Oct 26

Today’s News 26th October 2021

  • Germany To Launch EU-Wide Military Force As Frustration Grows After Afghan Debacle
    Germany To Launch EU-Wide Military Force As Frustration Grows After Afghan Debacle

    Ideas for a European Army have long been debated within the EU, which has as its purpose a civilian alliance – thus many have long argued it doesn’t need a military force – which would also be controversial as a parallel force to NATO. 

    But Germany along with four other European Union countries are now seeking to establish a new EU “rapid reaction force” in order to respond quickly to any future military crisis. The group including Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia is pursuing the initiative, citing the lessons learned from Afghanistan and the disastrous pullout which saw many European nationals get stranded in the Taliban-controlled country, with not enough flights or personnel available to evacuate them.

    Image: AFP

    German media outlet dpa days ago confirmed the plan after it obtained new internal documents, describing that the five countries are aiming “to expand the existing EU battle groups, which are multinational military units of 1,500 personnel each on standby to respond to crises.”

    “The new force is expected to include space and cyber capabilities, along with special forces and air transport,” the report indicated.

    Currently, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is in favor of the initiative, saying in a recent interview that EU forces within NATO are only able to conduct defensive operations within the context of United States support. Thus there’s a desire for a more independent force that can deploy rapidly without seeking broader US and NATO approval first, or going through NATO hurdles.

    When rumors of the plan were circulating earlier this year, one EU official was quoted as explaining that “What we have in mind is… to be able to deploy quickly this response force if for instance you have a legitimate government in a specific country which is afraid of a possible takeover by a terrorist group.”

    However, there’s this interesting pushback by Germany’s Left Party cited in Deutsche Welle:

    Meanwhile, Germany’s far-left Left party immediately denounced the plan, saying that leaders were drawing the wrong conclusions from Afghanistan.

    “The EU does not need a new intervention force. The EU should be a civilian alliance,” deputy party head Tobias Pflueger told dpa. The problem in Afghanistan was that nations had attempted to “democratize a country by military means,” he said.

    In the end it sounds like an EU reaction force is an attempt to regain control of foreign policy among some European countries recently frustrated at being dragged along by US interventionism abroad within the context of NATO, with Libya being another foremost example.

    It seems the heart of the problem could be EU nations’ inability to stand up to the United States or more powerful NATO states like France, when it comes to decision-making on situations such as toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi or far-flung battlefields in central Asia.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/26/2021 – 02:45

  • Polish PM Says EU Holding 'Gun To Our Head' Over Funds; Could Start 'WW3'
    Polish PM Says EU Holding ‘Gun To Our Head’ Over Funds; Could Start ‘WW3’

    via southfront.org,

    On October 24th, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki vowed to take apart a disciplinary chamber for judges that the European Court of Justice found to be illegal by year’s end.

    Still, he accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head”, urging Brussels to withdraw threats of legal and financial sanctions if it wanted to resolve the country’s rule of law crisis.

    Morawiecki warned that if the European Commission “starts the third world war” by withholding promised cash to Warsaw, he would “defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal”.

    The crisis of the rule of law in Poland has jeopardized the allocation of EU funding to Warsaw. Recently, the Constitutional Court of Poland confirmed the superiority of the constitution of the republic over the legislation of the European Union against the background of several verdicts of the EU Court, which condemned the actions of the Polish authorities.

    As a result of the conflict, Brussels has already postponed approval of a €36 billion package of measures to restore the Polish economy from COVID-19.

    Several member states of the commission have called for additional measures that could jeopardize the tens of billions of euros paid by the EU to Warsaw every year.

    “What will happen if the European Commission starts a third world war? If it starts a third world war, we will defend our rights with any weapon that we have at our disposal,” Morawiecki said.

    Morawiecki added that any action aimed at cutting funding will be met with harsh retaliatory measures.

    Earlier, on October 19, the prime minister said that Poland by the end of the year will liquidate the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court, which the European Court has declared illegal. According to the newspaper, the move is aimed at easing tensions in a protracted dispute that has raised concerns over Poland’s exit from the EU.

    The leaders of the EU member states at the summit in Brussels in December 2020 agreed on a multi-year EU financial plan and a fund for the recovery of the European economy, which were previously blocked by Poland and Hungary.

    The claims of Poland and Hungary concerned the intention of other countries to link the allocation of money from the EU budget to the rule of law in individual countries. In July 2020, EU leaders agreed on a €750 billion package to fund the recovery of Europe, whose economy has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    This emergency package is linked to the EU’s multi-year financial plan of 1.08 trillion euros and includes the possibility of providing concessional loans and subsidies to the countries of the union.

    Western and Northern European countries have pushed for the introduction of a “conditional mechanism” to ensure that the recipient states of the pan-European funds adhere to the values ​​and norms of the European Union, and that the EU has a mechanism to stop such financing in the event of a departure from the norms.

    The “conditional mechanism” was introduced against the background of many years of disagreements in the EU, primarily due to the actions of the authorities of Poland and Hungary, which are criticized by Western European countries for the inconsistency of policy with the principles of the rule of law.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/26/2021 – 02:00

  • Public Health Or Private Wealth? How Digital Vaccine Passports Pave Way For Unprecedented Surveillance Capitalism
    Public Health Or Private Wealth? How Digital Vaccine Passports Pave Way For Unprecedented Surveillance Capitalism

    Authored by Jeremy Loffredo and Max Bluemnthal via TheGrayZone.com,

    The titans of global capitalism are exploiting the Covid-19 crisis to institute social credit-style digital ID systems across the West…

    The death by starvation of Etwariya Devi, a 67-year-old widow from the rural Indian state of Jharkhand, might have passed without notice had it not been part of a more widespread trend.

    Like 1.3 billion of her fellow Indians, Devi had been pushed to enroll in a biometric digital ID system called Aadhaar in order to access public services, including her monthly allotment of 25kg of rice. When her fingerprint failed to register with the shoddy system, Devi was denied her food ration. Throughout the course of the following three months in 2017, she was repeatedly refused food until she succumbed to hunger, alone in her home. 

    Premani Kumar, a 64-year-old woman also from Jharkhand, met the same demise as Devi, dying of hunger and exhaustion the same year after the Aadhaar system transferred her pension payments to another person without her permission, while cutting off her monthly food rations. 

    A similarly cruel fate was reserved for Santoshi Kumari, an 11-year-old girl, also from Jharkhand, who reportedly died begging for rice after her family’s ration card was canceled because it had not been linked to their Aadhaar digital ID.

    These three heart-rending casualties were among a spate of deaths in rural India in 2017 which came as a direct result of the Aadhaar digital ID system.

    With over one billion Indians in its database, Aadhaar is the largest biometric digital ID program ever constructed. Besides serving as a portal to government services, it tracks users’ movements between cities, their employment status, and purchasing records. It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India.

    Having branded Aadhaar’s creator, fellow billionaire Nandan Nilekani, as a “hero,” initiatives backed by tech oligarch Bill Gates have long sought to bring the “Aadhaar approach to other countries.” With the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, Gates and other mavens of the digital ID industry have an unprecedented opportunity to introduce their programs into the wealthy countries of the Global North.

    For those yearning for an end to pandemic-related restrictions, credential programs certifying their vaccination against Covid-19 have been marketed as the key to reopening the economy and restoring their personal freedom. But the implementation of immunity passports is also accelerating the establishment of a global digital identity infrastructure.

    As the military surveillance firm and NATO contractor Thales recently put it, vaccine passports “are a precursor to digital ID wallets.”

    And as the CEO of iProove, a biometric ID company and Homeland Security contractor, emphasized to Forbes, “The evolution of vaccine certificates will actually drive the whole field of digital ID in the future. So, therefore, this is not just about Covid, this is about something even bigger.”

    For the national security state, digital immunity passports promise unprecedented control over populations wherever such systems are implemented. Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner of Ontario, Canada has described the vaccine passport system already active in her province as “a new, inescapable web of surveillance with geolocation data being tracked everywhere.” 

    For tech oligarchs such Bill Gates and neoliberal institutions such as the World Economic Forum, digital ID and digital currency systems have already enabled the extraction of unbelievable profits in the Global South, where hundreds of millions of people remain “unbanked” and therefore outside the sphere of electronic payments systems. 

    Now, with grassroots protest building against an exclusionary regime of vaccine passports, the captains of global capitalism are campaigning with more urgency than ever to bring digital ID to the West.

    For these elite interests, the digitization of immunity passports represent a critical tool in a long-planned economic and political transformation.

    “With no Covid Pass, my wife and I are banished from society”

    Across the globe, the certification of vaccination against COVID-19 is already a requirement to participate in daily life. 

    In Indonesia, COVID-19 vaccines are mandatory, and those who refuse may face fines or be refused access to public services. In Greece, residents must present immunity to work in or enter bars, theaters, and other indoor public spaces.

    France has similarly required residents to carry a health pass for access to all restaurants, bars, trains, and any venue accommodating more than 50 people, a decision that has stoked widespread protests throughout the country. The socialist French former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has blasted the new restrictions as “absurd, unfair and authoritarian.”

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    Italy has mandated its Green Pass for all workers, threatening them with termination from jobs and suspension of pay. Italy also requires the pass to use Italian public transit. Scenes of private security over-enforcement of the Green Pass and the exclusion of Italy’s elderly from vital services have already begun to go viral on social media.

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    Restrictions for Lithuanians who are not double vaccinated or unable to demonstrate recent prior infection from Covid-19 represent some of the harshest in the world. They are banned from restaurants, all non-essential stores, shopping centers, beauty services, libraries, banks or insurance agencies, universities, inpatient medical care, and train travel.

    Gluboco Lietuva, a self-described “Lithuanian father” who has refused vaccination, stated on Twitter: “With no Covid Pass, my wife and I are banished from society. We have no income. Banned from most shopping. Can barely exist.”

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    Four out of ten Canadian provinces currently require citizens to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 to enter indoor public venues like restaurants and theaters. All federal public servants and some other workers must be vaccinated to keep their jobs.

    The government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also requires all air travelers and interprovincial train travelers to be vaccinated. Canada’s Alberta province took the measures a step further this September when it announced that those who cannot prove full COVID vaccination will no longer be allowed to socialize indoors in groups of more than 12.

    In Israel, meanwhile, only those who have received three doses can work or shop indoors and go to restaurants; citizens who received two shots over six months ago are now considered unvaccinated. This rule has consolidated what even the New York Times has deemed a “two-tier system for the vaccinated and unvaccinated … raising legal, moral and ethical questions.” 

    In the US, President Joe Biden is “moving forward with vaccination requirements wherever [he] can.” Biden, who declared that his “patience is wearing thin” with unvaccinated Americans, recently announced new federal requirements mandating that about 80 million Americans – including all those who work at companies with more than 100 employees – must either be vaccinated or get tested for COVID-19 weekly. 

    Biden has also mandated that those working at facilities which receive Medicare or Medicaid must show proof of immunity to keep their jobs. According to AP, President Biden is considering proof of immunity for interstate travel, a restriction his former public health advisor, Ezekiel Emanuel, has clamored for. 

    In the state of Colorado, the UCHealth hospital system has announced that it will not allow organ transplants to be performed on unvaccinated patients, prompting some to travel to Texas for life-saving procedures.

    New York City offers a glimpse of the program in store for the rest of the country. The city’s “Key to NYC” requirement, which went into effect September 13, requires proof of vaccination to work at or attend indoor dining, indoor fitness, and entertainment venues like museums, stadiums, arcades, and theaters.

    “If you want to participate in our society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated,” Mayor De Blasio stated. “[New York City] is a miraculous place literally full of wonders … if you’re un-vaccinated, unfortunately, you will not be able to participate.”

    COVID-related mandates could be permanent

    While outlets like CNN have referred to vaccine passports as a “useful, temporary measure,” it is increasingly evident that the proof of immunity restrictions imposed on Western populations may not go away any time soon.

    Australia’s New South Wales Ministry of Health Dr. Kerry Chant has stated that citizens “need to get used to being vaccinated with COVID vaccines for the future… it will be a regular cycle of vaccination and revaccination.”

    Albert Bourla, CEO of the Pfizer corporation that has seen its stock skyrocket during the pandemic, remarked that the “most likely scenario” is coronavirus vaccine shots mandated on an annual basis.

    As a February Nature headline read, “the coronavirus is here to stay.” Or, as Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Emergency Program, put it: it is “very, very, unlikely” that COVID-19 will ever go away. 

    “Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “It’s unrealistic.”

    “This is our life from now, in waves,” Israel’s Coronavirus Czar, Salman Zarka, acknowledged. 

    Already, Zarka has prepared plans to mandate a fourth dose for Israelis.

    COVID mandates to be digitally enforced

    While a state-mandated treadmill of boosters may seem unappealing to many, if not outright hellish, for others the nightmare presents the opportunity of a lifetime. As early as May 2020, only seven weeks after the pandemic was declared, US tech billionaire Bill Gates predicted that “eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.” 

    Now, over a year later, a growing number of local and national governments require some form of digital proof of vaccination or natural immunity against COVID-19. 

    Those who want to travel to Canada, for example, are required to download an app that verifies the vaccination status of incoming travelers. The government also plans to introduce a federal, Canada-wide digital vaccine passport in the coming months.

    When the European Union (EU) opened up to foreign tourists this summer, it introduced a “Digital COVID Certificate” which granted entry to those vaccinated against COVID-19, those who have had a negative test, or those who recently recovered from an infection. Its proposed “Digital Green Certificate” has been branded as a means to facilitate safe free movement inside the EU during the pandemic.

    The government of France is partnering with a biometric technology company called IDEMIA to “make it easier for its citizens to prove their identity and complete online transactions using a smartphone.” The new app will “enable French citizens to place their national electronic identification cards [introduced to France as a COVID-19 response in August 2021] …  on the back of their smartphones and have their identity instantly confirmed.” IDEMIA is also helping France certify travelers immunity data with their Health Travel Pass suite. 

    The US is still accepting paper vaccination records, and President Biden has insisted no national app is in the works. However, seven U.S. states (California, New York, Louisiana, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, and Hawaii) have already implemented apps certifying vaccination against COVID-19 and have various degrees of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in place.

    ImmunaBand, a wearable wristband, whose company mission is “to bring the world a little closer in a time of the COVID-19 pandemic and for you to demonstrate to the world your vaccination status,” has also been approved by New York City as proof of vaccination.

    “In typical American fashion, the US government is relegating the creation of digital vaccination certifications to the private sector,” stated the non-profit Data & Society. 

    Indeed, behind the push for digital vaccine passports is a coterie of supra-national neoliberal institutions guided by oligarchic tech industry donors.

    Elite corporate interests behind digital COVID passports

    Mega-corporations, international finance institutions, and billionaire-backed private foundations have played a vital role in lobbying for and implementing digital immunity passports.

    The burgeoning global health passport system has been coordinated under the umbrella of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO). However, this institution is so intertwined with wealthy private interests it can hardly be characterized as a “public” health body. 

    As former WHO director Margaret Chan told filmmaker Lilian Franck, “only 30 percent of my budget is predictable funds. The other 70 percent, I have to take a hat and go around the world to beg for money. And when they give us the money, [it] is highly linked to their preferences, what they like.”

    Chief among those private funders is the second wealthiest man in the world, Bill Gates, and his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which happens to be the second largest donor to the WHO.

    Bill Gates with World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom

    The Gates Foundation recently helped fund a WHO paper providing “implementation guidance” for proof of vaccination certifications across the world. The authors crafted the paper alongside the Rockefeller Foundation and with guidance from several high-level representatives of the World Bank.

    According to Foreign Affairs, “few policy initiatives or normative standards set by the WHO are announced before they have been casually, unofficially vetted by Gates Foundation staff.” Or, as other sources told Politico in 2017, “Gates’ priorities have become the WHO’s.”

    Also at the forefront of the shift to digital credentials is the World Economic Forum (WEF). “The Forum is involved in the WHO task force to reflect on those [vaccine credential requirements] standards and think about how they would be used,” reads a May WEF article.

    On paper, the WEF (also known as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation) is an NGO and think tank “committed to improving the state of the world.” In reality, it is an international network of some of the wealthiest and most influential people on the planet. The Forum positions itself as the thought leader of global capitalism.

    The organization is best known for its annual gathering of the global ruling class. Each year, hedge fund managers, bankers, CEOs, media representatives, and heads of state gather in Davos to “shape global, regional and industry agendas.” As Foreign Affairs put it, “the WEF has no formal authority, but it has become the major forum for elites to discuss policy ideas and priorities.”

    In 2017, German economist and WEF founder Klaus Schwab introduced the concept of “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” with the title of the book he published that year. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) denotes the current “technological revolution” that is changing the way people “live, work, and relate to one another,” and with implications “unlike anything humankind has experienced,” according to Schwab.

    For him, the 4IR is the “merging of the physical, digital and biological worlds.” Schwab has even said that the 4IR will inevitably veer into trans-humanism, or human genome editing.

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    In January 2021, several WEF partners, including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and several other “heavyweights,” announced a partnership to launch the Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI) to develop digital immunization authentication tools, according to Forbes.

    Aiming to institute a single “SMART Health Card” for the world, the VCI intends for its SMART Health Cards to be recognized “across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries.”

    In the US, some states are already deploying the SMART Health Cards developed by the VCI. These SMART Health Cards have laid the basis for a de-facto national standard for vaccine credentials.

    “If enough states embrace the technology, it could become a de facto nationwide standard and relieve the Biden administration of having to lay out federal requirements for domestic purposes,” Politico noted.

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    The latest version of Apple’s iOS, iOS 15, even includes SMART Health Card support.

    As of today, those who received a vaccine in California, Hawaii, Louisiana, New York, Virginia, or certain counties in Maryland can obtain a SMART Health Card from the state.

    In most other states, a SMART Health Card is available to those who were vaccinated at one of more than 17,100 CVS, Walgreen’s, or Rite Aid pharmacy chains nationwide.

    “More states, pharmacies, and health systems will begin issuing SMART Health Cards very soon,” promises the site of the Commons Project, one of the founders of the VCI initiative.

    Commons Project CEO Paul Meyer happens to be a WEF “young leader.” 

    Commons Project CEO and World Economic Forum Young Leader Paul Meyer

    In India, tech oligarchs use digital ID to force social credit on rural poor, spawning exclusion and even death

    In 2015, The Gates Foundation provided seed money to a Yale School of Public Health project that would become known as Khushi Baby. Now a non-profit, Khushi Baby makes microchip-equipped necklaces for a child to wear at all times to track their vaccination status and establish continuous monitoring from their first immunizations through adulthood. The non-profit says it is now using data from over 35,000 villages in India to create algorithms that “predict health outcomes for mothers and children.” 

    From the website of KhushiBaby.org

    In 2016, IDEMIA, the security firm now working with the French government on vaccination and identity verification, designed the microchip-equipped necklaces. The necklaces have been used to track health data for 13 million people in India since the beginning of the pandemic.

    These programs have been marketed by corporate consultants as essential tools for improving equality and inclusion in the Global South. “Digital identification is key to inclusive growth,” claimed McKinsey, the global consulting firm, in 2019.

    “Something like 1 billion people could be more financially included and participative,” said Mike Kubzansky, managing partner of Ebay founder and media mogul Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network during a WEF panel exploring how “Digital Identification Provides a Significant Opportunity for Value Creation.”

    Like Gates, Omidyar is heavily invested in the advancement of digital ID and currency systems through his Omidyar Network, which collaborates with the World Economic Forum on the Good ID initiative.

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    A closer look at the push for “inclusion” by corporate behemoths reveals their altruistic language as little more than public relations cover for raw profit motives, resulting in marginalization and even death for many of those roped into their digital ID systems.

    Besides serving as the staging ground for the Khushi Baby venture, India has become a laboratory for digital tracking and identity systems. With support from Western capitalist outfits like the Gates Foundation and the World Bank, the country has become the site of the world’s largest digital ID database, known as Aadhaar.

    The Aadhaar system is named for a 12 digit number that serves as a proof of identity and address, among other markers, anywhere in India. To date, a whopping 1.3 billion Indians have been enrolled in the system, making it the largest biometric ID database ever constructed. It contains iris scans and fingerprints from both hands of each user. The technology for this system was provided by none other than the French security firm IDEMIA.

    Nandan Nilekani, creator of the Aadhar digital ID system, with Bill Gates

    Aadhaar was implemented in 2014, the year that the free marketeering, tech-centric Narendra Modi entered the prime minister’s office. Its creator, tech billionaire Nandan Nilekani, has been branded “the Bill Gates of Bangalore,” celebrated by globalization enthusiasts like Thomas Friedman, and hailed by none other than Gates as an altruistic “hero.” Gates’ foundation has collaborated with Nilekani through its “Co-impact” project alongside billionaire eBay co-founder Jeffrey Skoll’s Skoll Foundation.

    “Aadhaar is a huge asset for India,” effused Gates in a 2019 interview with the Indian network Times Now. “The fact that you can make digital payments and open a bank account so easily, India is a leader in that. There are huge benefits in being able to get digital government money to the beneficiary.”

    But behind the neoliberal spin, Nilekani’s Aadhar digital ID system has wreaked havoc on the lives of India’s most vulnerable and stigmatized populations.

    In the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, a wave of deaths took place in 2017 when impoverished citizens were cut off from government-subsidized food rations by the Aadhaar system. In several cases, aging widows were denied rice for several months because the system rejected their fingerprint scans.

    Around the same time, three brothers died of starvation after they failed to properly register with Aadhaar and were subsequently denied rations for six months. The same cruel fate was visited on the Kumari family, which was unable to obtain an electronic Aadhaar ID, lost its ration card, and saw its 11-year-old daughter, Santoshi, die of hunger.

    “Many people in Jharkhand have been victims of similar deprivation of food entitlements during the last few months,” reported India’s Scroll. “The main reason is that Aadhaar-based biometric authentication is now compulsory in about 80% of ration shops in the state.”

    According to Scroll, a random sample of 18 villages where biometric authentication was compulsory found that a staggering 37% of cardholders were unable to buy their food rations.

    Besides making Aadhaar the key to obtaining government services, the Modi government has integrated data collected by Aadhar to establish a “360-degree database” that “automatically track[s] when a citizen moves between cities, changes jobs, or buys a new property,” according to the Huffington Post. 

    When Covid-19 first reached India in early 2020, Nilekani proposed employing Aadhar as the basis for an anti-Covid vaccination and tracking program. “We must ensure that everybody gets a digital certificate with the date of vaccination, name of the vaccine and through which vendor and at what location,” he declared in 2020.

    Unsurprisingly, Nilekani’s system of mass surveillance has proven much more effective at harvesting data than it has been at protecting it. In 2018, the Indian Tribune newspaper was able to purchase the personal information of nearly every Aadhaar user through anonymous sellers over WhatsApp. The process took only 10 minutes and cost about $6 USD, the paper reported.

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    The system’s serial breaches of privacy even prompted some HIV-positive Indians to drop out of antiretroviral treatment programs that require the Aadhaar card. Though the Aadhaar is said to be voluntary, individuals with HIV have complained to Indian media that they were pressured into enrolling into the ID program, and had been threatened with the loss of medical services.

    US privacy advocates have pointed to digital national identity programs like Aadhaar as gargantuan surveillance tools that establish the basis for a social credit system.

    Addressing the US House Committee on Financial Services in July 2021, Elizabeth Renieris of Notre-Dame’s Technology Ethics Lab warned, “The Aadhaar number in India is able to track your activity across all facets of your life, from employment to healthcare, to school, to pretty much everything you do. You can’t retain autonomy over specific domains of your life. You can’t separate your personal and professional reputation. You can’t have this kind of contextualized personal identity. I think that’s really problematic.”

    “We must avoid building digital identity systems and infrastructure in a way that further expands and entrenches the surveillance state, as does the national identity system in India,” Renieris continued. 

    But it is the all-encompassing social credit aspect of Aadhaar that has made Gates so fond of the system. 

    Addressing India’s top policy makers in 2016, the world’s second wealthiest man declared, “Over time, all of these transactions create a footprint and so when you go in for credit, the ability to access the history that you’ve paid your utility bills on time, that you’ve saved up money for your children’s education, all of those things in your digital trail, accessed in an appropriate way allow the credit market to [score the risk properly].“ 

    ID4D expands digital ID to track more human activity than ever

    In 2016, the Gates Foundation ponied up funding for a World Bank project called the Identity for Development (ID4D) Initiative for the declared purpose of bringing the “Aadhaar approach to other countries.”

    To date, the World Bank has invested $1.2 billion into the ID4D initiative, with the official aim of creating “identification systems using 21st Century solutions.”

    Among the four financial partners that established the initiative were two familiar Big Tech-backed operations: The Gates Foundation and The Omidyar Network, along with Australian Aid and UK Aid. According to the World Bank, the Gates Foundation’s “catalytic contributions” in particular transformed the project from an idea to a functional World Bank initiative.

    Aadhaar’s Nilekani currently sits on the ID4D Initiative advisory council.

    According to the World Bank, ID4D “promote[s] the use of digital ID systems for free movement and service delivery, by creating linkages across systems that allow users to authenticate themselves for key services such as receiving social transfer payments, completing financial transactions, and crossing borders.”

    Promotional materials frame this venture as a humanitarian cause centered on helping poor women and making sure ”unbanked” individuals (those without a bank account) such as refugees and migrants are included in the modern economy. 

    Yet a closer look at the initiative’s backers and their agenda reveals a longstanding goal of the captains of global capitalism: creating a digitally centered identity system that enables powerful public and private institutions to track more human activity than ever.

    “Digital ID … can be leveraged by government and commercial platforms to facilitate a variety of digital transactions, including digital payments,” explains the World Bank. 

    In an August 2021 white paper, the World Bank called on African nations to achieve a “single digital market” and loosen regulations on digital infrastructure to lower the risk for investors. The paper revealed the real intentions behind the World Bank’s push for a closure to the digital divide: opening up the continent for foreign investment. “Government regulation,” the paper declared, “needs to smoothen the path to digital transformation in the region.”

    “By accelerating Africa’s digital transformation, businesses can reap the benefits,” the World Economic Forum (WEF) proclaimed in a 2020 article titled, “Africa has the potential to boost global growth.”

    “There will […] be lucrative opportunities in Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia … a good bet for companies seeking to enter new markets,” the WEF advised.

    As the World Economic Forum recently wrote, “COVID-19 has highlighted the advantages of creating a digital economy.” Yet the advantages the group speaks of will likely fall on the side of its stakeholders. 

    Partners of the World Economic Forum’s “Platform for a Good Digital Identity ” include the biometric ID firm Accenture, Amazon, Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC Bank, Mastercard, the biometric technology firm Simprints, and the credit giant, Visa. 

    The initiative’s stakeholders represent the key beneficiaries of a biometric ID system imposed on the Global South, with Western multinational financial firms functioning as the gateway for its inhabitants to participate in the global economy.

    The WEF has also made clear that the “end goal” of its agenda is expanding the model it established in India until every person in the world holds a unique digital ID. 

    In an article titled “Digital ID is the Catalyst of Our Digital Future,” Mohit Joshi, a WEF ‘young leader,’ argued that “governments should use [Aadhaar] to streamline the delivery of services and payments, and massively increase financial inclusion.”

    In a separate paper, however, the WEF conceded that the new digital system will not necessarily provide users with the liberation they have been promised: “Fourth Industrial Revolution digital identity will determine what products, services, and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us,” the WEF stated.

    ID2020 leverages vaccinations to push “beyond dystopian” digital ID’s and payments

    Back in 2016, Bill Gates’ Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), Microsoft, Accenture and the Rockefeller Foundation established a new consortium to provide digital ID certificates to infants when they receive their routine immunizations. They called it ID2020, incidentally naming it for the year that a global pandemic would be declared.

    ID2020 says it is “dedicated to spearheading a global digital biometric identity standard,” and claims Digital IDs will lead to “financial independence.”

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    Partners in the ID2020 initiative include the credit card giant Mastercard and Simprints, a biometric technology firm supported by the US Agency for International Development, a traditional front organization for US intelligence.

    From video of USAID’s May 2018 introduction of biometric data at refugee settlements in Uganda

    Mastercard’s ‘community pass’ project aims to capture the biometrics of 30 million individuals in remote parts of Africa over the next three years and issue them a Mastercard Community Pass biometric smart card, which will in turn provide Africans with a digital biometric identity and a digital bank account. 

    ID2020 is currently operating in Bangladesh, where it administers biometric enrollment and digital ID to infants when they receive routine immunizations. GAVI CEO Seth Berkely has said he plans to expand the program across the underdeveloped world, working with mega-corporations such as Facebook and Mastercard to tie vaccination status to a biometric identification system.

    “Eighty-nine percent of children and adolescents without identification live in countries supported by Gavi,” Berkley stated. “We are enthusiastic about the potential impact of this program not just in Bangladesh, but as something we can replicate across Gavi-eligible countries.”

    With the WHO’s declaration of a global pandemic in March 2020, an unprecedented opportunity arrived for the forces advancing digital IDs. As Andrew Bud, the CEO of biometric tech company and Department of Homeland Security contractor iProov, enthused, “The evolution of vaccine certificates will actually drive the whole field of digital id in the future. So, therefore, this is not just about Covid, this is about something even bigger.”

    By the following year, ID2020 and the USAID-partnered biometric ID firm, Simprints, had leveraged funding from Gates Foundation to publish an article entitled, “COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery: An Opportunity to Set Up Systems for the Future.” The authors argued that COVID-19 vaccines in the Global South could be used as a “potential lever” to deliver digital biometric IDs.  

    They went on to admit that such digital biometric systems would stay in place long after the COVID-19 pandemic was over, and would be exploited for an array of purposes after the rollout: “Biometrics have the advantage of being agnostic to use case,” the co-authors wrote, “meaning they can connect different systems during or even after rollout.” 

    From Simprints.com

    Elizabeth Renieris of the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab resigned from a technical advisory role on ID2020, citing “risks to civil liberties” after the initiative teamed up with tech giants to design COVID immunity passports backed up by experimental blockchain technology. 

    Renieris went on to denounce the burgeoning ID system as a civil liberties nightmare: “The prospect of severely curtailing the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals through ill-thought-out plans for ‘immunity passports’ or similar certificates, particularly ones that would leverage premature standards and a highly experimental and potentially rights-infringing technology like blockchain, is beyond dystopian.”

    Digital ID mavens prey on the global poor

    While linking a digital biometric ID to individuals’ finances is almost certain to exclude masses of people, and has even killed some by cutting impoverished citizens off from government services, predatory financial and credit institutions see the technology as the perfect means for capitalizing on untapped and developing markets. 

    A September 2021 report by BankservAfrica, the largest automated digital payments clearinghouse in Africa, which is headed by former executives at MasterCard, VISA, and IBM, urged South Africa to adopt a biometric digital ID system.  

    The report proclaimed, “The time has come for consumers, investors, and the private and public sectors to work collectively to achieve the common goal of enabling a robust, secure, and trusted digital identity for South Africa.”

    BankServAfrica’s digital payment platform is currently being tested in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania with financial support from the World Bank, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown just how critical a digital ID is,” BankServAfrica’s Chief Business Officer insisted.

    BankservAfrica’s report argued that a robust biometric digital ID system will help South Africa achieve “simpler FICA [credit score] processes” and “a fair, transparent, competitive, sustainable, responsible, efficient and effective consumer credit market.”

    But behind the lofty neoliberal rhetoric deployed by the financial industry lies a sordid record of profiteering and privacy invasion on a massive scale.

    In 2007, Vodafone and Safaricom launched mPesa, a system that allows users to digitally deposit, withdraw, transfer, and pay with money. The project was “able to make credit and growth capital available to millions of people who have never had access to credit before,” according to Areiel Wolanow, who led the team that designed and built the credit scoring engine for mPesa in Kenya.

    But a study by economist Alan Gibson revealed that it was the financial sector – not the rural population of the Global South – that truly benefited from mPesa. Meanwhile, the living conditions of the system’s mostly impoverished participants failed to improve at all:

    “What is indisputable is that the supply-side of the finance market has benefited greatly from the last ten years. Banks’ sales have increased by 2.5 times and profits by 3.5 times, with profit margins also increased; the inclusion years have undoubtedly been good years for the banks. This apparent contrast between conspicuous supply-side success and a still-poor economy … raises questions on the role of the finance sector. In particular, it begs questions on who/what it is there to serve, and on the incentives that drive behavior.”

    In a further indictment of supposedly “inclusive” digital payment schemes, the Review of African Political Economy found that “the bulk of this [mPesa] value does not go to the poor. Rather, such fintech is very clearly designed to hoover up value and deposit it into the hands of a narrow global digital-financial elite that are the main forces behind the fintech revolution.”

    Despite the evidence of widening inequality, Bill Gates – whose foundation spends hundreds of billions of dollars promoting digital financial services for the poor – gushed praise for mPesa. 

    “M-Pesa is an excellent program,” Gates effused on Twitter in one of several tweets hailing the digital payments system. 

    Gates linked to an article promoting the program by NPR, the US public broadcaster which has received upwards of $17.5 million from Gates while producing hundreds of articles praising the tech billionaire and his initiatives around the world.

    Back in the US, meanwhile, Gates’ ID2020 campaign has collaborated with the forces advancing a system that registers Americans’ vaccination status with the same corporation that calculates their financial credit score.

    The US credit industry and digital immunity ID outfits collaborate on “huge opportunities for the commercial sector”

    In Illinois, residents are currently required to verify that they have received the COVID-19 vaccine through an online portal called Vax Verify which will work in concert with Chicago’s soon-to-be-implemented vaccine passport.

    To register their proof of vaccination, Illinois residents must turn to Experian, the world’s leading credit score service. 

    Already, the Vax Verify portal is facing backlash for providing inaccurate vaccine status information. It is also the subject of serious security concerns given Experian’s record of breaches that leaked the personal data of millions of citizens from Brazil to South Africa.

    Further, the online portal requires that any resident with a freeze on their credit must unfreeze it with Experian before registering a vaccination. 

    “Using Experian is definitely one of the worst [vaccine passports] I’ve seen yet,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock commented to Yahoo News. 

    After Illinois became the first US state to forge a formal relationship between vaccine certifications and Experian, Illinois Congressman and financial industry darling Bill Foster introduced legislation that would foist a digital biometric ID onto the entire American population. 

    The Improving Digital Identity Act of 2021, introduced by Foster in July, calls for the public sector, and particularly the Department of Homeland Security, to work with the private sector to develop a new biometric digital ID infrastructure for the United States.

    In November 2020, the Gates-sponsored ID2020 provided an online forum for Foster to promote his bill. During the event, the congressman advocated for a “trusted biometric digital immunity certificate system” while explaining that his bill would obtain biometrics from every citizen so private corporations could then “leverage” it to generate enormous profits.

    Rep. Bill Foster headlined the Gates-backed ID2020’s November 2020 webinar

    “Once the government has [taken] those fairly serious biometrics from you – there will be huge opportunities for the commercial sector to leverage that,” he said. “And to try to get this all started, I introduced the ‘Improving Digital ID Act.’”

    Banking and credit card companies are among the many “commercial sectors” that Foster’s bill will benefit through digital biometric IDs. The bill plainly states that the corporate ID system will give “under-banked and unbanked individuals better access to digital financial services,” cloaking the opening of markets for finance giants in the same woke language that ID4D and ID2020 employ. 

    But as tech oligarchs and their partners in the financial and national security industries leverage the coronavirus epidemic to institute a lucrative apparatus of digital monitoring, dissent is erupting in the countries where vaccine passports have begun to exclude millions.

    Protests erupt against vaccine passports and “people who have very little to do with parliament”

    In New York City – ground zero of the US vaccination passport roll-out – where over 80 percent of all Covid social distancing arrests were conducted against Black residents in 2020, simmering tensions boiled over when three Black diners initiated a brawl with staff at Carmine’s, an Upper West Side restaurant that prevented them from dining without their vaccination proof.

    The incident spurred condemnation from a local Black Lives Matter chapter, which accused city authorities of exploiting mask mandates and vaccine passports to exclude and incarcerate Black residents. “What we are seeing here is the NYPD and restaurants using vaccination proof as a reason to discriminate against Black people,” declared BLM activist Kimberly Bernard.

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    France has been the site of some of the world’s largest protests against the vaccine passport system imposed under the watch of former banker and President Emanuel Macron. On August 14, over 210,000 people took to the streets in over 200 protests across France against the nascent biomedical security regime. 

    Puncturing the corporate media’s pigeonholing of the demonstrators as far-right shock troops, France’s Le Monde described them as “alone, coupled up, here with their family or friends, of all ages, white, Black, employed, retired, some vaccinated, others who refuse to get the shot.” 

    French journalist Pauline Bock noted that in her country, “the only trade that’s exempt from mandatory vaccination — the police — will be the one to make sure everyone else obeys. The policy is ripe for authoritarian misuse.” 

    In Italy, meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister and former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has mandated that all employees of both public and private businesses produce a Green Pass proving vaccination in order to enter their place of work. 

    The Green Pass vaccine passport system has already excluded unvaccinated individuals from restaurants, gyms, as well as trains, buses and domestic flights across the country. Official government numbers show the pass has failed to increase vaccine uptake.

    With the expansion of the Green Pass to places of work, Italians have risen up in some of the largest protests the world has seen against the nascent biosecurity regime.

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    On October 9, hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into Italian streets from Rome to Trento to voice their rejection of Draghi’s policy. In Rome, where police repressed peaceful demonstrators with batons and riot shields, a group of about 20 far-right hooligans attacked a local union office while police stood by. Interior Minister Carlo Sibilia exploited the incident to claim that “neo-fascist groups hide behind the so-called anti-vaxxers.”

    The secretary of a faction of Italy’s Communist Party, Marco Rizzo, who has condemned the passport system as “a discriminatory, divisive tool that pits one against the other,” cast suspicion on the incident. 

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    In an October 10 statement, Rizzo warned that the incident of “fascist violence” the day before played directly into the hands of the neoliberal government, and questioned whether a new “strategy of tension” was in play. The communist leader was referring to the Italian state’s covert weaponization of far-right militants during the 1970’s “years of lead” to foment violence and neutralize Marxist organizations.

    The demonstrations have now spread to the port city of Trieste, where union dock workers have refused to offload goods until the Green Pass is revoked. On October 18, Italian police attempted to break the workers’ strike with water cannons, tear gas, and heavy repression.

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    Two days before anti-Green Pass protests exploded across Italy, the renowned philosopher Giorgio Agamben appeared before the Italian Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Commission to issue a dramatic statement of opposition to the Green Pass. 

    Agamben is most famous for his concept of Homo Sacer, or bare life, in which an individual is stripped of rights and reduced to their biological essence in an extra-legal regime justified by war or other emergencies. When Italian authorities declared the first lockdown in March 2020, the philosopher applied the theory to his own country’s heavy-handed restrictions.

    “The defining feature…of this great transformation that they are attempting to impose is that the mechanism which renders it formally possible is not a new body of laws, but a state of exception – in other words, not an affirmation of, but the suspension of constitutional guarantees,” the philosopher explained in the foreword to his collection of 2020 writings on Covid-19, “Where Are We Now: The Epidemic As Politics,”

    In his remarks before the Italian Senate, Agamben pointed to a sinister agenda behind the official rationale for vaccine passports: “It has been said by scientists and doctors that the Green Pass has no medical significance in itself but serves to force people to get vaccinated. Instead, I think we must say the opposite: that the vaccine is a means of forcing people to have the Green Pass. That is, a device that allows individuals to be monitored and tracked, an unprecedented measure.”

    The philosopher concluded his address by taking aim at the supra-national forces – Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, and Rockefeller Foundation, among others – determined to impose a system of digital identification and high-tech social credit as much of the human population as possible. 

    “I believe that in this perspective,” Agamben warned, “it is more urgent than ever for parliamentarians to consider the political transformation underway, which in the long run is destined to empty parliament of its powers, reducing it to simply approving – in the name of bio-security – decrees emanating from organizations and people who have very little to do with parliament.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 23:50

  • Amnesty International To Close All Hong Kong Offices, Citing Beijing's Oppressive National Security Law
    Amnesty International To Close All Hong Kong Offices, Citing Beijing’s Oppressive National Security Law

    In an unprecedented move and huge indictment of pro-China policies and the mainland, Amnesty International has announced plans to shutter all of its Hong Kong offices, citing the oppressive ‘national security law’ that Beijing imposed on the city implemented in June 2020.

    The foremost international human rights group has had a presence in the city for over four decades. Operations will be moved elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, after the local Hong Kong office will close by this month, and the regional office expected to be shuttered by the end of the year.

    Image via AP

    An official Amnesty statement specifically called out the effective impossibility for the organization to do its job given the national security law opens up staff members to legal reprisal from the pro-China government.

    “This decision, made with a heavy heart, has been driven by Hong Kong’s national security law, which has made it effectively impossible for human rights organizations in Hong Kong to work freely and without fear of serious reprisals from the government,” Amnesty International’s board chairperson Anjhula Mya Singh Bais said.

    The statement further described a dangerous atmosphere where “authorities campaign to rid the city of all dissenting voices.” Thus Amnesty says “It is increasingly difficult for us to keep operating in such an unstable environment.”

    Since large-scale anti-China protests gripped the semi-autonomous island-city in 2019 into 2020, Amnesty has cited “a rapid deterioration in the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, expression and association as the Hong Kong authorities increasingly adopted mainland China’s vague and all-encompassing definition of national security.”

    This position has been vehemently rejected by China and pro-China HK lawmakers, with the national security law further potentially criminalizing the advancement and online social media promotion of such a stance. 

    Amnesty has further blasted the ability of China to extradite Hong Kong citizens: “Faced with mass protests, the government first suspended and then in September formally withdrew a proposed Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Bill (the Extradition Bill), which would have allowed the handover of persons in Hong Kong to mainland China,” a prior public statement said.

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    Likely the immediate result of Amnesty’s retreat from the city will be for smaller human rights organizations to follow suit. In this way the precedent will create a chilling effect, given that if such an organization which is as well represented by a large group of international lawyers can’t survive there, the smaller ones won’t risk it either.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 23:30

  • "Identifiable Harm": Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement
    “Identifiable Harm”: Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement

    Authored by C.Douglas Golden via WesternJournal.com,

    Thanks to President Joe Biden, JFK assassination records set to be released this year will be going back and to the archives. Back and to the archives. Back and to the archives….

    In a statement on Friday, the White House announced that long-classified documents regarding the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until Dec. 15, 2022 — over 59 years after Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas.

    According to CBS News, despite federal law which mandates all records on the event “should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination,” Biden said the federal archivist needs one more year to make appropriate redactions to minimize “identifiable harm.”

    While former President Donald Trump released several thousand pages of files under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, he held back others, citing national security concerns.

    According to a Friday statement from Biden, the federal government has been reviewing these redactions since 2018. They apparently need more time, because this is the federal government under the Biden administration and did we, like, expect them to do their job in an expedient manner?

    The statement noted the act allowed a postponement of record release when it “remains necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

    It went on to say that the national archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration said “unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies” and that NARA “require[s] additional time to engage with the agencies and to conduct research within the larger collection to maximize the amount of information released.”

    The archivist added that “making these decisions is a matter that requires a professional, scholarly, and orderly process; not decisions or releases made in haste” and recommended Biden “temporarily certify the continued withholding of all of the information certified in 2018” and “direct two public releases of the information that has” eventually “been determined to be appropriate for release to the public.”

    We’re already a good four years past the deadline from the federal government to turn in the assignment, so to speak. The JFK Act is clear: “Each assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of this Act.”

    The only exceptions are, of course, if the records cause “identifiable harm” and that harm is “of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” Well, whaddya know …

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    What do you think the early odds are that this information actually comes out next December? Anyone? Do you think we’re going to see what the federal government has been sitting on all these years, or are we going to be reading a statement about how the Omega-Sigma variant of SARS-CoV-2 knocked NARA off its schedule again and that it’ll be ready next year, pinky-swear?

    If there’s an actual betting market on this one, my money is going on the latter. I mean that literally — as long as it’s legal to do so, my proceeds from writing this story (and then some) will be plunked down on a bet that these files won’t see the light of day on Dec. 15, 2022.

    In fact, I’d be willing to bet the only way this these files see the light under a Biden administration is if Hunter Biden stays clean, paints a mural in the Gaza Strip so moving that Israel and Palestine hold hands and sing “Kumbaya,” works his way up the political ladder and then gets elected president in another decade or so. Generally speaking, that’s not the kind of futures bet that bookmakers allow, so I’ll stick to what I can get.

    In 1964, 10 months after the assassination, the Warren Commission delivered a report which found Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter and acted alone when he allegedly killed Kennedy. In 1978, a House Panel concluded JFK “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” but that it was “unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy,” according to The New York Times.

    These diverging narratives have turned theorizing about JFK’s assassination into a low-level national pastime.

    I happen to be on team Warren Commission; despite no lack of effort, the 58 intervening years since the assassination has produced as many credible suspects for a second shooter or co-conspirators as O.J. Simpson’s hunt for the real killers has produced credible alternate suspects for the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. (How is that going, by the way? I haven’t heard many updates from the Juice lately.)

    However, the fact the U.S. government jealously guards documents regarding an assassination that’s now well over a half-century old feeds into fever dreams like Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK.”

    In the most famous scene from the movie, Kevin Costner’s character — Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison, a colorful-yet-outré JFK conspiracy theorist who became the only prosecutor to try a case related to the assassination — tries to explain why the Zapruder film proved there had to be more than one shooter. Instead, Costner ensured “back and to the left, back and to the left” would become a running joke about conspiracy theorists for decades to come:

    Never mind that the “back and to the left” theory has been debunked. The point is, perhaps you believe in the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s slaying. Perhaps you’re like me and you’re tired of them. Either way, the fact the government refuses to release information on the assassination that’s the better part of a century old doesn’t help matters, whatever you believe.

    Perhaps the documents will contain embarrassing revelations about Cuba — originally suspected of being behind the assassination by many and a country the Biden administration would like to make nice with now. That’s my best (and only) guess on the matter. If I don’t end up with an inbox of other theories, I’ll be disappointed.

    The point is, however, that this speculation only persists the longer that the government holds on to documents legally required to be released four years ago, and which should have been in the public domain for far longer.

    The baffling part about this decision is that the White House is both creating and enabling a whole army of laptop Jim Garrisons. For an administration that seems unusually concerned about conspiracy theorists in other areas, usually when they concern conservatives, one might think they would consider this a pretty significant “identifiable harm.”

    Guess not.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 23:10

  • Public Schools In Boston Suburb Sued For Excluding White Students From Events
    Public Schools In Boston Suburb Sued For Excluding White Students From Events

    In the latest example of fighting racism in the bizarro world, Wellesley Public Schools, located in the Boston suburbs, is facing a federal lawsuit claiming that the district violated the constitutional rights of some of their students. 

    A non-profit group representing three Massachusetts families is responsible for filing the suit, according to CBS Boston. 

    The suit alleges that the schools “held racially segregated events for students where certain students were invited but white students were specifically excluded” – also known as the left’s answer to racism…more division, segregation and, well, racism. 

    The suit is also alleging that the district suppressed the First Amendment right of students citing, among other examples, an instance where students were told the phrase “Blue Lives Matter” was associated with white supremacy. 

    The group assisting with the lawsuit is called “Parents Defending Education”. 

    Nicole Neily, the group’s President, said: “This is not how public schools that operate with public tax dollars should be conducting themselves. It is fundamentally un-American to discriminate against students or separate students, segregate students, treat them differently, on the basis of race. It’s un-American and also it’s unconstitutional.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 22:50

  • Orwell's 1984 As Manual For The Woke
    Orwell’s 1984 As Manual For The Woke

    Authored by David Zukerman via AmericanThinker.com,

    On learning that Twitter sanctioned Rep. Jim Banks for daring to refer to Assistant Secretary of Health R. Levine as a man (and that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also referred, but without sanction, to Dr. Levine as a man) I turned, for insight on this peculiar assault on the concept of objective reality, to a classic novel on the nature of totalitarianism:  1984, by George Orwell.  Here are, I believe, relevant passages from the novel, from a torture scene, with torture applied to Winston Smith by O’Brien.

    O’Brien to Winston Smith, undergoing torture: 

    “Who controls the present, controls the past…” Signet Classic (paper), p.248

    This is what Critical Race Theory is all about.

    O’Brien to Winston Smith, undergoing torture, on the nature of reality:

    “Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see  something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external.  Reality exists in the human mind,  and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”  Ibid, at p. 249

    The Party says R. Levine is a woman; therefore, he is a woman.

    And through torture, O’Brien later has Winston Smith seeing five fingers when O’Brien held up four, with thumb hidden. At p. 258.

    O’Brien to Winston at p. 253:

    “The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”   Cf. Obama’s goal of transforming this country.

    The mindset of the Woke-media. 

    O’Brien to Winston at p. 255: 

    “We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission.  When you finally surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.” 

    Compare this to demands that it is impermissible to say that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

    Orwell, in 1984, teaches us that the Leftist Party will not be satisfied until Republican Congresspersons Jim Banks and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and all their GOP colleagues, agree that R. Levine is a woman — and, once the woke bring the GOP over to their side, they will, certainly, destroy it, and with it, the American spirit of freedom.

    And that is why, quite simply, the Democrat party and the woke media that would control the past by their control of the present, are the genuine threat to democracy.   They don’t have us immobilized, like Winston Smith, on a cot, attached to a machine that inflicts unbearable pain, but they use their power to inflict social and economic sanction on those they regard as heretics. 

    But they can and must be defeated.  How will  freedom prevail?  The way by which it always wins out: through commitment, and common-sense, and, not least of all, courage on the part of what the Constitution calls “We, the People.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 22:30

  • Striking Workers Decry "Suicide Shifts" As Pandemic Burnout Takes Toll
    Striking Workers Decry “Suicide Shifts” As Pandemic Burnout Takes Toll

    As protesters across the United States voice their opposition to vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions, overworked employees – stretched to the brink of exhaustion, are also fighting for their sanity, according to Bloomberg.

    From Hollywood sets to snack factories, and heavy-equipment makers to hospitals, employees are fighting back against what they see as a pernicious encroachment on their personal life — with work restricting their ability to relax, or just to get a good night’s sleep.

    Deere & Co. employees, who launched a 10,000-person strike Oct. 14, cited the mandatory overtime that can stretch their shifts to 12 hours. At Kellogg Co., the union went on strike this month after decrying the toll of seven-day workweeks that had kept cereal flowing to stuck-at-home customers during the pandemic. And at Frito-Lay Inc., workers have this year challenged what they called “suicide shifts”: being made to leave late and return early, with only eight hours of turnaround time in between.

    At present, there are more than 100,000 workers who have recently advocated for work stoppages around the country – while a record 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August alone – putting more pressure on an already tight labor market.

    According to Professor Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings Law School, workers are reacting to paycheck insecurity and instability in their schedules.

    “The issue of time as a workers’ rights issue has really come of age,” Williams told Bloomberg. “Workers being sped up, deprived of weekends, deprived of sufficient rest time, with extremely unstable schedules and long and erratic work hours — they’ve had enough.”

    Pandemic effect?

    Early on in the Covid-19 pandemic, essential workers were championed as heroes (and now summarily fired if they don’t take the most rushed vaccine in history). Yet, the accolades were largely lip service according to many of said workers, who say they didn’t receive the enhanced pay or protections they feel they deserve.

    Other workers, meanwhile, were largely able to work from home, spending time with their families while they ‘reassessed’ what they’d been sacrificing. Now, they’re resisting long hours and undesirable working conditions.

    “You’re only existing to do that job,” said 49-year-old Hollywood cameraman Hassan Abdul-Wahid.

    Several years ago, Abdul-Wahid arrived on a set and learned some horrifying news. A co-worker, driving home after an exhausting super-sized shift, dozed off, flipped her car and killed a friend. There wasn’t much time to reflect, Abdul-Wahid said. “We took a two-minute moment of silence and went back to work on some stupid music video.”

    The Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal both reported on Friday, citing people familiar, that the movie set on which Alec Baldwin discharged a prop firearm that killed a person was plagued by complaints over pay and conditions, leading some workers to walk off. The movie’s production company, Rust Movie Productions LLC, called safety its top priority. -Bloomberg

    Meanwhile over at Amazon – apparently due to a host of errors within the company’s HR system – errors caused by underinvestment, according to company insiders – some Amazon workers have been routinely underpaid, and some have also been fired by what appears to be a mostly automated system mistakenly marked them as “no shows”.

    What happens when an entire class of workers reach their breaking point and there’s nobody to replace them?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 22:10

  • Rand Paul: Fauci Will Never Stop Lying; Fire Him Now
    Rand Paul: Fauci Will Never Stop Lying; Fire Him Now

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Continuing his relentless effort to expose Anthony Fauci for lying about funding dangerous ‘civilisation ending’ gain of function research, Senator Rand Paul warned Sunday that the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will never stop lying about it and should immediately be fired.

    In an interview with Axios, Paul urged “He’s probably never going to admit that he lied,” adding “He’s gonna continue to dissemble, and try to work around the truth, and massage the truth.”

    “He [Fauci] should be fired,” Paul emphasised, adding “just for lack of judgment if nothing else.”

    Paul reiterated “We’re calling for an investigation and hearings on this. We’ve been calling for that for months.”

    “There has been a great deal of resistance from the Democrat side. Do we not want to know the origin of the virus or to know if it came from a lab? Particularly since this research still goes on,” the Senator further urged.

    Watch:

    Responding to Paul, Fauci claimed in an interview with ABC News that “He’s absolutely incorrect. Neither I nor Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, lied or misled about what we’ve done.”

    Fauci further claimed that it is “molecularly impossible for those viruses that were worked on to turn into SARS-CoV-2,” referring to the manipulation in the Chinese labs.

    “They were distant enough molecularly that no matter what you did to them, they could never, ever become SARS-CoV-2,” Fauci claimed:

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    During the interview, Fauci also stated “There’s all of this concern about what’s gain of function or what’s not.”

    Which is particularly interesting since he keeps changing the definition:

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 21:50

  • "We're Losing Everything" – Amazon's Automated HR System Commits Wage Theft On Massive Scale
    “We’re Losing Everything” – Amazon’s Automated HR System Commits Wage Theft On Massive Scale

    As Amazon waits to see if workers at its Bessemer, Ala. fulfillment center will be given a second shot at a vote to unionize following allegations of improper conduct on AMZN’s part – allegations made by the National Labor Relations Board – the NYT has just published a shocking story seemingly calibrated to galvanize public anger at the $1 trillion market cap behemoth founded by Jeff Bezos: Apparently, due to a host of errors within the company’s HR system – errors caused by underinvestment, according to company insiders – some Amazon workers have been routinely underpaid, and some have also been fired by what appears to be a mostly automated system mistakenly marked them as “no shows”.

    Per the NYT, Amazon’s management remained oblivious to these problems despite numerous complaints from workers until finally, one year ago, warehouse worker Tara Jones sent a desperate email to then-CEO Jeff Bezos himself asking him to rectify the fact that Amazon had been withholding $90 from her paychecks every cycle, repeatedly, despite her complaints.

    “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up,” she wrote weeks later. “I’m crying as I write this email.”

    Unbeknownst to her, the email set off an internal probe at Amazon. Eventually, that investigation determined that the company had been committing wage theft on a massive scale, as well as abusing its lowest-paid and most vulnerable workers in a host of other ways. The company still hasn’t finished identifying and repaying workers impacted by the mistakes, which Amazon is blaming on an automated software.

    Tara Jones

    Across the US, Amazon workers were underpaid, fired and abused as doctor’s notes were mysteriously deleted from systems. When they tried to complain to their case managers, they were routed through byzantine phone systems that were mostly automated. What little staffing there was involved outsourced call center workers in Costa Rica, India and Las Vegas who were overwhelmed themselves due to the immense volume of HR complaints.

    When it came time for some workers to return from medical leave, Amazon’s knotted HR system often took weeks or even months to register them and reinstate them on the schedule. In many cases, this resulted in weeks of lost income.

    Administrators were aware of these flaws, and were often met with similar resistance when they tried to take these issues up the chain. But Amazon has always been so focused on serving the customer, that the company failed to realize its treatment of its workers was starting to verge on abuse.

    One worker who was being paid disability by Amazon after a heart attack said his payments stopped abruptly for months. The financial strain essentially brought him and his wife to their knees.

    And when they sought help from the company, they were met with chilling silence.

    “Not a word that there had ever been a problem,” said James Watts, 54, who worked at Amazon in Chattanooga for six years before repeated heart attacks and strokes forced him to go on disability leave. The sudden loss of his benefits caused a cascade of calamities: Because he was without pay for two weeks, his car was repossessed. To afford food and doctors’ bills, Mr. Watts and his wife sold their wedding rings.

    “We’re losing everything,” he said.

    These issues have been known to managers across Amazon for some time. In internal correspondence, company administrators warned of “inadequate service levels,” “deficient processes” and systems that are “prone to delay and error.”

    The extent of the problem puts in stark relief how Amazon’s workers routinely took a back seat to customers during the company’s meteoric rise to retail dominance. Amazon built cutting-edge package processing facilities to cater to shoppers’ appetite for fast delivery, far outpacing competitors. But the business did not devote enough resources and attention to how it served employees, according to many longtime workers. “A lot of times, because we’ve optimized for the customer experience, we’ve been focused on that,” Bethany Reyes, who was recently put in charge of fixing the leave system, said in an interview. She stressed that the company was working hard to rebalance those priorities.

    However, the sad reality is that Amazon devotes seemingly endless resources to monitoring workers’ behavior down to the minute. But when it comes time to compensate those same workers, who have been subjected to what some have described as a kind of psychological torture on the floors of the company’s warehouse, Amazon couldn’t care less.

    These revelations are particularly shocking considering former CEO Bezos publicly proclaimed in his final letter to shareholders that Amazon would “do a better job” taking care of its workers.

    And while Amazon has seemingly appointed an executive – Bethany Reyes – to oversee the overhaul of Amazon’s HR system, there’s one obvious, glaring problem: The company is already having a hard enough time finding workers for its warehouses.

    Where is it going to find workers to fill out its workforce in HR?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 21:30

  • The Gaslighting Of America
    The Gaslighting Of America

    Authored by Bob Weir via AmericanThinker.com,

    I remember a comedy skit several years ago in which a woman comes home unexpectedly and finds her husband in bed with another woman.  Shocked, she demands to know who the woman is and why her husband is doing this.  The couple get out of bed and start getting dressed as the man says to his wife, “Honey, what are you talking about?” The wife, perplexed at the question, says, “I’m talking about that woman!”  Meanwhile, the other woman, now fully dressed, heads for the door.  The husband says, “What woman?  Honey, are you feeling okay?  There’s no woman here.”  Feeling dazed and confused, the wife begins to question her own sanity.

    That’s a pretty good example of what the Biden administration is pulling on the psyche of the American people.  

    What they’re doing is not merely “spin,” which has become SOP whenever a political party does a clever sales job on the public in order to keep certain facts from them.  No, this is much more than shrewd marketing; this is blatantly lying in the public’s face and telling them they’re crazy if they believe their own eyes.  

    When we look at videos showing thousands of migrants coming across our southern border with impunity, while Biden and his cohorts tell us they have the situation under control, we’re being gaslighted.

    When thousands of Americans and Afghan allies are abandoned to be tortured and killed by Taliban terrorists, while Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, tells us the war ended successfully, we’re being told not to believe what we’re seeing.  

    President Trump made our country energy independent, only to have his success overturned by Biden on day one of Biden’s presidency.  That forced our country to once again be dependent on foreign oil.  Biden said his action would help protect the environment.  We scratch our heads and wonder how it makes sense to ship millions of barrels of oil on cargo ships from thousands of miles away, only to be used the same way it was used when it was processed here.  

    Does foreign oil have less environmental effect than American oil?

    When Biden proposes a $3.5-billion “infrastructure bill” that is heavily weighted toward social engineering and radical “Green New Deal” initiatives, we’re told that everything is infrastructure.  

    We’re also told that the massive spending bill will cost “zero dollars” because the new taxes will be assessed only on the wealthy.  

    Then, to add more consternation to a public getting groggy trying to keep up with twelve-digit numbers, Biden and his accomplices want another $80 billion for the IRS so its agents can check into every bank account that has transfers of $600 or more.  As if the IRS weren’t already a liberty-crushing organization, Biden wants to provide it with more ammo to use against those who oppose him.  Nevertheless, we’re told it’s going after only tax cheats.  Why would these people need $80 billion more to do what they’ve always done?  Don’t ask, lest you get audited for questions they don’t want asked.

    When the supply chain of cargo ships, carrying about a half-million shipping containers filled with goods from all around the globe, are stalled in the waters outside major American port cities, we’re told by White House chief of staff Ron Klain that it’s just “high-class problems.”  

    In other words, only the wealthy are waiting for the goods to arrive at stores.  Moreover, Jen Psaki mocks it as the “tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed” — another elitist poking fun at the reasonable expectations coming from the working class.

    The list of gaslighting incidents is growing longer than Pinocchio’s nose. 

    Each time we are faced with another destructive lie, our attention is diverted to the latest Trump investigation or the probe of one of his supporters.  Keeping the January 6 imbroglio alive is one of those diversions.  The radical left has come to power by a sinister display of distractions from reality.  A major part of that distraction is using accusations of racism to muzzle opposition.  Most people will cower in fear of such labeling, even when they know in their hearts it’s not true.  That’s precisely what makes the accusations so useful to those who seek power through intimidation and distortion of reality.  

    President Trump called out situations for what they are, without the odious and murky filtration of political correctness.  That’s why the entrenched powers of Deep State corruption despised him.  

    Now we’re stuck with a president who says “what inflation?” as we pay higher prices than ever at the gas pump and the supermarket.  I seriously doubt that shoppers are questioning that reality.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 21:10

  • Israeli Official Threatens To Cut Power & Water To Proposed US Consulate For Palestinians
    Israeli Official Threatens To Cut Power & Water To Proposed US Consulate For Palestinians

    Two years ago as part of Trump’s drastic US foreign policy shift on the Israel-Palestine issue which changed decades of a status quo understanding, the US administration had shut down the longstanding US consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem as part of the Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as exclusively the recognized capital of Israel.

    As we detailed earlier, a showdown is brewing between the Israeli government and the Biden administration, given the US is now planning to reopen the consulate dedicated to Palestinian affairs in a stark reversal of the Trump policy – a move which has angered some Israeli officials to the point that there are now discussions and threats of shutting off water and electricity to the US consular building in the event it formally reopens. 

    The building in Jerusalem that previously functioned as a US consulate to Palestinians, AFP/Getty Images

    “No way would Israel agree to have the United States reopen its consulate dedicated to Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem, said Israeli Justice Minister Gideon Saar,” The Washington Post reported earlier this month of the Israeli reaction to the plans.

    The building in question was used for many years as the American representative office to east Jerusalem and the territories of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. Overseen by the State Department separately from what was at the time the main embassy in Tel Aviv, local Palestinians typically saw the consular presence as their only way of directly engaging with the US government, or a means of notifying or lobbying Washington on crucial issues affecting the Palestinian population.

    According to the latest statements of resistance to the Biden plan, which was initially laid out months ago by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israel’s Foreign Ministry sees the move as alarmingly tantamount to Washington’s formal recognition of the PLO once again:

    The professional echelon at the Foreign Ministry has described the expected American measures as an “introduction to the division of Jerusalem.” They stress that the effect of such a measure, which is backed by President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, will be to undermine, if not to completely withdraw from the measures taken by President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.

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    The report cites that the Palestinian side too sees it as a de facto walking back of Trump policy toward Israel, which the Palestinian Authority is welcoming of.

    Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren told the Israeli publication – likely echoing the perspective of a number of Israeli leaders – that one possibility being mulled in Tel Aviv is cutting power and water to the Jerusalem consulate building:

    Oren is also convinced that if the administration takes unilateral steps and reopens the consulate unilaterally, Israel will have to fight the move. “Theoretically, one could stop providing electricity and water to the building. And it is possible to do other things that we shouldn’t talk about right now,” he says.

    He further said Israeli leaders have to show Biden “there will be a price to pay; perhaps condemnations and perhaps sanctions.”

    In 2014 at the height of the war in Syria, the same Amb. Michael Oren voiced that Israel policy-makers see Sunni terrorist group in Syria – including ISIS – as a lesser evil compared to the Shia Iran threat…

    “Therefore, we have to weigh carefully whether we can bear those costs,” Amb. Oren said. “It is a strategic question, but, if, God forbid, the Americans decide to break all the rules, the battle at one level or the other will have to continue.” Thus Biden could be starting a fight with America’s closest Middle East ally, which could get very interesting – and would no doubt be used by the Republicans in the 2022 mid-term elections, and without doubt for the next presidential election in 2024.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:50

  • A $10K Bank-Snooping Threshold Would Intrude On Millions
    A $10K Bank-Snooping Threshold Would Intrude On Millions

    Authored by Andrew Wilford via RealClearMarkets.com,

    Bowing to pressure from banks and taxpayers concerned about a proposal to require financial institutions to report to the IRS gross inflows and outflows for just about every account in the country, Democrats have attempted to quell concerns by raising the threshold. Unfortunately, even the raised threshold is still laughably low to accomplish Democrats’ stated purpose of cracking down on wealthy tax cheats.

    The original proposal would have required financial institutions to report on any account (be it a checking account, savings account, stock portfolio, etc.) which handled more than $600 in inflows and outflows in a given year.

    Obviously, that’s just about every account.

    But the new proposal isn’t much better. This time, the threshold would be set at $10,000, and exempt payroll deposits. In other words, if a given taxpayer received $20,000 in payroll deposits, they would only exceed the threshold were other deposits and spending, taken together, to exceed $30,000.

    That sounds at first glance like a big difference, but unfortunately it would still affect millions of Americans of modest means. After all, $10,000 a year comes out to just over $830 a month in spending. And while payroll deposits would be exempted, many Americans don’t make their income through traditional biweekly payroll deposits.

    Small business owners and the self-employed, for example, often don’t receive a payroll check. With the rise of the gig economy, freelance work has exploded – Gallup research found that 44 million Americans were self-employed at some point during a given week in 2019. Meanwhile, there are well over 30 million small businesses in the United States.

    Workers in traditional employment situations can have money to deposit that doesn’t come from a payroll check as well. Tipped cash wages, gifts from family, or proceeds from the sale of assets like a car could all result in deposits that would count against the $10,000 threshold.

    While $10,000 sounds like a lot of money, it’s not when considering the amount of money average Americans need to spend just to get by. Federal Reserve Economic Data shows that every income decile, including the bottom 10 percent of American families, spends over $10,000 (over $12,000, in fact), every year on average on housing alone. In total, American households in every income decile spend over $28,000 a year.

    And even taxpayers who only receive payroll income could still get caught up in the IRS’s dragnet by saving up for a large purchase. Taxpayers who save for a down payment on a house, or the purchase of a new car, could easily end up spending $10,000 more than they take in in a given year.

    In short, you don’t need to be anywhere close to a wealthy billionaire hiding your resources away in secret offshore accounts to be caught up in the IRS’s snooping. Normal spending habits can easily mean that the IRS would be receiving access to your financial data — whether the threshold is set at $600 or $10,000.

    Democrats shouldn’t be taken seriously with this counteroffer to “ensure” that their bank monitoring scheme would go after their stated target of wealthy taxpayers only. A $10,000 threshold would still represent a broad-based effort to snoop on the financial affairs of average American taxpayers.

    Instead of giving the Internal Revenue Service new methods of spying on people, Congress should focus on fixing the agency’s broken systems and processes.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:30

  • Taiwan Earthquake Interrupts Micron Semiconductor Factories 
    Taiwan Earthquake Interrupts Micron Semiconductor Factories 

    A powerful earthquake struck Taiwan Sunday and reportedly knocked some of Micron Technology Inc.’s facilities offline, according to Bloomberg. 

    On Sunday, an earthquake of magnitude 6.5 struck northeastern Taiwan. The quake was large enough to affect Micron’s facilities in the northern Taiwanese city of Taoyuan. 

    Micron is still evaluating the impact and “determining the appropriate steps to return to full production.” The statement by one of the top computer memory and computer data storage companies was vague and didn’t detail what exact product lines were impacted. 

    Micron is a top producer of semiconductor chips, and the ongoing shortage in the industry and new developments arising from Taiwan could darken the outlook for chips. Expectations for the chip shortage to normalize could be at least another year. 

    “The semiconductor situation is going to take a long time to fix,” US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said at the Milken Institute Global Conference last week. “This is one I feel confident saying it’s not going to be fixed in a month or two, or six, or 12 months.”

    Also, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, evacuated some workers on Sunday as the earthquake shook buildings across the island. Taiwan resides near two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes. 

    Suppose the production of Micron chips isn’t brought up to full capacity in the near term. A supply chain analysis shows companies such as Apple, Dell, Intel, HP, LG, Hewlett Packard, and Cisco Systems could face order issues. 

    Already, Apple, Tesla, and Ford, among many others, have complained about chip shortages. Shown below is the number of times “semiconductor shortage” has been mentioned in Bloomberg news stories has hit a record high this month. 

    Add earthquakes to unexpected issues plaguing supply chains that could exacerbate the great semiconductor shortage.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:10

  • 2 Killed, 4 Wounded, Including Local Cop, During Mass Shooting In Boise
    2 Killed, 4 Wounded, Including Local Cop, During Mass Shooting In Boise

    Even as the US national murder rate climbed substantially during 2020 as the pandemic transformed American society into a pressure cooker, school shootings still haven’t made a comeback. In fact, they’ve been far less infrequent this year. 

    However, while school shootings have fallen in frequency, a different type of spree killer has emerged, exemplified by the disgruntled self-professed sex addict murdered a bunch of mostly asian massage parlor workers.

    The shooter, who is now in custody, killed two people and injured four, including a police officer, in a shooting at a shopping mall Monday in Boise Idaho.

    Authorities said officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect, during the news conference. The majority of the mall had been cleared, but police were still looking for any additional victims.

    Police didn’t release any other information, saying the investigation was ongoing, and asked police to avoid the area.

    Police didn’t provide any additional information about the incident to the press, they were interviewing dozens of people outside the entrance to Macy’s, one of five large department stores at the mall, which has 153 stores in all. Police are also investigating another crime scene that occurred nearby: there’s no clue yet as to whether they’re related.

    Cheri Gypin, of Boise, was in the mall with a friend where they walk for an hour three or four times a week. She said she heard several large bangs, but thought something had fallen from the ceiling. Then about 60 people, including families pushing strollers, came running at them, some of them shouting that there was an active shooter.

    “My friend was trying to process it,” said Gypin, 60. “I just looked at her and said, ‘We’ve got to run.’ So we just ran and kept running until we got to the outer perimeter of the parking lot.”

    They made their way back to their car, where police told the crowd of people who had fled the mall to leave the parking area.

    Calls of shots fired with one person down came in at 1:50 p.m. from the Boise Towne Square Mall, Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee said at a press conference.

    Lee said it “would be premature to make assumptions,” of the shooter’s motive, and the investigation is ongoing.The chief refused to take additional questions from the media.

    “I cannot stress enough how traumatic this event is for the community at large as well as for those that were witnesses or are the families of all who were involved,” Ryan said.

    No information on the identities of the victims or shooter has been released. We now await more details about the shootingl

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:00

  • California Decriminalized Shoplifting For Amounts Under $950, Guess What Happened Next
    California Decriminalized Shoplifting For Amounts Under $950, Guess What Happened Next

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Walgreens closed 22 stores in San Francisco where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized…

    Shoplifter’s Paradise

    Please note San Francisco Has Become a Shoplifter’s Paradise

    “Theft in Walgreens’ San Francisco stores is four times the average for stores elsewhere in the country, and the chain spends 35 times more on security guards in the city than elsewhere,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle. 

    Earlier this year, a spokesman for CVS, which has closed at least two stores, told CNN that of its 155 locations in the Bay Area, the 12 in San Francisco account for 26% of all shoplifting incidents in the region.

    Much of this lawlessness can be linked to Proposition 47, a California ballot initiative passed in 2014, under which theft of less than $950 in goods is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted.

    Meanwhile, politically progressive local prosecutors from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and New York compete to see who can prosecute the fewest people.

    Just Plain Crazy

    This is just plain crazy. And it’s another reason for the big backlash I expect in the 2022 midterm elections.

    School boards, crime, racist college admissions that favor blacks who cannot read, and critical race theory crammed down kids throats are all part of the extreme Left madness sweeping the country.

    In February, I noted Coca Cola Confirms Training Employees ‘Try To Be Less White’

    In July, I commented Critical Race Theory Should Be Banned, and a Black Parent Explains Why

    “Educators use CRT as their own agenda, to indoctrinate the kids to hate each other,” said one black parent to a rousing round of applause at a school board meeting.

    In May I noted College Entrance Exam SAT Score Racial Profiling: 964=1223

    Welcome to new math that says an SAT score of 964 equals a score of 1223.

    “We can’t sit on our hands and ignore the disparities of wealth reflected in the SAT,” claim college administrators.

    To compensate for the fact that Blacks score lower on average than Asians and Whites, SAT to Give Students ‘Adversity Score’.

    And so here we are. Shoplifting is the fault of Walgreens, not the shoplifters. 

    This makes about as much sense as everything else sweeping the country.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 19:50

  • One Bank's "Persistent Inflation" Meter Just Hit A Record 96 Out Of 100
    One Bank’s “Persistent Inflation” Meter Just Hit A Record 96 Out Of 100

    Earlier this year, as Wall Street first became obsessed with distinguishing transitory vs non-transitory (i.e., permanent) inflation, Bank of America launched two trackers – a transitory and a non-transitory inflation meter. Initially, it was mostly good news: while the bank’s transitory inflation meter was at 100, or the highest reading possible, non-transitory inflation was subdued, at just 37 back in May.

    However one month later, an ominous trend emerged: while “transitory” inflation was stuck at the highest reading possible, “non-transitory” inflation doubled to 75 in June.

    Needless to say, this was the time when the so-called “transitory inflation bros” starting to lose the argument that soaring inflation would fade away in just a few months, with sticky inflation such as rent and housing pushing sharply higher even as some transitory components such as used car prices and airfares eased off somewhat.

    Alas, since then prices have only continued to rise, and in September core CPI rose 0.24% in September, just barely rounding down to a 0.2%; here one of the biggest stories was the surge in owners’ equivalent rent (OER) and rent of primary residence to a 0.43% and 0.45% mom clip, far above the prior 0.2-0.3% mom trend. This pointed to much stronger persistent price pressures.

    Meanwhile, transitory drivers of inflation were more muted. On one hand, reopening-related components were a drag, as were some commodities such as apparel and used cars. On the other hand, new car prices and household furnishings & supplies gained. However, as we noted recently, used car prices tracked by the Manheim Used Car Index just soared to a new all time high, suggesting that upcoming CPI prints will see both transitory and persistent inflation components rising sharply.

    So consistent with the move in rents, the BofA US persistent inflation meter finally gave up all hope that inflation is coming down any time soon, and surged to 96 in September from 80 previously “suggesting historically elevated cyclical price pressures.” Meanwhile, even though transitory inflation cooled somewhat on a % yoy basis in September, it remained historically elevated. As such, the BofA US transitory inflation meter printed 100 for the sixth straight month.

    And as the next chart shows, never in the history of the data (which sadly goes back only to 1995) have both transitory and persistent inflation readings been at an all time high at the same time.

    And while this should put to rest the debate about whether the current episode of runaway inflation will fade away any times soon (it won’t), the bad news is that should economic growth continue to shrink at the current ominous pace – as a reminder the Atlanta Fed sees Q3 GDP growing just 0.5% – America is about to be reminded just how miserable life is under stagflation (for a quick preview of what is coming, please read “Is Stagflation Here: Comparing The 2020s With The 1970s…”).

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 19:30

  • Biden Plays Chicken With Semitruck Drivers
    Biden Plays Chicken With Semitruck Drivers

    Authored by Jackson Elliott, Cara Ding, Allan Stein, Steven Kovac, Jannis Falkenstern and Nick Ciolino via The Epoch Times,

    American truckers don’t like taking orders. But the Biden administration has increased pressure on them to take the vaccine—willing or unwilling.

    All through the pandemic, truckers endured hardships to keep America’s infrastructure running. They waited in line for hours in sight of bathrooms they weren’t allowed to use. On the road, some died alone of COVID-19.

    Now, with supply chains disrupted, Americans need them more than ever.

    But faced with the prospect of a forced vaccination, many drivers are considering quitting.

    “I’d fight it,” said veteran trucker Mike Widdins, referring to vaccine mandates.

    “I think a lot of us will be quitting. Who likes to be forced to do stuff you don’t want to do?”

    Widdins isn’t alone in his willingness to leave trucking if forced to vaccinate. Polls by trucking publications Commercial Carrier Journal and OverDrive indicate that up to 30 percent of truckers will seriously consider quitting if forced to vaccinate. If they quit, the consequences for America may be massive. US Transport estimates that 70 percent of American freight goes by truck.

    “It would hurt shipping big-time,” Widdins said.

    Narrowing Lanes

    The Sept. 9 mandate establishes an “emergency standard” which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is allowed to issue if it determines workers are in “grave danger.” Currently, the White House Office of Budget and Management’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is reviewing the mandate. The review process can take as long as 90 days.

    Most of the trucking industry will be unaffected by the Biden vaccine mandate, which demands that all companies with over 100 employees require vaccination or weekly COVID-19 tests.

    Most truck companies have six trucks or fewer, according to the American Trucking Associations. Independent drivers make an average of $50,000 more per year than drivers at large companies.

    Some experts say the selective reach of the mandate makes it ineffective. Barbara Smithers, vice president of the Indiana Motor Truck Association, told The Epoch Times via email that it makes little sense to “cherry pick” who to vaccinate based on company size.

    “Truck drivers spend most of their work hours alone in the cab of a truck—literally one of the safest places possible during a pandemic—so why do they need to be regulated in this way?” she said.

    “Testing hundreds of thousands of truck drivers moving across the country every day is a virtual impossibility.”

    For mandate-affected companies, Biden’s decision may drive away employees at a time when America needs them most. The American Trucking Associations estimates that America needs 80,000 more truckers to meet transportation needs.
    Recently, supply chain crises have left many Americans in need. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said the shortage will last as long as there’s a pandemic.

    With backups unloading goods at America’s ports, shortages already threaten consumers. But if long lines of trucks waiting to ship goods suddenly become shorter, the crisis will become far worse.

    Whether America runs short on trucks depends on the Biden administration’s orders and how truckers respond.

    Joe Trucker and Joe Biden

    The average trucker is a big, bearded guy with a sturdy, American name like ‘Joe.’

    Joe Trucker is friendly given the chance, and he thinks of his job as his little service to America. He has a relative in the military somewhere, or he served himself. Toward government, he holds a strong suspicion that increases the more pressure he feels from it.

    Joe Trucker doesn’t usually like interviews. If he doesn’t feel open to talking, he drops four-word answers like he tosses peanut shells from his window. In exchange for long hours away from home, he gets low pay, independence, and the nation’s best sunsets.

    The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus hasn’t been kind to Joe Trucker. At a time when many Americans hunkered down at home, he was still on the road.

    Trucking life during the pandemic was a series of frustrating restrictions, said trucker Victor Morales at a Georgia One9 truck stop.

    Morales has driven trucks for 25 years.

    After a long day on the road, Morales would wait for hours to drop off a truckful of deliveries at a warehouse. But warehouse owners didn’t allow truckers to leave their cabs for any reason.

    “You’re almost forced, like a second-class citizen,” he said.

    “They want the goods and services you got, but they don’t even want you to get out of your truck.”

    If they arrived hungry, they waited hungry, he said. They weren’t even allowed to use the toilet only steps away.

    “You can literally see a bathroom right there behind the glass. But you can’t get out,” said Morales.

    In the eyes of drivers, Biden’s mandate is the last step in a long line of restrictions that don’t consider their needs or wants.

    “It’s unconstitutional,” said one trucker who preferred to remain anonymous. “We’ll just buy our own damn trucks and run our own company. All we’ve got to do is shut down and the country doesn’t exist no more.”

    For many drivers, the vaccine mandate may prove the final straw. Some drivers don’t trust the vaccine because of how new it is. Some distrust it for personal medical reasons. Others distrust it because they don’t trust the government.

    “I had cancer years ago,” said trucker Jack McGregory. “I don’t want to put something that I don’t know exactly what it will do into my body. If I die, I want to die with a little more time on my hands than that.”

    McGregory said that he would rather quit than vaccinate.

    But even those who take the vaccine say they oppose the mandate.

    At the Pilot Truck Stop at I-69 and Wadhams Road in Michigan, all 10 truckers interviewed by The Epoch Times said they took the vaccine but oppose a vaccine mandate.

    Kevin Hambrick, a longtime driver with Fortune 500 transportation company J.B. Hunt, opposes the mandate.

    “Each guy should make his own choice,” Hambrick said.

    In Arizona, Florida-based truck driver Juan Martinez said that he knows life without freedom, having lived under Cuban communism. He also received a COVID-19 shot and opposes the mandate.

    “You have to decide for yourself,” he said. “People should do whatever they want to do.”

    Many drivers feel pressured by their employers. After a year of difficult pandemic restrictions, it seems to them that COVID-19 rules grow ever more invasive.

    In Flagstaff, Arizona, a long-distance truck driver in his late 20s asked not to be identified, fearing reprisal by his employer.

    “There’s no place in the middle right now,” he said, adding “if you want to put something in your body, it’s your personal choice.”

    Other truckers who did not want to be named said they felt angry at those who mandated the vaccine.

    “We run our country,” one said. “They don’t give a [expletive] about this country.”

    Roads to Health

    According to the Biden administration, America needs the new vaccine to increase protection against the CCP virus.

    “The vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing,” president Joe Biden said in a press conference. But more people should get vaccinated, he added.

    The current available vaccines block COVID-19 in most cases, according to CDC statistics.

    Today, 79 percent of Americans over 18 are vaccinated, according to the CDC. Experts say that this number might be enough to achieve herd immunity. But as the number of unvaccinated people has dwindled, pressure to increase vaccination numbers has increased.

    “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said to unvaccinated people. “Your refusal has cost all of us.”

    Some medical experts say clusters of unvaccinated people allow the virus to mutate into a form that can bypass the vaccine.

    “It’s perhaps just a matter of time,” University of Alabama at Birmingham medicine professor Dr. Michael Saag said. “A new variant could emerge where we won’t be so fortunate, and the existing vaccines won’t work.”

    Another recent executive order suggested that the White House fears a truck shortage.

    On Oct. 20, Biden announced an executive order that temporarily lifts weight restrictions on trucks and encourages more people to become truckers. The White House announced this order soon after the vaccine mandate.

    Neither the White House nor the Department of Transportation responded to repeated requests for comment on this story.

    Collision Course

    Truck industry experts say that truckers with the option to quit will do so if forced to take the vaccine.

    Joe Sculley, the president of Motor Transport Association of Connecticut, said that he sees a scenario playing out for those who oppose or refuse to comply with the mandate.

    “Drivers will leave bigger companies and look for smaller ones that do not have to comply with the mandate, or they will quit altogether and look for another profession,” he said.

    Right now, the supply chain crisis, the number of drivers who oppose forced vaccination, and the driver shortage leave the best cards in the hands of drivers, Sculley added.

    “Drivers have leverage,” he said. “It won’t be an empty threat. Nobody is going to be quickly replaced.”

    Jim Ward, president of D.M. Bowman and Chairman of the Truckload Carriers Associations, agreed that truckers are serious about quitting because of vaccine mandates.

    “With driver availability already limited, any exodus due to compliance with a vaccine mandate would put our nation and its economy in an even more precarious situation,” he said.

    Ward added that drivers who quit can’t easily be replaced. They require training.

    “Our nation’s professional truck drivers are the safest, most well-trained operators on the road today. Replacing any driver who leaves the industry is not an overnight process,” he said.

    Biden’s best chance to bring in new drivers comes from a pilot program in his recent infrastructure bill. The program would create a “test group” of 18- to 21-year-olds who would be followed to “see how they would perform,” Sculley said.
    However, the American trucking industry has long faced a driver shortage. Long hours away from home and mediocre pay doesn’t attract new drivers to the business, even when they have the right skills.

    Impact

    New workers also might not compare with longtime professionals. Experienced truckers thread their trucks through a complex ballet of traffic conditions and federal regulations to arrive on time.

    Football games, the Kentucky Derby, hurricanes two states over, and other issues can all mean higher traffic along a route, said Morales.

    “I’m not a sports fan. But I know when the playoffs are,” he said.

    If Biden’s mandate goes through, the most experienced truckers are most likely to quit, Morales said.

    In 10 years, nearly 30 percent of truckers will be 65 or older, according to Department of Transportation statistics. Often, these drivers make more money and have cash saved up, said Morales.

    “The mandate is going to affect the older drivers that have been here a while,” he said. “They’re gonna have a choice.”

    If these drivers retire early, it will be a challenge to replace them. To become a trucker, a driver must pass his commercial driver’s license (CDL) test, a process which usually takes four to seven weeks. During the pandemic, many truck driving schools closed, and training schools issued at least 100,000 fewer CDLS.

    Short-term truckers are often unreliable, said small truck company owner Pete Falkenstern. He calls them “cowboys.”

    “If somebody’s done it for a long time and hasn’t had a lot of accidents, they’ve been pretty safe,” he said. “They probably take some pride in what they do.”

    If 20 percent of truckers quit because of the mandate, America will lose about 15 percent of its transportation capacity.

    America’s infrastructure relies most on trucks. As a transportation system, trucks are incredibly flexible. They can go anywhere at any time, can carry many kinds of goods, and are the most cost-effective form of transportation over short to medium distances.
    “I love this industry, but without us this country would shut down in three days,” said trucker Jack McGregory.

    Even so, the trucking industry has a high turnover rate.

    Backing Up

    The vaccine mandate will only directly affect companies with over 100 people, but small truck companies won’t have the required resources to absorb many additional drivers, Falkenstern said.

    “I would love to be able to accommodate 30 people, but the work is not here to support that many,” he said. “I don’t want to operate any more than what I have because of insurance regulations.”

    Large truck companies also tend to be cheaper, said Falkenstern. They can buy things in bulk and self-insure.

    “A lot of the bigger companies can keep prices down,” he said. “They can get a lower cost because it’s in bulk.”

    Cathy Roberson, the founder and president of Logistics Trends and Insights LLC, said it’s unclear right now what the long-term impact of the vaccine mandate will be.

    If truckers quit, the mandate could damage America’s logistics system, Robertson said. But if they switch to smaller companies, Biden’s executive order might only reshuffle employees.

    “It really hurts the larger trucking companies more than anything else,” Robertson said.

    Whatever the case, the mandate will exacerbate current supply chain issues, she said.

    Already, logistics workers wrestle with the worst supply chain issues ever seen, said Lisa Anderson, the president of logistics group LMA Consulting.

    “It’s unprecedented. It’s never happened before,” she said.

    Right now, logistics issues have made it difficult to find replacement parts for trucks, she said. Businesses find themselves in a catch-22 situation; To fix their trucks, they need trucks to transport parts. The supply chain feeds itself.

    Anderson said the vaccine mandate will almost certainly worsen the driver shortage. Truckers are independent-natured.

    “They are more of a lone wolf, always navigating complex situations on their own,” she said. “They don’t like to be told what to do.”

    Delays Ahead

    If truckers follow through with what they say they will do, America’s supply chain crisis may soon become far worse.

    From a perspective based purely on material benefits, it seems like it’s only logical to obey the mandate. Truckers can take an effective vaccine, keep their jobs, and keep the national supply chain running.

    But human beings often want to assert that they amount to more than mere links in a chain, pulling on command from the federal government. The logic of individual freedom doesn’t calculate for material benefits.

    “It’s just that shoving-it-down-your-throat part,” Morales said. “Our first instinct will be to push back.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 19:10

  • SEC's Gensler Wins 'Battle Of The Regulators' To Oversee Stablecoins
    SEC’s Gensler Wins ‘Battle Of The Regulators’ To Oversee Stablecoins

    Just days after stablecoin issuer Tether Ltd paid a $41 million penalty after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found the company had falsely claimed it had adequate dollars in reserve to back its tokens (following an $18.5 million settlement paid in February to the New York attorney general’s office over a similar probe), Bloomberg reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has won the ‘battle of the regulators’ to move ahead as the main watchdog over stablecoins.

    SEC Chair Gary Gensler is supportive but politically careful when he expresses his views on the crypto-space

    “I taught this and studied it for many years at MIT and I wouldn’t have dedicated my time to it if I didn’t think it was interesting and innovative,” Gensler said in September.

    “But, at the same time, I don’t think technologies last long outside of a social and public policy framework and in this case, we have to insure for investor and consumer protection.”

    And now Bloomberg reports, the Treasury Department and other agencies will specify in a highly-anticipated report, expected to be published this week, that the SEC has significant authority over tokens like Tether, said people familiar with the matter.

    The report will also urge Congress to pass legislation specifying coins should be regulated similarly to bank deposits, one of the people said, asking not to be named because discussions are private.

    The revisions he sought make clear that the government will take an active role in regulating stablecoins even as it waits for longer-term plans to be implemented, but, of course, any broad regulatory bill faces long odds in a divided Congress and could take years to enact.

    This is, relatively speaking, being seen as a positive development since 1) it avoids the one-upmanship that could have occurred from various random government entities attempting to curry favor with the likes of Yellen and Warren who have made it clear they are not fans of the decentralized crypto world’s potential ‘breaking’ of the centralized financial system they rely on, and 2) SEC Chair Gary Gensler is, again relatively speaking, not in favor of any sweeping China-esque crypto ban (and some have argued previously he recognizes its value) even though he has made it clear in the past that there is need for regulation:

    “We’ve got a lot of casinos here in the Wild West,” Gensler said.

    “And the poker chip is these stablecoins.”

    Bitcoin ticked higher on the headline…

    While headlines over the coming weeks – as the negotiations begin over exactly how to control these ‘poker chips’ – are likely to cause volatility, the fact that the SEC is taking it under their wing entirely removes the deep left tail of an outright ban and the liquidity-related chaos that could cause in a hurry.

    If cryptocurrencies are to become the backbone of a modern decentralized financial system, then accepting the need for regulation is necessary.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 18:50

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Oct 25

Today’s News 25th October 2021

  • Millions Of Jobs At Risk As Europe Faces Magnesium Shortage
    Millions Of Jobs At Risk As Europe Faces Magnesium Shortage

    Europe purchases 95% of its magnesium from China, will run out of the industrial metal used to strengthen aluminum by the end of November that could threaten millions of jobs in sectors from automobiles to aerospace to defense and much more, according to Bloomberg. 

    Three trade groups, including European Aluminium, Eurometaux, and industriAll, warn shipments from China are dwindling quick due to power cuts to energy-intensive magnesium smelters. They said if reserves of the industrial metal aren’t increased in the near term, it may result in trade production shortages, factory closures, and job losses. 

    “Supply of magnesium originating from China has either been halted or reduced drastically since September 2021, resulting in an international supply crisis of unprecedented magnitude,” the trade groups said. They urged Brussels “to urgently work toward immediate actions with their Chinese counterparties to mitigate the short-term, critical shortage issue, as well as the longer-term supply effects on European industries.”

    Magnesium, which is used extensively in the aerospace industry, is a metal for producing aluminum alloys in the automotive industry and could compound issues for European carmakers already dealing with crippling chip shortages. 

    Morgan Stanley’s Amy Sergeant and Ioannis Masvoulas told clients last week that Europe stands out as the most exposed region to magnesium shortfalls from China. They said Europe shuttered its last magnesium smelter in 2001. This means that there’s no way for Europe to domestically increase magnesium supplies and hinges all on China’s output. 

    Days ago, Barclays analyst Amos Fletcher warned clients, “there are no substitutes for magnesium in aluminum sheet and billet production.” He said if “magnesium supply stops,” the entire auto industry will grind to a halt. 

    European Aluminium, whose members include Norsk Hydro, Rio Tinto, and Alcoa, said, “the current magnesium supply shortage is a clear example of the risk the EU is taking by making its domestic economy dependent on Chinese imports. The EU’s industrial metals strategy must be strengthened.” 

    Morgan Stanley warns: “Should magnesium shortages persist through to 2022, there is a growing risk of downstream demand destruction as smelters may be unable to produce specific aluminum alloys for the automotive, building, and packaging sectors. In that scenario, we could see a shift towards commodity-grade standard ingot.” 

    The unintended consequences of European officials deciding decades ago to rely entirely on China for magnesium could spell disaster for millions of jobs if reserves aren’t replenished soon. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 02:45

  • The Dutch Government Is Gambling Billions On Green Hydrogen
    The Dutch Government Is Gambling Billions On Green Hydrogen

    Authored by Cyril Widdershoven via OilPrice.com,

    • Green hydrogen is making headlines around the world as many consider it a cornerstone of a successful energy transition 

    • The Netherlands is ready to spend billions in its attempt to become a global green hydrogen hub, but some observers are becoming increasingly skeptical 

    • The economic viability of this new investment is unclear and a growing number of critics see these investments as the government gambling with billions of euros 

    The future of green hydrogen looks very bright, with the renewable energy source becoming something of a media darling in recent months. The global drive to invest in green or blue hydrogen is picking up steam and investment levels are staggering. Realism and economics, however, seem to be lacking when it comes to planning new green hydrogen projects in NW Europe, the USA, and Australia. At the same time, blue hydrogen, potentially an important bridge fuel, is being largely overlooked. The Netherlands, formerly a leading natural gas producer and NW-European gas trade and transportation hub, is attempting to establish itself as a main pillar of the European hydrogen economy. According to the Dutch government, the Netherlands is ready to provide whatever is needed to support the set-up of a new green hydrogen hub and transportation network. During the presentation of the 2021-2022 government plans in September (Prinsjesdag), Dutch PM Mark Rutte committed himself to this green hydrogen future. Without any real assessments of the risks and potential economic threats, plans are being discussed and implemented for a multibillion spending spree on green hydrogen, involving not only the refurbishment of the Dutch natural gas pipeline infrastructure but also the building of major new offshore wind parks, targeting the construction of hundreds of additional windmills. These wind parks are going to be set up and owned by international consortia, such as the NorthH2, involving Royal Dutch Shell, Gasunie (owned by the government), and others. The optimism about these projects is now being questioned, not only by skeptics but increasingly by parties, such as Gasunie, that are part of the deals. 

    Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported yesterday that questions are popping up about the feasibility and commercial aspects of these large-scale plans as well as the potential risks of a new “cartel” of offshore wind producers. The multibillion-dollar investment plans, supported by the government, are even being questioned by experts of the Dutch ministry of economy, as it is not clear at all if green hydrogen production in the Netherlands, such as the NorthH2 project in Groningen (formerly known as the Dutch natural gas province), will ever be feasible or take-off. The commercial viability of green hydrogen is a major issue as it still needs large-scale technical innovation and scaling up of electrolyzers. At the same time, there is uncertainty over demand as industry (the main client) does not appear to be interested at present. Dutch parties are also asking themselves if the current set up of the planned offshore wind parks are not a precursor to a new wind-energy cartel in the making.  Some Dutch political parties and even insiders from Gasunie are worried about a monopoly position of the likes of Shell in the future. 

    Still, the main underlying issue is the financial risks being taken by the government in the coming years. As Dutch professor Paul Bovend’Eert stated to the news “plans are being developed, but financial risks are not addressed”. He also reiterated that the Dutch parliament has often been left out of the loop or not simply addressed at all. Several analysts have already warned that the current pro-green hydrogen strategy of the government is ‘gambling with billions”. Some have even warned that the projections about needed investments could be much higher than already is expected. The EU already stated that between EUR240-380 billion is needed to set up European-wide 40GW of hydrogen production. The Dutch government plans indicate a production capacity of 3-4GW by 2030 or an investment of tens of billions. To become a real NW-European hydrogen hub, investments will have to be even higher. While optimism is there, no real regulation and control mechanisms are in place to structure these government investments or subsidies to commercial parties. Gasunie board members indicated that more conditions and legal structures need to be put in place to control where the money is going. The current energy, oil, and gas markets in the Netherlands and EU are already liberalized. Ownership and investment or production strategies are not being set up by governments or the EU but by companies themselves. Nothing, in reality, would change dramatically, comparisons between hydrogen and natural gas markets are large.

