The Elephant In The Room That Is Fraud

Authored by Jack Hellner via AmericanThinker.com,

There has clearly been trillions of fraud over the last several decades, and politicians in both parties have shown very little interest in rooting out the fraud until Trump. Somehow, most of the media and other Democrats aren’t too concerned with saving taxpayer dollars—they spend their time attacking Trump.

The media and other Democrats were outraged when Trump spent $16 million dollars fixing the reflecting pool problems, and there was endless reporting, but there is virtually no outrage and minimal reporting on the endless fraud, no matter how many billions have been legitimately stolen from the taxpayers.

The following is a small sample of what crooks have gotten away with, which is only the tip of the iceberg.

Federal data revealed this:

In 2024, 35 percent of exchange enrollees and 40 percent of fully-subsidized low-income enrollees generated no medical claims….

Tens of billions went to big insurance companies to pay for many fake people. Yet, as Democrats shuttered the government, almost all the media spewed were intentional lies about how Republicans wanted to take health care away from the poor, and premiums would rise substantially for them.

The media didn’t have much interest when an enterprising young reporter found massive fraud in daycare centers in Minnesota. They also didn’t have any concern when we learned Governor Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison knew about the fraud for a long time and instead of going after the criminals, sought to destroy the whistleblowers.

Here is how PBS reported on the story:

This week, the Trump administration dispatched federal officers to Minnesota amid concerns over fraud. The deployment comes after a right-wing influencer posted a video claiming, without proof, that daycare centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had misappropriated more than $100 million.

Hospice fraud in California is massive. Where is the endless reporting by the media? Why aren’t they concerned that Governor Newsom and other officials did little to nothing about it? They also don’t seem interested in how many millions of taxpayer dollars flow to entities associated with Newsom’s wife. Instead, they attack the Justice Department for investigating the obvious.

A huge amount of fraud was found with a small sample of SNAP recipients, yet this news piece seems aggravated at the Trump administration for doing something about it:

The USDA says 700,000 were removed from SNAP. Here’s what counts as fraud.

Multiple studies have found that SNAP fraud is rare, yet the Trump administration continues to place heavy focus on the issue.

In May, Rollins told Fox News that her department had found around 700,000 people fraudulently using SNAP rolls since February 2025 and arrested 895 people in the past year for fraud. She said 244,000 fraudsters used dead people’s social security numbers and 500,000 collected benefits in multiple states.

Here is a story that got little coverage about health care fraud schemes. You would think that with all the worries about Medicare survival that an arrest of around 450 people in 45 states would get extensive coverage, but it doesn’t.

New: Record Healthcare Fraud Bust: 450 Defendants Now Charged by Trump DOJ

How often is this happening throughout the country?

What about this?

Michigan childcare provider collected $1.1M in taxpayer funds despite no visible signs of operating

Where are the administrators we pay for verifying that daycare providers do in fact qualify for the money?

The media clearly has little interest in reporting on fraud perpetrated by illegals:

Illegal Alien Gets 8 Years in Prison for $89 Million Payroll Scheme Employing Illegal Alien Construction Workers

I bet few people saw this story about all the money funneled out during COVID:

NC Tax Preparer Pleads Guilty in $13.9M COVID-19 Fraud Scheme

Seven other return preparers have already pleaded guilty to their roles in the same scheme. 

The media is working hard to avoid the story about how we chased down a Somalian fraudster after he fled the country:

$250 Million Minnesota Fraudster Finally Nabbed — in Mogadishu 

Every once in a while, the media and other Democrats claim to care about debts and deficits, but they clearly don’t when they refuse to help going after fraud and treat every cut or freeze in government spending programs as a disaster.

The only time they really care about deficits is when they falsely claim that Republican tax cuts cost the government trillions of dollars.

Here is the truth about federal income and spending:

Individual income taxes collected FY 2017 $1.5 trillion. By FY 2025, they were up to $2.66 trillion—up more than double the 35% inflation rate for that period. Corporate income taxes in FY 2017 were $297 billion and in FY 2025, they were $452 billion (or up 52%). 

Meanwhile, spending went up from $3.98 trillion to $7.20 trillion—up 77%, which is more than double the rate of inflation. Uncontrolled spending including massive fraud is clearly the problem.

Is our media on it? Hardly.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/01/2026 - 15:45
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The Elephant In The Room That Is Fraud

Deflation Is Not The Villain - The Overleveraged Fiat System Is

Authored by Nick Giambruno via International Man,

It is important to clarify something here.

