiting for one case to take it over the top.  Once awareness of the issue reaches a critical mass, ultimately, it will be exposed.  That may be a celebrity case such as the Hunter Biden paternity case, or another contested paternity situation.  

We can't say how low it might go as it's impossible to accurately forecast how such liability might impact the company and/or how they may deal with it.  Revlon (REV) looks like it's on it's way to zero.  It is possible for a once blue chip company to fall from grace.  Perhaps it's simply that firms like LabCorp failed to evolve to meet a new challenging environment.  In any case, with LabCorp reaching highs recently, this is a great opportunity to short.

Additional Research

Assessing exclusionary power of a paternity test involving a pair of alleged grandparents

Marco A. Scarpetta Rick W. Staub David D. Einum

First published: 22 January 2007 Assessing exclusionary power of a paternity test involving a pair of alleged grandparentsCitations: 2

David D. Einum, Sorenson Genomics, 2495 So. West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84115; e‐mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

[This work was funded entirely by Orchid Cellmark, Inc.]

For more articles like this, checkout Global Intel Hub and see Crediblock Second Sight Market Analysis

 From National File

High-level whistleblowers exclusively tell NATIONAL FILE that Dominion Voting Systems has been a “national security threat” for years and its machines, programmed in Serbia, are known for vote-flipping like the kind that Dominion was caught engaging in during the 2020 presidential election in Michigan. According to whistleblowers, Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden personally visited Serbia to take part in a scheme that gave Democrats control of America’s Dominion voting machines in coordination with Eric Holder’s Justice Department. The plot is also linked to the Chinese, the Clinton Foundation, and George Soros. This article will take you through the entire globalist plot, step by step.

Dana Jill Simpson and her husband Jim are election integrity and technology experts who have worked for Tides Foundation insiders (the Tides Canada Foundation shares office space in Toronto with Dominion Voting Systems’ headquarters). They are both anti-war progressives in the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democrat Party. Dana Jill Simpson has been investigating Dominion for years, and she brought her concerns about voter fraud to the FBI in 2016 — including information about Dominion — but the FBI ignored her pleas for help. Simpson said the scanners for Dominion are made by a company called Flextronics in Plano, Texas, whose CEO does business with the Chinese company Huaewei.

The Obama-Biden administration literally gave Dominion its market share through a 2010 forced divestiture.

A March 8, 2010 press release from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice entitled “Justice Department Requires Key Divestiture in Election Systems & Software/Premier Election Solutions Merger” announced that DOJ was forcing a divestiture of election technology from a top company. Dominion ended up getting that technology and thus nearly a third of the electronic voting systems market in America.

“Jim and I as an election team working for Harvard lawyer Cliff Arnebeck located all the DOJ Documents to prove how Dominion Voting owes it 30% Market share to an Obama-Biden DOJ Antitrust division sale done by Eric Holder. No party running for office should have any ties to a company but Biden while in office with Obama let Eric Holder handle this sale to their pet company Dominion . That my friends is as corrupt as it gets,” Dana Jill Simpson said.

The Science Defies Politics blog reported: “It is not clear what products or services the company has developed. It found almost no buyers, until Obama was elected in 2008. In 2009, New York ordered a few dozens of systems from it. In 2010, Obama’s DOJ (Holder – Mueller) took the EVS unit, purchased from Diebold, away from the market leader ES&S, and gave it to Dominion. This gift included the installed base of about 30% of the US electronic voting systems (EVS) market. Within two weeks, Dominion also acquired Sequoia, which was formally spun from Smartmatic, but ties between these two companies remained. Smartmatic is a UK based EVS vendor, whose software was used by Chavez to “win” the Venezuelan referendum in 2004. Smartmatic’s unit Sequoia faced troubles in the US. Those troubles quickly ended when its assets were purchased by Dominion.”

THE DOMINION VOTING TECHNOLOGY IS PROGRAMMED IN SERBIA

BIDEN IN BELGRADE

“I got a tip that Biden took a Trip on May 20th 2009 and that is when he cut a deal to help Serbian Hackers in Belgrade where he was visiting to get control of info about ES and S Machines so he and Obama would have a better chance in 2012. Well, not only did they get a better chance but Biden had Holder force ES and S in a divesture suit in the Antitrust department in the US DOJ to give over half of ES and S to Serbian programmers for Dominion Voting Systems. Such a disgusting situation,” Dana Jill Simpson said. The date for Biden’s May 2009 Serbia trip checks out.

Biden is good friends with the Serbian Crown Prince, who has prematurely congratulated Biden for supposedly getting elected president. They have visited each other at their respective houses.

Here is Biden in Belgrade in 2016

SERBIA

Dominion programmers in Serbia have been scrambling to hide their LinkedIn accounts.

