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Latest Issues of #AxisOfEasy

Wages Going Up for Good: Catch-Up and Blowback

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 24, 2023 | 0 Comments
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Blowback has its own dynamics, as we’ll learn in the decade ahead.
One of the most durable expectations in the financial sphere is that inflation will drop sharply in a recession and the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates back to near-zero.

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#AxisOfEasy 299: RFKJr: “Ich Bin Ein Bitcoiner”

By Mark E. Jeftovic | May 24, 2023 | 2 Comments
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RFKJr: “Ich Bin Ein Bitcoiner,”
Triggernometry Podcast Debanked in UK,
FBI Misuses Intelligence Database 278,000 times … this and more in AofE #299

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Are You Ready For a Real Recession?

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 22, 2023 | 0 Comments
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In a real recession, what seemed safe and rock-solid melts into air.
We haven’t had a real recession in forty years (1981-82) and so only those who were in the workforce back then have any experience of how far and how fast things we think are solid can unravel.

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2023: Echoes of 1973

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 19, 2023 | 0 Comments
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So what’s changed? Everything, but mostly beneath the surface churn of circus and theater.
2023 is echoing 1973 in potentially consequential ways.

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How Many Dominoes Must Topple Before One Falls on Us?

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 17, 2023 | 0 Comments
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Everything’s abstract until it happens to us.
Dominoes falling are abstractions until one falls on you. Lines of dominoes toppling are an apt analogy to highly centralized systems that are tightly bound, that is, all the transactions that flow through the centralized hubs are interconnected, so when one domino falls, it topples chains of dominoes that then topple other chains.

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#AxisOfEasy 298: YouTube Attempts To Nudge Users Towards Premium Services By Blocking Viewership To Those Using Ad blockers

By Mark E. Jeftovic | May 16, 2023 | 1 Comment
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YouTube Attempts to nudge users towards premium services by blocking viewership to those using Ad blockers,
Meta’s security team warns that hackers are using ChatGPT’s popularity to spread malware on its platform,
Facebook investor suit over user data privacy incidents refused by Delaware judge … this and more in AofE #298

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What If AI Is Only a Cost and Not a Profit Bonanza?

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 15, 2023 | 0 Comments
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In the real-world, the costs are all we know for sure and profits remain elusive and contingent.
No one knows how the flood of AI products will play out, but we do know it’s unleashed a corporate frenzy to “get our own AI up and running.”

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Our Two Deep States, One Public, One Private

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 12, 2023 | 0 Comments
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One Deep State is bad enough, but a renegade, predatory private-sector Deep State is intolerable. In 2007, well before the term Deep State entered the common lexicon, I sketched the interconnected public-private pieces of the Deep State, which I termed the elite maintaining and extending global dominance.

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Doom Loops Are Multiplying

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 10, 2023 | 0 Comments
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We can all pretend to be fantastic until the floor collapses beneath us. At that point, complacency / denial gives way to panic, but it’s too late to effect any realistic reversal of fortune.

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#AxisOfEasy 297: NexusGuard Researchers Discover New InfoStealer Malware Being Circulated via Facebook Ads

By Mark E. Jeftovic | May 9, 2023 | 8 Comments
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NexusGuard Researchers Discover New InfoStealer Malware Being Circulated via Facebook Ads,
Meta Receives Third FTC Warning Over Allegedly Failing to Protect Underage Users’ Privacy,
Twitter CEO Elon Musk Opposes New Attempts at Irish Hate Speech Legislation … this and more in AofE #297

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Once Trust Has Been Lost, There’s No Going Back

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 8, 2023 | 0 Comments
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Now that the overlapping crises are upon us and the banquet of consequences is being served, we’ll see just who our elites and leadership really are. The erosion of trust doesn’t require intent, it only requires the blind pursuit of self-interest above all else.

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Front-Running the Fed Pivot Might Not Work Next Time

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 5, 2023 | 0 Comments
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The Fed has trained the trading-rats all too well, and there is no way to avoid the unintended consequences of the Fed’s large-scale human behavioral experiment.

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What If the Fed Has Lost Control?

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 3, 2023 | 0 Comments
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When this bubble bursts, there will be no fourth or fifth bubble, there will only be rubble.
The US economy and its financial system operate under the implicit belief that the Federal Reserve controls the direction of the economy and finance.

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#AxisOfEasy 296: RedLine Stealer MaaS Latest Example Of Hackers Exploiting Generative AI Technologies As AI Platforms Gain Popularity

By Mark E. Jeftovic | May 2, 2023 | 3 Comments
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RedLine stealer MaaS latest example of hackers exploiting generative AI technologies as AI platforms gain popularity,
Multiple salesforce websites have disclosed personal information,
Paul Thacker defends Tucker Carlson, says WHO stealth-edited vaccine information to censor Tucker … this and more in AofE #296

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Crystal Balls, Soothsayers and AI, Oh My!

