Krystal and Saagar talk about the stock market crash, crypto sinking, Ukraine war updates, Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ grift, Amazon workers rally, liberal fawning over Liz Cheney, DHS Board censorship plans, Dems supporting J6 GOP candidates, and hidden forces jacking up gas prices! James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJam…

Timestamps: Market Crash: 0:00 – 27:44 Ukraine: 27:45 – 42:19 Trump Grift: 42:20 – 51:51 Amazon: 51:52 – 59:25 Liz Cheney: 59:26 – 1:08:37 Krystal: 1:08:38 – 1:17:26 Saagar: 1:17:27 – 1:27:00 James Li: 1:27:01 – 1:38:41

6/14 NEWSLETTER: Markets Crash, Ukraine Update, Trump Grift, Amazon Workers, & More!

Welcome to the June 14th, 2022 edition of the Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar premium newsletter. There was plenty of confusion caused by the email distribution issues for yesterday’s show because some of you received three emails and others did not get one at all. To clarify, the triple email problem is being tackled daily by myself alongside the Supercast team. We believed the bug to be fixed ahead of today’s show, and when it was not we temporarily suspended the emails to figure it out. Then the email distribution was resumed to get the show out on time. If any of you continue to have issues, email james@breakingpoints.com or support@supercast.com and we will assist you. Further, the glitches with the weekend mini show audio have been fixed, and you can email us with any subscription issues. We are deeply sorry for the confusion and inconvenience this might have caused. Today the show is being sent out via MailChimp until the problems with Supercast emails are resolved.

Now to the contents of the June 14th show, which you can watch here:

MARKETS CRASH

In response to the news about record inflation, the stock market crashed again on Monday. Continuing the decline from Friday, the S&P 500 tumbled 4% to a new low for the year, closing in bear market territory. It means that the index tracking the 500 largest publicly traded companies is suffering a sustained decline in value reflective of investors worries about the economy. President Biden took a different note when addressing the economy over the weekend, declaring the job market the best since after WWII. High profile business leaders such as Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman have begun publicly expressing their fears of a recession. Gorman has increased his estimate from 30% to a 50-50 chance America ends up in a recession, according to remarks he made at a New York based investor conference. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon previously warned of a ‘hurricane’ coming to the US economy because of central banks raising interest rates combined with war in Ukraine; something JP Morgan echoed in a trading note on Monday. Wall Street is laser focused on the Federal Reserve’s next rate increase to be announced in a press conference later this week. A handful of Wall Street traders are bracing for extreme measures to mitigate inflation from the Fed, and other large banks have made similar estimates.

Cryptocurrency markets have not been immune to the plunges in the tech sector and the stock market as a whole. Marquee cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum have crashed 70% from peaks wiping out $2 trillion for investors over the past 8 months. The total market capitalization of crypto is now at $1 trillion after peaking at $3 trillion in November 2021. Amidst a major selloff on Monday, crypto exchanges halted trading for various reasons, including the volume of transactions caused by the market instability. In what’s been described as a ‘Black Monday’ for the crypto markets, the platforms holding up trades has been cited by analysts for the crash alonside runaway inflation and the decline in the NASDAQ. The NASDAQ, an index of tech stocks, is typically a good indicator of where the crypto markets are headed, and the possibility that crypto continues to decline remains strong.

***This newsletter was written early Tuesday morning before markets opened and please do not take financial advice from Breaking Points.

UKRAINE

The war in Ukraine has raged between the Ukrainian and Russian forces in the Donbas region. The highly contested area of Eastern Ukraine has become the main corridor of warfare between the two nations that some analysts believe has the looks of a stalemate. It is difficult to gauge with precision what is going on, in part because the United States lacks a clear understanding of what’s happening with Ukraine’s military. War strategy has not been made known and intelligence agencies have spent much of their resources on assisting the Ukrainians in their resistance to the Russians. US intelligence on the Russian army has become a vital resource for the Ukrainian forces, yet the knowledge obtained about the Ukrainian forces is minimal. The United States so far has sent upwards of $50 billion dollars worth of military aid and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine without oversight of the funds. It appears the latest round of military support is desperately needed by the Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region, where Russia is gaining ground thanks to its superior artillery.

