Feb 19

Today’s News 19th February 2021

  • Brandon Smith: A Question For Leftists
    Brandon Smith: A Question For Leftists

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    The media these days is saturated with tales of “evil conservatives” and our heinous plans for world domination through “insurrection”. In fact, most mainstream articles that cover recent events including the election and the protests at the capitol make a point to always mention “white supremacy” and “terrorism” in the same breath as the word “conservative”. This is an entirely deliberate propaganda tactic called “word association” or “word redefinition”; change the subtext of a word or group label in the minds of the masses and you can often change perception from positive to negative.

    In other words, Conservative = Racist/Terrorist. It doesn’t matter if it’s not true, it just matters that people are conditioned to subconsciously make the connection.

    How about an example:

    I’ve offered numerous criticisms of Trump and his administration over the years, but none of those criticism had anything to do with what leftists have been regurgitating since 2016. To them, Trump’s “racism” was verified fact, yet when I ask any social justice warrior to produce an actual quote of Trump saying something racist, they can’t seem to dig anything up.

    By extension, leftists have a bizarre obsession with Russia and the theory that Russia is an ever present hand of god in US politics, yet, none of them can produce any concrete proof that Russia has meaningful influence in American elections or affairs.

    The political left has committed itself to a fantasy world; a parallel universe. They deeply believes in things that never happened, and treat those beliefs as sacrosanct. Why? Probably because their movement is infected with people that are easily manipulated by word redefinitions and false associations. Are they victims of propaganda? Sure. Are they innocent? No, not really.

    Refusal to question the actions and motives of your chosen movement is willful ignorance, and leftists should be held accountable for that.

    They are the ONLY group of people that has consistently supported mass surveillance, mass censorship and deplatforming, mass violence, property destruction and looting as well as violations of individual rights through medical mandates and lockdowns.

    They call conservatives “insurrectionists” and “traitors”, but they are the only people openly trying to dismantle constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.

    So, who are the real villains of this story?

     

    Leftists seem to suffer from bewilderment when faced with conservative values, so perhaps an explanation is needed? Think of it this way: Conservatives value core principles (natural law) and the vital fundamentals of civilization. We believe merit is more important than equity. We believe in winning through hard work and excellence, not winning by deception or through claims of victim status. We do not value personal feelings above logic and reason, and the opinion of a mob is no more important to us than the opinion of a single person.

    Conservatives don’t owe any allegiance to the left’s twisted vision of “democracy” (tyranny by the majority), nor do we hold blind allegiance to any particular government. Our allegiance is to the Bill of Rights and to the principles which founded this nation, and when a political group attempts to violate those principles, we are not required to submit simply because they collected “more votes”.

    Our rights are more important than any election. Our rights are more important than your fears.

    One of the core characteristics of conservatives is that we have a tendency to argue with each other…a lot. It’s one of the main reasons why we find it difficult to organize on the same scale that leftists often do. We might all agree on the source of the problems our country faces, but we rarely all agree on the details, or the solutions. This is a weakness, but it is also a strength.

    I would much rather be a part of a movement that self reflects. I would much rather be a part of a movement that doesn’t operate as a hive mind. There needs to be LOGICAL dissenting voices in everything so that ideas are challenged. If the ideas are found wanting by reason and wisdom, then they need to be addressed or abandoned. The political left has no concept of this, though.

    Leftists are afraid to question anything within their own circles. To dissent on the smallest detail is to be a heretic, a traitor to the cause. They use the word “diversity” all the time, like a battle cry, but when confronted with true diversity (diversity of thought), they panic and react violently.

    Leftists don’t actually care about diversity; they only care that you have blind allegiance to the collective. Stray but a little, and the mob will come for your head. They LOVE plantations, they love slavery; as long as they own the plantations and they control the slaves.

    A natural consequence of this Animal Farm mentality is that irony and hypocrisy is lost on the followers of such movements. They project all their shortcomings and crimes on others. The devils they see in conservatives are actually the devils they see in the mirror everyday. That said, the higher up you get in the leftist pyramid, the less it becomes hypocritical and the more it becomes malicious and deliberate.

    The gaslighting, the word association propaganda, the selective memory hole they use to erase historical facts that contradict their ideology, the people at the top and their lackeys KNOW exactly what they are doing. They don’t care that their claims are hypocritical or outright fraudulent. They know they are lying, they know they are gaslighting. They’re not interested in being right, they are only interested in WINNING.

    There is much more going on here than meets the eye. There is a great deal of power and money behind the rise of the hard left ideology and there are certain people that benefit from it’s expansion. Leftists like to view themselves as the “underdogs” or revolutionaries fighting against “the man”. However, every resource of global power brokers has been offered in support of the political left. The “Man” is the ally of the leftists; in some ways he is even the creator of the leftist movement.

    They aren’t revolutionaries at all; they are the jackboots of the new world order.

    It was globalist institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation that funded different elements of the feminist movement and “gender studies” movements from the late 1960’s onward. This included the Rockefeller Foundation’s large donations to ‘The Feminist Press’ and the Ford Foundation’s programs to indoctrinate university professors into injecting social justice talking points into their curriculum.

    This is openly admitted in Alison R. Bernstein’s book ‘Funding The Future: Philanthropy’s Influence On America’s Higher Education’. Bernstein is the vice president of Education at the Ford Foundation and the former Associate Dean of Faculty at Princeton.

    That’s right folks, social justice activism was paid for and encouraged by the so-called “patriarchy”. This is reality, and it never stopped. Even today SJW groups are funded by globalists. For example, as the mainstream media often tries to dismiss or ignore, Black Lives Matter was initially funded by the Ford Foundation and George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. BLM coffers were flooded with over $100 million from uber rich white elites.

    Again, this is a FACT that even the dishonest spin doctors at Snopes are not able to deny. Instead, they attempt to use strawman arguments and sophistry to distract from the implication of extreme-left mobs receiving seed money from elitist billionaires.

    But let’s follow this path even further: Who gets the support of the mainstream media behemoths? Conservatives or leftists? The answer is obvious.

    What about Big Tech platforms? Do they enforce leftist ideological standards? Do they censor conservative viewpoints predominantly or leftist viewpoints predominantly? The reality is that conservatives are deplatformed from Twitter, YouTube and Facebook far more than leftists, this is verifiable fact.

    When alternative platforms like Parler are built, are they allowed to simply exist? Of course not! The leftists rampage in an effort to destroy them, but the leftists would have no power without the backing of corporate monopolies like Apple, Google and Amazon. Not only does Big Tech aid the leftists in their Jihad against conservatives, but the government does as well.

    They don’t just go after alternative platforms, they try to go after web service providers. And when alternative platforms move to more freedom oriented service providers like Epik, the leftists get government support in order to intimidate them also.

    Leftists revel in the argument that “freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences”; they seem to think it is rather clever. I would say, actually, yes, that’s EXACTLY what freedom of speech means. Freedom of speech means that no single group of people is allowed to use fear, intimidation and punishment to compel silence in other groups or individuals that disagree with them. With corporate monopoly and government on their side, it is clear that leftists have appointed themselves the sole arbiters of “consequence”, and this violates the constitution in every conceivable way.

    The collusion between government, corporations and extremist ideological movements is the classical definition of fascism. And, just as the Third Reich enjoyed immense funding, investment and industrial support from globalists and corporations in the decade leading up to WWII, the political left is enjoying immense support from the global corporate oligarchy today. You cannot be “anti-fascist” while you are colluding with fascists.

    So, again, I ask leftists: If you are the rebels, if you are the freedom fighters, then why are all the elites you are supposedly fighting against on your side? Why are evil people your most avid allies?

    *  *  *

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

  • NYC Waitress Fired For Waiting To Take COVID Vax Over Pregnancy Concerns
    NYC Waitress Fired For Waiting To Take COVID Vax Over Pregnancy Concerns

    A waitress in New York City was fired after she told her employer that she wanted to wait and see if the COVID-19 vaccine – which has been in use for less than nine months – has any side affects on pregnancy.

    34-year-old Bonnie Jacobson, who started working at the Red Hook Tavern in August, says she’s not an ‘anti-vaxxer,’ but was uncomfortable taking the vaccine while she and her husband were trying to conceive, she told the Daily Mail.

    Bonnie Jacobson

    On February 8, the restaurant sent an email to employees which said “If you choose to get vaccinated, here’s what you need to know.” The email made no mention of mandatory vaccinations – which, by the by, don’t prevent people from catching or transmitting COVID-19  and instead helps protect against serious illness from the disease.

    During a staff meeting, Jacobson says she told her manager that she wanted more time to research the vaccine, and was told that she wouldn’t be required to get the shot.

    “As a 34-year-old woman, why take the risk right now when I can just wait a little longer when there are people a lot older and more at risk who could use the vaccine more than I could right now?” she told the Mail. “My dad is 68 years old and lives in Pennsylvania and has diabetes, there’s no reason why I should be getting that before him.”

    Days later on February 12, the Brooklyn tavern changed its mind and sent an email telling employees that the vaccine was mandatory.

    “Please be advised that we will require that all employees receive the vaccination,” reads the email.

    “This will be mandatory for all existing employees and any new hires. The exception to this policy will be if your own personal health or disability prohibits you from obtaining this vaccination. We encourage you to consult your healthcare professional to determine if getting a vaccine is right for you.”

    Jacobson emailed her employers back, and said that while she ‘fully supports’ the vaccine, she doesn’t want to get it yet.

    “While I fully support the vaccine and understand its importance I do believe this is a very personal choice. I really hope this choice would not affect my employment at Red Hook Tavern,” she wrote, adding that she takes COVID “very seriously” and will continue to practice safety guidelines.

    “I get tested every 1-2 weeks and have never tested positive for COVID. I plan to continue these safety practices for as long as necessary,” her email continues, adding “Also once there is more research to support that it does not affect fertility I would reconsider my position.”

    On Monday, however, Jacobson heard back – with her employers noting that the company ‘respected’ her ‘very personal choice,’ but that “In order to continue employment with us, getting the vaccine is required. At this time your employment will be terminated. We are sad to see you go. If you do change your mind, please do not hesitate to let us know.”

    Red Hook Tavern owner Billy Durney told the Mail that he could have handled the situation differently, and that the tavern would update its policy so all employees understand their stance.

    “Once New York state allowed restaurant workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to put a plan in place to keep our team and guests safe,” he said in a statement obtained by various outlets, adding “No one has faced these challenges before and we made a decision that we thought would best protect everyone.”

    Red Hook Tavern owner Billy Durney

    “I just wanted more time they didn’t allow me that, I didn’t even have time to consult a physician. It was a week from being ‘your choice,’ to it’s not going to be mandatory, to it us mandatory, to you’re fired,” said Jacobson. “I had a very good working relationship there. I just had an employee review on February 6 and it was all positive, so it was truly shocking that it was so impersonal.”

    According to labor attorney Carolyn D. Richmond, it’s too early for companies to mandate shots.

    “Pregnancy and vaccine — as soon as you hear those words in the workplace, you should stop to think if what you are doing is right or wrong,” Richmond told the New York Times. “It has to be generally available to the employee population and it’s not. None of us are having an easy time getting appointments.”

    That said, employers have the right to mandate the vaccine, according to Dorit Reiss,  a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law.

    “Requiring a vaccine is a health and safety work rule, and employers can do that,” he told CNBC in December.

    Last month, the World Health Organization advised pregnant women not to get vaccinated unless at high risk for COVID-19 due to underlying conditions.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 23:40

  • Jettison The Johnson: Transwomen Athletes Crashing Female Sports Will Only Hurt The Game
    Jettison The Johnson: Transwomen Athletes Crashing Female Sports Will Only Hurt The Game

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    As the Biden administration moves to make it illegal to deny the participation of birth males in female sport, a number of courageous athletes and academics are beginning to speak out on the issue, warning that the presidential orders will have disastrous consequences on their profession, and possibly their lives.

    On the very same day of his locked-down inauguration, Joe Biden signed off on dozens of executive orders, including one gem entitled, ‘Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation’. The controversial legislation, which has never been the subject of serious debate at the governmental level, moves to allow transgender women (i.e. biological males that self-identify as females) who have undergone male puberty to compete in women’s sports.

    What could wrong?

    To better understand what the future of women’s sports may look like in the future, take a moment and watch the Mixed Martial Arts fight between Fallon Fox and Tamikka Brents from 2014. Fox, the first openly transgender athlete in MMA history, subjected Brents to a brief but brutal pummeling that resulted in a fractured skull and concussion.

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    Now with the passage of Biden’s order such displays of aggression on the field of broken dreams and bones promise to occur with increasing regularity. What is very odd about Biden’s executive order, clearly the brainchild of the radical progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is that it aims to protect a minuscule segment of the population, while leaving the majority exposed to tremendous risk of injury. Are the social justice warriors only interested in protecting minority groups for the supposed moral high ground it gives them when preaching their flawed message of ‘equality and inclusivity’?

    [ZH: we were also reminded of this story]

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    In any case, the Democrats, despite the conceit that theirs is the ‘party of science,’ blatantly ignore any medical evidence that disproves the notion that females can compete on a level playing with the males. After all, just because a person feels that they are trapped in the wrong body with the wrong sex does not mean that those feelings can alter biological fact.

    “Males are five inches taller than females, they have longer arms, a greater reach and they can generate more speed and larger hand spans,” explained Dr. Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist and university lecturer.

    “Males have 40 percent more muscle mass, and forty percent less body fat. The muscle they have is denser…and higher proportion of fast-twitch fibers, which are the fibers responsible for explosive movement…”

    What is the main driver of these significant physical differences between males and females? That would come down to testosterone, the powerful game-changing hormone released in males during puberty that Hilton refers to as “one hell of a drug.”

    “It has delivered us athletes like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps,” the professor continued, before dropping a tongue-in-cheek remark that underscored its desirability among athletes looking for a competitive edge.

    “As the original anabolic steroid, used widely in the 1980s in state-led doping programs, it has almost certainly delivered us a fair few elite females too.”

    The proponents of transgender females in women’s sports, however, argue that biological males are able to pare down their testosterone levels through a number of medical treatments, including the injection of estrogen, the female hormone, and the surgical removal of the testes, the endocrinal gland responsible for testosterone secretion. In 2003, the International Olympic Committee said these medical steps were sufficient enough to permit transgender women to compete alongside biological females in competition. In order for a transwoman to qualify to compete among biological females, the IOC required: testes removal at least two years before competing; legal status as female; hormones in line with female profiles.

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    These measures were deemed adequate – despite little study into the question – to ensure fair competition. However, a strange thing happened between 2003 and 2015, when the IOC rather radically changed the rules in the middle of the game, so to speak. That strange thing seems to have been the further radicalization of the progressive movement. Today, the IOC no longer demands that the biological males submit to castration in order to compete with the ladies. All that is required is that they keep their testosterone levels below a certain level. But does keeping testosterone in check make a difference. Yes, it does, but not nearly enough to level the playing field between transwomen and females.

    According to one study, published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, “transwomen still had a 9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events.”

    Dr. Hilton summed up the situation, which should give anyone pause who cares about the safety of females competing against transwomen: “even five years past transition and their testes long gone [transwomen] retain more muscle mass and remain much stronger than reference females.”

    Nevertheless, civil liberty groups, like the ACLU – without citing a single professional medical study – have come out in full support of transwomen competing head-to-head against females.

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    A Call for Balance

    This month, and not a moment too soon, a group of world class athletes and sports organizations announced the formation of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group created to “protect girls’ and women’s sports and accommodate transgender athletes.” Some of the high-profile names among the group include Olympic gold medalist swimmer Donna de Varona, International Tennis Hall of Famer Martina Navratilova, Olympic gold medalist swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, and Lyn St. James, former Indycar and LeMans racecar driver.

    The Working Group proposes that “the Biden Administration and Congress to reject ‘either/or’ positions and instead to adopt an ethical, science-based approach to the protection of girls’ and women’s sport.”

    Martina Navratilova, a winner of 18 Grand Slam singles titles, emphasized that she supported transwomen rights but that the physical advantages for transgender women competitors who had experienced male puberty were “pretty obvious.”

    In an interview with the BBC, Navratilova expressed opposition to “an all-inclusive situation where trans men and women, just based on their self identification [with the opposite sex], would be able to compete with no mitigation, no rules outside of that whatsoever. And that clearly would not be a level playing field.”

    Although that would seem to be a logical approach for everyone, not least of all for the females who must compete against biological males, the initiative is already being attacked on the grounds that it limits “fairness and opportunity” for transgenders in sports.

    According to Sharon McGowan, chief strategy officer of Lambda Legal, which works for LGBTQ civil rights, “The kinds of proposals that unfortunately [Navratilova] and others have been promoting would really sweep way too far in terms of limiting the opportunity of transgender children being able to participate in a way that ensures fairness and opportunity,” as quoted by Reuters.

    Unfortunately, it looks as though the only way Biden’s executive order will receive the fair amount of scientific scrutiny is when more females begin to suffer serious injury while competing against transwomen. But even then nothing guarantees that the woke crowd will awaken from its stupor.

    Admitting to its faults is not a strong suit of the radical progressives, even when lives are on the line, and this stubbornness could deal the world of women’s sports a truly fatal blow.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 23:20

  • Oakland Chinatown Shop Owner Arrested After Firing Shots Into The Air To Thwart Robbery  
    Oakland Chinatown Shop Owner Arrested After Firing Shots Into The Air To Thwart Robbery  

    Only in a liberal-run state like California will a store owner get jailed for intervening in a robbery outside his shop. It’s backasswards but true, according to local television station KTVU. 

    In Oakland’s Chinatown, a store owner was arrested Monday when he fired his handgun in the air to chase off a criminal who was mugging a woman outside his shop. No one was injured at the time of the incident, but the 36-year-old man was arrested and faces one felony assault with a firearm.

    Oakland’s Chinatown has been hit with a recent wave of assaults and robberies. Members in the community have pooled together funds and hired private security guards to patrol the streets.

    Oakland’s new police chief commented on Monday’s incident at a press conference on Tuesday. 

    “We don’t want people to fire weapons into our community. There could be unintended victims,” Chief LeRonne Armstrong said. 

    The store owner was bailed out on Tuesday with a $60k bond, the police department said. 

    Head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, Carl Chan, told CBS San Francisco that when he “talks to the entire community they feel sad that someone is trying to help others and ends up to be the one arrested or being in custody.” 

    Chan has been advocating for more police presence in the area. As we noted above, armed security guards already patrol the streets, funded by the public. 

    “So, I think many of the people feel strongly that we should be supporting the store owner,” Chan said.

    He added that more shop owners would have to intervene in violent crimes outside their stores without a police presence in Chinatown. 

    This incident sets a horrible precedent for store owners who may decide not to intervene in a violent crime outside their store because they fear any action they would take may result in jail. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 23:00

  • 5 Of 7 Republican Senators Who Convicted Trump Have Been Censured In Home States
    5 Of 7 Republican Senators Who Convicted Trump Have Been Censured In Home States

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    Of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict former President Donald Trump, five of them have been censured by various state and county Republican Parties or from voters.

    On Monday night, the North Carolina GOP unanimously voted to censure Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is retiring in 2022, after he voted to convict, despite previously said it was unconstitutional to try a former president.

    “By what he did and by what he did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,” Burr stated over the past weekend.

    Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who voted to convict and is up for reelection in 2026, explained that he did so because he “took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and I take that oath seriously.” However, his move didn’t go over well in the state’s GOP.

    The Louisiana Republican Party unanimously voted to censure—or officially condemn—Cassidy for his vote on the same day that he voted to convict the former president.

    Before that, the Lincoln County Republican Party unanimously censured Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) for his dismissing the legitimate concerns” of Nebraska’s secretary of state, Nebraska’s attorney general, “and a huge majority of Republican voters,” while it said he failed “to respect the high office of the President of the United States.”

    Sasse could be the one who loses the most politically, as some have said the senator could be a 2024 Republican presidential candidate. However, he is likely to face blowback from Republican voters, who, according to polls, view Trump very favorably.

    Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who faces reelection in 2022, was censured by Republicans in six state House districts over her vote to convict.

    “I stand my ground. If I had to take that vote again, I would vote to uphold my oath of office,” she said after voting, according to the Anchorage Daily News. “And, if the party is to censure me because they felt that I needed to support the party, they can make that statement, but I will make the statement again that my obligation is to support the Constitution that I have pledged to uphold, and I will do that, even if it means I have to oppose the direction of my state party.”

    In Pennsylvania, the York County GOP censured Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is slated to retire in 2022.

    “Given his recent support of the second unconstitutional impeachment effort against a president who is no longer in office the York County Republican Committee has reached the limits of its frustration,” Republican state Rep. Dawn Keefer wrote.

    Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a noted Trump critic from within the Republican Party, will not be censured by the Utah Republican Party after the organization said it would not do so. However, a widely circulated petition condemns the 2012 Republican presidential candidate for using “his senatorial power and influence to undermine” Trump.

    The state GOP noted that Romney and fellow Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R), who acquitted Trump, cast different votes.

    “The differences between our own Utah Republicans showcase a diversity of thought, in contrast to the danger of a party fixated on ‘unanimity of thought,’” the Utah Republican Party said in a statement on Monday, explaining that it won’t censure Romney.

    Meanwhile, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has not faced any punitive actions from within her party or a petition, although the state GOP is reportedly meeting to discuss potentially censuring her.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 22:40

  • Indonesia Moves To Punish Citizens Who Refuse COVID Vaccine
    Indonesia Moves To Punish Citizens Who Refuse COVID Vaccine

    In a uniquely heavy-handed move, the Indonesian government is threatening to punish citizens who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine, as the massive island nation, one of the world’s most populous, pushes one of the most aggressive vaccination campaigns in the world.

    According to Reuters, Indonesia’s capital Jakarta is threatening residents with fines of up to 5 million rupiah – about $360 – for anyone refusing a jab, an unusually stiff penalty aimed at guaranteeing compliance with new regulations calling for compulsory vaccinations. In addition to the fines, the government is threatening to withhold social aid.

    Deputy Jakarta governor Ahmad Riza Patria said city authorities were merely following rules and such sanctions were a last resort in Jakarta, which accounts for about a quarter of the archipelago nation’s more than 1.2 million coronavirus infections.

    “If you reject it, there are two things, social aid will not be given, (and a) fine,” Riza told reporters.

    For those who haven’t been following it, Indonesia is fighting one of Asia’s largest and most stubborn COVID outbreaks. The country aims to inoculate 181.5MM of its 270MM population within 15 months under a vaccination program that started last month.

    New cases have actually inched higher in Indonesia over the past week, while most of the world has seen a continued decline.

    Some 34K Indonesians have also died of the virus, and deaths have also ticked higher lately.

    Indonesia announced a presidential order earlier this month stipulating anyone who refuses vaccines could be denied social assistance or government services or made to pay a fine. The penalty would be determined by regional health agencies or by local governments.

    In a December survey, pollster Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting found that only 37% of 1.2K respondents were willing to be vaccinated, 40% were undecided and 17% would refuse across Indonesia. Though we imagine these new requirements might change that.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 22:20

  • Japan's Incredibly Shrinking Population Is A Big Problem
    Japan’s Incredibly Shrinking Population Is A Big Problem

    Submitted by Ethen Kim Lieser of 19FortyFive.com, Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn,

    As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to limit the number of foreign workers entering Japan, new government data has revealed that the nation’s population contracted by a record four hundred twenty thousand people last year.

    That hefty figure shattered the previous mark of nearly three hundred thirty thousand, which was set just the year prior, and continued the downward trend seen over the past decade.

    According to the Health Ministry, Japan’s population now sits at roughly one hundred twenty-six million.

    The 60% decrease in the number of foreign workers entering the East Asian nation over the past year has been largely blamed for the sharp drop in the population.

    Even with the pandemic cutting jobs across many sectors, many companies and small businesses, including those in the hard-hit restaurant and hotel industries, have reported consistent labor shortages.

    “Easing restrictions on immigration is a necessary first step in boosting the population, but the Japanese government also needs to address structural problems in the Japanese economy and society that keep young people from getting married and having children—even if they want to,” John Person, an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at University at Albany, State University of New York, told the National Interest.

    “This includes tackling the issue of growing economic inequality and ensuring better access to affordable childcare.”

    The data shows that in the first seven months of 2020, the difference between the number of births and deaths was similar to what was seen the year prior, but foreign arrivals into the country plummeted considerably due to airport entry restrictions that aimed to limit further spread of the coronavirus.

    Japan, though, is also still struggling to boost its low birth rates. The reported number of pregnancies fell 5.1 percent during the ten months through last October, the Health Ministry’s data showed.

    Japan, An Aging Society

    According to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan’s population is expected to decrease to about hundred eleven million by 2040, ninety-nine million by 2053, and eighty-eight million by 2065.

    “The decline in birthrate is an issue that compounds over time, so the fact that Japan’s birthrate has been in decline for so long means that even a rebound in birth rates now and in the future won’t solve the issue of the decline in overall population,” Person said.

    Toshiyuki Sakuragi, the director of the Japanese Studies Program at Gustavus Adolphus College, shared similar sentiments, adding that Japan’s “low fertility rate … is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future.”

    “Japan does not have many options for dealing with this problem,” he explained. “Two obvious options are—making it easier for women to fully participate in the labor market and accepting more immigrants. I see both as crucial for Japan’s future. I believe that an increasing number of Japanese people share this view, but any major cultural or societal change is likely to encounter significant resistance.”

    Some Reasons for Hope

    However, there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel, as the entry of foreign workers is expected to eventually perk up again with the rollout of this week’s mass vaccination campaign across the country.

    Employees at Tokyo Medical Center were among the first of some forty thousand medical professionals targeted to receive the initial shipments of the vaccine. They will be followed by 3.7 million more medical personnel, then thirty-six million seniors aged sixty-five and over.

    “This is the first major step towards ending the coronavirus (pandemic),” Vice Health Minister Hiroshi Yamamoto told reporters at the hospital after the first vaccines were administered.

    There were, however, increasing concerns that millions of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses could be wasted due to a shortage of syringes required to maximize the number of shots from each vial. The Tokyo Medical Center has confirmed that it has enough supply for now of the low dead-space syringes needed to extract six doses from each vial.

    Japan has signed overseas deals to procure a combined total of three hundred fourteen million vaccine doses from Pfizer and BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna. As the shots require two doses, that’s enough for one hundred fifty-seven million people to get fully inoculated.

    The country’s vaccine rollout noticeably lagged behind other developed nations because it asked vaccine maker Pfizer to conduct clinical trials with Japanese people, in addition to tests already conducted in six other countries. The Japanese are known to have a longstanding reluctance to take any vaccine shot, generally because of fears of having to deal with rare side effects.

    The vaccine campaign is also considered crucial to the fate of the Summer Olympics in late July, and the associated billions of dollars at stake. Japanese officials are also well aware that rival China, which has enjoyed much success in suppressing the virus, will host the Winter Olympics next year, giving even more urgency to make the Tokyo Games a reality. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has even billed the Games as “proof of human victory against the pandemic.”

