KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Jack Smith Is Our ‘Fascist Thug of the Year.’ “Merrick Garland will never stop abusing his power to punish Republicans for keeping him off of the Supreme Court. The people running Joe Biden’s brain knew what they were doing when they nominated him to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Of course, his minions like Jack Smith aren’t enforcing the law now, they’re just making it up to ruin the lives of anyone who disagrees with them politically.”

FULL SELF DRIVING WILL HAVE TO WAIT A BIT LONGER: GM to slash spending at Cruise by ‘hundreds of millions of dollars.’ “Barra and CFO Paul Jacobson said Wednesday there would be more specific information in the coming weeks about what this new Cruise will look like following the outcome of two independent safety and incident reviews that are already underway.”

DIGITAL FISHING EXPEDITION: Did You ‘Like’ or ‘Retweet’ Anything Trump Tweeted? You’re Under Investigation.

THEY ARE: Jamie Dimon worried US economy in a ‘sugar high,’ says lower-earning Americans should be ‘p—ed off.’

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Russia’s Coming Implosion (and Ours, Too). “At a time when Russia needs every able-bodied young man making babies with every willing and able gal, scenes like this one have become common across the country.”

BECAUSE EVERYTHING THE LEFT DOES HURTS PEOPLE: Whitney Cummings: ‘The Left Wants to Silence People.’

A BILLION-DOLLAR SWING AND A MISS: Apple Pulls Plug on Goldman Credit-Card Partnership.

The tech giant recently sent a proposal to Goldman to exit from the contract in the next roughly 12 to 15 months, according to people briefed on the matter. The exit would cover their entire consumer partnership, including the credit card the companies launched in 2019 and the savings account rolled out this year.

It couldn’t be learned whether Apple has already lined up a new issuer for the card.

The move would mark a swift about-face for a program that just over a year ago was extended through 2029 and was intended to serve as a pillar of Goldman’s main-street ambitions.

The retreat began around the end of last year after Goldman lost billions of dollars trying to build out a full-service consumer operation.

By early this year, Goldman had told Apple that it would be looking to offload the partnership. Typically the merchant—in this case Apple—plays a controlling role in such partnerships.

The customer satisfaction rate is high but Goldman’s acquisition costs were reportedly astronomical — something like $350 per cardholder.

WARGAMING 2024: How and When Could Democrats Dump Biden Before the Election?

HOW CAN THIS BE, WHEN ANYONE OR ANYTHING THAT CHOOSES TO IDENTIFY AS FEMALE IS FEMALE? Backlash over fake female speakers shuts down developer conference.

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Klaus Schwab and the UN Still Want to Purloin Your Sirloin to Make the Weather Gooder.

WENT WOKE, GOING BROKE: Big money book deals agreed by ‘inexperienced’ editors hired post-George Floyd have FLOPPED – including $500,000 ‘queer feminist’ novel that’s sold just 3,500 copies and Elliot Page’s $3MILLION trans memoir.

A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Radical Portland Teacher Reveals Why Strike Was About ‘Raw Power,’ Not the Kids.

IT’S ANOTHER CRISIS-BY-DESIGN IN THE MAKING: Joe Biden is tanking the US Treasury.

The Biden administration has decided to break all the rules in this regard. The Federal Reserve is trying to slow the American economy by raising interest rates, and the White House is trying to speed it up by injecting enormous amounts of fiscal expenditure through its Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In normal times, this would be considered chaotic policy, but since the 2016 election, economists have become unwilling to criticise Democratic ministries, lest it result in another Trump presidency.

While Joe Biden’s runaway spending is leading to clear problems in the market for Treasuries, it is arguably not the worst problem. If the situation got out of control and interest rates started to spiral, the Federal Reserve could, against its better judgement, reverse its QT programme and start buying up Government debt again. This would end any pretence of central bank independence, but it would also end a debt crisis in a pinch.

Not so when it comes to foreign buyers of Treasuries heading for the exit. It is well-known that the United States runs a large trade deficit, and so needs to borrow money from abroad in very large quantities. Much of this is undertaken by issuing Treasury debt to foreign borrowers, but now they are stepping back. This begs the question: why?

It could be a simple fluctuation that will soon reverse itself: occasionally, foreign borrowers temporarily lose their appetite for Treasuries only to return to the market later. The difference today, however, is that after the American freezing of Russian foreign exchange reserves last year in response to the invasion of Ukraine, everyone has been talking about de-dollarisation. The Russian reserve seizure has shown the world that American assets are only trustworthy if Washington agrees with your foreign policy.