Infowars reported: Screenshots show over 100 employees of the controversial voting machine company Dominion have deleted their LinkedIn profiles. On November 6th, the LinkedIn page for Dominion showed 243 employees on the site and by November 16th, only 140 remained…Why are Serbian software engineers in charge of a product being used in American elections?”

“I have one goal in this election and it is to destroy Dominion Voting,” Dana Jill Simpson said.

“Anyone who stands up for this machinery is nuts and they are misleading the public about where the equipment is made. I know I have been to the Denver office and all it does is sell foreign programmed machines to US voters like they were made in Denver when they are not . The New York Times and Washington Post are misleading the public with lies. I double dare those papers and any papers in the world or other Media to visit the Denver office and then say machines and programs are made there. It is a bald face lie. The Machines are made by Flex in China for the most part and the programming is done in Serbia and Canada and the International Corporation is Barbados. They have direct ties to Clinton Foundation in Delian Project,” Dana Jill Simpson said.

“This machinery not only stole the election from Trump but also Bernie . This bunch in Serbia and Canada of Dominion Computer Programmers hackers works with Hillary and with the UN on overthrowing Foreign Countries with the Delian Project,” Simpson said.

HERE IS THE OFFICE WHERE DOMINION MACHINES ARE PROGRAMMED IN SERBIA

CLINTON FOUNDATION

A Clinton Foundation website item states:

In 2014, Dominion Voting committed to providing emerging and post-conflict democracies with access to voting technology through its philanthropic support to the DELIAN Project, as many emerging democracies suffer from post-electoral violence due to the delay in the publishing of election results. Over the next three years, Dominion Voting will support election technology pilots with donated Automated Voting Machines (AVM), providing an improved electoral process, and therefore safer elections. As a large number of election staff are women, there will be an emphasis on training women, who will be the first to benefit from the skills transfer training and use of AVMs. It is estimated that 100 women will directly benefit from election technology skills training per pilot election.

Dominion Voting Systems shares an office floor with the George Soros-funded left-wing Tides Foundation in Toronto, NATIONAL FILE has learned. Our tipster makes clear that “Soros people” are very close with Dominion, which has partnered with a voting technology company chaired by one of left-wing billionaire George Soros’ best friends and associates. Dominion was caught flipping votes from President Donald Trump to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and Trump has cited data to accuse Dominion of widespread vote-flipping and vote-losing in key states. Dominion is headquartered in Toronto and has a U.S. office in Denver.

The Robertson Building’s Directory of Tenants shows that Dominion Voting is listed at both Suite 200 (the suite Dominion lists publicly) and also Suite 370, which places it in neighborly range of the Tides Canada Foundation in suite 360. Tides Foundation in America, based in San Francisco, created and financially supports Tides Canada Foundation. The Tides Foundation has reportedly received more than $20 million in donations from George Soros’ groups, and Tides shares Soros’ vision for a radical left-wing makeover of Western civilization and the world. Tides has given out money to numerous left-wing groups including ACORN and Project Vote and recently created the Black Lives Matter Support Fund.

More evidence is here:

This is just one link between Dominion Voting Systems and George Soros. Access Wire reported that “Dominion entered into a 2009 contract with Smartmatic and provided Smartmatic with the PCOS machines (optical scanners) that were used in the 2010 Philippine election, the biggest automated election run by a private company.”

Smartmatic is chaired by Mark Malloch-Brown, who is good friends with George Soros and even called Soros his landlord at a five-bedroom house in Westchester County, New York. Malloch-Brown has worked with Soros on various projects including as vice chairman of the Open Society Institute and also Soros Fund Management. Mark Malloch-Brown is listed as a Global Board Member of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Here is Malloch-Brown photographed with his friend George Soros:

Nancy Pelosi-linked Dominion Voting Systems is under harsh condemnation from President Donald Trump and his supporters after reported vote-counting malfunctions in many of the key states.

President Trump cited data reported by OANN’s Chanel Rion to state that Dominion flipped votes from Trump to Biden or lost Trump votes in massive margins in states including Pennsylvania and Georgia, where the flipped/lost vote total is higher than Joe Biden’s supposed “leads.” Dominion raised flags when officials were forced to admit that the system flipped 6,000 votes in Michigan from Trump over to his Democrat counterpart Biden. But data shows the problem to be much worse and more widespread. NOQ Report has a deep dive into the Dominion data cited by President Trump.

Bloomberg reported that Dominion “hired … a high-powered firm that includes a longtime aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. … Dominion’s first-ever lobbying firm is Brownstein Farber Hyatt and Schreck. Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi’s former chief of staff, is one of the lobbyists on the account.”

Dominion Voting Systems also hired the notorious Democrat political organizing operation Act Blue.