    A recent poll, however, has revealed that 80 percent of Japanese respondents support the cancellation or further postponement of the Olympics due to the ongoing pandemic.

    According to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Japan has so far recorded about four hundred twenty thousand confirmed COVID-19 cases and seven thousand related deaths.

    The country is currently seeing an average of about one infection per hundred thousand people—compared to about twenty-five in the United States and eighteen in the United Kingdom.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 22:00

  • Goldman Tells Clients To Buy Exxon Calls Ahead Of Analyst Day
    Goldman Tells Clients To Buy Exxon Calls Ahead Of Analyst Day

    To think it was just two months ago that Goldman upgraded energy giant Exxon to Buy for the first time in four years (after having a Sell rating as recently as October).

    In retrospect, this proved to be one of Goldman’s best recommendations in the recent past, and while the bank had since lifted its PT to $55, it also advised its clients to put on a call spread for some levered upside.

    Well, no more. As of today, Goldman has closed its recommendation to buy XOM call spreads, and instead has gone balls to the wall bullish, by initiating a new recommendation to buy calls outright ahead of the Mar 3rd analyst day:

    On Dec 15th, we recommended buying the XOM Apr-21 $45/$50 call spreads, driven by our bullish view ahead of multiple catalysts. On 20-Jan we rolled the recommendation to a higher strike at a gain. Today, with increased clarity on the company’s dividend payment, and solid earnings on 02-Feb, we recommend closing the call spreads at a gain, and buying the XOM Mar-21 $52.50 calls, recently offered at $2.56 (4.8%, stock $52.85).

    Why is the upcoming analyst day a catalyst? Because according to Goldman, “XOM analyst days have historically been an important catalyst, with the stock averaging +/-1.6% on the day of the event, nearly in-line with the average earnings-day move in past years.” And with one month implied volatility declining 10 points since earnings, Goldman believes “option prices are low, and recommend investors buy calls ahead of the analyst day.”

    For those who care more about the fundamentals, Goldman Energy analyst Neil Mehta is Buy rated on XOM, with his bullish near-term view driven by:

    • Significant upside to 2021-22 Visible Alpha consensus earnings
    • Outlook for improving oil prices, particularly relative to the forward curve
    • Leverage to continued chemicals strength
    • Improving natural gas price fundamentals
    • A view that refined product demand will sharply accelerate as jet and road travel rebound

    Yet while the biggest risk – the Exxon dividend – now appears safe, why has the stock failed to keep up with oil, and is still well below year-ago levels even as Brent has reversed all post-covid losses? As a reminder, this is a point we discussed earlier this week, when we showed that Goldman recommended adding energy equity exposure since the “US energy equity sector is almost unchanged since mid January” while oil has surged.

    According to Goldman’s Neil, despite recent investor conversations highlighting improving sentiment around XOM and the sustainability of its dividends, mutual funds remain underweight the stock, potentially a bullish positioning indicator.

    As a result, he too sees positive risk-reward heading into the March 3rd analyst day, where management is likely to discuss improving capital intensity, and defend the dividend. He also sees the event as an opportunity to unpack differentiated assets in their portfolio, particularly Guyana, Brazil and the chemicals portfolio.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:56

  • Only 44% Of High Schoolers Submitted SAT Or ACT Exams Last Year
    Only 44% Of High Schoolers Submitted SAT Or ACT Exams Last Year

    Remember how important the SATs were as a kid? It was almost like your entire future – and certainly your chances of getting into college – revolved around the standardized test.

    But today, the test doesn’t hold the clamor and clout that it once did. In fact, during 2020, only 44% of high schoolers submitted SAT or ACT exams with their college application, down from 77% the year prior, according to Bloomberg. A Kaplan survey of 400 college admissions officers found that only 9% were requiring standardized tests this year. 

    Schools are suspending requiring the testing because of the pandemic – and while students love it, some counselors worry it could “add to growing inequality” in higher education.

    This worry is a product of wealthier kids being able to “game” the other requirements looked at while applying to school. As we saw firsthand from the college admissions scandal, wealthy students can often give the appearance of being involved in all sorts of extracurricular activities when, in fact, they may not be doing all, or any, of them.

    17 year old Ayah Fakhy, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants in Los Angeles, says she is now worried she’ll be at a disadvantage without the standardized test. She said: “It frightened me. I knew I’d have to make the other parts of the application stand out.”

    Bob Sweeney, who works with a Brooklyn college access program that each year helps about 20 senior girls, agreed: “They’re at a disadvantage if there isn’t someone who can advocate for them.”

    But like with everything else, testing critics are working to get the SATs “cancelled” anyway. They claim the tests are biased against “poor students and members of underrepresented minority groups” and that doing away with them will “improve race, gender and income diversity”. 

    “It’s remarkable how many schools found the experience good enough to say ‘Let’s do it again,'” said Bob Schaeffer, who is director of FairTest, which has pushed to eliminate the SAT/ACT requirement. 

    Zach Goldberg, a spokesman for the College Board, which administers the SAT, argued against Scaeffer, saying the absence of common, objective indicators, will increase grades, which wealthy schools are more likely to inflate. 

    There’s a divide between those who still choose to send in their scores, the report notes:

    Forty-nine percent of students whose parents earned at least a bachelor’s degree provided test results, compared with 79% the previous year. Among those families who reported that neither of their parents earned at least a bachelor’s degree, only 31% sent scores, down from 71%. Wealthier students were also more likely to submit results, as were White and Asian students.

    17 year old Shawn Babitsky, the son of a single mother who works as a nurse’s aide and an Uber driver,  was upset he couldn’t send his test scores after his sessions were cancelled 4 times: “No one told me to start thinking about the SAT sophomore year. If I had, then maybe I could have had a test score. I wish I had been able to submit test scores.”

    He aims to study molecular biology. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:40

  • An Exceptionally Sad Day For Illinois
    An Exceptionally Sad Day For Illinois

    Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

    Despair, as best as we can tell, is the emotion growing most rapidly in Illinois, and yesterday, February 17, was particularly dispiriting.

    Three stories told those who believe Illinois is on the wrong track that the state’s political establishment cannot care less about their concerns. Disdain and even hatred about those concerns prevail.

    First was Gov. JB Pritzker’s State of the State and Budget Address. It’s not just that it was more of the same refusal to undertake the major reforms needed to solve the fiscal crisis, which we are writing about separately. It was the extreme rhetoric Pritzker used to attack a political obstacle that doesn’t exist.

    That political obstacle, Pritzker said, is Illinois Republicans. Their purposeful destructiveness has undermined the mission of putting Illinois on the right path, Pritzker would have us believe.  “In essence, they eliminated the fire department, burnt down the house, and poured gas on the flames — and now they’re asking why we’re not doing more to prevent fires,” he said.

    In truth, however, Republicans have been unable to pass or block a single thing of any consequence during the Pritzker Administration because Pritzker’s party has held a supermajority in the General Assembly for years. Nor do Republicans hold even one statewide office. He has faced no political obstacle from those he excoriated.

    Second, Illinois finalized the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards through a vote by a legislative committee. A firestorm of opposition preceded the vote, expressed by Illinoisans who saw what the standards were plainly designed to accomplish: political indoctrination of kindergarten through high school students, imposing radically divisive critical race theory on classrooms.

    Countless parents across the state were livid, but they watched helplessly as the standards were sold to the public through distortion and outright dishonesty, which we wrote about here.

    Third, a commission appointed by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to identify city statutes that perhaps should be removed returned its list of what it called “problematic” statues. The list includes five of Abraham Lincoln and two of George Washington.

    One, of a Native American, is titled A Signal of Peace, and was dedicated by an owner who said the monument was intended as a permanent symbol of respect for native people.

    Another, directed at antisemitism, bears a quote from a speech George Washington delivered to a Jewish congregation: “The government of United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” A bronze plaque placed by the donor reads: “Symbol of American tolerance and unity and of the cooperation of people of all races and creeds in the building of the United States.”

    And in the height or irony, one, shown here, is simply called The Republic.

    The Republic: “problematic.”

    Most Illinoisans may think it preposterous that those statues could be tagged for possible removal, but Lightfoot is taking her commission’s list seriously.  “This project is a powerful opportunity for us to come together as a city to assess the many monuments and memorials across our neighborhoods and communities — to face our history and what and how we memorialize that history,” Lightfoot said in a statement.

    The common element in each of those stories is the extreme contempt, even hatred, that Illinois’ political leadership shows for the most fundamental values held by many Illinoisans. And they make no effort to hide it. They simply don’t care.

    It is therefore understandable if despair is the sentiment growing most rapidly in Illinois.

    We can only hope that conviction, courage and resilience remain dominant and prevail against a government so estranged from so many of its own people.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:35

  • Techno-Censorship: The Slippery Slope From Censoring "Disinformation" To Silencing Truth
    Techno-Censorship: The Slippery Slope From Censoring “Disinformation” To Silencing Truth

    Authored by John Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

    – George Orwell

    This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it.

    In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

    Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

    This is how it starts.

    Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all still applies.

    “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

    In our case, however, it started with the censors who went after extremists spouting so-called “hate speech,” and few spoke out—because they were not extremists and didn’t want to be shamed for being perceived as politically incorrect.

    Then the internet censors got involved and went after extremists spouting “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden, and few spoke out—because they were not extremists and didn’t want to be shunned for appearing to disagree with the majority.

    By the time the techno-censors went after extremists spouting “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.

    Still, few spoke out.

    Eventually, “we the people” will be the ones in the crosshairs.

    At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

    When that time comes, there may be no one left to speak out or speak up in our defense.

    Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

    Watch and learn.

    We should all be alarmed when prominent social media voices such as Donald Trump, Alex Jones, David Icke and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

    The question is not whether the content of their speech was legitimate.

    The concern is what happens after such prominent targets are muzzled. What happens once the corporate techno-censors turn their sights on the rest of us?

    It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

    We are on a fast-moving trajectory.

    Already, there are calls for the Biden administration to appoint a “reality czar” in order to tackle disinformation, domestic extremism and the nation’s so-called “reality crisis.”

    Knowing what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

    Here’s the point: you don’t have to like Trump or any of the others who are being muzzled, nor do you have to agree or even sympathize with their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship would be dangerously naïve.

    As Matt Welch, writing for Reason, rightly points out, “Proposed changes to government policy should always be visualized with the opposing team in charge of implementation.”

    In other words, whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, for the sake of the greater good or because you like or trust those in charge, will eventually be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

    As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

    The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.

    Welcome to the age of technofascism.

    Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

    Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best. Certainly, Facebook and Twitter have become the modern-day equivalents of public squares, traditional free speech forums, with the internet itself serving as a public utility.

    But what does that mean for free speech online: should it be protected or regulated?

    When given a choice, the government always goes for the option that expands its powers at the expense of the citizenry’s. Moreover, when it comes to free speech activities, regulation is just another word for censorship.

    Right now, it’s trendy and politically expedient to denounce, silence, shout down and shame anyone whose views challenge the prevailing norms, so the tech giants are lining up to appease their shareholders.

    This is the tyranny of the majority against the minority—exactly the menace to free speech that James Madison sought to prevent when he drafted the First Amendment to the Constitution—marching in lockstep with technofascism.

    With intolerance as the new scarlet letter of our day, we now find ourselves ruled by the mob.

    Those who dare to voice an opinion or use a taboo word or image that runs counter to the accepted norms are first in line to be shamed, shouted down, silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are guilty of various “word crimes” and banished from society.

    For example, a professor at Duquesne University was fired for using the N-word in an academic context. To get his job back, Gary Shank will have to go through diversity training and restructure his lesson plans.

    This is what passes for academic freedom in America today.

    If Americans don’t vociferously defend the right of a minority of one to subscribe to, let alone voice, ideas and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different, then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).

    No matter what our numbers might be, no matter what our views might be, no matter what party we might belong to, it will not be long before “we the people” constitute a powerless minority in the eyes of a power-fueled fascist state driven to maintain its power at all costs.

    We are almost at that point now.

    The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

    Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

    Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.

    Again, to quote Greenwald:

    Censorship power, like the tech giants who now wield it, is an instrument of status quo preservation. The promise of the internet from the start was that it would be a tool of liberation, of egalitarianism, by permitting those without money and power to compete on fair terms in the information war with the most powerful governments and corporations. But just as is true of allowing the internet to be converted into a tool of coercion and mass surveillance, nothing guts that promise, that potential, like empowering corporate overlords and unaccountable monopolists to regulate and suppress what can be heard.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns. They’re laying the groundwork to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

    Therefore, it is important to recognize the thought prison that is being built around us for what it is: a prison with only one route of escape—free thinking and free speaking in the face of tyranny.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:20

  • The Reason Why A Lot Of People Are Leaving San Francisco Might Surprise You
    The Reason Why A Lot Of People Are Leaving San Francisco Might Surprise You

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

    Over the past year we have seen a mass exodus from major cities along the west coast, but what is happening to San Francisco is particularly sad.  Once upon a time, San Francisco was one of the most beautiful cities on the entire planet.  There is so much culture there, and the rolling hills make it a place like no other.  And thanks to the tech boom in Silicon Valley, it has become one of the most prosperous cities in the whole country.  So why have hordes of San Francisco residents decided to leave and never look back?

    Well, there are a lot of factors at work.

    First of all, the cost of living has gotten wildly out of control.  A postage stamp of an apartment will cost you thousands of dollars per month to rent, and a lot of people don’t like paying 17 dollars for a salad.

    For others, the extremely high taxes and the insane politicians are more than enough of a reason to leave the state.  The lockdowns that were instituted by Governor Gavin Newsom have destroyed thousands of small businesses, and many former small business owners have pledged that they will never go back to California under any circumstances.

    In San Francisco in particular, open drug abuse in the streets has made headlines all over the globe in recent years.  The streets are constantly littered with drug needles and piles of human feces, and that isn’t pleasant.

    On top of everything else, there is always the threat of more wildfires and a giant earthquake could strike the coast at literally any moment.

    But none of those things are what this article is about.

    This article is about the huge spike in crime that is driving countless people away from San Francisco.

    When he was able to get a job with a tech company four years ago, Kieran Blubaugh jumped at the chance to live in San Francisco, and at first everything seemed great…

    Kieran Blubaugh dreamed of living in California when he was growing up in Indiana. He played the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game and envisioned himself skateboarding down San Francisco’s crazy hills.

    After paying off his student loans four years ago, he landed a job with a tech company and moved to San Francisco. At first, life was heavenly. He had a seven-minute commute on his motorcycle. He could pay $30 to see Incubus, one of his favorite bands, a short walk from his apartment.

    Unfortunately, his infatuation with the region did not last long.

    Even though he was located in a good part of the city, crime just kept getting worse and worse, and eventually he decided that enough was enough…

    Soon, however, his California dream soured. Thieves broke into his locked garage and did $8,000 worth of damage to his motorcycle, doubling his insurance rates. His dog nearly died after eating human feces on the sidewalk. Seeing people either getting arrested or being treated for an overdose outside a nearby building was a regular occurrence.

    “And I live in a nice part of town,” said Blubaugh, 33.

    With each passing year, the criminals just keep becoming even more brazen.

    Not too long ago, San Francisco resident Ben Couillard had someone watch his house while he was away, and that individual actually had to confront someone that was trying to break into the house…

    He said the house sitter came face-to-face with the suspicious person who had turned his attention away from the vehicles and to the house.

    “So she saw him through the window and basically when she asked him, you know, ‘Can I help you?’ Like, what are you doing as he’s trying to break in? And he said to her, like, ‘Go upstairs, (expletive) or I’ll kill you.”

    What would you do if that happened to you?

    You could call the San Francisco police, and they may or may not show up eventually.

    Meanwhile, the junkies will continue to roam throughout your neighborhood as they search for things to steal so that they can sell them for more drugs.

    The other night, San Francisco officials held a “virtual town hall” to discuss the crime wave.  Residents were told that criminals are starting to target residents more frequently because they don’t have many tourists to prey upon these days…

    San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen, District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and the captain of the police department overseeing the area, held a virtual town hall with residents of the community Wednesday night to address their concerns.

    They attribute what they say is an increase in crime to “economic desperation” and “tourism has gone down so substantially in San Francisco that criminal rings that targeted tourists in areas that tourists frequent no longer have tourists there,” said Supervisor Ronen.

    Please remind me not to visit San Francisco as a tourist any time soon.

    Sadly, we are seeing the exact same thing happen to San Francisco that has happened to countless other communities all across the nation.  Like so many other major cities, it has become a crime-ridden, drug-infested hellhole, and this has happened even though northern California is swimming in hundreds of billions of dollars from the tech industry.

    After telling a reporter why he left the state, Kieran Blubaugh was asked how conditions in the state could be improved.  This was his answer…

    “We need more police. There’s a general lawlessness that’s just scary.”

    Isn’t that ironic?

    The “defund the police” movement has been pushing California cities such as San Francisco to greatly reduce police funding, but Blubaugh insists that the solution is more police.

    And Blubaugh is not exactly an elderly curmudgeon.  In fact, he is just 33 years old.

    Of course the phrase “general lawlessness” could be used to describe the condition of the United States as a whole.  We have become an upside down society where good is evil and evil is good, and as a result we have totally lost our way.

    Unless we completely reverse course, the “general lawlessness” in our country is only going to intensify in the years ahead.

    But we aren’t going to reverse course, are we?

    At this point, we appear to have a national love affair with evil, and the consequences of that love affair are going to be very bitter indeed.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:10

  • Biden Finally Accepts First Call From Netanyahu After Month-Long Delay
    Biden Finally Accepts First Call From Netanyahu After Month-Long Delay

    After going weeks since his inauguration without answering Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request for a customary first call, with growing concern in Tel Aviv over what was increasingly looking like an intentional snub, on Wednesday President Biden finally spoke with the Israeli leader. Though few details were made public as to the details of the content discussed, the conversation “was very friendly and warm and lasted about an hour,” according to the prime minister’s office.

    As for the White House, Biden “affirmed his personal history of steadfast commitment to Israel’s security and conveyed his intent to strengthen all aspects of the U.S.-Israel partnership, including our strong defense cooperation,” according to a statement. 

    Via Jerusalem Post/Israeli PM’s office

    Each side’s press readout indicated they dealt with Israel’s regional security concerns – at the top of the list being Iran – as well as the COVID-19 response, and recent normalization efforts between Israel and Arab countries, which was brokered under the Trump admin.

    Likely Netanyahu pressed Biden further on not restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear (JPOA) given the Islamic Republic’s recent breaches of the agreement. Tehran has lately urged that Washington must drop sanctions first before it acts to come under compliance. The Israelis think it’s all toward shielding an underlying nuclear weapons program, as opposed to developing peaceful nuclear energy.

    And the White House said further on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “He underscored the importance of working to advance peace throughout the region, including between Israelis and Palestinians. Together, they affirmed their shared interest in continued strategic cooperation to confront the many challenges facing the region.”

    Of course, the estimated $3.8 billion in annual military aid is still flowing uninterrupted…

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    Last week and into the days preceding the belated call, Israeli media was rife with speculation over what this means for the future of Israeli-US relations.

    “Biden and his aides aim to tell Netanyahu, ‘You’re nothing special,'” geopolitical analyst Yossi Melman previously wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz. “‘The personal connection and chemistry you had with Donald Trump not only fail to advance your standing in Washington, they’re an obstacle,'” the report last week speculated. 

    The further irony was that Netanyahu over the same period in which Biden was not bothering to pick up the phone had no less than three phone calls from Vladimir Putin.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:00

  • Texas Was "Seconds And Minutes" From Complete Disaster
    Texas Was “Seconds And Minutes” From Complete Disaster

    One week ago, long before almost anyone else realized just how serious the situation in the plains states in general and Texas in particular would be as a result of the cascade of soaring nat gas prices, we warned that all hell was about to break loose. But not even we had any idea just how close to total collapse the system nearly was.

    On Thursday, ERCOT officials said that the Texas power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months. They should know: ERCOT is the entity that operates the power grid that covers most of the state.

    The Texas Tribune reports that as millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.

    Maybe if they had read our warnings, none of what happened this week would have been a surprise. Alas, that was not the case. So in hopes to frontrun a wave of lawsuits, they spun their quick reaction as the only thing that prevented an even more catastrophic scenario: according to the Tribune, “the quick decision that grid operators made in the early hours of Monday morning to begin what was intended to be rolling blackouts — but lasted days for millions of Texans — occurred because operators were seeing warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid.”

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

    As natural gas fired plants, utility scale wind power and coal plants tripped offline due to the extreme cold brought by the winter storm, the amount of power supplied to the grid to be distributed across the state fell rapidly. At the same time, demand was increasing as consumers and businesses turned up the heat and stayed inside to avoid the weather.

    “It needed to be addressed immediately,” said Bill Magness, president of ERCOT. “It was seconds and minutes [from possible failure] given the amount of generation that was coming off the system.”

    With energy prices exploding to record highs, and with demand soaring, grid operators had to “act quickly” to cut the amount of power distributed, Magness said, because if they had waited, “then what happens in that next minute might be that three more [power generation] units come offline, and then you’re sunk.”

    Magness said on Wednesday that if operators had not acted in that moment, the state could have suffered blackouts that “could have occurred for months,” and left Texas in an “indeterminately long” crisis.

    In other words, the millions of households left without power – in some cases for days – were sacrificing for the greater good.

    So by manually shutting down entire parts of the grid, ERCOT avoided the worst case scenario: one where demand for power overwhelms the supply of power generation available on the grid, causing equipment to catch fire, substations to blow and power lines to go down.

    If the grid had gone totally offline, the physical damage to power infrastructure from overwhelming the grid would take months to repair, said Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of power and renewables at Enverus, an oil and gas software and information company headquartered in Austin.

    “As chaotic as it was, the whole grid could’ve been in blackout,” she said. “ERCOT is getting a lot of heat, but the fact that it wasn’t worse is because of those grid operators.”  If that had occurred, even as power generators recovered from the cold, ERCOT would have been unable to quickly reconnect them back to the grid, Johnson said.

    And since nobody can disprove a negative, one just has to take them at their word that dozens of people died so that millions more could live… or something.

    Grid operators would have needed to slowly and carefully bring generators and customers back online, all the while taking care to not to cause more damage to the grid. It’s a delicate process, Johnson explained, because each part of the puzzle — the generators producing power, the transmission lines that move the power and the customers that use it — must be carefully managed.

    “It has to balance constantly,” she said. “Once a grid goes down, it’s hard to bring it back online. If you bring on too many customers, then you have another outage.”

    And while that may justify the widespread blackouts, it does not explain why the Texas grid was so underprepared for just this scenario. ERCOT officials have repeatedly said that the winter storm that swept the state caught power generators off guard. The storm far exceeded what ERCOT projected in the fall to prepare for winter. Right, but that’s why they are paid the big bucks: to predict worst case scenarios (kinda like the Fed) – it is here that everyone failed so abysmally. Which means that it has to be spun into some heroic task.

    “The operators who took those actions to prevent a catastrophic blackout and much worse damage to our system, that was, I would say, the most difficult decision that had to be made throughout this whole event,” Magness said.

    Nine grid operators are working at any given time who make these sorts of decisions, said Leslie Sopko, a spokesperson for ERCOT. “At the end of the day, our operators are highly trained and have the authority to make decisions that protect the reliability of the electric system,” she said in a statement.

    The good news is that the Texas nightmare is coming to an end: ERCOT said it made “significant progress” overnight Wednesday to restore customer power to many Texans, and remaining power outages are likely due to ice storm damage to the distribution system. Some areas that were taken offline will also need to be restored manually, according to ERCOT.

    ERCOT warned that emergency conditions remain, and that “some level of rotating outages” may be necessary over the coming days to keep the grid stable.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 20:40

  • Bill Gates Plugs "Next Gen" Nuclear That Solves All Issues Of 'Safety & Economics'
    Bill Gates Plugs “Next Gen” Nuclear That Solves All Issues Of ‘Safety & Economics’

    For the past two months, Zero Hedge has been especially constructive on the uranium sector (and its handful of beaten down stocks), which we, and others, suspect may benefit tremendously as the sector gets swept up in the ESG euphoria many expect to follow the collapse of Texas’ independent power grid during this bitter winter storm. While conservatives have already attacked windmills and other “green” energy for contributing to the grid’s failure in the face of record low temperatures and snow in Texas (which never “winter-fied” its power grid)…

    …Many on the left, including AOC and other Green New Deal types, are using the opportunity to push their agenda own.

    Somewhere in the middle, uranium bulls have been growing increasingly convinced about the commodity’s prospects, as prices have trended after roughly a decade in the unloved wilderness. Will nuclear be the next “ESG Craze”?  Hugh Hendry and Michael Burry (two iconic hedge fund managers) have both plugged nuclear power, with Burry calling on the Dems to “convert the US to nuclear” adding the hashtag #greenfuturenow.

    In a recent Bear Traps Report, Larry McDonald wrote that one of the “cons” of nuclear is what to do with the potentially harmful waste.

    Nuclear Pros and Cons:

    Nuclear is so much better for the environment but the two major issues environmentalists cite as problems is discharged cooling water than harms fish due to warmer temp and micro leaks that go undetected. How to dispose of contamination is an issue too. I believe all these things have been addressed in the last couple decades and micronuclear sites are a way to limit fallout concerns, albeit extremely low. However, Japan didn’t do proponents of nuclear any favor and hard to ensure total safety when the Earth can move below you…

    Well, in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Thursday, billionaire Bill Gates joined in the chorus of pro-nuclear voices (something that he has long supported) as he sat for an interview on CNBC to plug a new book he is selling. 

    Asked pointed blank if Gates ever thought nuclear power would ever be politically palatable again, he responded “absolutely”, adding that nuclear – counter to the contemporary wisdom – is actually safer than natural gas and other fossil fuels, when one accounts for deaths from inhaling coal particulate and natural gas pipelines exploding.

    “The deaths per unit of power of these other approaches are far higher. And the miracle is I’m not even talking about the current generation of nuclear. There’s a new generation that solves the problem of economics…which is the big problem with nuclear” while also taking care of some of the safety issues.

    Gates then seized the opportunity to plug Terrapower, a public-private partnership (with money mostly from Gates), along with other government project, before later adding that the new generation of nuclear companies are figuring out how to mitigate threats, like the cleanup of waste (by burying it deep underground).

    Watch the full interview below:

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 20:20

  • GOP Senators Demand Probe Into Cuomo's "Possibly Criminal" Handling Of COVID Death Data
    GOP Senators Demand Probe Into Cuomo’s “Possibly Criminal” Handling Of COVID Death Data

    Via Planet Free Will News,

    A group of Republican Senators have penned a letter demanding a full investigation into the recent revelations that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration may have deliberately covered-up New York’s nursing home COVID-19 death toll.