    The increased criticism by some, such as Gasunie and political parties, with regards to the power position of commercial parties, is also very strange. Some could argue that the current hydrogen strategy of Shell and others is what society and Dutch judges have forced them to do. Shell could and should argue a very simple position “we are doing what the Dutch legal system is forcing us to do”. For parties such as Shell, at least in the Netherlands or the EU, taking up green hydrogen strategies is a new License to Operate. International energy giants such as Shell do not want to be minor players in this market. For an international player, a pivotal position in any market is a must. 

    In the coming weeks, especially after COP26, as criticism is now being muted by most, a potential storm could be brewing. If assessments are pointing out that the risks being taken by the Dutch government are too high in light of the benefits, and potential higher bills for customers, potential opposition to green hydrogen plans could be growing. At the same time, the Dutch hydrogen plans are seen by most as pivotal, even in light of the EU Commission’s Green Deal plans. A full-scale backlash to hydrogen could be a reality if Dutch political parties are going to constrain implementation, while other European countries will be more skeptical about their own plans. Billions, or potentially trillions, of euros will be at risk if this new hydrogen infrastructure turns out not to be economically viable. Without the power and technology of existing energy players, especially Shell, Total, BP, or ENI, behind the set-up, the future of this new power source will remain uncertain.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 02:00

  • Escobar: The World According To Vladimir Putin
    Escobar: The World According To Vladimir Putin

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Russian president, in Sochi, lays down the law in favor of conservatism – says the woke West is in decline…

    The plenary session is the traditional highlight of the annual, must-follow Valdai Club discussions – one of Eurasia’s premier intellectual gatherings.

    Vladimir Putin is a frequent keynote speaker. In Sochi this year, as I related in a previous column, the overarching theme was “global shake-up in the 21st century: the individual, values and the state.”

    Putin addressed it head on, in what can already be considered one of the most important geopolitical speeches in recent memory (a so-far incomplete transcript can be found here) – certainly his strongest moment in the limelight. That was followed by a comprehensive Q&A session (starting at 4:39:00).

    Predictably, assorted Atlanticists, neocons and liberal interventionists will be apoplectic. That’s irrelevant. For impartial observers, especially across the Global South, what matters is to pay very close attention to how Putin shared his worldview – including some very candid moments.

    Right at the start, he evoked the two Chinese characters that depict “crisis” (as in “danger”) and “opportunity,” melding them with a Russian saying: “Fight difficulties with your mind. Fight dangers with your experience.”

    This elegant, oblique reference to the Russia-China strategic partnership led to a concise appraisal of the current chessboard:

    The re-alignment of the balance of power presupposes a redistribution of shares in favor of rising and developing countries that until now felt left out. To put it bluntly, the Western domination of international affairs, which began several centuries ago and, for a short period, was almost absolute in the late 20th century, is giving way to a much more diverse system.

    That opened the way to another oblique characterization of hybrid warfare as the new modus operandi:

    Previously, a war lost by one side meant victory for the other side, which took responsibility for what was happening. The defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, for example, did not make Vietnam a “black hole.” On the contrary, a successfully developing state arose there, which, admittedly, relied on the support of a strong ally. Things are different now: No matter who takes the upper hand, the war does not stop, but just changes form. As a rule, the hypothetical winner is reluctant or unable to ensure peaceful post-war recovery, and only worsens the chaos and the vacuum posing a danger to the world.

    A disciple of Berdyaev

    In several instances, especially during the Q&A, Putin confirmed he’s a huge admirer of Nikolai Berdyaev. It’s impossible to understand Putin without understanding Berdyaev (1874-1948), who was a philosopher and theologian – essentially, a philosopher of Christianity.

    In Berdyaev’s philosophy of history, the meaning of life is defined in terms of the spirit, compared with secular modernity’s emphasis on economics and materialism. No wonder Putin was never a Marxist.

    For Berdyaev, history is a time-memory method through which man works toward his destiny. It’s the relationship between the divine and the human that shapes history. He places enormous importance on the spiritual power of human freedom.

    Nikolai Berdyaev. Photo: Center for Sophiological Studies

    Putin made several references to freedom, to family – in his case, of modest means – and to the importance of education; he heartily praised his apprenticeship at Leningrad State University. In parallel, he absolutely destroyed wokeism, transgenderism and cancel culture promoted “under the banner of progress.”

    This is only one among a series of key passages:

    We are surprised by the processes taking place in countries that used to see themselves as pioneers of progress. The social and cultural upheavals taking place in the United States and Western Europe are, of course, none of our business; we don’t interfere with them. Someone in the Western countries is convinced that the aggressive erasure of whole pages of their own history – the “reverse discrimination” of the majority in favor of minorities, or the demand to abandon the usual understanding of such basic things as mother, father, family or even the difference between the sexes – that these are, in their opinion, milestones of the movement toward social renewal.

    So a great deal of his 40 minute-long speech, as well as his answers, codified some markers of what he previously defined as “healthy conservatism”:

    Now that the world is experiencing a structural collapse, the importance of sensible conservatism as a basis for policy has increased many times over, precisely because the risks and dangers are multiplying and the reality around us is fragile.

    Switching back to the geopolitical arena, Putin was adamant that “we are friends with China. But not against anyone.”

    Geoeconomically, he once again took time to engage in a masterful, comprehensive – even passionate – explanation of how the natural gas market works, coupled with the European Commission’s self-defeating bet on the spot market, and why Nord Stream 2 is a game-changer.

    Afghanistan

    During the Q&A, scholar Zhou Bo from Tsinghua University addressed one of the key, current geopolitical challenges. Referring to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, he pointed out that, “if Afghanistan has a problem, the SCO has a problem. So how can the SCO, led by China and Russia, help Afghanistan?”

    Putin stressed four points in his answer:

    • The economy must be restored;

    • The Taliban must eradicate drug trafficking;

    • The main responsibility should be assumed “by those who had been there for 20 years” – echoing the joint statement  after the meeting between the extended troika and the Taliban in Moscow on Wednesday; and

    • Afghan state funds should be unblocked.

    He also mentioned, indirectly, that the large Russian military base in Tajikistan is not a mere decorative prop.

    Training bunker at Russia’s military base in Takikistan. Photo: Moscow Times

    Putin went back to the subject of Afghanistan during the Q&A, once again stressing that NATO members should not “absolve themselves from responsibility.”

    He reasoned that the Taliban “are trying to fight extreme radicals.” On the “need to start with the ethnic component,” he described Tajiks as accounting for 47% of the overall Afghan population – perhaps an over-estimation but the message was on the imperative of an inclusive government.

    He also struck a balance: As much as “we are sharing with them [the Taliban] a view from the outside,” he made the point that Russia is “in contact with all political forces” in Afghanistan – in the sense that there are contacts with former government officials like Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah and also Northern Alliance members, now in the opposition, who are self-exiled in Tajikistan.

    Those pesky Russians

    Now compare all of the above with the current NATO circus in Brussels, complete with a new “master plan to deter the growing Russian threat.”

    No one ever lost money underestimating NATO’s capacity to reach the depths of inconsequential stupidity. Moscow does not even bother to talk to these clowns anymore: as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has pointed out, “Russia will no longer pretend that some changes in relations with NATO are possible in the near future.”

    Moscow from now on only talks to the masters – in Washington. After all, the direct line between the Chief of General Staff, General Gerasimov, and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, General Todd Wolters, remains active. Messenger boys such as Stoltenberg and the massive NATO bureaucracy in Brussels are deemed irrelevant.

    This happens, in Lavrov’s assessment, right after “all our friends in Central Asia” have been “telling us that they are against … approaches either from the United States or from any other NATO member state” promoting the stationing of any imperial “counter-terrorist” apparatus in any of the “stans” of Central Asia.

    And still the Pentagon continues to provoke Moscow. Wokeism-lobbyist-cum-Secretary of Defense Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, who oversaw the American Great Escape from Afghanistan, is now pontificating that Ukraine should de facto join NATO.

    That should be the last stake impaling the “brain-dead” (copyright Emmanuel Macron) zombie, as it meets its fate raving about simultaneous Russian attacks on the Baltic and Black Seas with nuclear weapons.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 23:30

  • 10 Years After The Arab Spring: Gains For Democracy?
    10 Years After The Arab Spring: Gains For Democracy?

    On October 23, 2011, Libya was declared liberated from the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, marking one of the key events of the Arab Spring. Ten years after the wave of pro-democracy protests swept the region, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below that some countries have improved their scores on the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, while hopes of creating a more egalitarian society were quashed elsewhere.

    Even among countries which experienced a toppling of their government in connection with the Arab Spring, outcomes are widely differing ten years later, highlighting the volatility that can come with sudden political change.

    Infographic: 10 Years After the Arab Spring: Gains for Democracy? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Tunisia, where the government of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown in the beginning of 2011, achieved a rating of 6.59 out of 10 in the 2020 index, climbing 90 ranks since 2010 while being named the 54th most democratic country in the world. On the other hand, there is the tragic story of Yemen were chaos reigned in the aftermath of government overthrow. After the fall of two governments in 2012 and 2015, Yemen descended 11 ranks into the bottom ten of the world’s least democratic countries. Tunisia’s success has, however, been overshadowed by a governmental crisis in which the current President Kais Saied has suspended the parliament since July, showing the persistent fragility of democratic systems in the region.

    Libya stagnated near the end of the list, now sharing a rank with Yemen at the dismal democracy score of 1.95 out of 10. Despite a protracted crisis which saw government overthrow in 2011 and 2013, Egypt also stagnated, if at a somewhat higher score of 2.93. In Syria, dictator Bashar al-Assad resisted a change of power with all force, causing a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people to-date and caused the country to now be ranked as one of the five least democratic in the world.

    Two more countries in Northern Africa, Algeria and Morocco – where protests, but no direct governmental changes took place – nevertheless made democratic gains according to the EIU. While Algeria rose ten ranks to a score of 3.77, Morocco climbed even more, by 20 spots between 2010 and 2020, to a score of five out of ten, equaling rank 96 of the world’s most democratic nations.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 23:00

  • Jim Bovard: Down With Fraudulent 'Fair' Trade
    Jim Bovard: Down With Fraudulent ‘Fair’ Trade

    Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

    The Biden administration is embracing the same flawed “fair trade” mantra that previous administrations used to sanctify protectionist policies. Biden’s team has “largely dispensed with the idea of free trade as a goal in and of itself,” the New York Times reported. US Trade Representative Katherine Tai recently touted the Biden administration’s plans to “shape the rules for fair trade in the 21st century.” What could possibly go wrong from such a lofty aspiration?

    Thirty years ago, my book The Fair Trade Fraud was published by St. Martin’s Press. That book was translated into Japanese and Korean, and adapted as a textbook at the University of Chicago, Duke University, American University, University of Texas, and many other colleges. That book exposed fair trade as one of the great intellectual frauds of modern times. It is also a moral delusion that could lead to endless conflicts and an economic catastrophe.

    When politicians call for fair trade with foreigners, they use a concept of fairness diametrically opposed to the word’s normal usage. In exchanges between individuals – in contract law – the test of fairness is the voluntary consent of each party to the bargain: “the free will which constitutes fair exchanges,” as Sen. John Taylor wrote in 1822. When politicians speak of unfair trade, they do not mean that buyers and sellers did not voluntarily agree, but that federal officials disapprove of bargains American citizens made. Fair trade means government intervention to direct, control, or restrict trade.

    Fair trade often consists of some politician or bureaucrat picking a number out of thin air and forcibly imposing it on foreign businesses and American consumers. Fair trade meant that Jamaica was allowed to sell the U.S. only 970 gallons of ice cream a year, that Mexico could sell Americans only 35,292 bras a year, and that Poland could ship us only 51,752 pounds of barbed wire. Fair trade meant permitting each American citizen to consume the equivalent of only one teaspoon of foreign ice cream per year, two foreign peanuts per year, and one pound of imported cheese per year.

    American protectionists have always found moral pretexts to denounce “unfair” imports. In the 1820s, protectionists proclaimed that trade between England and America could not be fair because England was advanced and America was comparatively backward. In the 1870s, protectionists announced that trade between the US and Latin America could not be fair because the US was comparatively rich while Latin American countries were poor. In the 1880s, protectionists warned that trade could not be fair if the interest rate among the trading nations differed by more than two percent. In 1922, Congress effectively defined “unfair competition” as any foreign cost of production advantage that existed for any reason on any product.

    Since then, the US definitions of unfair trade have proliferated almost as fast as the number of D.C. trade lawyers. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. government penalized foreign farmers for not paying wages to their wives and children, foreign governments for not coercing foreign companies to buy more American products, and foreign companies for relying on part-time labor, making charitable donations, and failing to charge American customers the highest prices in the world. Federal law currently assumes that foreign competition that prevents American companies from raising their prices unfairly injures them.

    The most common foreign “unfair trade practice” is selling a better product at a lower price. Xenophobia is the foundation of U.S. antidumping law. The U.S. Commerce Department sees low-priced imported goods as Trojan Horses, insidiously undermining the American economy. The US government has imposed more dumping penalties against low-priced imports than has any other government in the world.

    The dumping law forces foreign companies to run a nearly endless gauntlet of American bureaucrats. Antidumping laws make it a crime for a company to sell the same product for two different prices in two different markets 15,000 miles apart. Dumping did not become a top trade issue until the 20th century, perhaps because our ancestors had not studied enough economics to become paranoid about minor price variations.

    “Fair trade” is increasingly a rallying cry of both conservatives and liberals who apparently believe that there is some hidden wisdom buried in the basement of federal agencies. But it is impossible to overstate the folly of some protectionist regimes. In 1816, Congress imposed high tariffs on sugar imports in part to prop up the value of slaves in Louisiana. Sugar producers have been “protected” almost ever since. The sugar program relies on import quotas and other interventions to drive U.S. sugar prices to double or more of the world price, costing consumers $4 billion a year. Since 1997, Washington’s sugar policy has zapped more than 120,000 U.S. jobs in food manufacturing. More than 10 jobs have been lost in manufacturing for every remaining sugar grower in the US American sugar growers will never become competitive unless there is far more global warming than even Swedish teen celebrity Greta Thunberg predicts.

    Fair trade dictates intentionally sacrifice some industries to other industries. A 1984 Federal Trade Commission study estimated that steel import quotas cost the U.S. economy $25 for each additional dollar of profit of American steel producers. Restrictions on steel crankshafts imports in 1987 hurt diesel truck engine manufacturers, restrictions on ball bearings imports in 1989 clobbered scores of American industries, and restrictions on computer flat panel displays devastated computer makers in 1991. More recently, Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, along with the foreign retaliation they sparked, destroyed an estimated 300,000 jobs. But the Biden team is perpetuating Trump’s tariffs (which were widely denounced when they were first imposed).

    American politicians profiteer on allegations of foreign unfairness. For American trade policy, need is the basis of right, and political campaign contributions are the measure of need. The more foreign unfair practices that politicians claim to discover, the more power they seize over what Americans are allowed to eat, drink, drive, and wear. Each new definition of unfair trade becomes a pretext to further restrict the freedom of American citizens.

    The myth of fair trade is that politicians and bureaucrats are fairer than markets—that government coercion and restriction can create a fairer result than voluntary agreement—and that prosperity is best achieved by arbitrary political manipulation, rather than allowing each individual and company to pursue his own interest.

    If a foreign nation blockades our ports, it is an act of war. But if American politicians blockade our ports, it is supposedly public service. Protectionism pretends that government can enrich citizens by selectively raising the prices of politically favored items. Protectionists champion the Washington version of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand: Americans automatically benefit from any trade restriction which politicians are bribed to impose.

    As soon as a politician or federal bureaucrat accuses foreigners of unfair trade, then any subsequent trade restriction is supposedly self-evidently justified. Protectionists profiteer because most of the Washington press corps is simply “stenographers with amnesia.” Reporters base their trade stories on government press releases and rarely probe beneath the surface of the latest edict. Few journalists take the time to sift through the details of foreign perfidy to recognize how often U.S. government accusations fail the laugh test.

    Trade allows consumers everywhere a chance to benefit from increases in productivity anywhere. As Emerson observed, “If a talent is anywhere born into the world, the community of nations is enriched.” Trade binds humanity together in laboring for mutual benefits. The expansion of trade between the end of World War II and the 1980s produced the greatest era of prosperity in world history.

    Government cannot make trade more fair by making it less free. It should not be a federal crime to charge low prices to American consumers. The time has come to end the medieval pursuit of a “just price” for imports and to cease allowing government officials to cease boundless economic power over American consumers and business. Unfortunately, fair trade demagoguery will continue as long as politicians are greedy, lobbyists are generous, and journalists are clueless.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 22:30

  • Goldman Cut's China's 2022 GDP To Just 5.2%
    Goldman Cut’s China’s 2022 GDP To Just 5.2%

    Less than a month after Goldman stunned its Wall Street peers when it slashed its Q3 China GDP forecast to just 0%, forecasting no growth in the world’s second largest economy, Goldman has done it again and in a note published late on Sunday, not only does the bank admit that China has entered a phase of “temporary stagflation”, but in a tone that is almost apologetic as Beijing will likely take great offense at this provocation, the bank cut its 2022 GDP forecast form an already low 5.8% to just 5.4%.

    Goldman first summarizes the stagflationary dynamics of the recently concluded third quarter, in which just Chinese real GDP growth slowed to a 0.8% annual rate while at the same time, PPI inflation reached 10.7% yoy in September, the highest on record.

    However, and this is where Goldman is ever so sorry for offending Beijing with its “math“, Goldman’s Hui Shan writes that this “stagflation” is very different from the experience of the US and other developed countries in the 1970 (spoiler alert: it actually isn’t different at all as we explained in “Is Stagflation Here: Comparing The 2020s With The 1970s…“).

    Goldman then spends the balance of the note not so much focusing on China’s deep economic problems, as much as apologetically explaining (to anyone who will listen), why these challenges are so transitory, they can effectively be ignored. As Shan writes, “the weakness in Q3 growth was driven by a number of factors, including the August Covid outbreak that impacted many provinces, the sharp slowdown in the property market, and the energy shortages and power cuts in late September. We think the Covid outbreak probably played the biggest role in negatively impacting Q3 activity, followed by property and energy.”

    It gets better: to make sure the message is received loud and clear in Beijing, Goldman goes so hyperbolic as to call events in Q3 a “perfect storm” (which of course is unpredictable, so it’s not Beijing’s fault for what is taking place in the economy). Here are Goldman’s key observations on this topic:

    The weak Q3 growth was driven by a number of factors – Covid outbreaks and chip shortages that the government has less control over on the one hand, and property tightening and power cuts that are mostly policy-driven on the other. The September activity data show evidence on the combination of various shocks to the economy (fig.3) For example, catering sales (i.e., restaurant services) rebounded sharply in September after slumping in August on Covid lockdowns in multiple provinces. Auto production and sales remained soft on chip shortages. Property sales continued to drop on the government’s deleveraging efforts and lending restrictions. Output of high-emission products such as steel and cement fell sharply on the “dual controls” of energy use and severe coal shortages which led to power cuts and production halts in these sectors.

    After the anemic sequential growth year-to-date (averaging only about 2% annualized rate), the Chinese economy appears to have gone from a positive output gap at the end of last year to some excess capacity in Q3.

    Looking across different sectors, Exhibit 5 shows that, with the exception of agriculture, all industries are currently at or below trend level of output, assuming a pre-Covid sector-specific trend. In the case of leasing and commercial services (e.g., travel agencies and large conferences), hotel and restaurant services, and other services (e.g., household cleaning services), the negative output gap remains significant. Eighteen months after the onset of the Covid outbreak early last year and with no end of the “zero Covid” policy in sight, activity in these sectors is at risk for longer-term scarring effects.

    Household consumption was the hardest-hit part of the economy last year on both lower income growth and a higher saving rate. By Q3, household saving rate has mostly normalized to its pre-Covid level, falling from a peak of 35% in 2020Q1 to 30% now (Exhibit 6). The main constraint to consumption is income growth. As of Q3, the growth of household disposable income averaged only 6.6% per year over the past two years, compared to 8.8% in 2019. Among different sources of income, growth of business income underperformed the most, averaging 3.6% per year over the past two years compared to 8.0% in 2019 (Exhibit 7).

    In other words, China’s stagflation is “temporary” and should reverse soon. Until it does, however, Goldman is tracking the contribution of housing to GDP growth, and calculates it as subtracting 0.5% from Q3 GDP. The bank admits that it expects “even bigger drags in the coming quarters.”

    Meanwhile, as the property market shrinks, and the overall economy is barely growing, PPI inflation soared in September, but here too Goldman expects CPI inflation “to remain muted in the coming months for two reasons. First, food and service inflation has little relationship with PPI inflation and is likely to stay low. Second, even at extremely high levels of PPI inflation, the pass-through into CPI inflation is fairly low: we estimate an additional 1pp increase in PPI inflation raises headline CPI inflation by 0.1pp.” It explains further below:

    September PPI inflation reached the highest level since the data were available in 1997, raising questions about both the duration of the high PPI inflation and its potential passing through into CPI inflation which has remained low. On the first question, PPI inflation is likely to stay high in the near term, but should soften notably in six months on base effect. If prices were to remain unchanged from here, PPI inflation would drop to about 2% in mid-2022. On the latter, we expect the pass-through from PPI to CPI to be limited for two reasons.

    First, CPI has three distinct components – food, non-food goods, and services (Exhibit 11). Food inflation and service price inflation are likely to remain low in the coming months on depressed pork prices (which dominate food prices) and negative output gap (which is a key driver of service inflation). Second, historically the sensitivity of CPI non-food goods inflation to PPI inflation is statistically significant but economically small. Exhibit 12 shows a nonlinear relationship where relatively mild year-over-year PPI inflation (i.e., between -5% and +5%) appears to have very little impact on CPI non-food goods inflation.

    But even at more extreme levels of PPI inflation, the magnitude of the pass-through remains modest: an additional 1pp increase in PPI inflation from its currently elevated levels boosts CPI non-food goods inflation by 0.25pp which translates into 0.1pp for headline CPI inflation.

    Goldman’s bottom line is please don’t revoke our operating license in China for telling it how it is that things are bad but will get better soon because “unlike the stagflation of the 1970s, the very low growth and high inflation in China in Q3 were policy-driven (e.g., property tightening and decarbonization), partial (e.g., PPI only), and likely temporary (e.g., policies have already been adjusted to boost coal production and accelerate fiscal spending in Q4).” Again, all of this is a pure figment of Goldman’s goalseeking imagination. For a full picture of how the 1970s stagflation is ominously similar to what is going on now, read this.

    In any case, with China’s economy now at stall speed, Goldman had a choice: bad news and even worse news, or good, if meaningless news and, well, worse news. The bank picked the latter writing that it now expects a sequential pickup in growth in Q4 – which by the way  is unchanged from Goldman’s previous forecast – with year-over-year GDP growth to drop to 3.1%. However, while nobody cares about Q4 without the bigger picture, it was here that Goldman saved its worst news for last, warning that “long-term policy direction such as property deleveraging remains unchanged as evidenced by the latest news on starting property tax trials in select cities.” As such, the bank has slashed its 2022 growth forecast to 5.2% from 5.6% previously.

    And, as was the case with Goldman’s overoptimistic 2021 GDP forecasts, expect  many more GDP cuts as China’s economy gets dangerously close to a hard landing, if not outright crash. Not surprisingly, Goldman’s conclusion suggests as much:

    Given the continued slowdown in credit growth – the year-over year growth in the stock of total social financing (TSF) dropped to 10.0% in September from 13.5% a year ago – and the “just do enough” approach of policymakers, we revise down our credit growth forecast to 10.5% for 2021 (previously 11.5%). This still implies a modest pick-up in sequential credit growth in Q4. In addition, we recently changed our monetary policy forecast and no longer expect a RRR cut in Q4. This is not a call on the broader monetary policy stance. Rather, recent communications by the PBOC suggest that the central bank is likely to use targeted liquidity instruments (e.g., SME and green financing relending programs) instead of broad-based RRR cut to replace the large amounts of maturing MLF loans.

    Finally, Goldman looks at its downside case scenario (the onw which will happen), and says that “if growth were to deteriorate sharply, we believe the government will react decisively, especially as China prepares for next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics” (starting from Feb 4)and the 20th Party Congress (October/November). Spoiler alert: growth will deteriorate sharply from here, something which the PBOC clearly see and is why the central bank just injected a net $190BN in reverse repo, the biggest liquidity injection since January. Here, too, expect much more.

    And while Goldman expects a sequential pickup inQ4, its year-over-year growth is poised to decline further. But under the “just do enough” mentality of policymakers, especially as the unemployment rate remains low despite weak growth, the bank warns that “growth headwinds are likely to linger and the slower-than-expected credit growth over the past few months should weigh on economic activity next year based on historical experience.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 22:04

  • Who Will Join The 100 Billion Dollar Club Next?
    Who Will Join The 100 Billion Dollar Club Next?

    Indian industrial magnate Mukesh Ambani made headlines recently when he entered the more-than-exclusive club of those with $100 billion or more in net worth. Currently, eleven men can call themselves members of this elusive bunch.

    Tech billionaires dominate the global $100 billion club – and they are exclusively at home in the United States. Even though Tesla CEO Elon Musk – currently the richest person in the world – is arguably a hybrid case, the only tycoon other than Ambani who made it this big in consumer or industrial products is Frenchman Bernard Arnault. The third non-techie, Warren Buffett of investment group Berkshire Hathaway, also hails from the United States.

    Infographic: The 100 Billion Dollar Club | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In comparison, the global 1 percent are a group of around 80 million people, while the global 0.1 percent still comprises 8 million individuals – making the $100 billion club the equivalent of the global 0.0000001 percent.

    But, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the entrance of Ambani as the second non-American and first person from a developing country is likely only the beginning of a diversification of the $100 billion club that could start very soon.

    According to data available through the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, eight billionaires could surpass the $100 billion barrier in the next four years, given that they continue to grow their fortunes at the same rate as they did between January and October 2021.

    Infographic: Who Will Join the 100 Billion Dollar Club Next? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    A second Indian, Gautam Adani of port operator Adani Group, could theoretically surpass the line in around five months, while the first woman who could join the club – French L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers – is still a potential 1.3 years away. A Chinese or Hongkongese member would join in early 2024, according to the calculation.

    Of course, billionaires’ net worth is tied to the volatile stock market and fortunes can change very quickly. Yet, the amount of contenders which are from more diverse backgrounds suggests that the list of the obscenely rich will start to look different in the future one way or another.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 22:00

  • Virus Gonna Virus (And China Gonna China)!
    Virus Gonna Virus (And China Gonna China)!

    Authored by Alex Berenson via Unreported Truths substack,

    We are almost two years into the plague di tutti plagues, the virus with a 3 in 1,000 death rate (give or take), which rounds down to roughly 0 in 1,000 for the non-elderly and morbidly obese.

    Along the way, lots of different states and countries have pursued lots of different strategies, from Zero Covid to Zero Restrictions, from early vaccines to late vaccines to (basically) no vaccines.

    Two years should be long enough to know who wore it best, amirite? So let’s go to the videotape!

    Here’s the United Kingdom (heavy early lockdown, 70% vaccinated, tons of testing, just like the public health people want)

    Erm. Not so good.

    And here’s India (hard early lockdown, 20% fully vaccinated, very few with mRNA vaccines)

    Okay, they had that big spikeroo in the spring, but they don’t look bad. But also they’re relatively young.

    Now here’s Colombia (VERY hard early lockdown, 39% fully vaccinated)

    Three, count them three, different waves, but nothing the last six months. Hmm. Maybe 39% vaccinated is the magic number?

    Or maybe not. Because here’s Russia (light lockdowns, 33% vaccinated):

    Mother Russia! Clearly some hard lockdowns are in order.

    And speaking of lockdowns, maybe Australia (SUPER hard lockdowns, explicit Zero Covid strategy, late but aggressive vaccinations) has the answer?

    Looking good for a while, Australia… but not so much now.

    It’s almost – hear me out, this is gonna sound CRAZEE – government strategies have made NO DIFFERENCE to the spread of this highly contagious but only moderately dangerous respiratory disease.

    There is one exception, though.

    I give you the People’s Republic of China, without which we wouldn’t be talking about the ro at all. Somehow Xi and Shi, the dear leader and the bat lady, have managed to make Covid go bye-bye – without a single jab of our fancy Western vaccines.

    Virus gonna virus. And China gonna China.

    It’s a miracle, I tell ya. A miracle!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 21:30

  • Is Stagflation Here: Comparing The 2020s With The 1970s…
    Is Stagflation Here: Comparing The 2020s With The 1970s…

    Now that the fear of stagflation is a growing concern on Wall Street as the latest BofA Fund Manager Survey showed…

    … as the inflation debate – at a time of shrinking global growth – has taken on renewed vigor given the latest commodity price surge over recent weeks, the energy shocks and discussions around stagflation have led many to make the comparison to the 1970s not just on this site…

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

    … but elsewhere:

    • Paul Tudor Jones, CEO of Tudor Investment Corp., tells CNBC that inflation is the single biggest threat to the economy: “The inflation genie is out of the bottle and we run the risk of returning to the 1970s” – CNBC
    • Is Stagflation Coming Back? Economist Sees Parallels With the 1970s—and Big Differences – Barrons
    • Is the world economy going back to the 1970s? – The Economist
    • What the Inflation of the 1970s Can Teach Us Today – WSJ
    • Conditions are ripe for repeat of 1970s stagflation – Guardian
    • Ignore the fearmongers: the 1970s are not coming back – Guardian
    • A Stock Market Malaise With the Shadow of ’70s-Style Stagflation – NYT

    Addressing these growing comparisons between the 2020s and the 1970s, last week Deutsche Bank’s credit strategists Henry Allen and Jim Reid looked into some of the similarities and differences between that infamous inflationary decade and today. Below we summarize some of the key observations made by the duo, who looked at how the 1970s evolved from an inflationary perspective and compare and contrast to today.

    We start by reminding readers that things were very bad in the 1970s….

    As Deutsche Bank writes, TV screens in the UK have recently shown scenes of long lines for gas across the vast majority of fuelling stations. Initially, this wasn’t about a shortage of fuel, but a shortage of HGV drivers that fed upon itself to become a fuel shortage amidst a demand surge as well. Right now, we’re still a long way from what we saw in the 1970s, when there were big reductions in the supply of energy, but the recent rise in global gas prices could be much more troublesome going forward. Across the globe, fuel rationing took place for a period of time back then, and governments ran huge media campaigns to conserve energy. President Nixon asked gas stations not
    to sell gasoline on Saturday or Sunday nights, and eventually license plate restrictions (odd and even) were in place in the US for when you could buy fuel. In Europe, some examples of the stresses included a ban in the Netherlands on Sunday driving, whilst the UK imposed a 3-day week as coal shortages threatened electricity supplies alongside a winter series of strikes by coal miners and rail workers.  Households were asked to heat only one room in their homes.

    so we need to put into perspective how bad things got for individuals and economies due to the energy issues. The recent gas problems have raised the prospects of a winter where rationing could take place but this is speculation for now. However, the spikes in gas prices are reminiscent of what happened with oil in the early 1970s (both have a geopolitical angle too) so some historical awareness is useful.

    How did inflation get out of control in the 1970s?

    Today’s situation has a number of parallels to what happened in the 1960s and 1970s, when inflation gradually accelerated to the point where it was out of control. Various shocks coalesced over a short period of time, and policymakers were consistently behind the curve in reacting:

    • In the US, the Johnson Administration’s Great Society programs and the Vietnam War drove up fiscal spending in the late-1960s.
    • In 1971, President Nixon ended the dollar’s link to gold, ending the system of fixed exchange rates that had prevailed after the Second World War.
    • An El Nino event in 1972 drove up food prices.
    • The dollar underwent a devaluation in February 1973.
    • Then on top of all this, the first oil shock occurred in 1973, followed by a second oil shock in 1979.

    Even though the commodity shocks are generally held most responsible for the high inflation over the period, it’s clear that inflation was already embedded in the system well before they occurred. So if you were keeping a strict timeline you could argue that when it comes to economic policy being more expansionary, we’re more in the late-1960s than the 1970s. Perhaps Covid has made the timeline more compressed, but inflation steadily moved from under 2% in the first half of the 60s to over 6% by the end of the decade.

    The inflationary set up in the 70s then deteriorated thanks to the suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold in 1971. Given that virtually every other currency was fixed to the dollar at the time, we quickly moved from a world of gold-based money to one where fiat money was in control. Interestingly, Figure 1 shows that with this loosening of policy constraints, the YoY percentage growth in monetary aggregates moved consistently into the low teens from high single digits in the late 1960s.

    Today, we’ve moved from pre-covid mid-single digit YoY percentage growth to a brief period of 25% YoY growth at the peak. Even if we revert back to single digit percentage growth there’s still a large residual amount of liquidity in the economy far above that assumed by the pre-covid trend. So there’s been a faster injection of money into the economy in the space of a year than we saw at any point in the 1970s.

    But even as inflation continuously accelerated through the late-1960s onwards, central bankers found it difficult to shift policy in a hawkish direction. This was partly down to political pressure, both explicit and implicit, since politicians were not keen on the idea of a slowdown in growth and higher unemployment. It was also down to a poor understanding of the economy – with policymakers wrongly believing in the Phillips Curve, and the belief that it was possible to “buy” lower unemployment with higher inflation, when this wasn’t actually true over the long term.

    We can see some of this pressure in action by looking back through the archives. The following quote comes from the Fed’s senior economist, J. Charles Partee, in the memorandum of discussion from the March 1973 FOMC meeting. He said that “To adopt a substantially more restrictive policy that carries with it the danger of stagnation or recession would seem unreasonable and  counterproductive. As unemployment rose, there would be strong social and political pressure for expansive actions, so that the policy would very likely have to be reversed before it succeeded in tempering either the rate of inflation or the underlying sources of inflation.”

    So even the Fed’s economists at the time were acknowledging the “social and political pressure” under which they were operating. One more recent academic paper by Charles Weise (2012) actually found that references at FOMC meetings to the political environment were correlated with the stance of monetary policy, which further suggests it was having an impact on decision-making.

    Another serious issue was that the Fed was operating with a poor understanding of the available data. Orphanides (2002) notes that errors in the assessment of the natural rate of unemployment meant policymakers believed that the economy was operating beneath potential. So that helped to justify lower interest rates than prevailed in reality. Had they actually realized the situation as it prevailed at the time, then perhaps they would have pushed more strongly for a hawkish stance. So a number of factors were pushing inflation higher. But what turbocharged it into double-digits in the US were two major oil shocks, which had ramifications across the entire developed world?

    1973: The First Oil Shock

    The first oil shock was triggered by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) placing an embargo on a number of countries, including the United States, in retaliation for their support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. There is also some evidence that the US abandoning the convertibility of the dollar into gold, which led to a big devaluation of the dollar, and a loss of income for oil producers, helped create resentment from this group.

    Regardless of the cause, this led to a quadrupling in oil prices, triggering a recession across multiple countries that began in late 1973. Inflation was already running at  a decent clip, but this turbocharged it, with CPI peaking at 12.2%, which was the highest it had been since the immediate aftermath of WWII.

    This, as Deutsche Bank notes, posed a tricky dilemma for the Federal Reserve. Although the inflation rate was high and rising, unemployment was also climbing at the same time. So hiking rates to deal with inflation risked exacerbating the unemployment situation. This scenario is completely unlike what happened after the GFC in 2008, which was a big deflationary shock, making it clear which way the Fed needed to move rates.

    At the time, the view was that the embargo was a structural shock that monetary policy couldn’t affect, so it should therefore look through such a transitory factor (this should ring a few bells). For a fly-on-the-wall view, Stephen Roach, who’s now a Senior Fellow at Yale but was formerly on the research staff at the Fed, said that Fed Chair Burns argued that as the shock had nothing to do with monetary policy, the Fed should exclude oil and energy-related products from the CPI index for its analysis.  Roach then said Burns insisted on removing food prices in 1973 after unusual weather. This too should ring bells… and alarms.

    The exclusions of these “transitory” factors became so extreme that Roach estimates that only 35% of the CPI basket was left. By the middle of the decade this series itself was then rising at a double-digit rate. You can get a sense of how loose policy was here by looking at the real Federal Funds rate, which moved into negative territory as a result of the oil shock. Interestingly, the real rate is now even lower than it was at any point in the 1970s.

    To be fair to the Fed, at the start of the energy shock it would have been tough to know how the situation would develop. The record from the December 1973 Fed meeting says: “On balance, the Chairman concluded, he believed that some easing of monetary policy was indicated today, but that it should take the form of a modest and cautious step. He was aware of the possibility that the oil embargo might not last more than another few weeks. On the other hand, the embargo might last another year.” So although we can view events with a detached level of hindsight, with the knowledge of how they played out, they were living through this in real time.

    As it happened, the embargo lasted until the following March, but the long-term effects are still with us today. The shock had revealed the dependence of the United States and others on foreign oil, so an emphasis was placed on reducing that dependence. That saw the Strategic Petroleum Reserve created in the US in 1975, which is a tool that today’s Energy Secretary has said is under consideration to deal with the present energy price surge. Then in 1977, the Department of Energy was created, which is also with us to this day.

    As Figure 4 shows, US inflation did come down again once the worst of the first oil shock had passed. But it only fell back to around 5% before picking up again, whilst monetary policy still remained fairly accommodative to deal with high unemployment (Figure 5), which in December 1976 stood at 7.8%.

    This was partly because there was still political pressure on the Fed. The Carter Administration arrived in office at the start of 1977, and in the transcript of the FOMC meeting that January, Chairman Burns said “We have a new Administration; the new Administration has proposed a fiscal plan for reducing unemployment, and any lowering of monetary growth rates at this time would, I’m quite sure, be very widely interpreted–and not only in the political arena–as an attempt on the part of the Federal Reserve to frustrate the efforts of a newly elected President and newly elected Congress to get our economy, to use a popular phrase, “moving once again.”

    Fast forward to today and although there isn’t the same level of political concern, the Fed have recently undertaken a dovish shift following their recent policy review. Their move towards average inflation targeting is an explicit acknowledgement that they’re willing to accept above-target inflation to make up for past undershoots. Furthermore, they have adopted a much more tolerant view on the risk of
    inflationary pressures from low unemployment, and officials regularly discuss distributional issues such as economic performance for those on low incomes or minority groups. So it’s clear that the Fed’s reaction function has changed relative to where it was just a few years ago.

    1979: The Second Oil Shock

    Back to the 70s and just as the economy was recovering from the effects of the 1973 shock, a second oil shock in 1979 sent inflation  sharply higher once again. This took place around the time of the Iranian revolution, which coincided with a big decline in Iranian oil output, to the tune of around 7% of global production at the time. Then in 1980, the Iran-Iraq War caused further declines in production for both countries.

    Although plenty blame the oil shock for creating high inflation, the truth was that this was merely the final nail in the coffin for the old regime, since in the preceding years, the Fed had persistently underestimated how high inflation would rise. The next chart shows that the Fed’s staff forecasts were repeatedly upgraded as time went on, even prior to the second shock.

    Unlike in 1973 however, this shock induced a much more hawkish policy response from the new Fed Chair Paul Volcker. Indeed, the transcript from Volcker’s first meeting as Fed Chair in August 1979 shows him pointing to higher inflation expectations that had developed, saying that “I think people are acting on that expectation [of continued high inflation] much more firmly than they used to.” And Volcker also recognized that restoring the credibility of economic policy could also “buy some flexibility in the future”.

    Although higher rates were a contributory factor behind the recession that began in early 1980, this new pro-active approach was successful at containing inflation, which fell from a peak of 14.6% in March 1980, down to 2.4% in July 1983. The real Fed Funds rate turned sharply positive in the early 1980s, dramatically above levels seen in the mid-1970s (see Figure 3). To this day, US inflation has yet to rise above 7% again.

    Comparing the 1970s and the 2020s: can we expect a repeat?

    Having discussed the 1970s, Deutsche notes that one of the biggest questions on investors’ minds is whether we’re in for a repeat. Some factors like demographics or globalization indicate that there are much greater inflationary pressures today. But others like declining union power and lower energy intensity are pointing in the other direction. We now look at a number of these in turn.

    1. Monetary Policy

    Like the 1970s, monetary policy is very loose today. In fact, the real federal funds rate (simply found by subtracting 12-month CPI inflation as per Figure 3) is actually lower today than it was then, while the increase in the money stock (Figure 1) has also seen a much bigger single year expansion than ever took place in the 1970s. Financial conditions today remain accommodative as well, thus providing a lot of support for the economy.

    2. Debt

    Recent decades have seen an extraordinary increase in global debt levels. In particular, government debt levels today are well in excess of the low levels reached in the 1970s. As a consequence, higher rates will have a much bigger impact on government and non-government balance sheets, and risk being much tougher to stomach today than they were then. This could mean policy makers are forced to remain behind the curve in a similar way to the 1970s, albeit for different reasons.

    3. Demographics

    The consensus assumes that demographics will be disinflationary as societies age. However, one similarity between the 1970s and now could be a worker shortage, albeit from different sides of the baby boomer demographic miracle. In the 1970s, the boomers had yet to hit the workforce and labor was relatively scarce. But from the 1980s onwards, the global labor force exploded in size as the boomers came of age. Simultaneously, China began to integrate itself into the global economy for the first time in several generations, thus unleashing a big positive labor supply shock onto the global economy. This combination has been disinflationary for wages for the past four decades. However, the major economies are now set to see their labor forces decline or at best level off as the baby boomers retire. So will we get similar labor market pressures as seen in the 1970s? Covid has shown what can happen to wages when there is a shortage of labor. The huge number of vacancies in low-paid jobs today due to a shortage of workers due to covid related issues are pushing wages up. And although the covid bottleneck will clear, the declining working-age population in many places over the decade ahead could see labor gain back some power that it lost from the end of the 1970s.

    4. Globalization

    The late-20th century was an era of rising globalization, with the 1970s alone seeing the share of global trade in GDP rise from 27% in 1970 to 39% by 1980. But since 2008, that progressive advance has stalled, and there are many signs that the post-pandemic will see a return to less globalization, as both countries and corporates look to localize their supply chains in order to make them more resilient. In turn, a retreat from globalization and firms facing less competition implies higher prices than would otherwise be the case. So as with demographics, the potential retreat of globalization would remove another of the big forces that’s helped to suppress inflation over recent decades.

    All the factors mentioned above point towards inflation being more difficult to combat today. But there are others that point in the opposite direction.

    5. Energy Reliance

    Since the 1970s, the US economy has become progressively less energy intensive. By 2020, the amount of energy required for each unit of GDP was just 37% of where it had been back in 1970, and the US Energy Information Agency are forecasting that will continue to fall over the coming decades. So with less energy required to support output, the impact of a price shock will be commensurately less than it was back in the Great Inflation of the 1970s.

    6. Union Power

    Another force acting against inflation is the decline in union membership over recent decades. Unions themselves do not cause inflation, which is a monetary phenomenon, but they can contribute to wage-price spirals. This is because higher inflation leads to higher wage demands from trade unions to ensure their members’ wages keep up with the rising cost of living. But firms then anticipate this by bidding up their own prices further, which can create a circular feedback loop as the unions in turn demand higher wages still. So the fact that unions are weaker is likely to put downward pressure on inflation, all other things equal. Having said this, there is some evidence that unionization is on an increasing trend, albeit from a low base. The mention of unions in official company documents was the fastest growing of our ESG buzz words in September 2021 relative to a year earlier.

    7.War, Geopolitics and Climate Change

    Many of the biggest inflations in history have been associated with wars, and the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s got going around the time of the Vietnam War, when there was upward pressure on spending. Today, the economic response to Covid has been almost comparable, with fiscal deficits on a scale not seen since WWII for many countries. In addition, the geopolitics of Russia being such an important supplier of gas to Europe has parallels with the West’s reliance on Middle Eastern oil supplies in the 1970s at a time of a divisive Arab/Israeli conflict.

    Going forward, the US/China relationship could be a key driver of inflation later in the current decade, particularly if an escalating cold war leads to a more bipolar world and a retreat from globalization, as discussed earlier. And that’s before we get onto the threat of climate change, where we’re already seeing the consequence of trying to move away from coal, in that we’ve become more dependent on other fuel sources such as natural gas. As the globe tries to further wean itself off fossil fuels, we could have more energy shocks over the course of this decade.

    8. The lessons of history

    Finally, history itself plays an important role in policymaking. For example, part of the reason that the economic response to the pandemic was so large and swift was in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the global financial crisis, where delays undermined the recovery.

    When it comes to inflation in 2021, plenty have raised concerns that today’s policymakers have little to no experience of dealing with a significant inflation problem. Indeed, for the decade after 2008, the main focus was on how to tackle chronically deficient demand as central bankers struggled to hit their inflation targets on a sustained basis in many countries. So the fear is that policymakers might have a dovish bias given these experiences, and risk being slow to recognize if inflation has become a more permanent feature of the landscape. This is particularly so when if anything, the perception is that they were too hawkish in the period following the financial crisis.

    On the other hand, today’s central bankers and other policymakers are aware of the lessons of the 1970s and will not want their legacies to involve a repeat. They recognize that inflation and unemployment can’t be traded off against each other over the longer term, and have much better data than their predecessors. Furthermore, there is still strong political pressure to avoid higher inflation… even as there is even greater political pressure to avoid taking the much needed if very painful steps to contain the coming inflation.

    What can we learn from this?

    Looking at the 1970s, the most important lesson is that even if inflation is down to transitory factors, the arrival of yet more “transitory” shocks can accumulate to keep inflation at high levels, with expectations becoming unanchored. That was what occurred with the oil shocks: although inflation was sent sharply higher, the truth is that inflation was pretty high already, as a legacy from the late 1960s, and the shocks turbocharged it yet further.

    But we can view the events of the 1970s with the benefit of hindsight. For policymakers at the time, it was less obvious that these shocks would not prove transitory, and today they face a similar dilemma. If policy reacts too forcefully to something central banks can’t control (like inflation thanks to supply-chain disruptions), then that risks undermining the recovery and actually pushing inflation below target, since the shock will eventually pass and monetary policy operates with a lag. On the other hand, doing nothing risks inflation expectations becoming unanchored, particularly if another shock then arrives to push inflation higher still. One can also argue that with money supply growth so strong over the past 18 months, there has been a strong monetary angle to inflation and therefore some tightening of monetary policy is sensible. Overall, it is an unenviable dilemma, and the debate in the economics profession right now speaks to the unknowns.

    So we approach this question with some humility. But we do think it worth noting that many factors like debt, demographics and globalisation all indicate that we could be facing an even more difficult situation than we saw back then. And the monetary aggregates have also seen a much more rapid increase as well. So policymakers will need to be vigilant for a potential repeat, particularly given that the institutional memories of high inflation have faded over time.

    The full Deutsche Bank report is available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 21:00

  • Treasury Secretary Says US Not Losing Control Over Inflation As Twitter CEO Issues Dire Warning
    Treasury Secretary Says US Not Losing Control Over Inflation As Twitter CEO Issues Dire Warning

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey issued a warning about rising inflation over the weekend as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday said the United States isn’t losing control.

    “Hyperinflation is going to change everything. It’s happening,” Dorsey wrote on Twitter, later continuing to say:

    “It will happen in the U.S. soon, and so the world.”

    Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and co-founder & CEO of Square, attends the crypto-currency conference Bitcoin 2021 Convention at the Mana Convention Center in Miami, Fla., on June 4, 2021. (Marco Bello/AFP via Getty Images)

    During an interview on Sunday with CNN, Yellen said that inflation levels would return to normal by the second half of next year. The Treasury Secretary made the remarks in context of promoting President Joe Biden’s domestic infrastructure and social spending packages worth trillions of dollars combined, saying the two programs would be implemented over 10 years.

    “I don’t think we’re about to lose control of inflation,” Yellen said. 

    “On a 12-month basis, the inflation rate will remain high into next year because of what’s already happened. But I expect improvement by the middle to end of next year… second half of next year,” she added.

    Supply chain snags have bedeviled the United States and other countries as economic reopenings have spurred a surge in demand, she continued.

    “As we make further progress on the pandemic, I expect these bottlenecks to subside. Americans will return to the labor force as conditions improve,” she said.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington on Sept. 30, 2021. (Sarah Silbiger/Pool via Reuters)

    However, a group that represents UPS, FedEx, and other air cargo companies issued a warning that the looming Biden vaccine mandate for federal contractors on Dec. 8 will trigger supply chain chaos. With that mandate coming in the midst of the Christmas shopping season, they argued that will further “adversely impact needed operations” and noted that worker shortages are already persistent.

    Meanwhile, a report from the Department of Labor released earlier this month found that the U.S. consumer price inflation is running near a 30-year high. Year-over-year prices in September are up by 5.4 percent, its report found, noting price increases for food, cars, and other staple goods.

    Procter & Gamble and Unilever, which both make consumer goods, both announced in recent days that they would increase prices on certain goods amid worsening inflation.

    Unilever finance chief Graeme Pitkethly saw little letup in inflationary pressures and warned that “we expect inflation could be higher next year than this year,” Reuters reported.

    Procter & Gamble’s price hikes are not being implemented on all its products, but they will be marked for specific items such as razors and in some sub-categories, CFO Andre Schulten said, reported Reuters. U.S. retailers are aware of the new sticker prices, he added.

    “We announced price increases to retailers in the U.S. on oral care, skin care, and grooming,” Schulten said in a conference call. “It’s item by item,” he added.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 20:30

  • Northern California Swamped With "Historic Rain" Amid Rare Atmospheric River Event 
    Northern California Swamped With “Historic Rain” Amid Rare Atmospheric River Event 

    The National Weather Service’s (NWS) Sacramento office said “potentially historic rain” rain has fallen in parts of Northern California after a bomb cyclone accompanied an atmospheric river that unleashed massive amounts of moisture pulled in from the Pacific Ocean.

    Northern California bore the brunt late Saturday/Sunday, with record rainfall in some areas. NWS Bay Area said, “We just passed the Gold Rush year of 1849 for 7th wettest October on record for Downtown SF. 1876 (3.36) here we come..(Current value is 3.14 which ties 1849).” 

    Evacuations were ordered for parts of Northern California that have been drought-stricken and left barren by wildfires. Areas that have been burnt are prone to dangerous flooding called “debris flows.” 

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    “If you are in the vicinity of a recent burn scar and haven’t already, prepare now for likely debris flows,” the Sacramento weather service tweeted. “If you are told to evacuate by local officials, or you feel threatened, do not hesitate to do so. If it is too late to evacuate, get to higher ground.”

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    Flooded streets were reported across the Bay Area, closing some in Berkeley and Oakland’s Bay Bridge toll plaza. Just north of San Francisco, a whopping 6 inches of rain has fallen this weekend. Rainfall estimates for the Bay Area show at least 3 inches have fallen, trouncing any other storm in years. 

    “Some of our higher elevation locations could see 6, 7, 8 inches of rain before we’re all said and done,” Sean Miller, a meteorologist for the NWS in Monterey. 

    The convergence of storms brings Northern California a huge relief amid devastating droughts and wildfires this past summer.

    As we’ve previously mentioned, La Niña conditions have been declared by NWS, which means wetter than average conditions for Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. In contrast, drier than average conditions are expected for Southern and Central California. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 20:00

  • Illinois Supreme Court Rules Tax On Guns & Ammo Unconstitutional
    Illinois Supreme Court Rules Tax On Guns & Ammo Unconstitutional

    By Lorenz Duchamps of Epoch Times,

    The Illinois Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 21 that two taxes on guns and ammunition in Cook County violate the state’s constitution because they affect law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment right to acquire firearms for self-defense.

    TINLEY PARK, IL – OCTOBER 18: Pistols are offered for sale at Freddie Bear Sports on October 18, 2012 in Tinley Park, Illinois. Facing a $267.5 million fiscal 2013 budget gap

    Supreme Court Justice Mary Jane Theis wrote in a 6–0 decision that the taxes violate the constitution’s uniformity clause, while also pointing out that the revenue from the generated tax isn’t directed toward funds or programs that reduce gun violence.

    “While the taxes do not directly burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to use a firearm for self-defense, they do directly burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to acquire a firearm and the necessary ammunition for self-defense,” Theis wrote in a 14-page opinion (pdf) filed on Thursday.

    “Under the plain language of the ordinances, the revenue generated from the firearm tax is not directed to any fund or program specifically related to curbing the cost of gun violence,” she noted. “Additionally, nothing in the ordinance indicates that the proceeds generated from the ammunition tax must be specifically directed to initiatives aimed at reducing gun violence.”

    The justice concluded that the case will be remanded to the circuit court “for entry of summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs.”

    In 2012, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a $25 tax on the retail purchase of a firearm within the county. The county’s Firearm Tax Ordinance was enacted in April 2013.

    A separate county tax was enacted in 2015, which added $0.05 per cartridge for centerfire ammunition and $0.01 per cartridge for rimfire ammunition. Americans who fail to pay those taxes are subject to a $1,000 fine for the first offense and a $2,000 fine for subsequent offenses.

    The trade group and gun-rights organization, Guns Save Life, challenged both taxes in a lawsuit against the county, saying they violate the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

    A spokesman for Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle said on Thursday they are disappointed in the ruling and will work to determine the next steps.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 19:30

  • "Euphoria Is Increasing": Goldman Doubles Down On Market Meltup Call, Sees $90BN In New Stock Buying This Week
    “Euphoria Is Increasing”: Goldman Doubles Down On Market Meltup Call, Sees $90BN In New Stock Buying This Week

    Last weekend we published a note by Goldman flow trader, Scott Rubner, who explained why despite a huge wall of worry which included such worries as a stagflation, China property bust, China slowing, Covid, tapering, corporate margin fears, snarled supply chains, energy, rate hikes, global growth slowing, higher rates, etc, stocks would melt up for a handful of simple reasons including a flood of buybacks and equity fund inflows, collectively amounting to roughly $8 billion per trading day, muted buyside sentiment, gamma flipping positive, a buying thrust from Vol Control funds and favorable seasonals.

    In retrospect, and with the S&P hitting new all time highs just a few days later, the Goldman trader was spot on.

    Fast forwarding one week, some may ask if Goldman’s enthusiasm has tapered. The answer, as the flow trader wrote in his latest Tactical Fund Flow note, is not at all, and instead Rubner is doubling-down on optimism, once again predicting nothing but meltups for stocks in the weeks to come. If one had to summarize his sentiment with one word it would be FOMO – the money just keeps flowing into stocks as the mechanistic Pavlovian response to just keep buying because the Fed will never let stocks sink proves simply far too strong. As a result, the bank now expects a gargantuan $90 billion in global equity demand for the coming week (more below).

    Global Equities logged >$1 Trillion dollars worth of inflows during the last 51 weeks and the start of positive vaccine news. This is the biggest market structure dynamic of the year. For context, the prior best rolling 51 week record was +$250 Billion. 2021 is 4x larger than the next best yearly inflow. I think the equity TINA money flow train keeps charging to close the year and accelerates aggressively in November. I calculate a significant, +$18B worth of non-fundamental equity demand every day this week and this increases with massive November monthly inflows and corporate demand after >47% of the S&P reports next week.

    Below Rubner lays out his latest detailed take on why the most likely path for stocks is a continued meltup higher.

    • 1. S&P 500 just logged its 55th new all-time high of 2021 after 7 straight gains and highest level since September 2nd.  Watch CNBC “boo-ya Jim” headlines.
    • 2. S&P 500 logged a new all-time high in every month so far this year and that has only happened one other time since 1928. (2014)
    • 3. There have been 15 times since 1928, that the S&P is up >20% or more through October. The median return for the rest of the year (last two months only) is +5.92%, with an 80% hit rate. 2021 would be the 16th time.

    • 4. As of Friday, Goldman Sachs Sentiment Indicator, which pulls in 9 positioning indicators, logged the lowest reading (-.9), since May 22nd, 2020 (covid times), which was 73 weeks ago. (SPX was 2,955.45 vs. SPX 4,532.65 currently).

    • 5. We are entering the strongest month (and best two month period) of the year with a median return of 2.1% and positive hit rate of 71% going back to 1985. VIX below 15, through pandemic lows.

    • 6. November Inflows is the biggest dynamic in the market next week. Goldman models +20bps of AUM ($23 Trillion) or +$46B of new demand (I expect double given money has completely halted going into bonds).

    • 7. Improving tax headlines dampen my biggest flow-of-funds worry for December. I am reducing my probability of December selling, no selling of tech stocks is positive in itself.
      • a) The timing of a potential capital gains tax rate hike has been a key focus of many investors. Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends are currently taxed at a maximum rate of 20%, along with a separate 3.8% tax on investment income. Vice President Biden has proposed taxing these as ordinary income for filers with over $1 million in annual income. This would roughly double the tax rate on capital gains and dividend income from 23.8% to 43.4%. Link
      • b) Using Federal Reserve data, GS Research estimates the wealthiest households now hold around $1 trillion in unrealized equity capital gains. This equates to 3% of total US equity market cap and roughly 30% of average monthly S&P 500 trading volume.
      • c) Past capital gains tax hikes have been associated with declines in equity prices and in total household equity allocations. In addition, high-momentum “winners” that had delivered the largest gains to investors ahead of the rate hike have usually underperformed. The Tech and Consumer Discretionary sectors have led the market this year and have also been the largest sources of capital gains within the US equity market during the last 3, 5, and 10 years.
      • d) The wealthiest 1% were the biggest net sellers of equities across US households around the last capital gains rate hike in 2013. In the three months prior to the hike, the wealthiest households sold 1% of their starting equity assets, which would equate to around $100 billion of selling in current terms.

    Just in case his euphoria outlook was not clear enough, Rubner then repeats what he wrote in various client chat rooms this week, explaining – again – he expects another epic liftathon.

    • 1. CTA – GS systematic strats estimate $47B to buy over the next 1 week assuming a flat tape. (and $23B to buy in a down 2.5 standard deviation move lower). ~$10B of global equity demand per day.
    • 2. Corporates – US Corporates are expected to purchase $3.80B shares per day. 47% of S&P reports next week.
    • 3. Retail – This week Global equities logged +$25B worth of inflows or ~5B per day.
    • 4. Retail (2) – US households currently own 38% of the $75 Trillion US Corporate Equity Market. There is a max frenzy around the new Bitcoin ETF launches. Pull up the DWAC SPAC, Euphoria is increasing.

    • 5. That is roughly $18B worth of global equity demand per day, every day this week, according to Goldman’s calculations.
    • 6. Positioning on the discretionary HF side remains low / negative / short, and Goldman is looking for any dip to be shallow.

    Last but not least, seasonals from here are up, up and away.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 19:00

  • This Shows Why The Yuan Is Defying Economic Slowdown
    This Shows Why The Yuan Is Defying Economic Slowdown

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live commentator and analyst

    Three things we learned last week:

    1. The yuan keeps rising even as the economy slows. China’s growth slipped below 5% in the third quarter. Excluding pandemic-hit 2020, that would be the slowest in more than three decades. Yet the yuan is surprisingly strong with the trade-weighted index hovering near the highest in almost six years. Friday’s FX settlement data show why the yuan is so resilient.

    A proxy for foreign-currency inflows, the net yuan purchases by banks’ clients amounted to 174 billion yuan ($27 billion) in September. The 12-month average rose to a record 159 billion yuan, thanks to strong exports and inflows to China’s stock and bond markets. The portfolio inflow will likely keep coming. The widely-followed FTSE WGBI index will include Chinese bonds by the end of this month, a move that Citigroup estimated will bring in about $3 billion a month. Against this background, any expectation for large yuan deprecation is likely to be misplaced.

    2. Beijing is making moves to calm the property market. A slew of senior officials, including Vice Premier Liu He, came out to try to shore up the struggling real-estate sector and reassure everyone that risks from Evergrande are contained. Evergrande’s surprising payment of interest rates last week helped it avoid an imminent default, triggering the biggest weekly rally in Chinese junk bonds since 2012. The crisis is by no means ending. But China’s fine-tuning of housing policy, including encouraging banks to increase mortgages, should bring some relief for property developers.

    It’s part of broad efforts by policy makers to keep the economy from faltering further. On Friday, a Ministry of Finance official said Beijing has urged local governments to speed up bond issuance to fund infrastructure projects.

    3. Inflation is bringing forward central bank rate expectations across the world. The global bond selloff continued last week as inflation expectations rose. The U.S. five-year breakeven rate reached the highest in more than a decade. In Russia, the central bank stunned investors with a bigger-than-expected rate increase Friday, and warned that more tightening may come to curb inflation. In China, while consumer prices are held back by lower pork prices, bond yields have also increased in recent weeks as expectations of reserve ratio cuts waned.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 18:30

  • "Welcome To The Hunger Games": More Chicago Officers 'Summoned' As City Council Mulls Vax Mandate Reversal
    “Welcome To The Hunger Games”: More Chicago Officers ‘Summoned’ As City Council Mulls Vax Mandate Reversal

    Chicago’s main police union is continuing to tell officers to hold the line as police HQ continues summoning officers to disclose their Covid vaccination status, and placing those who don’t comply on “no-pay status” while sending them home.

    Just ahead of a crucial city council meeting set for Monday, Fraternal Order of Police First Vice President Michael Mette likened the continued standoff to “The Hunger Games”. Mette referenced the popular dystopian novel series and movies in a social media video posted prior to the weekend, saying “Welcome to day three of ‘The Hunger Games,’ where we find out who the city is going to offer up as tribute.”

    Getty Images

    As of the weekend it’s as yet unknown precisely how many dozens or possibly many more officers have been temporarily relieved of duty, but it’s been clear that city authorities have been deeply hesitant to pull the trigger on threats of mass firings, given the already understaffed police and first responder units face weekend after weekend of high crime and violent incidents, including dozens of shootings a week.

    The police union is hoping that a proposal for reversing the vax status mandate order passes in a much anticipated city council vote to take place Monday:

    Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara is hoping a crowd shows up to City Hall to support an ordinance that will be introduced Monday that would defy the Mayor’s city employee COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

    “Let’s hope enough Aldermen do the right thing and push to have that ordinance enacted so this vaccine policy gets reset and negotiated like it should have been,” Catanzara said.

    In his most recent video, Catanzara said he hopes an ordinance that will be proposed Monday overturning Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s vaccine mandate will pass.

    The latest local reports say that at this point up to 70% of the some 12,000 member police force have revealed the vaccination status so far.

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    If Monday’s ordinance passes, the reversal of Lightfoot’s original mandate would mean any employee already placed on leave would receive back any missed paychecks retroactively, and the vax order would be declared “null and void”. 

    In fresh statements, union leader Catanzara estimated that this his knowledge thus far, “Over two dozen officers held the line and disobeyed the order and went into a no-pay status.”

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    The union is attempting to cover missed pay for resisters, also in order to encourage more: “We set up a heroes fund on the FOP website, that money will be distributed to the officers in no-pay status. We are going to figure out a calculation on how to help them out on this financial crunch they voluntarily took on our behalves,” Catanzara said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 18:00

  • Shock Waves In The Virginia Gubernatorial Election, Can Biden Help?
    Shock Waves In The Virginia Gubernatorial Election, Can Biden Help?

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    With 10 days to go before Election Day, Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are locked in a close battle for governor of Virginia…

    GOP Gains in Governor’s Race

    Highly respected pollster Monmouth University reports GOP Gains in Governor’s Race

    Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are locked in a close battle for governor of Virginia. The last Monmouth (“Mon-muth”) University Poll of the race before the election marks a gain for the GOP candidate from prior polls. Youngkin’s improved position comes from a widening partisan gap in voter engagement and a shift in voters’ issue priorities, particularly around schools and the pandemic.

    Youngkin (46%) and McAuliffe (46%) hold identical levels of support among all registered voters. This marks a shift from prior Monmouth polls where the Democrat held a 5-point lead (48% to 43% in September and 47% to 42% in August). A range of probabilistic likely electorate models* shows a potential outcome – if the election was held today – of anywhere from a 3-point lead for McAuliffe (48% to 45%) to a 3-point lead for Youngkin (48% to 45%). This is the first time the Republican has held a lead in Monmouth polls this cycle. All prior models gave the Democrat a lead (ranging from 2 to 7 points).

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    What Happened?

    At a September 28 debate, Mr. McAuliffe bluntly declared: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” 

    Youngkin took that pitch and ran with it. He promises more accountability, more charter schools, and an end to critical-race indoctrination.

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    Taken Out of Context?

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    What a hoot. The translation is perfect.

    Translation: “I accidently said exactly what I thought, instead of the poll tested remarks.”

    Biden to the Rescue?

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    Is that supposed to help? Whom?

    Obviously Biden thinks it will help McAuliffe, but color me skeptical. If an incoherent Biden gets on the stage with McAuliffe, it just might help Youngkin.

    My guess Biden sticks to cameo appearances, tries to say nothing, and the pluses and minuses balance out to nothingness. 

    Harris to the Rescue?

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    Is that supposed to help? 

    I’ll take a stab that this is negative for McAuliffe. Harris is not well liked and proven useless at the border.

    Education Message

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    Changing Numbers 

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    Poll Dynamics 

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    538 Poll Synopsis 

    The Trafalgar Group also has the poll as tied. But 538 corrects that to +1 for Younkin. 

    Amusingly, after having repeatedly blasted Trafalgar in the 2020 presidential election, 538 now ranks Trafalgar as A-.

    McAuliffe’s Gift to the GOP

    The Wall Street Journal discusses McAuliffe’s Gift to the GOP.

    Mr. McAuliffe this week released an ad that radiates panic. The screen pans over pictures of Mr. McAuliffe’s children, as the Democrat complains his Republican opponent took his words about education “out of context.” 

    Candidates stuck explaining what they really meant (two weeks from an election) are candidates in trouble. And every sign is that Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign has been on a perilous slide since that fateful comment.

    The moment illustrates again the power of education as a wedge issue. It crosses socio-economic lines, giving Republicans the opportunity to peel back crucial suburban voters who helped Joe Biden to the White House. And it crosses racial lines, providing the party a chance to build on gains among blacks, Hispanics and Asian voters.

    The issue resonates as strongly with Mr. Youngkin’s base, which is energized by a candidate willing to confront entrenched school boards and teachers unions. Monmouth finds GOP voter enthusiasm is booming, with 79% of Republicans saying they are very motivated to vote (7 points higher than Democrats) and 49% saying they are enthusiastic about the election (23 points higher). Education transcends the divide between working-class and college-educated voters.

    Virginia isn’t an outlier; it’s a road map. While the Beltway press corps has obsessed over protests in the Virginia suburbs, the same fury is ripping across districts in every state—including those crucial to Democrats’ congressional majorities. In New Hampshire ( Sen. Maggie Hassan ), parents line up to rail at school boards. In Colorado (where Sen. Michael Bennet used to be Denver’s superintendent of schools), board members are quitting, getting recalled or being challenged by entire slates of reformist parents. In Arizona ( Sen. Mark Kelly ), the state GOP has taken to running to “school board boot camps” to handle the unprecedented flood of newly engaged citizens.

    The McAuliffe experience shows how tricky the issue can be for Democrats. Teachers unions (core Democratic donors) demand fealty. Activists demand backing for transgender policies and critical-race curriculums. Yet it turns out this standard progressive line is offensive to millions of reengaged parents. Mr. McAuliffe’s first instinct was to bow to and back the educational establishment—which didn’t go well. He’s since tried to turn the tables and duck questions by incorrectly claiming CRT isn’t taught in Virginia schools and is a fiction—a “racist” “dog whistle.” That’s not fooling a single Virginia parent.

    Mish Call 

    Tossup. I don’t know. Perhaps a slight edge to Youngkin, simply based on momentum.

    But there is a second issue that no one above addressed and it can easily be the deciding factor.  

    Right To Choose

    Youngkin is pro-life in a deeply blue state. Women are over half the voters. This is just not a good issue for Republicans. In fact, it’s a terrible issue for them. 

    Once again, the base is going nowhere. Independents and moderates will decide the election. 

    Can Youngkin win enough independents and swing voters on education to counter a major flaw on abortion? 

    The Real Lesson  

    The real takeaway that the WSJ missed is the GOP needs to bend towards the middle. 

    The middle wants an end to critical-race indoctrination. But the middle includes other wedge issues like abortion. 

    The middle does not want the radical Left policies of the Progressives who have hijacked Biden’s agenda. 

    Instead, we have extreme politics on both sides where independents have to chose one wedge issue over another.

    *  *  *

    Like these reports? If so, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 17:30

  • "RV Capital Of The World" Sees Influx Of New Residents As Americans Abandon Big-City Living
    “RV Capital Of The World” Sees Influx Of New Residents As Americans Abandon Big-City Living

    Every once in a while, a headline cuts right through the haze of statistics and really tells you something about the complicated state of what’s really going on in the US.

    And somehow, the WSJ did it Tuesday with an article about how surging home prices (particularly in densely populated cities) and a shift toward a remote-work lifestyle are causing significant numbers of Americans to move away from big urban centers like NYC and smaller or mid-sized cities.

    Many of the cities on the receiving end are happy to see newcomers after decades of decline in their industrial base hollowed out over decades of deindustrialization.

    And their transition is a loss for largely blue states like California and New York that are hiking taxes and driving more taxpayers away.

    In the latest sign of this shift away from the more than decade-long shift of young people moving to big cities, Elkhart, Ind., which calls itself “the RV Capital of the world” based on the fact that it’s the largest RV manufacturer in the US, was the leading county in Realtor.com’s latest

    According to the latest data from a Realtor.com/News Corp., the last quarter was a very good one for Elkhart’s real-estate market, which is hotter than it’s been in decades. The Indiana county topped the WSJ’s “Emerging Housing Markets Index” in Q3.

    The index claims to identify “the top metro areas for home buyers seeking an appreciating housing market and appealing lifestyle amenities”.

    Per WSJ, the index’s top-ranked markets saw “faster-growing populations and more shopping interest from shoppers outside their metro areas than the market as a whole, said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.”

    Just in case you didn’t put the pieces together yourself, the WSJ reports that the COVID pandemic “...has spurred more RV demand” as households wanted to travel while “keeping their distance from others.” Unemployment in Elkhart did sit at 3% in August, compared with the 5.1% headline national average.

    The median home-sale price in Elkhart County rose 12.3% in August from a year earlier to $209,900, according to the Indiana Association of Realtors. There were 163 homes for sale that month, down from 220 a year earlier.

    “Market activity has slowed slightly in recent weeks, but “anything under $250,000 still goes very, very fast,” Ms. Miller said. “Those are the hardest to come by and the fastest to sell.”

    They even managed to measure the fact that about “65% of the page vies on Elkhart-area property listings” came from “outside the metro area” to illustrate the pace of interest from out-of-town buyers.

    It’s just the latest sign that, as we noted last week, job openings are soaring as millions of Americans are moving to new places and looking to start over.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 17:05

  • What's Behind The Eerie Calm In Corporate Credit
    What’s Behind The Eerie Calm In Corporate Credit

    By Vishwanath Tirupattur, global head of Quantitative Research at Morgan Stanley

    Over the past few weeks, risk markets have been buffeted by volatility from a wide array of sources. It was around a month ago that the regulatory reset in China and near-term funding pressures on select property developers roiled global markets, as investors fretted over the systemic implications for global growth. A mixed US jobs report along with sharply higher commodity prices intensified the debate around stagflation. Rhetoric from multiple central banks has been increasingly hawkish. The combination of these concerns has resulted in substantial market gyrations. Relative to a month ago, the S&P 500 Index declined by about 4% before recovering to up 6%. The shape of the Treasury yield curve has twisted and turned. The benchmark 10-year Treasury interest rate went from around 1.30% to around 1.70%, and market pricing of the timing of a Fed rate hike has come in sharply.

    Amid these substantial moves, corporate credit markets on both sides of the Atlantic have largely stayed calm. Credit spreads in investment grade, high yield and leveraged loans across the US and Europe have hovered near 52-week tights, with surprisingly limited volatility.

    Credit market beta relative to equity markets remains very low. Market access for companies across the credit spectrum has remained robust, as indicated by strong issuance trends, running at or ahead of the pace a year ago. What explains this stark difference between credit and other markets? The answer boils down to meaningfully improved credit fundamentals and elevated balance sheet liquidity, leading to a decidedly benign outlook for defaults over the next 12 months, if not longer.

    Our credit strategists, Srikanth Sankaran and Vishwas Patkar, have highlighted that the balance sheet damage from COVID has been reversed. At the end of 2Q, gross leverage in US investment grade credit had declined sharply to 2.4x, back to pre-COVID levels. Net leverage is now below pre-COVID levels, while interest coverage has risen sharply to a seven-year high.

    The trends in the high yield sector are even more impressive and the improvement broad-based, driven not just by the rebound in earnings but also negative debt growth. At 3.87x, the median leverage of high yield companies in our coverage universe for 2Q21 is down 0.5x Q/Q and 0.89x Y/Y. After four consecutive quarters of declines from the 2Q20 peak, median leverage now sits below the pre-COVID trough. That 71% of the issuers are reporting lower gross leverage Q/Q reflects the broad-based improvement.

    Encouragingly, the size of tail cohorts has also begun to normalize – the share of issuers reporting 6x+ leverage is down 7 percentage points on the quarter. On the median measure, debt balances were 3.9% lower Y/Y while LTM EBITDA was 17.5% higher. Median interest coverage increased in the quarter to 4.68x (+0.52x Q/Q), with a solid 82% of issuers posting improved coverage. Cash-to-debt ratios remained close to record highs at 15.6%. Even in LBO land, while 2021 has been a bumper year for acquisition activity, with transaction multiples and debt multiples at record highs – usually a source of concern for leveraged loan and high yield bond investors – unprecedented equity cushions have resulted in a better alignment of sponsor and lender interests, helping to alleviate concerns.

    These improvements in credit fundamentals explain the low-beta behavior of credit versus equity markets. Earnings and margin concerns matter for credit investors, too, but the intensity and breadth of balance sheet repair matter more. Furthermore, given the sharp rally in stocks, equity cushions in capital structures have increased and leverage as measured by debt-to-EV has declined.

    What are the implications for investors? A lot, of course, is in the price. With credit spreads near the tight end of the spectrum, we are more likely to see them widen than tighten.

    Indeed, the base case expectation of our credit strategists is for modestly wider spreads. However, the strength in credit fundamentals suggests that the outlook for defaults is benign and likely below long-term average realized default levels. Thus, we prefer taking default risk to spread risk here, leading us to favor high yield over investment grade and, within high yield, loans over bonds. For the more sophisticated investor seeking double-digit returns, the best expression of this view would be through equity tranches of collateralized loan obligations (CLO). Structural leverage as opposed to repo leverage, cash flows that are front end-loaded, multiple embedded refinancing options, all combined with the expectations of benign defaults, make CLO equity tranches a particularly interesting opportunity.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 16:40

  • Lira Tumbles To New Record Low As Critics Blast Erdogan's Ambassador Expulsion Scandal
    Lira Tumbles To New Record Low As Critics Blast Erdogan’s Ambassador Expulsion Scandal

    Following Erdogan’s Friday tirade, lashing out at Western countries for issuing a joint letter demanding the immediate release of jailed Turkish billionaire philanthropist businessman and opposition politician Osman Kavala, which was followed by the president’s threat that he had ordered ten ambassadors – including the US – to be deemed ‘persona non grata’ by Turkey’s government, the Turkish lira weakened to another record low against the dollar after electronic trading reopened early in the Asian session.

    Around 4pm ET Sunday afternoon, the lira tumbled 1.6% to a new record low against the dollar of 9.73 at the opening of Asian trading; this following the bigger-than-expected rate cut on Thursday despite rising inflation which sparked a furious selloff in the country’s currency as the move was widely derided as a dramatic and reckless and followed’s Erdogan’s erratic firing of three central bankers  the week prior.

    The non grata designation targeted the ambassadors of US, Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and New Zealand. Meanwhile, Turkish opposition leaders slammed Erdogan’s lashing out against the United States embassy and other allied Western countries as nothing but a major effort at distraction from Turkey’s economic tailspin and disaster in the making: 

    Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition CHP, said Erdogan was “rapidly dragging the country to a precipice.”

    “I worry … for Turkish financial markets on Monday. The lira will inevitably come under extreme selling pressure,” said veteran emerging market watcher Tim Ash at BlueBay.

    “And we all know that (Central Bank Governor Sahap) Kavcioglu has no mandate to hike rates, so the only defense will be spending foreign exchange reserves the CBRT does not have.”

    Typically such a designation of foreign ambassadors results in their prompt expulsion from the country, but as of Sunday night that doesn’t appear to have happened yet, suggesting this may be yet more jawboning from Erdogan. It wouldn’t be the first time the president has failed to follow up on his threats: in 2018, he said Turkey would boycott U.S. electronic goods in a dispute with Washington. Sales were unaffected. Last year, he called on Turks to boycott French goods over what he said was President Emmanuel Macron’s “anti-Islam” agenda, but did not follow through.

    As Reuters adds, citing a diplomatic source, a decision could be taken at Monday’s cabinet meeting and that de-escalation was still possible. Erdogan has said he will meet U.S. President Joe Biden at next weekend’s G20 summit in Rome. Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics for two decades but support for his ruling alliance has eroded ahead of elections scheduled for 2023, partly because of high inflation.

    Emre Peker, from the London-based consultancy Eurasia Group, said the threat of expulsions at a time of economic difficulties was “at best ill-considered, and at worst a foolish gambit to bolster Erdogan’s plummeting popularity”.

    “Erdogan has to project power for domestic political reasons,” he said.

    Erdogan’s anger erupted after the ambassadors of Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, New Zealand and the United States issued a joint statement on Oct. 18, calling for a just and speedy resolution to Kavala’s case, and for his “urgent release”.

    Soner Cagaptay from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy tweeted: “Erdogan believes he can win the next Turkish elections by blaming the West for attacking Turkey — notwithstanding the sorry state of the country’s economy.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/24/2021 – 16:20

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Oct 24

Today’s News 24th October 2021

  • Gordon Chang: Joe Biden's Taiwan Policy Is Now A Total Disaster
    Gordon Chang: Joe Biden’s Taiwan Policy Is Now A Total Disaster

    Authored by Gordon Chang via 19fortyfive.com,

    “He is just too old and likes to bluff, doesn’t know what he is talking about,” tweeted China Daily’s Chen Weihua on Friday, referring to President Joe Biden.

    On Thursday, Biden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he would defend Taiwan.

    “Yes, we have a commitment to do that,” the President said, responding to a question about what the U.S. would do if China attacked the island republic.

    Chen’s dismissive comment confirms that America’s deterrence of China is eroding fast.

    “Biden has been anything but clear,” ABC News wrote about the President’s intentions toward Taiwan.

    On the contrary, he has been crystal clear, on a number of occasions.

    Biden’s comment to Cooper was not a one-off. In August, he told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. would defend NATO partners, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

    If there is anything unclear, it is the situation after the clarifications from Biden administration officials: Press Secretary Jen Psaki, State Department spokesperson Ned Price, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. All of them walked back Biden’s statement to CNN.

    “Well, there has been no shift,” Psaki told reporters on Friday.

    “The President was not announcing any change in our policy nor has he made a decision to change our policy. There is no change in our policy.”

    In fact, there was a change. Biden’s definitive statement was a stark departure from America’s decades-old policy of “strategic ambiguity,” the policy of telling neither Beijing nor Taipei what the U.S. would do in the case of imminent conflict.

    There are now two causes for concern.

    • First, Biden, as Commander-in-Chief, makes foreign policy. The Constitution does not give that power to Psaki, Price, or Austin. Beijing may wonder—as should Americans and others—if Biden is still in charge.

    • Second, the instant clarifications undermine deterrence. Biden’s statement was clear and unambiguous, a warning to Beijing. The clarifications, on the other hand, tell China the United States is not committing itself to defend Taiwan.

    The walk-back statements could lead Beijing to believe there are disagreements inside the Biden administration and in a crisis, some officials would try to override the President to block an American defense of Taiwan.

    In short, Chen Weihua’s insulting comments look close to the mark.

    Deterrence has just had a bad day. And so has the U.S. Constitution.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 23:30

  • You Can Now Buy A Flying Car That Looks Like A Star Wars Spacecraft
    You Can Now Buy A Flying Car That Looks Like A Star Wars Spacecraft

    Forget Elon Musk’s Tesla Cyberquad ATV because there’s a new form of transportation for the offroad enthusiast now available, and it looks like something out of Star Wars. 

    Sweden’s Jetson Aero has begun manufacturing a personal electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that will zip around the skies at 63 mph. 

    The Jetson One eVTOL is an octocopter with four arms that produce 88 kW (118 horsepower) at full throttle. The pilot sits in an aluminum/carbon fiber frame and controls the craft via a throttle lever on the left, a joystick on the right, and a pair of pedals, likely controlling yaw.

    According to vehicle car website Autoevolution, “the company [Jetson Aero] said that you can easily climb as high as 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) with Jetson One.” So far, videos only show the eVTOL moving at high rates of speed at low altitudes.  

    Someone who weighs roughly 187 pounds can expect 15-20 minutes of flight time before the batteries need a recharge. 

    New Atlas noted the eVTOL comes 50% built, and presumably, owners will have to assemble the rest. For that reason, the craft will likely fly under “experimental” where pilots don’t need a license to fly. 

    As for price, a $22k deposit will give someone the right to reserve a build slot for 2023. There are only three left. Production in 2022, a total of 12, has already been secured from people worldwide, including a few in California. 

    Personal eVTOLs appear to be the next big trend in transportation that will revolutionize how people (rich people) travel and commute or spend their leisure time. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 23:00

  • A Tale Of Two Civilizations
    A Tale Of Two Civilizations

    Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

    In recent years, America’s unsuccessful attempts at containing China as a rival hegemon has only served to promote Chinese antipathy against American capitalism. China is now retreating into the comfort of her long-established moral values, best described as a mixture of Confucianism and Marxism, while despising American individualism, its careless regard for family values, and encouragement of get-rich-quick financial speculation.

    After America’s defeat in Afghanistan, the geopolitical issue is now Taiwan, where things are hotting up in the wake of the AUKUS agreement. Taiwan is important because it produces two-thirds of the world’s computer chips. Meanwhile, the large US banks are complacent concerning Taiwan, preferring to salivate at the money-making prospects of China’s $45 trillion financial services market.

    The outcome of the Taiwan issue is likely to be decided by the evolution of economic factors. China is protecting herself against a global credit crisis by restraining its creation, while America is going full MMT. The outcome is likely to be a combined financial market and dollar crisis for America, taking down its Western epigones as well. China has protected herself by cornering the market for physical gold and secretly accumulating as much as 20,000-30,000 tonnes in national reserves.

    If the dollar fails, which without a radical change in monetary policy it is set to do, with its gold-backing China expects to not only survive but be able to consolidate Taiwan into its territory with little or no opposition.

    Introduction

    On the one hand we have America and on the other we have China. As civilisations, America is discarding its moral values and social structures while China is determined to stick with its Confucian and Marxist roots. America is inclined to recognise no other civilisations as being civilised, while China’s leadership has seen America’s version and is rejecting it. Both forms of civilisation are being insular with respect to the other, and their need to peacefully cooperate in a multipolar world is increasingly hampered.

    Understanding another nation’s point of view is essential for peaceful harmony. This truism has been ignored by not just America, but by the Western alliance under American coercion. The Federal Government and its agencies are pursuing a propaganda effort against China’s exports and technology, while the average American appears less troubled. Perhaps we can put this down to a nation based on immigrants having a more cosmopolitan psyche than its predominantly Anglo-Saxon establishment.

    In Europe, it sometimes appears to be the other way round, with the politicians more prepared to tolerate China than their US counterparts. But then geography is involved, and the silk roads do not involve America, while rail links between China and Western Europe work efficiently, delivering vital trade between them.

    Economic interdependency is rarely considered. Nor are the potential consequences of diverging economic and monetary policies. While China has been squeezing domestic credit, the West has been issuing currency and credit like drunken sailors on shore leave. Being starved of extra credit, China’s economy has been deliberately stalled, and there is a real or imagined crisis developing in its property markets. Only now, it has become apparent that the West’s major economies are running into troubles of their own.

    Economic destabilisation heightens the risk of conflict, and perhaps the timing of the build-up of tensions in the South China Sea and over Taiwan is not accidental. On Wall Street there is an air of complacency, with the US investment community led by the big banks ignoring the developing risks of this dysfunction. In the context of deteriorating relations between China and America and with China’s growing contempt for US political resolve, Taiwan is becoming extremely important geopolitically.

    China’s plans for Taiwan

    Taiwan is in the world’s geopolitical crosshairs with President Xi insisting it returns to China. The West, which has failed to protect Taiwan from China’s claims of sovereignty in the past, thereby endorsing them, is only now belatedly coming to its aid with a new Pacific strategy. But the signals already sent to the Chinese are that the Western alliance is too divided, too weak to prevent a Chinese takeover. This surely is the reasoning behind China’s attempts to provoke an attack on its air force by invading Taiwan’s airspace. And all the West can do is indulge in finger-wagging by sailing aircraft carriers through the Taiwan Strait.

    Taiwan matters, being the source of two-thirds of the world supply of microchips. Faced with a pusillanimous west, this fact hands great power to China — which with Taiwan corners the market. Furthermore, the big Wall Street banks are salivating over the prospects of participating in China’s $45 trillion financial services market and are preparing for it. China has thereby ensured the US banking system has too much invested to support the US administration in any escalation of the Taiwan issue.

    The actual timing of China’s escalation of the Taiwan issue appears related to the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. That being so, the posturing between China and the Western Alliance has just begun. There are four possible outcomes: China backs off and the tension subsides, America and the Western Alliance back off and China gets Taiwan, there is a negotiated settlement, or a military war against China ensues.

    In this context it is important to understand the civilisation issue, which increasingly divides China and America. There is little doubt that the hitherto normal relationship between America and China was disrupted by President Trump becoming nationalistic. His “make America great again” policy was a declaration of a trade war. That was accompanied by a political attack on Hong Kong, which provoked China into taking Hong Kong under direct mainland control. There followed a technology war, leading to the arrest of the daughter of Huawei’s founder in Canada.

    There appears to be little change in President Biden’s policy against China. Now that his administration has bedded in, China is beginning to test it over Taiwan. To give it context, we should understand the Chinese culture and why the state is so defensive of it, and how the leadership views America and its weaknesses. For that is what is behind its economic divergence from the West.

    China’s changing political culture

    Since becoming President, Xi has reformed China’s state machinery. After assuming power in 2012, he needed to clear out the corrupt and vested interests of the previous regime. He instigated Operation Fox Hunt against corrupt officials, who, it was estimated, had salted away the equivalent of over a trillion dollars abroad. By 2015 over 180 people had been returned to China from more than 40 countries. Former security chief Zhou Yongkang and former vice security minister Sun Lijun ended up in prison and Hu Jintao’s powerful Communist Youth League faction was marginalised.

    By dealing ruthlessly with corrupt officials Xi got rid of the vested interests that would have potentially undermined him. He consolidated both his public support and his iron grip on the Communist Party for the decade ahead. His public approval ratings remain extraordinarily high to this day.

    On the economic front Xi faced major challenges. Having become the world’s manufacturer, a sharp wealth divide opened between China’s concentrated manufacturing centres and rural China. Some 600 million people are still subsisting on a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan ($156) a month. A rapidly increasing urban population has been denuding the rural economy of human resources and undermining the family culture.

    The wealth disparity between city and country has become an important political issue, which is why as well as refocusing resources towards agriculture Xi has clamped down on super-rich entrepreneurs and their record-breaking IPOs. In his Common Prosperity policy, Xi declared that he was not prepared to let the gap between rich and poor widen, and that common prosperity was not just an economic issue but “a major political issue related to the party’s governing foundations”.

    Following decades of communism under Mao, after China’s initial recovery and development Xi is now clamping down on unfettered capitalism. He and his advisers have observed the disintegration of family values in America and the rise of individualism at the expense of family life; and with popular culture how these trends are being adopted by China’s youth. The state has now shut down western-style social media, and erased celebrity culture.

    The social impact of cultural change is often overlooked, but it is at the forefront of China’s policy-makers’ consideration. For millennia, a state-controlled Chinese civilisation endured. Despite the Cultural Revolution, the post-war Mao Zedong years failed to erase it. Never sympathetic to free markets, statist thoughts have turned inwardly to Confucius and Marx to escape the obvious failings of American capitalism and its decline from familial values to individualism and rampant speculation.

    This is what Xi reflects in his presidency. His chief adviser, his éminence grise, is Wang Huning who operates in the political shadows. From all accounts, Wang is extremely clever, speaks French and English, spent a year in America and is a deep thinker who, having examined them, has rejected western values in favour of Chinese tradition. NS Lyons, an analyst and writer living in Washington, DC, has written an interesting article about Wang, published on Palladium Magazine — it is well worth reading.

    As we saw with the UK’s temporary éminence grise, Dominic Cummings, the power to influence possessed by such a person is considerable, but always in a statist context. The economics of free markets are not involved, except as a source of revenue to fund statist ambitions. The result is an assumption, an ignorance of economic affairs concealed by an automatic acceptance of the status quo.

    This is Wang’s weak point, and insofar as Xi relies on his advice, it is the President’s as well. Wang appears to be promoting a Confucian/Marxist hybrid civilisation which is intended to unify China’s many ethnic groups in a government-set culture, reverting to a morality of yesteryear. Comparing China’s future with that of American democracy and its moral degradation, the approach is understandable and enjoys popular support. But the consequences are that the state is drifting backwards towards its Marxist roots. The central command over the economy is exemplified in energy policy: power entities have been instructed to keep factories running without power outages, irrespective of coal and natural gas costs. In fact, the management of the economy was never relinquished by the state, which is now redoubling its efforts to retain control over economic outcomes.

    All one can say is that so far, the Chinese appear to have made considerably less of a mess managing their economy and currency compared with America’s Federal Government and its central bank.

    The political consequences are also important. By stemming the tide of Western moral decadence in her own territory China is insulating herself from the rest of the American-dominated world. This is being bolstered by steps to shift the emphasis from the export trade towards domestic consumption to improve living standards. In the process China will become more of an economic fortress, mainly interested in Africa and the Americas as sources of raw materials and commodities rather than as export markets to be fostered. China’s internationalism of the last four decades is increasingly redirected and confined to the Eurasian continent over which she exercises greater degrees of political and economic control. Which brings us back to the issues of Taiwan and the South China Sea, which China sees as consolidating her rightful political and cultural borders.

    However, the increasing autarky of both China and America is making the Taiwan issue more difficult to resolve peacefully. And we must also consider the opposing directions of drift for their two economies, which could decide the outcome.

    The US’s economic condition and outlook

    There is a mistaken assumption that the US’s economic troubles relate solely to the consequences of the covid lockdowns. Certainly, the Fed timed its funds rate cut to the zero bound and its current and unprecedented rate of quantitative easing of $120bn every month to March 2020, when lockdowns in Europe and the UK commenced. And it was becoming clear, despite President Trump’s prevarication, that the US would follow.

    But that ignores developments which preceded covid. Probably due to earlier tapering of QE in 2019, financial markets signalled a developing slump, with the S&P 500 falling 35% in 23 trading sessions to mid-March 2020 — eerily replicating the Wall Street Crash between end-September and late October 1929. It took the reduction of the Fed funds rate to the zero bound, and $120bn of monthly QE feeding into pension funds and insurance companies to turn markets higher. The yield on 10-year US Treasuries fell to 0.5% and equities markets soared on the back of a new basis of relative valuation.

    After the repo blow-up in September 2019, it became clear that bank balance sheets were too constrained to extend additional bank credit, and conventionally, that might have marked the turn of the bank credit cycle, which was why the comparison with late-1929 was so apt. Furthermore, the banks became less interested in extending credit to Main Street than to Wall Street after financial markets stabilised.

    The recovery in equities and their move into new high ground is simply asset inflation. Speculators have been quick to add to the Fed’s QE liquidity by drawing on bank and shadow bank credit to play the game. Figure 1 shows how margin loans have nearly doubled as the bull market in equities proceeded from late-March 2020. Never has so much leverage been seen in US securities markets.

    During covid lockdowns, beyond pure survival few in industry made judgements about the future. It was commonly assumed that when lockdowns ceased business would return to normal. But this made no allowance for the passage of time and the evolution of consumer needs and wants. Eighteen months later, we find that supply chains are still wrongfooted, disrupted by covid shutdowns and not supplying newly needed goods. Consumer demand patterns are not where they left off — they have radically changed.

    Buoyancy in the US economy is now proving short-lived. The flood of initial spending following lockdowns has receded and different factors are now at play. Supply bottlenecks due to lack of components, transport, and labour are forcing up prices at a pace not reflected in official statistics.

    In effect, GDP is insufficiently deflated by price rises on the high street to give a reasonable estimate of real GDP. With prices probably rising at over 15% annualised (Shadowstats.com estimated 13.5% three months ago and pressures on rising prices have increased significantly since) the US economy is in a slump which is beginning to replicate that of ninety years ago. The difference is that in 1930-33 the dollar was on a gold coin standard increasing its purchasing power as bank credit was withdrawn, while today it is pure fiat and declining at an increasing pace.

    Rising prices across the board are another way of saying that the currency’s purchasing power is declining, which given the Fed’s monetary policies of recent years is not surprising. Figure 2 shows the impact of the Fed’s monetary policy on commodity prices, which reflects the dollar’s weakness as a medium of exchange.

    Given that it takes anything between a few weeks and six months for energy and commodity prices to work through to consumer prices, the recent spurt in commodity prices strongly suggests that consumer prices are going to continue to rise into next year. Yet, only now are the Fed and other central banks beginning to accept that rising prices are not going to be as temporary as they first hoped. This is because it is not prices rising, but the dollar’s purchasing power falling. When they fully realise it, foreign holders of dollars, totalling $33 trillion held in securities, short-term instruments, and bank deposits will require higher interest compensation to persuade them to continue holding dollars. And this is where a conflicting problem arises.

    A rise in interest rates sufficient to compensate foreign holders of dollars for the currency’s loss of purchasing power will undermine the values of their US stock holdings, totalling $14 trillion, of which $12 trillion is held by private sector foreign investors. Furthermore, a further $12.5 trillion of foreign private sector funds are invested in long-term bonds which will also decline in value. Higher interest rates will certainly trigger private sector selling of these assets across the board.

    The fate of $6.6 trillion of foreign official holdings of long-term securities will be partly political, demonstrated by the most recent Treasury TIC figures which showed China selling $21bn of US Treasuries, and Japan and the UK buying $39bn between them. This is strongly suggestive of swap lines being drawn down to support the US Treasury bond market, while presumably the US, either through the Treasury, the Exchange Stabilisation Fund, or the Fed itself has bought JGBs and gilts as the quid pro quo.

    It is worth noting this point because it shows how low bond yields are perpetuated by cooperation between major central banks – along with the attendant monetary inflation. That being the case, private sector holders are misled by price stability while bonds are being wildly overvalued.

    Another way of looking at it is that if John Williams at Shadowstats is right about inflation statistics, then US Treasuries should be yielding as much as 10% along the whole yield curve. Perhaps the recent rise in the 10-year US Treasury yield in Figure 2 is indicating the start of the process of this discovery for foreign and domestic investors alike.

    The chart shows that once the 1.75% level is overcome, there is considerable upside in the yield, with a golden cross forming under the spot value. If yields rise from here, it will not be long before equity markets take note and enter a full-blown bear market.