The possibility has been raised of Ukraine facing defeat in the Eastern region of their country, paving the way for a Russian regroup and another offensive towards the capital city of Kyiv. However, doubts remain about the Russian capabilities due to severe casualties and lack of equipment required for an advance towards Kyiv. For each day Western reinforcements are delayed, there could be hundreds of Ukrainian casualties and scores more injuries. The Ukranians are counting on similar Western weapons to those that proved decisive in their initial resistance to the Russian invasion to even the playing field in the Donbas region. On Monday, it was reported that the Russians have seized most of the vital Eastern city of Sievierodonetsk and have resorted to burning crop fields in an all out assault on the Ukrainian residents. The Russians will look to target the western weapons shipments after allegedly doing so in an attack on Kyiv conducted to warn the Western nations backing Ukraine.

TRUMP GRIFT

The January 6th committee hearings led to new details coming out about how Donald Trump fundraised off his claims about election fraud. The money raised primarily through small donations was used in part to support organizations backed by the President to the tune of millions. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) showed a video featuring the committee’s Senior Investigative Counsel claiming donors were misled about where their money was going. The donors were told in dozens of fundraising emails that their money was going to an election defense fund that turned out not to exist. Over $250 million was raised from the emails and it ended up being a grift to enrich Trump himself and his allies. When asked about the election fraud allegations by Donald Trump promoted by Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘2000 Mules’ film, former AG Bill Barr laughed in amusement while he laid out the claims Trump brought to him. Barr’s persistent skepticism of Trump’s claims turned him from an ally of the Former President to a target of harsh criticism, something the former AG appears to have embraced. It has been known for some time the misuse of funds for the ‘election fraud’ battle and the January 6th committee has provided more specifics on that front.

AMAZON

The Amazon Labor Union held a rally outside the NLRB’s regional office in Phoenix to fight Amazon’s attempt to overturn the historic union election in the Staten Island, NYC JFK 8 warehouse that employs over 8,000 workers. The company objected to the grassroots, historic upset victory a week after the ballots were cast. Objections included favoritism by the NLRB and questions about the tactics used by the worker organizers like providing marijuana to workers. Amazon has requested the election get a do-over in a similar fashion to the Bessemer, Alabama warehouse that obtained a do-over because of illegal union busting tactics by the company. During the rally, Phoenix police kicked workers out of the hearing room where Amazon was contesting the results of the election. The rally was led by Amazon Labor Union President Christian Smalls, a former worker at the JFK8 facility who was terminated by the company and later the subject of a smear campaign.

LIZ CHENEY

Wyoming GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney has become a darling among liberals for her opposition to President Trump. She is the daughter of former VP Dick Cheney, the artictect of the Iraq War and War on Terror carried out by the George W. Bush administration. Her prominent role in the January 6th committee hearings has brought national attention, leading to liberals considering her for President in 2024. It is not the first time her name has been brought up by prominent liberal pundits for a national election and almost certainly will not be the last time. Cheney is facing an uphill battle in the primary election for her Wyoming Congressional Seat, and she’s relying on Democrats to change party registration to have a chance. Her absenteeism in the state and work on the Jan 6th committee are leading reasons why Republicans in the state are fed up. Cheney herself has hesitated to embrace the Democrats supporting her primary campaign, but she will need them to continue her political career going forward.

KRYSTAL

In her monologue, Krystal takes aim at Democrats for promoting Republican candidates who supported Trump’s ‘election fraud’ narrative in the general election.The party is aiming to promote GOP candidates they view as extreme, therefore easier to defeat in a general election. Democrats are making the January 6th hearings into a primetime spectacle and hoping they can be used to turn the midterms around. But they are making it more likely that politicians sympathetic to the events of January 6th obtain power, going so far as to make fake attack ads to boost candidates. The particular ad linked was featuring Colorado Senate candidate Ron Hanks, a man who was part of the mob on January 6th and fully believes in the cause. He previously released an ad where he blew up a dominion voting machine, making direct appeals to stop the steal believers. There are other candidates promoted by Democrats in more contested races who support the ‘stop the steal’ narrative and could win in a favorable election environment. One of them is Doug Mastriano, the GOP candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, His general election opponent Josh Shapiro spent more money on ads for Mastriano than the candidate himself. With a Governorship in a key swing state, Mastriano would be in a position to trigger a constitutional crisis and deny a Democrat an election victory in a close Pennsylvania contest. Mastriano has been cited by the January 6th committee for his central role in pushing ‘stop the steal’ in Pennsylvania. Additionally, Democrats have promoted candidates supportive of January 6th in Illinois and Nevada, competitive states where any GOP candidate could win in this electoral landscape. The party has spent an estimated $20 million on extremist candidates, betting on them being too fringe for a general electorate. They used the same infamous ‘pied piper’ strategy with Donald Trump, who ended up defeating Hillary Clinton, a lesson Democrats have not learned.