While mainstream economists, the financial media, academia, and other gatekeepers of the rotten fiat currency system howl about the dangers of deflation, it is worth taking a moment to consider whether it is really such a bad thing.

First, it is important to define our terms.

The correct and true meaning of inflation is an increase in the money supply. So the correct and true meaning of deflation is a decrease in the money supply. But that is not what most people mean when they refer to deflation, because the money supply rarely contracts in a fiat monetary system. When most people say deflation, they mean a general fall in prices.

One of the biggest popular misconceptions in economics is that a general fall in prices is a "bad thing."

It is an enormous misnomer. Falling prices caused by increases in productivity are actually a good thing. Who does not want to see their money go farther?

Technology is naturally deflationary. It drives down costs, increases efficiency, and makes goods and services cheaper over time.

In an honest monetary system, that would mean falling prices and rising purchasing power. In other words, your money would buy more as technology advances.

But that is not how the current system is designed to work. In fact, it does the opposite. It is like running on a treadmill that keeps accelerating.

In a fiat currency system, deflationary increases in productivity are more than offset by inflation, which benefits people who own stocks, houses, and other assets that rise with inflation, and hurts those who depend on wages denominated in the debased currency.

In short, in a fiat currency system, the benefits of deflationary technology primarily accrue to asset holders, because the forced inflation created by central banks pumps up asset values.

If we were living under an honest, hard-money monetary system, where the benefits of technology would not be offset by central banks debasing the currency, those gains would accrue more evenly across the population.

That is why I think the chart below is instructive.

It is a long-term view of real wages versus productivity.

The two tracked together well for decades, showing that as productivity increased, real wages did too. In other words, most people benefited from increases in productivity through higher real wages.

Then something changed around 1971, when that strong positive correlation broke. It was the year the US government cut the dollar's last link to gold and the dollar became a pure fiat currency.

Since 1971, there has been a growing gap between productivity and real wages.

If you could transport yourself back to the early 1970s, just as the divergence between productivity and real wages began, and ask people what they thought 2026 would look like, they might have said something like The Jetsons - flying cars, advanced technology, and a society in which everyone was better off.

They probably would not have believed you if you told them that, in reality, people would be worse off in many ways in 2026 than they were in the early 1970s, despite enormous technological progress. We may not have flying cars or The Jetsons, but there have still been significant advances. Yet people's standard of living has declined in many ways.

Today, many people are bewildered by how people could be worse off now than they were then. The answer is in this chart, which shows that the fiat system and currency debasement are the problem.

Despite advances in technology, the shocking level of currency debasement has not merely kept pace with the natural deflation that comes from increased productivity, but has vastly outpaced it... which is why people are, in many ways, worse off today than they were in the early 1970s. That prosperity has been stolen by inflation and fiat currency.

Since 1971, productivity has continued to increase, largely thanks to advances in technology, but those gains have not translated into growth in real wages as they had in the past under an honest money system. That is because under a fiat currency system, the central bank - the Federal Reserve - has created significantly more inflation than the gains in productivity, which meant real wages did not keep up.

However, those productivity gains from advancing technology did not just disappear. They were redirected somewhere else. They accrued primarily to asset holders, as wage earners chased rapidly depreciating fiat currency.

In short, the fiat currency system is a mechanism for transferring wealth created by technological productivity gains to asset holders and politically connected insiders closest to the money printer.

Frankly, it is a disgusting, dishonest system that operates at the expense of honest people.

But that is the nature of the monetary system we are all forced to live under. And it is wise to acknowledge it, understand it, and take action to protect yourself.

And now, with AI bringing a mind-bending level of productivity gains, this dynamic is about to go into overdrive.

I suspect we will see the gap in the chart above explode even further as AI, and future breakthrough technologies, produce the biggest productivity gains in human history, even as the US government is forced to create the largest amount of inflation in history to try to keep the debt-ridden fiat system going in the face of this historic disruption.

In other words, as technology becomes exponentially more deflationary and debt grows exponentially larger, the central bank's response will have to become exponentially more aggressive.

That means more debasement of your purchasing power to fight the very force that should be making your life cheaper.

Clearly, you want to be an asset owner in this environment so you can protect yourself from currency debasement and also benefit from tech-driven productivity gains.

But what assets should you own? I will get to that soon.

If we lived under an honest monetary system anchored in hard-to-produce money like gold, I think there would be far fewer worries about AI automation and disruption. That is because we would not live under a debt-ridden fiat system in which the government is forced to debase the currency. That would mean increases in productivity from technology would benefit far more people, as their money would go farther, prices would generally fall, and the cost of living would decline. And the government would not try to offset that with inflation.

