Feb 03

Today’s News 3rd February 2021

  • H.R. 127: A New Bill In Congress Would Literally End Your 2nd Amendment Rights Permanently
    H.R. 127: A New Bill In Congress Would Literally End Your 2nd Amendment Rights Permanently

    Authored by Michael Snyder via End of The American Dream blog,

    If a new bill that has been introduced in Congress eventually becomes law, the 2nd Amendment will still be in the U.S. Constitution, but for all practical purposes the rights that it is supposed to guarantee will be dead and gone.  H.R. 127 was submitted on January 4th, and if you have not read it yet you can find the full text right here.  It contains a lot of technical language, and so in this article I am going to try to break down what it means very simply.  Now that the Democrats control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, there is going to be a major push to ram through some form of gun control legislation.  If it is not this bill, it will be another one, so we need to be diligent.

    One of the biggest things that H.R. 127 would do is that it would create a national firearms registration system that would literally be accessible by anyone…

    HR 127 establishes a federal firearms registration system that will be accessible by federal, state, and local governments, including the military – even the GENERAL PUBLIC! The system will track the make, model, and serial number of all firearms, their owners, the dates they were acquired, and where they are being stored.

    So if your neighbor, a co-worker, or someone that just wanted to rob your home wanted to know how you were armed, all they would have to do would be to look it up in the firearms registration system.

    This bill would also apply retroactively.

    Within three months, you would have to report to the government where you bought all of your guns, when they were purchased, and where they are currently being stored.

    Needless to say, if the government knows where all of your guns are being stored, it would make it that much easier to grab them from you at some future date.

    H.R. 127 would also require all gun owners to be federally licensed.

    That would mean that owning a gun would no longer be a right.  Instead, it would be reduced to a “privilege” that the government could take away at any time.

    According to the bill, the licensing procedure would include “a psychological evaluation”…

    The licensing requirement mandates that the license applicant undergoes a criminal background check, and then submits to a psychological evaluation to determine whether the person is psychologically unsuited to possess a firearm. Successful licensees must show they have an insurance policy which will cost $800.

    I know a lot of guys out there that would definitely not want to go through any sort of a “psychological evaluation” by a government-approved psychologist.

    And it wouldn’t just be you that would get interviewed.

    According to the bill, spouses and other family members would be interviewed as well…

    For the psychological evaluation, a licensed psychologist will interview individuals’ spouses and at least two other family members or associates to “further determine the state of the mental emotional, and relational stability of the individual in relation to firearms.” Licenses will be denied to individuals hospitalized for issues such as depressive episodes; no duration for license disability is specified, and it does not matter whether the individual sought help voluntarily.

    The goal, of course, is to make owning guns as difficult as possible.

    Democrats figure that if they can put up as many barriers to gun ownership as possible, a lot less people will end up owning them.

    Thirdly, this bill would also greatly restrict the type of ammunition that you can own…

    Finally, HR 127 also criminalizes the possession of “large-capacity magazines” (those carrying greater than 10 rounds) and “ammunition that is 0.50 caliber or greater.”

    I know that all of this sounds utterly ridiculous, but the restrictions in this bill actually sound very, very similar to what Joe Biden has been publicly proposing…

    During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden promised a long list of gun control regulations. There is a reason that Michael Bloomberg spent $125 million helping Biden in Florida and something over $600 million nationally in the general election.

    The agenda includes: classifying many semi-automatic rifles and magazines holding more than 10 bullets as Class 3 weapons (which can require nine months or more for approval and a $200 fee), national gun licensing, “red flag” laws that let judges take away people’s guns without a hearing, background checks on the private transfer of guns, and bans on some semi-automatic firearms that happen to look like military weapons.

    Gun control is very high on the list of things that Joe Biden wants to get accomplished during the next four years.

    So like I said, if it isn’t this bill, it will be another one that is similar.

    They are coming for your 2nd Amendment, and they aren’t going to stop until they get what they want.

    Meanwhile, this is all happening at a time when murder rates all across America are going through the roof…

    “Homicide rates were higher during every month of 2020 relative to rates from the previous year,” the report states, calling the 30 percent surge “a large and troubling increase that has no modern precedent.”

    We have never seen major city murder rates jump by an average of 30 percent in a single year.

    Things are getting really crazy out there, and many believe that 2021 will be even worse.

    For almost a year, there has been civil unrest in our cities on an almost nightly basis.  As I write this, civil unrest has erupted in Rochester, New York.  We live at a time when rioting, looting, arson and vandalism have become commonplace, and the senseless violence that we have witnessed so far is just the leading edge of the storm.

    Millions of Americans can see what is happening to our society and they are quite concerned.  2020 was a record year for gun sales in the United States, and dealers have reported that demand is extremely strong so far in 2021 as well.

    The Democrats do not like this one bit, and they are going to do their very best to put a stop to it.

    Please let your friends, family and contacts know about H.R. 127, because an all-out attack on the 2nd Amendment is coming, but at this point most people are not even aware that it is about to happen.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/03/2021 – 00:00

  • "Soldiers Of The Future" – Russia Reveals 4th Generation Combat Gear For 2035 
    “Soldiers Of The Future” – Russia Reveals 4th Generation Combat Gear For 2035 

    The Russian military’s future appears to be dominated by advanced hypersonic missile technology, stealth fighter jets, and perhaps in the next 15 years, combat suits for infantrymen that resemble the military gear worn by “Master Chief” in the Halo video games. 

    State-owned defense giant Rostec State Corporation released a press release describing how it has begun work on a new combat suit for the “soldiers of the future.” The effort will result in the new suit being deployed on the modern battlefields by 2035.

    “The fourth-generation outfit is a principally new gear that demands looking into the future. It will unite the Russian military-defense complex’s latest achievements, new protection, and life-support systems, robotized equipment, and integrated information exchange systems. The outfit demands a big volume of research. We have begun the first stage to determine tactical and technical requirements,” Rostec Industrial Director Bekhan Ozdoev said.

    Rostec has already supplied the Russian military with 300,000 second-generation Ratnik combat gear outfits. The company is currently working on third-generation Sotnik gear that could be released by the mid-point of the decade. 

    Rostec’s Third-Generation Sotnik Combat Gear

    Rostec’s press release was vague regarding details about the fourth-generation gear. Ozdoev has said before that the new suit would be made with special armor that could withstand a .50 caliber shot. “The gear will not restrict movement and will allow you to take the extra weight necessary to perform special missions,” according to Ozdoev.

    Russia is also developing an exoskeleton that has already been field-tested in Syria while the US Army is still playing catch up with an exoskeleton still in testing. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 23:40

  • Our Oligarchs' Crisis Of Confidence
    Our Oligarchs’ Crisis Of Confidence

    Authored by Declan Leary via TheAmericanConservative.com,

    Let’s not attribute to malice that which can be explained by an insecure elite stumbling back into a tenuous grasp on power…

    On November 9, as the first week of election disputes started to wind down, Big Pharma giant Pfizer Inc. announced that its COVID vaccine had been tested and shown to be 90 percent effective.

    The timing was…fortuitous; cue the crazies. 

    Donald Trump, Jr. took to Twitter with the kind of vague suggestiveness that usually only works if you have something to suggest:

    “The timing of this is pretty amazing. Nothing nefarious about the timing of this at all right?”

    Charlie Kirk, a young conservative intellectual renowned for subtlety and nuance, took a similar tack in a Facebook video:

    “The reason is Pfizer wanted to wait until Joe Biden was coronated as president, so that Joe Biden could get the credit for this.”

    (Props to Charlie for the choice of “coronation” there, though his timing was off by a couple months.)

    History repeats itself – and since 2020 took all the good material, in 2021 we’ve already hit the reruns.

    On January 24, word got out that California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom planned to lift his Regional Stay Home Order, one of the strictest anti-COVID measures in the country. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, another pandemic hardliner whose iron fist inspired a hilariously ineffective kidnapping plot last year, likewise announced suspiciously close to the inauguration that her loyal subjects would be allowed to dine indoors beginning on February 2.