    “That so many people needlessly lost their lives because of the failed policies of Governor Cuomo’s administration – an administration that many have lauded over the past year – is tragic and deserves a full investigation and accounting,” reads the letter sent to Sen. Dick Durban (D-Ill), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    The letter is signed by nine GOP Senate Judiciary Committee members, including Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Marsha Blackburn, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton , and Thom Tillis .

    Last week the New York Post reported that Cuomo top-aid, Melissa DeRosa, told a group of lawmakers that Governor Cuomo and his senior staff engaged in a deliberate cover-up of New York’s nursing home COVID-19 death numbers out of fear that it would be “used against us” by the Trump Justice Department.

    “We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” DeRosa reportedly said during a private zoom call.

    It was also revealed in a separate report by the Associated Press that the Cuomo administration sent over 9,000 elderly coronavirus patients back to their long-term care centers while the administration reported these facilities had only admitted 6,000 patients.

    At the onset of the pandemic, a Cuomo directive ordered nursing homes to accept residents recovering from COVID-19 after they were discharged from hospitals, a decision many blame for spreading sickness and a high death toll among residents.

    “These new revelations, however, that Governor Cuomo’s administration withheld information from the Department of Justice and intentionally misled federal officials to avoid political accountability is more than irresponsible: it is very possibly criminal,” the GOP letter goes on, adding:

    “Those who deliberately withheld – or directed others to withhold – material information from the Department of Justice may be guilty of obstruction of justice, violating the False Claims Act, and numerous other criminal violations.”

    The letter calls on Durbin to open an investigation and hold hearings on the matter because:

    the “American people deserve to know the extent to which Governor Cuomo and his senior staff violated the civil rights of New York seniors, lied to the Department of Justice about their actions, and violated federal civil and criminal laws in the process.”

    The GOP letter comes on the heels of reports claiming the FBI and US attorney’s office in Brooklyn have begun an investigation into the governor and his administration’s handling of nursing home death data. The investigation was opened shortly after Democratic state Assemblyman Ron Kim, whose uncle died of COVID-19 in a nursing home, accused the governor of threatening him over his criticism of the handling of state nursing homes during the pandemic.

    Read the entire GOP letter below:

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 20:00

  • BOJ Mulls Changing How It Buys Billions In ETFs
    BOJ Mulls Changing How It Buys Billions In ETFs

    With all pretense that central banks don’t do everything in their power to push stocks higher having long ago been steamrolled by their own actions, on Wednesday Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga defended the Bank of Japan’s buying of equity ETFs in parliament, saying the policy isn’t aimed at lifting stock prices, which is funny because that’s precisely what it is aimed at.

    It’s also probably why he did admit that higher equity prices (with the explicit support of the BOJ) benefit Japan’s wider population, especially by helping the performance of pension funds including the Government Pension Investment Fund, Suga said.

    The prime minister was responding to criticism from an opposition lawmaker that rising share prices only benefit the wealthy; and while Suga acknowledged that inequality is growing in the domestic economy – facilitated by the BOJ’s own actions – he said the government’s third extra budget is helping, although it wasn’t clear where considering the ongoing collapse in Japan’s nominal wages.

    Despite Suga’s disingenuous attempts to deflect from what is the biggest topic of the millennium – namely central banks distortions and manipulation of capital markets – the growing concerns about the BOJ’s aggressive ETF purchases had an impact and on Thursday, Reuters reported that the Bank of Japan may replace some numerical guidelines for its purchases of exchange-traded funds with a pledge to ramp up buying when markets become volatile, three sources familiar with its thinking said.
    The change in policy – which would be similar to shifting from fixed forward guidance to more fluid, contingent regime – would allow the BOJ to more flexibly slow purchases when markets are stable, while “reassuring investors” it will step in forcefully when shock events trigger turbulence.

    While there is no consensus on the final decision, the idea is among options being floated within the BOJ ahead of a review of its policy tools due in March amid growing pushback.

    “There are benefits to having numerical guidelines, though they also serve as a bind,” one of the sources said, adding that removing some of the numerical guidelines was a possibility.

    “To make the BOJ’s policy sustainable, it needs to avoid buying too much ETFs when doing so is unnecessary,” another source said, a view echoed by a third source.

    Which of course is a funny “concern” to emerge now, after a decade of non-stop ETF purchases with the BOJ currently purchasing up to 50BN yen in ETFs every other week, after peaking at over 200BN during the March crisis.

    The BOJ will conduct the review of its tools at next month’s policy meeting to make its massive stimulus program “more sustainable and effective,” as the COVID-19 pandemic heightens prospects of a prolonged struggle to reflate the economy.

    The BOJ now pledges to buy ETFs at an annual pace of roughly 6 trillion yen ($56.7 billion) and by up to 12 trillion yen, a commitment that forces it to keep buying even when stock prices are booming, if keeping bulls quite happy.

    Yet in a curious reversal to years of policy, many BOJ policymakers now want to make the ETF-buying program more nimble, so it can buy smaller amounts or even stop buying when markets are calm, the Reuters sources said.  Some are warming to the idea of removing the 6-trillion-yen target or the 12-trillion-yen ceiling, a move that would give the BOJ a free hand in slowing purchases, they said. Others, however, are worried that taking out the numerical guidelines could scare investors and trigger a stock market sell-off at a time many Japanese firms close their March fiscal year-end books.

    Because clearly a stock market without explicit central bank support is simply not acceptable.

    To ease fears, the BOJ will seek to clarify that it would phase out purchases in non-crisis times, so it has scope to buy aggressively when markets turn volatile.In any case, the central bank will look at various ideas before reaching a final decision at the March 18-19 policy meeting, which could be swayed by market moves at the time, they said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 19:40

  • Texas Blackouts Cost Mexican Manufacturers $2.7 Billion
    Texas Blackouts Cost Mexican Manufacturers $2.7 Billion

    By Noi Mahoney of Freightwaves,

    Rolling power blackouts have affected key industrial sites across Mexico, including border states home to hundreds of factories producing everything from auto parts to electronics.

    Factories across northern Mexico states such as Tamaulipas, Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon reported more than $2.7 billion in losses from blackouts that started Monday when Texas began limiting natural gas supplies, according to Mexico’s National Council of the Maquiladora and Export Manufacturing (INDEX).

    INDEX reported 2,600 companies across Mexico have been affected by the power outages since Monday. 

    General Motors, Mazda and Volkswagen are suspending some of their operations for several days in Mexico due to the natural gas shortage, the automakers said in separate statements.

    “Due to the natural gas shortage affecting the Mexican territory, our Silao Guanajuato Complex was forced to stop its operations on the night of February 16 and February 17,” GM said in a statement.

    Volkswagen adjusted the production schedule of its plant in Puebla where it produces the Jetta, Taos and Golf model cars. 

    Japanese automaker Mazda announced it would stop production of its plant in Salamanca, Mexico, starting Wednesday due to the lack of natural gas from the U.S. Production could resume by Friday.

    More blackouts across Mexico could be on the horizon with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement that natural gas sale and exports to Mexico will be suspended until Sunday.

    “Some of the natural gas produced in Texas is occasionally shipped out of state. Today I have issued an order effective today through February 21, requiring producers who have been shipping to locations outside of Texas to instead sell that natural gas to the Texas power generator which will also increase the power produced and it will be shipped to homes in Texas,” Abbott said during a Wednesday press conference. 

    Ports of entry across Texas have been mostly unaffected by the wintry weather, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    “The Los Indios International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas, has been closed until further notice due to no electricity or water. Commercial traffic is diverted to Veterans International Bridge,” according to a Thursday email from CBP.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 19:20

  • In Major Nuke Deal Breakthrough, Biden Tells Iran 'We're Ready For EU-Sponsored Talks'
    In Major Nuke Deal Breakthrough, Biden Tells Iran ‘We’re Ready For EU-Sponsored Talks’

    A first potential major breakthrough which so far has proved elusive after Biden has stalled on prior promises to ‘immediately’ restore US participation in the Iran nuclear deal, the United States appears to have just changed its tune. An admin official has said ‘maximum pressure’ could come to an end if Iran agrees to engage through a broader EU-hosted meeting base in the P5+1 framework.

    “The United States would be ready to hold talks with Iran if the European Union extended an invitation, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday, sketching out a possible diplomatic path to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal,” Reuters reports late in the day Thursday. 

    Further the official said the administration’s “goal is to get both sides back into compliance with the nuclear deal” and has extended the invitation to Iran: “Let’s talk about how to get there.”

    Via Shutterstock/Office of the Supreme Leader

    Previously the administration appeared to balk when initially just such an offer was made two weeks ago by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif for the European Union to coordinate a piecemeal approach for dropping sanctions and Iran’s return to conformity. 

    But now Reuters has cited a top admin official to say “We are ready to show up if such a meeting were to take place” – in what’s clearly an invitation for Iran to signal the same. 

    Iran has indicated it will begin blocking IAEA inspectors from its nuclear facilities starting Sunday, February 21st, hence this new scramble out of the Biden administration to find a way forward before this next escalation measure that many fear would be hard to roll back takes effect. Both the US and Europe are warning against such a step.

    The US has lately been in direct talks with allies Britain, France, and Germany – the key European signatories to the JCPOA – and it appears they’ve finally struck up a common strategy in getting the frozen communications between Tehran and Washington going again. 

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

    At the start of this month State Department spokesman Ned Price appeared to shrug off EU-backed talks when asked directly about Tehran’s expressed willingness to engage through the Europeans. He said there are “many steps” that had to be taken before engaging “directly with Iran” and before the US is willing to “entertain any sort of proposal.” Later the White House appeared to walk back the comments.

    The central point of controversy since Biden took office was over who would “move first”. The Biden White House has been adamant thus far that Iran must return to compliance with enrichment caps and walking back breaches of the terms of the JCPOA. At the same time Iran has pointed to US hypocrisy of backing out of the deal in the first place (under Trump in May 2018) but now demanding Iran’s conformity. Iran has been adamant that all sanctions be dropped. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 19:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 18

Today’s News 18th February 2021

  • China Most Active In Spreading Disinformation On COVID-19 Origin: Report
    China Most Active In Spreading Disinformation On COVID-19 Origin: Report

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    China was the most active country in propagating disinformation on the origin of the COVID-19, according to a newly-released report by the Associated Press (AP) and the Digital Forensic Research Lab of Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council.

    The report was the results of a nine-month joint research project, after analyzing millions of social media posts and articles that were published in the first six months of the COVID-19 outbreak. It examined the false narratives that took hold in four countries: China, Iran, Russia, and the United States.

    China was much to blame for the disinformation on COVID-19 origin, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

    “Particularly in the period immediately following COVID-19’s initial spread, factual information about the disease, its origin, and its symptoms was lacking or withheld–most notably by China–providing the ample space for misleading and malicious information to take root,” according to the report.

    The Chinese regime concealed from the public information about the disease and also silenced eight whistleblower doctors, including ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who were the first to warn about an “unknown pneumonia” outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan on Chinese social media.

    The report pointed out that users on Chinese social media Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, began writing about an unproven conspiracy theory connecting the United States with the outbreak on Dec. 31, 2019. For example, one Weibo user wrote, “Watch out for Americans,” while another wrote about the United States being one of several countries in the world that houses a P4 bio-safety laboratory.

    But none of these early speculations on Weibo was “coordinated or particularly far-reaching.”

    Meanwhile, the P4 lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has long been speculated as the source of the virus in a potential lab leak. A fact sheet released by the U.S. State Department last month stated that it “had reason to believe” several researchers at the institute fell ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in the autumn of 2019, contradicting a claim by a researcher at the institute who said there was “zero infection” among lab staff and students.

    A recent investigation by a team of World Health Organization (WHO) experts in Wuhan did not rule out the possibility that the virus was leaked from the P4 lab, but concluded that the theory was “extremely unlikely.” Last week, WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus suggested more research was needed to study the different origin theories of the virus.

    China’s state-run media soon began driving China’s narrative of the pandemic after the sporadic chatters on Weibo.

    “China initially preferred to boost international perception in its favor by amplifying stories about its benevolence in assisting other countries to combat the virus,” according to the report.

    In late February last year, China’s state-run media began to publish articles suggesting that the virus may have originated outside of China, according to the report. Some outlets also provided negative coverage of the U.S. response to the outbreak.

    “As the disease persisted, however, China began to push narratives that painted its geopolitical competitors in a negative light, including pushing conspiracies such as the idea that COVID-19 was a U.S. biological weapon,” the report added.

    Twitter

    The report analyzed a series of Twitter posts made by China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijun in March 2020. In a tweet on March 12, Zhao accused the United States army of bringing the virus to Wuhan.

    The report found that Zhao’s tweets targeting the United States on March 12 and 13 last year had “accumulated nearly 47,000 retweets and quote tweets, [was] referenced in at least 54 languages, and favorited more than 82,000 times” as of Feb. 13. These tweets were also “amplified by at least 30 different Chinese diplomats and state-run accounts.”

    Zhao’s tweets also had an enormous impact on China’s domestic audience. According to the report, popular hashtags referencing his tweets were viewed by Weibo users more than 300 million times as of Feb. 13.

    The report also analyzed online activities following Zhao’s other tweets in March, which reposted a link to an article by Larry Romanoff published on Global Research Canada, a site known for advancing conspiracy theories on topics such as global warming. The article suggested that the virus might have leaked from Fort Detrick, a prominent military biomedical research lab in Maryland.

    There was a spike in Google searches for “Larry Romanoff” around mid-March, following Zhao’s tweets, according to the report.

    Recently, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying revisited the conspiracy theory by citing Fort Detrick. She said during a Jan. 18 press briefing that the United States should invite WHO experts to “conduct origin tracing” in the country.

    “If the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio-labs,” she said.

    Moreover, on Twitter, “the number of Chinese diplomatic accounts more than tripled on the platform between May 2019 and May 2020, from 40 to 135, and the output doubled and became more aggressive and conspiratorial,” the report stated. Due to China’s firewall, Twitter is not accessible by ordinary Chinese citizens.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/18/2021 – 00:05

  • Hong Kong Aiming For Legislation To Ban Insulting Public Officials
    Hong Kong Aiming For Legislation To Ban Insulting Public Officials

    If you thought there were free speech issues in the U.S., you haven’t seen anything yet.

    Hong Kong’s government is currently in the process of introducing legislation that would prohibit insulting public officials. We can only imagine the insults that were muttered when local citizens read the news from local media.

    Hong Kong’s Security Bureau is in the midst of leading a study on how the legislation could work and how it would be overseen, according to Bloomberg. Local outlets said, citing Civil Service Secretary Patrick Nip, that the issue was under examination. 

    The legislation would be part of a broader agenda by China to “erode basic freedoms” in Hong Kong. The move would be the biggest to censor free speech in Hong Kong since China’s institution of a law that has been used to combat mass protests in Hong Kong. 

    Beijing has also implemented a “patriotism test” to weed out pro-Democracy lawmakers. The test prompted mass resignations from opposition members in the Legislative Council last November, Bloomberg notes. Bloomberg also noted that Hong Kong judges and law enforcement are unlikely to challenge any new legislation from Beijing:

    Earlier this month, Hong Kong’s top court ordered that media tycoon and democracy activist Jimmy Lai remain in jail ahead of his trial on foreign collusion charges, a victory for Beijing that suggested Hong Kong judges were unlikely to challenge the security law. Hong Kong police also separately arrested Lai for assisting in an activist’s attempt to flee to Taiwan, the Oriental Daily reported on Wednesday, without citing anyone.

    Recall, back in June 2020, Hong Kong passed a law banning insults to China’s National Anthem. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 23:45

  • Leaked Video Shows Facebook CEO Questioning "Long-Term Side Effects Of Modifying DNA" In COVID Vaccine
    Leaked Video Shows Facebook CEO Questioning “Long-Term Side Effects Of Modifying DNA” In COVID Vaccine

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made comments last year about COVID-19 vaccines that clash with policies that his platform has implemented, leaked video shows.

    Zuckerberg said in July 2020:

    “I do just want to make sure that I share some caution on this [vaccine] because we just don’t know the long-term side effects of basically modifying people’s DNA and RNA … basically the ability to produce those antibodies and whether that causes other mutations or other risks downstream. So, there’s work on both paths of vaccine development.”

    The footage was published by Project Veritas, a journalism watchdog.

    It was allegedly from Facebook’s internal weekly question-and-answer session.

    Zuckerberg took a different stance when appearing in a virtual forum in November 2020 with Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading government scientist.

    “Just to clear up one point, my understanding is that these vaccines do not modify your DNA or RNA. So that’s just an important point to clarify,” Zuckerberg said, prompting Fauci to say: “No, first of all, DNA is inherent in your own nuclear cell. Sticking in anything foreign will ultimately get cleared.”

    Facebook didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Zuckerberg’s Facebook has imposed harsh guidelines on what people can post about COVID-19, and banned or restricted a number of users for violating the policies.

    Facebook earlier in February said it would take down any posts with claims about vaccines deemed false by health groups or its so-called fact-checkers.

    A health care worker prepares a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center inside the Blackburn Cathedral, United Kingdom, on Jan. 19, 2021. (Molly Darlington/Reuters)

    Facebook stated in a blog post, “Today, following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines.”

    The list includes “claims that the COVID-19 vaccine changes people’s DNA.”

    Administrators for some groups will be required to greenlight all posts if the groups have been labeled problematic in terms of posts that have been made.

    “Claims about COVID-19 or vaccines that do not violate these policies will still be eligible for review by our third-party fact-checkers, and if they are rated false, they will be labeled and demoted,” the company stated.

    Footage showing Zuckerberg commenting privately on various issues has been made public before by Project Veritas. In one clip, he praised President Joe Biden’s early executive orders “on areas that we as a company care quite deeply about and have for some time.”

    “Areas like immigration, preserving DACA, ending restrictions on travel from Muslim-majority countries, as well as other executive orders on climate and advancing racial justice and equity. I think these were all important and positive steps,” he said.

    Facebook banned former President Donald Trump in January while Trump was still in office. Trump remains blocked from the platform.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 23:25

  • America 2021? Cops Block Hungry Portlanders Scrambling For Discarded Food
    America 2021? Cops Block Hungry Portlanders Scrambling For Discarded Food

    A Northeast Portland Fred Meyer hypermarket threw out thousands of perishable items on Tuesday because it suffered power loss due to a winter storm. Images of the food quickly spread on social media as working-poor folks stormed the dumpster. Shortly after, a store manager called the cops, which prevented hungry people from taking free food. 

    The Oregon Live reported workers at the Hollywood West Fred Meyer threw away thousands of items “deemed no longer safe for consumption” on Tuesday following a severe winter storm knocking out power to the store.

    Working-poor Portlander stormed the massive dumpster on Tuesday for hopes of free food. They found a mountain of cheese and meats and juice and all sorts of foods stacked to the brim of a dumpster. 

    After a crowd developed, the store manager called Portland police. 

    Morgan Mckniff, a social justice warrior in Portland, said a dozen officers, some without masks, arrived on the scene and guarded the dumpster, ensuring no one in the community took the food. 

    Portland police said the store manager called officers after employees “felt the situation was escalating and feared there may be a physical confrontation,” a police spokesman said. 

    Juniper Simonis, another social justice warrior in Portland, documented the incident.

    Simonis said, “when I arrived on at the Hollywood @Fred_Meyer in Portland this evening, I was greeted by 12 @PortlandPolice officers who were apparently guarding two dumpsters full of food that mutual aid orgs were trying to distribute and hungry folks were trying to eat.”

    The amount of food Simonis documented in a series of posts was immense. 

    “And the meat. so. much. meat. think of all of the people hungry in warming shelters that would have LOVED some beef or a shrimp cocktail or a SIDE OF SALMON it is a white legacy to strip the water of salmon and throw it away with no thought for the fish or people,” Simonis said. 

    Simonis said it appeared the store cleared out anything that was refrigerated. 

    Simonis pictures of working-poor folks gathering food, many of whom are already dealing with food and housing insecurities. 

    Dozens of people found food.

    Fred Meyer eventually had to bring in a couple of dumpsters to dispose of the food. 

    The company eventually released this statement: 

    “Unfortunately, due to loss of power at this store, some perishable food was no longer safe for donation to local hunger relief agencies. Our store team became concerned that area residents would consume the food and risk food borne illness, and they engaged local law enforcement out of an abundance of caution. We apologize for the confusion.”

    With food banks overwhelmed, millions without jobs, an eviction crisis, soaring food/housing insecurities, and out-of-control inequality produced by the Federal Reserve, who would’ve ever thought Americans would be dumpster diving for food in 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 23:05

  • Biden Slaps Down Move For $50K Student Debt Forgiveness: "I Will Not Make That Happen"
    Biden Slaps Down Move For $50K Student Debt Forgiveness: “I Will Not Make That Happen”

    President Biden has appeared to give his ‘final’ and ‘definitive’ answer on student loan forgiveness at a moment progressives within the Democratic party continue pushing for much more than his planned 10,000 debt write off.

    In comments early this week, he balked at the idea of forgiving $50,000 in student loan debt for some 43 million Americans, which would amount to $1 trillion canceled overnight via executive order:

    “I will not make that happen,” Biden said during a CNN town hall on Tuesday night when asked if he would support cancellation of $50,000, adding that it “depends on whether or not you go to a private or public university” and that he’s opposed to saying that he was going to “forgive the debt, billions of dollars of debt, for people who have gone to Harvard and Yale and Penn.”

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    Biden further explained: “I do think in this moment of economic pain and strain that we should be eliminating interest on the debts that are accumulated, No. 1. And No. 2, I’m prepared to write off the $10,000 debt, but not [$50,000],” and underscored that such an ambitious and unfeasible number is likely outside his unilateral power to do.

    Progressives led by Senators Schumer and Warren haven’t let up the pressure after months of being vocal in media interviews and press events, and earlier this month reintroduced their measure which proposed a $50,000 forgiveness per borrower. 

    Meanwhile the usual suspects are seeking to make it primarily a race and class disparity issue, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeting Wednesday…

    “1. Who cares what school someone went to? Entire generations of working class kids were encouraged to go into more debt under the guise of elitism. This is wrong. 2. Nowhere does it say we must trade-off early childhood education for student loan forgiveness. We can have both.”

    The intra-party pressures from top congressional Democrats are likely to continue, with AOC’s tweet getting a lot of media attention later in the day Wednesday. 

    Meanwhile the White House has maintained the line of still looking into and “reviewing legally” whether or not it’s even possible for the president to issue student debt forgiveness without congressional approval, which is another key part of Progressives’ demands. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 22:45

  • Jailed Hong Kong Tycoon Arrested Again, Faces Charges Of Helping Activists Flee
    Jailed Hong Kong Tycoon Arrested Again, Faces Charges Of Helping Activists Flee

    Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai is already facing prosecution under Hong Kong’s new national security laws, and now it looks like authorities are heaping on even more charges against the high-profile pro-democracy figure.

    His Apple Daily tabloid reported that Lai has been arrested again, this time for suspicion of assisting one of 12 fugitives China captured at sea last year. Western media outlets quickly picked up the reports.

    Lai, who is being detained while awaiting a bail hearing on Thursday, has been charged with colluding with foreign forces under the new law.

    China’s coast guard captured the 12 fugitives in August as they tried to flee Hong Kong in a boat believed to be bound for Taiwan. All were held in a mainland China prison until a trial in late December. Ten were jailed for terms ranging from seven months to three years for illegally crossing the border, or helping to organize the crossing, while two minors were sent back to Hong Kong. 

    Papers later identified that Andy Li, one of the 12, as the individual Lai was suspected of helping, though it seems police in HK have had no further comment on the issue.

    Beijing imposed the new security law on Hong Kong in June of last year after COVID finally helped end months of pro-democracy protests.

    Lai was already the most high-profile person to be charged under the new security law. His prior charges related to statements he made on July 30 and Aug. 18, in which prosecutors say he requested foreign help for Hong Kong, something the new Beijing-imposed security law no longer allows.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 22:25

  • Los Angeles Slashes School Police Budget, Replaces Officers With "Climate Coaches"
    Los Angeles Slashes School Police Budget, Replaces Officers With “Climate Coaches”

    Authored by GQ Pan via The Epoch Times,

    The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education on Tuesday approved a plan to cut one-third of its police budget and divert the money to a program that focuses on black students achievement.

    The board voted to cut 133 school police positions from the Los Angeles School Police Department, including 70 sworn officers, 62 non-sworn officers, and one support staff member. The staff reductions reduce the annual budget of the district’s police force from $77.5 million to $52.5 million.

    Police officers stationed at all secondary schools will be replaced by new “climate coaches,” who are trained to, according to the plan, implement “positive school culture and climate,” use “de-escalation strategies” to resolve conflict, understand and address “implicit bias,” and eliminate “racial disproportionately” in school discipline practices.

    The new plan doesn’t allow individual schools to apply to keep police officers on their campuses. Instead, officers will remain on call to respond to emergencies, with a goal of a three-to-five minute response time.

    The police force reduction is part of the LAUSD’s $36.5 million Black Student Achievement Plan, which aims to provide supplemental services and support to 53 schools that have a large black student population and “high need indicators,” such as lower than average math and English language arts proficiency rates, higher than average referral and suspension rates, and higher than average chronic absenteeism.

    In addition to the police overhaul, the plan would dedicate $30.1 million for improving “school climate” and reducing “over-identification of black students” in suspensions and discipline actions, $4.4 million to implement academic changes such as adding more black authors into school curricula, and $2 million for community partnership with organizations that serve black youth.

    “We’ve been systematically failing black children as a country. Schools must be part of the solution, because a great education is the most important part of the path out of poverty,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said on Monday during his weekly update to the LAUSD community.

    “While we at L.A. Unified don’t have all the answers, we’re committed to making change.”

    The changes mark the latest move by the nation’s major public school districts in response to the “defund the police” movement. In the wake of death of George Floyd in custody of Minneapolis police, activist and organizations such as Black Lives Matter have called on local and officials to “defund” their law enforcement forces, arguing that redirecting funding from police toward other social service programs could make communities safer.

    Last summer, the Minneapolis Public Schools board of education voted unanimously to terminate its contract with the Minneapolis Police Department, saying it “cannot continue to be in partnership with an organization that has the culture of violence and racism.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 22:05

  • Myanmar Protesters Denounce China's "Hidden Hand" In Propping Up Junta
    Myanmar Protesters Denounce China’s “Hidden Hand” In Propping Up Junta

    There’s increasing suspicion that China had a “hidden hand” in Myanmar’s coup d’etat which kicked off Feb.1 upon the arrest and detention of the country’s civilian leadership.

    The substantial rumors that Beijing assisted in the military coup that’s plunged its southeast Asian neighbor into unrest – with a near total internet blackout and armored vehicles patrolling the streets – have grown to the point that it prompted a formal denial from China’s ambassador to Myanmar.