In such a world, I do not think AI would be nearly as controversial, because it would be seen as making the average person wealthier by reducing the cost of living.

So technological deflation that increases productivity and lowers prices is most certainly not a bad thing, as the fiat economists would have you believe. It is a wonderful thing and should create more abundance and make most people wealthier... in an honest monetary system.

That is why the whole framing around this issue needs to be challenged. It is not technology that is the problem. It is the fiat currency and the highly leveraged system that is the problem.

It is also why you see charlatans promote things like universal basic income (UBI) as a solution to the supposed AI problem.

The solution to the non-problem of technological increases in productivity is most certainly not a UBI, but rather an honest hard-money monetary system in which everyone generally benefits from increases in productivity - not just asset holders and politically connected insiders closest to the money printer.

Throwing the plebs a few crumbs with a UBI to help prop up a failing debt-based fiat currency scam is not a real solution. But thankfully, there is a real solution.

It starts with understanding the monetary, economic, and political forces driving this crisis - and taking practical steps before the next major wave of instability hits.

The fiat system is already under enormous pressure from sky-high debt, endless money printing, and accelerating technological disruption. The people who understand what is happening will be in a far better position than those who are blindsided by it.

That is why I put together a free special report focused on practical solutions - the top three strategies to help protect your money, preserve your freedom, and prepare for what comes next.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/30/2026 - 17:00
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Deflation Is Not The Villain - The Overleveraged Fiat System Is

Katz Says Israel Could Be Back At War With Iran 'Tomorrow'

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that the Israeli military was ready to restart the war against Iran and that it could happen as soon as "tomorrow".

Katz vowed that Israel would bomb Beirut's southern suburb of Dahiyeh if Hezbollah rockets were fired into northern Israel and that the IDF was prepared to respond if that prompted Iranian attacks on northern Israel.

Katz visiting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on February 2, 2025. Israeli Defense Ministry photo

"There is no reality in which Israel will not respond to an Iranian attack," Katz said, according to Israel Hayom. "The equation stands – rocket fire on Israeli communities means an immediate assault on the Dahiyeh. The possibility exists that Iran will attack Israel not only in response to strikes in the Dahieh. We could find ourselves at war with Iran tomorrow."

The Israeli minister said that a second potential scenario that would lead to a renewed war with Iran would be if President Trump decides to restart the bombing campaign.

"There are two scenarios that would resume full-scale fighting – a decision by President Donald Trump or Iranian missile fire. This could happen in two days," he said.

Katz also insisted that Israel was ready to fight Iran on its own, which he called a "blue and white operation," despite the fact that Israel is extremely reliant on US air defenses.

"The IDF is just waiting for it. We have selected targets to strike in Iran, and the IDF is prepared and alert, but we will not interfere with the US President’s current moves vis-a-vis the Iranians," he said.

Katz also boasted about the destruction of Shia Muslim villages in southern Lebanon. "It was clear during Operation Silver Plow that the Shia villages along the contact line had to disappear," he said, using the codename for Israel’s recent operations in southern Lebanon.

'Israel is preparing for the immediate resumption of military operations against Iran.'

Senior Middle East Correspondent @ariel_oseran joins @benitalevin on #TheRundown pic.twitter.com/8c7YfNgaMP

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) June 30, 2026

"We are currently in a situation where there is nearly 100% destruction in the contact-line villages of the western and central sectors. In the eastern sector, we are at 73% of villages destroyed," Katz added.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/30/2026 - 15:40
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Katz Says Israel Could Be Back At War With Iran 'Tomorrow'

Mega Heat Dome Inbound For Washington, DC

A massive heat dome is set to descend on the eastern half of the U.S., stretching from the Midwest to the East Coast and putting more than 230 million people in the crosshairs of temperatures above 90F, while millions will experience triple-digit temperatures during the Fourth of July holiday week and into weekend festivities.

The Midwest will be the epicenter of the heat dome early in the week, with metro areas such as St. Louis and Detroit climbing into the mid- to upper 90s.

By Wednesday, the heat shifts eastward, threatening record highs across Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, where temperatures are expected to exceed 100F over multiple days.

Heat wave is inbound, and this one could be among the DC area's most intense.

As we close in on the Wednesday start of an unusually intense and long-lasting blast of extreme heat extending into the Fourth of July weekend, computer models continue to pump out numbers that could… pic.twitter.com/CctcKMJMri

— Capital Weather (@capitalweather) June 29, 2026

Meteorologist Ryan Maue described it as a "mega heat dome" that will produce "record highs (daily) for almost the entire Eastern Seaboard from Maine to South Carolina."

