• Biden's Anti-Eurasian Green Delusion And America's Race To Irrelevance
  Biden’s Anti-Eurasian Green Delusion And America’s Race To Irrelevance

  Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Many people couldn’t help but laugh when Biden told the Boris Johnson on March 26 that the USA and it’s NATO allies should create “an infrastructure plan to rival the Belt and Road Initiative” post haste. What would such a program look like? How would it be funded when the USA is so embarrassingly bankrupt? Who among the nations of the world would ever consider buying a ticket onto such a sinking ship?

  It took a few weeks for details to finally emerge, but by the end of the April 22-23 Climate Summit hosted by Biden, John Kerry and Anthony Blinken, it has become abysmally clear what delusions possessed the poor president.

  After having announced a 52% carbon reduction policy below 2005 levels by 2050, Biden swiftly committed the USA to what he called the most comprehensive infrastructure plan in history with a $2 trillion Green New Deal-like infrastructure program designed to revive the policy of America’s 32nd president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mirroring FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, Biden has even planned a Civilian Climate Corps, along with a Green Climate Bank to parallel FDR’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

  The catch? Biden’s version was written by the same financial technocrats that FDR went to war with 80 years ago and unlike FDR’s version, the modern green version of the New Deal will have the effect of destroying the productive industrial powers and living standards of the nation once green grids are built.

  

  A Comparison of Two New Deals

  Where FDR’s New Deal was premised on the removal of Wall Street’s hegemony over national sovereignty via the Pecora Commission, Glass-Steagall, and SEC; Biden’s Green New Deal is shaped by Central Bankers’ Climate Compacts and green finance strategies authored by the richest oligarchs on the planet like the Bloomberg-Carney Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. In fact, it shouldn’t come as a coincidence that the first legislative effort to establish a Green New Deal, was not American at all, but was submitted by Britain’s Lord Adair Turner in 2009 while he was acting head regulator of the City of London which remains the nerve center of world finance today as it was a century ago. Up until 2019, Lord Turner was the chair of George Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking- an organization devoted to making Huxley’s Brave New World a practical reality and upon which he still serves as Senior Fellow.

  Where FDR created large scale infrastructure megaprojects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Project, Hoover Dam, Colorado River Basin programs, and St Lawrence Seaway which all had the effect of leap frogging to higher rates of industrial power than at any other time in history, Biden’s Green New Deal professes to do the opposite. Yes, jobs will be created in insulating a few million homes and building windmills and solar panels, however those jobs will be short lived. For once they are built there will be nothing left to do but maintain the solar panels with unionized squeegees in an imaginary world of no change and zero-technological growth that might look good in computer models, but has very little correspondence with humanity’s actual requirements for long term survival.

  It appears to be genuinely believed by ivory tower technocrats managing the Biden Administration that financing a green infrastructure program won’t be difficult. The 2020-21 pandemic showed the enlightened elite that money can always just be printed from thin air. The U.S. debt has already risen to 27 trillion, so what’s a few trillion more?

  Where that fails, just compensate by imposing Carbon Pricing onto all carbon sinners. Many nations have already gotten onboard that bandwagon with Sweden, Lichtenstein and Canada leading the race charging $129, $96, and $91 per ton of carbon emissions respectively. Coming out of Biden’s Climate Summit, Canada’s Justin Trudeau committed to raising this cost to $170/ton by 2030 while U.S. National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy announced will soon rise to $56/ton in the USA (a seven fold increase from the $1-7/ton price under Trump).

  Additionally, cap and trade schemes are always there for wealthy polluters to purchase unused carbon quotas from poorer polluters at home or abroad, so revenue can certainly be found that way. If all else fails, just raise taxes.

  In case poor nations of the world might feel like avoiding this sinking ship in order to work more closely with Russia and China, Biden was kind enough to announce a new international green finance strategy to assist the developing sector in their decarbonizing aspirations.

  The Problem with Green Energy

  For those who doubt the idea that the USA can or even should meet those 2035 carbon reduction targets, they might have solid reasons for their assumptions. For one thing, the USA currently relies upon 1,852 coal fired power plants which would mean that 11 plants would need to be shut down every month until 2035. What would compensate for this loss of capacity?

  Obviously not nuclear, since that has become politically-radioactive in the minds of most of Biden’s liberal constituency.

  Would it be green energy that fills the gap? Considering that green energy is magnitudes more costly, and unreliable relative to fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear power, that is also unlikely. The truth is, as Germany discovered recently, shutting down coal and nuclear at home, simply forces a nation to keep fossil fuel plants running as back up for the unreliable green energy grids while increasing imports of coal/natural gas-driven electricity from other countries. In Germany’s case, imports of nuclear and coal-generated electricity from Poland and the Czech Republic increased by 60% since the nation’s industrial base understood that green energy sources could never meet it’s needs. In the USA’s case, Mexico would most likely be the top supplier. Across the European Union where most nations have entirely submitted to pressure to “decarbonize” by 2050, coal, gas and crude oil imports now make up 2/3rds of all energy imports.

  While some advocates of the Green New Deal applaud the amazing breakthroughs in green energy tech over the past years which they say has reduced the price per kilowatt hour from an unreasonably high 35 cents to as low as 4 cents today… the truth is that the technology remains largely identical to the photovoltaic cells and windmills of yesterday with the only difference being the massively increased infusions of government subsidies given to private companies producing the green energy which the IMF calculated to be $5.2 trillion in 2017 alone (aka: 6.5% of the global GDP). And where do those subsidies come from? you guessed it. The tax payers.

  Lest we forget the oft-overlooked fuel source of bioethanol, over 40% of the USA’s corn production currently gets burned in the form of biodiesel and ethanol while billions starve and suffer food shortages around the world. The high cost of being green.

  Geopolitical Incompetence 101

  You might now be asking: Why would the USA which has admittedly chosen to define itself as an existential rival to Russia and China to the point of risking a full-scale nuclear war, be so intent on subverting its own economic foundations at a moment that both Russia and China (and over 136 nations of the world) have chosen to move on toward a diametrically opposing paradigm of large-scale infrastructure growth and scientific progress?

  If we take the old adage “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” as a truism, then signs for a bright future for the Green New Dealing western community poor indeed.

  Since Biden’s first days as president of the USA, the entire fabric of U.S. governance from top to bottom was completely overhauled in the form of omnibus executive orders designed to make the global climate emergency the top priority for all branches and levels of government- economic, military, intelligence, health and beyond. Under this green geostrategic paradigm, vast starvation, migration patterns, and wars have much less to do with imperial abuse, and everything to do with global warming.

  Biden created new directorates of climate policy with offices in the White House, demanded that the Director of National Intelligence and State Department overhaul their governance around dealing with the climate crisis and even passed executive orders banning all oil and natural gas drilling and exploration projects on land or offshore where government land is held. Biden even went so far as to assert that 30% of the entire surface of the USA would be brought off limits to all development by 2030.

  Sustained vs Sustainable Development

  Compare this with China which has simultaneously committed to building green energy systems without deluding itself into thinking that fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro could be taken out of their energy baskets.

  In fact, the primary fuel sources driving the large-scale development corridors of the New Silk Road are considered “dirty” sources verboten by the west like coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear and hydro. This fact even drove a delusional Biden to attempt to pressure Xi Jinping to speed up their phase out of coal by 2030 to which the Chinese leader responded “no”.

  Biden had earlier described China as the primary climate offender of the world saying: “China is far and away the largest emitter of carbon in the world, and through its massive Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is also annually financing billions of dollars of dirty fossil fuel energy projects across Asia and beyond.” He even demanded that leaders of the west “rally a united front of nations to hold China accountable to high environmental standards in its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects, so that China can’t outsource pollution to other countries.”

  In his remarks at the Climate Summit, President Putin re-emphasized to the western puppet heads of state who were busy massaging each other and chanting “build back better” in unison, that “green growth” should not occur at the expense of “sustainable growth”. Simply put, Putin is committed to putting people before ivory tower energy policies that may demand human sacrifices at the alter of Gaia, and emphasized Russia’s commitment to nuclear power, raising its fertility rate, raising average life expectancy which has already grown from 56 years/male and 61/female in the mid-1990s to 70 years today and plans are to increase that to 78 years by 2030.

  The irony about all of this is that China and Russia are increasingly adopting a system of political economy which is fundamentally OPEN and driven by scientific and technological progress without any supposed limits on its potential for improvement. This paradigm is fundamentally in harmony with the original New Deal policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt who himself envisioned a post-imperial world of win-win cooperation (in opposition to a dystopic closed-system world envisioned by Winston Churchill). The USA on the other hand, which professes to be the heir to the New Deal reforms of Franklin Roosevelt has come to embody the worst aspects of the Malthusian elite managing the British Empire for centuries which FDR devoted his life to stop.

  It was this empire that considered it “scientifically necessary” to subjugate India, China, Ireland, Africa and every other rival to lives of poverty, war, famine and stupidification.

  This was the empire which the republican revolution of 1776 aimed at overthrowing- not only from the Americas, but internationally. It is this same empire which was nearly destroyed by the Russian-U.S. alliance that shaped much of the 19th century and which again arose during WW2 as FDR and Stalin recognized they had much more in common with each other than either had with arch-racist Churchill. The British Empire was always run as a “closed system”, scientifically managed intelligence operation following Malthusian principles and adherence to strict mathematical equilibrium. In this formula for domination, military forces have typically been less important than control of nerve centers of finance, narcotics and other levers of corruption mental and spiritual corruption than many people- even among the most educated historians realize.

  And so we have come full circle. The gods have certainly made those elites managing the west mad, but whether or not the entire world will have to pay the price of their insanity yet remains to be seen.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 23:40

• NYPD Puts Down Robot Dog After Backlash 
  NYPD Puts Down Robot Dog After Backlash 

  The New York Police Department (NYPD) will part ways with its controversial robotic dog after mounting uproar from the public and lawmakers. 

  John Miller, the NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, told NYTimes that it ended a leasing contract with Boston Dynamics early for the four-legged robotic dog called “Digidog.” 

  

  A subpoena from City Councilman Ben Kallos and Council Speaker Corey Johnson revealed the NYPD’s leasing contract with Boston Dynamics, amounted to $94,000. The leasing agreement was terminated on April 22. The original lease agreement was through August.

  The termination of the lease was due to a series of incidents where the four-legged robot was deployed to a house invasion in the Bronx in February and a low-income housing project in Manhattan for patrol. Critics likened it to a surveillance robo-dog out of the dystopic TV series “Black Mirror.”

  Miller said the contract was terminated because the police force was improperly using the device to fuel heated discussions about race and surveillance. 

  “People had figured out the catchphrases and the language to make this evil somehow,” Miller said.

  He did not rule out the possibility of Digidog returning to the police force at some future date. 

  “But for now, this is a casualty of politics, bad information and cheap sound bytes,” he said. “We should have named it ‘Lassie.'”

  In February, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced the robot, saying police officers were targeting low-income communities. She also had an issue with the funds spent to lease the device. 

  

  “Please ask yourself: when was the last time you saw next-generation, world-class technology for education, healthcare, housing, etc consistently prioritized for underserved communities like this?” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at the time.

  Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, said he was “glad the Digidog was put down.”

  A spokesperson for Boston Dynamics said Wednesday its robots are not designed to be used as weapons nor used to intimidate people. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 23:20

• Blighted San Francisco Diagnoses Its "Perilous Trifecta" …And Bungles The Cure
  Blighted San Francisco Diagnoses Its “Perilous Trifecta” …And Bungles The Cure

  Authored by Christopher Rufo via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  San Francisco is coming undone. In recent years, the city has manifested a series of visible and persistent inequalities, with a spoils-to-the-victor world for its technological elite, and a chaotic, brutalized world for its dispossessed. In the city’s Tenderloin district, men openly hawk drugs on the street corners, desperate addicts are crumpled across the sidewalks, and first responders dart through the chaos to revive overdose victims.

  

  The city has become a web of contradictions. There are thousands of new millionaires, and, by the latest estimates, 18,000 people in and out of homelessness. The headquarters of Uber, Twitter, and Square are blocks away from the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SoMa. Wealthy families attending an art opening at the Civic Center have to cross through the tent encampments that line the sidewalks.

  Residents, property owners, and small businesses—who pay an enormous premium to live and work in San Francisco—have begun to erupt in frustration. Citizens tell pollsters that homelessness is the city’s most pressing issue and business owners tell pollsters that “conditions on [the] streets have progressively deteriorated.”

  

  Mayor London Breed of San Francisco: Trying to address the city’s problems by expanding institutions the chronically homeless keep cycling through.

  City Hall has begun coming to terms with the crisis. Mayor London Breed recently hired a director of mental health reform, Dr. Anton Nigusse Bland, who compiled a statistical summary of the problem. People have long known that San Francisco has a homelessness problem, but Nigusse Bland discovered a population-within-a-population—the so-called “perilous trifecta”: 

  4,000 men and women who are simultaneously homeless, psychotic, and addicted to alcohol, meth, or heroin.

  About 70 % of them have been on the streets for more than five years; 40% have been on the streets for more than 13 years.

  This is the city’s fundamental predicament.

  How do you help people in the grips of the perilous trifecta? What interventions could make progress? Where do social workers even start?

  It’s almost impossible to understate the depths of this challenge.

  

  Dr. Anton Nigusse Bland, city mental health director: Identified 4,000 suffering from the “perilous trifecta” of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction

  San Francisco’s current policy toward the perilous trifecta can be best described as compassionate neglect. Every year, the chronically homeless cycle through the institutions of the socialized state, from hospitals, jails, and shelters, to sobering centers, case management appointments, and 72-hour psychiatric holds. Local government provides enough to meet an outward standard of compassion, but not enough to alter the trajectories of the homeless. The result is a disaster, which has drawn criticism across the political spectrum. Progressives are demanding more funding for existing programs, while moderates are bewildered by the eternal recurrence of tents, needles, and feces in their neighborhoods.

  The current policy regime can be divided into three domains — the hospital, the jail, and the subsidized apartment.

  Together, these institutions represent the new orthodoxy of the modern urban approach: Homelessness is reduced to a set of social-scientific variables, to be manipulated through the intensive application of the medical and social sciences.

  As part of its medical system, San Francisco currently spends more than $255 million per year on mental health and substance abuse programs, many of which cater to the city’s homeless. In a recent audit of the behavioral health system, the city’s budget and legislative analyst found that 70% of all psychiatric emergency visits involved a homeless individual and that 66% of all visitors had co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. In total, the top 5% of “super-users,” totaling 2,239 adults, the majority of whom fall into the perilous trifecta, accounted for 52% of total systemwide service use. Doctors at San Francisco General see the same set of patients so frequently that they have developed an entire vocabulary to describe the population that circles in and out of their doors.

  The jail system is next. According to the San Francisco County Jail, the homeless account for 40% of all inmates — despite being less than 1% of the city’s overall population, and even after San Francisco decriminalized many quality-of-life crimes associated with homelessness. Again, the perilous trifecta looms large. Inmates with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders are more likely to be homeless and more likely to be charged with a violent crime compared to the general jail population. The pithy observation about deinstitutionalization is largely true: The people who might have once lived in the state mental hospital have simply been transferred to the county jail.

  

  Neither hospitals, jails, nor public housing have solved San Francisco’s homelessness epidemic.

  Finally, the public-housing complex is the new great hope, and fastest-growing public expenditure, for the homeless. Like many major West Coast cities, San Francisco has gone all in on “Housing First,” the theory that the municipal government must provide free housing for the homeless in perpetuity, with no expectations of sobriety, work, or participation in rehabilitation programs. For a city with a recurring homeless population of 18,000, this is an enormous expense. In 2019, San Francisco spent $285 million on shelters and “permanent supportive housing,” plus $65 million on traditional public housing, vouchers, and SRO units. At the same time, voters passed an additional $600 million bond to build “affordable housing.” But still, 67% of the Bay Area’s homeless are unsheltered.

  Even as they tout “evidence-based interventions,” “data-driven solutions,” and “best practices,” leaders in San Francisco have recognized the failure of the current system and proposed an ambitious reform agenda. However, in broad terms, this agenda only deepens its dependency on the social-scientific model and doubles-down on its worst assumptions. It can be summarized this way: deinstitutionalization, destigmatization, and decriminalization.

  In 2019, Mayor Breed and Supervisors Matt Haney and Hillary Ronen championed legislation for sweeping “mental health reform.” The plan would increase total spending on mental health and substance abuse to $500 million per year, and prioritize the homeless, create a central service center, and pressure private insurers to cover more costs. When it passed unanimously through the Board of Supervisors, Ronen celebrated it as a progressive milestone: “We just created the first universal mental health and substance use system in the country.”

  

  San Francisco’s homeless problem can be traced back to the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill after Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel and this subsequent film.

  But this universality is only a theoretical formulation. The legislation does not include a funding source and, more important, simply expands the existing behavioral health system rather than reforming it. For the perilous trifecta, the problem is often not access to services, but participation in services. According to the latest one-night count, only 17% of the homeless reported using mental health services and only 11% reported using substance abuse services. For the unsheltered population, these figures are almost certainly lower.

  The problem is that members of the perilous trifecta are the least likely to seek services. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, approximately half the patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder suffer from anosognosia, which is the inability to understand their own disorder, often leading to a refusal to enter treatment and take medication. Adding a serious addiction to methamphetamine, which can cause paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations, and violent behavior, only compounds the problem.

  In the past, the solution to this paradox was compulsion. The state took custody of the “gravely disabled” and treated them in long-term residential institutions. However, with the exposure of civil rights abuses and the release of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the United States gradually dismantled its mental health system, reducing the number of mental health beds per capita by an astonishing 95% between 1955 and 2016. Today, California has fewer beds per capita than the national average, with San Francisco having only 219 adult psychiatric beds available at a given time — drastically insufficient for the number of people in need.

  Although Mayor Breed has tentatively moved towards a return to short-term “conservatorships,” a form of involuntary commitment for individuals who present a grave danger to themselves or others, the plan has neither the scope nor the force to significantly reduce the numbers of the perilous trifecta. Because of pressure from disability activists and the ACLU, which have called conservatorships “the greatest deprivation of civil liberties aside from the death penalty,” the plan is limited to individuals who have had eight or more involuntary psychiatric holds in the past year, which, in practice, would mean less than 100 people citywide.

  Mayor Breed did not return a request for comment.

  

  San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney faces recall efforts in response to rising crime.

  Many progressive socialists argue that there is too much force in the system, not too little. San Francisco’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin, took office in January 2020 pledging to substantially reduce the county jail population, end cash bail, and decriminalize quality-of-life crimes associated with homelessness, including public camping, drug consumption, prostitution, and public urination. Boudin contends that the criminal justice system in San Francisco is a domain of persistent inequalities – locking up a disproportionate number of poor and minority residents – and has become the dumping ground for the addicted and mentally ill. Rather than continue this system, Boudin argues, the city must “implement a comprehensive transformation of the criminal justice system to decriminalize and treat mental illness, housing instability, and substance use as public health issues rather than criminal justice issues.”

  Boudin’s formulation does align with a single-day snapshot of the San Francisco County Jail population from 2016, which found that 48% of inmates were African American, 70% self-reported substance abuse, and 10% were deemed to have a serious mental illness. However, the narrative that the city is somehow targeting non-violent drug offenders and “criminalizing homeless” is specious. The snapshot also shows that 68% of inmates were arrested for violence, weapons possession, and serious felonies. Contrary to progressive rhetoric, only 4% were arrested for drug crimes — a vanishingly small number of people for a city in the midst of a heroin and methamphetamine epidemic.

  

  Authorities have enabled massive open-air drug markets in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin.

  The hard reality is that the perilous trifecta has fueled a boom in property crime and public disorder. In 2019, at least 1,120 individuals in the trifecta spent time in the county jail. Although the homicide rate remained static during Boudin’s first year office, burglaries have soared in a city that already had one of the highest property crime rates in the nation, while authorities enabled massive open-air drug markets in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, which is a central hub for the homeless population.

  The nexus between homelessness, addiction, and crime is clear: According to city and federal data, virtually all of the unsheltered homeless are unemployed, while at the same time, those with serious addictions spend an average of $1,256 to $1,834 a month on methamphetamine and heroin. With no legitimate source of income, many addicts support their habit through a “hustle,” which can include fraud, prostitution, car break-ins, burglaries of residences and business, and other forms of theft.

  Boudin’s plan to decriminalize such property offenses – the mirror opposite of the low-tolerance “broken windows” approach adopted in the late 1980s as crime rates began historic declines – has contributed to the sense that he is not holding criminals accountable. In 2019, the city had an incredible 25,667 “smash-and-grabs,” as thieves sought valuables and other property from cars to sell on the black market. The following year, rather than attempt to prevent or even disincentivize this crime, Boudin has proposed a $1.5 million fund to pay for auto glass repair, arguing that it “will help put money into San Francisco jobs and San Francisco businesses.” In literal terms, Boudin is subsidizing broken windows, under the notion that it can be transformed into a job-creation program.

  Boudin did not return a request for comment.

  Some San Franciscans are pushing back. Earlier this year, a group of residents and business owners launched a recall effort targeting Boudin, arguing that his policies have enabled crime and not done enough to protect victims.           

  The final plank of San Francisco’s policy platform is “destigmatization.” Public health experts in the city have gradually abandoned recovery and sobriety as the ideal outcome, preferring the limited goal of “harm reduction.” In a recent task force report on methamphetamine, the San Francisco Public Health Department noted that meth users “are likely to experience high levels of stigma and rejection in their personal and social lives,” which are “often reinforced by language and media portrayals depicting individuals who use alongside images of immorality, having chaotic lives, and perpetual use.”

  On the surface, this is a strange contention. If San Francisco’s perilous trifecta is any guide, methamphetamine use is heavily correlated with chaotic lives, perpetual drug abuse, crimes against others, and various transgressions against traditional morality. The harm reductionists’ argument, however, rests on the belief that addiction is an involuntary brain disease, akin to Alzheimer’s or dementia. In this view, addiction is better seen as a disability, and any stigma associated with it is therefore an act of ignorance and cruelty. According to the Department of Public Health, the goal of harm reduction policy is to reduce this unjustified stigma and focus public policy on “non-abstinence-based residential treatment programs,” “supervised injection services,” “trauma-informed sobering site[s],” and “training for staff on how to engage marginalized or vulnerable communities in ways that do not perpetuate trauma or stigma.”

  In practice, the task force recommendations would create an entire infrastructure to service addiction, rather than to reduce it. Although proponents of harm reduction claim the mantle of compassion, it’s a fatalistic theory. It assumes that most people cannot recover from serious addiction and, therefore, the social obligation is to provide the space and resources for addicts to pursue their own ends, which, for 40% of the perilous trifecta population, means 13 or more years in and out of homelessness. Activists have suggested that addicts can “reduce harms” by “[using] indoors instead of on the street,” “reducing how much [they are] using,” “transitioning from injecting to smoking,” and “continuing to use one type of drug but quitting another drug.” But in the face of the pathological overload of the perilous trifecta, these recommendations are negligently naïve, relegating a large portion of the homeless to a lifetime of chaos, sickness, and despair.

  In the long term, the real danger of destigmatization is that it would lead to the normalization of serious addiction and its consequences. In San Francisco, progressives have attempted to normalize the worst aspects of street homelessness, minimizing the drug use, toxic waste, psychotic episodes, and related crimes; they have blurred the lines between sickness and health, madness and sanity. Moreover, without a trace of irony, they have weaponized destigmatization itself, stigmatizing anyone who opposes the breakdown of public order as “fascists” and “homeless haters.” 

  

  An entire social media community has arisen documenting the descent of San Francisco’s streets. Twitter/homelessphilosopher/@PoopScoopSF/@sfstreets1/ @PowelMason415/@CleanUpWestSoma/@EsmeAlaki/@missmrm/@markdfabela

  The implicit wager of San Francisco’s policy is that the social-scientific apparatus can rescue people faster than the perilous trifecta expands its ranks. But the evidence suggests the opposite: that San Francisco has become a magnet for the troubled homeless. Methamphetamine deaths are up nearly 400% over the past five years; fentanyl overdoses doubled between 2019 and 2020. Meanwhile, the socialized state has reached a point of near exhaustion. First responders, police officers, and emergency room nurses are burning out. Psychiatrists at San Francisco General Hospital despair about the mass migration of out-of-state residents in search of the “San Francisco Special”: “housing, a psychiatrist, case manager, primary care provider, and transfer of Medicaid or general assistance.”

  The political class has insisted on greater control over the corporations, developers, and landlords, while deregulating life at the bottom. The result has been a deepening inequality, and an even more anarchic world for the poor. There is an entire social media community of mostly anonymous accounts who document the squalor of the encampments and psychotic episodes in the streets; they are the last resistance to the normalization of the perilous trifecta, and maintain their anonymity, it seems, out of fear of retribution. It’s a dark reality, but perhaps a warning of what’s to come.

  In the end, San Francisco finds itself fighting a monster. “Homelessness isn’t just a problem; it’s a symptom,” says its mayor. “The symptom of unaffordable housing, of income inequality, of institutional racism, of addiction, untreated illness, and decades of disinvestment. These are the problems. And if we’re going to fight homelessness, we’ve got to fight them all.” But this is part of the reason homelessness has become so intractable — —the political class has haunted its own world with abstractions; it has projected its own ideological premises onto the brutal reality of the streets.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 23:00

• Ammo And Primer Shortages Continue Into 2021 
  Ammo And Primer Shortages Continue Into 2021 

  Readers have been well informed about multiple shortages of ammunition and firearms in the last year due to a massive demand pull from frightened Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest in cities around the US, and the prospect of an anti-gun Biden administration. Now another shortage has materialized: the lack of bullet primers, which is the device responsible for initiating the propellant combustion that pushes the bullet out of the barrel. 

  Besides the ammo shortage of last year, reloading components, like primers, and reloading tools, have become scarce. 

  “Primers are tough for reloaders to find, too, as more and more of them are being used in making factory ammo,” said gun website Wide Open Spaces. 

  

  Bullets are relatively easy to produce. Brass casings can be reused, and powder is still plentiful, but there’s a bottleneck in ammo production because of the lack of primers. 

  There are only four domestic manufacturers in the US: Federal, CCI, Remington, and Winchester. These firms supply primers to the military and law enforcement and the retail market. 

  So in 2020, when more than 7 million people became first-time gun buyers. They had to buy bullets too. And as a result of the unprecedented demand for ammo, selling out at Walmart, local gun shops, and online websites, the great primer shortage continues. 

  Gun owners are clearly frustrated with excessively high ammo and primer prices that have more than doubled the prices than pre-COVID times. 

  The fact is, ammo companies didn’t have enough capacity to meet demand last year. 

   President of ammunition for Vista Outdoors, Jason Vanderbrink, speaks more about the primer shortage. 

  Due to the ammo and primer shortage, the 3D-printed gun community develops electrical ignitions that replace primers due to the shortage. 

  There are no signs that ammo and primer shortages are abating anytime soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 22:40

• The American Right Is The New Target Of Washington's "War On Terror"
  The American Right Is The New Target Of Washington’s “War On Terror”

  Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

  The security walls around the US Capitol may be removed, but the federal response to the January 6 protests has only just begun. The Democrats in Washington are determined to treat the incident as on par with the events of September 11, which may explain a troubling report about the potential use of the famed No Fly List.

  

  Yesterday Nick Fuentes, a right-wing social media pundit who attended the January 6 protests in the capital, alleged that he has been placed on the federal no-fly list, preventing him from traveling to Florida for a political rally. While Mr. Fuentes shared on social media audio of an airline employee suggesting that his flying restriction did come from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), later that night Tucker Carlson informed his audience that his staff could neither confirm nor deny the report. While critics pointed to previous social media posts which documented his being removed from a plane for failing to comply with mask policies, Fuentes has noted that he had no problem flying to Washington in January.

  It is unclear whether federal authorities will be in any rush to clarify the situation, but there is no reason not to assume that federal authorities would attempt to use this war on terror tool against political opponents. From its inception, what originally began as sixteen names federal authorities had connected to potential future terrorist attacks quickly grew to over 1 million. As is the case with other surveillance tools handed over to the deep state, there is very little oversight or due process involved in how federal authorities handle potential “terrorist threats.”

  Since January there has been a concerted effort by Democrat leaders, former deep state officials, and America’s most despicable neoconservatives to push the Biden administration to utilize the power of the federal government against the supporters of Donald Trump. While the incidents at the Capitol on January 6 are used to justify these calls, the weaponization of federal power against political opponents goes back almost as long as the federal government itself. In more recent years, President Biden’s previous service in the White House saw a Democrat administration that used both the IRS and Department of Homeland Security to target conservatives.

  Another reason to expect escalation from the Biden administration against vocal figures like Fuentes is the unique critique of the current regime from the right. The majority of Republican voters do not simply oppose President Biden due to politics, but flatly reject his democratic legitimacy.

  As Murray Rothbard explained, it is precisely this sort of attack that the state fears most:

  The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State’s intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the “multiplier effect,” it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.

  Thus, ideological support being vital to the State, it must unceasingly try to impress the public with its “legitimacy,” to distinguish its activities from those of mere brigands….

  The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’être.

  This perspective explains the disproportionate treatment that mostly peaceful protesters at the Capitol in January have received in contrast to those arrested during riots in American cities throughout the past year. The state will always treat those who seriously threaten its perceived legitimacy with greater zeal than those guilty of simply destroying the livelihoods of its citizens.

  This also highlights the self-defeating nature of the modern American conservative movement.

  For decades now, the same political party that often gives lip service to “federalism” has often been the party directly responsible for the growth of federal power. As noted earlier, it took exactly one administration before the Department of Homeland Security, created by the Bush administration, began to target the very voters who elected him to office. It was just two election cycles before the PATRIOT Act was used to target a Republican presidential campaign.

  The biggest question that now lies in American politics is whether conservatives are capable of learning from these examples. If the American right is capable of fully absorbing the reality that the greatest threat to their lives, liberty, and prosperity lies domestically—and not abroad—perhaps there is potential for a political rollback of the American empire.

  If not, American conservatives will come to understand how little constitutional rights truly mean in the face of a hostile state.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 22:20

• US Intelligence Tells Congress China's Nuclear Arsenal "On Track To Exceed Our Previous Projection"
  US Intelligence Tells Congress China’s Nuclear Arsenal “On Track To Exceed Our Previous Projection”

  A hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee this week on the range of threats the United States faces globally focused on China and Chinese leadership viewing US power as “declining” while Beijing is “rising” on the world stage.

  Most notable from the testimony is US intelligence’s view of China’s expanding nuclear arsenal, which is projected to at least double over the next decade. While currently the Department of Defense estimates China’s warhead stockpile to be in the low-200s, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, told the Senate hearing on Thursday that a rapid expansion of its stockpile is a top priority for Beijing. To the surprise of lawmakers, he strongly suggested that the DIA’s most resent projections actually underestimated China’s true nuclear expansion and ambitions.

  China is growing more aggressive – expanding its power projection around the world, including in Africa. I’ve seen evidence of it myself. @DefenseIntel Director LTG Berrier confirmed today China is looking to place military forces in Africa, as well as in Latin and South America. pic.twitter.com/qB8RT54Tyl

  — Sen. Jim Inhofe (@JimInhofe) April 29, 2021

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

  “In the span of capabilities that they have, the nuclear piece has been one component. It has been a priority for them,” Berrier told the lawmakers in response to a question by Sen. Tom Cotton, a well-known foremost China hawk. “And I think they have racked and stacked that in the things that they think that they need to get done by 2030 or 2035,” the DIA director followed with.

  Gen. Berrier explained that US defense intelligence now sees China as seeking to outpace even the earlier Pentagon projections. He said:

  “China is expanding and diversifying its nuclear arsenal… Last year, we assessed that China had a nuclear warhead stockpile in the low-200s and projected it to at least double over the next decade.

  Since then, Beijing has accelerated its nuclear expansion and is on track to exceed our previous projection. PLA nuclear forces are expected to continue to grow with their nuclear stockpile likely to at least double in size over this decade and increase the threat to the U.S. homeland.”

  And he further warned China is “probably” seeking to “match” many of America and Russia’s more advanced nuclear warhead capabilities and delivery platforms:

  China probably seeks to narrow, match, or in some areas exceed U.S. qualitative equivalency with new nuclear warheads and delivery platforms that at least equal the effectiveness, reliability, and/or survivability of some U.S. and Russian warheads and delivery platforms under development. The PLA continues to improve its pursuit of a nuclear triad, and increasing evidence indicates that Beijing seeks to keep a portion of its nuclear forces on a “launch-on-warning” posture.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Berrier elsewhere in the testimony affirmed that China is “the long-term strategic competitor to the United States” and remains “as a pacing threat, [Beijing] poses a major security challenge.”

  

  He said Beijing is focusing its defense technology efforts “almost certainly” toward holding” US and allied forces at greater risk and greater distances from the Chinese mainland.”

  In 2020 the Illinois-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated that China possesses 350 nuclear warheads, a number far higher than the more conservative DoD estimate. In its report at the time the think tank wrote, “We estimate that China has a produced a stockpile of approximately 350 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 272 are for delivery by more than 240 operational land-based ballistic missiles, 48 sea-based ballistic missiles, and 20 nuclear gravity bombs assigned to bombers. The remaining 78 warheads are intended to arm additional land- and sea-based missiles that are in the process of being fielded.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 22:00

• Majority Of US Companies Will Require Workers To Provide Proof Of Vaccination
  Majority Of US Companies Will Require Workers To Provide Proof Of Vaccination

  It looks like American colleges won’t be alone in making vaccination mandatory for any students who want to return to campus next semester. Despite the White House’s determination that vaccination shouldn’t be mandatory by law, more than 60% of American companies are reportedly leaning toward requiring proof of vaccination from their employees.

  

  According to a new survey from the Rockefeller Foundation, 65% of businesses will offer some kind of incentive for employees to get vaccinated, while 63% said they will require proof of vaccination before workers can return to the office.

  Another 35% said disciplinary actions are on the table, including the possibility of termination, for those who refuse vaccines.

  The survey, released Thursday, represents the responses of 957 businesses across 24 industries. Most of the respondents were US businesses with 250 employees or more.

  Even after employees have returned to the office, testing will remain a critical piece of the safety plan provided by most employers.

  Looking ahead, roughly two-thirds of employers are planning to allow employees to work from home full-time through 2021, and 73% intend to offer flexible work arrangements when the pandemic is over. However, 73% of businesses want employees to work from the office at least 20 hours a week.

  “This is not just a bubble that goes back to ‘normal’, there will be some positive flexibility after the pandemic ends and we go back to in-person work,” said Mara G. Aspinall, a professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions and one of the authors of the survey.

  As far as employee concerns go, most workers said they’re mostly worried about their personal health, risk of infection and safety of the workplace. And when it comes to returning to the office, 38% of employees want to return eventually but not immediately and about one quarter said they are reluctant to return at all.

  “The pandemic has changed the traditional office environment in many ways, possibly forever, yet a majority of employers are indicating they see real value in employees continuing to interact face-to-face,” Nathaniel L. Wade, a co-author of the study who is also affiliated with ASU’s College of Health Solutions. “We really wanted to make sure we’re giving public information to help people make good decisions.”

  Most employees, about 51%, would prefer to wait until the government or health agencies allow them to return to work, and about 47% said they would return to in-person work when the entire workforce is vaccinated.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:55

• The New Economic World Order After COVID-19
  The New Economic World Order After COVID-19

  Authored by Fred Dunkley via SafeHaven.com,

  “Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.”

  – Chinese proverb.

  A few days ago, China’s President Xi Jinping issued a thinly-veiled attack on the United States, condemning its economic and military hegemony and calling for a new world order whereby “International affairs should be handled by everyone.” Although Xi did not explicitly name the U.S. in his 18-minute speech, he took aim at Washington’s efforts to decouple supply chains from China, specifically the Trump administration’s ban on American semiconductors and other high-tech goods from being sold to Chinese companies such as Huawei.

  Xi lamented the current unilateralism, saying the rules set by one or a few countries ‘‘should not give the whole world a rhythm.’’

  Interestingly, Xi made those comments just days after U.S. President Joe Biden and Japan’s prime minister Yoshihide Suga committed to work together to oppose Chinese coercion in the South and East China Seas. 

  Readers might be wondering which are these privileged economies that might be giving Xi hissy fits.

  Well, it’s mostly the usual suspects, apart from the usual exceptions.

  Whereas the Covid-19 pandemic has sent many economies into their worst economic recessions in recent history, the old world economic order remains mostly intact with the exception of a few notable changes. More importantly, the United States, China, Japan and Germany, in that order, still rank as the world’s largest economies.

  However, some countries have moved places as a result of the pandemic while others are no longer among elite company.

  The data is derived from CNBC, which compares nominal gross domestic product across countries provided in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook database.

  So what are the biggest developments in post-pandemic economic rankings?

  

  Here we go:

  Brazil drops off

  For starters, Brazil has dropped out of Top 10.

  The big news in the New World Order is that Brazil went from being the ninth largest economy in 2019 to the 12th largest last year. Indeed, the South American powerhouse was the only country to fall out of the top 10 ranking.

  Even worse news for BRIC investors: The IMF says Brazil’s time in the cold is likely to last until 2026 when it might return to the Top 10.

  That revelation is hardly surprising, considering that Brazil is currently afflicted by the world’s third-largest caseload of Covid-19 infections, with the health secretary recently warning of an imminent collapse by the country’s health system.

  On a brighter note, the IMF has forecast that Brazil’s economy will expand 3.7% in FY 2021 after contracting 4.1% in 2020.

  South Korea rising

  Naturally, there’s a new entrant to the Top 10, which happens to be South Korea.

  With Brazil dropping out of the world’s 10 biggest economies, South Korea moved up to 10th place with the IMF predicting that it might maintain that spot till 2026.

  South Korea has recorded some success against Covid-19 though cases have been surging again this month.

  However, strong semiconductor exports have been instrumental in limiting economic contraction to just 1% in 2020.

  A global shortage in semiconductor chips has been wreaking havoc on the tech sector, automotive industry, consumer electronics industry, and everything in between. After years of tepid demand, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred a huge tech buying spree with manufacturers of personal computers, tablets, laptops, and gaming consoles­ caught off guard. 

  Indeed, the PC industry has been enjoying a major revival thanks to the work-at-home phenomenon with computer sales in 2020 exceeding 302 million units, good for a 13% Y/Y increase and the most since 2014. At the same time, webcam sales surged almost 360% with video conferencing becoming the new buzzword of modern communication.

  The trade war between the United States and China has only served to make a bad situation worse.

  In a decision announced last fall, the U.S. Commerce Department declared Chinese chip manufacturer Semiconductor Manufacturing International or SMIC, persona non grata after determining the company supplies the Chinese military with chips thus making it a threat to national security. The federal government restricted SMIC from obtaining some U.S.-regulated chip-making equipment leading to U.S. buyers cutting back orders from the company. SMIC is one of the largest manufacturers of semiconductor chips, accounting for about 5% of global semiconductor supply.

  Luckily, South Korea’s chip manufacturers have largely remained in Washington’s good books.

  U.K. leapfrogs India

  Another piece of bad news for BRIC investors: India, the world’s fifth largest economy in 2019, slipped to sixth place after the U.K. leapfrogged it.

  Unlike Brazil though, the IMF says the South Asian country could regain fifth place as early as 2023. 

  India has struggled to contain the pandemic even amidst widespread lockdowns, with the IMF predicting that the economy contracted a whopping 8% in FY 2020 which ended in March 2021.

  On its part, the U.K. has rolled out the second-most most successful Covid-19 vaccination program after the U.S. In fact, businesses in the country are doing brisk business after lockdown reopening–another big plus for the economy.

  In the final analysis, the old order appears set to remain mostly unchanged especially at the top echelons. U.S. businesses remain eager to expand their operations in China after the Asian nation recorded 18.3% year-on-year economic growth in the first quarter of 2021 but are constrained by geopolitical tensions between the two nations remaining high with the Biden administration recently announcing that it will maintain most of the Trump-era tariffs. This is unlikely to change anytime soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:40

• Farm Robot Zaps Weeds With High-Powered Lasers, Eliminates Need For Toxic Herbicides
  Farm Robot Zaps Weeds With High-Powered Lasers, Eliminates Need For Toxic Herbicides

  In the same way, a self-driving car sees its surroundings on city streets, sensors that use machine learning technology allow farm robots to navigate fields. Automation is a growing presence in the farm industry, and a new generation of autonomous robots is helping farmers shape tomorrow’s crops.

  Crops that can be harvested with barely any or no herbicides would be beneficial not just to humans but also to the environment. An oddly-shaped autonomous farm tractor can eliminate the need for toxic herbicides by using high-powered lasers to weed about 20 acres per day to solve this dilemma. 

  

  Robotics company Carbon Robotics unveiled its newest weed elimination robot, Autonomous Weeder, which leverages artificial intelligence, sensors, and lasers to eliminate weeds on commercial farms.

  

  “Traditional chemicals used by farmers, such as herbicides, deteriorate soil health and are tied to health problems in humans and other mammals. A laser-powered, autonomous weed management solution reduces or eliminates farmers’ needs for herbicides,” Carbon Robotics’ website said. 

  

  Autonomous Weeder offers an economical path towards organic farming that is generally labor-intensive. The robot also reduces the highly variable cost of manual labor. 

  “AI and deep learning technology are creating efficiencies across a variety of industries, and we’re excited to apply it to agriculture,” said Carbon Robotics CEO and Founder Paul Mikesell. 

  Mikesell continued: “Farmers, and others in the global food supply chain, are innovating now more than ever to keep the world fed. Our goal at Carbon Robotics is to create tools that address their most challenging problems, including weed management and elimination.”

  Here’s a demo video of the farm robot zapping weeds in a field. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:20

• The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 2: Moral Hazards In Space
  The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 2: Moral Hazards In Space

  Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

  Read Part 1 here…

  “Insufficient facts always invite danger.”

  Is it right to let a small number of very wealthy entrepreneurs fill Earth’s already crowded orbital space to establish non-terrestrial internet monopolies? What are the risks, and are the costs justified? Should orbital space be a public good?

  

  A few years ago I read a Sci-fi novel where the moon breaks into three parts. Everyone oohs and ahhs at the beauty of the new multiple moon system until it becomes apparent the new moons are colliding, creating hundred of smaller pieces. The pace of collisions increases chaotically towards a tipping point as the number of rocks increases, until the space debris starts bombarding the earth, wiping out life on the planet. Devasting stuff, and very unlikely.

  But there is a genuine scientific parallel.

  There are already millions of pieces of space junk orbiting the planet – ranging from broken satellites to discarded space gloves, some spanners and lots of flecks of paint that’s broken off spaceships. These orbit at stupendous speed. If they hit anything, they have the potential to cause enormous damage. If they destroy anything, then a single piece of debris can create a whole cloud of debris, each piece of which can cause similar damage, raising the potential of critical out of control chain reaction and a cloud of debris making space travel very dangerous.

  Scary… if you are spaceman.

  Many smart Tech investors consider the most valuable private company on the planet is Elon Musk’s Space X and his internet constellation Starlink. There are a host of other firms also shooting for space-based coms dominance; including the UK government’s recently acquired OneWeb, Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper (funded by Amazon), ViaSat and Telesat. All of them want to launch satellites into low-earth-orbit to win a share of space-based internet.

  Space X is doing a superb job transporting astronauts to the ISS. They are perfecting reusable rockets. I’m excited they may fly to the moon. I’ll be even happier if Musk gets his way and goes to Mars. I’ve written about the company a number of times: To the Stars, But Mars First, and Rocketmen and Viruses.

  Despite my admiration… I am not convinced we actually need the Starlink system. The risk it might destroy the viability of future space-based businesses is very small. But do we really need multiple competing space-based systems? And if not, should not Orbital Space be a public good regulated for the good of all, rather than the enrichment of the few?

  Wouldn’t it be better environmentally, at a much lower cost to simply continue to improve current terrestrial connectivity, rather than lob up hundreds of nasty big polluting rockets on the basis some Nutjob prepper in isolation in the Rockies will be able to post insane hatred on the internet? Maybe all these rockets could be used for obtaining resources from the solar system, or learning more about space based threats like asteroids or solar flares?

  Space based internet is a reality. It’s interesting to note the French have now taken a stake in OneWeb, where the UK holds the golden share.

  Today there may be 4000 satellites in orbit – a number that has nearly doubled in just a few years. That number is set to increase quadratically as all the new Satellite constellations go up.

  It was once fun to spot the occasional satellite traversing the sky, or streaking across a telescope viewfinder. Astronomers increasingly report trains of satellites are obscuring their stellar observations. The new Starlink satellites are 99% brighter than other “objects of all types currently in Earth Orbit”, said a US University of Michigan astronomer. There are around 9000 visible stars – but they are increasingly fazed by clouds of satellites “crawling” across the skies.

  Who cares about Astronomers when there is money to be made? Well… I do!

  The Low Earth Orbital (LEO) space will become increasingly crowded with potentially 30-40,000 new active satellites to be launched in the next few years. The lower their orbits, the more dense and more concentrated orbital risks become – but the advantage is shorter latency, the time delay caused by distance. LEO satellites latency should compare with pre-5G terrestrial internet in terms of speed of communication.

  But, as I said in the intro, space debris is a rising risk. A malfunctioning satellite is just a lump shooting round the planet at 25k mph looking for something else to hit. The denser the space becomes, the riskier it gets. For years space geeks have warned about debris circling the planet. The proverbial fleck of paint has enough momentum to destroy a satellite or puncture the International Space Station (ISS).

  The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering a request from Space X to lower the orbits of nearly 3000 licenced units from 1000 km to 550 km orbits, joining the 1400 Starlink birds already flying at 540-580 km. Jeff Bezos intends to layer his 3,236 unit Kuiper belt of satellites at 630km. Orbital Space is getting crowded.

  The UK’s OneWeb claim Space X had a near collision with its satellites in early April – which Space X says never happened.  A battle is underway – Kuiper and OneWeb are objecting to the lowered Starlink orbits, noting a collision would be like a “bomb” going off. Their argument makes sense – if satellites collide they break up into lots of smaller random pieces of debris, each a little bomb in its own right.

  Each little piece of debris has the potential to hit something else – a chain reaction creating more and more debris eventually obliterating all functional satellites in LEO, and potentially forming a barrier to future launches to higher orbits. It’s a doomsday scenario the boffins claim will happen.

  Of course, boffins always predict the worse. The sky may be full of junk, but collisions are very rare. During the last unpleasantness in Europe, there were multiple predictions that bomber streams raiding Germany in the dark would experience multiple collisions – which seldom happened. There are far more instances of bombers being hit by bombs dropped from above them.

  Musk also disagrees about the risks. His team say LEO is safer. Musk is very keen because he has identified that a vast constellation of LEO satellites covering the entire planet is his second road to riches. If he can charge $80 a month for access, he gets rich (see previous Morning Porridge:   He will also take a considerable subsidy from the US government ($20 bln over ten years) to provide rural internet services.

  But do we need to use satellites?

  The history of communications satellites goes back to Telstar in the 1960s. In the 1990s a host of telecoms companies including Globalstar and Iridium planned satellite coms networks, but with the rapid rollout and increasing speed of terrestrial internet and mobile phones left the ultra-expensive satellite systems floundering. They never found widespread adoption. (On the yacht I still have an Iridium phone – but I won’t renew any contract until I know I’m going to be miles offshore. A $89 Starlink connection might be a much better option.)

  LEO Starlink satellites will only stay in orbit 3-5 years and then need replaced before they burn up in the atmosphere. They are cheap and cheerful to manufacture – which makes them look a viable alternative to terrestrial internet. However, the apparent simplicity hides the reality. The biggest cost is launch – even Space X’s reusable Falcon rockets cost money. Generally, costs come in at $45-65K per kilogramme. Then there is the cost of Earth Station Antennas. The new sat firms all expect widespread adoption will bring down costs. Expectations are just another type of hope – which is never a good investment strategy!

  The bottom line is the evolving battle for Earth’s orbital space is another example where Tech is in danger of trumping common sense. Musk has first mover advantage, and he’s using his reusable rockets to establish himself as a monopoly supplier.

  I will admit… I find Musk…. distasteful. There is a great article on him in this morning’s WSJ: Elon Musk’s War on Regulators.  To quote: “Federal Agencies say he’s breaking the rules and endangering people.” The article sums him up well.. A toddler who will do anything to get his way. A narcissistic showman with a nasty streak – his appalling treatment and slander of a British cave-diver who laughed at his showboating plans to rescue stranded children in a cave demonstrated his contempt for others and sense of entitlement.

  I lost faith in Tesla around that time – it cost me the future stock upside when I dumped most of my position. I justify it because I ascribe to the view companies are part of society, and must follow social rules and conventions. Musk does not. He doesn’t do sorry, play by the rules or take responsibility for his actions. He gets away with it because he feels entitled to do so. He may or may not be a genius – that’s immaterial.

  What are the dangers? 2000 satellites per annum crashing back on to the planet? Crowded orbital space? Small. But would you trust the future to Musk? Is it right he’ll get to farm monopoly profits by taking away our view of the stars and future?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:00

• Soaring Copper Prices Send Crippling Shockwaves Across China's Economy
  Soaring Copper Prices Send Crippling Shockwaves Across China’s Economy

  As if China didn’t have (soaring) debt, (shrinking) demographic and (pent up) default nightmares to struggle with every night (and realistically, every day) it can now add one more splitting headache to its rosters of economic challenges: soaring prices in the one commodity that is absolutely critical for China’s rapidly growing economy. Copper.

  While commodity and copper bulls have enjoyed a tremendous start to the year with the price of copper surpassing $10K earlier this week and set to make new all time highs, Copper’s eyewatering price – which Goldman expects to keep rising for years due to an unprecedented supply/demand imbalance – is causing ripples of stress for industrial consumers in China, the world’s largest market for the metal. As Bloomberg reports, “some Chinese manufacturers of electric wire have idled units and delayed deliveries or even defaulted on bank loans, according to a survey by the Shanghai Metals Market.” Meanwhile, end-users such as power grids and property developers have also been pushing back delivery times, unable to pay for the metal, while producers of copper rods and pipes saw orders slump this week, said the researcher.

  Copper’s rally – which is fueled by soaring global demand resulting from trillions in stimulus, near-zero interest rates and the global economic recovery from Covid-19 – sent the price above $10,000 a metric ton on Thursday for the first time in a decade, making it among the best performers in a scorching surge in metals prices.

  “Domestic copper users are feeling the pain right now after the recent surge caught them off guard,” said Fan Rui, an analyst at Guoyuan Futures Co. “Electric wire producers are being hit the most, with smaller plants keeping run rates low as the spike is seen slowing the pace of investment by power grids.”

  In a clear indication that the laws of supply and demand still work somewhere, as the price of copper exploded, Chinese spot purchases of copper have weakened significantly amid the copper rally…

  

  … while the latest Chinese manufacturing PMI index slipped in April and the services sector also weakened, suggesting the economy is still recovering but at a slower pace. And while China – the biggest end user of physical copper may be approaching its demand limit  – analysts at banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are predicting further gains for the metal as the global economy picks up pace.

  To cynics who still remember Goldman’s $200 oil price target in the summer of 2008, Goldman’s copper euphoria is just a way to offload its own exposure to naive clients.

  Sure enough, Bloomberg notes that in a sign of potential weakness in Chinese physical demand, the spot contract traded at a discount of as much as 215 yuan a ton ($33) to Shanghai futures’ prices this week, the widest in about 10 months. The appetite for imports is also low, with the Yangshan copper premium, paid on top of benchmark LME prices, slumped to the lowest since data were first published in 2017.

  Furthermore, there is a precedent for demand destruction in China amid higher prices, according to BMO Capital Markets analyst Colin Hamilton. Hamilton pointed to 2006 where prices recorded the largest January-April gain on record and came amid a credit-fueled sudden acceleration in developed world demand.

  “2006 was the only year this century where annual Chinese copper consumption fell on a y/y basis, as marginal buyers simply stepped away,” Hamilton said in a note, hinting that 2021 may be the second such year unless copper prices don’t stabilize.

  Higher price levels also could see marginal buyers pull back in the near term and look to substitute in the medium term.

  “$10,000/t copper now is the biggest danger to future demand use, particularly in these nascent trends where material selection is still evolving,” said Hamilton. “There is no doubt copper may be best for electrical or heat transfer performance, but with the ratio to aluminium now well above the 3.5:1 level where we consider substitution accelerates, the risk is clear.”

  Copper fell 0.8% to $9,806 a ton on London Metal Exchange on Friday after reaching $10,008 on Thursday, the highest since February 2011. Aluminum also fell, while nickel rose.

  

  While physical demand may be reaching its limits, the financial demand for copper remains strong as speculators – who never plan to accept physical delivery – keep pushing the price higher on the back of generous leverage and trillions in central bank liquidity. The question is when does this artificial push higher reach its limits, and will the upcoming crash in copper be similar to the plunge in oil in the late summer of 2008, when brent collapsed from $150 to $30 right around the time of the Great Lehman Delevearging.

  Until then, we eagerly await for the new round of horror stories involving rehypothecated Chinese copper which as a reminder, is not only the most important commodity propping up China’s economy but also the key anchor behind hundreds of billions in Chinese Copper Financing Deals or CCFDs which we have discussed extensively in the past. One place we are closely watching is Chinese brokerage Dalu Futures which in late February amassed a $1 billion long position in copper contracts within just four days…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 20:40

• "The Social Contract Is Broken": Why Millennials Who Lack Rich Parents Feel Increasingly Hopeless
  “The Social Contract Is Broken”: Why Millennials Who Lack Rich Parents Feel Increasingly Hopeless

  The worsening precarity of the millennial generation has been a hot topic for the financial press over the last year, and it hasn’t failed to disappoint. Thinkpieces about crushing student loan debt, rising housing prices placing home-ownership further out of reach, and the soul-crushing intensity of formerly sought-after jobs in finance have abounded. And now, the Financial Times has launched a new series where it explores some of the biggest problems facing its millennial readers. And what the report discovered might come as a surprise to some. Picking up where that PowerPoint about the miserable working conditions of Goldman junior analysts left off, the FT reported that even millennials with strong resumes and “good jobs” who “did everything right” are “drowning in insecurity.”

  As the FT sees it, millennials’ fate will depend largely upon whether they’re the progeny of wealthy families, or not. Those who can depend on “the bank of mom and dad” for an interest-free loan (or a generous inheritance) will always have an advantage in procuring the best homes, jobs and school placement as entry to the upper echelon of society still largely depends on having access to the best schools and alumni networks. Millennials who don’t enjoy these advantages will be forced to compete in a market set up to cater to those who do.

  

  Source: FT

  But while that conclusion is relatively self-evident, an even more surprising detail from the FT’s report is that once-safe careers in investment banking and private equity no longer convey the same promise of long-term security. As an example of these phenomon, the FT introduces Akin Ogundele, who works in London’s financial sector, and lives in the city with his wife and young family. The fact that he’s struggling to pay his bills in a rental flat, with little hope of affording his own home any time soon, has given him a “sense that the social contract is broken for his generation…” something that’s shared by many young people “and not just in London.”

  Many of the story’s most striking examples are delivered with a quote. Here are a few of our favorites:

  • “If I carry on the way I am, I’m not sure what I’ll be able to pass down,” he says. “It can’t be good for the country — the disparities are just going to grow, the wealthy are going to grow wealthier and those that aren’t will get more and more removed.”

  • For Killian Mangan, who graduated during the pandemic last year and struggled to find a job, it feels as if “we are drowning in insecurity with no help in sight”. A twenty-something who works for a central bank says: “I sometimes have this feeling that we are edging towards a precipice, or falling in it already.”

  • A 30-something who works in private equity in the UK turns to collateralised debt obligations for a metaphor to describe the position of his generation. “The space I feel I occupy in the sociopolitical order is akin to being the first loss tranche in the debt stack,” he says. “Whenever anything bad happens I have no doubt that, because we lack political and economic clout, we will be left holding the bag.”

  • “At the moment, while the wealth is still held by older generations it shows up in the data as a difference between generations, but wealth doesn’t disappear, it’s going to flow down and [then] it moves on to being an issue about inequality within younger generations,” says David Sturrock, an IFS senior research economist. “It’s basically saying how much you stand to gain depends on who your parents are and the wealth they have.” Many developed countries share “a lot of the same dynamics”, he adds.

  • “I ate spaghetti for a month in 2009 because the company I worked for was owned by a private equity firm, which thought it best to cut me so it could buy out smaller competitors,” says Jim from California in the US. “They eventually hired me back for close to half the pay…way to develop talent, right?”

  • “After 30 or so rejections, I was chosen out of a pool of 2,500 applicants to undergo a psychometric test, followed by a video interview, followed by an assessment centre, followed by a week-long virtual scheme culminating in an interview before being offered a two-year training contract,” says Hadrien, a recent UK graduate. “We are competing with machines and bots, and an ever increasing population of skilled humans,” says another.

  But while some might dismiss these quotes as more whining from millennials who have nobody but themselves to blame for being duped into taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a four-year liberal arts degree, the FT also peppered the story with data supporting this vision of a downwardly mobile fate.

  It started with data showing fewer millennials will out-earn their parents.

  

  Source: FT

  And how feelings of career insecurity are shared by young people around the world, in both developing and emerging economies.

  

  Source: FT

  Millennials, meanwhile, struggling with a stubbornly low share of household wealth (partly a factor of the wealth-draining impact of student loans).

  

  Source: FT

  According to an editor’s note, the story is merely the first in a series about the myriad problems facing the millennial generation. While we’re sure its audience will appreciate the FT’s attempt to court more youthful readers, we suspect it might come off as a tad whiny. After all, millennials just had the opportunity to get in on one of the greatest wealth-creation engines of all time (crypto) while boomer CEOs were mostly left scratching their heads.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 20:22

• "3 Or 4" Senators Will Run For President In 2024: McConnell
  “3 Or 4” Senators Will Run For President In 2024: McConnell

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Several current Republican senators will run for president in the next election cycle, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Thursday.

  

  McConnell during a Fox News appearance responded to former President Donald Trump, a possible candidate who again criticized the longtime senator earlier in the day.

  “We need good leadership. Mitch McConnell has not done a great job. I think they should change Mitch McConnell,” Trump said.

  The relationship between the two Republicans has frayed for months.

  McConnell responded by saying that Republicans are “looking in the future, not the past.”

  He pointed to Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s speech on Wednesday night, saying Scott “is the future” of the GOP and laid out where the Republican Party has arrived.

  Trump also said, “100 percent I’m thinking about running,” noting that he drew some 12 million more votes in the 2020 election than he received in 2016.

  

  Then-President Donald Trump speaks to the media after signing a bill for border funding in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on July 1, 2019. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

  McConnell affirmed on Fox that he will back whomever voters choose as the GOP nominee in 2024.

  “I’m going to support the nominee of the Republican Party,” McConnell said.

  “I do predict, however, there’s going to be a robust competition for the nomination. I’ve got three or four members of the Senate who are going to be running for president in 2024, once that all sorts itself out, as the Republican leader of the Senate, obviously, I’ll be supporting the Republican nominee for president in 2024.”

  McConnell did not name which senators he was referring to, but Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and Scott are among the rumored potential candidates.

  Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are also considered possible candidates. Both ran in 2016.

  Others who have been mentioned as potentially running on the Republican side include former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.

  Trump on Thursday said he is considering DeSantis as his running mate if he does run.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 20:20

• When Murray Rothbard Predicted The Menthol Ban
  When Murray Rothbard Predicted The Menthol Ban

  Murray Rothbard wrote the following article in August 1994…

  Quick: Which is America’s Most Persecuted Minority? No, you’re wrong. (And it’s not Big Business either: one of Ayn Rand’s more ludicrous pronouncements.)

  All right, consider this: Which group has been increasingly illegalized, shamed and denigrated first by the Establishment, and then, following its lead, by society at large? Which group, far from coming out of the “closet,” has been literally forced back into the closet after centuries of walking proudly in the public square? And which group has tragically internalized the value-system of its oppressors, so that they are deeply ashamed and guilty about practicing their rites and customs? Which group is so brow-beaten that it never thinks of defending itself, any attempt at which is publicly condemned and ridiculed? Which group is considered such sinners that the use of doctored statistics against them is considered legitimate means in a worthy cause?

  

  I refer, of course, to that once proud race, tobacco-smokers, a group once revered and envied, but now there are none so poor as to do them reverence.

  So low has this group sunk in the public esteem that, in rushing to their defense, I am obliged to point out that I myself am not and never have been a smoker. Can you imagine having to put in such a disclaimer against special pleading in behalf of the rights of blacks, Jews, or gays against oppression?

  The crusade against smoking is only the currently most virulent example of one of the most malignant forces in American life: left neo-Puritanism. Puritanism was famously defined by my favorite writer, H.L. Mencken, as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” The major problem with the Puritans is not so much that they were a dour lot, but that they were believers in the dangerous Christian heresy of “post-millennialism” that is, that it is man’s responsibility to establish a thousand-year (give or take a few centuries) Kingdom of God on Earth as a precondition of the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. Since the Kingdom is by definition a perfect society free of sin, this means that it is the theological duty of believers to establish a sin-free society. But establishing a sin-free society, of course, means taking stern measures to get rid of sinners, which is where the rub comes in.

  Now I recognize that in being obliged to depict the crusaders as neo-Puritans, I am in a deep sense not doing justice to the original Puritans. The original seventeenth-century New England Puritans were not so much crusaders as people who wanted to establish their own sin-free Kingdom in their own new settlements, their own “city on a hill.” The original Puritans, too, were Calvinists, who believed in Christianity and a Christian commonwealth as a strict code of Biblical and God-determined law. But over the years, the original Puritanism was replaced, especially by a wave of pietist revivalism in the late 1820s, by a far more crusading and hence menacing version of Protestant Christianity: what is technically known as “post-millennial evangelical pietism” (PMEP). This PMEP took particular root among the ethno-cultural descendants of the old Puritans, people who became known as “Yankees,” and who had migrated from New England to populate such areas as upstate New York, northern and eastern Ohio, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois. (No, “Yankees,” as in “damn Yankees,” did not mean simply “Northerners.”)

  This new, and malignant, form of PMEP, of neo-Puritanism, which literally dominated all the mainstream Protestant churches in the North for literally one hundred years, had the following traits: (1) Creed, or liturgy, is formalistic and unimportant. So long as you are a Protestant, it doesn’t matter what church you belong to. Churches don’t matter; the only thing that matters is the individual’s salvation. (2) To achieve salvation, the individual must believe and must be free from sin. (3) “Sin,” however, is very broadly defined as virtually any practice that is enjoyable, in particular, anything which might “cloud your mind” so that you might not achieve salvation: in particular, liquor (Demon Rum); any activity on the Sabbath except praying, reading the Bible, and going to church (and not the Roman Catholic Church, the instrument of the Antichrist in the Vatican); (4) Since each individual is weak and subject to temptation, his salvation must be aided by the government, whose theological duty it is to stamp out such occasions for sin as liquor, activity of any secular sort on the Sabbath, and the Catholic Church. As one historian aptly summed up the PMEP attitude toward the State: “Government is God’s major instrument of salvation.” After all, how are liquor or Catholics to be stamped out by persuasion alone? (5) (the crucial icing on the cake): You will not be saved unless you try your darndest to maximize everyone else’s salvation (i.e., get the government to stamp out sin).

  

  Armed with this five-point world-outlook, the neo-Puritan PMEP hurled himself (and herself, and how!) into a devilishly energetic, hopped-up, unrelenting crusade to stamp out these evils, and to set up paternalistic Big Government on the local, state, and national levels to crush sin and to usher in a perfect sin-less Kingdom. In politics, this meant a full century of crusading against liquor, and to keep the Sabbath Holy. (Do you know that in libertarian, anti-neo-Puritan Jacksonian America, the Post Office used to deliver the mail on Sundays?) But since it would be clearly unconstitutional to outlaw the Catholic Church, the PMEP substitute was to try to force all children into a network of public schools, the object of which was to inculcate obedience to the State and, in the popular slogan of the day, to “Christianize the Catholic” kids, since Catholic adults were clearly doomed.

  It took archetypical neo-Puritan Woodrow Wilson not only to bring Prohibition to America, and thereby fulfill the PMEP’s most cherished dreams, but also to take PMEP crusading on to a world scale. For after the Kingdom was established in America, the next holy step was to bring about a worldwide Kingdom. (The Prohibitionist crusaders, however, soon found their dreams of a liquor-free Europe dashed beyond repair.)

  The ethno-religious group that felt the most severe oppression from the fanatical harridans of the PMEP (for yes, the most fanatic crusaders were Yankee women, especially spinsters) were the German-American Catholics and High-Church Lutherans. Both of these groups imported into America the charming and admirable custom of going to church on Sundays with their family in their best finery, and then repairing to a beer garden in the afternoon, where they could drink beer and listen to their beloved oom-pah-pah bands. You can imagine the reaction when hordes of PMEP harridans descended upon them crying “Sin! Evil! Smash!” for committing what to the Germans was harmless, but what to the PMEPs was the grave double sin of drinking beer, and on Sundays! And, furthermore, both the Catholics and the German Lutherans wanted to bring up their kids in their own parochial schools, and not in the secularist (or rather, PMEP) public school system!

  The high-water mark of PMEP crusading was, of course, the outlawing of all liquor (and by constitutional amendment, no less!). The result used to be common knowledge in America; absolute disaster: tyranny, corruption, black markets and more alcoholism as people went underground to get more intense “fixes” such as hard liquor rather than beer before the cops could close in. And, of course, organized crime, which was almost non-existent before Prohibition. But now, only groups willing to be criminals were available to supply a much desired and demanded product.

  This grim lesson used to be known to all Americans, but it has been lost in the enthusiasm for recent neo-Puritan crusades; against drugs, and now against smoking. What is little realized is that the current reason for the crusade was also present during the old PMEP war against liquor. As the decades wore on, the neo-Puritans used both theological and medicinal arguments; liquor will not only send you to Hell, but would also ruin your temporal body, your liver, your body-as-a-temple. Liquor would cause you to beat your wives, have more accidents, and, a little later, injure yourself and others on the road. Increasingly, over the years, the PMEPs married theology and Science in their crusade.

  So what happened to the aggressively Christian features of neo-Puritanism, to the emphasis on salvation and on the Kingdom? Interestingly, over the decades, the Christian aspect gradually disappeared. After all, if as a Christian activist, your major focus is not on creed or liturgy but on using the government to shape everyone up and stamp out sin, eventually Christ fades out of the picture and government remains. The picture of the Kingdom of God on Earth becomes secularized or atheized, and, in the Marxist version, the secular sin-free Kingdom is brought about by the terrible swift sword of the “saints” of the Communist Party. We have arrived at the grisly land of Left Puritanism, of a Left Kingdom which proposes to bring about a perfect world free of tobacco, inequality, greed, and hate-thoughts. We have arrived, in short, in the land of The Enemy.

  And so, smokers! Are you mice or are you men? Smokers, rise up, be proud, throw off the guilt imposed on you by your oppressors! Stand tall, and smoke! Defend your rights! Do you really think that someone can get instant lung cancer by imbibing a bit of smoke from someone sitting twenty feet away in an outdoor arena? How do you explain the fact that millions of people have smoked all their lives without ill effect?