    Via Economic Times

    Ambassador Chen Hai early this week responded to growing pro-democracy protests that have formed outside the Chinese embassy in the city Yangon. It a written public statement the ambassador claimed to have had no “prior knowledge” of the coup, further saying that allegations of Communist China’s assisting in setting up a telecommunications firewall in cooperation with military coup forces are “laughable”.

    “We have friendly relations with both the NLD and the military. The current situation is absolutely not what China wants to see,” Chen added. 

    As an example of the growing allegations that see Chinese ‘interference’ all over the worsening Myanmar situation, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are circulating assessments like the following.

    Credible sources revealed that the Myanmar military government is receiving “technical support” from the CCP to build similar internet firewalls to block access to Twitter, NYT, FB etc. The internet cutoff serves this need. Dictators help each other and CCP is leading the way.

    Indeed there should be ways that US-based tech and social media giants can verify this, though companies like Google have long had a suspiciously cozy relationship with Chinese Communist authorities. 

    Anti-China protesters through the region are pointing the finger at Beijing for this month’s rapidly moving Myanmar events…

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

    Current widespread internet outages and blockages of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter appear geared toward preempting the growing anti-coup demonstrations, which in the past days have seen tens of thousands hit the streets, and are resulting in increasingly violent clashes with police and military coup forces.

    According the latest reporting in The Guardian, “Since a military coup earlier this month, Myanmar has endured five internet blackouts. There have also been blocks on some social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which have been used to generate support for anti-coup protests in the country.”

    Via Reuters

    Meanwhile, amid broad clashes with police, there’s increasing “anti-China” sentiment growing among Myanmar protesters, as India’s Economic Times also observes, “Allegations of Chinese hand in Myanmar coup is growing in salience following massive anti-Beijing protests sweeping across the SE Asian state, India’s key neighbor to the East.”

    “Chinese President Xi Jinping has been urged by the protestors not to recognize Myanmar’s military regime and to stand with the people, amid a wave of anti-China sentiment—including boycotts on Chinese products, ET has reliably gathered from sources and activists who did not wish to be identified,” the report underscores further.

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

    Despite a near total internet and telecommunications outage across the country sporadic social media videos are in some cases still being posted of large-scale troop and armored vehicle deployments to the streets. Chaotic scenes of blasts and flash-bangs show anti-riot tactics deployed on crowds, but also suggest ‘live fire’ could be happening – though there’s still conflicting reports over whether security forces are using live ammo or rubber bullets. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 21:45

  • Greenwashing Turns "Ugly" Into Environmentally Friendly
    Greenwashing Turns “Ugly” Into Environmentally Friendly

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Times blog,

    Greenwashing is a term you may not be familiar with but may become used more frequently in the future. The combination of limited public access to information and seemingly unlimited advertising has enabled companies to present themselves as caring environmental stewards, even as they were engaging in environmentally unsustainable practices. This has been going on for years and I expect the effort to portray a company as “caring about the environment” is about to be ramped up to a whole new level.

    The idea of greenwashing is not new but has evolved and drastically increased with the news-waves constantly echoing concern over global warming and climate change. Many companies are now working to engage customers in their sustainability efforts, even as their core business model remains environmentally ugly. The many ways companies and people damage the environment are often their “dirty little secrets.” Sometimes environmentally damaging behavior is driven by greed, sometimes ignorance, and sometimes a feeling of entitlement or indifference. It is often difficult for people to discover the truth about a company when it is hidden behind well-contrived lies.

    In “Many Cites” Buses Have Few Riders

    In the same way, government diverts our attention from something that highlights its failures, companies often divert our attention from the bigger picture. Marketers create advertisements that appeal to the sensitive hearts of the consumers by making images and films that are adorable. This is also done by making green claims that are vague and ambiguous. By simply changing the color of the company logo from yellow or red to green can invoke the illusion of environmentally friendly products.

    Greenwashing is not reserved for companies, even individuals use it. An example is how John Kerry, President Biden’s recently appointed climate czar and envoy for climate change, tried to wash away his sin for taking a private jet to Iceland in 2019 to receive an award. When asked by a local reporter if this was an eco-conscious way to travel, the former secretary of state replied, “it’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.”

    Like many of the global elite, Kerry doesn’t see himself as guilty of abusing his position, to him, he is merely exercising his privilege. We see the same crap flowing from many of the self-absorbed global elite that attend conferences such as the World Economic Forum in Davos. For many of these people, a private jet is not the “only” choice, it is a “preferred choice.” The hypocrisy of John Kerry, and people like him, should give us pause.

    A major issue we now face is that putting a friendly face on ugly presents a real danger. This comes at the same time governments and central banks are rushing to fund a green agenda. Sadly, many of the ideas generated by these so-called environmentalists are akin to putting lipstick on a pig or rooted in the idea a great deal of money can be made by embracing this move. The continuing debate of whether Electric Vehicles are less damaging to the environment and indications they are not underlines the importance of plotting a clear path ahead.

    Years ago the answer was ethanol, a renewable domestically produced alcohol fuel made from plant material, today many see this as an expensive boondoggle to benefit big agriculture. The current political atmosphere is ripe for crony capitalism to flourish and boondoggles to sprout up everywhere, especially when it comes to going “green.” Another troubling development is the possibility of government overreach removing many of the choices we have come to enjoy. This of course would be carried out under the idea it is being done for “the greater good.”

    Falling into this category is an agenda being promoted under the Green New Deal moniker, this name is most likely used to give this vision of America a more credible image. The Green New Deal is modeled in part after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, a large federal program designed to stabilize the economy and recover from the Great Depression. It should be noted many people give credit to World War II for pulling America out of the Great Depression rather than Roosevelt’s economic policies.

    Factcheck.org looked into the Green New Deal to see what it includes and doesn’t as well as to why there is confusion over the content. It calls for a massive change in society and the way we live. It focuses on tackling climate change but isn’t concerned just with reducing emissions. This was all wrapped into a resolution listing goals to be accomplished in a 10-year mobilization effort that does not stipulate how the country will reach them. The resolution is also silent on cost and how all this should be funded. Below is a list of the five goals, which the resolution says should be accomplished in a 10-year mobilization effort:

    • Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers

    • Create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States

    • Invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century

    • Secure for all people of the United States for generations to come: clean air and water; climate and community resiliency; healthy food; access to nature; and a sustainable environment

    • Promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (“frontline and vulnerable communities”)

    With the hard turn towards creating a more green economy, it should come as no surprise that now Jane Yellen as the face of the Treasury Department’s free money initiative recently addressed the G7 telling them, we “should be focused on what more we can do to provide support at this time.” She went on to “emphasized the commitment of the Biden Administration to multilateralism to solve global issues, stating that the United States “places a high priority on deepening our international engagement and strengthening our alliances.”

    The fact Yellen also “expressed strong support for G7 efforts to tackle climate change, highlights how just a small percentage of votes can cause a 180-degree change in a country’s policies. Yellen even went further expressing her strong belief that G7 countries “must work to address the challenges facing low-income countries who are struggling to respond to the pandemic.” Several Central Banks have already endorsed the green agenda. This all falls into the scenario that it’s time to finally fix the world and together we have the ability to create the money to do it.  In short, we will spend and you should too.

    Enough about the money and the politics behind all this, the reality is, much of the direction the world takes will have less to do with the environment than the image those in charge wish to project. If any of these people really gave a damn about the environment the first word out of their mouth would be “conserve” and then they would be talking about reducing waste. 

    This is the low-hanging fruit that could be quickly reached and picked at little cost. Both would make a great difference. 

    The reason nobody talks about this is that conserving and reducing waste would cause the GDP to fall like a stone.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 21:25

  • Here We Go Again: Zoltan Warns Repo Market On Verge Of Major Shock As Key Funding Rate Turns Negative
    Here We Go Again: Zoltan Warns Repo Market On Verge Of Major Shock As Key Funding Rate Turns Negative

    Two weeks ago, when discussing the imminent avalanche of cash set to be unleashed by the Treasury – as a tsunami of $800BN in extra liquidity hits markets over the next 6 weeks, and a total of $1.1 trillion in the next 10 weeks – we said that “nobody was paying attention” to this coming flood of liquidity.

    Since then, some have started to pay attention, with Bloomberg writing an article yesterday titled “Yellen Shift on Vast Treasury Cash Pile Poses Problem for Powell” in which it described the liquidity “tsunami” as a move which aims to return its cash position at the central bank to more normal levels, and which “will flood the financial system with liquidity and complicate Powell’s effort to keep a tight grip over money market rates.”

    Sounds awfully familiar… as does this:

    “All this cash from the Treasury’s general account will have to go back from the Fed and into the market,” said Manmohan Singh, senior economist at the International Monetary Fund. “It will drive short term rates lower, as far as they can go.”

    Ok, fine – people are finally paying attention.

    So what does this mean for markets? Well, traders are clearly pricing in the impact of this liquidity tsunami with the S&P trading at an all time high just shy of 4,000. That was to be expected: after all every previous liquidity deluge has resulted in sharply higher risk prices and there is no reason why the algos should trade this one any different.

    But while the surge in stocks is in line with expectations, we have also observed several other more concerning developments. The first is the recent surge in 10Y swap spreads…

    … which is factoring the coming inflation that will be released courtesy of the Treasury’s soon-to-be unlocked $1.1 trillion.

    A more troubling side-effect of this “liquidity supernova” is the ongoing collapse in short-term rates, which – as a reminder – we also warned about saying “the plunge in short-term debt (Bill) issuance (since there will no longer be an urgent need to keep cash balances in the $1+ trillion range) will compress short-term spreads (effective FF through 3M) to zero – or even negative – as there is suddenly a flood of liquidity which could prompt the Fed to engage the fixed-rate borrowing facility or even nudging the IOER higher.”

    This, to be sure, is another point which suddenly has everyone’s attention and as Curvature’s repo export Scott Skyrm writes today in his repo market commentary, “The market is preparing for a deluge of cash. REG markets are progressively trading at lower rates each day and term markets are well bid.”

    Yes, the GSEs already have more cash in the Repo market these days, but now the monthly cash is about to enter the market – typically from the 19th to the 24th of the month. That means even more cash chasing the same amount of collateral. Given where term rates are trading, the market is pricing GC to trade around .03% to .02% early next week.“

    And on, and on, until GC repo hits 0%… and then goes negative sparking another mini repo market crisis, similar to the one from September 2019 only in reverse.

    That’s the point made by repo guru Zoltan Pozsar, who in his latest Global Money Dispatch note lays out the problem by comparing it to Sept 2019, similar to what we said two weeks ago when we explained that “what is happening now is just the opposite and many, many times bigger, as almost one trillion reserves are about to be injected into the system as cash is drained from the Treasury’s account at the Fed.”

    Here’s Zoltan:

    During September 2019, we argued that the system was running out of reserves – too much Treasury collateral was entering the system and we needed a fixed-price, full allotment o/n repo facility to absorb all the excess collateral. Banks’ binding constraint was intraday liquidity, which constrained their ability to lend into the o/n repo market. When their lending stopped, repo popped…

    Today, the banking system is running out of balance sheet, and money funds are running out of collateral. Soon there will be too much cash in the system; TGA balances will decline from $1.6 trillion to $500 billion by the end of June.

    As the Credit Suisse plumbing experts writes next, “this roughly $1 trillion decline will occur either through waves of fiscal spending, which will expand deposits and reserves at large banks…

    … or, if spending is too slow to meet the $500 billion target, through bill paydowns. Coupon issuance will be $1.4 trillion over the first half, and depending on whether the spending or paydowns scenario dominates, coupons will be bought mostly by banks, or shadow banks.”

    Which brings us to the key part: why we are about to see another burst of fireworks in the repo market where rates are about to go negative:

    Banks don’t have the balance sheet at the bank operating subsidiary level to add $1 trillion of deposits, reserves, and Treasuries: J.P. Morgan can’t grow more due to G-SIB constraints; Citibank flat-lined its balance sheet growth already; Bank of America has the capacity to add only $150 billion of deposits and HQLA; and Wells Fargo’s $500 billion capacity is constrained by its asset growth ban.

    Unless we get SLR relief at the bank opco. level, or Wells Fargo’s ban is lifted, banks will have to turn away wealthy households’ and institutions’ deposits, which will then go to money funds. But money funds will face a constraint too: the marginal asset they will direct inflows into – the o/n RRP facility – is capped; each money fund can place only $30 billion into the facility, which is too little.

    Banks’ balance sheet constraint becomes a collateral constraint for money funds, and collateral constraints may surface in both the spending and paydown scenarios. Collateral supply from coupon issuance will absorb this cash over time, but money markets react to what happens now, and with $1 trillion of new cash, there may be many pockets of collateral scarcity as these flows play out in real time.

    Which means that it will be up to the Fed to intervene once again and allow intermediaries to park the extra trillion in cash somewhere, in this case with the reserve currency’s central bank:

    The Fed can hike the o/n RRP rate to 100 bps, but unless it uncaps the facility, bills and repo can still go negative.

    And besides the repo market, the one place where this particular inversion will unleash shockwaves is the old, familiar FRA-OIS spread which – as everyone remembers from last March – emerged as the financial system’s key funding indicator. Only this time instead of blowing wider as it did last March…

    … FRA-OIS, already at the tightest level in at least a decade, is about to go negative. Zoltan has more:

    To have a view on FRA-OIS, we need to have a view on who will warehouse $1 trillion of reserves that will flood the system by June. Large U.S. banks won’t be able to unless they get SLR relief at the bank operating subsidiary level.

    We don’t think that SLR relief is coming, so as the stimulus checks go out, banks will have to turn away institutional non-operating deposits to money funds. The “natural” outlet for these institutional inflows will be at the o/n RRP facility, but the use of this facility is capped at $30 billion per fund. The use of this facility will be tested not only by stimulus-driven inflows but also by bill paydowns: as bills mature, money funds will look to the RRP facility as a substitute for bills.

    Uncapping the o/n RRP facility is more important than adjusting its price; the use of banks’ reserve accounts, the foreign repo pool, or Treasury’s account aren’t capped, so why impose a per-counterparty cap on the o/n RRP facility?

    The RRP cap is a key piece of our warehousing puzzle: the $1 trillion of reserves we’re trying to find a warehouse for are currently warehoused by the Treasury; U.S. banks can’t add another $1 trillion to their warehouses, and money funds can’t warehouse $1 trillion unless the Fed decides to uncap the RRP facility.

    In practical terms, this means that “unless the RRP facility gets uncapped, bill and repo rates can trade negative and money funds may turn away inflows, as they won’t invest at negative rates.”

    And yes, unless the Fed steps in, we may have NIRP among US commercial banks as soon as a few weeks from today:

    J.P. Morgan’s SLR problem points to negative deposit rates, and money funds’ RRP capacity problem points to negative bill and repo rates.

    And yes, somehow everyone missed that JPM’s earnings release itself warned very clearly that negative deposit rates are coming in 2021 should “excess liquidity” and “higher capital” become a fixture – which is about to be the case:

    The practical implications for a market trading at all time highs, where there does not appear to be a single cloud in the sky, are alarming:

    The implications for FRA-OIS from here are obvious: if U.S. banks are full and money funds can’t take new money either, foreign banks will warehouse reserves at rates below those of J.P. Morgan but above those available in the bill market – and both are negative. The price of warehousing is a fee, i.e. a negative rate…

    And so, unless the Fed steps in aggressively and either grants banks SLR relief and/or the overnight Reverse Repo Facility is uncapped – so that banks have a place to park the flood of $1.1 trillion in excess cash instead of turning it away – Zoltan expects U.S. dollar Libor-OIS spreads to reach zero by June, with risks to the downside. Needless to say, this would be the first time in US history that the key funding metric has dipped into negative territory. The problem is that just like with oil – which imploded instantly the moment it dipped below $0 on April 20, 2020, nobody knows just how negative FRA-OIS will drop, with the potential to unleash major money-market shockwaves growing by the second.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 21:11

  • An Absurd Look At The Marxist, Ultra-Woke "Education" System In 2021
    An Absurd Look At The Marxist, Ultra-Woke “Education” System In 2021

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    In honor of Black History Month, schools across the Land of the Free are adopting a curriculum that’s being pushed from the organization Black Lives Matter.

    Curiously, the “Black Lives Matter at School” curriculum has absolutely nothing to do with history, let alone black history.

    Instead, the organization presents an entirely Marxist, ultra-woke agenda.

    The first clue is that the website literally states “we engage comrades” through the curriculum’s 13 guiding principles.

    One of these guiding principles is “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” to replace it with “villages that collectively care for one another, and especially our children.”

    Wait, what? OUR children? Now we’re supposed to award untold influence over our kids to self-described “trained Marxists” ?

    But this only scratches the surface of the curriculum.

    Under the organization’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” there are lesson plans which endeavor to teach young students about why they should join trade unions when they become an adult.

    And they go on to teach that everyone is “entitled to economic, social and cultural help from your government.”

    One resource in the curriculum advocates printing money to implement a “systemwide social justice shock,” including “free universal health care… and direct subsidies [i.e. universal basic income].”

    Another teaches “that white supremacy is a fundamental component of our founding documents. The Constitution was not a document to promote democracy, but to prevent it… my students engage in an activity where they see this unfold in the classroom.”

    One lesson plan instructs teachers to have their students “Write your own hex poem, cursing… specific people who have been agents of police terror or global brutality” including “small micro aggressions… i.e., people who say ‘all lives matter’. . .”

    And they do this with incredibly young, impressionable children who absorb everything like a sponge.

    For example, the curriculum suggests instructing kindergarten students that ‘Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else’ as part of ‘freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.’

    This seems totally appropriate for a five year old!

    To be fair, some of the curriculum is grounded in good intentions. They teach kids that everyone has a right to be themselves, and that discrimination is stupid. Those are great lessons.

    But the way they cram it down everyone’s throat is appalling.

    For example, one curriculum resource was written by an individual who self-describes as a “queer disabled autistic nonbinary femme writer and disability/transformative justice worker.”

    You can’t just be a human being anymore. You can’t just be Bob or Maria. You have to provide a laundry list of ways that you self-identify with victim groups.

    This is what passes for credentials these days.

    It almost reminds me of those silly royal titles that monarch’s use. In Game of Thrones, Queen Daenerys self-stylized as “Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons . . .”

    Now it’s “Queen of the Bolsheviks, first of her name, rallier of woke mobs, Arch-Tweetress of problematic vocabulary, Lord-Commander of the social justice warriors, vanquisher of the cis-male, and defender of the nonbinary femmes.”

    This curriculum teaches young people that you gain power in our society– not through accomplishments and deeds– but by gathering more titles of victimization. More titles means more power.

    The propaganda and indoctrination starts in kindergarten and continues for 13 years.

    And you might think when you reach university you can finally acquire a real education.

    You pay $70,000 in annual tuition, for example, to attend one of the top schools in the world, Princeton University in New Jersey.

    And what greets these students seeking a higher education?

    First off— Princeton has a “Social Contract” now that students must sign, obliging them to nearly three dozen requirements ranging from obtaining a flu shot, to not leaving Mercer County until the end of the semester, to ratting out fellow students who do not comply.

    But perhaps the most ridiculous development yet was when the school newspaper ran a ‘Dear Abby’ style column last month from a “sexpert” explaining how students should engage in sexual intercouse in the age of COVID.

    The article advises students to abandon physical contact altogether, and instead use remote sex toys that can be controlled through online apps.

    Obviously they haven’t heard the news that such sex toys have been hacked, and users’ private parts were literally being held for ransom by hackers.

    The “sexpert” goes on to advise that, if students absolutely must meet in person for sex, they should wear a mask, avoid kissing, engage in an appropriate position, and use “external/male condoms”.

    Note the language— you have to say ‘external/male’ when referring to condom so that you don’t alienate men with vaginas, or women with penises.

    The sexpert also advises that students wear a “dental dam” for added protection. I had to look this one up— it’s basically a giant rubber barrier around your mouth.

    Sexy time!

    And just to prove there’s no limit to their ridiculousness, the sexpert concludes by telling students they should “order from your favorite online Black-, female/femme-, or queer-owned sexuality shop.”

    God forbid you buy a dental dam from someone without regard to the vendor’s gender, race, or sexual orientation.

    There was a time when the purpose of education was to expand minds.

    Now the intent is to close minds… to strip students of any ability to think critically, and replace intellectual independence with woke, Marxist propaganda.

    *  *  *

    On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 20:45

  • As Hearing Looms, Here Is How Gamma Was Weaponized Against GameStop
    As Hearing Looms, Here Is How Gamma Was Weaponized Against GameStop

    Submitted by SpotGamma.com,

    In late January 2021, GameStop experienced a once-in-a-decade squeeze that has captivated the world’s attention. This was a premeditated and programmatic exercise, orchestrated by coordinated stock and option buying across the retail and professional community, that resulted in large institutional entities losing billions of dollars. These investment houses with significant short positions did not expect a stock with GameStop’s fundamental profile to increase +2,500% in price over less than three weeks; therefore, they did not have the controls in place to handle the incredible levels of stock and call option purchases. The frenzy drew comments from the White House, provoked a social media crackdown, caused brokerage units to restrict trading, and has led to a Congressional hearing on GameStop on Thursday, February 18th.   

    At SpotGamma, we offer the following analysis, segmented into three phases:

    Phase One: The Setup

    • This is where retail investors started planning for the event
    • These retail investors started loading up on call options ahead of the coordinated large stock buying activity in phase two 

    Phase Two: The Weaponized Gamma Squeezes

    • In the first squeeze, retail investors relentlessly bought stock and call options 
    • In the second squeeze, the super squeeze, several factors rocketed the stock price upward. They include stock buying, call buying, put selling, celebrity engagement, forced stop-losses, and market makers buying stock to hedge options exposure

    Phase Three: The Unwind

    • This is where stock and options became too expensive for retail investors and declining volatility led to market makers selling stock they owned as hedges
    • Coupled with new trading restrictions imposed by the brokers, the stock price crashed back down more than 80pct from its highs in less than two weeks 

    The Setup 

    Phase One: Early in January 2021, Reddit/WSB and other retail traders began to focus on GME as a buying opportunity…. 

    (1) January 11th [Initial Attention]: GameStop recruited a highly-respected industry veteran to their Board (Chewy Founder, Ryan Cohen). This garnered enthusiasm from the retail community and acted as the initial catalyst for these investors to start discussing GME as a potentially exciting stock to own. There was some initial buying in the $15-$20 range, then the stock quickly shifted higher to the $35-$40 range. 

    (2) January 13th-20th [Loading Up]: Members of the Reddit/WSB community started purchasing large amounts of call options. This significant call buying began to form the basis for the first of two dramatic upward stock movements within the “Weaponized Gamma Squeeze” setup.  A “gamma squeeze” can occur when a trader or group of traders purchase call options in bulk, causing market makers who sold them these options to buy the stock as a hedge.  This aggressive forced stock buying adds to the stock price moving steeply upward and pushes the stock price higher as market makers scramble to buy incrementally more stock at rapidly increasing prices.

    This type of trade is not unique to GameStop.  Just last summer, SpotGamma coined the term “Weaponized Gamma” when in August a large fund, namely SoftBank, was reported to have purchased large and concentrated options positions in several top technology stocks. We assigned the term “weaponized” to connote the idea that options were being purchased for the explicit purpose of pushing market makers to purchase stock rather than investing with a belief in the company’s performance or value.

    Here, again, “Weaponized Gamma” applies to the GameStop event because it’s clear that retail traders understood the concept of a “gamma squeeze” and collectively coordinated their options purchases to initiate large market maker stock purchases.  Their action pushed the stock price up – “weaponization”. This snowball effect caused GameStop’s stock to increase as market makers hoped the call buying would stop… while instead the next stage of buying caused even more powerful pressure.

    (3) January 21st [Strength in Numbers]: Citron Research published a sell recommendation research report on GameStop.  This report drew the ire of the Reddit/WSB community, which bonded tightly as one against “Wall Street”. This retail group understood the pain they could inflict through coordinate levered purchases of both call options and stock. So, they organized to exact maximum pain for the institutional complex with full disregard for what they viewed as elitist backlash.  On January 22nd, call option volumes hit their peak, as you can see in the chart below.

    GME Call Volume, Put Volume

    Additionally, this activity displayed in the chart below shows the relative cost of an “at the money option” (an option with a strike equal to GME’s current price).  At the start of January, a trader would pay essentially 5pct of the stock’s price for this option, roughly $1.25 per contract.  As the squeeze began, options prices rose dramatically and that same option cost more than 35pct of the stock’s price for this option, upwards of $75.  This means on both a relative and absolute value, the calls became extremely more expensive.

    GME Options Costs

    What is equally fascinating, and central to understanding the entirety of the GME trade, is that as these call volumes reached their highs, put options volumes also hit their peak.  As we will explain in Phase 2, we believe this influx of put volumes was key to sustaining the GME stock price and helped fuel the second “super squeeze”.

    The Weaponized Gamma Squeezes

    Phase Two: Reddit/WSB Traders Drove GameStop to Shocking Heights Pressuring Dealers to Buy GameStop Shares

    (4) January 22nd-25th [The First Push, Squeeze #1]: In the days following the Citron research report, retail investors continued to purchase stock and options as a large collective community. They felt more and more emboldened as they made progress in pushing the stock price higher from $50-$60 a share up over $125. Eventually, we saw some large funds that had taken significant losses, including Melvin Capital.  These funds breached their borrowing and leverage capacity and were forced to buy back their short positions on January 25th. Again, at the root of this buying momentum was a squeeze that caused GameStop’s stock price to spike over 200pct higher intraday, which forced options dealers to buy stock at higher prices just to maintain their hedges.  In summary, we saw buying activity driven primarily by call options purchases forcing dealers to buy stock into a short-covering rally during the first gamma squeeze.  

    (5) January 26th-27th [The Super Squeeze, Squeeze #2]: At this point, we hypothesize that the key buyers shifted from the “retail” sector to “institutional.”  We have dubbed the price action associated with this move as the “Super Squeeze”.

    As news broke that Melvin Capital needed a bailout, Reddit/WSB investors felt they were winning.  This became a movement.  Even celebrities began to show their “support” for GameStop which in turn engaged an even larger retail crowd to buy stock.

    The next day, following the dramatic intraday 200pct rise and fall of GME on January 25th, it appeared to many as if the squeeze was over.  On a quantitative basis, the initial gamma squeeze seemed to reset and short covering subsided. However, at SpotGamma we observed that the number of put options traded increased sharply. You can see in the chart below that total call open interest (light blue) did not change materially throughout the entire period, despite the stock price moving much higher. However, put interest (dark grey) surged as the stock gained in price. 

    GME Call vs Put Open Interest

    Traditionally when a stock price moves higher traders will often buy puts, and dealers (who are short puts) will short stock as a hedge. However, we believe that that bulk of these put flows were traders SELLING puts. This forced options market makers to accelerate their stock buying hedges.  This activity helped fuel the upward momentum and create the “super squeeze.”  Again, as GME stock price was increasing, the market makers bought hedges and the short sellers bought stock to cover their short positions, thereby creating extraordinary upward pressure.