"Fire up the grill, buy plenty of ice 🧊 for your favorite beverages, get your pool floaties in order, and prepare for an extremely hot and humid Independence Day weekend across the Eastern United States with temperatures well over 100°F," Maue wrote in the note.

Bloomberg's two-week forecast for average temperatures across the Washington, D.C., metro area indicates the heat dome will linger until nearly the midpoint of the month. Temperatures are forecast to return to the 30-year mean of around 78F.

This is not global warming - just entering peak summer in North America.

To note, there are mounting El Niño risks (read here & here).

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 15:00
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Mega Heat Dome Inbound For Washington, DC

Chinese AI Matches Mythos In Cybersecurity Tasks With Open-Weight Model

While Anthropic has been forced to shut down its latest general-use models for over two weeks after it emerged that the company's de-tuned public-facing Fable 5 model could be 'jailbroken' into its unrestricted form (Mythos 5) to perform tasks that pose security risks, a Chinese AI company backed by Alibaba and Tencent has released a model that matches the performance of Mythos in some cybersecurity scenarios. 

The company, Zhipu AI - also known as Z.ai, can match the latest US models when it comes to finding security bugs - though it still lags at other tasks, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Overall, the capability gap between top U.S. models and those built by Chinese companies has narrowed significantly, and use of Chinese AI systems has surged as businesses seek to rein in runaway costs. A host of companies, including Microsoft, are weighing how they can offer Chinese models on their platforms, a development that is set to alter the balance of power among tech companies.

What's more, Zhipu's GLM-5.2 is an open-weight model, meaning it can be downloaded and run on hardware by anyone and can be modified and used without supervision - which hackers are undoubtedly loving. 

GLM-5.2 has ranked as one of the 10 most-used AI models, according to data from OpenRouter, a company that provides access to more than 400 AI models. In some benchmarking tests, according to the cybersecurity company Semgrep, GLM-5.2 bested Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 model, which was released in May. When given further instructions, Opus 4.8 and GLM-5.2 can match Mythos in bug-finding ability, according to researchers.

As we noted last week for our premium subscribers, this is how Goldman's Delta One head, Rich Privorotsky framed the latest Chinese shock to the system from open-weight models: 

The big development over the last couple of days has been GLM-5.2, another Chinese open source model that appears highly competitive on SWE benchmarks relative to some of the latest private models. It is not quite cutting edge, but the gap between open and closed models continues to narrow. The weights are open (MIT license), models can be distilled, quantized and reproduced...its a big leap in capability and a clear sign the field is narrowing.

It's not just some of Wall Street's top thinkers who were immediately drawn to the stats of the latest Chinese offering: various industry insiders were in shock.

Artificial Analysis’ new knowledge work benchmark rated it higher than GPT 5.5

"This kind of powerful weapon that can alter the landscape of cyberwarfare can’t remain solely in American hands," Zhou Hongyi - CEO of Chinese cybersecurity company 360 Security Technology, speaking at a cybersecurity conference in Beijing. His company has released a new bug-finding tool called Tulongfeng - which it claims is comparable to Mythos when it comes to finding bugs. 

Zhou Hongyi, chief executive of 360 Security Wu Hao/EPA/Shutterstock

So while the Trump administration restored some access to Mythos 5, IT departments across America are now at a disadvantage when it comes to using something this powerful to find and patch their own vulnerabilities. 

"Banning Fable while selling chips China needs to develop its own version is a gift to China," said Saif Khan - a distinguished technology fellow at the Institute for Progress think tank who focused on export restrictions under the Biden administration. Kahn says that the US needs to maximize the use of Mythos and similar models to harden cyber defenses while it can. 

Among the Mythos 5 and Fable 5 users that had lost access before Friday’s decision to restore Mythos 5 access for some trusted entities: the National Security Agency, which had been testing the tools and found them impressive in trials, according to people familiar with the matter.

Critics of the White House approach have said it has been lax in restricting use of Chinese open-weight models from companies such as DeepSeek and Zhipu, which are popular among U.S. businesses. -WSJ

Meanwhile - OpenAI on Friday said it will now limit access to its latest model - GPT 5.6, after Trump administration officials raised security concerns. The company warned that the government's current case-by-case evaluation process isn't a good long-term solution, but they're adhering to it following a recent executive order focused on security and model oversight. 

In short, the Trump administration is driving people to use open-weight Chinese models, while hobbling the US AI industry. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/28/2026 - 18:05
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Chinese AI Matches Mythos In Cybersecurity Tasks With Open-Weight Model