Thousands of protestors have descended on central London today to demonstrate against Britain's response to the Afghanistan crisis.

Marchers rallied outside Downing Street and took over Oxford Circus and Hyde Park as they criticised the government's handling of the Taliban seizing the Middle East nation.

Men and women let off green and red flares in the street, waved the country's flag and held up huge banners during the protest.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Nixon Shock, this article explains why fiat currencies have become joined at the hip to financial asset values. And why with increasing inevitability they are about to descend into the next financial crisis together.

I start by defining the currencies we use as money and how they originate. I show why they are no more than the counterpart of assets on central bank and commercial bank balance sheets. Including bonds and other financial issues emanating from the US Government, the individual states, with the private sector and with broad money supply, dollar debt totals roughly $100 trillion, to which we can add shadow banking liabilities realistically estimated at a further $30 trillion.

What better place for the Fed to have their annual company picnic than at the apex of the country's wealth inequality gap?

That's exactly what they'll be doing when they meet at Jackson Hole next week. It is located in Teton County, which has the "nation's highest per-capita income from assets", according to Bloomberg.

How fitting.

A study by the Economic Innovation Group points out that Jackson Hole has attracted the "ultra-rich" in recent years and that the "gap between counties with the lowest and highest asset income per capita rose sixfold between 1990 and 2019".

The study looked specifically at "income from assets", which excludes wages and government assistance. This category of wealth has skyrocketed in places like New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area.

As the hawks who have been lying about the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for two decades continue to peddle fantasies in the midst of a Taliban takeover and American evacuation of Kabul, progressive critics on Tuesday reminded the world who has benefited from the "endless war." "Entrenching U.S. forces in Afghanistan was the military-industrial complex’s business plan for 20+ years," declared the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Public Citizen.

As summer enters the final stretch and the fall school year is about to begin, the supposed quietest part of the year has been anything but for school boards across the country, according to Ballotpedia.

School board recalls, the process of removing a member or members of a school board from office through a petitioned election, have surged this summer to record-highs as schools are caught in the crosshairs of culture wars.

Many issues have parents across the country in an uproar, such as critical race theory (CRT), virus restrictions, and transgender rights. School officials have found themselves bombarded by angry parents who say CRT is poisoning the minds of their kids. In response, school board recall efforts are sweeping the country.

You can’t have a civilization without civility. We may possess technology that is more advanced than any previous generation of Americans has had, but when it comes to how we treat one another and how we conduct ourselves, we are the worst generation in U.S. history by a very wide margin. We have truly become a “Hollywood culture”, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The average American spends 238 minutes a day watching television, and it is inevitable that putting so much garbage into our minds is going to result in garbage coming out. Most Americans learn how to express themselves by emulating what they see on their screens, and so now we have tens of millions of extremely crude people running around all over the place.

If you spend any time in public at all, you know exactly what I am talking about. Most Americans dress like slobs, act like pigs and endlessly spew profanity wherever they go.

Update (2118ET): The Northeast is bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Henri, which is expected to make landfall on Long Island or in southern New England on Sunday afternoon.

Americans have been beaten in Afghanistan, a U.S. military official said Saturday. A day after he said the military was aware of reports that Americans were beaten by Taliban terrorists, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that “we know of a small number of cases where some Americans … have been harassed, and in some cases, beaten.”

“We don’t believe it’s a very large number, and most Americans who have their credentials with them are being allowed through the Taliban checkpoints,” he added.

The stunning admission came as the U.S. Embassy warned Americans against traveling to the U.S.-held airport in Kabul, where thousands of people are trying to enter to escape the country before American troops leave.

Back in late 2017, Bank of America's derivatives strategists made a remarkable, if hardly original, observation - the bank said what everyone knew but was afraid to voice namely, that "In Every Market Shock Since 2013 Central Banks Have Stepped In To Protect Markets."

After 4 years of hearing every possible reason as to why former President Trump should be thrown out of office, impeached, arrested or otherwise prevented from finishing his first term as President, it’ll be President Joe Biden that doesn’t finish his first term as President. At least, that’s my prediction.

I take zero pleasure in predicting this, not only because I don’t want President Biden’s health to deteriorate, no matter how much I disagree with his policy prescriptions, but also because I found Kamala Harris to be stunningly useless as Attorney General of California, phony and dislikable as a Presidential candidate and now simply incompetent and in over her head as Vice President. A growing number of Americans, a majority of which think she is “not fit to be President”, agree with me.