    Once again, murmurs issued from the lower-tier twitterati about the announcements’ suspicious timing. Some of it was serendipity, to be sure. Maybe, like Pfizer’s timeline being pushed back from just before the election to just after the election, it’s just a really bad look dictated by crappy circumstances. COVID numbers in both states are trending downward, and Newsom’s announcement came just as they’d dropped to the same point as when he’d put the order in place a month before. But there is a real question worth asking here, and it lies at the heart of our current political dysfunction: why do the people in power, in government and beyond, consistently act in a way that makes them look like part of some vast left-wing conspiracy? Why are tectonic policy shifts at the state level being arranged around the transfer of power at the federal? Why did the media and big business suddenly change their tune on the miracle date of January 20?

    I think the answer is fairly simple, and a lot less nefarious than some of the alternatives.

    We hear a lot of talk these days about “the politics of fear,” and it’s almost exclusively directed at the right (and almost exclusively in ridiculous ways): the only reason anyone possibly could have voted for Donald Trump is that they’re conditioned to fear Xi Jinping, or Jack Dorsey, or black people; the only reason to oppose progressive social policies is a fear of homosexuals, or of women, or of men who think they’re women; the only reason to reject the candidates of Wall Street—whose names are always tagged with a big, dark capital “D”—is fear that our backwards way of life will be ravaged by Kamala Harris’ lizard-people overlords; et cetera, et cetera, until it becomes apparent that the only possible explanation for any of the left’s electoral failures is some deep terror ingrained in the minds of half the voting public.

    But it’s worth talking too about the fear that drives the left.

    There’s the obvious example of the pandemic – the hysteria that left most of Blue America hunkered down like it was a nuclear apocalypse, only to bravely emerge from their bunkers in droves on November 3. That’s the same kind of fear that underlies the really fanatical climate stuff.

    But there’s another kind too, and it essentially boils down to a fear of opposition, a fear of not being in power.

    It’s a function of our adversarial politics: when you see no way of working with someone, when you can find no common ground, when the stated goals of that person go against everything you believe, you’re probably going to be terrified of any situation in which that person has power and you don’t. And it’s not fear of the extremes, either—call me an optimist, but I don’t think there are many people stupid enough to sincerely believe that Donald Trump is a fascist. We live in a world where four years of sometimes-successful administration by a scattershot, moderate conservative puts the fear of God in about 80 million people.

    So why does everything change the second 45 gives way to 46? It doesn’t require Don Jr.’s hypothetical nefarious plot. All it requires is that people in positions of power—the people who are terrified of losing those positions—act exactly as we would expect them to act under the influence of that terror. That doesn’t just mean Democratic governors who overplayed their hands, and then rethought their moves the second they stepped into a post-Trump world. It means the huge companies that, for the first time (and likely the last time) in a long time, didn’t have a buddy in the White House and now are ready to dive back into the game. It means the legacy media that went through a well-earned hell over the past five years, and now get a little breathing room to lob softball questions at a friendly politician. It means every American who subscribes to the progressive culture and narrative that dominate our institutions, who worried just for a moment that maybe they wouldn’t always be in control.

    Of course Gavin Newsom is going to do a 180 at the end of the age of Trump. He’s spent the last heaven-knows-how-long in a hysteric fugue, wrecking the bottom 90 percent of his state’s economy because he thought the world was ending. He came out of it to realize that there are consequences for the things you do in a panic, and that he was heading into a recall election. I don’t know everything; there’s always the outside possibility that Barack Obama and George Soros instructed Newsom on the necessary timeline during a weekend getaway at Bohemian Grove (or a pricey lunch at the French Laundry). But I find it more likely that the guy is just scrambling.

    Amazon is in a similar situation. On Inauguration Day, CEO Dave Clark sent a very buddy-buddy letter to Joe Biden, tripping over himself in a rush to announce the conglomerate’s eagerness to help with vaccine distribution. Of course, during the months the Trump administration had a vaccine in hand—or the months before, for that matter—the online megacorp made no such public offer. Were they holding the nation hostage? No vaccine until you vote the right way; scratch that, no vaccine until we’re absolutely sure that you all voted the right way and there’s no possible chance of going back. Again, anything’s possible—and speaking of lizard people, I’m suspicious of Jeff Bezos—but there are more probable explanations. Amazon’s profits skyrocketed during the pandemic, but so did negative attitudes among the public—as well as certain players in the federal government. I don’t see any imaginable world, even under Trump, where Amazon takes a real fall, but I can imagine plenty of ways that an unhappy government could make things a little harder for them. If I were Dave Clark, I’d be worried enough to curry favor with the new caudillo. I scratch your back, you stay 3,000 miles away from me.

    There are other reasons too, of course. A contract to help with the distribution of vaccines at the federal level is likely to be lucrative, and Donald Trump may have had the sense to deny it to Amazon. (Not least of all because the evidence has consistently shown that top-down distribution plans are failing, while locally oriented ones have seen remarkable success.) But at an even more fundamental level, Amazon wants to jump to the front of the queue. They’ve been pushing to get their labor force vaccinated as early as possible, including by a direct petition from Clark to the Centers for Disease Control. Can’t very well make record-breaking profits if all of your floor workers catch the WuFlu. A plum deal that keeps the labor force from needing sick days and boosts optics with the public and the feds may be exactly what Amazon needs just a few months after protesters set up a guillotine outside its founder’s Dupont Circle house.

    That’s one of the key takeaways here: these people are far too desperate to be as nefarious as we might think. The more outrageous aspects of the last few months—from Twitter censorship to post-election whiplash—may be best understood not as the first flashes of an ascendant tyranny, but as a flurry of idiotic moves by an elite who clearly have much less faith in their hold on power than we do.

    The wild saga of GameStop’s stock adventures over the past week or so is a perfect illustration of the point. When users of the subreddit r/wallstreetbets decided to invest in the video game chain, the price of the stock skyrocketed to peaks well over $400 (six months ago it was closer to $4). The move resulted in jaw-dropping profits for some of the amateur traders—and a whole lot of anger from the Wall Street establishment. Hedge funds and other big-dollar investors who had shorted the stock have lost over $5 billion altogether from the episode. So what did our robust market system do? Simple: citing market volatility, Robinhood and other day-trading services just restricted transactions on GameStop and other WallStreetBets picks. The big funds, meanwhile, were free to continue trading as normal. Besides giving the big guys a chance to get their ducks in a row, the freeze caused the stock to crash on Thursday morning, costing many amateur investors a pretty penny.

    It’s corrupt and immoral, and I’d be mad as hell if I’d been smart enough to get in on the GameStop craze. But it’s not the kind of thing that confident oligarchs do. It suggests the same fear that’s motivated so many decisions by people in power these past few months. Not to mention it may spark a backlash that will be well worth watching—and that may yet change our course in surprising ways.

    I’m as wary of the Wall Street-Silicon Valley-Washington axis as anyone. But it’s hard to be too afraid of any regime that can be thrown into such a devastating panic by a horde of Redditors buying GameStop stock from laptops in their mothers’ basements—or, for that matter, by a virus, or an election, or the host of The Apprentice.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 23:20

  • India Restricts Internet, Twitter Complies With Blockage Request As Farmers Protest Grows
    India Restricts Internet, Twitter Complies With Blockage Request As Farmers Protest Grows

    Parts of India are facing extended government-ordered internet blackouts as the Indian farmers protest movement has grown. The farmers allege Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s farming law, which ends the government’s programs to keep commodity prices at fixed levels, therefore allowing free markets to dictate prices, favors large corporations over smaller mom and pop farmers. 

    “Internet access remained blocked Monday in several districts of a state bordering India’s capital following violent weekend clashes between police and farmers protesting controversial agricultural reforms,” CNN reports at the start of a fresh week of clashes.

    Via AP

    “Online access would be suspended in at least 14 of 22 districts in Haryana state near New Delhi, until 5 p.m. Monday, according to the Department of Information and Public Relations of Haryana on Sunday,” CNN continues.

    The communications blackout which is intended to slow the unrest and ability of farmers to organize has been extended since it was put in place in a handful of districts last week.

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    The controversy has ensue since at least last summer with the farmers resisting Modi’s reforms and deregulation program, and have gotten increasingly organized.

    Protests have become especially fierce since the end of November, with tens of thousands of farmers clashing with police since establishing sit-in camps on the outskirts of New Delhi. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Early this week Twitter has moved to block protest-related accounts on orders from the central government which claimed a “grave threat” to public order:

    Twitter on Monday temporarily blocked dozens of accounts and tweets in India at the Hindu nationalist government’s request, including those of a prominent news magazine and farmers staging mass protests in the capital.