  And remember, if today they come for the smoker, tomorrow they will come for you. If today they grab your cigarette, tomorrow they will seize your junk food, your carbohydrates, your yummy but “empty” calories. And don’t think that your liquor is safe either; neo-Prohibitionism has been long on the march, what with “sin taxes” (revealing term, isn’t it?), outlawing of advertising, higher drinking ages, and the neo-Puritan harpies of MADD. Are you ready for the Left Nutritional Kingdom, with everyone forced to confine his food to yogurt and tofu and bean sprouts? Are you ready to be confined in a cage, to make sure that your diet is perfect, and that you get the prescribed Compulsory Exercise? All to be governed by a Hillary Clinton National Health Board?

  Smokers, if you have the guts to form a Smokers Defense League, I will be happy to join a Non-Smokers Auxiliary! How about smokers as one important mass base for a right-wing populist counterrevolution?

  This article originally appeared at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and The Libertarian Institute.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 19:40

• Toyota Is Building Its Own Autonomous City Next To Mount Fuji
  Toyota Is Building Its Own Autonomous City Next To Mount Fuji

  Many auto executives have said the “missing link” for autonomous success has been cities being wired to funnel data to cars for them to be able to meaningfully drive themselves. So Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is now setting its sights on building an all-autonomous city. 

  Toyota President Akio Toyoda kicked off the idea by gathering with Shinto priests at the base of Mount Fuji and praying for success. At an area where the company recently shuttered a factory, the automaker’s focus has turned to the idea of a 175-acre community to test future technologies such as autonomous vehicles, according to Bloomberg.

  Toyoda said: “It’s a new chapter in our story and in our industry.”

  

  Toyota is calling it the “Woven City” and it’ll be located about a 2 hour drive from Tokyo. The city will hand pick its residents and will test not only autonomous vehicles, but autonomous deliveries and mobile shops. Construction is expected to be completed in 2024.

  Hiroki Kuriyama, senior vice president of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., has said that cities feeding cars information will be the “the next big leap forward” for autonomous. His company is partnering with Toyota to develop the technology needed for the city. 

  Kuriyama notes that sensors and cameras built into infrastructure – and possibly even data from mobile phones – will make it easier to gather data that can then be “processed via optical networks” before being fed to cars, allowing them to navigate safely. 

  Toyota announced this week is was buying Lyft’s autonomous self-driving operations for $550 million. As a result of that deal, Toyota will take on 300 new employees and will ascertain tons of data that Lyft has already collected. 

  

  James Kuffner, Toyota’s chief digital officer and head of Woven Planet said the combination “can create a scalable solution that brings mobility beyond what we’re seeing today.” He continued: “Woven City will allow us to try out different city infrastructure. If cars and cities can communicate with each other in a smart way, I think we can build safer systems.”

  The city will also feature smart homes that take on their own trash and restock their own refrigerators. The city’s ecosystem will be powered by hydrogen. 

  Nakanishi Research Institute head Takaki Nakanishi said: “Mobility, living and cities are going to become connected, and control of that standardized software, that’s what everyone wants.”

  Kuriyama is confident the technology being used in the Woven City will be available within 5 to 10 years. “But what’s important is whether residents living in other cities will welcome those technologies,” he said. 

  

  Alexander Soley, an independent consultant focusing on autonomous vehicles, said: “When it comes to new technologies, you can’t just release them and expect them to get picked up, they need to sit with people for a good period of time.”

  “Elderly families are a group targeted to live in the city. How will they feel about stepping foot in a car without a driver? That’s what Toyota’s trying to figure out,” he continued.

  The town is going to house about 360 visiting scientists, Toyota employees, families and retirees. That number will eventually push into the thousands. The estimate costs is “upwards of a billion dollars” to build the city. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 19:20

• Oklahoma House Votes To Ban Teaching Of Critical Race Theory In Public Schools
  Oklahoma House Votes To Ban Teaching Of Critical Race Theory In Public Schools

  Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

  The Oklahoma House on Thursday voted to ban public schools and universities from teaching critical race theory in civics and history classes. After hours of discussion and debate, the GOP-controlled House voted 70-19 in favor of the bill, HB1775, which now heads to Gov. Kevin Stitt’s desk to be signed into law.

  

  It would prevent a number of topics, including that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another,” and that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive,” from being taught in the state.

  The sponsor of the bill, Republican state Rep. Kevin West said in a statement that students are being taught that because they’re a certain race or sex, they’re “inherently superior to others or should feel guilty for something that happened in the past.”

  “We’re trying to set boundaries that we as a state say will not be crossed when we’re teaching these kinds of subjects,” West said.

  Democrats argued that the bill was a waste of time and addressed a problem that doesn’t exist.

  “Instead of focusing on the real issues facing Oklahomans, the majority party continues their attack on anyone in Oklahoma who might not look, think, love, or act like them,” said state House Minority Leader Rep. Emily Virgin, a Democrat from Norman.

  Critical race theory has gradually proliferated in recent decades through academia, government structures, school systems, and the corporate world. It redefines human history as a struggle between the “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), similarly to Marxism’s reduction of history to a struggle between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.”

  It labels institutions that emerged in majority-white societies as racist and “white supremacist.”

  Like Marxism, it advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the critical race theory ideology.

  In February, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York condemned critical race theory, describing it as an outgrowth of the European Marxist school of critical theory that interprets American social and political life through the lens of a power struggle between the race of the oppressor and that of the oppressed.

  Proponents of critical race theory have argued that the theory is merely “demonstrating how pervasive systemic racism truly is.”

  In one of his first executive actions in the White House, President Joe Biden rescinded his predecessor’s ban of critical race theory in federal workplaces. Former President Donald Trump’s September 2020 executive order declared that diversity and inclusion training for federal employees should not promote “un-American” and “divisive concepts.”

  Biden instead issued an executive order stating that the federal government must pursue “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.”

  News of the Oklahoma vote comes days after Idado Gov. Brad Little signed into law a bill, H 377 (pdf), that would prevent the teaching of critical race theory in the Gem State’s public schools and universities.

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last month denounced critical race theory as hateful.

  “There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,” he said, announcing that the state’s new civic curriculum will explicitly exclude critical race theory.

  “Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”

  Elsewhere, Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, and West Virginia have said that they aim to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools, workplaces, and government agencies.

  Gov. Stitt’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 19:00

• Chlorine Prices Explode Just In Time For Peak Pool Season
  Chlorine Prices Explode Just In Time For Peak Pool Season

  Here’s another example of the butterfly effect.

  By now everyone knows that a March fire at a plant owned by Japanese chipmaker Renesas was the straw that broke the semiconductor camel’s back, and what were already stretched chip supply chains collapsed, forcing countless companies – from carmarkers to defense contractors – to put production on halt indefinitely until chip inventories had restocked.

  But did you know that a fire at a factor last summer could make operating a swimming pool this year prohibitively expensive?

  Late last summer, a massive fire broke out at a chemical plant in Lake Charles, LA after Hurricane Laura passed overhead. The chemical blaze was extinguished after three days, and was quickly forgotten… until this week, when Goldman reported that the August 2020 fire had sparked industry-wide chlorine shortages and price inflation.

  In recent weeks this story has received more widespread attention as media outlets nationwide have begun covering the severity of the problem, highlighting the possibility of a chlorine shortage during peak pool season in the summer months. Back in March, Goldman surveyed 11 regional pool retailers who at the time unanimously indicated that chlorine prices were on the rise, with most expressing uncertainty with regard to whether or not they will have enough chlorine to sell for the upcoming pool season.

  In retrospect, the answer was a resounding no: according to IHS Markit, chlorine prices were up ~37% YoY in March 2021, with prices expected to surge 58% from June to August this year.

  

  To address the fallout, Goldman surveyed 26 pool supply shops across the country, with most respondents located in pool-centric markets like TX, CA, NV, NM, and AZ. Of the 26 pool shops the bank spoke to, 15 expressed uncertainty or doubt when asked about whether they will have enough chlorine for pool season.

  As if that wasn’t enough, adding to the pressure created by the chlorine shortage, respondents called out a plastic bucket shortage, driven by COVID-related manufacturing slowdowns, which has made procuring certain volume sizes of chlorine more difficult for retailers, and has led suppliers to deliver chlorine in either bags or in buckets with different colored lids, according to respondents.

  One respondent noted that suppliers are slowing production of smaller-sized buckets of chlorine tabs (8-lb, 12-lb), with the focus shifting to larger 50-lb buckets. With customers buying up the smaller-sized buckets of chlorine, this particular store plans to only have 50-lb buckets left to sell within the next week, which are slightly more profitable, according to the respondent.

  When asked about whether the cost and availability of chlorine have improved in the last month or so, several respondents noted that while the supply of chlorine has improved somewhat, cost has not.

  Commentary from the industry’s main pool equipment supplier Pool Corp. on its recent earnings day underscores the severity of the chlorine shortage.

  “I mean overall, I would tell you the price on dichlor and trichlor [chlorine tablets], which is the product that was impacted by the shortage, they’re up about 60%. So if you think about how that’s going to shake out for the balance of the year, it will probably remain at elevated level because I believe that the industry is going to be short for the season,” Pool Corp CFO Mark Joslin told analysts on an April 22 earnings call.

  The shortage will likely lead to pool owners to get creative on pool sanitization, Joslin said quoted by Yahoo Finance.

  “Now that simply means that people are going to move their method of sanitization to another product, either a granular product or a liquid product. But there’s no shortage of ways to sanitize the pool. It just simply means at a certain point people will shift. We’ve also seen certain parts of the country accelerating the use of salt as a method of sanitization too,” Joslin added.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 18:40

• COVID-19 Means Good Times For The Pentagon
  COVID-19 Means Good Times For The Pentagon

  Authored by Mandy Smithberger via TomDispatch.com,

  In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington has initiated its largest spending binge in history. In the process, you might assume that the unparalleled spread of the disease would have led to a little rethinking when it came to all the trillions of dollars Congress has given the Pentagon in these years that have in no way made us safer from, or prepared us better to respond to, this predictable threat to American national security. As it happens, though, even if the rest of us remain in danger from the coronavirus, Congress has done a remarkably good job of vaccinating the Department of Defense and the weapons makers that rely on it financially.

  

  There is, of course, a striking history here. Washington’s reflexive prioritizing of the interests of defense contractors has meant paying remarkably little attention to, and significantly underfunding, public health. Now, Americans are paying the price. With these health and economic crises playing out before our eyes and the government’s response to it so visibly incompetent and inadequate, you would expect Congress to begin reconsidering its strategic approach to making Americans safer. No such luck, however. Washington continues to operate just as it always has, filling the coffers of the Pentagon as though “national security” were nothing but a matter of war and more war.

  Month by month, the cost of wasting so much money on weaponry and other military expenses grows higher, as defense contractor salaries continue to be fattened at taxpayer expense, while public health resources are robbed of financial support. Meanwhile, in Congress, both parties generally continue to defend excessive Pentagon budgets in the midst of a Covid-19-caused economic disaster of the first order. Such a business-as-usual approach means that the giant weapons makers will continue to take funds from agencies far better prepared to take the lead in addressing this crisis.

  There are a number of ways the Pentagon’s budget could be reduced to keep Americans safer and better protected against future pandemics. As the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force has pointed out, the biggest challenges we now confront, globally speaking — including such pandemics — are not, in fact, military in nature. In truth, hundreds of billions of dollars could be cut with remarkable ease from U.S. military spending and Americans would be far safer.

  Recently, some members of Congress have started to focus on this very point. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), for instance, proposed diverting money from unnecessary intercontinental ballistic missile “modernization” into coronavirus and vaccine research. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has gone further, suggesting a 10% reduction in the Pentagon’s budget, while Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), the only member of Congress to vote against the post-9/11 war resolution that led to the invasion of Afghanistan, has gone further yet, calling for the cutting of $350 billion from that budget.

  But count on one thing: they’ll meet a lot of resistance. There’s no way, in fact, to overstate just how powerfully the congressional committees overseeing such spending are indebted to and under the influence of the defense contractors that profit off the Pentagon budget. As Politico reported years ago (and little’s changed), members of the House Armed Services committee are the top recipients of defense industry campaign contributions. Even the chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee, which should be advocating for the strengthening of American diplomacy, has drawn criticism for the significant backing he receives from the defense industry.

  Focusing on Weaponry That Can’t Fight a Virus

  Defense contractors have consistently seen such investments pay off. As my colleague at the Project on Government Oversight, Dan Grazier, has pointed out, despite repeated warnings from independent watchdogs and medical professionals, even military healthcare has been significantly underfunded, while both the Pentagon and Congress continue to prioritize buying weapons over taking care of our men and women in uniform. Congress’s watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, warned in February 2018 that the health system of the Department of Defense (DOD) lacked the capacity to handle routine needs, no less the emergencies of wartime. As Pentagon spending has continued to escalate over the past 20 years, military healthcare funding has stayed largely flat.

  Under the circumstances, I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that Congress has also written additional arms contractor giveaways into its coronavirus relief bills. Though its CARES Act authorized trillions of dollars in spending, ProPublica unearthed a provision in it (nearly identical to one proposed by industry groups) that allows defense contractors to bill the government for a range of costs meant to keep them in a “ready” state. The head of acquisition for the Pentagon, Ellen Lord, estimated (modestly indeed) that the provision would cost taxpayers in the low “double-digit billions.” Additional language offered in the House’s next relief bill, likely to survive whatever the Senate finally passes, would increase such profiteering further by including fees that such companies claim are related to the present crisis, including for executive compensation, marketing, and sales.

  In such a context, it was hardly surprising that, during a recent hearing at the House Armed Services Committee on how the DOD was responding to the Covid-19 crisis, the focus remained largely on ways that the global epidemic might diminish arms industry profits. Representatives Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Mac Thornberry (R-TX) both argued that the Pentagon would need yet more money to cover the costs of any number of charges that defense contractors claim are related to the pandemic.

  Most ludicrous is the idea that an agency slated to receive significantly more than $700 billion in 2020 can’t afford to lose a few billion dollars to the actual health of Americans. Of course, the Pentagon remained strategically mum earlier this year when, in an arguably unconstitutional manner, the White House diverted $7.2 billion from its funds to the building of the president’s “great, great wall” on our southern border. In fact, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even admitted that it wasn’t exactly a major blow for the government agency with the largest discretionary budget. “It was not a significant, immediate, strategic, negative impact to the overall defense of the United States of America,” he assured Congress. “It’s half of one percent of the overall budget, so I can’t in good conscience say that it’s significant, immediate, or the sky is falling.”

  A Chicken Little Congress, however, doesn’t consider taking more funds from the Pentagon budget to shore up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) anywhere near as crucial as, for example, approving the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a slush fund that will be part of this country’s new Cold War with China — starting with a modest $1.4 billion in seed money, while the homework is done to justify another $5.5 billion next year. Similarly, even in such an economically disastrous moment, who could resist buying yet more of Lockheed Martin’s eternally troubled and staggeringly expensive F-35 Joint Strike Fighters than the Pentagon requested? Comparable support exists, even among senators unwilling to fork over any more dollars to desperate out-of-work Americans, for the president’s Space Force, that new service now in the process of creating a separate set of rules for itself that should allow it free rein over future spending. That, of course, reveals its real mission: making it easier for contractors to profit off the taxpayer.

  If anything, the main congressional criticism of the Pentagon is that it’s been too slow to push money out the door. And yet, in an institution that has never been successfully audited, there are red flags galore, as a recent Government Accountability Office assessment of major weapons programs suggests. The costs of such new weapons systems have cumulatively soared by 54%, or $628 billion, from earlier GAO assessments. That, by the way, is almost 90 times this year’s budget request for the CDC.

  And that’s just the waste. The same report shows that any number of weapons systems continue to fail in other ways entirely. Of the 42 major programs examined, 35 had inadequate security to prevent cyber attacks. General Dynamics Electric Boat’s $126 billion nuclear submarine program has been plagued by faulty welding for two years. The new Ford class aircraft carrier, built by Huntington Ingalls for $13.2 billion, includes a General Atomics launch system that continues to fail to launch aircraft as designed. In addition, as Bloomberg first reported, the ship’s toilets clog frequently and can only be cleaned with specialized acids that cost about $400,000 a flush. As my colleague Mark Thompson has pointed out, “escalating costs, blown schedules, and weapons unable to perform as advertised” are the norm, not the exception for the Pentagon.

  That track record is troubling indeed, given that Congress is now turning to the Pentagon to help lead the way when it comes to this country’s pandemic response. Its record in America’s “forever wars” over the last nearly two decades should make anyone wonder about the very idea of positioning it as a lead agency in solving domestic public health crises or promoting this country’s economic recovery.

  Broken Oversight

  As the first wave of the pandemic continues and case numbers spike in a range of states, oversight structures designed to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse when it comes to defense spending are quite literally crumbling before our eyes. Combine weakened oversight, skewed priorities, and a Pentagon budget still rising and you’re potentially creating the perfect storm for squandering the resources needed to respond to our current crisis.

  The erosion of oversight of the Pentagon budget has been a slow-building disaster, administration by administration, particularly with the continual weakening of the authority of inspectors general. As independent federal watchdogs, IGs are supposed to oversee the executive branch and report their findings both to it and to Congress.

  In the Obama administration, however, their power was undermined when the Office of Legal Counsel, the legal expert for the White House, began to argue that accessing the “all” in “all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other material” didn’t actually mean “all” when it came to inspectors general. Under President Donald Trump, the same office typically claimed that then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson did not have the authority to forward to the House and Senate Intelligence committees a concern that the president had improperly withheld aid to Ukraine.

  In fact, in the Trump years, such watchdogs have been purged in significant numbers. Shortly after Department of Defense principal Deputy Inspector General Glenn Fine was named to lead the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, for instance, the president removed him. Not only did that weaken the authority of the body overseeing trillions of dollars in spending across the federal government, but it jeopardized the independence and clout of the Pentagon’s watchdog when it came to billions already being spent by the DOD.

  In a similar fashion, the Trump administration has worked hard to stymie Congress’s ability to exercise its constitutional role in conducting oversight. A few months after the president entered the Oval Office, the White House temporarily ordered executive branch agencies to ignore oversight requests from congressional Democrats. Since then, the stonewalling of Congress has only increased. Mark Meadows, the president’s latest chief of staff, has, for example, reportedly implemented a new rule ensuring that executive branch witnesses cannot appear before Congress without his permission. In recent weeks, it was invoked to stop Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from appearing to justify his latest budget request or to answer questions about why his department’s inspector general was removed. (He was, among other things, reportedly investigating Pompeo himself.) Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley have both resisted calls from Congress to answer questions about the use of military force against peaceful protesters.

  Congress has a number of tools at its disposal to demand answers from the Pentagon. Unfortunately, the committees overseeing that agency have seldom demonstrated the will to exercise them. Last year, however, Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) added an amendment to a defense bill limiting funds for the secretary of defense’s travel until his department produced a report on disciplinary actions taken after U.S. troops were abushed in Niger in 2018 and four of them died.

  That tragic incident was also a reminder that Congress has taken little responsibility for the costs of the endless conflicts the U.S. military has engaged in across significant parts of the planet. Quite the opposite, it continues to leave untouched the 2001 authorization for use of military force, or AUMF, that has been abused by three administrations to justify waging wars ever since. The Congressional Research Service estimates that it has been used in that way at least 41 times in 19 countries. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, that number should be 80 countries where the U.S. has been engaged in counterterror activities since 2001.

  And there are significantly more warning signs in this Covid-19 moment that congressional oversight, long missing in action, is needed more than ever. (Trump’s response, classically enough, was “I’ll be the oversight.”) Typically, among the trillions of dollars Congress put up in responding to the pandemic-induced economic collapse, $10.5 billion was set aside for the Pentagon to take a leading role in addressing the crisis. As the Washington Post reported, among the first places those funds went were golf course staffing, submarine missile tubes, and space launch facilities, which is par for the course for the DOD.

  Implementation of the Defense Production Act also betrayed a bizarre sense of priorities in these months. That law, passed in response to the Korean War, was designed to help fill shortfalls in goods in the midst of emergencies. In 2020, that should certainly have meant more masks and respirators. But as Defense One reported, that law was instead used to bail out defense contractors, some of whom weren’t even keeping their employees on staff. General Electric, which had laid off 25% of its workforce, received $20 million to expand its development of “advanced manufacturing techniques,” among things unrelated to the coronavirus. Spirit Aerosystems, which received $80 million to expand its domestic manufacturing, had similarly laid off or furloughed 900 workers.

  While Americans are overwhelmed by the pandemic, the Pentagon and its boosters are exploiting the emergency to feather their own nests. Far stronger protections against such behavior are needed and, of course, Congress should take back what rightfully belongs to it under the Constitution, including its ability to stop illegal wars and reclaim its power of the purse. It’s long past time for that body to cancel the blank check it’s given both the Pentagon and the White House. But don’t hold your breath.

  In the meantime, as Americans await a future Covid-19 vaccine, the military-industrial complex finds itself well vaccinated against this pandemic moment. Consider it a Pentagon miracle in terrible times.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 18:20

• Biden Mulls Vax Mandate For All US Military After Huge Numbers Refused
  Biden Mulls Vax Mandate For All US Military After Huge Numbers Refused

  President Biden told NBC News in an interview which broadcast Friday that he’s mulling ordering all US military personnel to get a COVID-19 vaccine as commander-in-chief. “I’m not saying I won’t” rule it out, he emphasized in the new interview.

  This would also mean that anyone wanting to enter military service would have to receive the jab as a requirement to get in, which would likely cause a blow to military recruitment in the near-term. However, he didn’t outright say he’s ready to pull the trigger on the policy, which if enacted would constitute the largest federal government-ordered mandate in terms of forcing the vaccine on some 1.3 million active duty service members, not to mention over one million more reserve personnel. 

  

  Describing the decision as a “tough call” he suggested it was being hotly debated. “I don’t know. I’m going to leave that to the military,” Biden told NBC News’s Craig Melvin.

  “I’m not saying I won’t. I think you’re going to see more and more of them getting it. And I think it’s going to be a tough call as to whether or not they should be required to have to get it in the military, because you’re in such close proximity with other military personnel.”

  In follow-up to Biden’s comments, national security advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that a DoD-wide vaccine mandate is “something the Department of Defense is looking at in consultation with the interagency process and [I] don’t have anything to add on that subject today.”

  The whole debate was sparked in earnest when multiple headlines earlier this month took note of the large numbers of military members who were rejecting the vaccine. 

  For example, one recent USA Today report noted that nearly 40% of US Marines who have been offered a COVID-19 vaccine have refused to recieve it, according to Pentagon figures. And an earlier report in The Guardian described that “Reluctance to be vaccinated for Covid-19 is now rife in the US military, with about a third of troops on active duty or in the national guard refusing to be administered the vaccine.” 

  

  The Hill notes of the latest numbers as of this week that “Roughly 780,000 service members, or close to one-third of the total force, are partially or fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the latest Department of Defense numbers.”

  The broad reluctance among America’s military members to receive the jab probably has a lot to do with the vast majority being young, fit, and healthy — obviously far above the average American. And it’s clear at this point that this health demographic tends to experience fewer or minor symptoms if they get infected, if any symptoms at all. 

  Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Terry Adirim earlier this month tried to combat this mentality among military ranks, however, calling the wealth of anecdotal evidence in the end “not true”. But so far it still looks like a large chunk of armed personnel are not convinced that the vaccine is worth getting, hence the Pentagon mulling the mandate.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 18:00

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• UK Will Release Digital "Vaccine Passport" & "Green List" Of Travel Destinations Next Month
  UK Will Release Digital “Vaccine Passport” & “Green List” Of Travel Destinations Next Month

  The British government’s effort to create a digital “vaccine passport” app has officially been embraced by the UK’s former Continental partners.

  As the EU scrambles to implement a vaccine-passport system that will enable tourists from wealthy vaccinated countries (like the US and UK) to flock to beaches in Greece and Spain over the summer, British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps revealed in a TV interview Thursday that he will be able to give details on which countries have made it on to the UK’s “green list” “in the next couple of weeks”.

  

  The introduction of the UK’s “Green List” follows a series of US State Department Travel Advisories that placed 80% of the world’s countries on the highest level travel advisory. But while the US advisory carries no restrictions, the UK’s “green list” will feature all the countries where Britons can travel without being required to quarantine upon their return (though they will still need to be tested for COVID-19 upon their return).

  “…in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be able to tell you about which countries will have made it into the traffic light system and that ‘green’ list in particular are the countries where you’ll be able to go to without needing to quarantine on your return.

  “You will still need to take a pre-departure test and one test on your return.

  “I think people are getting very used to testing now, not least because we provide testing up to twice a week for everyone in the country right now. So I don’t think a test itself is a big deal.

  Shapps also confirmed an NHS app will be used to allow Britons to demonstrate whether they have had a COVID jab, or tested negative for the virus, before traveling abroad.

  “It will be the NHS app that is used for people when they book appointments with the NHS and so on, to be able to show you’ve had a vaccine or that you’ve had testing,” he added.

  “I’m working internationally with partners across the world to make sure that system can be internationally recognised.”

  Government sources clarified the app would not be the NHS COVID app – currently used to “check in” to venues such as pubs and restaurants for contact-tracing purposes – but would instead be the NHS app used to book general appointments.

  Shapps added that he was awaiting data from the government’s Joint Biosecurity Center, which is necessary to state which countries would be deemed “green”, “amber” or “red” under the traffic light system.

  He also reiterated that there was a need to be “very cautious” about allowing Britons to freely travel abroad again.

  “Beyond our shores we are seeing the highest levels of coronavirus that we have seen so far in the entire pandemic, right now,” he added.

  “So we do need to make sure we do this very, very carefully – we don’t want to throw away the lockdown, we don’t want to throw away our remarkable rollout in this country of the vaccination.

  Meanwhile, European nations are eager to welcome British tourists as they hope this summer will see a significant improvement over last year. Portugal’s ambassador to the UK, Manuel Lobo Antunes, told Sky News he was “hopeful” British travelers would be able to return to Portugal by the middle of next month.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 02:45

• Lavrov Calls Out Perfidious Albion In EU Diplomat Spat
  Lavrov Calls Out Perfidious Albion In EU Diplomat Spat

  Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling.

  

  Britain is fomenting a diplomatic crisis between the European Union and Russia, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Evidence and precedent indicate Lavrov has his sight well-trained.

  The British establishment’s notorious ability for machination and intrigue – hence the ancient moniker Perfidious Albion – can be seen as stirring the escalating row between the European Union and Russia in which diplomats are being expelled pell-mell.

  This week, Russia ordered the withdrawal of representatives from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. That came in response to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from those countries. Russia has also ordered home more diplomats from the Czech Republic. Poland and Italy have also been caught up in diplomatic antagonism with Moscow.

  The row blew up last week when the Czech Republic accused Russian state agents of being responsible for twin explosions on its territory back in 2104. The blasts caused the deaths of two workers at an ammunition depot near the village of Vrbetice close to the border with Slovakia. Until recently, the Czech authorities had concluded that the explosions were an industrial accident.

  What prompted the Czechs to revise their ideas and to now blame Russia for sabotage is the interpolation of Britain in providing “new information”. Specifically, it was the MI6-sponsored media group Bellingcat (a so-called private investigatory agency) which appears to have furnished the disinformation which purports to show the involvement of Russian military intelligence (GRU). Incredibly, the British claim their “evidence” shows that two of the GRU agents were also the same individuals who were alleged to have been involved in poisoning the Russian traitor-spy Sergei Skripal in England in 2018. The British claim to have passport information to support their claims, but such methodology is rife with forgery – a black art that the British are all-too skilled at.

  On leveling the accusation against Russia, the Czech Republic then ordered the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats. Moscow responded angrily, saying that the claims of sabotage were a “dirty fabrication” and pointing out that Prague did not provide any information for verification. Russia took swift reciprocal action by banishing 20 Czech diplomats from its territory.

  However, the row continues to flare with the Baltic states entering the fray by banning Russian officials in “solidarity” with the Czech Republic. The move by the Baltic states is predictable as they are supercharged by anti-Russian political sentiment. It’s a case of any excuse for them to inflame relations.

  The dispute comes at a fraught time when the European Union is discussing imposing more sanctions on Russia over wider concerns about the conflict in Ukraine, the imprisonment of blogger Alexei Navalny and a Russian security crackdown on Navalny’s shadowy Western-backed “opposition” network.

  The skirmishing over diplomats is a convenient way to further damage relations between the EU and Russia, especially as the strategically important Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project nears completion – a project that Washington wants to eviscerate for its own selfish commercial reasons. Uncle Sam’s junior partner Britain may be obliging in that regard and thus trying to curry favor for garnering an American trade deal in the post-Brexit world.

  Certainly, Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov is clear about the stealthy British hand in recent events. In a media interview this week, Lavrov mentioned the United Kingdom in wary terms, saying: “As far as the relations between Russia and Europe are concerned, I still believe that the UK is playing an active and a very serious subversive role. It withdrew from the European Union, but we see no decrease in its activities on this track. On the contrary, they are trying to influence EU member states’ approaches to Russia to the maximum possible extent.”

  It should be recalled that Britain has played a starring duplicitous role in demonizing Russia and poisoning international relations.

  It was Bellingcat (MI6) that pushed the narrative that Russia was complicit in the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner in 2014 over Eastern Ukraine with the loss of nearly 300 lives. Based on British “evidence” (which has been debunked as fabrication), a Dutch investigation into the disaster has accused Russia. That affair has hardened European prejudices against Russia which has fomented the imposition of sanctions.

  It was a former British MI6 operative Christopher Steele who was instrumental in promoting the Russiagate dossier around 2016 which destroyed bilateral relations between the United States and Russia, and which continues to fuel fabrications about Moscow’s interference in American and European politics (even those Steele’s “dirty dossier” is a risible load of rubbish and has been debunked).

  And it was the Skripal saga in Salisbury in March 2018 which Britain hatched to further poison international relations with Russia. That saga – with no proof against Russia – has become a concocted “standard proof” for the subsequent saga of “poisoning” the blogger conman Alexei Navalny. Western governments and media refer to the “Kremlin plot” to kill Skripal as “evidence” for another “Kremlin plot” to assassinate Navalny. This is tantamount to one fiction being used to prove another fiction. The same saga is now feeding into the Czech explosion row. And it all comes back to the devious ingenuity of Perfidious Albion.

  Foreign Minister Lavrov added a further incisive comment on the role of Britain. He said:

  “At the same time, you know, they send us signals, they propose establishing contacts. This means, they do not shy away from communication [with Russia], but try to discourage others. Again, probably [this can be explained by] their desire to have a monopoly of these contacts and again prove that they are superior to others.”

  The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling. Perfidious Albion par excellence.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 02:00

• European Parliament Approves Resolution On Far-Reaching Sanctions For 'Russian Aggression'
  European Parliament Approves Resolution On Far-Reaching Sanctions For ‘Russian Aggression’

  On Thursday European Parliament passed a resolution that calls for far-reaching EU sanctions on a number of fronts against Russia, and which most notably seeks to require a Russian ban on access to the SWIFT payment system if there’s ever a future move against Ukrainian sovereignty.  

  The European Parliament “Demands that the EU should reduce its dependence on Russian energy, and urges the EU institutions and all Member States, therefore, to stop the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and to demand a stop to the construction of controversial nuclear power plants built by Rosatom,” the now approved resolution says.

  

  569 members of the European Parliament voted for approval while there were 67 against the resolution’s adoption. As we explained previously, it appears a ‘preventative’ and threatening measure in the instance of any future scenario of another major Russian troop build-up in Crimea and along Ukraine’s border such as occurred over the last month.

  “Should military build-up lead to an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the EU must make clear the consequences for such a violation of international law and norms would be severe, MEPs agreed,” a European Parliament press release stated. “Such a scenario must result in an immediate halt to EU imports of oil and gas from Russia, the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT payment system and the freezing of assets and cancellation of visas for Europe of all oligarchs tied to the Russian authorities.”

  And further it underscored the EU member states must no longer be “welcoming places for Russian wealth and investments of unclear origin” as well as “the Kremlin’s strategic investments within the EU for the purposes of subversion.”

  #EuropeanParliament considers #Russia‘s disconnection from SWIFT, the international payment system, in a draft resolution that addresses a potential escalation in eastern #Ukraine.https://t.co/4o1GDSbSDE

  — Sonalika Kumar (@sonalika_kumar) April 29, 2021

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

  Needless to say, if the trigger were ever actually pulled on what are at this point these official threats to “require” immediate EU action in the face of “Russian aggression” – it would be all out economic and diplomatic war – or worse. 

  Previously the Kremlin warned that such a drastic move as cutting off Russia from SWIFT would indeed be considered an “act of war” – but this is precisely what officials in Kiev have been seeking to pressure Brussels to do.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 01:00

• Red States Are Fighting Back Against The Reset – What Does This Mean For The Future?
  Red States Are Fighting Back Against The Reset – What Does This Mean For The Future?

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  The past year I have been writing extensively about what I call the “great conservative migration”; a shift in US demographics not seen since the Great Depression. Approximately 8.9 million Americans have relocated since the beginning of the covid lockdowns according to the US Postal service, and a large portion of these people are leaving left-leaning blue states for conservative red states in the west and the south. States like California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey were at the top of the list of states people wanted to escape.

  

  The response from leftist states has been amusing. California, for instance, has tried to obscure the data on population loss and has dismissed the existence of the migration. They claim that the state population is actually rising, but fail to mention that most of California’s population “gains” have been from babies born along with an increase in illegal immigration. This has not offset the 267,000 individuals and families that left the state in the last three months 2020 alone. That’s an entire city of people, gone in 90 days.

  And where are these people going? Places like Idaho, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, etc. ALL red states that are fighting back against draconian covid mandates and other unconstitutional measures. The only outlier seems to be Oregon, which also has seen a population spike, and this indeed appears to be a migration of Californians to the north.

  This leads some conservative groups to believe there is an “invasion” going on of liberals into red states. After looking at the data and meeting many people moving to my own area in Montana, I find the “liberal invasion” narrative to be fraudulent.

  Leftists don’t relocate to red states, at least not very often. They do not run away from their safe spaces. Rather, they relocate an hour or two from the cities they are addicted to. This is what the data from San Francisco shows. With over 80% of people moving from the city staying within California. In other words, some leftists want to get out of the cities, but they don’t want to move far from their beloved progressive Utopias and they certainly don’t plan on embedding in conservative strongholds and trying to “take over”.

  Why this theory persists is beyond me as it has no basis in reality.

  No, the people moving across state lines today are mostly conservatives, they are congregating en masse in red states, and the effects have been rather dramatic. Home prices have skyrocketed due to extreme demand. In Montana, people are buying real estate sight unseen, a lot of it raw land that they are trying to build on. Lumber prices have tripled, and anyone in the construction business is booked a year and a half out. There are new residents actually scouring the message boards looking for ANYONE that can do work for them. There is nobody available. No one I know has seen anything like it in their lifetime.

  Luckily, a lot of these people seem to be on the same page in terms of principles. Those I have met are all conservative and the majority of them are preppers. They moved here because they know what is coming and they want to be surrounded by like minded neighbors when the manure hits the fan. Specifically, they do not want to be caught isolated in a blue state where vaccine passports, masks and lockdowns become a regular part of life for them and their children. They want to remain free.

  On the other hand, I am also hearing rumors that the relatively small number of leftists that live in my county want to leave. Some have expressed the need to “get out” and vacation in places like Portland, Oregon, where they “feel safe” because “everyone wears masks”. And I say, good for them. Hopefully they will stay there. These types of people are miserable excuses for human beings and they make everyone else around them miserable by constantly whining about how “no one follows the rules”.

  As a point of reference, there have been only 17 deaths from covid in my county in well over a year. The death rate is non-existent, and the virus already swept through the area with almost everyone either infected or asymptomatic. No one in Montana is afraid of this virus except a handful of weak minded progressives.

  My suspicion is that when all is said and done by the end of 2021 the US will essentially be split into two distinct nations: A leftist Marxist nation that continues to degrade into tyranny, and a conservative nation that people want to escape to so they can keep their liberties. Leftists won’t want to live near us, and we certainly will not want to live near them. Hypothetically, it should be a win-win situation, but there are other factors to consider.

  We must also take into account red counties. For example, the blue state of Virginia is actually only blue in a handful of counties. The majority are conservative and have stood in defiance of attempts by gun grabbing governor Ralph Northam, saying they will ignore any new gun laws Northam and the state legislature passes. County governments and county sheriffs are in agreement; Northam has no power in these places.

  In Eastern Oregon and Northern California, there is a push by multiple counties to actually join Idaho and become a part of the conservative state. The majority of voters in these counties supported the transition. The idea being that this is not a secession, and so the move will be far easier to accomplish with less legal obstacles. The decision will be voted on by county residents in May, and of course there will be attempts by congress to obstruct if the outcome is favorable.

  Even if the movement is not successful, the fact that voters in red counties are unified in their goal to get away from leftist political control should be taken very seriously. This is not just about states defying federal dictates, it’s also about counties defying state governments that do not represent their values.

  The bottom line is this – The leftist ideology is collectivist and totalitarian in nature. It is completely incompatible with the conservative principles of liberty, self determination, meritocracy, limited government and free market economics.

  The social justice cult has gone so far into extremism that reason and logic are actually vilified by them. They openly support mass censorship, mass violence against innocent people, mob intimidation against the citizenry, they argue in favor of economic lockdowns and unconstitutional covid mandates, they support draconian vaccine passports, and they are partners with Big Tech corporations as well as globalists institutions like the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. They are diametrically opposed to everything that conservatives and lovers of liberty hold dear.

  Honestly, it is unlikely that we will be able to share the same land mass, let alone the same cities and states, but I’ll get to that in a moment…

  At the state level, there has been a dramatic push-back against constitutional trespasses by the federal government under Biden, and these include measures which are aggressively promoted by the World Economic Forum and other globalist institutions in the name of the “Great Reset”. Multiple red states have passed laws or executive orders making it illegal to require proof of vaccination (vaccine passports). Some blue states have also “claimed” they will not require vaccinations, but the devil is in the details when dealing with the political left.

  In Montana, the governor and the state legislature will not allow government enforcement of vaccine passports, AND, they also will not allow corporations to demand vaccine passports either. In blue states like Illinois, the government might keep its word on passports, it might not, but they don’t really need to enforce vaccinations; all they have to do is allow major corporations to do it for them.

  With colleges (public institutions posing as private), airlines, hotels, hospitals, and major retail chains requiring a vaccine passport for employment or to make purchases, the effect of medical tyranny will be the same.

  Without state legal protections in place to limit social engineering by corporate behemoths the establishment still has all the tools it needs to assert covid controls.

  These companies do not represent private business or free markets anymore. Instead, they are appendages of establishment power that receive billions in taxpayer dollars to finance their operations. They should no longer be treated as if they have the same rights as normal businesses.

  Another interesting development is the number of red states that are passing laws which prevent the enforcement of any new federal gun controls. In Montana, Greg Gianforte just signed a bill nullifying federal gun bans. Federal rules do not apply here and state law enforcement agencies are prohibited from helping federal agencies enforce such laws. Similar legislation has been passed or is being considered in other red states like Utah and Arizona.

  It is unclear what would happen if the ATF or FBI tried to make arrests within Montana based on federal gun restrictions. I suspect that without extra protection from local law enforcement these agencies would be much more vulnerable in their operations. If they met with stiff resistance, they would be on their own. I also would not be surprised if sheriffs in most Montana counties stood in their way.

  The mainstream media has been almost completely silent on these developments. They barely even acknowledge the conservative migration. I doubt they will speak of the separation at all until the latest census data and postal data is more thoroughly examined. However, the changes to our nation are going to have far reaching consequences, and the consequences will be obvious in the near term.

  The “Great Reset” is meant to be a global project; meaning, no one is allowed to opt out. Leftists and globalists are notoriously plantation-minded; they believe that society is involuntary, and their rules for society should apply to all people. Those who wish to leave are actually seen as traitors, because the very act of leaving suggests that the system is flawed, and doubt creates questions, and questions create demands, and demands lead to defiance, and defiance leads to rebellion.

  The progressive/globalist plantation becomes an exercise in antagonistic self affirmation – You cannot leave the system, because everything is fine, and if you left people might think something is wrong and then everything would not be fine, so why would you want to upset the balance and ruin what is already perfect?

  In my last article I noted that red states in the US are the ONLY places in the world where freedom from the Reset is ingrained and people have the means to fight back. I still stand by that assertion. Some conservatives assume countries like Russia are going to fight the Reset, yet Putin and the Russian government enforced extensive covid restrictions recommended by the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, just like every other government. The head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on public health, Dmitri Morozov, stated that vaccine passports were “very important and needed in Russia”.

  Let’s face it, no major government is coming to save us; these delusional fantasies of Russia or any other foreign nation fighting against the Reset need to stop. The bottom line is this: The American red states are probably the only regions in the world that are resisting the reset agenda while also having the arms to back their resolve. If a rebellion is going to start against the globalists, it will start here.

  What does this mean for the future? It means we are going to be targeted. This is how I see the situation playing out…

  I have no doubt that the first step by the federal government under Biden will be to start cutting off federal funds to red states while flooding blue states with stimulus money. The strategy being that blue states will have unlimited free goodies while red states languish in poverty. Biden will be betting that red state citizens reliant on government checks will become despondent or angry. Of course, these taxpayer backed funds belong to all the states, but that won’t matter to Biden or to leftists; they will claim we are getting what we deserve.

  The logical response by red states will be to stop paying taxes, and to take over federal lands and the resources within their borders. Red states and red counties could also negate all EPA and BLM restrictions on resource usage and launch an epic revitalization of industry. In my area, I believe the logging industry which has been stifled by the federal government will return in full force. With lumber prices nearing hyperinflationary levels, it makes perfect sense. This will enrage the feds.

  The next step would be to make travel to and from certain red states difficult in order to isolate them. The feds may shut down airline flights while proclaiming that red states are “havens for covid infection”. This will not go over well with conservatives, and we will start demolishing any checkpoints that are meant to keep us in. Leftist controlled states and counties will start checking license plates and ID and harassing or arresting anyone from a conservative area. Travel will stagnate as people will not know which places are safe and which are dangerous.

  There will also be attempts to use federal agencies to insert into conservative areas to make arrests based on federal laws that have already been nullified. The goal will be to make examples out of some people, and send a message that conservatives “are not safe”, even in their own states. Eventually, the shooting will start and federal agents will die. Biden will demand a martial law response.

  If everything develops as described, the question arises, how many people in the military are actually willing to die for Biden? My guess is not that many, but with the right excuses and rationalizations who knows? Conservatives have been demonized for many years now, there may be a large enough chunk of the military that believes the propaganda, but I am doubtful.

  It could take two full terms of Biden for these events to happen. It could take far less time. I would not hold my breath for a 2022 or 2024 election to defuse matters. I think most conservatives learned their lesson on the futility of politics the last four years. The best possible outcome right now is that conservatives congregate, unify and organize from the local level to the state level to the point that we act as a deterrent to future tyranny.

  We all know one day the establishment is going to come for us, and if so then we’ll greet them with a long range love letter (if you get my meaning). But at least we will know where we stand. At least we will be living among kindred spirits, and at least there will be a glimmer of hope for the world. Sometimes the greatest act of rebellion is to offer people an alternative, a place where the rules of tyrants hold no weight. Conservative states and counties are doing this today, and it is a beautiful thing.

  *  *  *

  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
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:50

• China Creates Countrywide 'No-Pig Zones' To Limit African Swine Fever 
  China Creates Countrywide ‘No-Pig Zones’ To Limit African Swine Fever 

  The African Swine Fever (ASF) decimated China’s hog population in 2018 and has since been brought under control as the country rebuilds its hog herd. China released a novel plan to reshape the entire hog industry to mitigate future spreading, according to Bloomberg. 

  The Chinese agriculture ministry recently announced that the country would split into five regions from May. Pigs in each region will not be transported into other areas to mitigate the potential threat of ASF spreading. 

  

  Senior analyst Lin Guofa at consultancy Bric Agriculture Group said approximately 20% of the country’s pigs, or about 140 million live animals, are transported across the country each year and increase the chances of spreading diseases. The main transportation route for farmers is from the northeast to the south to meet the large demand for fresh meat in metropolises. 

  With new guidelines expected to be in place in a matter of days, areas known for little or no pig farming will have to increase capacity. 

  “Some areas that used to call themselves no-pig counties or no-pig cities will have to build pig farms,” Guofa said. 

  Under the guidelines, the only way for pork to be transported across regions will have to be in frozen meat form, leading to an expansion of the cold-chain industry, added Guofa. 

  Pigs are a significant source of protein in China. According to data from the Dalian Commodity Exchange, the country is the world’s top consumer of pork, with annual sales of around $308 billion per year.

  Chinese consumers have caught a period of relief after nearly two years of elevated pork prices due to the culling of millions of pigs countrywide during the ASF outbreak. Wholesale pork prices are down 30% year-to-date. 

  

  “The controls will depress prices in the north in the short term and push them up in the south,” according to Wang Zhong, chief consultant at Systematic, Strategic & Soft Consulting Co. “That may eventually prompt big pork producers — including Muyuan Foodstuff Co., New Hope Liuhe Co. and Wens Foodstuff Group Co. — to build more hog farms in the south and more slaughtering facilities in the northeast and northwest,” Bloomberg said.

  The new guidelines are similar to ones in Brazil and Spain that limit farmers from transporting live animals around the country. Such a measure has been successful in eradicating ASF from both countries. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:30

• The Shaky Foundations Of LA's Housing "Entitlement" For The Homeless
  The Shaky Foundations Of LA’s Housing “Entitlement” For The Homeless

  Authored by Christopher Rufo via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  In 2016 influential political leaders, activists, and media outlets in Los Angeles said they had a simple solution to homelessness: build more housing. Echoing an argument heard across the country, they claimed that rising rents have thrown people onto the streets and that by directly providing free “permanent supportive housing,” cities can reduce the number of people on the streets and save costs on emergency services.

  

  In response, 77% of Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2 billion bond for the construction of 10,000 units for the city’s homeless. That commitment made Los Angeles the most significant testing ground for the “Housing First” approach that has become the dominant policy idea on homelessness for West Coast cities. Even before the passage of the bond, the concept’s creator, Sam Tsemberis, was lavished with praise by the national media. In 2015, the Washington Post wrote that Tsemberis had “all but solved chronic homelessness” and that his research “commands the support of most scholars.”

  

  Sam Tsemberis: He has been hailed by the Washington Post as having “all but solved homelessness.” But Los Angeles, above, challenges his “Housing First” model.

  In the years since, “Housing First” has taken even greater hold in California and the across the West. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently declared that “we need to have an entitlement to housing.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom went a step further, arguing that “doctors should be able to write prescriptions for housing the same way they do for insulin or antibiotics.”

  Five years in, the project has been plagued by construction delays, massive cost overruns, and accusations of corruption. The Los Angeles city controller issued a scathing report, “The High Cost of Homeless Housing,” which shows that some studio and one-bedroom apartments were costing taxpayers more than $700,000 each, with 40% of total costs devoted to consultants, lawyers, fees, and permitting. The project is a boon for real estate developers and a constellation of nonprofits and service providers, but a boondoggle for taxpayers. The physical apartment units are bare-bones — small square footage, cheap flooring, vinyl surfaces — but have construction costs similar to luxury condos in the fashionable parts of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, unsheltered homelessness has increased 41%, vastly outpacing the construction of new supportive housing units. Los Angeles magazine, which initially supported the measure, now wonders whether it has become “a historic public housing debacle.”

  Before completing a single housing unit, the city reduced its projected construction from 10,000 units to 5,873 units over 10 years, with the potential for further reductions in the future. But the long-term problem runs much deeper: Even if one accepts that permanent supportive housing is the solution, there are currently more than 66,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. Under the best-case scenario, Proposition HHH will solve less than 10% of the problem over the course of a decade.

  

  Arrested development: Five years in, most of LA’s homeless projects are barely off the ground.

  Despite Housing First’s uncertainties, other West Coast cities desperate to solve homelessness, including Seattle and San Francisco, have been captured by its seductive messaging and promise of respite. As Los Angeles grapples with the unforeseen consequences of its big bet on “Housing First,” the federal, state, and local governments, especially in major metropolitan areas, are preparing to commit billions of dollars to the program, whose track record remains woefully underexamined.

  

  As Los Angeles’s “Housing First” program has failed to meet expectations, Mayor Eric Garcetti is now downplaying it as just one of several needed approaches to homelessness.

  Ever since clinical psychologist Tsemberis pioneered the model in New York City in the 1990s, political leaders, activists, and academics have insisted that Housing First is an “evidence-based” intervention that reduces homelessness, saves taxpayer money, and improves lives. Supporters frequently argue that the program reduced costs in a study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle, consistently demonstrates high retention rates in multiple academic surveys, and eliminated chronic homelessness in Utah. “We’re going to stem this crisis by building supportive housing in every neighborhood throughout Los Angeles,” City Council member Herb Wesson recently claimed.

  These studies, however, are not as persuasive as activists suggest. Although the study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle does show a net reduction in monthly social service costs of $2,449 per person, this figure does not include $11 million in capital and construction costs for the housing units themselves; in other words, Housing First saves money if the cost of housing is not included. Even on its own favorable terms, the study’s purported savings aren’t as dramatic as they appear: While the Housing First participants showed a 63% reduction in service costs over six months, a wait-listed control group that was not provided housing showed a 42% reduction in service costs over the same time period, raising questions about the specific effectiveness of the intervention.

  Claims that studies show one-year retention rates of roughly 80% for Housing First participants are open to question. In a meta-study of three best-in-class Housing First sites, researchers found that 43% remained in housing for the first 12 months, 41% were “intermittent stayers” who left and returned, and 16% abandoned the program or died within the first year. These findings challenge the argument that Housing First is a long-term solution to homelessness.

  Finally, advocates and the media have long touted Utah as the gold standard of Housing First. “The Daily Show” called the state’s program “mind-blowing,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2015 that Utah “is winning the war on chronic homelessness,” and dozens of media outlets announced that the state “reduced chronic homelessness by 91%.” These miraculous results, however, were not the result of Housing First policies, but apparently clerical manipulation by state officials. According to the Deseret News and economist Kevin Corinth, “As much as 85% of Utah’s touted reductions in chronic homelessness … may have been due to changes in how the homeless were counted.” It’s not that all of the chronically homeless were housed; they were simply transposed onto a new spreadsheet. Moreover, between 2016 and 2018, the number of unsheltered homeless in Utah nearly doubled – hardly the victory that Housing First activists had declared.

  

  Media, including Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” hailed “Housing First” in Utah. But stats were fudged.

  The recent debate surrounding Housing First has predominantly been focused on the physical and budgetary metrics of housing retention and cost reductions. But these surface-level concerns obscure a deeper question: What happens to the human beings in these programs? The results, according to the vast majority of studies, point to a grim conclusion: Housing First does not meaningfully improve human lives.

  Although housing programs are often an effective solution for families experiencing a temporary loss of shelter, Housing First programs do not have a strong track record improving the lives of the unsheltered homeless — the people in tents, cars, and on the streets — who often suffer from more severe challenges. According to research by the California Policy Lab, 75% of the unsheltered homeless have substance abuse condition, 78% have mental health conditions, and 84% have physical health conditions. In theory, Housing First would address these problems. In every program, residents are offered a wide range of services. At the Pathways to Housing program in New York City, a flagship program founded by Sam Tsemberis himself, residents are served by an “interdisciplinary team of professionals that includes social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, and vocational and substance abuse counselors who are available to assist consumers 7 days a week 24 hours a day.” However, despite this massive intervention, the Pathways program shows no reduction in substance abuse or psychiatric symptoms over time – in fact, those conditions often worsened.

  This basic finding is confirmed by a range of studies showing that residents of Housing First programs show no improvement regarding addiction and mental illness. They are housed but broken, wracked by the cruelest psychoses, compulsions, and torments – all under the guise of medical care.

  

  Los Angeles’s “Housing First” produces homes, but fails to address the problems of the once-homeless.

  A Housing First experiment in Ottawa, Canada, illustrates this paradoxical outcome in stark terms. Researchers divided the study into two populations: an “intervention” group that was provided Housing First and access to primary care, medically assisted treatment, social workers, and on-demand services; and a non-intervention “control” group that was not provided housing or services – they were simply left on the streets. To the shock of the researchers, after 24 months the non-intervention control group reported better results regarding substance abuse, mental health, quality of life, family relations, and mortality than the Housing First group. In other words, doing nothing resulted in superior human outcomes than providing Housing First with wraparound services.

  One explanation may be that Housing First programs are deliberately not oriented toward recovery, rehabilitation, and renewal. They operate on the “harm reduction” model, which allows residents to continue using drugs such as alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamine, and does not require mental health treatment as a condition of residency. In theory, this permissive policy would help “reduce harm” to the individual; in practice, however, it may create a community-level effect that makes it hard for any individual to find recovery. Here is the basic chain of events: Homeless individuals with substance abuse and psychiatric disorders are placed together in a residential facility where they are allowed to continue the way of life they had on the streets. Despite the availability of services, there is no incentive to use those services and no disincentive to the problematic behavior associated with street homelessness. Consequently, widespread addiction often becomes the norm within Housing First programs. 

  Preferring Homelessness

  This chain of events is not just a thought experiment. In Birmingham, Ala., researchers inadvertently created this exact problem when they put participants of two different programs – one “recovery” program and one “harm reduction” program – in the same apartment complex. Immediately after beginning the experiment, the recovery group “began abandoning the provided housing, complaining that their proximity to persons not required to remain abstinent (i.e., the other trial group) was detrimental to their recovery. They claimed that they preferred to return to homelessness rather than live near drug users.” The researchers quickly stopped and reorganized the trial, writing that “this unexpected reaction shows one possible risk to housing persons with active addiction.”

  Still, Housing First advocates insist that their policy is working. When reached for comment, Tsemberis insisted that the Washington Post headline declaring that he had “solved homelessness” is true. “The most effective way to end homelessness for people with mental health and addiction is to provide housing and wraparound support,” Tsemberis said. He points towards rates of “housing stability” as the key metric, while conceding that Housing First does not provide “a cure for mental illness and addiction.” This is a suggestion that policymakers have “solved homelessness” simply by bringing people indoors, no matter their addictions, mental illnesses, and human torments.

  Advocates portray Housing First as a science that transcends politics. The policy was first adopted by the George W. Bush administration and has gained support from Republicans and Democrats alike. As the Washington Post observed, it is “a model so simple children could grasp it, so cost-effective fiscal hawks loved it, so socially progressive liberals praised it.

  However, the real-world evidence from cities such as Los Angeles challenges this narrative. If Housing First has demonstrated anything, it is this: It provides a stable residential environment for the homeless to live out their pathologies, subsidized by the public and administered by the social-scientific sector. It does, not however, address addiction, mental illness and other factors that limit human potential and lead to homelessness.

  

  A defensive Garcetti: “Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.” 

  In Los Angeles, despite the insistence that Housing First is the answer, some uncertainty is creeping in. Mayor Garcetti is now on the defensive, as homelessness in Los Angeles continues to increase despite billions in spending. After the federal government released a study questioning the premises of Housing First, Garcetti backed away from the unidimensional approach, telling reporters with irritation in his voice: “Sometimes people parody Housing First as ‘only housing.’ Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.”

  In more bad news for public officials and supporters of Housing First, there is an emerging body of evidence that calls into question the “cost savings” of the program. A recent study in Massachusetts shows that Housing First does not reduce rehospitalization and service utilization, while another study in Chicago suggests that Housing First might increase overall costs. Furthermore, researchers have concluded that the purported cost savings in earlier Housing First studies would not apply to the 82% of the homeless population that is not chronically homeless.

  

  Ron Galperin: The Los Angeles controller has found the city’s housing program to be riddled with high costs and delays.

  In Los Angeles, this could spell disaster. In the most optimistic scenario laid out by the controller’s office, the city will build 5,873 supportive housing units at an initial cost of $1.2 billion, plus an estimated $88 million in annual service costs associated with the Housing First model. The recipients of this housing will not meaningfully improve their lives in terms of addiction, mental illness, and spiritual well-being — and there will still be 60,000 people on the streets across Los Angeles County. In other words, even under its own theoretical assumptions, Proposition HHH is doomed to fail.

  The City of Los Angeles did not return a request for comment.

  The potential silver living might be that a reconsideration of the Housing First approach could lead to a wider reckoning for policymakers and political leaders. At the end of the Housing First experiment in Los Angeles, the city will be responsible for thousands of wards of the state with little hope for recovery, as well as tens of thousands of campers in its public spaces. A few curious citizens will read through the academic literature and find a vast discrepancy between the ideological promises of Housing First and its real-world outcomes. They might then conclude that proponents should have known better.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:10

• "We've Seen Some Deaths" – StanChart Scrambles To Find Oxygen For COVID-Stricken Staffers In India
  “We’ve Seen Some Deaths” – StanChart Scrambles To Find Oxygen For COVID-Stricken Staffers In India

  If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that dealmaking doesn’t come to a stop just because of a once-in-a-century global pandemic. And although some have written the obituary for the SPAC boom, there’s clearly still enough dealmaking activity happening in India to warrant investment banks pushing ahead even as the second wave of the country’s COVID-19 pandemic leads to unprecedented devastation.

  

  And as banks work to ensure their employees can grind on regardless of the circumstances, Bloomberg reported that StanChart is attempting to buy medical grade oxygen for workers in its Indian offices who have become stricken with COVID-19.

  Chief Financial Officer Andy Halford says the London-based bank is “actively” attempting to find oxygen concentrators with hundreds of the company’s 20K-plus staff based in India infected.

  “I think we have got 800 cases currently of Covid and I think in total we have had some deaths among our employees in India to date,” Halford said in a phone interview after the bank published first-quarter earnings.

  “We are actively out there seeing what we can do make vaccine more available, and particularly offer more locations where staff can get it,” he said. However, he added the bank was reluctant to use “connections that would be inappropriate.”

  Standard Chartered is one of the biggest international banks operating in India. As well as providing banking and wealth management services in the country it also operates major back-office hubs in Bangalore and Chennai.

  StanChart CEO Bill Winters said that in reaction to the crisis, the bank is looking to transfer work away from India to service centers in Kuala Lumpur, Tianjian and Warsaw to help support employees within the country. “We are looking carefully at how we can rebalance loads,” Winters reportedly told the bank’s analysts on Thursday.

  “We have material case counts amongst our population, both in our services center and in the bank itself, consistent with what we are seeing across the country,” Winters said. “We’ve kept most of our branches open, banks are considered essential services, so we have had a disproportionate share of the cases in the branches’ staff, very unfortunately.”

  While most of the bank’s staffers are working from home, especially in hard-hit cities like Bangalore and Chennai, where the bank has thousands of employees, some 10% of front-office personnel are still working in the office at least part time.

  Their efforts helped the bank post an 18% jump in Q1 pre-tax profit as it cited the economic “recovery” seen in many of its key international markets (including India) as COVID-19 restrictions were loosened. To be sure, some of the bank’s strong quarterly performance was due to the bank dedicating less cash to offset feared loan losses, but trading, dealmaking and particularly strong performance in the bank’s wealth management business also contributed to the jump in profits.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:50

• "Election Panic" Coming In 2022, Martin Armstrong Warns "It's Going To Turn Violent"
  “Election Panic” Coming In 2022, Martin Armstrong Warns “It’s Going To Turn Violent”

  Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

  According to a recent poll, 51% of Americans think Joe Biden cheated to get into the White House.  The breakdown is 74% Republicans and an astounding 30% Democrats think cheating played at least a part of the 2020 Election outcome.  In Arizona, the 2020 Election ballots are finally being audited as court battles to stop it continue.  Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is predicting an election “panic in 2022.”  

  

  Armstrong explains, “It means extremely high volatility…”

  ”  Despite whatever they want to say, there is a large proportion of the population that do not believe the election.  Polls are saying it’s at 51%, but it’s probably close to 60% or 70%.  You are also seeing that 60% of Americans want a third party, and you are talking about Democrats and Republicans…

  I think because we have such a high number of people who do not trust the election results, I don’t think they are going to be able to get away with rigging the elections again.  It’s going to turn into violence.  There is no question about that.”

  Armstrong also sees Biden Administration tax plans on things like capital gains causing problems in the not-too-distant future.  Armstrong says,

  “If they raise capital gains, I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, you are going to have to sell.  Your accountant is going to say if you don’t sell, you going to pay twice or three times as much in taxes next year.  So, they can create a serious, serious collapse in the world economy.  This is in addition to all this Covid nonsense that they have created.”

  Armstrong has been saying for months that deflation would be the overarching theme in the economy.  Is that going to continue or has there been a change?  Armstrong says, “Deflation is now over…”

  ”  People have to understand.  It has nothing to do with the supply of money. . . . If you don’t see a bright rosy future, what do you do?  You save your money. . . . One of the number one selling objects in Europe is a safe.  People are storing cash. 

  Biden was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  People are now seeing that things are going to cost more in the future than they do today.  They have also created shortages because of these lockdowns.  The inflation is just beginning to start now.  It’s based on shortages, and it will continue going into about 2024.”

  The bottom line on the cause of inflation, according to Armstrong, is “a loss of confidence in government.”

  Armstrong also predicts,

  “We are looking at the prospect of a serious war between 2025 and 2027.  All this is completely because of this great reset nonsense.  They have been using the Corona Virus as an excuse to try and shut down the economy.  If you look at rents in New York City, they are in a freefall.  Real estate is going crazy outside of the urban centers.  In Florida, what was a $500,000 house last year is now more than $1 million.”

  On Trump, Armstrong says, “I don’t see him returning to office before 2024.”

  But, if massive ballot fraud is proven with the Arizona audit going on right now, Armstrong predicts, “The state legislature can recall a Senator” who won by election rigging.

  Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One in this in-depth interview (60 mins. in length) with Martin Armstrong of ArmstrongEconomics.com.  (What is written above is a very small sample of the actual interview.)

  *  *  *

  To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

  Martin Armstrong also told me there are a number of events that could cause the stock market to sell-off quickly and plunge deeply.  So, stay on guard, and stay hedged and protected for unforeseen developments. There is some free information, analysis and articles on ArmstrongEconomics.com. To get a copy of Armstrong’s latest book “The Cycle of War and the Coronavirus,” click here. There is also a PDF version of “The Cycle of War and the Coronavirus” you can get by clicking here.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:30

• White House Says Afghanistan Troop Drawdown Has Officially Begun
  White House Says Afghanistan Troop Drawdown Has Officially Begun

  Following the earlier this month Biden-ordered full troop exit from Afghanistan slated to be completed by Sept.11 of this year, the White House on Thursday announced the military withdrawal has now officially begun. 

  While traveling aboard Air Force One, the deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed to reporters that “A drawdown is underway,” but also added the caveat that, “While these actions will initially result in increased forces levels, we remain committed to having all of US military personnel out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2020.”

  

  “The President’s intent is clear, the US military departure from Afghanistan will not be rushed.… It will be delivered and conducted in a safe and responsible manner that ensures the protection of our forces,” Jean-Pierre explained.

  Previously Pentagon officials have described “increased forces levels” as constituting the security and personnel required to oversee a safe logistical exit from the country that includes a vast amount of military equipment and defense facilities that have accumulated over the course of the two-decade long war and occupation. 

  CNN details that “Fewer than 100 troops, along with military equipment, have been moved largely by aircraft to execute President Joe Biden’s order to begin the withdrawal process no later than May 1, according to several US defense officials.”

  “There have been about 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan that are openly acknowledged, plus several hundred additional special operations forces. All of them will depart under the President’s orders,” the report adds. NATO at the same time is signaling a full draw down within months.

  It’s likely these slew of new statements Thursday are intended to seek to assure the Taliban that an exit is indeed in motion. But Saturday could see a proverbial all hell breaking loose given May 1 is the deadline (from the Taliban’s perspective) based on the prior Trump admin-Taliban deal that was inked in February 2020.

  “There is remarkable consensus within the region and the international community against a military takeover by the Taliban.”

  I’m guessing the Taliban doesn’t care. https://t.co/hKUEd1qUiK

  — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) April 28, 2021

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  The Taliban has vowed to strike at any American targets should troops remain in the country after that date. US leaders are now worried that the Taliban could hit hard just as the Pentagon is in the midst of its draw down; and in the medium to longer term it’s expected that entire major cities could once again fall to the hardline Islamic fundamentalist group.

  To protect the exiting US troops, over the past weeks the US has sent additional B-52 bombers to the region to safeguard the pullout, along with the presence in regional waters of the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier. 

  Many pundits ultimately see this whole spectacle as just a recipe for continuing to stay far past Biden’s anticipated Sept.11 exit, given there’s a seeming endless number of ways this could go wrong. So it’s worth asking: will we still be seeing similar headlines of “drawdown has begun” a few years from now as the prior pattern has shown when it comes to America’s longest ever running war?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:10

• Biden Erased Decades Of Historic Crimes In His Speech To Congress
  Biden Erased Decades Of Historic Crimes In His Speech To Congress

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald and Siraj Hashmi via Outside Voices Substack, (emphasis ours)

  Biden’s claim that the Capitol Riot was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is ahistorical garbage…

  

  As President Biden wrapped up a 65-minute joint address to Congress to mark his administration’s first 100 days, what was shared in the lead-up to his speech sowed discord over the entire affair:

  Biden to refer to Jan 6 insurrection as “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” in speech tonight. pic.twitter.com/rW6L2ybDRQ

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 28, 2021

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  Sure enough, the President delivered on this. Opening his address, Biden stated, “I took the oath of office — lifted my hand off our family Bible — and inherited a nation in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

  Yes, the January 6th siege on the U.S. Capitol building, often alluded to as an “insurrection,” was an embarrassing day for our country. But to suggest that it was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is disingenuous at best. At worst, it’s a malicious attempt to whitewash the history of attacks carried out both by and on the government that have had much more catastrophic results.

  Apart from the September 11th terrorist attacks that targeted the country’s financial system, Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the defenders of our democracy when a hijacked American Airlines flight 77 flew into the Pentagon. Were it not for the heroes who resisted against the hijackers of United flight 93, Al Qaeda’s attempt to fly a commercial airline into the White House or U.S. Capitol building would have come to fruition. Despite being a horrific tragedy, 9/11 has been dismissed by some as being explicitly a “foreign attack,” not one from within.

  So, let’s explore attacks on our democracy from within.

  Following 9/11, the Bush administration, in conjunction with Congress, expedited the passage of the Patriot Act, a wide-sweeping national security law that infringed on the civil liberties of every American in the name of fighting terror. The Fourth Amendment became a relic of the past as the government’s power to surveil and spy on its own citizens reached its peak. Individuals who shared names with persons of interest or suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, landed on government no-fly lists, restricting their right to freely move about the country for dubious reasons and with no due process or recourse. And even worse, many had their right to due process eviscerated when they were detained by the newly-created Department of Homeland Security and found themselves at Guantanamo Bay without even being charged with a crime.

  Yet this is not the first time that American citizens, or even permanent residents for that matter, had their rights infringed upon by the government.

  As the FBI was formed in the early 20th century, Americans whose ideologies were at odds with the government’s interests were often targeted by the agency’s longest-serving director, J. Edgar Hoover. In the eyes of the FBI Director, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a suspected communist given his ties to Stanley Levison, whose suspected pro-communist activities were monitored by the FBI in the 1950s. Although Dr. King has been viewed as one of the most consequential leaders in American history due to his role in the civil rights movement, at the time, Hoover and many in the FBI viewed him as a threat to our democracy, ushering in communism under the guise of “civil rights.” The FBI infamously blackmailed Dr. King by sending him a letter advocating he commit suicide. 