    The first reaction from the Fed to these events will almost certainly be to claim that falling equities are a leading economic indicator, suggesting the economy faces a post-covid recession. Interest rates cannot be eased further, but QE can be stepped up to cap bond yields and encourage pension funds and insurance corporations to increase their investments. This would be a U-turn from the projected policy of reducing QE due to inflation concerns. But at that point the neo-Keynesian argument can be expected to claim that the developing recession more than negates prospective inflation concerns.

    Facing the same dynamics, the other leading central banks are certain to fall in line with the Fed’s new policy. But as John Law found in a similar situation in France in 1720, rigging a failing stock market (in his case the Mississippi venture) by currency and credit expansion ultimately fails and undermines the currency. Law destroyed the French economy, contrasting with the British South Sea Bubble, where the Bank of England was not involved and did not deploy its currency to ramp markets.

    Today, it appears that Law’s experiment is about to be repeated on a grander scale by the issuer of the world’s reserve currency. The other major western central banks will follow suite. The whole fiat money system is at risk of being driven into a similar failure as that which faced the French livre. So, where would that leave China?

    China’s economic and monetary outlook

    As noted above, China has followed a different monetary path from that of the Fed for some time — most pointedly since March 2020. Consequently, the yuan has risen against the dollar since then, illustrated in Figure 4.

    After some initial uncertainty, the yuan began to rise against the dollar and is now about 10% up on the late-March 2020 level. This is not significant yet, because the dollar’s trade-weighted index has fallen by a similar amount. But with China’s monetary policy of clamping down on shadow banking and excessive bank credit creation, compared against the Fed’s more expansionary monetary policies, we can expect the trend for a stronger yuan relative to the dollar to continue.

    In neo-Keynesian language, China is in a period of deflation, leading to falling prices relative to those measured in dollars. But that misses the point: China has been careful not to encourage speculation in financial assets, reflected in relative stock market performances, shown in Figure 5.

    While the Fed has been inflating stock prices through interest rate and monetary policies, the Chinese have discouraged speculation. The result is that financial assets in China should be less vulnerable to a general market downturn. It has been a deliberate policy to protect the Chinese economy from 2014 onwards, after the PLA’s chief strategist, Major-General Qiao Liang convinced Beijing that permitting unfettered speculation would leave markets vulnerable to a pump-and-dump attack by America.

    To the Chinese, excessive financial speculation aided and abetted by the Fed must look like a cover for underlying economic failure. Every thread of their analysis must point to economic disintegration from which China must protect herself. Rates of credit expansion must be restricted, and the yuan be permitted to rise on the foreign exchanges. The change in policy emphasis from export markets towards increasing domestic consumption should be accelerated. In any event, China is the world’s dominant manufacturer, so she has a good degree of control over prices in international trade for consumer goods anyway. The prices of imported commodities and raw materials matter more today and rising dollar prices for commodities and energy can be countered by a higher exchange rate for the yuan.

    The state’s policy of least risk is to quietly divorce the Chinese economy from the dollar’s influence. In switching some of its trade into the yuan and other currencies, it has been doing this since the Lehman failure, which was another seminal moment in Chinese thinking. The cultural analysis is that America is now destroying its own currency towards a terminal event, an outcome forecast by economics professors in China’s Marxist universities over fifty years ago. The post-Mao ride, piggybacking on American capitalistic methods, is no longer tenable.

    The golden backstop

    Like the Marxist professors in the universities, China’s thinkers, such as Wang Huning and President Xi himself, always believed America to be politically and morally rudderless and would destroy itself. Presumably the election of an unpredictable Trump followed by a President Biden who appears to be in a geriatric decline is seen in Beijing as evidence that American society is indeed rudderless and imploding.

    It was against this likely event that in 1983 far-sighted Chinese strategists began to accumulate gold and to corner the word market for bullion. It would have been obvious to them that one day, dancing with the capitalist devils would become too dangerous and China’s future would have to be secured at the outset long before a capitalist collapse.

    Accordingly, the Regulations on the Control of Gold and Silver were promulgated on 15 June that year, appointing the People’s Bank (PBOC) with sole responsibility for managing China’s gold and silver while private ownership remained banned. The PBOC then began to acquire gold from foreign markets, a task made easier by the 1980-2002 bear market. Meanwhile, the government threw substantial resources into developing gold mining, and became the largest gold producer in the world by a substantial margin, overtaking South Africa, Russia, and the United States. State owned refineries took in doré from abroad, adding to the accumulation.

    It was only after the PBOC had accumulated sufficient bullion from imports and domestic production that she set up the Shanghai Gold Exchange in 2002 and permitted Chinese citizens to acquire gold. The government even ran advertising campaigns encouraging the purchase of gold, and since then, over 19,000 tonnes have been delivered into private sector ownership from the SGE’s vaults.

    Together with the total ban on exports of Chinese refined gold, the pre-2002 ban on private ownership while the state acquired sufficient bullion for its purposes, coupled with the subsequent encouragement to the public to do the same, China clearly regarded gold as her most important strategic asset. It has still not shown its hand, but given the likely amounts involved, to do so would risk destabilising the dollar-centric fiat currency world. Until it happens, we should assume that the 20,000-30,000 tonnes likely to have been accumulated in various state accounts since 1983 is an insurance policy against the failure of American capitalism and the world’s reserve currency.

    This brings us back to the Taiwan question. For China, the re-absorption of Taiwan may become a simpler matter when the capitalistic Americans are economically at their weakest and the dollar is collapsing. Taiwan itself might face up to this reality. A few steps to push America on its way may be tempting, such as selling down their holdings of US Treasuries (already in process) or disclosing a significantly higher level of gold reserves. The latter may wait until a dollar crisis really develops, which is now surely only a matter of a little time.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 22:30

  • Visualizing The World's Biggest Real Estate Bubbles In 2021
    Visualizing The World’s Biggest Real Estate Bubbles In 2021

    Identifying real estate bubbles is a tricky business. After all, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley notes, even though many of us “know a bubble when we see it”, we don’t have tangible proof of a bubble until it actually bursts.

    And by then, it’s too late.

    The map above, based on data from the Real Estate Bubble Index by UBS, serves as an early warning system, evaluating 25 global cities and scoring them based on their bubble risk.

    Reading the Signs

    Bubbles are hard to distinguish in real-time as investors must judge whether a market’s pricing accurately reflects what will happen in the future. Even so, there are some signs to watch out for.

    As one example, a decoupling of prices from local incomes and rents is a common red flag. As well, imbalances in the real economy, such as excessive construction activity and lending can signal a bubble in the making.

    With this in mind, which global markets are exhibiting the most bubble risk?

    The Geography of Real Estate Bubbles

    Europe is home to a number of cities that have extreme bubble risk, with Frankfurt topping the list this year. Germany’s financial hub has seen real home prices rise by 10% per year on average since 2016—the highest rate of all cities evaluated.

    Two Canadian cities also find themselves in bubble territory: Toronto and Vancouver. In the former, nearly 30% of purchases in 2021 went to buyers with multiple properties, showing that real estate investment is alive and well. Despite efforts to cool down these hot urban markets, Canadian markets have rebounded and continued their march upward. In fact, over the past three decades, residential home prices in Canada grew at the fastest rates in the G7.

    Despite civil unrest and unease over new policies, Hong Kong still has the second highest score in this index. Meanwhile, Dubai is listed as “undervalued” and is the only city in the index with a negative score. Residential prices have trended down for the past six years and are now down nearly 40% from 2014 levels.

    Note: The Real Estate Bubble Index does not currently include cities in Mainland China.

    Trending Ever Upward

    Overheated markets are nothing new, though the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the dynamic of real estate markets.

    For years, house price appreciation in city centers was all but guaranteed as construction boomed and people were eager to live an urban lifestyle. Remote work options and office downsizing is changing the value equation for many, and as a result, housing prices in non-urban areas increased faster than in cities for the first time since the 1990s.

    Even so, these changing priorities haven’t deflated the real estate market in the world’s global cities. Below are growth rates for 2021 so far, and how that compares to the last five years.

    Overall, prices have been trending upward almost everywhere. All but four of the cities above—Milan, Paris, New York, and San Francisco—have had positive growth year-on-year.

    Even as real estate bubbles continue to grow, there is an element of uncertainty. Debt-to-income ratios continue to rise, and lending standards, which were relaxed during the pandemic, are tightening once again. Add in the societal shifts occurring right now, and predicting the future of these markets becomes more difficult.

    In the short term, we may see what UBS calls “the era of urban outperformance” come to an end.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 22:00

  • Why Australia Could (And Should) Become A Major Nuclear Power Producer
    Why Australia Could (And Should) Become A Major Nuclear Power Producer

    Authored by Paul Sullivan via OilPrice.com,

    Australia is a country nearly the size of the continental US with a population of about 26 million people.

    It is a country with vast open spaces. Most of its population is found on its east coast in New South Wales and Queensland, some population centers in Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territories and on the island of Tasmania. Most of the larger populations in these areas are in a few cities and their suburbs with lots of open space between them in many places.

    The largest electricity grid goes down the east coast and loops over to South Australia. There is another one in Western Australia, albeit a smaller one than on the east coast, and then an even much smaller one in the Northwest Territories. These grids are not connected. 

    Why is this important for nuclear power? 

    If we are thinking about big reactors, they can only be deployed in areas where the market can support them. If we are thinking about small modular reactors, SMRs, then there are other uses for smaller cities in less densely populated areas. 

    Australia is energy-rich. It is the largest coal exporter in the world. It’s one of the major gas exporters, and previously even was the largest LNG exporter in the world. It has massive wind, solar, geothermal, wind, tidal, and wave energy potential. It has significant hydroelectric resources, but recent droughts have put those into question. Given its low population and vast energy resources, about 2/3rd of its energy production is exported. It is an increasing net importer of oil and refined oil products. Oil, however, is a weak spot in Australia’s energy security and resilience. 

    Australia’s primary energy consumption is overwhelmingly fossil fuels. About 80 percent of its electricity is still from fossil fuels, with black and brown coal dominating, but renewables have been growing in importance, especially since 2008.

    Overall electricity generation grew nicely until a flattening out also in 2008. It is still growing, but not nearly as quickly as it once was. There are considerable differences in fuels and methods used to produce electricity across its territories and states. New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland use mostly coal. Western Australia is dominated by gas. South Australia uses mostly gas and a much larger percentage of renewables than any other area. Tasmania is mostly hydropower. The Northern Territories is almost dominated by an even mix of gas and oil. Except for South Australia, renewables are not a large part of electricity generation elsewhere in the country.

    Hydropower has been part of the energy mix in Australia for a very long time. Solar and wind really started to take hold and grow only in the 2000s. Bioenergy is a small percentage, but not entirely insignificant. Overall, for the country, coal use in electricity has been in decline. Natural gas and renewables have been increasingly used in electricity generation. 

    In terms of energy production, Australian coal has been on a steep growth path for some time. Oil has been in decline. Natural gas has grown greatly in recent years. In the overall big picture in energy production renewable energy is a coat of paint on top of the others. Coal dominates energy production and natural gas is a far second. 

    The main use of nuclear power is for electricity. However, the only nuclear reactor in Australia is in Sydney. It is a tiny 20 MW reactor that makes nuclear isotopes for medical purposes. Nuclear power can be curative in a medical sense. Many know this from personal experience. 

    Nuclear power is controversial in Australia. Importantly,  “Nuclear power production is currently not permitted under two main pieces of Commonwealth legislation—the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 (the ARPANS Act), and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the EPBC Act). These Acts expressly prohibit the approval, licensing, construction, or operation of a nuclear fuel fabrication plant; a nuclear power plant; an enrichment plant; or a reprocessing facility. There is also a range of other legislation, including state and territory legislation, which regulates nuclear and radiation-related activities.”

    There are also state and territory laws strictly regulating it, and in some cases, such as in Victoria, it is outright banned. So, there are many legal levels with hurdles for nuclear power. 

    Australia has the largest known reserves of uranium on the planet. It is the third-largest exporter of uranium. Yet is has no nuclear power plants to produce electricity. There is a possibility that the new strategic cooperation deal with the UK and the USA, the AUKUS agreement, that includes Australia getting help from the UK and the US to develop and deploy nuclear submarines, could create more conversation and debate on nuclear power. These nuclear submarines will require increasing nuclear expertise in Australia. There will be a need for that nuclear expertise to maintain and develop this fleet of nuclear submarines. In the US, many of the people working in nuclear power plants are Navy nuclear experts and engineers. 

    Some in Australia see the nuclear submarines deal as a marker to restart the debate on having nuclear power in the country. Others are vehemently against nuclear power. Many laws and regulations are still in place to put a check on nuclear power in the country. However, as climate change concerns continue to increase, there could be an increasing drive towards nuclear power in the country.

    Nuclear power plants produce no greenhouse gas emissions. The major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle is in uranium mining. Australia has very high per capita greenhouse gas emissions, especially if the emissions from its massive energy exports are added to the equation. Most of its domestic emissions are from the burning of coal, natural gas, oil, and oil products. 

    Environmentalism is growing in Australia. Recent droughts, fires, floods, and heatwaves are spurring this on. The options for lower emissions fuels do not include coal and oil, unless there are gigantic, and very expensive, programs for carbon capture and storage, CCS, and carbon capture and utilization, CCU. 

    The energy transition in Australia may include further moves towards natural gas, but that would cut into one of its greatest exports, LNG. The energy transition in Australia will likely include renewables, for which it has massive potential. However, renewables are intermittent and there will be a giant need for energy storage and demand management if Australia decides to take this path.

    With nuclear power as part of its energy transition, Australia would have another way of reducing its carbon emissions. Nuclear power is a baseload that runs 24/7, except during refueling and maintenance. 

    Nuclear power can have capacity factors well into the 90s. Renewables are not even close. Nuclear power could help stabilize the electricity grids of the country. It could help with the energy security, energy reliability, and energy resilience of the country. Nuclear power is over time, and on average, contrary to many media and other reports, one of the safest and least polluting sources of energy. 

    Retiring coal plants, and many are scheduled for retirement and have been retired, can be repurposed as nuclear plants in some places. The transition from coal to natural gas and renewables could be complemented with a transition from coal to nuclear power. Nuclear power could increase the diversity of the energy transition. 

    A nuclear power option that Australia could consider is small modular reactors. These produce smaller amounts of nuclear power than the standard plants. They can be built upon as modular, like building blocks, and when an area needs more power, they can be added in. They can have passive safety features well beyond the standard nuclear power plants. Next to this, they have a much lower proliferation risk. 

    It could be years before SMRs can be deployed anywhere in the world in large numbers, but many of the questions about standard reactors can be answered with SMRs. They are not the perfect answer, but in a world increasingly concerned about the effects of greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane, for many countries, nuclear will be close to a requirement in their energy transitions. Australia has lots of renewable energy potential, but it may be worth it to bring up nuclear once again. 

    Australia needs energy security, energy reliability, and energy resiliency. It also needs environmental security, environmental reliability, and environmental resilience. Australia has had some very rough times with fires, floods, droughts, storms, and more. Climate change is happening. Australia can be part of the problem or part of the solution.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 21:30

  • Tech Salaries Fall In High Cost Cities Like San Fran And New York As Remote Work Drives Employees Elsewhere
    Tech Salaries Fall In High Cost Cities Like San Fran And New York As Remote Work Drives Employees Elsewhere

    Salaries for tech workers in cities like New York and San Francisco are slipping, marking the first fall in 5 years.

    The drop in pay comes as a result of a push toward remote work, according to Bloomberg, citing a report by Hired. The report looked at more than 525,000 interview requests and 10,000 job offers via Hired’s workplace from January 2019 to June 2021. 

    Tech workers in San Francisco are still set to earn the highest rate in the country, but it has fallen 0.3% from last year to $165,000.

    In the U.S., salaries in the industry fell by 1.11% to an average of $152,000.

    However, in cities like Seattle, home to Amazon, pay rose to $158,000. Austin, Texas also saw a bump higher in salary since attracting companies like Facebook and Google. San Diego saw salaries move higher by 9.1% to $144,000.

    Hired Chief Executive Officer Josh Brenner told Bloomberg: “We’re seeing movement to some of these smaller markets driven by the actual lifestyle there. People are realizing San Diego has a nice way of living, good weather and it’s by the beach.”

    80% of tech workers are still working remotely, the report says. “A majority” would like it to stay that way.

    In addition to remote work, people are moving out of areas like San Francisco and New York due to the high cost of living, which offsets the higher salaries in those cities. 

    For example, a salary of $243,000 in San Francisco is the same spending power as a $165,000 salary in Dallas or Atlanta, the report noted. 

    Brenner concluded: “Austin has a lot to offer people and there are obviously tech companies moving there. But also a lot of remote workers are saying ‘I’m going to leave my very expensive big city and move to Austin.’”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 21:00

  • Israel Says Russia Will Allow Continued Attacks On Syria After Bennett-Putin Talks
    Israel Says Russia Will Allow Continued Attacks On Syria After Bennett-Putin Talks

    Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com, 

    Israel likes to attack Syria, and while officials will mostly claim it’s about Iran, such strikes continue with alarming regularity, the only pause being when Israel is unsure if Russia is still comfortable with them.

    This summer Russia suggested they wanted to slow down Israel’s attacks, but on Friday Israel’s Housing Minister reported that they’ve come to an understanding whereby Putin will keep a deconfliction mechanism in place, and allow Israel to strike Syria with no response.

    The two leaders met in Sochi on Friday, Oct. 22, 2021, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP.

    Details are not offered, as Israel tries to spin this as them getting everything they wanted at no cost. Russia has long had conditions on Israel’s attacks, however, and its unlikely that those aren’t still in place.

    In particular, Russia has long warned Israel to keep its warplanes away from Russian bases, and that’s likely still part of the understanding. Russia has also been bolstering Syrian air defenses, a process which may be ongoing.

    The Israeli official who described the aftermath of the Friday talks between PM Naftali Bennett and President Vladimir Putin was quoted in The Times of Israel as follows:

    There were “very wide” talks regarding the situation in Syria aimed at “safeguarding the coordination mechanism,” Elkin said.

    “The prime minister presented his world view on ways to stop Iran’s nuclear drive and Iran’s entrenchment in Syria,” he said in a statement. “It was decided to keep policies vis-à-vis Russia in place (regarding airstrikes in Syrian territory.)”

    Israel has attacked Syria hundreds of times in recent years.

    With a public imprimatur, Israel will probably increase strikes once again, though as in the past this is likely to mostly involve targeting Shi’ite militias.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 20:30

  • 40 Shipping Containers Adrift Off US Pacific Coast After Vessel Hit By Rough Seas 
    40 Shipping Containers Adrift Off US Pacific Coast After Vessel Hit By Rough Seas 

    The global supply chain is more snarled than ever, forcing container ships to stack truck-size intermodal containers to the brim in a technique called containerization. The more shipping containers loaded up on a vessel, the more prone it becomes to an accident at sea in adverse weather conditions.

    That’s precisely what happened last night, off the Pacific Coast, when stormy seas knocked 40 shipping containers off a vessel. The incident occurred when an inbound container ship about 43 miles west of the Strait of Juan de Fuca entrance was listed to its side due to a storm. 

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

    The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter from Port Angeles, Washington, to investigate the incident. What they found were 35 containers floating and unable to find the rest. 

    This weekend, a powerful storm is on the Pacific Coast and is responsible for heavy seas and high winds that put container ships at risk of losing cargo. 

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

    In April, reports surged of containers being lost as sea as vessels were being stacked to full capacity amid strained supply chains. The unintended consequence of packing ships full of cargo is that they become more accident-prone in rough waters. Add this potential risk to an already fragile supply chain that is experiencing record congestion at ports. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 20:00

  • "Corners Were Being Cut": Baldwin Shooting Already Has The Makings Of A Blockbuster Tort Action
    “Corners Were Being Cut”: Baldwin Shooting Already Has The Makings Of A Blockbuster Tort Action

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    The fatal shooting at Bonanza Creek Ranch already has the makings of a blockbuster tort action. Within 24 hours of actor Alec Baldwin fatally shooting cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding the director, witnesses have raised serious questions of negligent and unsafe practice on the site for the low-budget film, “Rust.”

    The question is not whether but when the first torts lawsuit will be filed.  There has already been speculation on the civil and criminal liability in the case, so it may be useful to explore what we know and what it might mean for the likely litigation ahead.

    We now know from accounts that the movie set was the source of long-standing complaints over safety and working conditions. The production company allegedly required workers to drive 50 miles a day rather than pay for hotels, according to witnesses. Workers complained that this left them exhausted on the set. The site turns out to be the same location used in past Westerns because of its remote and rugged terrain. (As a Western movie buff, one of the movies stood out as a favorite: The Man From Laramie).

    There were as many as three prior accidental discharges of weapons on the set. The conflicts over conditions on the set reportedly led to a demand that union members leave the set at one point.It does not appear that Baldwin knew that a live round or a projectile was in the gun. There are no reports to indicate that this was anything more than an accident, but police cannot operate under that assumption. Given the labor issues on the set, the possibility of an intentional act cannot be discounted. There is also possible criminal exposure for criminal negligence.It is also important to note that a “live weapon” can refer not to only to an actual bullet being put into the gun but some projectile being present. There could have been material in the gun that a blank round then turned into a lethal projectile like a bullet.

    There is a question where the lawsuit would be filed. Many of the crew were from California but the set is in New Mexico. The California code contains an ample criminal negligence or manslaughter provision:

    PART 1. OF CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS [25 – 680.4]

      ( Part 1 enacted 1872. )

    TITLE 8. OF CRIMES AGAINST THE PERSON [187 – 248]

    Section 192.

    Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice. It is of three kinds:

    (a) Voluntary—upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.

    (b) Involuntary—in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony; or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, or without due caution and circumspection. This subdivision shall not apply to acts committed in the driving of a vehicle.

    (c) Vehicular—…

    New Mexico has a similar provision that allows “involuntary manslaughter” charges for “the commission of a lawful act which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.”

    These conditions could be charged as actions taken “without due caution and circumspection.” In one recorded call, a witness refers to an assistant director who was supposed to check the gun for safety. The producers on the set, including Baldwin, could face such exposure.

    What is clear is that there is an abundance of evidence to support a tort action even at this early stage. Most sets strictly ban or limit live ammunition on the premises and have strict protocols for the use of prop guns. Even blanks have been known to kill actors like Brandon Lee in the movie “The Crow.”

    The low-budget description of this production could add to questions of whether precautions or protocols were shorted or ignored on the set.

    The use of a live round (or the presence of a projectile) is itself circumstantial proof of negligence. The family of Hutchins could seek to prove negligence in a wrongful death case through res ipsa loquitur. As Dean Prosser explained, the doctrine is used when “(1) the accident must be of a kind which ordinarily does not occur in the absence of someone’s negligence; (2) it must be caused by an agency or instrumentality within the exclusive control of the defendant; (3) it must not have been due to any voluntary action or contribution on the part of the plaintiff.”

    A live round in a prop gun does not ordinarily occur absent negligence. The question of the exclusive control of the instrumentality can be challenged but the plaintiff could argue that the production company continued to have such control. The gun was reportedly handed over by an assistant director to Baldwin, who was also a producer.

    Even without the use of res ipsa loquitur, the negligence of the act seems abundantly clear. This incident could well prove a violation of a statute or regulation making the act “negligent per se.” The violation of a statutory or regulatory standard of care in the use of prop weapons would allow a jury to assume negligence and proceed to questions of causation and defenses.

    Indeed, even if someone intentionally added the round for nefarious purposes, there was negligence in failing to properly check the prop before use on the set.

    There are already witness statements that would fill out such a negligence narrative for trial. One crew member is quoted as saying “There were no safety meetings. There was no assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. All they wanted to do was rush, rush, rush.”

    Another said that there were three accidental discharges and the set was “super unsafe.”

    Yet another witness said “Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting.”

    Labor trouble at the site could serve to document such complaints. Labor disputes are often written up by a shop steward or labor representative at a work site.

    In addition to negligence, there could be claims for the intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress. Anyone who was injured or impacted by the accident could easily make such a claim. It can be more difficult for a bystander like the other members of the crew.

    New Mexico has an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim that can be based on “reckless” conduct. Here is the jury instruction:

    To recover for intentional infliction of emotional distress, __________ (name of plaintiff) must prove that:

    (1) the conduct of __________ (name of defendant) was extreme and outrageous under the circumstances; and

    (2) __________ (defendant) acted intentionally or recklessly; and

    (3) as a result of the conduct of __________ (defendant), __________ (plaintiff) experienced severe emotional distress.

    Extreme and outrageous conduct is that which goes beyond bounds of common decency and is atrocious and intolerable to the ordinary person. Emotional distress is “severe” if it is of such an intensity and duration that no ordinary person would be expected to tolerate it.

    NMRA, Rule 13-1628

    In New Mexico, a claim for NIED is more limited when it comes to bystanders. As shown in cases like Fernandez v. Walgreen Hastings Co., 126 N.M. 263,968 P.2d 774 (1998), bystanders can recover for emotional distress damages only when the injury is caused by a sudden, traumatic event and the plaintiff was aware that the event was causing injury to the victim.

    In 1968, the California Supreme Court expanded NIED claims in Dillon v. Legg, 441 P.2d 912 (Cal. 1968), to include those bystanders who suffered emotional distress as a result of merely witnessing an accident that caused serious injury to a loved one, despite being outside the zone of danger. However, absent an injury to the witness, it required that the victim be a close family member.

    New Mexico is considered a “modified Dillon” jurisdiction. New Mexico applies four limitations on bystander recovery:

    1) There must be a marital or intimate family relationship between the victim and the plaintiff, limited to relationships between husband and wife, parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, brother and sister, and to those persons who occupy a legitimate position in loco parentis;

    2) The shock to the plaintiff must be severe and result from a direct emotional impact upon the plaintiff caused by the contemporaneous sensory perception of the accident as contrasted with learning of the accident by means other than contemporaneous sensory perception, or by learning of the accident after its occurrence;

    3) There must be some physical manifestation of, or physical injury to, the plaintiff, resulting from the emotional injury;

    4) The accident must result in physical injury or death to the victim.

    The crew could sue for a reckless act on the set under these rules though members could face serious pre-trial litigation under the elements of these rules.

    Obviously, the clearest case could be brought by the family of Hutchins as a wrongful death action. They could also seek punitive damages in such a case. Compensatory damages cover both economic and non-economic damages. That includes pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life. While rare, New Mexico does not limit punitive damages, which can be sought for torts that are malicious, willful, reckless, wanton, or fraudulent.

    This case would seem a compelling application of punitive damages. It would have cost little to check the gun before it was used on the set.

    In my torts class, we often discuss the Learned Hand formula (B = PL), an algebraic formula developed by a famous judge to weigh negligence.  (B = PL). The formula allows a comparison of the burden of avoiding an accident (B) against the probability (P) and magnitude (L) of loss resulting from the accident. When PL exceeds B, then the defendant should be liable.

    Under the Hand formula, this represented a “small B” or burden case. Conversely, it is also a “high L” case given the risk to life. Moreover, given that any material in the gun can be turned into a lethal projective, the probability factor could be treated as significant.  When you have a small B and a high PL, punitive damages become stronger possibility.

    If there is a criminal charge, a court could opt to delay any tort action until after the prosecution. However, the statute of limitations is three years for personal injury cases. They need only to file to toll that statute so they have considerable time and any delay due to a prosecution will not undermine their case. Indeed, it could strengthen the case by benefitting from evidence acquired by police and produced by the prosecution.

    The attorneys for the production company are likely to move quickly to seek settlements of civil claims, particularly with the family. They would be wise to make those numbers as high as possible given the strength of any civil case even at this early stage.

    In the end, the liability may be delayed but will likely be considerable. What is clear is that personal injury lawyers will view the Bonanza Ranch as aptly named for civil litigation.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 19:30

  • JPMorgan Turns Positive On Crypto, Sees "A Bullish Outlook For Bitcoin Into Year-End"
    JPMorgan Turns Positive On Crypto, Sees “A Bullish Outlook For Bitcoin Into Year-End”

    The launch of the first Bitcoin ETF, BITO, even if based on futures, was the culmination of seven years of anticipation for bitcoin bulls and it certainly did not disappoint: the leaks and the actual news propelled the cryptocurrency to a new all time high above $66,000 (with some profit-taking to follow).

    Yet despite the clear impact on the price of bitcoin, which has more than doubled from its July lows, not everyone is uniformly bullish on the impact of the first bitcoin ETF. As JPM’s Nick Panigirtzoglou writes in his latest widely-read Flows and Liquidity note, “the bulls are seeing this ETF as a new investment vehicle that would open the avenue for fresh capital to enter bitcoin markets” while the bears “are seeing the new ETF as only incremental addition to an already crowded space of bitcoin investment vehicles including GBTC in the US, ETFs listed in Canada since last February which have been already accessible to US investors, regulated (CME) and unregulated (offshore) futures, and plenty of direct investment options using digital wallets via Coinbase, Square, Paypal, Robinhood etc.”

    For its part, JPM – not surprisingly – falls into the skeptics’ camp (we say not surprisingly because for much of 2021, the largest US bank has been publishing bearish note after note, as we have repeatedly detailed, urging clients to ignore the largest cryptocurrency and if anything, to take profits. In retrospect, this has been a catastrophic recommendation for anyone who followed it). 

    According to the JPMorgan quant, the launch of BITO by itself will not bring significantly more fresh capital into bitcoin due to “the multitude of investment choices bitcoin investors already have. If the launch of the Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCC) last February is a guide, as seen in Figure 1, the initial hype with BITO could fade after a week.”

    Here, once again, JPM’s superficial “analytical” approach shines through and we are confident that Panigirtzoglou, who has been dead wrong about bitcoin for the past year, will once again be wrong in his take on BITO. Instead, for a much more nuanced – and accurate – view of the daily happenings in bitcoin ETF land we recommend Bloomberg’s inhouse ETF expert, Eric Balchunas who points to what is clearly an unprecedented, and rising demand for crypto ETF exposure (one can only imagine what will happen when Gensler greenlights an ETF based on the actual product not spread-draining and self-cannibalizing futures). Indeed, as Balchunas pointed out on Thursday, BITO – which is “maybe too popular for its own good”, has already “used up 2/3 of its total bitcoin futures position limits, only about 1,700 contracts ($600m) left bf it hits 5k total. Could hit in next day or two.”

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    But what about the ramp in bitcoin prices in recent weeks? Surely the anticipation of the ETF launch was the main catalyst? Well, according to JPM the answer is again no, and instead the JPM strategist writes that “while we accept that bitcoin momentum has shifted steeply upwards since the end of September, we are not convinced the anticipation of BITO’s launch was the main reason.”

    Instead, as the Greek quant explained before (see “JPMorgan: Institutions Are Rotating Out Of Gold Into Bitcoin As A Better Inflation Hedge“) he believes that rising inflation concerns among investors “has renewed interest in inflation hedges in general, including the use of bitcoin as such a hedge.”

    As he further explains, “Bitcoin’s allure as an inflation hedge has been strengthened by the failure of gold to respond in recent weeks to heightened concerns over inflation, behaving more as a real rate proxy rather than inflation hedge.” This is actually correct, and as we have shown previously gold indeed correlates much more closely to real rates that nominals, although in recent months, even real rates suggest that gold prices should be notably higher, perhaps confirming ongoing precious metal price suppression of the kind we have previously documented to be emanating from the BIS.

    In any case, JPM also updates a chart we showed previously, the shift away from gold ETFs into bitcoin funds, which was very intense  uring most of Q4 2020 and the beginning of 2021, has gathered pace in recent weeks.

    In turn, by putting upward pressure on bitcoin prices, JPM argues that this shift away from gold ETFs into bitcoin funds likely triggered mean reversion  across bitcoin futures investors which had reached very oversold conditions by the end of September. This is shown in Figure 3 via the bank’s position proxy based on CME ethereum futures. Looking at Figure 3, JPMorgan now claims that “there had been a steep decline in our bitcoin futures position proxy” which pointed to oversold conditions towards the end of September triggering a bitcoin rebound. This rebound appears to have accelerated over the past days ahead of BITO’s launch with the blue line in Figure 1 fully recapturing all the previous months’ unwinding. In other words, the price ramp into the bitcoin ETF launch was just a coincidence. Yeah right, whatever.

    Where JPM is however right, is in its assumption that a significant component of bitcoin futures positioning encompasses momentum traders such as CTAs and quantitative crypto funds. Previously, the bank had argued that the failure of bitcoin to break above the $60k threshold would see momentum signals turn mechanically more bearish and induce further position unwinds; it also claims this has likely been a significant factor in the correction last May in pushing CTAs and other momentum-based investors towards cutting positions. At the end of July, these momentum signals approached oversold territory at the end of July and have been rising since then in reversal to last May-July dynamics. The shor-tterm momentum signal has exceeded 1.5x stdevs, a z-score that we would typically characterize as overbought for other asset classes but still below the exuberant momentum levels of January 2021.

    So with both With Figure 3 and Figure 4 pointing to exhaustion of short covering and more crowded bitcoin positioning in futures, Panigirtzoglou sees bitcoin relying more on other flows outside futures to sustain its upswing. To him, this elevates the importance of monitoring Figure 2, i.e. the importance for the current shift away from gold ETFs into bitcoin funds to continue for the current bitcoin upswing to be sustained.

    In our opinion, the main problem for bitcoin over the previous two quarters had been the absence of significantly more fresh capital as shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6. Figure 5 shows our estimate of retail and institutional flows into bitcoin with an overall downshift in Q2 and Q3 of this year. Similarly, Figure 6 shows that the previous steepening in the pace of unique bitcoin wallet creation has largely normalized returning to pre-Q4 2020 norms, again implying an absence of significantly more fresh capital entering bitcoin.

    And yet, despite this latest (erroneous) attempt to downplay the impact of the bitcoin ETF, which JPMorgan says “is unlikely to trigger a new phase of significantly more fresh capital entering bitcoin”, by now too many JPM clients are invested in the crypto asset as Jamie Dimon (whose opinions on bitcoin have been an absolute disaster for anyone who traded on them) recently admitted, and so while tactically staying bearish on the impact of BITO, not even JPM’s house crypto “expert” can objective stay bearish in general, and as he concludes, “istead, we believe the perception of bitcoin as a better inflation hedge than gold is the main reason for the current upswing, triggering a shift away from gold ETFs into bitcoin funds since September.”

    So with Bitcoin now perceived as the best inflation hedge among non-traditional assets, Pnaigirtzoglou concludes that this gold to bitcoin flow shift “remains intact supporting a bullish outlook for bitcoin into year-end.”

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 19:10

  • Supply Chain Disruptions Curtail Union Pacific's Intermodal Volumes
    Supply Chain Disruptions Curtail Union Pacific’s Intermodal Volumes

    By Joanna Marsh of Freightwaves,

    Extended chassis dwell times and a lack of dray drivers dampened Union Pacific’s intermodal traffic in the third quarter, but the railroad hopes volumes will rebound once the disruptions clear and consumer activity picks up post-pandemic, executives said during UP’s third-quarter earnings call.

    “There are some really good-looking markers that tell us the economy is in a pretty strong place. And maybe we’ll stay there for a while,” President and CEO Lance Fritz said on the Thursday call.

    “There’s a lot of cash on deposit accounts that people are sitting on. And that is dry powder yet to be deployed in spending. As long as consumers continue to spend on things, that’s really good for the goods economy, which of course is the part of the economy that we participate in.”

    Fritz continued:

    “[Once] the COVID pandemic gets under control and [we] get continued signs of normalcy … consumers will spend that money and the low inventory-to-sales ratio is going to drive a need for continued stocking. … Certainly as we head into 2022, it looks like a strong environment.”

    Easing supply chain disruptions means putting more attention on ensuring adequate workforce numbers among dray drivers, at warehouse and distribution centers, and at the ports, according to Fritz.

    “I believe the Biden administration has identified basically increasing the throughput capability and the capacity capability, and understands the need to help put labor that’s available into those jobs and make more labor available for the jobs. … If we could snap our fingers on the back end, we would love to see more dray and warehouse distribution capacity. That’s the first thing that we would love to see. I think that would fundamentally change the street time for chassis and boxes,” Fritz said.

    UP’s intermodal volumes in the third quarter slipped 6% year-over-year to 809,000 units, although intermodal revenue rose 8% to $1.15 billion. UP attributed the volume decline to the tight dray market and not having enough dray capacity to support the overall supply chain. 

    To ease supply chain disruptions inland, the railroad has been utilizing its previously idled Global III facility near Chicago, and it has placed 5,000 cars strategically throughout the network, according to Eric Gehringer, executive vice president of operations. UP has also extended hours at selected ramps, and it has changed the hours of operation at the ICTF in Los Angeles to run 24 hours a day, Gehringer said.

    “We can take the volume. We can handle the volume efficiently, [but] we need the back end of the supply chain with warehouse capacity, warehouse labor, dray capacity and dray labor to be there to answer that call,” he said.

    As supply chain issues subside, opportunities to provide customers with visibility on network flows should be a focus for UP and the broader industry, Fritz said.

    The railroad should “keep our eyes open on opportunities to basically be better for customers. Step one in that has a lot to do with transparency and visibility in the existing supply chain across partners,” Fritz said. “We’re working very hard in that space with each of the supply chain partners that we have, whether it’s a technology platform that we can all use to see everybody’s KPIs and current status, or something more.”

    Third-quarter financial results

    Despite supply chain challenges globally and domestically, UP achieved an operating ratio (OR) of 56.3%, a third-quarter record and up from an OR of 55.1% in the second quarter of 2021.

    Investors sometimes use OR to gauge the financial health of a company, with a lower OR implying improved health. UP’s third-quarter net profit was $1.7 billion, or $2.57 per diluted share, compared with net profit of $1.4 billion, or $2.01 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2020.

    “The Union Pacific team successfully navigated global supply chain disruptions, a major bridge outage and additional weather events to produce strong quarterly revenue growth and financial results,” Fritz said in a release. “In the quarter, the team delivered solid core pricing gains, leveraged business development to produce a positive business mix, and generated productivity to offset flat volume. We also set a quarterly record for fuel consumption rate as we continue to make strides towards our goal to reduce our absolute greenhouse gas emissions.”

    Although third-quarter volumes were flat year-over-year, freight revenue rose 12% to $5.17 million on “higher fuel surcharges, strong pricing gains and a positive mix,” said Kenny Rocker, executive vice president for marketing and sales. 

    “Gains in our bulk and industrial segments were driven by market strength and our business development efforts. Those gains were offset by declines in our premium business group, as our served markets continue to be impacted by semiconductor chip shortages and global supply chain disruptions,” Rocker said.

    Operating expenses rose 9%, to $3.13 million, on an 81% increase in fuel expenses.

    Meanwhile, wildfires and other weather events challenged UP’s network operations, with quarterly freight car velocity down 13% to 195 daily miles per car, UP said. 

    UP maintained its 55% OR target for 2022, although it now expects volume growth closer to 5% for 2021, down from a previous guidance of 7%.

    “Industrial volumes remain consistent and strong across many sectors like forest products, metals and plastics. So we are bullish on several fronts,” CFO Jennifer Hamann said. “But as you are also well aware, headwinds in autos and intermodal persist. Global supply chain disruptions, semiconductor shortages and the additional pressure with international intermodal volumes … continue to constrain our premium volumes.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 18:30

  • Juror In Elizabeth Holmes Trial Dismissed For Playing Sudoku During Testimony
    Juror In Elizabeth Holmes Trial Dismissed For Playing Sudoku During Testimony

    A juror in the Elizabeth Holmes trial who was found playing Sudoku during the trial has been dismissed from duty, marking the third juror in the trial to be dismissed. 

    The juror admitted to playing the game during testimony to “help keep focused”, according to CNBC. Her Sudoku game was kept in her court-issued notebook, the report says. She played the game for “about seven to ten days of testimony”. 

    U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila asked the juror: “Were you playing this Sudoku?”

    The juror responded: “I do have Sudoku, but it doesn’t interfere with me listening. I’m very fidgety, so I need to do something with my hands. So at home I’ll crochet while I’m watching or listening to T.V.”

    The excuse didn’t cut it with the court, and the juror was subsequently dismissed. 

    That leaves only two alternate jurors in a trial that is expected to last until December, according to the report. 

    The judge found out about the game when a juror emailed him. He then told the courtroom: “The court had found good cause to excuse a juror.”

    “So has this distracted you from listening?” the judge asked the Sudoku playing juror in chambers. The juror replied: “No”. 

    When asked if they were able to “follow and retain everything that is going on in the courtroom,” the juror responded: “Oh, yeah, definitely”. 

    NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos said: “This may have been a case of one juror telling on another juror who was perceived to be not taking the trial seriously.” 

    He added: “As crazy as it sounds, as trials drag on jurors get fatigued. They sometimes turn to something like Sudoku or even fall asleep and that can disqualify them as jurors.”

    Two other jurors have already been removed from the trial: one for revealing they couldn’t return a verdict that would send Holmes to prison due to their Buddhist reliiefs and another for financial hardships. 

    A loss of too many jurors risks a mistrial, though a jury of 11 may be permitted by a judge to return a verdict. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 18:00

  • State Department Privately Admits 'Nearly 400' Americans Still Stuck In Afghanistan
    State Department Privately Admits ‘Nearly 400’ Americans Still Stuck In Afghanistan

    Authored by Nick Monroe via The Post Millennial,

    One of the questions that dominated the public’s attention over the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was how many Americans were left in the country. The White House gave varying answers at the time.

    The Biden White House told the public they didn’t know.

    However, months later, according to the Washington Free Beacon, we have a more exact amount — nearly 400 — far beyond the vague estimates given by officials.

    The outlet describes 363 Americans overall who are “stuck” in the Taliban-controlled country, whereas 176 of them want out of Afghanistan “immediately.”

    “I think it’s irresponsible to say Americans are stranded. They are not,” Jen Psaki said back in August.

    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki rejected the label of it being a “hostage situation” despite the fact the Biden administration left Americans behind in Afghanistan after leaving on August 30th, ahead of the scheduled deadline, at the behest of the Taliban.

    California Republican Representative Darrell Issa shared his feelings with the outlet: “We now know this administration repeatedly lied to the world about the citizens of our country it abandoned in Afghanistan. But it did something even worse: It broke a sacred bond of trust between Americans and their government. This isn’t close to over.”

    The source of this new intel was a non-public briefing on Thursday by the Biden administration’s State Department. The same group of people who took credit for the rescues of Americans by private military groups that stepped in when President Biden couldn’t deliver the manpower to rescue Americans.

    The same State Department that had promised American lives were a “top priority” and then airlifted out mostly Afghans instead.

    “The White House has said on the record that they’re turning the page and it becomes clearer all the time why: Every new detail that we find out about the reckless Biden policy in Afghanistan produces only more proof that they lied from day one,” an anonymous Congressional source told the Free Beacon.

    The desire to avoid public backlash was said to remain the Biden administration’s top priority. Something also seen in their recent negotiations with the Taliban earlier this month.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 17:30

  • India Deploys Advanced Anti-Aircraft Guns In High Altitude Border Standoff With China
    India Deploys Advanced Anti-Aircraft Guns In High Altitude Border Standoff With China

    Two weeks ago the Chinese and Indian militaries announced that the latest round of peace talks amid the 17-month standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) separating India from China have failed. The 13th round of talks collapsed after China accused the India side with issuing “unrealistic and unreasonable” demands.

    The Indian Army has within the past days announced the fresh deployment of batteries of upgraded anti-aircraft guns along the contested border. The region has witnessed a build-up of many thousands of troops on either side especially since the Ladakh Galwan Valley clash which occurred in June 15-16, 2020 – and resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers, and an unknown number of Chinese PLA casualties.

    Indian Army artillery unit

    Identified in military statements as L-70 anti-aircraft guns, it appears in response to China operating jet fight fighters out of multiple high-altitude airbases in the region, including deploying from small civilian airports and developing airstrips in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The legacy guns were specifically outfitted and upgraded for that purpose, and have an estimated range of 3.5km, firing at 300 rounds per minute.

    The Independent detailed that “New Delhi has deployed modern Ultra Light Howitzer M777 artillery guns along with its vintage, but now-upgraded L-70 Bofors artillery guns at its eastern border along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).” It’s rare to be able to deploy an artillery unit to at least 15,000 feet above sea level, given especially the extreme logistics required. 

    According to Indian Army Air Defense spokesperson Capt. Sarya Abbasi of the Army Air Defense, the new guns will integrate with ground forces to provide high-tech advanced targeting of any inbound aerial threat. “The guns can bring down all unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned combat aerial vehicles, attack helicopters and modern aircraft,” the captain said.

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    “The gun has enhanced target acquisition and automatic target tracking capability under all weather conditions with high-resolution electro-optical sensors comprising a daylight television camera, a thermal imaging camera and a laser-range finder,” the statement noted.

    L-70, Image source Indian Defence Research Wing

    Further, “The gun is also equipped with a Muzzle Velocity Radar for enhancing the accuracy of fire. The gun has the ability to be integrated with tactical and fire control radars which give it more flexibility in its deployment.”

    Military analysis news sources have indicated recent tests of the antiaircraft gun in September, wherein the upgraded L-70 intercepted a half-meter wide small drone. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 17:00

  • With A Record 79 Container Ships Waiting Off The SoCal Coast, A Scary Supply-Chain Solution Emerges
    With A Record 79 Container Ships Waiting Off The SoCal Coast, A Scary Supply-Chain Solution Emerges

    As we discussed yesterday, when looking at the recent dip in sky high container shipping rates, there was some fleeting hope that Southern California port congestion had turned the corner. The number of container ships waiting offshore dipped to the low 60s and high 50s from a record high of 73 on Sept. 19, trans-Pacific spot rates plateaued, the Biden administration unveiled aspirations for 24/7 port ops, and electricity shortages curbed Chinese factory output.

    Alas, it was not meant to be, and despite the very serious jawboning coming out of the White House, the time ships are stuck waiting offshore continues to lengthen. There are simply too many vessels arriving with too much cargo for terminals, trucks, trains and warehouses to handle, and according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, 79 container ships were waiting off Los Angeles and Long Beach on Thursday, yet another all-time record.

    In light of this record parking lot that has formed outside of LA…

    Container ships off LA/LB on Friday morning. Map: MarineTraffic

    … it is hardly a surprise that container dwell times have steadily increased over the summer and now into the Fall, increasing to an average of 5.9 days in September – up nearly 2.5 days since the April low of 3.6 days, according to Goldman Sachs.

    Goldman also notes that the proportion of containers that have been dwelling for longer than five days were 32.8% of total containers in September – up from 13.1% in the spring and 21.2% in September 2020 when dwell time began to accelerate as consumer demand returned.

    While it is obvious, it is important to note that higher dwell times at the ports and terminals lead to less overall supply chain efficiency and can impact volume throughput. For example, JBHT recently reported during their 3Q21 earnings call that congestion led to lower container turn efficiency to 1.62 from the end of 2Q21.

    Chassis also saw accelerated street dwell times in the most recent week (week 40) in the Port of L.A. and Long Beach. August (Weeks 37-39) averaged a street dwell time of 7 days before increasing to 9.0 days in Week 40 for 20 ft. chassis. 40/45 ft. chassis similarly jumped in mid-October to 10 days from the 8.5 day average over the previous three weeks.

    It’s not all bad news: in recent weeks, rails have seen an opposite trend as fluidity has continued to improve in their networks starting at the ports, decreasing their average dwell time to 5.5 days in September from 11.8 day high in June.

    As a result of the surge in client interest in supply chain issues on the West Coast, Goldman recently introduced the PMI Manufacturing Suppliers’ delivery times index from IHS Markit to its supply chain congestion tracker. Purchasing managers respond to IHS Markit’s PMI surveys indicating if it is taking their suppliers more or less time to provide inputs to their manufacturing. Above 50 indicates that supply delivery times are faster and below indicates that delivery is slower. Manufacturers have reported significant increases in delivery times, with the current index level in September at 16.6 – down significantly from July 2020 of 47.2.

    On an inverted basis, the index has increased 62% YoY in September reflecting the large increase in supplier delays

    On a roll, Goldman then makes another patently obvious observation, noting that congestion at the ports ultimately leads to higher rates in ocean freight, and it can also have an impact to air and truck rates as well.

    To be sure, as noted above, while prices have started to abate from record levels in mid-September in ocean freight (don’t get your hopes up – this is entirely due to another temporary lockdown in Chinese supply chains, a result of the reduction in manufacturing due to China’s ongoing power crunch and energy crisis), they still increased +350% YoY in the week ending October 15. Prices will remain elevated until congestion abates or demand normalizes; it is unclear when either of these will happen.

    More ominously, as of October 18, airfreight from Hong Kong to North America was $10.45 per Kg, up +97% YoY from $5.31.

    Goldman’s bottom line is that the data the bank tracks for supply chain congestion lines up with company commentaries during conferences in August and at the start of this current 3Q21 earnings season. In the short term, the bank continues to expect the increase in congestion to benefit asset light and freight forwarders from increased rates and the need to facilitate moves that asset based providers do not have the capacity to handle (translation: it will negatively impact everyone else who is reliant on Just In Time supply chains). Moreover, overall supply chain tightness should help keep truckload rates elevated, and the parcel sector could see ongoing benefit from shippers forced to use air capacity if unable to gain ocean container capacity.

    Of course, this being Goldman, the bank has to end on a positive note, and in its forecast writes that while ports reflect congestion in the short term, “we do expect some slight easing as we pass peak season shipping in late October for the holiday season and more abatement as we pass Chinese New Year in early 2022.” The bank also expects the abatement in congestion to positively benefit the rails as well as intermodal participants (such as JB Hunt) as fluidity improves and congestion related costs and service issues begin to abate.

    Alas, unlike Goldman, we don’t see any easing in the short- to medium-term, for several reasons. First, there is no catalyst on the horizon that will lead to both a reduction in demand for goods (over services) over the next 6 months especially with winter coming. Second, the downstream chaos in the supply chain alone means that everything has to align perfectly for the blockages to be resolved. However, that won’t happen because between the continued labor shortages, the lack of infrastructure to resume smooth operations, and a supply pipeline that it snarled on both ends (Chinese energy crisis, US labor crisis), the chaos will continue indefinitely. This is a key point made recently by Citi’s Matt King in his latest must read presentation (available to pro subs), asking if the economy is like a “double pendulum” where a “slightly harder push changes the system behavior entirely.”

    It gets worse though: so far the supply chain bottlenecks have not materialized in any tangible shortages at the retail level where rising prices have successfully offset rising demand (with a few notable exceptions). However, if and when the supply crisis hits a tipping point and photos of empty shelves once again flood the media, there will be a surge to hoard similar to what we saw in March 2020 as the panicked population buys first and asks questions later, at which point the chaos in the system will once again spill over. Or, as King puts it, “the desire to buy is inversely proportional to the stock available.“

    Which leaves us with the painful conclusion: if we want a return to the previous supply-chain equilibrium, the system needs to do more than just ramp up supply: it also needs to squash demand or the wild gyrations will continue.

    That means inducing another artificial recession to cripple demand, something which we doubt the Democrats controlling the 78-year-old in the White House will be able to stomach.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 16:30

  • Chinese & Russian Warships Still Circling Japan As 'Counterweight' To US "Destabilization" In Region
    Chinese & Russian Warships Still Circling Japan As ‘Counterweight’ To US “Destabilization” In Region

    After their provocative sail through of the Tsugaru Strait on Monday, a narrow chokepoint waterway through Japan, a large group of Chinese PLA and Russian warships have continued encircling Japan during an Indo-Pacific patrol mission that’s gone into the weekend.

    Russian media cited the country’s defense ministry as follows on Saturday: “Russian and Chinese navy vessels have completed their first joint patrol mission in the Pacific Ocean, covering a distance of over 1,700 nautical miles (around 3,100km) in a week.” It included at least ten warships, with Russia’s military releasing some stunning footage of the large naval group.

    Though irking and alarming Tokyo, also given this is the closest that such a joint Russia-China naval patrol has come to Japan’s coast (though Tsugaru is considered an international waters transit point), the Japanese Navy after closely monitoring their movements later said there’s as yet been no violation of Japan’s territorial waters. 

    Chinese state media hailed the joint patrol mission as a crucial counterweight to the US presence and Washington’s “destabilization” of the region. 

    For example, in state-run Global Times:

    The Chinese-Russian joint naval flotilla that transited the Tsugaru Strait days ago has since sailed along the east side of Japan’s main island to its south, almost making a circle around the island country, in a move Chinese experts said on Friday can bring balance to regional stability at a time when the US, Japan and other Western forces have been colluding to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region.

    Here’s more from GT, suggesting Beijing and Moscow are sending a loud and clear message to the continued heightened presence of the US in the region:

    Encircling Japan, particularly sailing to the east side of Japan, is of significance because many key military installations are located on that side, including the US Navy base in Yokosuka, a Chinese military expert who requested for anonymity told the Global Times on Friday.

    Many US military provocations on China in places like the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea were launched from these bases, the expert said, noting that the joint patrol by Chinese and Russian vessels could be seen as a warning to the US and Japan, which have been rallying up to confront China and Russia, serve the goals of US hegemony and undermine regional peace and stability.

    Indeed it appears this exercise was designed to show the “reach” of these two military superpowers’ navies in cooperation, at a moment the two countries are growing increasingly close in terms of strategically coordinating to oppose Washington aims, particularly in the East.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 16:00

  • CDC Director Admits "We May Need To Update Our Definition Of 'Fully Vaccinated'"
    CDC Director Admits “We May Need To Update Our Definition Of ‘Fully Vaccinated'”

    Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

    Yesterday, in a press conference, the director of the CDC warned that they may have to “update” the definition of “fully vaccinated”.

    At the virtual presser accompanying the approval of “mix-and-match” booster jabs, Dr Rochelle Walensky told reporters that:

    We will continue to look at this. We may need to update our definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ in the future,

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    The “updated” definition would potentially mean only people who have had the third “booster” shot would be considered “fully vaccinated”, while people who have had the two original shots are no longer “fully vaccinated”.

    Whilst the warning might just be a ploy to scare people into getting their “booster” without forcing them to, it should be noted a revised definition of “fully vaccinated” has already been adopted in other countries.

    For example, it is already policy in Israel where, in early September they “updated what it means to be vaccinated,”. You now need a third shot, or else you are no longer considered vaccinated.

    We wrote about it at the time, and predicted it would likely spread to the rest of the world.

    In fact, figures in the alternate media have been predicting this for a while. See this clip from YouTuber WhatsHerFace back in August:

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    As for the potential purpose of any “updated definition”, well it would be twofold.

    • Firstly, it would allow them to maintain control. Forcing people to jump through hoops just to “get back” rights they once took for granted creates an atmosphere that normalises state tyranny.

    • Secondly, and more cynically, it would allow them to artificially manipulate statistics to flatter the vaccines’ effectiveness whilst hiding any damage they might do.

    We already know that, in the US and others, you’re not considered “vaccinated” if you’re only single-jabbed, or double-jabbed for less than two weeks. So any patient infected with “Covid” in that time is considered “unvaccinated”, NOT a “breakthrough infection”.

    By redefining “fully vaccinated”, they can turn millions of double-jabbed people back into “unvaccinated” people and stop them from becoming potential “breakthrough infections” and hurting the vaccine effectiveness stats.

    This will, in turn, camouflage any excess mortality in those who have had the vaccine, for example due to antibody-dependent enhancement, because all those who die will officially be “not fully vaccinated”.

    They’ll likely push it through soon, before this winter’s flu season hits, so any flu deaths can be “unvaccinated covid deaths”.

    And for anybody out there who got double-jabbed thinking they were buying their life back, we’re sorry, but we did warn you this would happen.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 15:30

  • Fauci Funded 'Cruel' Puppy Experiments Where Sand Flies 'Eat Them Alive'; Vocal Cords Severed
    Fauci Funded ‘Cruel’ Puppy Experiments Where Sand Flies ‘Eat Them Alive’; Vocal Cords Severed

    While recent attention has been focused on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding the genetic manipulation of bat coronaviruses in the same town as the bat coronavirus pandemic emerged, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have demanded answers over ‘sick’ experiments on drugged puppies, according to The Hill.

    “Our investigators show that Fauci’s NIH division shipped part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia to drug beagles and lock their heads in mesh cages filled with hungry sand flies so that the insects could eat them alive,” writes nonprofit organization the White Coat Waste Project. “They also locked beagles alone in cages in the desert overnight for nine consecutive nights to use them as bait to attract infectious sand flies.”

    As The Hill‘s Christian Spencer writes:

    The White Coat Waste Project, the nonprofit organization that first pointed out that U.S. taxpayers were being used to fund the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology, have now turned its sights on Anthony Fauci on another animal-testing-related matter — infecting dozens of beagles with disease-causing parasites to test an experimental drug on them.

    House members, most of whom are Republicans, want Fauci to explain himself in response to allegations brought on by the White Coat Waste Project that involve drugging puppies.

    According to the White Coat Waste Project, the Food and Drug Administration does not require drugs to be tested on dogs, so the group is asking why the need for such testing. 

    White Coat Waste claims that 44 beagle puppies were used in a Tunisia, North Africa, laboratory, and some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed, allegedly so scientists could work without incessant barking. -The Hill

    The concerned lawmakers are led by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who said in a letter to the NIH that cordectomies are “cruel” and a “reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.” Mace is joined by reps Cindy Axne (D-Iowa), Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Scott Franklin (R-Fla.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Fred Keller (R-Pa.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), Brian Mast (R-Fla.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), Maria E. Salazar (R-Fla.), Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) via The Hill.

    Hilariously, Snopes lists this story as “mixture” because “it is unclear whether Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at NIH, personally approved the project.”

    So the buck stops wherever…

    How will Fauci spin this?

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 15:00

  • Von Greyerz: Shortages & Hyperinflation Lead To Total Misery
    Von Greyerz: Shortages & Hyperinflation Lead To Total Misery

    Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

    At the end of major economic cycles, shortages develop in all areas of the economy. And this is what the world is experiencing today on a global basis. There is a general lack of labour, whether it is restaurant staff, truck drivers or medical personnel.

    There are also shortages of raw materials, lithium (electric car batteries), semi-conductors, food,  a great deal of consumer products, cardboard boxes, energy and etc, etc. The list is endless.

    SHORTAGES EVERYWHERE

    Everything is of course blamed on Covid but most of these shortages are due to structural problems. We have today a global system which cannot cope with the tiniest imbalances in the supply chain.

    Just one small component missing could change history as the nursery rhyme below explains:

    For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
    For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
    For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
    For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
    For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.
    And all for the want of a     horseshoe nail    .

    The world is not just vulnerable to shortages of goods and services.

    BOMBSHELLS

    Bombshells could appear from anywhere. Let’s just list a few like:

    • Dollar collapse (and other currencies)

    • Stock market crash

    • Debt defaults, bond collapse (e.g. Evergrande)

    • Liquidity crisis  (if  money printing stops or has no effect)

    • Inflation leading to hyperinflation

    There is a high likelihood that not just one of the above will happen in the next few years but all of them.

    Because this is how empires and economic bubbles end.

    The Roman Empire needed 500,000 troops to control its vast empire.

    Emperor Septimius Severus (200 AD) advised his sons to “Enrich the troops with gold but no one else”.

    As costs and taxes soared,  Rome resorted to the same trick that every single government resorts to when they overextend and money runs out – Currency Debasement.

    So between 180 and 280 AD the Roman coin, the Denarius, went form 100% silver content to ZERO.

    And in those days, the soldiers were shrewd and demanded payment in gold coins and not debased silver coins.

    Although the US is not officially in military conflict with any country, there are still 173,000 US troops in 159 countries with 750 bases in 80 countries. The US spends 11% of the budget or $730 billion on military costs.

    Since the start of the US involvement in Afghanistan, Pentagon has spent a total of $14 trillion, 35-50% of which going to defence contractors.

    Throughout history, wars have mostly started out as profitable ventures, “stealing” natural resources (like gold or grains) and other goods–often due to shortages. But the Afghan war can hardly be regarded as economically successful and the US would have needed a more profitable venture than the Afghan war to balance its budget.

    US HOPELESSLY BANKRUPT  – NEEDS TO BORROW 46% OF BUDGET

    The US annual Federal Spending is $7 trillion and the revenues are $3.8 trillion.

    So the US spends $3.2 trillion more every year than it earns in tax revenues. Thus, in order to “balance” the budget, the declining US empire must borrow or print 46% of its total spending.

    Not even the Roman Empire, with its military might, would have got away with borrowing or printing half of its expenditure.

    TOTAL MISERY AS MR MICAWBER SAID:

    As Mr Micawber in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield said:

    ‘Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 19 [pounds] 19 [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 20 pounds ought and six, result misery.’

    And when, like in the case of the US, you spend almost twice as much as you earn that is TOTAL MISERY.

    Neither an individual, nor a country can spend 100% more than their earnings without serious consequences. I have written many articles about these consequences and how to survive the Everything Bubble

    INFLATION IS HERE

    The most obvious course of events is continuous shortages combined with prices of goods and services going up rapidly. I remember it well in the 1970s how for example oil prices trebled between 1974 and 1975 from $3 to $10 and by 1980 had gone up 10x to $40.

    The same is happening now all over the world.

    That puts Central banks between a Rock and a Hard place as inflation is coming from all parts of the economy and is NOT TRANSITORY!

    Real inflation is today 13.5% as the chart below shows, based on how inflation was calculated in the 1980s

    IMPLOSION OR EXPLOSION

    The central bankers can either squash the chronic inflation by tapering and at the same time create a liquidity squeeze that will totally kill an economy in constant need of stimulus. Or they can continue to print unlimited amounts of worthless fiat money whether it is paper or digital dollars.

    If central banks starve the economy of liquidity or flood it, the result will be disastrous. Whether the financial system dies from an implosion or an explosion is really irrelevant. Both will lead to total misery.

    Their choice is obvious since they would never dare to starve an economy craving for poisonous potions of stimulus.

    History tells us that central banks will do the only thing they know in these circumstances which is to push the inflation accelerator pedal to the bottom.

    Based of the Austrian economics definition, we have had chronic inflation for years as increases in money supply is what creates inflation. Still, it has not been the normal consumer inflation but asset inflation which has benefitted a small elite greatly and starved the masses of an increase standard of living.

    As the elite amassed incredible wealth, the masses just had more debts.

    So what we are now seeing is the beginning of a chronic consumer inflation that most of the world hasn’t experienced  for decades.

    THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES OF CURRENCY DESTRUCTION

    This is the inevitable consequence of the destruction of money through unlimited printing until it reaches its the intrinsic value of Zero. Since the dollar has already lost 98% of its purchasing power since 1971, there is a mere 2% fall before it reaches zero. But we must remember that the fall will be 100% from the current level.

    As the value of money is likely to be destroyed in the next 5-10 years, wealth preservation is critical.  For individuals who want to protect themselves from total loss as fiat money dies, one or several gold coins are needed.

    So back to the nursery rhyme:

    For want of a nail gold coin, the shoe was lost.
    For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
    For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
    For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
    For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.
    And all for the want of a horseshoe nail gold coin.

    Gold is not the only solution to the coming problems in the world economy. Still, it will protect you from the coming economic crisis like it has done every time in history

    And remember that if you don’t hold properly stored gold you don’t understand:

    • What happens when bubbles burst

    • You are living in a fake world with fake money and fake valuations

    • Your fake money will be revalued to its intrinsic value of ZERO

    • Assets that were bought with this fake money will lose over 90% of their value

    • Stocks will go down by over 90% in real terms

    • Bonds will go down by 90% to 100% as borrowers default

    • You lack regard for your stakeholders whether they are family or investors

    • You don’t understand history

    • You don’t understand risk

    The 1980  gold price high of $850 would today be $21,900,  adjusted for real inflation

    So gold at $1,800 today is grossly undervalued and unloved and likely to soon reflect the true value of the dollar.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/23/2021 – 14:30

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Oct 23

Today’s News 23rd October 2021

  • Why Should American Soldiers Die For Taiwan?
    Why Should American Soldiers Die For Taiwan?

    Authored by Daniel Davis via 19fortyfive.com,

    Calls by U.S. leaders to extend security guarantees to Taiwan against an aggressive China are on the rise. American pundits have likewise been eager and disturbingly casual about offering up U.S. service members to go and die for Taipei.  Before taking another step down this dangerous path, however, these leaders need to consider just how willing Taiwanese are to die for their own country.

    Until we have more concrete evidence that the Taiwanese are doing all they can for their own defense, all talk of America risking war with China for their benefit needs to come to a halt. There is no justification for sending American men and women to die on the seas and in the air around Taiwan when the citizens of Taiwan are themselves cool to the idea of dying for their own country.

    First is the classic “show me your checkbook and I’ll show you your priorities.” The United States places great value on protecting its citizens and global interests, as evidenced by the fact that we spend more on national defense than any nation on the planet, upwards of 3.5% GDP annually.

    As recently as 2016, Taiwan was spending an anemic 1.6% GDP on defense, and next year is expected to be only slightly better, at 2.1%. Evidence suggests that constant boasts by U.S. opinion leaders that the United States should give security guarantees to Taiwan leads the island’s leaders to conclude they don’t have to spend money on their own defense because they believe we will provide it for them.

    Second is the extent to which the citizens are willing to serve in the armed forces and risk their lives in defense of their country. In the United States, our all-volunteer force constantly produces sufficient numbers of service personnel to fully man the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. We don’t always meet the recruiting goals but we always have sufficient numbers of personnel.

    In Taiwan, by contrast, the armed services are significantly understaffed. So few Taiwanese are willing to sign up for military service, in fact, that earlier this year frontline combat units in the Taiwan military were assessed as being manned at a shockingly low 60%.

    The Taipei Times newspaper conducted research a few years ago into the attitudes of the recruitment-age youth in Taiwan, finding that large numbers were “(a)pathetic toward the military and averse to service.”

    One former Taiwanese Marine seemed to capture the reason for the apathy well:

    “I think it’s unlikely that we will go to war. If there’s no real enemy to fight against, I don’t know why military training is necessary.”

    Reuters reported in 2018 that 1,000 reservists over the previous three years had been charged for “dodging mandatory training.”

    It is clear that considerable numbers of Taiwanese people either do not believe the threat from China is real, don’t believe their country could defeat China if it did attack, or just don’t want to “waste time” serving. Such a dynamic harkens back to the recent situation in Afghanistan where large numbers of Afghan troops would rather make deals with their enemy than to fight to the death in a fight they don’t think they could win. It therefore made no difference to the outcome that American troops did fight for them over a 20 year period.

    Similarly, when the Russians annexed the Crimea in 2014, they did so without firing a shot because, like the Taliban did earlier this year, the Russians made deals with the defenders of The Crimea and likewise told them it would be pointless and futile to die fighting – when they could instead come to work for the victorious Russians. There is little reason to think some version of the same dynamic would not also exist in Taiwan if the Chinese were to attack.

    If the government of Taiwan is not willing to adequately fund its military, if the Taiwanese men and women whose lives would be on the line in a war with China aren’t willing to fight for their country, it would frankly be immoral to force American men and women to die in their place for Taiwan’s defense. It is time U.S. opinion leaders and government officials stopped being so eager to offer up American troops to go into harm’s way for the benefit of another country and start being concerned for the welfare of our troops’ lives.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 23:40

  • "How Dare You?" – These Countries Are The Most Committed To Coal
    “How Dare You?” – These Countries Are The Most Committed To Coal

    The already ambitious global carbon emission reduction goals were dealt a significant blow this month as China, having recently pledged to end all future foreign coal power projects, announced that they would be further committing to domestic coal expansion – likely pushing back the year the country expects to reach peak emissions (currently 2030), referencing a new “phased timetable and roadmap for peaking carbon emissions”

    Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports that, in a statement after a meeting of Beijing’s National Energy Commission, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang said:

    “Given the predominant place of coal in the country’s energy and resource endowment, it is important to optimise the layout for the coal production capacity, build advanced coal-fired power plants as appropriate in line with development needs, and continue to phase out outdated coal plants in an orderly fashion. Domestic oil and gas exploration will be intensified.”

    As data from Global Energy Monitor shows, planned and under construction coal plants in China already totaled 238 projects in July 2021, equating to an expected 260,017 megawatts of capacity.

    Infographic: Committed to Coal | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    This new output accounts for over half of all the world’s currently under construction coal energy capacity and puts China firmly ahead of all other countries still investing in the fossil fuel.

    We know at least on person is going to be furious…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 23:20

  • Israel Resumes Practicing Military Attacks On Iran After 2-Year Pause
    Israel Resumes Practicing Military Attacks On Iran After 2-Year Pause

    Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

    The Israeli Air Force has resumed, after a two-year pause, what is being described as “intense” drills to practice attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, a move that likely would start a major war.

    This comes just days after a report that the Israeli government approved a $1.5 billion budget increase for the military explicitly to pay for preparations to attack Iran. Defense Minister Benny Gantz defended the spending, saying it is necessary to prepare for the planned attack on Iran. This is expected to include acquiring new planes to participate in the attack.

    An Israeli Air Force Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker and F-16 fighter jets, via AFP

    Underpinning Israel’s on-again, off-again planning to attack are decades of efforts to get the United States to attack Iran instead. Usually Israel’s scaling up its own unilateral options is theater to try to pressure the US.

    This time, it comes not long after Israeli officials were crowing about Secretary of State Antony Blinken giving lip service to a US military option. This was reported to be exactly what Israel wanted, but now Israel is back to spending on its own war option.

    In the grand scheme of things, the Israeli war narrative fuels itself more than anything, trying to feed US policy with alarmist claims and false statements about the months until Iran has a bomb they aren’t even working on.

    Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is in Moscow discussing Syria and Iran with President Putin…

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    Though decades of this has made US decision-makers at least a little resistant, Israel’s own politicians, more than a few of whom have made a career on targeting Iran, may blunder themselves into an ugly war by falsely presenting themselves with no alternative.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 23:00

  • Chicago Pizzeria Forced To Close Due To Labor Shortage
    Chicago Pizzeria Forced To Close Due To Labor Shortage

    The country’s labor shortage is hitting home a little bit more for one Chicago-based pizzeria. 

    This past weekend, the restaurant couldn’t open because it didn’t have enough staff, according to a new report from Insider. It cost the owner about $5,000 in revenue, the report says. 

    Dave Bonomi, the owner of Coalfire Pizza in West Town, wrote on Twitter this past Sunday: “We are closed today. I simply do not have enough people to open.”

    “In nearly 15 years of selling pizza, this has never happened,” he continued. 

    In addition to not having enough staff, Bonomi said that applicants for jobs weren’t showing up to scheduled interviews. He attributes the no-shows to restaurants having a toxic reputation as places to work due to harassment from customers and low pay. 

    Some of Coalfire’s staff had already left for higher paying jobs at larger restaurant chains. Coalfire increased its starting salary for cooks to $18 per hour from $15 per hour in response. 

    Coalfire had already been “running on fumes” with a skeleton staff, Bonomi said. These problems got worse during the pandemic, he said, noting that the pandemic and the ensuing shortage was like “nothing I’ve ever seen”. 

    Coalfire is a microcosm of a shortage taking place all over the country, where independent businesses find themselves shorthanded and unable to staff themselves. Restaurants and businesses that were just getting back to operating “normally” after the pandemic have still had to close their doors and shutter operations as a result. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 22:40

  • The Frightened Class
    The Frightened Class

    Authored by Thomas Harrington via The Browstone Institute,

    They’re all around us, especially those of us who live in relatively prosperous metropolitan neighborhoods in the US or Western Europe. Despite being—at least in material terms—among the most fortunate people who have ever walked the earth, they are very scared. And they want you to be very frightened too.

    Indeed, many of them see your refusal to be as frightened as they are about life’s inevitable risks as a grave problem which entitles them and their often powerful and influential fellow travelers to recur to all manner of authoritarian practices to insure that you adhere to their increasingly neurotic view of reality.

    This tendency has been in full bloom lately as the people who have sat safely behind their laptops during the last 20 months have harangued and threatened those who have been out on job sites and meatpacking plants mixing freely with others and the virus, to internalize their own obsessions. 

    And when these supposedly ignorant others—whose storehouse of empirical evidence about the dangers of the virus easily outstrips that of the laptoppers—refuse to buckle to the demand to be scared, they are met with all sorts of opprobrium. 

    Viewed in historical terms, it’s an odd phenomenon. 

    For most of recorded time prosperity and education have been the gateway to a life of relative freedom from worry. But now, the people who most enjoy these benefits are, it seems, wracked with anxiety and, in the not infrequent way of many people suffering that plague, and hellbent on sharing their misery with others.

    The point here is not to belittle the very real costs of anxiety in the lives of many people, nor to dismiss it as a real public health concern. Rather, it is to ask how and why it is proliferating so rapidly among those who, at least on the surface, have less reason than the vast majority of their fellow human beings to suffer from it.

    There are, I think, a number of possible explanations. 

    One way of explaining the phenomenon is in the context of income inequality and its devastating effects on the shape and size of the upper middle class, and those who still believe they have a realistic chance of joining its ranks. Those who have “made it” into that sub-group are deeply cognizant of the unstable nature of their status in a world of corporate buyouts and rampant layoffs. And they worry that they may not be able to provide their children with the ability to retain what they see, rightly or wrongly, as the only real version of the good life. 

    Thus, when the people way up on top made the decision following September 11th to make the inducement of fear the cornerstone of political mobilization in an increasingly post-political and post-communal society, they found a ready reserve of support in this anxious if also relatively prosperous cohort of the population.

    And after two decades of having their already anxious inner selves massaged daily by an a steady drumbeat of fear (and a diet of Trump as Hitler for dessert) both they and their children fell like ripe fruit into the hands of those that wanted to sell them on the “unprecedented” threat posed by a disease that leaves 99.75% of its victims wonderfully alive.

    Adding another layer to this general phenomenon is the increasing isolation of our educated classes from “physicality” in both their work and communal lives.

    Until the 1990s it was virtually impossible for anyone other than the richest of the rich not to have any active or passive acquaintance with the world of physical work. Indeed, for the first three or four decades after World War II many of those who could financially afford to relieve their children of this acquaintance with physical work often did not do so, as they believed that knowing what it meant to sweat, ache, be crushingly bored and, not infrequently, humiliated during the course of the day was essential to gaining a more rounded and empathetic understanding of the human condition. 

    All that ended when the financialization of the economy and the rise of the internet made what Christopher Lasch presciently termed the “rebellion of the elites a much more palpable possibility.”

    For example, very few of my students have ever worked during their summers in anything other than office jobs, often procured through family connections. They thus have little understanding, and hence little empathy, of just how brutal and demeaning daily work can be for so many people. 

    This alienation from the physical can also be seen in family life. The predominant and seldom challenged edict of “go where the money is”—a virtual religion for those seeking upward advancement in US culture—has meant that large numbers of children now grow up far away from their extended families. However, we seldom talk about the built-in costs of subscribing to this ethos. 

    To talk with and listen to grandparents, uncles and aunts on a regular basis and in person is very different from seeing these people in occasional choreographed holiday rituals, or from time-to-time on Zoom. In the first instance, the child is inserted into a milieu that, for better or worse, structures his understanding of how the world works and forces him to recognize his relationship to both the past, other people and their individual stories. 

    Might they decide later, for very good reasons, to break for this particular network of narratives? Of course. But when they do so they will at least carry within the idea of a stable and rooted identity as a life goal, something that my discussions with students over the last decade have led me to believe many of them no longer see as a possibility, or even a need.

    The increasing distance between those working within the antiseptic confines of the information economy and those still earning their keep with their bodies has, moreover, led many of the former group into a state of enormous confusion regarding the distinction between words and deeds.

    To work in academia, as I have for the last three decades, is to be surrounded by people who truly believe that the words one exchanges with others are as existentially weighty and consequential as physical assaults upon the body. This not only shows how few of them have ever been in a real brawl, but how blind they are to the fundamental role that physical violence and/or the looming threat of its use has always played in the game of coercing the many to bend to the will of the few.

    And this is why so many of them, parroting the moralizing, if factually tenuous, talking points supplied to them by a deeply corrupt media establishment, are so nonplussed about the physical assaults upon people’s bodies now taking place in the name of “fighting Covid.” It is also why a disturbing number of those whom they teach truly believe that hearing someone utter a critique against an ideological construct that another person told them was good and correct is much more problematic than forcing someone to be injected with an experimental drug under the threat of losing their livelihood. 

    But perhaps the most significant reason for the rise of the Frightened Class is modern consumer culture’s assault upon the millenary practice of providing the young with what Joseph Campbell called “adequate mythic instruction.” For Campbell myths are, above all, a means of inoculating the young against the angst of knowing we are all destined for decrepitude and death, as well as much inflicted cruelty during that march toward oblivion.

    These stories, he suggests, show the young how others have confronted their fears in the past and have learned to find meaning and coherence in the apparent absurdity of their situations. They drive home the message that there is nothing approaching vital plenitude and significant psychological growth without the repeated assumption of risk and a constant engagement with fear. In short, they instill in the young the idea that they are by no means alone in their existential dilemmas. 

    From the point of view of consumer culture, however, a mythically-anchored person; that is, someone able to place their present struggles in a broad, coherent and historically-informed perspective, is a very troubling thing.

    Why? 

    Because such people are much less amenable to the mostly fear-based pitches that drive the production and consumption of the often nonessential goods upon which the system depends for its continued growth and expansion. If an adolescent has heard stories that underscore the ubiquity of awkward feelings among people of his age, and how so many before them passed through these difficulties and became stronger and wiser, then he is much less likely to pine for the purchase of the “solution” to the problem proffered to him by commercial entities. 

    It has been said that, over time, we tend to “become what we do.” It seems that after orchestrating campaign after campaign of fear on behalf of the truly powerful, the “literate” comfortable classes have come to believe their own schtick to the point where they have trouble understanding, or even tolerating, those who have always consumed their mercenarily-produced fear porn with a large helping of salt. 

    Worse yet, these self-frightened elites seem to think they can now remedy their lack of credibility with those living outside their grim prison of angst by simply amping up the volume on the scare machine. I suspect they might be in for a bigger and much more “physical” set of responses than they ever imagined could come their way. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 22:20

  • CFTC Awards Almost $200 Million To Deutsche Bank Whistleblower
    CFTC Awards Almost $200 Million To Deutsche Bank Whistleblower

    In a release out Thursday, the CFTC said it had issued a monstrous $200 million whistleblower award to someone whose “specific, credible, and timely original information significantly contributed to an already open investigation and led to a successful enforcement action, as well as to the success of two related actions, by a U.S. federal regulator and a foreign regulator.”

    It marks the largest payout ever by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

    Information provided by the whistleblower “led the CFTC to important, direct evidence of wrongdoing,” the release stated. It continued: 

    In order to qualify for an award, a whistleblower who significantly contributed to the success of an enforcement action must demonstrate that there is a “meaningful nexus” between the information provided and the CFTC’s ability to successfully complete its investigation, and to either obtain a settlement or prevail in a litigated proceeding. The Commission determined here that the whistleblower met this standard. 

    The whistleblower’s claim in connection with a third related action by a state regulator was denied because the whistleblower’s information was never shared with the state regulator. 

    While the CFTC’s release didn’t name the whistleblower or the case the award was related to, follow on reporting by the Wall Street Journal identified the whistleblower as someone who helped regulators investigate manipulation of global interest-rate benchmarks by Deutsche Bank.

    David Kovel, a managing partner at law firm Kirby McInerney LLP who represents the whistleblower, said: “We’re very happy that the CFTC was able to reverse an earlier decision and turn around their thinking. It says a lot about the people there that they don’t feel forced to stick with the wrong decision given the amount that’s at stake.”

    The whistleblower had offered information that helped lead to $2.5 billion in settlements with Deutsche Bank in 2015. 

    “The kind of information he provided was of the sort that was very hard to get if you don’t know where to look in a big financial organization,” Kovel added. 

    Dawn Stump, a Republican commissioner on the CFTC, was against tailoring the award to fines levied by foreign regulators. “I believe we need to take an especially close look at cases where a whistleblower asks the commission to tap its limited Customer Protection Fund for an award relating to an action by a foreign futures authority to address harm outside the United States,”  she told the Journal. 

    Mary Inman, an attorney representing whistleblowers at law firm Constantine Cannon LLP, concluded: “It’s showing that the CFTC program, like the SEC program, over the past 10 years, has really reached its maturity.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 22:00

  • Taibbi: Cancel Culture Takes A Big "L"
    Taibbi: Cancel Culture Takes A Big “L”

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    First, there were the numbers. Over the course of the last week, news commentators predicted a huge demonstration of Netflix employees in protest of comedian Dave Chappelle’s The Closer special, with Yahoo! typifying coverage. “Reports say that one thousand Netflix employees — nearly 10% of the company’s workforce,” they wrote, “are planning an October 20 walkout to protest the Chappelle special.”

    The Hollywood Reporter did say “at least one thousand” were planning on participating in a “virtual walkout,” whatever that is, but noted the story first came out in The Verge, which talked about a “company-wide” demonstration. Others followed, mostly without any hint that any of the reporters involved talked to anyone at Netflix but the demonstration’s organizers.

    Nobody checked, because everyone liked the narrative as was. As a result, “at least one thousand” became gospel, via headlines like Gizmodo’s “1,000 Netflix Employees Are Reportedly Planning Walkout to Protest New Chappelle Special,” or The Independent inviting us to “watch live” as “more than one thousand Netflix employees are set to walk out of their jobs on Wednesday.”

    By this Wednesday, October 20th, the day of the planned walkout, the story became “hundreds of Netflix employees and supporters are expected” to show up (CNN). Then, as the event started, it became “hundreds of protesters stood in solidarity with” Netflix’s employees, per The Daily Beast, for instance. Then NBC told us “Hundreds rally outside Netflix,” where protesting employees who lined up outside were “met with roaring applause.”

    How many employees walked out? Not one news organization put the real number in a headline, and only a few had the guts to even tweet that the actual protest was reduced in the end to the famed Arrested Development meme:

    Even the op-ed wrapups couldn’t avoid sounding like parodies, with the Washington Post talking about the “crowd of dozens” gathered outside the company’s West Hollywood offices being evidence that the popularity of a comedian whose show already gained over 10 million views was colliding with a “growing movement to protect the rights of transgender people” (how a comedy set could be a violation of “the rights of transgender people” was not explained, of course).

    Coverage across the board was ridiculously one-sided, with story after story quoting nothing but activists and woke Twitter personalities denouncing Chappelle’s “alleged jokes.” Journalists not only felt no responsibility to accurately gauge how many protesters might turn up, or balance out the outraged tweets with any of the millions of commenters who felt differently (or indifferently, as it were), they routinely mischaracterized the show’s content. For instance, Chappelle was regularly accused of having “defended” the rapper DaBaby in the special, an example being New York Times guest columnist Roxane Gay writing:

    One of the strangest but most telling moments in ‘The Closer’ is when Mr. Chappelle defends DaBaby, a rapper in the news for making pretty egregious homophobic remarks.

    You have to be high, or having a psychotic episode, to hear “defending DaBaby” in The Closer. For those who don’t know the story — I didn’t — DaBaby, described by Chappelle as “the number one streaming artist until about a couple of weeks ago,” went onstage in a concert in Florida in July and went on a half-coherent rant. He told “fellas” in the crowd: “If you ain’t sucking dick in the parking lot, put your cell phones up!” Some in the crowd went along.

    “Now you know, I go hard in the paint, but even I saw that shit and was like, ‘God damn, DaBaby,’ was Chappelle’s first comment. Then he went on:

    Can’t do that. Can’t do that. But I do believe and I’ll make this point later that the kid made a very egregious mistake. I will acknowledge that. But, you know a lot of the LBGTQ community doesn’t know DaBaby’s history, he’s a wild guy. He once shot a n*gga… and killed him, in Walmart. Oh, this is true, Google it. DaBaby shot and killed a n*gga in Walmart in North Carolina. Nothing bad happened to his career.

    Do you see where I am going with this? In our country, you can shoot and kill a n*gga, but you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings.

    You can definitely infer from that bit that Dave Chappelle does, in fact, think it’s worse to shoot and kill a person than to make homophobic remarks. That regularly came out translated in op-ed pages as “defending DaBaby.” Such blithely insane, proudly dishonest mischaracterizations have become a regular feature of national media commentary, and Chappelle mocks the habit repeatedly in The Closer (to the delight of audiences around the world, it might behoove press people to notice). However, that’s not where he was going with the DaBaby bit.

    White audiences couldn’t get enough of laughing at institutional racism as described in Chappelle’s Show, but The Closer is something different. Here we’re not talking about meathead cops who shoot your dog, or fat-cat white collar lawyers, congressmen, and federal investigators who kiss the asses of corporate thieves, i.e. the type of character he roasted in bits like “Tron Carter’s Law and Order.” Everyone hates those people, so you can beat on them all you want. They long ago stopped being taboo targets. The Closer goes after racism we’re not yet allowed to discuss.

    Fifteen-plus years ago, when Chappelle’s Show was taking the entertainment world by storm, we didn’t yet live in a world where upper-class white people had completed their Apollo 11 mission to enlightenment and planted a flag in racism and discrimination as their exclusive properties.

    This is an excerpt from today’s subscriber-only post. To read the entire article and get full access to the archives, you can subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 21:40

  • Mutated Strain Of Delta Variant Causing Panic In UK Has Been Found In US
    Mutated Strain Of Delta Variant Causing Panic In UK Has Been Found In US

    A mutated version of the delta variant that has caused panic in the UK has been detected in several states in the US, the CDC revealed this week.

    AY.4.2, a subtype of the highly transmissible delta variant which has become informally known as “delta plus”, accounted for 6% of all sequenced samples of the virus. Its emergence has coincided with a rebound in COVID cases in the UK.

    To be sure, right now, the strain is still rare in the US and accounts for “well below 0.05%” of cases sequenced, the CDC says. So there’s no reason to panic.

    “At this time, there is no evidence that the sublineage AY.4.2 impacts the effectiveness of our current vaccines or therapeutics,” the CDC said. “Vaccination remains the best public health measure to slow the spread of the virus and reduce the likelihood of new variants to emerge.”

    Around 16,830 AY.4.2 cases have been detected around the world across at least 28 countries, according to data from Outbreak.Info.

    Jeffrey Barrett, director of the COVID-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the U.K., told Newsweek on Thursday that it’s still unclear whether the subtype is helping drive rising case numbers in the UK.

    “We are one of the groups that has observed a [roughy] 10 percent growth advantage compared to other Delta.”

    “I’d say we can’t say for sure yet that that is a true biological advantage, as opposed to a bit of epidemiological ‘luck’ for this lineage, but the data are now accumulating week-by-week in favor of a small growth advantage.”

    While the sub-lineage is spreading in the U.K., experts have said AY.4.2 is not necessarily going to outcompete the original Delta variant.

    Although AY.4.2 is being monitored in the UK, it hasn’t yet been classified as a “variant under investigation” or a “variant of concern” by the WHO.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 21:20

  • Why Authoritarianism Must Prevail
    Why Authoritarianism Must Prevail

    Authored by Robert Wright via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Freedom anywhere is a threat to authoritarianism everywhere. That is why authoritarians must destroy all freedom and why liberty lovers, and even the merely “lib-curious” (liberty curious), must not just resist blatant authoritarianism, but reject it in all its guises. The fate of the nation, and the world, again hangs in the balance.

    To the extent that any freedom persists, authoritarian diktat can be subverted, albeit at a cost. History is rife with examples of bizarre entities, like nonbank banks (I kid you not!), rent-a-banks (ditto!), and gold caches, designed to work around branching restrictions, usury laws (maximum interest rates), the criminalization of holding gold, and sundry other attempts to limit financial freedom. (See my Financial Exclusion for details.)

    To squelch “undesirable” activity, like increasing bank competition, voluntarily lending/borrowing small amounts of money at rates commensurate with the attendant costs and risks, or trying to protect one’s family against fiat money inflation, government must outlaw the workarounds too. To get their way, statists must suppress all unapproved activities, which ultimately means forcing would-be innovators to obtain permission before they can lawfully engage in any new activities.

    Consider, for example, recent calls to allow the IRS to monitor essentially all bank accounts in the country. Maybe Americans will accept it, if, as claimed, the power is only used to enforce current tax laws. But if tax rates rise appreciably, as it seems they will, given the current administration’s policy goals, or if the transaction information is used for partisan political purposes, or to shame or coerce people into buying this, or not buying that, Americans will begin to search for workarounds. To the extent that the workarounds prove successful, government will be forced to outlaw the workarounds too.

    For instance, if workers ask their employers to pay them in Federal Reserve Notes or Bitcoin because they believe that the transaction costs of making payments in those media will be less burdensome than giving some party hack access to the most intimate details of their lives, the government may well force employers to pay workers only in USD and only via bank transfer. It might even ban cryptocurrencies entirely, or at least try to.

    Workers might then make one payment per month, to a “bill paying service” that for a fee will pay their bills for them, out of its one, giant bank account. Oh, but that sounds like an unregulated bank taking uninsured deposits so those services will have to be suppressed as well, or perhaps replaced by the central bank.

    People may then begin paying everything by credit card, and even direct their employers to repay their credit card issuers directly. Next thing you know Uncle Sam will want to see your credit card statements too. Ditto PayPal, Venmo, and any other fintech apps used to make or receive payments. Thus a seemingly innocuous request to see bank accounts for tax purposes becomes the excuse for full-blown financial repression. This will, as always, hurt the poor the most.

    Employers might work around those laws, along with the tax code and vaccine mandates by converting their employees into volunteers and donating payroll to a nonprofit charity with the singular mission of ensuring that the “volunteers” receive “donations” that happen to match the value of their former compensation. Imagine the chaos if every employer simultaneously did that! Government would have to respond by tightly regulating, if not outright outlawing, charities and volunteer work. Our liberty would be truly lost at that point, and again the poor would suffer most.

    Corporations shouldn’t be taxed, but they are. Many of the largest have engaged in (international) tax arbitrage by adroitly shifting headquarters, production facilities, and charters between different states, provinces, and countries. Governments are now fighting back by establishing a global minimum corporation tax. How long before some entity begins to offer oceanic or orbital (then moon, then Martian) charters as tax havens? Soon after, though, private space flight and oceanic colonization will likely be banned or heavily restricted.

    Everyone should be aware that if an international gold ETF issuing bearer shares, Honeypot.xxx (a sex worker-owned substitute for OnlyFans), a parallel university system, or anything else of import that runs against the woke or statist grain begins to gain commercial traction, regulatory hammers will swiftly bludgeon the innovators into compliance, or out of existence.

    Were that all! When statist solutions to perceived “problems” create real problems, the call inevitably goes out for yet more government. When pressed about how to pay for UBI (various universal basic income) schemes, for example, schemes that are purportedly needed to solve a nearly nonexistent income disparity “problem,” proponents will sometimes argue for the establishment of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF, or a giant investment fund owned by a government), the dividends and realized capital gains of which can be divided equally among the citizenry. 

    UBI proponents are not sure where the money to fund the SWF will come from, or if it is a good idea to concentrate all that economic and political power in one decision maker’s hands, but if you want to see their true colors, ask them why individuals cannot simply invest their own money for themselves. Turns out that elites believe that most Americans don’t know how to invest properly, in the “right” (which is to say Left) companies. So look for a push to outlaw individual investment in favor of a SWF-funded UBI, or at least a narrowing of choice to SEC-approved ESG funds. You may still own something in 2030, but it seems increasingly unlikely you will be happy.

    America and the rest of the West have been sliding down the slippery slope of statism for so long that they are now rapidly approaching the precipice that ends in rock bottom. Will liberty be crushed and a new dark age commence? Or will the masses then finally see governments as the problem, rather than as the solution?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 21:00

  • Parts Shortages Hit Auto Repair Shops, Taking Weeks To Fix Vehicles
    Parts Shortages Hit Auto Repair Shops, Taking Weeks To Fix Vehicles

    A global semiconductor shortage has reduced new car production and boosted used car demand. The average used car age on U.S. highways hit 12.1 this year, a record high, and has unleashed a repair boom. But with snarled supply chains, auto repair shops have had difficulty sourcing parts and told customers their cars could take weeks to fix, according to Bloomberg. 

    Paul McCarthy, chief executive of the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association, said that auto parts and repair industry is getting slammed like everyone else – delays stretching from weeks due to port congestion have produced hefty backlogs. 

    “This is the most difficult supply-chain environment that I have ever seen,” AutoZone Inc. CEO  William Rhodes said in a September earnings call. AutoZone is operating at “the lowest level of in-stock that I can ever remember,” he said. 

    For repair shops, breaking the news to customers that their broken cars might not be fixed for weeks because of a part of backorder has been difficult. 

    Bryan Kelley, the owner of Valley Automotive Repair and Electric, had to wait months for parts in the Seattle suburbs. He said a crankshaft position sensor took between 60-90 days to arrive, adding that the sensors used to take less than a day in pre-COVID times. 

    Kelley said one customer was about to give up on fixing his Dodge Ram 1500 because of the sensor backlog. 

    “He went as far as to say, ‘I’m going to tow it and buy another truck,'” said Kelley, who’s also chairman of the Automotive Service Association Northwest trade group. “It got compounded when he found he couldn’t just go down and buy one.”

    Another instance is in the Philadelphia suburbs, where Matlock’s Nissan Sentra flooded during Hurricane Ida in early September. The storm left her car’s interior moist. She took her car to Colket Technical Services in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, for new carpets, but mechanics told her no carpet sets were available. The workaround the mechanics advised her to do was rip up the old carpet and have it professionally cleaned, then reinstalled. 

    In Bethesda, Maryland, River Road Auto Service manager Danny Tomasian said even “oil filters are becoming harder to get, so when I buy them, I buy them in as big of quantities I can get.” 

    Compounding a repair boom with port congestion across China and U.S. adds to domestic shortages of parts and increased prices. 

    McCarthy of the suppliers association warned the shortage of aftermarket parts could get worse into next year. 
    Colket, the Philadelphia-area garage owner, called the shortage of parts and persistent delays: “We lovingly refer to it as an intergalactic backorder.”

    … and it’s not just sensors and oil filters that are becoming harder to find. Some tires have been in short supply that takes well over a month to receive. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 20:40

  • Feeding The Liberal Flock: Glenn Greenwald Exposes The Real Reasons For The Congressional 1/6 Committee
    Feeding The Liberal Flock: Glenn Greenwald Exposes The Real Reasons For The Congressional 1/6 Committee

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack,

    The Biden DOJ has not charged one 1/6 defendant with insurrection, sedition or plotting to kidnap or kill. Democrats need Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney to satiate liberal anger...

    Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    What follows is the last section of my article earlier this week, documenting why Congress’s Select Committee to Investigate 1/6 is both unconstitutional and an assault on civil liberties.

    Underlying so much of the anger and resentment surrounding 1/6 is the complete dissonance between the narrative fed to the citizenry by Democrats and their media allies on the one hand, and the legal realities on the other. It must be infuriating and baffling to a large sector of the population to have been convinced that what happened on January 6 was an unprecedentedly dangerous insurrection perpetrated by an organized group of seditious traitors who had plotted to kidnap and murder elected officials, only for the Biden DOJ to have charged exactly nobody with any criminal charges remotely suggesting any of those melodramatic claims.

    This was the same frustration and confusion that beset a large portion of liberal America when they were led to believe for years that Robert Mueller was coming to arrest all of their political enemies for treason and criminal conspiracy with Russia, only for the FBI Superman to close his investigation without charging a single American with criminal conspiracy with Russia and then issuing a report admitting that he could not find evidence to establish any such crime. How to keep the flock loyal when the doomsday prophecies continue to be unfulfilled, as the World-Ending Date comes and goes without so much as a bang, let alone an explosion?