Even Democrats harshly investigated Dominion Voting Systems for its well-documented lack of security and for using Chinese parts.

An Elizabeth Warren press release dated December 10, 2019 documents that Warren and fellow Democrat senators Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden investigated and exposed Dominion Voting Systems among two other election software systems owned by private equity.

“The three vendors — Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic — collectively distribute voting machines and software that facilitate voting for over 90% of all eligible voters in the United States. Private equity firms reportedly own or control each of these vendors, which “have long skimped on security in favor of convenience,” leaving voting systems across the country “prone to security problems,'” the press release stated, citing election security experts.

Even NBC News reported: “The source of the nation’s voting machines has become an urgent issue because of real fears that hackers, whether foreign or domestic, might tamper with the mechanics of the voting system. That has led to calls for ES&S and its competitors, Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems and Austin, Texas-based Hart Intercivic, to reveal details about their ownership and the origins of the parts, some of which come from China, that make up their machines.”

House Democrats then went after Dominion Voting Systems in a 2020 hearing, with Rep. Zoe Lofgren blowing the lid off the Chinese parts used by Dominion.

 From Daily Caller

Smartmatic, a U.K.-based voting technology company with deep ties to George Soros, has provided voting technology in 16 states including battleground zones like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Other jurisdictions affected are California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.

Its website includes a flow-chart that describes how the company has contributed to elections in the U.S. from 2006-2015 with “57,000 voting and counting machines deployed” and “35 million voters assisted.”

After this report’s publication, Smartmatic updated its website to remove the flow chart and declare that “Smartmatic will not be deploying its technology in any U.S. county for the upcoming 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.”

In 2005, Smartmatic bought-out California-based Sequoia Voting Systems and entered the world of U.S. elections.

According to Smartmatic’s website, “In less than one year Smartmatic tripled Sequoia’s market share” and “has offered technology and support services to the Electoral Commissions of 307 counties in 16 States.”

In 2007, Smartmatic announced the sale of Sequoia “given the difficult climate in the United States marketplace, tainted by a non-stop debate against foreign investment, especially in the election technology area.”

Among the “case studies” that Smartmatic lists on its website as examples of its work are Venezuela, where it has been facilitating elections since 2004 when it “won a bid to provide Venezuela with a reliable voting system.”

 It also lists Cook County, Illinois as another success story, when in “in 2006, Smartmatic signed what at the moment was the largest election automation contract in US history.” Cook County includes Chicago and its suburbs, a geographic zone that has historically and lately been subject to criticism for voter fraud.

The chairman of Smartmatic is Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who sits in the British House of Lords and on the board of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. He was formerly the vice-chairman of Soros’s Investment Funds and even the deputy secretary-general of the United Nations when he worked as chief of staff to Kofi Annan.

Malloch-Brown’s resume includes stints as vice-president of the UN World Bank and in British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet.

In addition to a close relationship with Soros, Malloch-Brown has worked with consulting firms that are well-connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton. He was an international partner with the Sawyer-Miller consulting firm and was a senior adviser to FTI Consulting.

One of Sawyer-Miller’s alumni is Mandy Grunwald, who ran the firm’s communication contract for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential run. She was also the head of communications for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid.

Jackson Dunn, who is a senior managing director with FTI Consulting, spent 15 years in Washington where he worked as an aide to President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hilllary Clinton.

Smartmatic has already encountered controversy in the ongoing presidential contest. It ran the online balloting for the Utah Republican caucus last March, when many critics said it was impossible to secure personal electronic devices that are used to register and vote.

This report has been updated to include statements by Smartmatic after publication.

 Authored by Charlie Shrem via CoinTelegraph.com,

A second Bretton Woods era will be even more centralized and even further from a true democracy...

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Barely 100 years ago at the start of the 20th century, people were able to exchange dollars for gold at their local bank. While gold was too hard to trade between people, banking institutions held gold and gave people cash for it. This was during what was known as the gold standard. Each sovereign currency’s value was determined relative to a fixed amount of gold. However, in the decades ahead, that standard quickly changed.

Toward the end of World War II, dozens of powerful people organized a meeting to discuss a new monetary agreement designed to minimize the economic damage done by the war. This meeting was named after the location where it took place: Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the United States.

It was a long-term plan with several parts that spanned over decades. And the Bretton Woods delegates decided that multiple fiat currencies would now be backed by the U.S. dollar as opposed to gold itself. At first, the dollar proved to be stable enough to support the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 — until it wasn’t in the decades ahead. During the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon called for more money. There wasn’t any more money in circulation. So, he started printing.

In 1971, President Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold, which effectively ended the Bretton Woods agreement after nearly 30 years.