  

  J Edgar Hoover (1895 -1972) points his finger while testifying before the House on Un-American Activities Committee, Washington, DC. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  The Red Scare was so severe in the United States that the government actively sought to chip away at Americans’ First Amendment rights to prevent the spread of such ideas. And through the Lavender Scare in the early 1950s, thousands of people were forced out of government service for simply for being suspected of being homosexual. 

  When the United States entered the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act of 1917 into law, which then gave way to the Sedition Act of 1918. These two laws worked in conjunction to strip away the First Amendment rights of every American and demand undying fealty towards the U.S. government. Expressing even the slightest bit of criticism of the U.S. or associating with groups like the Communist Party could result in, at the very least, a government wiretap, and, at worst, a hefty prison sentence and possible execution. In the same token that President Franklin Roosevelt interned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II in fear that they might side with the Japanese Empire, the Espionage and Sedition Acts under President Wilson explicitly targeted German-born American residents during World War I, with over 2,000 arrested and sent to internment camps.

  While the FBI has had its fair share of attacking our democracy, its intelligence counterpart, the CIA, has interfered in the affairs of other countries countless times. As Americans decry countries like Russia, China, and Iran for interfering in our electoral process, the CIA has had a hand in interfering in the affairs of well over a dozen nations. For as many autocratic regimes as the CIA tried to topple in places like Cuba, Indonesia, and the Dominican Republic, the CIA had a hand in the overthrow of democracies as well in countries like Iran, Chile, and Guatemala.

  For decades, J. Edgar Hoover — the notorious FBI Director after whom the law enforcement’s DC headquarters continues to be named — assaulted democracy in every way imaginable. Hoover kept dossiers on political leaders to enforce his will over them. His agency tried to blackmail Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into suicide with threats to expose alleged adultery. FBI agents routinely infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups as part of its COINTELPRO program and other similar domestic spying activities. And the NSA notoriously spied on millions of American citizens without warrants.

  There is a strong argument to be made that the CIA is responsible for interfering in American democracy, too.

  The first impeachment of President Donald Trump in 2019 occurred when a whistleblower within the CIA filed a complaint after Trump had a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, in exchange for $400 million in military aid.

  But it didn’t end there.

  The story of the Russian Bounty program on U.S. troops in Afghanistan that broke publicly in the summer of 2020 made a significant impact in tipping the scales during the 2020 presidential election. The CIA produced the initial intelligence assessment in 2019, which later broke publicly in the summer of 2020, further cementing the perception that Trump was in the pocket of Russian President Vladimir Putin––a claim that was exacerbated when then-President Trump dismissed the allegations outright, calling it “fake news.” However, in April 2021, Trump would be vindicated as the U.S. government revealed that the Intelligence Community had “low to moderate confidence” in the intelligence assessment. In other words, there was little evidence to prove that it was real.

  On top of these government abuses that took place on a wide scale impacting every American, there was a long-drawn-out period since the Civil War that impacted millions of Americans that has had consequences that last to this day: Jim Crow.

  Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, the implementation of Jim Crow laws in Southern former slave states not only segregated black people from the white population, but also barred them from fully participating in society as equal members. Through policies like poll taxes, literacy tests, and increased residency requirements, black people had their right to vote stripped away, essentially removing them from the political process, keeping them further ostracized from society. It was authoritarianism in the most sinister manner, targeting a racial group that was perceived to be subhuman to their white counterpart, all in the name of protecting democracy.

  

  A young boy drinks from the ‘colored’ water fountain on the county courthouse lawn, Hallifax, North Carolina, April 1938. (Photo by John Vacha/FPG/Getty Images)

  Despite all these examples in which our democracy––and the democracies of other nations––were attacked with our government playing the central antagonist, there were a half dozen times where the sitting U.S. president and, by extension, our democracy were attacked from within. Since the Civil War, four U.S. presidents were assassinated (Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, McKinley in 1901, and Kennedy in 1963) and two presidents were injured in assassination attempts (Roosevelt in 1912 and Reagan in 1981). These were six attacks on the duly elected leaders of the people of the United States. Not only does changing the leadership alter the trajectory for a nation, but due to its status, it has lasting effects for the rest of the world.

  If President Biden is to suggest that the siege on Capitol Hill on January 6th was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” then we should demand that our leaders be honest about what does and does not constitute an “attack on our democracy.” Attacks on our democracy aren’t just reserved for storming the U.S. Capitol and targeting U.S. lawmakers with historically low approval ratings. If that’s the case, that a certain set of rules only applies to the political elite and not the people, then it’s safe to say that we do not truly live in a democracy.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:50

• China PMIs Disappoint Again As Production, New Orders Slide
  China PMIs Disappoint Again As Production, New Orders Slide

  For the 4th time in the last 5 months, China’s Services and Manufacturing PMIs missed expectations in April.

  China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers index declined to 51.1 in April from 51.9 in March (and well below the 51.8 expectations), according to data released Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics.

  The non-manufacturing gauge, which measures activity in the construction and services sectors, dropped to 54.9 (from 56.3 in March), compared to 56.1 projected by economists.

  

  While the trend is not the friend of the Chinese economy, we do note that both PMIs remain above the 50-level demarcating an expansion in output. The reading has now remained in expansionary territory for 14 straight months.

  The subindex measuring production fell to 52.2 from 53.9 in March. Total new orders also dropped to 52 from 53.6 in March, and new export orders fell from 51.2 in March to 50.4, but stayed in the expansionary territory for two straight months.

  Surveyed manufacturers said chip shortages, international logistics jams and rising delivery costs have weighed on their operations, the statistics bureau said.

  The non-manufacturing PMI again outpaced manufacturing, supporting the view of the services sector is catching up and manufacturing activity peaking.

  The one potential silver lining, looking ahead, is that China’s economy could be about to get a boost as Deutsche Bank notes that from June onward, the credit impulse -on a YoY basis – should mechanically rebound thanks to base effects. More importantly, as the chart below shows, higher frequency leading indicators are also consistent with a recovery in the credit impulse.

  

  Indeed, recent easing of financial conditions suggests the credit impulse should converge towardsa zero. In turn, this would be consistent with stable PMI manufacturing new orders. And even more notably, for those paying attention to supply chain disruptions and inflationary impulses worldwide, a stabilization of China’s manufacturing is key given that it tends to lead global manufacturing and is a key driver of global inflation expectations.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:38

• Paris Mayor Backs Military Chiefs Who Threatened To Seize Control From Macron Over Inaction On Radical Islam
  Paris Mayor Backs Military Chiefs Who Threatened To Seize Control From Macron Over Inaction On Radical Islam

  A Paris Mayor who was raised in a devout Muslim household by Algerian immigrant parents threw her support behind a controversial letter by current and former military chiefs who said that if nothing is done about the “laxist” policies on radical Islam, it would require “the intervention of our comrades on active duty in a perilous mission of protection of our civilizational values.”

  

  “What is written in this letter is a reality,” Mayor Rachida Dati of Paris’ 7th arrondissement told France Info radio. “When you have a country plagued by urban guerrilla warfare, when you have a constant and high terrorist threat, when you have increasingly glaring and flagrant inequalities … we cannot say that the country is doing well.“

  “The hour is grave, France is in peril,” reads the letter, adding that failure to act against the “suburban hordes” would lead to “civil war” and deaths “in the thousands.”

  The letter was signed by hundreds of retired soldiers, including 20 retired generals, as well as several active duty members of the military – 18 of whom are to be fired, the country’s armed forces chief confirmed on Thursday, according to the Daily Mail.

  

  “The police have become a target for terrorists” said Dati, 55, who served as justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2009. Her comments follow the fatal stabbing last week of a policewoman in the southwest Paris neighborhood of Rambouillet. The suspect, a Tunisian national, had been watching jihadist propaganda videos prior to the attack.

  “I am afraid that the police will break down one day,” Dati continued, adding “And if they crack, we go well beyond the disintegration of society.”

  Dati’s comments come as France’s Chief of Defense, François Lecointre, called the letter “absolutely revolting,” adding of the active-duty signatories: “I hope that their automatic retirement will be decided.”

  “This is an exceptional procedure, which we are launching immediately at the request of the Minister of the Armed Forces,” he added. “These general officers will each pass before a higher military council. At the end of this procedure, it is the President of the Republic who signs a decree expelling them.”

  President Macron’s government strongly condemned the letter, which was published on the 60th anniversary of a failed coup d’etat by generals opposed to France granting independence to Algeria, its former North African colony.

  Prime Minister Jean Castex said the letter by military figures was ‘against all of our republican principles, of honour and the duty of the army’.

  And Florence Parly, the Defence Minister, said: ‘This is unacceptable. There will be consequences, naturally.

  The soldiers behind the letter were all said to be anti-immigration activists with racist views and strong ties to the far-Right Rassemblement National (National Rally).

  The lead signatory was Christian Piquemal, 80, who commanded the French Foreign Legion before losing his privileges as a retired officer after being arrested while taking part in an anti-Islam demonstration in 2016. –Daily Mail

  Supporting the signatories was Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National leader, writing in response to the letter: “I invite you to join us in taking part in the coming battle, which is the battle of France.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:30

• China Population Still Growing… For Now
  China Population Still Growing… For Now

  Earlier this week, we highlighted an interesting article in the FT this according to which China’s population was set to decline for the first time since the 1950s when the national census data is released soon. However, in response to the report which prompted widespread speculation over implications of this demographic inflection point, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) best known for faking every possible piece of data, released a statement this morning saying that the population continued to grow in 2020 ahead of the official release. Watch for 2016-19 revisions though.

  So although a decline was avoided, the NBS recently said that China’s demographics “has reached an important turning point”.

  Here Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid reminds us that using UN population forecasts, China’s population is predicted to peak in 2031 at around 2% above 2019 levels, so expectations were already that the population was plateauing. With normal margins of error the peak could come notably before (maybe even now) or indeed after. For the record, on the UN’s data, India’s population is expected to climb above China’s in 2027 – to be the largest in the world – and will be 17% above by 2050.

  More interestingly, the working-age population peaked in China around 2015 (2013 using NBS data) having surged in the globalization era. In the forty years to 2015 this increased c.97% but is predicted to fall c.-12% over the next 20 years.

  

  As Reid concludes, we can only speculate whether this changes the global inflation outlook. Over the last few decades the surge of global workers and the integration of originally very cheap Chinese labor into the global system has had a very depressing impact on inflation. But as workers become relatively more scarce across the world, including the now much higher-paid Chinese, not to mention with countless supply chains permanently frayed or broken, will there be more pricing power for labor in the years ahead?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:10

• "Historic Moment!" – China Successfully Launches First Module Of Next-Gen Space Station 
  “Historic Moment!” – China Successfully Launches First Module Of Next-Gen Space Station 

  China successfully launched a key module of a new space station Thursday, a mission that shows the country’s ‘space dream’ of dominating low Earth orbit is quickly becoming a reality. 

  China National Space Administration announced Thursday morning that the Long March-5B Y2 rocket lifted off in the southern province of Hainan with the core capsule of the new Tiangong space station. 

  Historic moment! Just now #China launched the Long March-5B Y2 #rocket, sending the #Tianhe天和 core module of China’s #SpaceStation into the #space. Tianhe module is China’s first space station core module and the largest spacecraft China has ever made. pic.twitter.com/ey9GYCKOao

  — Ambassador Deng Xijun (@China2ASEAN) April 29, 2021

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  The next-generation space station will take 18 months to build in low Earth orbit, with a completion year sometime in 2022. The space station is designed as a scientific research outpost for China through the end of the decade since it has been excluded from using the International Space Station (ISS). 

  When completed, the Tiangong space station will be approximately one-fifth the mass of the ISS and weigh about 90-metric-ton in the shape of a T. The size will be comparable to the Russian Mir space station, which operated from 1986 to 2000. 

  

  “We did not intend to compete with the ISS in terms of scale,” Gu Yidong, chief scientist of the China Manned Space program, was quoted by Scientific American as saying.

  The ISS recently celebrated its 20 years in operation with an end of lifespan by 2030. Already, the space station has shown signs of wear and tear amid a series of malfunctions, including air leaks. 

  In early April, Russia said it would pull out of the ISS in 2025 and build a space station by 2030 if Russian President Vladimir Putin provides funding. If not, Russia could soon find itself working with the Chinese in space.

  President Xi Jinping has touted China’s space dream as he was cited by state media as saying it’s the path to “national rejuvenation.” 

  China has recent made no secret of its space ambitions. From the moon to Mars, the country has recently landed multiple spacecraft on these extraterrestrial bodies.

  Meanwhile, the US is doing the same as a space race between both countries heats up. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:50

• America Has A Problem With Poorly-Trained Police Officers, Not "Systemic Racism"
  America Has A Problem With Poorly-Trained Police Officers, Not “Systemic Racism”

  Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  In what just might be the most misguided attempt at ‘utopian’ living ever conceived, progressive Democrats continue to demand the defunding and disbanding of police forces in cities around the country. Yet, like a doctor that has made the wrong diagnosis on a patient, such a radical idea will not bring peace and security to America’s ailing neighborhoods. In fact, it will make them virtually unlivable.

  

  The United States desperately needs a national debate on the root causes of police violence, which the political left has prematurely and wrongly attributed to “systemic racism.” Missing from the bigger picture are questions pertaining to economic hardship, broken homes, drug abuse and street gangs – and perhaps most importantly of all, poorly trained police – as just a few of the contributing factors that have placed law enforcement between a rock and a hard place.

  For every Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the murder of George Floyd, there are dozens of cops like Nicholas Reardon, who was forced to make a split-second decision after a Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, attempted to stab another teenager. Reardon, who shot and killed Bryant, has found himself something of a celebrity not for potentially saving the life of a young girl, but for being the fresh face of “white supremacy.”

  NBA star Lebron James led the charge against the cop when he unconscionably tweeted to his 46.5 followers a photograph of Nicholas Reardon with the caption, “YOU’RE NEXT, beside the emoji of an hourglass. Some people may consider that a threat.

  Facts do not matter. Only the narrative matters. pic.twitter.com/7yAp5X42Uu

  — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 22, 2021

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  In another incident, Kim Potter, a 26-year department veteran of the Minneapolis police force, shot and killed Daunte Wright, 20, just blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. The similarities don’t end there. As was the case with Floyd, Daunte Wright, for whom the police had an outstanding warrant, struggled with the police and even managed to make it back inside of his vehicle before being fatally shot. Potter, who appears to have mistaken her gun for a taser in the chaos that ensued, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in Wright’s death.

  In yet another highly publicized incident, Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latino boy, was shot and killed last month by Chicago Police Department officer Eric Stillman following a foot chase down a dark alley. Footage from Stillman’s body cam appears to show Toledo dropping a handgun moments before turning and raising his hands, immediately prior to being killed.

  Is it fair to blame the phantom of “systemic racism” for these and other killings that occasionally occur between civilians and the police? That would seem ludicrous, yet that is how these tragic incidences are being framed in the media and by civil rights groups, like Black Lives Matter, who continue to bang the drum for disbanding the police. Would it not make more sense to fight not only for better training in the police ranks, but for getting the word out to the youth that resisting arrest is not the best strategy when confronted by a law enforcement officer? Yet such a rational plan of action would deprive the Democrats of the political points they receive every time a member of the minority gets killed during a run-in with the police. At the same time, it would dry up corporate donations to BLM, which has helped its co-founder and self-described Marxist, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, purchase four luxury homes in the United States alone.

  Getting back to the question of police training, why didn’t Nicholas Reardon opt to shoot a warning shot instead, or perhaps “aim low,” as a means to prevent Miss Bryant from stabbing that young lady? And why was Officer Stillman in pursuit of an individual down a dark alley in the West End of Chicago without any backup? And finally, how in the world was it possible for Kim Potter, a trained police officer, to confuse a weighty Glock-22 with a lightweight Taser? Brandon Tatum, a Black American political commentator and former police officer, offered as an alternative to the ‘systemic racism’ theory, the possibility that Potter was part of an affirmative action hiring program.

  “They are hiring people to meet quotas,” Tatum commented on his YouTube channel, “and they’re not hiring the best people for the job.”

  

  That is one possible theory to explain police violence that the mainstream media will not be entertaining anytime soon. The question is “why”? Why is the media, just like it is with so many major corporations, hyping and funding the idea of systemic racism as the source of police violence when there are many other far more plausible explanations? While the ultimate motivation for assuming such a dangerous position may never be known, it is clear that anyone who challenges the ‘racist’ narrative risks attracting the wrath of the woke brigade. This would include, perhaps more than anyone, the academics.

  In 2019, psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland examined 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to ask a simple question: did the race of the police officer or the civilian play any role in those tragic events? The answer: no they didn’t. Cesario and Johnson concluded there was “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.” Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. Would it surprise anyone to know that “citizen behavior,” i.e. resisting arrest, is the greatest determinate of police behavior?

  Perhaps equally unsurprising is the establishment came down hard on the two number crunchers, especially after their research was cited by author Heather MacDonald in an article for the Wall Street Journal entitled, The Myth of Systemic Police Racism.

  “It set off a firestorm at Michigan State,” MacDonald wrote. “The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.”

  As par for course, various student groups took up petitions to have Hsu fired, while the school profusely apologized. In the end, the mob declared yet another victory as Hsu finally stepped down from his position.

  The controversial paper’s co-author Cesario told WSJ that he feared the activists would continue “pushing for a narrowing of what kinds of topics people can talk about, or what kinds of conclusions people can come to.”

  It appears that Mr. Cesario’s fears have materialized faster than he could have realized as a wall of censorship has been constructed around the world of academia, the one place where the truth on “systemic racism” was being exposed for the lie it is. Now that there is no one left to tell the people, aside from a handful of rigidly regulated and censored truth-seeking publications, America can expect a future of artificially induced racial tensions as a number of good cops are forced to take the blame for a “systemic racism” that only exists on the pages of the mainstream media.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:30

• Manhattan Retail Rents Continue Slide As Recovery Narrative Falls Apart 
  Manhattan Retail Rents Continue Slide As Recovery Narrative Falls Apart 

  Manhattan’s “prime” retail real estate market remained under pressure in the first quarter even as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available and public health restrictions eased. 

  According to Bloomberg, citing a report by Cushman & Wakefield, SoHo, a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan known for designer boutiques, fancy chain stores, and high-end art galleries, experienced the worst slump in retail rents in the first quarter, down 20% from a year earlier to $279 a square foot. The latest surge in long-term leases barely put a dent in overhead supply that has been increasing since the beginning of the pandemic. About 30% of SoHo’s retail space is dormant and available for rent. 

  We noted in a piece titled “Manhattan Retail Rents Plunge In “Prime” Shopping Areas” that retail rents slid in the fourth quarter of last year. 

  

  Besides SoHo, Herald Square and Madison Ave.’s retail rents tumbled 19% over the same quarter last year. Madison Avenue had the most inventory available, with the availability rate at a whopping 40%.

  

  “The bad news is that first quarter of 2021 is showing the true impact of the pandemic on the market,” Steven Soutendijk, an executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield, told Bloomberg. 

  Soutendijk continued: “The good news is that landlords are responding and adjusting rents even further downwards to spur leasing.”

  Mayor DeBlasio’s solution to mitigate the virus spread has doomed the city. A speedy economic recovery is now questionable.

  Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently said DeBlasio has “ruined” the metro area through strict public health orders crushing businesses and liberal policies that have made the area more dangerous. 

  “Now he’s consistently doing horrible things and destroying my city,” Giuliani said. “He’s ruining it all, he’s doing it in a flash of an eye.”

  To revive the city, DeBlasio will spend $30 million on a tourism campaign this summer to attract tourists. 

  “It’s critical that we deliver the message that New York City is open and welcoming visitors once again,” Fred Dixon, president and chief executive officer of NYC & Company, the city’s official tourism organization, told WSJ. 

  Tourism accounts for hundreds of thousands of jobs – for a sustainable recovery, there needs to be an influx of tourists to visit attractions, shop at retail shops, eat at restaurants, and stay in hotels. 

  An exodus of office workers, companies, and residents also adds to the city’s economic woes. Without the uptick in foot traffic on streets, the city should prepare for a new reality, one where its economic recovery lags the rest of the country. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:10

• The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 1: Protecting The People From Pernicious Manipulation
  The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 1: Protecting The People From Pernicious Manipulation

  Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

  “Heaven is purpose and principle. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulation.”

  We had a slew of spectacular Big Tech results this week, but has the time come to regulate them more closely to avoid increasingly monopolistic behaviour, and to protect the population from the pernicious effect of the manipulation of big data? It’s as much an argument about the role of the state as it is about the success of companies. There will be winners and losers.

  

  As always there is lots going on in markets, but the run of superb Tech results has been truly spectacular. Many tech firms have successfully navigated the Pandemic, selling into bored WFH workers, and achieved staggering success. Let’s use the moment to ponder the difficult question of how should we value Tech, and should it be more thoroughly regulated?

  To the upside, new value and economic growth is created from new ideas creating new demand and markets. Invention leads to innovation – which is why everyone is so over-excited about the swift adoption potential of AI, Virtual Reality, 3-D printing, Meatless meat, Robotics, autonomous systems from drones to cars and all the other wonderful things we read about in the new tech space. The companies trade on extraordinary multiples based on their perceived potential – and is often exaggerated.

  In real reality, (as opposed to virtual), these ideas are often brilliant solutions in search of problems; they take time, effort, and travel many wrong paths on the road to monetisation. We see that repeatedly in the miserable negative profits generated by so many tech unicorns that promised so much. Some stuff works. Much doesn’t.

  There is nothing wrong with the Tech adoption process. The massive personal rewards Tech entrepreneurs can make for themselves is a major reason why the West is so innovative. Long may it be encouraged.

  On the downside, some Big Tech – most these most closely thriving off the back of the monetisation of data – have been massively profitable. Their success creates a completely different series of moral sentiment dilemmas, as Adam Smith may have put it.

  Where do limits on Big Tech need to come?

  It’s been said the goal of every entrepreneur is to become a monopoly and reap monopoly-like returns. The goal of legislators is to avoid it happening. Regulatory oversight of profits is not an attractive option for investors who’ve funded the entrepreneur on the basis they’ll get monopoly-like yields.

  Google’s results earlier this week were spectacular. So spectacular they have raised fears for the prospect of further government/interventions to rein back on Big Tech money making machines. Google’s success (nobody calls it Alphabet) came on the back of the pandemic spurring up user numbers, web advertising, YouTube and the stock rose to a new record on a $50 bln stock buyback plan – what else would a tech giant find to do with its money, aside from buying Waymo’s driverless car tech and building more data centres?

  Facebook posted a beat on earnings and $26 bln revenues on the back of a 30% rise in ad revenue, and an increase in the volume of ads. My Facebook pages are now 80% ads for leather desk mats, outdoor kitchens, light fittings, Scandinavian furniture, wine storage and all the other stuff She-who-is-Mrs-Blain and I have googled as we renovate the house. I barely use the thing any more. My kids don’t touch it. Facebook makes nearly $10 for every user from Ad revenue.

  Amazon reports later today, and its looking like another massive winner on the back of boosted pandemic sales, the lack of high street competition due to lockdowns, its increasing dominance, and the fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers it’s planning to use to host drone deliveries…. (Ok.. but soon..)

  Apple is different. It sells real stuff, and regular readers will know I’m an addict of its goods and services. Its results were stellar – double digit growth across the product range, revenues of $90 bln – half of which was iPhone sales, 42.5% margins and authorisation for a $90 bln stock buyback programme.

  However, Apple is under the regulatory cosh for the way in which it’s using its massively powerful App Store gateway to gouge profits from App Developers – the Fortnite maker Epic Games takes Apple to court next week. Apple can do that because iOS and Mac is its own ecosystem/tech-habitat, and if you want access to its Bright-Shiny-Things you play by their rules.

  The problem of Big Tech’s success is its sheer scale, and many firms have passed the innovation/inventive stage into the monetisation phase. That is when some of them will morph from moving society forward into a pure profit play as they seek monopoly status. They stop inventing stuff, and seek to make their stuff pay, becoming increasingly bureaucratic as they do so.

  I read recently Matt Stoller of the American Liberties Project pointing out:

  “What these firms are doing to get 20-30% returns is capturing market power, they are not creating wealth.”

  Many politicians now agree. They see Facebook, Amazon, Google et al as de-facto monopolies reaping unwarrantable windfall profits while creating untold harm to consumers and other firms from anti-competitive business policies. Its a factor legislators around the globe are determined to address. (Especially if it makes them look strong to voters.)

  The question is – how much should government intervene to regulate and licence big tech? The Libertarian right would say not at all. But Adam Smith would have recognised the dangers inherent in Big Tech’s control and use of big data. Information is a public good. Rather than allowing Big Tech to own and control it – should it be owned by the people and licenced by the state as a public good? That’s a question, btw, not a statement

  Investors will say no – they want the returns. But these companies now utterly dominate their space. They are no longer inventive tech companies expanding the limits of innovation – now they are monopolies milking their data streams.

  That’s why Apple’s new privacy controls are so interesting. This week they upgraded the operating system to stop Apps from tracking Apple User’s data. Google is also on board to kill the App tracking cookies. That’s terrifying news for Facebook which has been monetising that data to sell ads. The social media site is on the wires arguing its bad for smaller niche advertisers, and that its just Apple and Google looking to concentrate the data in their own hands.

  There is any amount of economic literature to explain why monopolies are such a bad idea. Monopolies that exploit the information revealed by internet users about themselves are perhaps even worse – inserting themselves virus-like into their victims and driving their spending decisions. Its wider than just trying to sell us stuff our browsing history has suggested we might like to buy.

  As the degree of polarisation in recent elections has shown, the rising problem of this modern age is that billions of voters think they have free will, but their every action and belief is now increasingly set according to the algorithms dictating what the read, see and buy. In the US, its been the subject of judicial hearings: Algorithms and Amplification: How Social Media Platforms Shape our Discourse and Our Minds.

  Regulation is never a great solution, but maybe it is time for greater government action over the windfall profits being made by Big Tech behemoths? If Amazon is swamping the high-street because it runs cheaper – even it out by taxing them higher! The logic is simple: Amazon’s success puts high streets out of business and causes additional social welfare, medical and other costs from the workers and businesses it displaces. You can make similar arguments for any Big Tech monopoly…

  Except, maybe Facebook. If I can think of any reason not to dump Facebook, I’ll be sure to let you know. Basically it’s just an advertising platform, and its primary advantage of targeted advertising to likely interested, motivate buyers, is about to get much weaker. Sell. There are plenty of other ways to advertise.

  I have some further points to make re the need to regulate Tech, looking at it from a slightly different perspective of when Tech is Good or Bad for the environment and ecosystem (not just from the perspective of climate change), but I will save that up for Part 2… It will be about the pros, cons, and potential costs of launching Low Earth Orbit coms satellites, and will ask about the perceived public need vs public good!

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:50

• Zarif-Gate Leak Causes Shake-Up In Iran's Presidential Office As FM Expresses 'Regret'
  Zarif-Gate Leak Causes Shake-Up In Iran’s Presidential Office As FM Expresses ‘Regret’

  This week’s ‘Zarif-Gate’ audio leak has caused a shake-up in Iran’s presidential office, reportedly leading to the resignation Hessameddin Ashena, head of the Strategic Studies Center (a think tank closely associated with the Iranian presidency), as he was present during the interview with Zarif. The top Iranian diplomat had essentially said it was the military leadership that sets policy.

  “Hesamodin Ashena of the Center for Strategic Studies resigned over ‘the theft’ of the three-hour tape of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif being interviewed at the CSS,” AFP reports Thursday. “Ashena, who held the post of Iranian deputy intelligence minister in the 2000s, has headed the center since 2013 and also serves as adviser to President Hassan Rouhani.”

  But it’s not enough for Islamic hardliners representing the clerical and military establishment, who are now calling for Zarif to step down immediately, also given his remarks were taken as disparaging toward the late “national hero” Soleimani. 

  

  The interview, which was reportedly captured months ago and was never meant to be made public, included Zarif speaking with surprising frankness and criticism toward the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Islamic Republic. He bluntly admitted, for example, that the powerful IRGC often overrides government decisions and that the late Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani’s actions often harmed diplomacy. Even Iranian newspapers described the leak as a major “scandal” which embarrassed Iran on the world stage at a moment of “progress” at the Vienna nuclear talks. 

  In his first public comments since the scandal, Zarif said in an Instagram post that he’s committed to “protecting the interests” of the country and Iranian people. He expressed regret, but stopped short of a direct apology:

  “I am very sorry how a secret, theoretical discussion about the necessity of increasing cooperation between diplomacy and the field (the Guard) — in order for the next officials to use the valuable experiences of the last eight years –- became an internal conflict,” Zarif wrote.

  “I did not censor myself, because this is a betrayal of the people,” he added.

  “I have always been subject to the policies approved by the country and I have strongly defended them. But in expressing my expert opinion, I have considered seeking forgiveness, appeasement, and self-censorship as betrayal,” he said, essentially suggesting it was the leak itself that was a betrayal.

  “Zarif also says that by assassinating [Soleimani] in Iraq, the United States delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack.” https://t.co/J7tFMnspzg

  — Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) April 26, 2021

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

  While the widespread international coverage of the leaked tapes triggered a firestorm of debate within Iran which in typical fashion pitted the Islamic hardliners against ‘moderates’ (Zarif and Rouhani are widely seen within the “moderate” camp that seeks engagement with the West), it appears the Iranian top diplomat’s job is safe, for now.

  There’s speculation that the leak was intended to sabotage Vienna talks, which is viewed by deep suspicion within the Iranian hardliner political camp – particularly represented in parliament and among the Shia clerical establishment. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:30

• The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public's Trust
  The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

  Authored by Caitlyn Johnstone,

  This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.

  

  Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.

  The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

  And actually it doesn’t ultimately matter what mainstream pundits and reporters believe is the cause of the public’s growing disgust with them, because there’s nothing they can do to fix it anyway. The mass media will never regain the public’s trust.

  They’ll never regain the public’s trust for a couple of reasons, the first of which is because they’ll never be able to become trustworthy. At no point will the mass media ever begin wowing the public with its journalistic integrity and causing people to re-evaluate their opinion of mainstream news reporters. At no point will people’s disdain for these outlets ever cease to be reinforced and confirmed by the manipulative and deceitful behaviors which caused that disdain in the first place.

  A propaganda outlet will never be anything other than a propaganda outlet. A lot of half-awake people with one eye open and one eye closed will notice how the news media don’t practice journalism and don’t report the facts, and they’ll assume that something went wrong at some point. “Just do your jobs and report the news!” they’ll shout in frustration.

  But nothing has gone wrong, and they are doing their jobs. They are doing their jobs extremely well.

  Telling the mass media to “just do their jobs” and report the news is like bursting into a shoe factory yelling “Just do your jobs and start manufacturing dentures!” Their job is not to report the news, their job is to manipulate public perception for the benefit of the media-owning class. And toward that end they’ve been immensely successful.

  There’s no point admonishing the mainstream press for the public’s plummeting trust in it, because a thing that has only ever existed to administer propaganda can’t suddenly become journalism. It’s like yelling at a rock for not being a tree.

  The mass media are completely and utterly irredeemable, and always have been. It’s a waste of energy to try and get plutocratic propaganda institutions to suddenly begin doing journalism; that’s not what they’re for. Instead, our energy is better spent teaching people to stop seeing them as journalistic outlets.

  The other reason the mass media will never regain the public’s trust is that humanity’s relationship with narrative is evolving too far beyond the level that once saw Americans gathered around the television listening with Bambi-eyed faith to the words of Walter Cronkite. That level of widespread blind credulity in the official stories of the day will never again exist.

  Our old relationship with narrative is crumbling, and people’s old ways of understanding what’s going on in the world just aren’t holding together anymore.

  As cold war tensions with Russia and China continue to mount while the US-centralized empire fights with increasing desperation to retain its dominance, we’re seeing propaganda hit white noise saturation levels to such an extent that we’ll likely soon find out how aggressively the collective consciousness can be pummelled with mass-scale psyops before it snaps.

  America just went through four years with a president whose words had no relationship with facts or reality, and who made no attempt to pretend otherwise.

  The mainstream public is becoming increasingly aware of the widespread nature of disinformation and propaganda.

  Deepfake technology means we soon won’t even be able to trust video anymore.

  Ordinary people are hurting financially while Wall Street is booming, a glaring plot hole in the story of the economy that’s only getting more pronounced.

  There are numerous different narratives about Covid-19 and the government responses to it running parallel to each other with everyone still to this day absolutely certain that their position is the only correct one.

  The entire media class is acting stranger and stranger, now routinely reporting bogus stories en masse like the Russian collusion narrative or the “Bountygate” narrative and then simply acting like it’s no big deal when those stories they’d fed us with such urgency are completely discredited.

  Now we’re even seeing headlines about UFOs in esteemed mainstream publications, not just once but regularly, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

  You can’t twist and shove the collective consciousness around like that without something snapping. Without people beginning to look at the thoughts in their heads with suspicion and beginning to question their sense of reality. Without people wondering if everything they believe is a lie.

  Narrative Is Crumbling

  “We are now, as a species, collectively squeezing ourselves out of our old unhealthy relationship with narrative.”https://t.co/iYK2oC7YXf

  — Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) July 26, 2020

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

  We’ve been seeing signs that humanity is moving into a new relationship with narrative for some time now as people learn across all sectors of society that so many of the seemingly solid rules we once took so seriously are just empty thought fluff that we are free to rewrite at any time.

  Atheism and secularism, once fringe positions, are now mainstream as people have discovered that they don’t need to allow their lives to be controlled by words written by long-dead men in far off lands from cultural and historical contexts which have no relevance to our own circumstances.

  People are beginning to recognize that money is made up and we can collectively change the rules of how it works whenever we want, with the rising popularity of both socialism and cryptocurrencies capturing the public imagination of what’s possible.

  People are beginning to understand that what we call gender is a large network of conceptual constructs which we have overlaid upon human anatomy, and that we are free to disregard and re-author those conceptual constructs if that feels right to us.

  People are beginning to understand that romantic relationships don’t need to look the way they’ve been modeled for us across the centuries, with unmarried, same-sex, polyamorous, or other relationship models also being perfectly acceptable options.

  People are beginning to understand that “family” doesn’t need to refer to people to whom we are related by blood, with the concept of chosen family gaining in popularity.

  People are beginning to understand that the failed drug war is an immoral abuse and that we should be allowed to experiment with our own consciousness using whatever substances we see fit.

  These are all signs of a growing awareness that the “How It Is” narratives we’ve been fed by culture do not have the concrete reality to them that we once assumed they did. We’re beginning to see them as what they are: stories. Stories that we are free to ignore or re-write to whatever extent we find useful.

  For propagandists whose manipulations depend on their targets imbuing their narratives with a great degree of significance, this recent development is very problematic. If a ‘How It Is’ narrative isn’t taken seriously, it can’t be used to manipulate the way people think, behave, and vote. And this seriousness is exactly what we’re seeing deteriorate in humanity’s relationship with narrative.

  This could end up being a very, very good thing. All human destructiveness is ultimately caused by our taking thought seriously instead of simply using it as the tool it’s meant to be and setting it down when we’re done with it; look at any manifestation of human self-destructiveness, no matter how large or how small, and you’ll find a belief being taken too seriously underlying it. This shift in our relationship with narrative could end up being what saves us from our self-destructive patterns as a species.

  But it won’t lend itself to trust in the mainstream media. This too would be a very good thing.

  *  *  *

  I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.

  The best way to get around the internet censors and 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. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, 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. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 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.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:10

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• How Old Are Europe's Tech Companies?
  How Old Are Europe’s Tech Companies?

  In a previous infographic, we provided an overview of the age of the world’s (mostly American) tech giants. Then we had a look at a selection of Asian tech companies, showing that some are dinosaurs of the tech age while others have just about hatched, but already have taken over worldwide markets, such as Toshiba, Huawei or ByteDance. But, Statista’s Claire Jenik asks, what about the European technology companies?

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Founded about a century and a half ago, telecom equipment manufacturers Ericsson and Nokia are making their mark among Europe’s tech oldies.

  The Swedish telecommunications pioneer, founded in 1876, was one of the first companies to manufacture and market telephones. As for the Finnish Nokia, its history is a little different: once a manufacturer of toilet paper, the company became a conglomerate in the 20th century and then turned to the electronics industry in the 1960s, before becoming a leader in mobile telephony in the late 1990s.

  With about half a century on the clock, we then find IT and software giants, such as Capgemini, created in 1967 in Grenoble, and the German SAP, born in 1972. Much younger but born more than a decade ago, the music streaming services Spotify and Deezer, as well as the electronic payment platform Adyen. They are among the winners of the digital revolution and are today heavyweights in their respective industries. Finally, among the European “youngsters”, we can cite the Franco-German specialist in teleconsultation, Doctolib, who will be celebrating his 8th birthday this year as well as the 8 year-old British online food delivery service Deliveroo.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 02:45

• Another Navalny Drama Fizzles Despite Hungry Western Media
  Another Navalny Drama Fizzles Despite Hungry Western Media

  Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The indulgence and fawning must have given Navalny a sense of impunity, reinforcing his megalomania and attention-seeking…

  

  After three weeks allegedly on a hunger strike, the Western-lionized Russian blogger Alexei Navalny has thrown the towel in. The decisive factor was the Russian authorities refusing to kowtow to a Western orchestrated drama.

  Another factor is that Navalny is a conman and stooge of Western intelligence services. To carry out a real hunger strike is perhaps one of the most traumatic, mentally excruciating feats of self-sacrifice. To witness yourself wasting away to death must summon the deepest convictions of righteousness.

  I remember living through the Irish Republican hunger strike 40 years ago which resulted in the death of 10 prisoners in a British state prison. The first one of those men to die was Bobby Sands who at the age of 27 passed away in a coma on May 5 after 66 days of refusing food. It was one of the grimmest periods in the 30-year conflict with Britain that ravaged Ireland.

  Few political prisoners undertake hunger strike, and fewer still see it through to the horrendous end.

  Only those dedicated to a righteous cause could ever contemplate overcoming the gravest challenge.

  That’s why everything about Navalny’s supposed hunger strike reeks of a sham aided and abetted by the fawning Western corporate media.

  The apparent collaboration in this drama also indicates the relationship of a stooge orchestrated by Western state intelligence.

  When the 44-year-old convicted embezzler declared that he was going on a death-fast on March 31, the Western media kept pace with sensational headlines detailing his supposed declining health. We were told about pains, aches, and numbness, “torture”, “imminent death” and so on. Even though the Russian prison authorities released video footage of Navalny swaggering around his shared dormitory remonstrating with a guard over some petty issue.

  The British state-owned BBC reported that prison authorities were using dastardly tricks such as putting savory meals beside Navalny’s bed. The BBC never gave any such concerned coverage to Bobby Sands and his Republican comrades who were abused inhumanely by British prison guards. Indeed, the British media portrayed the then Margaret Thatcher government as justified in its treatment of “Irish terrorists”.

  Instead of the grim fate supposedly facing Navalny, the Western media reported his social media statements with an air of jocularity. “My friends would laugh if they saw me now walking around like a skeleton,” said Navalny in one of his Instagram posts. How is it that a purportedly persecuted prisoner has the liberty to use social media and generate Western headlines? The inappropriate humor also betrays a lack of credibility in his supposed journey of death.

  All the while, the Russian authorities were monitoring Navalny’s health and maintaining that his condition was “satisfactory”.

  U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were reportedly impressing on Russian President Vladimir Putin their concern over Navalny. Again, such high-profile intervention is a reflection of the political orchestration going on. It is so disproportionate to the reality that it is an absurd giveaway of scripted drama.

  It soon became clear, however, that the Russian state would not be bullied by psycho-drama. Its laws and sovereign affairs are not open for hypocritical Western lecturing.

  Navalny was arrested on January 17 after spending five months in Germany in flagrant violation of his parole terms for a suspended jail sentence over a fraud conviction in 2014. While in Germany, Navalny cooked up the outlandish drama that he had been poisoned with a military nerve weapon on the direct orders of Putin. No evidence has ever been provided to support his claims but the Western media and governments have endorsed the narrative as if gospel truth.

  The indulgence and fawning must have given Navalny a sense of impunity, reinforcing his megalomania and attention-seeking. He was therefore shocked when he was arrested on returning to Russia from Germany and again when the Russian federal authorities ordered in February that his suspended sentence be converted to two-and-half-years behind bars.

  While in prison, Navalny began demanding the “right” to have his private doctors visit him over alleged leg numbness and back pain. How’s that for arrogance!

  One wonders how the BBC would have reported it if Irish Republican prisoners were making such a demand from the British state.

  In any case, Russian authorities faced down the intense Western media campaign aiming to make a hero out of the “starving” Navalny. Prison doctors maintained that he was being adequately cared for. One may speculate that the Russian authorities spotted the fake drama from an early stage. You can’t pull off a harrowing hunger strike without an iron will – which Navalny and his handlers do not have because their cause is a fake pretext for destabilizing Russia’s internal politics and undermining the government.

  Realizing that the battle of wills – and shills – was not going to be won, the next necessary ploy was to create an off-ramp for Navalny in order to avoid farcical embarrassment.

  His personal doctors started “warning” on April 18 through obliging Western media headlines that Navalny “could die any day” due to his deteriorating condition. That was after 19 days of supposed hunger strike. Strangely, Navalny’s doctors were somehow able to give such a dire prognosis without actually examining him personally.

  Then on April 23, the BBC and other Western media outlets ran headlines such as: ‘Navalny urged to end hunger strike’.

  Within hours, the convicted conman declared that he was coming off his alleged fast to the death.

  So, there you have it. The end of another drama in which the Western-lionized hero cheats death twice in only a matter of months. First, from alleged poisoning with a deadly nerve agent, and secondly, from an anguish-filled three-week hunger strike (at least according to Western media).

  At this point, Navalny’s intel scriptwriters and Western media are the only ones going hungry.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 02:00

• Critical Race Theory Is About To Face Its Day(s) In Court
  Critical Race Theory Is About To Face Its Day(s) In Court

  Authored by John Murawski via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  As recently as last summer, few people outside academia had heard of critical race theory, whose central claim is that racism, not liberty, is the founding value and guiding vision of American society. Then, President Trump issued an executive order last September banning the teaching of this “malign ideology” to federal employees and federal contractors.

  

  Trump’s ban was blocked by a federal judge in December and immediately revoked by Joe Biden upon occupying the White House in January. Since then, federal agencies and federal contractors have resumed staff training on unconscious bias, microaggressions, systemic racism and white privilege – some of the most common but also most disputed concepts associated with the four-decade-old academic theory.

  

  Now critical race theory is about to face a major real-world test: a spate of lawsuits alleging that it encourages discrimination and other illegal policies targeting whites, males and Christians. But unlike Trump’s executive order, which ran into First Amendment problems by prohibiting controversial speech, the lawsuits name specific policies and practices that allegedly discriminate, harass, blame and humiliate people based on their race.  

  

  David Pitvorak, plaintiffs’ attorney: Equity “is a euphemism for race-based outcomes.”

  The common thread of these legal challenges is the inescapable logic that making accommodations for critical race theory will erode the nation’s anti-discrimination law as it has developed since the 1960s. This would mean replacing the colorblind ideal of treating all people equally, which has been widely viewed as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement, with a contrary strategy: implementing race-based policies, which can range from affirmative action to reparations for compensating African Americans for the injustices of the past and for producing equitable outcomes in the future.

  “Critical race theory is a Trojan horse of sorts,” said David Pivtorak, a Los Angeles lawyer representing two white men who are suing two California state environment agencies.

  “It disguises itself as the gold standard of fairness and justice but, in fact, relies on vilification and the idea of permanent oppressor and oppressed races. Its goal is not ensuring that all people play by the same rules, regardless of race, but equity, which is a euphemism for race-based outcomes.”

  About a dozen lawsuits and administrative complaints have been filed since 2018, with another wave planned this summer by conservative public interest law firms and private attorneys. Their goal is to draw attention to some of the more pronounced practices and win court judgments to slow down the spread of CRT in K-12 schools, government agencies other organizations.

  A pair of lawsuits filed in 2019 by four white women against the New York City public school system allege that a diversity trainer told employees, “White colleagues must take a step back and yield to colleagues of color,” and that they should “recognize that values of White culture are supremacist.” The California suit filed last year by the two white men alleges that the state hosted a discussion series in 2020 in which speakers stated “that any disparate outcomes in society must be the result of white supremacy.”

  A 2019 complaint filed by an Illinois public school teacher led to a finding that as part of a year-long course on equity and diversity, seventh- and eighth-graders participated in a white privilege awareness exercise that required them to remain “in silence” and with “eyes lowered” as they responded to a facilitator’s prompts. A 2020 lawsuit filed by a 12th-grade biracial student and his African American mother says that a civics class in a Nevada charter school taught that “reverse racism doesn’t exist” and that “people of color CANNOT be racist.”

  

  Margaret Burnham, critical race scholar: “Part of being an employee or a public official or a school teacher requires you to appreciate your own standing – your identity and your positionality.”

  Critical race theory scholars assured RealClearInvestigations that white people should never be fired, penalized or gratuitously humiliated for the historical accident of being born white. But organizations should be granted wide leeway in adopting diversity training and equity policies, they say, even if asking white people to acknowledge their unearned privilege and think about their complicity in white supremacy makes them feel singled out and induces anxiety.

  “Part of being an employee or a public official or a school teacher requires you to appreciate your own standing – your identity and your positionality,” said Margaret Burnham, a law professor at Northeastern University and a former Massachusetts state judge, using CRT terms that describe racial and gender power hierarchies.

  “Anything that is about the education of the person so that they can do a better job is fair game,” Burnham said. “Just like you have to learn new technologies, new languages, I consider this part of being an employee, part of being in a public space where you’re going to interact with other people.”

  Proponents of critical race theory say the lawsuits are a form of white denialism that confirms the pervasiveness of the problem that CRT exposes. Many critical race theorists believe that the United States has functioned as an elaborate affirmative action scheme to empower and enrich white males, a strategy that depends on a certain degree of coverup.

  “I see these lawsuits as a last gasp attempt of those who benefit from the racial hierarchy to cling to the power and the privileges that have been associated with whiteness from the beginning of the country,” said andré douglas pond cummings (who writes his name in lowercase letters), a business law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock who has taught courses on corporate justice and “Hip Hop & the American Constitution.”

  

  andré douglas pond cummings, critical race proponent: “Treating people with dissimilar histories equally … can lead to unjust results and outcomes.”

  “Critical race theory challenges the very legitimacy of the legal system in which these lawsuits are situated,” cummings said.

  “Treating people with dissimilar histories equally, where some have been historically oppressed, can lead to unjust results and outcomes, thereby requiring a focus on results and outcomes, not on blind process, with the goal being equal economic opportunity and equity.”

  The central unifying insight of critical race theory is that racism is embedded in the U.S. legal system and social structures, “so that you don’t have to think about it anymore and you can have racism without racists at this point,” said Robert Westley, a Tulane University law professor who specializes in critical race theory and reparations.

  “You don’t have to be an avowed racist in order for there to be race-based outcomes in this society,” Westley said, noting that confronting these matters “is going to entail talking about things that make a lot of people very uncomfortable.”

  CRT rejects the foundational premises of classical liberalism – such as legal neutrality and individual rights – and from that perspective, colorblindness is not understood as a strategy to overcome racism but as a method to perpetuate it.

  “It’s a white ideology,” Burnham said.

  “Colorblindness really comes into fashion as a means of denying the persistence of racial stratification in the United States.” 

  The lawsuits face a number of challenges, a point borne out by early setbacks some of the claims have experienced so far, including the defeat of Trump’s executive order on free-speech grounds. In another case, lawyers dropped the discrimination allegations in one of the first such lawsuits, filed in 2018 against the Santa Barbara Unified School District in California, because, they said, students and staff who supported the lawsuit were “deathly afraid” of repercussions if they spoke out and came forward publicly as plaintiffs. 

  Claimants generally have to prove the alleged discrimination is severe and pervasive. They also have to overcome the freedom-of-speech rights of those who are professing to be dismantling systemic racism. What’s more, lawyers on both sides say that courts traditionally defer to employers and educators to set policy on workplace training and classroom curricula, a built-in restraint on activist judges.

  Perhaps the biggest wild card in these lawsuits is the staggering cultural shift of the past five years, during which many of the precepts of CRT have become widely accepted, especially among many in the nation’s intelligentsia and the professional managerial class.

  President Biden has adopted the language and made equity part of his platform, including a proposal to establish an Equity Commission “to support the rights of Black, Brown and Native farmers.” Immediately upon taking office, he issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity” to address systemic racism and “affirmatively” promote equity and racial justice in the federal government.

  “Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the opportunities and challenges that we face,” the executive order states.

  

  Biden’s Education Department cited the 1619 Project among proposed new priorities for education.

  And last week, Biden’s Education Department proposed new priorities for its American History and Civics Education programs in recognition that the Covid-19 pandemic and “the ongoing national reckoning with systemic racism have highlighted the urgency of improving racial equity throughout our society.” The priorities include incorporating diverse perspectives and anti-racist practices into the teaching of history, with The New York Times 1619 Project cited as an example.

  

  Ibram X. Kendi: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

  This paradigm shift has catapulted “anti-racist” experts like diversity trainer and best-selling “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo into the stratosphere of fame. Another beneficiary of the zeitgeist is Ibram X. Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University who runs the school’s Center for Antiracist Research. Kendi is the author of the 2019 bestseller “How to Be an Antiracist,” which contains a succinct antiracist formula that rests on the distinction between bad discrimination (racism) and good discrimination (antiracism): “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

  The nation’s current anti-discrimination law does not make such a distinction, and would read Kendi’s proposal as absurd as claiming that there’s a meaningful difference between good theft and bad theft; instead, all discrimination is wrong in the existing legal framework, with the exception of limited, narrowly tailored exemptions that are subject to strict scrutiny by the courts.

  A sampling of recent lawsuits and complaints shows how critical race theory practices have played out in a variety of circumstances.

  The suit against the New York City Department of Education alleges that employees were told at a diversity retreat that “there is White toxicity in the air and we all breathe it in.” Examples given included the Protestant work ethic and being socialized to be “defensive.” Such messages about “interrogating Whiteness” were repeated over the course of a year, during which time four white employees who later filed suit were accused of privilege, shamed, demoted and replaced by African Americans. The pair of lawsuits, filed in 2019, are in the discovery phase as the Department of Education and the lawyers for the four white women suing exchange documents and evidence.

  A fall 2020 civics curriculum at a Nevada charter school encouraged students to “unlearn” the oppressive structures within their families, their religion and their intersectional identities. The teacher, who identified herself in class materials as a bisexual agnostic with a mental health disability, asked 12th-graders to reflect on the parts of their identity that “have privilege attached to it.” according to a discrimination suit filed by the biracial male student and his black mother who allege he was coerced to affirm a political ideology against his conscience and his Christian faith. The case, filed last December, is headed for trial after a judge, saying the allegations raise “some serious constitutional issues,” refused to toss it out.  

  

  Featured speakers: Blacks don’t use the outdoors in proportion to their population due to white racism.

  In the California lawsuit brought by the two white men, a discussion hosted by the state Department of Fish & Wildlife featured speakers who said that black people don’t use the outdoors in proportion to their population because of white racism, generational trauma and a historical fear of lynching. White employees were instructed on the country’s deeply racist legal system and advised that “silence is complicity” when it comes to racial injustice. According to the lawsuit, employees were subjected to implicit bias training that amounted to compelling staff to take “loyalty oaths” to CRT ideology. The lawsuit, filed last October, is in the early procedural stage; the state’s lawyers are seeking to have the case dismissed.

  In one of the more unusual cases, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights agreed in early January with an Illinois public school teacher that her school district violated anti-discrimination law when it implemented a discipline policy that explicitly directed staff to consider a student’s race when evaluating behavioral and disciplinary issues.

  The case offers indications that different judges will likely reach opposite conclusions in such disputes: Just two weeks after ruling for the schoolteacher under the Trump administration, the Department of Education put the case on hold when President Biden took office and issued the “advancing racial equity” executive order.

  

  Jonathan O’Brien, Nevada plaintiffs’ attorney: “The ideology is so patently stupid and racist to the common person that the only way you can implement it or teach it is with an element of coercion, otherwise it would just be laughed at.”

  The Department of Education initially found that the K-8 school district engaged in illegal stereotyping when administrators and staff were invited to write down “some defining aspects of white culture” in a white privilege awareness exercise. The materials provided several examples of “common white reasoning,” including: “we [whites] haven’t had to develop the skills, perspectives or humility that would help us engage constructively” in cross-racial conflicts. The agency also flagged a segregated “affinity group” for white students that served as a “safe space” for students to learn about white privilege, internalized dominance, microaggressions and how to act as an ally for students of color.

  Hovering in the background of these lawsuits is the unresolved question: To what extent does truth provide a defense against charges of discrimination? It will come as no surprise that to conservatives and other critics of CRT its fatal flaw is its factual wrongness.

  “The ideology is so patently stupid and racist to the common person that the only way you can implement it or teach it is with an element of coercion, otherwise it would just be laughed at,” said Jonathan O’Brien, the lawyer representing the student and mother who filed the Nevada lawsuit. “That’s why the training sessions are like pressure cookers.”

  But if critical race theory is true, as its adherents believe, then labeling the truth as discriminatory smacks of censorship.

  The lawyers who successfully challenged Trump’s executive order last year, for example, claimed truth as a defense when they argued that their clients offer instruction about systemic racism and white privilege as an essential part of their social justice mission to provide equitable health care services. Systemic racism is understood as the totality of social institutions operating in such a way as to generate disparate outcomes for people of color in criminal justice, health care, education and other areas.

  

  Camilla Taylor, Lambda Legal: “We’re talking about a structure, a system, that was set up to benefit white people.”

  “We’re talking about a structure, a system, that was set up to benefit white people. Whether people realize it or not, they’re often continuing that system in a way that hurts people of color,” said Camilla Taylor, director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, which calls itself the nation’s oldest and largest LGBTQ rights group.

  “And to undo that structure you need to be able to name who it benefits and who it disadvantages.” 

  Lambda Legal represented the NO/AIDS Task Force, Los Angeles LGBT Center and Dr. Ward Carpenter, the Los Angeles center’s co-director of health services who specializes in transgender medicine and personally treats 200 patients. Their successful legal challenge argued that the restrictions in Trump’s executive order “not only run afoul of First Amendment protections, but they ignore verifiable and truthful information, and therefore restrict highly protected professional speech.”

  In a phone interview, Taylor cited medical research published in 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that contended when African American newborns are cared for by African American physicians, their mortality rate is cut by half. There is no explanation for the disparity in death rates but the race of the provider, she said.

  “Implicit bias is a problem that is greater in white people than it is in people of color,” Taylor said.

  “To prevent people from talking about these facts, because they make you feel some sense of personal responsibility or guilt that you don’t want to feel, is not only wrong but it hurts people in real time.”  

  The stakes of this dispute couldn’t be higher, at least judging by the rhetoric expressed by both sides.

  One of the conservative groups planning to file lawsuits, the Upper Midwest Law Center in Golden Valley, Mich., is in talks with prospective clients who include non-whites, said the center’s president, Douglas Seaton.

  Seaton described the abandonment of the colorblind idea as giving up on the nation itself.

  “You can’t have a country as diverse as ours without equality before the law,” Seaton said. “It’s a recipe for communal violence, tribalism. You can’t simply proceed that way. You’d be doomed to internecine battles between groups.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 00:00

• India's COVID-19 Crisis Leads To Black Market Price Explosion
  India’s COVID-19 Crisis Leads To Black Market Price Explosion

  India recorded another 320,000 Covid-19 infections on Tuesday as the country struggles to cope with a deadly surge of the disease. Hospitals in Delhi and many other cities have run out of beds and oxygen and patients are being turned away. Countries have scrambed to assist India with the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom among the governments sending aid. The first ventilators and oxygen have touched down in India but more aid is desperately needed.

  

  The situation, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, in Indian hospitals has seen the price of essential medical supplies skyrocket, according to an investigation carried out by the BBC.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  They found that the $80 price for a standard 50 liter oxygen cylinder has climbed as high as $1,330 on the black market while the cost of an oxygen concentrator has nearly tripled.

  Likewise, the cost of essential drugs has also risen dramatically.

  For example, the highest price for 100mg of Remdesivir in India was quoted by the BBC as $53 and this has climbed as high as $1,000 on the black market.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 23:40

• California Officials, Biden-Linked Firm Coordinated With Big Tech To Censor Election Posts: Judicial Watch
  California Officials, Biden-Linked Firm Coordinated With Big Tech To Censor Election Posts: Judicial Watch

  Authored by Isabel Van Burgen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  California officials colluded with Big Tech to censor social media posts in the United States during the 2020 presidential election, government watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Tuesday.

  

  The findings come after Judicial Watch received 540 pages and a further four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California in response to an open records request, the group said.

  It had filed the request after a December 2020 report surfaced revealing that California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity had surveilled and asked the social media giants to remove or flag as “misleading” at least two dozen messages.

  Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that SKDKnickerbocker, a communications company linked to President Joe Biden’s election campaign, was involved in the censoring of speech during last year’s election period.

  The company did this by sharing its “Misinformation Daily Briefings” with California officials, who then passed them on to social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google for dissemination, according to Judicial Watch.

  “These new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech,” Fitton said.

  

  He added, “These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’—as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.”

  Jenna Dresner, senior public information officer for the Office of Election Cybersecurity, responded to the December report at the time saying that “we don’t take down posts, that is not our role to play.”

  “We alert potential sources of misinformation to the social media companies and we let them make that call based on community standards they created,” Dresner said.

  According to Judicial Watch, the documents it obtained show how officials pushed big tech companies to censor social media posts.

  

  Google’s YouTube was contacted directly by a state official to remove a Judicial Watch video on the platform on Sept. 24, last year, according to the group.

  “YouTube seemed to respond by deleting the video on September 27, 2020,” Judicial Watch said.

  In another instance, a Facebook user who implied having voted twice with multiple ballots had their post removed on Oct. 31, 2020. Other posts removed by social media giants included claims of voter fraud, receiving multiple ballots in the mail, and finding thousands of alleged unopened ballots in a dumpster.

  Meanwhile, a Twitter post from Fitton that said “Mailing 51 million ballots to those who haven’t asked for increases risk of voter fraud of voter intimidation,” was flagged by SKDKnickerBocker as part of its “Misinformation Tracker.”

  Washington-based SKDKnickerBocker said in a statement last November that it developed the Biden campaign’s vote-by-mail program in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

  The communications firm and California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment by The Epoch Times.

  Big Tech companies have drawn intense scrutiny for perceived political bias and alleged unbalanced moderation of users’ content. Critics say much of the companies’ moderation in the past year has unfairly targeted conservative speech and speech from individuals deemed to be supporters of former President Donald Trump.

  Meanwhile, groups on the other side of the aisle have been taking issue with how social media companies are operating, claiming that the Silicon Valley companies have failed to adequately address misinformation that is being proliferated online.

  Janita Kan contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 23:20

• Extent Of Toxic DDT Dumping Off Los Angeles Coast Is 'Staggering'
  Extent Of Toxic DDT Dumping Off Los Angeles Coast Is ‘Staggering’

  A new report from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California found a massive graveyard at the bottom of the seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles of a toxic chemical known as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT).

  Scientists used underwater drones with sonar technology to map out 36,000 acres of the seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles, where they found at least 27,000 barrels of DDT and an excess of 100,000 total debris objects. 

  This area has previously been known as a dumpsite for the industrial complex in Southern California, but the scientist uncovered the true extent of the massive underwater toxic waste zone dating back to World War II in March. 

  

  Images like this one show barrel-like objects containing the dangerous insecticide reside just 3,000 feet below the water’s surface.

  

  The survey provides “a wide-area map” of where the barrels are resting.

  

  For our millennial readers who weren’t around during the days of DDT over half a century ago, the ‘miracle’ pesticide was used against malaria and banned in 1972 after it was linked to cancer and severely damaged ecosystems. 

  Research from Scripps found traces of DDT after decades of barrels sitting at the bottom of the sea. 

  “Unfortunately, the basin offshore Los Angeles had been a dumping ground for industrial waste for several decades, beginning in the 1930s. We found an extensive debris field in the wide-area survey,” said Eric Terrill, chief scientist of the expedition and director of the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Now that we’ve mapped this area at very high resolution, we are hopeful the data will inform the development of strategies to address potential impacts from the dumping.”

  UC Santa Barbara professor David Valentin first discovered the concentrated accumulations of DDT in the area about a decade ago. He visually confirmed 60 barrels on the seafloor. Over the years, scientists have found high DDT levels in marine mammals, including dolphins and sea lions. Such exposure has been linked to the development of cancer in marine life. 

  Decades ago, the Southern California industry got away with dumping whatever they wanted offshore. The question now is who will pay for the cleanup? 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 23:00

• Japan Restarts Older Nuclear Reactors For First Time Since Fukushima
  Japan Restarts Older Nuclear Reactors For First Time Since Fukushima

  Since achieving the ambitious emissions-reduction targets laid out in the Paris Accords will require developed nations to revive their nuclear plans (something that climate activists have increasingly supported despite the continuing fallout from the disaster at Fukushima) Japan on Wednesday decided to revive three long-idled reactors, marking the first time that Japan has restarted a reactor that’s more than 40 years old.

  After Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga last week announced a new goal of cutting the country’s greenhouse gas emissions 46% by fiscal 2030 (an announcement that coincided with President Biden’s virtual climate summit) Nikkei reports that Gov. Tatsuji Sugimoto of Fukui Prefecture (located about 300 km, about 186 miles, west of Tokyo) gave the green light on Wednesday to restart the Kansai Electric Power reactor units 1 and 2 at the Takahama nuclear power plant, and unit 3 at the utility’s Mihama plant. Japan’s plans for building new reactors have been frozen for years, leaving its aging nuclear infrastructure largely intact.

  

  Achieving the emissions goals laid out by Suga last week will require generating 20% of Japan’s power via nuclear energy in the coming decades, experts said.

  Currently, Japanese regulations imposed after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown set the operating life of Japanese reactors at 40 years, while leaving open the possibility of extending that to 60 years. No reactors older than 40 years are currently operating in Japan – but that’s about to change.

  Industry Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama on Tuesday told Sugimoto that Japan “will use nuclear power sustainably into the future” and promised up to 2.5 billion yen ($23.1 million) in federal grants to help restart older reactors. Sugimoto told reporters that Kajiyama’s remarks were “something we hadn’t heard before.”

  Japan had about 50 nuclear reactors when Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi plant was struck by a tsunami in 2011 that knocked out its emergency power, leading to a historic meltdown. 

  Since then, more than 20 reactors in Japan have been marked for decommissioning. By 2030, nearly half of the country’s remaining reactors will be over 40 years old.

  Still, as Fukushima fades into history, support for nuclear power is growing within Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. To open the door to reviving more reactors, more lawmakers favor a different rubric for counting a reactor’s operating age that will subtract the years they spent idled.

  Unfortunately for the nuclear industry in Japan, other obstacles remain aside from environmental concerns. For example, the outlook for restarting Tokyo Electric’s workhorse Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant has been dimmed by a report that finds insufficient safeguards against terrorist attacks. In the US, nuclear has remained out of favor ever since that incident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

  As we pointed out on Earth Day, proponents of lower emissions are starting to accept that nuclear is the only practical strategy that wouldn’t involve massive reductions in energy use, while still maintaining robust systems that won’t seize up when wind turbines freeze.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:40

• Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund Eyes Stake In Aramco
  Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund Eyes Stake In Aramco

  As the production cuts agreed to by OPEC+ drive oil prices higher amid a broad-based commodity boom, China’s sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp is eying a major investment in Aramco, the world’s most valuable company, as Aramco again looks to sell off a piece of its business after scrapping an international IPO a few years back.

  

  Aramco abandoned plans for a public listing amid fears that US law might make Aramco assets vulnerable to seizure as families of victims who died in 9/11 seek compensation from the Saudi government. Instead, the company sold some debt on the international markets and offered shares that are traded domestically on Saudi Arabia’s bourse, but now it appears the oil giant, currently controlled by the Saudi royal family, is once again planning to sell off a stake in its business.

  But instead of turning to the public markets, Aramco is seeking out sovereign wealth funds to invest directly, according to Reuters.

  “There are talks now for the acquisition of a 1% stake by a leading global energy company in an important deal that would boost Aramco’s sales in … a major country,” Prince Mohammed said, without elaborating.

  “There are talks with other companies for different stakes, and part of Aramco’s shares could be transferred to the (Saudi) Public Investment Fund and a part listed … on the Saudi bourse,” he said in an interview aired by Saudi TV marking the fifth anniversary of Vision 2030.

  A 1% stake would equate to around $19 billion based on Aramco’s current market capitalization.

  Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has also spoke highly of the blossoming bilateral relationship between Riyadh and Beijing.

  Prince Mohammed said in the interview that Riyadh was strengthening its relationships with China, India and Russia, though the United States remained a strategic partner despite some differences with the Biden administration, which has taken a tougher stance on Saudi Arabia.

  “China has said Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner, India has said Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner and Russia has also said Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner,” the prince said.

  According to Reuters, Aramco has been in talks with CIC, as well as Chinese national oil companies. Aramco has been “in touch” with these investors for a few years now.

  “The kingdom does have close relations with China,” said a third source, who is close to Aramco. “The major shareholder will decide what to do with their shares.”

  A tie-up between Saudi and China might make Washington uneasy. But the deal makes sense from a financial standpoint. Saudi Arabia is already China’s biggest crude oil supplier, a position it maintained for a seventh consecutive month in March.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:20

• Watch Live: Senator Tim Scott Delivers Republican Rebuttal Against "Socialist Dreams"
  Watch Live: Senator Tim Scott Delivers Republican Rebuttal Against “Socialist Dreams”

  After President Biden has finished lecturing successful Americans that they “didn’t build it”, Republican Senator Tim Scott will argue that the Democratic agenda amounts to “Washington schemes” and “socialist dreams.”

  

  As the sole Black Republican in the Senate, Scott has promised to deliver an “honest conversation” and an “optimistic and hopeful message” in his own nationally televised remarks.

  “Our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams. It will come from you — the American people,” Scott said in experts of his speech released ahead of delivery.

  Scott, of South Carolina, will also laud Republican economic policy for benefits to minorities, women and low-income Americans.

  “Just before COVID, we had the most inclusive economy in my lifetime. The lowest unemployment ever recorded for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans. The lowest for women in nearly 70 years. Wages were growing faster for the bottom 25% than the top 25%,” he said in his prepared remarks.

  “That happened because Republicans focused on expanding opportunity for all Americans.”

  Finally, we note that in a floor speech last year, the 55-year-old South Carolinan exclaimed:

  “The stereotyping of Republicans is just as toxic and poisoned to the outcomes of the most vulnerable communities in this nation.”

  More Excerpts here…

  Excerpts of ⁦@SenatorTimScott⁩’s response tonight. pic.twitter.com/L2dEGpun1p

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 28, 2021

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

  Watch Live:

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:11

• Top Australian Official Warns "Drums of War Beat" As China Tensions Rise
  Top Australian Official Warns “Drums of War Beat” As China Tensions Rise

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, 

  A senior Australian official warned that the “drums of war” are “beating” in comments to his staff over the weekend as relations between Beijing and Canberra continue to strain.

