Inflation, DeSantis on Social Credit Scores & Nikki’s Lack of Noise – February 15th, 2023
- Another month, another 2% hit. If someone asks you how you are today, you could choose to respond, 2% worse off than a month ago and if you’re the average person you’d be right. Joe Biden has been President of the United States for over 24 months and there's one thing you can’t accuse him of being economically. Inconsistent. That’s because for the 22nd consecutive month the average American has fallen further behind financially. It’s like clockwork. With Joe Biden as president, you can always plan on being worse off next month. Yesterday’s CPI, or consumer inflation report, “surprised” on the upside once again. With the cost of life rising 6.4% year-over-year in January and wages only rising 4.4% during the month as we had the 22nd consecutive month of negative net wages in the United States. And what’s especially notable about this report is that we were already at a 40-year high rate of inflation a year ago. So now we’re experiencing 40-year high inflation a year after having had 40-year high inflation. And what does that mean to you in real dollar terms? You’d have to be earning 14% more money today compared to two years ago today just to break even in this economy. Of course, the average American is nowhere close to that which is why month after month we keep taking hit after hit. And what it also means is that the Federal Reserve is going to keep their feet on the gas in raising interest rates. Their target is 2% inflation. There’s an awfully long way to go. But hey, still no Trump Tweets, you really were tired of winning anyway, right?
- The ESG thing is a bigger deal than many think. Even among Governor DeSantis’ biggest detractors, how many of them look around the world and think what China is doing is what we should be doing. Probably not many of them, right? Yet every day in many ways our society continues to move closer to doing exactly what they’ve been doing with social credit scores via the ESG movement. Unsurprisingly one of the biggest advocates of social credit scores this side of Shanghai, has been The Great Reset Crowd in Davos, Switzerland with the World Economic Forum. Starting in January of 2021, the WEF put out this statement in a section which now lives on their website entitled: This new approach to credit scoring is accelerating financial inclusion. And what is this new system? ACS, or Alternative Credit Scoring. And how does this work? According to the WEF: The new scoring (ACS) works with artificial intelligence and social media, instead of paper-based scoring methods that depend on consumers having a bank account. Right, so an algorithm programmed by the powers that be with whatever criteria they see fit will search everything online that exists about us and determine our social credit score. What could possibly go wrong, right? On back of the push, from the WEF, it’s already in testing in Italy where a new Social Credit App was rolled out last year on a voluntary basis (for now). And what company is behind the project? US based Salesforce.com. A company which is already used by most of corporate America. This initiative is closer to home than you might think and works hand in glove with the ESG initiative – as that’s the determining factor as to what’s a “good social credit score”. So, Governor DeSantis’ latest announcement about newly proposed legislation which would ban any banking institutions from using social credit scores – in addition to banning any governments within the state from using them is more than just political posturing. The ESG thing is a bigger deal than many people think, and the social credit score is currently being pushed worldwide by the people who successfully launched the ESG movement worldwide using an American company with the widest reach within corporate America. This is but one more reason to be happy to be in the Free State of Florida.
- Nikki’s not a threat. So, Tuesday Nikki Haley reversed course after previously promising not to run against Donald Trump and announced a presidential bid becoming the former president’s first real challenger for the Republican nomination. But the former governor of South Carolina and UN ambassador under Trump isn’t a threat to win the nomination. That’s not according to me. That’s according to what you didn’t hear out of Donald Trump upon news of her announcement. Anything about her. Clearly to Donald Trump, Nikki’s not a threat.