    An Information Technology ministry source told the AFP news agency the government had directed the social media giant to act against about 250 Twitter accounts and tweets that posed a “grave threat to public order”.

    An official representing the farmers said the move by the US social media giant is an outrage as the accounts “had not done anything wrong” other than to support freedom of protest and expression.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    An official Twitter statement over the controversy said “it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time.” 

    It said this occurs when “a properly scoped” request is made – whatever that means. 

    Meanwhile, pop singer Rihanna has highlighted the protests in a viral tweet on Tuesday.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    We wonder if Twitter also agrees with the government moving to cut off broad swathes of the population from internet access too?

    At the very least, the company’s blocking of the protest accounts appears to put it squarely on the side of the government crackdown.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 23:00

  • Has Joe Biden Lost His Mind?
    Has Joe Biden Lost His Mind?

    Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

    Are you an accidental dependent of Washington?  Many people are.  And many people don’t even realize it.

    Systems of elaborate folly have been erected with the most impossible of promises.  That wealth can be created without production.  That stimmy checks can be paid without taxes.  That everyone can get free solar power at the expense of their neighbors.

    Central to these promises are the central government and central planning authorities.  They promise ease and comfort and, in return, they make you a dependent.  They promise a secure retirement, and free drugs, while running a scheme that’s beyond Charles Ponzi’s wildest dreams.

    Social Security, no doubt, is a tempting idea.  The government confiscates part of your paycheck every two weeks.  Then, in return, and after putting in 45 years, your retirement is subsidized.  You can enjoy your golden years in comfort.

    According to Rachel Greszler, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation:

    “[Social Security’s] America’s favorite entitlement program, and part of the reason it’s so popular is it’s not solvent.”

    Indeed, the most popular programs are those that promise people they’ll get out more than they put in.  The promise is so appealing people trust that by hook or crook their government leaders will deliver.  Alas, those counting on Social Security may suffer a grave disappointment.

    Collision Course With Disaster

    From the get go, it really didn’t take much abstract thinking to recognize that Social Security would eventually go broke.  Any honest assessment could discern it was doomed to fail.  All Ponzi schemes are.

    In 1939, before the first check was ever cut, John T. Flynn predicted Social Security would be under water by 1970 and insolvent by 1980.  Despite being called a crank by the political elites of the day, Flynn was right.  In fact, without the Greenspan Commission and the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, Flynn’s prediction would have been off by merely three years.

    But Greenspan didn’t solve the Social Security problem.  He merely extended it further into the future.  And in doing so he set up several generations of workers to be dependents…at the worst possible time.

    Right now we’re on a collision course with disaster.  Take government debt, for instance.  Over the last decade, real gross domestic product (GDP) has increased from about $15.6 trillion to about $18.6 trillion.  Over this same period, the national debt has increased from $13.5 trillion to $27.8 trillion.

    Clearly, there’s a fundamental divergence between economic growth and government debt growth.  Over the last decade real GDP has increased by $3 trillion – or by 19.2 percent.  Yet the national debt has increased by $14.3 trillion – or by 105.9 percent.

    Over an extended period, this divergence results in two dramatically different growth curves.  Government debt now dwarfs GDP by $9.2 trillion.  Do you think we’ll grow its way out of this?

    But wait, it gets worse.  The divergence between GDP and government debt is a major problem.  Yet it ignores an even larger story.  Specifically, it ignores the story of unfunded liabilities…

    Has Joe Biden Lost His Mind?

    The current price tag for unfunded liabilities – for Social Security, Medicare (Parts A, B, and D), federal debt held by the public, and federal employee and veteran benefits – is $158.9 trillion.  Again, GDP’s just $18.6 trillion.  Anyone under 50 years old that’s depending on Social Security to supplement them in retirement is toast.  Many people older than 50 are also toast.

    One generation always incubates the bacteria of the ailments which dominate the next one.  Yesterday’s actions reared the things which control the present.  So, too, today’s actions breed the things which will control tomorrow.

    At this very moment, we’re living with several unfavorable gifts from our forbearers.  Namely, social safety nets constructed many decades ago that don’t pencil out.  These safety nets are now stretching and fraying at the seams, at the precise moment when tens of millions of Baby Boomers will rely on them most.

    The first people into a Ponzi scheme always make out like bandits.  For example, Ida May Fuller cashed the first Social Security check, Check No. 00-000-001, dated January 31, 1940, in the amount of $22.54.  With just one check, she nearly recouped the full value of the $24.75 that she paid in.

    However, Fuller continued to cash these checks until she died on January 27, 1975.  In total, the $24.75 she paid in, ended up paying $22,888.92 back out to her.  What a bargain!

    According to official estimated from the Social Security Administration, just 79 percent of promised benefits will be payable in 2035 due to depletion of its trust funds.  Yet even though everyone’s known Social Security was going bust, most people haven’t done a thing to prepare for it.  Instead they’ve buried their collective heads in the sand like an unassuming ostrich.

    If you can believe it, three out of five families headed by a person age 65 or older have no money in retirement savings accounts.  The promise of Social Security misled them in damaging and irreversible ways.  Or did it?

    President Biden is currently preoccupied with delivering the American people from the evils of COVID-19. 

    After that, he intends to save us from global warming.  But that’s not all…

    Biden also promises to reform Social Security. 

    Per CNBC:

    “Under his [Biden’s] plan, eligible workers would get a guaranteed minimum benefit equal to at least 125 percent of the federal poverty level.  People who have received benefits for at least 20 years would get a 5 percent bump.  Widows and widowers would receive about 20 percent more per month.”

    To pay for it, Biden proposes to soak the rich with additional Social Security payroll taxes on those earning $400,000 and up. 

    Regardless, these token promises amount to merely rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.

    Surely Biden doesn’t think Social Security can be reformed, does he?

    Perhaps he’s lost his mind.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 22:40

  • China Top Diplomat Warns Biden Not To Cross "Red Line" Of Interests
    China Top Diplomat Warns Biden Not To Cross “Red Line” Of Interests

    In a much anticipated speech which marked the first time China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, addressed an American audience under the new administration at the New York based National Committee on US-China Relations, the top Communist Party official warned the US it must stop interfering Beijing’s “core interests” in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet affairs or else it risks crossing China’s “red line”.

    Ostensibly a gesture signaling China wants cooperation with the US under Biden, Yang as director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission and member of the powerful 25-member Politburo, urged that Biden abandon Trump’s “misguided policies against China” which has plunged the relationship into its “most difficult period since the establishment of diplomatic ties”.

    Yang Jiechi, Getty Images

    In the remote video address Yang laid out, “We believe that peace and development are still the prevailing trend of the times, and that peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation remain the shared aspiration of all peoples,” according to Bloomberg.

    Listing a number of flashpoints where already since his Jan.20 inauguration President Biden has eyed pressuring Beijing over human rights issues and anti-democracy crackdown, most notably Hong Kong and the Uighur persecution in northwest Xinjiang province (and of course Taiwan continues to loom large), Yang said forcefully:

    “They constitute a red line that must not be crossed. Any trespassing would end up undermining China-U.S. relations, and the United States’s own interests.”

    “We in China hope that the United States will rise above the outdated mentality of zero-sum, major-power rivalry and work with China to keep the relationship on the right track,” he added.

    Yang then spelled out the specific pressing grievances, which include “harassing Chinese students, restricting Chinese media outlets, shutting down Confucius Institutes and suppressing Chinese companies,” according to the speech – all of which were significant Trump policies and escalations of the last year of his administration.

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    “These issues concern China’s core interests, national dignity, as well as the sensitivities of its 1.4 billion people,” Yang emphasized in the video address. “They constitute a red line which must not be crossed.”

    The firm “warning” comes after newly confirmed Secretary of State Antony Blinken focused some of his first official statements last week on China’s egregious human rights record. 

    “We’ve seen China act egregiously to undermine the very commitments it made during the handover of Hong Kong,” Blinken said.

    Blinken had also last week affirmed his unwavering support for “standing up for our values when China is challenging them, including in Xinjiang against the Uighurs.” All of this also comes as tensions are soaring around Taiwan in the South China Sea, with both US and Chinese vessels and warplanes conducting show of strength exercises there.