    Adam Schiff’s new book — which essentially claims that Mueller is senile and was suffering from pitiful dementia — is obviously intended to provide some solace or at least a framework of understanding for disappointed liberals to keep the faith, but deep down, they know what they were expecting. The endorphin-producing fantasies on which they fed for years — of Trump and Trump, Jr. and Jared and Bannon and Ivanka being frog-marched out of the White House by armed, strapping FBI agents — were way too viscerally arousing for them to simply forget that none of it happened.

    A repeat of this disorientation and disillusionment when it comes to 1/6 could be quite dangerous for Democrats. It could be devastating to the media outlets which survive on serving the Democrats’ messaging and feeding dramatic conspiracy theories to the beleaguered liberal flock. In the days and weeks following 1/6, liberals really thought that dozens of members of Congress — from Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene — would be not just expelled from Congress but summarily imprisoned as traitors by a newly righteous Justice Department. They were led to believe that, with Bill Barr out of the way, Trump and his mafia family would finally pay for their crimes.

    Instead, they have been served a tepid, cautious, and compartmentally conservative Merrick Garland who seems barely able to send the Evil Insurrectionists — many of whom are just hapless and impoverished lost souls — to prison for more than a few months. The harsh reality is yet again destroying their cravings for promised vengeance and retribution, and something must be done, lest the cult loyalty be lost forever.

    That is, at bottom, what the 1/6 Committee is really for. The House Democrats have smart lawyers who are fully aware of all the above-discussed case law and other limitations on congressional power. That is why they purposely structured their third-party subpoenas to ensure nobody can challenge them in court: they know those subpoenas vastly exceed the limits of their authority and cannot withstand judicial scrutiny.

    This congressional committee is designed to be cathartic theater for liberals, and a political drama for the rest of the country. They know Republicans will object to their deliberately unconstitutional inquisitions, and they intend to exploit those objections to darkly insinuate to the country that Republicans are driven by a desire to protect the violent traitors so that they can deploy them as an insurrectionary army for future coups. They have staffed the committee with their most flamboyant and dishonest drama queens, knowing that Adam Schiff will spend most of his days on CNN with Chris Cuomo comparing 1/6 to Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust; Liz Cheney will equate Republicans with Al Qaeda and the Capitol riot to the destruction of the World Trade Center; and Adam Kinzinger will cry on cue as he reminds everyone over and over that he served in the U.S. military only to find himself distraught and traumatized that the real terrorists are not those he was sent to fight overseas but those at home, in his own party.

    But the manipulative political design of this spectacle should not obscure how threatening it nonetheless is to core civil liberties. Democrats in politics and media have whipped themselves into such a manic frenzy ever since 1/6 — indeed, they have been doing little else ever since Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 — that they have become the worst kinds of fanatics: the ones who really believe their own lies. Many genuinely believe that they are on the front lines of an epic historical battle against the New Hitler (Trump) and his band of deplorable fascist followers bent on a coup against the democratic order. In their cable-and-Twitter-stimulated imaginations, shortly following this right-wing coup will be the installation of every crypto-fascist bell and whistle from concentration camps for racial and ethnic minorities to death or prison for courageous #Resistance dissidents. At some point, the line between actually believing this and being paid to pretend to believe it, or feeling coerced by cultural and friendship circles to feign belief in it, erodes, fostering actual collective conviction and mania.

    And when fanatics convince themselves that their cause is not only indisputably just but an imperative for survival, then any doubts or questions about methods and weapons can no longer be acknowledged. The war they are fighting is of such overarching importance and righteousness that there is no such thing as unjust or excessive means to achieve it. Just a cursory examination of liberal discourse is enough to see that they have long ago arrived at and flew past this point of sectarian zealotry. And that is what explains their overwhelming support for state and corporate censorship of the internet, increasing reverence for security state agencies such as the CIA and FBI, love for and trust in corporate media, and a belief that no punishment or level of suffering is excessive when it comes to retaliation against their political enemies, including but not only those who participated in any way in the 1/6 protests.

    This is, after all, a movement that has long opposed the death penalty and whose more left-wing factions spent 2020 rioting in cities to protest police violence and chanting “Defund the Police!,” yet their only lament about Ashli Babbitt seems to be that she was the only pro-Trump “fascist” shot and killed by noble police officers on that day. They have pranced around for decades as criminal justice reformists, denouncing harsh prosecutorial strategies and judicial punishments, yet are indignant that people who put their feet on Nancy Pelosi’s sacred desk or vandalized the sacred halls of American power with their dirty and deplorable presence are not spending decades in a cage. They spent 2020 depicting police officers as racist savages, only to valorize the Capitol Police as benevolent public servants whom only barbarians would want to harm, then gave them an additional $2 billion to intensify their surveillance capabilities and augment their stockpile of weapons. Their fury that Trump officials did not end up spending decades in cages due to vague associations with Russians is exceeded only by their rage that pro-Trump protesters at the Capitol are being sentenced to months rather than years or decades in prison.

    A political movement that operates from the premise that its cause is too important to be constrained is one that inevitably becomes authoritarian. That such authoritarianism is the defining feature of American liberalism has been evident for several years. And an investigative congressional committee that they control, aimed squarely at their political enemies, accompanied by demands that anyone resisting it be imprisoned, can only lead to very dark and dangerous destinations.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 20:20

  • All The Metals Mined In One Visualization
    All The Metals Mined In One Visualization

    Metals are all around us, from our phones and cars to our homes and office buildings. While we often overlook the presence of these raw materials, they are an essential part of the modern economy. But, as Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada details below, obtaining these materials can be a complex process that involves mining, refining, and then converting them into usable forms.

    So, how much metal gets mined in a year?

    Metals vs Ores

    Before digging into the numbers, it’s important that we distinguish between ores and metals.

    Ores are naturally occurring rocks that contain metals and metal compounds. Metals are the valuable parts of ores that can be extracted by separating and removing the waste rock. As a result, ore production is typically much higher than the actual metal content of the ore. For example, miners produced 347 million tonnes of bauxite ore in 2019, but the actual aluminum metal content extracted from that was only 62.9 million tonnes.

    Here are all the metals and metal ores mined in 2019, according to the British Geological Survey:

    Miners produced roughly three billion tonnes of iron ore in 2019, representing close to 94% of all mined metals. The primary use of all this iron is to make steel. In fact, 98% of iron ore goes into steelmaking, with the rest fulfilling various other applications.

    Industrial and technology metals made up the other 6% of all mined metals in 2019. How do they break down?

    Industrial Metals

    From construction and agriculture to manufacturing and transportation, virtually every industry harnesses the properties of metals in different ways.

    Here are the industrial metals we mined in 2019.

    It’s no surprise that aluminum is the most-produced industrial metal. The lightweight metal is one of the most commonly used materials in the world, with uses ranging from making foils and beer kegs to buildings and aircraft parts.

    Manganese and chromium rank second and third respectively in terms of metal mined, and are important ingredients in steelmaking. Manganese helps convert iron ore into steel, and chromium hardens and toughens steel. Furthermore, manganese is a critical ingredient of lithium-manganese-cobalt-oxide (NMC) batteries for electric vehicles.

    Although copper production is around one-third that of aluminum, copper has a key role in making modern life possible. The red metal is found in virtually every wire, motor, and electrical appliance in our homes and offices. It’s also critical for various renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles.

    Technology and Precious Metals

    Technology is only as good as the materials that make it.

    Technology metals can be classified as relatively rare metals commonly used in technology and devices. While miners produce some tech and precious metals in large quantities, others are relatively scarce.

    Tin was the most-mined tech metal in 2019, and according to the International Tin Association, nearly half of it went into soldering.

    It’s also interesting to see the prevalence of battery and energy metals. Lithium, cobalt, vanadium, and molybdenum are all critical for various energy technologies, including lithium-ion batteries, wind farms, and energy storage technologies. Additionally, miners also extracted 220,000 tonnes of rare earth elements, of which 60% came from China.

    Given their rarity, it’s not surprising that gold, silver, and platinum group metals (PGMs) were the least-mined materials in this category. Collectively, these metals represent just 2.3% of the tech and precious metals mined in 2019.

    A Material World

    Although humans mine and use massive quantities of metals every year, it’s important to put these figures into perspective.

    According to Circle Economy, the world consumes 100.6 billion tonnes of materials annually. Of this total, 3.2 billion tonnes of metals produced in 2019 would account for just 3% of our overall material consumption. In fact, the world’s annual production of cement alone is around 4.1 billion tonnes, dwarfing total metal production.

    The world’s appetite for materials is growing with its population. As resource-intensive megatrends such as urbanization and electrification pick up the pace, our material pie will only get larger.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 20:00

  • Some Questions About America's "Wealth"
    Some Questions About America’s “Wealth”

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via DailyReckoning.com,

    It is a supremely tragic irony that while the corporate media ceaselessly tout America’s soaring financial “wealth,” the nation’s true wealth — its social order — is fast unraveling.

    While we’re encouraged to cheer billionaires blowing a tiny sliver of their wealth on space tourism and $500 million yachts as evidence of “prosperity,” our media and leadership (ahem) seem to be mystified by the unmistakable signs of unraveling.

    In my analysis, the social order is comprised of all the intangible social elements that serve to bind a nation’s people beyond their legal rights. The social order includes, but is not limited to, social (upward) mobility — the ladder to advancing one’s agency (control of one’s life) and opportunities for improved security and well-being.

    The social order also includes civic virtue, the willingness to share the sacrifices of one’s fellow citizens for the common good in proportion to one’s wealth and power and equal treatment before the law, not just as an abstraction but in the real world of the judicial system.

    The social order also includes the moral legitimacy of the governance system: Does the state (government) serve the citizenry, or is it the other way around?

    Lastly, the social order manifests social cohesion, which is the capacity for shared values and purpose and common ground, all of which generate a concern for the well-being of other citizens and a willingness to focus on shared interests.

    The Rot Starts at the Top

    America has lost all of these elements, as self-interest is the only value, purpose and goal that guides behavior, starting at the top: How do politicians acquire fortunes in excess of $100 million (cough, Pelosi, cough)? Through public service? (Don’t bust a gut laughing…) How do billionaires gain additional wealth so effortlessly (cough, Federal Reserve, cough)?

    The rot starts at the top and then seeps down into every fiber of the nation’s economic, social and political orders. America is now a moral cesspool, and “democracy” is merely the public-relations cover for a neofeudal autocracy.

    Behind every PR narrative lies the corruption of self-interest. How is it that day traders now rabidly follow Pelosi’s stock portfolio and super-wealthy Federal Reserve “leaders” front-run the Fed’s policies to further enrich themselves while claiming the mantle of “public service”?

    How does a child molester like Jeffrey Epstein end up entertaining Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Harvard elite and a veritable who’s who of America’s wealthy and powerful players?

    The evidence of irreversible social decay is everywhere: Violent behavior is now ubiquitous in aircraft and other social settings, common ground has vanished and the willingness or even the capacity to identify common interests has vanished.

    “Reform”

    “Reform” is another insider joke. Real reform might impinge on the wealth and power of our self-interested elites, so what we have instead is a simulacra of reform, which only adds additional friction to a system choking on bureaucratic sand in the gears.

    Homeless encampments are now just another accepted reflection of “soaring wealth and prosperity” in America, along with the declining prospects and wealth of the bottom 80%. If you fail to repeat the party line with sufficient enthusiasm, Big Tech will send you to the Digital Gulag.

    The more that politicians, Fed governors, insiders and billionaires bleat that they really, really care about commoners, the greater the gulf between the reality of their self-interest and their laughably transparent PR.

    As the apologists, toadies, lackeys, factotums and apparatchiks frantically spew rah-rah PR about the “recovery” (you mean we’re all addicts and are now “recovering”?), the workforce is finally awakening to the emptiness of the PR and the decay of America’s social order:

    The rewards of the economy have flowed to two classes, the Financial Aristocracy, the top 0.1% who now own more wealth than the bottom 80% of American households, and speculators, from the front-running scammers on Wall Street to the day traders gambling their Pelosi portfolios.

    So by all means, focus on the inexorable rise of stocks, cryptos and housing as “proof” of America’s soaring “wealth” while the social order unravels beneath our feet.

    Maybe it’s time to reconsider what we mean by “wealth”…

    What Is Wealth Anyway?

    The conventional definition of wealth is solely financial: ownership of money and assets. The assumption is that money can buy anything the owner desires: power, access, land, shelter, energy, transport and if not love, then a facsimile of caring.

    The flaw in this reductionist definition is obvious: Not everything of value can be purchased at any price —for example, health, once lost, cannot be purchased for $1 million, $10 million or even $100 million.

    A facsimile of friendship can be purchased (i.e., companions willing to trade fake friendliness for money), but true friendship cannot be bought at any price: Its very nature renders friendship a noncommodity.

    This explains the abundance of wealthy people who are miserable, lonely and phony to the core. Only commoditized goods and services can be bought with money or assets.

    Given the limits of the conventional model of wealth, the question naturally arises: What if we defined wealth more by what cannot be bought rather than by what can be bought?

    Another way of making the distinction is to ask: What has been commoditized/globalized such that any person with money anywhere on the planet can buy it? What cannot be commoditized because it is intrinsically inaccessible to commodification?

    Six Questions to Ask

    We can start our inquiry with a series of questions:

    1. What would be the impact on an individual’s health if modern medicine/pharmaceuticals were no longer available? Put another way: How dependent is one’s “good health” on commoditized interventions? How independent is an individual’s health/vitality from commoditized medicine?

    Health that is sufficiently vibrant that it has no need for commoditized medicine cannot be bought, and therefore it is a form of intrinsic (noncommodity) wealth.

    2. Can a shipwrecked individual swim two miles through open ocean from a doomed ship to safety?

    Money has no value if there is no help that can be bought; the individual’s only wealth in this situation (assuming they know how to swim) is their core physical strength and endurance — forms of wealth that cannot be substituted with money.

    3. If Cicero was correct and “the man who has a garden and a library has everything,” then let’s ask not how extensive one’s library might be in terms of the number of volumes, but ask how many of the books (or e-books) have been read, absorbed and enjoyed by the owner?

    In other words, it’s not the ownership of a library that creates noncommoditized wealth but the joy, knowledge and pleasure derived from the reading of the books that defines wealth.

    4. The same analysis can also be applied to a garden/orchard: What if we ask not how large the garden/orchard is in terms of square meters, but how expansive is the owner’s participation in the care of the garden/orchard, how much pleasure is created by the toil and harvest and how much of the bounty is shared with others?

    5. How many friendships does an individual have that began in high school or earlier and are still vibrant? How many friends does one have who can be entrusted with the deepest personal crises? How many friends’ homes are open to you, rain or shine?

    What if we defined the person with no true friends as impoverished, regardless of their ownership of assets and cash? Many people seem to have professional acquaintances they call “friends” to mask their bottomless poverty of real friends and friendships.

    6. What if wealth were measured in personal integrity, i.e., honesty, trustworthiness, compassion and the ability to remain accountable even as things fall apart?

    This is of course just a start: We could continue our redefinition of wealth to include kindness, empathy, the skills needed to organize volunteer community work parties and so on.

    As we explore what actually cannot be bought or commoditized, it raises this question:

    What if our commoditized, financialized definition of wealth reflects a staggering poverty of culture, spirit, wisdom, integrity, warmth, kindness, friendship, practicality and common sense?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 19:40

  • Dems Launch Federal Unionization Drive To Win Back Blue-Collar Workers Lost To Trump
    Dems Launch Federal Unionization Drive To Win Back Blue-Collar Workers Lost To Trump

    The fact that President Trump managed to win over white, working-class workers – many of them union workers, or the children of longtime union workers who saw their jobs shipped overseas when the factories closed – during Trump’s 2016 electoral triumph has stuck in the Democrat’s craw for years.

    In the ensuing years, the Dems have been quietly formulating a plan to win those workers back. And as the latest labor-relations battle brews in upstate New York, where a handful of company-owned Starbucks’ are seeing workers push for unionization, and workers at John Deere flex their power with a strike, Dems are quietly moving to try and signal their support for millennials’ and Gen Z’s supposed “fondness” for unionizing. But they’re doing it slowly, and quietly – and in a way that won’t infuriate any of their big corporate backers before next year’s midterm election.

    According to Axios, VP Kamala Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh are announcing new guidelines “to encourage federal workers to join unions.”

    Why is this important? Well, per Axios, the Biden Admin wants to bolster the collective bargaining power of workers across the country. So, they’ve decided the best course of action is to start “at home” with changes in the federal workforce.

    Why? Because there’s plenty of room for growth. With more than 2.1MM non-postal employees, the federal government is America’s largest employer. And right now, only 20% of federal employees belong to a union.

    That means there’s plenty of room for the Dems to kick-start their new labor-organizing push. But here’s the key: as Axios reports, the ultimate goal of this effort is to transform more workers – especially women and men of color – into dedicated labor organizers, who can then spread out across the economy and help their private-sector comrades demand their fair share from Starbucks and Amazon (companies that are already offering massive pay increases and benefits as the worker shortage reaches what just might be its most acute phase).

    Harris and Walsh are starting with two new requirements for federal workers.

    • For new hires, the government will be required to educate applicants about unions during the hiring and onboarding process. Unions will also be given a chance to participate in new employee training sessions.
    • For current workers, employers will need to communicate more clearly throughout the year about their collective bargaining rights and how to contact their unions.

    Union participation has been declining for 40 years, although it ticked up slightly in 2020, increasing to 10.8% of the workforce from 10.3% in 2019. The shift toward labor organizing appears to be happening no matter what at this point. The Dems just need to pretend like they’re the ones leading the charge.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 19:20

  • "Makes No Sense": Southwest Airlines Says It Won't Fire Workers Who Don't Get COVID Vaccine
    “Makes No Sense”: Southwest Airlines Says It Won’t Fire Workers Who Don’t Get COVID Vaccine

    By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times,

    Southwest Airlines’ CEO said the company will not fire employees who do not get the COVID-19 vaccine by Dec. 9 following a Biden administration mandate that was announced last month for federal contractors.

    In a statement to news outlets Friday, the Dallas-based carrier confirmed to Fox News it does not want to “lose any employee” over President Joe Biden’s mandate, adding that firing a worker over the vaccine “makes no sense.” It came a day after Southwest CEO Gary Kelly made a similar announcement during an earnings call.

    “This is an evolving process working with the government in terms of what they expect, and very clearly, we wanted our employees to know that nobody is going to lose their job on December the 9th if we’re not perfectly in compliance,” Kelly said, according to news reports. The Epoch Times has contacted Southwest for comment.

    “It is a work in progress, and we’re going to continue working in good faith to meet the requirements of the executive order. But I’ve already said, and I’m sure you’ve heard, we’re not going to fire anybody who doesn’t get vaccinated,” he continued.

    Biden’s mandate will start on Dec. 8, requiring federal contractors to make sure their workers are vaccinated. Employees can be granted a medical or religious exemption.

    But Kelly’s and Southwest’s announcements this week mark a reversal in the carrier’s vaccination stance. Earlier this month, Southwest stated that workers would have to be fully vaccinated or receive an exemption to “continue employment with the airline” after it conducted a “thorough review of President Biden’s COVID Action Plan and determined that the carrier’s contracts with the U.S. government require full compliance with the federal vaccination directive.”

    Also on Thursday, Southwest said in its quarterly results that it lost some $75 million after thousands of flights were canceled and delayed earlier this month. The firm blamed the weather and unspecified staffing issues, although there was widespread speculation that pilots and other employees walked out over the vaccine requirement.

    “I’m not going to fire anybody,” Kelly told CNBC Thursday after the quarterly results were released.

    Hundreds of workers and others also demonstrated outside Southwest’s Dallas headquarters on Monday, demanding an end to the vaccination requirement.

    Earlier in October, Southwest’s pilot’s union filed a lawsuit against the company, arguing that the COVID-19 shot could trigger potential career-ending side-effects for pilots.  In court filings over the weekend, Southwest asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit and said an injunction against its vaccine mandate could potentially harm its business.

    American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said this week that unvaccinated workers also will not be fired by the Dec. 9 mandate, saying the company will “work with” those who haven’t got the shot.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 19:00

  • Largest Candy Corn Producer Hit With Ransomware Attack Before Halloween
    Largest Candy Corn Producer Hit With Ransomware Attack Before Halloween

    Candy corn lovers, beware. Candy manufacturer Ferrara Candy was hit with a ransomware attack earlier this month. The company is responsible for 85% of all candy corn production in the US. 

    Gizmodo first reported the ransomware attack to have occurred on Oct. 9. Ferrara told the online tech publication that the attack “encrypted some of our systems,” and they were working with law enforcement:

    “Upon discovery, we immediately responded to secure all systems and commence an investigation into the nature and scope of this incident. Ferrara is cooperating with law enforcement and our technical team is working closely with third-party specialists to fully restore impacted systems as expeditiously and as safely as possible.”

    The Chicago-based confectionery manufacturer is currently operating at limited capacity but is hoping to fill all orders. 

    “We have resumed production in select manufacturing facilities, and we are shipping from all of our distribution centers across the country, near to capacity. We are also now working to process all orders in our queue,” Ferrara said. “We want to assure consumers that Ferrara’s Halloween products are on shelves at retailers across the country ahead of the holiday.”

    Ransomware attacks are surging this year, and many companies and even municipalities are paying the price to unlock their networks by meeting hackers’ demands. The most significant hack was the Colonial Pipeline by DarkSide, which led to fuel shortages across the Southern US. The ransomware attack was eventually resolved but came at a devastating cost to the company and the broader economy. 

    With ten days until Halloween, Ferrara better increase its candy corn output, or there could be shortages of the pentagonal pyramid-shaped candy that tastes like honey, sugar, butter, and vanilla.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 18:40

  • White House Wants Easier Path For "Climate Migrants"
    White House Wants Easier Path For “Climate Migrants”

    Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times,

    With the United Nations’ Glasgow climate conference just weeks away, on Oct. 21 several federal agencies simultaneously released four new analyses on the national security implications of climate change—including a report from the White House on climate change and migration stating that individuals citing climate change “may, in limited instances, have valid claims for refugee status” in the United States.

    That White House report goes on to state that nationals from a foreign state can be granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) on the basis of “climate-related factors,” later recommending that Congress consider relaxing TPS requirements and making it easier for TPS recipients to apply for permanent status.

    That report also recommends Congress evaluate the possibility of additional protection “for individuals who can establish that they are fleeing serious, credible threats to their life or physical integrity as a result of climate change.”

    In addition, it recommends that the United States scale up its investments related to climate migration through funding to USAID and the UN, among other entities.

    The report comes as the National Security Council creates a new interagency working group focused on the connection between climate change and migration.

    “Given that climate-induced weather extremes will grow in severity in unexpected ways, this working group will provide a venue for developing long-term strategies consistent with the evolving scientific understanding of climate impacts, such as those communicated through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. National Climate Assessment,” writes the White House in its Fact Sheet on the new reports.

    The White House report was released concurrently with three other reports, which follow up on President Biden’s executive orders on climate change, including E.O. 14013, “Executive Order on Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.”

    One comes from the Office of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, which released a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Climate Change.

    Representing the consensus position of the DNI and seventeen other intelligence agencies, the report claims that climate change will result in many outcomes that threaten U.S. national security interests, including by heightening water-related conflict, driving cross-border migration, and spurring competition for critical minerals with China.

    “China and India will play critical roles in determining the trajectory of temperature rise,” the report states.

    It also outlines several events that would alter its assessment, including large-scale geoengineering to “dim the planet” and induce global cooling, breakthroughs in nuclear fusion, and military incursions by China or other countries in the thawing Arctic.

    Another report comes from the Department of Defense, which released an unclassified version of its Climate Risk Analysis.

    That report omitted region-level analyses of climate-related hazards relevant to DoD’s global operations, which it stated were “Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).”

    Finally, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its Strategic Framework for Addressing Climate Change.

    “An influx of climate-related migration through the U.S.-Mexico border and climate-induced existential threats to Arctic communities and Alaska Native culture will accelerate and require our proactive actions to manage future border crises and potential relocation of internally-displaced populations,” states that report.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 18:20

  • "No Jab, No Job" – Aussie Supermarkets Demands 300K Workers Must Get Vaccinated Or Find Work Elsewhere
    “No Jab, No Job” – Aussie Supermarkets Demands 300K Workers Must Get Vaccinated Or Find Work Elsewhere

    As Australia continues to ease COVID restrictions, three major supermarket chains in the country are preparing to adopt a vaccine mandate that will effectively force 300K workers from across Australia to either get vaccinated, or quit, in accordance with the “no jab, no job” doctrine.

    According to the Financial Review, Australia’s most widely read financial journal, Woolworth’s is leading the charge to impose vaccination mandates on workers across Australia’s supermarket sector. So far, rivals Cole’s and Aldi have already joined in with their own commitments.

    However, even as the mandate is imposed on workers, unvaccinated customers will, of course, still be welcome in all of these stores, since the management and Aussie government have apparently drawn the line at threatening starvation to try and coerce people to accept the jab.

    Woolworths’ mandate will apply to all staff at its 1,200 retail outlets across its supermarkets and its Big W discount department stores, as well as those working in the group’s large warehousing and distribution centers, and its offices.  Cole’s and Aldi have issued similar mandates. Woolworth’s added that it intends to make Jan. 31 the deadline for full vaccination requirement in NSW, Victoria, ACT, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

    Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania will have a deadline of March 31.

    Despite all of Australia’s efforts to stamp out COVID, including closing its borders and locking down half the country for most of the winter (summer in the northern hemisphere) – cases have continued to climb, forcing the Australian government to finally relent as the lockdown measures took a massive toll on the country’s economy. Technically, Melbourne’s lockdown measures have been in place in some form for 245 days, making the lockdown in Australia’s second-largest city the longest-lasting lockdown anywhere in the world.

    Interestingly, other Aussie grocery chains have decided on a different tack.

    Wesfarmers, owner of Kmart, Target and the Bunnings hardware chain, is requiring all new employees to be vaccinated, but unlike its competitors, the company won’t make it mandatory for existing employees because. Why? Because, as the company’s managing director told the FR, the take-up rate was so high anyway through information sessions, on-site hubs and vaccination-leave arrangements, that coercing its own workers to get the jab simply doesn’t make sense.

    “I expect we will have a fully vaccinated workforce in the new year,” he said.

    Enough of them have already gotten, or plan to get, the jab voluntarily. At this point, the leading scientists have finally admitted that the concept of “herd immunity” is now a myth. COVID will most likely be endemic in the human population from here on out.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 18:00

  • Edward Snowden: "If You Weaken Encryption, People Will Die"
    Edward Snowden: “If You Weaken Encryption, People Will Die”

    Authored by Thomas Macaulay via TheNextWeb.com,

    Our online privacy faces growing threats. Governments around the world are calling for encryption backdoors that would enable access to personal information.

    They argue that encryption protects criminals. But it also protects activists, dissidents, persecuted groups, and ordinary citizens.

    Edward Snowden is among the most prominent beneficiaries. The whistleblower’s first messages to journalists were made with encryption. They resulted in revelations that millions of Americans had been under illegal mass surveillance.

    “If you weaken encryption, people will die,” said Snowden in a statement.

    “This year alone, after the fall of the government of Afghanistan, we saw how crucial encryption is in keeping ordinary people safe.”

    Snowden has joined the Global Encryption Coalition to launch a campaign to protect encryption. The group of civil society organizations and tech firms warns that undermining encryption will leave people more vulnerable to crime and surveillance.

    “I have seen first-hand how governments can abuse the power they have to access the personal data of innocent people in the name of national security,” said Snowden.

    “Weakening encryption would be a colossal mistake that could put thousands of lives at risk.”

    End-to-end encryption would make it harder to implement spy programs like the one Snowden exposed — which may be one reason why governments want to circumvent it. It would not be the first time that lawmakers have undermined our privacy in the name of fighting terrorism.

    Politicians assert  — with justification — that criminal gangs and paedophiles use encryption. But so do racial justice protestors to avoid police surveillance, LBTQ+ people in countries where their sexual orientation is criminalized, and even some of the politicians who have called for Snowden to be put in jail.

    Reporters also rely on encryption to protect their sources.

    “Now more than ever, journalists are facing digital threats to their work and safety,” said Lisa Dittmer, advocacy officer for Internet Freedom, Reporters Without Borders.

    “Encryption plays a critical role in protecting journalists and their sources, enabling them to share information even in the most dangerous environments.

    Yet as the need for encryption grows, so do the efforts to weaken it. Governments from India to Australia are calling for tech companies to build backdoors into their end-to-end encrypted systems. In the UK, new regulation could make service providers criminally liable for the acts of users if law enforcement can’t access their encrypted data.

    Their proposals, however, could actually make people more vulnerable. Any encryption backdoor may be a target for criminals. The information they access could threaten both national security and individual privacy.

    “Encryption makes us all safer,” said Snowden.

    “From families protecting photographs of their kids, to personal healthcare information, encryption keeps our private information private.”

    We all have private conversations that we don’t want overhead. Encryption backdoors would give malicious actors another way to access them.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 22

Today’s News 22nd October 2021

  • Erdogan Threatens To Kick Out 10 Western Ambassadors Over Jailed "Soros Leftover" Billionaire Osman Kavala
    Erdogan Threatens To Kick Out 10 Western Ambassadors Over Jailed “Soros Leftover” Billionaire Osman Kavala

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is lashing out at the United States and European countries for their joint statement demanding the immediate release of billionaire philanthropist and businessman Osman Kavala, who has been in Turkish custody since 2017.

    Erdogan lambasted the demand, saying “Those who defend this Soros leftover are trying to get him released. I told our foreign minister that we cannot afford to host them in our country.” He questioned, “Why would the 10 ambassadors make such a statement?”

    Osman Kavala, file image

    Erdogan lashed out further in front of reporters as cited in Anadolu Agency: “How dare you teach such a lesson to Turkey? Who are you? What do they say? ‘Release Kavala.’ Do you leave the bandits, murderers, terrorists in your own countries?“

    As to the veiled threat about about not being able to “host them in our country,” Ankara has signaled to foreign embassies it’s ready to make good on this, with the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoning an unprecedented ten diplomats to discuss and protest the matter. They were reportedly told the joint statement “irresponsible” and “unacceptable”.

    The statement protesting Kavala’s continued custody was signed by representatives of the US, Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and New Zealand. Social media messages calling for the philanthropist’s release were further posted by the embassies.

    Crucially the joint message questioned the state of democracy and human rights within the country that is NATO’s second most powerful militarily.

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

    The full October 18 US State Dept. statement which has outraged Erdogan reads as follows:

    Today marks four years since the ongoing detention of Osman Kavala began. The continuing delays in his trial, including by merging different cases and creating new ones after a previous acquittal, cast a shadow over respect for democracy, the rule of law and transparency in the Turkish judiciary system.

    Together, the embassies of Canada, France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States of America believe a just and speedy resolution to his case must be in line with Turkey’s international obligations and domestic laws. Noting the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights on the matter, we call for Turkey to secure his urgent release.

    Kavala’s supporters, meanwhile, have long said the charges against him are purely politically motivated. The 64-year old was initially arrested in October 2017, and the Turkish state heaped an array of charges on him which included supporting the Gezi protests in 2013 and even allegations of participation in the failed coup of 2016.

    Erdogan’s calling him a “Soros leftover” is due to the AK Parti seeing him as a malevolent and subversive figure intent on using his extensive wealth and influence to overthrow their rule via whipping up popular anger in the streets. Kavala has reportedly been held for years in appalling conditions without trial or recourse through the judicial system.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 02:45

  • Pupil Yells "Allahu Akbar" During Tribute To French Teacher Beheaded By Jihadist
    Pupil Yells “Allahu Akbar” During Tribute To French Teacher Beheaded By Jihadist

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    An 11-year-old pupil yelled “Allahu Akbar” during a school tribute to French teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded by a jihadist, while his Islamist father threatened to burn down the school.

    Diversity continues to be a strength.

    Paty was killed last year by a Chechen refugee in revenge for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to pupils in a class on free speech.

    During a tribute to Paty at the Jean-Zay middle school in the department of Drôme, southeast France, the student yelled “Allahu Akbar,” which is a refrain routinely used by jihadists during the commission of terrorist attacks.

    After the school gave the child a warning and informed his father, the father began threatening staff members, saying he firmly supported the actions of his son.

    He then turned up in person to the school and threatened to burn it to the ground.

    “Police were alerted and took the 43-year-old, who works as a security guard, into custody on Tuesday,” reports Breitbart.

    “During a search of the man’s property, the prosecutor revealed that there were discovered several weapons, including a sword, and radical Islamic Salafist literature.”

    Following the beheading of Paty, French ambassador to Sweden Etienne de Gonneville told broadcaster SVT, “France is a Muslim country.”

    A subsequent poll found that 79% of French people believed Islamism had “declared war” on their country.

    France’s presidential election takes place next April, with mass migration critic Eric Zemmour moving within 5 percentage points of Emmanuel Macron.

    Zemmour has called for France’s notorious Islamic ghetto no-go zones, which are routinely the scene of violence and mass rioting, to be “re-conquered by force.”

    Earlier this month, Conservative politician Gilles Platret was blasted by members of his own party and reported to the authorities after claiming that French people were being “ethnically cleansed” by migrants.

    Conservative presidential candidate Xavier Bertrand also recently warned that the country faces the risk of a “civil war” due its problems with gang violence and uncontrolled mass immigration.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 02:00

  • 'Let's Go Brandon' Rap Kicks Into Overdrive As Dancing Hotties Go Viral
    ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Rap Kicks Into Overdrive As Dancing Hotties Go Viral

    What started out as an NBC reporter’s ham-handed attempt to suggest NASCAR fans shouting “Fuck Joe Biden” were actually saying “Let’s go Brandon!” – is now a viral sensation.

    One can buy “Let’s Go Brandon” t-shirts, Christmas ornaments, stickers, and other merchandise to express how they feel about Biden – however nothing has gone quite as viral as rapper Loza Alexander’s “Let’s Go Brandon” rap – which went from a viral TikTok video to the #1 rap hit on iTunes this week.

    For the uninitiated:

    But wait – there’s more…

    Loza’s FJB rap went so viral that fans started the #LetsGoBrandonChallenge – which attracted submissions from several hotties and a bunch of dudes dancing to the song.

    Submitted for your edification in no particular order:

    And the dudes…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 01:11

  • COVID Authoritarians Are The Cause Of America's Problems, Not The Unvaccinated
    COVID Authoritarians Are The Cause Of America’s Problems, Not The Unvaccinated

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    It’s an odd dynamic – One would think that if the covid vaccines were a generally benevolent program that actually “followed the science” then there would be no need to pile drive the public with an endless barrage of vax propaganda.

    After all, if science and morality are on the side of the covid cult then the rest would naturally take care of itself and the overwhelming majority of Americans would have already voluntarily taken the experimental mRNA cocktail without any threats required.

    And, if some people still refused, then the science would dictate that it doesn’t matter, because if the vax actually works then those people present no threat whatsoever to the rest of society.

    It is highly revealing that this is not the case, and the more resistance the establishment encounters on mandates the more aggressive they become and the more they lie about the facts and evidence.

    Remember when Fauci and company said they only needed 70% of the population vaccinated to hit herd immunity? That concept was thrown down the memory hole and now they want 96% (really 100%) of the population vaccinated.

    They claimed that the vaccination programs were a success with between 70% to almost 80% of the public taking the double jab, and that was a lie as state numbers continue to contradict federal and CDC numbers.

    They claimed that the only pandemic still ongoing was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, and this was of course a lie as we have seen studies from multiple states and mostly vaccinated countries showing that the vaccinated now make up the bulk of infections and hospitalizations.

    They said the vaccines offered more reliable protection when compared to natural immunity, yet medical studies from around the world show that this was a lie and that natural immunity offers up to 27 times more protection than the vaccines do. And, they said that the vaccines were “safe and effective”, yet there is no long term data to prove they are safe, and multiple studies show that vaccine effectiveness is questionable to say the least.

    Lie after lie after lie. If the vaccines actually worked, there would be no need for so much deceit, and if their true intention was to “protect public health” then the establishment would be promoting treatment programs and natural immunity, not untested vaccines that continue to disappoint.

    Numerous fully vaccinated people including political figures like Colin Powell have died from covid but the mainstream media STILL claims this doesn’t disprove the efficacy of the jab. At the same time, unvaccinated alternative media figures like Joe Rogan beat covid in 3 days using treatments like Ivermectin, and the MSM attacks him relentlessly as some kind of charlatan merely because he dared to not die. The elitists think that the public doesn’t notice massive contradictions like this, but we do. We are not dumb, we see everything.

    In Washington State, for example, studies show that there have been at least 51,000 “breakthrough cases” of covid in the past 10 months. Breakthrough cases are people who are fully vaccinated but were still infected with covid. Of those 51,000 people, 493 people died. When calculating the percentage of dead vs infected, we get around 0.96%. The median death rate of covid among unvaccinated people is only 0.27% according to dozens of peer reviewed medical studies. This means that the death rate of fully vaccinated people in Washington is actually HIGHER than that of unvaxxed people.

    We have seen similar results in states like Massachusetts, where there were 5100 breakthrough cases in a single month and 80 deaths of fully vaccinated people, which is a 1.5% death rate for the vaxxed as opposed to 0.27% for the unvaxxed. Studies on death rates are going to have to take into account vaccinated deaths vs unvaccinated deaths from now on.

    And what about studies from highly vaccinated countries like Israel, which show that the majority of infections and hospitalizations are among vaccinated people, with infections spiking well after the vaccines were introduced. Right after Israel became one of the most vaccinated nations on the planet, it also had one of the highest infection rates on the planet.

    It should also be noted that the peak of US infections in 2020 ended well before the vaccine rollout even started in early 2021. Meaning, the vaccines did NOTHING to reduce infection rates. They dropped off on their own. This is a scientific fact that the mainstream avoids, just as they avoid admitting that the median death rate of covid is a mere 0.27%.

    The solution that the establishment offers is not surprising – They claim we need MORE vaccines through booster requirements. As the old saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And so the demented propaganda machine continues into infinity.

    The public is growing tired of the games as is evident in mass walkouts, sick-outs and other protests against Biden’s vaccine mandates for companies with more than 100 employees as well as most government institutions. We are seeing up to 50% of employees and government workers in many cases refusing to take the experimental jab despite the fact that they are being threatened with losing their jobs. This dynamic seems to have bewildered the covid cult and the globalists; they can’t wrap their heads around this level of resistance to their agenda.

    It’s not a new thing, but I have noticed an increasing number of vax propaganda commercials and articles featuring Donald Trump in the past month. All of them herald Trump’s pro-vaccination stance, which is odd because leftists spent most of 2020 saying they would not take any vaccine that Trump was responsible for producing.

    I was recently doing some research on YouTube and was annoyed to have to watch yet another vax ad, but this one had an odd tone. It showed clips of Trump making favorable statements on the mRNA vaccines, he and his wife taking the vaccines with dramatic music, and then a message at the end which said “There’s A Covid Vaccine Waiting For You, Too.”

    The bizarre commercial was clearly aimed at conservatives, but it displays an obvious disconnect that the covid cult and the media have when it comes to conservative thinking and principles.

    Leftists, collectivists and globalists function according to majority rule and herd mentality. They have gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers set the agenda and dictate decision making responsibilities for the group. Leftist herds wait patiently for top-down orders from their designated gatekeepers and most of them obey without question. This is how they operate.

    Liberty minded people operate in the opposite fashion. Our “leaders” are always under scrutiny, and this includes political mascots like Donald Trump. This is why, during a recent speech in Alabama, Trump was booed by a crowd of supporters after he called for them to get the covid vaccine. Conservatives generally don’t care about the person promoting the message, they only care if the message passes the smell test.

    Leftists and globalists are incapable of grasping conservative principles or the conservative mindset. This fact is hilariously evident in the style of propaganda they have consistently used to try to intimidate or pressure the conservative public into compliance with the mandates. We don’t view Trump as a philosophical leader; in fact, there were so many underlying issues with his cabinet and his policies that his leadership became suspect. At most, conservatives enjoyed Trump’s administration simply because his presence in the White House drove leftist authoritarians to greater madness.

    We definitely don’t care what Trump has to say on the vaccines.

    There is further evidence of the disconnect I describe in the actions of leftists and the establishment when it comes to vax mandates in the workplace. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the argument from covid cultists that conservatives “Might say we will refuse to comply, but when our livelihoods are threatened we will submit.” They believe this because that’s how THEY would respond. They are cowardly weaklings with no heart, no principles and no morals. They think that since they would cave in to the pressure, the rest of us would cave in as well.

    The past month has proven them oh so wrong as millions of people stage protests and walk outs across the country. There is even refusal among around 25% of the armed forced averaged across all branches, as well as up to 50% of city police forces. Most employers and government offices can barely function as is; there is zero chance they will be able to cope with a 10% loss of workforce, let alone a 25% to 50% loss. They would crumble.

    This was obviously not the plan; the globalists were not prepared for this level of resistance in the US and this is evident in their pathetic propaganda scramble. That does not mean they don’t have contingencies in place. I am already seeing a fledgling narrative in the media which is implanting the idea that any breakdown of the system in the US will actually be the fault of the unvaccinated.

    Biden has been a fervent culprit behind the narrative that everything from economic instability and supply chain problems to social divisions should be blamed on unvaccinated Americans. That’s right, the majority of these disasters started on Biden’s watch and because of his policies, but somehow WE are the real danger. Yes, the draconian mandates are illegal and unconstitutional and yes, mandates are not laws in any form, and yes, Biden and his handlers are acting like dictators and there is no reason to do anything they say. But, we are the bad guys. This is classic communist gaslighting.

    Here’s an idea: Stop trying to enforce covid mandates and vaccine passports. Stop paying people to stay home from work with covid welfare bribes. Stop generating trillions of dollars in fiat stimulus from thin air to pay for even more useless programs we don’t need. Then watch how quickly stagflation, economic instability, the workforce shortages and most other problems in the US suddenly disappear. The unvaccinated are not the source of American distress, the globalists and errand boys like Biden and blue state governors are the cause. Remove them from the equation and America’s future looks much brighter.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/22/2021 – 00:10

  • US Military Conducts Three Successful Tests To Advance Hypersonic Weapon Program
    US Military Conducts Three Successful Tests To Advance Hypersonic Weapon Program

    The U.S. Navy and Army announced Thursday three hypersonic component prototypes that were tested on Wednesday would increase the development of a new missile, Reuters said, citing a Pentagon report. The so-called “components” were tested on the same day President Biden called China’s latest hypersonic weapons test “concerning.” 

    The three components, which were not named in the report, were tested at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. A statement from the Pentagon said the tests will help “inform the development of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) and the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) offensive hypersonic strike.” Flight tests of the new hypersonic missile will be conducted in the near term.  

    The three tests “demonstrated advanced hypersonic technologies, capabilities, and prototype systems in a realistic operating environment,” the Pentagon added, adding that all the tests were successful. 

    On the same day, President Biden told reporters he was concerned about the new developments around China’s hypersonic weapons program, and Admiral Charles Richard, the head of Strategic Command who commands U.S. nuclear forces, indicated this week that more details about China’s hypersonic weapon test would likely be released next month. 

    The response by the Pentagon, to remain relevant in the headlines, following an investigative report by the Financial Times that alleges China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle from low Earth orbit this summer, shows the U.S. is falling behind in the hypersonic race. In another FT report released Wednesday, it turns out the Chinese launched two of these hypersonic glide vehicles that circled the planet in low Earth orbit before dropping altitude and coming close to hitting their targets. 

    Regarding China, FT said people familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments of the tests were baffled on how the Chinese were able to conduct the launches because they appeared “to defy the laws of physics.” 

    U.K. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warned that the West “needs to wake up” to the dangers of Chinese hypersonic weapons.

    “I definitely think the West needs to wake up to the consequences of Chinese and Russian missile development. They are potent,” Wallace said. “It is very important to understand what they are developing and what that means, both in range and speed of capabilities. We have seen China and Russia increase speeds in [their] missiles and ranges to an accurate level.”

    Hypersonic weapons can travel more than 3,850 miles per hour, or some five times the speed of sound. The U.S. has contracted Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to develop hypersonic weapons that could be fielded in the next few years. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 23:50

  • Why Congress Should Say No To An IRS Power Grab
    Why Congress Should Say No To An IRS Power Grab

    Authored by Patrick Hedger via RealClearMarkets.com,

    It’s hardly surprising that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) often receives low marks from American taxpayers. After all, simply filing your tax return can be a headache, let alone fighting for deductions or dealing with an audit. A recent survey conducted by Gallup found that Americans’ view that the IRS was doing an “excellent” or “good” job has dropped from 50 to 37 percent in the last two years. It’s puzzling then that – with all the pressing issues facing our country today – some members of Congress are choosing to prioritize expanding the power and authority of the IRS at the expense of taxpayers and their privacy. 

    Progressive members of Congress, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are pushing to give the IRS the power and responsibility to prepare tax filings on behalf of all Americans, even though the private sector currently provides this service cheaply – many times at no cost — and efficiently.

    Frankly, anyone who has had to deal with the IRS knows first-hand why this is a bad idea. 

    First, and foremost, the primary function of the IRS is to raise and collect revenue for the federal government. An IRS-run “free” filing system would likely be built to represent government interests and would have no incentive to maximize taxpayer deductions or protect taxpayers from audits. On the other hand, certified professionals and tax preparation companies have every reason to help taxpayers take advantage of every deduction available to them. Many current tax filing services even provide refunds to users if another service gets them more money back. 

    Such a program would likely cost billions of dollars. TechNet recently published a white paper written by former Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott, who served under President Obama. Scott found that, “any effort to have the IRS prepare Americans’ tax returns would be operationally impractical, prohibitively expensive, and likely fail to deliver the promised benefits.” Taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to foot the bill for a massive new government program that the private sector has already successfully accomplished, especially with Congress pushing for massive new spending programs elsewhere. 

    The Biden administration is already pushing for a law that would require banks to report transactions over $600 to the IRS. A government-run “free” file system would further require the IRS to collect troves of information from taxpayers that it currently doesn’t have access to. Both proposals should be concerning to privacy advocates and taxpayers.  

    The IRS has already proven that it can’t be trusted with confidential information. In 2016, hackers breached the IRS and stole more than 700,000 Social Security numbers. In a 2017 legal settlement, the IRS apologized for using its authority to audit and unfairly scrutinize conservative organizations. Just this year, the IRS leaked sensitive tax records of the wealthiest Americans, records that showed absolutely zero wrongdoing, to the press. In addition, the IRS was also recently found to have not been properly sanitizing disposed computers of sensitive taxpayer data, exposing untold Americans’ sensitive information. Giving the IRS more authority could result in future administration’s targeting taxpayers, organizations or vulnerable populations, like immigrants and seniors, for any number of reasons. 

    Time is running out to prevent Congress from granting the IRS a massive increase in authority. Sen. Warren and her progressive allies in Congress are attempting to push this proposal into the massive spending package currently being debated in Washington. Taxpayers and privacy advocates in all 50 states must unite and urge members of Congress to say no to this shortsighted and dangerous proposal before it’s too late. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 23:30

  • China's Evergrande Makes Last Minute Interest Payment On Dollar Bond, Avoiding Default
    China’s Evergrande Makes Last Minute Interest Payment On Dollar Bond, Avoiding Default

    In a surprise 11th hour development, China Evergrande made an overdue interest payment to offshore bondholders, the state-owned Securities Times reported Friday, an unexpected move that allows the property company to postpone – if not avoid – a default.

    The Chinese property developer sent $83.5 million to the trustee for the dollar bonds, and that financial institution will in turn pay bondholders, reported the Securities Times which is run by the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper. As reported earlier, this weekend was the deadline for a 30-day grace period before bondholders could send a notice of default to the company after it failed to make the interest payment on about $2.03 billion of dollar bonds on Sept. 23.

    A default by Evergrande – which is China’s 2nd biggest developer and its most indebted, and which late last week made a payment on onshore bonds – would have spiraled into the biggest corporate default in Asia, as it would also enable creditors to declare cross-defaults on some of Evergrande’s other debts. However, with its liquidity effectively frozen, its real estate sales plunging 97%, and its asset sales attempts a dead end, while Evergrande may have kicked then can this time, the company – which has the equivalent of more than $300 billion in total liabilities, including some $89 billion in interest-bearing debt as of the end of June – is still facing a virtually certain default in the coming weeks when many more coupons and maturities come due.

    Most international bondholders had expected Evergrande to fail to make its dollar bond payments before the end of the grace period. The company has also skipped other coupon payments in the past few weeks, and has outstanding dollar debt with a total face value of about $20 billion. Advisers to international bondholders said this month they had made little progress in their efforts to engage with Evergrande.

    On Wednesday, however, the Shenzhen-headquartered group said in a regulatory filing that it will “use its best effort to negotiate for the renewal or extension of its borrowings or other alternative arrangements with its creditors.”

    As also reported earlier, Evergrande has been trying to raise funds by liquidating assets such as stakes in subsidiaries and a Hong Kong office building that it owns. The company had also planned to sell a majority holding in its property-management unit for the equivalent of about $2.6 billion to a smaller rival, but said this week that it had terminated that deal. The news of the failed deal sent Evergrande stock tumbling on Thursday after it was unhalted after three weeks of being frozen.

    In retrospect the “unfreezing” may have been a signal that at least this one payment was about to be made.

    Evergrande’s Hong Kong-listed stock has lost more than 80% of its value this year and its dollar bonds are trading far below face value, indicating skepticism among investors that they will be repaid in full. On Friday, the shares rose 5% in early trading, even as its bonds were still at deeply distressed levels indicating investors still expect the company to ultimately default.

    A $4.7 billion, 8.75% Evergrande bond due 2025 was quoted at just 21.75 cents on the dollar Friday morning in Hong Kong, according to Tradeweb, up from 20.5 cents late Thursday.

    Some analysts were pleasantly surprised by the decision to make the offshore bond payment. Hans Goetti, founder and chief executive officer of HG Research, said that the payment is good news for foreign bondholders and signals authorities want to avoid the issue from spreading.  The payment “goes a long way to alleviate these fears because usually the foreign bondholders would probably be the ones holding the bag under normal circumstances”, Goetti told Bloomberg TC.

    It appears that Chinese authorities are “behind all this to make sure that we can avoid a spillover into the broader economy and also outside of China” he said adding that “this sends a signal that China is not interested in making this a bigger issue, especially for foreign holders in this case. I think that’s good news.”

    Others, however, were more realistic. As Justin Tang of United First Partners said, “we have seen this before” and this “does not solve the company’s problem and does not change the fact that it is the living dead.”

    “Evergrande is a candle burning on both ends, it needs to address declines in revenue and at the same time find cash for looming repayments. Nothing short of a restructuring or white knight will do.”

    Below are several other kneejerk responses to the Evergrande news, compiled courtesy of Bloomberg:

    Jun Rong Yeap, IG Asia Pte.

    • “It brings some near-term reprieve ahead of its official default deadline and presents a more positive scenario than what many will have expect”
    • “The plunge in share price yesterday seems to price in expectations that Evergrande will face difficulty in securing cash ahead with the sales deal fall-through,” but the interest payment report “just overturned that narrative for now”

    Banny Lam, Ceb International Inv. Corp.

    • “It is positive for dollar bond holders. However uncertainties remain if the Group can sell assets to pay for the offshore debt. Investors are watching if Evergrande can make agreement with creditors on how to settle the debt”
    • “The interest payment today only occupies a small portion of total interest payment. Investors are more interested to watch the progress of Evergrande’s debt restructuring, especially sales of valuable assets”

    Ting Meng, ANZ

    • The possibility of meeting the next coupon payment with a 30-day grace period due next Friday has risen. “We could see a rebound in the property sector in the short term”
    • “Evergrande has larger principal repayments next March, which is a critical date to watch closely. It needs to accelerate asset selling to meet that critical deadline”

    Omotunde Lawal, Barings

    • The relief that Evergrande has averted a default “was in line with government comments” and “buys the Group more time to seek further asset sales and solutions for the medium to longer term”

    Chang Wei Liang, DBS

    • “The bringing forward of debt restructuring is unfavored by large developers like Evergrande, with valuable offshore assets that can be subject to legal enforcement or with a storied reputation to maintain.” They are likely to “keep up their obligations as best as they can to avoid default”

    Finally, while Evergrande may have averted a default in the last minute, it has only kicked the can for a few weeks as the following distribution of debt interest and maturity payments shows.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 23:21

  • WaPo Editorial Board Calls For US Military Invasion Of Haiti
    WaPo Editorial Board Calls For US Military Invasion Of Haiti

    Apparently ignoring every “lesson” of the last two decades of utterly failed and disastrous US foreign interventions and adventurism abroad, which has left especially the Middle East burning and in a state of perpetual destabilization, The Washington Post editorial board is calling for yet more experiments in nation-building, this time much closer to home in a seeming throwback to era of the Monroe Doctrine. 

    “Haiti’s spiraling mayhem, florid lawlessness and humanitarian meltdown were predictable following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July,” the op-ed published earlier in the week began. “In a country already crippled by governmental dysfunction, the vacuum of political legitimacy and authority after that murder left a breeding ground for anarchy.” Naturally the premier hawkish beltway publication owned by Jeff Bezos and tied at the hip with the D.C. national security state sees only a singular “solution”…

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

    The article links Biden administration ‘inaction’ with the recent kidnapping of 17 Ohio-based missionaries in Port-au-Prince. Currently a criminal gang is demanding $17 million for their release, as FBI agents are reportedly on the ground searching for clues as to where they are being held.

    “The mess was largely ignored by the Biden administration, which has been preoccupied with other crises, until the kidnapping Saturday of 17 missionaries — a Canadian and 16 Americans, including five children — near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince,” WaPo continues.

    “Now the maelstrom in the hemisphere’s poorest nation is no longer ignorable,” the editorial board writes. And quickly bypassing any other possible efforts or options that might be available for Washington to help mitigate the ongoing crisis in Haiti, such as foreign aid or diplomatic or charitable efforts, the WaPo authors go straight to advocating direct military intervention and occupation to “fix” the Caribbean nation.

    Here are the key lines calling for US military action:

    Yet for all its unintended consequences, outside intervention could also establish a modicum of stability and order that would represent a major humanitarian improvement on the status quo, and with it, the prospect of lives saved and livelihoods enabled.

    Marines in Haiti, US DoD image

    In 2010 the US sent a major Navy and Marine deployment to Haiti as part of Operation Unified Response in the wake of a deadly earthquake that devastated the country. Also this summer a couple hundred Marines were sent in response to an earthquake that resulted in the deaths of more that 2,000 Haitians. 

    The editorial board concludes, “In the cost-benefit analysis that would attend any fresh intervention, policymakers must be alert to the risks, but also to the enormous peril of continuing to do nothing.”

    Though of course the obvious irony is that there will be zero “risks” for the WaPo armchair interventionists themselves. Fresh off one ‘forever war’ endless occupation in Afghanistan which just wrapped up after two failed decades a mere month ago, these beltway hawks are already salivating for more… all in the name of “helping others” – despite the whole ‘humanitarian intervention’ rationale being long ago exposed as a falsehood especially in places like Libya or Syria, where Washington meddling has only destabilized and destroyed once stable societies.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 23:10

  • Dr. Anthony Fauci Received Big Pay Increase To Prevent Pandemics
    Dr. Anthony Fauci Received Big Pay Increase To Prevent Pandemics

    Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via Forbes,

    In a January article published at Forbes, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that Dr. Anthony Fauci was the highest paid federal employee, earning $417,608 (2019).

    Dr. Fauci is still the top-paid federal employee earning $434,312 in 2020. Fauci is the Director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and current Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

    Fauci out-earned the U.S. president ($400,000); four-star generals in the military ($282,000); and roughly 4.3 million other federal employees.  

    Now, new documents released via our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the NIH tell us a lot more. Dr. Fauci received a big pay hike for his biodefense research activities. In other words, Fauci was paid to prevent future pandemics.

    The documents released to our non-profit organization OpenTheBooks.com reveal that Dr. Fauci was approved for a “permanent pay adjustment” in excess of his regular salary in December 2004, during the George W. Bush Administration.

    From 2004 through 2007, Fauci received a 68-percent pay increase from $200,000- to $335,000-a year. This award was permanent and carried forward through 2020.

    Fauci’s permanent pay raise was to “appropriately compensate him for the level of responsibility… especially as it relates to his work on biodefense research activities.”

    However, critics say that Fauci was funding research that was actually creating pandemic pathogens in labs that, if leaked or if fell into the wrong hands, might create the very human pandemic they were trying to prevent.

    Released here, for the first time, is a portion of NIH’s response to our OpenTheBooks FOIA request. These documents highlight Fauci’s central role in pandemic preparedness funding and biodefense strategies in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Included in the NIH production is a letter, date stamped December 15, 2004, from Dr. Raynard S. Kingston, the then-Deputy Director— which was approved and signed by Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the NIH Director under George W. Bush. The letter reads:

    “This is to request that the current retention allowance [(b)(6) redaction] for Dr. Anthony S. Fauci be converted to a permanent pay adjustment in the amount [(b)(6) redaction] over his base pay of [(b)(6) redaction] in order to appropriately compensate him for the level of responsibility in his current position of Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), especially as it relates to his work on biodefense research activities.”

    Redactions labelled (b)(6) under federal FOIA, fall under a large range of categories protecting the employee’s personal information. These redacted items are likely dollar figures, including his salary at the time, which apparently NIH still deems redaction worthy – even 17 years after the fact. 

     We have already posted his salary back to 2010, but our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com discovered Fauci’s salary records as far back as FY2004. It’s settled transparency law that Fauci’s compensation falls under open records law.

    So, why is NIH redacting financial information from 2004 that is 17-years old? Perhaps the answer is in the numbers…

    Dr. Anthony Fauci year-over-year salary growth, 2004-2020 OpenTheBooks.com

    Dr. Fauci’s “biodefense-related research”

    Dr. Kingston’s 2004 letter regarding Dr. Fauci explains some background for his proposed raise:

    “More recently, Dr. Fauci has been a key figure in the White House and Department’s response to bioterrorism. His contributions to this effort have been outstanding and include the development of the departmental strategy to augment smallpox vaccine supplies and the development of a plan to develop new anthrax vaccine. He serves as an expert consultant to the White House, the Secretary of DHHS, congressional staff, and a number of HHS groups on the development of biodefense-related research, and public health priorities. He is leading the development of a series of research initiatives, has coordinated fast-track initiatives for academia and industry participation in biodefense-related research, and is responsible for the development of future intermediate and long-range research plans and policies for a sustained and committed biomedical research response to bioterrorism threats. During FY2004, under Dr. Fauci’s leadership, NIAID significantly expanded, intensified, and accelerated its research programs in biodefense.”    

    Dr. Fauci permanent pay adjustment justification OpenTheBooks.com

    The timeline leading up to Dr. Fauci’s “permanent pay adjustment” is key to understanding Dr. Kingston’s recommendation letter and its approval by Dr. Zerhouni.

    • After 9/11 and the ensuing anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001, Dr. Fauci’s NIAID published, in February 2002, a 15-page document for the agency he oversaw at NIH. It was titled “NIAID Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research” and would kick start the NIAID efforts over the next 19 years to try and keep the country safe from bioterrorism.
    • Two years later, on December 15, 2004, Dr. Fauci’s increased workload was recognized by a permanent pay adjustment. To this day, Fauci’s portfolio still includes overseeing NIAID’s biodefense research, a portfolio that recently has grown by billions of dollars.

    Biodefense Funding and NIAID’s Pandemic Pathogen Research

    Over the years, NIH funding has gone towards numerous grants categorized as pandemic-prevention research, including grants for research on bat coronaviruses, both in the U.S. and abroad. Justification for the funding centered around trying to prevent the next pandemic and preventing a possible spillover of viruses from nature to humans. 

    Some of the biodefense research Dr. Fauci’s NIAID funding came under fire from fellow scientists as too risky. Critics said that Fauci was funding research in labs that was actually creating pandemic pathogens that, if leaked or if fell into the wrong hands, might create the very human pandemic they were trying to prevent.

    • In 2014, President Barack Obama’s Administration enacted a federal funding pause for what was termed “gain-of-function” research. It turns out, through waivers and pause exemptions, Dr. Fauci’s institute was funding many of the very scientists doing the potentially risky pandemic research, including the University of North Carolina coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric, who collaborated with Shi Zhengli, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s so-called “bat lady,” and New York-based EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak.
    • In December 2017, weeks after President Donald Trump’s first Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary resigned over a private plane charter scandal, and while the agency was still without a confirmed Secretary (Alex Azar was not confirmed and sworn in until January 2018), NIH and Dr. Fauci’s NIAID quietly restarted funding, with guidance, for what was then termed “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.” News of the funding restart surprised many in the scientific community.
    • In 2019, Dr. Fauci’s NIAID secretly approved funding for some of the controversial gain-of-function scientists whose very research caused the scientific community’s concern and led to the funding pause under the Obama Administration in 2014.
    • Last month, a rejected 2018 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant proposal was leaked and published online by a collaborate group of scientists and researchers known as DRASTIC, a leak detailed in The Intercept. The DARPA proposal included an idea to create a chimeric bat virus in the lab, to insert a special furin cleavage site, to test it in “humanized” mice, and do this all, in part, to study its potential to emerge as a pandemic.

    DARPA documents included in the leak show the agency rejected the grant proposal as too risky, but the fact that most all of the DARPA grant applicants are or were at the time recipients of NIH NIAID funds, under Dr. Fauci, either directly or through subgrants, has raised more than a few eyebrows.

    Few of these controversies made it into mainstream news cycles, most likely never would have except that in December 2019 the world learned of a novel respiratory coronavirus emerging in Wuhan, China – the very same city that had a lab that did pandemic bat virus research. Ironically, the Wuhan lab was funded with $600,000 in NIAID subgrants from Fauci’s agency’s biodefense funds, as the doctor himself admitted to Congress.

    Further background

    On January 27 and May 17, 2021, we asked NIH for Dr. Fauci’s fiscal year 2020 and 2021 financial and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms; job descriptions; and all employment contracts, amendments, modifications, and addendums; respectively.

    Dr. Fauci is required by federal law to file these forms with his employer, the National Institutes of Health. It has been nine months and NIH has yet to produce most of the requested documents.

    To say that that the details of Dr. Fauci’s employment are of the public interest – after almost two years of government decisions influenced by him – is an understatement.

    Note: Dr. Fauci and his agency did not respond to our request for comment before publication.

    Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 22:50

  • NOAA's Winter Outlook Warns Of 'Double Dip' La Nina, Expect Colder Than Normal Pacific Northwest
    NOAA’s Winter Outlook Warns Of ‘Double Dip’ La Nina, Expect Colder Than Normal Pacific Northwest

    La Niña conditions are emerging for the second consecutive winter, impacting the weather across the U.S. in the coming months. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) announced Thursday its seasonal outlook for winter from December 2021 through February 2022.

    NOAA’s 2021 Winter Outlook outlines wetter-than-average conditions for the Northern U.S., mainly in the Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies, Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and western Alaska. The report said widespread drought in the western half of the U.S. would continue to be monitored.  

    “Consistent with typical La Nina conditions during winter months, we anticipate below-normal temperatures along portions of the northern tier of the U.S. while much of the South experience above-normal temperatures,” said Jon Gottschalck, chief of CPC. 

    “The Southwest will certainly remain a region of concern as we anticipate below-normal precipitation where drought conditions continue in most areas,” Gottschalck said. 

    NOAA’s temperature outlook for the States: 

    • Warmer-than-average conditions are most likely across the Southern tier of the U.S. and much of the Eastern U.S., with the greatest likelihood of above-average temperatures in the Southeast.

    • Below-average temperatures are favored for southeast Alaska and the Pacific Northwest eastward to the northern Plains.

    • The Upper Mississippi Valley and small areas of the Great Lakes have equal chances for below-, near- or above-average temperatures.

    The potential development for a double-dip La Niña will also influence precipitation outlooks:

    • The Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies, Great Lakes, and parts of the Ohio Valley and western Alaska have the greatest chances for wetter-than-average conditions.

    • Drier-than-average conditions are favored in south-central Alaska, southern California, the Southwest, and the Southeast.

    • The forecast for the remainder of the U.S. shows equal chances for below-, near- or above-average precipitation during winter months.

    To sum up, La Niña conditions will push the jet stream further north, which leads to a drier and warmer pattern across the Deep South to Southeast. This doesn’t mean those areas won’t be hit with Arctic blasts, similar to what nearly collapsed Texas’ power grid in February. The Lone Star State appears to be taking no chances this year and next as it warned power companies to brace for cold snaps and upgrade systems to avoid blackouts. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 22:30

  • 'Thielism': Beyond The Dogmas Of Reaganism
    ‘Thielism’: Beyond The Dogmas Of Reaganism

    Authored by The Thielist via The Thielist Dispatch (emphasis ours),

    On October 31st, 2016, Peter Thiel delivered a speech at the National Press Club in the heart of Washington, just a few blocks away from the White House. In his prepared remarks, he articulated the case for Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee whose chances of winning the upcoming election against Hillary Clinton seemed all but nonexistent to the political establishment. But Thiel, always a contrarian, offered a radically different perspective. He argued that Trump voters weren’t crazy, and that the sentiments which fueled the candidate’s meteoric rise were the inevitable result of a country that had been run into the ground by decades of incompetence, misplaced priorities, and bubble thinking. The voters cast their ballots on November 8th, and the rest is history. Thiel was vindicated.

    How is it that a Silicon Valley billionaire could have understood what scores of pollsters, consultants, and other industry insiders did not? Thiel’s political endeavors, after all, comprise only a fraction of his work. First and foremost, Peter Thiel is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. And in the very same month that he gave a speech on Trump’s behalf at the RNC in Cleveland, Ohio, Thiel also bludgeoned Gawker Media out of existence and forced its founder into bankruptcy, exacting his revenge for outing him several years prior. But still, he somehow had a better read on the lives of everyday Americans than the pundit class, and in doing so made his peers look like arrogant buffoons.

    In an interview with Walter Isaacson, Jeff Bezos said, “contrarians are usually wrong.” While Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” slip encapsulated the Democratic nominee’s contempt for a vast portion of the American electorate, the Amazon founder’s swipe at Thiel speaks to the larger phenomenon that lead to Donald Trump’s rise.

    This country’s ruling elites have known nothing but fattening wallets and expanding cultural influence for decades. But in addition to self-enrichment, they have gained unprecedented control over all of America’s treasured institutions, slowly but surely chipping away at ordinary people’s ability to have a meaningful say in how their Republic ought to be run. Having wrested power away from the general public and the government designed to serve their interests, the ruling class has internalized the mentality that they can do no wrong; anyone who challenges their infallibility should simply be ignored. So strong was this self-confidence in 2016 that, when one of their own dared to suggest that the elite consensus was completely untethered from reality, other members of the ruling class simply reassured one another that everything was still proceeding according to plan. When you replay the events of that fateful year from their point of view, it is hard to doubt that waking up on the morning of November 9th must have been uniquely terrifying.

    Defining Thielism

    Nearly five years after his bet on Donald Trump, Peter Thiel is making his biggest foray into the political arena yet. He has given twin contributions of ten million dollars to the United States Senate campaigns of J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, and he’s also thrown his support behind the likes of congressional candidates such as Joe Kent and Patrick Witt. No one can say for certain what these efforts will yield, but it is undeniable that Thiel seems determined to disrupt the American political landscape. If his endgame is merely to raise the profile of a strong crop of candidates and get them elected to federal office, the strategy seems to be working. The closely-vetted bunch is charismatic, competent, and strong on messaging, which poses a frustrating challenge to Republican and Democratic challengers alike. But Peter Thiel’s true ambitions are grander.

    At the conclusion of his aforementioned National Press Club speech, Thiel spoke of then-candidate Trump ushering in “a new Republican Party, beyond the dogmas of Reaganism” and the birth of “a new American politics that overcomes denial.” The sentiment suggests that the project at hand is far more consequential than boosting a handful of impressive political outsiders. As the patron of an emerging movement within the Republican sphere, Peter Thiel is staging an effort to save the country. This is the dawn of Thielism as a political philosophy, which can be defined as follows:

    A contrarian conservatism is one whose priorities and strategies diverge from the platform of the Republican establishment. While reigning in Big Tech, fixing the American university system, and addressing the decline of domestic manufacturing have all become points of conversation on the Right, Thielism emphasizes the need to address each of those problems substantively. Furthermore, it rejects the premise that we always have to subscribe to established methods when devising solutions to those problems. Protecting the American worker, for example, requires us to reassess the near-sacred status of free trade within Republican orthodoxy.

    On a fundamental level, Thielism also rejects the doctrine of American exceptionalism. Why? Because it recognizes that America’s greatness cannot exist in rhetoric alone; it must be backed up with action, achievement, and honesty. What made us great in the past is worth celebrating, but simply assuming that some special national character will continue to buoy us into the future is ludicrous. We are still masters of our own destiny, but we can only reassert our national sovereignty if we become far more self-aware than we are today. This awareness requires us to take stock of our problems and begin solving them.

    Charting the Course Forward

    Every great movement has a founder, but the movement’s impact is inseparably linked to how much its adherents actually accomplish. If one espouses genius ideas but remains largely ignored, it’s not a movement at all. Fortunately, Thielism is reaching a critical mass on the legislative front, as candidates from Washington to Georgia position themselves to win seats in both houses of Congress next fall. But, as important as gaining an electoral foothold may be, it’s only one small part of the Thielist mission. The political dimension of the conservative movement must interface with the cultural dimension. And, most importantly, both politics and culture need to be responsive to the ever-present force of technology, which the Republican establishment has long ignored save for the purpose of generating funds for its campaigns. If leveraged correctly, technology of all varieties, not just digital, can become the space in which we finally reverse America’s decline.

    But first, it’s critical to note that we can’t afford to get bogged down in the culture wars. Despite an avalanche of opposition to them, the facts of biology which have underpinned all of human existence and been fundamental to Western civilization remain true as ever. In engaging with debates over such obvious matters, we conservatives lock ourselves into a hopelessly defensive posture. It’s time to drop our shovels and refuse to dig ourselves in any deeper. The only way out of the hole we’re in now is to go up, and the only way up is to build.

    This is not to say that we should outright ignore the state of our culture. To do so would be a grave mistake, as the work of preserving whatever fundamental truth and history we have left, reduced and diminished as they may be, remains an always important task. But, as many of us have come to understand already, the brand of conservatism to which we had subscribed up until this point has failed to conserve almost anything meaningful. The Thielist perspective on the matter is to filter out the distractions and devote energy to constructive, new endeavors that will serve our interests in tangible ways.

    Towards this end, there are a practically infinite number of pathways which can be taken. Particularly promising are the areas of decentralized finance, human inhabitance of space, and developing new modes of transportation. The common denominator among these three examples is the usage of technology for our own purposes rather than letting it be wielded mercilessly against us. While the current ruling class controls all major institutions, a truly disruptive advancement within a domain beyond their influence will loosen their grip. Of course, artificial intelligence and robots do pose a challenge to the new conservative movement, as both have thus far hurt the American worker immeasurably in service to the globalist agenda. But those scores are not entirely settled, and there is still a chance to stave off the worst possible outcomes if we address both items with urgency.

    Ultimately, Thielism seeks to return America to the state of definite optimism, which it has not experienced for some five decades now. Indefinite optimism—the “everything will be fine” mentality—has been the prevailing disposition of the ruling class since the dawn of the 1970s, and it was also the attitude of ordinary people until very recently. Today, most ordinary people aren’t optimistic. We are now in an era of indefinite pessimism, where things are just expected to get worse. And as much as we want to believe that the present storms will pass, a prolonged period of indefinite pessimism will eventually lead to collapse unless things change. A course correction is needed if we are to have any hope of keeping the Republic.

    Getting the compass reoriented back towards the ideal, definite optimism, means we need to provide concrete proof that the future will be better than the past. It means overcoming the blackpill, once and for all. It means harnessing the power of technology, which is supposed to improve our quality of life, and actually reaping its benefits. It means reclaiming the American Dream and using the government which exists to protect it in an effective, efficient manner.

    In beginning this project, I hope to play a small role in commentating on emerging developments within the conservative movement. It is abundantly clear that we need to take this country back, and doing so requires a worldview that looks beyond the tired solutions of the past to face the future, unafraid to acknowledge the many challenges before our nation today. With the same firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence as our forebears, let us go forward to create and build a better tomorrow for ourselves and for America.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 22:10

  • China Blocks All Boston Celtics Games After Enes Kanter Demands "Dictator" Xi "Free Tibet"
    China Blocks All Boston Celtics Games After Enes Kanter Demands “Dictator” Xi “Free Tibet”

    Here we go again.

    In an incident that echos the controversy unleashed by a seemingly innocuous tweet from then-Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, the Chinese government has just banned broadcasts of all upcoming games involving the Boston Celtics after one of the NBA’s star players released a recorded message denouncing Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “brutal dictator” and called for the CCP to finally “free” Tibet.

    In the nearly three-minute video, Enes Kanter claimed that the CCP has robbed the people of Tibet of their “basic rights” and that Tibetans are “not able to worship freely” amongst a host of other freedoms denied to them by China. “Tibet belongs to the Tibetan people…under the Chinese government’s brutal rule…[their] basic rights are nonexistent.”

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    Enes, who was born in Switzerland and raised partly in Turkey (by parents of Turkish origin), added in a second tweet that more than 150 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to raise awareness about the dire situation in Tibet.

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    Those tweets were sent yesterday. But as of Thursday morning in the US, Chinese internet giant Tencent had removed all live-streaming for upcoming Celtics games, leaving fans confused and asking in the comment section of its sports page what had happened with the game. Of course, this isn’t the first time the CCP has pulled the plug on broadcasting NBA games in China: they pulled broadcasts during Morey incident and even cancelled games involving NBA teams who had traveled to China to play.

    So far it doesn’t look like the NBA and its China arm have responded to any media requests for comment.

    But during a press briefing Friday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman had a few choice words for Enes, according to Bloomberg.

    Kanter was “grandstanding” to “draw eyeballs,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Thursday, without mentioning the NBA. “We welcome those objective friends to visit Tibet, but in the meantime, we will never accept any smear and attacks against Tibet’s progress and development,” he added.

    Already, it looks like posts about Kanter’s comments have been censored from Chinese social media.

    But this isn’t the first time Kanter has used his platform to attack what he sees as corrupt or repressive foreign leaders: Kanter is still wanted in Turkey for defamation and terrorism after denouncing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over reports of human rights abuses, has routinely used his platform to advocate for human rights.

    Following the Morey incident, the NBA quickly kowtowed to the CCP – earning condemnation from some American lawmakers – while LeBron James was harshly criticized for attacking Morey, claiming that Morey didn’t really understand the issues he was talking about. This infuriated pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, who quickly accused James of hypocrisy due to his involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement.

    One difference between the Morey incident is that he quickly deleted his tweets. Kanter’s have remained up for nearly a day already.

    The NBA is the most popular foreign sports league in China, and it’s already a billion-dollar business for the league. And unlike last time around, this latest NBA-China drama is unfurling as military tensions between the US and China have been intensifying in the Pacific as Beijing inexorably prepares for the great  “reunification” with Taiwan.

    The question now is: how long until the NBA responds to this? Will their reaction involve bringing a star player with a reputation for activism to heel? Will James or other star players speak up to call Kanter’s views on Tibet ‘misguided’?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 21:44

  • CDC Issued Last-Minute Changes To School Reopening Guidance After Being Asked By Teachers Unions, Emails Show
    CDC Issued Last-Minute Changes To School Reopening Guidance After Being Asked By Teachers Unions, Emails Show

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued last-minute changes to its school-reopening guidance after two prominent teachers unions asked the agency to do so, according to newly obtained emails by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust.

    The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the watchdog and published online show a string of communications between the CDC, the National Education Association (NEA), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second-largest teachers union and one of the top donors to the Democratic Party.

    Multiple emails show that both of the teachers unions also received a copy of the guidance, pertaining to the reopening of K–12 schools, shortly before the CDC released it to the general public.

    “These documents are further evidence that instead of following the science, the White House and the CDC allowed politics to influence policy,” Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told Fox News.

    One such email from AFT’s senior director of health issues, Kelly Trautner, to the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Feb. 11, shows AFT suggesting alterations be made to the CDC’s guidance just one day before it was publicly posted.

    “Thank you for your continued openness to our suggestions and input. We would like to share some thoughts regarding the paragraph below which was apparently leaked from the imminent guidance on reopening schools.”

    The paragraph reads:

    “At any level of community transmission, all schools can provide in-person instruction (either full or hybrid), through strict adherence to mitigation strategies. Recommended learning modes vary to minimize risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in school by emphasizing layered mitigation, including school policies requiring universal and correct mask use. The recommended learning modes (in-person, hybrid) depend on the level of community transmission and strict adherence to mitigation.”

    Within the email, Trautner says that “it would be great,” if the CDC insert the line:

    “In the event high-community transmission results from a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, a new update of these guidelines may be necessary.”

    Trautner goes on to cite concerns over the “likely” implications the language will have in schools where it is difficult to adhere to strict mitigation strategies due to them being located in “high density, crumbling infrastructure areas, and particularly when community transmission is high.”

    “We don’t believe that any current research has demonstrated that all schools in those areas can safely reopen,” Trautner wrote.

    One day later, on Feb. 12, CDC Chief of Staff Sherri Berger flagged Trautner’s suggestion for “possible follow-ups.”

    Walensky forwarded the email on to the CDC’s Director of Preparedness and Emerging Infections, Henry Walke, who replied, “Yes, will work with team.”

    On Feb. 12, Walke emailed Walensky with updated language for the guidance, writing, “see below, new is second paragraph.”

    “Super, thank you for doing that,” Walensky replied, adding, “I’m so grateful for your help.”

    People who are part of standout protest organized by the American Federation of Teachers chant, hold signs, and raise their fists outside of the Massachusetts State House in Boston, Mass., on Aug. 19, 2020. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

    The emails also show CDC officials coordinating an early release of the final guidance with both teachers unions.

    An email dated Feb. 11 from the CDC’s acting associate director for communications, Christopher Jones, has the subject headline, “AFT/NEA closing the loop.”

    “Greta and team will reach out to NEA/AFT this evening to set up a technical discussion tomorrow with both groups to talk through the CDC operational strategy,” Jones wrote.

    “Targeting 1130am so they have time to digest prior to the 2 pm release. Feel free to make that offer when you talk to them this evening and say CDC will be reaching out later tonight to set it up,” he continued.

    Walensky responded: “Perfect. Will do. Will try to reach them before I board. Thank you!”

    The following day, on Feb. 12, Jones wrote that the Department of Health and Human Services “said they are comfortable if we want to send something out at 145 we can. I am going to send the strategy and FS [fact sheet] to the unions at 145. If you all want to send the FS to partners at that time, that is fine. Amy, lets send FS to press at 145.”

    Jones messaged Becky Pringle, NEA’s president, and Randi Weingarten, AFT’s president, thanking them for their “continued partnership and input,” along with a PDF version of the strategy posting that day with a fact sheet embargoed until 2 p.m.

    “I know not much lead time but wanted to send your way as soon as was able,” Jones wrote.

    Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on June 9, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    AFT President Randi Weingarten has defended her organization communicating with the CDC regarding its school opening guidelines earlier this year.

    “The CDC in February and March basically asked all sorts of different organizations to sit down with them and give them comments about what they thought was important,” Weingarten said in an interview with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.”They talked to parent organizations, they talked to the two [teachers] unions.”

    “This is normal rule-making,” she said.

    The Epoch Times has contacted the CDC and the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 21:30

  • Video Of Mystery Man Goading Trump Supporters To 'Enter Capitol' Surfaces
    Video Of Mystery Man Goading Trump Supporters To ‘Enter Capitol’ Surfaces

    Four months ago, Revolver News‘ Darren Beattie reported that the FBI was possibly involved in organizing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

    Their evidence? A glaring omission in charging documents related to the event – that of several ‘unindicted co-conspirators’ which could point to either FBI operatives, or ‘protected’ agitators working with the agency.

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    More recently, a September “Justice for J6” rally appeared to have been infiltrated by a group of similarly built and attired gentlemen who were absolutely glowing.

    Meanwhile, over the past two weeks, several videos have emerged of Trump supporters casually strolling into the Capitol – and in one case, appeared to be waved inside by a Capitol Police officer. 

    And while there doesn’t appear to be any direct public evidence that a federal agency was involved in the J6 ‘insurrection’ – a shocking video posted by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has people wondering exactly who this man is telling Trump supporters to ‘go into the Capitol’ before the January 6 protest.

    “I’ll say it,” says the unidentified man, “We need to go in to the capitol,” to which one man starts a “FED!” chant. The same man can be seen approaching other groups of Trump supporters with the same suggestion.

    According to Massie, he presented the video to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who refused to acknowledge “how many agents or assets of the federal government were present in the crowd on Jan 5th and 6th and how many entered the Capitol.”

    Needless to say, speculation abounds:

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 21:10

  • Walmart Rolls Out Bitcoin ATMs Across 200 Stores Nationwide
    Walmart Rolls Out Bitcoin ATMs Across 200 Stores Nationwide

    While adoption of cryptocurrencies is accelerating among the investor class, rapidly enabled by this week’s launch of the first bictoin (futures) ETF, it appears the even broader adoption of digital currencies into day-to-day life and mom-and-pop may be about to escalate dramatically.

    Reuters reports that Walmart customers at some of its U.S. stores will be able to purchase bitcoin using ATM-like machines installed by Coinstar.

    Coinstar, known for its machines that can exchange physical coins for cash, has partnered with digital currency exchange CoinMe to let customers buy bitcoin at some of its kiosks.

    A bitcoin-enabled Coinstar kiosk at a Walmart in Warminster, Pa. (Kevin Reynolds/CoinDesk)

    “Coinstar, in partnership with Coinme, has launched a pilot that allows its customers to use cash to purchase bitcoin,” Walmart communications director Molly Blakeman told CoinDesk via email.

    “There are 200 Coinstar kiosks located inside Walmart stores across the United States that are part of this pilot.”

    Source: Coindesk

    This is all good news for those who see the network effect building more sustainable value in bitcoin, but, as CoinDesk.com reports, there are some ‘complications’.

    After inserting bills into the machine, a paper voucher is issued.

    The next stage involves setting up a Coinme account and passing a know-your-customer (KYC) check before the voucher can be redeemed.

    The machine charges a 4% fee for the bitcoin option, plus another 7% cash exchange fee, according to the Coinstar website and verified by CoinDesk.

    That’s considerably more complicated than a standard bank ATM and we suspect may leave a few eager adopters holding back.

    “Large retailers need to make sure they know the vendor they’re getting into bed with and what that organization is doing to manage risk,” Seth Sattler, compliance director of BTM provider DigitalMint, said in an interview.

    However, as Coindesk notes, the cryptocurrency ATM industry is expanding at a rapid pace, partly fueled by the COVID pandemic.  Coinstar announced plans in 2020 to double its fleet of 3,500 Coinme BTMs amid a spike in usage. More recently, Coinstar, which started adding bitcoin-buying services with Coinme in early 2019, added 300 bitcoin-enabled machines at Winn-Dixie, Fresco y Más, Harveys and other grocery stores across Florida.

    There are now almost 30,000 Crypto ATMs worldwide…

    Source: CoinATMRadar.com

    But Walmart (with 4,700 stores and a market cap of $409 billion), long seen as the crown jewel to bringing crypto financial services into the mainstream, is another step in the evolution of cryptocurrencies in everyday life.

    And no, this is not another Litecoin-like hoax.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 20:50

  • Blacklisted Huawei Paid Tony Podesta $500K To Lobby Biden Admin During Same Quarter CFO Released
    Blacklisted Huawei Paid Tony Podesta $500K To Lobby Biden Admin During Same Quarter CFO Released

    Chinese tech giant Huawei paid Democratic lobbyist and donor Tony Podesta $500,000 to lobby the White House during the third quarter – the same period in which the Biden DOJ struck a deal to allow Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to return home from Canada, where she was awaiting extradition to face criminal charges in the US.

    Whether Podesta spirit-cooked up Wanzhou’s release is unknown, however the White House says they had nothing to do with it – and that the company is still subject to trade restrictions.

    “This was a law enforcement matter that was entirely in the Justice Department’s hands – not a policy matter,” a White House official told CNBC. “As the Justice Department has said, they ‘reached the decision to offer a deferred prosecution agreement with Ms. Meng independently, based on the facts and the law, and an assessment of litigation risk.”

    “President Biden and this administration believe digital infrastructure equipment made by untrustworthy vendors, like Huawei, pose a threat to the security of the U.S., our allies, and our partners. Export controls against Huawei remain in place,” the official continued, adding. “We are engaging with all of our partners and allies on the risks posed by Huawei and dozens of countries and carriers have made the decision to exclude Huawei from their 5G networks. And we expect this trend to continue.”

    According to the report, Podesta registered to lobby for Huawei in July – his first official return to lobbying after his firm’s 2017 collapse under heavy scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russiagate probe.

    Podesta, according to the third quarter disclosure, targeted only the White House Office for Huawei last quarter. The disclosure form says it was for “issues related to telecommunication services and impacted trade issues.” The White House Office is run by the president’s chief of staff, who, in this case, is Ron Klain, another veteran Democratic power player.

    …

    For years, Huawei has sought to curry favor with American officials as it faces accusations that it is a threat to American national security. China’s government is known to exert a great deal of influence over the nation’s companies, although Huawei has denied that it would give data to Beijing. -CNBC

    Podesta‘s now-defunct lobbying firm earned hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for Russian-owned mining company Uranium One during the same period that the Clinton Foundation was receiving millions from individuals connected to the U1 transaction.

    The Podesta Group ended 2015 as Washington DC’s third-largest lobbying firm – with nearly $30 million in revenue from over 100 clients. After a string of embarrassing news reports, including a failure to improperly report a $300,000 shipping expense for Tony’s art collection, employees set up a system to prevent Mr. Podesta from being reimbursed by the company for personal expenditures, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    In 2016, SunTrust bank severed ties with the Podesta Group when they discovered that they were doing work for a U.S. subsidiary of a sanctioned Russian bank – presumably Russias Kremlin-owned Sberbank, which paid the Podesta group $170,000 over a 6 month period through September 2016 to lobby against 2014 economic sanctions by the Obama administration.

    Then, during the Russiagate investigation, Podesta clients became spooked as Special Counsel Robert Mueller began closing in on associate Paul Manafort. The Podesta Group decided (coincidentally) to retroactively file as a foreign agent for their work with the Manafort’s Pro-Russia Centre for a Modern Ukraine campaign  tied to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, shortly before Manafort’s indictment. The Podesta Group made $1.2 million as part of that effort. 

    With the Manafort probe red-hot, the unraveling of the Podesta Group was swift. With clients such as Wells Fargo, Wal Mart and Oracle Corp. bailing on Tony, the lobbying firm death-spiraled into default – as Tony refused to pledge his giant art collection against firm obligations.

    That said, like a cat with nine-lives, Tony Podesta has risen from radioactive recluse to DC power broker once again,. now that his old friends from the Democratic party running the show.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 20:30

  • Shipping Containers From Stranded Ships Abandoned In California Neighborhoods
    Shipping Containers From Stranded Ships Abandoned In California Neighborhoods

    Authored by Christopher Burroughs via The Epoch Times,

    Shipping containers stranded for weeks at sea are now reportedly being abandoned in California neighborhoods.

    Anaheim Street in Los Angeles has become one of the locations where an overflow of empty containers now line local streets, as nearby UCTI Trucking deals with more than they can handle under the local port’s 24/7 operations.

    “It’s a bunch of neighbors that are very upset because it’s a non-stop issue,” local resident Sonia Cervantes told CBSLA.

    Cervantes also said a container had blocked her car at one point.

    UCTI Trucking owner Frank Arrieran addressed the situation, as the company experiences massive overflow to its usual 65 container spaces.

    “Right now with the ports and everything that’s going on over there we’re stuck with the containers, having to bring them all to the yard, and we only have so much space,” Arrieran told CBSLA.

    Arrieran hopes to strike a deal with local officials to access more space to meet the growth in operations.

    As of Tuesday, 100 container ships were reportedly waiting to unload in the Los Angeles Port. Industry leaders claim the backlogs are partly due to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The growing supply chain issues have led some to label it a crisis. Republicans have spoken out for more from the Department of Transportation, while President Joe Biden addressed plans to improve shipping.

    Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said there “is more that the Department of Transportation can and should be doing to help address ongoing supply chain issues related to the pandemic,” in a statement to the Washington Examiner last week.

    The supply chain crisis led Biden to make new announcements last week to address congestion at some of America’s ports.

    “After weeks of negotiation and working with my team and with the major union and retailers and freight movers, the Ports of Los Angeles—the Port of Los Angeles announced today that it’s going to be—begin operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” Biden announced.

    “This follows the Port of Long Beach’s commitment to 24/7 that it announced just weeks ago,” he added.

    Biden called the effort a “first key step” to improving the nation’s supply chain.

    The president’s speech also announced the expansion of shipping companies to meet the growing demands.

    “Additionally, FedEx and UPS, two of our nation’s biggest freight movers, are committing today to significantly increase the amount of goods they are moving at night. FedEx and UPS are the shippers for some of our nation’s largest stores, but they also ship for tens of thousands of small businesses all across America,” he added.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 20:10

  • China Tested Two Nuclear-Capable Hypersonic Glide Vehicles This Summer, FT Reports
    China Tested Two Nuclear-Capable Hypersonic Glide Vehicles This Summer, FT Reports

    The Chinese military threat continues to be realized this week as it now appears two hypersonic weapon tests were conducted from low Earth orbit this summer, according to Financial Times, citing four people familiar with US intelligence assessments. 

    China’s next-generation hypersonic weapons appear far superior to anything in the US arsenal (that we know of). The first test was reportedly conducted on July 27 when a rocket used a “fractional orbital bombardment” system to launch a nuclear-capable “hypersonic glide vehicle” around the world. 

    FT initially reported the test was conducted in early August. However, sources familiar with US intelligence assessments say the second test occurred on August 13. 

    Three people familiar with the hypersonic tests said US military officials were “stunned” because China tested weapons that the US does not currently possess. 

    One person said US government space experts were baffled on how the Chinese were able to conduct such tests because they appeared “to defy the laws of physics.” 

    China orbiting nuclear-capable hypersonic gliders exploits the weakness of US missile defense systems which means the new weapons could potentially strike the US mainland. On Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian downplayed the August test and disputed FT’s initial report indicating the object was a “reusable space vehicle” similar to the ones used by SpaceX. 

    On Thursday, during a regular news briefing in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, “I want to reiterate that this test reported by certain media is a routine spacecraft test to verify the technology of the spacecraft’s reusability.” 

    The tests reported by FT have garnered concern from the White House. President Biden on Wednesday told reporters he was worried about the hypersonic development overseas. 

    US Admiral Charles Richard, the head of Strategic Command who oversees US nuclear forces, told Stars and Stripes this week that he wouldn’t be surprised if more reports are published in the press next month. 

    In response to the tests, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warned that the West “needs to wake up” to the dangers of Chinese hypersonic weapons.

    “I definitely think the West needs to wake up to the consequences of Chinese and Russian missile development. They are potent,” Wallace said. “It is very important to understand what they are developing and what that means, both in range and speed of capabilities. We have seen China and Russia increase speeds in [their] missiles and ranges to an accurate level.”

    If the hypersonic tests are confirmed, they would suggest China is lightyears ahead of the US and the rest of the world. President Xi Jinping would then have the ability to unleash orbital strikes on the US mainland or allies. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 19:50

  • WSB'ers Help Drive Trump's "TRUTH Social" SPAC Up Over 600% On The Day
    WSB’ers Help Drive Trump’s “TRUTH Social” SPAC Up Over 600% On The Day

    Update (1930ET): In a stunning development after hours, DWAC just topped $70, meaning it is up over 600% on the day…

    After being halted multiple times during the day…

    How long before Senator Warren demands this be removed from the exchange and that SPACs be immediately banned?

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    CNBC finally mentioned it after-hours as we noted that it appears WSBers are all over this new momentum darling as it reached the Top 10 most followed tickers on the Reddit platform in the last 12 hours

    With bullish sentiment strongly outweighing bearish…

    Source

    *  *  *

    President Trump is taking advantage of the waning SPAC craze to finally launch the media company that he and members of his circle have been hinting about and teasing since his time in the Oval Office. But fortunately for Fox News, it’s not a TV station: it’s a social media platform called “TRUTH social”.

    The platform will be owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, a new company which will soon hit the public markets via a merger with the special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp. (ticker: DWAC). The statement announcing the deal said the company could be worth up to $1.7 billion. 

    A firm that revived the EF Hutton brand, known for television commercials in the 1970s and ’80s touting its sage advice, is acting as the sole financial and capital-markets adviser to DWAC. EF Hutton gained renown with television commercials that featured the tag line, “When EF Hutton talks, people listen.”

    The firm was embroiled in a bogus-deposit scandal in the mid-’80s that precipitated its eventual sale.

    The SPAC is now trading up over 150%..

    Over 236 million shares have traded hands as of 12:02 p.m. New York time, nearly 10x Digital World’s float, compared to an average full-day volume of 178,000 shares a day since the SPAC went public on Sep. 30

    Speaking on his reasoning in launching the network, Trump – who remains banned from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – said “I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.” He added that presently, “we live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced. This is unacceptable.” Trump added that the platform is being “founded with a mission to give a voice to all.”

    TMTG is initially valued at $875MM, but according to the statement, but the business and its managers could earn an additional $825MM “earnout” depending on the company’s performance. The new combined company will start off with the $293MM from DWAC’s cash in trust that was raised during its initial SPAC offering.

    Read the full statement below:

    President Trump sued FB Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey after their companies permanently banned President Trump from using them after the events of Jan. 6. Back in March, sources close to Trump said he would be returning to social media with his own platform.

    While Twitter and Facebook have so far stood by their prohibition on Trump, Twitter CEO Dorsey was recently forced to admit that Twitter “may have crossed a line by blocking a New York Post investigation last year that revealed the potentially corrupt business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of presidential rival (and now President) Joe Biden. Twitter even went so far as to bar users from sharing the story in direct messages while the mainstream press simply believed the Biden camp’s initial claims that a laptop supposedly belonging to Hunter with thousands of incriminating videos, texts and images – revealing everything from shady business deals with CCP-tied Chinese businessmen to smoking crack naked with women who may or may not be prostitutes.

    Unsurprisingly, Twitter’s Dorsey has already tried to delegitimize Trump’s new platform by mocking some of the promotional materials on his own platform (where Trump isn’t even allowed to speak).

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    To be sure, TRUTH Social is not Trump’s first foray into independent social media. Back in May, Trump launched a platform sort of resembling Twitter called ‘From the Desk of Donald Trump’. Although RT described it as “effectively just a personal blog which was supposed to allow users to re-post Trump’s musings onto other mainstream platforms.”

    Former Trump spokesman Jason Miller also recently launched “GETTR”, a twitter-like social network meant to be the latest in a long line of conservative competitors to Twitter, including Gab and others. But he told Business Insider last night, in a statement that followed the initial launch of Trump’s new project, that he and Trump were “unable to agree” on GETTR.

    But, despite being “for free speech”, as Jonathan Turley notes, deep in the Terms of Service is some interesting restrictions:

    The “Terms of Service” also include a prohibition on the “excessive use of capital letters.” That rule seems a tad odd given the name of the site, which is fifty percent caps: “TRUTH Social.”  Then there is President Trump’s own signature use of all caps writing.

    However, the loss of all caps communications is hardly a major blow against free speech. What is far more concerning is this specific term for service:

    PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES

    You may not access or use the Site for any purpose other than that for which we make the Site available. The Site may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by us.

    As a user of the Site, you agree not to: ….disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site.

    While companies like Twitter have embraced biased and extensive censorship platforms, they do not (directly) censor criticism of their sites.