    As a visual representation of this event, the chart below presents a method of valuing the option market maker risk (exposure) caused by these new trades.  The aggregate delta reflects the directional exposure created by all of the GME options trades. Since this figure is extremely positive, it shows that the independent GME options traders profited from moves higher in GME stock. Conversely, it shows how the market makers (who are on the opposite side of these trades) had a large and growing requirement to buy stock to hedge their positions.  Here, we present this on an aggregate basis to illustrate just how much value in stock had to be purchased the morning of January 27th.

    To summarize the reasons for the Super Squeeze, which propelled GameStop shares from $80 per share to over $450, the following events were most impactful:  

    • Gamma-Squeeze: Options market makers bought stock to hedge options risk

    • Stock Purchasing: Retail collaboratively and aggressively purchased stock

    • Short-Covering: 400pct stock price rise forced short investors to buy stock

    The Unwind

    Phase Three:  Expensive Stock and Options Prices, Coupled with Trading Restrictions, Drove GameStop Price Back Down to $60 Per Share

    (6)  January 27th-28th [Expensive and Controlled Dynamics]:  Following this second big push, many traders wondered what would happen next.  Would we see a third leg of this squeeze send GameStop stock price to $700?  The answer we all know now is the trade stalled out, and at SpotGamma, we believe there are three primary reasons:

    Reason one: Stock and options were too expensive. At more than $300 per share, the call prices and stock price cost too much in buying power for the retail crowd to continue pushing the stock higher.  The leverage provided by trading firms such as Robinhood maxed out and the support waned, as retail traders were unable to buy more stock, and in some cases, were forced to sell their existing long positions.

    Reason two: Hedging requirements declined.  As the stock price stalled, the price of options (measured by the implied volatility) meant the market makers who were long stock no longer needed their positions and could sell them, putting downward pressure on GameStop’s share price.

    Reason three:  “Big Brother” clamped down.  On the night of January 27th, social media sites such as Reddit and Facebook blocked message boards discussing GME.

    (7)  January 29th-Feb 4th [Downward Slide]:  With these high prices, new controls, and market interventions, the stock price slide was progressive with a few days of intermittently volatility.  Again, during this period, since options dealers were able to sell the stock they bought as hedges, they eventually pushed the stock steeply lower in a matter of hours.  Eventually, the stock broke back below $100 per share by February 2nd and below $60 per share on February 4th. 

    GameStop was not the first stock to squeeze higher and it will not be the last.  At SpotGamma, we will consistently and reliably analyze these dynamics across more than 3,500 stocks and indices to bring our subscribers relevant actionable information.  We believe with the significant number of new trading accounts opened following the GameStop drama that this is the beginning of more options volume and there will be significant momentum across the derivatives markets in the years to come. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 20:25

  • Despite Putting 77% Of Vax Centers In Hard-Hit Hoods, De Blasio Admits "Profound" Racial Disparities In NYC Jabs
    Despite Putting 77% Of Vax Centers In Hard-Hit Hoods, De Blasio Admits “Profound” Racial Disparities In NYC Jabs

    Despite officials’ virtue-signaling pledges to carry out the ‘most-equitable vaccine rollout’ ever in the history of the world, it appears human people, with minds of their own, have a habit of messing up the best-laid plans of the central-planning overlords.

    While most states/cities have been, rightly, prioritizing the elderly and most vulnerable (comorbidities etc.), as well as healthcare workers, the underlying goal of preventing socioeconomic disparities in the vaccination process has been harder to achieve, despite some cities going to great lengths.

    New York City’s Mayor De Blasio said that 77% of the city’s vaccination sites are in 33 hard-hit neighborhoods, but in what he called a “profound” racial disparity, vaccines are disproportionately going to wealthier neighborhoods in Manhattan and Staten Island, according to data the city released Tuesday.

    As Bloomberg reports, white residents composed almost half the people who had gotten at least one dose, despite being only a third of the population.

    “We have a lot of work to do,” de Blasio said.

    “A lot of this is about underlying painful disparities and inequalities to begin with. Folks who have more privilege are best able to navigate this process. Folks who have more confidence in the vaccine are going to go through more effort to get it.”

    Interestingly Axios also reported that early analyses and news reports show that in many cities and states, people of color – particularly Black Americans – are falling behind white Americans in the vaccination effort, with experts claiming that structural barriers and higher rates of vaccine hesitancy would always be a problem.

    “Just as we’ve seen a much smaller portion of vaccines going to Black and brown New Yorkers, we see these geographic disparities bearing out as well,” said Torian Easterling, chief equity officer of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

    “Staten Island and Manhattan have the highest vaccination rates, while the South Bronx, parts of central Queens and central Brooklyn lag behind.”

    De Blasio claims that supply shortages and vaccine hesitancy also play a part.

    “Folks who have been doing very well in this society also have a high level of confidence in the vaccine,” de Blasio said.

    New York City recorded the highest number of vaccine doses administered last week since the inoculation drive began in December, doling out more than 317,000 shots, de Blasio said Tuesday. But, as Bloomberg notes, the city still has a long way to go to cover its more than 8 million residents. New York had administered nearly 1.3 million total vaccine doses as of Sunday, including 870,6000 first doses.

    You can lead a horse to water, but a skeptic will not be jabbed! As CBS reported in December, recent data from Pew Research Center shows that only 42% of Black Americans would get the vaccine if it were available to them today.

    This is significantly less than the White (61%), Hispanic (63%) and Asian (83%). 

    Source

    Finally, we also noticed to an interesting trend in the COVID-19 death rates. As Axios reports, the giant surge of COVID cases over the fall and winter hit white Americans disproportionately hard, narrowing the racial disparities in COVID deaths.

    Source

    And perhaps most worryingly, given the racial bifurcation trend in vaccinations, if these disparities persist, particularly as new variants of the virus become more prevalent in the U.S., the gap between different racial groups’ death rate will likely widen in the coming months.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 20:25

  • Everything They Don't Like Is Now A Public Health Emergency
    Everything They Don’t Like Is Now A Public Health Emergency

    Authored by Kyla Hatcher via The Mises Institute,

    Last summer, infectious disease experts at the University of Washington wrote what they called an “[o]pen letter advocating for an anti-racist public health response to demonstrations against systemic injustice occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

    It is essentially a letter explaining that white supremacy is a public health issue, especially in light of covid-19.

    The letter was signed by 1,288 “public health professionals, infectious diseases professionals, and community stakeholders.”

    Here are some passages from the letter (emphases added), followed by my analysis of each:

    White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.

    As public health advocates, we do not condemn [demonstrations that call attention to the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy] as risky for COVID-19 transmission. 

    This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.

    Protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported.

    Therefore, we propose the following guidance to support public health: 

    • Do not disband protests under the guise of maintaining public health for COVID-19 restrictions.

    • Advocate that protesters not be arrested or held in confined spaces, including jails or police vans, which are some of the highest-risk areas for COVID-19 transmission.

    • Listen, and prioritize the needs of Black people as expressed by Black voices.

    Dissecting the Letter

    “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue.”

    The language used here is important. White supremacy is lethal. Racism kills people.

    What is not written is, “Sometimes white supremacists, acting out of hatred, kill black people,” or even, “All white supremacists are culpable in the murder of black people.”

    Instead, the agency is assigned to racism itself. It is racism, not racist people, that is the public health issue; it is white nationalism that kills people. This is the same tactic used by antigun lobbies in their slogan “Guns kill people.” If guns kill people, guns need to be illegal. People killing people with guns is already illegal, just as white supremacists killing black men is already illegal. To advance further legal change, you have to change the language. “White supremacy kills people” leads the same people who want guns outlawed to want white supremacy outlawed. While the letter does not draw out these ideas to their logical conclusions, the logic employed is well down the slippery slope of sacrificing free speech.

    “We do not condemn [demonstrations that call attention to the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy] as risky for COVID-19 transmission.”

    That’s weird because every other kind of gathering is condemned by these people as risky. 

    “This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.” 

    These “experts” have even labeled protests against stay-home orders as demonstrations of white nationalism. How is protesting stay-home orders racist? It is not, of course, but by labeling it that and by labeling white nationalism lethal, we can conclude that protesting stay-at-home orders must also be lethal. By definition, then, these cannot be truly peaceful protests. We’re left with the conclusion that these protests must be regarded as illegal.

    The letter itself doesn’t take things quite this far, but as these ideas are accepted more and more by medical professionals and the public, they are more likely to be adopted by the US Public Health Service, and then how long until we see these kinds of results?

    “Advocate that protesters not be arrested or held in confined spaces, including jails or police vans, which are some of the highest-risk areas for COVID-19 transmission.”

    It’s easy to point out the glaring contradiction here. Protesters should not be arrested because that puts them at a higher risk for covid-19. But earlier in the letter it is argued that protests are not risky for transmitting the virus and that authorities shouldn’t enforce social distancing and masking in public because they’re not risky. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Health experts are telling the police who they can and cannot arrest not based on innocence or guilt, but on the basis of health. 

    This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

    Thankfully, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not yet labeled white supremacy a public health emergency, yet leading medical schools have signed on to support the letter and are actively teaching their medical students that things like white supremacy can be dealt with in the realm of health.

    Americans have made health and safety their gods – over freedom, over luxury, over progress and ingenuity, over God. And they have taken the words of their gods’ prophets as scripture.

    During the “age of covid,” we have seen Americans sacrifice everything (jobs, family, religion, social life) to health and safety, and in this letter we witness health experts speaking totally outside the realm of their expertise.

    In any case, Americans have apparently become well trained when it comes to so-called public health emergencies. Because both the public and the “experts” apparently worship health and safety above all else, it is not hard to believe that we can count on widespread obedience during the next declared emergency.

    What will be called a public health issue next? Gun violence (been there), transphobia (done that), religion, private schools and home schools?

    We would not be the first nation to lose its liberties on the installment plan.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 20:05

  • "Citrus Disaster" – Texas Cold Snap Means Crop Losses For Grapefruit Growers
    “Citrus Disaster” – Texas Cold Snap Means Crop Losses For Grapefruit Growers

    Well, here’s some more bad news for consumers who are already experiencing food price inflation – that is – the price of citrus could be ready to skyrocket amid the cold snap in Texas.

    Texas is the nation’s third-largest citrus-producing state behind California and Florida. Dale Murden, president of Texas Citrus Mutual, a trade group that oversees citrus growers in the state, told AccuWeather that growers were “about 50% harvested to date on grapefruit”, just as the polar vortex split dumped Arctic air into the region. He said growers were “just beginning to harvest our late Valencia orange.”

    “Most everyone saw temps of 21 degrees for several hours,” Murden said. He warns, “growers will no doubt lose some of the crop as we see some ice buildup inside the fruit.” 

    Murden said it only takes a few hours of temperatures below 28 degrees to freeze hanging fruit. He provided AccuWeather with pictures of frozen grapefruit trees. 

    Temperatures should return to the 40s and 50 for some parts of Texas by the weekend, but after a deep freeze for several days, there are new fears of a sizeable crop loss that could materialize in the state. 

    “At this time we have about 15% of our crop hanging on the trees, and that is likely lost,” April Flowers of Lone Star Citrus, a grower based in Mission, Texas. 

    Murden said the temperatures were so cold this week that most measures to warm citrus trees did not work. 

     “Some growers use a micro-jet irrigation system to spray their trees with water prior to the freeze because ice is insulative at 32 degrees,” Flowers said, “but this type of system is expensive and not widely used.”

    “As for whether this cold snap will turn into a weather disaster for Texas citrus growers,” Murden warned, adding that “it’s still too early to tell and will likely take a few weeks after the cold snap breaks for growers to assess any damages. ” 

    Flowers repeated Murden’s point: “The next several weeks will give us a clearer picture of the true impact of the storm.” 

    So in the next couple of weeks, more details will likely emerge of crop damage sustained by the latest winter blast to rock the state. This may result in a rise in citrus prices, such as grapefruit. 

    Consumers are learning this year that food prices all around them are erupting. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 19:45

  • Marcuse-Anon: Cult Of The Pseudo-Intellectual
    Marcuse-Anon: Cult Of The Pseudo-Intellectual

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    In my early twenties, I read an expedition was being planned in search of the grave of Genghis Khan. Being young, game, and interested in writing on an adventure, I inquired about tagging along.

    I found a professor at Harvard connected with the mission, whom I quizzed about its likelihood of success. The man laughed and eventually revealed the team had little idea where Khan was buried. Some colleagues merely dug up a few stories of Khan’s death that would be enough to take in a sponsor.

    I was blown away. How, I asked, could the archaeologists justify that?

    “Son,” he laughed. “They’re intellectuals. They can justify anything.”

    People complain about QAnon, but truly lasting, impactful lunacy is always exclusive to intellectuals. Everyone else is constrained. You can’t fish on land for long. Same with using a chainsaw for headache relief. An intellectual may freely mistake bullshit for Lincoln logs and spend a lifetime building palaces. Which brings us to Herbert Marcuse.

    Often called the “Father of the New Left,” and the inspiration for a generation of furious thought-policing nitwits of the Robin DiAngelo school, Marcuse was a great intellectual. Most Americans have never heard of him — he died in 1979 — but his ideas today are ubiquitous as Edison’s lightbulbs. He gave us everything from “Silence Equals Violence” to “Too Much Democracy” to the “Crisis of Misinformation” to In Defense of Looting to the 1619 Project and Antiracist Baby, and from the grave has cheered countless recent news stories, from the firing of Mandalorian actress Gina Corano to the erasure of raw footage of the Capitol riot from YouTube.

    Marcuse is so influential that subscribers thought it would be a good idea to review his books, rather than go one-by-one through the seemingly interminable list of homage texts dominating bestseller lists in recent years. When I told a friend, he warned with a chuckle about the author’s “spectacularly bad synthesis,” mimicking the old Reese’s Peanut Butter cup jingle: “You got your Marx in my Freud!” I read One-Dimensional Man, and a painful collection essays that included the famed Bible of post-liberal thinking, Repressive Tolerance. Conclusion number one: a person more hostile to the sensual possibilities of literature would be difficult to imagine. Reading Marcuse is like eating a bowl of thumbtacks. The style is nothing, however, next to the ideas. My God, the ideas!

    Berlin-born Herbert Marcuse was drafted into the German army in 1916, but didn’t see action in World War I. Fortune, obviously concerned with his destiny as the arch-priest of anti-thought in 21st century America, placed him in a rearguard unit. Despite the lack of combat experience, he came out of the war disillusioned, among other things by the experience of watching the German socialist opposition support the war.

    After studying at the University of Freiburg, he worked for years at a bookstore, then went back to school, studying under famed philosopher Martin Heidegger. He hoped to help solve the urgent question animating many young intellectuals of his time: what form of Marxism would eventually triumph across the civilized world?

    Then, just as Weimar Germany degenerated into exactly the social conditions under which Marx predicted proletarian revolution, German communism flopped, Heidegger became a Nazi University Rector, and a stunned Marcuse soon exiled himself to Switzerland and eventually America, where he would spend the rest of his life trying to come up with an explanation for what happened.

    Marcuse’s understandable grief and horror over the rise of Nazism, coupled with a humorously powerful loathing for his adopted American home, led him to write the work that first made him famous, 1964’s One-Dimensional Man.

    The smash #1 bestseller sold 300,000 copies and detailed Marcuse’s long-awaited explanation for a) why the proletariat had not risen in postwar Germany, and b) why there was no sense in waiting for it to do so going forward. He explained: not only was the material condition of the worker in modern capitalism insufficiently brutal to spur him to revolution, but technological advances coupled with expanded freedoms allowed even the lowliest employee to fully integrate into the “one-dimensional society,” a consumerist hell of mostly met material needs, “pleasure,” “fun,” and “socially permissible desirable satisfaction,” all of which “weakens the rationality of protest.”

    In this world where the commonest shlub can “have the fine arts at his fingertips, by just turning a knob on his set,” it would be impossible, Marcuse lamented, to produce the kind of class alienation Marx envisioned. What’s the point of having the right to dissent, if conditions disincline the citizen to revolution?

    Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals through the way in which it is organized. Such a society may justly demand acceptance of its principles and institutions…

    In the later book, An Essay on Liberation, Marcuse anticipated 21st-century liberal attitudes by concluding that the working-class was an actively regressive social force:

    By virtue of its basic position in the production process, by virtue of its numerical weight and the weight of exploitation, the working class is still the historical agent of revolution; by virtue of its sharing the stabilizing needs of the system, it has become a conservative, even counterrevolutionary force.

    After One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse in the 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance set out to argue that the very “stabilizing” rights and freedoms that facilitated this treacherous class integration were the problem that needed conquering. What resulted might be the most impassioned argument against individual rights ever written. It makes the Directorium Inquisitorum read like Dr. Spock on Parenting.

    Repressive Tolerance is a towering monument to the possibilities of nonsense in the academic profession. The essay’s 10,000 words, alternately hilarious and breathtaking, are circular thinking and the absence of self-awareness raised to the level of art. We don’t often encounter an author capable of denouncing “the tyranny of Orwellian syntax” while arguing in the same breath, literally and without irony, that freedom is slavery.

    Marcuse starts down this road by quoting John Stuart Mill, who he notes is “not exactly an enemy of liberal and representative government” (am I hallucinating a Twitter-like tone of haughtiness in such passages?). Even this Enlightenment hero, sneers Marcuse, admitted liberal rights are not absolute. “Liberty, as a principle,” Mill wrote, “has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.”

    But don’t we have something like liberty, in a society that grants us the vote, a free press, the right to assemble, dissent, even plot revolution? No, says Marcuse, because liberty “stipulates the ability to determine one’s own life,” an impossibility in our world. He explains:

    The problem of making possible such a harmony between every individual liberty and the other, is not that of finding a compromise between competitors, or between freedom and law, between general and individual interest, common and private welfare in an established society, but of creating the society in which man is no longer enslaved by institutions which vitiate self-determination from the beginning.

    (One noticeable human tic in the otherwise unrelenting metronome of Marcuse’s prose — the man writes like a car alarm left on — is a weird overuse of the word vitiate).

    In other words, real freedom doesn’t exist in the balance between the many individual liberties doled out to persons and institutions alike in societies like ours, but only in the post-revolutionary “created” society of absolute freedom as imagined by the author, a utopia Marcuse tabs the “pacification of existence.” (The ostensibly antiwar leftist’s use of that term just as America was beginning its “pacification” campaign in Vietnam is another of the essay’s quirks).

    Therefore, Marcuse wrote, any existing rights and freedoms “should not be tolerated,” because “they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery.”

    Settling for anything less than an absolute utopia of painlessness, or admitting any delays on the route there, even in the name of progress, is repression. As he put it, in America, the “exercise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori renunciation of counterviolence)” only served to “strengthen this administration by testifying to the existence of democratic liberties.” In other words — drumroll — freedom is slavery:

    Freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude…

    After completing the first stage of this Orwellian pole-dance, Marcuse marches up and down the runway, flinging paradoxes left and right. Not only is freedom servitude, but tolerance is intolerance! Democracy is totalitarianism! Equality is inequality! For the latter formulation, he used an argument that would be later deployed in reverse by Fox News to explain its infamous “Fair and Balanced” motto: “More representation of the Left would be equalization of the prevailing inequality.”

    He also argues progress is reaction, stability is emergency, and law is lawlessness, because “law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy.” Marcuse doesn’t state it, but the basic premise that all prerevolutionary reform is a trick of the oppressor also explains the current attitude toward racial relations, under which downplaying racial difference is racism and antiracism must conversely mean emphasizing its transcendent importance.

    You’ll recognize the view of violence in Repressive Tolerance. Marcuse had a twofold take. First, violence is obviously violence, when practiced by police, or the wards of prisons and mental institutions. Violence is even violence, he says, as practiced by revolutionaries like Robespierre (“even if the white terror was more bloody than the red terror,” Marcuse hastened to add, not wanting to completely abandon the guillotine to criticism). Whether practiced by the oppressor or the oppressed, he went on, “in terms of ethics, both forms of violence are inhuman and evil.”

    This is no prohibition against violence, however, because:

    Since when is history made in accordance with ethical standards? To start applying [ethics] at the point where the oppressed rebel against the oppressors, the have-nots against the haves, is serving the cause of actual violence by weakening the protest against it.

    Summing up: violence is always violence, as a matter of ethics. However, since ethics are not ethical, not only is violence not violence, but non-violence is violence, when practiced by the oppressed against the oppressor. This is the mentality behind last summer’s firing of analyst David Shor for re-tweeting a study suggesting nonviolent protest is effective, as well as the bizarre mania for calling things that were actually violence not violence (e.g. “mostly peaceful” protests, etc), while things that manifestly are not violence, like grade school teasing or cultural appropriation, are regularly described using the word.

    As for the question of exactly how conditional one’s rights should be, Marcuse insisted that “extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger.” This sounds reasonable until you read on: “I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs.”

    Marcuse remember had just finished a book explaining that revolution was obviated in a society where civil liberties were “too significant to be confined by traditional forms,” and whose “capacity to spread comforts” inspired widespread “voluntary compliance” with its more. Now, that same society was described as presenting such “extreme danger” to the citizen that suspension of all civil rights was necessary.

    To be fair to Marcuse, he was trying to argue that the “one-dimensional” society was “radically evil” because it created a kind of totalitarianism of the consumer instinct, in which the individual becomes one with the state through his worship of product, learning to understand happiness only as something that can be bought. While the supreme beneficiaries of this paradise of buying increase their wealth and political control, the state drops bombs abroad, and at home abuses prisoners, minorities, and the “unemployed and unemployable.” Meanwhile, the tyranny of affluence leads to:

    The systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence…

    I think most of us can agree that “radical evil” is a term that fits many parts of the American experience, from Tuskeegee to the moonscaped hamlets of North Vietnam and Cambodia to the Covid-racked prisons of today. Surely also we are exhibiting the symptoms of a deeper sickness when we plop our kids in front of screens to make them wanters-of-things, to save time while we adults chase the affluence dragon.

    But Marcuse’s main complaint was that despite technological advances that could have lessened the need for work, the individual of his time was still “compelled to prove himself on the market.” If we could only end the need to struggle through the “pacification of existence,” he insisted, that “might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity.” The “extreme danger” was choosing any other path.

    To say this is a warped concept of “danger” is an epic understatement:

    “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

    “Hi, I live in a society whose citizens choose to struggle in the market rather than enter a workless Eden of pure freedom, in which man’s vital needs will be tended to by a productive apparatus placed under the centralized control of persons like myself…”

    People who do intellectual work should feel a responsibility to make sure the words they use at least roughly correspond to their ostensible meaning, but like a lot of German intellectuals, Marcuse had been mired in dialectical comparisons for so long that his sense of proportion was fucked beyond recognition. The man cited aggressive driving in arguing an emergency so dire that a suspension of all civil liberties was warranted.

    There’s a reason some German scholars are said to prefer reading Clausewitz in English, because it’s clearer. With Marcuse, the translation doesn’t help. He was the real-world embodiment of Orwell’s utopian linguists who were impatient to rid the world of all those annoying words for shades of difference. Once you have a lock on “good,” why bother litigating degrees of its opposite? Bad is bad. He thought in binary pairs, and freely conflated concepts like inadequacy, misgovernment, and indifference with cruelty, repression, persecution, and terror, a habit of mind that’s inspired a generation of catastrophizing neurotics who genuinely don’t know the difference between disagreement and an attempt on their lives.

    We saw it in health officials who went from condemning anti-lockdown protests to, a week or two later, declaring that racism — not on their radar prior to the murder of George Floyd — was a “lethal public health issue” superseding the pandemic. We saw it with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez applying the transitive property of whatever nineteen times over to make Ted Cruz’s decision to refuse certification of the Electoral College mean he was “trying to murder me” and “almost had me murdered.” Same with the New York Times employees who declared their lives were thrust in peril by soon-to-be-fired editor James Bennet’s decision to run an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton:

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    The argument-from-emergency ties in with one of Marcuse’s most quoted passages: “Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.” This is another precursor to the Roger Ailes/Fox formulation that leftism is so hegemonic that one needs to pull the steering wheel of society hard to the right just to move in a straight line. (Both arguments are absurd). Marcuse famously believed toleration of competing views repeated the error of Weimar Germany, where “if democratic tolerance had been withdrawn, mankind would have had a chance of avoiding Auschwitz and a World War.”

    This wasn’t a new idea. It had been expressed by (among others) Plato, in his argument for the rule of philosopher-kings. In book 562(c) of the Republic, he wondered, “Does not the excess (of liberty) bring men to such a state that they badly want a tyranny?” Philosopher Karl Popper addressed this line in The Open Society and Its Enemies, in a passage that hilariously has become one of the most popular memes on Left Twitter. It is impossible to make even a tepid argument in favor of free speech online these days without being swarmed by dingbats posting this image:

    Yes, they are referring to a passage that Popper actually wrote: “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

    However, the Popper passage is actually found in the notes to The Open Society and Its Enemies, as an explanation rather than an endorsement of Plato’s argument against tolerance. In fact, the body of The Open Society and Its Enemies contains a passionate common-sense argument against Platonic intolerance and “benevolent dictatorship.” Popper begins with the observation that’s obvious no matter what your level of schooling: “All theories of sovereignty are paradoxical.”

    A society built around individual rights and freedoms does risk allowing illiberal forces to take advantage of those freedoms. But how does anyone outside of a Farrelly brothers movie come up with autocracy as a solution to the threat of autocracy? As Popper wrote, the “Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state… is likely to lead to a dictatorship,” among other things because it contains all the same pitfalls inherent in any government. “Any difference of opinion between Utopian engineers must therefore lead to the use of power instead of reason, i.e. to violence,” wrote Popper.

    Common sense seems to strike Marcuse’s old-world mentality as too gauche, a cheap shortcut, “hitting below the intellect,” as Oscar Wilde once put it, describing the American habit of “brute reason.” Marcuse’s disgust before the crassness, superficiality, and violence of the United States bleeds through in his books. Even when describing, say, America’s unique capacity for generating and distributing material wealth, he used phrases like “the better and more equitable distribution of misery and oppression.”

    Marcuse had no right being blind to the beauty of the American experiment, since his life was graphic proof of it. This was a man who became a wealthy international celebrity selling a book arguing that after fleeing Nazi Germany, he found “democratic totalitarianism” teaching at Brandeis University. In this sense, One-Dimensional Man reads like The Gulag Archipelago, minus the logging. Or confinement. Or political repression of any kind. In fact, Marcuse’s letter from the American gulag reads quite a lot like Monty Python’s “What have the Romans ever done for us?” skit:

    Rather than feel blessed to live in a country where a man can achieve wealth and fame writing one of the stupidest books in history, Marcuse became more embittered. This shines through in Repressive Tolerance, which doubles as an impassioned manifesto against enjoyment of any kind in the here and now, which Marcuse regarded as a kind of sin against the future Utopia. “For the true positive is the society of the future and therefore beyond definition and determination,” he wrote, adding that “the existing positive is that which must be surmounted.”