I warned almost two years ago that broadly sanctioning the Russian economy was unlikely to work and would likely backfire in ways we couldn’t predict — and here we are.

CLEANEST ELECTION IN HISTORY: Virginia Election Official ‘Altered Election Results’ in 2020.

THAT’S ALMOST 60 WASTED YEARS: For the First Time Since ’65, the U.S. Military Will Blast a Nuclear Reactor Into Space. “But fission can do much more than simple propulsion, and that’s why the U.S. military is forking over $33.7 million for Lockheed Martin—along with Space Nuclear Power Corp (SpaceNukes) and BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT)—to start designing a nuclear spacecraft as part of the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) project.”

They really had to stretch to get the JETSON acronym but it was worth it.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: How About One More War on Biden’s Watch — Much Closer to Home?

GO WOKE, START GOING BROKE, DIG IN: The Disney 10k Annual Report Reveals Disney May Be VERY Worried About Their Place in the Culture War.

I’m a “big picture” kinda guy, not a number cruncher in detail, and there’s nothing wrong with experts doing that number-crunching and we are blessed on this channel to have real experts like Valliant Renegade and Jonas J. Campbell and Mexican Ironman Mike to do that for us.

But.

Disney released their “Form 10k” as obligated to the Securities and Exchange Commission as a public corporation must do, and this, the “10k” is the annual report on all things financial about the business past, present, and potentially future. I’ve read these before on companies in and out of the “Industry” and I read this one and putting aside the detailed calculations, some things stood out to me. Here we go:

There is in such things a statement of the various “Risk factors” the company may encounter, all in the obligatory legal way to avoid people later saying “You never warned us about this!!” and most of these are pretty obvious and boilerplate. But here’s some of the Disney language—and warning, it is dense but there’s a point in showing it all to you so we can dig in and find the, well, crazy bits.

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Relentless Efforts to Derail the Trump Train Are Failing Bigly. “Despite the unceasing efforts to wear him down and destroy him, Trump keeps showing up to work. His haters aren’t getting any of the results they want. In fact, Trump’s poll numbers are on steroids now.”

21ST CENTURY TECH MEETS 7TH CENTURY BARBARISM: Fake babies, real horror: Deepfakes from the Gaza war increase fears about AI’s power to mislead.

WITH THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT: Conor McGregor on Irish Migrant Crisis: ‘We Are at War.’

DONALD TRUMP, PAY ATTENTION: Milei to Send ‘Shock’ Package to Argentina’s Congress on Day One.

“This is urgent,” he said in an interview broadcast Sunday by LN+ TV, adding that Argentina can’t wait for the usual start of congressional sessions in March. “Solving the central bank’s problems as soon as possible” and stopping money printing that causes inflation are among the urgent issues he intends to tackle with lawmakers, he said.

Once his government gets public finances and the central bank balance sheet in order, it will be able to start lifting capital controls and unifying the country’s diverse exchange rates, Milei said, repeating that he never promised to close the central bank on day one.

The positive market reaction to Milei’s win in the Nov. 19 runoff, evidenced by a rally of sovereign bonds and YPF’s debt, emboldened the libertarian economist to pursue his “shock therapy” agenda of fiscal adjustment.

“This has given us greater strength to redouble our bets in favor of fiscal order,” he said, adding the market read the signs his incoming government sent “to perfection.”

“If the financial markets accompany us and interest rates fall, this will be painful but a lot less painful,” he said of the impact of the spending cuts his government proposes — a key concern in a country where more than 40% of the population lives below the poverty line.

Maybe not for much longer, they won’t, if Milei gets his reforms pushed through.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: The Left Wants to Force You Into Scarcity “You probably already know, or at least suspect, that the plan is to make us so poor (and if the low-population radicals get their way, so few) that we’ll be easier to control. Corral, even. But there’s an irony here so delicious that I want to bite into it like one of those soon-to-be-forbidden juicy ribeyes I’m so fond of grilling.”

HERE’S A DEEP DIVE INTO 2024 BY AUTHOR AND SEMINARY PROFESSOR WAYNE GRUDEM: Trump’s Legacy Is at Stake.

SHOCKER: There’s a Connection Between the First American Released by Hamas and Hunter Biden’s Artwork.’

DON’T GET COCKY: Not Only Can Trump Win, Right Now He’s the Favorite To Win. “As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Elections analysts seem to know that they are obliged to mouth the words that Trump can win, but deep down, they don’t believe them. The notion that Biden is the favorite is deeply internalized, likely for a variety of reasons.”