  “In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat — sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer,” said Australia’s Department of Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo in comments that were made public on Tuesday.

  

  “Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarization of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war,” he said.

  While Pezzullo didn’t mention China in the remarks that were published, it’s clear he was referencing tensions with Beijing in the Indo-Pacific. Australia has followed the US in its military provocations against China and is a member of the Quad, a group that is seen as a possible foundation for an anti-China NATO-style alliance in Asia.

  On Sunday, Australia’s defense minister said the possibility of a war erupting over Taiwan should not be “discounted” and warned of regional tensions. “People need to be realistic about the activity,” Defense Minister Peter Dutton said. “There is militarization of bases across the region. Obviously, there is a significant amount of activity and there is an animosity between Taiwan and China.”

  Beijing responded to Dutton’s comments on Monday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said China hoped Australia would “fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue” and refrain from “sending any false signals to the separatist forces of ‘Taiwan independence.'”

  

  Australia-China relations have followed the trajectory of US-China relations and are rapidly deteriorating. Further straining ties, last week, Canberra canceled two deals between Beijing and the Australian state of Victoria that would have been part of China’s infrastructure global project, known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

  Beijing rebuked Australia’s decision to cancel the projects and urged Canberra to abandon its “Cold War mentality and ideological bias.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:00

• Ninth Circuit Says "Ghost Gun" Blueprints Can Be Posted Online Without Fed Approval 
  Ninth Circuit Says “Ghost Gun” Blueprints Can Be Posted Online Without Fed Approval 

  3D-printed gun blueprints can be posted online without U.S. State Department approval, a divided Ninth Circuit panel ruled on Tuesday. 

  The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a Trump administration order that authorized removing ghost guns from the State Department’s Munitions List.

  The appeals court ruling will make it easier to share untraceable 3D-printed gun blueprints online, but President Joe Biden in early April announced new measures to tackle gun violence, including a crackdown on ghost guns. 

  “The Ninth Circuit’s decision Tuesday overturned an injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle in March 2020. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik had blocked two rules that transferred regulatory control of 3D-printed gun files from the State Department to the Commerce Department. The rules also removed ghost gun blueprints from a State Department list of munitions that require a license to export. Twenty-two states led by Washington state sued to prevent the rule changes from taking effect,” Courthouse News Service said.

  Here’s more from Courthouse News Service on the divided panel of judges. 

  In a 25-page opinion, U.S. Circuit Judges Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee, and Ryan Nelson, a Donald Trump appointee, concluded that courts lack authority to review the challenged rule changes.

  They found a 1976 law, the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, and its subsequent amendments forbid judicial review of State Department decisions on what is considered a “defense article” subject to regulation.

  “Because Congress expressly precluded review of the relevant agency actions here, we vacate the injunction and remand with instructions to dismiss,” Nelson wrote for the majority.

  In a dissenting opinion, U.S. District Judge Robert Whaley, a Bill Clinton appointee sitting on the panel by designation from the Eastern District of Washington, argued that his colleagues misinterpreted what Congress intended when it gave the president power “to designate” what items are considered “defense articles and defense services” under the law.

  Whaley wrote that a 1981 amendment to the law “clarified that the president’s removal power was separate from its designation power and was subject to congressional oversight.” He said the majority disregarded a legal principle which presumes any words omitted from a statute should be deemed intentionally excluded from the law.

  “I disagree with the majority’s holding which allows this new regulatory system to escape appropriate oversight,” Whaley wrote.

  Bybee and Nelson rejected that criticism, arguing that prior to the 1981 amendment, the phrase at issue clearly encompassed the president’s power to add to and remove items from the list of regulated munitions.

  Changes to how 3D-printed gun specs are regulated were first proposed in May 2018 about two months after the Trump administration agreed to settle a lawsuit with a private company that distributes blueprints for so-called ghost guns. Under the terms of that deal, the Trump administration agreed to remove 3D-printed gun specs from the State Department’s list of regulated munitions.

  In his dissenting opinion, Whaley questioned why the government “suddenly and secretly changed course” by agreeing to that settlement after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor the State Department and denied Defense Distributed’s request for an injunction to have its blueprints removed from the list. 

  Prior to the settlement, the State Department had argued that Defense Distributed’s files could be used to create “virtually undetectable” firearms that presented a “serious risk of acts of violence” overseas, including the use of untraceable guns in assassinations and the manufacturing of gun parts for embargoed nations and terrorist groups.

  “[Department of State] has never explained why, after securing several victories in the litigation with Defense Distributed, it decided to settle and agreed to permit the export of 3D gun files, even though DOS had argued that the export of these files would irreparably harm the United States’ national security interests,” Whaley wrote.

  Whaley also questioned the government’s decision to keep that settlement secret until after a public comment period for the proposed rule changes ended on July 9, 2018. He noted that only a small fraction of submitted comments pertained to ghost guns, but after the settlement was made public, the government was flooded with “over 106,000 emails from concerned members of the public regarding the deregulation of 3D gun files.”

  Bybee and Nelson acknowledged some “additional reasons” Whaley cited as to why Congress intended to let courts review decisions to deregulate munitions, but they concluded that Congress never wrote those into the law.

  “Congress may decide to codify these policy considerations in the future. But [the law] as currently written does not reflect them,” Nelson wrote for the majority.

  Guns printed at home are often referred to as ghost guns because they lack serial numbers, making them untraceable. 

  In the last several years, a decentralized network of 3D-printed gun advocates has mobilized online and revolutionized gun designs, sharing blueprints, advice and building a community. 

  As we’ve noted, one online ghost gun community has developed the FGC-9, which stands for “f**k gun control 9 mm.” As we’ve mentioned, the FGC-9 can be printed entirely at home for the cost of $350, including the printer’s cost. 

  

  YouTuber Sean with “The 3D Print General” recently attended “Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin” on April 10-11 in Texas. He showed how 3D-printed guns have advanced over the years and can survive thousands of rounds of ammo.

  

  So, for the time being, ghost gun blueprints can be shared online, but it’s only a matter of time before the Biden administration swoops in like a hawk and unleashes executive orders against these untraceable firearms. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 21:40

• America's Political System Leaves Libertarians Homeless
  America’s Political System Leaves Libertarians Homeless

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  Sadly, in America’s two-party political system Libertarians are left Homeless. The libertarian philosophy or ideology has many facets. Running through all of them is the idea that less government is generally a good thing. This reminds me of what President Ronald Reagan, famously said: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Such words resonate with most libertarians.

  

  While the government may claim it has good intentions history shows it often finds a way to muck things up. This is due to the fact that “government” is comprised of both corrupt and fallible human beings. This is a toxic combination that tends to create policies that screw things up. This takes a variety of shapes, including costly or unintended consequences.

  While some people write a blog for financial gain, others of us do so seeking as wide a base of readership as possible in order to have our opinions heard and share ideas. It is fair to say that on occasion some readers, with opposing opinions refuse to agree to disagree. Below is a comment from one of those fellas taking issue with my claim libertarian views do not align with those of the right, part of what he is saying reflects the confusion surrounding libertarian philosophy.       

  Libertarian, or far-right, what’s the difference? So many times in the past, I’ve read blogs and websites from the far-right, in which they love to cloak themselves in the term of “libertarian,” but the rest of the Rational world understands your dog-whistle politics and misanthropic social ideals. Do your criticisms flow both ways? Where’s your hard-and-fast criticism of the political ideologues on the far right?

  In truth, the views of those claiming to be libertarians often conflict with those of other libertarians and even the Libertarian Party. We tend to be an odd lot and that is why the Libertarian Party may be doomed to failure. It seems the elephant in the room is the question of exactly where one person’s rights start and where another begins. 

  A libertarian is committed to the principle that freedom and liberty are the most important political values. This means we should be able to make our own choices about our own life, what we do with our body and our property. In short, other people should not forcibly interfere with our liberty, and we should not forcibly interfere with theirs. 

  Over the years, you would think the failure of big government to address our problems and woes would have convinced more voters expanding the role of government is not the answer. The cost of big government and the reality Washington seldom accomplishes its goals is beginning to nibble at the theory more government is good for society. While Government may be better at giving people access to services and good at passing popular laws, the private sector is by far more efficient and better at controlling costs.

  

  Over the last two centuries the United States government has been steadily moving away from Adam Smith’s idea of limited government and towards the view of Abraham Lincoln that government should do for the people, whatever needed to be done. The Democratic Party has long been thought of as the party of “big government.” Filled with believers that more government can make things right they claim they care about the “little guy,” women, workers, minorities. They are big supporters of unions, more rules, and more regulations.  

  We, libertarians,  looking for a port in any storm often find ourselves in the Republican camp but it is a poor fit. In politics many of the positions people take reek of conflict. The pursuit of an agenda or political advantage often results in people working together who would not otherwise normally socialize with one another, politics makes strange bedfellows. An example of this is how President Obama had the support of business-minded Republicans when pursuing trade deals while his party fought the idea. 

  Another example of this is how the mainstay Republican party stabbed Trump in the back on several occasions. Clearly, it was Libertarians and Populists that allowed Trump to get elected. In a piece authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute, he writes, “Since 2016, the role of libertarians in political discourse has tended to devolve away from a relevant political demographic into a weird scapegoat for the Left and Right.” Bishop goes on to point out what I contend is a major problem, and that is, while the libertarian electorate may not be valued, it is a very important demographic. This is because during Presidential elections those voting for a Libertarian Presidential candidate can flip enough delegates to give one party an undeserved victory in the electoral college.

  Libertarians are often misunderstood, they believe people are basically good and are endowed by their Creator with natural rights, including the rights of life, liberty, and property. 

  In the United States, libertarians often embrace a political philosophy that advocates small government and is culturally liberal and fiscally conservative. This is far different from what is offered up in America’s two-dimensional political spectrum mainly made up of conservatives with rigid right-wing social values and liberals that embrace big government and the spending that supports it.

  

  The Trend From 20% To 35% Is Clear And Continues

  Big government is not just an American problem and tends to be even worse in countries established long ago. It seems corruption and government both tend to grow in unison over time. The reality of ever-larger government has manifest itself in more scandals as departments overreach their missions. This can be seen in the military, the IRS, NSA, and huge incomprehensible bills being passed by Congress while our government often fails to accomplish the tasks it is given.

  Like the Populist, until the system changes, libertarians should expect to remain a small swing group looking for a home. As for the idea of reforming or improving our election system, that is very unlikely to happen as neither major party wants to introduce a change that might benefit the other. The entrenched interest of the elites within the system block change. The small hope for change can be found in shifting demographics that are rapidly shrinking the Republican Party. If they do not adopt a more populist message and a big tent policy they will continue to lose power. This could have a very negative impact on America going forward. 

  The polarization we see today may be mild compared to what we see in ten years if a large segment of the population feels its voice is silenced. If the checks and balances in our system fail, expect anger to grow as more Americans begin to feel even more left out in the cold. The saying “be careful what you wish for” may again be proven true as those wanting more government intervention experience the limits of government and bureaucracy while burdened by the financial cost it imposes. We must remember that government is often not constrained by the power of the purse to strive for efficiency, where a business fails when it does not meet its goals of providing a good service or product at a reasonable cost government muddles on.

  The open-ended theme of larger Government is generally a mechanism to in some way transfer wealth. Mandates often unfunded are fostered upon business organizations and private citizens.  A new proactive movement of “cuteness” cloaked in a veil of flexibility and diversity has allowed politicians and bureaucrats to use terms like “Private Public Partnership” and “quasi-government entities” that mask just how deep its roots have grown. These terms open a pathway for politicians to tinker without the personal financial risk that a businessman must take. Those within government love being creative especially when they do so on our dime. The use of sun-set legislation is underused when it comes to extending and renewing government bodies. We tend to forget that the best time to kill a monster is while it’s small.

  It is the nature of bureaucracy to expand. It often takes courage to make difficult and unpopular political and economic decisions that will cause pain but benefit society in the long run. A political system that encourages sidestepping these issues to pander to the masses in exchange for remaining in power pays a tremendous price that can stay hidden for only so long. This is a trap America has slipped into, getting out of this will prove quite difficult. I seriously question whether we have the fortitude to take the necessary steps required.

  *  *  *

  Footnote; This post dovetails with many of my writings. Some of my solutions may come across as provocative but are food for thought. For more on government’s role in our lives, related articles may be found in my blog archive, thanks for reading.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 21:20

• One Bank Warns Soaring Food Prices Will Lead To Social Unrest
  One Bank Warns Soaring Food Prices Will Lead To Social Unrest

  Yesterday we explained why with prices already soaring, global inflation was about to go into overdrive as the leading food price indicator that is the Bloomberg Agri spot index hit the highest level in six years.

  

  In a nutshell, this is a problem since food is a large component of CPI baskets in Asia, and “this large inflationary impulse in the region that houses more than half the world’s population should result in higher wage costs in the factory base of the world. As CPI and PPI rise in Asia, it will feed through globally in the months ahead.”

  Today, DB’s Jim Reid picked that chart as his “Chart of the day”, repeating what readers already know, namely that Bloomberg’s agriculture spot index has risen by c.76% year-on-year, noting that “that’s the biggest annual rise in nearly a decade, and there are only a couple of other comparable episodes since the index begins back in 1991.”

  Like us, Reid then patiently tries to explain to all the idiots – like those employed in the Marriner Eccles building – that the importance of this record surge “extends far beyond your weekly shop, as there’s an extensive literature connecting higher food prices to periods of social unrest.” Indeed, you’ll notice from the chart that the last big surge from the middle of 2010 to early 2011 coincided with the start of the Arab Spring, for which food inflation is regarded as a contributing factor.

  While this is hardly new – we discussed it in “Why Albert Edwards Is Starting To Panic About Soaring Food Prices” and in “We Are Edging Closer To A Biblical Commodity Price Increase Scenario” – Reid also reminds us that emerging markets are more vulnerable to this trend, since their consumers spend a far greater share of their income on food than those in the developed world.

  

  The DB strategist then goes all-in and says what everyone is thinking, namely that “this trend of higher food prices leading to social unrest extends far back into history and surrounds many key turning points. The French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the Ancien Régime, came after a succession of poor harvests that led to major rises in food prices. It was a similar story at the time of Europe’s 1848 revolutions too, which followed the failure of potato crops in the 1840s and the associated severe famine in much of Europe. And the 1917 overthrow of the Tsarist regime in Russia took place in the context of food shortages as well.”

  So while it remains to be seen what the consequences of today’s surge in food prices could be, Reid cautions that “given the hardship that’s already occurred thanks to the pandemic, a fresh wave of unrest would be no surprise on a historical basis.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 21:00

• Watch Live: President Biden Delivers "You Didn't Build That" 2.0 Speech To Congress
  Watch Live: President Biden Delivers “You Didn’t Build That” 2.0 Speech To Congress

  At 0900ET, President Biden will deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress, where he will unveil the “American Families Plan,” the third part – included with the stimulus and the American Jobs Plan – of his sweeping vision to redistribute wealth and reorganize the American economy.

  Readers can find an outline of the plan here, and can watch live below:

  A brief excerpt from his speech was leaked to Punchbowl News, and the theme, unsurprisingly, is attack on wealthy Americans, who will be called upon to finance Biden’s plan via massive tax hikes – the biggest in decades. (h/t @JakeSherman)

  “100 days since I took the oath of office — lifted my hand off our family Bible — and inherited a nation in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

  Now — after just 100 days — I can report to the nation: America is on the move again. Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Setback into strength.

  …

  The Americans Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America. And, it recognises something I’ve always said: Wall Street didn’t build this country. The middle class built this country. And unions built the middle class.”

  And with the Biden presidency looking increasingly like President Obama’s third term, it’s worth noting that the similarity between the theme from tonight’s remarks and a now-infamous line from a speech President Obama delivered in 2012 where he popularized the phrase “you didn’t build that” in a jab against wealthy Americans and captains of industry that was remembered as one of his more tone-deaf moments.

  Once again, an American President has decided that wealth redistribution is the best path to prosperity.

  

  Sen. Tim Scott will deliver the GOP’s rebuttal to Biden’s speech. Here are some excerpts from that below.

  Excerpts of ⁦@SenatorTimScott⁩’s response tonight. pic.twitter.com/L2dEGpun1p

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 28, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:53

• Biden's First 100 Days: A Radical Transformation Of America
  Biden’s First 100 Days: A Radical Transformation Of America

  Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

  President Donald Trump and conservative pundits warned for months during the 2020 campaign that behind then-candidate Joe Biden’s centrist, bipartisan façade lay a radical liberal agenda to transform the United States. Biden has proven them right in less than 100 days, earning praise from liberal observers who are drawing historical comparisons to the tenure of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  

  The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, written along the outline of Biden’s proposal, dwarfs FDR’s New Deal in terms of total cost to the American taxpayer. Democrats rammed the measure through Congress without any Republican support, proving Biden was the partisan that critics had warned about.

  The Democratic president’s proposed infrastructure measures—the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—would bring the total price tag to an estimated $5.4 trillion, while ushering in a wave of welfare programs unseen since the introduction of Medicare and food stamps. The cost splits up to more than $43,000 per household and more than the combined wealth of all the billionaires in America. Democrats could enact both plans without any Republican support, by using, for the first time ever, the reconciliation process more than once in a budget year.

  The fiscal scale and radical nature of the agenda, coupled with the razor-thin House and Senate majorities the Democrats are using to implement it, are exerting pressure on an American system of governance that has historically demanded a measure of bipartisanship in order to enact transformative change.

  “A Senate evenly split between both parties and a bare Democratic House majority are hardly a mandate to ‘go it alone,’” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a Trump critic and one of the few Republicans seeking a bipartisan solution on infrastructure, wrote on Twitter.

  Democrats argue that pushing the pandemic stimulus through without Republican support was necessary to help Americans struggling with the economic impacts of the pandemic. They say that some provisions of the bill, including the expansion of Obamacare, were long overdue. Democrats predict that the child tax credit, which will amount to a monthly cash payment for most families beginning in July, could cut child poverty in half.

  “The story of the first 100 days is about shots going into arms, checks going into pockets, and seeing hope on the horizon,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter on April 27.

  While testing the system’s limits, Biden has thrown the weight of the presidency behind the radical transformation of the system itself. He backed the long-shot bid for D.C. statehood, which would hand the Democrats two seats in the Senate in the foreseeable future, expressed support for weakening or undoing the legislative filibuster, ordered a commission to study reforms to the Supreme Court around the time fellow Democrats introduced legislation to pack the bench, and said he would sign H.R. 1, a vast election reform bill that would, among other provisions, make mail voting universal in perpetuity.

  “Mr. Biden knows his agenda is so radical, so extreme, that he cannot hope to pass it and keep it intact without first fundamentally changing the rules of the political game,” Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, wrote in a recent op-ed.

  “Consequently, he’s moving on all fronts to do just that.”

  To the Democrats, the wave of change is just what the doctor ordered. Former President Bill Clinton called Biden’s performance so far “almost pitch-perfect” in word and deed.

  “If we can produce positive results that cross those divides by lifting everybody, giving everybody a chance, then we have a chance to psychologically change,” Clinton told Deadline.

  ‘I Want to Change the Paradigm’

  While ushering along a wave of social change via legislation, Biden has churned out a steady stream of paradigm-shifting executive orders and actions on matters ranging from critical race theory training for federal employees to rejoining the World Health Organization.

  Some of the common themes among the five dozen executive actions during the president’s first 100 days in office were the reversals and revocations of Trump-era orders and the introduction of the quasi-Marxist “equity” ideology into virtually every aspect of government operations.

  “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” the title of Biden’s very first order, set the tone for the many that followed.

  “I want to change the paradigm. We start to reward work, not just wealth. I want to change the paradigm,” Biden said during his first press conference.

  What a president says is sometimes as consequential as what a president does. During Biden’s symbolic 100 days, this was exemplified by his comments on the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who was convicted of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Biden spoke in favor of convicting Chauvin before the jury rendered its verdict and—after the jury decision was announced—indicted America itself as guilty of “systemic racism.”

  Highs and Lows

  Though his cabinet wouldn’t admit it, Biden inherited a successful vaccine development and distribution program from Trump. This meant that Biden’s campaign promise of injecting 100 million Americans with the vaccine against the CCP virus in his first 100 days was on track to being fulfilled even before he took office on Jan. 20. After eluding questions about raising the target to a more ambitious figure, Biden doubled the goal to 200 million. The administration is now on pace to triple the initial goal by April 29, his 100th day in office.

  That tangible highlight is offset by the crisis on the southern border, which some experts say was triggered by Biden’s revocation of Trump-era immigration policies. Illegal aliens are crossing the border in numbers unseen in decades, forcing immigration authorities to overload shelters for housing detained minors. After weeks of avoidance, Biden finally called the situation a crisis earlier this month.

  The White House has signaled that it intends to solve the crisis by investing in the countries the illegal aliens are fleeing from. Over the past two decades, the United States has spent billions in foreign aid to the nations in question.

  Biden’s approval ratings have fluctuated between the high-40s and mid-50s during his first three months in office, according to Rasmussen, the only pollster conducting daily presidential approval surveys. The media may be contributing to that outcome.

  A recent Media Research Center study showed that evening news coverage of Biden was 59 percent positive during his first three months in office, compared to just 11 percent positive coverage during the same period in Trump’s presidency.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:30

• DoorDash Suffers Widespread Outages As Hangry Millennials Vent On Twitter 
  DoorDash Suffers Widespread Outages As Hangry Millennials Vent On Twitter 

  As millennials wind down for the evening in a post-pandemic world, online food ordering and food delivery platform, Doordash, is suffering widespread outages across the country, according to Downdetector. 

  Reports of outages first began around 1900 ET. 

  

  The outage map shows widespread disruption across the US. 

  

  Millennials are venting on Twitter that DoorDash has randomly canceled their orders or some are having payment issues. 

  One millennial was pissed: “DoorDash canceled my order after I waited a hour I’m not being a good person no more.” 

  Another said, “you guys keep blocking my payments saying it’s fraud… ive called over 10 times and nothing is done about it.. like I can’t order food now!! It even deactivated my sister’s account, and now I know you guys are saying my card is fraud. when its my card.” 

  “My card was charged twice but it shows no active orders?! What’s going on?” one Twitter user said. 

  Others a getting “Network Error.” 

  @DoorDash Your uptime sucks. Once a week, without fail. pic.twitter.com/C8nyWZ48ln

  — Adam Greenwell (@faust3000) April 29, 2021

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  More people are getting pissed. 

  I’ve got 4 charges on my card for a @DoorDash order that the restaurant cancelled and no order shows up on the app. I’m so pissed.

  — Shelley Boyer (@NapkinGirlSays) April 29, 2021

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  Google trends show over the last hour, “doordash canceled my order,” “doordash order cancelled,” and “why did doordash cancel my order,” soared as hangry millennials searched for reasons why the app was malfunctioning. 

  

  Maybe try Grubhub or Uber Eats… 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:10

• 50 Million People In Pathway Of Severe Storms From Texas To New York
  50 Million People In Pathway Of Severe Storms From Texas To New York

  A multi-day heavy rainfall and powerful storm threat will affect upwards of 50 million people across Southern Plains Wednesday and into the interior Northeast Thursday, according to CNN. 

  “Even though today may not look like a classic set up for a severe weather outbreak, there will be severe storms that break out from Texas all the way up to the Northeast,” said CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. “We often talk about the ingredients for big storms and today’s recipe includes an overabundance of warm air and humidity.”

  Current Radar (as of 1300 ET)

  

  Storm Prediction Center (SPC) warned hailstones up to 4 inches in diameter for some areas in the Plains. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri will see severe weather on Wednesday. 

  “The stronger thunderstorms may produce large hail and wind damage. A tornado threat may also develop in the Southern Plains,” warned SPC.

  The Southern Plains through the lower Midwest will experience torrential rains this afternoon and into tonight. 

  Forecast Precipitation 

  

  “Locally heavy rainfall will be a bigger concern in our area by later today and tonight, with both flash flooding and main-steam river flooding possible depending on just where the heavier rain swathes set up,” said the National Weather Service office in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  There will be an elevated risk for severe storms in parts of the interior Northeast by Thursday, especially the eastern Great Lakes region.

  Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, including Cleveland and Pittsburgh, could experience storms during the mid-to-late-afternoon hours, increasing into the evening. 

  12:55am CDT #SPC Day2 Outlook Marginal Risk: from east tx through the mid-south and across much of the oh valley https://t.co/rEAejNpVr0 pic.twitter.com/weJS1NRtfi

  — NWS Storm Prediction Center (@NWSSPC) April 28, 2021

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  Over 200 million people in the US are forecasted to have high temperatures of at least 80 degrees on Wednesday. All that warm and moist air have been fueling severe storms. 

  Thursday’s Forecast High Temps 

  

  So far, we don’t see any price anomalies in Texas power prices nor any others across the South. 

  … and of course, climate change warriors will point to the temperature spike and severe weather as proof global warming exists. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:00

• Manchin "Very Uncomfortable" With Biden's Trillion Dollar Plans
  Manchin “Very Uncomfortable” With Biden’s Trillion Dollar Plans

  Update (1505ET): Unsurprisingly, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is “very uncomfortable” with Biden’s plan – telling CNN‘s Manu Raju: “We want to find how we’re gonna pay for it. … Are we going to be able to be competitive and be able to pay for what we need in the country?”

  Asked Joe Manchin about the trillions proposed for Biden’s plans.

  “Sure, that makes me very uncomfortable,” he told me. “We want to find how we’re gonna pay for it. … Are we going to be able to be competitive and be able to pay for what we need in the country?”

  — Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 28, 2021

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  *  *  *

  President Biden will head to Capitol Hill Wednesday night for the first time since Inauguration Day (a casual visit by the president would risk spoiling the narrative that the Capitol remains a battle-scarred wreck since the Jan. 6 “uprising”) to unveil the second part of his “Build Back Better” plan, a $1.8 trillion proposal to expand the American “safety net” that will be financed by hefty tax increases on individuals and businesses, including a nearly 40% tax on short-term capital gains that spooked the market when it was first reported last week.

  The scale of the plan, which has been named “the American Families Plan” and is intended to compliment Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” unveiled four weeks ago, has increased in scope since the first details of a preliminary version were leaked to the press earlier this month.

  With spending spanning a decade, the plan’s main features include: $225 billion for child care spending, another $225 billion to create a national family and medical leave program. $200 billion in funding for universal access to pre-K schooling for young children. And $109 billion for two free years of community college, as well as additional subsidies for Americans to purchase health insurance. On the tax credit side, the plan extends a tax credit for up to $3,600 per child until 2025. Biden is scheduled to speak at 2100ET, according to his public calendar.

  

  The AFP marks the trillion-dollar-plus installment in Biden’s sweeping economic programs, enabled by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. First there was the $1.9 trillion, then the nearly $3 trillion American Jobs Plan, and now this. Their ambitious scale means they face an uncertain path through Congress, with Republicans expected to oppose the plan (though it’s possible Biden might win over a few moderates). Planned tax hikes would offset much of the cost of the plan.

  According to the FT, senior administration officials have confirmed that the plan would include an increase in the top income tax rate from 37% to 39.6% for Americans earning more than $400,000, eliminate the preferential tax treatment of capital gains and dividends for those earning more than $1 million (so those making a living day trading on Robinhood can relax) and scrap provisions allowing people to pass unrealized capital gains to their heirs tax-free. What’s more, the hike in the cap gains tax will be felt by the private equity industry, since their share of the appreciation in assets they oversee – known as carried interest – is treated as capital gains, and will now be taxed at a much higher rate.

  The end result is that much of President Trump’s tax cuts for individuals and businesses will be revered.

  “The president’s tax agenda will not only reverse the biggest 2017 tax law giveaways, but reform the tax code so that the wealthy have to play by the same rules as everyone else,” the White House said in a fact sheet accompanying its proposal.

  And as we reported yesterday, Biden also intends to hand $80 billion more to the IRS to finance campaigns to track down wealthy tax cheats who move money to tax havens overseas.

  Biden has repeatedly insisted that he would try and work with Republicans, and that he might be open to complaints about specific taxes. But if the GOP tries to stymie the plan, Biden has said he would have no problem going it alone.

  Since the text of the plan has yet to be released, those interested in a more comprehensive breakdown of its contents should check out the following summary courtesy of Bloomberg:

  Income Taxes

  Biden is calling to raise the top personal income tax rate to 39.6% for those among the highest 1% of earners. “No one making $400,000 per year or less will see their taxes go up,” the White House said in a fact sheet on the plan. Still, the document didn’t specify whether that threshold applies to both single earners as well as married couples.

  Capital Gains

  Biden would increase the capital gains rate to 39.6% from 20% for those earning $1 million or more — 0.3% of taxpayers or roughly half a million households — equalizing that rate with the top marginal income tax rate. A 3.8% Obamacare tax on investment would then be added on top, meaning the richest would pay a 43.4% federal rate on realized investment returns. State taxes could put the combined tax bill north of 50%.

  The plan would also end a long-standing capital gains tax break on inheritances known as “step-up in basis,” which allows heirs to use the market value of assets at the time of inheritance rather than the actual purchase price as the cost basis for capital gains when the holdings are sold.

  The proposal exempts the first $1 million of gains from the end of stepped-up basis, while there’s no tax if the gains are used for charitable donations. There will also be “protections so that family-owned businesses and farms will not have to pay taxes when given to heirs who continue to run the business.”

  Carried Interest, Real Estate

  The carried interest tax break used by private equity and hedge fund managers to lower their tax bills would be eliminated under Biden’s plan. In what critics call a loophole, that allowed for a share of income being classed as a capital gain, with an associated lower tax rate.

  The administration also would eliminate a real estate tax break for when property investors sell one holding for a more expensive one.

  IRS Audits

  The plan calls for increased audits on high-earners that could collect an additional $700 billion in tax revenue, with funding increases for the Internal Revenue Service. Biden is also proposing to require banks to report information on account flows, so that earnings from investments and business profits are reported to the IRS like wages are.

  Child Tax Credit

  Biden is proposing to extend through 2025 an enhanced version of the child tax credit. The credit, increased for 2021 in the March pandemic-relief package, provides a $3,600 credit for children under six and $3,000 for those six and older. The IRS is slated to send the payments regularly, which amounts to $250 or $300 per child per month, depending on their age. Congressional Democrats are pushing Biden to make this change permanent.

  Child Care

  The plan includes $225 billion to help low-income families pay for child care, provide funding to child care providers and boost wages for child care workers to $15 an hour. Biden is also proposing to make permanent a tax credit for child care costs that would reimburse families for care of children 12 and under with a credit worth up to $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for multiple children.

  Paid Leave

  Biden would create a $225 billion national paid family and medical leave program. It would provide partial wage replacement for workers who take time off to care for a newborn or an ill family member, recover from a health issue, deal with a family member’s military deployment, address domestic violence issues or deal with the death of a loved one. The plan guarantees 12 weeks of paid parental, family, and personal leave by year 10 of the program. It provides workers with two-thirds of average wage replacement per month, up to $4,000. Lowest-wage workers will get pay replaced at 80%.

  Health Tax Credits

  The plan would pump $200 billion into an expansion of tax credits for households that buy health insurance on their own, saving families an average of $50 per person per month. Biden’s outline said nine million people would save hundreds of dollars per year on their premiums, and four million uninsured people will gain coverage.

  Low-income Tax Credits

  An expansion of the earned-income tax credit for childless workers who earn wages below the poverty line would be made permanent under Biden’s proposal. The expansion roughly triples the value of the benefit for those individuals, the fact sheet said.

  Pre-School

  The plan includes $200 billion for free universal pre-school for all three- and four-year-olds. Pre-kindergarten teachers will earn at least $15 per hour, and those with academic qualifications will receive pay comparable to that of kindergarten teachers.

  College Tuition

  The plan would provide $109 billion to cover two years of tuition-free community college for students and an $85 billion investment in Pell Grants, to aid students pursuing up to a four-year degree. The plan also includes $62 billion to improve college retention rates for disadvantaged students and pump $46 billion into historically black universities, tribal colleges and other institutions that serve minorities.

  Nutrition Assistance

  There is $45 billion to improve the health of school meal programs and provide food for K-12 students during summer breaks in Biden’s proposal.

  Unemployment Systems

  The proposal earmarks $2 billion to modernize the unemployment insurance system, which has been subjected to fraud and technical challenges during the spike in unemployment caused by the pandemic. Biden didn’t call for an automatic extension of jobless benefits as some Democrats had requested, but he pledged to work with Congress automatically extend benefits based on economic conditions.

  Notably Omitted

  The plan did not include any references to expanding the $10,000 state and local tax, or SALT, deduction. More than 20 House Democrats have said that tax break must be boosted to support Biden’s economic agenda. The proposal also didn’t include an expansion of the estate tax — a long-standing Democratic priority that Biden campaigned on. Nor was there an enlargement of Medicare or the drug-price reduction measures that many congressional Democrats have pushed for — though Biden’s outline said both issues were priorities for him.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 19:44

• Why Did Congress "Bailout" Utah For $1.5 Billion? (When Utah Has A $1.5 Billion Budget Surplus)
  Why Did Congress “Bailout” Utah For $1.5 Billion? (When Utah Has A $1.5 Billion Budget Surplus)

  Authored by Adam Andrzejewski, CEO/Founder of OpenTheBooks.com, via Forbes.com,

  Recently, Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act along party lines – no Republicans voted for the legislation. Within the bill, there was $350 billion allocated to states, tribes, territories, and 30,000 localities.

  

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forecast that “republicans would vote no and take the dough.” So far, she’s right, as no republican governor has returned the funding.

  A case in point is Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R). Utah state government received $1.5 billion from the Rescue Act. However, the state has an estimated $1.5 billion budget surplus for 2021.

  Gov. Cox forecast a $427 million surplus for 2021 and already expected to have a $1.1 billion one-time surplus. The total extra funds in the state budget amounted to $1.5 billion.

  So, what’s the compelling public purpose for Congress to send Utah $1.5 billion in coronavirus aid? Considering the strength of their state economy, what’s the governor’s argument to keep the money?

  We reached out to Gov. Cox for comment on these important issues, however, we didn’t receive a response. Although U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted against the bill, he hasn’t weighed in on the Utah “bailouts.”

  Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com mapped every government receiving the congressional bailout. Look up your hometown by clicking one of the 50 pins (state capitol) and then scroll down to the chart beneath the map to see the local areas that received Rescue Act aid.

  Beyond the $1.5 billion in aid to Utah state government, a lot of taxpayer money also flowed to Utah’s counties and cities.

  Here’s a high-level breakdown of congressional bailout flowing into communities across Utah.

  Salt Lake County – $225 million

  Salt Lake County is the most populous in the state with an $1.1 million residents. The county is home to the state capital and its largest city, Salt Lake City. Roughly 1 in every 3 Utahns lives in this county. With $225 million in aid, the county collected the equivalent of about $225 for every resident.

  The county is home to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) in Salt Lake City.

  Utah County – $123 million

  Utah County is the second most populous county in the state with 636,000 residents. That means the county collected about $193 per person.

  Brigham Young University located in the city of Provo ($31.6 million in aid). Brigham Young was the founder of Salt Lake City, the first governor of the Utah Territory and second president of the LDS faith.

  Salt Lake City – $87.5 million

  Salt Lake City is the state capitol and is known for its ski resorts. In 2002, the city hosted the Winter Olympics.

  It’s also home to the Salt Lake City Temple. The 174-year-old Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. With an estimated population of 197,756, the equivalent aid for every resident amounted to $442.

  Davis County – $69 million

  With some ski resorts of its own, Davis County is considered a “bedroom community.” With a population of 355,000, the county collected $194 in stimulus funds for each resident.

  Weber County – $50.5 million

  The county is home to Weber State University, also founded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With 260,213 people, the stimulus works out to be about $194 per resident, the same rate of funding as Utah County and Davis County.

  Washington County – $34.4 million

  The county is home to Zion National Park and Snow Canyon State Park, and has 177,556 residents — an average $194 per person in aid — the same rate as Utah, Davis and Weber counties.

  West Valley City – $28.3 million

  The second largest city in the state, West Valley has 136,009 people — an average of $208 per person in aid. A suburb of Salt Lake City, West Valley is relatively new, only incorporating in 1980. The city is home to The Maverik Center which houses the professional hockey team, the Utah Grizzlies.

  Review the rest of Utah’s localities receiving congressional aid here.

  The Utah state economy remained strong as they successfully navigated the pandemic and the state government has a $1.5 billion surplus. Therefore, it’s mind-boggling that the state collected an additional $1.5 billion from the $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

  Critics say that Congress needs to do a better job of letting states manage their own affairs and stop the taxpayer-funded bailouts of states and localities.

  However, Speaker Pelosi was right: republican members of Congress voted no, but their governors took the dough.

  A request for comment to the governor’s office wasn’t returned by our deadline

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 19:40

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• "Exit NATO!" Turks Hold Anti-American Protest Outside Incirlik Base Over Armenian Genocide Decision
  “Exit NATO!” Turks Hold Anti-American Protest Outside Incirlik Base Over Armenian Genocide Decision

  Shortly following Joe Biden’s controversial Armenian Genocide statement on Saturday where he became the first US president to shift policy in terms of Washington official recognition of the WWI-era massacre of over one million Armenians in Asia Minor, the US Embassy in Ankara announced the closure of all American diplomatic facilities for Monday and Tuesday as a security precaution. 

  As expected, anti-American protests have indeed popped up at various locations where US personnel are stationed, most notably including outside Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. US troops and intelligence operatives have long been housed at the base in southern Turkey, and it was a major hub out of which anti-Assad military missions in were launched over the past many years. A group of protesters were seen and heard at the gates of Incirlik base loudly denouncing the “lie” of Armenian genocide while telling the Americans to “go home!” and “get out of Turkey!”

  İncirlik Üssü önündeyiz!

  Ey bizim kanımızı içmeye çalışan tek dişi kalmış canavar. Sana bu topraklarda gün yüzü göstermeyeceğiz! pic.twitter.com/XcOwYKZE71

  — TGB (@genclikbirligi) April 27, 2021

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

  Such a spectacle outside the major NATO base in Turkey is a rare one.

  According to a description of the demonstration by Military.com:

  A few dozen protestors held banners and chanted slogans. “Genocide is a lie, it’s an American plan,” they said. Demonstrators also demanded an end to the American military’s use of Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, shouting: “American soldiers, get out of Turkey!”

  Turks Protest Biden’s Armenian Genocide Decision, Call for US Military to Leave #Incirlik Air Base | https://t.co/v4werdK5X0 https://t.co/6Nn3Cm54p9

  — Manu Gómez (@GDarkconrad) April 26, 2021

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

  Other international reports noted that some of the demonstrators carried signs that urged Turkey to “exit NATO”…

  The protest was organized by a  local wing of the Youth Union of Turkey (TGB), who call Joe Biden’s recognition of the genocide “illegal and legally void”.

  The demonstrators are carrying Turkish flags and banners saying “exit NATO – the enemy of Ataturk”, “Close Incirlik for the US in response to lies about genocide”, and “No to NATO. This is our land!”

  Ironically much of the American public would only be too happy to see Turkey depart NATO.

  Scene’s from Monday’s protest at Incirlik Air Base:

  Currently an advisory posted to the US Embassy in Turkey’s website tells Americans to avoid these ongoing protests or any areas around US government facilities in the country.

  “U.S. citizens are advised to avoid the areas around U.S. government buildings, and exercise heightened caution in locations where Americans or foreigners may gather,” it says.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 02:45

• The Ukraine Crisis Can Be An Opportunity
  The Ukraine Crisis Can Be An Opportunity

  Authored by Douglas Macgregor via AmericanConservative.com,

  The trouble with leading a great power is that, from time to time, the president is obliged to act like the leader of a great power. If ever there was a time for sound presidential leadership, it’s now. With no appreciation for the endlessly renewable force of national self-preservation that animates Moscow’s maneuvers in Ukraine, President Biden’s insulting remarks and hostile sanctions have plunged the United States into a deeper, more dangerous confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, a region of limited strategic interest to the United States.

  

  Putin’s directive to return most of his troops to garrison while leaving their weapon systems and equipment in place along the Ukrainian border should be viewed in Washington as an opportunity to create a measure of stability in U.S.-Russian relations that’s been missing for years. It’s not enough to hurl insults and simply restate what the Biden administration is against. It’s time to explore what kind of alternative to the fragile and dangerous status quo in Ukraine that Washington and Moscow can both support.

  Washington did a deplorable job of formulating strategic aims in the Middle East and Afghanistan that justified the sacrifice of American blood and treasure. The president cannot seize the strategic initiative now if Washington continues to react impetuously and emotionally to real or imaginary threats to U.S. and allied interests.

  Winston Churchill insisted that most strategic problems can be solved “if they are related to some central design.” Central design implies the guiding influence of strategy. Strategy is not an ideological wish list. Strategy involves an understanding of strategic interests; in this case, grasping the divergence of American and Russian interests. Consider five points.

  First, an analogy may be instructive for Americans: Who rules in Kiev and governs Ukraine is as important to Moscow as events in Mexico are to Washington. It is not enough to admit that expanding NATO eastward to include Ukrainian membership was an unforced error. President Biden must acknowledge that since the end of the Cold War, the geo-strategic environment has changed profoundly. The growth in economic and military strength in Beijing and Moscow gives these nations weight, heretofore unrecognized by Washington, D.C., in the post-Cold War unipolar system.

  Second, Putin is well aware that the southeastern portion (including Odessa) of Ukraine is heavily Russian in language, culture, and political orientation. If this reality is ignored yet again in favor of more wishful thinking about the true character of Ukraine, in a future crisis, the southeastern areas are likely to be rapidly seized and occupied by Russian military power with little difficulty. The probability of U.S. and allied forces throwing Russian forces out is low. Moscow knows from its experience with Crimea that possession is indeed nine-tenths of the law.

  However, Putin is equally aware that for Moscow military action is an option, but hardly the first or even second option. Russian action in Ukraine would exact a serious cost from Moscow in trade sanctions and international standing. Beijing intervened to support the Russian economy once (in 2015), but it is not clear that Beijing would do so again if Russia’s economy faltered under these conditions. These points mean the opportunity for a negotiated settlement with Moscow should not be ignored.

  Third, the Biden administration must work with Moscow and Beijing to identify new rules of engagement that adapt American foreign policy to periodic competition between Great Powers. Russia (and China) advocates for the “principle of noninterference” in the affairs of other states. It’s time for Washington to explore the utility of this approach as a strategic hedge against future potential crises. It’s painfully obvious that Washington’s “Tomahawk Diplomacy”—the act of killing citizens with cruise missiles in weaker, largely defenseless countries when their governments refuse to accommodate American demands—is not viable against Russia or China, let alone against any number of states with rapidly growing military power.

  Fourth, the president must acknowledge that in the new, multi-polar international environment Washington bears an unequal and unsustainable financial burden for the defense of Europe. Acutely sensitive to the American electorate’s demands for peace and prosperity, Eisenhower foresaw the danger that Washington could be ensnared in conflicts on behalf of smaller states for which Americans did not want to fight. Eisenhower’s determination to avoid war and reduce the costs of global military commitments was the rationale for Austrian neutrality in 1955. It is also why Eisenhower urged neutrality for other, smaller European states.

  Finally, President Biden must devise a new national strategy that ensures its political goals are congruent with U.S. military capabilities and fiscal realities. Too many hotheads in the Senate and House are ready to commit American military power without first soberly assessing the concrete interests and the costs of such action. President John F. Kennedy thrilled his supporters with his assertion that Americans should “meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It was great rhetoric, but it put the nation on the road to disaster in Vietnam. The United States does not have the resources or the need to export its political ideas at gunpoint.

  Arnold J. Toynbee argued that great empires die by suicide, not murder. If the United States is to avoid this outcome, Washington must put an end to the strategic follies of the last 20 years, and put American foreign policy back on a credible foundation. Ukraine is a good place to start.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 02:00

• The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19
  The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power.”

  – Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

  For good or bad, COVID-19 has changed the way we navigate the world.

  

  It is also redrawing the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.

  Owing in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it has become increasingly obvious that we have entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations.

  This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.

  We’ve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which has seen governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, has shifted this transformation into high gear.

  Fascism has become a global menace.

  It remains unclear whether the American Deep State (“a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it”) answers to the Global Deep State, or whether the Global Deep State merely empowers the American Deep State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked.

  Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven corporate interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the security sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, the pharmaceutical industry and, most recently, by the pharmaceutical-health sector.

  All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins. The profit-driven policies of these global corporate giants influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care

  Global Disease

  The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled us into a whole new global frontier. Those hoping to navigate this interconnected and highly technological world of contact tracing, vaccine passports and digital passes will find themselves grappling with issues that touch on deep-seated moral, political, religious and personal questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers.

  We are about to find our ability to access, engage and move about in the world dependent on which camp we fall into: those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who have not.

  “It is the latest status symbol. Flash it at the people, and you can get access to concerts, sports arenas or long-forbidden restaurant tables. Some day, it may even help you cross a border without having to quarantine,” writes Heather Murphy for the New York Times.

  “The new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.”

  This is what M.I.T. professor Ramesh Raskar refers to as the new “currency for health,” an apt moniker given the potentially lucrative role that Big Business (Big Pharma and Big Tech, especially) will play in establishing this pay-to-play marketplace. The airline industry has been working on a Travel Pass. IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass. And the U.S. government has been all-too-happy to allow the corporate sector to take the lead.

  Global Surveillance

  Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.

  Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice.

  Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.

  Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept:

  “The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.’ It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it ‘has access to information that transits the nation,’ but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.”

  Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the “14 Eyes Program,” also referred to as the “SIGINT Seniors.” This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).

  Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.

  Global War Profiteering

  War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its biggest buyers and sellers.

  The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).

  Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (that’s $8.3 million per hour). That doesn’t include wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

  The illicit merger of the global armaments industry and the Pentagon that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 50 years ago has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation’s fragile infrastructure today. America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe.

  Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure,  spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. There’s a good reason why “bloated,” “corrupt” and “inefficient” are among the words most commonly applied to the government, especially the Department of Defense and its contractors. Price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire.

  It’s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.

  Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. President Biden, marching in lockstep with his predecessors, has continued to expand America’s military empire abroad and domestically in a clear bid to pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.

  Global Policing

  Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those belonging to other nations. There’s a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.

  There’s a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force: they belong to a global police force.

  For example, Israel—one of America’s closest international allies and one of the primary yearly recipients of more than $3 billion in U.S. foreign military aid—has been at the forefront of a little-publicized exchange program aimed at training American police to act as occupying forces in their communities. As The Intercept sums it up, American police are “essentially taking lessons from agencies that enforce military rule rather than civil law.”

  This idea of global policing is reinforced by the Strong Cities Network program, which trains local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo.

  The objective is to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police—acting as extensions of the United Nations—will identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.

  Of course, the concern with the government’s anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

  Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

  This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

  Are you starting to get the picture now?

  On almost every front, whether it’s the war on drugs, or the sale of weapons, or regulating immigration, or establishing prisons, or advancing technology, or fighting a pandemic, if there is a profit to be made and power to be amassed, you can bet that the government and its global partners have already struck a deal that puts the American people on the losing end of the bargain.

  We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

  The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished.

  In its place is a shadow government—a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy—that is fully operational and running the country.

  Given the trajectory and dramatic expansion, globalization and merger of governmental and corporate powers, we’re not going to recognize this country 20 years from now.

  It’s taken less than a generation for our freedoms to be eroded and the Global Deep State’s structure to be erected, expanded and entrenched.

  Mark my words: the U.S. government will not save us from the chains of the Global Deep State.

  Now there are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government—a power elite conspiring to rule the world—is the stuff of conspiracy theories.

  I am not one of those skeptics.

  I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on one’s liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.

  I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  I have studied enough of this country’s history—and world history—to know that governments (the U.S. government being no exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

  And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.

  Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government). They used to doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America, and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

  As I detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re beginning to know better, aren’t we?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 00:00

• Russia Is Putting Together An "Unfriendly Countries" Blacklist
  Russia Is Putting Together An “Unfriendly Countries” Blacklist

  Earlier this week Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told national media that the Russian government is currently finalizing what it’s calling an “unfriendly countries” list and that the United States is likely to be at the top of it.

  It follows a recent decree singed by President Vladimir Putin which prevents listed country embassies from being able to hire Russian citizens to work at their diplomatic and consular missions. It’s common practice for foreign embassies to hire staff from the local host countries for certain functins..

  Zakharavo in a weekend interview had said this ‘naughty list’ was triggered ultimately by “another round of unfriendly actions by the US” – a reference to Biden’s latest sanctions on Kremlin officials and Russian companies for the SolarWinds hack and alleged election interference. 

  

  “What are those unfriendly states? The list is being compiled now,” she previously Rossiya 1 TV channel. “As you understand, and I can confirm it, the US is, obviously, present” she said while stopping short of naming other specific countries. 

  On Tuesday state media sources indicated the following are likely be included: 

  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Canada
  • Poland
  • Ukraine
  • Czech Republic
  • some Baltic states

  In all about ten countries are expected to be named on the ‘blacklist’. 

  Russia’s list of “unfriendly countries” keeps on growing. pic.twitter.com/BTxbEgKLtR

  — Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) April 27, 2021

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  Citing a prominent Russian daily newspaper, TASS describes: “A well-informed source told the newspaper that the US, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia may be blacklisted. An additional Izvestia source in the government added that the UK, Canada, Ukraine and Australia may also be included.” The same publication indicated the list has yet to finalized, however.

  Earlier this month a number of these countries already expelled Russian diplomats and officials, especially the US, also amid a continued tit-for-tat exchange of diplomatic expulsions between Moscow and eastern European countries. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:40

• White House Weighs Whether To Back "Open Vaccine" Push Opposed By Bill Gates, Big Pharma
  White House Weighs Whether To Back “Open Vaccine” Push Opposed By Bill Gates, Big Pharma

  As the latest wave of India’s COVID-19 outbreak metastasizes into a full-blown crisis, India and other developing economies are seizing the opportunity to push back against the Bill Gates-backed status quo that prioritizes the intellectual property rights of big pharma over access to plentiful and cheap vaccines in the developing world.

  Gates has continued to insist that the current approach is the best option for the developing world. But increasingly, it seems the governments of India, South Africa, Nigeria and other emerging powers disagree. And as a showdown looms at the WTO, Washington is being pressed to confront the obvious hypocrisy in backing Gates over the “open vaccine” movement.

  As more lawmakers speak out on the issue, support has grown along Biden’s left flank to push the president and his top trade rep to back a proposal at the WTO to issue a waiver on IP restrictions that would effectively allow countries to manufacture jabs independently, instead of being forced to purchase them from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and their competitors on the open market.

  Of course, Biden can’t move on this issue without the implicit support of big pharma, and in an attempt to try and curry support, Biden’s trade representative Katharine Tai, who has seemingly made the “open vaccine” issue a pet project, met with top executives from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and others to discuss the possibility of supporting an IP waiver.

  The talks come as members of the WTO are due to discuss a proposal by India and South Africa to waive certain provisions of the organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights during an upcoming meeting on April 30. So far, the US has blocked the resolution. But a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers, civil society groups, and 60 former heads of state and 100 Nobel Prize winners have urged Biden to reconsider and instead back the waiver. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said she had no updates on the issue.

  

  Katharine Tai

  Beyond talk about “increasing vaccine production”, it’s not exactly clear what Tai and her fellow executives discussed (though the waiver was reportedly part of the talks), Reuters reminds us that, earlier this month, Tai told a WTO meeting the gaping divide between developed and developing countries’ access to medicines was “completely unacceptable” and that the industry needed to make sacrifices in times of crisis.

  On Tuesday, Seattle’s City Council passed a resolution put forward by the mayor’s office urging Biden to lift the patent restrictions.

  The resolution from my office, urging Biden to lift COVID-19 patent restrictions, passed 7-1 in Seattle City Council.

  Our movement rejects the status quo of billionaire-profit-driven vaccine apartheid & vaccine nationalism. We demand vaccine internationalism, a People’s Vaccine!

  — Kshama Sawant (@cmkshama) April 26, 2021

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  Others on social media pointed to the administration’s obvious hypocrisy on the issue. Biden reportedly spoke with PM Narendra Modi directly this week and offered US assistance in helping battle the country’s COVID-19 crisis, however, as one social media user pointed out, the US keeps blocking India’s request for waiving Intellectual Property Rights related to COVID-19 drugs and vaccine raw materials, in the WTO.

  Biden has announced sending help to India, to fight COVID-19.
  However, US keeps blocking India’s request for waiving Intellectual Property Rights related to COVID-19 drugs and vaccine raw materials, in the WTO. Please explain why.

  — Kingshuk Mazumder (@KingshukMazum15) April 27, 2021

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  Behind the scences and with the blessing of Gates, the world’s de facto COVID-19 vaccine czar, the industry has escalated its lobbying efforts in Washington, warning that giving up the rights to such valuable US intellectual property would inevitably aid America’s foes, especially China and Russia.

  The question now is: how many lives is that worth, with emerging economies expected to wait years to receive access to abundant vaccines, while unused jabs pile up in the US.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:20

• Deflation Threat Looms As China Suffers First Population Decline Since 1949
  Deflation Threat Looms As China Suffers First Population Decline Since 1949

  China is battling not one but three vicious demons. The interconnected issues of insurmountable debts, deflation, and demographics threaten to sap the world’s future growth potential. 

  Fending off the 3 D’s: debts, deflation, and demographics requires the People’s Bank of China to slash borrowing costs and unleash an enormous amount of credit into the local economy to cover up the faltering demand that usually persists with demographic challenges.

  The question we should be asking is China really on the “rise,” as President Xi Jinping believes: “the East is rising and the West is declining” or if the coming demographic crisis derails Xi’s global takeover plans.

  Beijing desperately attempts to recover from its decades of disastrous ‘one-child policy,’ which officially ended in 2015 and was replaced by the current two-child policy.

  According to FT’s sources, the latest Chinese census data, which was completed in December and has yet to be publicly released (the issue is reportedly so sensitive that it won’t be released until many government agencies reach a consensus on the data and its consequences), is expected to show the country’s first population decline since records began in 1949.

  China’s total population is expected to print less than 1.4 billion, according to people familiar with the census report, and if it is reported, the peak in China’s population came five years earlier than the United Nations predicted.

  But, as Bloomberg notes, the trend is hardly surprising. China’s birth rate has been in decline for years and the introduction of the two-child policy in 2016 failed to make a dent. The number of newborns in 2019 fell to 14.65 million, a decrease of 580,000 from the year before. To cope with the shrinking population, a PBOC study last month urged a drastic overhaul of the policy to encourage “three or more” children per household. It called for a total lifting of any restrictions to “fully liberalize and encourage childbirth” to reverse the current four-year straight decline in births nationwide. 

  A key section of the 22-page document spells out:

  “In order to achieve the long-term goals in 2035, China should fully liberalize and encourage childbirth, and sweep off difficulties (women face) during pregnancy, childbirth, and kindergarten and school enrollment by all means (possible),” the four central bank researchers wrote in the English language abstract. 

  But Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics, said the low birth rate has deep-rooted demographic and social causes that are difficult to reverse. After all, the decline in the fertility rate started before the one-child policy was introduced in the late 1970s, and followed a similar pattern in other Asian countries.

  

  In any event, as the official China Daily stated in December, population “trends are irreversible.”

  The PBoC has a big dilemma on its hands. China today is drawing parallels between Japan in the late 1980s – just before its “lost decade,” where the country experienced a decade of secular stagnation. 

  Firstly, demographics – if economic growth is a function of the number of workers and consumers in the economy and technological productivity, then a declining population in China would drag on the global economy. 

  China’s next path could be down the dark road of deflation, similar to Japan, where the typical response to deteriorating demographics is a continued build-up in private debt, leading to soaring public debt.

  The main lesson from Japan is that high debt levels result in structurally weak growth and anemic inflation. This would suggest the latest spurt of inflation rippling through the world is not sustainable. Future growth rates in China are expected to be much lower than what was seen pre-COVID. 

  Souring demographics would mean China’s total social financing and M2 would need to increase to fill in the cracks of faltering demand as the population declines. According to Bloomberg’s Ye Xie, a slowdown in credit growth could “start to shrink by July or August just as the Fed may lay the groundwork for its own tapering.” This would signal deflation is ahead. 

  

  Besides the 3 D’s: debts, deflation, and demographics, a population decline will also dent China’s global image. 

  Huang Wenzheng, a fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think-tank, said, “census results will have a huge impact on how the Chinese people see their country and how various government departments work.” 

  Wenzheng continued: “They need to be handled very carefully.”

  The Chinese take great pride in being part of the world’s most populous state, but the narrative could begin to shift when the data is released. 

  Wenzheng said the possibility of the first population decline in seven decades could push forward China’s looming demographic crisis: 

  “The pace and scale of China’s demographic crisis are faster and bigger than we imagined,” he said.

  “That could have a disastrous impact on the country.”

  A shrinking population could have profound economic implications.

  First, by Williams’s calculation, the demographic headwind means China may never be able to catch up with the U.S. as the world’s largest economy.

  

  Secondly, an older population would put extra strain on the underfunded pension system.

  

  A separate PBOC report last month estimated that a shrinking labor force is likely to lower China’s potential GDP growth to 5.1% by 2025, from an expected 5.7% this year. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that China’s 10-year bond yields peaked in 2013, the same year that the country’s working-age population started to fall.

  Here’s a look at potential GDP growth and the three-year average of 10-year yields.

  

  A ‘deflationary’ mindset and Japanification are the words that come to mind.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:00

• 'Mom And Pop' Landlords Dying On The Vine As Un-Evictable Tenants Enjoy Pandemic Protections
  ‘Mom And Pop’ Landlords Dying On The Vine As Un-Evictable Tenants Enjoy Pandemic Protections

  As millions of renters across America continue to benefit from sweeping protections against eviction during the COVID-19 pandemic, their landlords haven’t been so fortunate.

  

  According to Bloomberg, nearly $47 billion in rent relief from the Biden Administration has been slow to materialize, forcing “mom-and-pop” landlords into financial hardship – or forced to sell to wealthy investors. Bloomberg, perhaps to invoke sympathy for the landlord class, focused on the impact felt by minority landlords.

  

  Like their tenants, these landlords are more likely to be nonwhite or to be immigrants using real estate for their economic foothold. Now, mortgage, maintenance and tax bills are piling up, putting landlords in danger of losing their buildings or being forced to sell to wealthier investors hunting for distressed deals.

  …

  The tens of billions of dollars that Congress allocated for rent relief — starting in December and then with a second allotment in March — was supposed to help by covering back rent and unpaid utility bills. But the rollout has been moving at the speed of bureaucracy, which varies from state to state. –Bloomberg

  In one example, airport janitor Joaquin Villanueva has had to take out a home-equity loan to make ends meet while maintaining a three-unit rental house in East Boston. One of his tenants is eight months behind on rent, while another – an unemployed restaurant dish washer, owes him $5,000.

  

  “I don’t want to lose my house so I’m doing whatever I have to do,” said Villanueva – an El Salvadorian immigrant who works at Logan International Airport, adding “I’m not rich like a Donald Trump.”

  Another distressed landlord, Jamaican-America Lincoln Eccles, owns a 14-unit building in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. Eccles says investors have been flooding him with unsolicited phone calls, texts and emails. He says that selling would bring much-needed relief, as he’s now a year behind on taxes and gas bills. Eccles says he’d rather keep the building acquired by his immigrant father in order to pass it down to his first son, born this month.

  Unfortunately for Eccles, “One tenant owes more than $40,000 in back rent, five units are empty and Eccles can’t afford to replace or even fix a boiler that broke down again in March. The rent relief program will help only so much. He’s unlikely to get government grants to cover losses from a tenant who left in November owing $96,000.”

  According to RealtyTrac Executive VP Rick Sharga, “The fact that we’re over a year into the pandemic really puts a lot of these landlords at risk.”

  That said, not much is known about how many landlords themselves are in desperate situations, Bloomberg notes, however “it doesn’t take much to fall behind if income stops coming from one tenant in a small building. With each passing month, the problems get bigger and harder to solve.”

  So what now?

  It’s going to be an ordeal either way. In order to remedy shortfalls in rent, both renters and landlords will need to cooperate for the landlord’s benefit – with local governments often requiring long, detailed applications signed by both parties in order to prevent fraud.

  Meanwhile, many landlords don’t qualify for federal COVID-19 mortgage forbearance because less than a third have mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or another federal agency, while local governments can’t afford to let landlords pause property tax payments – particularly in cities which have suffered economic devastation due to the pandemic.

  “The long-term concern here, over the course of a few years, is that a growing share of mom and pop landlords will be forced to sell and rents will go up,” said Rutgers assistant professor of sociology who researches housing inequality. “There’s a lot of private equity interest and a real possibility of growing consolidation.”

  From the government side, the situation is a quagmire.

  Even as the pace of payments pick up, other challenges are looming. The way Congress allocated the money gave an outsize share to smaller states with low renter populations.

  New York’s $2.4 billion portion of the funds, for instance, is expected to cover less than 80% of back rent, utilities and late fees owed in the state as of March, according to estimates from Moody’s Analytics. In Illinois, it’s just 45%. Vermont, however, gets a roughly $350 million allocation, enough to pay for the state’s need more than nine times over.

  While Congress provided the Treasury Department with authority to fix any mismatch in funding, the reallocation can’t happen for several more months. -Bloomberg

  “Standing up a brand new program like this that’s very high-touch and has to get out ASAP is really tough,” said Stockton Williams, executive director of the National Council of State Housing Agencies, who added that while some states – including Alaska, Kentucky and Virginia have been quick to distribute relief, California and Texas – states with large allocations – have been slow to respond but are picking up speed.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:40

• "F**k The Police" Proclaims 32-Year-OId Livestreamer Before Killing Cop In 2AM Drunken Hit-And-Run
  “F**k The Police” Proclaims 32-Year-OId Livestreamer Before Killing Cop In 2AM Drunken Hit-And-Run

  A New York woman was arrested early Tuesday morning after striking and killing a veteran police officer in a New York City hit-and-run, according to the Daily Mail.

  In a nearly two-hour Facebook Live stream following the trial of ex-cop Derek Chauvin, 32-year-old Jessica Beauvais could be seen taking shots of vodka and saying “fuck the police” just hours before plowing into 43-year-old NYPD Highway Officer Anastasios Tsakos, 43, on the Long Island Expressway around 2am Tuesday morning while driving her Volkswagen on a suspended license.

  

  Taskos was redirecting traffic from a fatal car Queens accident at the time when Beauvais allegedly aimed for Taskos and struck him head on – killing the married father of a three-year-old son and six-year-old daughter. The 14-year veteran of the NYPD was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

  “We stand here this morning reminded once again, in law enforcement, there is no such thing as a routine job,” said NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, adding “We stand here devastated and trying to pick up the pieces of what is a shattered home and a shattered NYPD family.”

  

  Following the accident, Beauvais reportedly sped off with a ‘completely shattered’ windshield before she was arrested by police.

  

  Beauvais, who says she has a 13-year-old son in the video, offered a tearful apology for Tsakos’ death as she was led out of the NYPD’s 107th Precinct in handcuffs on Tuesday afternoon. ‘I’m sorry that I hit him and that he’s dead,’ she sobbed. 

  She is set to be arraigned on two counts of vehicular manslaughter, and reckless endangerment, leaving an accident resulting in death, fleeing an officer in a motor vehicle, and other charges, including driving while intoxicated. –Daily Mail

  “This week we are going to talk about the ignorance that was the Derek Chauvin trial – or the ignorance that is essentially just is this f**ing justice system,” Beauvais said at the beginning of her 1 hour 51 minute Facebook Live video as part of her Face the Reality radio show. “Police say an oath and in that oath they say an oath that they are not supposed to be afraid of that position and that is literally in the rules.”

  

  

  She then proceeded to say that police officers are “signing up for potential death like in the army,” and that it’s “part of the job” that people “might try to fucking kill you.”

  After which she killed a police officer, allegedly of course.

  “‘Like (hip hop group) NWA say about the police – if you’re going to kill me, at least I get to take someone with me,” she told her audience, adding “I’m one of those people. If I’m going to go, someone is coming.”

  Read the rest of the report here.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:20

• "Steady As She Goes": Why Powell Won't Rock The Boat Tomorrow
  “Steady As She Goes”: Why Powell Won’t Rock The Boat Tomorrow

  Be Steve Englander, head global G10 FX at Standard Chartered

  The Fed put a lot of effort after the March FOMC meeting into convincing bond investors that it was not thinking of changing its view of low inflation and low policy rates through 2023. There is increased optimism but not additional economic data since, so we think the Fed will try and keep the message as unchanged as possible. The lack of bond yield reaction to sharp data surprises has led investors to be cautious on the immediate upside to bond yields. Real yields are almost 20bps lower than at the March FOMC (Figure 1). There is no real appetite to fight the Fed now and the Fed has little incentive to rock this boat just yet.

  

  This makes it hard for the FOMC to convey a dovish message beyond what the market has absorbed already. The risk is that normally innocuous statements like ‘the next few months may give us more information on the strength of the recovery’ could be seen as signalling an early consideration of tapering or as defining substantial progress. While some market participants think the FOMC may intentionally convey a slightly more hawkish stance, we think the risk is that an inadvertent comment scares the market. There seems little upside in trying to nuance bond prices and reigniting premature tightening fears.

  Yields may not immediately spike higher, but bond prices could be increasingly vulnerable if near-term data continue to surprise to the upside. We think the 10Y UST will most likely trade in a 1.50-1.75% range near-term but see the risks as skewed towards travelling towards the top of that range if the Fed and data-flow play out as we expect. (see Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number).

  The one dovish signal that Powell could convey is that the Fed would measure its success by how few people were left without work once job creation began to level off, not how many jobs were created in the early stage of reopening. This would mean that the Fed would be looking at late Q3 and early Q4 data to decide whether sufficient progress has occurred.

  We doubt Powell is ready to provide a full definition of ‘sufficient progress’ that would encourage a Taylor rule type of market reaction. On the whole we think he will convey that the FOMC is not yet thinking about shifting its dovish stance – if March was too early, then April with a few added data points is unlikely to shift the dovish stance. This is an instance where the Fed wants to dampen investors’ forward-looking instincts.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:00

• European Investment Bank Issues €100 Million In Digital Bonds Using Ethereum
  European Investment Bank Issues €100 Million In Digital Bonds Using Ethereum

  The European Investment Bank will use blockchain technology to issue two-year digital bonds, the latest sign of growing mainstream adoption for crypto only this time Ethereum is taking the spotlight courtesy of the EIB.

  In an article published earlier on Tuesday, Bloomberg detailed the European Investment Bank’s plans to use Ethereum to register €100 million (~$120M) worth of digital notes. Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, and Société Générale will manage the sale. According to a Bloomberg the source the notes may be priced as soon as today.

  European Investment Bank is issuing 2 year digital bonds on Ethereum through Goldman, Santander, and Societe.

  Wow. @GoldmanSachs #Ethereum @RaoulGMI pic.twitter.com/kaQIrZ9C9V

  — Michael Tant (@MichaelTant3) April 27, 2021

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

  As CryptoBriefing notes, the European Investment Bank using Ethereum to register digital bonds would help reinforce Ethereum’s value proposition as a “global settlement layer.” The project’s biggest evangelists have long discussed Ethereum’s potential to act as the base layer for transactions of various forms. Ethereum processes its transactions using smart contracts; it’s the biggest and most used smart contract platform today, recording about 1.5 million transactions daily. 