    As The Wall Street Journal has underscored, there’s been a number of such speeches by Chinese government officials in the past days aimed at reaching American leaders, which lay out a vision for improved Sino-US relations, but squarely on Beijing’s terms:

    Vice Premier Wang Qishan told business leaders in the U.S. last week that China seeks a relationship of mutual respect and devoid of conflict and confrontation, according to a summary of the private meeting in the state-run China Daily. An American who joined the video meeting said Mr. Wang was uncompromising in describing China’s governance model as correct.

    Mr. Wang’s message, this person said, was effectively: “Here are the rules of the road.”

    So far it doesn’t look like the Biden administration looks to play by these rules, given the latest words out of the White House in no way appear the kind of departure from the prior Trump/Pompeo hardline tone that China was hoping for…

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    * * *

    Here’s a brief overview of the 25-minute address as provided by Bloomberg:

    • Trump policies have severely damaged U.S.-China ties, Yang says in a virtual speech to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
    • U.S.-China relations stand at key moment, both must restore ties to predictable, constructive track
    • Case for greater China-U.S. cooperation is strong, Yang says
    • China prepared to work with U.S. to move ties forward: Yang
    • China will continue to defend sovereignty, security
    • It’s wrong to view China as strategic competitor, Yang says
    • U.S. politicians must not use COVID to stigmatize China: Yang
    • U.S. should stop abusing national security, should increase international cooperation

    Watch the full virtual address below, which took place Tuesday (Beijing time):

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 22:20

  • Embattled Pennsylvania Secretary Of State Resigns After Botching Constitutional Amendment
    Embattled Pennsylvania Secretary Of State Resigns After Botching Constitutional Amendment

    Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D), who came under fire for extending deadlines for absentee voters to provide missing proof of identification – has resigned for failing to comply with an unrelated state election law.

    Boockvar botched a constitutional amendment which would have allowed sexual abuse victims more time to sue their alleged abusers. Pennsylvania law requires that the secretary of state’s office must publicize proposed amendments in two newspapers in each of the state’s 67 counties ahead of the election and between two separate votes, which her office failed to do.

    Her last day in office will be Feb. 5.

    “Because of the error, the process to amend the constitution must now start from the beginning, unless the General Assembly pursues this initiative through the bill process,” said Gov. Tom Wolf (D) in a statement.

    Wolf also noted that “This change at the Department of State has nothing to do with the administration of the 2020 election, which was fair and accurate,” adding “The delay caused by this human error will be heartbreaking for thousands of survivors of childhood sexual assault, advocates and legislators, and I join the Department of State in apologizing to you. I share your anger and frustration that this happened, and I stand with you in your fight for justice.”

    Boockvar made headlines in November after she usurped the power of the state legislature and unilaterally sought to accept mail-in ballots three days after the Nov. 3 election, while also extending the deadline for absentee voters to ‘cure’ their ballots by providing missing proof of identification. Both the state and the US supreme courts sided with Boockvar – with the latter after Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the liberal members of the court to block the GOP’s challenge.

    GOP Sen. Josh Hawley (MO) objected to the certification of Pennsylvania’s electoral results for Joe Biden following a riot at the US Capitol by protesters who disrupted proceedings.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 22:00

  • Reddit Trader DeepFuc*ingValue Loses $19 Million In Two Days As He Holds On To Gamestop Stock
    Reddit Trader DeepFuc*ingValue Loses $19 Million In Two Days As He Holds On To Gamestop Stock

    Earlier this week, one of the most notorious and popular WallStreetBets traders, best known by his alias DeepFuckingValue, by his YouTube username Roaring Kitty, and perhaps best known as the mastermind behind the Gamestop short squeeze, revealed himself to the world in concurrent articles from both Reuters and the WSJ (where he was also interviewed). His real name: Keith Patrick Gill, CFA, a title which the 34-year-old used while working in marketing for Mass Mutual, which he joined in 2019. The title then became worthless to Gill after he recently quit the life insurer to focus on just one thing: trading and spreading the gospel about Gamestop stock out of a basement of the home he rents in Wilmington, Mass… and boy was he successful.

    Regular readers know the story: through frequent posts on Reddit’s WallStreetBets thread, Gill became the Pied Piper of GameStop, sharing screenshots of his portfolio which inspired thousands of amateur retail investors to follow him into the ailing retailer too, while orchestrating the biggest short squeeze ever.

    Keith Gill, also known as u/DeepFuckingValue.

    Gill began sharing his bets with the group in September 2019, posting a portfolio screenshot indicating he had invested $53,000 in the company and had already netted a $46,000 profit. By last Wednesday, Gill was up over 4000% on stock and options investments in the company, with his GME position plus cash worth nearly $48 million (the value of his GME investments was $34 million), according to his Reddit posts.

    Source: Reddit

    Sadly for Gill, after his account peaked in the middle of last week, it’s all been downhill, and the money that took Gill over a year to accumulate he lost more than half in just two days: on Feb 1, DFV was down $5.2 million to $35.8 million including the cash, or $22 million in GME securities…

    Source: Reddit

    … followed by a record drawdown earlier today, when he lost a record $13.6 million bringing the value of his GME securities to just $8.4 million.

    Source: Reddit

    While for a hedge fund this sum is pocket change, for a trader who started off with $50,000 and worked diligently for nearly two years to build up a loyal following, the amount means months of hard work flushed down the drain. For most Americans, it’s an amount they can only dream of.

    And just like that, easy come, easy go: in the span of a few days, the value of Gill’s GME stock and call has plunged by 75%.

    Of course, with $22 million still in the account (thanks to $14 million in cash), Gill remains a winner although should GME stock continue to drop – and it most likely will not that the short interest has collapsed – his victory will get smaller… but at least he’ll hold.

    “Your steady hand convinced many of us to not only buy, but hold. Your example has literally changed the lives of thousands of ordinary normal people. Seriously thank you. You deserve every penny,” one Reddit user, reality_czech, responded to one of DFV’s famous P&L screengrabs.

    We are confident that Gill will have lots of pennies left over long after the GME short squeeze is forgotten, but to all those who followed in his footsteps and bought the stock on the furious momentum scramble higher over the past two weeks – all of whom are now underwater if they too held without selling since Jan 26 – and who plan on holding until the bitter end, they may not be so lucky.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 21:50

  • Guess Which Side The Corporate Media Is Taking In The GameStop Story…
    Guess Which Side The Corporate Media Is Taking In The GameStop Story…

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    You would think that a plucky group of Internet rebels standing up to a bunch of notorious hedge funds and short sellers would be a story that even the mainstream media should be able to get right, but apparently that is not the case.  As you will see below, the corporate-controlled media is attempting to convince all of us that the hedge funds and the short sellers are actually “the good guys” and that the “Reddit army” that is taking them on is a bunch of dangerous insurrectionists that are a threat to the entire system.  Of course I suppose that it shouldn’t be a surprise that the corporate-controlled media is standing up for the establishment, because the establishment showers them with millions of advertising dollars.  But it really has been disgusting to watch them totally sell out like this.  If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you would be tempted to believe that we now live in a “Bizarro World” in which everything that was once evil is now good and everything that was once good is now evil.

    Just within the past few days, the New York Times has called the “Reddit army” a “rebellion”, Investing Daily has referred to it as an “insurrection”, and NBC News has used the word “insurgency” to describe it.

    But first prize actually goes to the Washington Post.  They had the gall to run a story entitled “The good guys in the GameStop story? It’s the hedge funds and short sellers”…

    The Gamestop speculators are not merely in a frenzy about one stock. Their goal is to destroy the traders who link stock prices to fair value. To suggest a political analogy, they are not just blindly devoted to their candidate; they deny the legitimacy of the opposition party. They are not just acting within the system; they want to overthrow the system. It’s as though — just imagine — a rabble gripped by conspiracy theories were to attack the rules of democracy itself. The name “Gamestop” is apt.

    Are you kidding me?

    What is next?  Is the Post going to come out with a story about how Luke Skywalker was evil because he wanted to overthrow the established order that Darth Vader and the Emperor had instituted across the galaxy?

    The official slogan of the Washington Post is “Democracy Dies In Darkness”, and that is quite ironic because they have totally gone over to the dark side.  In the same article that I just quoted above, the Post laughably asserted that “a market without short sellers” would be like “a political system without investigative journalists”…

    What about short sellers? These are specialists who research stocks that might go down, sometimes because bosses are illegally covering up bad news about their companies. When short sellers identify a case of fraud or similar, they borrow and sell the stock, hoping to buy it back at a lower price later. Again, there is nothing evil about this. To the contrary, it’s a way of keeping prices honest. A market without short sellers is like a political system without investigative journalists.