The removal of the gold standard turned each country’s fiat currency into a floating exchange rate that was no longer fixed. Money was not measured by the dollar anymore; now, each currency was measured in relation to every other currency, with prices that constantly changed, creating foreign exchange market volatility.

Bitcoin as an opposition

Today, one asset that fiat currencies are measured against is Bitcoin (BTC). As I mentioned in 2019, I think Bitcoin is the best investment when it comes to currencies in the sense of sound money.

In certain countries — such as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, to name a few — Bitcoin’s price is currently at an all-time high compared with their national fiat. Relatively speaking, that’d be equivalent to Bitcoin price already being around $20,000.

The problem is that Bitcoin is not ready to be a monetary system in and of itself. Most people who have Bitcoin are just holding it — they’re not selling it or using it as currency due to its potential to rapidly appreciate, despite the downside risks.

Bretton Woods 2.0

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund is now calling for a second Bretton Woods era to be announced in 2020. This would establish the Special Drawing Right, or SDR, as the new reserve currency as opposed to the U.S. dollar. The SDR serves as the most stable investment option for the IMF. Its value consists of the top five global fiat currencies as a protection against volatile movements in forex markets. The problem with the SDR approach is that it could make the economic situation even worse than it is today.

History has shown that when people have an inflated amount of power with regard to money, they will use it. Just look at President Nixon during the Vietnam War and the original Bretton Woods agreement in the mid-20th century. Even worse is that now, nearly all central banks are printing more money, which in turn leads to inflation as fiat currencies lose their purchasing power.

We can’t have a single powerful entity with the power to print itself out of temporary trouble, especially while it would be putting us in future debt that would be impossible to manage. This is the opposite of democracy, where only a few people control big monetary decisions that affect everyone. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin aim to solve this dilemma, thanks to their limited supply, among other favorable qualities inherent in blockchain technology.

Blockchain tech has a solution

Blockchain has raised our standards to expect decentralization in the institutions that are meant to serve us. True decentralization is reached when the hierarchy is broken. Everything becomes transparent, and incentives are offered to push the system forward in the right direction.

Sogur, for example, is a startup tackling the ambitious challenge of creating a new monetary system based on its cryptocurrency SGR that models the SDR while leveraging blockchain and an intelligent economic design advised by world-renowned economists.

I like the idea of currency baskets that serve as a much more reliable, stable means of exchange. I don’t like that the IMF gets endless decision-making power over our global monetary system. Blockchain-based solutions are different — they have a foundation that’s governed by an assembly and, for example, can give SGR holders veto power over every decision at any given time.

Blockchain technology can combine the elements of decentralized governance into a classical corporate structure, in order to comply with international laws and Anti-Money Laundering requirements, while using a smart-contract-based bonding curve to tame inflation and volatility, which remain two of the biggest problems with traditional fiat currencies that can be solved.

 Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

This article takes a tilt at increasing speculation about statist global resets, and why plans such as those promoted by the World Economic Forum will fail. Central bank digital currencies will simply run out of time.

Instead, the collapse of unbacked fiat currencies will end all supra-national government solutions to their policy failures. Already, there is mounting evidence of money beginning to flee bank accounts into stocks, commodities and even bitcoin. This is an early warning of a rapidly developing monetary collapse.

Moreover, nothing can now stop the collapse of fiat currencies, and with it schemes to control humanity for the convenience and ambitions of government planners. There can only be one statist solution and that is to mobilise gold reserves to back and save their currencies, which in order to succeed will have to be fully convertible into circulating gold coinage. It will also require the role of governments to be reset into a non-welfare, non-interventionist minimalist role, which can only be achieved after a complete collapse of the current fiat-financed system.

Anything less will fail.

The Deep State and The Blob fuel conspiracy theories

Increasingly, people are beginning to realise that their world is undergoing a period of rapid change, with the future of fiat money now uncertain. For most, it is too difficult to even contemplate. But growing uncertainties are driving wild speculation about what those in authority now have in store for the human race in the form of a global reset. It is a time for conspiracy theorists, aided and abetted by our politicians and central bankers who are being increasingly evasive, because events are spiralling out of their control.

Then there is America’s Deep State, or the British equivalent, the more recently christened Blob; an amorphous entity comprised of the permanent bureaucracy with its own agenda. These faceless planners have moved on from merely making ministers’ lives difficult if they deviate from the blob’s predetermined course — immortalised in “Yes Minister” and its sequel series “Yes Prime Minister”.

As we saw with Brexit, The Blob has been rigging political outcomes, even conniving in elections. Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 officer produced a dodgy dossier on Trump to influence the American presidential election in 2016. But there is no such thing as an ex-MI6 Agent because of the Official Secrets Act, so we can only conclude that the intelligence arm of The Blob sanctioned it on a distanced basis. MI6 works with other intelligence agencies under the five-eyes agreement and is close to the CIA. Though they do not necessarily share intelligence, it is impossible to conceive of Steele’s role in influencing the outcome of a US presidential election without the CIA’s knowledge. Almost certainly, the fact that it was commissioned must have been with the CIA’s blessing.

