Paul Krugman on inflation; U.S. prosecutors explore racketeering charges in short-seller probe; Vast Leak Exposes How Credit Suisse Served Strongmen and Spies; My latest coronavirus e-mail; I met anti-vaxxer Candace Owens and Parler CEO George Farmer; We need to lift nearly all pandemic restrictions ASAP

1) Every month or so, I include a column in my daily e-mail by Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, which always triggers a few e-mails like this:

Krugman is worse than dart throwing chimp

He's been wrong about almost everything he's predicted... for decades...

To which I replied:

Here's what (Republican) Charlie Munger had to say about him in 2016:

Take Paul Krugman and read his essays, you will be impressed by his fluency. I can't stand his politics; I'm on the other side. But I love this man's essays. I think Paul Krugman is one of the best essayists alive.

With that introduction, here are Krugman's latest thoughts on inflation: What to expect when you're expecting inflation. Excerpt:

Good news on inflation has been hard to come by lately. But this week we got two encouraging reports from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – results from its latest Survey of Consumer Expectations, and an analysis of the recent behavior of inflation expectations by New York Fed economists.

Neither report had any bearing on the inflation we're actually seeing, which continues (so far) to run hotter than it has for decades. Instead, they were all about the hypothetical future. Consumers, it turns out, don't expect inflation to stay hot. Rather, they appear to believe it will continue for a while, then fade away. In fact, expected inflation over the medium term has actually come down over the past couple of months.

Furthermore, it's unlikely that a few more bad numbers will create an inflation panic: Consumers appear much less likely to revise up their expectations of future inflation than they were in the past.

Why do we care? It's not because consumers have some special wisdom, but because expected inflation can feed actual inflation. Actually, it can do that in two ways – although only one is relevant to our current situation. And the apparent fact that medium-term expectations of inflation aren't rising greatly improves our chance of getting past this difficult episode without a lot of pain.

2) Things may be going from bad to worse on this wild goose chase... U.S. prosecutors explore racketeering charges in short-seller probe. Excerpt:

U.S. prosecutors are exploring whether they can use a federal law originally enacted to take down the mafia, in a sprawling probe of hedge funds and research firms that bet against stocks, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

The Justice Department last year issued subpoenas to dozens of firms, including such well-known names as Citron Research and Muddy Waters Research, as part of the sweeping probe focused on potentially manipulative trading around negative reports on listed companies published by some of their investors, Reuters and other media have reported. read more

While prosecutors haven't made any decisions yet, potential charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) were an option on the table, the sources said.

In the past, prosecutors have built RICO cases alongside other allegations, such as manipulation. One of the most high profile cases brought under the RICO Act included that of Michael Milken, who was indicted in the 1980s for racketeering and securities fraud but reached a plea deal, pleading guilty to securities violations but not racketeering or insider trading.

Reuters could not ascertain which types of charges the agency was leaning toward at this stage of the investigation or whether the probe would eventually lead to charges.

3) What a total disgrace: Vast Leak Exposes How Credit Suisse Served Strongmen and Spies. Excerpt:

The client rosters of Swiss banks are among the world's most closely guarded secrets, protecting the identities of some of the planet's richest people and clues into how they accumulated their fortunes.

Now, an extraordinary leak of data from Credit Suisse, one of the world's most iconic banks, is exposing how the bank held hundreds of millions of dollars for heads of state, intelligence officials, sanctioned businessmen and human rights abusers, among many others.

A self-described whistle-blower leaked data on more than 18,000 bank accounts, collectively holding more than $100 billion, to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper shared the data with a nonprofit journalism group, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and 46 other news organizations around the world, including the New York Times.

The data covers accounts that were open from the 1940s until well into the 2010s but not the bank's current operations.

Among the people listed as holding amounts worth millions of dollars in Credit Suisse accounts were King Abdullah II of Jordan and the two sons of the former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak. Other account holders included sons of a Pakistani intelligence chief who helped funnel billions of dollars from the United States and other countries to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Venezuelan officials ensnared in a long-running corruption scandal.