    Per the statement, TRUTH Social will launch in beta form later this month with the first users being allowed access off a wait list. The company intends to expand the platform to all users early next year.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 19:33

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 21

Today’s News 21st October 2021

  • The Cost Of Going Green Is About To Get More Expensive
    The Cost Of Going Green Is About To Get More Expensive

    The cost of going green is about to become more expensive as polysilicon prices are erupting and will likely remain elevated due to factory shutdowns in China. 

    Polysilicon is a superrefine form of silicon used in solar panels for its semiconductor-like material properties. Spot prices for polysilicon bottomed at $6.30/kg in mid-2020 and have jumped 600% to $36.09/kg as of last week, according to BloombergNEF. 

    China is a top producer of polysilicon. The latest factory shutdowns of energy-intensive factories, such as ones that refine silicon, have resulted in declining output that will affect global supply. Countries, in a rush, to greenify their economies are increasing demand for solar panels that are pressuring polysilicon prices higher. 

    “It’s been a very crazy year,” Sakura Yamasaki, the Singapore Solar Exchange director, said during a recent Roth Capital Partners webinar. She said polysilicon prices could stabilize in the second quarter of 2022 but thinks prices will continue to increase. 

    “The ride up is not over,” Yamasaki said.

    She said the market will remain “chaotic” in 2022 as other costs such as freight and commodities will make the cost of producing solar panels much higher than in previous years. 

    “There will be no relief in 2022,” she said, with the outlook “as crazy as this year.”

    Perhaps the cost of polysilicon and ultimately solar panels will continue to move higher over the years as Bank of America recently noted: no less than a stunning $150 trillion in new capital investment would be required to reach a “net zero” world over 30 years – equating to some $5 trillion in annual investments – and amounting to twice current global GDP.

    The move to a net zero global economy is shockingly expensive. For the US alone, President Biden wants 40% of the US power grid sourcing solar generation by 2035, either a bunch of new polysilicon factories will need to be built, or the cost of going green will be astronomically expensive.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 02:45

  • Taliban-Russian Meeting In Moscow Takes Place Amid "Friendly Atmosphere"
    Taliban-Russian Meeting In Moscow Takes Place Amid “Friendly Atmosphere”

    By South Front.org

    On October 20th, the first official meeting between the Taliban and the Russian government took place, following the forming of the Afghanistan government.

    Notably, Russia called on the Taliban to form an inclusive government with the participation of all political forces in the country, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

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    The task of achieving sustainable peace in Afghanistan is still urgent. We see the key to its sustainable solution, first of all, in the formation of a truly inclusive government, which should fully reflect the interests of all, not only ethnic, but also the political forces of the country,” he said.

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    Lavrov spoke at the opening of the third Moscow-format meeting on Afghanistan in Moscow. It was in Moscow in 2018 that representatives of the Ashraf Ghani government and the Taliban movement met for the first time in this format. The format originated in 2017, and was a tool for negotiations between the former government and the Taliban.

    It should be mentioned that Lavrov did not attend a meeting with US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, but personally attended the online meeting with the Taliban representatives. Still, Lavrov expressed regret that there was no USA at this event.

    Lavrov said he was satisfied with the level of interaction with the Taliban and was grateful to them for their assistance in returning Russians home from Afghanistan.

    Lavrov condemned the previous republican government for abandoning its citizens to the Taliban and de-facto recognized the established government and the currant status of Afghanistan as The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

    He underlined that the current Afghanistan issues are terrorism and drug trade. ISIS and Al-Qaeda need to be dealt with, while drug trafficking needs to be reduced, as the two issues are interlinked.

    Finally, Lavrov called on the international community to mobilize financial assistance to Afghanistan. He further said that NATO and the collective West was responsible for the crisis in this Central Asian country.

    He called on the West to ensure payments to Afghan teachers and doctors, who have been entirely abandoned and said that after 20 years of US and NATO intervention the economy has been left in a collapse, with no development.

    The remainder of the meeting is behind closed doors.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 02:00

  • The Empire Of Lies Breaks Down: Ugly Truths The Deep State Wants To Keep Hidden
    The Empire Of Lies Breaks Down: Ugly Truths The Deep State Wants To Keep Hidden

    Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

    – Albert Einstein

    America is breaking down.

    This breakdown – triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, racism, classism, fascism, fear-mongering, political correctness, cultural sanitation, virtue signaling, a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing government corruption and brutality, a growing economic divide that has much of the population struggling to get by, and militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment) – is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long.

    In New York City, for example, a 200-year-old statue of Thomas Jefferson holding the Declaration of Independence will be removed from the City Council’s chambers where it has presided since 1915. Despite Jefferson’s many significant accomplishments, without which we might not have the rights we do today, he will be banished for having been, like many of his day, a slaveowner. Curiously, that same brutal expectation of infallibility has yet to be applied to many other politically correct yet equally imperfect and fallible role models of the day.

    In Washington, DC, a tribunal of nine men and women spoke with one voice to affirm that the government and its henchmen can literally get away with murder and not be held accountable for their wrongdoing. The Supreme Court’s latest rulings are yet another painful lesson in compliance, a reminder that in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

    All across the country, from California to Connecticut and every point in between, men and women who have worked faithfully and diligently at their jobs for years are being terminated for daring to believe that they have a right to bodily integrity; that they should not be forced, against their conscience or better judgment, to choose between individual liberty and economic survival; and that they—and not the government, or the FDA, or the CDC, or the Corporate State—have dominion over their bodies. Conveniently enough, this COVID-19 pandemic has created yet another double standard in how “we the people” navigate this country: while “we the middling classes” are subjected to vaccine mandates and denied even the right to be skeptical about the origins of the COVID virus, let alone the efficacy of the so-called cure, the government, corporations and pharmaceutical companies have been shielded from liability with blanket immunity laws that ensure we are little more than guinea pigs for their questionable experiments.

    And then in Pennsylvania, a man traveling on a commuter train harassed, assaulted and then raped a woman over the course of 40 minutes and more than two dozen train stops while fellow travelers, watching and filming the attack, did nothing. Not a single witness called 911. Not a single bystander intervened to help the woman. Despite the fact that the man was outnumbered and could have been overwhelmed by those on the train, no collective effort was made to ward off the attack. Only when it was too late, when the damage had been done and the train had pulled into its last stop, did police show up to intervene.

    There is an allegory here for what is happening to our country and its citizens, who have also been waylaid by a madman (the Deep State), stripped of their safety nets (their rights undermined and eroded), and savaged out in the open by a fiend (the American Police State and its many operatives—the courts, the legislatures and their various armies) that is devoid of humanity while those not in the immediate crosshairs watch safely from a distance without making a move to help.

    This is madness, yet there is a method to this madness.

    This is how freedom falls and tyranny rises.

    Remember, authoritarian regimes begin with incremental steps: overcriminalization, surveillance of innocent citizens, imprisonment for nonviolent—victimless—crimes, etc. Bit by bit, the citizenry finds its freedoms being curtailed and undermined for the sake of national security. And slowly the populace begins to submit.

    No one speaks up for those being targeted.

    No one resists these minor acts of oppression.

    No one recognizes the indoctrination into tyranny for what it is.

    Historically this failure to speak truth to power has resulted in whole populations being conditioned to tolerate unspoken cruelty toward their fellow human beings, a bystander syndrome in which people remain silent and disengaged—mere onlookers—in the face of abject horrors and injustice.

    Time has insulated us from the violence perpetrated by past regimes in their pursuit of power: the crucifixion and slaughter of innocents by the Romans, the torture of the Inquisition, the atrocities of the Nazis, the butchery of the Fascists, the bloodshed by the Communists, and the cold-blooded war machines run by the military industrial complex.

    We can disassociate from such violence. We can convince ourselves that we are somehow different from the victims of government abuse. We can continue to spout empty political rhetoric about how great America is, despite the evidence to the contrary.

    We can avoid responsibility for holding the government accountable.

    We can zip our lips and bind our hands and shut our eyes.

    In other words, we can continue to exist in a state of denial. Yet there is no denying the ugly, hard truths that become more evident with every passing day.

    1. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.”

    2. Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.

    3. Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there’s a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.

    4. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

    5. Some years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?” The answer, then and now, remains the same: None. There is virtually no difference between psychopaths and politicians.

    6. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us

    7. The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance.

    8. If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.

    9. America’s shadow government—which is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now and operates beyond the reach of the Constitution with no real accountability to the citizenry—is the real reason why “we the people” have no control over our government.

    10. You no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent.

    11. “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect our constitutional rights while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.

    12. Private property means nothing if the government can take your home, car or money under the flimsiest of pretexts, whether it be asset forfeiture schemes, eminent domain or overdue property taxes. Likewise, private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. 

    13. We now find ourselves caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state, and “we the people” are losing.

    14. All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

    15. If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.

    16. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

    17. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

    18. Finally, freedom is never free. There is always a price—always a sacrifice—that must be made in order to safeguard one’s freedoms.

    We cannot remain silent in the face of the government’s ongoing overreaches, power grabs, and crimes against humanity.

    Evil disguised as bureaucracy is still evil. Indeed, this is what Hannah Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, such evil happens when bureaucrats (governmental and corporate) unquestioningly carry out orders that are immoral and inhumane; obey immoral instructions unthinkingly; march in lockstep with tyrants; mindlessly perpetuate acts of terror and inhumanity; and justify it all as just “doing one’s job.”

    Such evil prevails when good men and women do nothing.

    By doing nothing, by remaining silent, by being bystanders to injustice, hate and wrongdoing, good people become as guilty as the perpetrator.

    There’s a term for this phenomenon where people stand by, watch and do nothing—even when there is no risk to their safety—while some horrific act takes place (someone is mugged or raped or bullied or left to die): it’s called the bystander effect.

    It works the same whether you’re talking about kids watching bullies torment a fellow student on a playground, bystanders watching someone dying on a sidewalk, passengers on a train filming a fellow traveler be raped without intervening to help, or citizens remaining silent in the face of government atrocities.

    We need to stop being silent bystanders.

    It’s time to stand up for truth—for justice—for freedom—not just for ourselves but for all humanity. Tomorrow may be too late.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/21/2021 – 00:10

  • New China Law Will Punish Parents For Children's 'Bad Behavior'
    New China Law Will Punish Parents For Children’s ‘Bad Behavior’

    China has drafted a law that would punish the parents of children who exhibit “very bad behavior” – which would be one of the first laws of its kind anywhere in the modern world.

    A spokesman for the Legislative Affairs Commission of China’s parliament, which is often dubbed in the West a “rubber-stamp” institution for the dictates of Communist party leadership, said “There are many reasons for adolescents to misbehave, and the lack of or inappropriate family education is the major cause.”

    It comes amid a broader initiative by President Xi and party leaders to stamp out what they’ve dubbed the false “spiritual opium” of Western culture, in reference to everything from internet gaming, to worship of Hollywood celebrities, to pop music, also to things deemed effeminate. 

    Image via Quartz 

    The blanket youth cultural reform initiative centered on “anti-addiction” has already resulted in severe restrictions placed on online video gaming for people under 18-years of age. A decree passed in early September grabbed world headlines and drew outrage from West-based human rights groups. Currently children are only legally allowed to participate in online gaming from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.

    Additionally video games and other popular media content that don’t promote “correct values” are being banned.

    As for the newly proposed legislation that can effectively deem a parent a “criminal” for their child’s actions, it will reportedly include language that encourages parents to allow children to rest and play and appropriate times, likely in an effort to promote ‘well-roundedness’ in youth education. 

    According to further media commentary on the controversial law:

    They’re also expected to instill children with a sense to “respect the elderly and care for the young,” according to a draft version of the bill, which is the latest attempt by China to address how its young citizens behave at home, according to Reuters.

    It’s as yet unclear, however, the actual punishments that could be handed out to parents if their child is caught misbehaving. It also remains uncertain just how certain actions of children will be interpreted. Likely the law will initially apply to the recent dictates surrounding the video game bans and restrictions, as well as consumption of Western pop culture.

    Likely it’ll initially give authorities more tools to go after parents caught encouraging activities that go against what are dubbed “correct values”.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 23:50

  • Marine Vet Sues Walmart After Pharmacist Refused To Fill His Ivermectin Prescription
    Marine Vet Sues Walmart After Pharmacist Refused To Fill His Ivermectin Prescription

    Authored by Debra Heine via AmGreatness.com,

    Walmart is facing a new lawsuit after a pharmacist in Albert Lea, Minnesota, refused to fill a prescription for ivermectin to treat a Marine vet and his wife, both of whom were suffering with COVID-19.

    The Marine, Bill Salier, shared his story the “Steve Deace Show” on BlazeTV Monday.  Salier told Deace that out of desperation, he ended up purchasing the “pony paste” from the feed supply store, and they both almost immediately got better.

    Salier, 53, told Deace that he began feeling sick on Oct. 1, and tested positive for COVID-19 a few days later. After his diagnosis, Salier said he attempted to receive monoclonal antibody treatments through the Minnesota Resource Allocation, but his requests were ignored.

    “We never so much as heard a word back, not even in acknowledgement that the requests had been put in,” he said.

    Salier said he then went to a clinic that had one monoclonal treatment, but they were saving it for a more severe case. He said he asked for ivermectin, but the clinic refused to treat him with it because the FDA has not cleared the use of the drug for treatment of COVID.

    Generally, doctors in the U.S. have followed the government’s recommendations on ivermectin, and have shunned it as a treatment for COVID-19 patients.

    Groups like the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors, on the other hand, have championed the Nobel-prize winning drug as an effective at treatment for COVID-19.

    With Deace’s help, Salier said he found a doctor who would treat him and his wife. After a teleconference call, he said, the doctor prescribed ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and some other drugs for them to take. The doctor said that Salier’s case had deteriorated to the point where he would have to be hospitalized within 48 hours without a serious intervention.

    Salier said his prescription was sent to his local Walmart in Albert Lea, Minnesota, but the pharmacist refused to fill it.

    “This pharmacist contacted my wife, telling her that he would not fill it. My wife stated that he did not have the right to stand between our physician’s prescription and the patent, he asserted that he did have that right and he refused to do so,” Salier said.

    The Marine vet said that their physician later called the Walmart pharmacy to insist that the script be filled, but the pharmacist refused, and hung up on him.

    “We were faced with either continuing to suffer and quite possibly ending up in the hospital where you have—I don’t know—a 50/50 chance of coming out,”  he told Deace, explaining that they were forced to turn to their local farm store, and purchase the horse paste, which is the same compound as the human pharmaceutical (with a few non-toxic additives like apple flavoring), but dosed for horses.

    “I was forced with this decision and I was either going to lay there, suffer, and be at life’s peril of losing my time with my family, or I was going to eat that horse paste. And down the hatch it went,” Salier said. His wife, he added, “was forced into the same option.”

    Salier told Deace that “within eight hours” he was feeling better.

    “I started to feel the turnaround in my body,” he said, adding, “it turned her (his wife) around within six hours.”

    People who resort to using the veterinary version of the drug generally know to convert the dosage to one that is appropriate for human consumption. Horse medication that contains Ivermectin and additional deworming agents are reportedly not safe for human consumption in any dosage.

    Salier confirmed to American Greatness that he and his wife reduced the dosage, and took the pony paste for a week. He added that they were finally able to get a prescription through a pharmacy in Florida, but because demand was so high, they didn’t get the prescription until today.

    “In the end, the option was forced on us by the refusal to fill the prescription,” he said.

    “We had to gamble on the pony paste or gamble that I would survive what I was going through. We prayed, and put the paste in the applesauce, and down the hatch,” he added. “I thank God for that decision.”

    After being forced to take livestock medicine to treat his COVID, the Marine is on the warpath.

    “If you ever wanted to find out what it is to punch a Marine in the face and what type of response you’re gonna get, well, America, you’re about to see the type of response that you get. Because if you take on me and my family, and you stand between our physician and the health care that they have prescribed to me as a life-saving thing — in my opinion that is what it did — then you have got a fight on your hands and I am coming for that fight,” he told Deace.

    Salier reiterated to American Greatness why he felt called to fight the giant corporation.

    “I believe with all my heart that when our liberties and decisions for our own lives are stripped from us, our answer must be NO,” he said. “I will not stand for this.”

    Salier has partnered with We the Patriots USA, a nonprofit organization that defends civil liberties, to raise money for his federal lawsuit against the pharmacist and Walmart.

    Brian Festa, an attorney with We the Patriots USA, told Deace that it was “abhorrent” for the Walmart pharmacist to “play God” with the Saliers’ lives.

    He pointed out that even the FDA acknowledges there are times when it is appropriate for health care providers to prescribe repurposed drugs.  It’s actually a fairly common practice.

    “So, this is talking about off-label usage. This has been done for years,” Festa said.

    “We’re talking about a drug, ivermectin, that was part of a treatment protocol that won the Nobel Prize in 2015 as an anti-parasitic for malaria. This is FDA-approved, it’s been used for decades as an anti-parasitic, and now you’re suddenly telling us in 2021 that it’s unsafe because it’s being used for off-label usage? Which again, is so common in the practice of medicine.”

    Festa added that the pharmacist “had absolutely no right to tell Bill and his wife that he was not going to fill this prescription” and that Walmart should be held accountable for denying the Saliers access to a potentially lifesaving drug.

    ‘We the Patriots USA’ announced on its website on Tuesday that it had raised enough money to proceed with the lawsuit.

    “Thanks to the incredible generosity of our supporters and the listeners on The Steve Deace Show, we are proud to announce that we have fully funded a lawsuit on behalf of Bill Salier, a retired Marine who was refused ivermectin at a Walmart pharmacy in Minnesota when he fell seriously ill with the covid bioweapon.” the group stated. 

    “We fully support Bill in his fight against the covid fascists, and that’s why We The Patriots USA committed $25,000 to Bill’s lawsuit even before we launched yesterday’s fundraising campaign. After all, Bill served his country honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps. It’s time we fought for him!”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 23:30

  • Russia Says Another Putin-Biden Meeting A Likely Possibility "By Year's End"
    Russia Says Another Putin-Biden Meeting A Likely Possibility “By Year’s End”

    The Kremlin has teased another potential face-to-face summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin “by the end of the year,” according to government spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday.

    Peskov said a meeting is possible in “one format or another” – suggesting various possibilities including a remote format meeting, following their first in-person summit in Geneva on June 16, which was aimed at thawing tensions and opening up communications. “In one form or another (a meeting) is quite realistic,” the Russian spokesman added.

    Last summer’s Geneva meeting, via Reuters

    In reporting the statements, Reuters underscored that Moscow-Washington relations now “languish at post-Cold War lows” despite the summer summit which both leaders described generally as positive and cordial. 

    Crucially the announcement comes after last week’s rare visit to Moscow of Biden’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. Russia issued a temporary suspension of travel sanctions against her just so that she could enter the country for direct dialogue with Russian Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov.

    According to TASS:

    Ushakov and Nuland reached some understanding “in terms of the prospects for further dialogue at the highest level in the near future.”

    …”We will inform you once they are finalized in terms of a format and dates,” he said.

    And further there were these recent comments by Putin himself suggesting continued high level contacts amid heightened tensions:

    At a Russian Energy Week plenary session on October 14, President Putin mentioned that Nuland, during her visit to Moscow, touched upon the possibility of contacts at the highest level.

    Meanwhile, weeks after Nord Stream 2 has been deemed complete, and with the first section filling with gas while still awaiting German regulatory approval, Biden is being widely blamed by Russia hawks for allowing the Russia-to-Germany pipeline to move forward, supposedly allowing the Kremlin to hold Europe’s energy “hostage”…

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    Nuland in comments last week after more than an hour-and-a-half worth of meetings that included Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov hailed “the frank, productive review” of US-Russia relations, noting that the two sides are “committed to a stable, predictable relationship,” according to a prior US Embassy statement.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 23:10

  • US Marshals Investigating Whether January 6 Defendants Being Deliberately Mistreated
    US Marshals Investigating Whether January 6 Defendants Being Deliberately Mistreated

    Authored by Matt Vespa via TownHall.com,

    The feds have locked up hundreds of people connected to the January 6 riot. That’s all it was, by the way. It was a riot. It was not a violent insurrection. It wasn’t an armed coup. It wasn’t worse than the American Civil War. It sure as hell wasn’t worse than the 9/11 attacks. It was mostly a bunch of people walking around inside the Capitol Building. It’s why Democrats don’t want us to see all the security camera footage. It’s bland and boring as hell—far from the “end of the republic” narrative they’ve been stroking for months. Get over it. Everyone else has—and the fact that hundreds have been arrested undercuts the reasoning behind creating a select committee to investigate how this happened. No one cares—especially now.

    Source: AP Photo/Julio Cortez

    Yet, since hundreds are locked up as quasi-political prisoners, a judge seemed worried about deliberate mistreatment. One defendant had a broken wrist which required surgery. DC officials dithered on doing anything for four months. Why? Well, they wouldn’t say, which is why they were held in contempt. 

    Judge Royce C. Lamberth called for an investigation into the conditions of the prisoners and the US Marshal Service has acted upon that request (via NBC4 Washington): 

    A week ago, a federal judge raised questions about the treatment of those Jan. 6 inmates at the jail after revelations one of the defendants had a broken hand that was allegedly improperly cared for.

    The judge also formally found the jail warden and the director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt of court for not responding to court questions about the medical care of Jan. 6 inmates.

    The judge says he’s referring the matter to the U.S. attorney general for a possible civil rights violation investigation.

    […]

    D.C. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Chris Geldart confirmed Monday the inspectors are speaking with Jan. 6 defendants and said all court orders are being followed.

    “We have been working with the marshals office,” he said. “As a matter of fact, they’re in there today doing an inspection of the jail and talking with many of the Jan. 6 folks that are there to make sure that we are continuing to do that.”

    Most of these people should be set free. The sentencing guidelines for some have also been questioned, with federal prosecutors asking for decades-long jail sentences for people who just walked around a building. It’s classic overreach. You don’t need to have a law degree to see that—even Obama-appointed judges see through it. For those who fought with the cops, that’s a different story—but most of these folks didn’t do anything that requires jail time. Sorry—it’s a political witch hunt. And for all this technology that found these people, it seems it’s incapable of finding Brian Laundrie in Florida. This circus has gone on long enough.  

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 22:50

  • NYC Mayor Expands Vaccine Mandate To All City Workers, Offers $500 "Carrot"
    NYC Mayor Expands Vaccine Mandate To All City Workers, Offers $500 “Carrot”

    Despite pushback against the vaccine mandate imposed on the city’s teachers and public school workers and managers, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking coercive city mandates to the next level Wednesday by announcing that they would be extended city-wide.

    The mayor told MSNBC in an interview Wednesday morning that his mandate will now expand to “all city agencies, all city workers. It’s time for everyone to get vaccinated,” de Blasio said. “Our public employees are going to lead us out of the Covid era.”

    So, starting Wednesday, the mayor is once again attempting a combo of “the carrot and the stick” by requiring some 160,500 city employees to get the jab, and who will get an extra $500 in their paychecks just for receiving their first shot at a city-run vaccination site.

    Although that benefit will “end at 5pm on Friday, Oct. 29, by which point city employees are required to have proof of at least one dose, according to an NYC government website.

    And for those who refuse: “Unvaccinated employees will be placed on unpaid leave until they show proof of vaccination to their supervisor.”

    Already, most city workers had to be vaccinated or tested weekly due to either city or state mandates. Health-care workers in the state and city have all been forced to accept the jab or weekly testing due to a mandate from the state.

    Somehow, we suspect this new mandate will go over about as well as the last one.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 22:30

  • Jim Chanos: China's "Leveraged Prosperity" Model Is Doomed…And That's Not The Worst Of It
    Jim Chanos: China’s “Leveraged Prosperity” Model Is Doomed…And That’s Not The Worst Of It

    Authored by Lynn Parramore via The Institute for New Economic Thinking,

    Famed short-seller is even more concerned with political fallout from Evergrande than economic/financial woes.

    Renowned short-seller Jim Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates, is what you might call the “ever-bear” of China. For more than a decade, he has warned that the country was building a real estate-driven economy on a feeble house of cards. He spoke to the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s Lynn Parramore about how he views the chickens coming home to roost as the property giant Evergrande – now the world’s most indebted property developer — teeters on the verge of collapse.

    Lynn Parramore: Back in ’09, when you started looking at China, your real estate analysts alerted you to the mind-boggling amount of real estate overdevelopment there. You warned that this overdevelopment would end badly. After Xi Jinping became president in 2013, you expressed the then-minority view that a different kind of leader had arrived on the scene. What’s your take on what has happened since then?

    Jim Chanos: In 2013, we put a slide in our presentation for investors and talks that was very controversial – especially for Chinese nationals. It showed President Xi Jinping in emperor’s garb. People thought we should take it out, that it was offensive. At the time, Xi was widely seen as just the latest in a series of technocrats who had risen through the ranks — one who would follow along with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. It’s “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.” It’s okay to get rich as long as the country prospers.

    But a few things made us think, no, this guy is different. His first speech in China after becoming president was critical of the Soviet Union for being soft on perestroika. They should have crushed it when they had the chance, he said. Xi then set up an institute to study the Soviet Union’s collapse. That was a red flag to us that he was going to be more hardline than people thought. He went on to do an anti-corruption drive, which people dismissed as a typical settling of scores that Chinese leaders do. But it actually extended beyond that. A couple of years later, he began talking in Puritanical terms about social issues. Again, that was different. Nobody had cared about that stuff for 20 years. Do what you want as long as you don’t question the party. Next, we had the book collecting his speeches and writings, which people could be seen carrying around. He started showing up in military events dressed in Mao jackets. This symbolism isn’t lost in China.

    We noticed all this, but the real switch occurred in 2019 when he started going after celebrities like Jack Ma [co-founder of Alibaba]. At that point, it was clear that this president was not stepping down at the end of 10 years. He was taking a much harder line on the “flowers of capitalism,” if you will, than past presidents. In 2021, all of this exploded into the open. There’s been initiative after initiative. Redistributing wealth to the masses. Going after other leaders. Overlaid on top of this is the Evergrande saga.

    LP: Let’s talk about Evergrande, the Shenzhen developer whose crisis has got everybody worried. How did things get so bad?

    JC: Last year, as the tech crackdown was gaining momentum, Xi’s administration put down a set of rules called the “three red lines.” They were sort of balance sheet financial tests. It was an attempt to deleverage the real estate developers.

    LP: Which means he knew something was wrong.

    JC: Well, here’s the problem. I always joke that when you have an investment-driven economic model, you know your annual GDP on January 1st of that year, because you can stick shovels in the ground to make your growth numbers. That’s how the model works. It’s not a consumption-based model. As we now know — and the Wall Street Journal just had some phenomenal numbers in a recent piece – that real estate construction is now larger than it was when he took office. I would always hear, well, don’t worry: these are smart guys, technocrats who see the problem and will wean themselves off this apartment construction-on-steroids. But they haven’t.

    LP: Why haven’t they been able to slow it down?

    JC: Since we started following China at the end of ’09, this is the fourth time that they’ve attempted to slow the real estate market down, because they do know that this is going to be basically too big to deal with if it keeps growing at the rate it’s growing. But every time they’ve done it, the economy has hit stall speed very quickly, and they panicked. They went from hitting the breaks to hitting the accelerator. That’s why we’ve seen higher levels of real estate. The idea that “I can’t lose buying apartments” became ingrained with bankers, real estate speculators, and the public.

    LP: So with Evergrande, everyone came to expect a bailout?

    JC: I think we’re at that crossroads. The problem is that these companies are so much bigger than they were in 2015 or 2011. Can you bail everybody out? In the case of the developers, you have an additional problem. The biggest amount of liabilities is not necessarily to banks and bondholders. It’s to apartment buyers. Here’s why: the Chinese real estate finance system is exactly the opposite of ours. In our system, when there’s a new development, you’re typically required to put 10% down to sign a contract, with the balance due on closing. You go get your financing and your mortgage proceeds pay for the rest of the house or the apartment. In China, you pay upfront. You are extending the developer a loan. So, of the $300 billion in liabilities Evergrande owes, I think the biggest chunk, last time I checked, is basically what we would call a deferred revenue item. It’s money that you took in from people, and you owe them an apartment. And the apartments aren’t done, but the money’s been spent. So the problem is not just bailing people out, but the question of who is going to put up more capital to pay off the retail people that have bought apartments that haven’t gotten anything.

    These numbers are big, and Evergrande is not the only one. There are a handful of developers that are missing interest payments and have their bond prices reflecting distress.

    LP: How much has corruption played a role in this mess?

    JC: That’s a problem with their economic model focusing so much on real estate. Because they don’t have a local tax system, like property taxes, the local governments sell land to pay for local services. But whenever you have private developers buying land from municipalities controlled by one party, yeah, it’s ripe for corruption. We know that’s rampant in China.

    LP: How do you view the policy reaction to Evergrande?

    JC: So, what do the policymakers do? It’s not a Lehman moment in that there’s not a lot of cross-border interbank lending here. The Chinese system is still pretty much a closed financial system. That’s not the risk. During the Global Financial Crisis [GFC], what brought us to our knees was the liability side of the banks’ books. They couldn’t roll over the loans to each other because no one trusted the assets. Here, it’s the assets. I think that if they try to inflate it again, if they try to bail it out again, we’re only going to be right back in this soup in another two or three years, with even bigger problems.

    LP: Is this only a problem with the real estate sector, or is it more extensive?

    JC: Based on our analysis of the numbers – and you have to take the Chinese numbers with more than a shaker of salt – we’ve long thought that residential real estate was probably 20% of GDP and that all in, real estate construction and related services was about 25%. Ken Rogoff came out with a study last year that said it was 29%. That’s already a huge amount compared to other countries.

    Well, the numbers that the Wall Street Journal just put out were staggering, implying that there were 1.6 million acres of residential real estate under construction. If you do the math, it’s the equivalent of 72 million apartments. We believed that they were selling 20 million a year, but the WSJ story seems to imply that the numbers are actually much, much bigger. That tells me that our numbers and Rogoff’s numbers regarding GDP are probably on the low side. It could be a 30-40% problem, not a 20-25% problem. It’s just magnitudes bigger. We’ve never seen anything like this. And there’s no game plan, no historical analog. Maybe Tokyo in ’89? But this is worse than that. It’s worse than Spain in ’06 or Ireland in ’06. We’ve just never seen an economy this dependent on putting up apartment buildings — apartments that nobody is residing in. Everybody already has an apartment! These additional ones are second and third apartments at this point, and only for people who can afford them because they’re extremely expensive.

    I think the Chinese government has convinced themselves that by borrowing lots of money from their own citizens and elsewhere, that there’s ongoing activity that is sustainable. But as we find out in every real estate bubble that bursts, when your activity is constructing real estate itself and you’re taking capital and turning it into income by paying construction workers and real estate brokers and everybody else, when that activity ends, it goes poof! And there’s no income from the asset you’ve just financed. It’s not like building a factory where you have demand for your products. It’s just apartments sitting empty in Beijing or Shenzhen.

    LP: How does this problem relate to Chinese politics?

    JC: As all of this is happening on the financial and economic front, along with the crackdown on business elites, we’ve seen a commensurate rise in bellicosity, in saber-rattling toward Taiwan, India, and Tibet. We’ve seen a much more aggressive posture from Xi in relating to the West. Now every day there’s a warning in one of the Chinese Communist Party organs threatening Australia if they come to Taiwan, threatening Japan. I don’t know if the Party is preparing the citizenry for a “them.” Someone to blame.

    LP: As we’ve seen with the pandemic already.

    JC: Yes, and in the way they’ve treated the West’s outrage about the concentration camps in Xinjiang province. That’s the classic authoritarian move. We know it from our own country. Blame someone. “It’s their fault, not our fault.” We need an enemy. I don’t know how real the saber-rattling is. Is it a distraction from domestic belt-tightening that’s coming? Planting the idea that we’re going through hard times because the whole world is against us? We’ll see. It’s an incredibly interesting time to be watching China.

    LP: What does it all mean to the rest of the world?

    JC: Again, I think it’s not a financial transmission issue reverberating through the financial systems and markets. I do think that it will affect global growth. China was a full point of the 3% global real growth we’ve had since the GFC. Without China, it’s 2%. So China itself, by growing 7 or 8% a year was a disproportionate amount of global growth. It’s also going to impact what I call Greater China, which is Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore – the areas that trade very actively with China. And it will definitely impact commodity exporters. In this massive build-out, China has continued to suck in iron ore and copper and all kinds of things from a variety of different countries like Brazil and Australia. But I think that the impact might be more political than financial. That’s what worries me.

    LP: How would you characterize these worries?

    JC: It’s the rise of bellicosity, the rise of a more militant China as the economy and the financial situation has gotten more precarious. That’s a 1930s kind of problem. We know that a rise in authoritarianism and statism around the world was one of the upshots of ’29-’32. You had leaders saying, “I’m the one that can get us out of this problem” and “They are the ones who got us here.” This situation in China is a little bit frightening to the student of history, because there’s no doubt, whether you’re flying over Taiwan airspace or coming close to ships in the South China Sea, that there’s a rise of tensions in and around China. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

    LP: To touch on Xi’s crackdown on the tech industry, how do you view that in the context of the need to lessen this dependency on the real estate sector? Certainly, we can see in our own case with Silicon Valley — Facebook and so on — that poorly regulated tech is a problem. But what does Xi’s stance mean in the context of his desire for China to be a leader in innovation, on the cutting edge of technology?

    JC: That was always one of the responses to our concerns about the investment-driven model. People said, well, everyone does everything on their smartphone in China. They’re far more advanced in social media than we are and more advanced in payment systems, and so on.

    The problem was that, number one, it gave rise to these global tech celebrities, and number two, I think China, or the Party, realized a little bit later than they might have that the control of databases and information that these companies have is certainly a power center. And the one thing that the Communist Party cannot brook is a threat to its control. There are no other political parties, no free press. The only thing that could challenge control is the thing that people said would liberalize China – the internet. Access to the internet, access to ideas, access to global media. People thought these things would democratize China, but Xi is saying no: we’re going to put up a Great Firewall and we’re not going to allow Alibaba to have as much power as the Party.

    LP: And it looks like he’s going after the banks next.

    JC: The real estate system is so big, and so levered – the banking system has grown with it, of course. It seems to me that Xi is basically going through all the power centers — technology, finance, etc., and cracking down. He’s making sure his people are completely in charge and that there’s no interference, no other power centers. And it makes me ask why. What’s the end game? I mean, the Party has control of the country for the most part. The citizens understand that. So why? What is coming that he feels he needs to make sure that all of his people are in control? I can’t help but think of Stalin. The end game puzzles me the most. Is it to prepare for a takeover of Taiwan? To be more forceful on the international stage? I don’t know.

    LP: What is distinct about China’s vision of capitalism in the context of a one-party system? What are its particular features and challenges?

    JC: What distinguishes China and what makes it so unique from my perspective, putting on the financial historian’s hat, is that the speed at which they developed was unprecedented, and the amount of risk they have taken to do that is unprecedented. Their banking system is now the largest in the world. The amount of real estate construction is just completely insane, and until, perhaps, this past 12 months, we haven’t seen a real, serious effort to say, “Maybe we should rethink this fantasy where everybody is going to have six apartments. Maybe we need to do other things in our economy to balance it out.”

    How are they going to deal with the transition? Because they’re going to have to do it at some point. I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how they try to get out of it. Do they switch spending to defense spending? Do we get an arms race? Can they keep a closed currency? There are a whole lot of big questions.

    They’ve got to make some tough decisions on how the economic model is going to work going forward. In the late ‘80s, everybody thought Japan was going to surpass the U.S., but they had the same problems – a banking system that was bloated, real estate prices too high, too dependent on exports, and they’ve had 30 years of muddling through. The idea that China is going to be growing 6 or 7% while the rest of the world is growing 2% just has to be revisited. It’s not gonna happen. That realization is going to be the bucket of cold water that’s going to force them to rethink next steps. The population has been used to this leveraged prosperity, and everybody has borrowed money to buy real estate. What are the next steps? It’s otherworldly what they have done with real estate. Whatever happens, it’s going to be severe somehow. Whether it’s politically or financially — whatever it is, it’ll be severe.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 22:10

  • As Buffalo-Area Starbucks' Rally To Unionize, Corporate "Support Managers" Keep Showing Up At Stores
    As Buffalo-Area Starbucks’ Rally To Unionize, Corporate “Support Managers” Keep Showing Up At Stores

    Starbucks employees at several Buffalo area stores have filed for union elections. Not long after, “support managers” from Starbucks corporate started showing up for site visits. 

    The corporate employees are “part of a counteroffensive” by the company to help sniff out and prevent unionizing, employees told the New York Times. 

    Executives from out of town have also made an increasing number of visits, a move that Starbucks says is “standard company practice” and is to help “improve training”. 

    Decade long Starbucks veteran Michelle Eisen said: “For a lot of newer baristas, it’s an imposing force. It is not an easy job. It should not be complicated further by feeling like you’re having everything you’re doing or saying watched and listened to.”

    Starbucks employee Alexis Rizzo said: “It’s insane. Even if you’re just trying to run to the back to grab a gallon of milk, you now have to run an obstacle course to fit between all the folks who have no real reason to be there.”

    She said it was “intimidating” and that dozens of employees could all be in the store at once. 

    A Starbucks spokesman said: “The listening sessions led to requests from partners that resulted in those actions. It’s not a decision where our leadership came in and said, ‘We’re going to do this and this.’ We listened, heard their concerns.”

    Starbucks has so far staved off similar uprisings for unions in New York City in the early 2000s and in Philadelphia in 2019. 

    According to the NY Times, “Starbucks is also seeking to persuade the labor board to require that workers at all 20 Buffalo-area stores take part in the election, rather than allow stores to vote individually, arguing that employees can spend time at multiple locations.”

    As of now, none of Starbucks’ 9,000 locations are unionized. The National Labor Relations Board says union elections should be able to take place in an environments free of intimidation. Former NLRB chair Wilma Liebman said that Starbucks’ actions could eventually result in a union election being set aside, should the union lose.

    “You could say it’s part of an overall series of events that seems to create a tendency that people would be chilled or inhibited,” she said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 21:50

  • Joe Biden & The Disappearing Elephant: How To Make A Full-Sized Scandal Vanish In Front Of An Audience Of Millions
    Joe Biden & The Disappearing Elephant: How To Make A Full-Sized Scandal Vanish In Front Of An Audience Of Millions

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    This week marked the anniversary of one of the greatest political tricks in history: the disappearance of Hunter Biden scandal. 

    New emails were released that added new details to what was a raw influence peddling operation that netted millions from foreign sources. A new tranche of emails connecting President Joe Biden to key accounts prove just how this political sleight of hand was worthy of Houdini. After all, Houdini only made an elephant disappear. The Bidens made the equivalent to an entire circus disappear in front of an audience of millions.

    How Houdini made his 10,000 pound elephant Jennie disappear every night in New York’s Hippodrome remains a matter of some debate. There are no good pictures of his famous cabinet and Houdini later threatened to sue those claiming “disappearing elephants.”  What is clear is that the sheer size and the audacity of the act (like that of the Bidens) contributed to the trick. The fact is that Jennie never left the large cabinet, people just didn’t see it.

    The Bidens achieved the same effect. They made a full-sized scandal disappear with the help of media and members who did not want the public to see it.  Twitter banned postings about the laptop until after Biden was elected. The media dismissed the story as a conspiracy theory with some mocking the “New York Post and everyone else who got suckered into the ridiculous Hunter Biden Laptop story. Take a bow.”

    Committee Chairman Adam Schiff assured that public that “this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.”

    Some 50 former intelligence officials, including Obama’s CIA directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta, also insisted the laptop story was likely the work of Russian intelligence.

    The laptop is, of course, now recognized as genuine even by some of the early deniers. Hunter remains under criminal investigation for possible tax and money laundering violations. But the greatest “reveal” is the person referred to as “the Big Guy” and “Celtic” in these emails: President Biden.

    Recently released emails reference payments to President Biden from son’s accounts and indicate the possible commingling of funds.  Even more embarrassing, the shared account may have been used to pay a Russian prostitute named “Yanna.” In one text, a former secret service agent warns Hunter (who was holed up with a prostitute in an expensive hotel) “Come on H this is linked to Celtic’s account.”

    The question is whether prosecutors will continue to act like they do not see the elephant. Consider these established facts:

    • First, it is widely believed that Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden, received millions in influence peddling. For his part, Hunter only had influence and access to sell. He admits that he was a crack addict and alcoholic all the way up to the start of his father’s presidential campaign — in his words, “Drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating,” as well as “smoking crack around the clock.”

    • Second, Joe Biden has continued to deny knowledge or involvement in these foreign dealings and those denials are now directly contradicted by emails and witnesses. Hunter himself contradicted his father’s repeated denials. Likewise, a key business associate of Hunter Biden, Anthony Bobulinski, directly accused Joe Biden of lying about his involvement. Bobulinski has detailed a meeting with Joe Biden in a hotel to go over the dealings. Past emails included discussions of offering access to then-Vice President Biden. They also include alleged payments to Joe Biden. In one email, there is a discussion of a proposed equity split of “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” Bobulinski confirmed that “H” was used for Hunter Biden and that his father was routinely called “the big guy” in these discussions.

    • Third, while he was vice president, Joe Biden allowed Hunter to fly on Air Force 2 to countries like China where he was seeking millions. He also met with Hunter’s foreign business associates. In 2015, a State Department official flagged the possible conflicts from Hunter’s dealings during the Obama Administration.

    • Fourth, new emails suggest a commingling of funds between Hunter and his father. Emails from Eric Schwerin, his business partner at the Rosemont Seneca consultancy, refer to the payment of household bills for both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. He also notes that he was transferring money from Joe Biden. Rosemont Seneca is directly involved in the alleged influence peddling schemes and questionable money transfers from Chinese and Russian sources.

    • Finally, Hunter himself admitted that his missing computers files may have been stolen by foreign agents for blackmail purposes. Hunter’s emails claim one of his laptops may have been stolen by Russian agents after a drug and alcohol binge with prostitutes.

    Given the ongoing criminal prosecution, that would seem an ample basis for the appointment of a special counsel. The President is mentioned repeatedly in emails and by witnesses in relation to influence peddling schemes and even receiving funds from shared accounts. He has also denied knowledge that key witnesses refute, including his son.

    Influence peddling is common in Washington and can be done legally. Yet, it has also been the subject of intense criminal investigations. For example, the FBI raided the home of Trump counsel Rudolph Giuliani and others based on allegations of influence peddling in an ongoing criminal investigation. The Justice Department wants to know if Giuliani secured contracts in exchange for access or influence. The media gleefully recounted the raids and how Giuliani may have cashed in on his access.

    It seems that the illusion depends on the specific elephant.

    Houdini once said that “It is still an open question . . . as to what extent exposure really injures a performer.” The same question can be asked about a politician. President Biden is in full display in these emails. The question is whether the public – or the prosecutors – want to see him.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 21:30

  • "Prepare For The Worst" – Caribou Coffee Panic Hoards Arabica Beans Amid Global Deficit 
    “Prepare For The Worst” – Caribou Coffee Panic Hoards Arabica Beans Amid Global Deficit 

    US restaurant chain Caribou Coffee Co. is panic hoarding coffee beans as a global supply deficit grips the world and fuels inflation. 

    “We continue to increase safety stock on key items,” CEO John Butcher told Bloomberg. Besides coffee beans, he said the company is loading up on cups, lids, packaging, chocolate, and anything that comes to mind as supply chains remain snarled. 

    Butcher said, “my gut tells me to hope for the best and to prepare for the worst. I personally don’t see any reason to believe that supply-chain disruptions are going to go away anytime soon.”

    “Everybody is in the same boat: They’re hopeful that things will improve by the end of 2022. But for now, we have to prepare as though they won’t,” he said. 

    Caribou, now part of Panera Brands, has approximately 450 US locations and plans to expand its franchising program in 2022. However, an emerging global supply deficit of arabica coffee beans (something we first warned in March and later explained in May), disruptions of logistical networks around the world, caused by container shortages and port congestion, will continue to elevate coffee prices higher for longer.

    Arabica coffee prices have soared to fresh decade highs this week, as news of the global supply deficit paints a grim outlook for 2022. Some of the deficit originated in Brazil, one of the world’s top coffee producers, as droughts and frosts crushed crops. 

    “We believe in a deficit of around four million bags, other analysts see it as high as seven million bags,” Carlos Mera, head of Rabobank’s commodities desk, wrote, adding that exports from Brazil and other top producing countries are slowing. 

    If Caribou is panic buying coffee beans, imagine what Starbucks are other larger chains have been doing… 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 21:10

  • Newman: "Deep State Cannot Stop Unprecedented Awakening"
    Newman: “Deep State Cannot Stop Unprecedented Awakening”

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Award winning journalist Alex Newman says, “The Deep State globalists cannot stop the “unprecedented awakening going on in America.” 

    Newman, who wrote the popular book called “Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes,” explains, “Everybody knows that the press is lying…”

    ”  Nobody believes the press anymore.  ‘Let’s go Brandon.’  Everybody knows this is absolutely absurd.  The point is not to make people believe these absurdities anymore.  The point now is to demoralize people and to really silence us.  That’s what’s going on with sicking the FBI and DOJ on parents complaining about hate being taught to their children, and that’s what’s going on with the propaganda…

    They want to silence us.  They want to intimidate us.  They want to bully us, and they want to terrorize us into staying quite…

    AG Garland said all these parents are intimidating and harassing school boards.  What could be more intimidating than sicking one of the world’s most powerful law enforcement agency on parents expressing their concern?  I can’t think of more things that would be more intimidating than that.  So, the irony is off the charts, but the goal here is to silence people into submission.”

    Newman says the threats and bullying are backfiring and is not working in the least.  There is good news, and Newman explains,

    “They trot out these people to demoralize us and to scare us and make us think that everything is over.  Just keep your head down and comply, but it’s not working. 

    It is absolutely not working. 

    We have an awakening going on in this country… there’s an awakening that is happening here that is unprecedented in the modern history of this country.  It is such good news, but now we are in a race against time.  They are trying to collapse the supply chain and trying to implode everything before enough people wake up and do something about it.”

    Newman points out that since 2016, the Deep State has been losing the narrative and losing badly.  Newman explains,

    “The entire propaganda machine was non-stop bombarding Americans with anti-Trump propaganda, and Americans went to the polls.  Even with all the voter fraud in 2016, Trump still won in an Electoral College landslide.  That’s how much they have lost control of the narrative. 

    They thought by shadow banning us and rigging their algorithms, people should not come across our information.  That failed, and that’s why they had to ban you.  This is why they had to ban thousands of top content creators that were making huge amounts of money for them. 

    They have lost total control of the narrative, and they are left with what can they blow up and what can they do to scare us?  What can they do to make us think we are all alone, and that’s exactly what we are seeing right now, and it is crystal clear.  I think everybody should be able to see this at this point.”

    In closing, Newman points out how weak the Deep State really is and says, “Their entire narrative is based on lies, deception, trickery and intrigue...”

    ”  When you examine it closely, it all falls apart.  It’s true with the clot shots.  It’s true with the mandates.  It’s true with the schools.  It’s true with the courts, and it’s true with everything that they are doing.  They have to rely on lies.  The Bible says the devil is the father of lies.”

    Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with award winning journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the recent popular book “Deep State.” (10/16/21)

    (There is much more in the 38 min. video interview.)

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

    For a copy of Alex Newman’s popular book “Deep State” click here. For a copy of Alex Newman’s popular book “Crimes of the Educators” Click here.  (Please support the truth tellers!!) Newman also has his own website called LibertySentinel.org. There is lots of free information and articles there.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 20:50

  • Biden Nominee For Top Banking Regulator Facing Growing Resistance In Senate
    Biden Nominee For Top Banking Regulator Facing Growing Resistance In Senate

    Unsurprisingly, some influential Senate Democrats are getting cold feet about the prospect of President Biden nominating Saule Omarova to lead the OCC. The  Cornell law professor educated in the USSR who has proposed that the Fed take over most retail banking activities from the private sector (which a Fedcoin – or ZuckCoin – just might help it to do) while wholeheartedly supporting the progressives’ “Green New Deal” agenda.

    This has, understandably, made many in both Congress, and the industry she is about to regulate, uncomfortable.

    As we have reported, Omarova has previously favorably compared  the USSR to the US – at least when it comes to the “gender pay gap”.

    “Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best,’” Omarova tweeted in 2019, adding (after receiving harsh criticism) “I never claimed women and men were treated absolutely equally in every facet of Soviet life. But people’s salaries were set (by the state) in a gender-blind manner. And all women got very generous maternity benefits. Both things are still a pipe dream in our society!”

    Additionally, as the Wall Street Journal editorial board notes, “Ms. Omarova thinks asset prices, pay scales, capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government. In two papers, she has advocated expanding the Federal Reserve’s mandate to include the price levels of “systemically important financial assets” as well as worker wages. As they like to say at the modern university, from each according to her ability to each according to her needs.”

    In a recent paper “The People’s Ledger,” she proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumer bank deposits, “effectively ‘end banking,’ as we know it,” and become “the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” She’d also like the U.S. to create a central bank digital currency—as Venezuela and China are doing—to “redesign our financial system & turn Fed’s balance sheet into a true ‘People’s Ledger,’” she tweeted this summer. What could possibly go wrong? -WSJ

    Omarova also wants to create a “Public Interest Council” of “highly paid” academics who would wield subpoena power over regulatory agencies, including the Fed.

    But President Biden has put these concerns aside and said he plans to nominate Omarova, though he has yet to make it official. Many speculate her nomination is mostly a sop to the party’s progressive wing, since even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opposes her nomination.

    But according to a report published Wednesday by CNBC, Omarova’s nomination is running into resistance in the Senate, including among key Democratic members of the committee that must approve her nomination before it goes before the entire Senate.

    Senate Democrats are fractured over whether to support Saule Omarova, Biden’s indicated choice to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, jeopardizing her candidacy.

    Any Democratic defection, or an indication of such, could force Senate leadership to scrap the nomination before putting Omarova up to a vote.

    According to CNBC’s main source (who remains anonymous) is that these Senators have already shared their misgivings with President Biden.

    Her selection, coupled with her views on how to overhaul the US banking system, prompted several Senate Democrats or their staff to complain to the White House and suggest that the president’s choice will be tough to support on Capitol Hill, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    This person declined to be named in order to speak openly about private discussions between the White House and Senate offices.

    Others surrounding the OCC nomination process said a handful of moderate Democrats harbor reservations about Omarova and her aspirations to “end banking as we know it,” as she suggested in a Vanderbilt Law Review article.

    Those people cautioned that skeptical senators likely haven’t made a final decision yet but are leaning against her candidacy.

    But it’s not just the whispers of anonymized sources from the Hill suggesting that the nomination of what would be America’s first formerly Communist chief of the OCC (Saule once earned a “Lenin” award back in the USSR, which has favorably compared to the US in at least one notable instance) is in trouble. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, a critical red state Democrat and community banking champion, told CNBC that he’s having second thoughts – though he didn’t say he opposes the nomination.

    Sen. Jon Tester of Montana told CNBC on Tuesday that he has “concerns about Omarova’s candidacy. Tester, known in the Senate as a champion of community banks, did not indicate whether he opposes her outright.

    “Some of Ms. Omarova’s past statements about the role of government in the financial system raise concerns about her ability to impartially serve at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency,” he said. “I’m looking forward to meeting with her to discuss them.”

    Tester, a moderate member of the Senate banking committee, would also vote on whether to recommend Omarova to the broader chamber. A representative for Sen. Mark Warner, another moderate on the banking committee, said the Virginia Democrat has not yet made a decision on whether to support Omarova.

    Of course, Senate progressives like Sherrod Brown of Ohio still full-throatedly back Saule’s nomination.

    The office of banking committee Chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a fierce advocate of Omarova’s, reiterated its support for Biden’s pick.

    “Senator Brown and the White House continue to push back against Republicans’ misleading statements against Ms. Omarova’s character and policy positions,” a spokesperson said.

    The White House continues to support Omarova’s nomination, an official said.

    In a sign of how little the leadership wants to deal with this right now, with so many other Democratic priorities being hammered out, including Biden’s entire domestic agenda, when approached by CNBC, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer refused to even return their request for comment.

    At the very least, the takeaway from all of this is that even if Omarova’s nomination isn’t already dead in the water, the Dems won’t have the bandwidth to deal with a high-profile nomination fight until next year.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 20:30

  • Israel Approves $1.5 Billion Budget For Potential Attack On Iran
    Israel Approves $1.5 Billion Budget For Potential Attack On Iran

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    According to a report from Israel’s Channel 12, the Israeli government approved a $1.5 billion budget to prepare for a potential attack on Iran.

    The extra funds would be used to purchase additional aircraft, surveillance drones, and the munitions needed to strike Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. The report said about $620 million would come from the 2022 military budget, and the rest of the funds would come from this year’s budget.

    Airstrikes in Syria, via Reuters.

    For years, Israel has been seeking bunker-busting bombs that could penetrate Iran’s underground facilities. If they did acquire the munitions, Israel would also need bombers capable of carrying them, something it currently doesn’t have.

    The US tested a new 5,000-pound bunker buster earlier this month, which Israeli media interpreted as a possible message to Iran.

    In July, it was reported that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) requested additional funds for next year’s budget to prepare for operations against Iran. Throughout the year, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has repeatedly said the IDF is “accelerating” plans to strike Iran, and Israeli politicians have constantly been threatening the Islamic Republic.

    Israel frequently carries out covert attacks against Iran’s civilian nuclear program, but the IDF planning suggests an overt operation could happen in the future. The US has joined Israel in issuing threats against Iran.

    Footage of US “bunker buster” bomb being tested…

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

    Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted at military action against Iran alongside Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. Blinken said if diplomacy with Iran fails, the US will turn to “other options.”

    Lapid made clear that one of Blinken’s “options” was military action. “I would like to start by repeating what the Secretary of State just said. Yes, other options are going to be on the table if diplomacy fails.  And by saying other options, I think everybody understands here … what is it that we mean,” Lapid said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 20:10

  • In 'Deep Ship'? Biden Weighs National Guard To Address Record Number Of Vessels Off Los Angeles
    In ‘Deep Ship’? Biden Weighs National Guard To Address Record Number Of Vessels Off Los Angeles

    It’s becoming impossible to ignore just how unprepared the Biden administration is in tackling the current shipping crisis and its impact on domestic supply chains and state economies. A significant backlog of container ships continues to pile up at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, even though President Biden issued a directive last week to keep both ports, which account for 40% of all shipping containers entering the U.S., operating on a 24/7 basis. Now the administration is so desperate that they’re weighing the use of the National Guard to alleviate stretched supply chains so that Americans will hopefully get their consumer goods before the holidays, according to AP News. 

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

    With a record 97 container ships at anchor across the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, congestion at the nation’s top ports worsens. To alleviate bottlenecks threatening the holiday shopping season, the White House released a directive last week advising both ports to operate on a 24/7 basis to counter the backlog. For some context, the ports typically have 17 ships at anchor in pre-pandemic times, so with 97, it only suggests Biden’s plan is “too little too late,” explained one U.S. importer of toys. 

    The administration is searching for other ideas to alleviate port congestion. According to WaPo, citing three sources, Biden’s team has explored whether deploying the National Guard at the ports would quell overwhelmed supply chains. 

    One source said the administration has not considered activating the National Guard at a federal level but could soon deploy Guardsmen on a state level. They may take a page out from the U.K. when they deployed troops to resolve gas shortages last month. What’s likely to happen are Guardsmen with licenses to operate heavy machinery or trucks could be deployed.

    Much of the port congestion is due to the relentless, fiscally stimulated demand for (made in China) products by Americans, all thanks to the government handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus checks. Labor shortages at ports have also been another issue, which originated when the Biden administration began paying people more money to sit on their couches than work. 

    A.P. notes that a trade group representing clothing manufacturers has requested the National Guard or even naval ports to unload cargo.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 19:50

  • The FDA's War Against The Truth On Ivermectin
    The FDA’s War Against The Truth On Ivermectin

    Authored by David Henderson and Charles Hopper via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    On July 28, the Wall Street Journal ran our article “Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug?”

    In it, we outlined the potential value of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin for Covid-19, and we questioned the FDA’s vigorous attack on ivermectin. Many people praised us and many criticized us. We had clearly covered a sensitive subject. It didn’t help that one of the studies we referenced was retracted the day our article was published. Within hours of learning that fact, we sent a mea culpa to the Journal’s editors. They acted quickly, adding a note at the end of the electronic version and publishing our letter. It’s important to address two criticisms of our work. The first is that we exaggerated the FDA’s warning on ivermectin. The second is that Merck’s stance on ivermectin proved that even the company that developed ivermectin thought that it doesn’t work for Covid-19.

    First, we didn’t exaggerate the FDA’s warning on ivermectin.

    Instead, the agency changed its website after our article was published, probably to reflect the points we made.

    Second, Merck had two incentives to downplay ivermectin’s usefulness against the novel coronavirus.

    We’ll explain both points more fully.

    Ivermectin was developed and marketed by Merck & Co. while one of us (Hooper) worked there years ago. Dr. William C. Campbell and Professor Satoshi Omura were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. They earned it for discovering and developing avermectin. Later Campbell and some associates modified avermectin to create ivermectin. Merck & Co. has donated four billion doses of ivermectin to prevent river blindness and other diseases in areas of the world, such as Africa, where parasites are common. The ten doctors who are in the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance call ivermectin “one of the safest, low-cost, and widely available drugs in the history of medicine.” Ivermectin is on the WHO’s List of Essential Medicines and ivermectin has been used safely in pregnant women, children, and infants.

    Ivermectin is an antiparasitic, but it has shown, in cell cultures in laboratories, the ability to destroy 21 viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. Further, ivermectin has demonstrated its potential in clinical trials for the treatment of Covid-19 and in large-scale population studies for the prevention of Covid-19.

    Contradicting these positive results, the FDA issued a special statement warning that “you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19.” The FDA’s warning, which included language such as, “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death,” and “highly toxic,” might suggest that the FDA was warning against pills laced with poison. In fact, the FDA had already approved the drug years ago as a safe and effective anti-parasitic. Why would it suddenly become dangerous if used to treat Covid-19? Further, the FDA claimed, with no scientific basis, that ivermectin is not an antiviral, notwithstanding its proven antiviral activity.

    Interestingly, at the bottom of the FDA’s strong warning against ivermectin was this statement: “Meanwhile, effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 continue to be to wear your mask, stay at least 6 feet from others who don’t live with you, wash hands frequently, and avoid crowds.” Was this based on the kinds of double-blind studies that the FDA requires for drug approvals? No.

    After some critics claimed that we overstated or overreacted to the FDA’s special warning, we reviewed the FDA’s website and found that it had been changed, and there was no mention of the changes nor any reason given. Overall, the warnings were watered down and clarified. We noticed the following changes:

    • The false statement that “Ivermectin is not an anti-viral (a drug for treating viruses)” was removed.

    • “Taking a drug for an unapproved use can be very dangerous. This is true of ivermectin, too” was changed to the less alarming “Ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective for these indications.” (Indications is the official term used in the industry to denote new uses for a drug, such as new diseases or conditions, and/or new patient populations.)

    • The statement, “If you have a prescription for ivermectin for an FDA-approved use, get it from a legitimate source and take it exactly as prescribed,” was changed to, “If your health care provider writes you an ivermectin prescription, fill it through a legitimate source such as a pharmacy, and take it exactly as prescribed.” This more clearly acknowledges that reasonable physicians may prescribe ivermectin for non-FDA-approved uses, such as Covid-19.

    • The ending statement about masks, spacing, hand washing, and avoiding crowds was replaced with one that recommended getting vaccinated and following CDC guidelines.

    • The reasonable statement “Talk to your health care provider about available COVID-19 vaccines and treatment options. Your provider can help determine the best option for you, based on your health history” was added at the end.

    The new warning from the FDA is more correct and less alarming than the previous one.

    In a statement from February, Merck, the company that originated and still sells ivermectin, agreed with the FDA that ivermectin should not be used for Covid-19.

    “We do not believe that the data available support the safety and efficacy of ivermectin beyond the doses and populations indicated in the regulatory agency-approved prescribing information.”

    To some, this appeared to be a smoking gun. Merck wants to make money, they reason, and people are interested in using ivermectin for Covid-19, therefore, Merck would warn against such usage only if the scientific evidence were overwhelming. But that’s not how the pharmaceutical industry works.

    Here’s how the FDA-regulated pharmaceutical industry really works.

    The FDA judges all drugs as guilty until proven, to the FDA’s satisfaction, both safe and efficacious. By what process does this happen? The FDA waits for a deep-pocketed sponsor to present a comprehensive package that justifies the approval of a new drug or a new use of an existing drug. For a drug like ivermectin, long since generic, a sponsor may never show up. The reason is not that the drug is ineffective; rather, the reason is that any expenditures used to secure approval for that new use will help other generic manufacturers that haven’t invested a dime. Due to generic drug substitution rules at pharmacies, Merck could spend millions of dollars to get a Covid-19 indication for ivermectin and then effectively get zero return. What company would ever make that investment?

    With no sponsor, there is no new FDA-approved indication and, therefore, no official recognition of ivermectin’s value. Was the FDA’s warning against ivermectin based on science? No. It was based on process. Like a typical bureaucrat, the FDA won’t recommend the use of ivermectin because, while it might help patients, such a recommendation would violate its processes. The FDA needs boxes checked off in the right order. If a sponsor never shows up and the boxes aren’t checked off, the FDA’s standard approach is to tell Americans to stay away from the drug because it might be dangerous or ineffective. Sometimes the FDA is too enthusiastic and these warnings are, frankly, alarming. Guilty until proven innocent.

    There are two reasons that Merck would warn against ivermectin usage, essentially throwing its own drug under the bus.

    Once they are marketed, doctors can prescribe drugs for uses not specifically approved by the FDA. Such usage is called off-label. Using ivermectin for Covid-19 is considered off-label because that use is not specifically listed on ivermectin’s FDA-approved label.

    While off-label prescribing is widespread and completely legal, it is illegal for a pharmaceutical company to promote that use. Doctors can use drugs for off-label uses and drug companies can supply them with product. But heaven forbid that companies encourage, support, or promote off-label prescribing. The fines for doing so are outrageous. During a particularly vigorous two-year period, the Justice Department collected over $6 billion from drug companies for off-label promotion cases. Merck’s lawyers haven’t forgotten that lesson.

    Another reason for Merck to discount ivermectin’s efficacy is a result of marketing strategy. Ivermectin is an old, cheap, off-patent drug. Merck will never make much money from ivermectin sales.

    Drug companies aren’t looking to spruce up last year’s winners; they want new winners with long patent lives.

    Not coincidentally, Merck recently released the clinical results for its new Covid-19 fighter, molnupiravir, which has shown a 50% reduction in the risk of hospitalization and death among high-risk, unvaccinated adults. Analysts are predicting multi-billion-dollar sales for molnupiravir.

    While we can all be happy that Merck has developed a new therapeutic that can keep us safe from the ravages of Covid-19, we should realize that the FDA’s rules give companies an incentive to focus on newer drugs while ignoring older ones. Ivermectin may or may not be a miracle drug for Covid-19. The FDA doesn’t want us to learn the truth.

    The FDA spreads lies and alarms Americans while preventing drug companies from providing us with scientific explorations of existing, promising, generic drugs.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 19:30

  • Putin Orders All Workers Home For One Week Amid Record COVID Surge
    Putin Orders All Workers Home For One Week Amid Record COVID Surge

    Cities across Russia appear to be heading into lockdown again, despite the Sputnik V vaccine having been the world’s first to have rolled out last year, and with at this point an estimated one-third of the population being fully vaccinated. Yet this week has witnessed new daily record highs as confirmed coronavirus cases surge once again. 

    Tuesday witnessed the highest single-day death toll thus far in the pandemic, with 1,038 deaths from the virus recorded, according to the AP. President Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday an almost unprecedented order for all workers across the nation to stay home for one week. In some hard-hit cities, the mandate could reach up to two weeks. However, authorities have stopped short of imposing a full-fledged national lockdown.

    Via Newsweek

    During Wednesday statements, Russian health authorities reported 34,073 new coronavirus cases over the prior 24 hours, a new daily high.

    The work stoppage plan was initially proposed by Putin’s Cabinet – which the president is now backing – to take effect October 30, and going through the first week of November.

    “Our task today is to protect life and health of our citizens and minimize the consequences of the dangerous infection,” Putin said in a video call with officials Wednesday, The Associated Press reported. 

    “To achieve that, it’s necessary to first of all slow the pace of contagion and mobilize additional reserves of the health care system, which is currently working under a high strain,” he added.

    Putin further expressed frustrations with the course the pandemic is taking, after the vaccine has long been available to all seeking it: “I can’t understand what’s going on,” he said. “We have a reliable and efficient vaccine. The vaccine really reduces the risks of illness, grave complications and death.”

    “There are only two ways to get over this period — to get sick or to receive a vaccine,” Putin said. “It’s better to get the vaccine, why wait for the illness and its grave consequences? Please be responsible and take the necessary measures to protect yourself, your health and your close ones.”

    Graphs via Moscow Times

    Reports estimate that about 45 million Russians are fully vaccinated, which constitutes 32% of the total population of 146 million. According to France24, there continues to be widespread hesitancy based on “mixed signals” from government authorities, akin to the kind of confusion and contradictory messaging seen in the United States and other parts of the globe:

    Even though Russia in August 2020 became the first country of the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine and vaccines are plentiful, Russians have shown hesitancy about getting the shots, a skepticism blamed on conflicting signals sent by authorities.

    While extolling Sputnik V and three other domestic vaccines, state-controlled media were often critical of Western-made shots, a controversial message that many saw as feeding public doubts about vaccines in general.

    Below are some further details on the recent Covid developments in Russia, via The Moscow Times:

    • President Vladimir Putin announced a non-working week in Russia from Oct. 30-Nov. 7. Putin pleaded with Russians to get vaccinated and said the public holidays could be extended further if cases do not start to fall.
    • Moscow will go into a strict lockdown if coronavirus infections continue to rise, according to a Moscow government order that was sent to businesses in the city Wednesday.
    • Moscow’s mayor announced Tuesday plans to reintroduce remote work, mandatory vaccinations for service workers and other measures to slow the surging fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic starting next week.
    • Nationwide, 87% of hospital beds reserved for coronavirus patients are occupied, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said Wednesday in a televised meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

    While Putin’s nationwide one week work furlough is being described as an “order” – it’s unclear to what degree it will be legally enforced, or met with penalties should some offices and companies stay open for their workforce. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 19:10

  • "It's Like A Zombie Apocalypse Walking Into Parts Of San Francisco": Addict's Mother Decries
    “It’s Like A Zombie Apocalypse Walking Into Parts Of San Francisco”: Addict’s Mother Decries

    Authored by Vanessa Serna via The Epoch Times,

    San Francisco’s leniency on drugs is filling the street with lawlessness, according to the mom of a 32-year-old drug addict, who’s urging policymakers to enforce stricter laws that criminalize drug use and sales in the city.

    “[Police] are on the streets and they’re not arresting anybody and the dealers are selling right in front of them,” Jacqui Berlinn said in an interview with California Insider, a show with The Epoch Times.

    “They allow the addicts to use in front of other people… Other people who live there can openly see the addict’s using needles and smoking … acting out in the ways that are harmful to them or the public.”

    Berlinn said her son is suffering from a fentanyl addiction, which has left him homeless and physically bent at a 45-degree angle.

    “A lot of people say, you have to let him hit rock bottom,” Berlinn said.

    “My son’s rock bottom I believe is death. Right now, he needs to be coerced to get help because his fear of the withdrawals from this drug are so great.”

    Berlinn’s son was introduced to drugs as a teenager and he became addicted after suffering from anxiety and depression.

    Nowadays, Berlinn’s son wanders the streets between Oakland and San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood since drugs are more accessible there.

    In the past, Berlinn traveled throughout the Tenderloin neighborhood in search of her son, and she described the area as a “zombie apocalypse” with drug dealers on the corners of the street accompanied by homeless drug addicts.

    Despite selling and consuming drugs in public, Berlinn has noticed police officers in the area allowed the lawlessness on the streets to continue.

    “I feel like they’re enabling these people to commit a slow suicide,” Berlinn said.

    “The people that are there that are homeless and addicted are being preyed upon and they are deteriorating slowly. It’s a slow death. They’re out in the elements. Many of them have open sores and they’re in bondage to these drugs and San Francisco particularly helps keep them in that situation by not prosecuting the drug dealers, by allowing the open-air drug scenes.”

    Berlinn once reported to police a naked homeless man in plain sight.

    Police stated there was not anything they could do, as people were frequently naked in the area, she said.

    Amid witnessing the drug crisis in San Francisco, Berlinn called for a statewide initiative to treat mental illnesses, rather than a county-by-county approach, stating homeless drug addicts come to San Francisco due to the “hands-off, live and let live policy.”

    According to Berlinn, Proposition 4 – a law that changed some lower-level crimes from felonies to misdemeanors – and other state laws has led to fewer arrests for carrying small amounts of drugs and shoplifting.

    The last time of his arrest, Berlinn’s son expressed his desire to get sober. He made a call to check into a rehabilitation center but was turned away due to a lack of availability.

    Temporarily, he was sent to a transitional sober living home outside of San Francisco where he eventually turned back to drugs.

    The transitional sober living home offered no mental health services while allowing him to come and go as he pleased, Berlinn said.

    Her son has shared that some addicts who’ve lived in the housing with no support services have overdosed while alone and nobody knew or was around to revive them.

    “His greatest fear is detoxing from fentanyl because it’s supposed to be incredibly horrible,” she said. “He could even die from it if he’s not getting help and being monitored.”

    Berlinn described the homeless drug addicts as people’s family members and loved ones who are trapped.

    “They’re definitely not cracking down on these open-air drug scenes,” Berlinn said. “They’re allowing it to flourish and the solution I hear is safe injection sites. My son says that then there’ll just be more people like him on the street because they’re just making it easier to be a drug addict. They’re normalizing drug addiction.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 18:50

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 20

Today’s News 20th October 2021

  • The US Dominates The World's "Keyboard Kings" With $23 Million eSports Prize Money In 2020
    The US Dominates The World’s “Keyboard Kings” With $23 Million eSports Prize Money In 2020

    Last month, Thailand became the latest of a growing number of countries recognizing eSports as an official sport, joining the ranks of China, the United States, South Korea and others.

    When it comes to prize money won by its eSports athletes, the Asian country was almost able to crack the top 10 in 2020. The top spots were claimed by places known for its eSports proficiency as Statista’s chart indicates.

    Infographic: The Keyboard Kings of the World | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The United States came out on top with its 4,854 players earning roughly $23 million in prize money.

    However, as Statista’s Flrian Zandt notes, even though the total might be impressive, China emerges the winner when you factor in the number of players and the corresponding per capita income by earning top spots in eSports competitions. On average, every U.S. player made about $4,700 with tournament wins, while the 846 Chinese players earning a total of $17.2 million managed to rack up a per capita figure of approximately $20,300. Coming in third is South Korea, the country with the longest running eSports history and home to the International Esports Federation since 2008, with a total sum of $9.5 million in prize money earned by 939 athletes.

    Overall, 25,193 players accumulated roughly $122 million in prize money in 2020. Even though this seems like a sizeable amount, the biggest revenue streams for the eSports segment lie elsewhere. For 2021, Newzoo estimates revenues of $641 million through sponsorships, $192.6 million through media rights licensing and $126.6 million through publisher fees alone.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 02:45

  • Things Are Getting Messy In Draghi's Italy
    Things Are Getting Messy In Draghi’s Italy

    Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

    Sixteen percent of the country’s officially employed workforce just lost their jobs (temporarily for the moment). And as one would expect, they’re not happy.  

    It is a strange experience watching the events currently unfolding in Italy from the relative calm and normality of Catalonia. As I reported in August, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled against the use of covid passports to restrict access to public spaces — specifically hospitality businesses (bars, restaurants and nightclubs). Since then the court has scaled back the ruling, allowing certain regions, including Galicia and Catalonia, to use the digital documents to restrict access to bars and nightclubs. But things are still moving quite slowly though I’m sure they’ll pick up speed soon. Italy, by contrast, has just introduced the strictest rules in Europe.

    “No Jab, No Job” Writ Large

    As of last Friday all residents of Italy need a covid passport, or Green Pass, to access not only public spaces but also public and private workplaces. The pass proves that they have either been vaccinated against Covid-19, have recovered from the disease in the past six months or have recently tested negative. And now they need it to make a living, to feed their families.

    The “no jab, no job” rule applies to workers of all kinds, including the self employed, domestic staff and even people working remotely. If you’d still rather not get vaccinated, you have the option of showing proof of a negative test every two days. That can cost anywhere between €15 and €50 each time — far beyond the means of most low-paid workers. If you still refuse to get vaccinated or present proof of negative tests, you face unpaid suspension as well as a fine of up to €1,500. Public sector workers have five days to present the green pass before being suspended. Private sector workers without a green pass face suspension from the first day.

    Here’s more from Politico (comment and emphasis in brackets my own):

    By law, all workers must be able to show a so-called Green Pass, proving they are vaccinated against COVID-19 or have tested negative in the past 48 hours. Roughly 81 percent of Italians over 12 are fully vaccinated.

    While polls suggest the majority of Italians are in favor of vaccine passes (just as the majority of people in all countries are in favour of vaccine passes, according to polls), there are still 3.8 million unvaccinated workers, many in strategic sectors and public services such as ports, trucking, health care and law enforcement, who will be unable to work.

    Massive Cull of Workers

    This is by any measure a massive cull of workers. Three point eight million is more than 5% of Italy’s entire population and over 16% of the country’s officially employed workforce (22.7 million). The total number of people currently unemployed in Italy is 2.3 million. In other words, if none of the unvaccinated workers were to cave in to the government’s demands — some will, of course, we just don’t know how many — the number of people without work in Italy would increase by well over 150% — in the space of just one week! And as the Politico article mentions, many of these workers are in strategic sectors and public services.

    This is all happening as Europe — and the world at large — faces the worst supply chain crisis in decades as well as acute energy and labor shortages. The move also risks giving a huge boost to Italy’s already quite large informal economy. Given as much, this is a huge, high-stakes bluff on the part of Draghi’s technocratic government, which was formed eighth months ago. If it pays off, the vast majority of Italy’s vaccine holdouts will fall into line and go back to work, and other governments across Europe will follow suit with similar mandates. If it doesn’t, Italy’s economy could be plunged into chaos.

    So far, data suggest that the government’s “no jab, no job” rule hasn’t exactly had the desired effect. When the rule was initially unveiled, on September 16, Italy’s Public Administration Minister Renato Brunetta said it would trigger such a “huge” boost vaccination take-up that its job would largely be done before it even came into effect. That hasn’t happened. As El Mundo reports, in the week through Oct.8 some 410,000 people received the first dose, according to official data, a 36% drop from the previous week and the lowest weekly count since early July. 

    Over the last few days the response of many of the affected workers has been to stage rolling strikes and protests across the country. Roads and ports have been blocked. This has coincided with hundreds of flight cancellations due to strikes by workers at the former flagship airline Alitalia, which flew its last flight on Thursday. There have also been violent demonstrations by far-right groups such as Casa Pound and Forza Nuova as well as a 24-hour general strike held last week by unions to protest the government’s labour and economic policies.

    Since Friday Italy’s largest port, Trieste, 40% of whose employees are unvaccinated, has been an important focal point of industrial action.

    “There are no blockades, whoever wants to work does,” said Stefano Puzzer, leader of the protest against the health pass in the port of Trieste, on Friday. Yet although the strike was reportedly entirely peaceful and workers who wanted to work were allowed to do so, riot  police yesterday used water cannons and tear gas to evict the longshoremen.

    One Little Flaw

    The ostensible logic behind the government’s latest mandate is that by “nudging” almost everyone who can get vaccinated to get vaccinated, it will help the country finally achieve herd immunity and thereby eliminate the virus. Also, work spaces will become much safer places because all workers will either have been fully vaccinated against covid-19, will have natural immunity or will have recently tested negative for the virus.

    There’s just one little flaw in the plan: the current crop of covid-19 vaccines are rather “leaky”, particularly with regard to the Delta variant.

    As such, people who are vaccinated are still liable to catch and transmit the virus and in some countries (such as the UK) the vaccinated account for more cases (in nominal terms) than the unvaccinated. In addition, what protection the vaccines do provide tends to wane rapidly. At the peak of Israel’s latest wave of infections, in August, half of the seriously ill hospitalized patients had been fully vaccinated at least five months prior, reported NPR. 

    Which begs the question: if a vaccinated person and an unvaccinated person have a similar capacity to carry, shed and transmit the virus, particularly in its Delta form and even more so after four of five months after vaccination, what difference does implementing a vaccination passport, certificate or ID actually make to the spread of the virus?

    Vaccine Passport: An End In and Of Itself?

    In sum, Italy just unleashed the most severe de facto vaccine mandate in Europe on the basis of a vaccine that doesn’t actually work very well and is still only authorised by the European Medical Agency for emergency use. To give an idea of just how extreme the Draghi government’s position now is, the only other country in the world to have introduced a mandatory Covid passport for all workers is Saudi Arabia, reports Thomas Fazi in a recent article:

    With these changes, we are effectively stripping citizens who haven’t broken any law whatsoever (in Italy, like elsewhere, Covid vaccines are not mandatory) of their basic constitutional rights — the right to work, to study, to move freely. That should give anyone reason to pause and reflect. This kind of discrimination is also in direct violation of EU Regulation 2021/953, which states that “[t]he issuance of [Covid] certificates… should not lead to discrimination on the basis of the possession of a specific category of certificate”, and that “[i]t is necessary to prevent direct or indirect discrimination against persons who are not vaccinated, for example because of medical reasons… or because they have not yet had the opportunity or chose not to be vaccinated”.

    This is also echoed by Resolution 2361 (2021) of the Council of Europe. In fact, the word “discrimination” doesn’t even begin to do justice to what we are witnessing in Italy. Representatives of the political, medical and media establishment have openly accused the unvaccinated of being “rats”, “subhumans” and “criminals”, who deserve to be “excluded from public life” and “from the national health service” and even to “die like flies”. Perhaps more worryingly, both prime minister Mario Draghi and the president Sergio Mattarella have accused the unvaccinated of “putting the lives of others at risk” (a claim based on the assumption that the vaccinated aren’t contagious).

    That claim has now been thoroughly disproved by myriad scientific studies, as Yves painstakingly documented in August. So why do governments continue to repeat it? Why aren’t they rethinking their strategy? Perhaps, as Fazi postulates, the green pass is not just a means to an end — mass vaccination — but also an end in and of itself:

    The Italian economic-political establishment has a long history of invoking, embellishing or even engineering crises — usually economic in nature — to justify technocratic governments and emergency measures, as well as the sidestepping of the normal channels of democracy. In this sense, it is not outlandish to posit that the country’s elites, under Draghi’s leadership, may view the current conjecture as a golden opportunity to complete the oligarchisation of the country they’ve been working at for the past decades (and in which Mario Draghi has played a central role).

    A crucial feature of this process has been the transition from a post-war regime based on the centrality of parliament to one dominated by executive, technocratic and supranational powers, in which the legislature performs a marginal role, thus insulating policymaking from democratic processes. As a result, there has been an increased resort to so-called “technical governments” run by “experts” supposedly untainted by political partisanship and unburdened by the complications of parliamentary politics — as well as the transfer of key policy tools from the national level, where a certain degree of democratic control can always potentially be exercised, to the supranational institutions of the EU, which are undemocratic by design.

    Now Draghi is even being heralded in some quarters as a possible new figurehead for Europe in the post-Merkel era. The financial and economic elite are no doubt salivating at the prospect.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 02:00

  • The CIA Has Stultified American Consciences
    The CIA Has Stultified American Consciences

    Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Mises Institute,

    One of the worst consequences of converting the federal government to a national security state has been the stultification or warping of the consciences of the American people. With unwavering allegiance to the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, all too many Americans have sacrificed their sense of right and wrong at the altar of “national security,” the two-word term that has become the most important term in the political lexicon of the American people.

    The best example of this phenomenon is the CIA’s power of assassination. Most Americans have come to passively accept this power, with nary a thought as to the victims against whom it is carried out and under what what circumstances it is carried out.

    Consider recent revelations that the CIA was planning to assassinate Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, for disclosing dark-side secrets of the US deep state to to the world. 

    That’s why US officials have pursued him with a vengeance—not because he lied about the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s dark-side activities but rather because he disclosed the truth about them. 

    That’s why they were seeking to murder him—to silence him, to punish him, and to send a message to other potential disclosers of dark-side secrets of the national security establishment. 

    But anyone with a conscience that is operating would easily see that assassinating Assange would be just plain murder. And at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the murder of an innocent person is just plain evil. 

    Yet the reaction to all this from the mainstream press has been one great big collective yawn. No big deal. It’s just another state-sponsored assassination intended to protect “national security.” If US national security state officials have decided that Assange needs to be taken out, then that’s just the way it is. That’s why we have a CIA, after all. We have to defer to its judgment, even if it means sacrificing our consciences in the process. After all, that’s its job—to protect “national security.”

    By the way, there is virtually no doubt that if they could get away with assassinating Edward Snowden for disclosing the truth about NSA dark-side activity, they would murder him too. The probable reason they haven’t assassinated Snowden is because they haven’t figured out a way to get the assassins out of Russia.

    When the federal government was converted to a national security state after World War II, the American people made an implicit bargain with the devil. The bargain empowered the national security establishment to engage in dark-side activity, including assassination. But another part of the bargain was that officials would keep their dark-side activity secret from the American people so that people wouldn’t have to deal with their consciences over a governmental entity that was assassinating people. 

    Assange’s and Snowden’s great “crime” was in violating that pact. By bringing dark-side activity to the attention of the American people, they ran the risk that people’s consciences might start operating. 

    So far, there appears to be no risk of that happening. Consider, for example, the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. That was just plain murder. Iran and the United States are not at war with each other. Sure, we are told that Iran is a “rival,” an “enemy,” an “opponent,” or an “adversary,” but does that morally entitle US officials to murder Iranian officials? It does not, just as it doesn’t entitle Iranian officials to murder US officials. 

    Again, however, the reaction among the mainstream press to the assassination of Soleimani was one great, big collective yawn. Revealingly, there was also no moral outrage expressed among church ministers across America. If the Pentagon and the CIA deemed it necessary to assassinate Soleimani, that’s all we need to know. 

    To get America back on the right track, what we need is a moral awakening, one that entails the operation of conscience. If that day were to come, there is no doubt that the American people would cast the CIA into the dustbin of history, where all evil agencies belong.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/20/2021 – 00:05

  • The World Is Transitioning To EVs, But Our Nation's Power Grid May Not Be Ready
    The World Is Transitioning To EVs, But Our Nation’s Power Grid May Not Be Ready

    While electric vehicles are undoubtedly the future, the question of whether or not our power grid is also ready for the “future” has started to surface. Especially in places like New York.

    Power outages and appeals from utilities for customers to cut back on usage have been commonplace – not just in California, but also in places like New York, Texas and Louisiana. 

    And while the nation stays focused on “the future” of vehicle travel, another bottleneck arises in power generation, a new Washington Post article points out. The grid is going to be “challenged” by the need to deliver power to the cars, the report notes.

    Gil Quiniones, head of a state agency called the New York Power Authority, said: “We got to talk about the grid. Otherwise we’ll be caught flat-footed.”

    One recent study predicts the country will need to invest $125 billion into the grid to handle the shift to electric vehicles. The current infrastructure bill would account for $5 billion in upgrades. That leaves an enormous gap.

    Cars, trucks and busses in New York will use 14 percent of New York’s total output by 2050, the report says. Its the same as “powering a new city of four million people”.

    Shuli Goodman, executive director of a Linux Foundation project called LF Energy, said: “The grid of the future isn’t going to be a grid at all. It will be more like the Internet.”

    Government officials are optimistic about wind and solar, but renewables like wind power are limited in how they can expand and unreliable in their power generation. Wind, for example, makes up just 3% of power generation in New York.

    “The rest of New York, the topography doesn’t really lend itself to wind. Up and down the East Coast, it’s more difficult to site wind farms,” said Jason Du Terroil, who works for a wind turbine operator.

    The Tug Hill Land Trust, a private nonprofit, even objected to some wind power being installed in parts of rural New York. A representative from the group said: “If you’re cutting down trees to put up windmills to fight climate change, it doesn’t make sense to me. It would be a lot easier to swallow if it was a community project, with community benefits.”

    But the grid must expand with New York’s 70/30 goal, one where 70% of power is carbon free by 2030, in mind. 

    And while solar has also been proposed as a solution, especially for cities, not everyone is confident that large corporations and crowded cities won’t overwhelm the grid.

    “What if Amazon and FedEx and UPS say, ‘We’re going to go electric’. Con Ed is going to be scrambling,” Gil Quiniones, head of the New York Power Authority, said.

    “You don’t want everybody charging when it’s 96 degrees at 2 p.m. That’ll crash the system.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 23:45

  • Bitcoin & The US Fiscal Reckoning
    Bitcoin & The US Fiscal Reckoning

    Authored by Avik Roy via NationalAffairs.com,

    Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have few fans in Washington. At a July congressional hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that cryptocurrency “puts the [financial] system at the whims of some shadowy, faceless group of super-coders.” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen likewise asserted that the “reality” of cryptocurrencies is that they “have been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers; they’ve been a tool to finance terrorism.”

    Thus far, Bitcoin’s supporters remain undeterred. (The term “Bitcoin” with a capital “B” is used here and throughout to refer to the system of cryptography and technology that produces the currency “bitcoin” with a lowercase “b” and verifies bitcoin transactions.) A survey of 3,000 adults in the fall of 2020 found that while only 4% of adults over age 55 own cryptocurrencies, slightly more than one-third of those aged 35-44 do, as do two-fifths of those aged 25-34. As of mid-2021, Coinbase — the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States — had 68 million verified users.

    To younger Americans, digital money is as intuitive as digital media and digital friendships. But Millennials with smartphones are not the only people interested in bitcoin; a growing number of investors are also flocking to the currency’s banner. Surveys indicate that as many as 21% of U.S. hedge funds now own bitcoin in some form. In 2020, after considering various asset classes like stocks, bonds, gold, and foreign currencies, celebrated hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones asked, “[w]hat will be the winner in ten years’ time?” His answer: “My bet is it will be bitcoin.”

    What’s driving this increased interest in a form of currency invented in 2008? The answer comes from former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who once noted, “the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press…that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation…the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to…inflation.” In other words, governments with fiat currencies — including the United States — have the power to expand the quantity of those currencies. If they choose to do so, they risk inflating the prices of necessities like food, gas, and housing.

    In recent months, consumers have experienced higher price inflation than they have seen in decades. A major reason for the increases is that central bankers around the world — including those at the Federal Reserve — sought to compensate for Covid-19 lockdowns with dramatic monetary inflation. As a result, nearly $4 trillion in newly printed dollars, euros, and yen found their way from central banks into the coffers of global financial institutions.

    Jerome Powell, the current Federal Reserve chairman, insists that 2021’s inflation trends are “transitory.” He may be right in the near term. But for the foreseeable future, inflation will be a profound and inescapable challenge for America due to a single factor: the rapidly expanding federal debt, increasingly financed by the Fed’s printing press.

    In time, policymakers will face a Solomonic choice: either protect Americans from inflation, or protect the government’s ability to engage in deficit spending. It will become impossible to do both. Over time, this compounding problem will escalate the importance of Bitcoin.

    THE FIAT-CURRENCY EXPERIMENT

    It’s becoming clear that Bitcoin is not merely a passing fad, but a significant innovation with potentially serious implications for the future of investment and global finance. To understand those implications, we must first examine the recent history of the primary instrument that bitcoin was invented to challenge: the American dollar.

    Toward the end of World War II, in an agreement hashed out by 44 Allied countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the value of the U.S. dollar was formally fixed to 1/35th of the price of an ounce of gold. Other countries’ currencies, such as the British pound and the French franc, were in turn pegged to the dollar, making the dollar the world’s official reserve currency.

    Under the Bretton Woods system, foreign governments could retrieve gold bullion they had sent to the United States during the war by exchanging dollars for gold at the relevant fixed exchange rate. But enabling every major country to exchange dollars for American-held gold only worked so long as the U.S. government was fiscally and monetarily responsible. By the late 1960s, it was neither. Someone needed to pay the steep bills for Lyndon Johnson’s “guns and butter” policies — the Vietnam War and the Great Society, respectively — so the Federal Reserve began printing currency to meet those obligations. Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, also pressured the Fed to flood the economy with money as a form of economic stimulus. From 1961 to 1971, the Fed nearly doubled the circulating supply of dollars. “In the first six months of 1971,” noted the late Nobel laureate Robert Mundell, “monetary expansion was more rapid than in any comparable period in a quarter century.” That year, foreign central banks and governments held $64 billion worth of claims on the $10 billion of gold still held by the United States.

    It wasn’t long before the world took notice of the shortage. In a classic bank-run scenario, anxious European governments began racing to redeem dollars for American-held gold before the Fed ran out. In July 1971, Switzerland withdrew $50 million in bullion from U.S. vaults. In August, France sent a destroyer to escort $191 million of its gold back from the New York Federal Reserve. Britain put in a request for $3 billion shortly thereafter.

    Finally, that same month, Nixon secretly gathered a small group of trusted advisors at Camp David to devise a plan to avoid the imminent wipeout of U.S. gold vaults and the subsequent collapse of the international economy. There, they settled on a radical course of action. On the evening of August 15th, in a televised address to the nation, Nixon announced his intention to order a 90-day freeze on all prices and wages throughout the country, a 10% tariff on all imported goods, and a suspension — eventually, a permanent one — of the right of foreign governments to exchange their dollars for U.S. gold.

    Knowing that his unilateral abrogation of agreements involving dozens of countries would come as a shock to world leaders and the American people, Nixon labored to re-assure viewers that the change would not unsettle global markets. He promised viewers that “the effect of this action…will be to stabilize the dollar,” and that the “dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today.” The next day, the stock market rose — to everyone’s relief. The editors of the New York Times “unhesitatingly applaud[ed] the boldness” of Nixon’s move. Economic growth remained strong for months after the shift, and the following year Nixon was re-elected in a landslide, winning 49 states in the Electoral College and 61% of the popular vote.

    Nixon’s short-term success was a mirage, however. After the election, the president lifted the wage and price controls, and inflation returned with a vengeance. By December 1980, the dollar had lost more than half the purchasing power it had back in June 1971 on a consumer-price basis. In relation to gold, the price of the dollar collapsed — from 1/35th to 1/627th of a troy ounce. Though Jimmy Carter is often blamed for the Great Inflation of the late 1970s, “the truth,” as former National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow has argued, “is that the president who unleashed double-digit inflation was Richard Nixon.”

    In 1981, Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker raised the federal-funds rate — a key interest-rate benchmark — to 19%. A deep recession ensued, but inflation ceased, and the U.S. embarked on a multi-decade period of robust growth, low unemployment, and low consumer-price inflation. As a result, few are nostalgic for the days of Bretton Woods or the gold-standard era. The view of today’s economic establishment is that the present system works well, that gold standards are inherently unstable, and that advocates of gold’s return are eccentric cranks.

    Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that the post-Bretton Woods era — in which the supply of government currencies can be expanded or contracted by fiat — is only 50 years old. To those of us born after 1971, it might appear as if there is nothing abnormal about the way money works today. When viewed through the lens of human history, however, free-floating global exchange rates remain an unprecedented economic experiment — with one critical flaw.

    An intrinsic attribute of the post-Bretton Woods system is that it enables deficit spending. Under a gold standard or peg, countries are unable to run large budget deficits without draining their gold reserves. Nixon’s 1971 crisis is far from the only example; deficit spending during and after World War I, for instance, caused economic dislocation in numerous European countries — especially Germany — because governments needed to use their shrinking gold reserves to finance their war debts.

    These days, by contrast, it is relatively easy for the United States to run chronic deficits. Today’s federal debt of almost $29 trillion — up from $10 trillion in 2008 and $2.4 trillion in 1984 — is financed in part by U.S. Treasury bills, notes, and bonds, on which lenders to the United States collect a form of interest. Yields on Treasury bonds are denominated in dollars, but since dollars are no longer redeemable for gold, these bonds are backed solely by the “full faith and credit of the United States.”

    Interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds have remained low, which many people take to mean that the creditworthiness of the United States remains healthy. Just as creditworthy consumers enjoy lower interest rates on their mortgages and credit cards, creditworthy countries typically enjoy lower rates on the bonds they issue. Consequently, the post-Great Recession era of low inflation and near-zero interest rates led many on the left to argue that the old rules no longer apply, and that concerns regarding deficits are obsolete. Supporters of this view point to the massive stimulus packages passed under presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden  that, in total, increased the federal deficit and debt by $4.6 trillion without affecting the government’s ability to borrow.

    The extreme version of the new “deficits don’t matter” narrative comes from the advocates of what has come to be called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), who claim that because the United States controls its own currency, the federal government has infinite power to increase deficits and the debt without consequence. Though most mainstream economists dismiss MMT as unworkable and even dangerous, policymakers appear to be legislating with MMT’s assumptions in mind. A new generation of Democratic economic advisors has pushed President Biden to propose an additional $3.5 trillion in spending, on top of the $4.6 trillion spent on Covid-19 relief and the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. These Democrats, along with a new breed of populist Republicans, dismiss the concerns of older economists who fear that exploding deficits risk a return to the economy of the 1970s, complete with high inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment.

    But there are several reasons to believe that America’s fiscal profligacy cannot go on forever. The most important reason is the unanimous judgment of history: In every country and in every era, runaway deficits and skyrocketing debt have ended in economic stagnation or ruin.

    Another reason has to do with the unusual confluence of events that has enabled the United States to finance its rising debts at such low interest rates over the past few decades — a confluence that Bitcoin may play a role in ending.

    DECLINING FAITH IN U.S. CREDIT

    To members of the financial community, U.S. Treasury bonds are considered “risk-free” assets. That is to say, while many investments entail risk — a company can go bankrupt, for example, thereby wiping out the value of its stock — Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Since people believe the United States will not default on its obligations, lending money to the U.S. government — buying Treasury bonds that effectively pay the holder an interest rate — is considered a risk-free investment.

    The definition of Treasury bonds as “risk-free” is not merely by reputation, but also by regulation. Since 1988, the Switzerland-based Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has sponsored a series of accords among central bankers from financially significant countries. These accords were designed to create global standards for the capital held by banks such that they carry a sufficient proportion of low-risk and risk-free assets. The well-intentioned goal of these standards was to ensure that banks don’t fail when markets go down, as they did in 2008.

    The current version of the Basel Accords, known as “Basel III,” assigns zero risk to U.S. Treasury bonds. Under Basel III’s formula, then, every major bank in the world is effectively rewarded for holding these bonds instead of other assets. This artificially inflates demand for the bonds and enables the United States to borrow at lower rates than other countries.

    The United States also benefits from the heft of its economy as well as the size of its debt. Since America is the world’s most indebted country in absolute terms, the market for U.S. Treasury bonds is the largest and most liquid such market in the world. Liquid markets matter a great deal to major investors: A large financial institution or government with hundreds of billions (or more) of a given currency on its balance sheet cares about being able to buy and sell assets while minimizing the impact of such actions on the trading price. There are no alternative low-risk assets one can trade at the scale of Treasury bonds.

    The status of such bonds as risk-free assets — and in turn, America’s ability to borrow the money necessary to fund its ballooning expenditures — depends on investors’ confidence in America’s creditworthiness. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve’s interference in the markets for Treasury bonds have obscured our ability to determine whether financial institutions view the U.S. fiscal situation with confidence.

    In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s advisors prioritized reducing the deficit, largely out of a conern that Treasury-bond “vigilantes” — investors who protest a government’s expansionary fiscal or monetary policy by aggressively selling bonds, which drives up interest rates — would harm the economy. Their success in eliminating the primary deficit brought yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond down from 8% to 4%.