At the time of writing, we do not know the outcome of the current presidential election, but enough doubt has been thrown on the validity of the voting process to implicate unknown parties in managing the outcome. It can never be proved, but for increasing numbers of sceptics it looks like a Deep State operation. It is therefore hardly surprising that conspiracies abound.

The World Economic Forum

The most prominent of these conspiracies has hit the headlines in recent weeks. Its ambition is to take the lead in resetting the world by dismantling the capitalist system in favour of a greater technocratic rule — a fourth industrial revolution no less, even planting microchips in humans to read their brains and control them. The leader is one Klaus Schwab, whose World Economic Forum runs the annual Davos bunfight.

As leader of the Davos forum, Schwab probably sees himself as the coordinator of world government. If so, at 82 years old he is probably getting impatient about the progress towards his personal vision of ultimate power. The covid chaos and the success of his climate change agenda must be encouraging him to think he is very close to a breakthrough. Alternatively, we might consider Schwab as a latter-day Charles Fourier (1772—1837), the utopian socialist philosopher, whose forgotten ideals were only marginally more narcissistic and bizarre than Schwab’s.

While the great and the not so good love the annual Davos party as a networking venue for the politics industry, when it comes to transferring real power to Schwab, it’s a no-no. The only time a politician transfers power is when he is deposed by his or her electorate, colleagues, or the military. And history is littered with utopians, like Schwab, grasping for power over their fellow men. In addition to Charles Fourier, we can include Georg Hegel (1770—1831) and Auguste Comte (1798—1857), as well, of course, as Karl Marx. As thinkers or philosophers, they were all influential in their day and some of their ideas persist in the naïve.

So, while increasing numbers of well-informed people are beginning to sense the end of the current world order, to assume that this will hasten the WEF’s grab for world domination by influencing events is a mistake. All our deep states, blobs and their branches, particularly central banks, will want to hold onto and enhance their executive power with the political class increasingly cast as cover. The planners at national level are not going to submit to Mr Schwab’s plans for world domination. Instead, international relations involve mutual cooperation to secure purely domestic objectives, something President Trump was in the process of destroying. From the Deep State’s point of view, perhaps that’s why he had to be deposed in favour of Biden, who is a long-serving compliant figure.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)

There can be little doubt that central banks wish to increase their control over money and how it is used, cutting out the obstacle of commercial banks who produce most of the money in circulation through the expansion of bank credit. From a statist point of view, commercial banking is a dinosaur, an outdated remnant of free markets, perpetuating needless systemic risk and superseded by technology. Branch networks will disappear with cash, changing relationships between banks and the general public for ever.

By introducing direct central bank accounts for members of the public and every business, commercial banks become superfluous and can be allowed to die. And if one goes bust before commercial banking has ended, the facility to transfer all its loans and deposits onto a central bank’s books will then exist. The removal of systemic risk by the abolition of commercial banks is one of several likely long-term objectives of CBDCs. Commercial banks can be left with the role of investment banking activities in capital markets.

We can imagine the development of CBDCs going even further than just replacing cash. Stimulation by dropping money into personal accounts can be used to target increased spending by consumers, or even groups of consumers, sorted by wealth, location or other factors. Some consumers can be favoured relative to others, so in a swing state, for example, an incumbent administration might buy votes. While this would be strongly denied, as we have seen with unfettered fiat currency the state creeps incrementally towards unstated objectives, using every tool at its disposal. The election of Deep State-approved politicians then becomes possible.

Eventually, funding of all capital projects will come under the direct control of the central bank. And savings deposits, always seen to be a brake on consumption, can be banished. Capital can be made available for government schemes and favoured businesses on the say so of the central bank.

A future government statement might be issued on the following lines:

“Your Government is pleased to announce that the National Audit Office has approved a number of infrastructure projects targeted at improving communications between administrative centres. This investment over ten years will secure an estimated 500,000 jobs. The cost over the life of the project is XXX billion monetary units. The Central Bank has confirmed it will make funding for these projects available, both to your Government and approved private sector contractors.”

This would be a planners’ heaven. Furthermore, CBDC money can be withheld or frozen for anyone suspected of crimes and tax evasion, starving them into confessions of guilt. The justification is always that it is in the national interest to ensure that financial and tax crimes are eliminated — something commercial banks have singularly failed to do. Overseas payments can be routed through other CBDCs, giving the central banking network control over world trade. Just imagine foreign trade being conducted through a grander version of the Eurozone’s TARGET2 settlement system!