    Marcuse would have fit with the Puritan settlers, who were ready to hang the first man who laughed at a fart (rather than waiting to do it in the afterlife). The humorlessness and love of the lash that have always been part of America’s DNA, from The Scarlet Letter through the Anti-Saloon League, are part of the reason Marcuse’s ideas still have so much purchase. He was obsessed with determining “correct and incorrect” action and speech, deciding what is art and what is “pseudo-art,” which messages are intolerably regressive, etc. He was happy to tell you how to calculate this. For instance, he declared Dostoyevsky to have a regressive message, but because it was “absorbed, aufgehoben in the artistic form,” the bad thing was “canceled by the oeuvre itself.” So, okay for putting on the shelves of the “pacified” state.

    He was the inspiration for the attitudes of modern America, which is suspicious of all forms of enjoyment divorced from political intent. Forget humor, our popular culture doesn’t even feel safe celebrating sex, unless it’s tragic or transgressive. We’re living out the Woody Allen joke, “I finally had an orgasm, but my doctor said it was the wrong kind.”

    It’s all Puritanism, seething at any delays in building that ladder to heaven, the only difference being that the Puritans, being Christians, at least believed in original sin and forgiveness, i.e. you still got to go to Heaven after the thumbscrews. The new secular incarnation believes forgiveness is the only sin, while due process and the presumption of innocence just delay justice.

    Rehabilitation just can’t be risked, without imperiling society’s victims. “The exercise of civil rights by those who don’t have them presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise,” Marcuse writes, adding that “liberation of the Damned of the Earth presupposes suppression not only of their old but also of their new masters.”

    All the revelry in suppressing rights gets to the real reason Marcuse has come back into vogue. Strip the rhetorical bells and whistles from books like One-Dimensional Man and Repressive Tolerance and what’s left? A white, affluent, upper-class intellectual frustrated by the lack of a popular mandate for his vision of political takeover. The original plan of riding proletarian revolution to power thwarted, Marcuse early on concluded that the working-class needed a push from more knowledgeable political actors. He wrote in 1947:

    Marx assumed that the proletariat is driven to revolutionary action on its own, based on the knowledge of its own interests, as soon as revolutionary conditions are present. . . .  [But subsequent] development has confirmed the correctness of the Leninist conception of the vanguard party as the subject of the revolution. 

    By the mid-sixties, however, he realized that the working-class wouldn’t do the job even if pushed. Therefore, other groups must provide the necessary revolutionary energy:

    Those who form the human base of the social pyramid—the outsiders and the poor, the unemployed and unemployable, the persecuted colored races, the inmates of prisons and mental institutions.

    I’d have more sympathy for this point of view were it not so obvious that Marcuse’s embrace of the “persecuted colored races” was opportunistic afterthought. His real endgame is absolutist rule by our intellectual betters. Explaining that “the democratic argument implies a necessary condition, namely, that the people must be capable of deliberating and choosing on the basis of knowledge,” he goes on to prove that the broad main of people are not so capable. They lack the discernment to know the “objective truth which can be discovered,” to separate correct from incorrect, among other things because too many incorrect opinions are allowed to circulate.

    Ultimately, he writes, “if the choice were between genuine democracy and dictatorship, democracy would certainly be preferable. But democracy does not prevail.”

    As such, “The radical critics of the existing political process are thus readily denounced as advocating an ‘elitism’, a dictatorship of intellectuals as an alternative.” This sounds bad! But, he insisted in 1965, when one considered that the current business and military elites had such a bad record, “political prerogatives for the intelligentsia may not necessarily be worse for the society as a whole.”

    Summing up, this is a theory of an intellecutal elite forced to seize absolute power on behalf of racial minorities, the disabled, and other oppressed groups, while canceling free speech and civil rights for all others, and especially for the corrupted mass of working-class people, who are no friends of the revolution but actually ignorant conservatives obstructing the road to “pacification and liberation.” Does this sound familiar?

    Marcuse had it wrong. Fifty-plus years later, American society does much worse at satisfying material needs, and the ordinary working person is less and less often invited to share the “stabilizing needs” of the system with its rulers. Even Marx was closer to correctly describing today’s politics. What has been successfully integrated, by the very consumerist oligarchs Marcuse supposedly despised, is would-be dissident literature like Repressive Tolerance.

    Back in the sixties, Marcuse was denounced by Pope Paul VI, while establishment political figures decried his support of groups like the SDS, the Weathermen, and the Black Panthers. He was seen as a thorn in the side of the status quo. Today Marcuse is the status quo. His muddle-headed theories are the cover story for a new theory of corporate vanguardism that places an ennobled political elite in charge of replacing our messy system of freedoms and principles with a more “centralized” control of the “productive apparatus,” the exact thing Marcuse hoped for in One-Dimensional Man.

    The American system, flawed as it was and is, was designed to prevent this kind of concentration of power, through checks and balances and the protection of individual rights. Those protections have been under assault throughout our history by monopolists and other reactionaries, who never had a gift as luscious as Marcuse: a self-styled progressive arguing to the masses that they should cast democracy and ethics aside for their own good.

    For Marcusean ideas to be venerated now by elite millionaire politicians, clad in kente cloth scarves and funded by banks and weapons-makers flying Black Lives Matter banners, is the perfect ending to this slapstick career. Nothing about Marcuse was American, except his most important quality: he was a quack, which made him not just one of us, but a figure of respect and influence in this society. He died too soon for the White House, but he’s well on his way to becoming our own Iron Felix, his statue erected in place of those piddling fake patriots with names like Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.

    The man who probably wouldn’t have touched a Harley, a blues guitar, a Budweiser, or a baseball without a Haz-Mat suit will spend eternity watching his name become locked in association with the red, white, and blue, with American tanks and rifles spreading his doctrine of unfreedom to every corner of the globe. You could laugh at the irony — capitalism can even absorb this — but this particular character wouldn’t get the joke.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 19:25

  • Watch: Palm Beach Cop Harasses Woman At Her House Over Facebook Remark
    Watch: Palm Beach Cop Harasses Woman At Her House Over Facebook Remark

    A Palm Beach woman who joked on Facebook about dumping ‘thousands of masks’ on the lawn of the county commissioner got a visit from the Sheriff’s office on Feb. 12, after authorities had surveilled the conversation.

    Angelique Contreras, a mother of three, was discussing the county’s new policy to exclude people who refuse to wear masks from public meetings, when a man named Anthony Collins joked about leaving “hundreds of bags of garbage” on the lawn of the county commissioner, to which Contreras added “Thousands of Mask(s).”

    Later, an officer with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office who identified himself as Detective Horton showed up at Contreras’ house and warned her against ‘trespassing’ and illegal activity, according to WND.com.

    “The reason why we’re here is, bothering you on a Friday night, is, I guess you and some guy named Anthony were posting on social media that you were gonna go trespass on a county commissioner’s property, dump garbage on her property,” says Horton.

    “I didn’t say that I would dump garbage on her property,” Contreras replied.

    “That’s the discussion you guys were having,” Horton replied.

    “No I wasn’t,” Contreras shot back.

    “I can show you the post,” replied Horton – to which Contreras said “I plead the Fifth.”

    The only crime committed by Contreras was filming the encounter in vertical mode. Watch:

    More via WND:

    “Trespassing is a crime. Dumping garbage on people’s property is a crime. So don’t do it,” Horton explained.

    Contreras asked: “Is that why you all are here?”

    “Yeah,” said Horton. “Today’s day and age, ma’am, you’re talking about trespassing …”

    “Didn’t talk about trespassing,” Contreras noted.

    “Going on someone’s property is trespassing, right?” the detective explained.

    “I didn’t say any of those words,” she responded. “This is just fear-mongering. You know that, right?”

    “Fear-mongering of what?” Horton asked.

    “Of a citizen, for nothing,” Contreras said.

    “OK, sorry you feel that way,” the detective responded.

    “I do, I’m putting my kids to bed, and you’re wasting tax-dollar money to come out here and …”

    “Tell you not commit a crime? Yes,” Horton interrupted.

    “I’m not committing a crime,” Contreras said, adding she wasn’t planning on committing one.

    When Contreras requested to file a trespassing report against an unidentified woman whose identity was known to Horton, they refused to take the report. 

    Contreras, a hairstylist and makeup artist from a family of Cuban refugees, has since posted the incident all over social media.

    “Still looking for answers: Who was the protected and unnamed woman on my property?! Who sent the officers to do their gestapo bidding? Who is watching and reporting my social media post? Why was I targeted?” she posted on Facebook.

    “No matter what a person’s political beliefs are, I do not believe anyone deserves to be bullied by our local government officials. We should not be intimidated by law enforcement. What happened at my house was clearly political intimidation,” Contreras told National File.  “I know what Communism is and we have been living in it for the past year.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 19:05

  • HashMasks, CryptoPunks, & More… Inside The Multi-Billion-Dollar Market For Tokenized Art
    HashMasks, CryptoPunks, & More… Inside The Multi-Billion-Dollar Market For Tokenized Art

    Via The FinTech Blueprint substack,

    We want to talk about Hashmasks. And in particular, the one selling for $650,000. That, in the context of the $3.5MM Beepl art sale, and $1.7MM Rick and Morty NFT sale. More deeply, we want to talk about financial assets, the value of things, and the additive nature of new channels and ecosystems as old ones become commodified.

    The reader will be familiar with the traditional asset classes – equities, fixed income, with maybe some cash equivalents and alternative investments. These represent somewhere around $50 to $100 trillion of value. They are core capitalist assets, in the sense that they represent various financial claims and obligations on the abstractions we humans call companies and governments.

    You can’t eat a company.

    But you can eat a piece of bread. Stick with us here.

    Bread is wonderful. It is also cheap at $1.50 a pack (give or take). It is made from wheat, a plant that grows from the ground. It takes 4 months from seed to harvest, and then requires a massive industrial value chain to be collected, turned into flour, shipped on diesel-burning-trucks across the country’s highways, and into bakeries, where waged-employees labor in factories to make what you and I buy in the supermarket.

    If you want something with “fundamentals” that is “grounded” and “real”, things can’t really get much better than bread. It mixes the mana from the Earth, with the labor of the human, with the invention of technology, to solve an existential problem. And to most of us, it is essentially *free*.

    You eat bread so you don’t starve and die. Very many people have died from starvation. This is a 20 million-people-per-decade problem. You would think that something that is literally a life-saver would be worth a *lot*. But it isn’t on the margin. Bread is not rare — it is a commodity with a massive, undifferentiated supply.

    Put another way, the “market” values your weekly sustenance at less than your Netflix or Spotify subscription. A video game on Steam might cost $50, as does a season of the Sopranos on Amazon, or a Kindle version of Game of Thrones. Aren’t those things “less important”?

    You can see how a central planner of an economy might overindex on the value of bread, and underindex on the value of TikTok.

    Or on the value of collectible digital art. So here we have demonstrated that our intuitions about what is good and valuable for society are totally unhelpful in thinking about innovation and frontier assets.

    Financial Assets as a Flag

    Going back to our point about the $50 trillion of financial asset classes, those tend to be so abstract that the average investor treats them a bit like magic. Yes, the ownership of a share of AAPL stock does grant you certain legal rights, enforceable against a regulated corporation in some particular way under some particular circumstances, tied into a Rube Goldberg machine of exchange, clearing, and settlement, backed by “cash flows” generated by the sales of a kazillion iPhones, summarized in an annual report, and so on and so forth. For most people, this is voodoo. Buying AAPL stock is like buying a Tom Brady jersey. It is popular fashion.

    You are not buying the machine. You are buying a flag for your identity. That flag might be AAPL or AMAZON, or GME, or Bitcoin. The Bitcoin flag these days is a bit more fun. Invoking some computational octopus monster that coheres a forever-true ledger of monetary truth is not that different, in our collective consciousness, from summoning Warren Buffet’s “value investing” discounted cash flow approach as a personal virtue for stock selection.

    We are not saying that there aren’t crafts-people, and crafts-robots, who actually do the computational work of assessing these values. We are instead saying that the rest of the market is just a bunch of free riders waving their flag around.

    As another example, options are priced using Black–Scholes, because other market participants are pricing options using Black-Scholes, without understanding what the formula actually does, or its limitations. We can say the same thing for diversification using Modern Portfolio Theory, and its mega-printing of passive ETFs. Such flags can be carried around by an agitated subreddit. Or by an over-conditioned Wharton MBA, that has invested a lot of personal pride in navigating Excel without using the mouse. To go deeper into exploring the distinction between knowing things from first principles (e.g., how a blockchain works, or how a stock is valued) and uniting in a community to champion its reductive slogans, we recommend the collected writings in Less Wrong.

    All this to say, the emotion-driven investor is not “irrational”. Rather, they are a socially-driven animal relying on socially-established consensus around expertise and narrative. They are an investor into “signals”. Thereby we conclude that (1) things that are existentially important to the survival of the species, like bread, are not valuable on the margin, and (2) that things that are abstract and incomprehensible in the extreme to the average person, like a $3,000 share of Amazon, are very valuable and subject to rising exponentially in value.

    Meet me in the Middle

    Not everything is some shared hallucination.

    There are financial assets that have real world instantiations. Or alternately, there are some real world things that have financial attributes.

    There are about $200 trillion worth of residential real estate, and another $30 trillion worth of commercial real estate. These are our homes, sky-scrapers, and cities. We can add to this tangible basket our infrastructure – roads, bridges, and train tracks. Given our obsession with the digital age, we may not remember the very tangible power of owning a rail-road monopoly.

    On the media side, there is about $2 trillion of collected art worldwide, hanging in museums, stacked in galleries, or part of a large family office collection — of this, about $60B is turned into fees per year. In music, the intellectual property of songs accrues to owners and yields $10B in performing rights revenues.

    One point that we want to land is that finance is embedded in all these different types of things we love and understand: our homes, our art, our music. Financial constructs are like clothes around their bodies.

    Crypto Collectibles as the Growth Vector

    To the extent that Decentralized Finance is an attempt at re-wiring the financial machine of our abstract asset class markets, NFTs (“non fungible tokens”) and the crypto art movement is an attempt at re-wiring the financial attributes that connect to media and digital objects.

    This is deeply interesting and exciting, especially because we do not really know or understand yet where things are going to go. The current innovations are attempting to re-create analogies in the physical world. That will shift and transform into new frontiers. Just as we flagged DeFi in 2019 as the core engine for growth in 2020 on Ethereum, we flag NFT platform development as a core driver for 2021 and beyond.

    Let’s get our data in order from Cryptoart.io and OpenSea.

    There is about $12MM of digital collectibles trading volume in January of 2021, with projects like Hashmasks and CryptoPunks dominating 7-day volume on OpenSea. There are probably about a hundred thousand existing NFTs, and a few thousands current participants in this market. The business model consists of a few gated platforms (e.g., Nifty Gateway, SuperRare), which act as galleries, editing and filtering a collection. The visual style of the work they select is vaporwave in palette, and delivered as glitchart or 3D renders.

    Some NFTs are individual prints of artwork, similar to a painting made by Picasso, a song dropped by Beyonce, or a video uploaded by a YouTube creator. They are curated, bought and sold in reference to that object only. The value usually derives from *who* made the object, just as it does in traditional media.

    Another aside on value. The Mona Lisa is original and valuable. A poster of the Mona Lisa is not valuable, despite being nearly identical in visual information. A reproduction of the Mona Lisa, even if perfect stroke-for-stroke, is similarly not valuable, because it is not the original. Therefore, the art is valuable not for its collection of particular atoms in some particular order, but for its historical and social context. Recreating the object does nothing, because it does not contain the same social history.

    With digital NFTs, the same logic is true. Just because you have an identical JPEG to the one anchored to the blockchain, does not mean you have an original worth anything, nor does your ability to look at it suggest anything from a collectible point of view. Owning the original means you own its particular history and meaning in the community. This is why the original CryptoPunks have sold for a cumulative $43M, as a piece of history of the first generative NFT collection on Ethereum.

    That brings us to the second point about NFTs. They do not have to be single, beautiful, genius renders. Instead, they can be large, distributed programs. CryptoPunks printed 10,000 editions of slightly different pixelated avatars. This is done through a software-based art system, and is inherently inclusive. Even if you do not own a “rare” CryptoPunk, you can still have one as a badge of participation in the overall movement. You can allow it to be your *flag*, going back to the point about Apple stock.

    Hashmasks are similarly generative, though they are far more gorgeous, evoking Jean-Michel Basquiat in their procedural algorithms.

    The print ran to 16,000 objects, with elements of various rarity. The most rare combinations are selling for over ETH 100, with the most common going for a few ETH. That is still several thousand dollars — a price wildly unaffordable for non-crypto denizens. It is far more expensive than our favorite loaf of bread. But what a stunning, bold flag it makes regardless! It answers the question of “who you are” for its digital owner.

    There are, of course, financial features built into these mathematical marvels. First, a lottery. The NFTs were sold without revealing their rarity for several days — a mechanic identical to a lottery ticket, and the lootboxes from video games that countries like Belgium have banned for being too addictive. Second, a bonding curve, which can unfavorably be characterized as algorithmic ponzinomics. We don’t agree with that framing, but it is fair to raise the issue. And last, an “emissions” schedule of tokens from holding the NFT that allow you to change the name of the object, thereby impacting its scarcity and social history.

    There are a few other mechanics worth flagging before we wrap up. Projects like Async Art allow people to buy layers within an artwork, and then change the layer as part of a participatory community effort. Others, like Cometh.io place the NFT collectible into a virtual world with actions that mirror its financial attributes — virtual space ships mine asteroids to receive real world currencies. For comparisons, think about the likes of Eve Online, the World of Warcraft gold farming, Second Life, and the various virtual reality blockchain projects (Decentraland, CryptoVoxels) come to mind as a path towards a Fortnite-like, NFT-based, multiverse.

    Add or Subtract

    All you need to do now is watch this space with curiosity. We will see an evolution beyond the editorial crypto art galleries of today, to TikTok-like neural-network-mediated creative spaces. We will see a deep melding of NFTs with complex DeFi primitives, like tranching for quality, collateralization and staking, as well as lending, borrowing, and exchange. The creative space is barely starting to be explored. Even if the “market” crashes in USD value, the underlying technology trends will persist.

    This will not detract from the past, but it will add to the future. We quote Matthew Ball’s charts of the evolution of the music and gaming markets.

    New channels and monetization methods are mana for creators. New platforms create gold rushes, excitement, and the conquering of frontiers. Mobile gaming added $40 billion of revenue to its overall market, while digital streaming in music rescued the industry with $5B+ of revenue. On blockchain, NFTs are now generating a profound pull for creative digital objects, and we are excited to see what comes next.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 18:45

  • New COVID Levels Slump To Lowest In Months, 1/3rd Of US Troops Reject Jabs
    New COVID Levels Slump To Lowest In Months, 1/3rd Of US Troops Reject Jabs

    Across the US, Europe and most of the world, new COVID cases and deaths continue to decline as New York State announces more summertime reopening plans for summer camps, indoor family-entertainment centers and amusement parks and the EU strikes a major deal for more COVID jabs.

    Worldwide, total case numbers are nearing 110MM, as total deaths are on the verge of breaking above 2.25MM as of Wednesday. In the US, new daily cases and deaths have plunged to their lowest levels since the fall, as projections show numbers falling even more quickly than academic projections used by the CDC had anticipated.

    Globally, new case numbers and deaths are also at their lowest levels in months.

    The first two FEMA mass vaccination centers eopen in California, Joe Biden is promising all Americans who want the shot will be able to get one by July. But even after the latest outbreak aboard a Navy ship, a top US military said Wednesday that more than 1/3rd of servicemembers are declining to get the vaccine.

    During a House hearing on the Armed Forces’ response to COVID-19, Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee Rep. Mike Rogers asked Maj. Gen Jeff Taliaferro, Vice Director for Operations, what percentage of service members have declined to receive the vaccine. Tallaferro replied that the number was somewhere around 2/3rds acceptance.

    Meanwhile, despite the drop in case numbers and deaths, the NYT and its editorial writers warned that COVID isn’t done with the US yet, adding that “some signs” suggest the wave of superbowl parties across the US could spark a wave of new cases in the coming weeks, an assertion that appears entirely speculative. It added that these threats are “compounded” by the fact that new mutant strains could risk taking root despite the vaccination effort.

    Outside the US, Europe finally managed to finalize a deal with Pfizer-BioNTech for 200MM more doses of their vaccines, as well as for another 150MM Moderna jabs.

    Meanwhile, Auckland’s three-day lockdown is coming to an end end after authorities expressed confidence that the latest community outbreak is contained. Auckland will move to Alert Level 2 at midnight on Wednesday, allowing schools and businesses to reopen. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern added that the remainder of New Zealand will move to level 1, meaning people no longer have to observe social distancing or limit the size of gatherings, as cases in the country are essentially back at zero.

    Finally, in France,  officials extended the duration of quarantine to 10 days for those who test positive in the northeastern part of the country where virus circulation and the prevalence of new mutant strains is particularly high.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/17/2021 – 18:25

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  • How Conspiracy Theorizing May Soon Get You Labelled A "Domestic Terrorist"
    How Conspiracy Theorizing May Soon Get You Labelled A “Domestic Terrorist”

    Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    If you are starting to feel like forces controlling the governments of the west are out to get you, then it is likely that you are either a paranoid nut job, or a stubborn realist.

    Either way, it means that you have some major problems on your hands.

    If you don’t happen to find yourself among the tinfoil hat-wearing strata of conspiracy theorists waiting in a bunker for aliens to either strike down or save society from the shape shifting lizard people, but are rather contemplating how, in the 1960s, a shadow government took control of society over the dead bodies of many assassinated patriots, then certain conclusions tend to arise.

    Three Elementary Realizations for Thinking People

    The first conclusion you would likely arrive at is that the United States government was just put through the first coup in over 58 years (yes, what happened in 1963 was a coup). Although it is becoming a bit prohibitive to speak such words aloud in polite society, Nancy Pelosi’s official biographer Molly Ball, recently penned a scandalous Time Magazine article entitled ‘The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Elections’ which admitted to this conspiracy saying:

    “Even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream- a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” (Lest you think that this was a subversion of democracy, Ball informs us that “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”)

    Another conclusion you might come to is that many of the political figures whom you believed were serving those who elected them into office, actually serve the interests of a clique of technocrats and billionaires lusting over the deconstruction of western civilization under something called “a Great Reset”. Where this was brushed off as an unfounded conspiracy theory not long ago, even Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister (and neo-Nazi supporting Rhodes Scholar) Chrystia Freeland decided to become a Trustee of the World Economic Forum just weeks ago. In this role, Freeland joins fellow Oxford technocrat Mark Carney in their mutual endeavor to be a part of the new movement to decarbonize civilization and make feudalism cool again.

    Lastly, you might notice that your having arrived at these conclusions is itself increasingly becoming a form of thought-crime punishable in a variety of distasteful ways elaborated by a series of unprecedented new emergency regulations that propose extending the definition of “terrorism”. Those implicated under the new definition will be those broad swaths of citizens of western nations who don’t agree with the operating beliefs of the ruling oligarchy.

    Already a 60 day review of the U.S. military is underway to purge the armed forces of all such “thought criminals” while McCarthyite legislation has been drafted to cleanse all government jobs of “conspiracy theorists”.

    Another startling announcement from the National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin that domestic terrorists include: “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority [and] perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”

    While not yet fully codified into law (though it will be if not nipped in the bud soon), you can be sure that things are certainly moving fast as, before our very eyes, the right to free speech is being torn to shreds by means of censorship across social media and the internet, cancelling all opinions deemed unacceptable to the ruling class.

    The Conspiracy to Subvert Conspiracy Theorizing

    This should not come as a surprise, as Biden’s new addition to the Department of Homeland Security is a bizarre figure named Cass Sunstein who famously described exactly what this was going to look like in his infamous 2008 report ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (co-authored with Harvard Law School’s Adrien Vermeule). In this under-appreciated study, the duo foresaw the greatest threat to the ruling elite took the form of “conspiracy theorizing” within the American population using as examples of this delusion: the idea that the government had anything to do with the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, or the planning and execution of 9-11.

    Just to be clear, conspiracy literally means ‘two or more people acting together in accord with an agreed upon idea and intention’.

    The fact that Vermeule has made a legal career arguing that laws should be interpreted not by the “intentions” of lawgivers, but rather according to cost-benefit analysis gives us a useful insight into the deranged mind of a technocrat and the delusional reasoning that denies the very thing which has shaped literally ALL of human history.

    In their “scholarly” essay, the authors wrote “the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.” 

    After establishing his case for the threat of conspiracies, Sunstein says that “the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”.

    Not one to simply draw criticisms, the pro-active Sunstein laid out five possible strategies which the social engineers managing the population could deploy to defuse this growing threat saying:

    “(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.

    (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.

    (3) Government might itself engage in counter speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.

    (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech.

    (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help”.

    (I’ll let you think about which of these prescriptions were put into action over the ensuing 12 years.)

    Cass Sunstein was particularly sensitive to this danger largely because: 1) he was a part of a very ugly conspiracy himself and 2) he is a world-renowned behaviorist.

    The Problem of Reality for Behaviorists

    As an economic behaviorist and lawyer arguing that all “human rights” should be extended to animals (blurring the line separating human dynamics from the law of the jungle as any fascist must), Sunstein has spent decades trying to model human behavior with computer simulations in an effort to “scientifically manage” such behavior.

    As outlined in his book Nudge (co-authored with Nobel Prize winning behaviorist Richard Thaler), Sunstein “discovered” that people tend to organize their behavioral patterns around certain fundamental drives, such as the pursuit of pleasure, avoidance of pain, and certain Darwinian drives for sex, popularity, desire for conformity, desire for novelty, and greed.

    One of the key principles of economic behaviorism which is seen repeated in such popular manuals as Freakonomics, Nudge, Predictably Irrational, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Animal Spirits, is that humans are both biologically determined due to their Darwinian impulses, but, unlike other animals, have the fatal flaw of being fundamentally irrational at their core. Since humans are fundamentally irrational, says the behaviorist, it is requisite that an enlightened elite impose “order” upon society while maintaining the illusion of freedom of choice from below. This is the underlying assumption of Karl Popper’s Open Society doctrine, which was fed to Popper’s protégé George Soros and which animates Soros’ General Theory of Reflexivity and his Oxford-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

    This was at the heart of Obama’s science Czar John Holdren’s call for world government in his 1977 Ecoscience (co-written with his mentor Paul Ehrlich) where the young misanthrope envisioned a future utopic world governed by a scientifically managed master-class saying:

    “Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime- sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable”.

