Alphabet Boys Strike Again
147: FBI and the growing threat of big government
Well lads by all accounts financial markets are grim.
We’ve all been through an incredibly volatile part of stock market history with unprecedented money printing by the US Federal Reserve in 2020/2021 in response to the global coronavirus epidemic.
The S&P 500 has lost nearly 20% this year as retail investors learn painful and devastating lessons about bubbles.
Even savvy institutional managers and traders have been wrecked in many instances — fools who used too much leverage, or got stuck on the wrong side of large trades. Hedge funds are having people redeem capital left and right, the Fed seems set on driving hard real unemployment, and sizeable layoffs are beginning in tech, finance, and other industries.
Crypto has had it’s reckoning and baptism by fire, torched by ponzis and ultra levered markets — now a shell of what it was this past year with a impressive market cap. Bitcoin (BTC) had the highest market capitalization of $1.28 trillion on November 9, 2021 — it now sits around $16,000.
The Nasdaq is down nearly 33% YTD — slaughtered by high valued tech companies that benefitted from cheap lending, record investments, and hyper growth but are now weighed down by high cost borrowing and aggressive selling from wary investors.
Stocks like PayPal Holdings Inc., Netflix, Etsy Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., DocuSign Inc., and Zoom Video have all fallen over 50% since their 52 week highs early this past year.
FTX has blown up in Hindenburg fashion causing devastating rippling liquidations and blow ups in the crypto industry and erasing months and months of gains. SBF has been apprehended and will likely be sentenced soon.
The question remains — is crypto still viable long term given recent developments. Binance, the other massive global exchange has come under fire this past week from mainstream media and financial pundits, who claim that the firm may suffer the same fate as FTX if they can’t fulfill withdrawals.
A massive shock has been introduced to the global financial ecosystem on multiple levels as the world wide reserve banks and governments continue monetary tightening.
Things are beginning to look bad, with institutions screaming warnings of a tough recession.
Blackrock in a recent piece commentates:
We are seeing a new regime “play out in persistent inflation and output volatility, in central banks pushing policy rates up to levels that damage economic activity, rising bond yields and ongoing pressure on risk assets”
“Central bankers won’t ride to the rescue when growth slows in this new regime, contrary to what investors have come to expect. They are deliberately causing recessions by over-tightening policy to try to rein in inflation. That makes recession foretold.”
Recession seems imminent — more specifically a recession that all Americans feel deeply.
For today we wanted to pivot and bring everyone up to speed on the next set of Twitter Files to drop — a particularly interesting set of drops that detail the FBI’s involvement with Twitter.
What was uncovered is damning for Democrats and Republicans alike and has serious implications for law abiding citizens like you and me.
The FBI
I remember when I was a senior in high school. It was the summer before graduation and it was career week. Dozens of students would have parents come in and present on their jobs and careers so that is students could ideally get a third person opinion on career paths, professions, and careers.
Some peoples parents were consultants or bankers, some were doctor’s or nurses, firemen or police officers, accountants or government workers. But what stood out to me were the two obtuse looking gentlemen in the corner wearing khakis, sport coats, ties, with a very distinctive badge on their hips.
We wouldn’t have to wait long for them to begin speaking and to everyone’s amusement announcing to us that they were with the FBI.
Unlike the case with others parents who received little interest or follow up questions, the FBI agents were overwhelmed with giddy high schoolers who wanted to know if they had ever been in a fire fight or ever shot someone or arrested a terrorist before.
The agents reacted non chalantly echoing to the class that the majority of the job involved boring administrative work, traveling, and following up on leads and tips. Still, they gave a good performance and made up for the ominous absence of our classmate who’s father we all knew was CIA but nobody formally talked about.
The reality is the FBI and other 3 letter agencies in the United States have developed extensive networks of power and influence in the last 30 years. Mission focuses have shifted with the global war on terror and the agencies have begun working together in capacities that they hadn’t before.
Regardless of your political leanings — objective people have identified a pattern by now within these Federal Agencies.
We’ve all been there before. Out day drinking with the squad. Someone invariably brings up politics or the FBI or conspiracy theories. Maybe they talk about Waco Texas where 76 besieged members of the religious group the Branch Davidians died, or Ruby Ridge a year earlier when an an exchange of gun fire killed Sammy Weaver, deputy marshal Bill Degan and a family dog Striker at a small cabin in Idaho.
The next day, 22 August, operating under rules of engagement that allowed deadly force, an FBI sniper wounded Randy Weaver as he checked on Sammy’s corpse. The same sniper then shot Randy’s wife, Vicki, dead and wounded Kevin Harris (Guardian).
The legacy of the FBI is tarnished with these operational and tactical blunders in which American citizens died at the hands of the badge holders. Nowadays a-lot of the paranoid opinions, fear, and anxiety about government overreach stems from the staunch examples the FBI provided for us in those two incidents.
In the digital age — theories and speculation have only grown about what the FBI’s mission has become, as it’s revealed more and more politicians on both sides of the aisle have cozied up to and actively worked with groups within the FBI and broad efforts have been made to censor what the feds deem “misinformation” or “propoganda” with the ironic part being they themselves get to determine what exactly that is.
It seems conspiracy theories just have a knack for coming true the last several years.
On the heels of the earlier twitter files, as well as recent events revealing the extent of big tech censorship and collusion with federal entities (the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), we get another huge drop detailing what is exactly being done by the Feds. It’s nothing other than pure bullying and political intimidation.
We already knew they were likely turned/compromised — but this is wild stuff. Even former head of Twitter trust and safety Yoel Roth found himself un nerved by the blatant moves to censor and adjust content from the FBI. That says a lot, given Yoel was an avid left leaner and trump hater.
Despite politics being intertwined heavily in all of this we want to make something very clear.
What was uncovered here and continues to be uncovered in other instances, is serious stuff.
For both sides of the political aisle and more importantly for you as a US citizen, it pays to be up to speed on what has transpired.
Today’s rant is on the FBI and the efforts made to sway and control public opinion in the United States.
This is a bi-partisan issue, that every freedom loving American should care about regardless of who they voted for or intend to vote for in the future.
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Let’s start with what the FBI was actually doing with Twitter and other social media companies and why it should matter to any freedom loving American.