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This is a comparison of Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee statement with the one issued after the Fed’s previous policymaking meeting on Dec. 15.

When she was growing up in Paris, Pauline Baer de Perignon was always told the same story about her great-grandfather, Jewish art collector Jules Strauss. Strauss — a German Jew living in Paris — owned a trove of Impressionist pictures by Renoir, Degas, Monet and many others. But the stock market crash of the 1930s forced him to sell much of his collection, leaving his heirs nothing. He died in 1943 of old age.

Despite inflation growing at 7% (versus The Fed’s target rate of 2%) and U-3 unemployment being only 3.9%, one would have thought that Jay and The Gang would have started increasing rates at the January meeting. But nooooo. The Fed actually sat on their hands and did nothing. What did The Fed say? “The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. In support of these goals, the Committee decided to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent. With inflation well above 2...

Four doctors, including the director of Covid response for UCSF Medical Center’s emergency department, are calling on state leaders to acknowledge the transition of Covid to an endemic disease and lift most masking policies for school-aged children.The petition was first circulated Friday and currently has more than 9,500 signatures. It includes a strongly-worded open letter to Gov. Newsom and state public health and education leaders, and it notes that “restrictive policies … have long lost their justification as necessary for prevention of serious illness and death.”The California Public Health Department said in a statement responding to the letter that “vaccinations,...

A solid majority of Americans know that the 2020 election was fraudulent. That’s a big problem for a country with a representative government, one in which the leaders are supposed to represent the will of the people. We’re a nation of laws ostensibly flowing from a Constitution that sets out explicit limitations on the federal government’s powers and protects a variety of citizens’ rights upon which said government cannot infringe. To the degree that a significant majority of citizens feel that the leader of this government was not constitutionally elected, that’s a problem. For all its importance, our Constitution is...

A graphical summary of the xenon-lamp flash photo-pyrolysis method. Credit: EPFL As the world's energy demands increase, so does our consumption of fossil fuels. The result is a massive rise in greenhouse gases emissions with severely adverse environmental effects. To address this, scientists have been searching for alternative, renewable sources of energy. A main candidate is hydrogen produced from organic waste, or biomass, of plants and animals. Biomass also absorbs, removes and stores CO2 from the atmosphere, while biomass decomposition can lead to negative emissions or greenhouse gas removal. But even though biomass heralds a way forward, there is still...

Legislative Democrats on Tuesday blocked an audit of COVID-19 testing failures that occurred during a spike of 1,100 nursing home deaths in Colorado during the 2020 Christmas season — the worst nursing home death rate in the nation. Democrats on the Legislative Audit Committee unanimously torpedoed the audit request by Republicans on a party line vote. PeakNation™ will remember the no-bid contract and $90 million awarded to Curative to provide the questionable testing, which reportedly produced false negatives on the most vulnerable of patients and could have led to the rapid spread of the virus. Now Coloradans will never know...

Members of the progressive "Squad" have quickly responded to news of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement by calling for a Black woman to take his place. "It is past time for a Black woman to be named to the Supreme Court," Rep. Cori Bush, R-Mo., tweeted on Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that Democrats will take up a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is expected to retire at the end of the current term, with "all deliberate speed." "President Biden’s nominee will receive a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be considered and confirmed by the full United States Senate with all deliberate speed," Schumer said in a statement.

9:52 AM · Jan 26, 2022·Twitter Web App

A U.S. State Department official claimed that intelligence shows "every indication" Russia will use military force in Ukraine by mid-February. An unnamed U.S. official first told Fox News on Jan. 14 that Russia had started to prepare for a "false-flag operation" in eastern Ukraine, which would provide the pretext for an invasion. The official said that preparations would take several weeks, meaning that any invasion would likely begin by mid-February at the latest. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman reiterated those claims on Wednesday while speaking at the Yalta European Strategy Forum.