  In recent years, the network’s activity has been characterized by the DeFi and NFT booms, but Ethereum still has to earn wider recognition among institutions like banks. If the European Investment Bank and other financial giants are to start issuing payments on Ethereum, mass adoption may be on the horizon. 

  Though Ethereum is not as widely known as its predecessor, Bitcoin, it has had its fair share of mainstream attention recently. CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, launched ETH futures in February. Like BTC, ETH is now supported by PayPal. This year’s NFT explosion has also inspired digital creators and major pop artists like Eminem and Kings of Leon to start using the network. 

  ETH jumped this afternoon, possibly in response to the Bloomberg report. It traded as high as  trading at $2,651 at publication, a new record high, before retracing to $2,625. It has gained over 20% in the past three days, and is up 267% YTD, vastly outperforming bitcoin.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:40

• Lawyer For Ashli Babbitt's Family Says Lawsuit Will Be Filed Soon Against US Capitol Police
  Lawyer For Ashli Babbitt’s Family Says Lawsuit Will Be Filed Soon Against US Capitol Police

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  A lawyer for Ashli Babbitt’s family said that they will file a lawsuit against the U.S. Capitol Police after a Capitol Police officer shot and killed her during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

  

  No charges were filed against the officer who shot Babbitt. The officer has not been identified publicly. Babbitt, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was unarmed when she tried to climb through one of the Capitol doors before the officer shot her.

  “The family and I were disappointed in the Department of Justice’s decision on this, but my role is really to bring a civil action and in that way, vindicate her rights,” Terry Roberts told Newsmax on Monday.

  The Babbitt family, he said, disagrees with the Department of Justice’s move to not pursue criminal charges against the officer, adding “clearly, the officer required willfullness … he could clearly see that she was not armed” and didn’t present an immediate threat. The officer also didn’t give ample warning before the shooting, Roberts said.

  “This is a situation in which the officer could have easily arrested her if he had grounds to arrest her without using deadly force,” he said.

  “This was an egregious act of excessive force.”

  Because Babbitt was a supporter of former President Donald Trump, Roberts suggested that the officer involved in the shooting got off lightly.

  The family has not yet filed the lawsuit but will do so soon, he added in the interview.

  Roberts previously told The Epoch Times in March that the lawsuit could entail an excessive use of force complaint.

  “That will be filed against the officer, the Capitol Police,” he said at the time.

  An investigator said that his firm has successfully identified multiple witnesses and spoken to them and a team has spent weeks collecting open-source videos and photographs as part of the effort to reconstruct what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting.

  Roberts then added:

  “Witnesses confirm that the officer did not give Ashli a single verbal warning prior to firing. In fact, Ashli was not even aware that the officer was present, as he was located in the doorway of a room off to the side of her field of vision.”

  But Mark Schamel, an attorney for the officer, told The Epoch Times via email that the officer warned people inside not to enter the Speaker’s Lobby.

  “He fired only one shot at the only person who breached the locked doors and makeshift barricade that had been erected. He did so after clearly identifying himself and ordering the mob not to come through the barricade,” Schamel said.

  “He used tremendous restraint in only firing one shot, and his actions stopped the mob from breaking through and turning a horrific day in American history into something so much worse.”

  The Epoch Times has contacted the Metropolitan Police Department for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:20

• Meet The Billionaire Who "Finally Understood Bitcoin" After Tripping On Magic Mushrooms
  Meet The Billionaire Who “Finally Understood Bitcoin” After Tripping On Magic Mushrooms

  Christian Angermayer built his portfolio the old fashioned way: by taking psychedelics and buying bitcoin.

  That’s the actual story of the 42 year old German billionaire that was highlighted by Bloomberg on Thursday. He literally “rode the wave” of every big fad over the last 12 months – including bitcoin and SPACs – and made a fortune in the process.

  His family office is called Apeiron Investment Group and has been the lead investor in 7 companies that have gone public in the last year, raising more than $1 billion combined. He has 10 more companies slated to IPO this year. 

  Angermayer took his first trip on psychedelics in 2015 before investing in companies that are in the space. A conversation with a neuroscientist at a dinner party is what turned him on to the idea of magic mushrooms, despite the fact that he doesn’t drink alcohol. “It was the single most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, nothing really comes close,” he said of his first trip, which took place in the Caribbean. 

  

  After the trip, he claimed he “finally understood bitcoin”. From there, it became a feedback loop of investing in the things he was passionate about while riding the crypto wave that has swollen over the last half decade. 

  On his investing style, he said: “I just invest in what I’m very curious and passionate about,” he told Bloomberg. The report calls him the “German version of Chamath Palihapitiya”. 

  But he doesn’t have as big of a presence on social media as Chamath. This hasn’t stopped him from cultivating serious relationships with influential investors like SoftBank and Peter Thiel. 

  Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz said of Angermayer: “He’s probably the best networker I’ve ever met. He’s built this amazing network of people who like and have learned to trust him because he’s made them money. As a capital raiser, he’s awesome.”

  Angermayer’s office, based in Malta, “helped China’s HNA Group purchase 9.9% of Deutsche Bank AG stock in 2017′ and received a finder’s fee of $15.6 million for introducing executives at SoftBank and the now-defunct Wirecard.

  Apeiron has $2.5 billion in assets, half of which are Angermayer’s. The fund “has averaged an annual internal return of more than 50% over the past decade”, according to Bloomberg. The portfolio is full of companies like AbCellera Biologics, which has developed an antibody drug for Covid and Compass Pathways, a psilocybin-focused depression treatment company that we highlighted shortly after it went public. 

  

  He has also produced or executive produced 21 different movies, the report notes. Thiel said of him that his curiosity “allows him to recognize trends very early or invent and create an entire sector himself.”

  Benedikt Franke, CEO of the Munich Security Conference said of him: “He is an investor who has fully understood the importance of geopolitics for long-term strategy.”

  Angermayer added: “I understand politicians better than investors. One reason I’m very happy is I’m very honest with myself. I want everybody to like me.”

  When asked what type of hedging he uses, Angermayer responded: “None”. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:00

• Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number
  Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number

  Early indications point to very strong job numbers for April (due May 7), possibly as much as 1.5 million jobs or more, according to Standard Chartered FX strategist Steve Englander. He bases this estimate on an analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit payments in recent weeks. Average weekly benefits have been very stable since late February, but the amount of spending has dropped sharply since mid-March (Figure 1). By implication, the numbers receiving benefits are probably also dropping.

  

  Englander then translates the drop in benefits to an implied fall in unemployment, and seasonally adjusts the unemployment drop based on past patterns. As a result, he finds that unemployment may have decreased between 1.4 million and 2.0 million from March to April. The wide range emerges because March to April seasonality is very strong and the adjustment factor is very uncertain. However, as he adds, a number in the middle or upper end of the range is more likely than in the bottom half, based on this analysis.

  This is how Englander arrived at his estimate

  1. First, assume that just about everyone who lost employment is collecting unemployment benefits because of the broadening of benefits eligibility. In the past, UI benefits have covered about half of workers who lose their jobs; now they cover most of the work force potentially affected by COVID-19, including gig workers and the self-employed.
  2. Similarly, benefits keep getting extended and now will last to September 2021. The major reason to leave unemployment is to go back to work.
  3. Early in the pandemic, benefits paid and the number of benefit recipients moved erratically because of delays and slow systems. This has stabilized in recent months – the $1.9tn stimulus bill in March extended, but did not change, benefits from the $900bn December bill, so there were no discontinuities once the December provisions were implemented.
  4. Since early March, the average weekly payment for unemployed workers has been steady at about $560.
  5. The number of people receiving benefits dropped by 8.6% on a two-week moving average (2wma) basis in the three weeks after the March survey period. The amount of UI benefit payments on the same basis dropped 10.4%. The amount of UI benefits paid out in the April survey week on a 2wma was 15.6% lower than the amount of UI benefits paid out in the March survey week.
  6. If the percentage drop in benefits matched the percentage drop in unemployment, the numbers receiving UI benefits would have dropped 2.9 million.
  7. April employment seasonal effects are severe and cyclical. When unemployment is low and frictional, as in 2018 and 2019, the April seasonal decline in benefit recipients can be 16-18% of the total. This is because with so few unemployed for cyclical reasons, the ebb and flow of seasonal weather represents a big fraction of employment moves.
  8. When unemployment is high, as in 2010 and 2011, the decline in benefit recipients can be as low as 6-8%. Good weather doesn’t bring you back to work in a bad economy. This April, a reasonable range for the seasonal decline is no more than 8%, and could be as low as 5%, given how much stronger cyclical factors are relative to weather in the current downturn than was the case in 2010 and 2011.
  9. A 5% seasonal unemployment drop would leave unemployment 2.0mn lower on a seasonally adjusted basis; an 8% drop would leave unemployment 1.4mn lower. The bigger unemployment drop looks more reasonable to us because there is not that much seasonality in services and retail, which were heaviest hit.

  Risks and data biases

  In some ways these data are better than the BLS surveys that generate household and payroll employment estimates. The Treasury publishes its disbursements on UI benefits on a daily basis with only a day’s lag; these data are not a sample but the totality of what is getting paid. Similarly, the insured UI data basically represent the universe of people receiving benefits and the COVID-19 relief measures encompass a very high percentage of those who have lost jobs, so sampling issues are modest.

  If the objective is to predict non-farm or household employment, the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys from the Treasury spending and Department of Labor benefits data is a disadvantage because the samples may diverge, even if sampling is less of an issue.

  Estimating the seasonal factor is the other big risk. In stable periods, seasonal adjustment is largely formulaic; in volatile periods, there is considerable discretion on what is viewed as seasonal. The seasonality in a period of cyclical upheaval is likely to be modest, but there is a wide confidence interval around our estimates.

  Some workers can collect benefits for partial work weeks. They would be counted as UI beneficiaries, but the BLS labor survey definition classifies them as working, so the decline in benefits may be higher than the decline in BLS-measured unemployment. On the other side, newcomers to the labor market may not be receiving benefits, so if they found jobs they would count as newly employed without having previously been counted as receiving benefits.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:40

• Nothing Can Get Us Out Of This High Debt, High Intervention, Low Default, Low Productivity Loop
  Nothing Can Get Us Out Of This High Debt, High Intervention, Low Default, Low Productivity Loop

  On Tuesday morning, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid published his 23rd annual default study, a document he first put out in the 1990s which as he says, “makes me feel very old” and adds that the story of this report over the past decade or so has been the increasing divergence between economic growth and defaults. And while defaults have trended down alongside growth, the last 12 months have been a supersized version of this as defaults have peaked at a lower level than during the previous three big default cycles even as growth across many countries was at the lowest levels for several decades or centuries.

  

  According to Reid, the reason for this is simple: it is because debt has become so large over this period, and of such extreme systemic importance, that when each cycle turns there is an ever larger policy move to ensure that many of the most heavily indebted entities don’t default and risk a severe contagion event for the global economy.

  In short, in some bizarro form of undead corporate fascism, quasi-insolvent companies how hold the entire world ransom with their own survival, or as Reid puts it “we have so much debt that anything that questions the authorities’ commitment to supporting it risks financial crises.”

  It’s interesting though that since defaults structurally stepped down from around 2004, average spreads have stayed almost identical. So, over a cycle, spreads have not adjusted lower.

  While this is good news for bondholders it’s not great for the economy as creative destruction has been quashed over several cycles and we argue that this has in turn helped reduce productivity.

  Reid’s despondent and fatalistic conclusion: “at this stage it’s hard to see what gets us out of this perpetual high debt, high intervention, low default, low productivity loop.”

  Here’s the answer: nothing. Which is why the only possible outcome is taking the current insanity to its absurd, hyperinflationary extreme.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:20

• Trump-Tied Group Sues Biden Admin Over Racial Discrimination In Farm Subsidy Program
  Trump-Tied Group Sues Biden Admin Over Racial Discrimination In Farm Subsidy Program

  Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

  A newly-formed legal group tied to former President Donald Trump on April 26 sued the Biden administration, seeking to block the implementation of a farm subsidy program that overtly excludes white farmers.

  America First Legal, headed by former senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, against Tom Vilsack, Biden’s secretary of agriculture.

  

  Tom Vilsack speaks after being nominated to be Agriculture Secretary by President-elect Joe Biden, in Wilmington, Delaware, on Dec. 11, 2020. (JIM WATSON/AFP)

  The lawsuit argues that the program, enacted as part of Biden’s pandemic stimulus package, discriminates against white farmers by limiting financial aid to “socially disadvantaged” farmers or ranchers based on their race.

  “The Department of Agriculture lurches America dangerously backward, reversing the clock on American progress, and violating our most sacred and revered principles by actively and invidiously discriminating against American citizens solely based upon their race. This is illegal, it is unconstitutional, it is wrong, and it must stop,” the lawsuit (pdf) states.

  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website currently defines a “socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher” as belonging to “groups [that] include, but are not limited to African Americans, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Asians, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, refugees, immigrants.”

  The America First Legal lawsuit cites a different definition of “socially disadvantaged” that appears on a fact sheet (pdf) by the USDA. That fact sheet limits the definition of “socially disadvantaged” to six races and leaves out whites.

  The relevant section of the pandemic stimulus bill points neither to the fact sheet nor to the USDA website. The act says that the definition of the term is in the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990. That act says that “the term ‘socially disadvantaged farmer or ranchers’ means a farmer or rancher who is a member of a socially disadvantaged group.” The act further defines a “socially disadvantaged group” as “a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities.”

  

  Stephen Miller, senior advisor to the president, attends a joint press conference with President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Sept. 20, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  The legal action is the first brought by America First Legal, a pro-Trump legal outfit modeled on the legal warfare model that the Democrats deployed to thwart Trump’s agenda. The organization says that its mission is to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.”

  The White House and the Department of Agriculture did not immediately return requests for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:00

• Outrage After Iran Elected To UN Women's Rights Committee
  Outrage After Iran Elected To UN Women’s Rights Committee

  Over the past years various United Nations human rights related bodies have been subject to embarrassment and scrutiny given countries like Saudi Arabia and China have served on them. With such a track record, it was apparently thought a good idea to let another notorious violator of human rights take up an important human rights role at the UN.

  Last week the UN’s Economic and Social Council elected Iran to a 4-year term on its Commission on the Status of Women. That’s right, the hardline Shia Islamic theocracy now sits on a council defining itself as the “principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

  

  International outrage among women’s rights groups and others was swift and fierce, with the executive director of UN Watch perhaps putting it best: “Electing the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” Hillel Neuer said.

  “It’s absurd — and morally reprehensible. This is a black day for women’s rights, and for all human rights,” Neuer added. 

  It should also be noted that China and Pakistan are also on the same Commission on the Status of Women. 

  The Hill reviews the status of women’s rights inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, which it notes has  “some of the strictest laws and codes in the world” limiting women’s freedom as follows:

  Married women cannot obtain passports or leave the country without permission from their husbands. Women who are not married are similarly under the control and supervision of their fathers.

  Women cannot go out in public uncovered due to mandatory hijab laws, and those who do face jail time, according to the 2020 World Report by Human Rights Watch.

  A 2020 Amnesty International report stated that in Iran, “the authorities failed to criminalize domestic violence, marital rape, early and forced marriage and other gender-based violence against women and girls, which remained widespread.”

  Human Rights Watch (HRW) also denounced Iran’s nomination to the UN women’s committee while emphasizing Iran’s “deplorable women’s rights records.”

  Look at her face. This week the U.N. Elected those who threw acid on her face for wearing “inappropriate hijab” to its top Women’s Rights Commission.
  Women of my country Iran are disappointed at the UN .
  Don’t legitimize a misogynist regime.@antonioguterres
  .@Nazhatskhan pic.twitter.com/bNAFsU87Ct

  — Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 24, 2021

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

  The group also called on the UN to overhaul its opaque nomination and elections process, given well-known states that are abusers of human rights keep getting elected to key committees. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:40

• Say It Loud: "I Am Not A Racist!"
  Say It Loud: “I Am Not A Racist!”

  Authored by Stuart Reges, University of Washington via CampusReform.org,

  When young people today watch images of police turning a firehose on black demonstrators they can only imagine what America was like in those days, but I don’t have to imagine it.  I lived in that America and watching its sins displayed night after night on the evening news deeply affected me.  That is why I have done a great deal of soul searching ever since I have been accused of being a racist.

  

  It started when the UW College Republicans organized an affirmative action bake sale where they sold cookies at different prices depending upon the customer’s race.  It was a political stunt meant to make people angry and they succeeded.  Hundreds of protestors gathered around their booth along with a dozen police officers.  I stopped by and tried to have a conversation with a young protestor but it degenerated into a situation where she loudly denounced me to a mob of several dozen students that surrounded me.

  At one point I said that I didn’t see rampant racism on campus and the crowd burst into laughter.  A local paper called The Stranger wrote about the incident and a local TV station included it on the evening news.  I was surprised to find that this single incident branded me as a racist to many students and colleagues.  After one of our students complained, the director of my school reprimanded me for a “lack of sensitivity to minority students.”  A student experience survey conducted at the time generated several angry comments about me including one that said that I am “a garbage person and should not be teaching in this institution” and that I am, “the symbol of hate, ignorance, racism, and white supremacy. I would not be surprised if they were in the KKK.”

  Last summer when I posted a message to a faculty mailing I was accused of being a racist for defending police officers during our summer of riots.  

  One faculty member wrote that, “What Stuart has shared is racist, trolling behavior from a faculty member with a long history of documented racial biases.”

  In my lifetime I have seen this country make incredible progress on the race issue, so I was confused to find myself accused of being a racist.  

  Shelby Steele provided an answer.  

  

  In his book Shame he writes that in our divided society liberals pursue “poetic truth” that “disregards the actual truth in order to assert a larger essential truth that supports one’s ideological position” and that poetic truths “work by moral intimidation rather than by reason, so that even to question them is heresy.”

  He goes on to write that:

  “if you want to be politically correct, if you want to be seen as someone who is cleansed of America’s past ugliness, you will go along with the poetic truth that racism is still a great barrier for blacks.  Conversely, embracing the literal truth—that racism is no longer a serious barrier—will make you politically incorrect and will stigmatize you with that ugliness.”

  I know in my heart that I do not harbor ill will towards anyone based on race and it seems clear that most Americans believe the same thing.  Overt racism has all but disappeared from modern life, especially on college campuses, but progressives have concocted various explanations for hidden forms of racism.

  One accusation is that we have bias that we aren’t even aware of.  In reviewing the many decisions I have made in my 35-year university career for admissions, hiring, and grading, I can’t find even one incident of negative racial bias.  The only examples of bias were in the opposite direction with minority candidates treated more favorably.  The euphemism is that they are “diversity” candidates as in, “We can hire three faculty this year, but the dean said that we can hire up to two more if they are diversity hires.”

  Another accusation has been the claim of systemic racism, the idea that white men built our society so that it favors them.  This idea should not be dismissed out of hand.  I still remember when I first visited a store for left-handed people.  I was amazed to find how much our society has been designed to work well for right-handed people.  I didn’t realize that can openers and desks and notebooks had all been designed for right-handed people like me.

  To take this idea seriously, though, the proponents would have to produce examples of how the system has been tilted in favor of white people.  Where is the equivalent of the left-handed can opener?  Many people have taken a stab at this although there are few convincing examples and many cases where people who make this argument have had to retract their claims.  For example, The Smithsonian quickly apologized for producing a poster that indicated that white culture includes rugged individualism, the nuclear family, and the scientific method.

  The only solid evidence for systemic racism is the fact that there are differences in outcomes across races with whites and Asians generally performing better.  But this argument falls apart when you consider alternate explanations.  In my own courses I have found that course grades are highly correlated with lecture attendance and that mathematical background seems to be an issue for many students who struggle.  

  So to the extent that some minority students perform less well in my courses, it seems most likely that this stems from factors other than race including a weak math background and students putting in less effort than others.

  Shame is a powerful emotion, but it’s time to stand up to these ideological bullies and to speak the truth.  

  It is not racist to oppose affirmative action.  

  It is not racist to challenge the claim of rampant racism on college campuses.  

  It is not racist to support the police.

  It is not racist to challenge the claim of hidden bias and systemic racism.  

  I am not a racist and I won’t stay silent any longer.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:20

• "We Haven't Seen This Before" – Wealthy Americans Panic-Chase Million Dollar Listings
  “We Haven’t Seen This Before” – Wealthy Americans Panic-Chase Million Dollar Listings

  Wealthy Americans are taking advantage of cheap mortgages, increased savings, and the ability to remote work for them to search for homes listed above $1 million.

  Redfin reports luxury home sales in the first three months of the year are soaring. Sales jumped by 41.6% over the quarter versus the same period last year. It’s a sharp contrast from sales of affordable homes that increased by 7%, and sales of mid-priced dwellings that rose by 5.9%.

  

  

  Sales growth of homes in all tiers has historically been similar. Still, the latest divergence identified by Redfin outlines how the coronavirus pandemic and policy action by the Federal Reserve and political elites in Washington have exacerbated the great wealth divide that developed long before the pandemic. Affluent folks had access to cheap mortgages, while lower-income earners had limited access to cheap credit as millions of them fell into instant poverty during shutdowns. As a result of government and central bank interventions, a K-shaped economic recovery developed and also manifested in the real estate market. 

  “Affluent Americans with the flexibility to work from anywhere are taking advantage of low mortgage rates and buying up high-end houses—particularly in popular vacation destinations—which is contributing to the surge in luxury home sales. Meanwhile, many lower-income Americans have lost their jobs and lack the means to become homeowners,” said Redfin. 

  Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said Americans are demanding larger homes driven by a desire for more space that could be used as offices, gyms, and outdoor entertainment during the pandemic. He added: “The larger space automatically means that it is more expensive.”

  

  Redfin said sales of luxury homes during the quarter saw the biggest gains in Miami, where luxury-home sales erupted by 101.1% from a year earlier—followed by San Jose, CA (92.3%), Oakland, CA (82%), Sacramento, CA (79.3%), and Las Vegas (72.7%). These areas were some of the top migration destinations during the pandemic.

  “Luxury properties, even those in the $3 million range, are getting multiple offers and going for well over the asking prices,” said Oakland, CA Redfin real estate agent Katy Polvorosa. “That’s something we haven’t seen before, even though the Bay Area has many affluent residents. Everyone just wants more space and big backyards, whether it’s because they’re stuck at home during the pandemic or because they have a growing family.”

  Jefferies recently told clients the US is short 2.5 million homes. The National Association of Realtors said the existing housing inventory could run out in two months. However, the shortage is less severe in the luxury market. 

  The typical luxury home sat on the market for 61 days in the first three months of the year, 38 fewer days than the same period in 2020. 

  

  … and what has this meant for luxury home prices over the year? Well, an explosion, of course. Increases were also seen across all tiers. 

  

  So how long will the housing frenzy last? 

  Well, the latest housing data dimmed the outlook. Existing home sales data was worse than expected and have declined for the second month as prices soar at a record pace. 

  

  This should not have been a huge surprise, as Christophe Barraud warned earlier. Housing affordability has been under pressure since January. On the one hand, mortgage rates started rebounding, with the 30-year recently hitting the highest level since June 2020 in late March.

  

  Like any frenzy, there’s a beginning (start of the pandemic) and an end (when rates rise). The question: When does the music stop playing? 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:00

• Beijing Looks To Scapegoat Regulators Who Initially Backed Ill-Fated Ant Offering
  Beijing Looks To Scapegoat Regulators Who Initially Backed Ill-Fated Ant Offering

  When Beijing’s top anti-trust regulator announced a new investigation into Chinese delivery giant Meituan the other day, Alibaba investors may have been tempted to wonder whether the CCP had finally moved on fro Alibaba, Ant Financial and Jack Ma.

  

  Any investors who dared to dream likely saw their hopes crushed Tuesday when WSJ published a report revealing the existence of an investigation into how Alibaba and Ant Group managed to cultivate support for its scuppered IPO. In other words, Beijing is looking for scapegoats within the state apparatus who can be blamed for allowing Alibaba, Ant and China’s other tech giants to become so dominant in the first place. The standards and procedures set by both the China Securities Regulatory Commission and other stock regulators in Shanghai are now facing scrutiny as investigators try to figure out exactly how Ma was able to shepard Ant’s IPO application through the system so quickly.

  “What happened is deeply embarrassing for regulators because they should have more effectively coordinated before approving the IPO,” says Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who specializes in China’s financial-technology sector.

  “By not doing so,” he added, “they were stuck in a lose-lose situation of either the last-minute pause or, worse, forcing massive losses on IPO investors by changing the regulatory stance post-IPO.”

  According to WSJ, the investigation will focus on “regulators who greenlighted the initial public offering, local officials who advocated it and big state firms that stood to gain from it.” Investigators are specifically looking into officials’ relationships with Alibaba founder Jack Ma, whose criticisms of China’s regulatory framework, made during an obscure industry event back in October, prompted the CCP to scrap the planned IPO of Ma’s Ant Group, which was supposed to be spun off from Alibaba in what would have been the world’s largest IPO. Since then, Alibaba has been handed a $2.8 billion fine.

  After a protracted absence from the public eye that aroused suspicion, Ma has continued to keep a low profile, appearing only to parrot his allegiance to the CCP when called upon to do so.

  Since halting Ant’s IPO late last year, President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed that China’s technology giants shouldn’t use their size, capital and troves of data to undercut their rivals. During a speech in January, he singled out the financial sector as particularly ripe for reform. Ant, which has been forced to reorganize as a financial holding company, will face far more restrictions now that it has been stripped of its “tech” classification, and will instead be treated like any other bank or financial institution in China.

  In summary, as Beijing seeks to punish any regulators deemed “too close” to Ma, the outside world will be watching to see if any further punishments are directed at the executive himself, whom investor Kyle Bass once mused would likely be “disappeared” by the CCP not long after stepping down from his job as Alibaba’s CEO – something Ma did more than a year ago. While some nameless CCP bureaucrats might join him on the chopping block, Ma’s fate is looking increasingly grim.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 18:40

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• Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To "Open Vaccine" Movement
  Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To “Open Vaccine” Movement

  Roughly one year after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seized control of the global response to COVID-19 with the goal of providing “equitable access” to a vaccine, Bill Gates & Co. have accomplished the opposite:  The Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator mechanism, backed by the Gates Foundation, has a stated policy of respecting the exclusive intellectual property rights of western drugmakers. At the same time, the WHO-backed alternative solution, known as Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, or C-TAP, which was supposed to foster an open-source pool of vaccine and drug technology, has mostly faltered.

  

  As India’s second-wave COVID-19 outbreak spirals out of control, more parties have come forward to criticize Gates for his support of IP protections. Considering the scarcity of the medicines, there have been increasing calls from countries like India and South Africa, international relief organizations and other public figures to waive IP protections so that poorer countries can get faster access to the vaccines. WTO Director General Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has led a host of emerging-market nations in a push to waive IP protections, arguing that numerous facilities exist that could ramp up production in the coming months.

  But as pressure to reconsider this stance mounts, Gates insisted during an interview Monday with Sky News’ Sophy Ridge that stripping IP protections from vaccine recipes wouldn’t be helpful. Asked point blank about the issue, Gates responded with an emphatic “no”.

  “The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not intellectual property. It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way,” Gates explained. “There are all sorts of issues around intellectual property having to do with medicines. But not in terms of how quickly we’ve been able to ramp up the volume here.”

  Watch the full interview below:

  As Gates sees it, his foundation has helped to accelerate the pace of vaccine testing and design by years. In the past, it would likely have taken decades for poor nations to get supplies from rich states that designed them. “Typically, in global health it takes a decade between when a vaccine comes into the rich world and when it gets into the poor countries,” Gates said.

  While Gates apparently can’t see past how things were done in the past, critics quickly pointed out that countries like the US are already stockpiling more vaccines than they can use. And while Gates insists that there aren’t any factories in the developing world capable of making patented western jabs, India’s Serum Institute is an obvious example of how this simply isn’t the case. Plus, many of the countries pushing the vaccine IP waiver at the WTO have identified facilities where vaccine production can be ramped up quickly.

  Opponents of this approach from within the pharmaceutical industry are scrambling to lobby the Biden Administration to oppose the waiver push at the WTO after a recent speech by Katherine Tai, Biden’s top trade official, stipulated that Washington would “consider what modifications and reforms” can be applied to intellectual property rules. Among other risks, Big Pharma is arguing that an “open” vaccine would benefit American rivals like China and Russia.

  But the reality is that billions of denizens of the developing world stand to benefit, while drug companies and the international pharmaceutical industry stands to miss out on some profits.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 02:45

• UK Carrier Strike Group To Embark On 6-month Indo-Pacific Deployment
  UK Carrier Strike Group To Embark On 6-month Indo-Pacific Deployment

  Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

  Britain will send a Carrier Strike Group to the Indo-Pacific region next month in a massive show of force aimed at countering the security challenges posed by the Chinese regime.

  

  The Carrier Strike Group, which will be led by the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be the “largest concentration of maritime and air power” in the UK, said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in a press release.

  During its 28-week deployment, the Carrier Strike Group will visit more than 40 countries and conduct engagements with Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and India as part of the UK’s “tilt towards the Indo-Pacific region, said the MoD.

  Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “When our Carrier Strike Group sets sail next month, it will be flying the flag for Global Britain—projecting our influence, signalling our power, engaging with our friends, and reaffirming our commitment to addressing the security challenges of today and tomorrow.

  “The entire nation can be proud of the dedicated men and women who for more than six months will demonstrate to the world that the UK is not stepping back but sailing forth to play an active role in shaping the international system of the 21st Century.”

  

  Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, leaves 10 Downing Street in London on Feb. 13, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

  According to the MoD., the Carrier Strike Group will seek to achieve the UK’s goal for “deeper engagement in the Indo-Pacific region in support of shared prosperity and regional stability,” which was set out in the government’s recently published Integrated Review into foreign, defence, security, and development policy.

  The review, which was published in March, said the UK will invest in enhanced “China-facing capabilities” and improve its response to “the systemic challenge that it poses to our security, prosperity and values—and those of our allies and partners.”

  HMS Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful surface vessel in the Royal Navy’s history, will be carrying eight F-35B Lightning II fast jets of the Royal Air Force, four Wildcat maritime attack helicopters, seven Merlin Mk2 anti-submarine helicopters, and three Merlin Mk4 commando helicopters. A company of Royal Marines Commandos will also be based on the carrier.

  

  A new F-35B Lightning fighter jet takes off from the deck of the United Kingdom’s new aircraft carrier, The HMS Queen Elizabeth on Sept. 27, 2018. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

  The carrier will be joined by a surface fleet of Type 45 destroyers, HMS Defender and HMS Diamond, Type 23 anti-submarine frigates HMS Kent and HMS Richmond, and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s RFA Fort Victoria and RFA Tidespring.

  A Royal Navy Astute-class submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles will be deployed in support of the surface fleet.

  A U.S. destroyer, USS The Sullivans, will sail as part of the Group and providing it with air defence and anti-submarine capabilities. A squadron of 10 F-35B Lightning II aircraft from the U.S. Marine Corps will also be integrated into the fleet.

  The Royal Netherlands Navy’s frigate HNLMS Evertsen will be providing further air defence.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 02:00

• Will Canada Be A Bridge Of Cooperation Or A Platform For War In The 21st Century
  Will Canada Be A Bridge Of Cooperation Or A Platform For War In The 21st Century

  Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Canada could play the role of intermediary and diplomatic bridge both for the benefit of its own citizens and the wellbeing of the world as a whole…

  

  The arctic remains the world’s last frontier of human exploration. It is also a domain of great potential cooperation among great civilizations, or inversely a domain of militarism and confrontation.

  In recent years, Russia and China have increasingly harmonized their foreign policies around the Framework unveiled by President Xi Jinping in 2013 dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative. Since its unveiling, this megaproject has grown in leaps and bounds winning over 136 nations, accruing $3.7 trillion of investment capital and evolving new components such as the “Digital Silk Road”, “Health Silk Road”, “Space Silk Road”, and of course the “Polar Silk Road”. In March 2021, the Polar Silk Road, first announced in 2018, was given a prominent role in the 2021-2025 Five Year Plan with a focus on Arctic shipping, resource development, scientific Arctic research and conservation.

  With the enthusiastic support of Russia, China has increasingly become a leading force in icebreaker technology, northern resource development, arctic infrastructure construction, with an aim to be a world leader in shipping across the rapidly melting Northwest Passage cutting between 10-15 days off of goods moving between Asia and Europe. The recent clogging of the Suez Canal and over congested Straits of Malacca have been stark reminders that Arctic shipping is a domain of global strategic significance during the 21st century.

  Russia’s role as Chair of the Arctic Council between 2021-2023 will also put a major spotlight on the evolving Russia-China paradigm for win-win cooperation of the north as a territory of dialogue and development which is the theme of the upcoming St. Petersburg Arctic Summit later this year.

  The Threat of Confrontation Heats Up

  Despite these positive strides, many geopoliticans in the west have repeatedly attacked such developments as “efforts to conquer the world and replace the USA as global hegemons”. Those promoting this Hobbesian outlook not only choose to ignore the countless olive branches offered to the west by the Eurasian powers for mutual development, but have also accelerated a policy which some have dubbed a ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ ballistic missile encirclement of both Russia and China. This latter policy was recently called out by Foreign Minister Lavrov on April 1, 2021 who said:

  “We now have a missile defence area in Europe. Nobody is saying that this is against Iran now. This is clearly being positioned as a global project designed to contain Russia and China. The same processes are underway in the Asia-Pacific region. No one is trying to pretend that this is being done against North Korea… This is a global system designed to back U.S. claims to absolute dominance, including in the military-strategic and nuclear spheres.”

  

  Instead of acknowledging the fact that Russian and Chinese military strategies are defensive in nature, advocates of full spectrum dominance have chosen to push an opposing narrative painting both Eurasian nations as competitors and rivals with ghoulish secret intentions to annex the world. Under this confrontational paradigm, both NORAD and NORTHCOM continental defense systems are undergoing a reform under General Glan van Herck who stated in his Declassified Executive Summary of NORAD’s New Strategic Vision:

  “Both Russia and China are increasing their activity in the Arctic. Russia’s fielding of advanced, long-range cruise missiles capable of being launched from Russian territory and flying through the northern approaches and seeking to strike targets in the United States and Canada has emerged as the dominant military threat in the Arctic.”

  Why the general believes this to be the dominant cause of military threats rather than the USA’s unilateral withdrawal from all confidence building measures such as the 1972 ABM Treaty, the 1987 INF Treaty and Open Skies Treaty is beyond the capacity of this writer’s imagination.

  An important part of this continental reform involves an upgrading and expansion of the U.S.-directed Ground Based Midcourse Defense system of 44 silo-based interceptors located in Alaska and California with an additional 20 in response to both China and Russia’s development of hypersonic, maneuverable warheads as well as a new generation of submarine and land-based ICBMs. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle recently attacked this upgraded GMD program by stating not only is the system woefully inept (only half of its 18 tests since 1999 hit their targets), but is also unnecessarily provocative, forcing Russia and China to upgrade their own systems in response to a threat that never should have existed in the first place. In a 2019 interview Coyle stated:

  “All of this is causing Russia and increasingly China to build more and more offensive systems, so that they can overwhelm U.S. missile defence- assuming that they would work… We have no way of dealing with more and more missiles from Russia or China and so building up more and more missile defense is backfiring”.

  General van Herck has also championed Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technology across all domains of data collection and even supplementing human decision making as part of the goal of achieving “global integration, all domain awareness, information dominance to reach decision superiority”. Dubbed Pathfinder, van Herck has stated “I absolutely believe it can be a model for the Department of Defense. It lays the foundation for improved data-driven decision making and enhanced capability”. Whether it is wise to strive to cut decision making on matters such as thermonuclear war down to 12 minutes as is currently celebrated by Pathfinder supporters while leaving strategic decision-making protocols in the hands of soulless algorithms, or whether it is a living prophecy of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove can be left up to debate. The fact remains that this is the game plan.

  Since both unipolar and multipolar paradigms gripping the Arctic are creating an objective tension which threatens humanity and since appreciation for the origins and evolution of the Russia-China alliance is misunderstood and mischaracterized in the west, a few words of context are in order.

  A Brief History of Russian Chinese Arctic Synergy

  In 2015, Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union first signed an MOU to integrate with the Belt and Road, and as of 2019, China and Russia signed a series of major programs to extend the Belt and Road Initiative into the Arctic. The synergy between what Prime Minister Medvedev called the “Silk Road on Ice” and Putin’s Great Eastern Vision were obvious and in April 2019, both nations released a joint statement “Joint efforts will be made in Arctic marine science research, which will promote the construction of the ‘Silk Road on Ice.” The statement asserted that both nations “look forward to more fruitful and efficient partnerships worldwide to contribute to the sustainable development of the world oceans and a shared future for mankind.”

  

  During an April 2019 BRI forum, President Putin laid out his concept of Russian and Chinese foreign policy doctrines saying:

  “The Great Eurasian Partnership and Belt and Road concepts are both rooted in the principles and values that everyone understands: the natural aspiration of nations to live in peace and harmony, benefit from free access to the latest scientific achievements and innovative development, while preserving their culture and unique spiritual identity. In other words, we are united by our strategic, long-term interests.”

  In recent months, the Russian-Chinese Joint Statement on Global Governance of March 23, 2021, represented the clearest response to the collapse of diplomatic bridges uniting west and east whose already weak edifices have been set ablaze in recent months. This diplomatic arson took the form of increased anti-Russian and anti Chinese sanctions, accelerated NATO war games on Russia’s perimeter, increased efforts to consolidate an anti-Chinese Pacific NATO, not to mention Biden’s infamous remarks that Putin was a “soulless killer”. These diplomatic disasters culminated in the infamous ambush of Chinese officials in Alaska on March 19, 2021.

  Economic Cooperation and Shared Interests

  Russia and China’s collaboration on Arctic resource development has seen both nations focus on transportation corridors, energy and research with a consistently open offer for all nations among their western counterparts to join at any time. Among the most important of the Arctic Projects now underway as part of Russia’s Arctic 2035 Vision announced in 2019, the 6000 km Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline is at the top of the list which will make Russia the primary supplier of China’s energy needs by 2030. This project will be joined by a Power of Siberia II doubling the natural gas output to China via Mongolia and both projects are part of the historic $400 billion energy deal signed between China and Russia in 2014 with the aim of sending 38 billion cubic meters of gas to China for 30 years.

  A similar strategic project is the LNG-2 involving Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Russian companies on a joint project showcasing the importance of Polar Silk Road thinking in alleviating tensions among Pacific neighbors. Global energy analyst Professor Francesco Sassi of Pisa University stated that this project “will see an unprecedented level of cooperation between Japanese and Chinese energy companies in one of the most important Russian energy projects of the next decade”.

  Additionally China’s 30% stake in the Yamal LNG pipeline which involves the Silk Road Fund ties China’s energy interests ever more deeply into the heart of Russia’s north east.

  Russia’s program of expanding Trans Siberian Rail traffic 100 fold from the current 3000 twenty foot units/year to 300 000 twenty foot units/year by upgrading and doubling rail is vital as well as the program for the completion of the Northern Latitudinal Railway connecting west Siberian ports to the Arctic. On the strategic point of shipping, Russia is not only expanding its fleet of icebreakers to include new models of Project 22220 nuclear powered icebreakers, but also will increase freight traffic to 80 million tons/year by 2025 (up from the current 20 million). Several of Russia’s 40 icebreakers are nuclear powered, making it the only nation in the world enjoying this claim… a title it will enjoy until later this year as China rolls out its first 33,000 ton nuclear icebreaker which will join its growing inventory (already far advanced of both Canada’s and the USA’s dismal capacity).

  Part and parcel of Russia’s new 15-year plan for the Arctic are plans to commit state support for broad transport and energy infrastructure via direct investments as well as the creation of “economic preference zones” giving private sector actors tax incentives. State support will also be directed towards efforts to mitigate climate change, scientific research, monitoring of environmental damage and pollution clean up.

  The Rise of China as an Arctic Powerhouse

  China deployed their first Arctic research expedition in 1999, followed by the establishment of their first Arctic research station in Svalbard, Norway in 2004. After years of effort, China achieved a permanent observer seat at the Arctic Council in 2011, and by 2016 created the Russia-China Polar Engineering and Research Center to develop better techniques to access Arctic resources. In 2012, China rolled out its first icebreaker (Snow Dragon I) and has quickly surpassed both Canada and the USA whose two out-dated ice breakers have passed their shelf life by many years.

  As the Arctic ice caps continue to recede, the Northern Sea Route has become a major focus for China. The fact that shipping time from China’s Port of Dalian to Rotterdam would be cut by 10 days makes this alternative very attractive. Ships sailing from China to Europe must currently follow a transit through the congested Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal which is 5000 nautical miles longer than the northern route. The opening up of Arctic resources vital for China’s long term outlook is also a major driver in this initiative.

  In preparation for resource development, China and Russia created a Russian Chinese Polar Engineering and Research Center in 2016 to develop capabilities for northern development such as building on permafrost, creating ice resistant platforms, and more durable icebreakers. New technologies needed for enhanced ports, and transportation in the frigid cold was also a focus.

  The Questionable Role of Canada in the Arctic Great Game

  Amidst this dramatic rate of Arctic development both towards militarization and towards economic cooperation, the Canadian government has managed to remain remarkably aloof and non-committal.

  Despite the fact that a 2016 Foreign Policy Review called for Canada’s integration into the northern missile defense shield last championed by Dick Cheney in 2004, Canada’s policy establishment has not committed to any course and while the field remains open for a potential Arctic policy based on diplomacy and cooperation as a bridge between East and West, time is running out.

  On the one side, high ranking war hawks among Washington and Ottawa’s policy elite make every effort to court Canada as a participant of the NORAD/NORTHCOM Strategic Vision as the war drums continue to pound. On the other side, Russia has made its desires for Russian-Canadian Arctic cooperation known as Russian chargé d’affaires Vladimir Proskuryakov stated on April 6:

  “Despite political difference between our two countries, prospects for Russia-Canadian Arctic cooperation look wide and generally positive. We should only use our possibilities properly.”

  Proskuryakov continued: “Being neighbours across the Arctic Ocean, we want to make maximum use of the Arctic potential as a territory of peaceful dialogue and sustainable development, which naturally combines realities and technological solutions of the 21st century with cultural and historic traditions of the indigenous populations.”

  If Russia’s hopes for collaboration are to make any headway, then it is certain that Canada’s September 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework will play a role. This framework was an honest attempt by the Federal government to create a “long term strategic vision for activities and investments for Arctic 2030 and beyond”. Having committed to an $800 million fund for Arctic development and amplifying the National Trade Corridors Fund of $2.3 billion/year for 11 years devoted to transportation infrastructure, Canada’s Transportation Minister Marc Garneau called for northern infrastructure proposals in October 2020 with a March 2021 deadline saying:

  “Efficient and reliable transportation networks are key to Canada’s economic prosperity. Enhancing Arctic and northern transportation will support trade diversification and social development and ensure greater connectivity for Northerners. I encourage eligible transportation infrastructure owners, operators and users to apply for funding under the National Trade Corridors Fund.”

  Sadly, months later, the deadline came and went with no concrete projects placed on the table and no mechanisms established to carry out any potential construction. No funding mechanisms were set in place and without a vision the potential use of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank or Bank of Canada continues to go untapped.

  The only concretized policies for the Arctic put in place by the Trudeau government during this time are a stark inversion of actual development with three omnibus bills C-48, C-69 and C-88 passing in short order under the fog of a climate emergency declared by the Parliament. Under these bills, a moratorium was placed on all oil tankers in Northern BC stretching from Vancouver to Alaska (C-48), total bans on offshore drilling were passed declaring Arctic waters off limits to development (C-88) and environmental review processes-already among the most elaborate and bureaucratic among developed nations, was expanded (C-69), making new energy projects in the Arctic nearly impossible.

  The Private Sector Steps In

  When opportunities to connect Canada’s interests with China were advanced, as seen in the case of China’s efforts to purchase Canadian construction giant Aecon Inc in 2018 or the Hope Bay TMAC Resources in Nunavut in 2020, the Federal Government swept in at the last minute to kill the deals ensuring that no Chinese capital would have any influence in Canada’s development prospects.

  Stephen van Dine (VP of Public Governance at Canada’s Institute of Governance) wrote that pension funds, the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and Bank of Canada should be used to play a positive role in arctic development. Van Dine wrote in January 2021: “The Canadian arctic is almost investment-ready for the next 50-100 years with a reliable, predictable infrastructure program for schools, public housing, health centers and power generation. What’s missing is a long-term plan.”

  Frustrated with this commitment to inaction, Canadian business leaders at various times formed consortiums outside of the influence of Ottawa as seen in the Alaska-to-Canada Railway Development Corporation which won the support of both the Albertan government as well as former President Donald Trump in September 2020. The A2A Program called for building 2500 miles of rail and finally closing the gap separating Canada from Alaska, which to this day remains one of the most underdeveloped frontiers on earth. Despite the billions of dollars of annual federal transfers to the native bands of each of the northern territories, drug abuse, suicide rates, depression and school drop out rates are magnitudes higher among the static, disconnected northern communities of Canada relative to the national average.

  Many were curious if Biden would continue Trump’s support of this program but considering the new president’s swift killing of the Keystone XL pipeline and his passage of Executive Orders ensuring a total halt to all economic development of Arctic resources, the answer has become less ambiguous. These orders made Biden’s ideological stance on Arctic economic development and the A2A Project transparent, and also defined what should be expected of the Biden-Trudeau “Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canada Partnership”.

  Another group of thought leaders representing interests in the public, private and academic centers, frustrated at the plague of stasis recently formed a group called Arctic360 with the mandate to drum up support for a positive vision for Canada’s High North. Comparing Canada with other members of the Arctic Council, Jessica Shadian (President and CEO of Arctic360) wrote:

  “When it comes to Canada’s truly competitive advantage for becoming a global leader in innovation it is time to break out of the usual mould and go where few Canadians go: the North. One just needs to glance at Canada’s Nordic Arctic neighbours to see that there is precedence. The often-made arguments as to why the North is an inopportune place for everything from living to working to starting a business or building a road is its real advantage. That the North is vast, cold, remote, dark six months of the year, has harsh weather and a critical infrastructure gap is one of Canada’s biggest innovation assets. Add to this, that the North is home to many of the critical minerals that China and others want for building technologically advanced infrastructure. The North could be Canada’s unrealized key to leap-frog existing infrastructure and industries and play a global leadership role in 21st Century innovation. The question is whether we have the ambition or the conviction to lead.”

  A True Vision for Inter-Civilizational Cooperation: The Bering Strait Corridor

  It was in March 2015, foreseeing the Arctic extension of the Belt and Road Initiative by a number of years, that former Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin, brilliantly called for a Trans-Eurasian Development Belt with rail stretching all the way up to the Bering Strait crossing and integrating into Asia. Yakunin, who for years has been a proponent of the connection of the Americas and Eurasia by rail, said the project should be an “inter-state, inter-civilization, project. It should be an alternative to the current (neoliberal) model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world ‘future zone,’ and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies.”

  Having been originally conceived in the 19th century as outlined by Governor William Gilpin in his 1890 Cosmopolitan Railway, and supported by Czar Nicholas II who sponsored feasibility studies on the project in 1906, the Bering Strait tunnel connecting Eurasian and American continents fell from general awareness for decades. It was briefly revived during discussions held between FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace and Russian Foreign Minister Molotov in 1942 but was again lost under the fog of Cold War insanity. This century-old idea again resurfaced when Russia signaled its willingness to construct the project in 2011 offering over $65 billion towards its funding, which only required the cooperation of the United States and Canada. China put its support behind the Bering Strait Tunnel in May 2014.

  While such a grand design would provide the most direct pathway for the west to synchronise our development paradigm with the Polar Silk Road, and Greater Eurasian Partnership, it is admittedly a far cry from the realities plaguing current geopolitical thinking.

  The best that can be hoped for in the short term would be a successful war avoidance strategy adopted by Ottawa in alignment with Moscow’s desires for cooperation on the field of anti-coronavirus programs, education and arctic medical needs and environmental management. If these simple trust building mechanisms can begin to take hold, and if war hawks are kept at bay, then perhaps Canada can eventually play the role of intermediary and diplomatic bridge both for the benefit of its own citizens and the wellbeing of the world as a whole.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 00:00

• Company Weaponizes Soldiers' Smartphone Data To Expose US Military Secrets
  Company Weaponizes Soldiers’ Smartphone Data To Expose US Military Secrets

  As pressure mounts on Big Tech firms to curb their invasive data-harvesting practices first implemented to cultivate valuable personal data that can be packaged and sold to advertisers for a premium (indeed, this is how the “free Internet” was built), WSJ has just published a shocking story about how one firm (a defense contractor called “PlanetRisk”) discovered it could track sensitive movements of American troops in Syria via data generated by apps on their smartphones.

  After making the discovery, the firm used the data to build a surveillance tool that could monitor the travel of refugees from Syria to Europe and the US. The goal was to sell the finished product to the counter-terrorism and intelligence communities.

  But, as WSJ pointed out, “buried in the data was evidence of sensitive US military operations by American special-operations forces in Syria.”

  The fear now is that this data can be bought and sold by America’s adversaries to gain valuable intelligence insights into the movements of American forces. Many vendors now sell “global location information from mobile phones to intelligence, military and law-enforcement organizations.” The US has struggled to effectively monitor what “software service members are installing on devices and whether that software is secure.”

  “Our country’s intelligence leaders have made it clear that putting Americans’ sensitive information in the hands of unfriendly foreign governments is a major risk to national security,” he said.

  This isn’t a new issue. Back in 2019, the Trump Administration moved to force the divestiture of Grindr, the LGBTQ-friendly dating app, which the military and CFIUS – the Commerce Department’s board that reviews foreign deals – largely over concerns that data gleaned from the app might be weaponized to track US troops.

  

  What PlanetRisk revealed could easily be replicated by an American adversary. The company simply traced cell signals from US bases in Syria to an abandoned cement factory back in 2016. This was before US special forces use of the area as a staging ground had become public knowledge. What’s more, PlanetRisk could monitor the movements of American troops even while they were out on patrol, a serious operational security risk that opened units up to being targeted by enemy forces.

  When PlanetRisk traced telephone signals from US bases to the Syrian cement factory in 2016, it hadn’t been disclosed publicly that the factory was being used as a staging area for U.S. and allied forces.

  PlanetRisk resolved to use its discovery to build a new tool and sell it to intelligence agencies, but it was beaten to market by a competitor and the firm eventually dissolved. But in its reporting, WSJ managed to replicate PlanetRisk’s findings, tracking movements at the same cement factory in 2017 and 2018 from a commercial data broker and analytics company that wished to remain anonymous. The Journal tracked the movements of people who appeared to be American special ops, just as PlanetRisk had.

  WSJ also tracked the data to US facilities such as Fort Bragg, Fort Hood in Texas or tiny desert outposts such as the US-run Camp Buehring in Kuwait before later traveling to the Lafarge Cement Factory in northern Syria.  Although these data sets don’t contain personalized names, each individual is assigned an alphanumeric identifier designed for advertisers. But, as WSJ points out, the places associated with a device can offer clues that can in turn be weaponized. While the US has allowed personal data to become a commodity – which led to the backlash in 2018 and 2019 in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal.

  

  Source: WSJ

  While the US government has taken steps to teach operational security best practices to troops, there’s little doubt that the US system’s approach to commercializing data on behalf of the advertising and technology industries has created massive security holes. And unsurprisingly, China is getting better at exploiting them, while at the same time banning the export of data on its own citizens to prevent any rival countries from tracking its citizens and military personnel in the same way.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:40

• Jailing Of 4 Doctors For Illegal Organ Extraction In China Casts Spotlight On Forced Organ Harvesting
  Jailing Of 4 Doctors For Illegal Organ Extraction In China Casts Spotlight On Forced Organ Harvesting

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

  A criminal case involving unauthorized organ procurement surgery conducted in an unlicensed ambulance in China is casting a spotlight on Beijing’s continued efforts to cover up its state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.

  

  Last July, four doctors from eastern China were sentenced to between 12 and 28 months in prison after being found guilty for their roles in illegally extracting the liver and two kidneys of Li Peng, a hospital patient, after her death.

  According to China’s state-run media, Li’s liver ended up at a military hospital in China’s capital Beijing, and her kidneys went to a hospital in neighboring Tianjin for transplant. Both hospitals have been identified by a U.S.-based nonprofit as suspected centers for the forced extraction of organs from living political prisoners.

  The doctors, as well as two other accomplices, were charged after Li’s son, Shi Xianglin, alerted authorities that his mother’s donation record was not registered in China’s official donation database. Shi began to suspect that something was amiss after he found out that his cousin Shi Zijun was paid 200,000 yuan (about $30,780) two days after his mother’s organs were removed. Under China’s official organ donation program, donors are not compensated, according to Chinese authorities.

  The money was paid by local businessman Huang Chaoyang, who was also sentenced to 10 months in prison last year over his role in the unauthorized organ extraction. According to China’s state-run media, Huang Chaoyang was a businessman selling medical equipment.

  The four doctors later appealed their sentences, arguing that what they did was a “state-endorsed” duty since they were simply following orders from their hospital supervisors.

  Illegal Organ Extraction

  Li, a 53-year-old woman living in Huaiyuan County in eastern China’s Anhui Province, died at the local hospital, the People’s Hospital in Huaiyuan County, on Feb. 15, 2018. Four days earlier, she had been rushed to its intensive-care unit (ICU) after being wounded by her stepson during an axe attack.

  On Feb. 12, 2018, after spending one day in the ICU, Li was determined to be in a life-threatening condition with signs of imminent respiratory failure.

  Yang, a deputy chief physician and director of the hospital’s ICU, was the doctor looking after Li when she was admitted to the unit.

  It was Yang who persuaded Li’s husband and daughter to sign a voluntary organ donation form, after promising that they would be paid. Initially, Yang promised that the family would be paid 160,000 yuan (about $24,630) but increased the payment to 200,000 yuan at the demand of Li’s nephew Shi Zijun. Li’s husband and daughter signed the form on Feb. 14, 2018, one day before Li’s death.

  Authorities in China, however, claim that all organ donors are non-remunerated donors.

  After getting the family’s approval, Yang called Huang Xinli who worked at a hospital in nearby Nanjing City about an organ extraction, and Huang made the decision that Li’s organs would be suitable for organ transplantation surgery.

  At the time, Huang was a chief physician at the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, which is affiliated with Nanjing University Medical School. Prior to his employment there, Huang had worked at Jiangsu People’s Hospital, a state-run hospital located in the eastern Jiangsu Province’s capital Nanjing.

  Huang then arranged to have his former colleague Lu Shen, and another doctor Wang Hailang remove Li’s organs in an ambulance. Lu was the chief physician in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery at the Jiangsu People’s Hospital. Wang was a doctor in stomatology at the Huaibei Miners General Hospital in Anhui.

  Li’s organs were removed immediately after her death, but it was unclear where the ambulance was parked when the surgery took place.

  The unlicensed ambulance was owned by Ou Yang, who received a one-year-one-month sentence in the same trial as that against businessman Huang Chaoyang and the four doctors. According to China’s state-run media, Ou bought the ambulance from a government health center in Anhui’s Suzhou City in 2015. Since then, he got a new license plate for the ambulance and began using the vehicle to transport patients from areas near local hospitals.

  At the trial at a local court in Anhui in July, all four doctors were convicted of the crime of intentional destruction of a corpse.

  While Lu was found liable for extracting organs from Li only, the other three doctors were found guilty of engaging in unauthorized organ procurement surgeries on 10 other individuals in Huaiyuan County between 2017 and 2019.

  Details of these 10 individuals are not known, but Huang was found to be the main surgeon behind the procurement surgeries on these people. Ou, the owner of the unlicensed ambulance, was also involved in the illegal removal of organs from seven of the 10 individuals.

  Lu was sentenced to one year in prison, while Huang, Yang, and Wang were sentenced to two years and four months, two years and two months, and two years in prison, respectively.

  The four doctors appealed to an intermediate court in Bengbu, a city in Anhui. The court rejected their appeals and upheld the lower court’s ruling in August. They had argued that their actions were authorized as they were following orders from their hospital superiors.

  On April 19, Chinese news portals Tencent and NetEase reported that Lu Dahai, an alias for Lu Shen, said that he had appealed his case to the province’s highest court, the Anhui’s Higher People’s Court.

  Organ Harvesting

  The two hospitals that took Li’s liver and kidneys respectively—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) No. 302 Hospital and Tianjin First Central Hospital—have been named by the U.S.-based World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) for their suspected roles in forcibly harvesting the organs from prisoners who practice Falun Gong.

  The PLA hospital has carried out a large number of liver transplant surgeries. According to the WOIPFG, the number of these surgeries reached 310 between April 2005 and April 2010, and 146 between May 2010 and December 2012.

  Adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual exercise also known as Falun Dafa, have been targeted for persecution by the Chinese regime since 1999. Millions of practitioners have been thrown into prisons, labor camps, psychiatric wards, and other facilities, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

  In the 2000s, reports emerged that the Chinese communist regime was systematically killing detained Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to use for transplantation. At the time China did not have an official organ donation program, and Chinese officials said organs mainly came from executed prisoners.

  Amid the growing scrutiny of China’s organ transplant system, the regime announced that starting Jan. 1, 2015, it would stop sourcing organs from executed prisoners and claimed that it would executively rely on a new system of voluntary donations. However, Beijing’s claim was refuted by a 2019 report by a London-based people’s tribunal.

  The report concluded, after a year-long investigation, that the stated-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting was happening on a “significant scale” in China, with Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs.

  An investigative report by The Epoch Times in 2016 concluded that tens of thousands may have been killed at the Tianjin First Central Hospital, as the hospital carried out more transplants than the supply of organs from executed prisoners could support.

  On April 13, the WOIPFG released an investigative report into the Jiangsu People’s Hospital. In November 2018, a doctor at the hospital did not deny that they sourced transplant organs from Falun Gong adherents when answering a phone inquiry by a WOIPFG investigator, who posed as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official. The doctor also said that a liver transplant surgery could be arranged in less than two weeks.

  The report also included a 2017 audio recording of a phone conversation between a WOIPFG investigator, who posed as someone making inquiries about liver transplant surgeries, and an unnamed liver transplant doctor at the hospital. The doctor said an organ was available as soon as two weeks, a waiting time shorter than that at the nearby Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital.

  The Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital is also on WOIPFG’s list of hospitals likely to be involved in forced organ harvesting.

  Shifting the Narrative

  That Li’s case was widely reported by China’s state-run media and not censored is significant, said WOIPFG’s Chair Wang Zhiyuan in a recent interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.

  Wang said that the CCP was trying to use the news to spin a narrative around organ harvesting in China—by trying to create a story that these crimes are all committed by individuals and that it is the Chinese authorities who are trying to stop them.

  In reality, China’s state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience is an expansive endeavor involving cooperation among government agencies affiliated with the CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the Chinese military, police units, military police, as well as regional Party and government agencies, Wang said.

  He said the sentences handed down on the doctors were quite lenient because, while the CCP wanted to use the case for propaganda purposes, it also did not want to draw too much attention to the matter because the doctors were likely acting on orders from their hospitals.

  Based on recent findings, Wang said some Chinese hospitals are clearly still engaging in live organ harvesting from Falun Gong adherents.

  Organ harvesting in China has attracted greater scrutiny in the West in recent years, especially as the United States and other democracies are stepping up their criticism of the CCP over its array of severe human rights abuses.

  In the United States, eight counties in Virginia have passed a resolution condemning China’s ongoing practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience. On April 15, the Texas Senate adopted a similar resolution.

  In early March, U.S. lawmakers in both the Senate and House introduced legislation to seek accountability for China’s organ harvesting. If enacted, the bill would allow the U.S. government to impose sanctions on individuals and government officials responsible for organ trafficking or organ harvesting. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:20

• Is Joe Rogan's Spotify Exclusivity Damaging His Relevance?
  Is Joe Rogan’s Spotify Exclusivity Damaging His Relevance?

  Joe Rogan made the headlines last year when his highly lucrative exclusivity deal with Spotify was revealed. The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most successful podcasts in the world first appeared on Spotify on September 1 and from December 1, all episodes were released exclusively on the streaming platform, having previously boasted a huge following on YouTube.

  

  While the financial benefits for Rogan and the show are undeniable, Statista’s Martin Armstrong asks (and answers) has restricting his reach led to a drop in relevance? Google Trends data for the U.S. suggests that this may be the case. As originally covered by TecTalk, there has been a clear dampening of search interest for the term ‘Joe Rogan’ since the episodes were moved over to Spotify. Previous spikes of interest generated when the show was more widely accessible have largely disappeared, relatively speaking.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As noted by TecTalk “In the six months leading up to the show’s December 1st exclusive start, [there was] an average search index for ‘Joe Rogan’ of 57.9. After the week of December 1 that index value has dropped to 34.6, which constitutes a 40.2 percent drop in search volume.” Although the podcast is not behind a paywall, Spotify’s popularity and accessibility is still nothing compared to that of YouTube and, despite the integration of video, the chances of an episode going viral are clearly lower at the moment.

  All that said, his latest discussion with libertarian comedian Dave Smith is a much-watch/listen as the two cover everything from America’s regime change foreign policies to Alinksy-ite domestic policy shifts, to COVID corruption, to diversity training, to vaccine passports, to running for president (as a libertarian candidate) and, quite frankly, everything else in the current zeitgeist…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:00

• Declassified FISA Opinion Shows More FBI Abuses
  Declassified FISA Opinion Shows More FBI Abuses

  Authored by ‘Techno Fog’ via The Reactionary substack,

  The FBI continued to spy on Americans without a warrant…

  A FISA Court opinion and order declassified today reveals continued FBI abuses of “raw FISA-acquired information.” After a DOJ National Security Division review, the FISA Court noted “the FBI’s failure to properly apply its querying standard when searching Section 702-acquired information was more pervasive than was previously believed.”

  

  This opinion includes these findings:

  April 2019 – July 2019: An FBI technical information specialist was involved in “Compliance incidents” by conducting 124 queries of Section 702-acquired information on (1) Volunteers who had requested to participate in the FBI’s “Citizens Academy”; (2) Persons who needed to enter the field office to perform repairs; and (3) Persons who reported they were victims of a crime.

  

  August 2019 – October 2019: An FBI Task Force Office “conducted approximately 69 queries using names and identifiers of individuals…” The redactions keep secret the identity of the victims.

  

  Other Violations:

  • One FBI intelligence analyst “conducted 110 queries for analytic paper.”

  • Another analyst conducted improper queries for “ongoing vetting of confidential human sources” as well as “overly broad queries” and “mistakenly failed to opt out of querying against raw FISA-acquired information.”

  Judge James Boasberg, who presides over the FISA Court, found little issue with these abuses. In fact, Boasberg concluded:

  “[T]he Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine its prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

  HOWEVER – Boasberg then concludes that the government has reported numerous incidents involving searches of FISA information without warrants.

  

  In other words, the FBI is using FISA acquired information to investigate domestic crimes – not matters of foreign intelligence. These included investigations of “health-care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

  

  “Public corruption and bribery.” I highlight that last part because it means the FBI continued to improperly use FISA-acquired information to spy on government officials.

  

  As we previously reported, Boasberg declined to sentence former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith to prison – not even a day – after Clinesmith altered a CIA email and lied about it to others within the FBI in furtherance of a Carter Page FISA renewal. The FISA heightened duty of candor doesn’t come with heightened punishments for violating that duty.

  After the latest revelations of abuse and unaccountability, perhaps it’s time for FBI Director Wray, Judge Boasberg, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to go.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:40

• New Chinese Decree Forces Religious Leaders To Actively Support Communist Party
  New Chinese Decree Forces Religious Leaders To Actively Support Communist Party

  China has rolled out with a new policy which requires all religious leaders in the country to show open support to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The new decree goes into effect May 1 and orders all religious heads, including Christian pastors and bishops, to “follow the lead of and support the Communist Party.”

  While Chinese state interference in religious affairs of citizens is far from anything new, this particular decree appears far reaching and is also aimed at rooting out “foreign” influence, with significant legal repercussions that are threatened.

  

  According to an unofficial translation of Article 3 of the decree: “Religious professionals shall love the motherland, support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, support the socialist system, abide by the Constitution, laws, regulations, and rules; practice the Core Socialist Values, uphold the principle of religious independence and self-management, persist in our nation’s direction of the sinification of religion, and preserve national unity, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and social stability.”

  The full decree entitled “Measures on the Management of Religious Professionals” also purports to define “rights” of “religious professionals” – or rather their extreme limitations under the law.

  It also requires religious clerics to resist the infiltration of foreign forces through religion. Violators of the new decree will also be subject to criminal charges and other sanctions, which is a strengthening of older policies. Instead of just state-controlled practices, there’s now more legal basis for criminalizing religion that’s been “unapproved”.

  Critics are already pointing out it constitutes a further severe crackdown on freedom of religion and worship. One large ‘house church’ leader in Beijing commented to US-funded VOA News, “This decree goes against our religious beliefs, and the separation of politics and religion.” The representative said additionally, “There will be a further narrowing of religious freedom and more severe crackdowns on believers.”

  ‘They Think The 21st Century Will Be The Chinese Communist Century:’ Report Shows China’s Crackdown On Religious Freedom https://t.co/FGJ20dZKLK

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 22, 2021

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

  It also further tightens oversight of official government-sanctioned Catholic communities in the country.

  Below is the relevant section from the document…

  Catholic bishops are to be approved and consecrated by the Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China shall complete a form for recording Catholic bishops within 20 days of consecrating them, send it to the State Bureau of Religious Affairs for filing, and submit the following materials:

  1. Copies of the bishop’s household registration booklet and resident identity card.
  2. An explanation of the circumstances by which the provincial, autonomous region, or directly governed municipality religious group democratically selected that bishop;
  3. The approval documents from the Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China;
  4. An explanation of their consecration by the bishop that presided over it.

  * * *

  According to VOA, the new decree is related to a recent push to force various religious communities into integrating official CCP propaganda and history into their religious teaching curriculum: “The issuance of the decree coincides with a push by the government-controlled national religious associations of Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism and Islam to require all believers to study topics such as the histories of the CCP, the People’s Republic of China and socialism to mark the 100th anniversary of the CCP in July.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:20

• Aussie Defence Minister Warns Conflict Over Taiwan "Cannot Be Discounted"
  Aussie Defence Minister Warns Conflict Over Taiwan “Cannot Be Discounted”

  Authored by Daniel Yeng via The Epoch Times,

  Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton is warning that conflict over Taiwan is a possibility and has vowed to work with allies to maintain peace in the region.

  “People need to be realistic about the activity,” Dutton told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday.

  “There is militarisation of bases across the region. Obviously, there is a significant amount of activity, and there is an animosity between Taiwan and China.”

  “If you look at any of the rhetoric that is coming out of China from spokesmen, particularly in recent weeks and months in response to different suggestions that have been made, they have been very clear about that goal,” he added.

  “I don’t think it should be discounted. I think China has been very clear about the reunification, and that’s been a long-held objective of theirs,” Dutton said.

  The minister added that “nobody wants to see conflict” between China and Taiwan and added that the Australian Defence Force was prepared to meet any threats in the region and that they would work with allies in the region for peace.

  

  Earlier this month, Michael Goldman, charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, revealed that the United States and Australia were working on “contingencies” if conflict were to erupt around Taiwan.