The leak shows that Credit Suisse opened accounts for and continued to serve not only the ultrawealthy but also people whose problematic backgrounds would have been obvious to anyone who ran their names through a search engine.

Swiss banks have long faced legal prohibitions on taking money linked to criminal activity, said Daniel Thelesklaf, the former head of Switzerland's anti-money laundering agency. But, he said, the law generally hasn't been enforced.

It's not the least bit surprising, however, as Switzerland has a long history of reprehensible behavior when it comes to finance – most notoriously banking the Nazis and stealing the assets that were held by Jews murdered by them. Here's an eight-minute video about it, How the Swiss Protected Hitler's Gold, and here's an hour-long 1997 Frontline story on it, Nazi Gold.

4) On Friday, I sent my first e-mail to my coronavirus e-mail list in nearly two weeks (to be added to it, simply send a blank e-mail to: cv-subscribe@mailer.kasecapital.com). You can read the entire e-mail here.

Here was the first part of my e-mail:

Over the past year or so, I've harshly and unequivocally criticized quite a few people, media outlets, and political parties for misleading their followers about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, which is a major reason why, as of today, 24% of Americans haven't even had a single shot, and 72% aren't boosted, trailing nearly every other wealthy country, as you can see in this chart (source):

Primarily as a result of this (though other factors are also at work, most importantly a higher obesity rate), we have the highest cumulative COVID death rate among our peer countries:

Additionally, 2,306 Americans on average – nearly 100 every hour – continue to die every day, almost all of them completely needlessly. Had they simply gotten even one free and convenient shot (much less the recommended three), the great majority of them would be alive today.

That's why I say that those who are responsible for spreading vaccine misinformation have blood on hands...

I never thought I'd actually meet one of these folks in person, but that's exactly what happened... You're not going to believe this crazy story...

Completely randomly, I sat next to leading anti-vaxxer and conservative firebrand Candance Owens at dinner on Tuesday night!

Click here to read what happened next...

Later, my e-mail concluded:

I think Israel and Denmark have it right and we need to quickly follow their lead. THE PANDEMIC IS OVER. We need to start treating it as endemic, like some combination of the seasonal flu and smoking.

As a simple example, it is beyond ridiculous that NBA star Kyrie Irving isn't allowed to play in Nets home games in Brooklyn. Exactly who would be endangered by allowing him to play??? The absurdity rises to another level when VISITING players who aren't vaxxed ARE allowed to play! NBA commissioner Adam Silver: NYC COVID-19 vaccination rule keeping Kyrie Irving from playing at home 'doesn't quite make sense.'

Except for those who are working directly with the elderly or vulnerable (like some healthcare and nursing home workers), this is dumb as well: Nearly 1,500 NYC workers get the ax for flouting COVID vaccine mandate.

No, I'm not saying pandering politicians and media figures like Ron DeSantis and Tucker Carlson were right all along – they were wrong and thousands of their viewers/supporters/residents died needlessly as a result. They have blood on their hands.

But even a broken clock is right twice a day and even a blind squirrel finds a few acorns...

The combination of rising vaccinations, better treatments, and the milder omicron variant has materially changed the situation on the ground. The infection fatality rate (IFR) is now, according to Dr. Maki, only 1.5-2x greater than that of the flu. Therefore, our policies must change to reflect this much lower risk.

Politicians (mostly Democrats these days) who fail to recognize this and quickly pivot will be severely punished by voters in November...

In the rest of my e-mail, I cover:

• E-mails with George Farmer on COVID death rates in Israel and South Africa and whether vaccines are a "magic bullet"
• COVID Won't End Up Like the Flu. It Will Be Like Smoking.
• What the Hell Is Happening to COVID in Israel?

Best regards,

Whitney

P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.