Worried yet? In the advanced economies Covid-19 has nearly eliminated cash, which doubtless is intended to be replaced entirely by CBDCs. The end of cash and bank deposits will allow the central bank to cap the amount of cash anyone can hold, and also ensure that everyone is paid a “living wage”. Already flagged, another intention is to eliminate the burden of interest rates and by controlling where money supply is expanded, manage the economy.

It is commonly assumed that those in charge of us know what they are doing — they don’t. They have become trapped at a socialist endpoint and are doubling down in their efforts towards greater socialism. But their dreams of future control are mere escapism. Individuals will lose yet more personal freedom, but ultimately the state cannot conquer human nature and the will of individuals to do what they want. The Soviets attempted it and failed, despite killing and starving many millions.

Central to the collapse of any state-directed reset will be the loss of faith in fiat currencies, and particularly that of the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar. This remains the case irrespective of whether circulating currency is in cash, bank deposits, or CBDCs. Indeed, the collapse could be hastened by CBDCs, because the intention is to increase the pace of injection of new money into the economy if it is required (it always is), and to impose deeper negative interest rates, which cannot be easily achieved under the current monetary system.

If these statist intentions are allowed to prevail, along with other agendas such as the elimination of cheap and effective fossil-based energy, the outlook for humanity is exceedingly grim. Like communism, the global reset into which the western world is drifting will destroy society. Those who believe in liberal values in the original sense of the term — not the modern socialist connotation — will find themselves welcoming the destruction of the current system before it is evolved any further.

The course of a currency collapse

The end of fiat currencies is likely to come sooner than later, from the consequences of today’s massive money-printing, particularly of dollars. Already, US government spending is financed substantially more by currency debasement than taxes, a condition that will almost certainly continue to deteriorate rapidly in the coming months. Furthermore, the global banking system, which is extremely thinly capitalised, faces a tsunami of bad debts which can only lead to a systemic failure — most likely in the Eurozone initially, but threatening all other jurisdictions through counterparty risks. It is coming to a head and is likely to happen soon, possibly triggered by the second covid wave.

Long before the two or three years required for any CBDC to be operational, the world’s reserve fiat currency, the US dollar, is already hyper-inflating. There are signs the markets are beginning to understand this. Bitcoin’s price has risen sharply, sending signals to everyone that the differential between its ultimately fixed quantity and the accelerating rates of fiat currency debasement is feeding dramatically into the price.

Despite the economic slump, equity markets are being driven to new highs as non-financial customers deem stocks to be preferable to bank deposits. It has not helped that the Fed reduced deposit rates to zero last March, well below everyone’s time preference. The Fed has also promised infinite QE in order to fund the fiscal deficit. Therefore, it is not surprising that individuals and corporations are shifting out of cash balances into financial and other assets, with the notable exception of fixed-interest bonds. Rising commodity and raw material prices are also telling us that dollars are been sold in those markets.

This is the point being missed in all commentaries: the mounting evidence that markets, being forward-looking, are beginning to abandon the dollar. And once it goes beyond a certain point, nothing will reverse a rapid loss of purchasing power to the point of worthlessness. To avoid this outcome central banks led by the Fed must immediately abandon inflationary financing of budget deficits.

That is not going to happen. In addition to the current hyperinflation must be added the inflationary cover for the costs and consequences of rescuing a failing global banking system. The costs are immediate, in that governments will take on their books everyone’s bad debts. The consequences are that through their central banks they will have no political alternative other than to counter the economic slump through yet more money printing.

US Treasury bond yields are already beginning to rise, perhaps reflecting this developing outcome as Figure 1 shows.

The up-arrow at the bottom-right of the chart shows that the downward momentum for the bond yield has reversed, forming a golden cross; that is to say the yield is above its two commonly followed moving averages which in turn are forming a cross with the 55-day moving average rising above the 200-day moving average, a strong indicator of a major turning point and of higher bond yields to come. The upward turn of bond yields is to be viewed in the context of the dollar’s trade weighted index, which is shown in Figure 2.

Currently standing at 92.40, if the dollar’s TWI breaks below 91.75 (the low on 1 September) it is likely to head significantly lower. With foreign holdings of dollars and dollar denominated financial securities totalling almost $27 trillion, the chances are that dumping of the dollar on the foreign exchanges will increase rapidly. That being the case, the Fed will not only be funding the unprecedentedly high (for peacetime) budget deficit but will have to absorb foreign sales of US Treasuries and dollars in order to keep the cost of government funding suppressed.

Evidence is mounting that it cannot be done. And with the end of the suppression of interest rates comes the collapse of accumulated malinvestments, of government finances, and of the currency itself.