    In Clinton’s heyday, the Federal Reserve was limited in its ability to influence the 10-year Treasury interest rate. Its monetary interventions primarily targeted the federal-funds rate — the interest rate that banks charge each other on overnight transactions. But in 2002, Ben Bernanke advocated that the Fed “begin announcing explicit ceilings for yields on longer-maturity Treasury debt.” This amounted to a schedule of interest-rate price controls.

    Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has succeeded in wiping out bond vigilantes using a policy called “quantitative easing,” whereby the Fed manipulates the price of Treasury bonds by buying and selling them on the open market. As a result, Treasury-bond yields are determined not by the free market, but by the Fed.

    The combined effect of these forces — the regulatory impetus for banks to own Treasury bonds, the liquidity advantage Treasury bonds have in the eyes of large financial institutions, and the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of Treasury-bond market prices — means that interest rates on Treasury bonds no longer indicate the United States’ creditworthiness (or lack thereof). Meanwhile, indications that investors are growing increasingly concerned about the U.S. fiscal and monetary picture — and are in turn assigning more risk to “risk-free” Treasury bonds — are on the rise.

    One such indicator is the decline in the share of Treasury bonds owned by outside investors. Between 2010 and 2020, the share of U.S. Treasury securities owned by foreign entities fell from 47% to 32%, while the share owned by the Fed more than doubled, from 9% to 22%. Put simply, foreign investors have been reducing their purchases of U.S. government debt, thereby forcing the Fed to increase its own bond purchases to make up the difference and prop up prices.

    Until and unless Congress reduces the trajectory of the federal debt, U.S. monetary policy has entered a vicious cycle from which there is no obvious escape. The rising debt requires the Treasury Department to issue an ever-greater quantity of Treasury bonds, but market demand for these bonds cannot keep up with their increasing supply. In an effort to avoid a spike in interest rates, the Fed will need to print new U.S. dollars to soak up the excess supply of Treasury bonds. The resultant monetary inflation will cause increases in consumer prices.

    Those who praise the Fed’s dramatic expansion of the money supply argue that it has not affected consumer-price inflation. And at first glance, they appear to have a point. In January of 2008, the M2 money stock was roughly $7.5 trillion; by January 2020, M2 had more than doubled, to $15.4 trillion. As of July 2021, the total M2 sits at $20.5 trillion — nearly triple what it was just 13 years ago. Over that same period, U.S. GDP increased by only 50%. And yet, since 2000, the average rate of growth in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for All Urban Consumers — a widely used inflation benchmark — has remained low, at about 2.25%.

    How can this be?

    The answer lies in the relationship between monetary inflation and price inflation, which has diverged over time. In 2008, the Federal Reserve began paying interest to banks that park their money with the Fed, reducing banks’ incentive to lend that money out to the broader economy in ways that would drive price inflation. But the main reason for the divergence is that conventional measures like CPI do not accurately capture the way monetary inflation is affecting domestic prices.

    In a large, diverse country like the United States, different people and different industries experience price inflation in different ways. The fact that price inflation occurs earlier in certain sectors of the economy than in others was first described by the 18th-century Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. In his 1730 “Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General,” Cantillon noted that when governments increase the supply of money, those who receive the money first gain the most benefit from it — at the expense of those to whom it flows last. In the 20th century, Friedrich Hayek built on Cantillon’s thinking, observing that “the real harm [of monetary inflation] is due to the differential effect on different prices, which change successively in a very irregular order and to a very different degree, so that as a result the whole structure of relative prices becomes distorted and misguides production into wrong directions.”

    In today’s context, the direct beneficiaries of newly printed money are those who need it the least. New dollars are sent to banks, which in turn lend them to the most creditworthy entities: investment funds, corporations, and wealthy individuals. As a result, the most profound price impact of U.S. monetary inflation has been on the kinds of assets that financial institutions and wealthy people purchase — stocks, bonds, real estate, venture capital, and the like.

    This is why the price-to-earnings ratio of S&P 500 companies is at record highs, why risky start-ups with long-shot ideas are attracting $100 million venture rounds, and why the median home sales price has jumped 24% in a single year — the biggest one-year increase of the 21st century. Meanwhile, low- and middle-income earners are facing rising prices without attendant increases in their wages. If asset inflation persists while the costs of housing and health care continue to grow beyond the reach of ordinary people, the legitimacy of our market economy will be put on trial.

    THE RETURN OF SOUND MONEY

    Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, was acutely concerned with the increasing abundance of U.S. dollars and other fiat currencies in the early 2000s. In 2009 he wrote, “the root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” Bitcoin was created in anticipation of the looming fiscal and monetary crisis in the United States and around the world.

    To understand how bitcoin functions alongside fiat currency, it’s helpful to examine the monetary philosophy of the Austrian School of economics, whose leading figures — especially Hayek and Ludwig von Mises — greatly influenced Nakamoto and the early developers of Bitcoin.

    The economists of the Austrian School were staunch advocates of what Mises called “the principle of sound money” — that is, of keeping the supply of money as constant and predictable as possible. In The Theory of Money and Credit, first published in 1912, Mises argued that sound money serves as “an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments” that belongs “in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.” Just as bills of rights were a “reaction against arbitrary rule and the nonobservance of old customs by kings,” he wrote, “the postulate of sound money was first brought up as a response to the princely practice of debasing the coinage.”

    Mises believed that inflation was just as much a violation of someone’s property rights as arbitrarily taking away his land. After all, in both cases, the government acquires economic value at the expense of the citizen. Since monetary inflation creates a sugar high of short-term stimulus, politicians interested in re-election will always have an incentive to expand the money supply. But doing so comes at the expense of long-term declines in consumer purchasing power.

    For Mises, the best way to address such a threat is to avoid fiat currencies altogether. And in his estimation, the best sound-money alternative to fiat currency is gold. “The excellence of the gold standard,” Mises wrote, is “that it renders the determination of the monetary unit’s purchasing power independent of the policies of governments and political parties.” In other words, gold’s primary virtue is that its supply increases slowly and steadily, and cannot be manipulated by politicians.

    It may appear as if gold was an arbitrary choice as the basis for currency, but gold has a combination of qualities that make it ideal for storing and exchanging value. First, it is verifiably unforgeable. Gold is very dense, which means that counterfeit gold is easy to identify — one simply has to weigh it. Second, gold is divisible. Unlike, say, cattle, gold can be delivered in fractional units both small and large, enabling precise pricing. Third, gold is durable. Unlike commodities that rot or evaporate over time, gold can be stored for centuries without degradation. Fourth, gold is fungible: An ounce of gold in Asia is worth the same as an ounce of gold in Europe.

    These four qualities are shared by most modern currencies. Gold’s fifth quality is more distinct, however, as well as more relevant to its role as an instrument of sound money: scarcity. While people have used beads, seashells, and other commodities as primitive forms of money, those items are fairly easy to acquire and introduce into circulation. While gold’s supply does gradually increase as more is extracted from the ground, the rate of extraction relative to the total above-ground supply is low: At current rates, it would take approximately 66 years to double the amount of gold in circulation. In comparison, the supply of U.S. dollars has more than doubled over just the last decade.

    When the Austrian-influenced designers of bitcoin set out to create a more reliable currency, they tried to replicate all of these qualities. Like gold, bitcoin is divisible, unforgeable, divisible, durable, and fungible. But bitcoin also improves upon gold as a form of sound money in several important ways.

    First, bitcoin is rarer than gold. Though gold’s supply increases slowly, it does increase. The global supply of bitcoin, by contrast, is fixed at 21 million and cannot be feasibly altered.

    Second, bitcoin is far more portable than gold. Transferring physical gold from one place to another is an onerous process, especially in large quantities. Bitcoin, on the other hand, can be transmitted in any quantity as quickly as an email.

    Third, bitcoin is more secure than gold. A single bitcoin address carried on a USB thumb drive could theoretically hold as much value as the U.S. Treasury holds in gold bars — without the need for costly militarized facilities like Fort Knox to keep it safe. In fact, if stored using best practices, the cost of securing bitcoin from hackers or assailants is far lower than the cost of securing gold.

    Fourth, bitcoin is a technology. This means that, as developers identify ways to augment its functionality without compromising its core attributes, they can gradually improve the currency over time.

    Fifth, and finally, bitcoin cannot be censored. This past year, the Chinese government shut down Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper not by censoring its content, but by ordering banks not to do business with the publication, thereby preventing Apple Daily from paying its suppliers or employees. Those who claim the same couldn’t happen here need only look to the Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point, a regulatory attempt to prevent banks from doing business with legitimate entities like gun manufacturers and payday lenders — firms the administration disfavored. In contrast, so long as the transmitting party has access to the internet, no entity can prevent a bitcoin transaction from taking place.

    This combination of fixed supply, portability, security, improvability, and censorship resistance epitomizes Nakamoto’s breakthrough. Hayek, in The Denationalisation of Money, foresaw just such a separation of money and state. “I believe we can do much better than gold ever made possible,” he wrote. “Governments cannot do better. Free enterprise…no doubt would.”

    While Hayek and Nakamoto hoped private currencies would directly compete with the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies, bitcoin does not have to replace everyday cash transactions to transform global finance. Few people may pay for their morning coffee with bitcoin, but it is also rare for people to purchase coffee with Treasury bonds or gold bars. Bitcoin is competing not with cash, but with these latter two assets, to become the world’s premier long-term store of wealth.

    The primary problem bitcoin was invented to address — the devaluation of fiat currency through reckless spending and borrowing — is already upon us. If Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending plan passes Congress, the national debt will rise further. Someone will have to buy the Treasury bonds to enable that spending.

    Yet as discussed above, investors are souring on Treasurys. On June 30, 2021, the interest rate for the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond was 1.45%. Even at the Federal Reserve’s target inflation rate of 2%, under these conditions, Treasury-bond holders are guaranteed to lose money in inflation-adjusted terms. One critic of the Fed’s policies, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, compares the value of today’s Treasury bonds to a “melting ice cube.” Last May, Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and a former bitcoin skeptic, said “[p]ersonally, I’d rather have bitcoin than a [Treasury] bond.” If hedge funds, banks, and foreign governments continue to decelerate their Treasury purchases, even by a relatively small percentage, the decrease in demand could send U.S. bond prices plummeting.

    If that happens, the Fed will be faced with the two unpalatable options described earlier: allowing interest rates to rise, or further inflating the money supply. The political pressure to choose the latter would likely be irresistible. But doing so would decrease inflation-adjusted returns on Treasury bonds, driving more investors away from Treasurys and into superior stores of value, such as bitcoin. In turn, decreased market interest in Treasurys would force the Fed to purchase more such bonds to suppress interest rates.

    AMERICA’S BITCOIN OPPORTUNITY

    From an American perspective, it would be ideal for U.S. Treasury bonds to remain the world’s preferred reserve asset for the foreseeable future. But the tens of trillions of dollars in debt that the United States has accumulated since 1971 — and the tens of trillions to come — has made that outcome unlikely.

    It is understandably difficult for most of us to imagine a monetary world aside from the one in which we’ve lived for generations. After all, the U.S. dollar has served as the world’s leading reserve currency since 1919, when Britain was forced off the gold standard. There are only a handful of people living who might recall what the world was like before then.

    Nevertheless, change is coming. Over the next 10 to 20 years, as bitcoin’s liquidity increases and the United States becomes less creditworthy, financial institutions and foreign governments alike may replace an increasing portion of their Treasury-bond holdings with bitcoin and other forms of sound money. With asset values reaching bubble proportions and no end to federal spending in sight, it’s critical for the United States to begin planning for this possibility now.

    Unfortunately, the instinct of some federal policymakers will be to do what countries like Argentina have done in similar circumstances: impose capital controls that restrict the ability of Americans to exchange dollars for bitcoin in an attempt to prevent the digital currency from competing with Treasurys. Yet just as Nixon’s 1971 closure of the gold window led to a rapid flight from the dollar, imposing restrictions on the exchange of bitcoin for dollars would confirm to the world that the United States no longer believes in the competitiveness of its currency, accelerating the flight from Treasury bonds and undermining America’s ability to borrow.

    A bitcoin crackdown would also be a massive strategic mistake, given that Americans are positioned to benefit enormously from bitcoin-related ventures and decentralized finance more generally. Around 50 million Americans own bitcoin today, and it’s likely that Americans and U.S. institutions own a plurality, if not the majority, of the bitcoin in circulation — a sum worth hundreds of billions of dollars. This is one area where China simply cannot compete with the United States, since Bitcoin’s open financial architecture is fundamentally incompatible with Beijing’s centralized, authoritarian model.

    In the absence of major entitlement reform, well-intentioned efforts to make Treasury bonds great again are likely doomed. Instead of restricting bitcoin in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable, federal policymakers would do well to embrace the role of bitcoin as a geopolitically neutral reserve asset; work to ensure that the United States continues to lead the world in accumulating bitcoin-based wealth, jobs, and innovations; and ensure that Americans can continue to use bitcoin to protect themselves against government-driven inflation.

    To begin such an initiative, federal regulators should make it easier to operate cryptocurrency-related ventures on American shores. As things stand, too many of these firms are based abroad and closed off to American investors simply because outdated U.S. regulatory agencies — the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Treasury Department, and others — have been unwilling to provide clarity as to the legal standing of digital assets. For example, the SEC has barred Coinbase from paying its customers’ interest on their holdings while refusing to specify which laws Coinbase has violated. Similarly, the agency has refused to approve Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) without specifying standards for a valid ETF application. Congress should implement SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s recommendations for a three-year regulatory grace period for decentralized digital tokens and assign to a new agency the role of regulating digital assets.

    Second, Congress should clarify poorly worded legislation tied to a recent bipartisan infrastructure bill that would drive many high-value crypto businesses, like bitcoin-mining operations, overseas.

    Third, the Treasury Department should consider replacing a fraction of its gold holdings — say, 10% — with bitcoin. This move would pose little risk to the department’s overall balance sheet, send a positive signal to the innovative blockchain sector, and enable the United States to benefit from bitcoin’s growth. If the value of bitcoin continues to appreciate strongly against gold and the U.S. dollar, such a move would help shore up the Treasury and decrease the need for monetary inflation.

    Finally, when it comes to digital versions of the U.S. dollar, policymakers should follow the advice of Friedrich Hayek, not Xi Jinping. In an effort to increase government control over its monetary system, China is preparing to unveil a blockchain-based digital yuan at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Jerome Powell and other Western central bankers have expressed envy for China’s initiative and fret about being left behind. But Americans should strongly oppose the development of a central-bank digital currency (CBDC). Such a currency could wipe out local banks by making traditional savings and checking accounts obsolete. What’s more, a CBDC-empowered Fed would accumulate a mountain of precise information about every consumer’s financial transactions. Not only would this represent a grave threat to Americans’ privacy and economic freedom, it would create a massive target for hackers and equip the government with the kind of censorship powers that would make Operation Choke Point look like child’s play.

    Congress should ensure that the Federal Reserve never has the authority to issue a virtual currency. Instead, it should instruct regulators to integrate private-sector, dollar-pegged “stablecoins” — like Tether and USD Coin — into the framework we use for money-market funds and other cash-like instruments that are ubiquitous in the financial sector.

    PLANNING FOR THE WORST

    In the best-case scenario, the rise of bitcoin will motivate the United States to mend its fiscal ways. Much as Congress lowered corporate-tax rates in 2017 to reduce the incentive for U.S. companies to relocate abroad, bitcoin-driven monetary competition could push American policymakers to tackle the unsustainable growth of federal spending. While we can hope for such a scenario, we must plan for a world in which Congress continues to neglect its essential duty as a steward of Americans’ wealth.

    The good news is that the American people are no longer destined to go down with the Fed’s sinking ship. In 1971, when Washington debased the value of the dollar, Americans had no real recourse. Today, through bitcoin, they do. Bitcoin enables ordinary Americans to protect their savings from the federal government’s mismanagement. It can improve the financial security of those most vulnerable to rising prices, such as hourly wage earners and retirees on fixed incomes. And it can increase the prosperity of younger Americans who will most acutely face the consequences of the country’s runaway debt.

    Bitcoin represents an enormous strategic opportunity for Americans and the United States as a whole. With the right legal infrastructure, the currency and its underlying technology can become the next great driver of American growth. While the 21st-century monetary order will look very different from that of the 20th, bitcoin can help America maintain its economic leadership for decades to come.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 23:25

  • More Than 180 San Francisco City Officials, Including Police And Sheriff Employees, Placed On Leave For Not Being Vaccinated
    More Than 180 San Francisco City Officials, Including Police And Sheriff Employees, Placed On Leave For Not Being Vaccinated

    Crime is getting so bad in San Francisco, we’ve noted that businesses like Walgreens are simply closing their stores and leaving the city. 

    Which is why it seems like a peculiar time to put more than 180 city officials, including some from the police and sheriff’s office, on leave for not getting vaccinated. 

    Placing these workers on leave leads to a process that could end in termination, Breitbart wrote about the decisions. 

    The same report notes that crimes YOY in the city are up, with homicide rising 12.8%, human trafficking up 20% and assault up 9.2%.

    Mawuli Tugbenyoh, spokesperson for the Department of Human Resources, said: “Across the country and the world, thousands of people continue to die from COVID-19. Sadly, this includes employees of the city and county of San Francisco. To protect the health and safety of members of the public as well as employees, the city issued its vaccination policy,”

    Apparently, people dying from homicide and committing felonious acts in such great numbers that entire businesses are moving out of the city is just fine though. 

    SF City Streets / Photo: Insider

    The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

    As of Thursday afternoon, 76 sworn police officers — or 3.5 percent of all officers — remained unvaccinated. A additional 32 non-sworn employees also have not received shots. Those numbers dropped from early Wednesday evening, when Police Chief Bill Scott said 118 officers and 31 non-sworn employees remained unvaccinated, on trend with a decline in recent weeks.

    The Police Department has 2,832 employees, including 2,113 officers. Most, but not all, needed to get vaccinated by Oct. 13. The Sheriff’s Department reported a 3.8 percent unvaccinated rate, with 39 out of 1,014 staff not fully vaccinated. In the Fire Department, 35 employees — or 2 percent of 1,738 — have not gotten shots.

    The Chronicle report continues:

    “Employees can apply for medical or religious exemptions. The city has so far received approximately 800 exemption requests from city workers, which it is reviewing ‘as quickly as possible with priority given to employees who have earlier deadlines for vaccination.’”

    Tracy McCray, vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, concluded:

    “It’s a time when we really can’t afford to lose anyone. It’s just really harsh, it’s my way or the highway.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 23:05

  • "We Just Don't Know" How To Defend Against Possible Chinese Hypersonic Missile: US Ambassador
    “We Just Don’t Know” How To Defend Against Possible Chinese Hypersonic Missile: US Ambassador

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

    A new investigative report by the Financial Times asserted that China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, which circled the earth in a low orbit before cruising toward and narrowly missing a test target. The Chinese regime has officially denied the report’s findings, saying that the object in question was a spaceship.

    U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said that Washington is concerned about China’s possible deployment of hypersonic weaponry, and said the United States hadn’t developed a means of countering it.

    “Hypersonic technology is something that we have been concerned about, the potential military applications of it and we have held back from pursuing, we had held back from pursuing military applications for this technology,” Wood said at a press meeting in Geneva on Oct. 18.

    “But we have seen China and Russia pursuing very actively the use, the militarization of this technology, so we are just having to respond in kind … We just don’t know how we can defend against that technology. Neither does China, neither does Russia.”

    A Weapon Without Rebuttal

    The Financial Times report, which cited five people familiar with the matter, and China’s subsequent rebuttal created a furor in parts of the U.S. intelligence community, which appeared unprepared for the news that China was so far into its efforts to develop hypersonic capabilities. Others were less surprised, however.

    “Hypersonic weapons research and development has been underway in China for decades,” said Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

    “In 2019, the People’s Liberation Army revealed the first medium-range HGV [hypersonic glide vehicle] weapon, its DF-17 HGV-armed missile system.”

    “Thus, reports that China has combined a HGV strike system with a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) must be taken very seriously.”

    HGVs are highly maneuverable vehicles that skip or “glide” their way to a target after being brought to low orbit by a rocket booster. FOBS is a system first theorized in the Soviet Union, in which a missile enters low orbit before striking its target, rather than arcing out of orbit before coming back to the surface.

    The combination of the two technologies is important because, unlike a traditional intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that exits the atmosphere and reenters using a predictable arc, the HSV/FOBS design allows for a payload to strike out with near-unlimited range from any direction once it is in orbit, effectively negating traditional early warning systems.

    According to Fisher, this raises a red flag, as the United States currently lacks the capability to defend against an attack that uses such technology.

    “On ICBMs, HGV weapons are capable of very sharp and rapid maneuvering that can help defeat missile defenses, assuming we have anti-HGV missile interceptors, which currently is not the case,” Fisher said.

    “When HGVs arm new Chinese FOBS systems, which was just tested, you combine a strike system designed to avoid U.S. ground-based detection with a strike warhead that is very difficult to shoot down.”

    “There are indications that China intends to arm its ICBMs with multiple HGV warheads, which increases their range and also their ability to defeat any U.S. defenses.”

    Russia finished development of its own HGV, dubbed “Avangard,” back in 2019. That weapon is capable of flying at Mach 20, roughly 15,000 miles per hour. North Korea similarly test-fired its own hypersonic weapon in September. The United States has also been investing heavily in developing hypersonic capabilities over the past several years.

    Given such a threat-rich environment, it’s difficult to determine how genuine the surprise of the intelligence community was, as Fisher said that those in the know might not be making it known.

    “It is hard to determine ‘surprise’ in the intelligence community because compartmentalization is its way of life,” Fisher said.

    “Those who might talk to journalists are not necessarily those who would have been briefed on these PLA developments.”

    Regardless, the alleged capability is something to be contended with, as the combination of HGV and FOBS would mean that China has, or is close to having, a weapon capable of evading U.S. defenses and striking the homeland.

    Spaceship or Missile?

    Adding to the confusion surrounding the report was Beijing’s firm denial that such a weapon existed at all.

    Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a media briefing that the Financial Times report was inaccurate, and said the object was a spaceship designed to explore the possibility of utilizing reusable technology to reduce the costs of China’s space missions.

    The Chinese regime intentionally makes it difficult for the international community to assess its weapons tests, however, and such could be the case here. That’s because the Chinese Communist Party and its military branch, the People’s Liberation Army, utilize a so-called dual-use policy that ensures commercial and scientific projects also provide a military benefit.

    The contention of whether China tested a hypersonic missile or a spaceship provides a prime example of this policy in action, as China’s space and missile programs both use rockets from the “Long March” family to reach orbit. Thus, any test to improve China’s space program also improves its missile program, and vice versa.

    Fisher noted that some experts have argued that all of China’s space launch vehicles should be counted as strategic strike systems, as China’s space program and all of its launch sites are owned and managed by the Chinese military.

    He also noted that public counts of China’s ICBMs don’t currently count them as such.

    “It is reasonable to ask: Has the PLA really had many hundred ‘ICBMs’ for a long time?” Fisher said.

    US Policy of Restraint ‘Failed’

    Fisher said China’s alleged test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile was an attempt to leapfrog U.S. capabilities and effectively subvert the efficacy of the United States’ next generation of missile defense technologies.

    “Combining HGVs and FOBS is one way that China is preemptively responding to any U.S. decision to increase missile defense of the U.S. homeland,” Fisher said.

    “They are seeking to defeat U.S. missiles defenses that have not yet been developed or deployed.”

    This is ostensibly the reason for Washington’s concern. As stated by Wood, there’s simply no extant counter to a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile system that could strike anywhere on earth.

    To mitigate such a threat, Fisher said the United States ought to pursue space-based defense systems that could detect and destroy HGVs during the “boost phase,” before they reached orbit and became unpredictable to traditional tracking systems.

    Before that happens, however, Fisher said the United States would need to reckon with the failure of its long-standing policy of not building adequate missile defenses as a means of encouraging non-proliferation.

    “For decades, and this is still U.S. policy, we did not build missile defenses to stop Chinese and Russian nuclear warheads from vaporizing Americans,” Fisher said. “[We did this] so that we would not give them an excuse to start a nuclear arms race.”

    “American restraint on this count has failed.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 22:45

  • Emerging World Hands Dems A "$750 Billion Bill" For Climate Change Ahead Of Glasgow Summit
    Emerging World Hands Dems A “$750 Billion Bill” For Climate Change Ahead Of Glasgow Summit

    While the EU’s leading unelected bureaucrats continue to play footsie with the Kremlin while energy prices soar and EU member states reckon with the prospect of a very cold winter, the Wall Street Journal has just taken the time to remind us why the far-left Democrats’ progressive “Green New Deal” climate rhetoric is all but destined to fail. And they did it with a portrayal of John Kerry’s uncomfortable silence after being confronted with the price tag for the Democrats’ green energy aspirations not at home, but abroad.

    According to WSJ, the made-for-camera moment happened at a global climate summit in July, when there were no cameras around, when Kerry was handed what the paper described as “a bill” for aiding the developing world in its shift away from fossil fuels – enough to achieve the “green energy” to protect them, and the world, from Global Warming.

    The figure: $750 billion. The number was “met with silence [Kerry] according to Zaheer Fakir, an adviser to Creecy [South African Environment Minister Barbara Creecy]” and Kerry wasn’t the only western official in the room wearing a long face.

    Of course, that’s not even anywhere close to the real number. As we and Bank of America’s analysts have already explained, there’s a $150 trillion backing the global climate crusade via its most effective capitalist soldiers: the ESG-focused companies and investors who are raising trillions of dollars to “fix” this problem.

    Yet, the most sober-minded analysts still believe that the cost of actually coming anywhere close to meeting the West’s commitments will spark levels of inflation that many American consumers (if you asked them) probably wouldn’t be too comfortable. 

    Even by the most optimistic projections for development and the advent of green technologies, there’s still no way of pulling this off without causing a great monetary disturbance. Some might call it “runaway inflation”…

    …but don’t worry, whatever BofA calls it, it has a “cheat sheet” ready for its clients.

    Ultimately, this is BofA’s admission taken from everything we have shared above.

    Q: What is the economic impact of net zero?

    A: The inflation impact of elevated net zero funding will not be insignificant but the impact looks manageable at 1% to 3% per annum depending on central bank monetization rates, particularly if government spending is targeted and contributes to accelerate the rate of global GDP growth. The IEA also has a productive outlook for their net zero scenario, where the change in the annual growth rate of GDP accelerates by somewhere between 0.3% and 0.5% on a sustained basis over the next 10 years as a result of a shift to a green economy.

    But the sad reality is that the emerging world (ie China) isn’t willing (or, in fact, even able) to meet the west’s demands. They’re not going down with their use of fossil fuels, they’re actually going in the opposite direction – up – as they industrialize while “billions rise out of poverty” according to WSJ (nevermind what happens in the US while this process takes place).

    At this point, it’s important to remember that it’s not so much a coalition of nations that the west needs to “convince” – it’s really just China. The US, Europe and a few other wealthy nations “committed” to providing $100 billion a year from 2020 through 2025. So far, they have fallen short every year (though that number spent annually is going up, not down).

    Most western officials involved are saying that the west must focus first on the goals it met at the last great climate summit in Paris more than 5 years ago before it starts talking about new promises and projections after 2025.

    “There isn’t enough official development funds in the system to close the gap of climate finance,” said Gustavo Alberto Fonseca, director of programs at the U.N.’s Global Environment Facility, which funds climate infrastructure in the developing world. “There has to be a market-based solution.”

    If we know that already, then why are we having another one of these big global pow wows again, right now, while the entire world is convalescing from COVID?

    If the “price tag” for climate change is such an impediment, then why don’t the powers that be focus on more productive uses of their time – like minting the $1 trillion coin (which, given the rhetoric from the Fed and Treasury, seems to be exactly what the Dems are thinking of resorting to in the US).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 22:25

  • San Francisco Shuts Down In-N-Out Burger For Refusing To Be "Vaccination Police For Government"
    San Francisco Shuts Down In-N-Out Burger For Refusing To Be “Vaccination Police For Government”

    Authored by Jefferey Jaxen and Patrick Layton via TheHighwire,com,

    In-N-Out Burger’s Chief Legal and Business Officer, Arnie Wensinger, is set to release a statement after the San Francisco Department of Health closed one of the Top California Burger Restaurant’s locations. 

    “Today, the San Francisco Department of Health closed our restaurant…” he wrote.

    According to Wensingers statement, In-N-Out Burger employees were allegedly “not preventing the entry of customers who were not carrying proper vaccination documentation.”

    Beyond the famous California institution’s location “properly and clearly” posting signage to communicate local vaccination requirements, the SFDH has attempted to require In-N-Out Burger employees to act as health police and enforcement personnel for the city.

    He explains, “After closing our restaurant, local regulators informed us that our restaurant Associates must actively intervene by demanding proof of vaccination and photo identification from every customer…barring entry for any Customers without proper documentation.”   

    Wensigner opened up further in the statement saying they are committed to the highest level of customer service & making all feel welcome. 

    “We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government. It is unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers,” wrote Wensigner. 

    In late August, San Francisco became one of the first major U.S. cities to require proof of full COVID-19 vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, theaters, and other entertainment venues. 

    New York City’s policy went into effect on August 17, and the city began to enforce the requirements as of September 13. Inspectors for New York City have reportedly given numerous violations of $1,000 for failing to check vaccination cards.

    Some fast-food chains shut their seating areas altogether, sacrificing sales and bottom lines to appease city health rules.

    Federal and State Vaccine Mandates have fueled a great divide in the U.S., pitting businesses, unions, legislators, and neighbors against one another based on their firmly held beliefs on the issue.

    Further fueling the division are inconsistent actions from public officials like CA Governor Gavin Newsom. It was recently reported that Newsom, who is publicly driving Lockdowns and Vaccine mandates, does not vaccinate his own daughter. In addition to that, CA Assemblyman Kevin Kiley tweeted that the embattled Governor is fighting to remove the vaccine mandate for a union that reportedly gave over $1 million to his campaign.

    For In-n-Out Burger, they are not alone as employees, employers, unions, public employees, and even Governors across the nation are signaling their distaste for a mandate Arnie Wensinger describes as a “government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business.”

    The statement concludes with a declaration that leaves no doubt about where the famous Burger Institution stands.

    “This clear governmental overreach and is intrusive, improper, and offensive.”

    Full Statement:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 22:05

  • The One Chart Restaurateurs Should Worry About
    The One Chart Restaurateurs Should Worry About

    US restaurant bookings have stalled in the last four and half months despite two-thirds of the country fully vaxxed and the economy roaring back, fueled by unprecedented amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus. 

    High-frequency data, provided by OpenTable, shows US restaurant bookings have yet to make a new high since June.  Bookings have made a remarkable recovery from the COVID low in the spring of 2020 through the mid-point of this year but have languished in the back half and remain slightly below pre-COVID levels. Restaurateurs should keep note of the chart below: 

    It’s understandable that fears of COVID variants this summer might have played a role in stalling restaurant bookings, but since Sept. 13, the 7-day moving average of new COVID cases has plunged. Still, bookings have yet to surge but instead seem to be moving lower. 

    Even with 64% of the country fully vaxxed, bookings have stalled and could move lower, suggesting that consumer sentiment could be the problem. 

    Last week, the UMich sentiment survey showed that preliminary consumer sentiment data for October slipped as more Americans grew more concerned about current conditions and economic outlook.

    One major problem is consumer inflation expectations for the next year surged to their highest since 2008 (as longer-term inflation expectations dipped). Higher inflation could be impacting family budgets and means restaurant spending is being slashed. 

    If consumers have learned anything from the pandemic shutdowns, they can cook at home and save a bunch of money rather than eating out. This trend could become more permanent and dampen the restaurant industry’s recovery through winter as inflation bites. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 21:45

  • Is Aspirin The New Horse Dewormer?
    Is Aspirin The New Horse Dewormer?

    Authored by Brian C. Joondeph, MD (emphasis ours),

    Aspirin is one of those drugs that has been around forever. It is commonly used as a pain reliever, anti-inflammatory, and blood thinner. Surprisingly it may also have benefits in treating COVID.

    A paper in Anesthesia and Analgesia published last spring titled, “Aspirin use is associated with decreased mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, and in-hospital mortality in hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019.”

    This was a retrospective, observational study of adult patients admitted to multiple hospitals in the U.S. between March and July 2020, in the early days of COVID. The primary outcome addressed by the researchers from George Washington University was the need for mechanical ventilation, which then, and still now, carries an extremely high chance of never leaving the ICU alive.

    This was not a gold standard randomized prospective clinical trial. That would not be feasible in this situation since study patients were already hospitalized and critically ill. Remember in the early days, one needed to be extremely ill before even being admitted to the hospital rather than being sent home until sick enough to return and go straight to the ICU.

    But the results were impressive. As reported last week by the Jerusalem Post,

    The team investigated more than 400 COVID patients from hospitals across the United States who take aspirin unrelated to their COVID disease, and found that the treatment reduced the risk of several parameters by almost half: reaching mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admissions by 43%, and overall in-hospital mortality by 47%.

    Why would aspirin be helpful for COVID, a respiratory disease? What if COVID is more than simply a lung disease or pneumonia? COVID is actually thought to be a microvascular disease causing blood clots, as described in the medical journal Circulation,

    Although most patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present with a mild upper respiratory tract infection and then recover, some infected patients develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multi-organ failure, and death. Clues to the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 may lie in the systemic inflammation and thrombosis observed in infected patients. We propose that severe COVID-19 is a microvascular disease in which coronavirus infection activates endothelial cells, triggering exocytosis, a rapid vascular response that drives microvascular inflammation and thrombosis.

    Note the thrombosis aspect, blood clots forming in the lungs and elsewhere in the body. Aspirin, as a blood thinner, reduces the risk of blood clots, explaining its potential benefit for COVID.

    YouTube screen grab

    For the same reason, the American Heart Association recommends,

    If you have had a heart attack or stroke, your doctor may want you to take a daily low dose of aspirin to help prevent another. Aspirin is part of a well-established treatment plan for patients with a history of heart attack or stroke.

    Add the appropriate caveat, which I would echo, “You should not take daily low-dose aspirin on your own without talking to your doctor. The risks and benefits vary for each person.”

    How did aspirin get its start? Over 3,500 years ago, willow bark, known as “nature’s aspirin,” was used as a painkiller and antipyretic by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and in a chemical synthesis by a Bayer chemist in 1897.

    Aside from pain relief, it was found to have anti-platelet and anti-cancer effects. It’s also on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, along with another familiar drug, ivermectin. The Harvard-based physicians’ health study in the 1980s found that low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack by 44 percent.

    A recently published Israeli study found, “Aspirin use is associated with better outcomes among COVID-19 positive patients.” This included a lower likelihood of infection, disease duration, and hospital survival. In other words, aspirin works as both a preventative and as a treatment.

    Aspirin is another potential therapeutic, along with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which is inexpensive, readily available, and relatively safe, and could save countless lives when used appropriately for COVID. An editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia described aspirin for COVID as, “An old, low-cost therapy with a strong rationale.” And right on cue, it’s time for aspirin-bashing to commence.

    At the same time as these papers showing potential benefits of aspirin for COVID hit the news, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, on Oct. 12, posted draft recommendations saying that, “Once people turn 60 years old, they should not consider starting to take aspirin because the risk of bleeding cancels out the benefits of preventing heart disease.” What curious timing.

    Certainly, aspirin has potential side effects including an increased risk of bleeding. All medications have side effects and one can even die from drinking too much water. It always comes down to medical decision-making, balancing risks and benefits, in consultation with one’s healthcare provider.

    The media wasted no time in using the suddenly released and new aspirin recommendations at the same time as news reports on aspirin benefits for COVID hit the news.

    NBC reported, “Most adults shouldn’t take daily aspirin to prevent heart attack, panel says.” The New York Times echoed, “Daily low-dose aspirin no longer recommended by doctors, if you’re healthy.” Healthline went further, “Doctors warn daily aspirin use can be dangerous.” Driving or walking across the street can be dangerous too.

    Sound familiar? How many adults have been taking low-dose aspirin daily for many years, based on the decades-old Harvard study? I have as I have a family history of cardiovascular disease and my internist and I agree that the benefits outweigh the risks, despite the new recommendations.

    Similarly how many patients have been taking hydroxychloroquine for years or decades for arthritis or lupus, without dying from the drug as Fox News crank Neil Cavuto warned last year? How many take ivermectin to prevent parasitic infections? Now we can add aspirin to the list of once safe and effective medications — that’s now on par with cyanide or strychnine.

    It seems the medical establishment and the media want to squash any potential COVID therapeutic, especially the inexpensive ones, instead pushing vaccines and extremely pricey medicines like Merck’s new $712 COVID drug.

    The media described ivermectin as horse dewormer or animal paste, seemingly unaware that it is an FDA-approved medication for human use and was once honored with a Nobel Prize. Watch Joe Rogan put CNN’s medical mouthpiece, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in a virtual chokehold until he tapped out and admitted to CNN’s irresponsible reporting and lying about ivermectin.

    Aspirin also has non-medical uses including as a stain remover, garden enhancer, and dandruff remedy. I would love to hear President Trump mention the potential benefits of aspirin for COVID and see the news headlines of Trump recommending people ingest detergent, fertilizer, or shampoo to treat COVID.

    Welcome to simple aspirin, the media’s new horse dewormer.

    Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. On Twitter and FreeAtlantis as @retdoc.

    To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 21:25

  • China's Magnesium Shortage Could Spell More Trouble For Global Car Industry 
    China’s Magnesium Shortage Could Spell More Trouble For Global Car Industry 

    While a shortage of semiconductors has plagued the global auto automotive industry this year, the market is now turning its focus to magnesium, a hardening agent of aluminum. Such a shortage could paralyze the aluminum billet production used to make engine blocks, gearboxes, frames, body panels, and rims, among other critical items for automobiles in Europe and the Americas. 

     “A magnesium shortage could trigger a shortage of aluminum, which in turn could also hit car production.

    “We stress at this point that such a scenario is not yet included in our estimates. The issue has just emerged and no carmaker has yet warned about it,” BofA Securities analyst told clients in a note. 

    The source of the shortage is China’s monopoly on global magnesium production. Production curbs of energy-intensive smelters have reduced the industrial metal’s output, resulting in dwindling stockpiles in Europe and North America. 

    Barclays analyst Amos Fletcher told clients in a note that “there are no substitutes for magnesium in aluminum sheet and billet production.” He warned if “magnesium supply stops,” the entire auto industry will grind to a halt. 

    The latest warning of magnesium shortages materializing was last week’s warning from S&P Global Platts who obtained a letter from Matalco Inc. President Tom Horter warning customers, “in the last few weeks, magnesium availability has dried up, and we have not been able to purchase our required magnesium units for all of 2022.” 

    Matalco is North America’s largest producer of aluminum billet. Horter’s warning continued: 

    “The purpose of this note is to provide this advanced warning that, if the scarcity continues, and especially if it becomes worse, Matalco may need to curtail production in 2022, resulting in allocations to our customers.” 

    For a stunning wake-up call to just how concentrated the complex global supply chain is, 85% of the world’s magnesium production comes from China. Much of it comes from one town in Shaanxi province, Yulin, where the government has curbed output at 70% of all magnesium smelters this year due to energy conservation ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

    European industry groups have sounded the alarm. WV Metalle, Germany’s non-ferrous metal trade association, warned:

    “It is expected that the current magnesium reserves in Germany and throughout Europe will be exhausted in a few weeks at the end of November 2021 at the latest,” the group said. “In the event of a supply bottleneck of this magnitude, there is a risk of massive production losses.”

    European Aluminium, whose members include Norsk Hydro, Rio Tinto, and Alcoa, said, “the current magnesium supply shortage is a clear example of the risk the EU is taking by making its domestic economy dependent on Chinese imports. The EU’s industrial metals strategy must be strengthened.” 

    Aluminum futures on the London Metal Exchange have broken out to a new high as concerns of magnesium supply mount. 

    The critical question is if Beijing will allow magnesium smelters to restart operations by the end of the year or early next year to replenish supplies. If that’s not the case, expect the automotive industry to be dealing with a twin crisis of not just a lack of semiconductors but also crucial aluminum.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 21:05

  • It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid
    It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    The oligarchic empire is working harder and harder to bolt down our minds in service of its agendas…

    Silicon Valley is working more and more openly in conjunction with the US government, and its algorithms elevate empire-authorized narratives while hiding unapproved ones with increasing brazenness.

    The mass media have become so blatantly propagandistic that US intelligence operatives are now openly employed by news outlets they used to have to infiltrate covertly.

    NATO and military institutions are studying and testing new forms of mass-scale psychological manipulation to advance the still developing science of propaganda.

    A transparently fake “whistleblower” is being promoted by the US political/media class to manufacture support for more internet censorship and shore up monopolistic control for institutions like Facebook who are willing to enforce it.

    Wikipedia is an imperial narrative control operation.

    They’ve imprisoned a journalist for exposing US war crimes after the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him.

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    The powerful work so hard at such endeavors because they understand something that most ordinary people do not: whoever controls the dominant narratives about the world controls the world itself.

    Power is controlling what happens; absolute power is controlling what people think about what happens.

    If you can control how people think about what’s going on in their world, if you can control their shared how-it-is stories about what’s happening and what’s true, then you can advance any agenda you want to. You’ll be able to prevent them from rising up against you as you steal their wealth, exploit their labor, destroy their ecosystem and send their children off to war. You can keep them voting for political institutions you own and control. You can keep them from interfering in your ability to wage wars around the world and sanction entire populations into starvation to advance your geostrategic goals.

    This status quo of exploitation, ecocide, oppression and war benefits our rulers immensely, bringing them more wealth and power than the kings of old could ever dream of. And like the kings of old they are not going to relinquish power of their own accord, which means the only thing that will bring an end to this world-destroying status quo is the people rising up and using the power of their numbers to end it.

    Yet they don’t rise up. They don’t because they are successfully propagandized into accepting this status quo, or at least into believing it’s the only way things can be right now. Imperial narrative control is therefore the source of all our biggest problems.

    And they’re only getting more and more aggressive about it. More and more forceful, less and less sly and subtle in their campaign to control the thoughts that are in our heads.

    Many of those who have this realization see it as cause for despair. I personally see it as cause for hope.

    They work so hard to manufacture our consent for the status quo because they absolutely require that consent; history shows us that rulers do not fare well after a critical mass of the population has turned against them. And they’re working harder and harder to manufacture that consent, even as extremely influential people begin questioning whether we’re being deliberately deceived about everything.

    They used to look like someone using a bucket to bail out water from a leaky boat. Now they look like someone treading water, barely managing to get their mouth and nose high enough to take gasps of air.

    They’re working harder and harder because they need to.

    The fact that the propagandists have to work so hard to keep our society this insane means the natural gravitational pull is toward sanity. They have to educate us into crazier and crazier ways of thinking from the moment we go to school until we die, because otherwise we’ll collectively awaken and shake off their shackles.

    It takes a lot of educating to keep us this stupid.

    You think you’re struggling? You should see the people trying to manufacture consent for a status quo that is both plainly insane and self-evidently unsustainable. They’re the ones doing all the heavy lifting in this struggle. They’re the ones fighting gravity.

    Hope is not a popular position to take in a world that is being abused, exploited and being driven mad by manipulative sociopaths. Which is understandable.

    But I just can’t help it. I look at how hard they are struggling to keep the light from bursting in and driving out the darkness, and I can’t help but think, “Those poor bastards can’t keep that up much longer.”

    *  *  *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 20:45

  • Pakistan Navy Intercepts Indian Submarine In Maritime Border Breach, Blasts "Deplorable" Aggression 
    Pakistan Navy Intercepts Indian Submarine In Maritime Border Breach, Blasts “Deplorable” Aggression 

    Pakistan’s Navy announced on Tuesday that days ago it detected an Indian Navy submarine preparing to breach its territorial waters, for which it responded and “blocked” the vessel. 

    This as a strict ceasefire has been in place along all border regions since early this year following recent tensions, particularly in disputed Kashmir, where in 2019 an Indian jet was shot down and the ejected pilot briefly held by Pakistan’s military. The Pakistani military statement indicated the incident happened on October 16, and it even released video which it says confirms the incident. 

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    The navy statement indicated that a Pakistan long-range maritime patrol aircraft had “detected and blocked” the vessel “from entering Pakistani waters”.

    Further a Pakistani Armed Forces media statement hailed the navy’s “unremitting vigilance and professional competence,” saying further that “During the prevailing security milieu, a strict monitoring watch has been kept by Pakistan Navy to safeguard maritime frontiers”, according to an ISPR statement.

    It further blasted Indian aggression and “machinations” along the border: 

    “The recent incident reflects the deplorable Indian machinations vis-à-vis commitment and resolve of Pakistan Navy to defend maritime frontiers of the motherland.”

    It’s being widely described as the third submarine intercept incident in five years between the nuclear armed powers. India did not immediately respond to the allegations. 

    Illustrative: Indian Navy

    “The previous two submarine interceptions occurred in late 2016 and early 2019,” UPI writes. “Officials said the sub was found about 176 miles south of Karachi, just inside the boundary of Pakistan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.”

    If the Pakistan Navy’s location information is accurate, “The position would be just inside the boundary of Pakistan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), an area of coastal water and seabed that countries have exclusive economic rights over, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” according to Al Jazeera.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 20:25

  • TikTok Threatens To Censor "Let's Go Brandon" Song For "Harassment And Bullying"
    TikTok Threatens To Censor “Let’s Go Brandon” Song For “Harassment And Bullying”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    A popular new song containing the viral anti-Biden ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ meme faces potential removal by TikTok for “harassment and bullying.”

    Yes, really.

    After the track by rapper Loza Alexander soared up the Apple Music Hip Hop and Rap chart over the weekend, it also began to go viral on TikTok, receiving over 500,000 likes.

    That’s when the thought police stepped in.

    “Tik Tok has threatened to remove my #letsgobrandon viral video that is approaching the number one spot on iTunes top us hip hop records! Tik Tok is claiming that I’m bullying? But how???” asked Alexander.

    The message from TikTok says that the song is being investigated for the “content violation” of containing “harassment and bullying.”

    Apparently, the new social media benchmark for “bullying” is making fun of the president.

    In enforcing such a rule, TikTok is merely mirroring its Communist Chinese censorship system, which also blocks content that lambastes or ridicules President Xi Jinping.

    Hear ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ via the video below.

    * * *
    ZH: Meanwhile, Alexander has uploaded several videos of the #letsgobrandonchallenge where people dance, or just look hot, to his viral song.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 20:05

  • As US Becomes World's Largest Bitcoin Miner, Riot Blockchain Unveils 200 Megawatt Immersion-Cooled Mining Operation
    As US Becomes World’s Largest Bitcoin Miner, Riot Blockchain Unveils 200 Megawatt Immersion-Cooled Mining Operation

    Not that long ago, China was the dominant power in global bitcoin mining, a position that presented the cryptoworld with a profound threat: if Beijing wanted it could simply take control over a majority of global mining rigs and launch a “51% attack“, in the process nuking the blockchain and effectively destroying the world’s greatest monetary experiment overnight.

    However, in the span of just a few short months, back in May, China’s State Council – which was focused on marketing its disastrous digital yuan and hoped to eliminate all competition – expelled its domestic bitcoin mining industry citing environmental and financial concerns, under the pretext that bitcoin miners were using up too much dirty electricity (a rather hypocritical take for a country that has emerged as the world’s largest polluter) in a move that many have said will be remembered as the “single greatest geopolitical mistake of the 21st century” (it would subsequently proceed to ban all bitcoin activity in yet another catastrophic mistake by the country’s oligarchs). And with China voluntarily cedeing its sole veto control over bitcoin, we predicted that the outcome would be an extremely bullish one for the crypto sector especially since the ESG criticism against bitcoin would gradually fade away;  indeed, with bitcoin now trading just shy of all time highs, we were right.

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    The winner? The United States, which was just a minor player in recent years and has since blossomed into the world’s largest bitcoin mining hub.

    Source: CBECI

    In just two months, the US overtook China as the world’s biggest source of bitcoin mining after Beijing banned crypto mining this year, new data have revealed. As shown above, China’s share of the global hashrate — the computational power required to create bitcoin — fell from 44 per cent to zero between May and July. The country accounted for three-quarters of the global hashrate in 2019.

    The US share of the global hashrate increased from 17 per cent in April to 35 per in August, while Kazakhstan rose 10 percentage points to 18 per cent in the same period.

    Michel Rauchs, digital assets lead at the closely watched Cambridge tracker, noted that “the effect of the Chinese crackdown is an increased geographic distribution of hashrate across the world”, adding that it could be seen as “a positive development for network security and the decentralized principles of bitcoin”.

    Meanwhile, miners outside China enjoyed a digital coin minting spree in the months following the ban, as Chinese competitors hurried to relocate their operations.

    But nobody has benefited more than the US: “The China shutdown has been great for the industry and US miners,” said Fred Thiel, chief executive of Marathon Digital Holdings, a Las Vegas-based crypto mining company. “Overnight, fewer players were going after the same finite number of coins.”

    More importantly, in a radical departure from China’s coal-fueled mining free for all, the US is rapidly becoming a truly “environmentally-conscious” global mining hub, as demonstrated by today’s news from Riot Blockchain which announced their new 200 megawatt (MW) industrial-scale immersion-cooled bitcoin mining operation at its Whinstone facility in Rockdale, Texas which was acquired by the company earlier this year. This operation features two buildings that will host roughly 46,000 S19 series Antminer ASICs — all immersion-cooled.

    “After months of research and development, utilizing partnerships across industries, Riot is proud to be a pioneer in the use of cutting-edge immersion-cooling technology at an unprecedented scale,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot.

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    According to the company, Immersion-Cooling is the process of submerging miner ASICs in a specialized fluid that circulates, allowing the miners integrated circuits to operate at lower temperatures. if it sounds vaguely similar to how one cools a nuclear power plant, it’s because it’s not too far off. This technique also increases the hash rate of the miners, as they no longer need fans for cooling, resulting in the machines using less energy. In fact, the machines themselves become sources of energy (and heat), which with the world facing a global energy crisis is a feature that both China and Europe would be delighted to have.

    The company is expecting a 25% increase in hash rate from the miners being submerged, according to industry data and the company’s own preliminary immersion-cooling test results, but they could see a potential increase of ASIC performance by as much as 50%.

    The initial deployment of these immersion-cooled ASICs is expected to begin in Q4, 2021. Riot will hardly be alone and as more bitcoin miners relocate out of the desolate communist wasteland that seems to only specialize in genetically engineering viruses these days, Texas will see tremendous monetary and socio-economic benefits as it becomes the global hub for clean bitcoin mining, much to the humiliation of Beijing which literally kicked out the digital golden goose.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 19:45

  • Police Suggest Possible Charges For Those Who Filmed Rape On Train
    Police Suggest Possible Charges For Those Who Filmed Rape On Train

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    The recent rape of a woman on a train in Pennsylvania has shocked and disgusted the nation, particularly after passengers did nothing to help the woman as she was allegedly attacked by Fiston Ngoy, 35. Now police are reportedly considering criminal charges against passengers who filmed the rape and did not call the police.

    The woman was reportedly harassed by Ngoy for a long period before he raped her in front of the other passengers.

    The question is the basis for such criminal charges. There is first the failure to call police. Then there is the filming of the attack. While passengers could claim that they were recording the crime, police say that the passengers did not call them or share the videos.

    Generally there is no duty to rescue or to call police under the common law. Some states have moved to penalize those who do not call police. For example, Washington state allows for the charging of a misdemeanor.The law covers violent crimes, sexual assault, and assault of a child. The law requires that individuals “shall as soon as reasonably possible notify the prosecuting attorney, law enforcement, medical assistance, or other public officials.”  The law further states “The duty to notify a person or agency under this section is met if a person notifies or attempts to provide such notice by telephone or any other means as soon as reasonably possible.”

    I am unaware of such a law in Pennsylvania, but these laws are rarely enforced.

    Conversely, New York charged a woman for calling police in a racially charged incident in Central Park. The charge was later dismissed.

    We have seen criminal charges for videotaping crime scenes in other countries.  We also discussed a torts case involving a delay in calling police, but that case involved people who were deemed partially responsible for a death.

    In 2009, the New York courts ruled that Metro workers were not legally required to assist a woman being raped at a station.

    In torts, there is no duty to rescue rule.  That was the holding in the famous ruling in Yania v. Bigan, 397 Pa. 316, 155 A.2d 343 (1959), where a man watched another man drown without taking any efforts to assist him. Even though Bigan dared Yania to jump into the hole full of water, the court found that this made no difference. Since these taunts were “directed to an adult in full possession of all his mental faculties [it] constitutes actionable negligence is not only without precedent but completely without merit.” On the rule itself, the Court wrote:

    Lastly, it is urged that Bigan failed to take the necessary steps to rescue Yania from the water. The mere fact that Bigan saw Yania in a position of peril in the water imposed upon him no legal, although a moral, obligation or duty to go to his rescue unless Bigan was legally responsible, in whole or in part, for placing Yania in the perilous position: Restatement, Torts, § 314. Cf: Restatement, Torts, § 322. The language of this Court in Brown v. French, 104 Pa. 604, 607, 608, is apt: “If it appeared that the deceased, by his own carelessness, contributed in any degree to the accident which caused the loss of his life, the defendants ought not to have been held to answer for the consequences resulting from that accident. … He voluntarily placed himself in the way of danger, and his death was the result of his own act. … That his undertaking was an exceedingly reckless and dangerous one, the event proves, but there was no one to blame for it but himself…The complaint does not aver any facts which impose upon Bigan legal responsibility for placing Yania in the dangerous position in the water and, absent such legal responsibility, the law imposes on Bigan no duty of rescue.

    Europeans have always criticized our rule and many countries have long recognized a duty to rescue – though usually that obligation ends with any physical risk.

    New York was the scene of perhaps the most infamous example of citizens failing to act to protect a victim. Kitty Genovese (right) was stabbed to death near her home in Queens on March 13, 1964. She was stabbed twice in the back by Winston Moseley and screamed, “Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!” While someone yelled, “let that girl alone” and Moseley ran, no one called the police. Genovese crawled away, but Moseley returned ten minutes later and searched for her. Over the course of half an hour, he raped her and then murdered her. Somewhere between 12 and 38 people are estimated as having heard the assault. When witness Karl Ross finally called the police, they arrived within minutes.

    I am unaware of a criminal provision that would allow a charge for the other passengers in Pennsylvania. Indeed, I know of no law requiring an intervention in a violent crime scene anywhere in the country. Perhaps some of our Pennsylvania lawyers could help out.  Requiring people to take such a risk is unlikely to be upheld in court. The failure to call 911, as discussed above, is a crime in a few states but only treated as a misdemeanor in those rare cases of prosecution.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 19:25

  • IHS Market Warns Of "Armageddon" For US Propane Market 
    IHS Market Warns Of “Armageddon” For US Propane Market 

    The expanding energy crisis is causing propane to rocket higher (read: here) as supplies dwindle to below seasonal levels as research firm IHS Markit Ltd. warns of “armageddon” during the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

    IHS analyst Edgar Ang told attendees during a virtual presentation on Tuesday that US propane inventories are at a record low and will be extremely tight as cold weather is ahead. Mean temperatures in the Lower US 48 are expected to dip into the 60-55F range through the end of this month. 

    Heating degree days are set to soar by month end, suggesting the heating season has already begun. 

    Ang said 1Q22 prices are already above later-dated supplies that “it may indicate players are preparing for propane-market armageddon.” He warned some areas of the country might be prone to shortages this winter. 

    Propane prices, which are used for heating resident and commercial building structures and also used for industrial production of plastics, have jumped to the highest in a decade due to increasing overseas demand and tight production. The surge comes as a global energy crunch threatens to derail the global economy. 

    In a separate report, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects households that use propane and heating oil this year will spend much more than last. This could strip out some of their spendings in other areas of the economy, such as eating out.

    Soaring energy prices, plus food, shelter, and other costs, will continue to pressure the Biden administration to solve persistent inflation that eats away at real wages. 

    Making matters worse IHS expects a cooler winter that could boost energy demand and continue to place a bid under propane prices, analyst Veeral Mehta said.

    It’s only now that the Biden administration wishes there was global warming. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 19:05

  • Iran, Venezuela To Sign 20-Year Economic Cooperation Deal While Facing US Sanctions
    Iran, Venezuela To Sign 20-Year Economic Cooperation Deal While Facing US Sanctions

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    Iran and Venezuela have announced a plan to sign a 20-year economic cooperation deal as the two countries continue to strengthen their trade relationship in the face of US pressure.

    Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia met with his Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday. After meeting with Plasencia, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the deal will be signed when Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro visits Tehran in the “next few months.”

    Image source: TradeWinds

    The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the two diplomats “decided to hold a joint economic commission of the two countries in the near future and to compile and finalize a comprehensive plan for the 20-year economic cooperation between the two countries.”

    Both Iran and Venezuela are under crippling economic sanctions, so the two countries are natural trading partners. This growing relationship has angered Washington. During the Trump administration, the US outright stole shipments of Iranian gasoline that were bound for Venezuela.

    Despite the US pressure, Caracas and Tehran continue to trade. On Friday, an Iranian ship discharged about 2 million barrels of condensate in Venezuela, a compound used to refine oil. In exchange, Venezuela gave Iran about 2 million barrels of crude.

    In Tehran on Monday, Plasencia also met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The Iranian leader said strengthening ties with countries like Venezuela will be a priority of his.

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

    “In this government, we are determined to overcome the problems caused by the enemies and continue the path of development of our country,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 18:45

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  • The Nuclear ESG Push Is On: UK Aims To Put Reactors "At The Heart" Of Its Decarbonization Strategy
    The Nuclear ESG Push Is On: UK Aims To Put Reactors “At The Heart” Of Its Decarbonization Strategy

    The United Kingdom could be ready to officially put nuclear power back on the map.

    That’s because UK ministers are planning on putting nuclear power “at the heart of Britain’s strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” a new report from the Financial Times reveals. 

    In what is one of the boldest statements about the future of nuclear in a major geographic area, government documents will lay out a “net zero” strategy for the UK as well as a cost assessment of implementing the strategy to meet the 2050 goal. 

    Then, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to give the documents a “go ahead”. 

    The FT reported on how the project would be funded:

     The creation of a “regulated asset base” (RAB) model will be key to delivering a future fleet of large atomic power stations. The RAB funding model is already used for other infrastructure projects, such as London’s Thames Tideway super sewer.

    Under the scheme, households will be charged for the cost of the plant via an energy levy long before it begins generating electricity, which could take a decade or more from when the final investment decision is taken.

    The mechanism is designed to encourage investment by institutional investors, such as pension funds, by guaranteeing steady returns from early on. Legislation on the nuclear RAB model will be published later this month.

    Westinghouse is already taking well to the news, planning to revive plans for a nuclear power plant that was abandoned by Hitachi in 2019, the report says.

    Ministers will also be advocating for small modular reactors, which we noted days ago were also key to France’s plans to meet net zero carbon emissions goals.

    A combination of “nuclear power, renewables and ‘carbon capture and storage'” is being targeted for UK’s 2035 net zero goal. 

    The government will also produce costs analyses and broader environmental plans ahead of the upcoming COP26 climate conference in Glasgow at the end of October. 

    Four days ago we noted that France was also adopting nuclear as part of President Macron’s strategy for decarbonization. 

    Recall, Germany is also trying to stop the decommissioning of its nuclear reactors. A newly penned letter to the FT, signed by professors from Oxford, Harvard and American University alongside a group of environmentalists, is urging that Germany postpone its exit from nuclear energy for benefit of the environment.

    Noting that many Germans aren’t happy with the job politicians are doing addressing climate change, the letter notes that Germany’s “emissions are rising sharply again, at a time when they need to be falling fast”.

    Recall, just days prior to that we wrote about Poland’s second largest energy consumer considering a move to small modular reactors to help generate energy. 

    Earlier in the summer we posted about how crypto miners were starting to forge partnerships with nuclear power plants to combat the “bitcoin is not good for the environment” argument. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 02:45

  • Washington Or Moscow: Decision-Time For Erdogan In Northern Syria
    Washington Or Moscow: Decision-Time For Erdogan In Northern Syria

    Authored by Tulin Daloglu via TheCradle.co,

    Erdogan’s Syria choices seem increasingly limited by unflagging US support for his Kurdish foes. Turkey’s only option may be a Russian one…

    In his 7 October statement renewing US national emergency powers in Syria, US President Joe Biden said: “The situation in and in relation to Syria, and in particular the actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria, undermines the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, endangers civilians, and further threatens to undermine the peace, security, and stability in the region, and continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

    The full statement obviously has several intended audiences, but then quite remarkably, veers to cast Turkey, a NATO ally, almost as an existential threat to the United States. Ankara understands that the exaggerated accusation may be a tactic to keep Turkey from carrying out military operations east of Euphrates River, currently controlled by US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) militias.

    But whether Turkey aims to make this move is beside the point. What this harsh White House language seems to be communicating is a US red line whereby the Kurdish-controlled area in northeastern Syria is regarded as a federal district – as in Washington, DC or Puerto Rico. That is the crux of all that matters.

    For years, US policymakers regarded Turkish misgivings over this issue as either paranoiac or conspiratorial. When Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed a multi-billion-dollar energy package in 2013 by bypassing the central government in Baghdad, it was Washington that warned Ankara that such acts could only empower the Kurds’ drive for independence. To note, these contracts eventually did not yield any favorable results.

    Fast forward to 2017, when Washington tamped down the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum quickly and decisively. The move made Ankara temporarily cool its concerns over the US’ stance on Kurdish nationhood, but found itself on alert again when the Pentagon began working closely with the YPG militia in Syria.

    Turkey argues that the YPG is an extension of a group the US State Department classifies as a terrorist organization: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The US maintains that its support of the YPG does not indicate hostility toward Turkey, its territorial integrity or national harmony; it merely needs non-US bodies on the ground to fight ISIS and, frankly, Syrian allied forces attempting to recover their resource-rich swathe of territory.

    For years now, the American media has glorified the bravery of Kurdish fighters to generate sympathy, and cast Turkey as a racist state prepared to commit cross-border genocide against Kurdish populations. This simplistic approach in shaping people’s perception is one aspect of Washington’s policy agenda. The other part frames the US-YPG relationship as being merely transactional – the YPG maximizes its political and military power and the US scores gains against ISIS and the Syrian government.

    The question is whether US-backed Kurdish forces are even an antidote to ISIS. Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford doesn’t think so. “The YPG militia cannot destroy ISIS,” he said in a recent webinar event. “An autonomous (Kurdish) administration is not going to resolve the ISIS problem.”

    So then, why does Biden’s administration believe that Turkey undermines US counter-terrorism efforts enough to pose a national security threat? If one examines Washington’s own post-9/11 foreign policy track record in Turkey’s neighborhood, there’s virtually nothing resembling “peace, security, and stability in the region.”

    Is Turkey single-handedly responsible for these American failures? No. Could the Kurdish militia pose a threat to Turkey’s national unity and peace? Yes. Does the YPG have a right under international law to defend itself? Let’s get honest here – these NATO allies no longer trust each other enough to look away. And frankly, neither Turkey, nor the US, nor the YPG have the right to invoke international law in their fights against each other inside Syrian territory.

    The US-Turkey relationship has never been an easy one due to Ankara’s poor record of human rights and rule of law, and its 1974 Cyprus intervention. These differences have grown in recent years, and include Turkey’s expulsion from the F-35 program, its exposure to CAATSA sanctions, bitter fights over its acquisition of Russian S-400 anti-missile systems, and so forth. But no issue today is of more concern to the Turks than the Kurdish one, and Washington doesn’t want to hear it.

    When then-Vice President Biden visited Ankara on August 24, 2016, Turkey launched its Operation Euphrates Shield in northeastern Syria. Whether Biden received prior notice remains a mystery; it was the first high-level US visit to Turkey after the failed 15 July putsch by the Turkish-banned Fethullah Gulen movement (Gulen enjoys asylum in the United States), and perhaps Ankara was feeling vindictive.

    “We couldn’t understand if it was an internet game, if it was serious, when it happened,” Biden has said. The again, he also assured Turkey that the US would extradite Gulen if the evidence warranted a trial, and that it would cut support to the YPG if they did not withdraw to the east of the Euphrates river.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Biden on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome later this month, but the way Washington is ignoring him after years of support is making him restless. The inner ranks of the Ankara beltway are still reeling from the speed at which Turkey went from downing a Russian fighter jet for its 8-second incursion into Turkish air space, to purchasing S-400s from Russia the next day.

    Given Ankara’s chaotic past decade, nothing is taken at face value anymore. But the US is also no longer perceived as a respectful partner in building democracy and human rights. Today, it is regarded more as a cold-blooded, interest-driven power broker, with little loyalty. While Russia, China and Iran are also viewed as sanguine players, they at least appear to respect their alliances.

    Neither of these rising regional powers can single-handedly shape the world order in the way the Americans have done for decades. But, together, they are jockeying to exert influence and maximize their benefits in the wake of Washington’s error-filled, foreign policy decline in influence. The more the US sidelines the interests of its NATO ally in favor of Kurdish militias, the more tectonic opportunities arise for Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran’s benefit.

    Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met privately for almost three hours in Sochi on 29 September. It is in Putin’s interest to exploit or magnify US-Turkish differences to wrench Turkey away from its Western alliance, where anti-Erdoganism creates unprecedented opportunities for Russia. For years, Washington supported Erdogan in power; now Moscow is playing the same game.

    The YPG recently killed two Turkish special operations police officers in northern Syria. Since then both Erdogan and Turkey’s Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar have spoken cautiously about their next step. On Friday, the Turkish president promised a “different” kind of anti-terror response in Syria, and took a swipe at the Americans: “The terrorists of the PKK, YPG and PYD are running wild in entire Syria, not only in the northern part. The leading supporters of them are the international coalition and the US,” he said.

    It is unclear what Erdogan intends to do next. It could be a limited operation targeting only the Tel Rifaat area – which is under the supervision of the Russians, who have promised to clear out YPG militia. But Moscow will want something in exchange – likely, the complete removal of Turkish-backed militants in Idlib.

    However, if Erdogan and Putin reached a comprehensive agreement in their latest bilateral meeting, Turkey could also aim for the area (30 kilometers deep, from Manbij to al-Malikiyah) of Operation Peace Spring, which Biden would fiercely oppose. Or it could do nothing at all. For Ankara, these are not easy times to make hard decisions.

    One direction will leave Erdogan stuck with uneasy allies who militarily support his most belligerent foes. The other direction will see him abandoning all hope of territorial gains in the Levant, highlight his decade-long failed investment in Syrian regime-change, and place him firmly back within Turkey’s borders.

    President Biden has either misread the tea leaves in the region or actively wants Moscow to exert even more influence over Ankara. Either way, Erdogan may find himself outmatched in the duel between Moscow and Washington. The end game could be a new West Asian order.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 02:00

  • Who Will Be 'Brave' In Huxley's New World?
    Who Will Be ‘Brave’ In Huxley’s New World?

    Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    No wonder that the Tavistock Institute and the CIA became involved in looking at the effects of LSD and how to influence and control the mind.

     “ ‘Science?’….’Yes,’ Mustapha Mond was saying, ‘that’s another item in the cost of stability. It isn’t only art that’s incompatible with happiness; it’s also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled…I’m interested in truth, I like science. But truth’s a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it’s been beneficent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history…But we can’t allow science to undo its own good work. That’s why we so carefully limit the scope of its researchers…We don’t allow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of the moment. All other enquiries are most sedulously discouraged…Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness…[but] People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years’ War. That made them change their tune all right. What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled – after the Nine Years’ War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We’ve gone on controlling ever since. It hasn’t been very good for truth, of course. But it’s been very good for happiness. One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You’re paying for it, Mr. Watson – paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.’ “

    Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

    Where does one start in discussing the famed fiction novel of Huxley? Although most agree that there is a definite brilliance to the piece, most are also confused as to what was Huxley’s intention in writing the extremely influential dystopic vision. Was it meant to be taken as an exhortation? An inevitable prophecy? Or rather…was it meant as an Open Conspiracy?

    What do I mean by an Open Conspiracy?

    If we are going to talk about such things our story starts with H.G. Wells, whom Aldous acknowledged he was most certainly influenced by, particularly by Wells’ novels “A Modern Utopia,” “The Sleeper Awakes,” and “Men Like Gods,” when writing his “Brave New World.”

    Although Aldous is quoted as referring to Wells as a “horrid, vulgar little man,” (Wells was indeed not a very likeable individual) it was not for reasons one might first assume. Aldous did share a Wellsian perspective in that society should be organised based on a caste system. Perhaps this was one of the reasons Aldous was so fascinated with learning about India’s Hindu religious beliefs and practices, which had coexisted for centuries with a deeply ingrained caste system to which India is still struggling to remove itself from to this day. This is not to say that one caused the other, or that Hinduism has not offered a plethora of great works and insights, but that it had become corrupted and thoroughly intertwined with upholding India’s caste system at some point one cannot deny; that it was used to justify a system of hierarchy from slave to the god-like state of a Brahmin and that British imperialists had always been greatly fascinated by this form of social organization one cannot deny.

    Aldous was always interested in the subject of religion, but more so for its uses in behaviourism and mental conditioning achieved through such techniques as entering states of trance where an individual’s suggestibility could be manipulated. Hypnopædia was not just some quirky sci-fi concoction. It is also why Aldous was so interested in the work of Dr. William Sargant, whom Aldous repeatedly refers to in his writings and lectures and who was involved with the Tavistock Institute and MKUltra. More on this in Part two.

    These spiritual/religious studies are what shaped the core thesis of Aldous’ book “Doors of Perception” which is considered the instruction manual for what started the counterculture movement. The title is influenced by the poet William Blake who wrote in 1790 in his book “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,”:

    “if the doors of perception were cleansed then everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern“

    Another major influence for “Doors of Perception” was again H.G. Wells, from his book “The Door in the Wall,” which examines the contrast between aesthetics and science and the difficulty in choosing between them. The protagonist Lionel Wallace is unable to bridge the gap between his imagination and his rational, scientific side which leads to his death.

    Aldous writes in his “Doors of Perception,”:

    “That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely…Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia [ancient Roman pagan festival], dancing and listening to oratory – all these have served, in H.G. Wells’s phrase, as Doors in the Wall…Under a more realistic, a less exclusively verbal system of education than ours, every Angel (in Blake’s sense of that word) would be permitted as a sabbatical treat, would be urged and even, if necessary, compelled to take an occasional trip through some chemical Door in the Wall into the world of transcendental experience. If it terrified him, it would be unfortunate but probably salutary. If it brought him a brief but timeless illumination, so much the better. In either case the Angel might lose a little of the confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning and the consciousness of having read all the books…But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out…”

    Aldous was always chasing the perfect drug that would be minimal in its physically destructive effects but would allow an individual to tap into an almost consumer state of a religious/spiritual out-of-body experience, a transcendence that promised a connection with the Infinite, inner peace and enlightenment.

    Enlightenment and inner peace in a pill, ready for whenever one needed a short holiday from the “illusion” of reality.

    The name Soma, which Aldous used to name his fantasy ideal drug in “Brave New World,” was based off a plant whose juices were used to create the spiritual drink which was described in both the ancient religious practices of the Vedic tradition and Zoroastrianism, which called the plant and spiritual drink by the same name, Soma. Today, it is a mystery as to what plant they were referring to in these texts. Huxley no doubt chased after this dragon the entire latter half of his life, and indeed, psilocybin mushrooms are theorised as one of the potential candidates for what could have been named Soma centuries ago.

    It is perhaps here that people are the most confused about the character of Huxley. After all, he was obviously walking the walk so to speak, thus didn’t he truly believe that psychedelics were the path to freedom through enlightenment?

    Well, the argument has been made that Huxley’s approach to LSD [and other psychedelics] was essentially oligarchic, that it was to be regarded as a dangerous substance to be sampled only by such fine and visionary minds as his own. That is, those who had the mental strength, the mental stamina to reach enlightenment; those who were too weak to sustain such mental rigours would become the very opposite, and risked falling into the dark pit of complete madness, although this in of itself was perceived by many to be a form of clairvoyance. After all, what is it to be mad in a world that is sickeningly and inhumanely “normal”? This is most certainly how Ken Kesey thought when writing his “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” that madness itself was a form of liberation from the shackles of capitalist societal constraints.

    Perhaps madness was the goal, it was after all, much more attainable that the promised enlightenment…

    As William Sargant noted in his book “Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing” J.F.C. Hecker was studying the dancing mania phenomenon that occurred during the Black Death, which was a social phenomenon that arose in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people who would begin to dance erratically during the Plague, sometimes thousands at a time until they would fall from exhaustion or from injuries. It was thought to have arisen in Aachen, Germany in 1374 and quickly spread throughout Europe with one of the last observations of it occurring in 1518 in Alsace, France.

    Hecker observed in his research on the dancing mania that heightened suggestibility had the capability to cause a person to “embrace with equal force, reason and folly, good and evil, diminish the praise of virtue as well as the criminality of vice.”

    Such a state of mind was likened to the first efforts of the infant mind, Sargant writes “this instinct of imitation when it exists in its highest degree, is also united a loss of all power over the will, which occurs as soon as the impression on the senses has become firmly established, producing a condition like that of small animals when they are fascinated by the look of a serpent.”

    I wonder if Sargant imagined himself the serpent…

    It is no wonder that the Tavistock Institute and the CIA became involved in looking at the effects of LSD and how to influence and control the mind. And perhaps it is no coincidence that Aldous Huxley was in close correspondence with William Sargant to which Sargant even refers to Aldous’ “insights” multiple times in his book “Battle for the Mind.”

    Aldous is also quoted in a lecture he delivered to the Tavistock Group, California Medical School in 1961:

    “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

    Aldous goes on to state a year later in a lecture titled “The Ultimate Revolution” at UC Berkeley Language Center 1962:

    “Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows…we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. This is the, it seems to me, the ultimate in malevolent revolutions shall we say, and this is a problem which has interested me many years and about which I wrote thirty years ago, a fable, Brave New World, which is an account of society making use of all the devices available and some of the devices which I imagined to be possible making use of them in order to, first of all, to standardize the population, to iron out inconvenient human differences, to create, to say, mass produced models of human beings arranged in some sort of scientific caste system.”

    Yes, yes we get it. This is all to be taken as “warnings” to the public, a terrible necessity that will come about if over-population is not addressed (as he makes clear in his Brave New World Revisited). With over-population comes over-organization which in turn leads to the scientific advances in technology which we are told by Aldous can only lead to totalitarianism. Thus, population growth and advances in the sciences are the greatest threat to humankind. Wait, that sounds oddly very much like the reasonings of Mustapha Mond, have we come around full circle, what exactly does Aldous agree and disagree with here? Are we to have a scientific dictatorship in order to avoid a totalitarian system in the form of a scientific dictatorship?

    In H.G. Wells’ “Open Conspiracy: Blueprints for a World Revolution,” he describes his vision for a Modern Religion:

    ‘…if religion is to develop unifying and directive power in the present confusion of human affairs it must adapt itself to this forward-looking, individuality-analyzing turn of mind; it must divest itself of its sacred histories…The desire for service, for subordination, for permanent effect, for an escape from the distressful pettiness and mortality of the individual life, is the undying element in every religious system.

    The time has come to strip religion right down to that [service and subordination is all Wells wants to keep of the old relic of religion]…The explanation of why things are is an unnecessary effort…The essential fact…is the desire for religion and not how it came about…The first sentence in the modern creed must be, not “I believe,” but “I give myself.” ‘

    Hmm, is this the same Revolution as Aldous is speaking about? After all, there is a lot of similarity between H.G. Wells’ description of his “Modern Religion” and what Aldous is preaching in his “Doors of Perception,” to which Wells is undoubtedly a large influence. The desire to escape from the distressful pettiness and mortality of the individual life, that the explanation for why one does something is not important, only to be motivated by the desire for release, for a complete catharsis that only the fervour of a “religious,” a “spiritual” experience can bring about.

    It is the desire for, not the care for why. To believe is not even acceptable, because to believe pertains to thought, it is merely a matter of surrender, that you give yourself. It is not to act with reason but to be possessed by its very opposite; to be in a state of existence where there are no words, and thus there are no thoughts, just direct sensory feeling.

    The ultimate achievement is to completely surrender oneself to the external world, perhaps to a dictatorship without tears…

    The reader should be aware that Wells wrote a book titled “The New World Order” in 1940, and is the first that I am aware of to pioneer this now-infamous term. The reader should also be aware that Julian Huxley (Aldous Huxley’s brother) was a co-author of “The Science of Life,” a part of Wells’ trilogy “The Outline of History” (1919), “The Science of Life” (1929), and “The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind” (1932) to which Wells made no qualms should be regarded as the new Bible. Julian was also a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society, serving as its Vice-President from 1937-1944 and its President from 1959-1962. Interesting life choices from the authors of the “new Bible.”

    In addition, Aldous’ grandfather Thomas Huxley (“Charles Darwin’s bulldog”) was the biology teacher of H.G. Wells and was one of the largest influences in Wells’ life, promoting the works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Malthus, for more on this refer to my paper. Although Thomas Huxley lived before the time of the “science” of Eugenics, he was a stout Malthusian and thus one can rather safely say would have been a eugenicist if offered the chance.

    Thus, we should regard Aldous’ mention of the stylish ‘Malthusian belt’ in his “Brave New World,” under a more somber light perhaps…

    And now we are ready to walk through the doors of perception on Aldous himself, the true Huxley behind the projected illusion. We may not find Infinity at the end of this excursion, but we will most certainly be better equipped to tell the difference between Huxley’s self and non-self, between what is real and what is false.

    [This is Part 1 to a three-part series, Part 2 and 3 will cover the War on Science, the Battle for your Mind and Aldous Huxley as a pioneer for the counter-culture movement and its implications.]

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/19/2021 – 00:00

  • Lloyd Austin To Stress "Open Door To NATO" In Visit To Ukraine & Georgia
    Lloyd Austin To Stress “Open Door To NATO” In Visit To Ukraine & Georgia

    Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is traveling to eastern Europe this week, where he will reportedly tell countries on the “the front lines of Russian aggression” – in particular Ukraine and Georgia – that there is an “open door to NATO”, according to a senior defense official quoted in The Washington Times.

    His trip will take him to both countries, after which he’ll go to Romania and on to Belgium to participate in a meeting of NATO defense ministers. “We are reassuring and reinforcing the sovereignty of countries that are on the front lines of Russian aggression,” the unnamed senior US official said further.

    Both Ukraine and Georgia have have seen recent border conflicts and tensions flair up with their large, more powerful neighbor – including the Russo-Georgia War of 2008 centered on the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

    “Against that backdrop, defense officials said Mr. Austin will tell Ukrainian and Georgian leaders that there is an open door to NATO membership and that each country should take steps to qualify for membership,” the Washington Times continues. 

    As for Ukraine, which earlier this year saw President Volodymyr Zelensky provocatively declare that “NATO membership is the only way to end war in Donbass”, Austin is expected to underscore “unwavering support” – according to a DOD announcement of the official trip:

    In Ukraine, the Secretary will meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and Minister of Defense Andrii Taran to reaffirm our unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The visit will also serve as an opportunity to discuss Ukraine’s progress with the implementation of defense and defense industry reforms needed to advance its Euro-Atlantic aspirations as well as regional cooperation among Black Sea allies and partners.

    Meanwhile, just before Austin’s arrival in the region, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov took the opportunity to restate Russia’s “red line” in an interview with a French TV channel, saying “Ukraine’s accession to NATO would be the worst-case scenario” for which Moscow would respond with necessary “active measures”.

    Via The Sun

    “This is a scenario that goes beyond the red lines of Russia’s national interests. This is a scenario that could force Russia to take active measures to ensure its own security,” Peskov said. And addressing accusations earlier in the year of Russia threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty via a major troop build-up, he pointed out that “before the Russian troops were moved to that region, there were large NATO exercises held near the Russian border. Everyone talks about the concentration of Russian troops all the time, but nobody talks about the concentration of NATO troops.”

    Austin’s trip comes on the heels of a rare visit to Russia of Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, where a US delegation said productive talks were had with the Russian side toward restoring deteriorated communications with Washington.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 23:40

  • After Backlash Over $600 IRS Bank Surveillance, Democrats Revise Proposal
    After Backlash Over $600 IRS Bank Surveillance, Democrats Revise Proposal

    Senate Democrats on Tuesday plan to release a reworked version of a Biden administration proposal to surveil US bank accounts – after their original plan to require financial institutions to report transactions on bank accounts with more than $600 in annual deposits and withdrawals was widely panned (i.e. most people). 

    Now, the rule will apply to anyone with at least $10,000 in annual non-wage deposits or withdrawals, according to the Washington Post, which writes that the toned-down scope ‘intends to insure it applies to only larger account holders.’

    We wonder, though, if this includes older Americans deriving at least $10,000 in annual dividends / interest outside of a traditional IRA (which is considered ordinary income when taken)? Or parents sending at least $10,000 per year to college-aged children? Or anyone paying cash for a car, or motorcycle, or literally anything that costs more than $10,000? Or those who have spent at least $10,000 in a year – which brings us back to ‘most people.’

    “I don’t know why they thought $600 would be a good number. $10,000 is definitely an improvement,” said former Obama and Trump IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, who thinks the threshold should be closer to $50,000. “The vast majority of people won’t be affected, but it will pick up more than just the idle rich.”

    That said, some Democratic aides are skeptical whether even the altered version of the proposal will make it into the final Build Back Better package.

    Democrats supportive of the proposal have pointed out that well-funded business lobbyists and Republican lawmakers have mounted an all-out campaign against the measure that has sometimes exaggerated or outright fabricated the extent of the changes. But opposition to the measure is not limited to Wall Street, and has extended to community banks influential with much of the congressional Democratic caucus. -WaPo

    Over 20 GOP attorneys general have opposed the original proposal in a Friday letter to President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, saying that it “stands in direct opposition to privacy that Americans are entitled to and deserve.” We can’t imagine they’ll change their stance in light of the changes.

    At present, the rule change is nebulous. Perhaps Tuesday’s proposal will shed more light on exactly who Democrats are targeting with financial surveillance.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 23:20

  • Chinese & Russian Warships Jointly Sail Through Chokepoint Off Japan's Mainland For 1st Time
    Chinese & Russian Warships Jointly Sail Through Chokepoint Off Japan’s Mainland For 1st Time

    In an unprecedented maneuver amid joint naval drills that just wrapped up in the region, a large group of Chinese PLA and Russian warships sailed through a key chokepoint very close to Japan’s mainland for the first time ever on Monday.

    Ten naval vessels belonging to China and Russia passed through the northern Tsugaru Strait, Tokyo’s Defense Ministry said soon after the pass through. It comes after the two militaries just wrapped up four days of joint naval exercises, dubbed ‘Maritime Interaction 2021’, in the Sea of Japan from Oct.14 through 17.

    Russian MoD image of the weekend drills.

    It also comes after in recent months Japan has made it clear that it sides with Washington’s controversial Taiwan pro-independence stance, inviting the wrath and muscle-flexing of Beijing.

    Nikkei Asia reported that “The warships sailed eastward toward the Pacific Ocean, likely as part of Naval Interaction 2021, a joint maritime exercise the two navies are conducting this month.”

    The maritime monitoring site Naval News described the weekend Russia-China drills as follows:

    12 planes and helicopters of the Pacific Fleet’s air arm and the Chinese Navy were also involved in the maneuvers.

    During the joint maneuvers, the crews of the warships from both countries practiced joint tactical maneuvering, mine countermeasures, artillery live-firing against seaborne targets. They also searched for and blocked a simulated enemy’s submarine in the assigned area.

    Russia’s military released footage showing the large-scale joint drills…

    On Friday Russia’s Ministry of Defense had blasted the behavior of a US destroyer in the Sea of Japan, charging that the USS Chafee had come dangerously close to a Russian vessel while intruding on Russia’s territorial waters. Russian media reports said the two ships came within 60 meters of each other.

    The US Navy later in the day refuted the claims, saying its ship was conducting legal “routine operations” in international waters while blaming the Russian warship for making an aggressive approach.

    The Kremlin said the Russian Navy “chased” the US destroyer out of the area, with the two contradictory narratives still unsettled. Further the region has seen Russia and Japan locked in an island dispute that goes back to WWII. Over the past couple of years, there’s been a handful of encounters between US and Russian ships, given neither the US nor its ally Japan recognize the extent of what Russia claims as territorial waters.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 23:00

  • NHL Suspends San Jose Sharks Player 21 Games For Submitting Fake COVID Vaccine Card
    NHL Suspends San Jose Sharks Player 21 Games For Submitting Fake COVID Vaccine Card

    The Kyrie Irving effect is spreading.

    In the latest farce involving pro sports covid “loopholes”, the AP reports that the NHL has suspended San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane for 21 games for submitting a fake COVID-19 vaccination card.

    The league announced the suspension without pay on Monday and said Kane will not be eligible to play until Nov. 30 at New Jersey. Kane will also forfeit about $1.68 million of his $7 million salary for this season with the money going to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

    There was a silver lining: the league also announced that a concurrent investigation into allegations of sexual and physical abuse made against Kane by his estranged wife, Anna, could not be substantiated. Kane had previously been cleared by the NHL in an investigation into allegations made by Anna Kane that he bet on hockey games, including some against the Sharks.

    But while Kane probably did not beat the crap out of his estranged wife, the league did determine that Kane violated the COVID-19 protocols. A person familiar with the investigation said earlier this month that the league was looking into allegations that Kane submitted a fake vaccination card.

    Using a fake vaccination card is illegal in both the United States and Canada, as well as against NHL rules.

    Commissioner Gary Bettman said last week that only four players on active rosters hadn’t been vaccinated, although one wonder what the real number is.

    Kane had not been around the team since the start of training camp while these investigations were ongoing in an agreement between him and the team.

    Kane, 30, is three seasons into a $49 million, seven-year contract. He’s with his third organization after being drafted by and debuting with Atlanta/Winnipeg and a stint in Buffalo. Last season, he had 22 goals and 27 assists in 56 games.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 22:40

  • Female Writer Who Won World's Biggest Literary Prize Turns Out To Be Three Men
    Female Writer Who Won World’s Biggest Literary Prize Turns Out To Be Three Men

    An anonymous writer who has been likened to Italy’s pseudonymous Ellena Ferrante was just awarded a €1MM ($1.16MM dollars) literary prize for her dazzling work as a groundbreaking female author. There’s only one minor clarification though: she’s a he.

    Well, she’s actually three men. According to the FT, Carmen Mola, an author who until now has been presented as a female university professor writing under a pen name because of her desire for anonymity (something nobody would question since progressive critics would simply assume she’s doing this to protect herself from online hate hate speech), revealed her true identity to the world when the main prize was awarded in the presence of the Spanish King.

    When the writer’s name was called three men walked to the podium. It turns out, Mola was actually a collaboration between three Spanish TV writers (Mola is neither a woman nor an academic). Their names: Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez nor Antonio Mercero are academics. They have worked on scripts for shows including On Duty Pharmacy, Central Hospital and No Heaven Without Breasts.

    “Carmen Mola is not, like all the lies we’ve been telling, a university professor,” said Díaz on winning the prize. “We are three friends who one day four years ago decided to combine our talent to tell a story.”

    The group of men won the prize for a book titled The Beast, a historical thriller set during the cholera epidemic in 1834. During an interview with a Spanish newspaper, one of them claimed that they “didn’t hide behind a woman, we hid behind a name.”

    “I don’t know if a female pseudonym would sell more than a male one, I don’t have the faintest idea, but I doubt it,” he added.

    Carmen Mola was said by the men’s publishers, Penguin Random House, to be the pseudonym of a female writer born in Madrid. Mola was also described as a forty-something mother of three children, who worked as a professor while writing crime thrillers in her spare time.

    “Mola”, or the men hiding behind Mola, has also been interviewed by the Spanish press, and a picture has been shared on her publisher’s website depicting a woman with her back to the camera who was identified as Mola.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 22:20

  • FDA To Allow "Mixing and Matching" Of COVID Boosters
    FDA To Allow “Mixing and Matching” Of COVID Boosters

    mRNA or a disabled adenovirus? According to the latest iteration of the “science” it’s really all the same and just jam it in there, because as the NYT reports, the Food and Drug Administration will allow Americans to “mix and match”, i.e., receive a different Covid-19 vaccine as a booster than the one they initially received, a move that could “reduce the appeal of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and provide flexibility to doctors and other vaccinators.”

    In other words, the mRNA lobby has just booked the entire second floor at Scores and is hoovering up industrial amounts of Colombian marching powder while surrounded by the best silicone money can rent.

    In the latest example that money talks and what was scientific consensus until this morning walks, the government would not recommend one shot over another, and may instead note that using the same vaccine as a booster when possible is preferable, but vaccine providers could use their discretion to offer a different brand, a freedom that state health officials have been requesting for weeks. Maybe one should check if the bank accounts of said state health officials have suddenly seen a mysterious inflow of outside funds that prompted their agitation.

    In any case, the approach was foreshadowed on Friday, when so-called “researchers” presented the findings of a federally funded “mix and match” study to an expert committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration. The study found that recipients of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot who received a Moderna booster saw their antibody levels rise 76-fold in 15 days, compared with only a fourfold increase after an extra dose of Johnson & Johnson.

    We can only assume that this “study” is different than the one that took place just a few months ago that prompted the same NYT to report that “Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts“…

    … and in which we read that:

    Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”

    It now turns out that Britain was simply early in guessing which way a whole lot of bribes money can sway the “science” du jour.

    Amusingly, even as the FDA agonizes over greenlighting covid booster shots for Americans younger than 65 – having initially rejected the biotech/pharma lobbied outcome which has been eagerly sought by the Biden admin – Federal regulators this week are aiming to greatly expand the number of Americans eligible for booster shots. As such, the FDA is now expected to authorize boosters of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines by Wednesday evening; it could allow the mix-and-match approach by then. The agency last month authorized booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for at least six months after the second dose.

    Then, on Thursday, a CDC advisory committee will also take up the booster issue and will then issue its own recommendations (to go ahead and do it because science says “mix and match” is cool). By the end of the week, tens of millions more Americans could be eligible for extra shots.

    So how exactly do we know that the “mixing and matching” that was anathema as recently as January is now to be encouraged? Well, because the “experts” emphasized last week that the new “data” was based on small groups of volunteers and short-term findings.

    We repeat: small groups of volunteers and short-term findings of mixing and matching revealed that all is well, so by extension, the protocol is perfectly suitable for hundreds of millions over years if not decades.

    Furthermore, only antibody levels — just one measure of the immune response — were calculated as part of the preliminary data, not the actual levels of immune cells primed to attack the coronavirus, which scientists say are also an important measure of a vaccine’s success. Then again, in a country that ignores natural covid immunity – because, well, that doesn’t lead to an even bigger yacht for certain biotech CEOs – this was to be expected.

    It gets better: perhaps in an attempt to mitigate its previously reported on how experts were “worried” due to precisely this “mix and match” approach, the NYT notes that “while the research on mixing and matching doses is somewhat thin, even some scientists who have strongly criticized the Biden administration’s booster policy said that providers should be given a measure of discretion as the campaign ramps up.”

    One wonders if these are the same “scientists” who strongly disagreed with a growing number of countries – such as Sweden, Norway and Finland – suspending use of the Moderna vaccine in young people “for precautionary reasons” following reports of “possible rare side effects.” Something tells us that that the answer is a resounding yes.

    “If you look at the data, it certainly looks like it might be better,” Dr. Paul A. Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said of Moderna or Pfizer boosters for Johnson & Johnson recipients. “I think we should move quickly on this, because it’s already happening.” He should know – after all this is the same Dr. Offit who was “honored by Bill and Melinda Gates during the launch of their Foundation’s Living Proof Project for global health.”

    Demonstrating just how extensively the scientific consensus can swing in under a year, at the meeting on Friday of the Food and Drug Administration’s expert panel – of which Dr. Offit is a member – top C.D.C. officials argued that providers needed latitude to offer different vaccines as boosters because – get this – patients might have had adverse reactions after their initial shots or presented other new concerns. In other words, a patient may not want a booster due to a bad experience with the original vaccine. So here’s the brilliant solution: just give them the other vaccine. And what’s most remarkable is that since this is fundamentally a ploy to get people who have had a JnJ vaccine to get a second, mRNA-based vaccine, the “scientific” thinking is that giving patients the same vaccine which was halted in various Scandinavian countries due to its “possible rare side effects” is literally what the doctor ordered.

    Ultimately, however, money is involved and as most of our readers know by now, money can induce some truly creative “scientific” thought. Like for example the thinking by Pfizer and Moderna CEOs who know that they need this approval to continue making billions from the vaccine: the federal government will cover the cost of a different vaccine as a booster only if the Food and Drug Administration authorizes the approach, officials told the NYT.

    “I’d like to reiterate how important it is from a programmatic perspective to have a little bit of flexibility,” Dr. Melinda Wharton, a top vaccine official at the C.D.C., told the F.D.A. panel. The same “little bit of flexibility” why the NYT back in January called “a mess” and “gambling”

    And just to avoid potentially embarrassing questions about conflicts of interest, the ironclad clause was invoked – the public health interest. 

    “From a public health perspective, there’s a clear need in some situations for individuals to receive a different vaccine,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, another high-ranking C.D.C. official.

    Finally, what would yet another scientific flip-flop be if it didn’t include, you guessed it, Anthony Fauci.

    Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, publicly suggested on Sunday that the government was headed toward granting greater leeway, at least for Johnson & Johnson recipients. “I believe there’s going to be a degree of flexibility of what a person who got the J.&J. originally can do, either with J.&J. or with the mix-and-match from other products,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

    A far cry from what he said in January, but that’s hardly news to anyone.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 22:00

  • North Korea May Have Test-Fired A Ballistic Missile, Japan Coast Guard Reports
    North Korea May Have Test-Fired A Ballistic Missile, Japan Coast Guard Reports

    Earlier this evening, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired an unidentified projectile into the sea east of the Korean peninsula.

    North Korean state media images of a new cruise missile tested in September

    This is the sixth “projectile” test so far in 2021:

    • March 25, 2021: North Korea carried out test-launch of two upgraded KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles carrying a 2.5 live warhead each that correctly hit the simulated targets. While North Korea official statement reported a 600 km range, Japanese and South Korean sources reported that the missiles flew just over 400 km. Later, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff revised their range assessment of new North Korean missile to 600 km and the Defense Minister said that blind spots due to earth curvature led to initial estimate of 450 km.

    • September 11, 2021: North Korea carried out tests of a new long-range cruise missile on 11 and 12 September 2021, according to the KCNA. The missiles flew for 1,500 kilometres and successfully hit their target in North Korea’s waters, and were meant for a “strategic role” according to the news agency, which analyst Ankit Panda stated was a common euphemism for a missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

    • September 15, 2021: North Korea fired two unidentified ballistic missiles towards the Sea of Japan. Japan’s Ministry of Defense stated that they had landed in the country’s exclusive economic zone. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that the missiles flew for 800 kilometres, while reaching an altitude of 60 kilometres, and were fired from Yangdok County. KCNA later stated that they were part of a railway-borne missile system.

    • September 28, 2021: A short-range missile was fired by North Korea towards the Sea of Japan from Chagang Province, according to South Korean officials. The Japanese government meanwhile suspected it to be a ballistic missile. Rodong Sinmun stated that North Korea had tested a new hypersonic missile called Hwasong-8 and it was launched from Toyang-ri in Ryongrim County. The test, including that of its gliding warhead, was a success according to the state media, which also called it a weapon of “great strategic significance”.

    • September 30, 2021: KCNA stated that North Korea had successfully tested a new anti-aircraft missile. It added that the missile contained the new technologies of twin-rudder control and double-impulse flight engine.