    Yes, let us take a moment of silence right now to acknowledge all of the wonderful contributions that short sellers have made to our society.

    It really has been amazing to watch the lengths that some in the mainstream media will go to in an attempt to demonize the retail traders that have banded together to go after the short sellers.  On CNN’s website, Chris Cillizza did his best to try to turn the “woke mob” against the Reddit traders by linking them with Trump.  The following comes from his article entitled “How Trumpism explains the GameStop stock surge”…

    The point is that there is no real point beyond showing up the pros — proving to them that they aren’t as smart as they think they are and that they don’t have the ability to control everything.

    Which, again, has its roots in Trumpism. The entire notion of Trump’s candidacy and presidency was to stick it to the elites. And then, well, uh, there wasn’t really a plan beyond that. The screwjob was the point.

    Others have gone even farther.  To me, it was extremely offensive when former SEC Commissioner Laura Unger compared the short squeeze on Wall Street to the rioting at the U.S. Capitol.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Of course whenever something happens that the establishment really doesn’t like, it is just a matter of time before they start blaming Russia.

    The other night, Jimmy Kimmel suggested that “maybe even some Russian disrupters” were at least partially responsible for the chaos on Wall Street, and MarketWatch actually published an article entitled “The GameStop saga is a road map for the Kremlin and other enemies of America”.

    Ever since the 2016 election, Russia has become the ultimate boogeyman.

    If something major goes wrong, Russia has to be blamed for it somehow.

    President Trump at least attempted to keep our relations with Russia fairly stable while he was in office, but now that he is gone I have a feeling that U.S. relations with Russia are going to completely fall apart.

    But that is a topic for another article.

    Getting back to the topic at hand, the short sellers only have themselves to blame for what happened.  The number of GameStop shares that had been sold short was greater than the number of GameStop shares that actually existed, and that was a golden invitation for anyone that wanted to attempt a massive short squeeze.

    If it wasn’t the Reddit army, it was probably going to be someone else.

    What a year this has been already.

    On the first Wednesday of 2021, there was a massive riot at the U.S. Capitol.

    On the second Wednesday of 2021, President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives.

    On the third Wednesday of 2021, Joe Biden was inaugurated.

    On the fourth Wednesday of 2021, the GameStop short squeeze made headlines all over the globe.

    So will something historic happen this Wednesday?

    We shall see, but without a doubt the chaos that we have witnessed so far is just the very start of our troubles.

    Everywhere you look, people are extremely angry.

    And everywhere you look, our system is being greatly shaken.

    Most Americans are sick and tired of the corruption and injustice that they see all around them, and they know that our “leaders” aren’t going to do anything about it.

    People are increasingly taking matters into their own hands, and the Reddit army is thrilled that the hedge funds and the short sellers can finally feel their fury.

    But fury is not going to fix our system.

    At this point, nothing will.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 21:40

  • JPM Warns Amazon And Google's Blockbuster Results May Have Marked The Top
    JPM Warns Amazon And Google’s Blockbuster Results May Have Marked The Top

    Earlier today we reported that traders were “on edge” ahead of today’s earnings reports by giga-cap tech giants Google and Amazon, because in a “perverse” market such as this one, where even solid beats are punished, a disappointment by either of the two companies could have led to a broader market selloff. We now know, of course, that both companies reported blowout results and the real highlights wasn’t the two FAAMG giants’ Q4 earnings but rather the departure of the world’s 2nd richest man, Jeff Bezos, from the helm of his company.

    For those who missed it, here is a breakdown of the results (via JPM):

    • AMZN – Blow out numbers for Q4 and Q1 guide looks more than enough. More focus likely to be on Bezos’ transitioning to an Exec Chair role by Q3.

      • Q4 net sales +42% FXN (whisper high-30s %) to $125.6b vs St $119.7b, guide$112-121b. AWS +% vs whisper 28-29%. Op Income $6.9b vs whisper $5b+, guide $1.0-4.5b. For Q1, co guiding to net sales $100-106b (+30-37% cc y/y) and opincome $3.0-6.5b vs expectations $99-100b and ~$6b. Co announce that Bezos will transition to an Exec Chair role over in Q3 with Andy Jassy (CEO AWS) hisreplacement.oStock trading +28bps post-market

    • GOOGL – Q4 Properties growth hits +23% (whisper 17-18%) and Margins well ahead.

      • Q4 revenue +23% FXHN (whisper ~20%) to $56.9b vs St $52.8b. Within that,Properties +22% (exp +17%) to $38.8b vs St $35.7b (Search +17%, YouTube+46%). Cloud +47% vs exp ~50%. Google Op Income $15.6b vs St $11.8b, OtherBets -$1.14b vs St -$1.25b. Cloud Op Income margin for 2020 was -13.6% (JPMe +2.0%). Co bought back $7.9b in the Q (expectation ~$8b).oStock trading +5.5% post-marke

    And yet even though both AMZN and GOOGL stocks jumped after hours, one bank warned that despite the favorable response by the market, this could be as good as it gets.

    As JPMorgan’s Andrew Tyler wrote in his daily market intel piece, “with Amazon and Alphabet/Google today, each of the FAAMNG names have now beaten revenue and earnings expectations.”

    The question, however, is now that all the upside catalysts are out of the picture, “what’s next for the group” asks JPM and cautions that “it is possible that you see the group used as a source of funds with no major catalysts on the horizon and lowered risk of a Reddit-inspired move.”

    Which brings up a follow on question: “If FANG+ fail to rally from here, can the broader tape move higher? There has been increasing chatter across the Street that the combination of positioning and valuation may trigger a pullback.”

    On its own, the answer to the latter question would be yes. However, in a world where hedge funds now scramble to delever at the faintest whisper of a short squeeze emerging from the r/wallstreetbets subreddit, could we be on the verge of a perfect storm for stocks, where all the good news are more than priced in, and the smallest turbulence sparks a liquidation cascade?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 21:20

  • US Mint Warns It Can't Meet "Surging Demand" For Silver & Gold
    US Mint Warns It Can’t Meet “Surging Demand” For Silver & Gold

    With The Fed printing money ‘out the wazoo’, monetizing COVID relief package debt as fast as Congress can pass the bills, demand for bullion was already surging. However, the last week or so, on the heels of the Reddit-Raiders taking aim at Silver, demand for silver (and gold coins) has exploded…

    Sales of U.S. gold bullion coins rose 258% in 2020 while silver coin demand was up 28%, the U.S. Mint said Tuesday.

    Which has led to bullion dealers running dry of stock and physical premium to paper silver prices soaring to record highs.

    “There are massive shortages. We’ll be completely out of stock if it carries on like this – the first time since our company opened in Singapore seven years ago,” said David Mitchell, managing director at Indigo Precious Metals.

    “In the short term, stocks may run out since it takes a long time for sea shipping, but overall supply is ample,” said Peter Fung, head of dealing at Hong Kong-based Wing Fung Precious Metals.

    And now, courtesy of Reuters, we have an answer to the shortage.

    The US Mint is limiting distribution of its gold, silver and platinum coins to specific dealers because of heavy demand, and a limited number of suppliers of metals, it said in a statement.

    The United States Mint said on Tuesday it was unable to meet surging demand for its gold and silver bullion coins in 2020 and through January, due partly to pandemic-driven demand and plant capacity issues… Heavy buying has continued in 2021, it said, squeezing supplies, which had already been tight as the coronavirus affected production.

    The last time the US Mint ‘admitted’ its inability to meet demand was in June 2010.

    And the reaction in precious metals was…

    Trade accordingly.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 21:00

  • Semi Shortage Stings Ford, Forcing More Layoffs And Shift Reductions
    Semi Shortage Stings Ford, Forcing More Layoffs And Shift Reductions

    Automakers are in the midst of dealing with two major supply chain crises at once. First, they are still dealing with the remains of a global supply chain lockup that occurred as a result of Covid-19. And more recently, they have been dealing with a semiconductor shortage, which we have covered extensively on Zero Hedge, that has forced some manufacturers to shutter and slow down production. 

    Now, Ford has announced it is making even more production cuts and temporary layoffs at its Chicago Assembly Plant. The most recent round of layoffs is being attributed to the supply chain disruptions in semiconductors, according to The Pantagraph. 