First the ashes, then, hopefully the phoenix

Elected in 1929, Hoover was the first US President who thought he could improve on the capitalist system of markets reforming themselves, and the results were a disaster. He was thrown out of office and replaced with another interventionist, Roosevelt, and the supremacy of the US Government over markets reforming themselves became established. The situation today is the logical destination of the fallacy that governments can run the economy.

It will end with the collapse and replacement of today’s unbacked fiat currencies — the ashes and then the phoenix. There is every indication that the time when all is rendered into ashes is rapidly approaching. People with fiat, earning fiat, relying on fiat will be impoverished. A currency collapse with no foreign currency to escape into is a cataclysmic event, the like of which we haven’t seen before, not even in Roman times. If it doesn’t buy you food and warmth a million bucks is worthless.

Governments will also have no means of collecting taxes, other than in their worthless currencies. They will be unable to pay their administrators, who cannot even afford to attend their offices. Their pensions and everybody else’s will be worthless. There will be no incentive for anyone in government without money. And without money there is no political power.

There can only be one solution, and that is a reset with gold. The slide in currencies can be stopped by making them exchangeable into gold. The reason for a gold-backed reset is not so much to stop a fiat currency from further collapse but to use it to ensure the widest distribution of the national gold reserves through a reformed gold-backed currency. The US Treasury claims it still has over 8,000 tonnes of gold, which assuming the Deep State hasn’t raided it, can ensure that a new dollar, convertible by everyone into gold, can circulate as money.

The same is true for other currencies, to greater or lesser degrees depending on their national gold reserves. But to be credible, gold coins must also circulate freely alongside readily convertible paper and digital substitutes. The banking system must also be reformed to do away with bank credit expansion, which creates deposits unbacked by gold. By then most of them may be in public ownership or protection, so a reform to abolish bank credit expansion should not be too difficult.

The mobilisation of central bank gold is the best outcome by far. It returns the choice of money to the people who use it for the intermediation between their production and consumption. But very few in government, their Deep States or The Blobs, have the intellectual capacity to understand what needs to be done. Their advisors are inflationists to a man or woman. Furthermore, the US’s Deep State is obsessed with the threat from China and Russia, which between them control international bullion markets (London and Comex are just paper), and have substantial declared and undeclared reserves. Legitimising gold will transfer enormous monetary and geopolitical power from America to the Asian hegemons, which is likely to be strongly resisted.

Furthermore, it will require governments to backtrack on the socialising process, whereby by providing welfare and regulating everything their budgets got out of hand. They must aim to reduce the full burden of their activities on the economy to under 20%.

Following a currency collapse, any central bank that thinks it can use a CBDC to manage market outcomes will undermine its own credibility. Other than issuers of gold-backed notes, they will have no role. In order for the necessary reforms to stick, flights of fancy such as the statist ambitions of planners and of the Klaus Schwabs of this world must be abandoned, along with all the false sciences adopted by statists. But on the positive side, a collapse of fiat currencies is required to sweep away the current failing system, and sooner or later that is what we are going to get.

 Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

It is an overplayed cliché to refer to the insanity of the current year. Still, 2020 manages to surprise. It is increasingly looking like 2020 has created the greatest challenge to democratic legitimacy in the past century.

Yesterday was a truly remarkable day in American history.

The official legal team for President Donald Trump—led by Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis—outlined an argument that America’s elections were hijacked by a conspiracy involving Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic corporation, and elected officials of both parties. The team claimed that these actors collaborated with foreign enemies of the president to ensure he lost the 2020 election, actively inflating the vote totals for Joe Biden. The evidence, they say, will include hundreds of sworn affidavits and other documents that will validate their accusations. They also implied that the Department of Justice is either actively involved in this plot or serving to protect those involved.

The press conference was heavy in bold and striking claims, but so far the legal team has not provided enough documentation to adequately vet the claims made. It is certainly true that questions existed about some of these voting systems prior to the election and that the official results include all sorts of unprecedented voting trends that have sparked questions about their statistical likelihood. Unlikely outcomes are not, however, impossible outcomes, and there are no accusations that any voting machines were illegally used without going through the legally required certification processes.

Any serious legal challenge by Trump’s campaign team will require significant evidence that they have yet to make available. Of course, if the claims are accurate, the case involves a crime that may be beyond the capabilities of America’s judicial system.

What the Trump campaign can legally prove, however, is almost a secondary issue at this point.

Yesterday’s press conference has entrenched the current American president in the position that his anointed successor is illegitimate and that he is the one who holds a democratic mandate to govern.

America has had controversial electoral outcomes before, such as the elections of 2000 and 1876, which ended up being decided by party leaders in a smoke-filled backroom (Republican Rutherford Hayes was given the presidency over Samuel Tilden in exchange for the repeal of Reconstructionist-era laws in the Southern states).