  In recent months, Chinese military jets have made near-daily incursions into Taiwanese airspace, with the largest being in late March, when 20 Chinese military planes entered its Air Defence Identification Zone.

  

  J15 fighter jets on China’s sole operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, during a drill at sea in April 2018. (AFP/Getty Images)

  U.S. Admiral Philip Davidson, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, also issued a warning in response to Beijing’s increasing military build-up, saying he believed China could invade Taiwan “in the next six years,” while other analysts believe the timeframe could be shorter.

  Beijing sees Taiwan as its own territory, even though the island state has been governed as a distinct territory for more than seven decades.

  Recently, the communist regime has upped its rhetoric against the island, vowing to bring it into the fold—by force if necessary.

  Meanwhile, throughout 2020, Australia has endured a year-long economic coercion campaign from Beijing targeting key exports to China, including coal, beef, wine, barley, lobster, timber, lamb, and cotton.

  The Chinese trade strikes were launched in response to calls by Foreign Minister Marise Payne in April 2020 for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

  Australia has encouraged exporters to find alternative markets to China while passing several laws to shore up the country’s national security against interference by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

  Last week, Foreign Minister Payne exercised powers granted to her by the Foreign Relations Act and terminated the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative signed with the Victorian state government.

  The Chinese Embassy in Canberra criticised the move, labelling it “unreasonable and provocative.” While Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin urged Australia to “revoke” the decision or Beijing would “resolutely take strong actions.”

  Dutton responded, saying, “We’re not going to have our values compromised. We aren’t going to surrender our sovereignty.”

  “We are standing up for who we are. We’ve got very important diplomatic relations with many countries, including China, but we aren’t going to be compromised by the principles of the Communist Party of China.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:00

• Corn Prices Touch 8-Year High As Albert Edwards Worries About Food Inflation
  Corn Prices Touch 8-Year High As Albert Edwards Worries About Food Inflation

  Chicago corn futures are up 3% Monday as supply concerns drive prices to an 8-year high. 

  

  “Corn is in the driver’s seat as there are supply worries as well as strong demand,” a Singapore-based feed grains trader told Reuters. “Corn is pulling prices of wheat and soybeans higher.”

  Besides corn, wheat tagged a seven-year high, while soybeans are at eight-year highs. The entire agri-complex is on fire. 

  

  Traders are looking at the dryness in Brazil and cold temperatures in the US that have supported prices. 

  BAMWX meteorologist Kirk Hinz outlines dryness in Brazil “continues to be a big concern ahead.”

  

  Also, “fuel is being added to the fire by reports that the Argentinian government is considering raising its export taxes on grains and oilseed (products), which would further tighten the situation on the world market,” Commerzbank said in a note.

  Commerzbank continued: “This is because Argentina also plays a very important role in supplying the world markets, especially as the world’s largest soybean meal and oil exporter.”

  In the US, a cold spell in early April adds to additional supply concerns. 

  We noted earlier this month that freezing temperatures could have a profound impact on seedling development this spring. 

  The cold blast has likely delayed seeding across the Corn Belt as farmers wait for warmer temperatures. Planting corn in cooler climates is still possible, but colder soil can take corn kernels much longer to germinate and increases the risk of seedling death. 

  Combine weather woes and possible export taxes in Argentina, and increasing demand from China has developed into a perfect storm of higher prices. 

  Rising agri commodity prices prompted SocGen’s resident permabear Albert Edwards to provide yet another warning (read his first warning here) about soaring food inflation and what social ramifications it could mean for emerging economies. He pointed out central banks pumped trillions of dollars into the global economy after the financial crisis a little more than a decade ago. It resulted in an eruption of food prices that led to the Arab Spring revolutions – something he believes could happen again. 

  Revolution alert: After a pause to refresh, the copper price rising again. Most think this is a sign of the strength in the economic cycle. But the surge in agric prices, (just as in 2011 that triggered the Arab Spring revolutions) suggests this is more to do with QE – again! pic.twitter.com/Ga89zUqSQV

  — Albert Edwards (@albertedwards99) April 22, 2021

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

  “I’m not sure if central banks will ever realise not only do their QE polices increase inequality and fan the embers of popularism, but after having done that, rocketing food prices ignite that discontent into raging infernos as occurred during the Arab Spring a decade ago,” Edwards said in another tweet. 

  I’m not sure if central banks will ever realise not only do their QE polices increase inequality and fan the embers of popularism, but after having done that, rocketing food prices ignite that discontent into raging infernos as occurred during the Arab Spring a decade ago. https://t.co/1tUbeAQKVL

  — Albert Edwards (@albertedwards99) April 11, 2021

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

  Food prices are undeniably soaring faster than inflation and incomes around the world. It’s only a matter of time before social instabilities begin in low-income countries.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:40

• Canadian City Offers COVID Shots To "Black And Other Racialized Populations"
  Canadian City Offers COVID Shots To “Black And Other Racialized Populations”

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  The city of Hamilton in Canada posted a tweet offering the COVID-19 vaccine to “black and other racialized populations” over the age of 18, prompting questions as to whether this was discriminatory.

  

  “COVID-19 vaccine appointments are now available for Black and other racialized populations/people of colour ages 18+ who live in postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N and L9K at the COVID-19 vaccine clinic at FIRSTONTARIO CENTRE, Friday to Sunday this coming week,” stated the tweet.

  COVID-19 vaccine appointments are now available for Black and other racialized populations/people of colour ages 18+ who live in postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N and L9K at the COVID-19 vaccine clinic at FIRSTONTARIO CENTRE, Friday to Sunday this coming week.

  — City of Hamilton (@cityofhamilton) April 24, 2021

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

  This was followed up by another tweet that said appointments are now full, further advising, “Black and other racialized populations/people of colour, who are ages 18+ live in eligible postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N, L9K can call the Public Health COVID-19 Hotline at 905-974-9848, option 7 for an appointment at other clinic locations depending on availability of vaccine.”

  Black and other racialized populations/people of colour, who are ages 18+ live in eligible postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N, L9K can call the Public Health COVID-19 Hotline at 905-974-9848, option 7 for an appointment at other clinic locations depending on availability of vaccine.

  — City of Hamilton (@cityofhamilton) April 24, 2021

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

  Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, “prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability.”

  By apparently excluding white people from being offered the shot, the city’s policy appears to be in violation of this act.

  Respondents to the tweet expressed their confusion.

  “How is this even remotely fair? I live in L9C, over 40 and compromised immune system but I can’t get an appointment!!! Ridiculous,” commented Shelly Petrie.

  How is this even remotely fair? I live in L9C, over 40 and compromised immune system but I can’t get an appointment!!! Ridiculous

  — Shelly Petrie (@Shelly76981807) April 25, 2021

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

  “Imagine this same tweet but with “white” instead of “black” and the outrage it would cause,” remarked another respondent.

  “You will be relying on these spanish colonial race charts to determine priority, yes?” joked another.

  You will be relying on these spanish colonial race charts to determine priority, yes ? pic.twitter.com/RkI0xvPzdu

  — Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) April 26, 2021

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

  “While a white 56 year old with a rare disease that has caused scarring in both lungs, compromised immune system, heart palpitations and hypertension, is still awaiting their first shot. I sense a serious level of racism by our elected officials,” said another.

  While a white 56 year old with a rare disease that has caused scarring in both lungs, compromised immune system, heart palpitations and hypertension, is still awaiting their first shot. I sense a serious level of racism by our elected officials.

  — Land_of_Mud (@Land_of_Mud) April 24, 2021

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

  Governments and health bodies across the west have funded public relations campaigns to encourage ethnic minorities to take the jab because of their historically lower than average uptake in those communities.

  However, in directly offering the jab to certain racial groups before others, authorities may find themselves in hot water if a discrimination case is brought before the courts.

  *  *  *

  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. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:20

• Biden's Stimulus Checks "Wreck Labor Pool" As People Get Paid To Stay Home 
  Biden’s Stimulus Checks “Wreck Labor Pool” As People Get Paid To Stay Home 

  There are new concerns that President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package is already harming the labor market recovery. 

  While job openings and postings are increasing, there is an issue with the number of applications as labor participation currently stands at 61.4%, with an unemployment rate of 6.2%. People are not applying for jobs as they should be as they collect stimulus checks and enjoy a work-free lifestyle, all on the backs of taxpayers.

  There are many jobs available in manufacturing, trade and transportation, logistics, and the professional sector. But employers have difficulty sourcing workers. 

  The latest comments from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City provide a chilling insight this month into the labor shortage developing at manufacturing firms across Denver, Oklahoma City, and Omaha: 

  “Stimulus and increased unemployment money are wrecking the labor pool. Lower-level employees are quitting to make just as much not working.”

  So, lower-level employees are making more money collecting stimulus checks and other handouts under the Biden administration. This was very similar when former President Trump dished out helicopter money during the early days of the pandemic. 

  What this creates are more bottlenecks for the supply chain as labor becomes scarce. 

  “It is very difficult to handle the increased business with supply chain issues across all materials and finding anyone who wants to work. The federal government has incentivized people to stay home and not be productive.”

  Other employers report: 

  “Unemployed workers have no incentive to return to work given the COVID bonus payments.”

  What this means is that entry-level pay will have to increase to get low-level workers off the couch. This will create more cost pressures for companies that will either be absorbed or pass onto the consumer. 

  The Biden administration effectively destroys the labor market, resulting in significant repercussions for the real economy, such as a labor shortage that could stall the recovery. 

  In particular, a McDonald’s in Tampa, Florida, offered $50 last week to anyone who would show up to a job interview. 

  

  WSJ said labor shortages in the food industry affect nationwide and independent eateries as they can’t source enough workers for the front and backend. Some fast-food chains are offering signing bonuses. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. is offering free college who work at least 15 hours a week. Taco Bell is giving paid family leave to company store managers. Other operators are boosting pay. 

  But even with all the perks, a labor crunch affects many businesses in various industries to retain workers as the stimulus money adds a barrier to bring back low-level workers. 

  JPMorgan recently warned clients of a massive labor shortage in the US. 

  

  However, JPMorgan did not expand on what may be causing this unprecedented schism within the economy – after all, for normalcy to return, people must not only be employed but must want to be employed – it did suggest that the “robust” government stimulus may be keeping workers on the sidelines. 

  In a letter sent to the White House Friday, WSJ explains Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for the Biden administration to make the jobless benefits permanent, the onset to universal basic income. 

  While politicians on Capitol Hill have cheered about people’s QE since the pandemic began, the consequences of paying low-level workers more to sit at home than to work could derail the economic recovery.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:00

• Beijing's 'Big Tech' Crackdown Continues With Anti-Trust Probe Into Food-Delivery Giant
  Beijing’s ‘Big Tech’ Crackdown Continues With Anti-Trust Probe Into Food-Delivery Giant

  Two weeks after China’s State Administration for Market Regulation – Beijing’s paramount anti-trust regulator – fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion for abusing its market dominance, capping off the country’s first major anti-trust action to rein in one of the tech giants dominating the Chinese domestic economy, the CCP has just launched its next major anti-trust investigation.

  The SCMP reported that China’s antitrust regulator on Monday officially launched a probe into food-delivery service provider Meituan, citing alleged monopolistic business practices like forcing merchants to “pick one from two” – that is, forcing merchants to either pick its platform as its exclusive distribution channel, or find themselves banned.

  

  The probe reportedly resulted from a public tip. Though it’s not yet known how long the investigation will last, it’s worth remembering that the Alibaba probe was launched on Christmas Eve of last year, and ended earlier this month. Meituan has pledged to cooperate (though of course it has little choice in the matter).

  “The company will actively cooperate with the investigation by the regulatory authorities to further improve the level of business compliance management, protect the legitimate rights and interests of users and all parties, promote the long-term and healthy development of the industry, and earnestly fulfill its social responsibilities,” Beijing-based Meituan said in a statement. “At present, the company’s various businesses are operating normally.”

  According to the SCMP, this tactic of forcing merchants to choose just one platform is widespread in China, suggesting that the crackdown – like other antitrust actions – is more about humbling China’s upstart tech giants and keeping them subservient to the will of the CCP. The company’s shares declined on the news in Hong Kong markets.

  The new probe proves that Beijing’s crackdown on Alibaba and Ant Group wasn’t isolated, and that there will likely be more investigations into other Chinese tech giants before this is over, the SCMP hinted. “It’s not a surprising decision. After Alibaba’s record fine, no big tech players should be immune from monopoly investigations,” said Li Chengdong, the chief executive of e-commerce consultancy Dolphin Think Tank. “The regulators need to also show that the investigation is a fair move for everyone, it’s not only about Alibaba.”

  Meituan, which was founded by 42-year-old Wang Xing, has been dragged into court over allegations of unfair competition before. A local court in Jiangsu this month ruled that Meituan had to pay 352,000 yuan ($54,180) as compensation to Ele.me. a food-delivery adversary owned by Alibaba (as fate would have it) for asking merchants to shun the competing service. Aterward, Meituan issued a public statement claiming it wouldn’t make such demands in the future. Another similar lawsuit played out in February. Then, Meituan and 33 other tech companies were brought in front of SAMR and other regulators earlier this month, and given a deadline of May 13 to rectify anti-competitive behaviors, or be “severely punished”. While the company says it doesn’t practice “one of two”, sources told the FT that Meituan practices a more scaled-down approach whereby it lowers commissions on merchants who exclusively use its platform.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:40

• "Apocalyptic" St. Vincent Eruption May Halve GDP 
  “Apocalyptic” St. Vincent Eruption May Halve GDP 

  There’s no doubt the Caribbean island of St Vincent is experiencing a humanitarian crisis as chronic food and water shortages develop amid ongoing volcanic eruptions at the northern part of the island. Volcanic ash blankets the island and has heavily impacted its agricultural economy. 

  According to Bloomberg, St. Vincent and the Grenadines could experience a halving of gross domestic product due to the near-continuous showering of ash across the island since April 9.

  “The damage on the north of the island is bordering on apocalyptic,” Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves told Bloomberg in a telephone interview. “The country is not recognizable as a Caribbean island in the north of the country.”

   Before And After 

  

  Before And After 

  

  La Soufriere volcano, located in the northern part of the island, has erupted numerous times in the last couple of weeks. At least 20,000 people have been displaced, or about 19% of the island’s population. Much of the economic devastation is situated in the country’s farm belt where agriculture represents about 15% of the economy and is the largest employer. 

  

  The Eastern Caribbean island is one of the world’s top producers of arrowroot and other exotic fruits, vegetables and root crops. Bananas are another huge crop for the country. 

  Such reliance on an agriculture economy is proving to be disastrous following La Soufriere’s volcanic eruption. 

  More than 100 million cubic meters of ash spewed from a volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent recently. The darkened western coastline in a @USGSLandsat image captured Sunday offers a sense of the ash’s extent.
  Find imagery at https://t.co/86O1czz4SR pic.twitter.com/qViPUv4ZbQ

  — Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (@USGS_EROS) April 26, 2021

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  Preliminary estimates show the farmland near the volcano wiped out 100% of the vegetable crop, 90% of tree crops — like mangoes – and 80% of root crops.

  “This means, essentially, that agriculture has been wiped out on the island,” Gonsalves said.

  New United Nations video shows villages covered in ash amid ongoing volcanic eruptions on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, with the UN reporting more than 12,700 people have been evacuated from their homes. https://t.co/SW3RZVXHNC pic.twitter.com/52k11kA9Jg

  — ABC News (@ABC) April 21, 2021

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  Tourism has also become an integral part of the island’s economy. Even before the violent eruptions, tourism and travel were down due to the virus pandemic. 

  Scientists don’t know when the dangerously active volcano will stop erupting. In 1979, La Soufriere erupted for four months. In 1902, the eruption last about one year. 

  “The true economic toll of La Soufriere remains unclear, but Gonsalves estimates the volcano caused $150 million in infrastructure damage and $150 million in agriculture and housing losses. In addition, it will require $20 million to $30 million to clean up the islands and about $15 million per month to feed and house evacuees,” Bloomberg said. 

  “The longer people have to stay in shelters and the longer it takes for the volcano to stop erupting, the more precarious our financial situation will be,” he said.

  St Vincent has the third-highest debt-to-GDP at 81% among any other Caribbean nation and faces at least a halving of its economy this year. 

  “Undoubtedly, our debt is going to increase as we try to rebuild and recover from this disaster,” Gonsalves said. “We need our friends to stand by us at this time.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:20

• ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM
  ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com

  Enormous sums of money have poured into racial justice groups since the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department. “The foundation widely seen as a steward of the Black Lives Matter movement says it took in just over $90 million last year,” according to a February Associated Press review, while at least $5 billion was raised by groups associated with that cause in the first two months alone following Floyd’s death.

  

  Two weeks after the Floyd killing, The New York Times said that the “money has come in so fast and so unexpectedly that some groups even began to turn away and redirect donors elsewhere,” while “others said they still could not yet account for how much had arrived.” Propelled by the emotions and nationwide protest movements that emerged last summer, corporations, oligarchs, celebrities and the general public opened their wallets and began pouring money into BLM coffers and have not stopped doing so.

  Where that money has gone has been the topic of numerous media investigations as well as concerns expressed by racial justice advocates. AP noted that BLM’s sharing of financial data in February “marks the first time in the movement’s nearly eight-year history that BLM leaders have revealed a detailed look at their finances.” That newfound transparency was prompted by what AP called “longstanding tensions boil[ing] over between some of the movement’s grassroots organizers and national leaders — the former went public last fall with grievances about financial transparency, decision-making and accountability.”

  In December, ten local BLM chapters severed ties with the national group amidst questions and suspicions over the handling of activities and finances by one of its co-founders, Patrisse Cullors, who had assumed the title of Executive Director. On April 10, The New York Post published an exposé on what it called Cullors’ “million-dollar real estate buying binge.” The paper noted that as protests were unfolding around the country, the BLM official was “snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone, according to property records,” including a California property valued at $1.4 million. The article also revealed that the self-described Marxist and her partner “were spotted in the Bahamas looking for a unit at the Albany,” an “elite enclave laid out on 600 oceanside acres,” which “features a private marina and designer golf course.” The Post included photos of several of the properties obtained from public real estate listings.

  In an interview about that Post story with Marc Lamont Hill, Cullors — except saying she has not visited the Bahamas since the age of 15 — did not deny the accuracy of the reporting, but instead justified her real estate acquisitions. She denied she had taken a salary from the BLM group, pointing to other income she earns as a professor, author, and a YouTube content creator as the source of this sudden outburst of real estate purchases. She denounced the Post reporting as “frankly racist, and sexist.”

  So that seems like a perfectly healthy cycle for covering a controversy, obviously in the public interest. In the wake of concerns from activists about where this massive amount of BLM money has gone, The New York Post did its job of unearthing the splurge of real estate acquisitions by the person who controls and directs BLM’s budget and who has been a target of accusations and suspicions from activists. Cullors then had the opportunity to publicly provide her side of the story concerning her aggressive and ample financial investments.

  But then something quite unhealthy and unusual occurred. Five days after publication of that Post article, the Substack journalists Shant Mesrobian and Zaid Jilani reported that Facebook was banning the sharing of that article worldwide on its platform — similar to what Twitter and Facebook did in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election to The New York Post‘s reporting on the Biden family’s business dealings in China and Ukraine. The Substack reporters noted that Facebook ultimately confirmed the worldwide ban of the Post‘s reporting to The New York Times’ media reporter Ben Smith, justifying it on the ground that the article “revealed personal details about [Cullors] and her residence in violation of Facebook’s community standards.”

  

  In his weekly New York Times Sunday night media column, Smith returned to this subject. When a Facebook lawyer justified the censorship by citing an alleged policy that the tech monopoly will ban any “article [which] shows your home or apartment, says what city you’re in and you don’t like it,” Smith expressed extreme skepticism:

  The policy sounds crazy because it could apply to dozens, if not hundreds, of news articles every day — indeed, to a staple of reporting for generations that has included Michael Bloomberg’s expansion of his townhouse in 2009 and the comings and goings of the Hamptons elites. Alex Rodriguez doesn’t like a story that includes a photo of him and his former fiancée, Jennifer Lopez, smiling in front of his house? Delete it. Donald Trump is annoyed about a story that includes a photo of him outside his suite at Mar-a-Lago? Gone. Facebook’s hands, the lawyer told me, are tied by its own policies.

  Presumably, the only reason this doesn’t happen constantly is because nobody knows about the policy. But now you do!

  Smith was additionally disturbed that Facebook was, in essence, overriding the editorial judgment of news outlets, which grapple every day with how to strike the balance between ensuring the public knows of information in the public interest and protecting a person’s right to privacy. For obvious reasons, public figures and organizations — which both BLM and Cullors undoubtedly are — are deemed to have a lower expectation of privacy when it comes to what is newsworthy. That is why, for example, the extramarital affairs of Donald Trump or Bill Clinton are deemed newsworthy whereas, outside of the dead-but-returning Gawker sewer, the sex lives of private citizens are not. Yet Facebook accords no deference to the editorial judgments even of the most established media outlets. Instead, they told Smith, “Facebook alone decides.”

  ---

  Whatever one’s views are on this particular censorship controversy, there is no doubt that it is part of the highly consequential debate over online free speech and the ability of monopolies like Facebook to control the dissemination of news and the boundaries of political discourse and debate. That is why Smith devoted his weekly column to it. And yet, when Smith approached the standard free speech advocacy groups for comment on this story, virtually none was willing to speak up. “Facebook’s usual critics have been strikingly silent as the company has extended its purview over speech into day-to-day editorial calls,” he wrote.

  Among those groups which insisted that it would not comment on Facebook’s censorship of the Post‘s BLM story was the vaunted, brave and deeply principled free speech organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. “We don’t have anyone who is closely plugged into that situation right now so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time,” emailed Aaron Madrid Aksoz, an ACLU spokesman. Smith said “the only criticism he could obtain came from the News Media Alliance, the old newspaper lobby, whose chief executive, David Chavern, called blocking The Post’s link ‘completely arbitrary’ and noted that ‘Facebook and Google stand between publishers and their audiences and determine how and whether news content is seen.’”

  How is it possible that the ACLU is all but invisible on one of the central free speech debates of our time: namely, how much censorship should Silicon Valley tech monopolists be imposing on our political speech? As someone who intensively reports on these controversies, I can barely remember any time when the ACLU spoke up loudly on any of these censorship debates, let alone assumed the central role that any civil liberties group with any integrity would, by definition, assume on this growing controversy.

  In lieu of the traditional, iconic and organization-defining willingness — eagerness — of the ACLU to defend free speech precisely when it has been most controversial and upsetting to liberals, what we now get instead are cowardly, P.R.-consultant-scripted excuses for staying as far away as possible: “We don’t have anyone who is closely plugged into that situation right now so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time.” That sounds like something Marco Rubio’s office says when asked about a Trump tweet or that a corporate headquarters would say to avoid an inflammatory controversy, not the reaction of a stalwart civil liberties group to a publicly debated act of political censorship.

  In this particular case, it is not difficult to understand the cause of the ACLU’s silence. They obviously cannot defend Facebook’s censorship — affirmatively defending the stifling of political speech is, at least for now, still a bridge too far for the group — but they are petrified of saying anything that might seem even remotely critical of, let alone adversarial to, BLM activists and organizations. That is because BLM is one of the most cherished left-liberal causes, and the ACLU now relies almost entirely on donations and grants from those who have standard left-liberal politics and want and expect the ACLU to advance that ideological and partisan agenda above its nonpartisan civil liberties principles. Criticizing BLM is a third rail in left-liberal political circles, which is where the ACLU now resides almost entirely, and thus it again cowers in silence as another online act of censorship which advances political liberalism emerges. Indeed, BLM is an organization which the ACLU frequently champions:

  No matter how you say it, BLACK LIVES MATTER. pic.twitter.com/KBlyoUA8fR

  — ACLU (@ACLU) January 4, 2021

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

  Like so many liberal-left media outlets and advocacy groups, the ACLU was suffering financially before they were saved and then enriched beyond their wildest dreams by Donald Trump and the #Resistance movement he spawned. “The American Civil Liberties Union this week laid off 23 employees, about 7 percent of the organization’s national staff,” announced The Washington Post in April, 2015. But in the Trump era, the money flowed in almost as quickly and furiously as post-Floyd money to BLM. In February, 2017, said AP, the group “is suddenly awash in donations and new members as it does battle with President Donald Trump over the extent of his constitutional authority, with nearly $80 million in online contributions alone pouring in since the election.” So that is the donor base it now serves.

  

  The ACLU’s we-know-nothing routine for abstaining from commenting on Facebook’s censorship of the BLM article is, for so many reasons, preposterous. The group funds what it calls its Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and some of its best lawyers oversee it. Clearly they focus on these issues. And the ACLU in general has taken a firm and borderline-absolutist position against online censorship by Silicon Valley monopolies: principles whose application to this particular case would be easy and obvious. The ACLU has a section of its website devoted to “Internet Speech,” and its position on such matters is stated explicitly:

  The ACLU believes in an uncensored Internet, a vast free-speech zone deserving at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to traditional media such as books, newspapers, and magazines….The ACLU has been at the forefront of protecting online freedom of expression in its myriad forms. We brought the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared speech on the Internet equally worthy of the First Amendment’s historical protections.

  In a July, 2018 article published on the group’s site entitled “Facebook Shouldn’t Censor Offensive Speech,” the group praised Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial pledge “to keep Facebook from diving deeper into the business of censorship” as “the right call.”

  Unlike in response to the BLM controversy, the ACLU had no trouble back then recognizing that “what’s at stake here is the ability of one platform that serves as a forum for the speech of billions of people to use its enormous power to censor speech on the basis of its own determinations of what is true, what is hateful, and what is offensive.” The ACLU’s stated policy on these controversies could not have been clearer: “given Facebook’s nearly unparalleled status as a forum for political speech and debate, it should not take down anything but unlawful speech, like incitement to violence.” In light of that principle, how is it remotely hard to denounce Facebook’s censorship of the Post‘s article given that it does not even arguably fall within the scope of those narrow exceptions?

  Because the ACLU still employs a few old-school civil libertarians among its hundreds of lawyers and staff, those employees manage to do work and express views that are consistent with the ACLU’s old-school civil liberties agenda even when contrary to the interests of liberal politics. But the tactics used by the ACLU in those cases to downplay or hide those aberrations are as transparent as they are craven.

  When three Silicon Valley monopolies united to remove the social media app Parler from the internet in January, 2021 after influential Democratic lawmakers demanded it — one of the most brute acts of monopolistic censorship yet — an ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, was cited in The New York Times as labelling Parler’s destruction “troubling,” telling the paper: “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet.” But on the ACLU’s highly active and influential Twitter account — the group’s primary platform for promoting its work, expressing its views, and soliciting donations, where it has two million followers and often tweets up to fifty times a day — the group said absolutely nothing about the removal of an entire social media app from the internet:

  

  Indeed, the ACLU — outside of a few token, hidden statements — has chosen to play at most a minor role in the key free speech controversies of the day, ones focusing on such weighty matters as internet freedom and online censorship over our political debates by Silicon Valley monopolies. Over the last four years, as Facebook’s censorship has expanded rapidly, the ACLU has said little to nothing about it — including remaining in utter silence about the extraordinary decision to censor pre-election reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and what it revealed about Joe Biden’s business dealings. Last month, Substack reporter Michael Tracey reviewed the ACLU’s prior 100 tweets and found that 63 of them were about trans issues while a grand total of one was about free speech and none about due process. A comparison of the number of ACLU statements on online censorship controversies to its manifestations on trans issues similarly reveals a fixation on the latter with very little interest in the former:

  

  It goes without saying that the ACLU has every right to devote a huge bulk of its institutional resources and public advocacy to the cause of trans equality if it chooses to do so. But what that reveals is that the group is becoming exactly what its leaders always vowed it would never be: just another garden-variety liberal political advocacy group. After all, there is no shortage of extremely well-financed LGBT groups doing the same advocacy on trans issues. Those LGBT groups shifted their focus almost entirely to trans issues when they won the entire agenda of gay and lesbian equality with the Supreme Court’s 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage in all fifty states, and supporting trans rights is the mainstream, standard view of Democratic Party leaders and liberal activists.

  The ACLU’s refusal to engage with growing online censorship is baffling even from the perspective of its liberal politics given that radical leftists are increasingly (and predictably) the targets of tech censorship alongside anti-establishment right-wing voices. Just yesterday, the highly popular trans YouTube host Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints complained that one of her past episodes had just been demonetized and urged: “Free speech should be reclaimed as an essential leftist issue. We should not surrender the most fundamental civil right to Google LLC in the name of deplatforming rightists and curtailing harassment.” Wynn’s last video, rebutting the views of J.K. Rowling on trans issues, featured Wynn’s list of the telltale signs of “indirect bigotry” toward trans people, and she included “free speech advocacy,” but — as happens to so many people — Wynn has apparently reconsidered that view and has discovered the centrality of free speech values now that her own speech is targeted. But agitating for more online political censorship still remains a cause deeply popular among establishment liberals, further explaining the ACLU’s reluctance to involve itself in these controversies on the side of free expression.

  

  What always distinguished the ACLU in the past — and what gave it credibility with judges in courtrooms — was its devotion to and focus on non-partisan free speech, free press and due process causes that were too unpopular or controversial for other groups to touch, particularly liberal groups who could not afford to offend the political sensibilities of Democrats. There are still some isolated occasions when the ACLU does such things — such as when it spoke up in defense of the NRA against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to target the group with destruction or when the ACLU recently denounced parts of the Democrats’ H.R.1 “reforms”— but the ACLU largely hides those exceptions on its most popular public platforms, and they are becoming increasingly rare.

  And now we have arrived at the truly depressing and tawdry place where the ACLU is afraid to apply its long-stated principles to denounce Facebook’s censorship because the censorship in question happened to be an article that reflected poorly on the sacred-among-liberals BLM group. In the place of brave lawyers and activists defending the constitutional rights and civil liberties even of those people and groups most despised, we have instead a corporate spokesman emailing The New York Times with excuses about why it cannot and will not speak up about a major censorship controversy that has been brewing for two weeks. In that decline one finds the ACLU’s sorry trajectory from stalwart civil liberties group into a lavishly funded arm of the Democratic Party’s liberal political wing.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:00

• Recall Newsom Election Officially Triggered In California After Signatures Counted
  Recall Newsom Election Officially Triggered In California After Signatures Counted

  A recall effort against California governor Gavin Newsom (D) gained enough signatures to trigger a special election, according to the latest count by the Secretary of State’s office, which says 1,626,042 submitted signatures have been verified – surpassing the 1.495 million signatures required.

  

  According to KTLA, California voters will face two questions; “Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him?” If there aren’t enough votes on the first question, votes on the second question will be discarded.

  Among the most prominent Republicans running to replace Newsom are former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, who has never run for elected office. Businessman John Cox, who lost badly to Newsom in 2018, and former Congressman Doug Ose, also are running.

  In 2003, voters recalled Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s the only other recall of a California governor to qualify for the ballot. –KTLA

  “The People of California have done what the politicians thought would be impossible. This recall movement to remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office has reached yet another milestone,” said Orrin Heatlie, Lead Proponent of the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign and founder of the California Patriot Coalition.

  According to the petition, grounds for the recall are as follows: “Governor Newsom has implemented laws which are detrimental to the citizens of this state and our way of life. Laws he endorsed favor foreign nationals, in our country illegally, over that of our own citizens. People in this state suffer the highest taxes in the nation, the highest homelessness rates,  and  the  lowest  quality  of  life  as  a  result.  He  has  imposed  sanctuary  state  status  and  fails  to  enforce  immigration  laws.  He  unilaterally  over-ruled  the  will  of  the  people regarding the death penalty. He seeks to impose additional burdens on our state by the following; removing the protections of Proposition 13, rationing our water use, increasing taxes and restricting parental rights.”

  Newsom, who’s into “double masking,” is also a giant hypocrite – breaking his own lockdown edict last November by dining with medical industry lobbyists at an opulent dinner at the French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California, while small business owners across the state died on the vine from stater and local lockdown policies. Newsom’s pandemic restrictions have notably been struck down by multiple judges for lack of legal or scientific justification – while several California sheriffs from major counties also publicly announced that they wouldn’t be ‘blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle’ to enforce Newsom’s ‘dictatorial’ lockdowns.

  According to Newsom, and in spite of the above, responded to the recall as an effort by the ‘extreme right wing’ to take power, saying “This is a Republican effort…this is a Donald Trump effort.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:40

• China's E-Commerce Giant JD.Com Starts Paying Some Workers In Digital Yuan
  China’s E-Commerce Giant JD.Com Starts Paying Some Workers In Digital Yuan

  China’s e-commerce giant, JD.com which directly competes with Jack Ma’s Alibaba, said on Sunday that it has started paying some staff in digital yuan, the virtual version of the country’s physical currency which according to some is set to overtake the US dollar and become the world’s next reserve currency.

  JD said that it has provided technology and service support for China’s e-CNY trial programs in Suzhou, Beijing and Chengdu, since partnering with the People’s Bank of China last September.

  

  As we have reported extensively, China has been busy experimenting with digital currency over the past few months and is on track to become the world’s first major economy to issue a digital version of its fiat money, which could see a wider rollout at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. In October, Shenzhen, a southern city known for its progressive economic policies, doled out 10 million yuan worth of digital currency to 500,000 residents, who could then use the money to shop at certain online and offline retailers.

  

  Several other large Chinese cities have followed Shenzhen’s suit. The residents in these regions must apply through selected banks to start receiving and paying by digital yuan.

  As TechCrunch notes, the electronic yuan initiative is a collective effort involving China’s regulators, commercial banks and technology solution providers. At first glance, the scheme still mimics how physical yuan is circulating at the moment; under the direction of the central bank, the six major commercial banks in China, including ICBC, distribute the digital yuan to smaller banks and a web of tech solution providers, which could help bring more use cases to the new electronic money.

  Of course, that means that the digital yuan is anything but a cryptocurrency, and is merely a more digital version of the currency already in circulation. In fact, all that the digital yuan is achieving is the forced conversion of all paper currency into digital token format, which allows Beijing infinitesimal control over every single transaction, and revealing the identity of every single currency holder – precisely the opposite of what cryptos stand for.

  Of course, since China is an authoritarian regime where companies have to comply with Beijing’s demands to be “Jack Ma’d”, China’s major tech companies have actively participated in the buildout of the digital yuan ecosystem, which will help the central government better track money flows even better.

  Aside from JD.com, video streaming platform Bilibili, on-demand services provider Meituan and ride-hailing app Didi have also begun accepting digital yuan for user purchases. Gaming and social networking giant Tencent became one of the “digital yuan operators” and will take part in the design, R&D and operational work of the electronic money. Jack Ma’s Ant Group, which is undergoing a major overhaul following a stalled IPO, has also joined hands with the central bank to work on building out the infrastructure to move money digitally. Huawei, the telecom equipment titan debuted a wallet on one of its smartphone models that allows users to spend digital yuan instantaneously even if the device is offline.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:20

• NYC Records Most Violent Week This Year With 46 Separate Shootings 
  NYC Records Most Violent Week This Year With 46 Separate Shootings 

  A summer of gun violence could be nearing for New York City as Mayor Bill de Blasio, a symbol of America’s ultra-progressive left, cannot stop a wave of shootings and homicides. 

  According to NYPost, NYPD data reveals the metro area endured its bloodiest week so far this year as shootings and homicides erupt.

  About 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over seven days ending Sunday (April 26). Compared to the same time last year, violent crime has skyrocketed 300%. To be fair, the metro area was in lockdowns last year around this time, but still, de Blasio’s liberal policing policies are failing.

  

  This weekend alone, there were two dozen people shot and three killed. A weekend from hell could be the first course of many more as warmer temperatures bring more people outside and into the streets. 

  In response to the mayhem, de Blasio has unveiled a plan to stop gun violence with new efforts to place more police officers in high-crime districts and convince gangs to trade in their weapons for jobs. 

  Ahead of the summer months, a surge in violent crime and reopening could be a perfect storm to fuel a violent crime wave. 

  De Blasio’s inability to stop gun violence is very troubling. A spike in crime has given city dwellers a reason to move out of the city for peace and quiet as they remote work in the suburbs. 

  Nearly three decades of declining violent crime have reversed thanks to de Blasio and his liberal band of progressives who think they know best when it comes to how policing should work. Certainly, defunding the police and dismantling the NYPD anti-crime unit has backfired. 

  New York City faces an absolute disaster of failed liberal leadership and an example for the next mayor of what not to do to move the city forward.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:00

• Pentagon Reveals 3-Hour Long IRGC "Swarming" Incident Of US Vessels In Gulf
  Pentagon Reveals 3-Hour Long IRGC “Swarming” Incident Of US Vessels In Gulf

  US Navy officials have revealed to The Wall Street Journal that a pair of Coast Guard ships were recently “swarmed” by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fast boats in the Persian Gulf earlier this month as they conducted patrols in international waters.

  The report says “The incident occurred April 2, just as the U.S. and Iran announced they would conduct negotiations toward renewing the 2015 multilateral nuclear accord.” It was considered by the Pentagon to be a major incident (unlike the more frequent, minor exchange of “warnings” between rival military vessels in the region) given the IRGC boats encircled and “buzzed” the US vessels for up to three hours.  

  

  A US Navy spokesperson condemned the “unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers” and underscored the Iranian side failed to back off after multiple radio warning attempts communicated. 

  It’s rare that such an incident occurred with US Coast Guard ships… naturally we wonder what United States Coast Guard ships were doing so far away from… the US coast.

  The US Navy apparently provided a photo of the incident in progress…

  Did anyone else just assume the U.S. Coast Guard only guards the coastline of the United States? https://t.co/qMb6lDsCka

  — Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 26, 2021

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

  The incident is recounted in further detail by the WSJ as follows:

  U.S. Navy officials confirmed that three fast attack crafts and one ship known as Harth 55, a 180-foot, twin-hulled support vessel, swarmed the two Coast Guard ships while they were patrolling international waters in the southern portion of the Persian Gulf.

  The larger vessel repeatedly crossed in front of the bows of the two U.S. vessels, the Monomoy and the Wrangell, coming as close as 70 yards away, officials said. That forced the Wrangell to have to make defensive maneuvers to avoid collision, Navy officials said.

  The Harth 55 is perhaps the most distinctive somewhat recent addition to Iran’s Navy, considered a high-speed vessel capable of carrying a helicopter and up to 100 troops.

  

  The timing of the public disclosure of this “new” swarming event revelation is interesting given it comes a day after leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif surfaced. In it he candidly admits that the IRGC often overrides government decisions, even suggesting the late IRGC Quds Force chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani tried to sabotage Iran’s seeking to restore the JCPOA nuclear deal.

  Could the IRGC’s April 2 swarming event in the Gulf (just as the Vienna talks were about to get started) have been part of an attempt of hardliners leading the military establishment to derail attempts of ‘moderates’ at engagement with the US? 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 18:40

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• Second Turkish Crypto Exchange Collapses, Four Employees Arrested On Suspicion Of Fraud
  Second Turkish Crypto Exchange Collapses, Four Employees Arrested On Suspicion Of Fraud

  Just days after major Turkish Crypto exchange Thodex collapsed, its CEO fled with a rumored $2 billion (and was reportedly detained) and dozens of people were arrested, Turkey’s cryptocurrency investors were dealt another blow as second big exchange collapsed.

  In a statement posted late Friday on its website, Vebitcoin said it halted operations citing deteriorating financial conditions claiming that unspecified financial strain led to the decision — possibly caused by an unusually high number of withdrawals leading up to Turkey’s forthcoming cryptocurrency ban, according to CoinTelegraph.

  “We have decided to cease our activities in order to fulfill all regulations and claims,” the announcement read in part.

  Demiroren News Agency said its Chief Executive Ilker Bas and three other employees have been detained on Saturday. The Financial Crimes Investigation Board has blocked Vebitcoin’s accounts and opened a probe. Vebitcoin is – or rather was – Turkey’s fourth biggest exchange with close to $60 million in daily volumes, according to CoinGecko.com which tracks data on price, volume and market value on crypto markets. More than half of this volume came from Bitcoin, which dropped 19% this week.

  On Saturday morning, Muğla chief public prosecutor Mehmet Nadir Yağcı announced in a statement to local media that four employees have been detained by law enforcement following allegations of fraud.

  “Following the search and seizure operations carried out at the company headquarters and at some addresses, 4 people, who are company directors and employees, were detained. The investigation carried out by the Directorate of Cyber ​​Crimes Branch of the Muğla Police Department is carried out in a multifaceted and meticulous manner.”

  The collapse of Vebitcoin comes days after Thodex halted operations and its 27-year-old founder fled to Albania. Thodex had about 390,000 users according to a lawyer for the victims and losses could be as high as $2 billion, according to Turkey’s Haberturk newspaper. Police subsequently issued upwards of 75 arrest warrants and detained 62 in connection to a possible exit scam.

  This week’s rout marks the worst period for Bitcoin since it tumbled amid a wider slump in risk assets at the end of February with bitcoin sliding as low as $48,000 late on Sunday, amid broader weakness in the entire crypto space.

  

  The two exchanges were part of the cryptocurrency boom that had drawn in legions of Turks seeking to protect their savings from rampant inflation and the collapsing Turkish currency. Turkish inflation hit 16.2% in March, more than three times the central bank’s target, and the lira has weakened more than 11% against the dollar this year — its ninth consecutive year of losses – making it the year’s worst performing major currency.

  

  The boom in Turkish crypto trading which saw daily volume on local crypto markets close to $2 billion for Friday, according to data from CoinGecko.com, regulators have come knocking. In early April, Turkey’s Central Bank has banned cryptocurrencies as a form of payment from April 30, and the country has prohibited payment and electronic money institutions from mediating money transfers to cryptocurrency platforms.

  Central Bank chief Sahap Kavcioglu said more regulations are in the pipeline in a televised interview on Friday. “We are working on regulations in terms of cryptocurrency,” he said. “There are disturbing money outflows to outside of Turkey via cryptocurrencies.”

  Turkey’s crypto ban has become a hot-button issue, as opposition leaders have voiced support for crypto.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 02:45

• The Ignorant World And What to Do About It
  The Ignorant World And What to Do About It

  Authored by Joakim Book via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  A spectre is haunting the Western world – the spectre of a grossly mistaken understanding of the world. 

  

  British kids have nightmares about the climate. Half of French respondents think it likely that climate change will cause “the extinction of the human race.” American teachers coddle students who have panic attacks when wildfires rage somewhere on the planet. Eco-anxiety has clearly gripped the Western world, but what’s worse is that most people have a dismal outlook on all of humanity’s progress, not just climate change. 

  Because slow changes don’t get noticed, and because humans use mental shortcuts to understand the world, we end up with a grossly misinformed view of what is. The late Hans Rosling, the Swedish professor of international health that most of us know as the excited man on YouTube (the one who explains the progress of the world with bubbles and giant blocks), dedicated his life to dispelling these misperceptions. The Gapminder Foundation that now carries on his legacy writes

  “Our ignorance surveys have shown that the general public is misguided about many basic global facts. Reliable global statistics exist for nearly every aspect of global development, but these numbers are not transformed into popular understanding because using and teaching statistics is still too difficult.” 

  Gapminder routinely asks 12 questions (sometimes with a thirteenth question on global temperatures, which most people tend to get right) about basic, uncontroversial, changes in global development – multiple-choice questions on things like demographic change, how many girls in poor countries finish primary school, and what’s happened to extreme poverty in the last twenty years. 

  The results are terrible, but it’s not a question of ignorance. If people genuinely didn’t know, by chance alone they’d pick the right answer a third of the time: this is the chimpanzee threshold. Instead, the average human gets 2.2 answers right. The results for some questions, like global life expectancy (50, 60, or 70 years?), ought to scare us more than any dismal vision of climate change. Having more than doubled since 1900, the global improvements in the last forty years seem to have passed most smart people by. Of students and faculty at top universities less than one in five manage to get this right – even Nobel Laureates underperform the chimps. The worst-performing groups were Swedish trade unionists (10% got the answer right) and Norwegian teachers (7% correct). In one memorable lecture, Rosling animatedly exclaimed “What in the world are you teaching the kids?!”

  In that one line lies much of the problem for our continued misinformation about the world. 

  Media coverage inundates us with a constant flow of catastrophes from one part or the world or another, while overlooking the great non-events of the world. When super cyclones kill 128 people instead of the hundreds of thousands they used to or would have, we don’t even hear about them. When hundreds of thousands of people are lifted out of extreme poverty a day, every day, that’s no longer newsworthy. The result is, Gapminder notes, that “people end up carrying around a sack of outdated facts that you got in school (including knowledge that often was outdated when acquired in school).”

  Counteracting that requires information and an updated framework for thinking about the world. To embrace the notion that things gradually get better – not worse – as we solve more problems, invent better things, and bring more people into the global marketplace. The return of such an optimist mentality (Rosling prefers ‘possibilist’) requires nothing more than accepting that “facts are better than myths – especially for understanding the world.”

  Thou shalt not misinform

  To say that the world is getting better is not to be complacent about its problems. It is not to be Pollyannaish about the future or believe that from here the only way is up. It’s to say that, on net and over time, the world gets better. It’s to say that progress is hard-earned; that it’s a gradual process, with deep structural and historical roots; that the small heavens we may create in our own lives combine to make the entire world slightly less bad than it was yesterday. I work for you doing what I’m good at; you work for me doing what you’re good at – and inventors and entrepreneurs halfway around the world figure out ways to do things that make both our lives better.  

  This isn’t a predetermined path, and it most certainly isn’t always up. Last year was a setback in just about every way we know how to measure (mortality, life expectancy, poverty). The twentieth century saw some of humanity’s worst atrocities: world wars, genocide, autocrats. Sometimes progress pauses, and sometimes our past progress gives rise to new challenges we have yet to overcome – like the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from the coal and oil we burned for (great!) use as fuel, production, and transportation. 

  While that’s a global challenge to talk seriously about with our children, we don’t have to overdo it. Imbuing them with mistaken doom-mongering helps nobody. When we do, we’re not setting up the next generation for a flourishing world, or even a factful one. 

  Nobody told these kids that wildfires destroy less area now than they used to and forests in California burned much more before Europeans arrived. Deaths from natural disasters, those like storms, hurricanes, and floods that we usually associate with worsening climate change, are massively down over almost any time frame, even though we are many more people on the planet. Child mortality is falling everywhere around the globe, and we produce more food than we ever have. None of those trends are about to suddenly stop, reverse, and undo the progress we’ve already made. 

  What is the point of studying when the world is collapsing around us?

  This is a point that many schoolchildren have raised, Greta Thunberg perhaps most prominently. The world is heading for an urgent climate disaster, so why should they study for a future they won’t have? 

  One reason would be to learn that the world isn’t collapsing, that things are getting better – even though the pandemic coverage and climate change alarmism seem to suggest otherwise. Disasters are quick and sudden; progress is slow and hard-won. We live longer, healthier, safer, better, and more fulfilling lives, with better access to almost anything you can imagine. So far, human ingenuity has outpaced anything that a hostile planet has thrown at us or a declinist mentality has conjured up.

  In all this mess, thankfully, there’s at least one thing you can do: imbue your child not with the dangers of the world, but with the factful progress of the world. This is what Tony Morley, a fellow traveler and prominent advocate for progress, is doing: Targeted at 6-to-12-year-olds, Morley is bringing together a hundred one-page stories about the forces, the people, and the astonishing history of how humans have progressed and collectively improved our global living standards. Human Progress for Beginners tries to

  “tell the dramatic history of human civilization and the jagged upward path of improved living standards in the last 250 years. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, civilization has experienced the greatest increase in living standards, prosperity, and well-being in our species’ history. […] Human Progress for Beginners will tell the untold story of progress for young readers in a bright and engaging book, the likes of which has never been attempted.”

  Chapters span the innovations that rocked our world: the printing presses, steam power, and combustion engines; the history of living standards, of light, and of food; and the progress of literacy, peace, and pollution. 

  “Progress forward,” Morley emphasizes, “is not progress completed,” and our world certainly has room for improvement. But that’s not reason enough to despair and invoke the doom-and-gloom zeitgeist of “civilizational decline,” “apocalypse,” or “climate emergency.” Instead, we ought to celebrate our achievements, even in the areas that many of our young people now believe are irrevocably destroyed. 

  It’s a counterintuitive notion and a difficult thing to wrap one’s head around, that the world can both be better and is still in many respects bad. We do nobody any favors, least of all our children, by exaggerating one while forgetting how far we’ve come.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 02:00

• Illinoisans Overwhelmingly Oppose Racial Indoctrination Rampant In Schools, Yet They Cower In Silence
  Illinoisans Overwhelmingly Oppose Racial Indoctrination Rampant In Schools, Yet They Cower In Silence

  By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

  Illinois’ political establishment is far out of touch with the general public on the racial dogma now forced on students from kindergarten through college. Yet a stunning two-thirds of Illinoisans say they don’t speak up, thereby ceding control to an intolerant, extremist minority.

  The proof is in a poll released last month that was mostly buried and ignored by the press. It primarily addressed what schools now teach as unquestionable truth: critical race theory, often called anti-racism or wokism.

  Illinoisans don’t like it. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which commissioned the poll, summarized their findings this way:

  A majority  of respondents  favor equipping teachers to develop core skills and competencies over the encouragement of  progressive  political activism.  Illinoisans  also  favor  a curriculum that  focuses  on “American founding principles and . . . documents” over  one that  incorporates  key  tenets of the  New York Times’ 1619  Project.  At  the post secondary level,  strong  majorities  oppose reducing police presence on campus;  support viewpoint diversity; favor a merit-based application process;  and  prioritize  reducing the cost of tuition over expanding  diversity  and equity  programs.     

  That’s completely at odds with mandates from the state’s politicians and education officials. The Illinois State Board of Education recently approved woke teaching standards with its “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Standards” for K-12 education, and the state earlier made “implicit bias” training required by law for Illinois teachers.

  Among the survey’s specific findings:

  • Sixty-two percent of Illinoisans say it’s more important to expose students to a variety of perspectives, compared to just 23% who want teachers to embrace progressive viewpoints and perspectives; 15% were not sure where they stood. The view was shared by a plurality of Democrats (49.6%) as well as majorities of Republicans (78%) and Independents (69%).

  • Illinoisans reject a core piece of woke teaching, 1619 Project published by The New York Times, which aims to “reframe the country’s history” by putting slavery and its enduring consequences “at the very center of our national narrative.” Forty-eight percent of respondents favored a focus on “American founding principles and . . . documents,” compared to 38% who favored “new curriculums that teach children to understand that America is founded on slavery and remains systemically racist today.”

  • 57% of respondents said training programs should focus on making teachers better equipped to help students develop core skills and competencies, not on social justice or progressive politics. Just 34% said the priority should go toward teaching progressive viewpoints and social justice advocacy to help teachers overcome their own biases and build more inclusive classrooms

  • “A resounding 84% of respondents,” according to the poll’s sponsor, said that “all people should be treated equally on merit” when the question was posed in general terms. When asked to think about the college admissions process specifically, 63% answered that “all people should be treated equally based on merit, even if that results in less racial diversity at selective colleges and universities,” including 89% of Republicans, 62% of Independents and a plurality (47%) of Democrats.

  The polling was done by a reputable firm, Eighteen92, which surveyed 800 Illinois residents.

  That last bullet point above is particularly striking because it means Illinoisans even oppose affirmative action, and it’s affirmative action that is systemic in most of America, not racism.

  Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising since even Californians oppose affirmative action. In November they voted overwhelmingly to retain their constitutional ban on affirmative action, which is another story that was buried. “The margin of defeat, 56 to 44 percent, was striking to students of political history, because it suggests that race neutrality is more popular now than when it was initially mandated by a 1996 ballot initiative that passed by a slightly smaller margin,” said The Atlantic, which did cover it.

  Most significant of all, however, is that over two-thirds of Illinoisans say they are afraid to speak up on these issues.

  Why?

  Because they fear the mob.

  Sixty-four percent of respondents reported that they stop themselves from expressing their opinion on controversial political and social issues “often” (30%) or “sometimes” (34%), with an additional 18% doing so “rarely,” according to the survey sponsor. No surprise there. National surveys, as the sponsor wrote, “have repeatedly shown that political correctness has silenced important discussions—among students on college campuses and in the broader marketplace of ideas.”

  Of those who reported self-censoring, 22.4% said the main reason they do so is because they are worried about unfair criticism, while 22.0% answered that they are “worried about professional or academic consequences” for saying the wrong thing.

  This must end.

  Critical race theory is perhaps the most pernicious and destructive movements our age. It is a doctrine of hatred and division designed purposefully to stoke racial division, just as countless tyrannical movements throughout history have inflamed racial division to divide and conquer.

  It expressly rejects the goals of color blindness and the melting pot, which have been among the most noble aspirations of America and most all of the Western Hemisphere. By asserting that race, not character, fundamentally defines all humans, it rejects, at its core, the most fundamental premise of our society – that all men are created equal.

  Yet it gains momentum every day. “When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, I am not exaggerating, wrote a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute this week in City Journal. “[F]rom the universities to bureaucracies to K-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down.”

  What the majority lacks is courage. Courage to stand one’s ground in the face of a mob. Courage to speak up to politicians, administrative officials and school boards. From that City Journal column:

  Above all, we must have courage, the fundamental virtue required in our time: courage to stand and speak the truth, courage to withstand epithets, courage to face the mob, and courage to shrug off the scorn of elites. When enough of us overcome the fear that currently prevents so many from speaking out, the hold of critical race theory will begin to slip. And courage begets courage. It’s easy to stop a lone dissenter; it’s much harder to stop 10, 20, 100, 1,000, 1 million, or more who stand up together for the principles of America. Truth and justice are on our side. If we can muster the courage, we will win.

  “I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated.” That’s the title under which a New York teacher last week published his case for why children “are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school.”

  Read his column. Find your own way to show the courage he has. Do not stand by while our children are indoctrinated.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 23:30

• Yuan Forward Sales Surge To Highest Since 2015
  Yuan Forward Sales Surge To Highest Since 2015

  Another month, another gaping discrepancy between Chinese FX reserve data and actual yuan cross-border flows.

  In the same month that PBOC data revealed that FX reserves stood at US$3,170bn in March, $35BN lower than February (granted mostly on valuation effect, which when netted out implies that FX reserves declined by $4bn), Goldman has calculated that net FX flows were actually $34BN into the Chinese economy.

  According to Goldman’s Maggie Wei, in March, there was $2BN in net inflows via onshore outright spot transactions,and US$7BN in net inflow via freshly entered and canceled forward transactions, while a separate SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows” shows that domestic banks saw net RMB receipt of $25BN from onshore to offshore. Combining the three, Goldman’s “preferred” FX flow measure suggests a total of $34BN inflows in March, which while slightly slower than February, was a mirror image of the picture implied from FX reserve data.

  

  Digging deeper into the numbers reveals that FX inflows related to the goods trade surplus remained strong at $26BN in March, even higher than the single month goods trade surplus at $14bn in March. The FX conversion ratio for net goods trade surplus in Q1 2021 stood at 81%, higher than 45% in Q4 2020. Services trade related FX outflow in March was modestly higher at $6BN, vs $2BN in February.

  FX inflows notwithstanding, China’s net foreign exchange settlement, which the US Treasury considers a more comprehensive proxy for intervention because it includes the activities of China’s state-owned banks, and surged to about $180 billion last year, remained persistently wide compared to the modest decline in PBOC FX assets. As a reminder, historically these two data series have tracked each other closely but a striking divergence emerged since last November.

  

  Commenting on China’s FX shennanigans, Bloomberg’s Ye Xie notes that yuan forward transactions surged as corporates hedged their currency exposure, with settlement data showing that yuan-forward sales surged in March to the highest since 2015 as China’s currency weakened during the period. “The increased trading of currency derivatives is a healthy development, suggesting Chinese companies have become more prudent managing their currency exposure” according to Wang Chunying, spokeswoman for the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

  

  As Xie summarizes the above, hedging activities soared since October when regulators cut the reserve requirement to make it less costly to sell the yuan in forwards. It may have helped lower currency volatility. Separately, the settlement data showed net foreign currency inflows continued last month, albeit at a slower pace, as strong exports offset small bond outflows.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 23:00

• Here's What Data Says About The Myth Of "Racism" In Police Killings
  Here’s What Data Says About The Myth Of “Racism” In Police Killings

  Authored by John Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics.com,

  President Biden claimed that Derek Chauvin’s conviction on Tuesday “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism” of police. With the police shooting that same day of 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, the White House again pushed the racism claim, noting that this was just another example of how “police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people.”

  But where is the evidence for these claims? In Chauvin’s trial, the prosecution never once mentioned evidence that the now-former officer is racist. A day after the verdict, the Biden administration announced plans for a pattern-or-practice investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if there is such racism, but the administration’s comments sure sound as if they have already determined the study’s outcome.

  In the other case, body camera footage released by police revealed that Ma’Khia Bryant was fatally shot as she charged another girl with a knife. The officer shot one black girl in an attempt to save what appears to be another black girl from being stabbed.

  Politicians such as Biden as well as the media have helped create a biased perception that is far from the reality of shootings by police.

  

  In a study, the Crime Prevention Research Center (where I serve as president) found that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mention the officer’s race. When the officer is black, news coverage rarely mentions that detail.

  And there’s evidence that blacks aren’t all that fed up with the police. A July 2017 Quinnipiac University poll in New York City found that blacks strongly support the cops in their neighborhoods — 62% approved compared to just 35% who disapproved. That approval rating was 11 percentage points higher than for the New York City Police Department as a whole. It makes sense that people only know their local cops, and rely on media reports to form impressions about other areas they are less familiar with. A 2020 Monmouth University poll found that 72% of both blacks and whites are satisfied with their local police.

  There is other evidence. If blacks don’t trust the police, they presumably won’t turn to them as frequently as whites when a crime occurs. Yet, blacks report violent crime to police at a higher rate than either whites or Hispanics, even when controlling for income levels. Low- and middle-income blacks are about 11 percentage points more likely to report violent crimes to police.

  Through extensive research, we found 2,699 police shootings across the nation from 2013-2015. That’s far more than the FBI found, since its data is limited to only 1,366 cases voluntarily provided by police departments. The FBI data has other shortcomings, too: It disproportionately includes cases from heavily minority areas, giving a misleading picture of the frequency at which blacks are shot.

  Our database keeps track of characteristics of both the suspect and the officer involved in each shooting, local violent crime rates, demographics of the city and police department, and many other factors that help determine what causes police shootings.

  Officers kill blacks at a higher rate than their share of the population: 25% of the suspects killed were black, 45% white, and 16% Hispanic. As for where the deaths are occurring, black suspects tend to die in heavily black larger cities with populations averaging over 600,000, while whites are killed in smaller cities with an average population of 250,000. 

  White suspects were slightly more likely to be holding a firearm than blacks (63% to 61%). Black and white suspects were both equally likely to be involved in violent crime when they lose their lives at an officer’s hands, though blacks who died were more likely to be involved in drug or property offenses. But police generally have more challenging jobs in cities where blacks are killed. The average city where blacks are killed had a 61% higher violent crime rate and 126% higher murder rate than where the average white was killed.

  After accounting for these and other factors, including averaged cultural differences in police departments, we found that black officers were at least as likely as their white peers to kill black suspects, but that black officers were more likely to kill unarmed blacks than were white officers.

  The data offered some clues for how to reduce these fatal incidents. It can’t explain all instances, such as George Floyd’s case where Floyd resisted arrest by four officers, or possibly the Columbus case where an attack by a knife-wielding suspect was already in process. But, usually, when more police are present at the scene of a confrontation with a suspect, the odds of a fatality decline. There is about a 14% to 18% reduction in the suspect’s chances of being killed for each additional officer present. Officers feel more vulnerable if they are alone at the scene, making them more likely to use deadly force. Also, suspects may be emboldened and resist arrest when fewer officers are present.  

  It is a dangerous fiction that prejudiced white officers are going out and disproportionately killing black men.

  But that doesn’t mean that measures can’t be taken to reduce shootings by police. The most obvious step would be to increase the number of officers responding to a call, to avoid forcing lone, vulnerable officers to make life-or-death decisions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 22:30

• "It's Like Hand To Hand Combat" – Doctors Mull Strategies For Boosting Vaccine Demand Amid Fears 'Herd Immunity' Now Out Of Reach
  “It’s Like Hand To Hand Combat” – Doctors Mull Strategies For Boosting Vaccine Demand Amid Fears ‘Herd Immunity’ Now Out Of Reach

  Now that President Biden has reached his goal of 200M COVID-19 jabs administered across the US, Americans should expect fewer updates about the vaccination effort. Why? Because from here on out, the pace of new vaccinations is expected to slow substantially now that the vaccine rollout has hit a critical inflection point. As former FDA Director (and current Pfizer board member) Dr. Scott Gottlieb predicted a few weeks back, the US will “struggle” to reach herd immunity.

  Since then, mass vaccination centers have been shut down in states across the US. Even in wealthy, deep-blue states like Connecticut, local officials are warning that demand for the new jabs is waning. In many states, unused vaccines are beginning to pile up, leaving thousands of jabs to spoil, while more than 100 countries have yet to receive even a single jab.

  

  In CT, the New Haven Register carried a warning from a top doctor from the Yale University health-care system. Dr. Thomas Balcezak, the chief clinical officer at Yale-New Haven, warned that CT might not reach herd immunity.

  He spoke about the slackening in demand:  “Right around 55 percent of the state vaccinated: half is there and half has not yet been vaccinated.”

  “A slack in that demand tells us the second half of the state isn’t seeking vaccinations with the same ferocity as the first half did. I hope that trend changes,” Balcezak said.

  And that’s a problem, Dr. Balcezak added, because the expectations for herd immunity require between 70% and 80% of the adult population to be vaccinated. And if that level isn’t achieved quickly enough, mutant strains of the virus might be able to get the upper hand, as more vaccinated individuals fall ill despite being – in theory – immune to “severe” effects of the illness.

  Over the weekend, the New York Times published a story warning that the federal government is already considering new tactics to encourage more people to accept the vaccines, including allowing people to receive the jabs directly from their own doctors. Unfortunately, for these new strategies to be implemented country-wide, a new logistical obstacle will need to be overcome: vaccines will need to be shipped in much smaller batches.

  “If you think of this as a war,” said Michael Carney, the senior vice president for emerging issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, “we’re about to enter the hand-to-hand combat phase of the war.”

  However Pfizer, Moderna and J&J – which just received permission to continue doling out the shots despite concerns about rare and deadly blood clots – decide to tackle these problems, it has become clear that the timeline for “herd immunity” sketched out below looks almost impossibly optimistic.

  

  To try and make it easier for adults hoping to get vaccinated, President Biden this week urged employers to allow their workers paid time off, if necessary, to allow them to get vaccinated.

  

  Whether these new targeted methods will make a difference in vaccination rates is unclear. As the NYT pointed out, vaccination rates vary widely at the state level.

  But the distribution is uneven: While New Hampshire has given at least one shot to 59 percent of its citizens (that figure includes children, most of whom are not yet eligible), Mississippi and Alabama are languishing at 30 percent.

  The laggards are trying to adjust. In Louisiana, where 40 percent of the adult population has had one shot even though all adults have been eligible since March, officials are delivering doses to commercial fishermen near the docks and running pop-up clinics at a Buddhist temple, homeless shelters and truck stops. Civic groups are conducting door-to-door visits, akin to a get-out-the-vote effort, in neighborhoods with low vaccination rates.

  Some southern doctors are directly emailing patients to encourage them to get vaccinated.

  In Alabama, Dr. Scott Harris, the state health officer, is trying to reach rural white residents, who are mistrustful of politicians and the news media. Dr. Harris is asking doctors to record cellphone videos, with a plea: “Please email them to your patients, saying, ‘This is why I think you ought to take the vaccine.’”

  According to the NYT, those in charge of the vaccine rollout have started to compare this late-stage of the adult vaccination rollout to the “ground game” seen in the final phase of a hard-fought political campaign.

  White House and state health officials are calling this next phase of the vaccination campaign “the ground game,” and are likening it to a get-out-the-vote effort. The work will be labor intensive – much of it may fall on private employers – but the risk is clear: If it takes too long to reach “herd immunity,” the point at which the spread of the virus slows, worrisome new variants could emerge that evade the vaccine.

  “If you think of this as a war,” said Michael Carney, the senior vice president for emerging issues at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, “we’re about to enter the hand-to-hand combat phase of the war.”

  But the executive director of another national health organization said these efforts might not amount to much. At the end of the day, the people who want the vaccine have had every opportunity to seek it out. What’s left are people who are more skeptical of the vaccine. And the recent issues surrounding rare side effects tied to the J&J jab probably haven’t helped to dissuade them.

  “There are states where they feel they have hit the wall,” said Michael Fraser, the executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “The folks that wanted it have found it. The folks that don’t want it are not bothering to find it.”

  Circling back to the situation in Connecticut, Dr. Balcezak pointed out that rumors about patients who suffered severe COVID-19 symptoms – or even succumbed to the virus – despite being fully vaccinated have also hurt the prospects for the rollout: there have been about a dozen cases across Connecticut where people who were fully vaccinated who nevertheless were hospitalized for COVID-19. Balcezak said one of those people later died, although the patient had “underlying respiratory illnesses.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 22:00

• GOP Lawmaker Urges FBI To Reassess Decision Concluding 2017 Baseball Shooting Was "Suicide By Cop"
  GOP Lawmaker Urges FBI To Reassess Decision Concluding 2017 Baseball Shooting Was “Suicide By Cop”

  Authored by Samuel Allegri via The Epoch Times,

  Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) is asking the FBI to reassess their decision to classify the June 14, 2017 baseball field shooting outside of Washington as “suicide by cop” rather than a domestic terrorism case.

  

  Wenstrup was present when the Republican legislators were targeted by left-wing extremist James Hodgkinson, who fired over 100 rounds at them and other staff, severely injuring House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was hit on the hip and recovered after many surgeries.

  The letter, (pdf) which protests and asks for a reassessment, was addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray last week and made available to reporters on Wednesday.

  The shooter is known to have posted angry messages about then-president Donald Trump and other Republicans. He was wounded during gunfire exchange with Capitol Police and later died at the scene.

  “According to FBI Special Agents, the attacker’s motivation was ‘suicide by cop,’” Wenstrup wrote.

  “This conclusion defies logic and contradicts the publicly known facts about the perpetrator and the attack. The shooter had an extensive social media record highlighting his hatred of President Trump and Republicans. He had a list of names—including Republican Members of Congress—in his possession. Before carrying out his attack, he asked if the Members at the baseball field were Republicans or Democrats,” Wenstrup wrote.

  “He was heavily armed, sought cover during the shooting, well over 100 rounds were fired, and the attacker could not have known that then-Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s security detail was present given that they were in an undercover vehicle and in plain clothes. All these facts are inconsistent with a designation of ‘suicide by cop.’”

  He then expresses his frustration, saying that the FBI didn’t conduct thorough interviews at the outset of the investigation, claiming that neither he nor his colleagues were interviewed as witnesses.

  “As a member who was present during the attack and the November 2017 briefing, and as a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I request that the FBI Counterterrorism Division promptly review the investigative findings, interview all relevant witnesses, and update, as appropriate, the investigative conclusions—including an internal investigation of how the FBI reached its ‘suicide by cop’ conclusion,” Wenstrup wrote in conclusion.

  Wenstrup pointed out that the  Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recognized the incident as an act of domestic violent extremism, where the shooter was politically motivated and deliberately targeted GOP members.