    The affected plants, which will be subject to layoffs or shift reductions, are:

    • Dearborn Assembly Plant, which makes the F-150 pickup.

    • Kansas City Assembly Plant, which makes the F-150

    • Louisville Assembly Plant, which makes the Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair

    • Chicago Assembly Plant, which makes the Explorer, Police Interceptor and Lincoln Aviator

    “At the Chicago Assembly Plant, two shifts will be laid off next week,” the report says. 

    A letter written by UAW Local 551 Chairman Coby Millender that has been circulating in Chicago warns workers to be wise with their finances:

    “The company has informed us that beginning next week, they want to have B and C crew laid off initially for one week with a strong potential for additional weeks. It’s totally based on how soon the supplier resolves this issue. I just wanted to make you aware 551, so that you can begin to plan accordingly. Be wise with your finances.”

    Recall, we wrote just days ago how the industry was “panicked” about the semi shortage. Major players like VW, Toyota and GM are still suffering from a shortage of chips that are becoming more common in everyday vehicles, we noted. The drain on the supply chain has come from a corresponding rise in the sales of gaming consoles, TVs and computers – mostly as a result of the pandemic. The chips are now being used in everything from vehicle entertainment centers to anti-lock brakes. 

    Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Stellantis, told the Financial Times: “I am here to protect the fact that my company is treated fairly. I will look for all possible solutions. If I need to I will fight back [to ensure its chip contracts are met].”

    The unexpected disruption is the first time the industry has truly thought long and hard about the supply chain it uses for semiconductors. Only about 10% of semiconductor fabrication plants are used for automotive parts, FT notes. Since there is no “quick fix”, the shortage is expected to drag on for “at least” 6 months. Companies like Taiwan Semiconductor are, at the same time, still trying to address fallout from U.S. sanctions. 

    One China based supplier told FT: “The sanctions meant some clients redirected their orders from SMIC to other places, such as TSMC. Inside the industry, we are all pretty panicked, because the scope of the chip shortage is too big, and affects too many types. In the short term, we can’t see any way of resolving it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 20:40

  • No Country For Young Men?
    No Country For Young Men?

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    All of the Employment Gains for 20 Years Are From Those Aged 60 and Over

    Here’s a fascinating look at employment trends for the past 20 years and what’s driving them.

    Demographics Plus the Employment Population Ratio

    St. Louis Fed writer William Emmons notes the chart is a function of population growth and the Employment-Population ratio.

    What’s Driving This Outcome

    1. The older population (60 and older) grew much faster than the younger population (16-59). 

    2. The employment-to-population (E-P) ratio among those 60 and older increased significantly while the E-P ratio among the younger population declined, on balance. 

    3. The older population is likely to continue growing faster than the younger group. 

    4. The E-P ratio of the 60 and older group is likely to increase further as the health and educational attainment of older people continues to improve and the demand for older workers persists. 

    The above points from Older Workers Accounted for All Net Employment Growth in Past 20 Years

    Burger Biggie

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    This reminds me of something I said just before and during the great recession. Unfortunately, I cannot find a link but it went like this.

    “Parents will be competing with their kids and grandkids for jobs.”

    Well here we are. 

    When I grew up there was hardly anyone over the age of 50 working in fast food chains. 

    Now? What percentage of fast food, Sam’s Club, or Walmart greeters are under the age of 50? What percentage are part-time?

    What About Employer Health Care Coverage?

    Note that Health Care Coverage for part-time employees is optional.  

    Those between the age of 60 and 65 cannot wait to reach the age of 65 so they can get on Medicare. 

    Obamacare Impact

    Thanks to Obamacare, younger workers pay more than their fair share as a subsidy to their parents and grandparents.

    Push for $15 Minimum Wage

    The push for $15 in minimum wage plus rapidly rising health care costs further incentivizes part-time work, overseas outsourcing, and robotics to eliminate the jobs altogether.

    That’s the rest of the story.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 20:20

  • Amazon Reports Blowout Quarter, Jeff Bezos Stepping Down As CEO
    Amazon Reports Blowout Quarter, Jeff Bezos Stepping Down As CEO

    With Amazon and Google, together representing a whopping $3.1 trillion in market cap almost as large as the entire Russell 2000, set to report earnings after the close Bloomberg noted that some investors were nervous that anything but a massive beat, well in excess of expectations would be required to avoid a dip in the Nasdaq (recall last week’s drop in AAPL and TSLA stock following stellar earnings reports).

    So what is the absolute lowest numbers that Amazon has to beat in Q4 to avoid sliding? Here are the consensus estimates:

    • Net sales: $119.70 billion
    • GAAP EPS: $7.34
    • AWS net sales: $12.77 billion
    • Operating income: $4.47 billion

    Amazon was expected to post a record year, its sales supercharged by the pandemic with the online retail giant among the main beneficiaries. The debate retail watchers are having now is the extent to which people are going to go back to physical stores when the virus recedes.

    * * *

    So with all that in mind, how did Amazon do? Well, in light of the continued covid lockdowns, it will probably not be a surprise that it was another blockbuster quarter for the retailer which blew away consensus estimates:

    • Q4 Net Sales $125.56B, beating estimates of $119.70B
    • Q4 EPS $14.09, smashing estimates of $7.340, more than double the $6.47 year ago.
    • Q4 Operating Income $6.9B, beating estimates of $4.47B, up 77% Y/Y
    • Q4 AWS Net Sales $12.74B, just missing estimates of $12.77B, up 28% Y/Y
      • Amazon Web Services net sales +28% vs. +34% y/y, estimate +28.3%
    • Fulfillment expense $18.47 billion, estimate $18.52 billion

    Looking ahead, the company’s guidance was also solid:

    • Amazon Sees 1Q Net Sales $100.0B to $106.0B, Est. $95.72B
    • Operating income Q1 expected between $3.0 billion and $6.5 billion, compared with $4.0 billion in first quarter 2020.

    … but the real bombshell in today’s report is that CEO Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO and “transition” to the role of executive chair in Q3 2021, who after 27 years at the helm of the retailer he founder, is ending an era at Amazon.

    Discussing his life plans after Amazon, Bezos says that “as Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have.”

    Bezos will be replaced with Andy Jassy – currently the CEO of Amazon Web Services – as CEO of the entire company at that time.

    Jeff’s parting words:

    Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to. We have things in the pipeline that will continue to astonish. We serve individuals and enterprises, and we’ve pioneered two complete industries and a whole new class of devices. We are leaders in areas as varied as machine learning and logistics, and if an Amazonian’s idea requires yet another new institutional skill, we’re flexible enough and patient enough to learn it.

    Keep inventing, and don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It remains Day 1.

    Here is the letter sent from Bezos to the company’s employees:

    Fellow Amazonians:

    I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.

    This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.

    Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.

    How did that happen? Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.

    I don’t know of another company with an invention track record as good as Amazon’s, and I believe we are at our most inventive right now. I hope you are as proud of our inventiveness as I am. I think you should be.

    As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope to lead on important social issues. Two high-impact examples: our $15 minimum wage and the Climate Pledge. In both cases, we staked out leadership positions and then asked others to come along with us. In both cases, it’s working. Other large companies are coming our way. I hope you’re proud of that as well.

    I find my work meaningful and fun. I get to work with the smartest, most talented, most ingenious teammates. When times have been good, you’ve been humble. When times have been tough, you’ve been strong and supportive, and we’ve made each other laugh. It is a joy to work on this team.

    As much as I still tap dance into the office, I’m excited about this transition. Millions of customers depend on us for our services, and more than a million employees depend on us for their livelihoods. Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else. As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have.

    Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to. We have things in the pipeline that will continue to astonish. We serve individuals and enterprises, and we’ve pioneered two complete industries and a whole new class of devices. We are leaders in areas as varied as machine learning and logistics, and if an Amazonian’s idea requires yet another new institutional skill, we’re flexible enough and patient enough to learn it.

    Keep inventing, and don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It remains Day 1.

    Jeff

    In stepping down from day-to-day leadership and taking and executive chairman role, Jeff Bezos is following the path laid down by Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates, who after handing off control to Steve Ballmer, stayed involved in many of Microsoft’s most important initiatives, advising engineers regularly. Bezos’s farewell letter to employees seems to envision a similar role: “I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives.”