There are several key differences between these instances and the current political turmoil: you now have a populist sitting president, actively despised by the corporate press, who is simultaneously disliked by the establishment of his own party and passionately beloved by his base.

As I noted in an article a few days after the election:

regardless of the legal outcome, America is about to find itself with a president that will be viewed as illegitimate by a large portion of the population—and perhaps even the majority of some states. There is no institution left that has the credibility to push back against the gut feeling of millions of people who have spent the last few months organizing car parades and Trumptillas that their democracy has been hijacked by a political party that despises them.

The response we will receive from the corporate press, Very Serious pundits, and the various talking heads representing all the institutions that Trump has repeatedly mocked and belittled is obvious. Trump’s legal team is being dismissed as a bunch of partisan, sycophantic cranks spinning baseless conspiracy theories. Donald Trump is being portrayed as a spoiled, entitled man-child who would rather take down American democracy than admit he lost. His supporters will be dismissed and mocked as, at best, dumb suckers or, at worst, potentially violent right-wing extremists.

The problem is that, regardless of one’s opinion of Donald Trump or the specific claims made by his legal team, America’s elite and those in power have no credibility of their own.

For almost four years, the corporate press has propped up various false stories about the president while simultaneously propping up his political enemies and actively ignoring stories about the misconduct of Joe Biden’s son and potential conflicts of interest regarding the former vice president. The concerted effort to ask serious questions even forced journalists like Glenn Greenwald to ditch a media company he helped found.

At the same time, progressively-aligned Big Tech companies (many of which are staffed by former members of Kamala Harris’s political offices) have been taking an increasingly aggressive role in censoring and editorializing President Trump and his supporters.

Their claims that they have an ethical obligation to combat “misinformation” in the name of “democracy” are undermined by their willingness to actively assist the Chinese Communist Party in censoring dissidents.

Meanwhile, the professional political class in this country, lauded as “experts” by the bad actors mentioned above, has long mocked the notion of democratic oversight. An explicit example was offered just recently when Jim Jeffrey, a US envoy to Syria, gleefully disclosed to DefenseOne that American military leaders successfully maintained a larger military presence in the country than President Trump had ordered. The power of America’s professional bureaucracy goes beyond military matters, however, and the hope of much of America’s elite is that US policy will be increasingly influenced by their colleagues at the UN and other globalist institutions. Be it the Paris Accord or the Great Reset, many American progressives increasingly view very serious policy matters as issues too important to be entrusted to American voters.

Further still, America’s political environment has become so polarized and hostile that you have many elected officials in positions of influence who openly despise large swaths of the American population. For example, Arizona’s secretary of state—the woman in charge of election integrity in the state—described Trump’s base as “neo-Nazis” in 2017. Given her public statements, why would any Trump supporters have any faith in a governing body she influences to count votes? Meanwhile, the secretary of state in Michigan was a former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing hate group.

It would, of course, be wrong to suggest that the elites of the American left are alone in their hatred of their political enemies. While the Left has tended to be more violent in recent years, there are many Republican voters who consider the political left immoral, un-American, and a threat to their families. The difference is that, outside of a few levers of federal power held by the Republican Party, the American right does not have nearly the same institutional support that the Left does currently.

It appears that 2020 may be the year that finally proves that the façade of democracy is not enough to maintain a unified political body. The election process does not inevitably lead to compromise and tolerance, but rather ends in those in power and those who are politically vanquished. When the losers of elections do not view their loss as a genuine reflection of democratic will, but rather an illegitimate coup, it is difficult to maintain governance over a population. Joe Biden appointing John Kasich–type Republicans will do little to soothe and reassure those who view a Biden presidency as little different than an occupational force.

This is why Ludwig von Mises viewed political decentralization and secession as a necessary component of liberal democracy. The proper objective of the democratic process was the peaceful transfer of power reflecting changes in the political will—political self-determination—rather than some form of civil worship of the will of the majority. When political differences become irreconcilable, true political decentralization allows for the breaking of political unions.

Will that end up being the ultimate result of the position of Trump's legal team? Who knows. Trump and a few lawyers will certainly not be enough to overturn the official results or to successfully spur a Trump secession movement. What will be interesting is how the institution of the Republican Party will respond to the escalating rhetoric of the president.

Under President Obama, the Republican Party remained civil and submissive while its Tea Party base discussed ideas like nullification and a convention of states. The sterility of the traditional GOP is likely a major reason why Donald Trump was able to take over the party. How much of the modern GOP will continue to follow the forty-fifth president, and how many will end up being perfectly content with being partners with Joe Biden?

What we can be sure of is that it will be much harder for Biden to win over many of the 70+ million Americans who voted for Donald Trump earlier this month.