    The caveat: If Darwinian impulses mixed with irrational “animal spirits” were truly all that animated those systems which behaviorists wish to map and manipulate (aka: “nudge” with rewards, punishments), then a scientific priesthood would indeed be a viable and perhaps necessary way to organize the world.

    Fortunately, reality is a bit more elegant and dignified than behaviorists wish to admit.

    Why Computer Modellers Hate Metaphysics

    On a closer inspection of history, we find countless instances where people shape their individual and group behavior around sets of ideas that transcend controllable material impulses. When this happens, those individuals or groups tend to resist adapting to environments created for them. This incredible phenomenon is witnessed empirically in the form of the American Revolution, Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings, Civil Rights movements, and even some bold manifestations of anti-lockdown protests now underway around the world.

    Among the most troublesome of those variables which upset computer models are: “Conscience”, “Truth”, “Intentions”, “Soul”, “Honor”, “God”, “Justice”, “Patriotism”, “Dignity”, and “Freedom”.

    Whenever individuals shape their identities around these very real, though immaterial (aka: “metaphysical”) principles, they cannot be “nudged” towards pre-determined decisions that defy reason and morality. Adherence to these principles also tends to afford thinking people an important additional edge of creative insight necessary to cut through false explanatory narratives that attempt to hide lies behind the appearance of truth (aka: sophistry).

    As witnessed on multiple occasions throughout history, such individuals who value the health of their souls over the intimidating (and extremely malleable) force of popular opinion, will often decide to sacrifice personal comfort and even their lives in order to defend those values which their minds and consciences deem important.

    These rare, but invaluable outliers will often resist policies that threaten to undo their freedoms or undermine the basis of their society’s capacity to produce food, and energy for their children and grandchildren. What is worse, is that their example is often extremely contagious causing other members of the sheep class to believe that they too are human and endowed with unalienable rights which should be defended.

    The Intentions Ordering World History

    Perhaps, most “destructive” of all is that these outlier people tend to look for abstract things like “causes” in historical dynamics shaping the context of their present age, as well as their current geopolitical environment.

    Whenever this type of thinking is done, carefully crafted narratives fed to the masses by an enlightened elite will often fail in their powers to persuade, since seekers after truth soon come to realize that IDEAS and intentions (aka: conspiracies) shape our past, present and future. When the dominating intentions shaping society’s trajectory is in conformity with Natural Law, humanity tends to improve, freedoms increase, culture matures and evil loses its hold. Inversely, when the intentions animating history are out of conformity with Natural Law, the opposite happens as societies lose their moral and material fitness to survive and slip ever more quickly into dark ages.

    While sitting in a jail in Birmingham Alabama in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described this reality eloquently when he said:

    “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust… One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

    From Plato’s organization of his Academy and efforts to shape a Philosopher King to beat the forces of the Persian Empire, to Cicero’s efforts to save the Roman Republic, to Augustine’s battles to save the soul of Christianity all the way to our present age, conspiracies for the good and counter-conspiracies for evil have shaped history. If one were to begin an investigation into history without an understanding that ideas and intentions caused the trajectory of history, as is the standard practice among history professors dominant in todays world, then one would become incapable of understanding anything essential about one’s own reality.

    It is irrelevant that behaviorists and other fascists wish their victims to believe that history just happens simply because random short-sighted impulses kinetically drive events on a timeline- the truth of my claim exists for any serious truth seeker to discover it for themselves.

    Back to our Present Sad State of Affairs

    Now we all know that Sunstein spent the following years working as Obama’s Regulatory Czar alongside an army of fellow behaviorists who took control of all levers of policy making as outlined by Time Magazine’s April 13, 2009 article ‘How Obama is Using the Science of Change’. As the fabric of western civilization, and traditional values of family, gender, and even macro economic concepts like “development” were degraded during this period, the military industrial complex had a field day as Sunstein’s wife Samantha Power worked closely with Susan Rice in the promotion of “humanitarian bombings” of small nations under Soros’ Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

    After the Great Reset Agenda was announced in June 2020, Sunstein was recruited to head the propaganda wing of the World Health Organization known as the WHO Technical Advisory Group where his skills in mass behavior modification was put to use in order to counteract the dangerous spread of conspiracy theories that persuaded large chunks of the world population that COVID-19 was part of a larger conspiracy to undermine national sovereignty and impose world government.

    The head of WHO described Sunstein’s mandate in the following terms:

    “In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are using a range of tools to influence behavior: Information campaigns are one tool, but so are laws, regulations, guidelines and even fines…That’s why behavioral science is so important.”

    Today, hundreds of Obama-era behaviorists have streamed back into influential positions of government under the new “scientifically managed”, evidence-based governance coming back to life under Biden promising to undo the dark days of President Trump.

    Ideologues who have been on record calling for world government, the elimination of the sick and elderly (see Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emmanuel’s Why I Hope to Die At 75), and population control are streaming back into positions of influence.

    If you think that anything they have done to return to power is unlawful, or antithetical to the principles of the Constitution, then these technocrats want you to know that you are a delusional conspiracy theorist and as such, represent a potential threat to yourself and the society of which you are but a part.

    If you question World Health Organization narratives on COVID-19, or doubt the use of vaccines produced by organizations like Astra Zeneca due to their ties to eugenics organizations then you are a delusional conspiracy theorist.

    If you doubt that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide or that implementing the Paris Climate accords may cause more damage to humanity than climate change ever could, then you must be a conspiracy theorist.

    If you believe that the U.S. government just went through a regime change coordinated by something called “the deep state”, then you run the risk of being labelled a delusional threat to “the general welfare” deserving of the sort of treatment dolled out to any typical terrorist.

    It appears that the many comforts we have taken for granted over the past 50-year drunken stupor called “globalization” are quickly coming to an end, and thankfully not one but two opposing intentions for what the new operating system will be are actively vying for control. This clash was witnessed in stark terms during the January 2021 Davos Summit, where Xi Jinping and Putin’s call for a new system of win-win cooperation, multipolarity and long-term development offset the unipolar zero-sum ideologues of the west seeking to undo the foundations of industrial civilization.

    Either way you look at it, conspiracies for good and for evil do exist now, as they have from time immemorial. The only question is which intention do you want to devote your life towards?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 23:50

  • Putin Reportedly "Interested" In Elon Musk's Proposal For The Two Men To Speak
    Putin Reportedly “Interested” In Elon Musk’s Proposal For The Two Men To Speak

    On Sunday, we were among the first to note that Elon Musk had reached out to Vladimir Putin and asked for a “conversation” – ostensibly about bringing his companies to Russia – and hopefully not to just immediately surrender secrets related to the U.S. space program to Russia. 

    Whether the offer by Musk is telegraphing that his clout in China could be running out, or it’s just another case of “Musk being Musk”, his offer didn’t appear to fall on deaf ears.

    It didn’t take long for Chinese media to confirm that a “conversation” could actually happen between Musk and Putin. State-affiliated outlet People’s Daily reported on Monday that Putin was “interested” in Musk’s offer. 

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    It raised a lot of questions from investors – namely, what would the optics if another major company CEO with ties to the U.S. Space Program reached out and made the same offer?

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    But there was at least one investor on FinTwit that gave Musk the benefit of the doubt.

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    Recall, on Sunday, we wrote that Elon Musk tweeted the official English twitter account of the Kremlin, i.e., Vladimir Putin, saying “would you like join me for a conversation” on the popular (and so far invite-only) new audio social network Clubhouse.

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    He then followed up in google-translated Russian “it would be a great honor to speak with you.”

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    We continue to wait for more context on this story as it develops. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 23:30

  • Rockets Pound US Base In Northern Iraq Leading To Casualties
    Rockets Pound US Base In Northern Iraq Leading To Casualties

    Submitted by South Front,

    The United States has already started bearing the consequences of the decision of the Biden administration to halt the troop drawdown from the Greater Middle East.

    On February 15th, 14 rockets struck the area of the US military base near Erbil International Airport, 4 of them within the compound, 10 of which were near strikes. One private contractor was killed and 5 were injured. In a rare event, 1 US service member was also wounded.

    The location of the attack coincides with Turkey’s operation “Claw Eagle 2” which targets the alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions. Most of northern Iraq was on edge, as a result.

    Turkey and the US, as NATO allies appear to not be cooperating whatsoever, as they’re pursuing separate goals in largely the same areas of the Middle East.

    Ankara’s activities contribute to the chaos of the Middle East situation, as it targets the PKK, while the US mostly targets and is targeted by Iranian-backed forces.

    Another US ally, this time one that aligns its activities with it – Israel struck unknown targets around Damascus.

    It launched missiles from the occupied Golan Heights, and many of them were intercepted by Syrian air defenses, however, some landed on their targets. It is unclear what was targeted and what the damage was.

    There have been no strikes by Israel through Lebanese airspace after a drone was downed, and Hezbollah vowed to attempt to destroy any Israeli aircraft that encroaches on its airspace.

    Movements throughout the Middle East are beginning for the US and its allies.

    In Iraq, many of the targeted convoys in the last several weeks have reached their destinations.

    With a lack of reports of convoy targeting, it would appear that the currently static positions are under threat.

    Iran is continuing its movements, undermining US and Israeli influence, and it has had general success in recent weeks. The US is fighting back against it.

    On February 11th, a truck moving supplies for an Iranian-backed unit, al-Haydariyun, was targeted near Syria’s border with Iraq.

    According to the Resistance Media Network, the truck was targeted by a drone likely operated by the US military.

    In Yemen, the US said it would attempt to impose a peace deal, on its own terms. It claims to stop supporting Saudi Arabia’s genocidal intervention. Washington, however, also continues providing defensive services and intelligence.

    Following Joe Biden’s first foreign policy speech, the time for the US to move has come. In the coming days, the “fight against ISIS” is sure to ramp up, alongside various other movements throughout the Middle East.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 23:10

  • Israeli Hospitals Brace For Rising Numbers Of Children Infected With COVID As Schools Re-Open
    Israeli Hospitals Brace For Rising Numbers Of Children Infected With COVID As Schools Re-Open

    Just as it led the world during the vaccination process (with only a few suspicious deaths), Israel is on track to lead the US and Europe in reopening schools and its broader society. And its hospitals are already bracing for a surge in deadly infections (worsened by individuals’ complications and the “post-COVID” syndrome) as the cases of five desperately ill children captivate the country.

    Israel isn’t yet vaccinating children under the age of 16 at this stage even as schools are set to reopen, but public health officials are already out telling the press and the public, not to worry, because Israel will have a team of doctors at the ready.

    Here’s more from Haaretz:

    On Sunday, the head of the general medicine division at the Health Ministry, Dr. Sigal Liverant Taub, wrote a letter to hospital administrators urging them to adjust their infrastructure to suit children, and to prepare their daily medical teams to treat young people by February 25.

    “In the upcoming two months, we expect an upward trend in infection in children of all ages in Israel,” Liverant Taub wrote. “Evidence is accumulating for higher infection rates of the British variant, whose prevalence in Israel is about 80 percent, among children.”

    The doctor added that treating children in the same fashion as adults “is not a solution that we want, and therefore we must prepare infrastructure specifically for children, [staffed] by a team that is skilled in treating children alone.”

    These statements are landing as five Israeli children have been hospitalized in Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava for COVID-19 and its complications, one of them in serious condition. Three of them (a 13-year-old, a 10-year-old and a 1.5-year-old) have active COVID-19 infections.

    One of the doctors treating the children added that COVID complications can be unpredictable.

    Dr. Dganit Adam, the director of Meir Hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit, said that “We are witness to the fact that despite everyone being certain that children are not endangered by the coronavirus, there are an increasing number of children being hospitalized for COVID-19 and the complications that follow it.”

    She added, “Some come to us in a more complicated medical state. It’s important to be aware of this and to pay attention to symptoms after coronavirus infection – fever, rashes, redness in the eyes and other symptoms, even a month after falling ill.”

    In other news, back in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s latest announcement about the positivity rate in the Empire State declining to a new post-November low has got markets people talking about the outlook for the economic reopening in the US.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 22:50

  • National Guard To Stay In DC "Through Fall 2021", Why?!
    National Guard To Stay In DC “Through Fall 2021”, Why?!

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    A leaked email suggests that there are plans to keep the National Guard in Washington DC beyond the previously discussed deadline of March 12th, and throughout the Summer AND Fall.

    A report by FOX 5 cites an internal email seen by reporters that reveals The National Security Council is asking the Department of Defense to engage Capitol Police on planning for post-March 12th support.

    The report notes that there will be a meeting for agencies to discuss the matter next Wednesday, February 17th.

    The email was written by Robert Salesses who is covering the duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security.

    It states:

    “If it’s not possible to sustain at the current level with NG personnel, we need to establish the number of NG personnel (DCNG and out-of-state) we can sustain for an extended period – at least through Fall 2021 – and understand additional options for providing DoD support, to include use of reserve personnel, as well as active component.”

    While troops were expected to stay in DC for the duration of the impeachment sideshow, owing to “security concerns,” it now appears that they will remain even longer.

    The Pentagon has confirmed that there are still around 6000 National Guard troops in DC. While there have been indications that the number will be reduced to 5000 within a month, there have been no other indications of when troops will be stood down.

    There is also no indication of when the huge razor wire topped security fencing will be removed from around Capitol Hill.

    The Guard have been given virtually no information about what they are required to do, with one soldier previously describing the situation as “very unusual for any military mission.”

    As we reported last month, thousands of the troops were forced to sleep OUTSIDE and in a parking Garage near the Capitol building after a Democratic lawmaker complained that ONE guardsmen was not wearing a face mask.

    The estimated cost of keeping the security measures is so far close to $500 million.

    Without a legitimate reason to keep troops in DC any longer, Americans can only assume that the Biden administration and the Democrats feel their grip on power needs protecting by a permanent military presence.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 22:30

  • Stunning Images Reveal Massive Commercial Jet Parking Lot Amid Travel Collapse
    Stunning Images Reveal Massive Commercial Jet Parking Lot Amid Travel Collapse

    Pilot and photographer Jassen Todorov captured stunning images of hundreds of commercial jets parked in airfields across the US amid the downturn in air travel thanks to the virus pandemic, according to Daily Mail. 

    Todorov’s images include billions of dollars worth of commercial jets parked at dusty airfields across the country. 

    The images give light to new data from travel firm Cirium, who outlines in a recent report the number of single-aisle aircraft in service has plunged since the beginning of the year amid a flare-up of US COVID-19 cases and increased restrictions. 

    Cirium’s data showed single-aisle aircraft in service fell below the 8.8k mark on Feb. 5, a drop of 15% compared with Jan. 3 figures. 

    Following months of surging air travel numbers into the 2020 holiday season, US passenger volumes dove in late January to their lowest levels in six months. 

    Todorov captured more pictures of commercial jets parked at airfields. It appears reopening optimism two months into vaccination rollouts has yet to bring a “V-shaped” recovery to the airline industry. 

    Demand for used private jets is soaring as rich people do not want to fly first class anymore amid fears of being infected. 

    On top of this all, remote working and teleconferencing have resulted in a permanent shift lower in business travel, which was the bulk of all travel. The pandemic is expected to keep commercial airlines in a state of depression for a few years. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 22:10

  • Navy Scrambles As Deployed Sailors Test COVID-19 Positive On Previously-Stricken Carrier
    Navy Scrambles As Deployed Sailors Test COVID-19 Positive On Previously-Stricken Carrier

    Akin to a similar outbreak scenario aboard the same aircraft carrier which took it out of commission last year during the early phase of the pandemic, the USS Theodore Roosevelt is once again entering what essentially appears like quarantine, now undertaking “aggressive mitigation” measures after three sailors tested positive for COVID-19. 

    After being placed in isolation they are expected to be flown off ship. According to a US Navy statement, “The sailors’ cases were identified during random command surveillance testing, which has been taking place as part of a holistic COVID-19 mitigation effort that includes physical distancing, additional cleaning and mandatory mask-wearing on the ship, U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Myers Vasquez told USNI News.”

    USS Theodore Roosevelt, Getty Images

    This suggests a wider outbreak may be in progress aboard the carrier, but so far others identified which had close contact with infected individuals have tested negative and are said to be in quarantine.

    The first time the Roosevelt faced an outbreak it involved over 1,200 eventual infections, with one death, all of which took the nuclear-powered carrier out of commission, forcing it to dock at Guam and cut short its slated mission last May. Like the majority of the prior wave of infections the first time, the three sailors are asymptomatic.

    Currently the carrier strike group is on its second deployment within a year, now operating in the Pacific and off a recent port call in Guam. According a Navy spokesperson, necessary precautions were taken during a late February through early January port call:

    During the Guam visit, sailors were allowed off the ship, but measures were put in place to keep them from coming into contact with anyone outside their COVID-free bubble. A section of the beach was cordoned off for them, and they were not supposed to come in contact with other personnel on the pier, Vasquez said.

    The US Navy further said new protocol to prevent further COVID-19 spread aboard the ship has been implemented with the ultimate goal of ensuring it remains operational.

    “The ship is following an aggressive mitigation strategy in accordance with Navy and CDC guidelines to include mandatory mask wearing, social distancing, and proper hygiene and sanitation practices. U.S. Pacific Fleet is committed to taking every measure possible to protect the health of our force. USS Theodore Roosevelt is currently underway and remains fully operational,” the Navy said.

    The devastating rapid spread of the virus aboard the ship last spring into early summer marked a massive crisis for the Navy. It not only temporarily took the ship out of commission, but saw Chinese state media mocking the ‘weakness’ of the Pentagon’s Pacific forces and deployments at the time. It also resulted in the Roosevelt’s prior commander, Capt. Brett E. Crozier being relieved – also with the Secretary of the Navy later forced to resign over the crisis’ mishandling.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 21:50

  • WHO Issues 'Alert' To Six African Nations After Recent Ebola Outbreaks
    WHO Issues ‘Alert’ To Six African Nations After Recent Ebola Outbreaks

    After the West African country of Guinea reported its first confirmed Ebola deaths since 2016, prompting the declaration of an “epidemic situation,” the World Health Organization (WHO) has alerted six countries to watch out for further spread of the disease, according to Reuters.

    The news comes as Guinea declared a new Ebola outbreak on Sunday in the first resurgence of Ebola in West Africa since the 2013-2016 outbreak, while the Democratic Republic of Congo reported its first resurgence on Feb. 7. Liberia was also mentioned as among the countries that received an “alert”.

    “We have already alerted the six countries around, including of course Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they are moving very fast to prepare and be ready and to look for any potential infection,” the WHO’s Margaret Harris told a Geneva briefing. -Reuters

    The other countries that received a warning weren’t named.

    According to the WHO’s Harris, health authorities had identified close to 300 Ebola contacts in the Congo outbreak and around 109 in Guinea, as doctors and nurses race to prevent the spread of disease.

    Gene sequencing of Ebola samples from both Congo and Guinea is allowing scientists to learn more about the origins of the new outbreaks and identify the strains that are spreading, Harris added.

    “We don’t know if this is down to Ebola persisting in the human population or if it’s simply moving again from the animal population but the genetic sequencing that’s ongoing will help with that information,” she said.

    Given current global pandemic awareness combined with the fact that Ebola victims are easy to identify by the rapid onset of vomiting and, later, bleeding from orifices (as opposed to the significantly less deadly COVID’s asymptomatic spread), we are hopeful that these latest African outbreaks can be quickly contained.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 21:30

  • This Is What Hedge Funds Bought And Sold In Q4: Complete 13F Summary
    This Is What Hedge Funds Bought And Sold In Q4: Complete 13F Summary

    In the aftermath of late January’s massive short squeeze fireworks, 13F reporting season – which had lost much of its luster in recent years as hedge funds lost much of their impact in a centrally-planned world – was once again interesting, if only to find who had extra exposure to the January short-squeeze turmoil. Of course, we should caveat that as usual, all of the positions disclosed in today’s round of 13Fs were stale by at least 45 days, and as such there has certainly been significant rotation out of the high beta and most shorted names in late January and early February.

    With that said, and as noted earlier, the big highlight was Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway which trimmed its Apple holding in the fourth quarter, while reporting formerly secret stakes in Verizon ($8.6BN), Chevron ($4.1BN) and Marsh & McLennan ($499MM).

    Berkshire’s reduction in Apple stood in contrast to other positions investment funds revealed in regulatory filings for the quarter, which showed several favoring megacap tech companies according to Bloomberg which notes that Microsoft has been an early winner in 13F filings released so far as major hedge funds bought positions. The software maker was a top new buy at Bridgewater and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, while D1 Capital Partners and Tiger Global Management also boosted their stakes.  A handful of Tiger Cubs (firm run by alumni of Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management) also boosted their stakes in Microsoft with Viking, Tiger Global and Maverick all adding to their positions in the software giant, which gained just 6% in the quarter.

    Another megacap technology company, Facebook, was a top new buy at Gabe Plotkin’s Melvin Capital Management, although it is likely that after the fund’s flameout, it was likely forced to liquidate some or all of its stake.

    Meanwhile, recent initial public offerings Airbnb and DoorDash also received attention from funds. Both companies were top new buys at Tiger Global and Temasek. Banks have been more divisive. Bridgewater snapped up shares of JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup, while Berkshire exited its positions in PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and JPMorgan, and it cut its stake in Wells Fargo.

    Going down the list, Bloomberg notes, that Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management increased its stakes of 26 companies in the fourth quarter, including adding 1.63 million shares of Walt Disney which surged 46% in the period. That brought Coatue’s stake in the world’s largest entertainment company to about $2 billion at year-end, making it the fund’s biggest long U.S. holding. At the same time, Coatue cut its exposure to the tech sector by about 6%, but it could be that the firm was just rebalancing the portfolio given the jump in those shares.

    Tiger Global made a notable move in selling a major chunk of its Sunrun stake — it sold an investment that has been incredibly profitable for Chase Coleman’s firm. Tiger Global made $1.5 billion on the solar company’s stock last year, and it has been among the best performers in Tiger Global’s hedge fund and long-only fund.

    Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is pursuing investments on video-game makers. The Riyadh-based Public Investment Fund bought stakes in Activision Blizzard Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. The three stakes had a combined value of almost $3.3 billion at the end of December, according to its filing.

    Below  is a snapshot summary of some of the key position changes revealed at the more popular hedge funds in the 4th quarter, courtesy of Bloomberg.

    ADAGE CAPITAL PARTNERS

    • Top new buys: TSLA, KSS, WORK, EV, RL, SO, AVIR, CEO, APSG, STPK
    • Top exits: ST, CVX, OC, BECN, HI, KURA, FSR, AZO, FIVE, AZN
    • Boosted stakes in: ALXN, XOM, GE, EMR, DOV, EOG, DIS, GOOGL, PXD, GOOG
    • Cut stakes in: FTV, W, HZNP, MRK, CRM, HON, SRPT, ITT, LPX, FIS

    APPALOOSA

    • Top new buys: OXY, XLE, QCOM, M, KMX, KSS, EPD, XOP, EWY, ADS
    • Top exits: T, MO, BSX
    • Boosted stakes in: AMZN, FB, MSFT, TWTR, UNH, HCA, ET, AMLP, ADBE, CRM
    • Cut stakes in: PCG, BABA, WFC, SQ, MA, EMR, V, PYPL, NFLX, SYY

    BALYASNY ASSET MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: MSFT, DIS, WORK, KO, IPHI, XLNX, COO, JBHT, AAPL, INTU
    • Top exits: LULU, SCHW, WDAY, SWKS, SHOP, QCOM, KNX, COST, WFC, FDX
    • Boosted stakes in: V, BAC, GOOGL, MXIM, TEAM, BABA, NFLX, RP, PANW, TSCO
    • Cut stakes in: ATVI, AMZN, TGT, TJX, WLTW, OTIS, CTSH, MCD, MIDD, BIIB

    BAUPOST GROUP

    • Top new buys: INTC, MPC, ADV, FNF, RBAC, VSPR, RADI, DGNS
    • Top exits: HPQ, MCK, AMAT, HWM
    • Boosted stakes in: QRVO, FB, SSNC, CLNY, PEAK, EBAY
    • Cut stakes in: FOXA, GOOG, PSTH, VIST, ATRA

    BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY

    • Top new buys: VZ, CVX, MMC
    • Top exits: GOLD, MTB, PNC, PFE, JPM
    • Boosted stakes in: ABBV, MRK, TMUS, BMY, KR, RH
    • Cut stakes in: WFC, SU, LILAK, GM, USB, AAPL

    BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES

    • Top new buys: JPM, BAC, MSFT, C, WFC, MS, GS, SCHW, USB, AON
    • Top exits: TSLA, LULU, LOW, SHW, JCI, HD, DD, ECL, KMX, MAS
    • Boosted stakes in: WMT, PG, PDD, IEMG, KO, JNJ, PEP, VWO, COST, IVV
    • Cut stakes in: GLD, NTES, DHI, LEN, VFC, WDAY, TT, PPG, ODFL, SPLK

    COATUE MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: DASH, XPEV, API, AYX, SFIX, ROOT, LYFT, ROKU, BA, LSPD
    • Top exits: SMAR, LBRDK, SDC, NAT, DHT, EAF, TNK, LUMN, SSYS, DDD
    • Boosted stakes in: DIS, UBER, SQ, NUAN, Z, PYPL, PINS, EXPE, SE, SNOW
    • Cut stakes in: PLAN, NKLA, GDOT, AEO, URBN, FB, DXCM, DOCU, DDOG, BEKE

    CORSAIR CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: DNMR, JIH, CCX, LAUR, NRZ, NVGS, LEAF, LNG, SATS, ATH
    • Top exits: FMC, NWSA, QQQ, CDR, KLR
    • Boosted stakes in: WMB, GSAH, GDDY, VRT, NATR, STAR, CUBI, ECPG, ENZ, GVA
    • Cut stakes in: PSTH, AON, CC, BXRX, BH, IQV, PLYA, GLD, BBCP, LKQ

    CORVEX MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: GOOGL, FISV, WDAY, CCEP, AEO, GPN, RADI, STPK, FB
    • Top exits: BABA, CMCSA, ILMN, ACM, TWTR, NAV, LYV, MSGS, PCG
    • Boosted stakes in: FE, ATVI, ATUS, AMZN, JPM, DIS, ZEN, ADBE, FIVE
    • Cut stakes in: EXC, CNP, EVRG, HUM, TMUS, NFLX

    D1 CAPITAL PARTNERS

    • Top new buys: BKNG, DDOG, AMZN, DECK, MRVI, BAX, DRI, TEAM, BX, EDU
    • Top exits: IR, PNC, CLVT, DT, MSGS, MU, SMAR, KRC, BABA, ESS
    • Boosted stakes in: MSFT, EXPE, NFLX, FB, GOOGL, DIS, RH, JPM, DHR, TGT
    • Cut stakes in: LYV, CVNA, AVB, ORLY, HPP, BLL, LVS, DEI, AAP, RACE