    Later, in an emailed statement, the Japanese Coast Guard said that North Korea launched what may have been a ballistic missile.

    Missiles on display at at a military parade in January 2021

    This test comes just days after the US Defense Department warns that North Korea may resume long-range ballistic missile tests in the year 2022.

    As NHK reports, the Defense Intelligence Agency, an intelligence arm of the US Defense Department, on Friday released a report that examined the current situation of North Korea’s military power, including its nuclear weapons and missiles.

    The report says, “North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival,” and “It is possible we could see a test of a long-range missile over the next year.”

    The report adds North Korea also will work to improve its newer solid-fueled ballistic missiles, which can be made ready for launch more quickly than liquid-fueled ones.

    It also says, “Integrating a nuclear weapon with a ballistic missile and enabling that nuclear-armed missile to function reliably as a system is North Korea’s ultimate operational goal.”

    It notes that “further underground nuclear tests to validate weapon capabilities are possible.”

    The report did not cite any specific intel suggesting such a possibility, but it may just have come true tonight.

    The reported test-firing comes just hours after Tongil Voice, a North Korean propaganda radio broadcast, said on its website Seoul should take actions to improve cross-border relations before such a declaration can be made.

    “Currently, inter-Korean relations are unstable and remain in a stern, strained phase,” it said.

    “If an end-of-war declaration is made while neglecting the current hostile and opposing relations, (the two sides) will fall into the evil cycle of conflict even before the ink dries up.”

    It cited Seoul’s recent arms buildup and joint military exercises with the United States as the cause of tensions on the peninsula.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 21:45

  • Northern California Gets Reprieve From Worst Drought In Century As Rain And Snow Fall   
    Northern California Gets Reprieve From Worst Drought In Century As Rain And Snow Fall   

    The National Weather Service (NWS) said drought-stricken Northern California might catch a break from wildfire season this week as several weather events of rain and snow move across the area. 

    An NWS meteorologist in Sacramento, Emily Heller, said precipitation has already begun to fall in some areas, with more expected by the weekend. 

    “It is definitely going to help things out,” Heller said. “Whether we can say fire season is quote-unquote over, we will have to hear from the i-mets in the field, but it will definitely be helpful.”

    A little less than two inches of rain is expected across the Bay Area this week from a series of storms coming from the Northwest. Higher altitudes in the eastern portions of Sierra Nevada could see more than a half-foot of snow. 

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    NWS issued a winter weather advisory on Monday for the Sierra Nevada area. 

    The storms could surpass average monthly rainfall totals, a major relief for the area that has seen hundreds of thousands of acres scorched by wildfires. San Francisco could see some of the biggest rainfall precip in a year. 

    According to the California Department of Water Resources, California has reported its driest water year in nearly a century. The U.S. Drought Monitor shows 87% of the state is experiencing extreme or exceptional drought. About half of the state is in the worst category. 

    In the months ahead, the news gets better for Northern California and the Pacific Northwest as the Climate Prediction Center, an arm of the NWS, has called for La Niña conditions, which means wetter than average conditions might alleviate some of these drought-stricken areas. As for Southern and Central California, La Niña means a drier than average winter. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 21:30

  • Minnesota Hospital Shuts Down ER And Urgent Care Amid Nurse Strike
    Minnesota Hospital Shuts Down ER And Urgent Care Amid Nurse Strike

    By Jack Philips of Epoch Times,

    A hospital in Minnesota confirmed it temporarily shut down its emergency room and urgent care facility due to a nurse strike.

    Allina Health, located in Plymouth, said in a statement that due to the strike, emergency and urgent care services at its WestHealth location were suspended from Sunday morning until Wednesday.

    “No other services on the WestHealth campus have been impacted,” Allina Health’s statement said before it redirected people to seek urgent or emergency care at its Abbott Northwestern Hospital Emergency Department and other locations.

    The City of Plymouth also confirmed that the hospital’s emergency room and urgent care facilities were shut down, releasing a list of nearby locations for emergency services on its website.

    About 50 emergency room nurses organized by the Minnesota Nurses Association walked off the job, demanding more benefits and holiday pay, the organization told local media.

    “Compensating nurses fairly for holiday pay is especially critical because understaffing by Allina and other hospital systems has required nurses to work more days and longer hours, including overtime and holidays, as they continue on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the firm said.

    But Allina Health and Abbott Northwestern WestHealth negotiated seven times with the statewide union, noting that a “settlement was previously reached and unanimously recommended” by the union. However, the Minnesota Nurses Association didn’t finalize the deal and went ahead with the strike.

    “Throughout negotiations, we have consistently offered proposals that demonstrate our commitment to our employees, including an immediate wage increase to align wages with other metro hospitals and agreeing to some of the union’s other priority issues,” the firm said.

    But one striking nurse, union chairwoman Sonya Worner, told Fox9 that Allina Health carried out “a diabolical decision to shut down care to the residents, as well as their own revenue.”

    “This could literally end tomorrow if we got a call saying, ‘Yes we’ll offer you summer holiday pay as part of this package,’” Worner added.

    The nurses’ work stoppage in Plymouth comes as hundreds of thousands of workers in other industries went on strike in recent days. About 10,000 unionized John Deere employees voted to go on strike last week after claiming that the agriculture equipment and tractor manufacturer failed to come up with a contract proposal that met their demands.

    Meanwhile, Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers voted earlier this month to authorize a strike in Oregon and California, potentially enabling thousands of nurses, doctors, and other staff to walk off their jobs in the coming days.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 21:10

  • Australian Official Lashes Out At Ted Cruz After "Covid Tyranny" Tweet: 'Glad We're Not Like Texas'
    Australian Official Lashes Out At Ted Cruz After “Covid Tyranny” Tweet: ‘Glad We’re Not Like Texas’

    Days ago Texas Senator Ted Cruz called out Australia’s extreme Covid policies as but more “Covid tyranny”. The policies have lately received widespread scorn and mockery from many conservative commentators and political pundits, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before US Congressional leaders joined in. 

    “The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful & sad. Individual liberty matters. I stand with the people of Australia,” Cruz had tweeted out, commenting on a video featuring top Australian official Michael Gunner rolling out what’s widely being called the world’s strictest vaccine mandate to date. 

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    Gunner, who is chief minister of Australia’s Northern Territory, went through a litany of occupations that required getting the jab in order for venues to safely reopen. 

    “If your job includes interacting with members of the public, then you need to get the jab,” he said of the new mandate. He had listed off jobs ranging from hospitality, to work in retail or supermarkets, to bank tellers, and hair dressers as among the many occupations that will require it.

    All Australians whose professional work will involve any interaction with the public are now mandated to get the vaccine, or else face steep fines and other possible measures:

    The territory announced last week that workers who interact with the public must receive their first vaccination shot by Nov. 12 or face a $5,000 fine, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. About 68% of its residents were already fully vaccinated as of Sunday.

    On Sunday, a clearly incensed Michael Gunner fired back at the Texas Republican – unusual in that Cruz was offering a critique which was not officially representative of the US government. Thus it’s clear that Cruz’s tweet got under the Australian politician’s skin. 

    “Here are some facts,” the Australian official wrote. “Nearly 70,000 Texans have tragically died from COVID. There have been zero deaths in the [Northern] Territory. Did you know that? Vaccination is so important here because we have vulnerable communities and the oldest continuous living culture on the planet to protect. Did you know that?”

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    Gunner went on: “We don’t need your lectures, thanks mate,” according to the tweeted message.

    “You know nothing about us. And if you stand against a life-saving vaccine, then you sure as hell don’t stand with Australia. I love Texas (go Longhorns), but when it comes to COVID, I’m glad we are nothing like you.”

    But clearly many Aussie citizens themselves are not at all happy to be living under a government that’s made living normal daily life pretty much impossible and “a thing of the past”, resulting in recent huge protests, and in turn sending more and more police to the streets and out in force at supposedly “dangerous” public parks.

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    Seemingly endless examples have come out of Australia over the course the pandemic demonstrating that individuals’ rights have often been completely suspended, including government agents literally combing people’s Facebook posts for signs of merely attending protests – and literally showing up their door unannounced in Gestapo-like fashion.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 20:50

  • One Bank Reveals The Dismal Truth About The $150 Trillion Crusade Against Climate Change
    One Bank Reveals The Dismal Truth About The $150 Trillion Crusade Against Climate Change

    Last week, Bank of America sparked a firestorm of reaction amid both the pro and contra climate change camps, when it published one of its massive “Thematic Research” tomes, this time covering the “Transwarming” World (available to all ZH pro subs), and which serves as a key primer to today’s Net Zero reality, if for no other reason than for being one of the first banks to quantify the cost of the biggest economic, ecologic and social overhaul in modern history.

    The bottom line: no less than a stunning $150 trillion in new capital investment would be required to reach a “net zero” world over 30 years – equating to some $5 trillion in annual investments – and amounting to twice current global GDP.

    Needless to say, the private sector has nowhere near the capital required to complete this investment which is why Bank of America generously estimate that all or parts of the bill would have to be footed by central banks in the form of tens of trillions in QE. And since QE is essentially debt monetization, and since $150 trillion in new debt would have devastating consequences on the economy, BofA was kind enough to share its calculation of just how inflationary this billionaire pet project would be: the “full monetization” scenario, where central banks inject $5 trillion in liquidity every year via QE for 30 years, would result in incremental 3% of inflation for a good decade. This is inflation over and above whatever is already coming down the pipeline.

    Which is where we get to the punchline, because as BofA admits, the crusade against climate change, the ESG doctrine, the “Net Zero” world, whatever one wants to call it, it’s all about greenlighting the biggest QE episode in history, one wrapped in the “noble” veneer of fighting for the most important cause in the history of civilization, but in reality it’s just the biggest wealth transfer scheme in history:

    We just see a peak of <1% additional inflation a year over a three decade horizon. Under more aggressive scenarios where central banks opt to absorb either half or the full decarbonization bills through quantitative easing, the risks of an inflation shock grow. Still, we think our third case is the most likely scenario, as it would be politically difficult to justify a much more expansive monetary impulse. True, while central bankers have expressed a desire to help green the economy, their corporate bond purchases have historically been restricted to crisis time policies through quantitative easing and remain well below purchases of sovereign debt. As such, any purchases of corporate green bonds would likely be limited both by the size of future purchase programs and their proportion relative to the overall corporate bond market, with slightly higher allocations under more progressive purchase policies that highlight environmental concerns

    At this point alarm bells should be going off even among the most brain-dead progressives because for all its touted benefits, the costs are starting to emerge and – at least when it comes to the next two or three generations – they will be absolutely crushing for the middle class, while allowing the top 1% to plunder and pillage virtually all the world’s assets. Think of it as the biggest mandated theft in world history, and suddenly one can understand why every private-jet setting billionaire is oh so very vocally in support of a “net zero” world.

    It gets worse.

    Now that the genie is out of the bottle, and the hard questions like “who gets to pay for all this” are being asked, Bank of America had a follow up report in which it made it abundantly clear that “contrary to some arguments, we think climate mitigation efforts are likely to hurt growth in the next decade or so.”

    In his note titled “A hot take on climate change” (once again available to professional subscribers in the usual place), Bank of America chief economist Ethan Harris first goes through all the familiar steps of just why it is so imperative – and noble – to do something to fight greenhouse gases (similar to what we have read for much of the early part of the 20th century, when article after article starting in 1912 lamented the catastrophe that is global warming, at least until the 1970s when the lack of actual global warming prompted “scientists” to suggest that global cooling and “a new ice age” is inevitable instead). At least the scientists could agree that it’s “global something” (turns out it would really mean “global money printing“), and as Harris laid it out, this is what “scientific consensus” appears to agree on now:

    1. Human behavior is having a significant impact on climate change and climate events.
    2. Even under optimistic assumptions—such as achieving net zero emissions by 2050—the impacts will likely grow over this century.
    3. Early action is much more effective than waiting until later.
    4. Uncertainty about the exact impact is not an excuse for inaction: a wide range of outcomes means more, not less urgency in acting.

    None of the above is new as the mainstream media has been bombarding its audience for the past decade with emotional platitudes and qualitative appeals as to why something has to be done.

    However, as we first touched upon last week, any discussion of the economics of climate change should start and end with the fact
    that it is the ultimate example of “externalities”—private activities (usually for corporations who scions and shareholders are by now in the top 0.01% of global wealth) that create public costs. Indeed, as Harris writes, climate change is the ultimate externality because activity in one place impacts the whole world. The fact that climate change is global in nature and that so much of the benefit of actions accrues to everyone else has some powerful implications.

    First, unlike other technology “races”, climate mitigation is more of a cooperative “game” than a competition. When countries like the US and China “compete” to develop new technologies, two points of conflict often tend to arise—a fight for market share and a fight for geopolitical superiority. By contrast, countries that develop efficient climate mitigation technologies have a strong incentive to share the benefits. If they hoard the technology, the impact on their own climate will be much smaller.

    This is great… if only it weren’t a pipe dream. Why? Because as the recent refusal by China’s Xi Jinping – incidentally the world’s largest polluter – to join his fellow “climate change crusading” world leaders at the COP26 Net Zero summit in Italy later this month, it’s all one giant spectacle meant for the masses. Because if the world’s largest polluter is making it clear he has no interest in actually reducing his own CO emissions, then anyone preaching some bullshit about a “cooperative game” can shove it.

    Still, where Harris is somewhat correct, is in pointing out the “depressing consensus out of the climate change literature” that even if everyone cooperates, the earth will continue to warm as there are lags in the link between GHG and global warming. Indeed, under the best of outcomes—with every country hitting aggressive mid-century goals—the policy shift will mitigate, not stop the problem. Hence in BofA’s view, “climate events will be a rising downside risk—of varying intensity—under almost any plausible scenario.”

    In other words, the net zero theater of the absurd is one where the actors’ motives clearly diverge – when only a convergence from the start could make it work – yet where even a best case scenario of complete cooperation has no chance of actually stopping the problem, just mitigating it. Oh, and meanwhile, the world is set to incur some $150 trillion in costs.

    Which then brings us to BofA’s core assessment: will all this be good or bad for growth? Here, we find some unexpected truth…

    In BofA’s view, both press reports and many of the studies of climate change focus on the wrong side of the economy—the impact on aggregate demand rather than on productive capacity. For example, the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) argues that pushing toward net zero emissions would lower employment in the traditional energy sector by 5 million by 2030, but would add 14 million jobs in the clean energy sector. They also argue that “the increase in jobs and investment stimulates economic output, resulting in a net increase in global GDP to 2030.” Global GDP growth averages 0.4 higher over the 2020 to 2030 period. The downside would be that some countries would be winners and others would be losers, and that inflation – once one factors in the trillions and trillions of central bank QE needed to fund this whole crusade – could be 1-to-3% higher.

    Here Bank of America disagrees, writing that by the time serious climate mitigation efforts are underway the global economy will likely be close to full employment. This will likely be the case in the US. Hence staffing up the industry means drawing workers out of the rest of the economy. At the same time, building up green energy infrastructure will require more than a doubling of investment in the sector, from roughly 2% of GDP now to a 4.5% average over the 2020-30 period. Where is that 2.5% of GDP going to come from? (spoiler alert: money printing, and everyone knows this).

    Or maybe note: Harris admits that in the short run, central banks could in effect accommodate the surge in demand, allowing their economies to overheat. Hence the IEA estimate of 1-to-3% higher inflation. However, the BofA economist disagrees with that estimate as well. If the Fed allows a permanent overshoot of economic potential, inflation will not just increase, it would trend higher. As in the 1970s there will be a feedback loop between price inflation, wage inflation and price expectations.

    Translation: the “net zero” crusade against climate change really is…. the necessary and sufficient condition to trigger the hyperinflation that the world’s massively indebted nations need to inflate away their debt.

    But wait, there’s more, because as Harris concedes next, in reality, while inflation is set to soar, climate mitigation is “also likely to slow the supply side of the economy,  particularly in the ramping up phase.” He explains further:

    Big structural changes in the economy tend to create big transitional challenges. Workers need to move from one sector to another, some industries will boom while others shrink, and as regulations and taxes increase, capital that had been invested in producing and using dirty energy will rapidly become obsolete.

    All of this means lower trend growth during the transition from a dirty to a green economy. And, as noted above, there isn’t even any assurance that a transition to a green economy will ever be completed once it has begun; at best, we may be stuck in the “mitigation” phase for ever.

    The highly asymmetric payoff – BofA concedes – comes in the very long-run, with the benefits accreting here and now to those who stand to reap the generosity of central bank printing, which naturally will be those who own the inflation-resistant assets such as stocks, commodities and, of course, cryptos; while the pain borne by everyone else which – sadly – means the shrinking middle and lower classes, who however are “in it for the long run”, and for the benefits that a cleaner climate will (perhaps) provide their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Their generation, however, will be sacrificed at the altar of the 0.1% good. Because like every true religion, “climate change” also requires a sacrifice so a handful of chosen ones can live better.

    Just the tip of the iceberg

    So much for theory, what is happening on the ground? As Harris explains, the progress on policy is painfully slow as some policies continue to worsen rather than help the problem. Consider two examples. First, according to IEA, countries spend more than $400BN per year subsidizing mainly oil, but also gas and electricity consumption. In many instances there is a conflict between helping the poor and helping the environment. Second, despite what BofA calls “rising sea levels and increased hurricane activity,” some countries incentivize locating houses in harm’s way through subsidized insurance and disaster relief. Almost as if the countries themselves, and certainly the Malibu beachfront billionaires, don’t actually believe in – gasp – rising sea levels. Again there is a conflict between two goals—helping vulnerable people and reducing the cost of climate events.

    Meanwhile, climate change and mitigation efforts already appear to be impacting the global economy. While scientists are very careful to avoid assigning a causal relationship between climate change and individual climate events – perhaps for the same reason that “science” emerged as a politically-motivated farce when reaching rash, ideologically-driven conclusions during the covid spectacle  – but they point to some disturbing trends. Consider two examples highlighted by BofA: “First, data published by the Environmental Protection Agency show that the number of wildfires in the US has shown no trend from 1983 to 2020. However, when they focus only on large fires, the amount of acres burned seems to have shifted up significantly starting in about 2000. Second, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory collates studies of hurricanes and tropical cyclones. Its report is sprinkled with the usual qualifiers (medium to high confidence) but the evidence points to an increase in the intensity of storms in recent years.” Dear Bank of America – this is called tortured goal seeking: squeeze the data hard enough and any pattern you want will eventually emerge.

    More importantly, BofA admits that there is now evidence that climate change and mitigation play “some role” in the recent rise in energy prices (to this we would counter that not only does climate change mitigation play “some role” but that the chief reason for the global energy crisis is the idiotic push for a ESG utopia, something which we warned would happen back in June in “Will ESG Trigger Energy Hyperinflation“).

    But where it gets worse is that given the regulatory outlook, and the now prevailing stigma associated with any fossil fuels, investment in dirty energy capacity will be low and depend on high prices. Meanwhile green energy is not ramping up fast enough to fill the gap. Hilariously, changes in wind and rain patterns seem to have affected the supply of wind and hydro power. The same wind and hydro power that was supposed to lead the world out of its fossil fuel addiction. Because so blind were the scientists in pushing their political agenda, they failed to see what was right in front of their noses, the same way Reuters figured out last week that European and U.S. cities planning to phase out combustion engines over the next 15 years first need to plug a charging gap for millions of residents who park their cars on the street. Oops – perhaps in retrospect, the policymakers and scientists should have though of the blindingly obvious first, instead of rushing to goalseek the agenda to makes them the most monetary benefits…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 20:30

  • La Nina Sparks Early Freeze In China As Coal Supplies Languish
    La Nina Sparks Early Freeze In China As Coal Supplies Languish

    China Meteorological Administration (CMA) warns of a La Nina weather pattern which has already brought in the first round of cooler weather. Temperatures across China are plunging, and the power crisis is worsening as demand for electricity generation ticks higher, straining coal supplies. 

    Thermal coal futures on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange jumped as much as 8% to $284, a record high, on Monday, following reports provinces will begin the traditional heating season earlier than anticipated. 

    CMA said temperatures slid more than 10 degrees Celsius in recent days across eastern China. There are reports snow has begun to fall in parts of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang. Across the country, mean temperatures have tumbled in the last several weeks. 

    Last month, Bloomberg reported that China’s central government officials “ordered the country’s top state-owned energy companies to secure supplies for this winter at all costs.”

    Translation: Beijing is no longer willing to risk social anger, and in the future, China will be subsidizing coil and natural gas, which will lead to even higher prices, which will lead to even higher prices for other “substitute” commodities such as oil, which is why Brent and WTI have are at 7-year highs. 

    But even with panic buying, sluggish September fuel supplies raised concerns that domestic production will be unable to meet rising demand for electricity generation this winter. 

    Reuters said coal production in China was around 334.1 million tons last month, down from 335.24 million tons in August. The ability to boost coal production has hit roadblocks as flooding closed dozens of top-producing mines in the country.  

    “The Chinese government is losing the battle to control rising coal prices,” said Alex Whitworth, head of Asia Pacific Power and Renewables Research at Wood Mackenzie. “Despite efforts to increase coal supply, weather, security, and logistics challenges caused production to fall in September. Nor has China been able to rein in rising electricity demand.” 

    The National Energy Administration said electricity consumption in September climbed 6.8% compared with last year and increased 12.9% for the first three quarters of this year. 

    Last week, China introduced market reforms to allow electricity prices to rise 20% to incentivize power plants to generate power. Some plants were shuttered or reduced capacity because higher input prices such as coal and natural gas have made electricity production uneconomical. 

    “The recent price liberalization for coal power utilities and industrial end-users is a sign that the government does not believe it can control coal prices in the near future,” Whitworth said.

    The latest round of news suggests it’s all hands on deck for Beijing as the traditional heating season begins earlier this year as the country races to secure coal to rebuild depleted stockpiles. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 20:10

  • Locked & Loaded: Supreme Court Is Ready To Take Aim At The Second Amendment
    Locked & Loaded: Supreme Court Is Ready To Take Aim At The Second Amendment

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the Hill on the makings of a blockbuster case in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the first major gun rights case before the Supreme Court in ten years.  Justices have been openly discussing a case to push back on lower courts that have been chipping away at its Second Amendment jurisprudence. They found that case with a strikingly familiar plaintiff.

    Here is the column:

    In the movie “True Grit,” federal marshal Rooster Cogburn is asked if the gun that he brandished at a crime scene was loaded. Cogburn, played by John Wayne, dryly responds, “A gun that’s unloaded and cocked ain’t good for nothing.” Something similar might be said of a Supreme Court docket, particularly when there is a Second Amendment case that could prove one of the most impactful decisions of the term.

    The court will soon take up New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, more than a decade after its last major gun rights decision. The case promises to be a showdown between the Supreme Court and lower courts, which have been chipping away at the high court’s prior Second Amendment rulings.

    In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms. Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states.

    The new case concerns concealed-carry restrictions under N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f) that require a showing of “proper cause.” Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are “of good moral character.” The case presents a single short, direct question — whether New York’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.

    The high court has been carefully waiting for just the right case to address states and cities that have sought to limit gun rights. Indeed, just this week, the court turned down a challenge of a Wisconsin law imposing a lifetime ban on gun ownership for former felons, including cases involving nonviolent crimes. That and other cases seemed tailor-made for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote a strong defense of the Second Amendment in a similar case as an appellate judge.

    It often is difficult to determine which side of the court supplied the votes to grant review in a case. That is not the situation here. The New York case was clearly accepted by conservative justices with a mind toward reversal of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

    The selection of a New York case is particularly poignant. Some of the justices were none too pleased with the Big Apple last year when city officials suddenly sought to withdraw a case on the court’s docket. New York politicians had passed a law that many of us viewed as unconstitutional, with its imposition of burdensome limits on the transportation of lawful guns from homes. Those politicians publicly thumped their chests about going to the Supreme Court with the law and limiting the Second Amendment precedent; professing absolute confidence, they litigated the law, and, again, the 2nd Circuit supported the dubious statute. The Supreme Court accepted the case for review and was expected to overturn the law — until New York suddenly changed the law and then quietly sought to withdraw its case before any ruling.

    The court ultimately dismissed the case but did so over the objections of three dissenting justices. It was a rare instance in which the court resisted such a mootness ruling after a party sought to withdraw — but, then, few litigants have had the temerity to do what New York did. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas specifically called out New York for “manipulating” the docket by withdrawing an unconstitutional law just before a final opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined in the condemnation and added menacingly that “some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.”

    The court then did precisely that, by accepting a case with the very same plaintiffs: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association. On this occasion, however, the court is unlikely to tolerate another bait-and-switch by state officials trying to withdraw the case at the last minute.

    If those four justices are still intent on pushing back on lower courts, they need only Chief Justice John Roberts or Barrett to hand down a major ruling in favor of gun rights.

    The briefs filed in the case include groups such the Cato Institute, which directly confronted the court about it being legally absent without leave on gun rights for more than a decade. Cato has argued that judicial “inaction has contributed to the Second Amendment’s demise. It’s no secret that many federal courts have engaged in systematic resistance to Heller and McDonald.”

    Many point to the court’s statement in Heller, which acknowledged that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It then listed possible “sensitive places” for denying permits to former felons. Lower courts limiting gun rights have repeated those lines like a mantra, and the high court appears poised to bring clarity to that ambiguity.

    Bruen has many of the same elements as Heller, including a rich historical discussion of what gun ownership has meant through history. Notably, English subjects in the American colonies were the first to receive written guarantees of the right to bear arms for self-defense; settlers of the Virginia colony in 1607 and the New England colony in 1620 were subjects under royal charters recognizing that right. In England, the right to bear arms was formally declared in the 1689 Declaration of Rights that stated that the right to arms was among the subjects’ “true, ancient and indubitable rights.”

    That history will weigh heavily in the court defining the right of people to carry weapons in self-defense outside of the home. In many ways, Bruen is the shot not taken last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York. Now the same plaintiffs are back, and New York has supplied another perfect case for the expansion of gun rights. So if you are wondering if Bruen is loaded, at least four justices are likely to agree that a Second Amendment case “that’s unloaded and cocked ain’t good for nothing.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 19:50

  • "Striketober" – Walk-Outs Surge As Workers See Opportunity In Rising Job Openings
    “Striketober” – Walk-Outs Surge As Workers See Opportunity In Rising Job Openings

    Some labor experts have opined that the failure of a group of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. to succeed in their battle to form a union should blunt the nascent revival in the American labor movement. But as the number of American workers who decided to quit their jobs during the prior month soared to a record high north of 4MM, the number of open jobs in the US remains north of 10MM. For the first time in decades, workers have the power in the labor market. And they’re using this newfound leverage to launch a flurry of strikes, creating another headache for their preoccupied bosses.

    According to Reuters, thousands of workers are on strike across the US. Data maintained by Cornell show 176 strikes have been called this year, with 17 in October alone.

    They’re demanding high pay and better conditions, among other things, and some of them are already winning or at least reaching a settlement. Just this weekend, Hollywood make-up artists and camera operators reached a deal  to avoid a walkout.

    This victory in Hollywood, combined with the latest JOLTS numbers, are bound to be encouraging.

    Kevin Bradshaw, an employee at Kellogg’s cereal plant in Memphis, Tennessee, where most of North America’s Frosted Flakes are made, told Reuters he opposes cuts to healthcare coverage, retirement benefits and vacation time that union officials say the company is pushing for from about 1,400 workers. They have been on strike since Oct. 5 at plants in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

    “Enough is enough,” said Bradshaw, vice president of Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 252G at the Memphis plant. “We can’t afford to keep giving away things to a company that financially has made record-breaking returns.”

    Kellogg’s labor activists complain that their members were deemed “essential” during the start of the COVID pandemic, yet, despite this, the manner in which they are treated by management hasn’t changed.

    Another thing workers hope will benefit them in their struggle (although, in the end, disappointment isn’t just possible, but likely): the Democrats are back in control in Washington. But workers who expect President Biden to have their backs should remember that the Dems and President Biden are restricted by their corporate backers.

    Still, so far, at least 176 strikes have been launched this year, including 17 in October alone, according to data from Cornell’s Labor Action Tracker.

    “Workers are on strike for a better deal and a better life,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s biggest labor federation, during a conference for business journalists.

    “The pandemic really did lay bare the inequities of our system and working people are refusing to return to crappy jobs that put their health at risk,” she added, noting that the term #Striketober was trending on Twitter.

    There have been some setbacks, yet overall, union laaders are still hopeful. Union membership has declined to just 11% of workers today, down from more than 20% in late 1983. What’s more, Americans’ support for unions has risen to its highest level in decades. 68% of Americans now approve of unions, the highest level since 1965, according to Gallup.

    “We have entered a new era in labor relations,” said Harley Shaiken, professor emeritus of labor at the University of California Berkeley. “Workers feel they’re in the driver’s seat and there’s plenty of lost ground to make up.”

    “What we’re seeing is a fight to return or at least stay in the middle class,” he said.

    Back in April, President Biden – who has struggled to appeal to working-class whites by playing up his ties to organized labor – created a task force to promote labor organizing. Biden also spoke out in support of the workers in Bessemer before  their vote, which organizers insist was unfairly tampered with by Amazon.

    Other setbacks for the bosses have popped up in Beaumont, Texas, where Exxon Mobil ordered a lockout of 650 workers from its refinery and an adjacent plant since May after a local chapter of the United Steelworkers union refused to submit a contract proposal. Union leaders have scheduled a vote on the contract for Tuesday, but have urged members to reject it. Some members are moving to try and decertify the union.

    Exxon said the lockout was necessary to avoid the disruption of a possible strike and the changes to seniority it wants to impose were needed to ensure profitability. Some union members have moved to decertify the union. Over at John Deere, which makes farm equipment, 90% of its 10K workers recently launched a strike.

    And according to Reuters, one industry that’s ripe for labor unrest is health-care.

    More than 28,000 healthcare workers at 13 Southern California Kaiser Permanente hospitals and hundreds of medical centers voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to authorize a strike. They want more pay and higher levels of staffing to reduce burnout worsened by the pandemic. That demand is echoed by nearly 2,000 healthcare workers who have been on strike since Oct. 1 in Buffalo, New York. “We’ve been working short at Mercy for five years,” Kathy Kelly, who has been a nurse for 38 years at the Catholic Health System’s Mercy Hospital, said while on break from picketing. “Enough’s enough. We can only give so much.”

    Anybody searching for more data on labor actions can check the ILR data from Cornell, which can be found here.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 19:30

  • Chicago Mayor Accuses Police Union Of Trying To 'Induce An Insurrection' Over Vaccine Mandate
    Chicago Mayor Accuses Police Union Of Trying To ‘Induce An Insurrection’ Over Vaccine Mandate

    Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot – who appears to have violated both local and state mask mandates at the WNBA finals yesterday – said that the city’s Fraternal Order of Police is attempting to “induce an insurrection” using misinformation to oppose vaccine mandates.

    “We believe that the FOP leadership is trying to foment an illegal workstop, and a strike – plain and simple… The contract is clear and has been known for a long time. The police union is not authorized to strike.”

    “What we’ve seen from the FOP, in particular the leadership, is a lot of misinformation. A lot of half-truths and frankly flat-out lies, in order to induce an insurrection.”

    Watch:

    Last week, the head of the Chicago police officers union on Tuesday called on its members to refuse to comply with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which took effect on Friday.

    “Do not fill out the portal information,” Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said in a video to officers posted on YouTube.

    “I’ve made my status very clear as far as the vaccine, but I do not believe the city has the authority to mandate that to anybody—let alone that information about your medical history.”

    “It’s safe to say that the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50 percent or less for this weekend coming up,” Catanzara added.

    Lightfoot’s mandate requires city workers to report their vaccine status by Friday or be placed on a “no-pay” status.

    On Friday, the FOP and Lightfoot’s administration sued each other – with the city filing a complaint against the union and Catanzara for supporting a “work stoppage or strike regarding the vaccine mandate.”

    Hours later, the FOP filed suit against Lightfoot and Chicago PD Supt. David Brown, accusing them of failing to negotiate with the union over the mandate, according to CBS2 Chicago.

    At a hearing late Friday afternoon, city attorneys assured a Cook County judge officers who show up to work over the weekend will be able to work and will be paid, but said they could be written up for disciplinary action if they do not comply with the requirement to report their vaccination status by the Friday night deadline.

    After lengthy arguments, the judge granted the city’s request for a temporary injunction barring Catanzara from making any public comments that encourage members of the FOP to defy the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate until the next hearing on the city’s lawsuit on Oct. 25. -CBS2

    Meanwhile, as we noted earlier Monday, Chicago has canceled all time-off requests.

    Catanzara said he believes up to half of the entire Chicago police department are ready to not comply with the vaccine mandate, with city officials also bracing for a potential huge loss of personnel, given the latest order that’s gone out across the CPD is the restriction of time off, which typically only happens ahead of July 4th – or other weekends expected to bring surges in violent crime. 

    According to the latest reports:

    Days off are being cancelled and any time-off will require approval from a deputy chief or above, according to a new memo from First Deputy Supt. Eric Carter. The memo is being read at all roll calls for the next five days.

    “Until further notice: The use of elective time off by all sworn CPD members is restricted,” the memo says. 

    Also on Sunday the CPD issued another memo calling for vaccine compliance, but this time expressly stating that the city is prepared to fire or discipline officers found “disobeying a direct order”.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 19:11

  • Gov. Newsom Signs Cultural Marxist Bills
    Gov. Newsom Signs Cultural Marxist Bills

    Op-Ed Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

    The California Legislature passed 836 bills this year, of which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 770. That’s 92 percent. He vetoed only 66, or 8 percent. That’s about average for governors in recent years.

    It’s also a reason the legislature ought to return to part-time status, as it was before the 1970s. Texas still maintains a part-time legislature meeting every other year. Its success is shown by how, with the 2020 U.S. Census, it gained two congressional seats as California lost one.

    Although high taxes and regulations are the major reasons businesses and citizens are leaving California, another factor is dealing with the irrationality of the government. The state often just doesn’t make sense. It’s guaranteed to make even less sense in the future.

    That has been a theme of the series of articles I’ve written on the bills this year, of which this will be the fourth and last. The theme of this article is Cultural Marxism.

    One could write a dozen articles a week on the bills and only get part of the way through by the end of the year. Gov. Gavin Newsom was right, although in an ironic way he didn’t intend, when he said on Oct. 9 while signing his last batch of bills, “What we’re doing here in California is unprecedented in both nature and scale.”

    My previous three articles are here, here, and here.

    California Governor Gavin Newsom discusses the state’s plan for homelessness inniciatives in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 29, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    AB 338: Fr. Juniper Serra Statue Replacement

    Assembly Bill 338 is by Assembly Member James C. Ramos (D-Highland). The bill concerns what to do after vandals tore down the statue of Fr. Juniper Serra on the grounds of the state Capitol on July 4, 2020. The bill replaces it with a statue of Native Americans, so that, in the bill’s language, “the devastating impact of the mission period, and Father Serra’s role in that devastation, [will] be recognized and acknowledged.”

    Critics said the action is an affront to the state’s more than 10 million Catholics. Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento said that, although the Native Americans suffered during that period, Serra worked “to protect the dignity of native peoples. His holiness as a missionary should not be measured by his own failures to stop the exploitation or even his own personal faults.”

    Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez and San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone added in a Wall Street Journal article, “[N]o serious historian has ever made such outrageous claims about Serra or the mission system, the network of 21 communities that Franciscans established along the California coast to evangelize native people.”

    The legislature easily could have both restored the Serra statue and erected a new statue on the Capitol grounds to the Native Americans, adding to the 12 memorials already there. The Serra vandalism also comes after the statue of Christopher Columbus was removed from the Capitol Rotunda in June 2020.

    All this is pure, unadulterated Cultural Marxism. It is shoving history down Orwell’s “Memory Hole” and erecting a false narrative to advance a socialist agenda.

    AB 1084: Gender-Neutral Toy Sections

    Assembly Bill 1084 is by Assembly Member Evan Low (D-Campbell). It requires stores selling toys with more than 500 employees to add “a gender-neutral section or area, to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer, in which a reasonable selection of the items and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed, regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.”

    Low seems not to have noticed how children tend to wander around stores and find whatever toys they want to cajole their parents into buying.

    The clueless legislator explained, “Part of it is to make sure if you’re a young girl that you can find a police car, fire truck, a periodic table or a dinosaur. And then similarly, if you’re a boy, if you’re more artistic and want to play with glitter, why not? Why should you feel the stigma of saying, ‘Oh, this should be shamed’ and going to a different location?”

    Aside from the Cultural Marxist coercion element, the bill has other problems.

    Notice the vagueness, which could lead to the prosecutions even of the most vigilant retailers: “gender neutral” … “section or area” … “discretion of the retailer” … “reasonable selection” … “regardless of whether.” This is going to be a field day for lawyers.

    AB 1084 will also increase costs by an unknown amount for retailers, for lawyers to figure it out, and for employees to implement it by erecting new areas of the store with new labels. The bill will also scare off parents from such stores, sending even more business online, where such restrictions to not apply. Many jobs will be killed.

    The bill has received national attention and is another reason the state is such a laughingstock.

    AB 101: Cultural Marxist Ethnic Studies

    Assembly Bill 101 is by Assemblymember Jose Medina (D-Riverside). It mandates “the completion of a one-semester course in ethnic studies … including for pupils enrolled in a charter school.”

    In an explanation on his website oddly titled “I am Ethnic Studies!” Medina explained, “AB 101 is necessary to ensure all students develop a foundational and accurate understanding of United States history. We are poised to lead the nation in education equity for all students. And become the first state to require ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement.”

    Critics signing a joint letter opposing the bill included Parents Defending Education, the AMCHA Initiative (anti-Semitism watchdog), the California Association of Scholars, the National Association of Scholars, the San Diego Asian Americans for Equality, and the Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation.

    The letter (pdf) said the imposed curriculum would be “firmly rooted in the highly politicized and controversial version of the discipline known as Critical Ethnic Studies. The discipline is firmly rooted in neo-Marxist ideologies that divide society into oppressed and oppressor groups based primarily on race, and, as part of its disciplinary mission, uses the classroom to indoctrinate students into narrow political beliefs and political activism. Pursuing a narrow political framework in education is divisive, discriminatory and inflammatory.”

    AB 101 also dilutes the value of charter schools, which were created specifically to avoid most of the mandates of the labyrinthine state Education Code. The code already runs to 4,058 pages, according to the March 2021 edition sold on Amazon. The 2022 edition will run many pages longer.

    The bill tosses another problem to local school boards, which already are grappling with critical race theory (CRT), as The Epoch Times has been covering.

    I’ve talked to several young couples with kids about this mandate and CRT. They say it’s yet another impetus to get their kids out of California to a more sensible state.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 19:10

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Oct 18

Today’s News 18th October 2021

  • Only 22 Countries Have Never Been Invaded By Britain
    Only 22 Countries Have Never Been Invaded By Britain

    Even though the British Empire only managed to establish its first colony in Ireland in 1556, several decades after Portugal and Spain claimed land on the African continent and the Americas, Statista’s Florian Zandt points out that it still became synonymous with global conflict due to its network of dominions and colonies spanning the whole globe.

    As the first chart from Statista’s new content series InFact shows, although certainly not all of them became its subjects, Britain’s warfaring efforts only spared precious few countries in the world.

    According to the book “All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To”, there are only 22 countries Britain never invaded throughout history. There aren’t many gaps on the map, but some of the more notable include Sweden, Belarus and Vatican City.

    Infographic: Only 22 countries have never been invaded by Britain | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The biggest blank spots can be seen on the African continent, even though the Royal African Company founded in 1660 alone was responsible for forcibly removing 212,000 slaves from their homeland and shipping them to English colonies in the Americas between 1662 and 1731.

    The British Empire in its various iterations can be seen as one of the longest-lasting Western empires in the world.

    Its first permanent overseas colony in the Americas was established in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia, while Hong Kong, its last big overseas territory, was handed over to China in 1997.

    In 1920, the empire covered roughly 13,700,000 square miles or 24 percent of the total land area of the Earth.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 02:45

  • Beijing, Moscow, Ankara Push US Out Of Red Sea Dominance
    Beijing, Moscow, Ankara Push US Out Of Red Sea Dominance

    Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

    Washington’s escalating hybrid warfare operations against Ethiopia may have cost the United States its strategic influence over the globally-vital Red Sea/Suez sea lanes.

    The U.S. abandonment of Ethiopia has forced its government to seek allies and protection elsewhere, and Russia, China, and Turkey have rushed in to fill the power vacuum.

    The now-open hostility of the Biden administration toward Ethiopia was rationalized as being supportive of Egypt’s position as the United States’ preferred partner in the region, controlling the Suez Canal. Washington also justifies its hostility on claims—widely discredited by the evidence—of Ethiopian “human rights violations” in its fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) marxist insurgency. But it was the TPLF which began the war surging into the neighboring Ethiopian Amhara and Afar regions, causing millions of refugees.

    And despite the U.S. efforts to please Cairo, Beijing and Moscow have also improved their positions with the Egyptian government.

    As a result, the Ethiopian government, which had seen Washington as its preferred partner, was forced to reopen talks with China—which the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali had essentially rejected on taking office in 2018—as well as Russia and Turkey. Turkey had until this point been regarded as a threat to Ethiopia, given that it had been funding Islamist insurgents in Ethiopia in recent years.

    To improve its defense position, the Ethiopian National Defense Force has been acquiring significant numbers of unmanned aerial combat vehicles (UCAVs) from China, Turkey, and Iran, and large amounts of weapons and ammunition from Russia, Belarus, and the United Arab Emirates. Russia has been moving Sukhoi Su-27S combat aircraft into the Ethiopian Air Force.

    The U.S. moves support Egypt’s longstanding rivalry with Ethiopia—a rivalry which has not been reciprocated—out of fear that a strong and united Ethiopia could dominate the lower Red Sea and jeopardize maritime traffic coming into and from Egypt’s Suez Canal. Egypt has also alleged that Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile, was restricting Nile water flows to Egypt. This was proven to be a false claim, too, although Egypt does face an increasing water shortage because of its growing population. Cairo, however, needs a scapegoat.

    China and Russia have been able to prove that they have real leverage in the region by resisting U.S. attempts to have the United Nations Security Council authorize military intervention against Ethiopia. The U.S. move was to help the TPLF and the equally violent—avowedly genocidal—Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) to break up Ethiopia.

    Beijing and Moscow gained considerable gratitude in Addis Ababa by using their veto powers in the Security Council to delay or block Washington’s plans. And Beijing already maintains a significant military base in Ethiopia’s neighbor, Djibouti, and built the new Djibouti-Addis Ababa rail link.

    Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel attend the opening ceremony of China’s new military base in Djibouti on Aug. 1, 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Image)

    In mid-October, Washington escalated plans for economic sanctions against Ethiopia for refusing to allow “U.S. aid” convoys to be routed through the Ethiopian capital to the TPLF. Addis Ababa quickly discovered that the “U.S. aid” convoys were going merely to support the TPLF’s military operations against both the Tigrayan population and other Ethiopians.

    Hundreds of “aid convoys” were reaching the TPLF, but the trucks never returned to the capital; they were diverted to be used by the TPLF to aid its mobile warfare, now well-entrenched in the Amara and Afar regions.

    Far from being embattled, the TPLF has been engaging in large-scale, formal offensive military operations and causing what is genuinely a humanitarian crisis, with massive casualties and an estimated 2 million refugees. The World Heritage city of Lalibela in Amhara Region has been occupied for several months by TPLF forces, who were trained and armed by the United States under the Obama administration.

    Long-serving U.N. officials in Ethiopia have complained that, with the U.S. pressure, new U.N. officials have been shipped into the country and have been promoting the U.S.-TPLF line against the advice of the more experienced U.N. country team. Meanwhile, Ethiopian government forces had, by the second week of October, begun an offensive against the TPLF, utilizing China’s Wing Loong II (CJ-2) MALE (Medium-Altitude, Long-Endurance) UCAVs, which had been shipped in urgently from Chengdu to the Harar Meda Air Base in Ethiopia, not far from the fighting in the Afar and Amhara regions. The CJ-2s can carry 420 kg of ordnance, including precision weapons.

    Ethiopia has also acquired Turkish Bayraktar TB2 UCAVs, as well as Iranian UAVs.

    It does not appear as though the U.S. escalation of political and economic warfare against Ethiopia will abate as long as the Biden administration’s present State Department team is in place. State Department sources admit privately that they are using the same playbook against Ethiopia as they used during the Clinton administration against Serbia in the 1990s. But the United States was then strategically far stronger, and China, Russia, and Turkey were far weaker.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/18/2021 – 02:00

  • Will The US Abandon Taiwan?
    Will The US Abandon Taiwan?

    Authored by Brandon Weichert via RealClearWorld.com,

    “Goodbye, great power competition and hello, strategic competition,” this is what the Biden Administration’s Pentagon spokesperson recently told Daniel Lipmann of Politico. According to analysts, these comments signal a shift toward a more cooperative, even conciliatory, American posture toward the Chinese Communist Party. Further, President Joe Biden told the media on October 6 that he had “spoken with [Chinese President Xi Jinping] about Taiwan. We agree that we will abide by the Taiwan Agreement.” 

    The agreement that Mr. Biden was referring to was the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, an ambiguous agreement forged between China and the United States in which Taiwan would be treated by the United States as a foreign country without being formally recognized as such. While the 1979 agreement does allow for the provision of American military aid to Taiwan such that Taiwan can “maintain a sufficient self-defense capability,” the terms of this agreement allow for the Americans to shirk away from Taiwan whenever it is convenient for Washington do so.  

    The Biden-Xi call came on the heels of China’s brazen violation of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) during the week of October 1. At that time, China deployed more than 50 warplanes to violate Taiwan’s ADIZ, testing Taiwan’s overworked air defense network and pushing the island’s military to the point of exasperation. At some point, a grave miscalculation will occur between China and Taiwan—a mistake that could spark another world war that Washington is not prepared or willing to fight.

    In response to the recent Chinese aggression against Taiwan, the United States deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups near Okinawa. These powerful American warships linked up with the British Royal Navy’s carrier strike group. A group of warships from Japan, New Zealand, Canada, and the Netherlands also joined the American led flotilla. 

    The flotilla was meant to deter Beijing from any further acts of aggression during a low point in relations between Beijing and Washington.

    Beijing was likely unimpressed.

    Deterrence only works on an opponent who is willing to abandon the objective you are trying to prevent that opponent from achieving. Frankly, Beijing wants Taiwan more than Washington wants to keep the island away from China. 

    The current situation in China is especially dangerous for Xi Jinping’s continued rule. As China’s economy goes through a massive reorganization that could take down Xi’s regime, the Chinese ruler is looking to distract his people through powerful displays of nationalism, such as reclaiming the “lost” Chinese province of Taiwan. 

    President Biden, meanwhile, is beset by crises everywhere. 

    The American economy teeters on the brink as inflation continues unabated, a government shutdown looms, brittle supply chains cannot keep up with increased demand, Americans eschew returning to work in favor of greater welfare payments, and COVID-19 continues to rampage throughout the United States. To offset these economic threats to Biden’s presidency, the White House will likely try to get a new trade deal crafted with China that will curb inflation and generate trade. 

    What’s more, President Biden is fearful of a manmade global climate catastrophe. Both he and his climate czar, John Kerry, have for years insisted that China is key to curbing anthropogenic climate change. Far from courting war with China, the Biden Administration likely is seeking to reset relations to what they were before Donald Trump’s rise in 2016. 

    No matter what President Biden says, it is unlikely that he will commit US forces to defend Taiwan. According to a 2021 survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 41 percent of Americans support US military power being used to defend Taiwan. Therefore, it’s not politically expedient for Biden to risk another world war—at least according to the polls—anymore than it was for Biden to keep US forces in Afghanistan.

    Beijing is quickly approaching the time when it is prepared to call Washington’s bluff over Taiwan. Should Biden refuse to act militarily to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Beijing would probably offer Biden the useless consolation prize of a hollow climate deal and a new trade deal that empowers China in the long run. The diminution of American power will continue under Biden until there’s nothing left of the American-led world order.

    With America’s only options being world war or capitulation, without an actual leader to rally the American people to stand for what’s right and to chart a new course, what else other than the collapse of American power in the Indo-Pacific can one expect? 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:55

  • Rare Breed Triggers Accused Of Creating "Machine Gun" Loses First Court Battle With ATF
    Rare Breed Triggers Accused Of Creating “Machine Gun” Loses First Court Battle With ATF

    Florida company Rare Breed Trigger, LLC manufactures a drop-in trigger that makes an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle cycle rounds faster lost its first court battle with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), according to Orlando-based news outlet WFTV. This means the company must halt all sales of its FRT-15 trigger while it waits for trial.

    On July 26, the ATF sent a letter to Rare Breed stating the FRT-15 trigger has been classified as a machine gun under the National Firearms Act, and the company must cease all sales or face fines and jail time. 

    In early August, Lawrence DeMonico, president of Rare Breed, sued the ATF after the agency said the drop-in trigger converted the semi-automatic weapon into a “machinegun,” capable of firing more than one bullet per trigger pull. He said the ATF’s claim is preposterous as the trigger must entirely cycle before the next round is fired. 

    DeMonico and his lawyer filed a request for a preliminary injunction as part of its lawsuit, preventing the ATF from inhibiting the company from selling its triggers ahead of trial. However, the request was denied on Tuesday, citing a lack of evidence that the ATF’s action would financially cripple the company. 

    The FRT-15 trigger sells for $380 on the company’s website, is currently listed as “out of stock.” Court documents show the company must stop making new triggers, and there’s a possibility that triggers in existence might be seized. 

    Responding to the new court development is Baltimore-based The Machine Gun Nest who said this is one case every gun owner needs to pay attention to because it could mean the ATF will continue to infringe on gun owners’ rights through executive fiat. 

    Saying that a trigger manufacturer cannot sell the one project they produce does “no harm” is a failure on some level there on the judge’s part. The fact that Rare Breed wasn’t issued a preliminary injunction is ridiculous. Gun owners should pay attention to this case, as the Rare Breed trigger and other similar forced reset triggers will be a convenient scapegoat for the government to continue to push forward on infringing citizens’ 2A rights.

    This is another example of the ATF arbitrarily redefining their definition of what a machine gun is, which was first done with the bump stock in 2018. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:30

  • China Q3 GDP Growth Disappoints, Inflation Expected To Stay "High For Some Time"
    China Q3 GDP Growth Disappoints, Inflation Expected To Stay “High For Some Time”

    Facing a “complex and severe domestic and overseas environment”, China’s stats bureau spokesperson Fu Linghui admitted that economic indicators all weakened in Q3/September.

    • China 3Q GDP Grows 4.9% Y/Y; Est. 5% – MISS

    • China Sept. Industrial Output Rises 3.1% Y/Y; Est. 3.8% – MISS

    • China Jan.-Sept. Fixed Investment Rises 7.3% Y/Y; Est. 7.8% – MISS

    • China Sept. Retail Sales Rise 4.4% Y/Y; Est. 3.5% – BEAT

    GDP growth was a mere 0.2% in the third quarter from the previous three months.

    Bank of America’s Helen Qiao says on Bloomberg TV that, aside from retail sales, the numbers are all pointing to downside risk — she especially noted the hit from the energy crunch.

    Aside from GDP, all the other Chinese macro indicators continued to slide (except unemployment, which improved to its best since December 2018). It is worth noting that this is the official surveyed rate and doesn’t capture the whole jobs market.

    Sales of clothing fell 4.8% and automobiles fell almost 12% while furniture was also soft. Catering services rose only 3.1% YoY, a sign that Chinese are not out dining and wining much.

    Finally, PPI is likely to stay at high levels for some time, statistics spokesperson Fu says, suggesting little will be done in the short-term from a policy-tightening perspective.

    “However, it should also be noted that at present, uncertainties in the international environment are growing, and the domestic economic recovery is still unstable and unbalanced,”

    Chang Shu and Eric Zhu at Bloomberg Economics warn that the economy needs a cushion, stating that greater policy support is needed for the economy to pull through the soft patch. But a quick turnaround is unlikely, given the slowdown is being driven predominantly by supply shocks, and the government is committed to driving long-term structural reforms.

    Fu said the government will “strive to keep the economic operation within a reasonable range and ensure the completion of the main objectives and tasks of economic and social development.”

    Bloomberg’s Enda Curran warns that it’s clear now that the final three months of the year are going to be harder to navigate on so many front. To be clear, China will do what it takes to avoid a hard landing, but it’s still a more complicated picture than what many anticipated when the year began.

    The bottom line is that China’s economy is slowing — and may slow further from here. Supply challenges are clearly hurting the industrial sector even as retail sales hold up better than expected. Where the overall trajectory goes from here will depend on the energy crunch, consumer confidence and how much support the government will tip into the economy.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:17

  • Weiss: We Got Here Because Of Cowardice, We Get Out With Courage
    Weiss: We Got Here Because Of Cowardice, We Get Out With Courage

    Authored by Bari Weiss via Commentary.org,

    A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears. 

    Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon.

    It begins by stipulating that the forces of justice and progress are in a war against backwardness and tyranny. And in a war, the normal rules of the game must be suspended. Indeed, this ideology would argue that those rules are not just obstacles to justice, but tools of oppression. They are the master’s tools.  And the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

    So the tools themselves are not just replaced but repudiated. And in so doing, persuasion—the purpose of argument—is replaced with public shaming. Moral complexity is replaced with moral certainty. Facts are replaced with feelings.

    Ideas are replaced with identity. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Debate is replaced with de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion, with exclusion.

    In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully. 

    In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan, your whole life can be ruined. Just ask Tiffany Riley, a Vermont school principal who was fired—fired—because she said she supports black lives but not the organization Black Lives Matter.

    In this ideology, the past cannot be understood on its own terms, but must be judged through the morals and mores of the present. It is why statues of Grant and Washington are being torn down. And it is why William Peris, a UCLA lecturer and an Air Force veteran, was investigated for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out loud in class.

    In this ideology, intentions don’t matter. That is why Emmanuel Cafferty, a Hispanic utility worker at San Diego Gas and Electric, was fired for making what someone said he thought was a white-supremacist hand gesture—when in fact he was cracking his knuckles out of his car window.

    In this ideology, the equality of opportunity is replaced with equality of outcome as a measure of fairness. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, the course must have been defective. Thus, the argument to get rid of the SAT. Or the admissions tests for public schools like Stuyvesant in New York or Lowell in San Francisco. 

    In this ideology, you are guilty for the sins of your fathers. In other words: You are not you. You are only a mere avatar of your race or your religion or your class. That is why third-graders in Cupertino, California, were asked to rate themselves in terms of their power and privilege. In third grade. 

    In this system, we are all placed neatly on a spectrum of “privileged” to “oppressed.” We are ranked somewhere on this spectrum in different categories: race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Then we are given an overall score, based on the sum of these rankings. Having privilege means that your character and your ideas are tainted. This is why, one high-schooler in New York tells me, students in his school are told, “If you are white and male, you are second in line to speak.” This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.

    Racism has been redefined. It is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someone’s skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups. If disparity is present, as the high priest of this ideology, Ibram X. Kendi, has explained, racism is present. According to this totalizing new view, we are all either racist or anti-racist. To be a Good Person and not a Bad Person, you must be an “anti-racist.” There is no neutrality. There is no such thing as “not racist.” 

    Most important: In this revolution, skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests. The Enlightenment, as the critic Edward Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism. 

    What we call “cancel culture” is really the justice system of this revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next. 

    It has worked. A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey.

    Why are so many, especially so many young people, drawn to this ideology? It’s not because they are dumb. Or because they are snowflakes, or whatever Fox talking points would have you believe. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life—the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning. A pandemic of distrust. It has taken place against the backdrop of the American dream’s decline into what feels like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others. And so on.

    “I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thrusting for faith.” That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with Communism. The same might be said of this new revolutionary faith. And like other religions at their inception, this one has lit on fire the souls of true believers, eager to burn down anything or anyone that stands in its way. 

    If you have ever tried to build something, even something small, you know how hard it is. It takes time. It takes tremendous effort. But tearing things down? That’s quick work. 

    The Woke Revolution has been exceptionally effective. It has successfully captured the most important sense-making institutions of American life: our newspapers. Our magazines. Our Hollywood studios. Our publishing houses. Many of our tech companies. And, increasingly, corporate America. 

    Just as in China under Chairman Mao, the seeds of our own cultural revolution can be traced to the academy, the first of our institutions to be overtaken by it. And our schools—public, private, parochial—are increasingly the recruiting grounds for this ideological army. 

    A few stories are worth recounting:

    David Peterson is an art professor at Skidmore College in upstate New York. He stood accused in the fevered summer of 2020 of “engaging in hateful conduct that threatens Black Skidmore students.”

    What was that hateful conduct? David and his wife, Andrea, went to watch a rally for police officers. “Given the painful events that continue to unfold across this nation, I guess we just felt compelled to see first-hand how all of this was playing out in our own community,” he told the Skidmore student newspaper. David and his wife stayed for 20 minutes on the edge of the event. They held no signs, participated in no chants. They just watched. Then they left for dinner.

    For the crime of listening, David Peterson’s class was boycotted. A sign appeared on his classroom door: “STOP. By entering this class you are crossing a campus-wide picket line and breaking the boycott against Professor David Peterson. This is not a safe environment for marginalized students.” Then the university opened an investigation into accusations of bias in the classroom.

    Across the country from Skidmore, at the University of Southern California, a man named Greg Patton is a professor of business communication. In 2020, Patton was teaching a class on “filler words”—such as “um” and “like” and so forth for his master’s-level course on communication for management. It turns out that the Chinese word for “like” sounds like the n-word. Students wrote the school’s staff and administration accusing their professor of “negligence and disregard.” They added: “We are burdened to fight with our existence in society, in the workplace, and in America. We should not be made to fight for our sense of peace and mental well-being” at school.

    In a normal, reality-based world, there is only one response to such a claim: You misheard. But that was not the response. This was: “It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students,” the dean, Geoffrey Garrett wrote. “Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry.” 

    This rot hasn’t been contained to higher education. At a mandatory training earlier this year in the San Diego Unified School District, Bettina Love, an education professor who believes that children learn better from teachers of the same race, accused white teachers of “spirit murdering black and brown children” and urged them to undergo “antiracist therapy for White educators.” 

    San Francisco’s public schools didn’t manage to open their schools during the pandemic, but the board decided to rename 44 schools—including those named for George Washington and John Muir—before suspending the plan. Meantime, one of the board members declared merit “racist” and “Trumpian.” 

    A recent educational program for sixth to eighth grade teachers called “a pathway to equitable math instruction”—funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—was recently sent to Oregon teachers by the state’s Department of Education. The program’s literature informs teachers that white supremacy shows up in math instruction when “rigor is expressed only in difficulty,” and “contrived word problems are valued over the math in students’ lived experiences.” 

    Serious education is the antidote to such ignorance. Frederick Douglass said, “Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light only by which men can be free.” Soaring words that feel as if they are a report from a distant galaxy. Education is increasingly where debate, dissent, and discovery go to die.

    It’s also very bad for kids.  For those deemed “privileged,” it creates a hostile environment where kids are too intimidated to participate. For those deemed “oppressed,” it inculcates an extraordinarily pessimistic view of the world, where students are trained to perceive malice and bigotry in everything they see. They are denied the dignity of equal standards and expectations. They are denied the belief in their own agency and ability to succeed. As Zaid Jilani had put it: “You cannot have power without responsibility. Denying minorities responsibility for their own actions, both good and bad, will only deny us the power we rightly deserve.”

    How did we get here? There are a lot of factors that are relevant to the answer: institutional decay; the tech revolution and the monopolies it created; the arrogance of our elites; poverty; the death of trust. And all of these must be examined, because without them we would have neither the far right nor the cultural revolutionaries now clamoring at America’s gates. 

    But there is one word we should linger on, because every moment of radical victory turned on it. The word is cowardice.

    The revolution has been met with almost no resistance by those who have the title CEO or leader or president or principal in front of their names. The refusal of the adults in the room to speak the truth, their refusal to say no to efforts to undermine the mission of their institutions, their fear of being called a bad name and that fear trumping their responsibility—that is how we got here.

    Allan Bloom had the radicals of the 1960s in mind when he wrote that “a few students discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.” Now, a half-century later, those dancing bears hold named chairs at every important elite, sense-making institution in the country. 

    As Douglas Murray has put it: “The problem is not that the sacrificial victim is selected. The problem is that the people who destroy his reputation are permitted to do so by the complicity, silence and slinking away of everybody else.”

    Each surely thought: These protestors have some merit! This institution, this university, this school, hasn’t lived up to all of its principles at all times! We have been racist! We have been sexist! We haven’t always been enlightened! I’ll give a bit and we’ll find a way to compromise. This turned out to be as naive as Robespierre thinking that he could avoid the guillotine. 

    Think about each of the anecdotes I’ve shared here and all the rest you already know. All that had to change for the entire story to turn out differently was for the person in charge, the person tasked with being a steward for the newspaper or the magazine or the college or the school district or the private high school or the kindergarten, to say: No.

    If cowardice is the thing that has allowed for all of this, the force that stops this cultural revolution can also be summed up by one word: courage. And courage often comes from people you would not expect.

    Consider Maud Maron. Maron is a lifelong liberal who has always walked the walk. She was an escort for Planned Parenthood; a law-school research assistant to Kathleen Cleaver, the former Black Panther; and a poll watcher for John Kerry in Pennsylvania during the 2004 presidential election. In 2016, she was a regular contributor to Bernie Sanders’s campaign.

    Maron dedicated her career to Legal Aid: “For me, being a public defender is more than a job,” she told me. “It’s who I am.”

    But things took a turn when, this past year, Maron spoke out passionately and publicly about the illiberalism that has gripped the New York City public schools attended by her four children. 

    “I am very open about what I stand for,” she told me.

    “I am pro-integration. I am pro-diversity. And also I reject the narrative that white parents are to blame for the failures of our school system. I object to the mayor’s proposal to get rid of specialized admissions tests to schools like Stuyvesant. And I believe that racial essentialism is racist and should not be taught in school.”

    What followed this apparent thought crime was a 21st-century witch hunt. Maron was smeared publicly by her colleagues. They called her “racist, and openly so.” They said, “We’re ashamed that she works for the Legal Aid Society.” 

    Most people would have walked away and quietly found a new job. Not Maud Maron. This summer, she filed suit against the organization, claiming that she was forced out of Legal Aid because of her political views and her race, a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. 

    “The reason they went after me is that I have a different point of view,” she said.

    “These ideologues have tried to ruin my name and my career, and they are going after other good people. Not enough people stand up and say: It is totally wrong to do this to a person. And this is not going to stop unless people stand up to it.”

    That’s courage.

    Courage also looks like Paul Rossi, the math teacher at Grace Church High School in New York who raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. A few days later, all the school’s advisers were required to read a public reprimand of his conduct out loud to every student in the school. Unwilling to disavow his beliefs, Rossi blew the whistle: “I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent.” That’s courage. 

    Courage is Xi Van Fleet, a Virginia mom who endured Mao’s Cultural Revolution as a child and spoke up to the Loudoun County School Board at a public meeting in June. “You are training our children to loathe our country and our history,” she said in front of the school board. “Growing up in Mao’s China, all of this feels very familiar…. The only difference is that they used class instead of race.”

    Gordon Klein, a professor at UCLA, recently filed suit against his own university. Why? A student asked him to grade black students with “greater leniency.” He refused, given that such a racial preference would violate UCLA’s anti-discrimination policies (and maybe even the law). But the people in charge of UCLA’s Anderson School launched a racial-discrimination complaint into him. They denounced him, banned him from campus, appointed a monitor to look at his emails, and suspended him. He eventually was reinstated—because he had done absolutely nothing wrong—but not before his reputation and career were severely damaged. “I don’t want to see anyone else’s life destroyed as they attempted to do to me,” Klein told me. “Few have the intestinal fortitude to fight cancel culture. I do. This is about sending a message to every petty tyrant out there.”

    Courage is Peter Boghossian. He recently resigned his post at Portland State University, writing in a letter to his provost: “The university transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a social justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender and victimhood and whose only output was grievance and division…. I feel morally obligated to make this choice. For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didn’t?”

    Who would I be if I didn’t?

    George Orwell said that “the further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” In an age of lies, telling the truth is high risk. It comes with a cost. But it is our moral obligation.

    It is our duty to resist the crowd in this age of mob thinking. It is our duty to think freely in an age of conformity. It is our duty to speak truth in an age of lies. 

    This bravery isn’t the last or only step in opposing this revolution—it’s just the first. After that must come honest assessments of why America was vulnerable to start with, and an aggressive commitment to rebuilding the economy and society in ways that once again offer life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the greatest number of Americans.

    But let’s start with a little courage.

    Courage means, first off, the unqualified rejection of lies. Do not speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob. And do not genially accept the lies told to you. If possible, be vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false. Courage can be contagious, and your example may serve as a means of transmission.

    When you’re told that traits such as industriousness and punctuality are the legacy of white supremacy, don’t hesitate to reject it. When you’re told that statues of figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are offensive, explain that they are national heroes. When you’re told that “nothing has changed” in this country for minorities, don’t dishonor the memory of civil-rights pioneers by agreeing. And when you’re told that America was founded in order to perpetuate slavery, don’t take part in rewriting the country’s history.

    America is imperfect. I always knew it, as we all do—and the past few years have rocked my faith like no others in my lifetime. But America and we Americans are far from irredeemable. 

    The motto of Frederick Douglass’s anti-slavery paper, the North Star—“The Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren”—must remain all of ours.

    We can still feel the pull of that electric cord Lincoln talked about 163 years ago—the one “in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

    Every day I hear from people who are living in fear in the freest society humankind has ever known. Dissidents in a democracy, practicing doublespeak. That is what is happening right now. What happens five, 10, 20 years from now if we don’t speak up and defend the ideas that have made all of our lives possible?

    Liberty. Equality. Freedom. Dignity. These are ideas worth fighting for.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:05

  • Washington State Trooper Gives 'Final Sign Off' After Refusing To Take Vaccine; Tells Governor To Kiss His A**
    Washington State Trooper Gives ‘Final Sign Off’ After Refusing To Take Vaccine; Tells Governor To Kiss His A**

    A Washington state trooper released a video of his ‘final sign off’ after more than 22 years on the Yakima County force, after he was forced out of his job for refusing to take the Covid-19 vaccine by Oct. 18.

    “This is my final sign-off after 22 years serving the citizens of the state of Washington, I’ve been asked to leave because I am dirty,” said the unnamed officer.

    “Numerous fatalities, injuries, I’ve worked sick, I’ve played sick, buried lots of friends over these years,” he continued. “I’d like to thank you guys, as well as the citizens of Yakima County as well as my fellow officers within the valley. Without you guys I wouldn’t have been very successful.”

    “So State 1034 this is the last time you’ll hear me in a state patrol car… And [governor] Jay Inslee can kiss my ass,” he concluded.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIn response, a dispatcher thanked him for his years of service.

    “Thank you for your 22 years and five months of service to the citizens of Washington state,” she said. “You’ve taken on many roles in your time with the patrol. In your first year, you delivered a baby while on patrol. You’ve been a theory instructor and part of the chaplaincy board.”

    “You’ve been a great role model and a mentor for all the young troopers serving in the area by sharing your knowledge and experience throughout the years,” she continued, adding: “Thank you for your service.“

    Governor Jay Inslee issued a sweeping order in August mandating that state government workers must “Show proof of vaccination on or before October 18 or lose your job.”

    According to the Seattle Times, more than 90% of state govt. employees were fully vaccinated as of Saturday.

    Last Monday we noted that up to 40% of Seattle PD may lose their job over the mandate. As of Oct. 6, 292 sworn personnel had yet to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccination per the report, down from 354 on Tuesday. An additional 111 officers are awaiting the results of exemption requests, meaning the total number of potentially fired Seattle cops is as high as 403.

    That said, the President of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Mike Solan, said on Friday that officers who choose not to get vaccinated will not be terminated immediately on the Oct. 18 deadline – and will instead be given notice for a “Loudermill hearing” where they will be able to plead their case.

    Meanwhile in Chicago, a Judge issued a temporary restraining order late Friday against the Chicago police union president prohibiting him from making public statements which encourage members not to report their Covid-19 vaccination status to authorities.

    Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s high-stakes standoff with the police union over the city’s vaccine mandate landed in court Friday, with a judge doing what the mayor could not — temporarily silencing Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara.

    Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan granted the city’s request for an injunction but only to the extent that Catanzara be precluded — at least until the next hearing Oct. 25 — from making any further YouTube videos or otherwise using social media platforms to encourage his members to defy the city’s mandate to enter their vaccine status on the city’s data portal.

    Catanzara soon took to the union’s YouTube channel where he said the courts were attempting to muzzle him. He said he would comply and urged his members to “do what’s in their hearts and minds.” –Chicago Sun Times

    “Enough is enough…”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 22:40

  • Greenwald: Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled By Exploiting "Insurrection" Fears
    Greenwald: Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled By Exploiting “Insurrection” Fears

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

    When a population is placed in a state of sufficiently grave fear and anger regarding a perceived threat, concerns about the constitutionality, legality and morality of measures adopted in the name of punishing the enemy typically disappear. The first priority, indeed the sole priority, is to crush the threat. Questions about the legality of actions ostensibly undertaken against the guilty parties are brushed aside as trivial annoyances at best, or, worse, castigated as efforts to sympathize with and protect those responsible for the danger. When a population is subsumed with pulsating fear and rage, there is little patience for seemingly abstract quibbles about legality or ethics. The craving for punishment, for vengeance, for protection, is visceral and thus easily drowns out cerebral or rational impediments to satiating those primal impulses.

    Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    The aftermath of the 9/11 attack provided a vivid illustration of that dynamic. The consensus view, which formed immediately, was that anything and everything possible should be done to crush the terrorists who — directly or indirectly — were responsible for that traumatic attack. The few dissenters who attempted to raise doubts about the legality or morality of proposed responses were easily dismissed and marginalized, when not ignored entirely. Typically, they were vilified with the accusation that their constitutional and legal objections were frauds: mere pretexts to conceal their sympathy and even support for the terrorists. It took at least a year or two after that attack for there to be any space for questions about the legality, constitutionality, and morality of the U.S. response to 9/11 to be entertained at all.

    For many liberals and Democrats in the U.S., 1/6 is the equivalent of 9/11. One need not speculate about that. Many have said this explicitly. Some prominent Democrats in politics and media have even insisted that 1/6 was worse than 9/11.

    Joe Biden’s speechwriters, when preparing his script for his April address to the Joint Session of Congress, called the three-hour riot “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Liberal icon Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), whose father’s legacy was cemented by years of casting 9/11 as the most barbaric attack ever seen, now serves as Vice Chair of the 1/6 Committee; in that role, she proclaimed that the forces behind 1/6 represent “a threat America has never seen before.” The enabling resolution that created the Select Committee calls 1/6 “one of the darkest days of our democracy.” USA Today’s editor David Mastio published an op-ed whose sole point was a defense of the hysterical thesis from MSNBC analysts that 1/6 is at least as bad as 9/11 if not worse. S.V. Date, the White House correspondent for America’s most nakedly partisan “news” outlet, The Huffington Post, published a series of tweets arguing that 1/6 was worse than 9/11 and that those behind it are more dangerous than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda ever were.

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    And ever since the pro-Trump crowd was dispersed at the Capitol after a few hours of protests and riots, the same repressive climate that arose after 9/11 has prevailed. Mainstream political and media sectors instantly consecrated the narrative, fully endorsed by the U.S. security state, that the United States was attacked on 1/6 by domestic terrorists bent on insurrection and a coup. They also claimed in unison that the ideology driving those right-wing domestic terrorists now poses the single most dangerous threat to the American homeland, a claim which the intelligence community was making even before 1/6 to argue for a new War on Terror (just as neocons wanted to invade and engineer regime change in Iraq prior to 9/11 and then exploited 9/11 to achieve that long-held goal).

    With those extremist and alarming premises fully implanted, there has been little tolerance for questions about whether proposed responses for dealing with the 1/6 “domestic terrorists” and their incomparably dangerous ideology are excessive, illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional. Even before Joe Biden was inaugurated, his senior advisers made clear that one of their top priorities was to enact a bill from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — now a member of the Select Committee on 1/6 — to import the first War on Terror onto domestic soil. Even without enactment of a new law, there is no doubt that a second War on Terror, this one domestic, has begun and is growing, all in the name of the 1/6 “Insurrection” and with little dissent or even public debate.

    Following the post-9/11 script, anyone voicing such concerns about responses to 1/6 is reflexively accused of minimizing the gravity of the Capitol riot and, worse, of harboring sympathy for the plotters and their insurrectionary cause. Questions or doubts about the proportionality or legality of government actions in the name of 1/6 are depicted as insincere, proof that those voicing such doubts are acting not in defense of constitutional or legal principles but out of clandestine camaraderie with the right-wing domestic terrorists and their evil cause.

    When it comes to 1/6 and those who were at the Capitol, there is no middle ground. That playbook is not new. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” was the rigidly binary choice which President George W. Bush presented to Americans and the world when addressing Congress shortly after the 9/11 attack. With that framework in place, anything short of unquestioning support for the Bush/Cheney administration and all of its policies was, by definition, tantamount to providing aid and comfort to the terrorists and their allies. There was no middle ground, no third option, no such thing as ambivalence or reluctance: all of that uncertainty or doubt, insisted the new war president, was to be understood as standing with the terrorists.

    The coercive and dissent-squashing power of that binary equation has proven irresistible ever since, spanning myriad political positions and cultural issues. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s insistence that one either fully embrace what he regards as the program of “anti-racism” or be guilty by definition of supporting racism — that there is no middle ground, no space for neutrality, no room for ambivalence about any of the dogmatic planks — perfectly tracks this manipulative formula. As Dr. Kendi described the binary he seeks to impose: “what I’m trying to do with my work is to really get Americans to eliminate the concept of ‘not racist’ from their vocabulary, and realize we’re either being racist or anti-racist.” Eight months after the 1/6 riot — despite the fact that the only people who died that day were Trump supporters and not anyone they killed — that same binary framework shapes our discourse, with a clear message delivered by those purporting to crush an insurrection and confront domestic terrorism. You’re either with us, or with the 1/6 terrorists.

    What makes this ongoing prohibition of dissent or even doubt so remarkable is that so many of the responses to 1/6 are precisely the legal and judicial policies that liberals have spent decades denouncing. Indeed, many of the defining post-1/6 policies are identical to those now retrospectively viewed as abusive and excessive, if not unconstitutional, when invoked as part of the first War on Terror. We are thus confronted with the surreal dynamic that policies long castigated in American liberalism — whether used generally in the criminal justice system or specifically in the name of avenging 9/11 and defeating Islamic extremism — are now off-limits from scrutiny or critique when employed in the name of avenging 1/6 and crushing the dangerous domestic ideology that fostered it.

    Almost immediately after the Capitol riot, some of the most influential Democratic lawmakers — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who also now chairs the Select 1/6 Committee — demanded that any participants in the protest be placed on the no-fly list, long regarded as one of the most extreme civil liberties assaults from the first War on Terror. And at least some of the 1/6 protesters have been placed on that list: American citizens, convicted of no crime, prohibited from boarding commercial airplanes based on a vague and unproven assessment, from unseen and unaccountable security state bureaucrats, that they are too dangerous to fly. I reported extensively on the horrors and abuses of the no-fly list as part of the first War on Terror and do not recall a single liberal speaking in defense of that tactic. Yet now that this same brute instrument is being used against Trump supporters, there has not, to my knowledge, been a single prominent liberal raising objections to the resurrection of the no-fly list for American citizens who have been convicted of no crime.

    Axios, Jan. 12, 2021

    With more than 600 people now charged in connection with the events of 1/6, not one person has been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government, incite insurrection, conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping of public officials, or any of the other fantastical claims that rained down on them from media narratives. No one has been charged with treason or sedition. Perhaps that is because, as Reuters reported in August, “the FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.” Yet these defendants are being treated as if they were guilty of these grave crimes of which nobody has been formally accused, with the exact type of prosecutorial and judicial overreach that criminal defense lawyers and justice reform advocates have long railed against.

    Dozens of the 1/6 defendants have been denied bail, thus being imprisoned for months without having been found guilty of anything. Many are being held in unusually harsh and bizarrely cruel conditions, causing a federal judge on Wednesday to hold “the warden of the D.C. jail and director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt of court,” and then calling on the Justice Department “to investigate whether the jail is violating the civil rights of dozens of detained Jan. 6 defendants.” Some of the pre-trial prison protocols have been so punitive that even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — who calls the 1/6 protesters “domestic terrorists” — denounced their treatment as abusive: “Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Warren said, adding: “And we’re talking about people who haven’t been convicted of anything yet.” Warren also said she is “worried that law enforcement officials are deploying it to ‘punish’ the Jan. 6 defendants or to ‘break them so that they will cooperate.”

    The few 1/6 defendants who have thus far been sentenced after pleading guilty have been subjected to exceptionally punitive sentences, the kind liberal criminal justice reform advocates have been rightly denouncing for years. Several convicted of nothing more than trivial misdemeanors are being sentenced to real prison time; last week, Michigan’s Robert Reeder pled guilty to “one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building” yet received a jail term of 3 months, with the judge admitting that the motive was to “send a signal to the other participants in that riot… that they can expect to receive jail time.”

    Meanwhile, long-controversial SWAT teams are being routinely deployed to arrest 1/6 suspects in their homes, and long-time liberal activists denouncing these tactics have suddenly decided they are appropriate for these Trump supporters. That prosecutors are notoriously overzealous in their demands for harsh prison time is a staple of liberal discourse, but now, an Obama-appointed judge has repeatedly doled out sentences to 1/6 defendants that are harsher and longer than those requested by DOJ prosecutors, to the applause of liberals. In sum, these defendants are subjected to one of the grossest violations of due process: they are being treated as if they are guilty of crimes — treason, sedition, insurrection, attempted murder, and kidnapping — which not even the DOJ has accused them of committing. And the fundamental precept of any healthy justice system — namely, punishment for citizens is merited only once they have been found guilty of crimes in a court of law — has been completely discarded.

    Serious questions about FBI involvement in the 1/6 events linger. For months, Americans were subjected to a frightening media narrative that far-right groups had plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, only for proof to emerge that at least half of the conspirators, including its leaders, were working for or at the behest of the FBI. Regarding 1/6, the evidence has been clear for months, though largely confined to right-wing outlets, that the FBI had its tentacles in the three groups it claims were most responsible for the 1/6 protest: the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters. Yet last month, The New York Times acknowledged that the FBI was directly communicating with one of its informants present at the Capitol, a member of the Proud Boys, while the riot unfolded, meaning “federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known.” All of this suggests that to the extent 1/6 had any advanced centralized planning, it was far closer to an FBI-induced plot than a centrally organized right-wing insurrection.

    Despite this mountain of abuses, it is exceedingly rare to find anyone outside of conservative media and MAGA politics raising objections to any of this (which is what made Sen. Warren’s denunciation of their pre-trial prison conditions so notable). The reason is obvious: just as was true in the aftermath of 9/11, people are petrified to express any dissent or even question what is being done to the alleged domestic terrorists for fear of standing accused of sympathizing with them and their ideology, an accusation that can be career-ending for many.

    Many of the 1/6 defendants are impoverished and cannot afford lawyers, yet private-sector law firms who have active pro bono programs will not touch anyone or anything having to do with 1/6, while the ACLU is now little more than an arm of the Democratic Party and thus displays almost no interest in these systemic civil liberties assaults. And for many liberals — the ones who are barely able to contain their glee at watching people lose their jobs in the middle of a pandemic due to vaccine-hesitancy or who do not hide their joy that the unarmed Ashli Babbitt got what she deserved — their political adversaries these days are not just political adversaries but criminals and even terrorists, rendering no punishment too harsh or severe. For them, cruelty is not just acceptable; the cruelty is the point.

    The Unconstitutionality of the 1/6 Committee

    Civil liberties abuses of this type are common when the U.S. security state scares enough people into believing that the threat they face is so acute that normal constitutional safeguards must be disregarded. What is most definitely not common, and is arguably the greatest 1/6-related civil liberties abuse of them all, is the House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

    To say that the investigative acts of the 1/6 Committee are radical is a wild understatement. Along with serving subpoenas on four former Trump officials, they have also served subpoenas on eleven private citizens: people selected for interrogation precisely because they exercised their Constitutional right of free assembly by applying for and receiving a permit to hold a protest on January 6 opposing certification of the 2020 election.

    When the Select 1/6 Committee recently boasted of these subpoenas in its press release, it made clear what methodology it used for selecting who it was targeting: “The committee used permit paperwork for the Jan. 6 rally to identify other individuals involved in organizing.” In other words, any citizen whose name appeared on permit applications to protest was targeted for that reason alone. The committee’s stated goal is “to collect information from them and their associated entities on the planning, organization, and funding of those events”: to haul citizens before Congress to interrogate them on their constitutionally protected right to assemble and protest and probe their political beliefs and associations:

    List of 11 private citizens who received subpoenas from the 1/6 Congressional Committee for deposition testimony and records

    Even worse are the so-called “preservation notices” which the committee secretly issued to dozens if not hundreds of telecoms, email and cell phone providers, and other social media platforms (including Twitter and Parler), ordering those companies to retain extremely invasive data regarding the communications and physical activities of more than 100 citizens, with the obvious intent to allow the committee to subpoena those documents. The communications and physical movement data sought by the committee begins in April, 2020 — nine months before the 1/6 riot. The committee refuses to make public the list of individuals it is targeting with these sweeping third-party subpoenas, but on the list are what CNN calls “many members of Congress,” along with dozens of private citizens involved in obtaining the permit to protest and then promoting and planning the gathering on social media.

    What makes these secret notices especially pernicious is that the committee requested that these companies not notify their customers that the committee has demanded the preservation of their data. The committee knows it lacks the power to impose a “gag order” on these companies to prevent them from notifying their users that they received the precursor to a subpoena: a power the FBI in conjunction with courts does have. So they are relying instead on “voluntary compliance” with the gag order request, accompanied by the thuggish threat that any companies refusing to voluntarily comply risk the public relations harm of appearing to be obstructing the committee’s investigation and, worse, protecting the 1/6 “insurrectionists.”

    Worse still, the committee in its preservation notices to these communications companies requested that “you do not disable, suspend, lock, cancel, or interrupt service to these subscribers or accounts solely due to this request,” and that they should first contact the committee “if you are not able or willing to respond to this request without alerting the subscribers.” The motive here is obvious: if any of these companies risk the PR hit by refusing to conceal from their customers the fact that Congress is seeking to obtain their private data, they are instructed to contact the committee instead, so that the committee can withdraw the request. That way, none of the customers will ever be aware that the committee targeted their private data and will thus never be able to challenge the legality of the committee’s acts in a court of law.

    In other words, even the committee knows that its power to seek this information about private citizens lacks any convincing legal justification and, for that reason, wants to ensure that nobody has the ability to seek a judicial ruling on the legality of their actions. All of these behaviors raise serious civil liberties concerns, so much so that even left-liberal legal scholars and at least one civil liberties group (obviously not the ACLU) — petrified until now of creating any appearance that they are defending 1/6 protesters by objecting to civil liberties abuses — have begun very delicately to raise doubts and concerns about the committee’s actions.

    But the most serious constitutional problem is not the specific investigative acts of the committee but the very existence of the committee itself. There is ample reason to doubt the constitutionality of this committee’s existence.

    When crimes are committed in the United States, there are two branches of government — and only two — vested by the Constitution with the power to investigate criminal suspects and adjudicate guilt: the executive branch (through the FBI and DOJ) and the judiciary. Congress has no role to play in any of that, and for good and important reasons. The Constitution places limits on what the executive branch and judiciary can do when investigating suspects . . . . .

    The full article is available to subscribers only. To read the rest of the article, please subscribe at the button below and the full article will then be fully accessible here

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 22:15

  • 'Coffee Cup Gestapo': The Latest Covid Crackdown Viral Video Out Of Australia
    ‘Coffee Cup Gestapo’: The Latest Covid Crackdown Viral Video Out Of Australia

    Examples of Covid policy crackdowns out of Australia have only grown more and more absurd as viral videos continue to hit the web on a weekly basis showing the insane and Orwellian lengths police and government authorities are willing to go supposedly in the name of keeping people “safe”.

    The latest encounter of an Aussie citizen with police in Melbourne shows officers actually briefly inspecting a man’s beverage, apparently to ensure that his pulling down his mask in order to consume coffee was “justified”. It should also be noted that this took place outside in the fresh air of a public park…

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

    The short clip, which since being posted online has been reported on in multiple international media outlets, shows a masked-up and glove-wearing officer grabbing the man’s coffee cup, while saying, “Do you mind if I check if there’s actually anything in that?” 

    After giving it a shake, the officer gives it back to the man and says, “Enjoy your coffee” – apparently satisfied at finding liquid in it.

    Some news reports mocked the scene as a “North Korea-style” encounter and others dubbed the officers as part of the “Coffee cup Gestapo”.   

    The clip of the encounter has racked up millions of views across various social media platforms this weekend.

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    The Daily Mail captured some of the outraged social media commentary in response to the incident as follows:

    ‘They were all standing around like a council worker leaning on his shovel, waiting for smoko,’ posted another. ‘Innocent passer-by suffered the brunt of their bored frustration. Poor grunt, no heads to bash, they were made to look stupid.’

    And some are noting the irony in applying the same obsessive social distancing standards to the police, who themselves ended up being the potential ‘contaminators’ by grabbing the man’s coffee in the first place:

    Others were concerned the police officer – who was wearing gloves – could have potentially contaminated the cup by touching it before returning it.

    ‘Why wasn’t the officer forced to change his gloves to touch another person’s property? He could easily spread Covid,’ said one. 

    ‘If that police officer unknowingly had Covid he would absolutely spread it. It is completely irresponsible (and against all infection control) to behave that way.’ 

    But ultimately it appears to be “all about control” – as many commentators have pointed out of late, also following multiple recent videos showing Australian police going door to door to confront residents over their social media posts expressing pushback against the government’s blatantly authoritarian laws and regulations forced on the population during the pandemic.

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    No doubt there’s more to come, with the daily and weekly examples getting more and more absurd and outlandish.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 21:50

  • Jussie Smollett Forced To Face Trial After Judge Denies Dismissal Request
    Jussie Smollett Forced To Face Trial After Judge Denies Dismissal Request

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    Jussie Smollett’s criminal trial will move forward after a judge on Friday struck down the actor’s effort to dismiss the criminal case.

    Smollett in early 2019 made headlines after he told police officers that he was attacked by two white men who shouted epithets at him. However, several weeks later, Smollett, who is black, was charged with one felony count of lying to authorities after officers uncovered evidence that suggested that the incident was staged.

    After initial charges against him were dropped by Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx’s office, a special prosecutor was appointed and charged him with felony counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing false police reports about what happened. The actor has denied the allegations and has pleaded not guilty.

    Foxx, who had received funding from wealthy left-wing financier George Soros for her reelection campaign, came under criticism for her handling of the case. The special prosecutor concluded she and her office did nothing criminal but did abuse their discretion and made false statements about the case.

    On Oct. 15, Judge James Linn said that Smollett’s case now is being handled by a special prosecutor and stated he won’t interfere, according to reporters. Smollett’s trial is set for Nov. 29.

    One of the actor’s lawyers, Nenye Uche, said that Smollett had been offered a non-prosecution deal by prosecutors who had previously served in Cook County. Uche argued that Smollett had given up a $10,000 bond and performed community service under the deal.

    Smollett being “hauled back into court again” is a violation of his due process rights, Uche argued in court, USA Today reported.

    “It’s as clear as day—this case should be dismissed because of an immunity agreement,” Uche said. “A deal is a deal. That’s ancient principle.”

    But Sean Wieber, an attorney with the special prosecutor’s office, said Uche’s claim should be dismissed.

    “We have already dealt with this before,” he said, according to the report.

    “Nothing we’ve heard today changes one iota [of the case]. This can be comfortably denied.”

    Amid widespread speculation that Smollett partook in a hoax to advance his career, the actor was later written out of “Empire,” which subsequently went off the air. Smollett is also fighting a civil lawsuit from the city of Chicago, which claims the actor owes the city tens of thousands of dollars to cover police costs during the investigation.

    Earlier this month, it was announced the jury selection phase of Smollett’s trial would start in early November.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 21:25

  • Malone, Kirsch, & Wuhan Whistleblower Hit Maui To Promote Rational Debate On All Things Covid
    Malone, Kirsch, & Wuhan Whistleblower Hit Maui To Promote Rational Debate On All Things Covid

    As protests against Covid-19 mandates rage in major cities around the world, a group of US-based truth seekers took to Maui over the weekend to headline the ‘Free Maui Unity March & Rally’ – where they promoted the free exchange of information abuot the virus, untainted by government narratives, and an evidence-based approach to the pandemic so that people can make informed medical decisions without fear of retribution.

    Photos courtesy of Ed Dowd

    Among the attendees were Dr. Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Frontline Doctors Ryan Cole and Richard Urso, and a guest appearance by Whistleblower Dr. Li-Meng Yan – a Chinese virologist who worked in a WHO reference lab in Hong Kong and has published evidence that Covid-19 was created in a lab.

    Former Blackrock portfolio manager Ed Dowd attended a post-rally private dinner with the speakers, and told Zero Hedge that topics discussed included the “coordinated effort to prevent early treatment of Covid with pre-existing available drugs,” and that currently available vaccines are “experimental, don’t provide immunity or prevent transmission and have more risk than benefit.“

    “We can’t even begin to know the long term effects of the vaccines – one of many concerns to the doctors on the panel. Usually a vaccine requires 7-10 years of data before it can be approved,” Dowd added, citing Dr. Ryan Cole of America’s Frontline Doctors.

    On Saturday, hundreds – if not thousands of Hawaiians turned out for a march opposing pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates, eventually ending up at the War Memorial Stadium to hear the featured speakers.

    One of the speakers, Steve Kirsch – a tech mogul who made hundreds of millions in Silicon valley, and started the Covid-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF) – spoke at length about vaccine safety, and has compiled several arguments against the Covid-19 vaccine in a lengthy PDF. Kirsch challenges anyone to refute his data. Instead, he was pushed out of his most recent position as CEO of a tech startup, and treated to a Daily Beast hit-piece.

    Trained as an engineer, Kirsch maintains that the vaccine is ineffective, more dangerous than the virus itself, and that the medical field is under constant threat to stick to official narratives or face smear campaigns. Within minutes of Dowd uploading his Saturday speech, YouTube deleted it – forcing him to upload it to free speech platform Rumble instead.

    The headliners gathered for a second dinner Saturday evening, at which Kirsch said that despite losing vast wealth and opportunities in his mission to educate people “if my data about these vaccines can save just one life it’s worth it to me.”

    Dr. Robert Malone – a pivotal figure in the development of mRNA vaccine technology and staunch advocate for medical freedom, proposed what he calls the “Maui plan,” which contains three elements:

    1. Early treatment options
    2. The right for doctors to practice medicine how they see fit without fear of retribution (“The media is not trained to practice medicine. The politicians are not trained to practice medicine”).
    3. “Don’t vaccinate our children.”

    “The risk to kids from this pandemic are about zero,” said Malone. “Pretty darn close. In something like 400 deaths in children since the beginning as identified by the CDC, every single one of those is in children that had major preexisting medical conditions.”

    “Let’s stop the fear being put on our children. The fear is what’s damaging our children, it’s not the virus,” said Malone (who has yet to be un-personed by YouTube), adding “If there are superspreaders, it’s probably the vaccinated adults who are having less symptoms, going to the grocery store, going into the schools, going into the hospitals, going into state government – whether they’re vaxxed or not, the vaccines are not protecting them against Delta.”

    For an in-depth look at what Kirsch and Malone

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 21:00

  • Why Goldman Expects A Huge Market Melt-up In The Coming Weeks
    Why Goldman Expects A Huge Market Melt-up In The Coming Weeks

    Below we excerpt from the latest Goldman”Tactical Flow-of-funds: October 2H” report by flow trader Scott Rubner who writes that he is “on FOMO Watch” and lays out the argument for a major market breakout in the coming weeks.

    October 1H (S&P is +3.03% MTD ) = “We made it through the October __________ scare.” Word bank: Stagflation, China Property, Covid, Tapering, Supply Chain, Energy, Hiking, China, Growth, Higher rates, etc, etc.

    Talking Points: (Positioning and Sentiment is UN-STRECHED), really un-stretched.

    1. Un-emotional systematic CTA and VC equity re-leveraging given the decline in volatility: Sold -$96B of Equity over the last 1 month.

    2. Un-emotional systematic, now covering shorts in fixed income (read positive NDX, which means positive SPX): Sold -$540B of FI over the last 1 month.

    3. Discretionary shorting into expiry covering, GS PB.

    4. Corporate buyback dry powder is the largest incremental buyer in the market.

    5. 401k quarterly equity inflows have not slowed

    6. Generation I – (Generation Investor), the retail trader hugely pivoted back into secular growth.

    7. Mutual Fund year end is 10/29 – can’t report cash on the year-end statements?

    8. 2022 seems very difficult! There is a growing interest to try and catch-up to benchmark gains here in Q4.

    9. Bond inflows have now slowed to zero and credit logged their first outflows. $ looking for a home?

    This is the biggest flow dynamic to know for November, and this kicks off aggressively following back earnings.

    1. US corporates authorized +$884B YTD as of October 8th. This is YTD authorization record and exceeds the tax reform Euphoria of 2018. The Goldman buyback desk estimates FY authorizations will be $965B.

    2. The GS buyback desk forecasts $887B worth of buyback executions for 2021. This would be the second highest year on record (after 2018).

    3. The breakdown of executions per quarter is as follows: Q1 – $203B (actual), Q2 – $234B (actual), Q3 – $220B forecast, Q4 – $230B forecast.

    4. In Q4, the GS buyback desk estimates +$230B repurchases, this is broken down by +$70B in October during the blackout window using 10b5-1 plans and +$160B in November and December.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    According to GS Research, November is the #1 month for buyback executions, November plus December is the best two month period of the year for executions.

    5. 11/1 is the defacto start to the buyback window (65% of corporates are in the open window)

    6. 11/8 is the GS official start to the buyback window (90% of corporates are in the open window).

    7. There are 42.5 trading days in November and December including major vacation weeks and low liquidity.

    8. The $160B of repurchases in the last two months of the year is ~$3.80B per day, every day. This is significantly front loaded into November (and should pace above >$4B).

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns

    It’s not just buybacks… Equity Inflows – this has been the biggest market dynamic of 2021.

    9.There have been +$774.50B global equity inflows YTD, the best year on record by a mile, in the 190 trading days ending on October 6th. This will be roughly $1 Trillion worth of inflows for 2021.

    10. This is approximately +$4.10B worth of [retail] demand every single day of 2021.

    11. My assumption is that these inflows will not slow (actually increase coming out of bonds), but lets say, same pace.

    12. This is $8B worth of equity demand from corporates and retail, all else equal for the 42.50 trading days to close out the year. This before what I am typing below.

    13. Bond inflows went to zero this week and logged credit outflows (Investment Grade, High Yield, and EM Debt) – looking for a home?

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    Melt-up checkdown: This is why I think there is risk now to the upside in November (this may get pre-traded in late October) 14.

    Exposure is not high: GS HF PB Gross 177% (28th percentile 1-yr) and Net 62% (23rd percentile 1-yr)

    On Wednesday (waiting on Thursday) – US equities on the GS Prime book saw the largest 1-day net buying since late August (+1.1 SDs vs. the average daily net flow of the past year), driven by short covers and to a lesser extent long buys (2 to 1).

    Both Macro Products (driven by short covers) and Single Names (driven by long buys) were net bought and made up 74% and 26% of Thursday’s $ buying activity, respectively.