By Charles Hugh Smith | May 1, 2023 | 0 Comments
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As long as we mint millions from a Never-Ending Bull Market, we’ll always stay one step ahead of the Debt Monster.

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When We Lose Small Businesses…

By Charles Hugh Smith | April 28, 2023 | 0 Comments
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When we lose small businesses, we lose More than tax revenues.
Small businesses receive plenty of lip service but very little appreciation–until they’re gone. By then it’s too late to do anything but mutter, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

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What If the Whole Shebang Unravels?

By Charles Hugh Smith | April 26, 2023 | 0 Comments
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Nobody seems to be wondering what happens should the real world no longer respond to the Perpetual Motion Finance Machine.
Scrape away the hand-wringing about interest rates and we find a bedrock of complacency.

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#AxisOfEasy 295: Facebook Censors Pulitzer Prize Winner’s Critique Of US Involvement In Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

By Mark E. Jeftovic | April 25, 2023 | 7 Comments
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Facebook censors Pulitzer Prize winner’s critique of US involvement in Nord Stream Pipeline attack,
According to Latest Citizen Lab Report, Israeli Spyware Maker NSO Group Deployed at Minimum 3 New “Zero-Click” Exploits Against iPhones in 2022,
New Palo Alto Networks Report Shows Rising Trend in Threat Actors Who Are Adopting Web3 IPFS Technology… this and more in AofE #295

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America’s Social Contract Is Broken

By Charles Hugh Smith | April 24, 2023 | 0 Comments
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The Social Contract is broken not just by wealth inequality per se but by the illegitimate
process of wealth acquisition

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Extremes Get More Extreme, But Everything’s Fine

By Charles Hugh Smith | April 21, 2023 | 0 Comments
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Extremes keep getting more extreme, but for those at the top of the heap, it’s all fine. For everyone else slipping down the ladder, all that FINE adds up to Fragile, Insecure, Nonsensical, Expensive.

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Over the Falls: Credit, Collateral, Risk, Asset Valuations

By Charles Hugh Smith | April 19, 2023 | 0 Comments
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Together, these factors generate a self-reinforcing cycle of debt saturation, declining collateral and credit contraction.

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#AxisOfEasy 294: TikTok Facing £12.7M Fine From ICO For Regulatory Issues For The Use Of Children’s Data

By Mark E. Jeftovic | April 18, 2023 | 0 Comments
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TikTok facing £12.7M fine from ICO for regulatory issues for the use of children’s data,
The evolution of the Lazarus group’s DeathNote campaign,
Microsoft Releases Set of Security Updates to Patch 97 Flaws Impacting its Software, Including Active Ransomware Exploit … this and more in AofE #294

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The Housing Bubble: Owners Trapped by Low-Rate Mortgages, Buyers Thwarted by High-Rate Mortgages

By Charles Hugh Smith | April 17, 2023 | 0 Comments
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Who’s left to buy overvalued houses? Too few to prop up bubble valuations. If as many posit the Federal Reserve has an unstated mandate to generate a “wealth effect” by propping up housing, they’ve managed to create a no-win situation.

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This Housing Bubble Is Different: It’s Much More Precarious

By Charles Hugh Smith | April 13, 2023 | 0 Comments
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And what happens next? Bubble symmetry: valuations fall at the same rate as they rose, declining back to the starting point over a roughly equivalent time duration.

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#AxisOfEasy 293: Clearview AI Admits To Nearly 1 Million Uses By US Law Enforcement

By Mark E. Jeftovic | April 11, 2023 | 2 Comments
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Clearview AI Admits to Nearly 1 Million Uses by US Law Enforcement,
Discover the secret location of the Bitcoin whitepaper on your MacBook,
British Privacy Watchdog Issues 12.7m Pound Fine on TikTok Over Children’s Digital Safety … this and more in AofE #293

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Contributors

Mark E. Jeftovic

Mark E. Jeftovic

Mark is the co-founder of easyDNS and the editor-in-chief of #AxisOfEasy. He is the author of Managing Mission Critical Domains & DNS (Packt UK, 2018) and Unassailable: Protect Yourself from Deplatform Attacks & Cancel Culture. 

The Canadian Bitcoiners

The Canadian Bitcoiners

Joey Tweets and Len the Lengend are the hosts of The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast, and you may recognize them as the voices (and faces) behing the AxisOfEasy Podcast. CanadianBitcoiners.com

Charles Hugh Smith

Charles Hugh Smith

Charles Hugh Smith is the author of numerous books and writes from OfTwoMinds.com.