    So who is Andy Jassy? As Bloomberg notes, for those of you who haven’t tracked Amazon’s rise to the top of cloud computing, here is a little background:

    • He’s a longtime Amazonian, and a former technical advisor, a sort of chief of staff role, to Jeff Bezos.
    • Colleagues say he’s Bezos-like in his preference for data-driven decisionmaking and customer focus.
    • The unit he led, Amazon Web Services, reshaped how companies buy technology. It is far and away the leader in rented software services and computing power.
    • After the retirement earlier this year of Amazon’s consumer unit CEO Jeff Wilke, Jassy was the natural heir apparent. This makes that official.

    AMZN’s new CEO Andy Jassy.

    Jassy’s ascent to the top comes amid calls to spin out AWS as a separate company, however, today’s decision appears to be the main reason why Bezos resisted that pressure.

    Going back to the Q4 numbers, they will clearly take on a secondary importance after this blockbuster news, we find that the company’s revenue grew by a whopping 44% in Q4, the biggest increase since 2011 (with Q1 midline revenue projected to grow a solid 36.5%.

    At the same time, profit margin dipped modestly in Q4, sliding from 6.4% in Q3 to 5.5%

    While International profit margins dipped (after turning positive for the first time ever in Q2), it was the decline in AWS margins to 27.9%, the lowest since 2019, that may spook some investors.

    The company ends the quarter with a record 1.3 million workers, up 63% Y/Y

    And speaking of Jassy’s AWS, the Amazon cloud segment had another solid quarter, bringing in $12.7 billion in sales, just under analyst estimates. Operating margin was up year over year for a fourth consecutive quarter. That’s going to reassure investors looking for strength from Amazon’s de facto cash machine amid fierce competition from rivals like Microsoft and Google.

    Looking ahead, during the call, CFO Olsavsky said COVID expenses in Q1 will drop to $2 billion from $4 billion in Q4 mostly since the warehouses are less busy than they were during the holiday quarter. Olsavsky also said that Jeff Bezos “will remain deeply involved in product development and innovation” although there is still no announcement on who will run cloud unit.

    The stock initially tumbled on the news of Bezos’ departure, which is already trending on Twitter…

    … only to rip higher as attention shifted back to the company’s blowout earnings and the realization that between his divorce and his shmoozing across Hollywood parties, Bezos had already checked out:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 20:12

  • Gone In 60 Seconds: Catalytic Converter Theft Erupts Across Country 
    Gone In 60 Seconds: Catalytic Converter Theft Erupts Across Country 

    Local news stations across the country report a dramatic increase in catalytic converter thefts.  

    Catalytic converters, which are part of a car’s exhaust system, are sought out by thieves because they contain precious metals and can be sold for scrap. 

    With metal prices booming, thieves use cordless reciprocating saws to cut a car’s catalytic converter in under 60 seconds. 

    Thieves have been targeting commercial vehicles in industrial parking lots and even cars in residential neighborhoods. 

    In the last few days, there are endless stories of catalytic converter thefts from across the country, from Louisville, Kentucky, to Rochester, New York, to Olmsted Falls, Ohio, to Sherman, Texas.

    Thieves are after platinum, palladium, and rhodium inside the converters. Thieves can easily strip down exhaust part and extract the precious metals, turning around and selling it to scrap yards for a handsome profit. 

    Internet search trends for “catalytic converter thefts” erupted during the beginning of the pandemic when tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs. Simultaneously, trillions of dollars in stimulus via the central bank and federal government resulted in surging asset prices, including different types of metals, which made catalytic converter scrap prices jump. Thieves asked themselves, why steal copper wire when catalytic converters bring more money. 

    What’s also interesting is that during the pandemic, interest searches for “catalytic converter scrap price” have surged to record highs – it seems like a lot of people are interested in scrapping valuable car parts. 

    Earlier this year, AOC said crime in New York City is on the rise due to people “stealing bread to feed their children.” Maybe they’re not stealing bread but rather catalytic converters. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 20:00

  • At Least 10 Dead, 30 Injured After Mogadishu Hotel Seige Ends
    At Least 10 Dead, 30 Injured After Mogadishu Hotel Seige Ends

    Via Southfront.org,

    On February 1st, the siege at the Afrik Hotel in Mogadishu ended, with security forces taking the upper hand.

    Islamist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the assault through their radio station.

    The attack featured clashes with heavy gunfire, which followed a car bombing. The entire incident took longer than 7 hours.

    Among those killed at the popular hotel was the well-known retired General Mohamed Nur Galal, said Somalia’s Information Ministry. Another general and more than 100 civilians were reportedly rescued during the siege.

    According to various reports, anywhere between 9 and 17 people were killed, and at least 30 were injured.

    “The operation is over now,” said police spokesman Sadik Ali.

    “I have never witnessed such a level of devastation,” said bystander Ali Ato, who said he went to the hotel to recover the body of a colleague.

    There are numerous photographs and videos on Twitter and YouTube.

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    The Somalian government condemned the al-Shabab attack.

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    Somalia is scheduled to hold indirect parliamentary and presidential elections on February 8, but two regional states, Jubbaland and Puntland, have objected to how delegates were selected and electoral management bodies appointed.

    The Associated Press quoted United Nations special representative James Swan warning officeholders that their use of a resolution to stay on would bring “an unpredictable political situation in a country where we certainly don’t need any more of that.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 19:40

  • Nimitz Carrier Departs Mideast For Home As Iran Releases S.Korean Tanker Crew
    Nimitz Carrier Departs Mideast For Home As Iran Releases S.Korean Tanker Crew

    Reflecting the expected shift in Biden administration foreign policy priorities away from the Middle East and toward southeast Asia, especially China, the Pentagon has announced Tuesday afternoon that the USS Nimitz has departed its Mideast region of operation. 

    It had been sent there at the tail-end of the Trump presidency amid ratcheting tensions with Iran, and as the former president reportedly mulled military action to prevent Iran from taking steps to achieve nuclear weapons. 

    Pentagon press secretary John Kirby issued a statement confirming the “USS Nimitz has left Arabian Sea and 5th Fleet after being deployed for over 270 days amid tensions with Iran.” The aircraft carrier is now “currently in the Indo-Pacific.”

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    This follows a New York Times report on Monday saying the Nimitz had finally been ordered home to its US West coast base:

    The aircraft carrier Nimitz is finally going home.

    …With those immediate tensions seeming to ease a bit, and President Biden looking to renew discussions with Iran on the 2015 nuclear accord that Mr. Trump withdrew from, three Defense Department officials said on Monday that the Nimitz and its 5,000-member crew were ordered on Sunday to return to the ship’s home port of Bremerton, Wash., after a longer-than-usual 10-month deployment.

    The move is a sign that tensions are fast deescalating as both Tehran and Washington looking for openings to return to the JCPOA.

    At the moment the US is requiring Iran to take enrichment back under the caps delineated by the accord, while Tehran is saying Washington must drop sanctions first.

    Via Stratfor

    And in related news which also signals de-escalation of tensions in the region, the South Korean tanker crew which Iran’s IRGC has been detaining for nearly a month has now reportedly been freed.

    “The sailors from a South Korean tanker seized in the Persian Gulf by Iranian troops last month are free to leave the country on humanitarian grounds, Iran’s state TV said Tuesday,” according to the AP.

    “Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said a legal investigation into the tanker and its captain would continue,” the report continued. Iran used the tanker detention to press Seoul over the some $7 billion in assets frozen in South Korean banks due to US-led sanctions; however, it’s unclear the degree to which South Korea complied on that front. 

    But it is clear the release of the tanker and its crew appears a “goodwill gesture” ahead of negotiations over the frozen funds, also which Iran intended as leverage and as a future “warning” if the outcome to those negotiations are not favorable. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 19:20

  • Lincoln High School And The Latest Fact-Checking Pitfalls
    Lincoln High School And The Latest Fact-Checking Pitfalls

    Submitted by Kalev Leetaru of RealClearPolitics,

    As Internet fact-checkers have evolved from niche websites into the absolute arbitrators of “truth” on the modern web, they have gone from debunking simple urban myths to tackling far more complex and nuanced topics. One area of particular concern is a growing focus on humor websites and even fact-checking future events.

    On Dec. 16, Not the Bee, which describes itself as a “humor-based news, opinion, and entertainment site,” shared on its Instagram account a photograph of Abraham Lincoln titled “San Francisco to rename ABRAHAM LINCOLN High School because – I swear this is real – ‘he did not show that black lives ever mattered to him.’” Four days later, Facebook fact-checking partner USA Today (which receives funding from Facebook) published a fact check of the post, issuing a verdict that it was “Missing Context.” This means that anyone viewing the Instagram post since then has seen a large red warning label saying, “Missing Context. Independent fact-checkers say information in this post could mislead people.”

