The Faithful Watchman

Elon Musk Predicts How Long Global Recession Will Last

Elon Musk predicted a global recession that could last until 2024.

In a Twitter exchange Thursday, Musk predicted that a global recession would last until Spring of 2024. Musk’s prediction follows comments he made earlier this week saying that many of the major economies are already in recessions. It also follows warnings from fellow titans of industry Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon, who have also warned in recent days about a coming recession.

The exchange began with a tweet from Billy Markus, the creator of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. “[O]h wow coronavirus numbers are actually pretty low [I] guess all we have to worry about now is the impending global recession and nuclear apocalypse,” Markus wrote on Twitter.

“It sure would be nice to have one year without a horrible global event,” Musk replied.

Then a Twitter account called Tesla Owners Silicon Valley replied to Musk, asking how long and how bad the recession would be.

“How long you think the recession will last,” Tesla Owners Silicon Valley asked.

“Just guessing, but probably until spring of ‘24,” Musk replied.

A Russian fighter jet fired a missile while shadowing a Royal Air Force recon plane on patrol over the Black Sea, UK says

A Russian fighter jet recently released a missile “in the vicinity” of a Royal Air Force reconnaissance plane conducting a patrol mission in Eastern Europe, UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace said Thursday.

The unarmed RC-135W Rivet Joint was in the middle of a routine patrol over the Black Sea on September 29 when two armed Russian Su-27 fighter jets “interacted” with the surveillance aircraft, Wallace told lawmakers in London while delivering an update on the war in Ukraine.

“It is not unusual for aircraft to be shadowed, and this day was no different. During that interaction, however, it transpired that one of the Su-27 aircraft released a missile in the vicinity of the RAF Rivet Joint beyond visual range,” Wallace said, adding that the interaction lasted about 90 minutes.

The RAF Rivet Joint returned to its base once the patrol finished, Wallace said, and he’s since communicated his concerns with his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, “in light of this potentially dangerous engagement.”

Boston University researchers claim to have developed new, more lethal COVID strain in lab

Researchers at Boston University added a spike protein from the Omicron variant with the original Wuhan strain, which has an 80% kill rate.

Researchers at Boston University say they have developed a new COVID strain that has an 80% kill rate following a series of similar experiments first thought to have started the global pandemic that began in China.

The variant, a combination of omicron and the original virus in Wuhan, killed 80% of the mice infected with it, the university said. When mice were only exposed to omicron, they experienced mild symptoms.

The research was conducted by a team of scientists from Florida and Boston at the school’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories.

Damage from weather, climate disasters could exceed $100B in 2022, NOAA says

Just 15 events have killed more than 340 people in 2022.

Damage from weather and climate disasters in 2022 could exceed $100 billion in the U.S. by the end of the year, according to estimations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

So far this year, 15 events — including the recent Hurricanes Fiona and Ian — have incurred damages of more than $1 billion, NOAA announced on Tuesday. It is the 8th consecutive year in which the U.S. has endured 10 or more billion-dollar disaster events.

Vatican official apologizes for taking down LGBTQ resource

A reference to New Ways Ministry, a U.S.-based group that advocates for greater acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church, has been restored on the Vatican website.

A Vatican official has apologized to a leading Catholic LGBTQ advocacy group for having yanked a reference to it from the Vatican website, saying he realized the move caused pain and that the Catholic Church does indeed want to include gays and hear from them.

The Vatican’s General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops, which is organizing a two-year consultation of rank-and-file Catholics ahead of a 2023 meeting of bishops at the Vatican, restored the reference to New Ways Ministries on the website over the weekend.

Biden Announces Foreign Policy Strategy, Targets China And Russia

President Joe Bien’s administration is preparing to go head to head with China and Russia in its new foreign policy strategy.

“In the early years of this decisive decade, the terms of geopolitical competition will be set while the window of opportunity to deal with shared challenges will narrow. We cannot compete successfully to shape the international order unless we have an affirmative plan to tackle shared challenges, and we cannot do that unless we recognize how heightened competition affects cooperation and act accordingly,” the White House said on its website.

But it was the next section, where the administration vowed to go head to head with China and Russia that caught many eyes.