  The appeal to reassess also drew support from Democrats.

  “I actually would like to associate my—your comments with my interest in wanting to pursue that as well, Dr. Wenstrup,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), said, according to Politico.

  “I’d like to second Dr. Wenstrup’s questions on the near massacre of our colleagues in 2017,” Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said. “So I, like my colleague, Jackie Speier, have a particular interest in that.”

  

  House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) uses crutches after returning to Capitol Hill for the first time after being shot in June at a congressional baseball team practice in Alexandria, Va., in Washington on Sept. 28, 2017. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

  Scalise asserted strongly that the incident was evaluated wrongly by the FBI.

  “I was shot by a deranged Leftist who came to the baseball field with a list of Congressional Republicans to kill,” he wrote on Twitter.

  “This was NOT ‘suicide by cop.’ End of story.”

  I was shot by a deranged Leftist who came to the baseball field with a list of Congressional Republicans to kill.

  This was NOT “suicide by cop.”

  End of story. https://t.co/cSGYZeQO3I

  — Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) April 21, 2021

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

  The Epoch Times reached out to the FBI for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 21:30

• The Catalyst For The Next Leg Higher: Buyback Blackout Period Just Ended
  The Catalyst For The Next Leg Higher: Buyback Blackout Period Just Ended

  Now that even Wall Street’s perennial permabull, JPMorgan, has joined most other major banks including Goldman, Deutsche and Morgan Stanley in warning that the coming weeks and months could be treacherous for stocks (DB went so far as predicting a 10%+ correction in the next three months), and saying on Friday that “easy equity gains for the broad market are likely behind us” and as a result its “bullish conviction is now lower”, a caution which spooked retail and hedge fund investors alike, with Goldman Prime reported on Friday that its book “saw the largest net selling in 5 weeks (-2.1 SDs), driven by short sales and long sales (4 to 1) and equally by Single Names and Macro Products.”

  Yet despite the selling stocks have continued to confound everyone, thanks to what we said would be yet another short squeeze, and rose back to all time highs amid mounting bearish sentiment.

  And just to add to the confusion, a new catalyst has emerged which is almost assured to push the S&P decisively into record territory.

  According to Goldman’s John Flood, the Buyback blackout period ended on Friday, with the strategist noting what we previously discussed, namely that buyback authorizations “are already up meaningfully vs prior year YTD values.” To wit, “2021 YTD authorizations are +75% vs 2020 YTD auths, +24% vs 2019 auths, and +26% vs 2018 auths (reminder, 2018 was a record buyback year).”

  Of course, we already knew this as we reported last month that “Stock Buybacks Soar To All Time High”…

  

  … a reminder of just how short collective memory is, as barely a year ago, the media, Congress and the broader public all rightfully slammed US corporations for having spent the bulk of their cash in the past decade on stock buybacks, and not on building a rainy day fund… which is why everyone demanded a government bailout in the immediate aftermath of the covid crisis.

  

  And since nothing ever changes on Wall Street, expect another burst in buybacks in the coming weeks – much of it funded by the trillions in new corporate debt issued over the past year – not only propping up risk but pushing it to a new all time high.

  How high? Here are the details in terms of Goldman desk flows: “we are currently running 1.6x vs 2020 FY ADTV, 1.0x vs 2019 FY ADTV, and 0.9x vs 2018 FY ADTV and we expect this to continue to pick up as we move into open window starting next week. So in other words, 2021 has more authorizations than 2018 (record buyback year), but is only pacing .9x the ADTV (actual purchases) of 2018 so far. That could suggest more purchases to come, or corporates saving their ammo.“

  What could they be saving their ammo for? Why the next 5-10% pullback of course, at which point they will instruct their banks – such as Goldman – to lift every offer, quickly recovering all losses and pushing the  market to its next all time high.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 21:00

• No, Dogecoin Does Not Compete With Bitcoin
  No, Dogecoin Does Not Compete With Bitcoin

  Authored by Peter St.Onge via CryptoEconomy substack,

  Elon Musk’s dogecoin tweets have given the coin a nice run, sending its price from fractions of a penny – where it traded for roughly 8 years – to 40 cents on April 20th before falling back. It was enough to yank bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff from watching his gold portfolio do nothing – also for roughly 8 years – to crow that “dogecoin is eating bitcoin” and begging dogecoiners to put laser beams on their nose.

  

  So what’s the story, is dogecoin set to overtake bitcoin and then USD to become the world’s reserve currency?

  Very wow, but no.

  The short answer is because dogecoin and bitcoin serve fundamentally different purposes: at best, dogecoin is one of many medium of exchange (MOE) coins, while bitcoin stands alone as a stable and secure store of value (SOV) where people park their life savings. In other words, dogecoin doesn’t compete with bitcoin any more than your dinner plates compete with your refrigerator, pantry, or freezer.

  Let’s first get out of the way that dogecoin was started as a joke. Critics use this to variously criticize dogecoin itself or to criticize bitcoin as joke-by-contagion. Alas, the universe does not care why you invented something. Gunpowder was invented for fireworks, not war, and coca cola was invented to get high, not for kids to enjoy with a Happy Meal. Twitter was invented as a podcasting platform, Facebook as a knock-off Hot or Not, and Wikipedia as the most authoritative source of human knowledge. The universe does not care why you invented something, users decide.

  So, with that, what is dogecoin? Like bitcoin, it’s a POW (“proof of work”) coin where transaction processors vote on the rules of the game including how new coins are produced. There are 129 billion dogecoins in existence, with 5 billion new coins issued per year, for 3.9% annual supply inflation. The 5 billion is constant, meaning dogecoin’s inflation rate gets lower and lower as new coins add to a larger base—in 4 years, it falls to 3.3%. 

  For comparison, there are 18.6 million bitcoins in existence, growing at 330,000 per year, for annual supply inflation of 1.7% per year. Bitcoin’s supply inflation also declines, halving every four years, so in 2024 supply inflation falls under 1% per year when it will be lower than gold’s supply inflation of about 1.5% per year.

  Next up, speed and fees. While bitcoin creates a new block of transaction records every 10 minutes, dogecoin creates one every 1 minute. However, given dogecoin’s smaller ecosystem (market capitalization, miners) you’d want to wait for multiple block confirmations to be sure. The crypto exchange Kraken, for example, requires 40 dogecoin blocks—40 minutes—before considering a deposit valid, the same time they require for bitcoin. So it’s a functional tie on speed.

  Next, fees. Dogecoin has been very cheap until recently; a year ago it cost a fifth of a penny to send a transaction. It does have slightly more capacity than bitcoin, but the main reason was almost nobody was using dogecoin, so it was like buying space on an empty cargo ship. Alas, now that Elon’s tweets have lifted dogecoin from the muck, those fees are rising, today at $1.09. More on this later, since it goes to dogecoin’s long term prospects as an MOE.

  So far, a Peter Schiff might say “sure, it all sounds like a bitcoin clone.” And that brings us to the important question: how people use it. We can read this directly off valuation as a ratio of usage. This tells us, fundamentally, if people are using dogecoin to store savings like they do in bitcoin, or if they’re simply using dogecoin for transactions. 

  On that count, dogecoin today is going for 35c, making those 129 billion coins worth $45 billion. While bitcoin’s 18.6 million coins are currently worth $1 trillion. Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap says 66 billion dogecoins are currently traded daily, worth about $23 billion, and 1 million bitcoins are traded daily, worth about $55 billion. Divide the two and you get a market value of bitcoin at 20x daily volume, but just 2x for dogecoin. This is telling us, loud and clear, that dogecoin is not a store of value. It may not even be a very good medium of exchange, since pure MOE coins like monero or dash trade around 4x daily volume.

  Why does the market think dogecoin’s a lousy place to park your life savings? We can speculate that, given it was essentially abandoned for 8 years and is populated by charming but low-commitment users, it cannot begin to compete with bitcoin’s social layer, network effects, brand trust and loyalty, holder dedication and stability, and even bitcoin’s enormous energy use that increases security by increasing the cost of an attack. This last point is important considering that sovereign attack has been the final battle that has killed every previous private money in history.

  So, if dogecoin isn’t seen as an SOV for solid reasons, it means it doesn’t even compete with bitcoin. Any more than your dinner plates compete with your fridge. Both are inputs to eating food, yes, but they involve different stages with negligible overlap. For example, if you buy a nicer set of plates you don’t empty out the fridge, and if you buy a bigger fridge or move it where you can reach it easier, you don’t feel the need to go buy smaller plates. And, germane to market capitalization, the vast majority of the food you own is in your fridge or even freezer (“cold storage”), not sitting on a plate at any given moment. Just as the vast majority of people’s life savings are in a bank, house, or stocks, not sitting in their pants pocket to be whipped out at 7/11.

  It’ll have to be a separate article, but the wider lesson here – beyond dashing Peter Schiff’s dreams of a Dogecoin Standard – is that bitcoin skeptics are way off when they complain about bitcoin fees or 10 minute blocks. Bitcoin doesn’t pretend to be a medium of exchange, and it hasn’t for years. Users hold it to be a store of value, and it turns out it’s a damn fine one. Nothing else comes close, and certainly not dogecoin.

  So if dogecoin doesn’t compete with bitcoin, who does it compete with? Simple: MOE coins and exchanges. Considering these solutions work in seconds and have fees even lower than dogecoin’s pre-Elon days, it’s not clear why one would bother. In which case dogecoin would be, not even an MOE, but that streetwalker among cryptocurrencies: a speculative coin. One whose life’s purpose is, in practice, speculating on Elon Musk joke tweets and then, like a cicada, going dormant for 8 years. 

  Can dogecoin still go up? Sure, speculative assets are the Rule 34 of the financial world – they can do anything. But the fundamentals aren’t there to sustain durable demand for dogecoin, certainly not as a store of value and, I think, not even as a medium of exchange.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 20:30

• NYC Unleashing Army Of 10,000 'Cleanup Corps' As Trash, Rodent Complaints Soar
  NYC Unleashing Army Of 10,000 ‘Cleanup Corps’ As Trash, Rodent Complaints Soar

  New York City is in the process of hiring and deploying 10,00 workers for a newly created “City Cleanup Corps” after complaints over filthy conditions surged 150% between March and August 2020, and rodent complaints spiked as well according to Bloomberg, citing data from the city’s 311 service request line.

  

  The push to restore some of the city’s pandemic related cuts to the sanitation budget comes as Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $30 million tourism push this week. With de Blasio departing City Hall later this year due to term limits, the cleanup job will have to be completed by his successor.

  Among the more than a dozen candidates in the June 22 Democratic primary, perhaps no one has a more detailed plan to address the trash problem and beautify streets than former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia. She’s pledged to increase funding to public spaces, parks and gardens, restart recycling programs and send zero waste to landfills by 2030. “When we see dirty streets, people intuitively think either government isn’t doing its job or things are really bad,” Garcia said in an interview with Bloomberg News editors and reporters. “When you cut the sanitation budget by more than $100 million, you have to understand the implications of that.”

  Sanitation intersects with climate, public health, safety, transportation and the city’s economic recovery. Cleaning the streets will reinvigorate the culture and tourism that keeps money flowing into New York, said Margaret Chin, a City Council representative for Lower Manhattan and a member of its sanitation committee. -Bloomberg

  According to the report, trash levels are now higher than last year’s peaks as people return to the city, while online deliveries have generated massive amounts of waste. By the end of March, waste tonnage had risen approximately 15% vs. the first few months of the pandemic, city data reveal.

  “People may not think that’s a priority, but it’s very important for businesses, tourists, community residents to have their neighborhoods clean,” said Chin, adding “It just makes people feel better when you walk down the street and it’s not full of garbage.”

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 20:00

• "Ethereum About To Make An Epic Breakout Over Bitcoin"
  “Ethereum About To Make An Epic Breakout Over Bitcoin”

  From Larry McDonald, author of the Bear Traps report

  This week’s 20 year note auction was well received with dealers taking less than the last time. That suggests there was good end investor demand, for now. Since the reopening of 20-year issuance, it has been up and down. It is always a relief to get through an auction. But macro hedge clients we RESPECT point to the “undeniable” bid to cover (PROBLEM) trend across the breadth of 2021-2022 US Treasury bond auctions. Above all, the path ahead is in a clear and present DOWN trend (poor bid to cover trend path).

  

  ACG in Washington reminds us, this is on Janet Yellen’s mind every morning at breakfast. This week in Miami, conversations at the Four Season Brickell with institutional investors, we are consistently reminded of the US Treasuries Refunding schedule juices HIGHER in the month of May again. As the bid to cover decay marches forward in 2021, bond sales overpower global bond buyers – the Fed MUST step in as the buyer of last resort. Biden – Yellen – Reconciliation will literally force the Fed into action later this year. We have a social justice Fed and US Treasury (far more U-6 unemployment focus, near 11%) now with an enhanced power of reconciliation in their back pocket, a game-changer for metals.

  

  We think a growing forward trend is a combination of pressure on crypto-currencies, particularly Bitcoin (more and more clients point out – Ethereum has software applications that work and becoming more popular so isn’t just a one-trick pony like Bitcoin) with some of that flowing into precious metals, particularly silver.

  Why? If in fact there has been a crypto-currency substitution for precious metals to some non-quantifiable and therefore non-verifiable extent, then that certainly allows for reverse substitution on a crypto drawdown on a similar scale. There have been three 70% crashes in crypto in recent years. As Aristotle said in his Metaphysics, “If it happened before, it can happen again.” So surely if something has happened three times, it can happen a fourth time.

  If crypto represents a flight from fiat currency, then a move out of crypto should lead into the ultimate non-fiat currency: gold (and gold’s playmate, silver). Remember – Gold and silver are not substitutes for fiat currencies. Fiat currencies are substitutes for gold and silver. As readers know, we like precious metals and we like copper (see our bull case here. Palladium made a new high the other day. Between deficit spending, upcoming yield curve control, opening up of the economy, and the US infrastructure spend, inflation havens should work, to gold and silver’s benefit. Furthermore, because of electric vehicle and solar panel production growth, silver has additional demand drivers that should push it to new recovery highs. So, now we see an additional reason to play long precious metals: a potential kick in the pants for Bitcoin.

  Ethereum > Bitcoin:

  “Larry, pay attention – ETH/BTC about to make an epic breakout. I think Ethereum is the world’s most interesting trade right now. That NFT company we told u about, Yat; going to do 20-25mm in very high margin revenue this quarter (1st revenue quarter). The alpha male trade now is ETH over BTC.”

  From the live Bloomberg chat, Billionaire VC client in the valley keeps making this point, 8 weeks now.

  

  And once the recent high is taken out, there is much more room to go…

  

  In fact, should ETHBTC hit its historical high, Ethereum would be above $5,000.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 19:30

• QQQ ETF Sees Biggest Outflows Since Bursting Of Dot Com Bubble
  QQQ ETF Sees Biggest Outflows Since Bursting Of Dot Com Bubble

  The recent surge in hedge fund selling (as discussed last week in “Goldman Prime: Hedge Funds Sell Stocks 7 Of The Last 8 Days; Short Squeeze Coming“) appears to be accelerating, reinvigorated by last week’s dismal Netflix earnings and guidance, and as Bloomberg first pointed out has spilled over to the broader tech sector resulting in a broad liquidation before the sector’s heavyweights report this week.

  The $161 billion QQQ ETF – a Nasdaq proxy darling of retail and institutional investors alike – has bled nearly $6 billion over the past five days in its worst stretch since the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It helped drag QQQ to its first weekly drop in over a month.

  

  To be fair, with the exception of the ugly NFLX results, earnings season has hardly been disappointing for tech, with the few tech companies that have already reported surprising on earnings by 18% on average. And yet, as we warned, their stock prices have barely moved higher in the following 24 hours, as they were already priced to absolute perfection following the recent surge. It’s also why the pressure is on the rest of the FAAMG megacaps to deliver, including Amazon.com, Apple and Microsoft, which are all scheduled to report earnings next week.

  “With earning season starting to heat up, especially for the tech sector next week, it is likely that the expectations for technology companies may be too high,” said James Pillow, managing director at Moors & Cabot, echoing precisely what we said two weeks ago. “It’s early still, but just look where the earnings surprises are coming from: materials, energy, and financials, all about 80% or higher. Money will follow performance — and the performance is coming from those sectors.”

  ETF flows have already been reflect the shift, with financials-tracking ETFs attracting $15.7 billion in inflows so far in 2021, while energy and materials funds have absorbed $14.4 billion and $4.9 billion, respectively according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, tech ETFs have posted inflows of just $3.9 billion year-to-date, after QQQ alone took in $16.7 billion in 2020 – the most since 2000. Much of that inflow is now reversing as investors are looking for the next catalyst to push tech stocks higher… or failing that, the next greater fool.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 19:05

• Fed-Induced Inflation Has Resulted In Collapsed US Births… Twice
  Fed-Induced Inflation Has Resulted In Collapsed US Births… Twice

  Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

  Total US births are collapsing and likely to continue falling significantly further over the coming decade(s). However, this isn’t our first rodeo…as total births collapsed during the 1960’s ’til early ’80’s…almost inexplicably against a fast growing childbearing population. And now, since 2007 (and not just a C-virus one off), total births have again collapsed against a growing childbearing population. I will make the case that much of this comes back to the Federal Reserve’s policies to foment stagflation/inflation which have created the birth dearth(s). Young adults (potential parents), like the canary in the coalmine, are among the most economically vulnerable to the Fed fueled asset inflation (with lagging pay increases and little to no assets to offset the rising costs of living). Their determination to delay marriage and children is the ultimate barometer of the US economic wellbeing.

  The chart below (1950 through 2040) shows annual US births (blue columns…regardless parents legal/illegal status plus Census ’00/’08 birth projections through 2040), actual births (blue dashed line…including my projection from 2020 through 2040), 20 to 35 year old female childbearing population (pink line…representing roughly 80% of births among 15 to 45 year old total female childbearing population), and soaring 45+ year old post-childbearing female population (yellow line).

  Looking at the US childbearing female population, there is no growth anticipated through 2040, while fertility rates continue tanking due to a slew of economic / pandemic / environmental / overpopulation concerns. The Census continued projections for rising fertility rates and total births is poorly founded.

  

  Viewing the year-over-year change in 20 to 35 year-old childbearing females (pink columns), annual births (dashed blue line), and Federal Reserve set Fed Funds rate % (black line). We are looking at two periods of collapsed births in the US since 1950…both in conjunction with significantly increasing female childbearing populations (which of and by itself, should have resulted in flat to rising births). Instead, upon the initiation and continuation of major stagflationary/inflationary interest rate policy changes, fertility rates and total births fell precipitously.

  

  Below, take a gander at US fertility rate (children per females) vs. Federal Funds Rate %. While other segments of the population fared far better thanks to offsetting asset inflation, young adults were not so lucky and chose to delay/refrain from marriage, family formation, and having children.

  

  The age of first marriage for both males and females has soared by almost a decade (chart below), while the 30 year’ish window of fertility has not really changed. Females of most species can give birth during 80%+/- of their lifespans. Our species is capable of childbearing during only about 40% of the lifespan (females typically reach menopause by age 50). At age 30, 75% will be pregnant within one year of attempting to do so. By age 40, the odds drop to 40%. Also, risks of adverse outcomes for the child/mother rise dramatically as the mothers age increases. At age 20, 1 in 1,441 births will result in Down Syndrome…by age 45, 1 in 32. Simply put, women are more fertile and births are less challenging on mother and child while women are in their prime childbearing years from 20 to 30…but the current economic system simply doesn’t support this option.

  

  Due to economic / financial pressure, dual-income households have become the norm. The percentage of childbearing age females in the labor force now is nearly double the post WWII situation. Since 2000, females have fluctuated between 65% to 70% labor force participation…well above the 40% seen in 1960 (white line below is raw female 15 to 54 year old employed / population ratio).

  

  In order to achieve financial strength / independence, the number of women getting secondary educations has soared. As of 2019, a greater percentage of females (36.6%) have four-year or greater college degrees than males (35.4%)…compare that to the pre-war situation of 1940, with 3.8% & 5.5%, respectively. Obviously, the 4+ years of education plus the associated soaring student loan debt has pushed marriage, homeownership, and children to the latest on record.

  The average age that a female first marries has soared from 20 in the 1950’s to somewhere beyond 28 years old in 2021. Consider…

  • The average age of a mother at first childbirth is now over 26 years old

  • The average age of a married mother at first childbirth is now over 29 years old…versus unmarried mothers closer to 24.

  • Women with a college education (heavily impacting financial capability of supporting a family) are now approaching 31 years of age before first childbirth versus 24 w/out a college degree.

  It’s also important to note that the decline in births is not due to abortion. Total abortions and abortions to live-birth ratio continue to decline from the 1980’s, early 90’s peak. Total abortions are down 50% since peak, and abortion to live-birth ratio is at record low levels since Roe v. Wade in 1973. Still, as of 2018, abortion to live-birth ratio was 189 abortions per 1000 live births…still significant (& massively contentious), but my point is it is a decelerating impact on total births.

  Below are the Census projections for births, going back to ’00, ’08, ’12, ’14, and 2017. As can be seen, births continue to massively undershoot the Census projections. Much of the miss can be attributed to bad assumptions regarding Latino immigration rates and fertility rates…which have both been far lower than projected by the Census. The Latino population has normalized to the much lower fertility rates and economic situation than the Census could conceive.

  

  From 2009 through 2020, there were 6.6 million fewer births (-12.5%) in the US (regardless legal/illegal status of the parents) than the Census projected there would be, in both it’s 2000 and 2008 projections. Given the flat childbearing female population, soaring average age at first marriage, and collapsing fertility rates, I’m projecting nearly 15 million fewer births (-30%) over the next decade than the ’00/’08 Census projections.

  So What? Ultimately, the most inflationary thing in an economy is population growth and family formation. But the Fed’s policies, although advocating inflation via substituting currency dilution, interest rate mismanagement, quantitative easing, etc., is actually the basis of long term deflation. The merits of a financial system requiring infinite growth against an economic system meant to supply the finite needs of a population (with little to no population growth) should have been debated long ago. Now the economic system is being poked and prodded with stimulus, ZIRP, QE, untold leverage, etc. to synthetically produce growth for a financial system that can be called nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. The faster the substitution of these synthetic proxies (and their asset inflation impacts), the faster the decline in births will be. All of the trends in place to push births lower are accelerating. Whether this is intentional or de facto, I can’t say…but the outcome of collapsing US (and worldwide) births is clear.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 18:40

• Musk On Mars: "A Bunch Of People Will Probably Die, But It's A Glorious Adventure"
  Musk On Mars: “A Bunch Of People Will Probably Die, But It’s A Glorious Adventure”

  “A bunch of people will probably die in the beginning,” is how Elon Musk characterized his plans of colonizing Mars last week.

  Musk made the comments while speaking with Dr. Peter Diamandis on Thursday in Cape Canaveral, Florida for an event to announce a $100 million carbon removal project “aimed at helping to keep the Earth habitable while humanity seeks to become an interplanetary species,” RT reported. 

  The conversation on the live stream quickly turned to Musk’s “plans” to colonize the red planet.

  

  Musk, apparently already dubbing himself reining emperor of the red planet, said that Mars wouldn’t just be an “escape hatch for rich people.”

  “It’s going to be uncomfortable and you probably won’t have good food, and all these things, you know,” he said. He noted that colonizing Mars would be “dangerous… uncomfortable…  a long journey, you might not come back alive, but it’s a glorious adventure and it’ll be an amazing experience.”

  He added: “If an arduous and dangerous journey where you might not come back alive, but it’s a glorious adventure, sounds appealing, Mars is the place. That’s the ad for Mars.”

  If we make life multiplanetary, there may come a day when some plants & animals die out on Earth, but are still alive on Mars

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2021

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

  Despite this, Musk didn’t think he would have any trouble finding volunteers. “Honestly, a bunch of people probably will die in the beginning. It’s tough sledging over there, you know. We don’t make anyone go,” he added about a colonization project that doesn’t really even exist. “It’s volunteers only.”

  “If we make life multiplanetary, there may come a day when some plants and animals die out on Earth, but are still alive on Mars,” Musk wrote on Twitter last week. 

  We wonder if it’s more “arduous and dangerous” than being a Tesla owner…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 18:15

• Morgan Stanley Is Planning Ahead For A "Harder Summer"
  Morgan Stanley Is Planning Ahead For A “Harder Summer”

  By Andrew Sheets, chief cross-asset strategist at Morgan Stanley

  The weather in London has been unseasonably good and, together with the easing of some local restrictions, this opens the door to that most elusive of feelings: normality. Our economists forecast a strong rebound in UK GDP for 2Q, and when navigating the crowds that have now appeared, this feels about right.

  The catch, however, is that more normality also portends a more difficult summer for the markets. Some of the problem is fundamental, some psychological, and some a function of what’s now in the price.

  Let’s start with the three fundamental challenges.

  • First, our global economics team has consistently argued that this will be a strong, ‘V-shaped’ recovery, a view that underpinned our strategy preference for early-cycle winners. But following the arrival of better data, not to mention the US$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, better growth is now more widely expected. Meanwhile, the rate of change for that growth will soon peak, given that we’re passing the one-year anniversary of the largest global economic drawdown on record.
  • The second fundamental challenge lies in inflation. Our economists forecast US core PCE to hit ~2.5%Y next month, and stay at 2.0%Y or higher for the rest of the year. If that’s correct, inflation will switch from being a far-off concept to something appearing regularly in the monthly data. While we don’t think we’re on the verge of runaway prices, markets are forward-looking, and cyclical, early-cycle winners historically underperform when inflation moves back above trend. My colleague Mike Wilson has been vocal about starting this shift out of early-cycle cyclicality, and increasing quality in the portfolio.
  • Then there is the virus. My colleague Matthew Harrison thinks that vaccinations will allow the US to achieve herd immunity by summer, maybe as early as June. While this is clearly a public health milestone to be celebrated, the implications for markets could be more complicated.

  

  Low inflation and a terrible pandemic gave the Federal Reserve two powerful arguments to keep accommodation flowing even as financial conditions improved. Can the Fed sustain this accommodation if the US hits herd immunity and realized inflation is above 2.0%Y this summer? Certainly, and this remains our expectation. But is that a trickier message for the Fed to manage? It sure seems that way.

  There are also some softer, market psychology risks that may be relevant.

  Seasonality is good in April but gets worse in May through September, offering a convenient excuse to reduce exposure. Then there’s the unprecedented build-up of unused time off and desire to take advantage of it. This is not a cry for sympathy; our industry is well compensated and has been able to work remotely more easily than many others. But with only slight exaggeration, one of the bigger risk-management challenges this summer might be keeping desks properly staffed.

  The real crux of the issue, however, is what’s in the price. The year-to-date rally has increasingly eliminated upside to our targets.

  Across four major global equity markets (the US, Europe, Japan and emerging markets), only Japan is currently below our end-2021 strategy forecast. In bond markets, US 10-year rates are near the year-end expectations of my colleague Guneet Dhingra, who also thinks that US inflation breakevens now price in the rise of inflation our economists forecast. Oil and credit spreads are also near our year-end targets, and mortgage valuations have compressed so much that, as my colleague Jay Bacow notes, shorting MBS against US 5-year Treasuries is a positive carry, positively convex trade.

  We’ll be sitting down soon for our semi-annual outlook process, so it’s possible that these longer-term forecasts will change. But based on our current expectations, there just isn’t much milk left in the carton.

  There are a few exceptions. EM local bonds have been big underperformers this year, and James Lord and our emerging market strategy team are out with a recommendation to buy them (FX-hedged). Their underperformance relative to other assets, our expectation for more stability in US yields and a historically low cost of removing currency risk all make a compelling case.

  Like EM local bonds, CLOs are a less liquid corner of the market that has lagged the rally, and thus still offer value. With confidence in the global recovery, my colleagues Charlie Wu and Vasundhara Goel like taking default risk in US CLOs at current prices, and see good returns in junior parts of the capital structure in EU CLOs, respectively.

  Growth is still improving and liquidity is still abundant. The bull market remains intact, and I struggle to see the type of calamity that defined the summers of 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015. But a harder, choppier, more range-bound summer does seem likely. Increase quality within equity portfolios, trim CCCs and long-dated corporates, sell MBS against Treasuries, and buy a few EM local bonds.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 17:50

• Home Prices Soar 18% To An All Time High; A Record 58% Of Houses Sell Within Two Weeks Of Listing
  Home Prices Soar 18% To An All Time High; A Record 58% Of Houses Sell Within Two Weeks Of Listing

  As if the official government data on soaring home prices wasn’t crazy enough, the latest monthly data from RedFin shows that in April, homes sold at their fastest pace on record with nearly half off-market within one week.

  “There has been an ongoing debate at Redfin about whether fear of coronavirus infection was keeping homeowners from selling. With a third of American adults now fully vaccinated and still hardly any homes being listed for sale, we’re close to settling that debate,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather.

  (A quick note on the base effect in the housing market: at this time last year, pandemic stay-at-home orders halted homebuying and selling, which makes year-over-year comparisons unreliable for select housing metrics. As such, this report has been broken into two sections: metrics that are OK to compare to the same period in 2020, and metrics for which it makes more sense to compare to the same period in 2019.)

  Metrics to compare to 2020:

  • The median home-sale price increased 18% year over year to $344,625, an all-time high. Asking prices reached an all-time high of $356,175.

  

  • Homes that sold during the period were on the market for a median of 21 days, the shortest time on market since 2012. This was 16 days fewer than the same period in 2020.
  • 45% of homes sold for more than their list price, an all-time high. This was 18 percentage points higher than the same period a year earlier.

  

  • The average sale-to-list price ratio, which measures how close homes are selling to their asking prices, increased 2.3 percentage points year over year to an all-time high of 101.0%, meaning the average home sold for 1% more than its asking price.

  

  • 58% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within the first two weeks on the market. This was a new all-time high (Redfin’s data for this measure goes back to 2012).

  

  • 46% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within one week of hitting the market, an all-time high.

  

  • Meanwhile, with supply at record lows, demand remains near record highs thanks to fiscal stimulus, an exodus from rental units and near-record low mortgage rates.

  

  Metrics to compare to 2019:

  • Pending home sales were up 23% from the same period in 2019.

  

  • New listings of homes for sale were down 10% from the same period in 2019.

  

  • Active listings (the number of homes listed for sale at any point during the period) fell 47% from the same period in 2019 to a new all-time low.

  

  Fairweather’s conclusion: “Homeowners are staying put because if they move and buy another home they will face a very competitive housing market as buyers, and they don’t need to sell to take advantage of record low mortgage rates. They can just refinance their current home. On top of that, builders are struggling to construct new homes given an ongoing lumber shortage. Without more homeowners listing, buyers are scrambling to compete for the limited number of homes on the market, which continues to drive prices up to new heights.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 17:25

• MIT Study Suggests Six Foot Social Distancing, Limited Occupancy Rules Are Completely Pointless
  MIT Study Suggests Six Foot Social Distancing, Limited Occupancy Rules Are Completely Pointless

  Authored by Tom Pappert via NationalFile.com,

  A new study conducted by MIT scientists and released this week reveals that the six foot social distancing and limited occupancy guidelines made law in most of the civilized world have done little to slow the spread of COVID-19, and suggests the only way to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is to limit exposure to highly populated areas and areas where people are physically exerting themselves, such as gyms, or areas where people are singing or speaking, such as churches.

  

  The study reveals that the social distancing guidelines employed throughout much of the world for over a year have done nothing to limit the spread of COVID-19, suggesting that the adaption of the guidelines did not stop the spread of the of the China-originated virus, and it can only be slowed with the employment of severe lockdowns. Paradoxically, states and cities that have engaged in severe lockdowns have seen the largest spikes of COVID-19.

  “We argue there really isn’t much of a benefit to the 6-foot rule, especially when people are wearing masks,” MIT professor Martin Z. Bazant said, as reported by NBC.

  “It really has no physical basis because the air a person is breathing while wearing a mask tends to rise and comes down elsewhere in the room so you’re more exposed to the average background than you are to a person at a distance.”

  In other words, widespread mask wearing may simply change the physical vectors of transmission within a given room rather than stop it, effectively making six foot distancing rules pointless.

  In their study, Bazant and the other researchers declare, “Adherence to the Six-Foot Rule would limit large-drop transmission, and adherence to our guideline, [of limiting time spent in densely populated areas], would limit long-range airborne transmission.”

  In the guideline, the researchers write, “To minimize risk of infection, one should avoid spending extended periods in highly populated areas. One is safer in rooms with large volume and high ventilation rates. One is at greater risk in rooms where people are exerting themselves in such a way as to increase their respiration rate and pathogen output, for example, by exercising, singing, or shouting.”

  

  Bazant also told the media, “What our analysis continues to show is that many spaces that have been shut down in fact don’t need to be. Often times the space is large enough, the ventilation is good enough, the amount of time people spend together is such that those spaces can be safely operated even at full capacity and the scientific support for reduced capacity in those spaces is really not very good.” He added, “I think if you run the numbers, even right now for many types of spaces you’d find that there is not a need for occupancy restrictions.”

  This comes on the heels of a study that suggests the Pfizer vaccine could cause severe neurodegenerative diseases caused by brain prions created by the mRNA-style vaccine. National File reported, “‘The current RNA based SARSCoV-2 vaccines were approved in the US using an emergency order without extensive long term safety testing,’ the report declares. ‘In this paper the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was evaluated for the potential to induce prion-based disease in vaccine recipients.’ Prion-based diseases are, according to the CDC, a form of neurodegenerative diseases, meaning that the Pfizer vaccine is potentially likely to cause long term damage and negative health effects with regards to the brain.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 17:00

• Fund Manager Arrested, Charged With Fraud, After Using Client Funds For His "Race Car Hobby"
  Fund Manager Arrested, Charged With Fraud, After Using Client Funds For His “Race Car Hobby”

  Stop us if you’ve head this one before: a hedge fund manager was arrested and charged with fraud for spending client funds to keep up with his own personal habits and live a lavish lifestyle.

  Are you stunned? Haven’t heard anything like this in…months? Days? Need the dirty details of yet another story about fraud on Wall Street? Well, here they are.

  44 year old Andrew Franzone was charged last week with defrauding investors of almost $40 million, some of which he diverted to buy an aircraft hangar for his private race car collection. He was arrested in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, according to a U.S. Department of Justice release. 

  The release says he touted his fund as a “multi-strategy investment program … focus[ed] on three unique asset classes: the preferred stock market, the option market, and the private investment portfolio” and that he “assured investors that FF Fund was focused on trading in the preferred securities and options markets, which afforded its investors access to quarterly liquidity, and that FF Fund had a track record of consistent positive trading returns since its inception in August 2010.”

  

  The DOJ alleges his representations about the fund’s liquidity and strategy were “largely fabricated”:

  Instead of engaging primarily in preferred securities and options trading that ensured the FF Fund’s liquidity, FRANZONE instead diverted more than 80% of FF Fund’s capital to high-risk, illiquid private investments, many of which were either worthless or significantly impaired. FRANZONE also misappropriated FF Fund’s assets to fund his own personal business interests, including the purchase of an airplane hangar, and lied to investors about FF Fund’s performance and assets under management.

  Through these and other fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions, FRANZONE induced over 100 investors to invest more than $40 million in FF Fund.  Despite showing investors positive trading returns as late as 2019, FF Fund was unable to fulfill redemption requests in early 2019 and is currently in the process of being liquidated.

  Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said:  “Andrew Franzone allegedly promised his clients access to his successful liquid trading strategy and consistent, positive trading returns.  As alleged, those promises were lies.  Franzone lied about his fund’s investments and performance, and he lied in promising clients that they had could readily access their invested capital.  While his investors lost money, Franzone enriched himself.  We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to protect investors from these types of deceptive practices.”

  USPIS Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett said:  “Mr. Franzone allegedly misled investors to believe his fund was liquid and he could cover their redemption requests, in a scheme to lure them in to investing in his hedge fund. This should be a reminder that greed has no boundaries and does not care about a favorable portfolio. Postal Inspectors remind all investors to thoroughly check offers, and if they sound too good to be true, keep your money in the bank.”

  Franzone’s affinity for racing was even featured in the Wall Street Journal back in 2016. 

  He has been charged with “one count of securities fraud, which carries a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison, and one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 16:35

• How Easy Is It To Escape Taxes By Moving Offshore Or To Puerto Rico?
  How Easy Is It To Escape Taxes By Moving Offshore Or To Puerto Rico?

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  Unhappy with Biden’s tax proposals? So are many others. Let’s discuss moving offshore.

  

  Puerto Rico Too Good to Be True?

  That’s the question of the day. And the answer is “it depends”. 

  If you are willing to live in Puerto Rico and can do business there, then the short answer is yes, go for it.

  If you think you can escape capital gains taxes just by moving, the answer is a lot more complex.

  Slash Your Taxes To Zero? Not Exactly

  Robert Wood a tax contributor to Forbes addresses the above questions in Move To Puerto Rico, Slash Your Taxes To Zero? Not Exactly

  Puerto Rico hopes to lure American mainlanders with an income tax of only 4%. Legally avoiding the 37% federal rate and the 13.3% California (or other state) rate sounds pretty good. What’s more, there is no tax on dividends, and no capital gain tax in Puerto Rico.

  However, some big cautions are in order. First, forget about easily avoiding U.S. tax on the appreciation in your assets before you move. If you move with appreciated stock, bitcoin or other property, and then sell, all that pre-move appreciation is still subject to U.S. tax. Only your post-move appreciation will be subject to the special tax rules in Puerto Rico. In fact, to escape U.S. tax on all of the pre-move appreciation, you generally must wait a full ten years after you move. That is hardly a quick fix. What about selling your U.S. real estate? That will always be U.S. source income. That means it is fully taxed in the U.S., even if you move to Puerto Rico and wait ten years before selling.

  There are other fundamentals about the rules too. First, as with any move, you have to actually move! Your tax home—your real home—must be in Puerto Rico. Remember, just like any move from one state to another, it has to be real. Try to avoid messy facts that don’t look like a permanent move. If possible, sell your home, move your family, sever connections to your old local clubs, and so on. After all, if you are later ruled not to be a Puerto Rico resident, the IRS is back in the picture asking for back taxes, penalties and interest.

  Puerto Rico Is Perfect For Whom?

  If you are willing to move to Puerto Rico, and live there at least 183 days a year, then it is a very good solution for financial professionals, stock traders and anyone else who can conduct business online or over the phone.

  One would not have to renounce citizenship or do anything else drastic.

  I know prominent people, one whose name nearly all my readers would instantly recognize who did exactly that.

  I believe he has been there for 10 years now which means all accumulated capital gains are now at a 5% long-term rate. 

  Not a Quick Capital Gains Fix

  For those seeking to avoid capital gains, current long-term capital gains are 0% but only after the move.

  Also consider even more detailed information by DC Tax attorney Peter Palsen in Tax-Weary Americans Find Haven in Puerto Rico.

  New qualifying residents have 100% tax exemption from Puerto Rico taxes on all dividend and interest income and long-term capital gains accrued after becoming a qualifying new resident.

  As for prior unrealized capital gains, the statute provides that:

  The total net long-term capital gain generated by a resident individual investor related to the appreciation of the securities owned by such resident individual investor before becoming a resident of Puerto Rico, which appreciation is recognized ten (10) years after he/she became a resident of Puerto Rico and before January 1st, 2036, shall be subject to a five percent (5%) tax, in lieu of any other tax imposed under the Code.

  Palsen provides examples in his article and even a phone number if you wish to contact him. 

  Whether or not one can escape taxes by moving to Puerto depends on your purpose, current income, and for capital gains avoidance, how long you are willing to commit to living there.

  Puerto Rico a State?

  This tax haven dies on the vine as soon as Puerto Rico becomes a state. 

  Democrats desperately want to make Puerto Rico a state, not for the benefit of Puerto Rico, rather to pick up two more Senate Seats.

  For investment purposes, Puerto Rico is doing what it is doing on purpose. Those are the competing forces.

  Net Capital Gains Tax Would Approach a Whopping 60% Under Biden’s Proposal

  In case you missed it, please consider the post on which this one is based: Net Capital Gains Tax Would Approach a Whopping 60% Under Biden’s Proposal

  I am pleased to help any way I can those who wish to avoid such taxes.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 16:10

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• Escobar: Putin Rewrites The Law Of The Geopolitical Jungle
  Escobar: Putin Rewrites The Law Of The Geopolitical Jungle

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

  Putin’s address to the Russian Federal Assembly – a de facto State of the Nation – was a judo move that left Atlanticist sphere hawks particularly stunned…

  

  The “West” was not even mentioned by name. Only indirectly, or via a delightful metaphor, Kipling’s Jungle Book. Foreign policy was addressed only at the end, almost as an afterthought.

  For the best part of an hour and a half, Putin concentrated on domestic issues, detailing a series of policies that amount to the Russian state helping those in need – low income families, children, single mothers, young professionals, the underprivileged – with, for instance, free health checks all the way to the possibility of an universal income in the near future.

  Of course he would also need to address the current, highly volatile state of international relations. The concise manner he chose to do it, counter-acting the prevailing Russophobia in the Atlanticist sphere, was quite striking.

  First, the essentials. Russia’s policy “is to ensure peace and security for the well-being of our citizens and for the stable development of our country.”

  Yet if “someone does not want to…engage in dialogue, but chooses an egoistic and arrogant tone, Russia will always find a way to stand up for its position.”

  He singled out “the practice of politically motivated, illegal economic sanctions” to connect it to “something much more dangerous”, and actually rendered invisible in the Western narrative: “the recent attempt to organize a coup d’etat in Belarus and the assassination of that country’s president.” Putin made sure to stress, “all boundaries have been crossed”.

  The plot to kill Lukashenko was unveiled by Russian and Belarusian intel – which detained several actors backed, who else, US intel. The US State Department predictably denied any involvement.

  Putin: “It is worth pointing to the confessions of the detained participants in the conspiracy that a blockade of Minsk was being prepared, including its city infrastructure and communications, the complete shutdown of the entire power grid of the Belarusian capital. This, incidentally means preparations for a massive cyber-attack.”

  And that leads to a very uncomfortable truth: “Apparently, it’s not for no reason that our Western colleagues have stubbornly rejected numerous proposals by the Russian side to establish an international dialogue in the field of information and cyber-security.”

  “Asymmetric, swift and harsh”

  Putin remarked how to “attack Russia” has become “a sport, a new sport, who makes the loudest statements.” And then he went full Kipling: “Russia is attacked here and there for no reason. And of course, all sorts of petty Tabaquis [jackals] are running around like Tabaqui ran around Shere Khan [the tiger] – everything is like in Kipling’s book – howling along and ready to serve their sovereign. Kipling was a great writer”.

  The – layered – metaphor is even more startling as it echoes the late 19th century geopolitical Great Game between the British and Russian empires, of which Kipling was a protagonist.

  Once again Putin had to stress that “we really don’t want to burn any bridges. But if someone perceives our good intentions as indifference or weakness and intends to burn those bridges completely or even blow them up, he should know that Russia’s response will be asymmetric, swift and harsh”.

  So here’s the new law of the geopolitical jungle – backed by Mr. Iskander, Mr. Kalibr, Mr. Avangard, Mr. Peresvet, Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Sarmat, Mr. Zircon and other well-respected gentlemen, hypersonic and otherwise, later complimented on the record. Those who poke the Bear to the point of threatening “the fundamental interests of our security will regret what has been done, as they have regretted nothing for a very long time.”

  The stunning developments of the past few weeks – the China-US Alaska summit, the Lavrov-Wang Yi summit in Guilin, the NATO summit, the Iran-China strategic deal, Xi Jinping’s speech at the Boao forum – now coalesce into a stark new reality: the era of a unilateral Leviathan imposing its iron will is over.

  For those Russophobes who still haven’t got the message, a cool, calm and collected Putin was compelled to add, “clearly, we have enough patience, responsibility, professionalism, self-confidence, self-assurance in the correctness of our position and common sense when it comes to making any decisions. But I hope that no one will think about crossing Russia’s so-called red lines. And where they run, we determine ourselves in each specific case.”

  Back to realpolitik, Putin once again had to stress the “special responsibility” of the “five nuclear states” to seriously discuss “issues related to strategic armament”. It’s an open question whether the Biden-Harris administration – behind which stand a toxic cocktail of neo-cons and humanitarian imperialists – will agree.

  Putin: “The goal of such negotiations could be to create an environment of conflict-free coexistence based on equal security, covering not only strategic weapons such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarines, but also, I would like to emphasize, all offensive and defensive systems capable of solving strategic tasks, regardless of their equipment.”

  As much as Xi’s address to the Boao forum was mostly directed to the Global South, Putin highlighted how “we are expanding contacts with our closest partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the allies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization”, and extolled “joint projects in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union”, billed as “practical tools for solving the problems of national development.”

  In a nutshell: integration in effect, following the Russian concept of “Greater Eurasia”.

  “Tensions skirting wartime levels”

  Now compare all of the above with the White House Executive Order (EO) declaring a “national emergency” to “deal with the Russian threat”.

  This is directly connected to President Biden – actually the combo telling him what to do, complete with earpiece and teleprompter – promising Ukraine’s President Zelensky that Washington would “take measures” to support Kiev’s wishful thinking of retaking Donbass and Crimea.

  There are several eyebrow-raising issues with this EO. It denies, de facto, to any Russian national the full rights to their US property. Any US resident may be accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security. A sub-sub paragraph (C), detailing “actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad”, is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs.

  Purchases of Russian OFZ bonds have been sanctioned, as well as one of the companies involved in the production of the Sputnik V vaccine. Yet the icing on this sanction cake may well be that from now on all Russian citizens, including dual citizens, may be barred from entering US territory except via a rare special authorization on top of the ordinary visa.

  The Russian paper Vedomosti has noted that in such paranoid atmosphere the risks for large companies such as Yandex or Kaspersky Lab are significantly increasing. Still, these sanctions have not been met with surprise in Moscow. The worst is yet to come, according to Beltway insiders: two packages of sanctions against Nord Stream 2 already approved by the US Department of Justice.

  The crucial point is that this EO de facto places anyone reporting on Russia’s political positions as potentially threatening “American democracy”. As top political analyst Alastair Crooke has remarked, this is a “procedure usually reserved for citizens of enemy states during times of war”. Crooke adds, “US hawks are upping the ante fiercely against Moscow. Tensions and rhetoric are skirting wartime levels.”

  It’s an open question whether Putin’s State of the Nation will be seriously examined by the toxic lunatic combo of neocons and humanitarian imperialists bent on simultaneously harassing Russia and China.

  But the fact is something extraordinary has already started to happen: a “de-escalation” of sorts.

  Even before Putin’s address, Kiev, NATO and the Pentagon apparently got the message implicit in Russia moving two armies, massive artillery batteries and airborne divisions to the borders of Donbass and to Crimea – not to mention top naval assets moved from the Caspian to the Black Sea. NATO could not even dream of matching that.

  Facts on different grounds speak volumes. Both Paris and Berlin were terrified of a possible Kiev clash directly against Russia, and lobbied furiously against it, bypassing the EU and NATO.

  Then someone – it might have been Jake Sullivan – must have whispered on Crash Test Dummy’s earpiece that you don’t go around insulting the head of a nuclear state and expect to keep your global “credibility”. So after that by now famous “Biden” phone call to Putin came the invitation to the climate change summit, in which any lofty promises are largely rhetorical, as the Pentagon will continue to be the largest polluting entity on planet Earth.

  So Washington may have found a way to keep at least one avenue of dialogue open with Moscow. At the same time Moscow has no illusions whatsoever that the Ukraine/Donbass/Crimea drama is over. Even if Putin did not mention it in the State of the Nation. And even if Defense Minister Shoigu has ordered a de-escalation.

  The always inestimable Andrei Martyanov has gleefully noted the “cultural shock when Brussels and D.C. started to suspect that Russia doesn’t ‘want’ Ukraine. What Russia wants is for this country to rot and implode without excrement from this implosion hitting Russia. West’s paying for the clean up of this clusterf**k is also in Russian plans for Ukrainian Bantustan.”

  The fact that Putin did not even mention Bantustan in his speech corroborates this analysis. As far as “red lines” are concerned, Putin’s implicit message remains the same: a NATO base on Russia’s western flank simply won’t be tolerated. Paris and Berlin know it. The EU is in denial. NATO will always refuse to admit it.

  We always come back to the same crucial issue: whether Putin will be able, against all odds, to pull a combined Bismarck-Sun Tzu move and build a lasting German-Russian entente cordiale (and that’s quite far from an “alliance’). Nord Stream 2 is an essential cog in the wheel – and that’s what’s driving Washington hawks crazy.

  Whatever happens next, for all practical purposes Iron Curtain 2.0 is now on, and it simply won’t go away. There will be more sanctions. Everything was thrown at the Bear short of a hot war. It will be immensely entertaining to watch how, and via which steps, Washington will engage on a “de-escalation and diplomatic process” with Russia.

  The Hegemon may always find a way to deploy a massive P.R. campaign and ultimately claim a diplomatic success in “dissolving” the impasse. Well, that certainly beats a hot war. Otherwise, lowly Jungle Book adventurers have been advised: try anything funny and be ready to meet “asymmetric, swift and harsh”.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 23:20

• Scientists Are Now Growing Human-Monkey Chimeric Embryos
  Scientists Are Now Growing Human-Monkey Chimeric Embryos

  In a move that is undoubtedly going to raise all sorts of ethical and scientific questions, scientists have now successfully grown human-monkey chimeric embryos for up to 20 days. The international team of scientists was led by gene expression expert Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute in California, according to RT.

  Along with his team, he “implanted human stem cells into primate embryos which then grew for up to up to 20 days.”

  While the experiment toes many ethical lines, the potential benefits of helping humans understand evolution and biology seem to have outweighed the negatives – for the time being, at least. 

  Belmonte said: “As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease. An important goal of experimental biology is the development of model systems that allow for the study of human diseases under in vivo conditions.”

  

  The monkey embryos were injected with human stem cells 6 days after they were created, which can “yield multiple different types of tissue, both embryonic and non- or extra-embryonic tissues,” the report notes.

  The human cells were still found in 132 chimera embryos 24 hours after implantation. 109 embryos continued to develop after 9 days. After day 19, only 3 embryos remained. After 20 days, all of the embryos had been destroyed. 

  Researchers were able to examine the resultant embryos to determine “which communication pathways between the monkey and human cells were viable in the generation of future chimeras and which were not.”

  The team said it gave the “utmost attention to ethical considerations… by coordinating closely with regulatory agencies” during their research.

  Technology developed by Weizhi Ji and his team at Kunming University of Science and Technology in Yunnan, China has made the attempts at chimeras – which have been ongoing since the 1970’s – possible. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 22:50

• FBI Releases Documents On Investigation Into Death Of DNC Staffer Seth Rich
  FBI Releases Documents On Investigation Into Death Of DNC Staffer Seth Rich

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  The FBI has produced 68 pages relating to a Democrat National Committee (DNC) worker who was shot dead in 2016 in Washington, including an investigative summary that appears to suggest someone could have paid for his death.

  

  Seth Rich, the worker, was shot dead in the early morning hours on July 16, 2016, near his home in the nation’s capital.

  The murder, which is unsolved to this day, fueled widespread media coverage, especially after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange suggested that Rich was the person who provided internal DNC emails to WikiLeaks. Rich’s family has called the notion that Rich leaked documents to WikiLeaks a conspiracy theory.

  The newly released files show top Department of Justice officials met in 2018 and discussed Rich’s murder. They reviewed Rich’s financial records and did not identify any unusual deposits or withdrawals.

  Additionally, none of the witnesses interviewed during the investigation reported to authorities anything unusual about Rich’s life prior to the homicide.

  One witness saw an individual walking away from the location where Rich was killed but thought Rich was merely drunk so did not alert authorities. They realized something bad had happened when they saw a bloodstain on the ground in the same place the following day, as well as police tape surrounding the scene.

  A person whose name was redacted took Rich’s personal laptop to his house, according to one of the newly released documents. The page also indicates that authorities were not aware if the person deleted or changed anything on Rich’s personal laptop.

  The FBI came into possession of Rich’s work laptop, the bureau previously revealed.

  On another page, it was said that “given [redacted] it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a random street robbery,” Ty Clevenger, a lawyer, told The Epoch Times.

  Law enforcement officials have suggested Rich was the victim of an attempted robbery, according to news reports, though none of his belongings were stolen. They have said no evidence links the shooting to Rich’s employment by the Democratic National Committee.

  The files were released this week in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Texas resident Brian Huddleston, who Clevenger represents.

  

  Seth Rich, the voter expansion data director for the Democratic National Committee, in a file photograph. (LinkedIn)

  Huddleston sued the FBI after it told him it would take 8 to 10 months in June 2020 to respond to his Freedom of Information Act request. Huddleston asked the FBI to produce all data, documents, records, or communications that reference Seth Rich or his brother, Aaron Rich.

  A federal judge earlier this year ordered the FBI to produce documents concerning Rich by April 23. The FBI identified 576 relevant documents but only produced 68 of them to Huddleston.

  The FBI has declined to speak about the lawsuit. Attorneys for Rich’s parents did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

  The documents show that some reporting on Rich’s death was wrong, such as an ABC News report that claimed the FBI was not involved in investigating the murder.

  Clevenger said he found concerning how the government apparently does not know whether anything was deleted from Rich’s personal laptop.

  The documents were largely redacted but the information that did get through “shows that their whole narrative is falling apart,” he added. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

  The attorney plans to ask U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama nominee, to produce unredacted copies for his perusal. The judge could rule that some redactions were improper.

  Defendants could also face repercussions for not producing all of the documents they have concerning Rich, including fines.

  U.S. Attorney Andrea Parker, who is representing the FBI, told the judge in a court filing this week that the bureau can only process 500 pages per month for each Freedom of Information Act request. She asked the court to give the bureau additional time to produce all of the relevant records.

  Clevenger told the judge in a court filing this week that the private sector routinely processes 500 pages or more per day and that the government should be afforded no more than two weeks to produce the remaining 1,063 pages.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 22:20

• China Unveils "AlphaDog" – An Affordable Alternative To The Terrifying "Robo-Dog"
  China Unveils “AlphaDog” – An Affordable Alternative To The Terrifying “Robo-Dog”

  For years readers have read our countless notes on Boston Dynamics‘ four-legged Spot robot. Now there’s a new robo-dog in town, and its name is “AlphaDog.” 

  Chinese tech firm, Welian, has developed the Chinese version of Spot called AlphaDog, which is already on sale for $2,400. Compared to the $74,500 price tag of Spot, this robo-dog is more affordable than the US version. 

  

  AlphaDog’s design is similar to SPOT – and it even has the same name as an early Boston Dynamics prototype from a decade ago. While SPOT is positioned for commercial use, AlphaDog has been geared towards consumers.

  “It’s really very similar to a real dog,” Ma Jie, chief technology officer at Weilan, told AFP. 

  

  AlphaDog is more agile and faster than Spot. The robot moves at speeds up to 9 mph or about 2.5x faster than SPOT. It uses sensors and artificial intelligence to maneuver around obstacles and complete tasks. 

  “It can predict the friction and height of the ground (to) adjust its height, adjust the stride frequency, and adapt to the environment,” he told AFP.

  Welian integrated AlphaDog with 5G technology to make it carry out tasks autonomously. At the moment, the company has sold 1,800 units to developers and tech enthusiasts. 

  It remains to be seen what AlphaDog will become as developers and tech enthusiasts begin experimenting with the robot. Many of these folks have been drooling over SPOT for nearly half a decade but could not obtain one due to lack of business credentials and price. 

  What appears evident is that robot dogs will be integrated into society and the corporate world to complete tasks for humans. It’s only a matter of time before these machines are outfitted with weapons for war. 

  … and already Spot has been tested by the French military. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 21:50

• Biden Admin Stops Fining Illegal Immigrants Who Don't Leave US, Cancels Debt
  Biden Admin Stops Fining Illegal Immigrants Who Don’t Leave US, Cancels Debt

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  The White House on Friday ended the Trump-era policy of fining illegal immigrants who have failed to leave the United States, claiming there is no evidence they work.

  

  Authorities with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rescinded two orders, which were used during the Trump administration, on collecting financial penalties and issuing fines to illegal immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will also work with the Treasury Department to cancel the existing debts of illegal immigrants who had been fined.

  “There is no indication that these penalties promoted compliance with noncitizens’ departure obligations,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement on Friday.

  “We can enforce our immigration laws without resorting to ineffective and unnecessary punitive measures.”

  ICE stopped issuing the fines on Jan. 20, the first day President Joe Biden took office. Friday’s announcement from Mayorkas essentially formalizes the policy change.

  Former President Donald Trump in 2018 used the Immigration and Nationality Act to issue fines after the federal government had not done so for decades. At one point, the administration was fining illegal immigrants up to $500 every day they remained in the United States after being told to depart. According to reports, some illegal immigrants had fines of up to $500,000.

  During the start of his term in 2017, Trump signed an order that promised “as soon as practicable, and by no later than one year after the date of this order,” the federal government can collect “all fines and penalties that the Secretary is authorized under the law to assess and collect from aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

  But according to Friday’s release, DHS said it reviewed “detailed data regarding the issuance of such fines since 2018” and was “clear to Secretary Mayorkas and Acting [ICE] Director Tae Johnson that the fines were not effective and had not meaningfully advanced the interests of the agency.”

  “ICE intends to work with the Department of Treasury to cancel the existing debts of those who had been fined,” said the news release.

  “The rescission marks ICE’s latest move toward focusing its limited resources on those posing the greatest risk to national security and public safety in accordance with the current guidance on civil immigration enforcement and removal priorities,” it added.

  After Biden took office in January, his administration moved to rescind several Trump-era orders, including the “Remain in Mexico” policy and halting construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall—although the pause in wall construction is being reviewed by the Government Accountability Office as to whether it violated the Constitution’s provision that Congress has the power to allocate funds.

  Republicans have pounced on Biden’s orders, saying the move—in combination with the administration’s messaging—has encouraged illegal immigrants and unaccompanied minors to stream across the border, where tens of thousands are being housed in makeshift Border Patrol and Health and Human Services facilities, military bases, and other emergency holding sites.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 21:20

• Turkey Summons US Ambassador, Says Armenian Genocide Statement "Alienating" A NATO Ally
  Turkey Summons US Ambassador, Says Armenian Genocide Statement “Alienating” A NATO Ally

  update: Turkey has responded to Biden’s Armenian Genocide statement from early in the day by summoning US Ambassador David Satterfield to Ankara, according to state-run Anadolu news agency.

  In addition to the swift condemnation from Turkey a mere minutes after the statement was out, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry also asserted Biden’s statement is “null and void in terms of international law” and that it “caused a wound that was difficult to repair.”

  We strongly reject and condemn @POTUS’s unfounded statement on the events of 1915. Politicizing history is never a rational and moral act. It is a pity that the US has succumbed to an interest group at the expense of distorting historical facts and alienating a NATO ally.

  — Ibrahim Kalin (@ikalin1) April 24, 2021

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  Turkey also said the Biden administration had “alienated” a NATO ally…

  The US mis-statement has no historical and legal basis. Here is my short statement: pic.twitter.com/CukYLlLmbc

  — Ibrahim Kalin (@ikalin1) April 24, 2021

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  Armenian-Americans in various US cities, especially Los Angeles, gathered to celebrate the US recognition of the historic genocide. Biden is the first US president to do so.

  At Glendale’s Verdugo Park this afternoon, a group of Armenian Americans gathered to mark the day of remembrance.

  “The pain is in all of Armenians’ hearts, and we’ll never forget,” said Samo Davtyan, who attended the event with his daughter. https://t.co/jzAjLJu2gF

  — Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 24, 2021

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  * * *

  Turkey has predictably responded in a swift and fierce manner to Joe Biden’s Saturday statement in recognition of the historic Armenian Genocide, becoming the first US President to do so: “Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden wrote on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

  “Today, as we mourn what was lost, let us also turn our eyes to the future – toward the world that we wish to build for our children. A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security,” Biden continued. “Let us renew our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world. And let us pursue healing and reconciliation for all the people of the world.”

  Minutes after the declaration was issued, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey “entirely rejects” the US characterization of the event. Cavusoglu said it will only serve to “open a deep wound” in bilateral ties. 

  

  Turkey further called the US change in policy toward recognition of “genocide” a distortion of “historical facts”: 

  “This statement of the US, which distorts the historical facts, will never be accepted in the conscience of the Turkish people, and will open a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said, adding it rejected and denounced the statement “in the strongest terms”.

  “We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice,” Cavusoglu said further. “We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism.”

  “Words cannot change or rewrite history.”

  We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice.

  We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism.#1915Events

  — Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (@MevlutCavusoglu) April 24, 2021

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  Another top Turkish official told the United States it should focus on its own ugly past instead of lecturing others. 

  Turkey’s official position has long been that wartime (connected with the events of WWI) deaths of Armenians were a few hundred thousand and that they weren’t a targeted ethnic group, while historians have tended to recognize around a million or more deaths in the name of ‘Turkification’.

  A huge number of Greek and Assyrian Christians were also massacred or left to die in the middle of the northern Syrian desert.

  It’s official: President Biden has officially recognized the Armenian genocide.

  “The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.” https://t.co/QfWcFKD7Lv

  — Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 24, 2021

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  Previously Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump carefully avoided using the term “genocide” when addressing historic atrocities in Asia Minor – so as not to offend the key NATO ally, particularly when the Pentagon relied so heavily on Turkish bases related to the war in Syria. 

  It’s also of note that Biden’s Saturday statement referenced Constantinople as opposed to Turkey’s modern name of Istanbul – which is also sure to be generally seen by the Turks as an offence (though still an accurate historical reference)…

  “Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination,” the White House statement said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 21:19

• These Are The Most Polluted Cities In America
  These Are The Most Polluted Cities In America

  The American Lung Association has released its 22nd annual State of the Air Report. Statista’s Niall McCarthy details that it found that 135 million Americans live with polluted air that is putting their health and lives at risk. It also found that the burden is not being shared equally with people of color 61 percent more likely to live in a county with polluted air than white people. While some parts of the country made improvements with 14.8 million fewer Americans inhaling unhealthy year compared to last year, the threat of particulate air pollution is worsening.

  Close to 1.1 million Americans were found to be living in areas with unhealthy levels of PM2.5 pollution compared to last year’s report.

  Microscopic PM2.5 particles emanate from many sources such as diesel engines, coal-fired power plants, wildfires and wood-burning stoves. They can cause a range of health issues including asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes and the development of lung cancer while, more recently, they have also been linked to worse outcomes in Covid-19 patients. Every year, the report ranks U.S. cities across two categories of air pollution – short-term particle pollution and year-round particle pollution. 54.4 million Americans fall into the first category and have to live with dangerous spikes in short-term particle pollution, primarily due to residential woodburning and wildfire smoke.

  20.9 million Americans have to live with year-round particle pollution, the second category. Based on the the National Air Quality standard for year-round particle pollution, counties scoring below 12 were given “Pass” grades while those scoring above were “failed”.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Once again, Bakersfield, California, was named the worst U.S. city for year-round particle pollution despite the fact that it managed to improve its levels of short-term PM2.5. It was followed on the list of worst-performing cities by Fresno-Madera-Hanford and Visalia, both of which are also in California. Poor air quality has been a problem for years in California and the state retained its distinction of having the worst performing cities in the report, with 10 of the 25 most polluted cities in the country.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 20:50

• The United States Has Declared Defeat In Two More Wars
  The United States Has Declared Defeat In Two More Wars

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  President Biden announced last week that he planned to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan by September, which he says will mark the end of what is now a twenty-year war in the central Asian country.

  A week earlier, the US and Iraq reaffirmed a deal to withdraw “any remaining combat forces” from Iraq, and to further wind down the US involvement there, which dates back to the 2003 invasion.

  In both cases, of course, the stated plans to end military intervention have been framed in polite language designed to make it look like the US is leaving on its own terms—and also to allow the US regime some level of plausibility when it claims “mission accomplished.”

  In reality, of course, both Iraq and Afghanistan are just two more wars that the United States has lost in a long list of botched military interventions dating back to Vietnam and Korea. Moreover, these withdrawals signal the US’s continued geopolitical decline in a world that is becoming multipolar and highly motivated to bring to a final end the US’s vanishing “unipolar moment.”

  But what exactly do we mean by “lost” in this context? Well, by the standards of the objectives presented by the US regime itself when these wars began, these wars are complete failures.

  For example, we were told Iraq and Afghanistan would become “democracies” where Western-style human rights are protected and valued.

  That was the humanitarian justification.

  We were also told these countries would become reliable allies of the United States, sort of like Germany or Japan.

  That was the geopolitical justification.

  The US has failed on both fronts.

  

  The Failure of Global Democracy

  When the United States first invaded Afghanistan, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US regime claimed the mission was both a punitive and a strategic one. The military intervention was, we were told, designed to punish and disable the Taliban regime, which was fostering terrorist training camps of the sort that supposedly led to 9/11.

  But, not surprisingly, Washington then decided it was going to stay in Afghanistan for a long time. The voters were soon told to brace for a generational war, one that could last decades. After twenty or twenty-five years, though, we were told Afghanistan would become a liberal democracy where women could walk around in miniskirts and the youth would spend their days studying poetry and engineering at universities. Afghanistan, we were told, would end up like postwar Germany and Japan—outposts of Western liberal democracy.

  Needless to say, the Pentagon never mentions that anymore. Even after twenty years, the political situation in Afghanistan can perhaps be most accurately described as an ongoing series of wars between warlords, with US-supported warlords on the “good” side. The idea that these US-aligned warlords represent the side of human rights, though, is wishful thinking at its most extreme.

  Two years after the occupation of Afghanistan began, the promises of “global democracy” became even more grandiose as the regime tried to grow support for the Iraq invasion. The Bush administration pushed a grand vision for the entire region with claims that a new democratic Iraq would serve as the launching point for a total makeover of the Middle East, which would soon become a region of liberal democracies. The US repeatedly claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was something of a reincarnation of Hitler—rather than the run-of-the-mill dictator he was—and suggested that once Hussein was gone freedom and justice would flower throughout the region.

  That didn’t happen. Indeed, even if life improved for some Iraqis—such as the Kurds—life became far worse for countless other Iraqis. As noted by NPR in 2018, as a result of the Iraq War,

  Iraq devolved into one of the most dangerous and corrupt countries in the world. With an estimated 500,000 killed in war and violence since 2003, few families have been left untouched. Although security has improved immensely, corruption remains entrenched.

  “The majority of people before—Sunni and Shiite—did not like the [Hussein] regime,” says [General Najm al-Jabouri]. “But many people, when they compare between the situation under Saddam Hussein and now, find maybe their life under Saddam Hussein was better.”

  Today, Iraq’s standard of living remains crippled by the US invasion, and the democratic government amounts to a regime that is little more than a group of competing kleptocracies.

  Moreover, the US invasion paved the way for the rise of religious extremism in Iraq, which led to the near-total destruction of Iraq’s Christian population—which had enjoyed legal protection under Hussein.

  Rather than spread notions of liberal democracy and human rights in the region, the US regime has only doubled down in its support for the most repressive regimes. The US remains an enthusiastic supporter of the Saudi regime, one of the most despotic and blood-soaked regimes on earth today. The US has been propping up the military dictatorship in Egypt. Through its interventions in Libya and Syria, the US has taken the side of terrorists and Islamic zealots who traffic young women for sex slavery and enforce the most draconian sorts of Islamic law—something much more rare under the Hussein regime, or under the secular regime still ruling in Syria.