    Sentiment = ZZZZs.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    15. Gamma is not long: Current SPX long gamma = $1B vs. A high last week of $7.7B long. This is the 3rd lowest long of the year and a decline of $7B w/w. This has allowed the market move more freely and we really haven’t seen this little long position in the past year. I think dealers go short (finally) after today’s expiry.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Global Markets Division, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    16. OpEx (Option expiry): $2.2 Trillion worth of option notional rolls off Friday and “everyone is looking for weakness into expiry trade.” After today’s expiry, I expect the market to move more freely, especially to the upside.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, OptionMetrics

    17. Current CTA positioning in Fixed Income: why do you care? This is an index construction issue. When CTAs short bonds (value > growth)…. when they cover, the whole index can move higher? My most important chart this week.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    18. Performance has largely been difficult and 2022 is expected to be difficult. A big bulk of Mutual Fund year-end is at the end of October. Buy stocks w/ cash on sidelines?

    Source: Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division, Cormac Conners, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    19. Systematic releveraging becomes the focus following the FLIP: Systematic equity strategies have sold $96B worth of equities over the past 1 month.

    We have systematic strategies buying $44.8 Billion over the next month and $106.5 Billion if the market is up modestly, which is trending. This would roughly be a $200B swing, this is large.

    Source: Goldman Sachs Global Markets Strats Division, as of 10/15/21. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

    20. And then, there are seasonals which start to really kick in at the end of the month. You are here w/ the buyback window.

    • I. Since 2020, there has been +$2.281 Trillion inflows into bonds and cash vs. +$578 Billion inflows into equities. 4x more inflows into Cash and Bonds.
    • II. Since 2016, there has been +$4.609 Trillion inflows into bonds and cash vs. +$427 Billion inflows into equities. 11x more inflows into Cash and Bonds.
    • III. Since 2011, there has been +$5.205 Trillion inflows into bonds and cash vs. +$748 Billion inflows into equities. 7x more inflows into Cash and Bonds.

    I promised myself that I would never use the term “Great Rotation” again, that is the rotation out of bonds into equities, however this movement of capital is the most important dynamic that I am tracking right now. Global Bond funds saw the SMALLEST INFLOWS since Q1 this week. What level higher in bond yields stop this inflow all together (or possibly move to outflows?). Global equities logged another +$13B worth of inflows on the week. No change in tone.

    • IV. There is a competition for dip alpha. Why did everyone want the -5% pullpack? Here is the data.

    This recent stretch was the 8th longest streak without a -5% dip since 1930, lasting 226 trading days. There have been 34, five percent pullbacks since 1980, 1m, 3m, 6m returns have had positive hit rates of 74%, 82%, and 85% respectively

    • V. Retail aggressively defended large cap tech and secular growth this week.
    • VI. October Checklist continued below. (Index gamma smallest long of the year, sentiment ticks lower (again), shorts tick higher, systematic to re-lever above 4400, seasonals remain strong, and Q4 performance catch up vs. benchmarks).

    Who was the largest incremental buyer in the equity market this week?

    Retail traders made a huge pivot this week and have been buying the dip in large cap tech and secular growth.

    a. US single stock equities with the largest percentage of total volume traded by retail on Thursday October 8th, 2021.

    b. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute buy skew on Thursday October 8th, 2021.

    c. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute sell skew on Thursday October 8th, 2021.

    e. US single stock equities with the largest percentage of total volume traded by retail on Wednesday October 6th, 2021.

    f. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute buy skew on Wednesday October 6th, 2021.

    g. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute sell skew on Wednesday October 6th, 2021.

    h. US single stock equities with the largest percentage of total volume traded by retail on Tuesday October 5th, 2021.

    i. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute buy skew on Tuesday October 5th, 2021.

    j. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute sell skew on Tuesday October 5th, 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 20:35

  • 40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom's Order 
    40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom’s Order 

    This might come as a surprise, but 40% of California state employees are unvaccinated despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s directive to mandate the jab or be subjected to regular testing. 

    Newsom issued this new directive in July following a surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. At the time, he said, “We are now dealing with a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and it’s going to take renewed efforts to protect Californians from the dangerous Delta variant.” 

    Still months later, less than two-thirds of state workers, or 62%, were vaccinated, according to The Sacramento Bee. The figure is much lower than the state’s overall rate of 72%. 

    Human Resources Department spokeswoman Camille Travis said her agency has only compiled 89% of state employee vaccination status. She said the data so far suggests some state employees weren’t compelled to get jabbed after Newsom’s directive.  

    Some of the state’s largest departments shared vaccination rates: 52% of California Highway Patrol employees, 60% of Department of Motor Vehicles employees, and 60% of prison employees have received the shots. California Department of Transportation has the highest with 70%.

    Newsom’s mandatory jab, or be forced to regular testing for state employees, is less stringent than those of health care workers who have been forced to get the vaccine unless they had a medical exemption or religious claim. One emerging drawback of mandatory jabs, with no consideration for regular testing nor naturally-acquired immunity, are reports that a third of all hospitals in the state are experiencing critical staffing shortages because engineers, janitorial staff, respiratory therapists, nurses, midwives, physical therapists, and technicians have either staged strikes or have left the job over the mandate.

    Director of Medical Ethics, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty of the University of California, Irvine, challenged the constitutionality of the hospital’s vaccine mandate regarding individuals who have recovered from COVID and have naturally acquired immunity and was immediately placed on leave. There’s no room to debate science as only the government can decide what’s best for state employees.

    The same sort of stringent vaccination rules for healthcare workers could be coming to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the state’s largest department, with approximately 66,000 employees and a vaccination rate of 60%.

    Overreaching government mandating jabs has unintended consequences such as workers striking or leaving their posts altogether, exacerbating already critical labor shortages in essential services. 

    Perhaps of even more note is the fact no lesser liberal mouthpiece than The New York Times is finally willing to admit that it’s not just KKK-Hat-wearing ‘Trumpers’ that are the great unwashed deplorables refusing to get vaccinated.

    In New York, for example, only 42 percent of African Americans of all ages (and 49 percent among adults) are fully vaccinated – the lowest rate among all demographic groups tracked by the city.

    This is another area in which the dominant image of the white, QAnon-spouting, Tucker Carlson-watching conspiracist anti-vaxxer dying to own the libs is so damaging.

    It can lead us to ignore the problem of racialized health inequities with deep historic roots but also ongoing repercussions, and prevent us from understanding that there are different kinds of vaccine hesitancy, which require different approaches.

    Just ask Nicki Minaj.

    … the Covid States Project’s research showed that unvaccinated people who nonetheless wore masks were, indeed, more likely to be Black women.

    Did you ever think you would read those ‘facts’ from that ‘news’ outlet?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 20:10

  • Dozens Of Climate Activists Arrested After Storming Interior Department, Police Sustain "Multiple Injuries"
    Dozens Of Climate Activists Arrested After Storming Interior Department, Police Sustain “Multiple Injuries”

    By Tammy Hung of Epoch Times,

    A group of activists protesting against fossil fuels were arrested after staging a sit-in at the Interior Department in Washington on Oct. 15.

    Climate activists during a protest on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 15, 2021

    The protesters stormed the Stewart Lee Udall Main Interior Building on Thursday afternoon, with “multiple injuries” reportedly sustained by federal police and one officer hospitalized, according to a statement from Interior Department Communications Director Melissa Schwartz.

    Thursday was the second to last day of the week-long protest held by People vs. Fossil Fuels to demand a declaration of a national climate emergency by President Joe Biden.

    The organization also demanded Biden stop approving fossil fuel projects and speed up the end of the “fossil fuel era.”

    While the Federal Protective Service (FPS) did not indicate how many people were arrested on Thursday, People vs. Fossil Fuels said that 35 were arrested at the Interior department.

    By the end of the week-long protest, People vs. Fossil Fuels claimed that 655 people had been arrested.

    On the same day, Melissa Schwartz stated, “Interior Department leadership believes strongly in respecting and upholding the right to free speech and peaceful protest.”

    “Centering the voices of lawful protesters is and will continue to be an important foundation of our democracy,” Schwartz added.

    FPS told Fox News that it was “committed to the safety of demonstrators participating in lawful protests” and expressed full support for the “peaceful expression of all people.”

    “FPS will continue to pursue our mission of ensuring the safety and security of federal employees and facilities, consistent with the law,” added the statement.

    FPS also mentioned the U.S. Park Police and Washington Metropolitan Police Department for helping “to detain, prosecute, or take action against anyone who caused harm and attempted to disrupt the business of the federal government yesterday.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 19:45

  • Joe Manchin Slams 'Out-Of-State Socialist' Bernie Sanders Over VA Op-Ed
    Joe Manchin Slams ‘Out-Of-State Socialist’ Bernie Sanders Over VA Op-Ed

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) says he ‘won’t take orders from a socialist’ after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote an op-ed in a West Virginia newspaper urging Manchin’s constituents to support President Biden’s infrastructure bill.

    “This isn’t the first time an out-of-stater has tried to tell West Virginians what is best for them despite having no relationship to our state,” wrote the 74-year-old Manchin in a Friday statement.

    “Congress should proceed with caution on any additional spending and I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs,” he continued, adding: “No op-ed from a self-declared Independent socialist is going to change that.”

    Sanders, 80, slammed Manchin and fellow Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in the Charleston Gazette-Mail Op-Ed over the moderate Democrats’ opposition to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.

    “Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation,” claimed Sanders, “Yet, the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate we need every Democratic senator to vote ‘yes.’ We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin.”

    “This is a pivotal moment in modern American history,” Sanders continued. “We now have a historic opportunity to support the working families of West Virginia, Vermont, and the entire country and create policy which works for all, not just the few.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 19:20

  • Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates On Military, Federal Employees And Contractors
    Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates On Military, Federal Employees And Contractors

    By Mimi Nguyen Ly of The Epoch Times,

    Service members from all five branches of the U.S. military, federal employees, and federal civilian contractors have joined in a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Defense over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

    A civilian contractor receives a COVID-19 vaccine from Preventative Medicine Services in Fort Knox, Ky., on Sept. 9, 2021. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

    The 24 plaintiffs “face a deadline under the Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate to receive a COVID-19 vaccine that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs, and have been refused any religious exemption or accommodation,” according to Liberty Counsel, the Christian legal firm that filed the lawsuit.

    The lawsuit (pdf), filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, lists President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as defendants.

    The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order (pdf) to prevent the COVID-19 vaccine mandates from taking effect, and ultimately issue an injunction to prevent the Pentagon from enforcing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

    Biden on Sept. 9 issued an executive order requiring almost all federal employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment. Regular testing isn’t an option. Civilian federal employees and contractors have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated.

    Austin issued a memorandum on Aug. 24 saying that all military service members must receive a COVID-19 vaccine, after which all the branches of the military announced various deadlines for its troops to be fully vaccinated, regardless of whether they had previously survived a bout of COVID-19, and threatening suspensions or other disciplinary actions if service members don’t have a pending exemption request or fail to comply.

    The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have set a Nov. 28 deadline for their active-duty service members; reservists have until Dec. 28. For the Army and the Air Force, the deadlines for active-duty service members are Dec. 15 and Nov. 2, respectively, and deadlines for National Guard and Reserve members are June 30, 2022, and Dec. 2, 2021, respectively. U.S. Coast Guard members have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated.

    “Plaintiffs have demonstrated their commitments to the United States Constitution and the Nation’s future comfort, security, and prosperity. This Court should demand that the Nation return the favor. Telling Plaintiffs they must accept or receive a shot they oppose according to their sincerely held religious beliefs, or face court martial, dishonorable discharge, and other life altering disciplinary measures, disgraces the sacrifices these heroes have made,” attorneys wrote in the filing, adding that relief is “needed now” to “prevent the immediate and irreparable injury” imposed by the vaccine mandates.

    A Pentagon spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “We do not comment on ongoing litigation.”

    “The Biden administration has no authority to require the COVID shots for the military or for federal employees or civilian contractors. Nor can the Biden administration pretend that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment do not apply to its unlawful mandates,” Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said in a statement. “The Commander-in-Chief must end this shameful treatment and abuse of our brave military heroes. Forcing the COVID shots without consent or consideration for their sincere religious beliefs is illegal.”

    White House officials didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

    Religious Exemption Requests Denied, Suit Claims

    The lawsuit notes that many of its 24 plaintiffs have had their requests for religious exemption denied, while other plaintiffs “have been threatened with dishonorable discharge, court martial, termination, or other life-altering disciplinary measures” for seeking such exemptions.

    “Some of these Plaintiffs have been informed by their superiors that no religious exemption or accommodation will be given, so there is no point in even making a request,” attorneys said in the filing.

    The suit said that Vice Admiral William Galinis, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, on Oct. 14 issued a warning to his entire command of more than 85,000 civilian and military personnel, saying, “The Executive Order mandating vaccinations for all federal employees has provided clear direction. We are moving quickly toward a workforce where vaccinations are a condition of employment. Frankly, if you are not vaccinated, you will not work for the U.S. Navy.”

    A Navy spokeswoman declined to comment last week when asked whether any religious or medical exemptions had been approved.

    The three currently available COVID-19 vaccines are the one-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, and the two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.

    “Plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs preclude them from accepting any one of the three currently available COVID-19 vaccines derived from, produced or manufactured by, tested on, developed with, or otherwise connected to aborted fetal cell lines,” the suit argued, subsequently providing evidence that aborted fetal cell lines were involved in certain stages of development of all three vaccines.

    “Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs compel them to not condone, support, justify, or benefit (directly or indirectly) from the taking of innocent human life via abortion, and that to do so is sinning against God,” attorneys wrote.

    Attorneys are asking the court to declare that the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the plaintiffs is unlawful because it violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act by “imposing a substantial burden on Plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs.”

    EUA Products Cannot Be Mandated: Attorneys

    Attorneys argued in the suit that no COVID-19 vaccine is available in the United States that has received full licensing and approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and as such, cannot be mandated.

    Austin, in his memo on Aug. 24 (pdf), stated that the mandatory vaccinations “will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the [FDA] in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance,” attorneys noted, arguing that “additional military documents reveal that the Department of Defense is not following its own directive” and is using vaccines under emergency use authorization [EUA] “because there is no FDA approved vaccine available.”

    Austin’s memo came a day after the FDA issued full approval for future Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, which will bear the Comirnaty label. The latter vaccine wasn’t available in the United States as of Oct. 12, The Epoch Times reported previously.

    The attorneys argued that explicit statutory conditions for an EUA require that people are given “the option to accept or refuse administration” of a given unapproved product that has been authorized for emergency use.

    According to the lawsuit, “Because all COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are subject to the EUA Statute restrictions and limitations, all individuals—including military service members, federal employees, and federal civilian contractors—have the explicit right under the EUA Statute to accept or refuse administration of the products.”

    Attorneys asked the court to declare the vaccine mandate as unlawful because it violates the EUA provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act “by imposing a mandatory COVID-19 shot upon Plaintiffs without giving the ‘option to accept or refuse’ the EUA product.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 18:55

  • Has The Housing Bubble Peaked: Zillow Pauses Robo-Flipping Due To "Snags"
    Has The Housing Bubble Peaked: Zillow Pauses Robo-Flipping Due To “Snags”

    In recent weeks we had heard several anecdotal reports that Zillow’s electronic house flipping service was underperforming, buying houses at overinflated prices and then flipping them for a loss (even when factoring in fees and commissions).

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    It appears there has been some truth to that, because according to Bloomberg,  Zillow, which acquired more than 3,800 homes in the second quarter, “will stop pursuing new home purchases as it works through a backlog of properties already in its pipeline.”

    Zillow Group Inc. is taking a break from buying U.S. homes after the online real estate giant’s pivot into tech-powered house-flipping hit a snag.

    While Zillow is best known for publishing real estate listings online and calculating estimated home values – called Zestimates – that let users keep track of how their home is worth (with the traffic on the company’s apps and websites serving as the main source of profits in Zillow’s online marketing business), more recently it has been buying and selling thousands of U.S. homes. In 2018, the company launched Zillow Offers, joining a small group of tech-enabled home-flippers such as OpenDoor, known as iBuyers. In the new business, Zillow invites homeowners to request an offer on their house and uses algorithms to generate a price. If an owner accepts, Zillow buys the property, makes light repairs and puts it back on the market.

    While the service was firing on all cylinders in the aftermath of the Covid crisis when home prices tumbled only to shoot back up to all time highs, rising at a record 20% Y/Y pace, in recent months it has found flipping to be far more challenging as the pace of flips has slowed drastically in a housing market where most of the first time buyers now find themselves priced out.

    However, instead of admitting that we may be nearing (or have already passed) the peak of yet another housing bubble, Zillow has instead blamed “operational capacity” and being short staffed to meet the pace of transactions.

    While the iBuying process is powered by algorithms – which as the anecdotes above suggest may way above fair value – as well aslarge pools of capital, it’s also reliant on humans. Before Zillow signs a contract to buy a house, it sends an inspector to make sure the property doesn’t need costly repairs. After it buys a property, contractors replace carpets and repaint interiors.

    So joining the vast majority of US corporations which blame lack of workers on reduced output (it could, say, hike wages to quickly offset its staffing challenges), Zillow has blamed the lack of workers to perform the menial home-flipping tasks.

    “Given unexpected high demand, Zillow Offers has hit its capacity for buying homes for the remainder of the year,” an employee who works in the company’s home-buying operation in two states wrote in an email to a business partner that was viewed by Bloomberg.

    Staffing shortages have reportedly been exacerbated by Zillow’s willingness to let customers set a closing date months into the future, meaning it could agree to buy a house in August and begin renovating it in November.

    “We are beyond operational capacity in our Zillow Offers business and are not taking on additional contracts to purchase homes at this time,” a spokesperson for Zillow said in an email. “We continue to process the purchase of homes from sellers who are already under contract, as quickly as possible.”

    None of this of course would be an issue if Zillow merely hiked wages, a step that would immediately fill all the vacant positions and resolve its “stated challenges” overnight at a tiny hit to profit margins. The fact that it has not done so suggests that the cause has nothing to do with the stated reason for the flipping pause. Instead, the most likely reason why Zillow is pulling back from robo-flipping is that the housing market is starting to crack and this particular segment is no longer profitable.

    In any case, according to Bloomberg, pausing new acquisitions will allow the company to work through its backlog, the narrative goes. Yet while both Zillow and Opendoor briefly stopped buying homes in the early days of the pandemic, the companies ultimately benefited from the housing boom that started when early economic lockdowns lifted, it still took Zillow several months to resume purchasing homes at its pre-pandemic pace.

    Curiously, while Zillow is putting roboflipping on hold, Opendoor has no such “worker shortage” issues despite having a similar business model.

    “Opendoor is open for business and continues to serve its customers with a simple, certain, fast and trusted home move,” a spokesman for the company said in an email.

    It may be open, but one wonders for how long: Zillow has said it plans to refer potential customers to traditional real estate agents (and, by extension, its competitors). It would not be doing this if it was handing over not just market share but also potentially generous profit margins.

    As such, the real question is whether Zillow’s move may the first sign that the US housing market has finally peaked and – with rates expected to keep rising for the foreseeable future along with inflation – it’s all downhill from here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 18:30

  • Hedge Fund CIO: The Old And The Young Are Set For A "Terrifying, Agonizing" Battle
    Hedge Fund CIO: The Old And The Young Are Set For A “Terrifying, Agonizing” Battle

    By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

    “Today’s announcement has the potential to be a game-changer,” said Biden, from the White House steps, directing attention to the Port of Los Angeles and its newly extended hours of operation. “Private sector companies need to step up as well,” pleaded the President, scrambling to grease America’s rusty supply chain.

    Nearby, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its consumer price index for September. The CPI rose +5.4% from 2020. And a few blocks away, the Social Security Administration considered the arguments for and against transitory inflation, then hiked next year’s benefits by +5.9%. That’s the largest cost-of-living adjustment in 40 years, and a reminder that the lags in inflation are integrated into public policy. In 2020, the inflation adjustment was just +1.6%. But that was before consumer prices jumped +5.4% – inflation cut 3.8% of purchasing power from seniors living off social security. And they’re not alone. This time last year, investors who sought the safety of risk-free 10yr Treasury notes (+0.74% yield back then) lost -11.19 % when measured on an inflation-adjusted basis. What connects these two stories is that both Social Security commitments and Treasury securities represent government liabilities.

    And the net present value of those liabilities is impossibly large to meet – in real terms, at least. So the government’s long process of lightening its burden from that real liability has finally begun.

    If successfully coordinated and executed by the Fed, Treasury, IRS, regulators and elected politicians, inflation rates will be guided to remain well above nominal interest rates for decades. That’s what the inflation-index Treasury market is signaling. By design, the process will destroy vast sums of capital because private-sector assets are the government’s liabilities. And our job as investors is to adapt to this new environment. The starting place is to view it all as neither good nor bad, but rather an inevitable process that simply is – a world of nominal illusion.

    * * *

    Lines

    After decades of coordinated government policy that prevented widespread capital destruction in each and every recession, we unsurprisingly find ourselves with an overabundance of it. Interest rates remain so low not simply because the Fed set rates at zero and buys $120bln of bonds per month. When there is too much of any commodity, its price declines. And until the supply of capital shrinks meaningfully, or demand for it rises materially, the interest rate that borrowers are prepared to pay for something so abundant will remain low.

    Of the many lines that divide our fractured world, the darkest separates young and old. For decades, Baby Boomers advocated for an economic and entitlement structure that favored the old relative to the young. The ageing now overwhelmingly control societal wealth and have granted themselves entitlements that claim an outsized portion of future economic output. The young are expected to produce this for them. Baby Boomers also saddled their offspring with a climate crisis. And the young are no longer willing to tolerate the status quo.

    Much of the tension we see today emanates from competing interests between young and old. This gets obscured by those with an interest to divert attention. But economics doesn’t lie for long. And systems that swing too far from balance are usually drawn back toward center. So the pressures to deprive the old of the wealth they accumulated and the entitlements they granted themselves has begun. The path this process takes will define markets for decades. The fight will be wicked. Agonizing. It has started by haircutting the wealth of those who own bonds.

    The worst possible investment environment for wealthy old people is a high inflation environment with (1) very low yields on risk-free bonds, and (2) extremely high valuations for risky assets. Low yields deprive old people of a way to mitigate their loss of buying power. So they grow poorer unless they take market risk. But when asset valuations are historically high and increasingly disconnected from economic reality, old people who buy them run the risk that prices crash. Without income to recover from such losses, such a situation is rightly terrifying.

    US inflation over the past year was +5.4%. Old people who own risk-free 10-year Treasury notes to secure their retirement lost -11.19% of their real purchasing power in that period (bond prices fell and inflation rose). Those who owned investment grade corporate bonds lost -4.8% of their real purchasing power. In a great irony that foreshadows the generational stresses ahead, old people who own gold to hedge inflation lost -12.8% of their real purchasing power in the past year (prices fell -7.4% and inflation rose +5.4%).

    The people who maintained their real wealth in the past year did so because they owned risk assets. The S&P 500 return including dividends was +30.3%. After discounting that by the +5.4% rise in the consumer price index, the real return was +24.9%. House prices rose +19.7%, and on a real basis were +14.3%. Food price indexes jumped +30% over the past year, gasoline and copper prices leapt +50%, oil doubled, and natural gas surged +150% in the US. But few old people own such things. They consume them. And the one thing old people are unwilling to risk their money on is digital assets. Bitcoin surged 441%. Ethereum soared 920%.

    Anecdote

    There are two good things about being young and broke. The best part of course, is that you are not old. But you also have little to lose. And that is liberating for a person with decades to recover from taking risk in ventures that might fail.

    Having a large group of such youth is an invaluable asset for the older citizens supported by their innovations and output. But powerful forces, if improperly managed, create havoc. So all successful societies strike a healthy balance between the competing desires of old and young. Nations that favor the former to the detriment of the latter suffer upheaval. This is roughly where we are now – nor are such dynamics limited to the US. And they are amplified by a world with a rising proportion of unproductive elderly.

    Our youth, in a system they increasingly recognize as profoundly unfair and biased against their interests, are doing as they should: advocating for vast spending programs to build a green infrastructure and social system that reflects their priorities, unconcerned by the resulting inflation that will erode the wealth of their elders.

    With powerful new blockchain technologies, many are building businesses to bankrupt their parent’s incumbent industries whose lobbyists calcify what our youth see as an unjust status quo. They are fleeing high tax states with bankrupt entitlement systems, for cities like Austin which they then remake in their image. As elderly gold owners writhe in portfolio pain, confused why the price of yellow metal is falling with inflation rising, our young people look to the digital future, buying bitcoin, ether. Solana. NFTs.

    And as investors, our job is to recognize such trends, capitalizing on the opportunities they create, mitigating the risks such periods of upheaval produce. And in this new world, transitioning from old to young, unsettling inversions emerge. The strategies we previously turned to for safety have become risky. While unfamiliar investments that at first appear risky, provide safety.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 18:00

  • Fauci Tees Up Unvaccinated Blame Campaign Over Potential 'Fifth Wave'
    Fauci Tees Up Unvaccinated Blame Campaign Over Potential ‘Fifth Wave’

    Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Faucci, is setting the stage to blame the next uptick in Covid-19 cases on the unvaccinated.

    Fauci’s ‘science’ – which does not include the vastly superior naturally-acquired immunity from previous Covid-19 infections, or the fact that the vaccine does not prevent transmission – presumes that “the more people we get vaccinated, the less likelihood that there’s gonna be another surge as we go into the winter.“

    Of note, just over 67% of the US is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

    Just like 86.1% vaccinated Singapore?

    Via Reuters

    If only there were cheap and effective prophylaxis and early treatment options in everyone’s medicine cabinet to take at the first sign of infection.

    via ivmmeta.com

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsFauci on Sunday also suggested that people shouldn’t be hesitant to take Johnson & Johnson booster shots, as they probably should have made their vaccine a two-dose regimen instead of a single shot anyway.

    “I think that they should feel good about it because what the advisors to the FDA felt, is that given the data that they saw, very likely, this should have been a two-dose vaccine to begin with,” he told ABC News’ “This Week.”

    The ‘top doc’ went on to suggest that some J&J vaccine recipients might be well served to mix brands – receiving a Pfizer or Moderna shot as their booster.

    “You know, that is true the data you refer to that if you [get the booster], people who have originally received J&J with either Moderna or Pfizer, the level of antibodies that you induce in them is much higher than if you boost them with the original J&J,” said Fauci, adding “I think it’s going to be variable depending upon who you are. For example, a woman of childbearing age who’d would have almost no issues at all with a possible adverse event of myocarditis — which you see, rarely…with the mRNA vaccine — that person might want to opt for that approach.”

    “If you’re a young man who does have that very, very rare risk of getting myocarditis, you might want to take the J&J route.”

    So remember – when the next Covid-19 wave hits the US, blame the unvaccinated. Of course, we don’t expect Fauci to actually call out the least vaccinated demographics, as that might ruin such finely curated narratives.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/17/2021 – 17:30

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Oct 17

Today’s News 17th October 2021

  • David Hogg Rebuked Again, Youth Gun Sports Leagues See "Record-Setting" Participation
    David Hogg Rebuked Again, Youth Gun Sports Leagues See “Record-Setting” Participation

    Op-Ed via The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN). 

    Gun Control activist David Hogg can’t seem to catch a break. His viewpoint that younger people are more anti-gun appears to be continuously rebuked by new reports from this post-COVID world. 

    Most recently, the NRA reported that the USA Clay Target League (USACTL) had its biggest year yet for student-athletes. Almost 40,000 will be participating in programs in the fall. Both male and female students compete on the same team, meaning that not just young males are represented here. 

    “Despite constant challenges both last year and this year, we are pleased to have our largest fall registration numbers ever,” said John Nelson, president of the USACTL. “The record-setting participation this fall is the result of the incredible efforts of coaches and families to overcome ongoing issues with the pandemic and ammunition shortages.”

    In this post-COVID world, not only are people connecting more with the outdoors, but they’re also starting to connect with shooting sports as well. The popularity of shooting sports has grown exponentially since 2020. We can speak to that here at TMGN as many of new customers have become increasingly interested in competitive shooting, especially our millennial customers. 

    This is a big sign, as we wrote about before and continued to highlight that David Hogg’s assertations that this large crowd of young anti-gun voters chomping at the bit to saw AR15s in half is a fantasy at best.

    The interesting thing about people who get into competitive shooting as opposed to someone who bought a gun during the panic buy is, while those who bought during the panic buy are likely to change their minds on gun ownership, they may not continue to engage heavily with those in firearms culture or have conversations that advance their views. On the other hand, those who compete are exposed to more ideas and have more informed opinions on firearms, typically leading them to be more pro-gun. 

    The reality of the situation is that millennials and Gen Z are becoming more conservative and have positive attitudes towards guns. According to Forbes, “Gen Z is more individualistic, more conservative both social and fiscally…” naturally, this idea lends itself to firearms. It’s no wonder Gen Z is more pro-gun, raised with access to the internet, first-person shooting games, and action movies. Not to mention watching the debt crisis and student loans spiral out of control. Their views seem to align more with Libertarians or moderate republicans. Researching each of their ideas independently through the internet has allowed them to come to a logical conclusion instead of an emotionally influenced one.

    Only time will tell, but it seems like more and more data is showing that David Hogg is wrong as his anti-gun campaign fades into the darkness. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 23:30

  • Visualizing The Global Silver Supply Chain
    Visualizing The Global Silver Supply Chain

    Although silver is widely known as a precious metal, its industrial uses accounted for more than 50% of silver demand in 2020.

    From jewelry to electronics, various industries utilize silver’s high conductivity, aesthetic appeal, and other properties in different ways. With the adoption of electric vehicles, 5G networks, and solar panels, the world is embracing more technologies that rely on silver.

    But, as Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada details below, behind all this silver are the companies that mine and refine the precious metal before it reaches other industries.

    The above infographic from Blackrock Silver outlines silver’s global supply chain and brings the future of silver supply into the spotlight.

    The Top 20 Countries for Silver Mining

    Although silver miners operate in many countries across the globe, the majority of silver comes from a few regions.

     

    Mexico, Peru, and China—the top three producers—combined for just over 50% of global silver production in 2020. South and Central American countries, including Mexico and Peru, produced around 390 million ounces—roughly half of the 784 million ounces mined globally.

     

    Silver currency backed China’s entire economy at one point in history. Today, China is not only the third-largest silver producer but also the third-largest largest consumer of silver jewelry.

    Poland is one of only three European countries in the mix. More than 99% of Poland’s silver comes from the KGHM Polska Miedź Mine, the world’s largest silver mining operation.

    While silver’s supply chain spans all four hemispheres, concentrated production in a few countries puts it at risk of disruptions.

    The Sustainability of Silver’s Supply Chain

    The mining industry can often be subject to political crossfire in jurisdictions that aren’t safe or politically stable. Mexico, Chile, and Peru—three of the top five silver-producing nations—have the highest number of mining conflicts in Latin America.

    Alongside production in politically unstable jurisdictions, the lack of silver-primary mines reinforces the need for a sustainable silver supply chain. According to the World Silver Survey, only 27% of silver comes from silver-primary mines. The other 73% is a by-product of mining for other metals like copper, zinc, gold, and others.

    As the industrial demand for silver rises, primary sources of silver in stable jurisdictions will become more valuable—and Nevada is one such jurisdiction.

    Nevada: The Silver State

    Nevada, known as the Silver State, was once the pinnacle of silver mining in the United States.

    The discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, one of America’s richest silver deposits, spurred a silver rush in Nevada. But after the Comstock Lode mines began declining around 1874, it was the Tonopah district that brought Nevada’s silver production back to life.

    Tonopah is a silver-primary district with a 100:1 silver-to-gold ratio. It also boasts 174 million ounces of historical silver production under its belt. Furthermore, between 1900 and 1950, Tonopah produced high-grade silver with an average grade of 1,384 grams per tonne. However, the Second World War brought a stop to mining in Tonopah, with plenty of silver left to discover.

    Today, Nevada is the second-largest silver-producing state in the U.S. and the Tonopah district offers the opportunity to revive a secure and stable source of primary silver production for the future.

    Blackrock Silver is working to bring silver back to the Silver State with exploration at its flagship Tonopah West project in Nevada.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 23:00

  • Dean Cain: "Woke" Superman's Mission Is Neither Bold Nor Brave
    Dean Cain: “Woke” Superman’s Mission Is Neither Bold Nor Brave

    Authored by Dean Cain via RealClearPolitics.com,

    DC Comics recently revealed that in an upcoming issue titled “Superman: Son of Kal-El,” the son of Lois Lane and Clark Kent would be bisexual, and that he’s going to fight “real-world problems” such as climate change, that he’ll protest the deportation of refugees, and date a “hacktivist.”

    What exactly is a “hacktivist”? Isn’t hacking illegal? Is Superman supporting  criminal activity? It’s a chore to keep up with all the different iterations of the current superheroes, but DC Comics is calling  it a “bold new direction” for the character. I  see nothing “bold” about it.

    I say they’re jumping on the bandwagon, but they’re fighting the wrong issues. There is a clear agenda here. It’s globalist, it’s anti-America, but it’s not bold and it’s not brave.  

    Robin, Batman’s famed red-headed sidekick, came out as bisexual recently, and honestly, who is shocked about that one?  The new Captain America is gay. The character of Alex (my daughter in the live-action series “Supergirl”) was lesbian. A gay or bisexual superhero is not groundbreaking in 2021. It’s banal. I have zero issue with that. I’m all for inclusiveness and acceptance and tolerance. It might be more interesting, however, if they created new characters instead of retrofitting the identity of existing ones.

    “Brave” would have been to do some of this 30 years ago. Or to depict Superman, or Jon Kent, fighting for the rights of LGBT people in Iran where they’ll throw you off a building for the “offense” of even being suspected of homosexuality. And why doesn’t Superman fight the injustices that created the refugees whose deportation he’s protesting? Digging deep into those issues — that would be brave. That would be informative. I’d read that comic book.

    “Bold” would be fighting for the rights of Afghan women to attend school and be able to live free and go to work, and fighting for the right for boys to not be raped by men under the supposedly newly enlightened Taliban.

    There is genuine evil in the world.  Actual corruption and government tyranny.  Plenty of real-world things to fight against. Like people being put into Chinese concentration camps because of their religion. Or human trafficking — honest-to-God slavery — taking place all over the world today.  It exists. Right now, and in our own hemisphere. Drug cartels trafficking people across the border, sexually molesting young women. Brave and bold would be to tackle those issues and shine a light into that darkness. I’d love to see the character doing that. I’d read that, too. 

    “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” is no longer the catchphrase of Superman. The new phrase? “Truth, Justice, and a Better World.” Okay, I’ll buy that, but what’s the vision that accompanies this more expansive view of social justice? What would make for  a better world? Socialism? Communism? Forced equality?

    To me, a better world is one in which people have more freedom and independence. Protection from government overreach and corruption. Safety and security. In a word, the idea of America. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people – concepts laid out by our Founding Fathers during the creation of the United States of America.

    No, America is not perfect. We are constantly striving for a more perfect union, but I believe it’s self-evident that ours is the most free and fair and most equitable country — with the most opportunity — in the history of the world. That’s why so many people are desperately making their way here, through all manner of hardships, from all corners of the globe.

    Yet, the cool thing right now is to bash America. But I wonder if most of the people who do so have really traveled and spent real time in other countries — dealing with other governments to see what the rest of the world is like.  I have, and most of the world is nothing like America. Most of the rest of the world lacks our individual freedom, our equality of opportunity, our right to compete in open markets, and, yes, the ability to attain material success. We shouldn’t apologize for any of it. We should revel in these values, which have attracted waves of new immigrants to our shores every year.

    In 1938, DC Comics (then called Action Comics) unveiled the story of unique immigrant, a baby from a dying planet who, as an adult, devotes his life to fighting crime, righting wrongs, and defending honest government. This is not hyperbole. In the very first Superman strip, our hero ends up in the U.S. Capitol where he interrupts a corrupt bargain between a lobbyist and a lawmaker. This, after convincing the governor to spare an innocent woman about to be executed for a murder she didn’t commit, roughing up a wife beater, and (of course) saving the life of Lois Lane. Superman was a fast worker.

    What makes America great isn’t our government, and it certainly isn’t an increasingly authoritative “nanny state.” Instead, it’s our commitment to freedom and our traditions of self-reliance. Of course, we should acknowledge the shortcomings of our history and strive to live up to our creed, but we live in a country made great despite Big Government and career politicians, not because of them. As Ronald Reagan said, “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”

    As for the cultural gatekeepers busily rethinking which of our national heroes — or iconic superheroes, for that matter — belong on pedestals, I’d say this: Inclusiveness is healthy, but tinkering with the sexuality or political outlook of fictional heroes does not necessarily improve their character. Here, after all, was the initial description of the man from Krypton: “Superman, champion of the oppressed. The physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need!”

    That’s a hard mantra to improve on, in my view, and is quintessentially American – it champions both strength and compassion.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 22:30

  • These Are The World's Most Interesting Neighborhoods
    These Are The World’s Most Interesting Neighborhoods

    In light of the travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, city trips to domestic destinations have become more and more attractive for short vacations; but, as Statista’s Florian Zandt notes, now that regulations are starting to get lifted again and tourists are bound to explore cities beyond their own regional and national confines.

    Time Out Magazine has compiled a list of the most interesting neighborhoods around the world as a guideline – with more than one unexpected entry in the top 10.

    Infographic: The World's Most Interesting Neighborhoods | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While the survey among 27,000 city dwellers identified mainstays like New York and its Chelsea neighborhood, the lively XI District of Budapest or the historical Jongno 3-ga area of Seoul as some of the boroughs that offer city trippers a lot in terms of culinary richness, culture and a sense of community, the Senegalese capital Dakar and its Ngor quarter and Vilnius’ Station District are more unusual picks. This might be rooted in the methodology of the survey, with local editors weighing the results according to their expertise and more importance given to the communality aspect brought to the forefront by the global pandemic.

    Interestingly, the majority of the most sought after city trip destinations before COVID-19 are absent from Time Out’s top 10. In 2018, Bangkok had the most international overnight visitors with roughly 23 million, followed closely by Paris and London according to a survey by MasterCard. New York City ranked seventh with 13.6 million, while Seoul came in at eleventh place with 11.2 million tourists staying overnight.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 22:00

  • Loudoun County Superintendent Appears To Admit District Violated State Law By Not Reporting Sexual Assault
    Loudoun County Superintendent Appears To Admit District Violated State Law By Not Reporting Sexual Assault

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    The superintendent of a Virginia school district on Friday appeared to admit the district violated state law in failing to properly report alleged sexual assaults, as a state official confirmed the matter is under review.

    Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler is seen during a school board meeting in Ashburg, Va., on June 22, 2021. (LCPS/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler made the admission during a brief appearance before reporters, where he read a prepared statement and took no questions.

    Ziegler said that the district made “errors in our state reporting regarding disciplinary incidents in schools,” adding that it “inadvertently omitted some information in the past.”

    “That is extremely concerning, and we are taking steps to make sure that process is improved. I will say that I have no reason to believe at this time that any missing reports were due to an intent to hide any information from the Virginia Department of Education,” he said, blaming an alleged “lack of oversight” that was in place before he was appointed in June, even though he served as interim superintendent starting Jan. 1.

    Ziegler appeared to be responding to a report by The Daily Wire that the district failed to record multiple instances of alleged sexual assault even though it’s required to by state law.

    Ziegler said during a school board meeting on June 22 that he was unaware of any record of assaults happening in the district’s restrooms, nearly a month after a girl was allegedly raped by a male in a bathroom at Stone Bridge High School.

    State law says that reports “shall be made” to school and district authorities regarding all assaults on school buses, on school grounds, or at a school-sponsored activity.

    State law also directs district superintendents to annually report such incidents to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). But a public database of reports showed at least one assault that was not reported to state authorities.

    A Loudoun County Public Schools spokesperson declined to comment on Ziegler’s Friday remarks but did not dispute the characterization that Ziegler acknowledged state law was not complied with.

    Superintendents who fail to comply or secure compliance with the reporting requirements are subject to sanctions.

    A VDOE spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency has reviewed the submissions made by Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) concerning discipline, crime, and violation “and is in communication with LCPS regarding the accuracy of their reports and whether the division is in compliance with state reporting requirements.

    The spokesman confirmed that the submissions are required annually and that superintendents are required to certify their accuracy.

    “This is a matter that VDOE takes very seriously and is actively investigating discrepancies in the LCPS reports,” he said.

    Attendees are seen during a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Va., on June 22, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

    In his statement, Ziegler said he made misleading comments during the June meeting. He said his remarks came after wrongly interpreting a question about incidents in bathrooms as only involving transgender or “gender-fluid” students.

    “I regret that my comments were misleading and I apologize for the distress that error caused families. I should have asked Board Member Barts clarifying questions to get to the root of her question, rather than assuming what she meant. I will do better in the future,” he said.

    He also apologized for how the district handled two recent alleged assaults. 

    “Let me say to the families and students involved: My heart aches for you, and I am sorry that we failed to provide the safe, welcoming and affirming environment that we aspire to provide,” he said.

    A spokeswoman for father Scott Smith said in a statement to news outlets that Ziegler’s statement on behalf of LCPS “is the first acknowledgment that we have had that they are in fact responsible for their bad decision-making and policies that resulted in the two sexual assaults that happened in our high schools.”

    “Today, Superintendent Ziegler said what we already knew: that the actions of the Loudoun County School Board and Administration ‘failed to provide the safe environment’ for the Smith’s daughter,” an attorney for the family added, before accusing LCPS of prioritizing “misguided policies of political correctness over student safety.”

    Ziegler’s statement came as the county’s education leadership is under heightened scrutiny, in part because the board passed a policy that forces LCPS staffers to address students by any pronoun they choose, and lets students who claim to be another gender use that gender’s facilities.

    The policy drew a fiery response at the June meeting, which was disbanded after Smith and another parent were arrested.

    Smith recently revealed that his daughter was allegedly raped by a male inside a girl’s bathroom in her high school. He has described the male as utilizing the softness toward transgenderism to get inside the facility.

    Smith has accused district leadership of covering up the assault.

    The Loudon County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to The Epoch Times an incident took place in May at Stone Bridge High School but declined to provide more details, citing an ongoing investigation. It also declined to confirm reports that the same male was behind a sexual assault that took place at a different LCPS high school in October.

    A Freedom of Information Act request seeking more details on the incidents and the arrest of Smith was sent.

    LCPS told The Epoch Times earlier in the week via email that school board members “are typically not given details of disciplinary matters” and were not aware of the alleged rape until it was reported on in media outlets.

    A member of the school board facing a recall petition resigned from the board on Friday, and attorneys for the Smith family filed a lawsuit this week against the district.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 21:30

  • "Foreign Is Dangerous" – China's Censors Are Banning Hollywood Films From Domestic Market
    “Foreign Is Dangerous” – China’s Censors Are Banning Hollywood Films From Domestic Market

    Just like American political leaders and financial giants, Hollywood has also misjudged China’s intentions. After Dalian Wanda’s takeover of the American production company Legendary Entertainment, some warned that Beijing was trying to subvert American audiences’ opinion of China by injecting subtle Chinese propaganda into American films.

    But it turns out, Beijing and President Xi had no intentions of embracing Hollywood: instead, it appears they’re trying to keep Chinese consumers from absorbing Hollywood’s decadent cultural values. Which is why American films have been increasingly blocked from being shown in the Chinese entertainment market in recent years.

    According to a report by Nikkei, while Hollywood studios hoped China would be a major growth market for blockbuster films, China’s censors have been extremely selective about which films they allow to be screened in the world’s second-largest economy, whose box office revenues surpassed America’s in 20202 (thanks, in major part, to the pandemic).

    Source: Nikkei

    Just like NBA players, who need to watch what they say about sensitive issues like Hong Kong, Hollywood actors need to be careful about touching a nerve. When John Cena accidentally referred to Taiwan as “a country” in a promotional clip for “Fast & Furious 9”, he nearly cost the studio more than $200MM. It ended with him begging for the CCP’s forgiveness for his honest mistake.

    Although unpredictable, China has been a major factor in decision-making for American studios. Film productions sometimes tweak scenes to get access to China. A trailer for the sequel to the 1986 blockbuster “Top Gun” suggested that Japanese and Taiwanese flags on the leather jacket of the main character, Maverick, had been removed to avoid touching a nerve with Chinese regulators. In June, “Fast & Furious 9″‘ star John Cena apologized to Chinese fans for referring to Taiwan as a “country” in a promotional video for the movie. “Fast & Furious 9” made nearly $204 million in China and $173 million in the U.S.

    Sometimes, anticipating how the Chinese audience will react to a film can be difficult. Take “Shang-Chi”, which was widely praised for its all-Asian cast. The movie was widely criticized in China, despite taking in hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.

    Studios and stars often find themselves drawn into controversy on Chinese social media. With a nearly all-Asian cast, “Shang-Chi” was well reviewed, widely appreciated and lucrative: Its U.S. box office had topped $200 million and it had brought in $388 million worldwide as of Oct. 5, according to Box Office Mojo. But as it was being promoted overseas, China’s netizens criticized the stars, Simu Liu and Awkwafina, for failing to conform to traditional Chinese beauty standards, and also the villain, the Mandarin, for being a stereotype. Some reviewers in the U.S. had similar criticisms of the Mandarin — a heavily reworked version of the Marvel comic strips’ Fu Manchu — but Chinese actor Tony Leung received particularly heavy criticism on Chinese social media for the role before the film was released.

    And while Marvel movies have been hugely popular in China, some fear the upcoming “Eternals” movie may be blocked by Chinese censors.

    Some suspect the upcoming “Eternals” faces difficulty securing a release date because its director, Oscar-winning China native Chloe Zhao, was criticized for making an unflattering comment about her homeland during an interview several years ago. The announcement of her Oscar victory was blocked on the Chinese internet as well. It remains unclear if Chinese moviegoers will be able to watch “Eternals” this year. “If I was an investor, I would be very concerned about a strategy at this point that depended on access to the Chinese market and the good graces of Chinese film regulators,” said Aynne Kokas, the author of “Hollywood Made in China” and a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. “To make very expensive films in anticipation of being able to deliver them to the Chinese market and then not being certain that’s possible is actually a much more financially irresponsible strategy from my perspective.”

    China’s censors only allow a quota of 34 foreign films to be released in mainland China each year. Despite years of negotiations between regulators in Hollywood and China’s censors, Beijing has refused to change the quota. Beijing also has caps on foreign content on the country’s streaming services.

    What’s more, Beijing’s recent crackdown on its own entertainment industry (banning depictions of “sissy” men while erasing one of the country’s most popular actresses from the Chinese Internet) further supports the fact that Beijing has a very clear idea of what entertainment should be permitted and what should not.

    “You look at all of the criticisms of the so-called sissy boys, the closing down of the K-pop fan clubs, closing down of tutoring services that taught English, English not included in school final exams…It’s the atmosphere right now that foreign is dangerous, and Hollywood is subject to that as well,” said Stanley Rosen, a political science professor who specializes in Chinese politics and society at the University of Southern California.

    And while Hollywood has so far depended on China for growth, Beijing doesn’t need Hollywood for anything. Already, homemade patriotic blockbusters have proven to be major hits in China, and abroad. For the past six years, domestic films have led the Chinese box office in revenue.

    But if Hollywood still needs China, it is an open question whether China needs Hollywood. In the first half of 2021, China’s box office reached roughly $3.9 billion, according to the tracking app Dengta, and although the highest-grossing films used to be Hollywood blockbusters, domestic films have taken the crown for the past six years. “Hi, Mom,” a heartwarming Chinese movie about a woman going back in time in an attempt to make her mother’s life better, has the highest box office of 2021 worldwide so far, at $822 million.

    Patriotic Chinese blockbusters have generated much revenue as well. “The Battle at Lake Changjin” raked in $203.2 million over the National Day weekend in China, according to Box Office Mojo.

    So, American studios now have a difficult choice to make. They can start being more sensitive to the demands of the Chinese market. But such a “craven” approach would likely elicit a backlash at home, as politicians accuse Hollywood of putting profits over human rights.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 21:00

  • Leader Of California's Largest Labor Union Quits After Tax, Embezzlement Charges
    Leader Of California’s Largest Labor Union Quits After Tax, Embezzlement Charges

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The executive director of California’s largest labor union has resigned from her post after the state charged her and her husband with embezzlement, tax fraud, perjury, and failure to pay unemployment insurance taxes.

    Then-Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California Executive Director Alma Hernandez and her husband, Jose Moscoso, were charged in a seven-page felony complaint filed with the Sacramento County Superior Court earlier this month. Hernandez had held the position since 2016. The charges, which came about as a result of a multiagency investigation led by California’s Tax Recovery in the Underground Economy Task Force, were made public this week by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat.

    SEIU represents more than 700,000 workers across California. Hernandez campaigned to defeat the September recall effort against Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Her organization reportedly donated upward of $6 million to the anti-recall campaign. Newsom easily won the vote.

    “The union is also a major player in the Capitol, pushing for policies such as a $15 minimum wage,” The Sacramento Bee reported. “It represents local government employees, state workers, in-home caregivers, lecturers, janitors, and health and care professionals, among others.”

    In announcing the criminal proceeding on Oct. 13, Bonta defended the role of labor unions.

    “Labor unions are an integral part of what makes California strong. Unions are working people standing together to demand fair wages, quality healthcare, a safe work environment, and the ability to retire with dignity,” he said in a statement.

    “Working people deserve leaders they can depend on to help them achieve these goals at the bargaining table and through political advocacy, but also leaders they can trust. When there is reason to believe trust has been broken and crimes have been committed, we have an ethical duty to investigate—we owe that to the people of California.”

    The California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation began probing the married couple’s finances after the Fair Political Practices Commission alleged following an investigation that Hernandez had embezzled $4,500 from an SEIU California-sponsored political action committee, or PAC. It’s also alleged that she declared on a form that the PAC paid $11,700 to her husband for food vendor services that she knew hadn’t been provided.

    The California Franchise Tax Board alleges that Hernandez and Moscoso underreported their income by $1.4 million from 2014 to 2019. The Employment Development Department also claims that Moscoso’s air duct cleaning business failed to report and remit taxes on employees’ wages from 2017 to 2020 and that he paid employees under the table.

    The complaint also included a so-called white-collar crime enhancement that would force the couple to serve time in state prison if convicted.

    Family spokesperson Mari Hernandez told The Sacramento Bee that Hernandez quit her job so that she could focus on “legal issues facing her family.”

    “Those who know her know she has devoted her entire working life to the cause of justice and dignity for working people, especially those without power, privilege, or papers,” she said.

    Timothy Snowball, California litigator for the Freedom Foundation, which has been critical of public-sector unions, said malfeasance in labor unions is commonplace.

    Timothy Snowball, California litigator for Freedom Foundation (courtesy Timothy Snowball)

    “This kind of corruption at the highest echelons of leadership of SEIU California or any other union,” comes as no surprise “unfortunately,” according to Snowball.

    “We’ve been documenting and spending time for years explaining to public employees about this type of corruption,” he told The Epoch Times.

    “So the way this works is public employees show up at their jobs the first day, and like many jobs, you’re handed a pile of paperwork to fill out.”

    That paperwork typically contains union membership cards, according to Snowball.

    “A lot of times they don’t even explain what these cards are,” he said. “Sometimes, they’ll send in union representatives to strongarm people into signing these things. They find them, and then they have money taken out every paycheck to unions like SEIU California, who then take that money and spend it on political causes that those members very well may oppose.

    “And when people find out about this, they go, ‘Oh, my gosh. I had no idea you’re going to be spending this on fighting the recall or anything else. And hey, I don’t want my money spent that way.’ And the union winds up saying, ‘Sorry, you signed this card. You didn’t read the fine print, and now you’re out luck.’ And it’s absolutely outrageous.”

    Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation, implied that criticism now being leveled at SEIU wasn’t sincere.

    These charges “provide fuel” to union opponents, Smith told The Sacramento Bee, but stated that every union leader in the state “takes the responsibility of being a good steward of members’ funds very seriously.”

    “The way we fight back against politically motivated attacks is by continuing to show what a strong, unified labor movement accomplishes for working people,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 20:30

  • US Coal "Roars Back" Under Biden Unlike Trump 
    US Coal “Roars Back” Under Biden Unlike Trump 

    One of the biggest ironies to start this decade is the transition from fossil fuel generation to green energy has created a global energy crisis that is forcing the U.S., among many other countries, to restart coal-fired power plants monumentally ahead of the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere to prevent electricity shortages.

    The virtue-signaling assault by the green lobby spearheaded by hapless puppet Greta Thunberg must beside herself as U.S. power plants are on course to burn 23% more coal this year, the first increase since 2013, despite President Biden’s ambitious plan for a national grid to run on 100% clean energy by 2035. 

    A global energy crunch is rippling through the world amid a huge rebound for power. Natural gas has soared to record highs as supplies remain tight, and countries are finding out that renewable energy sources aren’t as reliable as previously thought. This has created a massive worldwide scramble by power companies for fossil fuels, especially coal. 

    U.S. utilities are transitioning to coal because soaring natural gas prices make it uneconomic to produce electricity. At the moment, 25% of all U.S. electricity produced is derived from coal-fired plants, up ten percentage points since the beginning of COVID. 

    “The markets have spoken,” Rich Nolan, the National Mining Association chief executive officer, told Bloomberg. “We’re seeing the essential nature of coal come roaring back.” The Energy Information Administration forecasts U.S. utilities are estimated to burn 536.9 million short tons of thermal coal, up from 436.5 million in 2020. 

    Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources, the largest U.S. exporter of fuel, said demand for coal will remain robust well into 2022. Last week, he warned about domestic supply constraints and power companies already “discussing possible grid blackouts this winter.” 

    He said, “They don’t see where the fuel is coming from to meet demand,” adding that 23% of utilities are switching away from gas this fall/winter to burn more coal. There are not enough coal miners to rapidly increase mining output. 

     Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners, said the decarbonization communication from Western governments would undoubtedly be challenged due to the energy crisis it has sparked. 

    “The goal of policy, if you listen to what’s being said in Western countries in the context of climate discussions, is not only to stop building new coal but to eliminate the existing capacity to burn coal,” Book said. “This is a moment in time when that idea is going to be challenged.”

    One thing Greta and the wealthy elite that likely fund her campaign to reeducate younger generations into believing the green energy transition will be seamless is that it won’t and may take decades.

    A pure-play coal company that is already benefiting from the demand surge and rising prices is Peabody Energy Corporation. As cooler weather fast approaches, the company may see increased demand for its thermal coal that utility companies use to produce electricity. On a technical basis, a so-called bullish “golden cross” was just triggered. 

    “Make Coal Great Again,” former President Trump used to tell crowds a few years back at rallies in West Virginia. We’re sure it’s boom times in the Appalachia hills. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 20:00

  • Interior Secretary Haaland Says Wind Turbines May Soon Line US Coasts
    Interior Secretary Haaland Says Wind Turbines May Soon Line US Coasts

    Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Speaking at a wind industry conference held by the American Clean Power Association, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced plans by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to arrange seven offshore lease sales along the U.S.’ coastlines by 2025, in line with the Biden administration’s executive order, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” which directed the Secretary of the Interior to “[double] offshore wind by 2030.”

    General view of the Walney Extension offshore wind farm operated by Orsted off the coast of Blackpool, Britain, on Sept. 5, 2018. (Phil Noble/File Photo/Reuters)

    The proposed sites would include the coast of northern and central California, the coast of Oregon, the Gulf of Mexico, the Carolina Long Bay, the Central Atlantic, the New York Bight, and the Gulf of Maine.

    The American Clean Power Conference at which Secretary Haaland spoke also featured remarks from Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) and various wind industry insiders, and was sponsored by GE Renewable Energy, Siemens Gamesa, Shell, Vineyard Wind, and other firms with a financial stake in wind power.

    “The Interior Department is laying out an ambitious roadmap as we advance the Administration’s plans to confront climate change, create good-paying jobs, and accelerate the nation’s transition to a cleaner energy future,” Secretary Haaland said.

    “Together, we will meet our clean energy goals while addressing the needs of other ocean users and potentially impacted communities.”

    In their press release on the announcement, BOEM claimed it would use “the best available science as well as knowledge from ocean users and other stakeholders to minimize conflict with existing uses and marine life” while realizing the goal of adding another 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.

    Yet some people, including WindAction Group director Lisa Linowes, argue that BOEM and other government agencies have not done enough to address the potential environmental impacts of wind energy projects along the country’s coasts.

    In an email exchange with The Epoch Times, Linowes highlighted a lawsuit against Vineyard Wind’s 800-megawatt wind energy project along Martha’s Vineyard.

    The lawsuit alleges that BOEM and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Marine Fisheries (NOAA/Fisheries) have not done enough to protect the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale from being harmed by the project.

    Offshore wind projects can also hinder commercial fishing, potentially violating the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953.

    While the Trump administration’s Interior Department released a memo in December 2020 asserting that the Act prevents offshore wind projects that unreasonably interfere with fishing, the Biden administration reversed that opinion in April 2021.

    “The Secretary’s obligations to provide for the ‘protection of the environment,’ the ‘prevention of waste,’ the ‘protection of national security interests of the United States,’ and the ‘fair return to the United States’ may weigh in favor of Secretarial actions to maximize low-emission and renewable electrical generation from offshore wind facilities, but, in some circumstances, the siting and operation of those facilities may not optimally provide for other ‘reasonable uses’ of the exclusive economic zone,” writes Robert Anderson, principal deputy solicitor of the Department of the Interior, whose publications as a law professor include research aimed at “protecting offshore areas from oil and gas leasing.”

    Linowes said, “The Biden [administration] is playing fast and loose with our laws in order to ram through an offshore wind industry. This is certain to produce more lawsuits and ultimately turn the public against these projects. The number of people living along the east coast that oppose these projects is growing rapidly.”

    “The risks to birds and bats are real. Fifteen miles off shore is not very far,” Linowes added.

    Asked what it will do to ensure its turbine capacity is not harmful to ocean life, bird populations, and fishermen, a DOI spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that “BOEM continues to work with the fishing community, other federal agencies, Tribes, industry, conservation organizations, and other key ocean users and stakeholders to ensure that offshore energy development and the BOEM regulatory review process is informed by the data and information they provide, as well as the best available science and knowledge.”

    But Linowes voiced skepticism about the agency and industry’s commitment to working with fishermen and other stakeholders, stating that those groups “failed to achieve agreement with Vineyard Wind and other projects off the coasts of NJ and NY.”

    Asked about who would clean up old wind turbines and associated infrastructure, the DOI spokesperson responded that “lessees are responsible for the decommissioning of proposed projects at the end of their lease. This includes the removal or decommissioning of all facilities, projects, cables, and obstructions.”

    On Twitter, Haaland’s remarks were met with enthusiasm by some.

    “This has to be my favorite announcement to come out of #OffshoreWind21 so far! Many thanks to Secretary Deb Haaland for taking the trip. This has many implications for the #NewYork area, especially as regards #ports #infrastructure and electrical transmission,” said David Brezler, who describes himself on LinkedIn as a data analytics and project management professional currently working on offshore wind and other renewable energy projects.

    Others responded to the announcement by pointing out wind energy’s reliability and cost issues.

    While Biden’s Department of Energy has claimed that 30 gigawatts of additional wind power would “power 10 million homes,” intermittent power sources such as wind also require backup from natural gas or other reliable electricity sources when wind is not blowing, adding what are known as load balancing costs.

    In Germany, where wind power has rapidly expanded, energy prices for household consumers have risen to the highest in the European Union (EU), and are expected to spike this winter, in line with projections for the United States.

    Germany’s dependence on foreign energy sources, including Russia and other geopolitical rivals, is also high; in 2019, Germany relied on imports for 71 percent of its energy supply according to the Energy Information Administration, a slight decline from 2000, according to Deutsche Bank.

    “Wind farms can’t ‘combat’ climate change. Only fraudsters claim, and idiots believe such nonsense. All wind farms do is rip off ratepayers with pointlessly expensive and unreliable electricity,” said Steve Milloy, proprietor of JunkScience.com, who served on President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 19:30

  • Ethereum's Turn To Outshine Bitcoin Is Coming, UBS Says
    Ethereum’s Turn To Outshine Bitcoin Is Coming, UBS Says

    After a stellar start to the year, which saw its price soar to an all time high above $4,100, trouncing virtually all of its crypto peers, Ethereum has stagnated in recent weeks, with its place in the spotlight taken by bitcoin which whose impressive outperformance has been the result of now confirmed speculation that a bitcoin futures ETF is coming. It also meant that what has traditionally been a close correlation between the two larges cryptos has broken in favor of the larger peer; it would also suggest that ethereum is trading about $1000 cheap vs bitcoin.

    It wasn’t just bitcoin’s long-overdue ETF success: ETH was also put in the shade by DeFi- and NFT-driven demand for faster and cheaper blockchains since the late summer, according to UBS strategist James Malcolm. But in the bank’s latest Crypto Compass publication, Malcolm writes that this could soon change thanks to the progress with one of Ethereum’s prior Layer 2 solutions, Optimism.

    As UBS explains, “having been all but forgotten, it suddenly seems set to give leading competitor Arbitrum a run for its money. OVM 2.0 promises faster processing, cheaper gas prices and fewer code constraints, which should encourage smart contract deployment.” Furthermore, it has just been implemented on Ethereum’s testnet and is now scheduled to go mainnet-live in two weeks, on October 28.

    Of course, all of this pales in comparison to the ETH uplift that will take place once Ethereum 2.0 is ready for rollout. Some have speculated that the event will quickly trigger a quick doubling in the cryptocurrency which Goldman dubbed the “Amazon for information” (and is why Goldman also sees ETH eventually overtaking BTC).

    Data also show the recent rebound in active addresses on chain, offset by the small decline in total transfer volumes, which however can be attributed to the surge in whale trading in recent weeks (more below).

    A curious divergence also emerges when looking at exchange balances between BTC and ETH.

    But what appears most remarkable is the distribution of crypto strikes for bitcoin and ethereum, both of which are far above spot, suggesting that a major gamma squeeze may be on deck for both.

    Incidentally, speaking of ETH level 2, Bitcoin’s Lightning Network for smaller transactions has also been growing in anticipation of next month’s Taproot upgrade: year-to-date, the number of LN nodes and channels has doubled, and capacity nearly tripled.

    Incidentally, this does not mean that Bitcoin is set to drop, on the contrary.

    As UBS also writes, Bitcoin – which is now on the right side of $60k – is within striking distance of its April all time highs. Its latest rally came in two steps: October 1, which was put down to a Powell comment about having no intention to follow China in banning crypto, and October 6 when nearly $1.6bn of buy orders were reportedly executed within five minutes. Both occurred against a backdrop of big-name presenters at digital summits, rising speculation about imminent US ETF approval (which we now know has taken place), and pushback from the Senate Banking Committee’s ranking Republican against the Biden administration and Fed’s crystallizing plans to impose bank-like regulation on stablecoins. Pat Toomey’s point was this is something for Congress to decide and enact clarifying legislation, which would take more time. They helped trigger liquidations of short futures positions but left no footprint on bid-ask spreads, which barely budged in contrast to what we saw a month earlier.

    Not surprisingly, with Bitcoin steamrolling above $60K, bullish sentiment has become even more pronounced, attracting growing spot-futures basis arbitrage on the CME and pushing perpetual futures funding rates uniformly higher

    On-chain activity has also seen a major revival as BTC entity-adjusted transaction volumes overshot their early-2021 highs.

    What is most remarkable is that this is not at all small-time and retail investors setting the price: as the next chart from UBS shows, whales are in the driving seat to an almost unprecedented degree with the mean-to-median transaction size ratio is at its highest level since 2013.

    And speaking of whales, the bitcoin supply held by whales is now at the highest it has ever been at around 8mm coins (out of a total 21mm), while both exchanges and OTC desks have seen their holdings decline. Also notable, the collapse in bitcoin supply that was last active less than 3 months ago as increasingly more are truly HODLing.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 19:00

  • Morgan Freeman Spurns "Defunding Police"; Says "Most Of Them Are Guys That Are Doing Their Job"
    Morgan Freeman Spurns “Defunding Police”; Says “Most Of Them Are Guys That Are Doing Their Job”

    Authored by Louise Bevan via The Epoch Times,

    Legendary American actor Morgan Freeman, while talking about his upcoming movie “The Killing Of Kenneth Chamberlain,” took the opportunity to express that he rejects the notion of “defunding the police.”

    While talking to Black Enterprise magazine’s Selena Hill in early October, the 84-year-old actor clarified, “I’m not the least bit for defunding the police. Police work is, aside from all the negativity around it, it is very necessary for us to have them, and most of them are guys that are doing their job.

    “They’re going about their day-to-day jobs,” he said.

    “I know some policemen who would never even pull their guns, except on a range.”

    Morgan Freeman speaks at the 26th Annual Critics Choice Awards on March 07, 2021. (Getty Images)

    Freeman’s latest film, “The Killing Of Kenneth Chamberlain,” is about the real fatal police shooting of an elderly black Marine vet with bipolar disorder in his home in White Plains, New York.

    Co-star Frankie Faison, playing Chamberlain, aligned with Freeman’s stance on police defunding while pointing out a discrepancy.

    “We as entertainment, people in the arts, we’re treated a little differently by law enforcement than people who are just ordinary walks of life,” he told Hill.

    “I would like for that to stop; I want us all to be treated equally.”

    In an Instagram post, Hill stated her contrary position as an “avid supporter of defunding the police,” but concurred with the actors that violence against African-Americans at the hand of police should end.

    While rejecting defunding, Freeman put his money where his mouth is to promote police reform, a movement he supports.

    In June, alongside University of Mississippi criminal justice professor Linda Keena, the actor donated $1 million to the university’s School of Applied Sciences for a research and specialized training center: the Center for Evidence-Based Policing and Reform.

    Freeman and Linda Keena attend the 2017 Breakthrough Prize at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, on Dec. 4, 2016. (Kimberly White/Getty Images)

    “Look at the past year in our country, that sums it up,” Freeman said.

    “It’s time we are equipping police officers with training, and ensuring ‘law enforcement’ is not defined only as a gun and a stick.

    “I often talk to police officers when I see them out and ask how they would do their work if they didn’t have guns,” he added. “Support of this center is about finding ways to help officers, and arrive at solutions.”

    Keena agreed, “The goal should be to give officers as many tools as possible to do their jobs more effectively.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 18:30

  • Just How Big Is China's Property Sector, And Two Key Questions On Policy And Tail Risks
    Just How Big Is China’s Property Sector, And Two Key Questions On Policy And Tail Risks

    While the broader US stock market was giddily melting up in the past week, things in China were going from bad to worse with Evergrande set to officially be in default on Oct 23 when the grace period on its first nonpayment ends, and with contagion rocking the local property market – which as we explained last week just saw the most “catastrophic” property sales numbers since the global financial crisis – sending dollar-denominated Chinese junk bonds to all time high yields.

    So even though it is now conventional wisdom that China’s property crisis is contained (just as its concurrent energy crisis is also somehow contained), we beg to differ, and suggest that the crisis hitting the world’s largest asset class is only just starting and is about to drag China into a “hard landing”, with the world set to follow.

    And yes, with a total asset value of $62 trillion representing 62% of household wealth, the Chinese real estate sector is not only 30 times bigger than the market cap of all cryptos and also bigger than both the US bond and stock market, but is the key “asset” that backstops China’s entire financial system whose deposits at last check were more than double those of the US. In other words, if China’s property sector wobbles, the world is facing a guaranteed depression.

    So given the escalating weakness in China’s property sector, which has been in focus given intense regulatory pressure on developers’ leverage and banks’ mortgage exposure, and consequent contraction in sales and construction activity, it is natural to ask how significant a hit this could pose to both China’s and the global economy. To help people get a sense of scale, below we excerpts some of the key findings from a recent note from Goldman showing just how big China’s property sector is.

    1. A wide range of estimates for the scale of China’s property sector — up to about 30% of GDP — have been reported in the media and by other analysts. Different definitions of the scope of the sector largely account for the disparity.
    2. The most important distinctions are what types of building are included (residential, nonresidential, or all construction including infrastructure), what economic activity is included (only the construction itself, or all the value-added embedded in the finished residence e.g. domestically produced materials), and whether related real estate services are also included.
    3. A narrow definition of “residential construction activity as a share of GDP” could be as low as 3.6% of GDP. Expanding this to include all related domestic activities – e.g. materials like metals, wood, and stone produced domestically and used in housing construction, as well as services like financial activities and business services used directly or indirectly by the housing sector – would account for 12.4% of GDP. Adding nonresidential building construction and its associated activity would take it to 17.7%. Finally, including real estate services—which show a high correlation with broader property trends—would take the number to 23.3%. (All these numbers are based on detailed 2018 data, and exclude infrastructure spending not directly related to residential and nonresidential buildings.)
    4. The property sector’s share of the Chinese economy has grown fairly steadily over the past decade, after surging in the stimulus-fueled recovery just after the 2008 financial crisis.

    Digging into the definition of the “property sector”, there are three main questions that need to be kept in mind:

    1. What types of construction? One important difference is in what types of construction activities are included. Construction broadly consists of three categories: residential housing, nonresidential buildings, and infrastructure-related construction. In China, residential construction appears to be about half of total construction—the rest is either non-residential building construction or civil engineering works, plus a small amount of installation/decoration activity. Specifically, residential and nonresidential buildings represent around 70% of total construction, and residential floor space under construction is typically about 70% of total floor space under construction.

    Note that this ~50% share for residential share of total construction is not unusual in international perspective. For example, the residential share is similar in the United States—though it reached into the 60-70% range during the peak years of the housing bubble—and has been about 40-50% in South Korea for some time.

    2. What types of economic activity (only construction, or everything necessary to complete the finished building)? An even more important distinction is what types of activities one counts. Strictly speaking, the construction industry itself represents about 7% of China’s GDP. This represents wages, profits, and taxes from the construction sector (regardless of what type of construction or what end users). This is the value added of the construction sector itself, or the narrowly defined activity of building things.

    However, the construction industry uses a lot of output from other sectors – both materials (cement, wood, steel, etc.) and services (transportation of materials, financial services) to create finished buildings. Put another way, there are a lot of “backward linkages” from the construction sector: a home purchase requires not just the value added from construction industry, but also the value added from the “upstream” industries that provided the materials and were otherwise involved in the completion of the finished product.

    To gain some intuition for this, in the chart below, Goldman shows how much of each industry’s domestic value added ultimately goes into “final demand” of the construction industry (purchases of property by consumers or investment in property by businesses). For example, about one-third of value added in “wood products” goes into construction, about one-half of basic metals value added goes into construction, and essentially all of construction’s value added goes into construction final demand. (Note that this includes direct and indirect requirements—for example, basic metal output that is sold to firms in the metal fabrication industry that then sell to the construction sector would be counted as part of final demand for construction.)

    The next chart shows what fraction of the final demand for construction is provided by each sector. Roughly speaking, if we think about this as “the total domestic value added embedded in an apartment”, almost 30% of this is provided by construction activity, 8% from nonmetallic mineral products, etc.

    From the perspective of total domestic value added from all industries embedded in the final demand of the construction industry, the overall construction industry’s final demand accounts for roughly one-quarter of China’s GDP. This estimate is based on China’s most recent (2018) “input-output” table—which indicates the final output of each industry, as well as how much input is used from every other.

    3. Should real estate services be included. Some analysts focus on property construction only, while others add the “real estate services” sector e.g. the leasing and maintenance of buildings when estimating the impact of the housing sector of the economy. These activities contribute roughly 6-7% of GDP in China. In many countries, real estate services are somewhat less volatile than housing construction. The likely reason is that real estate services relate in part to the stock of existing buildings than the flow of new building construction. Even if there were a housing crash and building construction stopped, most real estate services could theoretically continue.  As evidence of this, in the US housing crash, construction sector GDP fell by ~30% peak to trough but real estate services never declined. That said, in China the “real estate services” sector has been significantly more volatile, almost as volatile as the construction sector itself.

    Contributions by type of demand and activity

    Taking these three factors into consideration, Goldman next shows estimated shares of China’s activity in the next chart, and breaks down construction into its main components while showing the share attributable to real estate services. The “sector activity” column shows the share of GDP accounted for directly by activities of that sector. In other words, companies and workers engaged in all types of construction activity accounted for 7.1% of China’s GDP in 2018. The “final demand” column shows the share of GDP accounted for by all the domestic economic activities embodied in final demand for that sector. In other words, the demand for buildings and other construction also generates demand for materials and other types of services — and adding the value added in construction and all of these “upstream” sectors together gives the numbers in the right column

    Putting the above together, the size of China’s property sector therefore depends on the question we want to answer:

    • What share of Chinese economic activity do workers/companies involved in residential construction represent? Here, one should look at domestic value-added (the left column). This is 7.1% for overall construction and just 3.6% for residential construction only.
    • How much economic activity is driven by demand for residential property construction? Residential property demand drives 12.4% of GDP (right column, second row in table), because in addition to the construction activity it creates demand for all the materials and other services involved in building construction.
    • What about the impact of total demand for property construction? Including non-residental buildings as well as residential, and the total upstream requirements of both, we want to look at the “domestic value added in final demand” of construction of residential + nonresidential buildings. This is 17.7% of GDP (12.4%+5.3%).
    • How much of the economy is at risk from a property downturn? Here, we could potentially add end demand for real estate services to the above calculation. This would be another 5.6% of GDP, suggesting 23.3% of the economy—nearly a quarter—would be affected.

    Finally, if one adds all construction and all real estate and all their associated activities, we get just over 30% of the economy (24.5%+5.6%), although it is worth caveating that this may be an overly broad definition for the property sector, as it includes infrastructure-related activity, which if anything is likely to be ramped up by policymakers in the event of severe property sector weakness.

    * * *

    Yet even a nice big, round 30% estimate for how much China’s property sector contributes to GDP, does not encompass all the potential spillovers from a construction sector downturn. There are at least three others:

    1. Second-round effects. A shock to construction (or any other sector) implies a drop in wages and company profits in that sector. This in turn implies lower income for the household and business sectors — and incrementally lower consumption and investment respectively. Such “second-round” or “multiplier” effects aren’t included in the estimates above.
    2. Fiscal spillovers. Land sales represent an important part of local government revenues in China (roughly 1/3 in gross revenue terms). Governments acquire land usage rights from rural occupants and sell them at a premium via auctions to developers. If land sales revenues fall because of a housing downturn (through some combination of fewer successful auctions and/or lower land prices), budgets will be squeezed, which could limit local governments’ spending and investment.
    3. Spillovers abroad via imports. As the world’s largest trading nation, China does not get all of its construction materials and other intermediate inputs domestically. In addition to the estimates above, which focus on domestic value-added, about 11% of the total value added embedded in China’s construction final demand is from foreign sources. (This is about 3% of China’s GDP, although it makes more sense to look at each trading partner’s exposure relative to the size of its own economy.) So, if we wanted to look at the total size of China’s construction sector in terms of driving economic activity, regardless of where that economic activity occurs (perhaps to compare China’s construction sector to other countries with different levels of import intensity) the figure in the top right cell in Exhibit 3 would be 3% larger.

    Putting it all together, and China’s property sector emerges as the mother of all ticking financial time bombs.

    * * *

    Which brings us to what is Beijing’s latest policy action (if any) to prevent this potential financial nuke from going off, and what are any additional tail risks to be considered.

    Well, as noted above, China’s property sector began the week with sharp price falls across the board, with China’s junk bonds cratering to near all time lows and with signs that the concerns are spilling over to the broader China credit market with spreads widening across the board. Some key updates:

    • Recent news suggest China property stresses are building up. A number of China property HY developers have made announcements over recent weeks regarding their upcoming bond maturities.
    • On 11 Oct, Modern Land launched a consent solicitation to extend the maturity on its USD 250mn bond due on 25 Oct by 3 months
    • Xinyuan Real Estate announced on 14 Oct that the majority of holders of its USD 229mn bond due on 15 Oct have agreed to an exchange offer. Note that Fitch considers both transactions to be distressed exchanges.
    • Furthermore, Sinic announced on 11 Oct that they are not expecting to make the principal and interest payments on its USD 250mn bond due on 18 Oct. These indicate that stresses amongst developers are building.

    Meanwhile, the grace period on Evergrande’s missed coupon payments is ending soon. Evergrande missed coupon payments of USD 148MM on 11 Oct. This came after missing an earlier coupon payment on 23 Sep. The earlier missed coupon has a 30-day grace period, which ends on 23 Oct, and should that not be remedied in the coming week, the company will be in default on this bond. With Evergrande USD bonds priced at around 20, a potential default is unlikely to have large market impact, though if the company is able to remedy the earlier default, this could provide a positive surprise for the market.

    Despite these mounting risks, the market staged a sharp rebound at the end of the week, with news emerging that policymakers are seeking to speed up mortgage approvals (if not followed by much more aggressive easing, this step will do nothing but delay the inevitable by a few days).

    And while Goldman’s China credit strateigst Kenneth Ho writes overnight that valuation is cheap across the lower rated segments within China property HY, market direction hinges on whether they will be able to refinance and avoid defaults. In particular, he notes that with $6.2bn of China property HY bonds maturing in Jan 2022, policy direction in the coming two months will be key. And since Goldman remains in the dark as to what Beijing will do next, as it remains “difficult to foresee how policy developments will play out in the coming weeks”, Goldman prefers to wait for clearer signs of policy turn before shifting lower down the credit spectrum.

    * * *

    This brings us to what Goldman calls two key questions on China property – policy and tail risks, which will dictate the direction of the China property HY market.

    As discussed in depth in recent days, Beijing’s tight regulatory stance is increasingly affecting a broader set of developers, as slowing activity levels are adding to worries across China property HY. For the period from early August to the first week of October, the volume of land transactions cratered by 42.5% compared with the same period last year, and for property transaction volume, this fell by 27.0%.

    Difficult credit conditions and weak presales add pressure to developers’ cash flows, and these factors are what led to the pick up in defaults and stresses in China property HY. Therefore, unless there are clear signs of an easing in policy direction, Goldman warns that tail risks concerns are unlikely to subside, and these will dictate the direction of China property HY market. As noted by Goldman’s China economics team, credit supply holds the key to China’s housing outlook in the near term, emphasizing the need for policy adjustments in order to stabilize the housing market. Incidentally, the latest monthly Chinese credit creation numbers showed a modest miss to expectations, as total TSF flows came in at 2.928TN, just below the 3.050TN consensus, and up 10.1% Y/Y, lower than the 10.3% in August (the silver lining is that M2 rose 8.3%, up from 8.2% in August and above the 8.2% consensus).

    That said, given the sharp slowdown in residential property activity levels over the past two months, policy stance appears to have relaxed over the past two weeks if somewhat more slowly than most had expected. The table below summarizes a number of policy announcements and news reports that suggest some easing of policies are taking place.

    That said, the announcements and policymakers’ statements do not signal a large shift in overall policy direction yet. For example, the more concrete measures such as home buyer subsidies and the reduction in home loan interest rates are conducted at a city, and not national, level. And whilst Bloomberg reported that the financial regulators have informed a number of major banks to accelerate mortgage approvals, the precise details are lacking. The recent actions are therefore mostly in line with the overall policy stance. On one hand, policymakers remain focused on the medium term goal of deleveraging, and will want to avoid over-stimulating and reflating the property sector; on the other hand, policymakers have stated that they want a stable property market and to avoid systemic risks from emerging, suggesting that they would seek to avoid over-tightening. The problem is that they can’t have both, and one will eventually have to crack.

    Goldman is somewhat more optimistic and writes that finding a balance will take time, adding that “given the need to balance the competing policy objectives, further measures could continue to emerge piecemeal, and visibility on the timing and the type of policy actions are limited.” Furthermore, there may need to be further downside risk towards the property sector before we see a more decisive change in direction in the policy stance. This means that tail risks concerns are unlikely to subside, despite signs that policy direction is gradually shifting.

    * * *

    Assuming help does not come on time, the next key question is how fat is the tail as large amounts of bonds trading at stressed levels. Currently, the China property market is pricing in elevated levels of stress. Their price distribution is shown below indicating that 38% of bonds (by notional outstanding and excluding defaulted bonds) are trading at a price below 70, and 49% of bonds are below a price of 80.

    Are market prices overly bearish on tail risk, or are they accurately reflecting the stresses amongst property developers? With policymakers likely to maintain their medium term goal to delever the property sector, it is unlikely that tail risk concerns for higher levered developers will not subside. However, how “fat” the tail is will depend on the policy stance over the next two months.

    A big challenge going forward is that there are sizeable bond maturities in the next year, which will heavily influence tail risk. As noted above, a number of developers have conducted or are seeking to complete distressed buybacks, and defaults rates amongst China property HY companies are soaring. As such, the policy stance in the next two months will be critical.

    As shown in Exhibit 2, China property HY bond maturities are relatively light for the remainder of 2021, but pick up substantially in 2022, with USD 6.3bn of bonds maturing in January alone!

    A full list of bond maturities from now to February 2022, is shown below.

    It goes without saying, that should policy easing over the next two months be insufficient to ease the financial conditions amongst developers, there could potentially be a meaningful pick up in credit stresses at the start of 2022 just as the Fed launches its taper and just as a cold winter sends energy costs to unprecedented levels.

    Finally, for any investors seeking some exposure to China’s HY market assuming that the worst is now over, Goldman agrees that while valuation is cheap across the lower rated segments within China property HY, the key determinant on market direction won’t be valuation, but rather hinges on whether developers will be able to refinance and avoid defaults – i.e., can the Ponzi scheme continue.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 18:00

  • North American Crane Count Decrease Signals Growing Uncertainty
    North American Crane Count Decrease Signals Growing Uncertainty

    By Zachary Phillips of ConstructionDive

    Summary:

    • Rider Levett Bucknall’s Crane Count decreased by 4.5% from Q1 to Q3 2021. The index measures the number of fixed cranes across cities in the U.S. and Canada, as a representation of the active construction workload in those cities.

    • Of the 14 cities measured, only three — Los Angeles, San Francisco and Toronto — saw an increase in the number of cranes in that period.

    • Five of the cities — Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Portland — saw what RLB called a “significant decrease” in the number of cranes; dropping by 30% or more.

    The dip in Q3 comes after a spike in Q1 of 2021, which also followed a decrease in the crane count. Toronto has continued to tower over U.S. cities when it comes to the total number of cranes.

    One thing connects all the cities, RLB’s report said: uncertainty, which remains significant to construction everywhere. Commercial cranes are down collectively 36% — or 20 cranes — across North American cities.

    “We anticipate better times ahead with previously delayed projects being brought back online,” the report said. “However, this is conditional upon market conditions as the AEC industry continues to experience the effects of COVID-19.”

    The most popular sectors for crane usage were mixed-use and residential. In Los Angeles, RLB counted 25 cranes for mixed-use and 12 for residential projects. In Toronto, those numbers were 47 and 133, respectively.

    Other findings from the report include:

    • A 40% increase of cranes used in the education construction sector.
    • Los Angeles saw the highest percentage increase from Q1 to Q3, by 19%.
    • The number of cranes in Toronto increased by 81% when compared to Q3 2020.

    Here are some of the highlights for U.S. cities:

    Los Angeles: The second most populous city in the U.S. saw its second straight report with an increase in the number of cranes, jumping from 43 to 51. The growth can likely be attributed to an increase in major transportation projects in the city, RLB said. The number of cranes on commercial projects have declined, in addition to a dip in the hospitality sector, but there has been a spike in demand for residential construction.

    San Francisco: The number of cranes in San Francisco grew by two from Q1 to Q3, but 10 new cranes have been erected within the last six months, RLB said, as some projects leave and others arrive. Most of the new cranes are for residential projects, which has seen an increase in demand, though others are for mixed-use and industrial projects. 

    Chicago: In January of 2017, RLB counted 56 cranes in Chicago. A steady, though not constant, decline in those numbers led to only seven counted cranes in Q3 of 2021. This, however, is due to a large number of projects downtown topping off and now leasing to new renters. The number of cranes is not anticipated to increase in the near future, RLB reported.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 17:30

  • Trump Favored To Win 2024 Among Top UK Betting Houses
    Trump Favored To Win 2024 Among Top UK Betting Houses

    Former President Donald Trump is favored to win the 2024 US election, according to UK-based betting exchange Ladbrokes sportsbook, as well as London-based Smarkets.

    As the Las Vegas Review-Journal notes, Trump surpassed Joe Biden last week – with Smarkets giving the former US president a 20% chance (4-1 odds) of winning in 2024 vs. Biden’s odds of winning at 19% and VP Kamala Harris’ odds at 13%.

    “It’s a pretty staggering development to find a defeated one-term president taking over as favorite from the incumbent who beat him, but we know by now that Donald Trump is no ordinary politician,” said Smarkets head of political markets, Matthew Shaddick. “It’s early days, but the latest market signals suggest there is every chance we could be heading for a Biden vs. Trump rematch in 2024 with Trump currently having a very slight edge, according to the betting.”

    At Ladbrokes, Trump is a +350 favorite over Biden (also 4-1 odds), and Harris 5-1.

    Trump’s odds of becoming the 2024 GOP nominee stand at 45%, according to Smarkets.

    “Trump’s odds have been improving all year and in particular since Biden’s poll ratings began declining this summer,” said Shaddick, adding “There is absolutely no sign of Republican voters deserting him, and he leads every primary poll by a distance.

    “Many forecasters had predicted that health or legal issues might stop Trump from re-election, but the latest Smarkets prices imply that there is a two-in-three chance he’ll run for the White House again in three years’ time.”

    At London’s Betfair, however, Biden is favored over Trump (4-1) while Harris stands at 5-1.

    As the Review-Journal notes, wagering on the election isn’t permitted at US sportsbooks – however “At offshore books that operate illegally in the U.S., Trump is the +275 favorite over Biden (+325) and Harris (5-1) at BetOnline and the 3-1 favorite over Biden (+325) and Harris (5-1) at SportsBetting.ag.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 17:00

  • Investors Rush To Buy Nearly 1 In 4 Homes
    Investors Rush To Buy Nearly 1 In 4 Homes

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Investors are buying huge percentages of existing home sales…

    Corelogic reports Single-Family Investor Activity Surges in the Second Quarter.

    Large investors (those who retain 100 or more properties) are largely responsible for this rise.

    Of all investor purchases made in June 2021, 20% were made by large investors. This is much higher than 11% in 2020 or 14% in 2019.

    Small investors (those who retain between 3 and 10 properties), have declined slightly and now account for less than half of investor purchases at 46% in June.

    Mid-sized investors (those who retain 11-99 properties) have stayed constant, oscillating around 35% percent in the past 30 months.

    The pandemic seemed to drive away large investors, but they are now making up their largest share of investor purchases seen in the past decade.

    If you have been outbid on a home there’s nearly a 1 in 4 chance it was to an investor or group of investors.

    *  *  *

    Like these reports? If so, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 16:30

  • Texas Guardsmen Shot At By Heavily Armed Cartel Gunmen At Border 
    Texas Guardsmen Shot At By Heavily Armed Cartel Gunmen At Border 

    Heavily armed drug cartels are becoming more aggressive along the Texas-Mexico border amid President Biden’s immigration crisis. Last week, Fox News’ Bill Melugin captured cartel members shooting over Texas Guardsmen stationed at an observation post. Now Melugin says cartel members are shooting “at Texas National Guard soldiers.” 

    The latest incident occurred Thursday night in Roma, Texas, when suspected cartel members fired “two shots across the border at Texas National Guard soldiers,” according to Melugin. He said this is “the same area where cartel gunmen have been seen taunting the soldiers in recent days.” 

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

    The Fox News reporter tweeted a video of suspected cartel members firing machine guns over a National Guard observation last week. 

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

    The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) said, “two shots were fired across the border from Mexico into Texas, “believed to be aimed at Texas National Guard personnel.” They stated, “Texas Rangers responded to the scene” and confirmed “no injuries,” adding that an “investigation into this incident” is underway. 

    Responding to DPS’ statement published on Facebook, many users were disgusted how “sleepy Joe Biden’s world” is falling apart. Some suggested Guardsmen and all law enforcement fired upon by cartel members should “shoot back.” Others said this is an “act of war.” 

    “Force should be met with force, you do not have to wait until the bullet hits you to protect yourself, it is called Self Defense!” someone said. 

    Another said, “they need a reaper drone out there.” 

    While the Biden administration seemingly ignores the border crisis, Texas Governor Greg Abbot has continued increasing Guardsmen along the border as he warns of “increased caravans attempting to cross the border caused by Biden’s open border policy.”

    The latest leg down in Biden’s polling data may be derived from all the bad press surrounding the border crisis. 

    Biden’s choice to ignore the southern border crisis has been a godsend for Republicans ahead of the 2022 midterms, who can now use the immigration angle to highlight how the president was ill-prepared. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 16:00

  • NYC Judge Prevents Father From Visiting His Daughter Unless He Gets Vaccinated
    NYC Judge Prevents Father From Visiting His Daughter Unless He Gets Vaccinated

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    A judge in New York City has blocked a father’s right to see his three-year-old daughter unless he agrees to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

    Yes, really.

    In early September, Evan Schein, an attorney acting on behalf of the mother in the couple’s divorce case (the family has not been named), raised concerns about the father’s vaccination status, leading high profile judge Judge Matthew Cooper to suspend his visitation rights until he received the jab.

    According to Cooper, the father needs to submit to the shot because it has become a prerequisite “to participate meaningfully in everyday society.”

    “The dangers of voluntarily remaining unvaccinated during access with a child while the COVID-19 virus remains a threat to children’s health and safety cannot be understated,” said the judge.

    “Unfortunately, and to my mind, incomprehensibly, a sizable minority, seizing upon misinformation, conspiracy theories, and muddled notions of ‘individual liberty,’ have refused all entreaties to be vaccinated,” he added.

    The father’s only other option is to pay for expensive PCR tests every week in addition to taking a biweekly antigen test within 24 hours of his every other weekend visits.

    The ruling was praised by the mother’s attorney, who called it “an incredibly important one that highlights the extraordinary times we are living in and reinforces that a child’s best interests are paramount.”

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

    However, Lloyd Rosen, the father’s attorney, warned that the ruling sets a terrible precedent.

    “My client is not a conspiracy theorist,” Rosen said.

    “He has concerns about the vaccine. He’s heard about side effects. He once had a bad reaction to a flu vaccine.”

    “This judge must feel that 80 million Americans who aren’t vaccinated are placing their children at imminent risk or harm and, therefore, the courts should intervene and remove those children from their parents,” he added.

    “This is an absurd position to take.”

    The father has previously been infected with COVID-19, meaning he has antibodies that offer him far greater protection than the vaccine, but that isn’t even being taken into account.

    As we previously highlighted, patients who are in urgent need of life-saving organ transplants are now being denied treatment due to their refusal to take the vaccine.

    As we warned all along, the agenda behind mandatory vaccination schemes is to make life a living hell for refusniks who don’t comply, while maintaining all along that the vaccine isn’t “mandatory.”

    We are now hurtling full throttle towards a Chinese-style social credit score system where basic functions of living are denied to those who choose to exercise their bodily autonomy.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 15:30

  • Working-Poor Still Use Food Banks As Millions Had Their Savings Wiped Out During COVID  
    Working-Poor Still Use Food Banks As Millions Had Their Savings Wiped Out During COVID  

    Eighteen months since the virus pandemic began, hunger and food insecurity continue to plague millions of households across the country. Some of these folks have had their life savings drained with no financial safety net for the next crisis. 

    Compound food insecurity and deterioration of financial conditions of households, and it appears the working-poor have barely recovered from the pandemic downturn. What’s likely to happen is the Biden administration will continue handing out free money to these folks to prevent social upheaval. An example of this was when Biden increased SNAP allowances by a quarter a few months ago. 

    First, let’s talk about food banks and their current state. Katie Fitzgerald, COO of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that oversees a nationwide network of 200 food banks feeding more than 46 million people, told AP News that despite the decreasing numbers of households reliant on food banks. Today’s numbers remain 55% above pre-pandemic levels “We’re worried (food insecurity) could increase all over again if too many shoes drop,” she said.

    The next is a new NPR poll that finds almost 20% of U.S. households had their savings wiped out during the pandemic. The share of respondents who made $50k or less was about 30%. 

    Avenel Joseph, a vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said many used their savings to cover basic expenses and survive as tens of millions were laid off during the pandemic. “When crisis hits, or anything goes out of the norm—your child is sick, for example—you are sacrificing wages,” she said. About 66% of households earning $50k or less had difficulty pay rent, feeding their family, and covering medical bills. 

    Countless times we have described the disparity between the people who hold assets and those who don’t. The gap in wealth inequality surged even wider, already at emergency levels before the pandemic, after the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars in liquidity into financial markets to boost asset prices higher, such as stocks, bonds, homes, art, classic cars, wine, and crypto. Those who owned nothing were the worst off. 

    The age-old question for the Biden administration: How will they elevate those stuck in poverty? Keep handing out free money and disincentivizing people not to work?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 15:00

  • Win For Virginia Parents After Loudon County School Board Member Announces Resignation
    Win For Virginia Parents After Loudon County School Board Member Announces Resignation

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Embattled Loudoun County, Virginia, School Board member Beth Barts, who was the subject of a recall petition, announced Friday that she will resign from her position in November.

    “This was not an easy decision or a decision made in haste. After much thought and careful consideration, it is the right decision for me and my family,” Barts said in a statement on Facebook.

    “Please accept this letter as my formal resignation from the Loudoun County School Board effective November 2, 2021.”

    Children hold up signs during a rally against critical race theory being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Va., on June 12, 2021. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Epoch Times has contacted the Loudoun County School Board for comment. The Loudon County Public School system also confirmed her resignation on Friday, saying it will start the process of filling the Leesburg District seat.

    “I want to thank Board Member Barts for her service to the Leesburg District,” School Board Chair Brenda L. Sheridan said in a statement.

    “The School Board will announce its process for filling the Leesburg seat at its October 26 meeting and anticipates filling this position at its December 14 meeting.”

    Last week, a Virginia judge denied Barts’ motion to dismiss a Loudon County parents’ organization’s petition to recall her before also removing Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj from the case. The decision represented a victory for opponents of critical race theory, a quasi-Marxist ideology that is the center of a culture war that’s going on across the United States.

    The group Fight For Schools and other organizations alleged that Barts was involved in a private Facebook group that violated the School Board’s Code of Conduct and local laws after the page’s members allegedly tried to attempt to reveal private information about—or doxx—parents as well as opponents of critical race theory and similar ideologies.

    Asra Nomani, vice president of strategy and investigation for Parents Defending Education and a key opponent against critical race theory being taught in schools, hailed the announcement that Barts will be resigning.

    “The first domino falls,” Nomani wrote to her 66,000 Twitter followers. “This will not save her from investigations into her corruption,” she added.

    School Board Vice Chairwoman Atoosa Reaser said in March that Barts repeatedly violated the school board’s code of conduct. Responding to allegations that she was part of a Facebook group that tried to doxx parents, Barts said earlier this year that “it’s not my job to be liked. It’s my job to ask hard questions, work to provide the best education for our kids, make sure our teachers are paid what they really deserve, and represent the people of Leesburg.”

    Barts’ resignation comes just days after the Department of Justice announced it was tasking FBI agents and U.S. attorneys to discuss strategies to address alleged threats against school administrators, teachers, and board members. The move has drawn significant condemnation from Republican lawmakers and officials, who alleged the agency is now treating concerned parents as political enemies.

    Barts’ resignation announcement also came after the father of a 15-year-old girl who attends a Loudon County high school told news outlets that his daughter was sexually assaulted by an unnamed boy in the bathroom. Scott Smith, the father, suggested that the boy allegedly exploited left-wing school bathroom policies around gender.

    Smith announced plans to sue the school district this week.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/16/2021 – 14:30

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