    In its fact check, USA Today confirmed that all of the details of the Instagram post, including the quote, were absolutely correct. Why, then, did it flag it as misleading? In the paper’s words, “It is true that a renaming committee included Abraham Lincoln High School on a list of 44 schools whose namesakes met its renaming criteria. But the committee has not finalized its recommendations, and the school board has not voted on the name changes — so at this time, it’s not accurate to say that the school will be renamed.”

    In short, the fact-checker said the post wasn’t true because Not the Bee didn’t explicitly make clear that the renaming was only proposed. Yet humorous social media accounts by their nature must condense complex topics into pithy one-liners that dispense with nuance, raising the question of why USA Today felt the need to fact-check a humor site in the first place.

    USA Today has fact-checked several stories by Not the Bee and its sister site, Babylon Bee. The sites have also been a frequent target of other fact-checkers, such as Snopes, which in 2018 famously fact-checked a Babylon Bee story headlined “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News Before Publication,” determining after extensive research that CNN had not actually installed such a machine in its newsroom.

    Snopes’ decision to rate as false that satirical piece had real-world consequences, as Facebook threatened to reduce Babylon Bee’s visibility on the platform and terminate its ability to monetize or run ads. (Public outcry then caused the company to reverse itself.) In justifying its fact check, Snopes’ founder argued that “some readers … interpreted it literally.”

    Indeed, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, USA Today made the same argument when it fact-checked another Babylon Bee article that jokingly said the courts had ruled Ginsburg wasn’t really dead and were working on a way to clone her so Donald Trump could not name a replacement. Asked why USA Today believed that readers would mistake such obvious satire, the paper offered that there was “an environment of information disorder” after her death and that “we would rather err on the side of caution, and not assume all readers have the full context behind all headlines they read on social media.”

    But this begs the broader question of why fact-checkers have repeatedly targeted the Bee, which states explicitly that it is a satirical site. Asked about this, USA Today said it merely fact-checks “content that Facebook has identified as potential misinformation” and that Bee content is simply forwarded to them by Facebook as viral misinformation more often than content from other sites.

    This suggests that either Babylon Bee’s content goes far more viral than that of other satirical sites or that Facebook simply flags its posts at a higher rate. Asked for comment on how it decides which satirical posts to flag, Facebook did not respond. The company did, however, state that satirical posts should only be reviewed when “a reasonable user” would not immediately understand the material to be satirical, such as “content from sites not clearly labeled as or widely known as satire.”

    While the Bee clearly self-identifies its content as satire, USA Today contended that satirical sites are often confused with real news. Moreover, it pointed out that some satirical sites exist specifically to confuse users, pointing to its fact checks of “an outfit called America’s Last Line of Defense that creates fake stories intended to ensnare the confirmation bias of conservatives in their views about liberals.”

    In the case of Abraham Lincoln High School’s renaming, the basic facts of Not the Bee’s Instagram post were correct, but USA Today flagged the post because the renaming was still tentative. Yet, USA Today failed to update its fact check when the renaming committee did finalize its list or when the school board accepted the list on Jan. 12 (see minute 5:59:50 of the video). When the board met again two weeks later on Jan. 26 and formally approved the renaming, USA Today again took no action to update its post.

    Does Facebook require fact-checkers to update their verdicts within a certain number of days after new information arises? Asked this, the company responded that for outdated fact checks Facebook takes no action and requires ordinary users to contact fact-checkers directly to request that they correct their verdicts. Only after inquiring with USA Today about why it had not updated its fact check did the paper finally append an editor’s note two days after the board had voted and two weeks after the list had been finalized. Asked why it took so long, the paper said it strives to update its fact checks, but did not comment further.

    Therein lies the danger of “fact-checking the future”: the need for timely updates. At a time when the renaming news was being heavily discussed, users that searched the web for information about it were pointed to the fact check saying the matter was still tentative. Instead of combating misinformation, USA Today actually contributed to it.

    Compounding the issue, even after being contacted, USA Today chose not to update the title of the fact check to reflect the new information and, most importantly, did not update its verdict. Thus, days after the school board finalized the name change, viewers of Not the Bee’s Instagram post still see a warning label telling them that the post is incorrect.

    This is not the first forward-looking fact check that USA Today has failed to update in a timely manner. On Oct. 24, 2020, it labeled as “False” the claim by Donald Trump that a COVID-19 vaccine would be ready around Election Day and that it would become available to the public before the “second or third quarter of 2021.” In reality, the first vaccine’s readiness was announced just a few days after the election and the first members of the public began receiving the vaccine on Dec. 8 in the U.K. and Dec. 14 in the U.S., exactly as Trump had predicted. Yet more than a month after those first shots and two months after the vaccine’s efficacy was announced, USA Today has failed to change its verdict.

    This raises yet another question regarding whether a new rating label such as “Hasn’t Happened Yet” is needed to sidestep this issue.

    Beyond that, there’s the matter of how quickly fact-checkers should be required to update their reviews and whether they should publicly acknowledge their mistakes. Like other fact-checkers, USA Today has simply deleted its mistakes. Readers of its Nov. 19, 2020, fact check on noncitizen voters will today see that Andrew Glen is a West Point professor emeritus. Yet when the fact check was first published, the reference to him looked quite different, implying that Glen had only been a student and was falsely claiming to have been a professor. Despite the news organization’s corrections policy requiring such updates to be visibly flagged, in this case the paper quietly deleted its error with no public acknowledgement.

    From fact-checking satirical fiction to ruling on future events to quietly deleting their errors, fact-checkers continually undermine public trust in their verdicts even as social media platforms rely ever more heavily on their rulings to take real-world action against publishers. With Twitter now experimenting with crowdsourcing fact-checking to the general public, this already muddled undertaking is only going to get messier.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 19:00

  • Florida Gov. Cracks Down On Big Tech – Lets Residents Sue Over Censorship, $100K Daily Fine For Suspending Political Candidates
    Florida Gov. Cracks Down On Big Tech – Lets Residents Sue Over Censorship, $100K Daily Fine For Suspending Political Candidates

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has taken bold action against Big Tech – announcing several measures to counter widespread censorship of conservatives and promote the free exchange of information.

    As reported by Breitbart‘s Allum Bokhari, the measures – announced on Tuesday in a 45-minute speech – include mandatory opt-outs on content filters for Floridians, fines, and grants residents the ability to sue over censorship.

    More via Breitbart:

    • Mandatory opt-outs from big tech’s content filters, a solution to tech censorship first proposed by Breitbart News in 2018.
    • A private right of action for Floridian citizens against tech companies that violate this condition.
    • Fines of $100,000 per day levied on tech companies that suspend candidates for elected office in Florida from their platforms.
    • Daily fines for any tech company “that uses their content and user-related algorithms to suppress or prioritize the access of any content related to a political candidate or cause on the ballot.”
    • Greater transparency requirements.
    • Disclosure requirements enforced by Florida’s election authorities for tech companies that favor one candidate over another.
    • Power for the Florida attorney general to bring cases against tech companies that violate these conditions under the state’s Unfair and Deceptive Practices Act.

    “What began as a group of upstart companies from the west coast has since transformed into an industry of monopoly communications platforms that monitor, influence, and control the flow of information in our country and among our citizens, and they do this to an extent hitherto unimaginable,” said DeSantis, adding “These platforms have changed from neutral platforms that provided Americans with the freedom to speak to enforcers of preferred narratives. Consequently, these platforms have played an increasingly decisive role in elections, and have negatively impacted Americans who dissent from orthodoxies favored by the Big Tech cartel.”

    Watch:

    Some 250 million Americans, or around 4 out of every 5 people, have social media accounts.

    Other Florida conservatives weighed in on Tuesday’s announcement.

    “Florida is taking back the virtual public square as a place where information and ideas can flow freely. We’re demanding transparency from the big tech giants,” said State House Speaker Chris Sprowls in a statement.

    “The big tech companies have the duty to allow differing views on their public platforms. No one should be excluded. But let’s be clear: They are targeting conservatives,” said Senate President Wilton Simpson according to local10, adding that it amounts to political censorship.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 18:40

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