U.S. natural gas futures jumped as much as 6% to $4.298/MMBtu Tuesday morning as traders are concerned about the possibility of a major winter snowstorm on Friday evening into Saturday for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions.We first alerted readers on Monday about the prospects of “a possible nor’easter impacting the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast from Friday Night to Saturday.” Within 72 hours of the storm (today), meteorologists can start discussing potential impacts. Around 48 hours (Thursday), more accurate snowfall total estimates will be circulated on social media and mainstream media outlets. On Friday, meteorologists can pinpoint town-by-town potential impacts. So far,...

Brent crude oil prices rose on Wednesday to $90 a barrel, as low Cushing and distillate inventories combine with supply jitters in Europe, Russia-Ukraine tensions, and falling Russian seaborne crude imports from the Baltics. As of 11:00 a.m. EST on Wednesday, even after the weekly U.S. inventory report from the EIA showed a build in crude oil inventories, WTI Crude prices were up 1.96% at $87.27, while Brent Crude briefly hit $90, up nearly 2% on the day. Fears that sanctions on Russia could cause a shortage of crude oil and natural gas have rattled the commodity markets in recent...

Unvaccinated inmates in Pennsylvania’s state prisons are being held in lockdown conditions indefinitely, unless they submit to vaccination. It means they must stay in their cells 22 hours a day. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, which oversees state prisons, denies lockdowns are related to vaccination. “Out-of-cell time may vary based on a number of factors, but inmates are not—and have not been—locked down based on vaccination status,” Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Press Secretary Maria Bivens told The Epoch Times in an email. “Vaccination among the inmate population is voluntary, and approximately 90 percent of inmates have been vaccinated against COVID-19.”...

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul relayed some advice for non-mask wearers who get confronted in public by hysterical, hypochondriac Karens during a Tuesday night segment of Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime." Host Jesse Watters introduced the segment with a montage of mask nazis harassing normal Americans guilty of wanting to breathe freely. "These people clearly aren't well," Watters said before bringing on the Kentucky senator. "Large swaths of America are in a Covid cult." Asked by the Fox News host how to handle such intrusions "in a respectful but normal way," Paul jokingly responded: "See, I would say bear spray...

Wyoming’s first (b)lack sheriff last year fired a white deputy who is accused of tormenting a (b)lack subordinate for years with racist name-calling that led him to quit, a new federal lawsuit reveals. Albany County Patrol Sgt. Christian Handley once drove past and yelled a profanity and the N-word at Cpl. Jamin Johnson while Johnson and his wife and children were walking out of their home, according to one example of racism alleged in the discrimination lawsuit filed last week. “Mr. Handley later apologized for having not realized that Mr. Johnson’s family was present, as if his vile racism was...

Congressional candidate Robby Starbuck has a released campaign video with Senator Rand Paul’s endorsement of him for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District. “I’m endorsing Robby Starbuck because he’s one of the good guys. He’s one of the guys who really will go to Washington and do as he says,” Paul states in the video.

Colorado district attorneys warned the governor that he set a "troubling precedent" when he intervened in the Rogel Aguilera-Mederos case. District attorneys warned Gov. Jared Polis that he created “a troubling precedent” in commuting Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’ prison sentence while the case was still pending, saying the act weakened public trust in the law. In a letter to Polis, District Attorneys Michael Dougherty and Daniel Rubenstein — a Democrat and a Republican, respectively — agreed that the 110-year sentence in the deadly interstate crash “was too severe.” But they stressed that by commuting the sentence to 10 years before a judge...

1. Novavax Clinical DataWord came yesterday that Novavax had very good safety and efficacy in the trial of their recombinant protein vaccine. This is good news. By this point, the vaccine is much less needed here in the US, but it could be a very important part of getting many other countries vaccinated, due to its less demanding storage requirements and (relatively) straightforward production process. The company does intend to file for FDA approval, and is in the last stages of getting all of its manufacturing and quality control procedures ready for that. I hope that this opens up to...

CNN “Democracy in Peril” host Jim Acosta on Tuesday reacted to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) setting up a tip line for parents to report the teaching of “inherently divisive” rhetoric such as Critical Race Theory. Acosta noted that the GOP had recently been engaging in a culture war, which he warned “could be weakening our democracy.” He argued Youngkin went from “campaigning in a fleece vest” to running “a Soviet-style police state.”