Reporter’s Notebook: The missiles of October

Biden recently came under fire for his Armageddon reference amid Russian nuclear threats

We have not necessarily been here before. But we’ve been close enough.

To wit: Washington and Moscow trading barbs in October of a midterm election year about nuclear weapons.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said President Biden. “[Russian leader Vladimir Putin] is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological and chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

China’s secret police have invaded American shores: human rights advocate

China’s reported transnational policing will ‘escalate very quickly’ unless governments take action

China’s reported overseas police service stations and their operations to persuade citizens to return to the homeland mark a dangerous expansion of the regime’s international reach, according to a human rights advocate.

Safeguard Defenders, a pan-Asian human rights organization, published an investigation last month detailing a Chinese campaign to combat “fraud and telecom fraud” crimes committed by its citizens living abroad. The report indicated that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has established at least 54 police stations across 30 different countries, including the U.S.

“I think it shows how brazen the CCP is getting and how little regard they have for other governments,” Laura Harth, Safeguard Defenders’ campaign manager, told Fox News. “It’s in violation of international law, it’s in violation of territorial sovereign.”

‘Not a bluff’: Putin threatens nuclear war, calls up thousands of reserve troops

Russian President, Vladimir Putin, holds a microphone

Micaela Burrow – September 21, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled down on the credibility of his threats to use nuclear weapons for Russia’s self-defense in a speech Wednesday morning, in addition to calling up hundreds of thousands of additional troops for battle.

In the largest escalation since Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in February, Putin made good on a partial mobilization for 300,000 reserve and special operations personnel in an executive order signed Wednesday. He issued veiled threats of nuclear strikes in response to the “aggressive policy of Western elites” to continue provoking Russia on the 1000-km line of contact in Ukraine and providing the Ukrainian army with weapons and supplies.

“In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff,” he said.

Putin’s speech aired less than 24 hours after the Russian-installed leaders in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine’s south, as well as the two sympathetic presidents in the eastern Donbas region, announced plans to hold referendums on acceding to the Russian Federation later in September.

Russia at present does not exercise full control over the territories. Russia’s deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, said Tuesday that annexation of the regions would expand the list of possible military options amid Ukraine’s burgeoning counteroffensive in the east and south, Reuters reported.

Putin added that North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces were conducting reconnaissance operations over Russian territory and had openly discussed launching nuclear weapons against the federation, despite lack of evidence for the latter, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In the speech, Putin also accused the West of committing “nuclear blackmail” over the Zaporizhzhia power plant, after Zelenskyy said Putin was engaged in “nuclear terrorism” for its dangerous shelling in the area.

https://www.wnd.com

The White House Has Just Called For The Creation of a “Digital Dollar”

Elijah Cohen – Sepember 18, 2022

The United States is making progress toward the creation of a digital currency, which the administration of President Joe Biden believes would assist in enhancing the country’s position as a worldwide financial leader. It announced the issuance of a framework that outlines the regulation of digital assets, which includes bitcoin and other objects of value that exists purely in digital form.

The framework consists of a number of different approaches that may facilitate the management of these assets and make the digital asset space more resistant to fraud, or so they say.

Government agencies have been hard at work over the last six months, since since President Biden issued Executive Order 14067 on March 22 with the title “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets,” in order to develop the framework.

The framework recommends the establishment of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), also known as a central band for a digital version of the United States dollar, in order to facilitate the processing of digital transactions more easily. The CBDC has the potential to make possible an efficient payment system, create technical innovations, and facilitate cross-border transactions, all while fostering environmental sustainability, according to a fact sheet that has been released to describe how agencies have responded to the executive order.

In point of fact, digital U.S. dollars already do exist in commercial bank accounts all around the nation. These dollars are backed by reserves in accordance with a method of banking known as fractional-reserve banking.

The Federal Reserve insists that banks only keep a small percentage of their total deposit obligations in cash. Transactions are conducted digitally and do not entail the physical movement of “bags” containing cash.

A theoretical electronic dollar would, in the same way that the physical dollar is controlled, get the complete faith and support of the central bank. Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, has said on many occasions that the primary objective of digital money issued by a central bank would be to do away with the need for cryptocurrencies.

https://themindunleashed.com