  The US’s regime change in Iraq supercharged al-Qaeda and ISIS, leading to humanitarian crises in northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

  The Failure of Regime Change

  But even if the US failed miserably on installing new human rights–loving regimes across the region, at least the US’s “national interests” are now much safer thanks to regime change. Right?

  Well, not quite. Although Washington now claims that it is leaving Iraq and Afghanistan on good terms with the local regimes, the fact is that the US is leaving in power a great many enemies who are more than happy to see the US leave. And in many cases, the US strengthened those with an interest in undermining Washington’s interests.

  In Afghanistan, for example, the anti-US warlords (i.e., Taliban-aligned groups) aren’t going away, and are likely to even increase in power as the US leaves. This, after all, is the central claim made by those who oppose Biden’s withdrawal plan. The US leaves behind an Afghanistan where anti-US powers are likely to quickly rush in and fill the power vacuum.

  Meanwhile, in Iraq, the main “accomplishment” of the removal of Sunni-aligned Saddam Hussein was to grow the power of the Shia minority. This now means the growth of Iran-aligned Shia militias, which are avowedly opposed to the US regime.

  In other words, the US could maintain a foothold in both countries indefinitely, but it could only do so through old-fashioned—and very costly—military occupation. That’s certainly not what Washington promised twenty years ago.

  With all its fanciful promises for fundamentally changing the calculus in the Middle East, the US has not come even close to shifting the balance of power toward the US by creating a new block of pro-US “democracies.” Mostly, the US has sown chaos in the region, paved the way for terrorist groups, and reaffirmed support for some of the worst dictators and regimes in the region.

  All of this was bought and paid for by thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of lives in the invaded countries. And by trillions of US dollars. 

  The last twenty years have been little more than the US regime spinning its wheels, all while condemning millions to a new reality of greater death, disability, and poverty.

  It’s not over yet, though. The fact some announcements have been made about ending wars doesn’t mean they’re really over. There’s no time frame for the final removal of combat troops from Iraq. In Afghanistan, the US may not be ending the war at all, but only shifting toward a war fought by US-employed mercenaries.

  In any case, the global political situation has become expensive and hostile to the point that it now makes sense to at least ostensibly bring these conflicts to an end. Also, now that the average American voter is barely paying attention—and that the US is facing an economic crisis and weak recovery—it has become politically expedient to forget about those old wars, presumably with an eye to starting a new one with Russia. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 20:20

• "Biden Is An Idiot" – Fmr Police Officer Blasts Democrats For "Riding The Wave Of Dead Black People"
  “Biden Is An Idiot” – Fmr Police Officer Blasts Democrats For “Riding The Wave Of Dead Black People”

  Former Arizona police officer-turned conservative political commentator Brandon Tatum unloaded on President Biden and the press for politicizing the Derek Chauvin trial, and insists that so-called ‘systemic racism’ is simply manufactured by politicians and the media to earn votes and make money.

  

  “I think we’re living in the twilight zone,” Tatum said of the Chauvin trial. “This conviction, in my personal opinion, did nothing for our country. People are living a lie. I mean this is one police officer, one person in the community, they found him guilty, this was the swiftest justice I’ve ever seen in my life. The day after the film came out he was arrested. He was tried. 10 hours of deliberation, he was convicted. I’m not really sure why people are acting like this is monumental.

  “Also, he did not get a fair trial in my personal opinion. There was a lot of obstruction that happened. They paid the family out $27 million before the jury could be selected. I mean, they’re going to have a case in appeal. I don’t know why people are celebrating and I don’t know why this is such a big focal point other than – people are making money off of the pain of people in our country.”

  The BBC host then asked Tatum if he was upset over this “landmark” case?

  “This is not a landmark case, this is a political agenda,” Tatum shot back. They’re pushing laws in our country. Policing in America is not inherently racist. We don’t live in a racist country. This was an interaction between a police officer that I thought did the wrong thing, and a black man who was on drugs high, resisting arrest, and ended up being killed by that police officer. That’s as simple as it can be. The President of the United States got out and made a fool of himself trying to promote racism in a simple police encounter that the officer got convicted on.

  “So you reject President Biden’s comment about systemic racism and it being a stain on the whole nation?” the host replied.

  “Yes, President Biden is an idiot in my personal opinion, and he’s just talkin’ because he’s a politician. Systemic racism – I mean if you look at Joe Biden himself, he spoke at a Klu Klux Klan-member’s funeral and did the eulogy of Robert Byrd … We don’t have a problem with racism in our country, we have a problem with people not following the law. We also have a problem with politicians making up things so they can get re-elected. And that’s exactly what has been happening. That’s why you never see anything change. They’re lying to us.

  The host then tried using woke racial statistics, arguing: “So the rate of people being killed by police – the rate is higher amongst black people than amongst the rest of the population. How do you account for that if that isn’t a systemic racism problem?“

  Tatum shut that down with force, replying: “First of all that’s not true, twice as many white people are killed by police every year. Twice as many white people are killed unarmed by police every year – you just don’t see it. There’s a gentleman named Tony Timpa. I bet nobody has any idea who Tony Timpa is. Tony Timpa was murdered in the same fashion as George Floyd was killed, but because he was white, we don’t hear about it and nobody cares about it. Nobody’s talking about police reform when he was suffocated and killed. But they only talk about it because George Floyd is black.

  “Black people commit over half of violent crimes in this country, and only make up 13 percent of the population. They commit over half of the murders in this country, but only make up 13 percent of the population – and we can agree that 13 percent of the population aren’t the criminals. There’s only a small fraction of the black community that’s doing this. So that explains why police are in the black communities more, and that explains why black people are incarcerated more. They are making up lies saying that it has anything to do with racism.

  “Do you understand that there’s black police officers too that patrol many of these majority-black cities? Are they racist? No, that’s not the case. They’re just making things up in my personal opinion, and they’re riding a wave of dead black people in order to make money and get political leverage.”

  Watch:

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 19:50

• Jim Bovard: The Feds Are Coming For Libertarians
  Jim Bovard: The Feds Are Coming For Libertarians

  Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

  On the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, former CIA chief John Brennan announced on television that federal intelligence agencies “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” various suspect groups, specifically mentioning libertarians.

  Libertarians are in the federal crosshairs. Six or seven years ago, there was a lot of prattle about how “the libertarian moment has arrived.” I always knew that was hokum. Since then, there has been a huge increase in hostility to libertarians in Washington DC and elsewhere around the country.

  

  Many libertarians assume they have nothing to fear because they are not engaged in seeking to violently overthrow the government. But the feds will be able to find many other pretexts to target peaceful citizens with supposedly subversive ideas. Federal law already defines “domestic terrorism” far more broadly than most people realize. As the Oregonian recently noted, “Cases categorized as domestic terrorism include allegations of…knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted [government] building or grounds…civil disorders and making threatening communications.” FBI chief Christopher Wray told a Senate Committee that the FBI has 2,000 ongoing domestic terrorism investigations. Wray recognizes the terrorist peril as the ticket to a bigger budget: “We need more agents; we need more analysts.”

  The Biden administration is itching for a broad new domestic terrorism law to enable even more crackdowns. Libertarians need to recognize how that definition of terrorism has already mushroomed. Capitol Police acting chief Yogananda Pittman, testifying to Congress, described the January 6 clash at the Capitol as “a terrorist attack by tens of thousands of insurrectionists.” Apparently, anyone who tromped from Trump’s raging speech to the Capitol that day was a terrorist, or at least an “insurrectionist” (“terrorist” spelled with more letters?).

  After the clash at the Capitol on January 6, the de facto definition of terrorism seems to be “anything that frightens politicians.” Will we find out too late that the new de facto definition of “domestic terrorist” is “individuals who distrust the feds and own two guns and more than 100 bullets”?

  Another codeword for who the feds will target is “extremists.” The Washington Post in January portrayed “domestic extremists” as “a disease that seems to have taken hold in the nation’s nervous system.” Last fall, FBI boss Wray told Congress that among the “underlying drivers for domestic violent extremism” are “perceptions of government or law enforcement overreach.” Libertarians are practically defined by their perception of government as overreaching. After the January 6 clash, Wray portrayed more busts as proof of FBI triumphs: “The more of the arrests that you see, well, that’s obviously good news for everybody that we’re arresting people who need to be arrested.”

  Here we see the former CIA chief, John Brennan, saying that libertarians are no different than “white supremacists and domestic terrorists,” as he calls for the need to bring foreign terror war tactics onto US soil to squash them all. pic.twitter.com/M02Bw7Be9J

  — Being Libertarian (@beinlibertarian) January 21, 2021

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  In the coming years, the feds may treat libertarians like Muslims were treated after 9/11. Any new crackdown on terrorism will turn into a numbers game in which justice and fair play don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Between 2001 and 2006, federal prosecutors charged 10 times as many people in terrorism investigations as they convicted on terrorism-related charges. President Bush declared in 2005 that “federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted.” But only 39 people were convicted on crimes tied to terrorism or national security, a Washington Post analysis found.

  Entrapment opened the floodgates to federal terrorism indictments. Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, estimated that only about 1 percent of the 500 people charged with international terrorism offenses in the decade after 9/11 were bona fide threats. Thirty times as many were induced by the FBI to behave in ways that prompted their arrest. In 2006, the FBI fabricated a terror scheme by the Liberty City Seven, where an informant encouraged a bunch of dimwits in Florida to babble about blowing up government buildings. That group was so knuckle-headed that they asked the FBI informant for military uniforms and wanted to conduct a parade.

  Few Americans recognize how badly the legal playing field is tilted against them. When FBI agents knock on their doors, many Americans won’t hesitate to open up because they assume “those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.” But the FBI is exploiting a sweeping law that criminalizes casual comments. Federal agents have the right to lie to you and to put you in prison if you lie to them. Any citizen who makes even a single-word (“no” or “yes”) false utterance to a federal agent faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

  It gets worse. You don’t have to actually lie. FBI agents can fabricate the sentences they use to hang you. Unlike most law enforcement agencies, the FBI rarely videotapes interviews, thereby permitting agents to create the narrative or “facts” which then can be used to charge individuals with false statements. Instead of a transcript, an FBI agent writes up a memo a day or two later asserting what you said. FBI agents have been taught that subjects of FBI investigations “have forfeited their right to the truth,” which helps explain the vast increase in federal entrapment operations.

  If the FBI shows up at your door, they might have already accessed every email and text message you sent in recent years. They may have vacuumed all your social media activity—those private Facebook messages you sent—HA! They may have also accessed all your credit card and other financial data. And the FBI may have already interrogated other people to squeeze out accusations against you that they can throw in your face. Then they launch into a game of 20 questions—with a federal indictment awaiting if they claim you answered untruthfully.

  Politicians in Washington don’t see such abuses as a problem; instead, they are a grand opportunity to smite people who don’t kowtow. It wasn’t that long ago—in the final 15 years of J. Edgar Hoover’s reign—that the FBI became America’s thought police. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy marriages with poison pen letters, and to cripple or destroy leftist, black, white racist, and anti-war organizations. A 1976 Senate report warned, “The American people need to be assured that never again will a federal agency be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order.” But legal and administrative restrictions on the FBI evaporated in the post 9/11 panic, resulting in pervasive abuses of Americans’ rights.

  The FBI now operates with near-total impunity. The same is true of many state and local police departments who may be hungering for new federal subsidies to crackdown on the extremist peril.

  How might this play out in the daily lives of people guilty of entertaining libertarian ideas? Consider Duncan Lemp, a 21-year-old Maryland man who was shot to death in a predawn raid in March 2021 after police smashed in his bedroom window and tossed flash bang grenades into his bedroom. Lemp was active on Twitter and liked several tweets by Libertarian presidential candidate John McAfee. Lemp’s last tweet declared, “The Constitution is dead.” Two months later, so was Lemp.

  The Montgomery County, Maryland government later admitted that Lemp was targeted in part because was “anti-government” and “anti-police”. Plus, Lemp was outspoken about his support of the Second Amendment and posted photos of himself with guns on Instagram. Police saw one such photo and concluded that Lemp possessed a semi-automatic rifle that was illegal to own in Maryland. After they killed him and searched the Lemp home, they realized they had mis-identified the firearm—it was legal. But police, prosecutors, and local politicians treated that like a harmless paperwork error: nobody cared about the wrongful killing of Duncan Lemp.

  The police case against Lemp also came from accusations from one or more confidential informants. Lemp trusted people who betrayed him to the police, allegedly with false accusations according to Lemp family lawyer, Rene Sandler. A month after Lemp was killed, activists held a protest at Montgomery County Police headquarters. I attended that event as a journalist (the ol’ press pass flopping around my neck) and was chagrined to see how the event went down. Guys in Hawaii-style “Boogaloo” shirts were using bullhorns to scream profanities at cops and were pointlessly blocking a road. One of the most prominent organizers told attendees to bring firearms to the event, despite Maryland law prohibiting firearms at protests. He told people on Facebook to show up with their guns anyhow and just walk around, pretending not to be part of the demonstration. That guy was full of bluster but never showed up for the protest himself. Almost 10% of the 30 protesters were arrested for firearms or other offenses. I later heard that one of the guys suspected of being a police informant against Lemp was at that rally pretending to demand justice for Lemp.

  In the coming months and years, many libertarians could be indicted not for violent acts against the government but for unwise or reckless words uttered in proximity to government informants. If you don’t know someone like the back of your hand, then you better be damn careful what you say around them. And even if you know a person well, that doesn’t oblige you to join them in a leap off a legal cliff. Simply because someone spouts anti-government zeal doesn’t make them more trustworthy than a congressman. Claire Wolfe, the author of 101 Things to Do Until the Revolution, wrote an excellent guide to recognizing government informants which she made available for free online.

  Simple prudence can suffice to avoid many tripwires. If some new acquaintance wants to provide you a pipe bomb to help “make a statement,” he probably isn’t a real friend. There was a saying among antiwar activists in the 1960s and 1970s that the person who most fervently advocates violence is likely the undercover government agent. Activists should also recognize the likelihood that they could be surveilled online or in person. Parler was supposed to be a secure alternative to other online venues but millions of its messages were leaked earlier this year.

  The answer is not to shut up and sure as hell not to cease fighting for your rights and liberties. Friends of freedom need to continue valiantly and peacefully championing their ideas. At some point, more Americans will finally recognize the folly of permitting politicians and government agents to capture vast unchecked power over everyone else. In the meantime, prudent libertarians will avoid writing anything in an email that they don’t want to hear read out loud in federal court.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 19:20

• Hawaiian Rental Car Shortage Leaves Tourists Renting U-Haul Trucks 
  Hawaiian Rental Car Shortage Leaves Tourists Renting U-Haul Trucks 

  Tens of thousands of travelers have flooded Hawaii this month. The state relaxed the mandatory ten-day quarantine policy, allowing travelers to present a negative COVID-19 test to bypass quarantine instead. A simple, rapid test (which only takes about 20 minutes) is required to visit Hawaii’s beaches and resorts. The influx of travelers has strained the supply of rental cars as some tourists resort to renting U-Haul moving vans and trucks. 

  

  HawaiiNewsNow first reported the shortage of rental cars on Wednesday. The local newspaper said it’s not uncommon to see tourists driving U-Haul vehicles around the islands. Last month, it was reported that rental car rates for a standard Toyota Camry jumped to $722 per day, from around the average of $100 due to shortage.

  Hertz Vehicles Cuurently Soldout At Kahului Airport

  

  U-Haul Marketing President Kaleo Alau told HawaiiNewsNow that an “uptick from tourism, the uptick from companies opening back up, from the economy restarting — everybody seems to need a vehicle.” He said U-Haul facilities in the state are the busiest in years. 

  “Most of the time, they’re saying that they can’t get a vehicle from any of the rental spots. They’re all sold out,” Alau said.

  Maui resident Dave Morrell said the rental car supply in Maui has been depleted. 

  “We had relatives from out of town come in and one couldn’t even find anything,” Morrell said. 

  The pandemic might have skewed the supply of rental cars over the last year. Hertz, one of the largest rental car providers, filed for bankruptcy early last year and has been in an ongoing restructuring phase. Since then, the company has liquidated fleets of vehicles. Now there are not enough rental cars. 

  Daily rental price spikes have been so concerning that the issue has caught the attention of state authorities:

  “I don’t want to prejudge anyone or any company but I think it certainly deserves our attention. We are going to be investigating the underlying basis for charging such great amounts to rent a vehicle,” said Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs executive director Stephen Levins.

  When U-Haul rental vehicle inventories are exhausted across the islands, tourists can also explore rental vehicles at The Home Depots and Lowe’s. But that’s old school, internet searches for “turo car rental hawaii” are surging to record high. 

  

  Turo is a peer-to-peer carsharing platform where anyone can rent out their vehicle. Only millennials would know this . 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 18:50

• Dozens Arrested After CEO Of Turkish Crypto Exchange Flees With $2 Billion
  Dozens Arrested After CEO Of Turkish Crypto Exchange Flees With $2 Billion

  Turkish authorities have detained 62 people over alleged links to the Istanbul-based cryptocurrency exchange Thodex after its founder fled with a reported $2 billion in investors’ assets, Turkish media reported. The suspects were apprehended in raids carried out in eight cities including Istanbul, Anadolu Agency reported on Friday. Police issued arrest warrants for 16 other people.

  The arrests come after nearly 400,000 users of a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange were left out of their accounts without being able to withdraw their funds. The platform’s website has been down for several days, while reports suggest its CEO has already fled the country with up to $2 billion.

  Bloomberg reported that Thodex, a Turkey-based crypto exchange, has ceased trading, citing an “unspecified partnership transaction.” The trading platform, founded in 2017, issued a statement explaining that all services will remain shut down for about five working days. However, the message reassured customers that they shouldn’t worry about their funds. In retrospect, they should.

  Approximately at the same time, though, users started to complain about their inability to access their own assets. As Crypto Potato notes, some took it to Twitter to complain about losing much of their net worth.

  A local #Crypto exchange where I’d ~20% of my entire trading capital got rug pulled

  -20 days no withdrawal (fiat & crypto)
  -Then the website went offline
  -Then the CEO run abroad

  I’m not broke, but it hurts… Alot

  It sucks, Even when u deal with regulated exchanges#Thodex

  — Feras_Crypto (will Never DM you First) (@FeraSY1) April 21, 2021

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  He wasn’t alone: on Thursday, hundreds of thousands of users were unable to get access to their digital wallets.

  “We have started the legal procedures and lodged a complaint at the prosecutor’s office,” a lawyer for some investors said. Prosecutors were investigating the businessman on charges of “aggravated fraud and founding a criminal organisation”.

  ÖNEMLİ DUYURU pic.twitter.com/3aBeJjFSYQ

  — THODEX (@thodexofficial) April 22, 2021

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  According to subsequent coverage the exchange’s chief executive officer and founder, Faruk Fatih Ozer had fled the country.

  Following news of Ozer’s alleged escape from Turkey, users of the local exchange hired a law firm to file a complaint against Thodex. Oguz Evren Kilic, representing an unspecified number of Thodex customers, confirmed the development, saying, “we have filed a legal complaint on Wednesday.”

  He speculated that the funds on the Turkish exchange could be worth “hundreds of millions of dollars,” as the exchange had 391,000  users. According to another report, Thodex’s CEO and founder has run away in Thailand with an estimated amount of roughly $2 billion.

  Overnight, Turkish security officials released a photo of Thodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer going through passport control at Istanbul Airport on his way to Albania.

  

  On Friday, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu made a phone call to his Albanian counterpart to request Ozer be captured and repatriated.

  At the same time, Turkish police raided the company’s headquarters on the Asian side of Istanbul and seized computers and digital materials, press reports revealed. Turkish authorities also started procedures to issue an international warrant to arrest and extradite the missing founder of a cryptocurrency exchange, Anadolu Agency reported.

  In a message on the company’s Twitter account, Ozer said he was abroad for meetings with foreign investors and would return home “in a few days and cooperate with judicial authorities so that the truth can come out”. Subsequent updates indicated that this was a lie.

  In recent months, a growing numbers of Turks turned to cryptocurrency in a bid to shield their savings in the face of a sharp decline in the value of the Turkish lira and high inflation. The Turkish crypto market remains unregulated despite growing scepticism from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government about its safety.

  Last week, Turkish authorities took a step to regulating  the cryptocurrency industry, and as we reported last week, Turkey officially banned users from using cryptos as payment instruments starting April 30th.

  The government spent a massive $165 billion in foreign-exchange reserves over the past two years, effectively leaving its central bank without reserves Erdogan revealed on Wednesday, part of a futile effort to prop up the national currency. Concern about the country’s dwindling foreign-exchange reserves, which are negative when money borrowed by the government from private banks via swap agreements are factored in, has fueled concern about both lira and dollar deposits — and pushed savers into alternative investment vehicles.

  Last Friday, the volume of trade in Turkish crypto markets tripled to over $1.2 billion from a week earlier, according to data published by coingecko.com, which tracks data on price, volume and market value on crypto markets. That compares with an average daily trading volume in the Turkish stock market’s benchmark index of about $3.1 billion.

  “One can establish a crypto exchange with just 50,000 liras (about $6,000) in capital,” Oguz Evren Kilic, a lawyer representing Thodex users, said by phone. “There’s a huge regulatory gap in this field.”

  Meanwhile, as Bloomberg reports, last month Thodex initiated a campaign to boost membership by offering millions of free Dogecoins to new registrants. Its website says 4 million of the coins were distributed, though many people have taken to social media to complain they never received them.

  In the latest development in this bizarre saga, in a statement published from an unknown location, Thodex CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer promised to repay investors and to return to Turkey to face justice after he did.

  “I was born as one of the three siblings of a civil servant,” Ozer said in his statement, adding that he’s a high-school dropout. As the company ran into financial trouble, he said he thought about either committing suicide or giving himself up to authorities, but both of those options meant clients’ assets would never be retrieved.

  “So I decided to stay alive and fight, work and repay my debts to you,” he said. “The day I repay all my debt, I will return to my country and give myself in to justice.”

  Narrator:  “he won’t return.“

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 18:20

• What Higher Corporate Taxes Mean For The Market: A Surprising Observation
  What Higher Corporate Taxes Mean For The Market: A Surprising Observation

  Earlier this month, Joe Biden unveiled his Made in America Tax Plan, which proposes an increase in the US corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% which was followed by a Bloomberg report that the capital gains tax would be hiked to 39%. And while the tax plan and all of its details are unlikely to pass through Congress in its current form, the prospect of higher corporate taxes has immediately translated into angst among investors based on numerous client conversations (such as those of Goldman), despite historical market data indicating that changes to the corporate tax code should not be feared. In fact, a recent report from BMO’s Brian Belski shows that calendar years in which tax hikes went into effect have historically coincided with double-digit S&P 500 price returns and stronger US GDP growth, on average.

  Belski also we found that the level of corporate tax rates does not seem to have a meaningful long-term impact on broader market performance as companies have been able to generate solid price returns and healthy earnings growth under various tax regimes throughout history.

  And while an increase in corporate taxes will inevitably lead to a reduction in 2022 S&P 500 bottom-up EPS, with Goldman estimating that the Biden tax plan will cut 2022 EPS by 9%, all things equal…

  

  … Belski argues that other factors are also at play that could potentially offset some of this earnings hit such as economic stimulus, infrastructure spending, and improving overall fundamentals for US stocks.

  Below we summarize the main points from the BMO report:

  Tax Increases Have Been Far From Detrimental to US Stock Market Performance

  • According to BMO, during the five prior corporate tax rate increases, the S&P 500 posted an average calendar year gain of 12.9% with positive price returns in each instance

  Companies Can Generate Solid Price Returns and Earnings Growth Under Various Tax Regimes

  • Over past decades, tax environments appeared to have little long-term effect on broader market price returns and corporate profit growth

  Investing Solely Based on Tax Rate Levels Is Not a Worthwhile Strategy

  • Changes in tax policy can impact short-term performance trends in companies with the highest and lowest tax-rates, but these effects tend not to persist over time

  Estimating the Impact of a 28% Corporate Tax Rate on S&P 500 EPS

  • BMO’s analysis shows that a corporate tax rate hike to 28% could shave 6.1% off 2022 S&P 500 bottom-up EPS – slightly below the 9% Goldman estimate, while an increase to 25% could reduce earnings by 3.5%

  Some more details:

  Biden’s proposal to raise the US corporate tax rate to 28%, from 21%, would mark the first increase since 1993 and sixth tax hike since 1945.

  

  There is still a ways to go before the proposed tax hike by the Biden administration gets enacted and the finalized details of the legislation emerge. Nonetheless, the prospect of higher taxes tends to immediately translate into angst among investors – especially when coupled with fears about an imminent capital gains tax hike – despite historical market performance data indicating that changes to the corporate tax code should not be feared.

  During the five prior corporate tax rate increases in 1950, 1951, 1952, 1968, and 1993, the S&P 500 index posted an average calendar year gain of 12.9% with positive price returns in each instance. This gain was well above the 4.6% average return registered during the nine annual periods when the tax rate was reduced and also higher than 9% price return for all calendar years going back to 1945. The standard deviation of price returns has also been substantially lower during these tax hike periods.

  

  Increases in corporate tax rates have also coincided with stronger US economic growth as real GDP grew at a 5.7% average clip during annual tax hike periods vs. a 3.7% rate during tax cut periods and a 3.1% average growth clip in all years since 1945.

  

  As BMO notes, from its perspective “this is not a matter of tax policy helping or hindering US equity gains, but instead more likely to do with the level of economic growth during these periods.”

  * * *

  Along with looking at S&P 500 performance during years in which tax policy changes occurred, BMO also examined annual price returns based on the general level of corporate tax rates. Despite common perceptions to the contrary, the bank’s work shows that there is little evidence to suggest that corporate tax rates have any type of  meaningful impact on US equity market returns.

  For instance, going back to 1945, the S&P 500 has averaged a 10% gain during years in which the US corporate tax rate was below 35% compared to the 10.3% gain posted during years when the tax rate was 50% or higher. Keep in mind that the proposed 28% corporate tax rate would still rank among the lowest in US history after those seen in 2018-20.

  

  Over the decades, US stocks have predominantly performed well regardless of the underlying tax regime in place.

  

  The S&P 500 logged some of its best gains in the 1950s despite tax rates rising to >50%, and then posted subpar annualized returns in the 1970s even as tax rates decreased. During the 1980s and 1990s, US stocks did see solid gains while tax rates were lower, but then registered losses in the 2000s while taxes remained at 35% as the tech-bubble and financial crisis drove down stock prices. Simply stated, there are many other factors at play. According to BMO’s Belski, “it is not corporate tax rates that are dictating market performance.”

  A similar story exists on the earnings front. Over past decades, US companies have been able to generate substantial earnings growth in different tax environments, including periods of high corporate tax rates.

  

  To further evaluate the impact of corporate tax reform on US stock returns, BMO grouped S&P 500 companies into quintiles based on their year-end effective tax rates (Q1= highest tax rates; Q5= lowest tax rates), and examined performance during the two previous major tax legislation changes in 2018 (tax cut) and 1993 (tax hike).

  Leading up to the Trump tax cut in December 2017, the S&P 500 companies with the highest tax rates (considered tax reform beneficiaries), largely lagged their lowest tax rate counterparts until a short spell of outperformance occurred three months prior to the legislation being signed into law through two months after, which then eventually faded. Looking at calendar year price returns, companies in quintile 1 indeed outpaced those in quintile 5 in both 2017 and 2018.

  

  However, the highest tax rate group was not the best performing quintile in either year as quintile 3 topped returns in 2017 while quintile 2 led the way in 2018.

  

  The highest tax rate stocks also largely trailed the lowest tax rate stocks leading up to the Clinton tax hike in August 1993, which was then followed by bouts of outperformance and underperformance for quintile 1 vs. quintile 5. On a calendar year basis, the lowest tax rate group was the second best performer (13.1%) after quintile 1 (18.9%) in 1993, despite the tax increase, while quintile 2 (11.7%) was the biggest laggard. In 1992, the lowest tax rate names topped performance, outpacing quintile 1 by almost seven pct. pts with quintiles 2 & 3 the biggest laggards.

  

  What is the takeaway here?

  While changes in tax policy may very well impact short-term performance trends in certain areas of the market, the direction and magnitude of these impacts are not necessarily consistent, and tend to dissipate as time goes on. As such, BMO is not advise its clients and investor in general to use tax rates as a standalone factor in predicting longer-term forward returns, and instead should focus on fundamentals and the economy.

  * * *

  Finally, looking specifically at the potential impact of the Biden corporate tax proposal, which would raise the corporate income tax rate to 28% from 21%, impose a new minimum tax on US companies, and increase taxes on foreign income of many US-based multinationals, BMO’s analysis on the impact on S&P 500 earnings focuses on the headline corporate tax rate and the estimated reduction to bottom-up EPS given a 28% rate and a potential compromised rate of 25%.

  • Looking at 2022 EPS forecasts for S&P 500 companies, bottom-up EPS for the index currently stands at $203. An increase in the tax rate to 25% could shave 3.5% off earnings, based on BMO’s work, lowering 2022 bottom-up EPS for the S&P 500 to $196.
  • A corporate tax hike to the proposed 28% rate could reduce earnings by 6.1%, slashing 2022 bottom-up EPS for the S&P 500 down to $191.

  

  If the proposed 28% corporate tax rate were to get enacted, it would reverse half of the tax cuts imposed by Trump back in 2017-18, with the effects not necessarily being felt evenly across sectors.

  S&P 500 sectors that were the biggest beneficiaries of the tax reform bill put forth by Trump and exhibited significant reductions to their overall tax rates, such as Health Care, Consumer Discretionary, and Technology, could be hurt the most. These sectors were identified by examining the change in the aggregate effective tax rates for all 11 S&P 500 groups for the end of 2017 (pre Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017) vs. the end of 2019 (post Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017).

  

  It is important to keep in mind that any increase in taxes and reduction to EPS for US companies could also be offset to some degree by resulting positive factors of higher taxes, such as infrastructure spending and economic stimulus.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 17:50

• Taibbi: The Heroic Congressional Fight To Save The Rich
  Taibbi: The Heroic Congressional Fight To Save The Rich

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News substack,

  A handful of Democrats want to hold up a $2 trillion infrastructure bill to save a choice tax deduction for the wealthy, not that you’ll hear it described that way…

  

  Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, made an inspired plea recently. The Harvard man and Alpha Epsilon Pi brother is a member of the so-called “SALT caucus,” a group of congressfolk threatening to hold up Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill if it doesn’t include a full repeal of a Donald Trump-imposed $10,000 cap on deductions of state and local taxes.

  “It is high time that Congress reinstates the state and local tax deduction, so we can get more dollars back into the pockets of so many struggling families,” intoned Gottheimer, one of 32 members of the SALT caucus, which includes 8 Republicans.

  Pressure on Biden to repeal the SALT cap has been amping up, mainly from tri-state Democrats like Gottheimer, fellow New Jerseyan Bill Pascrell, and Tom Suozzi of New York. “No SALT, no deal!” the trio power-tweeted a few weeks back. Just a few days ago, Gottheimer even came up with a new way to argue the plan, offering to pay for the repeal of the SALT cap by increasing audits.

  “There is a way to do this by going after what people owe already,” he said.

  The effort by the “SALT caucus” to hold a $2 trillion relief bill hostage in order to help what they’re calling “struggling families” in the “middle class” is just the latest development in a years-long saga revealing Congress at its phoniest and most shameless.

  This issue that “means so much to the American people,” according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is really a niche matter concerning a sliver of the most well-off Americans in a handful of blue states, who were made the target of a political prank of sorts by the Trump administration in 2017.

  There are a lot of people who own homes in blue states, could use the deduction, probably don’t think of themselves as rich, and would balk at the idea that repealing the cap would be a luxury giveaway. The story has been framed in the press as more of an everyman issue, and the fact that most of the money at stake involves people at the very top of the curve has been obscured.

  The start of this story was classic Trump. Looking for ways to help pay for his own monster tax break at the end of 2017, the Donald decided to poke Democrats with a long stick, via the cap on the unlimited state and local tax deduction.

  “He did it for all the wrong reasons,” says David Sirota of The Daily Poster, “but it was the one progressive thing he ever did.”

  Economist Stephen Moore, who advised Trump, called the cap “Death to Democrats.” On October 11th, 2017, Trump explained to an approving Sean Hannity that he, Trump, was just trying to help states with fiscal problems help themselves. Note the loving repetition here of the word, “borrowing”:

  You know, you have some really well-run states that have very little borrowing. Some have no borrowing, very little borrowing. And it’s unfair that a state that is well-run is really subsidizing states that have been horribly mismanaged. I won’t use names, but we understand the names. But there are some states that have hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in borrowing.

  However, the SALT cap didn’t so much go after “Democrats” as “affluent Democrats.” It only applied to people who itemize their taxes, which meant the 90% of Americans who take the standard deduction were unaffected. The deduction raised over $70 billion in just the first year, and roughly 56% of that money came just from the top 1% of taxpayers, living in a few states in particular.

  The tax nastygram seemed directed at Trump’s hometown delegation. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney in April of 2017 complained about the cost of protecting “Trump and his family here in NYC”; the SALT cap affected 19% of Maloney’s constituents in Brooklyn and on the Upper East Side, and taxpayers in that 19% each lost an average of $100,405 in breaks. Chuck Schumer, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, personally took over $58,000 in SALT deductions just in 2016.

  Overall, 39 of the 40 districts most affected by the SALT cap were represented by Democrats. Of those, 28 came from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Also affected: Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district, where residents lost an average of $53,471 of write-offs. Trump’s campaign promises to take on “elites” proved phony, except when he was able to effect this targeted partisan strike at the people he knew and hated the most: rich, socially liberal Democrats, especially ones from the tri-state area.

  The joke ended up being on them, but at the time, the gloat factor in the Trump White House was enormous. The administration’s vermian Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin, boasted that he was using the SALT caps to hoist blue states on their own fiscal petard. “I do hope this sends a message that, perhaps, they should try to get their budgets in line,” he said.

  Politically, the SALT cap was like a kids’ prank, putting a dogpile in a paper bag and setting it on fire on a neighbor’s stoop: you can’t let it burn, but you don’t want to step in it, either. For Democrats, letting it go would draw hell from top donors, while fighting back would surely invite accusations of prostituting for the wealthy. What choice would they make?

  Almost universally, Democrats united behind a repeal, arguing with a straight face the SALT cap did not benefit the affluent, but “families,” the “middle class,” and “working people.”

  A common theme was that even if the tax break didn’t directly affect most, it indirectly hurt everyone, since ordinary people would be denied “essential services” as a result of overall decreased tax revenue (a “backdoor hit to every taxpayer around the country” was how Chicago congressman Danny Davis put it). Beyond that, Democrats cried, the plan was unfair. Pelosi’s formulation was that the SALT cap was not just “devastating” (!), but “mean-spirited” and “politically motivated.”

  Within a year after the cap was imposed, a quartet of states led by New York filed a 52-page federal lawsuit — State of New York, State of Connecticut, State of Maryland, and State of New Jersey v. Steven Mnuchin — challenging the cap’s constitutionality. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo led the fire-and-brimstone brigade.

  “The federal government is hellbent on using New York as a piggy bank to pay for corporate tax cuts and I will not stand for it,” Cuomo said, adding that he was “proud to announce that New York is the first state in the nation to take legal action against Trump’s tax plan that benefits the 1 percent at the expense of middle-class families.”

  That was an odd way to put it, since the SALT cap overwhelmingly affected the 1%. As the Brookings Institute pointed out, the SALT cap in its distribution of benefits was actually more regressive even than Trump’s infamous Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which Democrats denounced as a handout to the rich:

  

  After the midterm elections of 2018, members on the Hill whispered to any reporter who would listen that the Democrats’ success had been driven by popular outrage over the SALT fiasco. The cap was “one of the major reasons the House flipped from Republicans to Democrats,” said Chuck Schumer, and the data bore him out: Democrats picked up 15 seats in the 50 districts that had the highest rate of voters claiming the deduction, while picking up just two in the bottom 50 such districts.

  But what did that mean? Was there widespread popular anger about the SALT cap, or was this just another demonstration that “Democratic support has been increasing for years in higher-income, highly-educated areas,” as the Tax Policy Center noted?

  It’s not outlandish to think the SALT episode played a role in speeding what’s been a long-developing transformation of voter bases, with Democrats more and more rapidly taking over the Bill Buckley bedroom communities that Republicans used to dominate. At minimum, the SALT issue inspired mindfreak rheotrical spectacles like Mitch McConnell arguing against a tax on “wealthy people,” and Ted Cruz defending the caps by saying, “The only people whose taxes are going up are the really rich.”

  The new Democrats elected in 2018 ended up providing the core of the “SALT caucus” with California’s Katie Porter and Mike Levin, New Jersey’s Mike Sherrill, Andy Kim, and Tom Malinowski, and Lauren Underwood from Illinois among the members. Since Biden’s win, the SALT warriors redoubled efforts for repeal, with the impressively shameless Suozzi denouncing the cap as an “existential” problem and a “body blow to New York and middle-class families throughout the country.” Other caucus members similarly went all-out in describing a repeal of the SALT cap as something like the second coming of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

  “The SALT cap penalizes working-class Long Islanders,” said New York’s Andrew Garbarino. “From firefighters to police officers, to teachers, to nurses, and small business owners, I hear from people every day about what a crushing blow the SALT cap has delivered them.”

  “SALT does in fact make a critical difference in helping make ends meet for our middle-class residents like teachers and law enforcement officers,” said Sherrill.

  “The cap on the state and local tax deduction hurts middle-class California families,” said Porter.

  All this propaganda put the national press in a bind. According to Trump-era custom, mainstream publications rarely use words like “lie” in conjunction with Democrats, and never phrases like “open political whoring.” The bulk of coverage of the SALT debate therefore relied on euphemisms and weasel words, with one outlet after another reaching for headlines that didn’t describe a transparent effort to lower taxes at the top of the top income bracket.

  A popular take was to depict the SALT dilemma as a “challenge” or “risk” for Democrats. “California Democrats should make gutsy move on taxes,” wrote a columnist for the San Jose Mercury-News. “Democrats Get Clout Needed for Risky Bid to End Trump’s SALT Cap,” added Bloomberg. “California Democrats have a chance to flex some muscle and work to restore deductions for taxpayers,” wrote the Los Angeles Times.

  The New York Times was most creative. “SALT Tax Increase That Burned Blue States is Targeted by Democrats,” read an effort from 2019, noting the party’s effort to restore a “popular tax break.” The Times later went with “Pelosi Floats New Stimulus Plan: Rolling Back SALT Cap.”

  They were also one of many outlets to describe the Democrats’ position on SALT as “uncomfortable” or “awkward,” as in, “The state and local tax issue is in some ways an awkward one for Democrats, because they are trying to restore a tax break that primarily benefited relatively high earners.”

  My personal favorite came from Wall Street’s Old Faithful, Andrew Ross Sorkin, who hosted a debate on Squawk Box between Suozzi and onetime antitax crusader Mick Mulvaney. Reading off a question to Mulvaney from what Sorkin called an “astute” viewer, he suggested paying state tax was like paying tax to a foreign country:

  If a U.S. citizen pays income tax today to a foreign state, to a foreign country, they get an uncapped foreign tax credit… to their federal tax liability. However, if they pay to a domestic state, right, like New York, they get capped. Does that make any sense to you in the world?

  Missing most from coverage has been any indication of the sheer size of the amounts at stake. Even in light of the news that the Biden administration is “eyeing” a capital gains increase that could generate $370 billion over ten years, that’s still way short of the $600 billion in revenue over ten years that would be sacrificed if the SALT cap is repealed.

  The Biden administration, incidentally, has yet to line up behind Pelosi and Schumer and back a repeal of the cap, and a lot depends on their decision. Among New York’s congressional delegation, just a few members have not backed the SALT cap repeal, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who called a potential repeal a “gift to billionaires”).

  In yet another example of the upside-downness around this issue, some of the only attempts to speak in plain language about SALT have come from the financial press, where Forbes wondered if Democrats would cut taxes “for the rich” and Yahoo! Finance said this was one tax break the Democrats should “grant the wealthy.”

  Beyond that, only a handful of voices like Richard Reeves at Brookings and Sirota from the Daily Poster have evinced much interest. Democrats have mostly succeeded in painting the matter as an assault on partisan dignity.

  Sirota, who worked for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020, tells a story about getting an email from a Long Island-based finance professional who was furious about the SALT cap, adding, “I have the courage to wear my Bernie hat on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.” Sirota tweeted: “We are in hell.”

  In one Poster piece, Sirota talked about how the SALT debate arose in the context of messaging that appears with increasing frequency in pop culture and the press, about how hard life is in the top tax bracket. The classic of the genre was a Times piece from 2009 entitled, “You Try to Live on 500K in This Town,” but, he notes, it started earlier:

  In the lead-up to the financial crisis the Washington Post insisted that a family making $300,000 is just “squeaking by.” Fast Company has told readers about a family supposedly living “paycheck to paycheck” on $325,000 a year. CNBC insists that it costs $350,000 to be middle class in a big city. And the New York Times has insisted that earning only $500,000 a year makes it difficult to live in a Big Apple where the median annual household income is $60,000. 

  There are legitimate reasons to be in favor of restoring the full deduction, but instead of talking about them, Democratic leaders and pundits have mostly been trying to sell the public on an absurd lie: that a tax break for which only 1 in 10 Americans even qualifies, and overwhelmingly benefits those in the highest-earning percentile, is a “middle-class” benefit. No one seems to mind that this is the same take Democrats blasted when used by Republicans to argue for the Bush tax cuts or the repeal of the estate tax.

  After the midterms in 2018, former CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider said the Democrats were “becoming a party dominated by educated, upper-middle-class, liberal whites,” analysis that was borne out in 2020, when gains among that exact demographic helped Democrats win back the White House from Trump. It would be surprising if they didn’t develop economic policies to match, and the “SALT caucus” is a big step in that direction.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 17:20

• NJ Deli With $100 Million Market Cap Linked To Shell Company Whose Stock Also Recently Exploded
  NJ Deli With $100 Million Market Cap Linked To Shell Company Whose Stock Also Recently Exploded

  Just days ago, we highlighted when fund manager David Einhorn pointed out a small New Jersey deli that was trading with an insane market cap of over $100 million as one of the hallmarks of the bubble the market is in. Einhorn wrote:

  “Strange things happen to all kinds of stocks. Last year, on one day in June, the stocks of about a dozen bankrupt companies roughly doubled on enormous volume. Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported a boom in penny stocks.

  Someone pointed us to Hometown International (HWIN), which owns a single deli in rural New Jersey. The deli had $21,772 in sales in 2019 and only $13,976 in 2020, as it was closed due to COVID from March to September. HWIN reached a market cap of $113 million on February 8. The largest shareholder is also the CEO/CFO/Treasurer and a Director, who also happens to be the wrestling coach of the high school next door to the deli. The pastrami must be amazing. Small investors who get sucked into these situations are likely to be harmed eventually, yet the regulators – who are supposed to be protecting investors – appear to be neither present nor curious.”

  After Einhorn’s comments went viral, people began digging into the “unusual” story of Hometown Deli and voila, we were granted even more strings to pull on. For example, CNBC reported yesterday that the deli is liked to another company whose stock has skyrocketed over the last year, E-Waste.

  E-Waste is a self-admitted shell company and had total assets of about $183,000 and liabilities of $412,400 as of its most recent SEC filings. It posted a net loss of $58,000 for the 9 months ended November 30. The company’s own filings state it was created in 2012 “to develop an e-waste recycling business” but “was not successful in its efforts and discontinued that line of business.”

  It has been a shell company since then and has been looking to “engage in a business combination with a private entity whose business presents an opportunity for its shareholders.”

  

  But E-Waste’s stock, like Hometown’s, has recently rocketed to a high of $10.25 per share. It put the company’s market cap at over $100 million. 

  Not unlike Hometown Deli, E-Waste also has little ongoing business. Yet this didn’t stop Hometown Deli from lending E-Waste $150,000 late last year – even while the deli was closed due to the pandemic. E-Waste CEO John Rollo also had an interesting former gig for someone in the waste business: he worked another job as a patient transporter at a northern New Jersey hospital, at a healthcare system CNBC says he’s still employed at. Hometown International’s CEO is a New Jersey high school principle and a wrestling coach.

  Rollo had also won two Grammy awards, the report notes, as “a recording engineer and producer on albums by artists such as The Kinks, Joe Cocker, Whitney Houston, Kool & the Gang and Quiet Riot”. 

  And there’s yet another interesting connection between the two companies: they each have the same Hong Kong entity as their largest shareholder and “similar consulting contracts” with companies controlled by investors. Additionally, both companies employ the same New York law firm.

  Like Hometown, E-Waste also was involved with a lawyer who was sued by the SEC for alleged involvement in fraudulent schemes. Hometown’s lawyer was also charged with federal crimes, while E-Waste’s lawyer was not. 

  Involved in both companies is a man named Peter Coker, Sr., whose son Peter Coker Jr. is Chairman of Hometown International. He is also “executive chairman of South Shore Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong company that owns a financially troubled hotel in Macau, China,” CNBC notes. The report details what appears to be numerous related party transactions between the Cokers, entities they control, Hometown and E-Waste.

  Meanwhile, as the Fed sees no signs of excess, we pointed out this morning…

  A New Jersey deli has a bigger market cap than Credit Suisse

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 22, 2021

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

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 16:50

• Hidden Threats – 3 Things To Worry About That Mainstream Media Refuses To Discuss
  Hidden Threats – 3 Things To Worry About That Mainstream Media Refuses To Discuss

  Authored by Professor Scott Galloway via ‘No Mercy/No Malice’ blog,

  In February 1946, President Truman directed his intelligence apparatus to prepare a daily summary of critical national security issues. The President’s Daily Brief (“PDB”) has been produced ever since, and those that have been made public illustrate the breadth and complexity of the threats facing our nation. For example, in 1962, while President Kennedy dealt with the risk of Soviet nuclear weapons being stationed 200 miles off Miami, his PDB also alerted him to chaos in the Saudi and Congolese governments, Khrushchev’s plans for a “major reorganization” in the USSR, worsening tensions between Laos and North Vietnam, and a destabilizing student protest in South Korea.

  The U.S. has survived for 250 years in part because its leaders have worried about, fortified against, and repelled a wide range of emerging threats. Many threats are obvious and popularly understood; however, many others are self-inflicted, uncomfortable to acknowledge, or come hidden under the guise of opportunity. These threats can register the greatest damage, as fewer defensive measures have been taken against them. In sum, it’s productive to worry about things that others (e.g., the media, colleagues) do not.

  Below are the threats that I believe to be most present and not clear.

  

  1. The Virgin Homicides

  Young men are less likely than young women to graduate from high school (45,000 fewer U.S. boys than girls do so every year) and college, they are twice as likely to overdose, and three times more likely to be arrested. Men die from suicide at a far greater rate than do women — and these disparities are increasing.

  

  

  It is increasingly difficult for young people to become a viable, consistent provider. Real wage growth has been sluggish for decades, and the boom in asset prices makes it harder to buy a house or build wealth.

  

  Self-perception of success/failure is a function of relativity and proximity. Twenty-somethings today spend three hours a day on social networking apps, and, for the first time in history, a majority of them live with their parents. Young people do not benchmark themselves against peers from other eras or geographies, but against their Instagram feeds and roommates (i.e., parents). These examples set unattainable standards and remind them of their shortcomings, respectively.

  Worsening economic prospects affect men and women, but not equally. Despite generations of effort and real improvement in gender equality, men are still expected to be providers and are told from an early age that financial success is a critical measure of manhood. Seventy-one percent of American women say it is very important for a man to support his family financially. Only 25 percent of men say the same about women.

  

  For better or worse, men who are perceived as unviable providers do especially poorly when seeking mates. Online dating apps are now the most popular way for people to meet, and they provide unprecedented data on mating preferences. Of course, for both men and women, a small group receives most of the attention. In fact, the inequality of attention is greater than the inequality of income.

  

  But, the concentration is far greater for men. On Hinge, the top 10 percent of men receive nearly 60 percent of the “likes” — the comparable figure for women is 45 percent. If Hinge constituted a sovereign, it would reflect an average wealth (measured in “likes”) for women, but for men, it would be the eighth most unequal country on Earth.

  One outcome: a radical decline in sexual activity among young men. In 2018, 28 percent of men under 30 reported having no sex in the past year — double historical rates.

  

  This isn’t about sex, but about a wider range of (non-)attachments (marriage rates hit an all-time low in 2018 as well). As a species, we need physical and social contact, and we crave deep, meaningful bonds. Men who fail to attach to partners, careers, or communities grow bitter, and seek volatility and unrest. They are more susceptible to fringe theories, and over-index on online forums filled with misogynist content and misinformation. Economic inequality and elasticity are correlated with violence and instability, and studies of gun violence in the U.S. find a strong association with decreased social mobility. Marriage, on the other hand, correlates with reductions in crime, and may even have a causal effect on reducing it.

  The reduction of economic pathways for young people is no less serious for women, but it appears to be less dangerous. When young women feel shame and rage, they don’t turn to AR-15s. The most dangerous person on the planet is a bored, broke, lonely young male. The U.S. is producing too many of them. Unless we dramatically increase the economic opportunities for young people, we increase the volatility of our commonwealth and add accelerant to crises.

  

  2. Crypto’s Assault on the USD

  The United States government plays a vital role in world security and economic prosperity. Large-scale criminal enterprises, extremist terror organizations, rogue nations such as North Korea, and authoritarian powers like China and Russia seek to undermine the American way of life. The bulwark to these threats is our nation’s ability to deploy unrivaled economic and military force in pursuit of U.S. interests and defense of our citizens.

  A pillar of this strength is the primacy of the United States Dollar. The dollar is the world’s default currency, preferred store of value, and medium of exchange. Because global investors are eager to hold dollars, we have tremendous latitude regarding our own liquidity and influence over organizations and sovereigns that trade in the dollar. Because global commerce is settled in dollars, U.S. law enforcement maintains visibility into — and authority over — flows of capital and influence. The dollar is a ubiquitous countermeasure to adversaries that does not present the risk(s) of escalation of military force.

  The dollar is already structurally challenged: It accounts for 59 percent of global foreign exchange reserves but only an estimated 16 percent of global GDP. That would be hard to sustain under any circumstances, but now, the U.S. is accelerating its long-running debasement of the once “all-mighty dollar” in a misguided attempt to prop up the shareholder class during the pandemic.

  

  As John Connally Jr., Richard Nixon’s treasury secretary, put it in 1971, “the dollar is our currency, but it is your [every other nation’s] problem.” Today, apparently infinite quantitative easing (printing money) is our problem … and it is bitcoin’s opportunity. Cryptocurrency, sitting at a $2T market capitalization, is no threat to the dollar today, but the trends are not favorable.

  Should bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies usurp the scarcity credibility of major currencies and emerge as the dominant form of money, the dollar — and the role it plays in world stability — would be drastically undermined. Widespread use of currencies that evade the existing financial system could blind U.S. authorities to tax fraud, sanctions evasion, and other criminal conduct. Indeed, it would degrade the ability of governments across all democracies to collect taxes and enforce financial laws. Less investor interest in the dollar would increase U.S. government borrowing rates, and reduce discretionary spending as interest on debt increases.

  Delta of Domain

  Big tech has created enormous value. However, its net value (benefits minus externalities) is diminished as regulators and lawmakers lack the domain expertise to regulate the externalities.  So, while cryptocurrencies offer potential for creative destruction — and significant value creation — ignorance among regulators and lawmakers regarding cryptocurrencies is unacceptable and dangerous.

  It is fashionable in crypto communities to celebrate the potential impact on USD hegemony. This is a short-sighted, liberterian-esque screed whose loudest barkers are often the greatest beneficiaries of our economy, and who are using their influence to drive history’s greatest pump-and-dump. Crypto offers great possibility, but not all of those possibilities are good for the commonwealth.

  Democracies lose when the wealthy evade taxes, or when organized crime can easily move and store capital. A decentralized financial system runs the risk of neutering enforcement. U.S. adversaries have a vested interest in the success of any technology whose success may come at the cost of the USD. China has announced a state-sponsored cryptocurrency (AKA Big Brother Coin) and India may be the swing vote to determine whether cryptocurrencies or the Yuan will reign supreme on the global stage.

  The velvet glove of U.S. values surrounding our unrivaled ability to deliver force (globally) is our nation’s most fearsome legionnaire. USD primacy is a close second. Indeed, they are codependent — anything that threatens both must be better understood.

  3. Obesity

  Before we all had mask collections and Zoom accounts, obesity was the defining public health crises of our time. Now, though it has been (temporarily) superseded by a pandemic that has killed half a million Americans, it is the leading aggravating factor in that new scourge.

  Obesity is associated with many of the leading causes of death in the U.S. (diabetes, heart disease, and stroke). If that doesn’t scare you, let’s put it in the language of America: money. In 2016, the U.S. spent an estimated $480 billion on obesity-related costs and $1.24 trillion in indirect work loss costs. Or roughly … all the bitcoin.

  It’s only getting worse: Today, 42 percent of Americans are classified as obese, up from 34 percent in 2007-2008. While obesity is a direct result of behaviors like overconsumption and inactivity, its prevalence is a symptom of structural inequality and just bad structures — namely, the food industrial complex, which profits greatly off the sales of cheap, unhealthy foods and that disproportionately targets low income people and people of color.

  While obesity is not a new concern, it has gained new urgency, even as we are increasingly reluctant to address it. Just as masking has been politicized by the right, open conversation about the dangers of obesity has been politicized by the left. Media has moved from fat-shaming (reprehensible) to willful blindness towards the dangers of excess weight (inexcusable). Even as obesity rates increase, fewer people are trying to lose their dangerous excess weight.

  

  But we cannot ignore the underlying data: Covid-19 is especially dangerous for the severely overweight. In fact, the CDC estimates that being obese triples the odds of being hospitalized for Covid. Seventy-eight percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 were either overweight (28 percent) or obese (50 percent). Eighty-eight percent of Covid deaths in the first year of the pandemic occurred in countries where over half the population is overweight — led by the U.S.

  In a dark twist, the pandemic has also made obesity more widespread. In February, nearly half of American adults reported gaining a median of 15 pounds during the pandemic, and 10 percent of them reported gaining more than 50 pounds.

  Of course, obesity is not just a function of willpower, but also of genes, stress levels, and access to healthy food and healthcare. As industrial food production has scaled, our instincts for seeking salty, sugary, and fatty foods have not modulated. So, while individuals are not to blame, we are fighting an uphill battle: Once a person becomes severely overweight, their body changes and fights efforts to lose the excess weight and keep it off. If our government doesn’t tackle the obesity epidemic with the same urgency as it would any other public health crisis — starting with open, non-politicized conversation — we are destined to become a nation lacking the strength and vitality that has for so long cemented us as leaders on the global stage.

  Summary

  The U.S. is increasingly alone, broke, and overweight.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 16:20

• Border-Area Hotels Bail On Biden Admin To House Migrant Overflow
  Border-Area Hotels Bail On Biden Admin To House Migrant Overflow

  Four hotels in Texas and Arizona have pulled out of agreements to house around 600 migrants as federal facilities grapple with record numbers of illegal apprehensions at the US-Mexico border.

  

  According to Axios, “A Woodspring Suites, a Hampton Inn by Hilton, a Microtel by Wyndham and a Best Western were slated to open up more space for migrant families starting April 30, but backed out and now the deadline has been pushed back, according to sources familiar with the situation.”

  That said, the Texas nonprofit which won no-bid contracts after hiring a Biden transition official – Family Endeavors – told Axios that they’ve secured three alternative hotel sites, but did not elaborate.

  Family Endeavors is securing the hotels as part of its $87 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The nonprofit also signed a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to find housing for unaccompanied minors, worth up to $550 million.

  More via Axios:

  • Lorenzen-Strait, a former official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, previously advised the Biden-Harris transition team on Department of Homeland Security policy and staffing matters.
  • He also ran a consulting firm advising companies on federal procurement practices, according to his LinkedIn page, with specific expertise on agencies that include the Administration for Children and Families — the division of the Department of Health and Human Services tasked with detaining and processing child migrants.
  • The Washington Examiner first reported on Lorenzen-Strait’s role at Family Endeavors, in the context of an $87 million DHS contract awarded to the group last month.
  • ACF officials did not respond to a request for comment from Axios. Family Endeavors said its contracting work on the border is “a continuation of services we have delivered to the migrant population since 2012.”

  “The families that come into ICE custody will be housed in a manner consistent with legal requirements for the safety and well-being of children and their parents or guardians,” an ICE spokesperson told Axios in a statement, adding that families are generally in custody for less than 72 hours for processing.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 15:50

• Make No Mistake: Programmable Digital Currencies Are Weaponizable Money
  Make No Mistake: Programmable Digital Currencies Are Weaponizable Money

  Authored by Peter Earle via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  Earlier this year, China began to roll out a project that had long been in the works – a digital version of its currency, the yuan, is now being used in four Chinese cities. The Chinese government sees two major potential benefits to the experiment: a tangible challenge to the U.S. dollar’s global ubiquity, and a way to control how Chinese citizens spend their money. 

  

  As a government-issued currency, the digital yuan can be manipulated and monitored in a number of ways. Importantly, it is programmable. Writes The Wall Street Journal, “Beijing has tested expiration dates to encourage users to spend it quickly, for times when the economy needs a jump start.” 

  Although the concept of a currency which is artificially inflatable/deflatable on demand seems novel, it has its roots (as do so many concepts) in the theorizing of a long-dead economist. A German entrepreneur by the name of Silvio Gesell witnessed Argentina’s 1890 financial crash firsthand. The ensuing unemployment, poverty, and economic stagnation convinced him that something needed to change. Such crises occurred, he theorized, because people hoarded money out of fear and brought business to a halt, argued Gesell––this he dubbed “poverty amid plenty.” 

  To encourage quicker spending, disincentivize saving, and therefore avoid more catastrophic financial crashes, Gesell proposed money with an expiration date. “Currency Reform as a Bridge to the Social State,” his first published work, detailed a system in which paper bills would expire unless they were stamped––renewed––for a fee. This ultimately meant that holders of money incurred a demurrage cost, which is the cost of holding a given currency. Because of Gesell’s proposed renewal fee, savings had a negative interest rate. 

  He called this Freigold, or “free money.” Speaking of his system’s perceived benefits in The Natural Economic Order, Gesell wrote,

  Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of the money. So we must make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange.

  At a time when nations were largely on the gold standard, Gesell’s idea was unorthodox (and unpopular). 

  Gesell died in 1930, having never seen his monetary system realized. But just two years later, in the deepest depths of the Great Depression, a handful of small and medium towns in the United States and Europe looked to his proposal to soothe their economic distress. The best-known of these cases was the small town of Wörgl, Austria, in which town official Michael Unterguggenberger convinced Wörgl to issue stamped money known as “Certified Compensation Bills.” The experiment came to be known as the “Miracle of Wörgl,” reflecting the town’s success in reducing unemployment and the relative ease with which Wörgl weathered the Depression compared to the rest of Austria. Hawarden, Iowa, and Anaheim, California, inspired by Wörgl’s experience, soon enacted similar policies. 

  But it must be said that Wörgl’s experiment was likely successful because it, similar to the currency itself, had an expiration date. After just one year, the town put the project to rest. As Jonathan Goodwin wrote, “Once the taxes in arrears were completely paid and when people had paid enough taxes in advance to feel safe and comfortable (at some point they would stop paying forward), the scrip would lose a key part of its attractiveness.”

  Of course, even if consumption drove economic growth (and there are a number of both economic and reductio ad absurdum arguments that point out the flaw in that concept), the idea of money that can be coded to decay at tailorable rates is disconcerting. 

  Chinese Yuan spot (40 years)

  

  (Source: Bloomberg Finance, LP)

  Central banks are monetary central planners, and the many criticisms that apply to central planning in every other field apply here as well. Their insularity, the blizzard of information they face, and political manipulation result in a preponderance of erroneous, ineffective, or late policy choices, all of which bring about unintended consequences. At times, those unintended consequences become new crises, which demand further policy intervention. Given this inevitability, any expansion of policy armamentaria should be viewed with deep concern. This is true of China’s digital yuan, the Wörgl experiment, and any number of other unconventional monetary policy tools in use now or in the future.

  In the specific case of a currency engineered for customizable demurrage, pernicious applications come to mind immediately. The extent to which those are realizable, however, pivots upon a degree of theorizing as to how “targetable” the programmed change of purchasing power will be. (Because such a system will ultimately require the elimination of cash to be fully effective, the warnings associated with a closely-related unconventional monetary policy, negative interest rates, apply here as well.)

  A preliminary question is to what extent, or even whether, the induced loss of purchasing power will be communicated by the implementers of monetary policy. It is conceivable that in some nations the disclosure of an impending demurrage operation will be disseminated well in advance and will include specifics regarding the anticipated amount of change; other governments may be less forthcoming. This will likely derive as much from the authoritarian character of the state as from specific policy aims. Further, while in the 1890s the average farmer understood the basics of inflation and deflation (owing to their dealings in grains and other commodities), it may be difficult to expect the same of citizens in the modern age. 

  By announcing that money will be debased by a discrete amount at a certain point in time, individuals, firms, and other institutions holding money––again, assuming these policies are applied on something akin to an M3 basis––will make decisions based not upon their tastes and needs, but rather upon the desire to convert money to another form in anticipation of the loss of purchasing power. The effect of individuals and large financial institutions singling out certain goods as stores of value under the artificial upward ratcheting of time preference would, as do most other forms of monetary tinkering, inevitably create price distortions and possibly shortages, depending on the availability of local goods and services.

  Should the ability to direct the demurrage be more precise, the implications are much starker. It is conceivable that financial institutions might make the case that their money (more precisely, money in their accounts) should be insulated from those policy measures, thus creating a corporatist monetary system: consumers and unfavored economic actors wrestling with concocted losses of purchasing power, economic elites, their firms, and other court favorites receiving, or being left with, unimpinged purchasing power. Exactly where the lines between the favored and not are drawn, and the occasions upon which they are invoked, are left to the reader’s imagination. A look at the influence exerted by both special interest groups and corporations on public policy is instructive.

  Chinese CPI (YoY, 10 years)

  

  (Source: Bloomberg Finance, LP)

  But this only opens the proverbial door. History is rife with examples of political initiatives which, however nobly intended or narrowly designed, became blunt tools of widespread oppression. 

  Could a demurrage feature of a programmable digital currency, nominally designed to spur consumption and increase monetary velocity, not ultimately become a broad punitive instrument? It could serve as an intermediate form of a fine for misdemeanors or other legal sanctions: Rather than forfeiting a lump sum, a violator’s account balance could be rigged for an accelerated loss of purchasing power. The argument in support of such a measure may well be that it punishes wrongdoers virtuously, afflicting the health of their bank balance whilst “supporting the economy” or “fostering economic growth.”

  Although it tempts speculation of a particularly Orwellian tenor, one may imagine––I stress the term imagine as distinct from predict or expect, as this is not a conspiracy theory––the tying of anything from mandatory insurance coverage to getting vaccinated to compulsory voting to be enforceable under the threat of individually-targeted monetary penalties. Whether or not such a measure would fall under the legal category of a Bill of Attainder would also, likely, be a matter of considerable controversy.

  A state determining that its populace is insufficiently supportive of a military campaign may decide that hardships are not being sufficiently shared: A sudden, unannounced attack on bank balances resulting in an immediate loss of purchasing power could be imposed to align interests. Could a failure to consume certain goods––say, domestic versus foreign––trigger a government-decreed, disciplinary lopping of an offender’s bank balances? In the same way that a former president allegedly used the Internal Revenue Service to terrorize and harass political opponents, a currently innocuous programmable digital currency may, over time, morph into nothing less than weaponizable money. 

  China, by launching its digital yuan project, is traversing new territory in the realm of authoritarian monetary planning. Unfortunately, this endeavor may not be an isolated experiment for much longer; already, officials with the U.S. Federal Reserve are engaging in research to build and test a digital dollar. Central bankers the world over, in fact, are signaling increasing openness to experimental policy initiatives. This particular project is still in its infancy, but one thing is certain regardless of differing cultures or political systems: Central banks of all colors are prone to the pitfalls of central planning and will necessarily inflict unintended consequences upon the populations they serve. 

  Money, in its most basic form, is an irreplaceable facilitator of economic calculation and a social instrument making cooperation possible on a global scale. Policies of the sort which programmable digital currencies bring into the realm of possibility potentially turn those on their head, introducing new possibilities for intentional––and systematic––coercion.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 15:20

• "That's How Crazy The Market Is" – A "Virtually Unheard Of Trade" Spotted In Lumber
  “That’s How Crazy The Market Is” – A “Virtually Unheard Of Trade” Spotted In Lumber

  On Monday we highlighted a remarkable fact about the buying frenzy in the US lumber market: lumber futures were up for 16 consecutive days, a stretch without a down day since March 26, and while they did dip on Tuesday, the have more than recovered this latest decline, and are now up 19 of the past 20 days.

  

  This surge in lumber prices to record highs, which was driven by an unprecedented shortages coupled with soaring demand by homebuilders…

  

  … has also translated to unprecedented events in the supply chain, with Bloomberg today reporting a remarkable episode showing how extreme America’s shortage of lumber has become: For the first time in recent memory, a lumberyard was the one selling wood to a supplier.

  Needless to say, this kind of trade – where a customer sells goods to its traditional supplier – is virtually unheard of.

  MaterialsXchange, a Chicago-based digital trading platform for physical wood products, reports that the trade involved a lumberyard selling about 30,000 square feet of oriented strand board, or OSB ( a cheaper stand-in for plywood that is widely used to make house floors and walls).

  “Building materials are moving from company to company in nontraditional flows,” said MaterialsXchange co-founder and CEO Mike Wisnefski. He added that prices have gotten so high that some homebuilders are being forced to cancel projects, leaving certain lumberyards with a little “excess inventory.”

  On Wednesday, his company brokered another OSB sale involving a US East Coast lumberyard selling to another one in Arkansas at $1,500 per 1,000 square feet, surpassing a record $999 that was reached at the end of March, based on Random Lengths pricing.

  For those confused, Bloomberg explains: in a normal world, wholesale distributors buy lumber from sawmills and sell that to the yards that homebuilders frequent. But lumber markets today are anything but normal with futures surging by more than 60% to record levels this year as the entire timber supply chain collapses under the weight of soaring demand from people renovating their homes and buying bigger ones. As a result, sawmills can’t keep up with orders. Truck shipments have been delayed. And distributors are running short on product.

  “That’s how crazy the marketplace is,” said RCM Alternatives lumber analyst Brian Leonard, who has covered the industry for 35 years and had previously never heard of lumberyards selling to distributors. “Obviously it shouldn’t happen. You never push product back up the chain but you can today because of the volatility of the market.”

  Furthermore, “reverse” trades like the one that occurred earlier this month will push wood prices even higher. Distributors buying back supply from yards will inevitably mark up prices to the customers they resell to, “potentially creating a vicious cycle that continues to stoke what has already proven to be an unrelenting lumber rally”, according to Bloomberg.

  And, as we discussed earlier this week, soaring lumber prices are directly translating into much higher prices for new homes, making housing – where prices have already exploded thanks to the Biden stimulus and the Fed’s ZIRP – even more unaffordable.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/24/2021 – 15:11