It’s another instance of the words and actions of the Democratic party being at odds with each other. They supported the pro-choice, NRA backed Henry Cuellar against Jessica Cisneros despite the leaked opinion on Roe. Now they claim to see January 6ths as a moral catastrophe but their actions speak otherwise. Democrats have no illusions that the January 6th hearings will persuade anyone, and with that all they have left is to hope Republicans are even worse. An ugle race to the bottom with no end

After the monologue, Krystal and Saagar talk about the exact number of election denier candidates being supported by Democrats. The Democrats are playing with fire with people they claim pose a threat to democracy as we know it. A pied piper strategy has worked in the past, but as Donald Trump shows the high reward comes with extremely high risk for Democrats.

SAAGAR

In his monologue, Saagar revives an old foe and examines the whistleblower documents leaked about the DHS ‘Disinformation’ Board proposal. The matter on the board appeared to be settled when appointed head Nina Jankowicz resigned and the project was paused due to public blowback. It turns out the Biden administration was lying when they denied the DHS Board would be used to censor domestic political speech and would only target foreign speech. Whistleblower documents show the DHS solicited Twitter to get involved with the project. They had a planned meeting with Yoel Roth, a Twitter executive who played a crucial role in facilitating the censorship of the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden. It was never made known to the public, but Jankowicz offered Twitter the data collected by the government to spur an enforcement regime against information the DHS seemed bad. The documents also revealed the government sought to censor information and label it disinformation based on an undefined standard of objectivity. Essentially, the US government would give data to Twitter and carry out a mass censorship regime through that platform.

The playbook was used with Facebook and covid vaccines where the government would label disinformation and provide it to Facebook for the company to use for censorship. It led to Jen Psaki to call for big tech companies to collude and ban anybody who gets banned on another platform based on what the government says. This marks the growing fusion between big tech, the media, and the national security state that has been carried out for some time. There has been a complete mainstream media blackout on the whistleblower documents, because the media supports a censorship regime against half the country. A lesson from the January 6th hearings is that the ideas of the ‘Disinformation’ Governance Board are something the political class wants to normalize under the guise of protecting democracy. Regardless of how you feel about the ‘stop the steal’ claims, the government creating a regime where it decides truth and false is a dystopian promise. Journalists backing this have shirked their duty in favor of being propagandists for a censorship regime, and if people stop paying attention it could easily come in different forms.

After the monologue, Krystal and Saagar discuss the media blackout on the lies by the DHS board advising private tech companies. DHS tried to have it both ways where they downplayed the activities of the board and also deemed it crucial for democracy. They never provided a clear answer of what the board was tasked with doing, providing a huge red flag on what could have been taking place behind the scenes. Elites will highlight truly deranged behavior to make a case for censorship regimes, without acknowledging the deteriorating underlying conditions that push people to extremism to begin with. The push to a police state is a very slippery slope, and being part of a free society requires giving people the freedom to believe what they want.

JAMES LI

Krystal and Saagar are joined by Breaking Points collaborator and political commentator James Li to have a deeper conversation about American economic rot. The behavior by oil companies looking to restrict supply and reap profits off sky high global oil prices serves as a perfect representation of how shareholder primacy at the expense of all else has run the American economy into the abyss. The priorities of companies is not to invest in the economy or create jobs, rather it is to provide returns to shareholders. It leads to the outsourcing of supply chains, economic financialization, political corruption, and deep societal rot that can lead to situations like we are in now. Be sure to subscribe to James’ channel 51-49 here.