GM has vastly expanded its Chevy Bolt recall that it had previously issued due to risk of fires.

The company said on Friday it was going to take a $1 billion charge as a result of the recall and that it was "indefinitely" halting sales of the EV due to the risk of fire from the car's battery pack.

The expanded recall "covers 73,000 vehicles from model years 2019 through 2022," Reuters reported Friday. It now encompasses all remaining Bolt vehicles that hadn't been previously recalled. The company is targeting replacing defective battery modules with new ones as a solution.

GM had already set aside $800 million for previous recalls, which is not included in the new $1 billion cost for the company.

Recent media reports point obliquely to significant developments in John Durham’s special counsel investigation. He’s using a grand jury to subpoena documents and witness testimony regarding the FBI’s illegal spying operation against Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And now stories in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post say Durham may be looking to make criminal charges against “lower-level FBI agents” as well as outside sources who passed false information to federal law enforcement.

If that’s accurate, the latter category could include political operatives, foreign spies, big-name Beltway lawyers, journalists, and computer experts. But current and former government officials say the reports seem intended to shape the narrative on behalf of those Durham may really have in his crosshairs—senior FBI officials, including former Acting Director Andrew McCabe.

Dramatic satellite imagery shows the intense wildfires raging across the Western US, generating large smoke columns that have blanketed several states.

Less than three months ago, the Centers for Disease Control published a mostly-ignored, large-scale study of Covid-19 transmission in US schools which concluded that while masking then-unvaccinated teachers and improving ventilation was associated with lower levels of virus transmission in schools - social distancing, classroom barriers, HEPA filters, and forcing students to wear masks did not result in a statistically significant benefit.

The Syrian anti-government Islamist faction and al-Qaeda spinoff which has for years occupied Idlib province, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has issued a formal statement celebrating the Taliban’s victory this week in Afghanistan.

HTS called the Taliban conquest an event of "utmost joy and delight" while also saying those fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad "draw inspiration" for what it dubbed "the Syrian Revolution." This after on Tuesday and into Wednesday HTS oversaw a ‘victory parade’ in honor of the Taliban in Idlib’s streets.

A scientist renowned for delivering speeches exciting and inspirational had been travelling from city to city with his chauffeur. After the speech was finished and the audience clapped and rose to their feet, the chauffeur spoke with some irritation to the scientist:

“You know, I listen to you give these same speeches, night after night, and you say them exactly word for word! I bet I could deliver your speech at our next venue.”

The scientist, a bit miffed, replied:

“Okay, why don’t we exchange clothes, and I will drive you to the next venue, and you, my chauffeur, can deliver my speech.”

Sure enough, the chauffeur – dressed as the scientist – delivered an extraordinary speech and once again the audience stomped and applauded. However, this time the moderator stood and said, “Wow – amazing speech. But I think we have some time for questions.”

A man in the audience rose and inquired about an esoteric point.

In the French government's readout of the conversation between the two leaders, Macron tells Biden that the US and its allies have a "moral responsibility' to ensure the safe evacuation of Afghan citizens who assisted US and European troops for the past two decades - who, along with their families, are now at great risk Taliban death squads, according to The Guardian.

"We cannot abandon them," Macron told Biden.

The White House, however, made no mention of Macron's comments about 'moral responsibility.'

"They lauded the tireless efforts of their personnel working closely together in Kabul on the evacuation of their citizens, the brave Afghans who have stood by us and our Nato partners, and other vulnerable Afghan nationals," reads a White House description of the call.

It is one of the ironies of history that the American intervention in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was given the name Operation Enduring Freedom.

So what should we call the shambolic American exit we are currently witnessing? Operation Evaporating Freedom? How about Operation Enduring Foul Up?

There was certainly something enduring about the scenes in Kabul last week. Read Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American: 'We go and invade the country: the local tribes support us: we are victorious: but… [then] we made peace… and left our allies to be crucified and sawn in two.

They were innocent. They thought we'd stay. But we were liberals and we didn't want a bad conscience.'

I doubt Joe Biden has read much Greene. But he's certainly of the generation of liberals that Vietnam scarred, even if he watched the war from the comfort of the US Senate, to which he was elected in 1972 – aged 29 – after campaigning for US withdrawal.

At least seven Afghans have been killed near Kabul’s international airport amid the chaos of those attempting to flee the Taliban takeover of the country, the British military has said.

But the UK defence ministry did not elaborate when they were killed and if the latest death toll is on top of the four people reportedly crushed to death on Saturday.