    DUQUESNE FAMILY OFFICE

    • Top new buys: CMI, RUN, LIN, ASHR, SMH, NYT, ABCL, AA, FSLR, ARRY
    • Top exits: BABA, NFLX, GDX, FB, ALNY, XLI, FIS, VZ, BKNG, WEN
    • Boosted stakes in: PANW, DIS, CVNA, TMUS, SBUX, TECK, NET, RETA, CCL, IQV
    • Cut stakes in: JD, GOLD, GOOGL, SMAR, WDAY, PYPL, LYV, PENN, AMZN, FSLY

    ELLIOTT MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: EVRG, T, PSA, FFIV, SNAP, PINS, FNV, XOP
    • Top exits: EBAY, WELL, RILY
    • Boosted stakes in: DELL

    EMINENCE CAPITAL

    • Top new buys: WSC, EXPE, AN, GOOG, ADI, GDDY, MA, FIS, JWS, GH
    • Top exits: JPM, BAC, QSR, RJF, VTR, KDP, AZO, DHI, VICI, SHAK
    • Boosted stakes in: CTVA, RP, LH, MIC, DFS, PANW, NEWR, RRR, TPX, COF
    • Cut stakes in: ASH, CPRI, SEE, CHNG, FISV, DD, PSTG, BABA, UBER, WELL

    ENGAGED CAPITAL

    • Top new buys: GIL, QUOT
    • Top exits: MED, JACK, MX
    • Boosted stakes in: STKL, NCR, MGLN, IWM

    FIR TREE

    • Top new buys: ABBV, OUT, SPR, BSX, HHC, PRO, CONX, IMPX, CRHC
    • Top exits: EIX, FLT, PSTH, EXC, CUK, ETWO, JWS, GIX, UWMC, LOTZ
    • Boosted stakes in: LAMR, CMCSA, MSGE, ANTM, PRPB, FIS, YAC, AMHC, CTXS
    • Cut stakes in: FE, LYV, SLM, TMUS, EXPE, CCIV, WPF, THCA, CNC, HEC

    GREENLIGHT CAPITAL

    • Top new buys: DNMR, FUBO, ADT, CLOV, SATS, SONO, NPA
    • Top exits: INTC, INGR, PVH, GHC, CRY, KW, VAPO, AMRN, GPORQ
    • Boosted stakes in: REZI, TECK, CNX, DDS, AAWW
    • Cut stakes in: JACK, ICPT, GLD, CC, CCK, NCR, CHNG, AER

    ICAHN

    • Top new buys: BHC, DAN
    • Boosted stakes in: IEP, XRX
    • Cut stakes in: TEN, LNG

    JANA PARTNERS

    • Top new buys: LH, THS, TGNA, GRA
    • Top exits: ELY, BCO
    • Boosted stakes in: PRSP, EHC
    • Cut stakes in: SPY, BLMN, NEWR

    LANSDOWNE

    • Top new buys: UNP, GE, ENIA, PSX, HTOO, EEM, VXX, GLD, UVXY
    • Top exits: FSLR, COG, EQT, CDE, PAAS, UNVR, LOOP, QS, RIDE, GDXJ
    • Boosted stakes in: TSM, AMAT, ADI, AES, BLDP, AG, TMUS
    • Cut stakes in: C, ED, IDA, LUV, NSC, BKNG, DAR, UAL, REGI, VMC

    LONG POND

    • Top new buys: PHM, SUI, ELS, AMH, NNN, SRC, FR, ABNB, LSI, EXP
    • Top exits: HLT, SHO, SBRA, PEAK, WELL, PGRE, HPP, EXPE, KRC, H
    • Boosted stakes in: EQR, AVB, WH, UDR, GLPI
    • Cut stakes in: DEI, JBGS, MGP, MAA, LVS, ESS, CPT, HGV

    MAGNETAR FINANCIAL

    • Top new buys: OPEN, XLNX, ALXN, PNM, NAV, AJRD, WORK, HMSY, OSB, CCX
    • Boosted stakes in: IPHI, CIIC, BSX, AZN, NPA, MRK, EXPC, JIH, IPV, FSRV
    • Cut stakes in: ADCT, MPLN, MP, EHC, UBER, ABBV, WLTW, GRUB, VAR, PSTH

    MAVERICK CAPITAL

    • Top new buys: SEER, MGM, PLD, GTLS, WYNN, IBP, SQZ, DASH, DGNS, CROX
    • Top exits: DLTR, GPN, TMUS, WEN, BBBY, UAA, FND, CRI, FTCH, FDX
    • Boosted stakes in: AMAT, FLT, ADBE, FB, GME, MSFT, ATRA, GOOG, NKTR, JACK
    • Cut stakes in: HUM, GLW, KKR, AMZN, LOGI, APD, ZNGA, DXC, CCK, CNC

    MELVIN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: FB, COUP, MELI, NFLX, PAGS, CRWD, SPGI, GWW, ADI, XRAY
    • Top exits: DOCU, MCD, TJX, LOW, PYPL, WDAY, SBAC, DPZ, BURL, EAT
    • Boosted stakes in: MA, EXPE, GOOGL, TEAM, V, HLT, AMD, NUAN, LVS, NKE
    • Cut stakes in: BABA, NOW, AMZN, AZO, DDOG, SE, AAP, LH, ALGN, FISV

    OAKTREE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: COLD, LU, OAS, CRC
    • Top exits: MEG, BIDU, CEO, SQM, CCS, GTXMQ, GTH, XPEV, API, MSGE
    • Boosted stakes in: ITUB, VALE, BBD, PBR, CX, IBN, AZUL, NMIH, SMCI, TRMD
    • Cut stakes in: TSM, UNIT, MELI, INDA, KC, COOP, ALLY

    OMEGA ADVISORS

    • Top new buys: GM, WSC, CMCSA, BGS, ORCC, DMAC
    • Top exits: LEE
    • Boosted stakes in: MP, COOP, ATH, ET, STKL, SNR, NAVI, VRT, GCI, FCRD
    • Cut stakes in: AMCX, SRGA, MGY

    PERSHING SQUARE

    • Cut stakes in: LOW, QSR, SBUX, A, HLT

    SOROBAN CAPITAL

    • Top new buys: LOW, GWRE, PLNT
    • Boosted stakes in: MSFT, ATUS, AMZN, FIS, YUM, MAR, ADI, GOOGL
    • Cut stakes in: RTX, CSX, PSTH, UNP, HLT, ARMK, FISV

    SOROS FUND MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: QS, EEM, CLVT, ELAN, ALLY, UPST, SYF, XLNX, AMZN, EV
    • Top exits: DKNG, XLI, MCHP, U, MCHI, MTG, SIRI, RNR, BXMT, C
    • Boosted stakes in: LQD, ATVI, DIS, DHI, NLOK, DEN, GOOGL, AXTA, NXPI, OMF
    • Cut stakes in: HAIN, VICI, DRI, SE, PCG, VST, AGNC, CBB, FE, VAR

    STARBOARD

    • Top new buys: ON
    • Top exits: SPY
    • Boosted stakes in: ACIW, CTVA, NLOK, CVLT, ACM, IWM, BOX, IWR
    • Cut stakes in: AAP, IWN, SCOR, CERN, GDOT, MMSI

    TEMASEK HOLDINGS

    • Top new buys: DASH, WISH, XLB, XLI, MSFT, SQZ, EWZ, CRM, ABNB, ADBE
    • Top exits: DD, GOVT, XLK, USIG, XLV, FUTU, XLP, ROK, CGNX
    • Boosted stakes in: PYPL, V, AMZN, MA, SCHP, DDOG, UBER, ASLN
    • Cut stakes in: TME, DELL, XLY, SE, FTCH, HDB

    THIRD POINT

    • Top new buys: UPST, GOOGL, APTV, SWK, NKE, CTLT, LESL, KMX, RH, UNH
    • Top exits: FTV, SQ, CZR, GDRX, TXG, PTVE, CD
    • Boosted stakes in: INTU, AVTR, PLNT, TDG, MSFT, SPGI, SHY
    • Cut stakes in: BABA, AMZN, FIS, CRM, ADBE, PINS, JD, FB, EXPE, GB

    TIGER GLOBAL

    • Top new buys: DASH, COUP, ONEM, AI, YSG, ABNB, SQ, INTU, MSP, ASO
    • Top exits: GOOGL, TME, CDAY, FTCH, CDLX, TENB, BILI
    • Boosted stakes in: UBER, SE, PTON, DOCU, MSFT, EGHT, WDAY, NOW, SNOW, SHOP
    • Cut stakes in: RUN, FB, TWLO, MDB, ZM, PLAN, PYPL, NFLX, SMAR, FLT

    TUDOR INVESTMENT

    • Top new buys: AI, ABNB, SOXX, XLF, EWZ, ICLN, MDLZ, RSG, PG, TEKK
    • Top exits: KC, KDP, BDX, RPAY, ADT, ADI, ARE, TROW, MAS, SHW
    • Boosted stakes in: WORK, SPY, ALXN, MXIM, VAR, EV, GRUB, WLTW, AAPL, UBER
    • Cut stakes in: PCG, FSLR, RXT, GDRX, LSI, DLR, DIS, V, XOM, LIN

    VIKING GLOBAL INVESTORS

    • Top new buys: UNH, ABCL, DIS, PANW, NOW, HIG, GE, HCA, FB, APD
    • Top exits: CMCSA, CME, RTX, ADI, EXAS, BILL, TEAM, CDAY, ANTM, ALL
    • Boosted stakes in: MSFT, V, GOOGL, FLT, FIS, ZBH, BSX, SE, TMUS, AVTR
    • Cut stakes in: TMO, AXP, LVS, CNC, HLT, AMZN, CSGP, AVB, BKNG, BPMC

    WHALE ROCK CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

    • Top new buys: DIS, UBER, ZS, SMAR, EXPE, FTCH, TRIP, BILI, EGHT, PDD
    • Top exits: W, BABA, MSFT, AVLR, FTNT, STNE, AMD, AYX, CDAY, NOW
    • Boosted stakes in: CRWD, CVNA, TSM, PINS, CREE, MDB, FIVN, SQ, SE, CRUS
    • Cut stakes in: AMZN, JD, FB, ZM, OKTA, SHOP, COUP, NVDA, MPWR, FSLY

    Source: Bloomberg

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 21:10

  • JPM: "Bond Yields Are Likely To Move Higher From Here" But The Real Question Is "What's Behind The Move"
    JPM: “Bond Yields Are Likely To Move Higher From Here” But The Real Question Is “What’s Behind The Move”

    According to the closing market intelligence recap from JPMorgan’s Andrew Tyler, most of today’s conversations at the largest US commercial bank surrounded the impact of bond yields on equity prices, and to be sure with the 10Y pushing through 1.3%, a yield level last seen in late Feb 2020, the surge in yields has started hitting risk assets which closed lower on the day led by small caps and duration sensitive sectors.

    Here JPM interjects that while the jump in yields matters, from a trader’s perspective, the question “why yields are rising” matters even more. As JPM futures trader Matt Booras explains, if yields are rising for “good reasons” such as increasing GDP forecasts, then stocks will be fine. However, if there is a “bad” yield rising event such as a lack of demand for US Treasuries then stocks may come under pressure. Irrespective of the reason, Booras is looking for yields to eventually compress multiples which could disproportionately hit Tech while Cyclicals still move higher.

    Focusing on the question of how rising bond yields will impact equities, JPM strategist Mislav Matejka makes the following observations:

    • Bond yields are likely to move higher from here, and that the move should be absorbed well by the equity market.
    • Bond yields are likely to move up further, reflecting not just the upcoming normalization inactivity, starting in Q2, but also the potential for overshooting given pent-up demand and continued fiscal support. A significant gap remains open between bond yields and inflation forwards, and between bond yields and US PMIs.
    • JPM would not expect the stocks-bonds correlation to break down while US 10-year yields are sub 2%, especially if the central banks’ liquidity provision remains ample, and growth backdrop positive. P/Es did not tend to de-rate during cyclical earnings upswings.
    • Bond yields would need to move up by 100-200bp in order to erase the equity attractiveness.
    • What to favor when yields are rising? The sectoral leadership remains clear around bond yield moves, with Financials and Cyclicals at the top, and the Defensives, in particular Healthcare and Food Producers, at the bottom. Tech generally aligned with the latter group. Stock baskets in report. Regionally, Eurozone and Japan score high, while the UK tended to be the worst.

    Finally, looking at the recent blowout in swap spreads and addressing the possibility that MBS hedgers will engage in convexity hedging, resulting in an even sharper move higher in yields, JPM’s rates trader Ryan Wald writes “are we going to have convexity paying? We may. Is it going to be to the extent that we experienced in the previous two convexity events? Not likely. Reason is due to the difference in who currently owns large percentages of the MBS market and how they choose to hedge their duration gaps. In ’03 the GSE’s were responsible, and in ’13 taper tantrum it was the REITs. Both of these entities actively hedged their duration gap. In current times, a large percentage of MBS ownership has shifted towards commercial banks. And because banks are net running a very large duration short which only continues to grow on the back of the Fed’s QE program… Any duration extension on the back of a convexity event would be welcomed, as opposed to being actively hedged.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 20:50

  • 'Woke' Teachers Want Shakespeare Canceled: "This Is About White Supremacy And Colonization"
    ‘Woke’ Teachers Want Shakespeare Canceled: “This Is About White Supremacy And Colonization”

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    “Too Woke, Or Not Too Woke?”

    While the House managers were quoting Shakespeare in their case against President Donald Trump last week, it appears that the Bard may soon be less known than “Poor Yorick” who we once knew so well.

    There is a growing campaign by teachers to drop Shakespeare and other Western literature from classes. One group, #DisruptTexts, insists “This is about White supremacy and colonization.”

    Lorena German, National Council of Teachers of English Anti-Racism Committee chair and a co-founder of the Disrupt Texts forum, insisted “everything about the fact that he was a man of his time is problematic about his plays. We cannot teach Shakespeare responsibly and not disrupt the ways people are characterized and developed.”

    We previously discussed how the portrait of William Shakespeare was removed at the University of Pennsylvania’s English Department as a statement for greater racial sensitivity and diversity. Students are increasingly being deprived of such foundational classics as “Romeo and Juliet,” “Macbeth,” “King Lear” or Richard III. These are works that are not only masterpieces but shaped generations of later works and continue to be referenced in modern writing.  Yet, this is a movement that has been building since 1987 when Jesse Jackson led Stanford undergraduates chanting, “Hey, ho, Western Citv has got to go!”

    Amanda McGregor, a Minnesota-based librarian wrote in the January issue of School library journal  that “Shakespeare’s work is full of problematic and outdated ideas, lots of misogyny, racism, homophobia, class discrimination, anti-Semitism, misogyny”

    German insisted that Shakespeare “is not ‘universal’ in a way that other authors are not. He is not more ‘timeless’ than anyone else.”

    Some teachers advocating replacing Shakespeare with such works as “Hunger Games.”

    Shakespeare could have seen his coming when he wrote in As You Like It that “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

    However, the exiting of Shakespeare will come at a terrible cost for our students. While Shakespeare appears the new rallying cry for woke teachers, he is “a man more sinned against than sinning.” 

    If he is stripped away from our reading lists, our students will be the poorer for it.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 20:30

  • US CDC Weighs Extending Interval Between COVID Jab Doses
    US CDC Weighs Extending Interval Between COVID Jab Doses

    In what could become another major messaging flip-flop from the CDC, after repeatedly urging all eligible Americans to make sure not to miss their second follow-up dose of the COVID vaccine, Bloomberg reports that the scientific professionals managing the US COVID response are weighing recommendations to extend the interval between the first and second dose as supplies run low.

    The CDC’s advisory committee has reportedly debated the idea, which will be taken up by the full committee and provide official guidance, according to a Bloomberg report. Jose Romero, chairman of the committee and Arkansas health secretary, reportedly declined to comment officially.

    Such a delay would be a big shift from just a few weeks ago, when US health officials rejected a dose-stretching policy adopted by the UK which allowed up to 12 weeks between shots. Most drugmakers have agreed, saying that policies should follow the protocols used in the shots’ testing, in which the intervals were set at three or four weeks.

    But apparently the situation has changed, or is changing. Despite all the fearmongering about the COVID “mutant” strains (another possibility repeatedly denied by Dr. Tony Fauci and other top health officials until it finally became a reality), Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York affirmed earlier that the state’s positivity rate had fallen to its lowest level since November (though Cuomo is also now embroiled in a worsening scandal over allegedly lying about COVID deaths in NY’s nursing homes.

    “We know that until we have sufficient vaccine, there is the requirement to have some sort of prioritization scheme,” Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s Covid-19 czar, said in an interview.

    “The next question is, is it better to put a single dose in the arms of more people?”

    The CDC is weighing the shift, which could slow down the vaccination process, while President Biden is doing everything in his power to hit the 100MM vaccinated mark by his 100th day in office.

    While supplies have been cited in some reports, we also note demand could also become an issue as not just vaccine-skeptics, but weather-impacted travel restrictions (see Texas for example) mean there are not enough arms to jab.

    And unfortunately, it seems some states have been overwhelmed by the task of trying to get enough doses for the most urgently needed patients, all of which have forced both the FDA and CDC to “moderate” their stance about delaying the second dose.

    Though we do question the ‘science’ here? Is the science of vaccine efficacy protocols being sacrificed at the alter of inept local government logistics?

    Jesse Goodman, former chief scientist at the FDA, warned that the big fear is that letting up the gas on vaccines will let new terrible COVID mutations fester and spread.

    Still, the states likely won’t move on the official policy without a go-ahead from the Feds.

    “Our strategy for Covid constantly needs to balance what our national experts say,” he said, “but also it’s our responsibility to our citizens to make sure we’re constantly trying to push the envelope.”

    At the end of it, the message is a little muddled: Get your second COVID shot just in case any new scary COVID mutants pop up (or continue to spread), but if you can’t, don’t worry about it.

    At least, as far as vaccinations are concerned, the US is still ahead of Europe.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 20:10

  • Media Silence After Biden Removes Petitioning From White House Website
    Media Silence After Biden Removes Petitioning From White House Website

    Authored by Eric Garris via AntiWar.com,

    It appears that the ‘We the People’ petition system has been taken off the White House website. Here is an archive of what it looked like before Biden took office.

    The system has been around for many years. At any given time, hundreds of petitions were active. If you get 100,000 signatures, the White House is supposed to give an answer. You may remember that there was an active “Free Assange” petition that the Obama Administration was obligated to answer (and gave a bad answer).

    When Trump took office, he briefly discontinued it but put it back up after a media uproar.

    Now it appears the Biden White House has removed it. The website used to be here:
    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov

    This URL, as well as URLs for all currently-active petitions, just forward to the White House front page. I explored the website and could not find any mention of it. The link used to appear in both the “Contact” and “Get Involved” links, but it is gone from both.

    I have seen nothing about this in the media. When I Google “White House Petition System Down” and other similar searches, I only get 4-year-old articles about the time that Trump temporarily disabled it.

    Wikipedia says that the system was taken down the day Biden took office: On January 20 2021, the day the Inauguration of Joe Biden took place, the website’s address started redirecting to the White House’s website home address.

    AFP/Getty Image

    This is a terrible event, and it must be publicized, and Biden must be made to reverse this decision.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 19:50

  • House Hearing On GameStop Fiasco Will Focus On "Short Selling And Stock Manipulation"
    House Hearing On GameStop Fiasco Will Focus On “Short Selling And Stock Manipulation”

    In order to affect change, one has to understand the problem before them. It is by those standards we can confidently say we are near-certain that this week’s upcoming congressional hearings on the GameStop fiasco will be both a useless circus and a intellectual farce.

    But just in case we had any doubt left, the nationally televised exercise in Congressional incompetence when it comes to all things capital markets is now said to be focusing on “short selling and stock manipulation”.

    In addition to short selling and stock manipulation, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the hearing would also focus on “consumer protection, short squeezes, and the roles of ‘gamification’ of trading and social media” – which should be a hoot, considering precisely nobody in congress comprehends equity valuations, how capital markets work, what a short squeeze is – or really anything other than how to trade on inside government information. 

    The topics were reportedly sent out Monday in a “memo sent to members of the House Financial Services Committee by Democratic staff.” The memo says that the GameStop chaos “raises questions regarding whether legislators and regulators should take a closer look at existing rules governing short sales and related disclosures, as well as the conflicts between the practice of payment for order flow and firms’ best execution obligations.”

    Lest we forget, it was short sellers who were the target in the GameStop run up, not the parties who may have conspired to manipulate the price of the security artificially by buying it all at once. Though we can’t say we are surprised that Congress already appears to be off-base, before the hearing has even started.

    The memo also says: “It also raises important questions about the efficacy of anti-market manipulation laws and whether technology and social media have outpaced regulation in a manner that leaves investors and the markets exposed to unnecessary risks.”

    Short seller Jim Chanos weighed in earlier today with his response to Vlad Tenev, who is reportedly hiding out in a hotel and has been getting on our nerves, as we noted over the weekend. 

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

    Other traders were…well, less than optimistic about the hearing’s ability to affect change. 

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

    We think one trader has the right idea of how to watch the hearing:

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

    Other traders showed their unending confidence in Maxine Waters’ ability to comprehend the situation.

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

    And of course, the main focus of this hearing shouldn’t be “evil short sellers”, but rather Citadel’s cozy and relatively unknown relationship with Robinhood and why Robinhood, who positions itself as an app for the little guy while funneling orders to Citadel in exchange for cash, didn’t have the liquidity to perform its basic functions when market participants all threw their hat in the same ring.

    You can read our entire explanation of just how cozy Robinhood and Citadel are – and, more importantly, how they make their money, here. 

    As for our thoughts on the hearing? We think the Chez Quis Maitre D’ said it best.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 19:30

  • Surge In Anti-Asian-American Violence Prompts NYC Restaurateurs To Take Action
    Surge In Anti-Asian-American Violence Prompts NYC Restaurateurs To Take Action

    Authored by Tanay Warerkar via NY.Eater.com,

    A group of prominent Asian-American chefs and restaurants owners in New York – who represent some of the top restaurants in the city including Málà Project, Fish Cheeks, and Nowon – have teamed up to raise awareness about the recent rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, particularly the elderly, in the United States.

    Heart of Dinner’s Yin Chang (left) and Moonlyn Tsai packaging meals for elderly Asian Americans,  Dan Ahn [Official]

    The effort, called #EnoughIsEnough, was spearheaded by Eric Sze, chef and owner of East Village Taiwanese restaurant 886, who says he was prompted to take action after seeing videos of attacks on older Asian Americans in the Bay Area last week and how he felt that it hadn’t been covered enough by the mainstream media in the U.S. in the immediate aftermath. The campaign has already raised more than $4,000 as of this morning.

    Sze reached out to a bunch of his friends in the restaurant industry and together the group decided that they would focus on donating meals to homeless shelters, particularly those located in areas like Chinatown with a large Asian-American population, and parts of Harlem and the Bronx, which have larger Black and brown populations.

    The group is currently raising funds through an online campaign and was initially hoping to raise $10,000 to serve 1,000 meals on February 23 and 24. The fundraised blew past the $10,000 mark in just two and half hours, according to Sze, and group has since increased the ask to $20,000, with plans to double the number of meals served as well. Some of the organizations they’ve identified so far for meal distribution include the Bowery Mission, the Bronx Family Shelter, and Welcome to Chinatown.

    Yin Chang ( extreme left) and Moonlyn Tsai delivering meals to an older Asian American couple during the pandemic,  Alex Lau [Official]

    Kopitiam co-owner Moonlyn Tsai, who along with her girlfriend Yin Chang runs Heart of Dinner, will be leading the meal delivery efforts in Chinatown on February 24. During the early months of the pandemic, Tsai and Chang’s organization was at the forefront of delivering meals to the elderly Asian population in Chinatown, many of whom were homebound and weren’t receiving culturally appropriate meals. Heart of Dinner will be doing much of the same in a couple of weeks, utilizing its existing network, and delivering 500 meals to the Chinese American Planning Council, Hamilton Madison House, and Nanoom House, in total, along with some direct deliveries to people’s homes.

    “It is really heartwarming to see a community banding together through food,” says Tsai, adding that she was particularly heartened that her friends in the restaurant industry came together so quickly despite most of them facing challenges operating their restaurants during the pandemic.

    An additional 500 meals will go to shelters in Harlem and the Bronx. In addition to the meal donations, the group is also organizing virtual cooking classes with chefs like Helen Nguyen of the modern Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Social, and Lucas Sin from Junzi Kitchen that will take place on February 22. Called the “Lunar Banquet for Uncle Vicha,” the event recognizes not the just the start of the Lunar New Year but is also aimed at honoring the memory of Vicha Ratanapakdee, the 84-year-old San Franciscan, who died after he was pushed by a teenager onto the pavement.

    The campaign honors the memory of 84-year-old San Franciscan Vicha Ratanapakdee, who died after a teenager pushed him on to the pavement,  Jonathan D. Chang [Official]

    The chefs will be utilizing Essex Pearl’s kitchen at the Market Line on the Lower East Side to film the cooking demonstrations, and details for those classes will be emailed to folks after they make a donation to the campaign.

    Others like Amelie Kang, the owner of Málà Project, and Sakura Yagi, of T.I.C. Restaurant Group, are planning to raise awareness about the rise in hate crimes through their restaurants’ and personal Instagram accounts.

    One part of this coordinated effort is to raise awareness so more mainstream media outlets will increase coverage of crimes against Asian Americans. The New York City Police Department created a Asian Hate Crimes Task Force last year in response to a major spike in verbal and physical assaults toward Asian Americans during the pandemic; earlier on in the pandemic, several Chinese restaurants in the city reported vandalism and harassment shortly after the state-mandated shutdown in March last year. Even before the shutdown, Chinese restaurants in the city were already seeing a massive drop in sales due to xenophobia and misinformation spreading about the virus.

    [ZH: As an awkward reminder, while some would like to push the narrative that Trump’s rhetoric against China is responsible for the recent attacks, Black-on-Asian violence isn’t a new thing, and has been documented in the Bay area for more than a decade. Raising the question, are we supposed to believe that black thugs have been taking direction from former President Trump (who received just 12% of the black vote).]

    In March last year, Russell Jeung, a professor at the San Francisco State University teaching Asian-American studies created a tool to track hate-related incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. By the end of last year, it had recorded more than 2,800 incidents that were self-reported, according to USA Today.

    Eric Sze preparing meals for hospital workers earlier in the pandemic, 886 [Official]

    Another part of the campaign, however, is to encourage other Asian Americans to speak out about incidents or harassment and to encourage others in the Asian American community to start similar initiatives.

    “We want to empower people who feel like their opinions don’t matter,” says Sze.

    “Sometimes in Asian cultures it’s nailed into your head that your voice doesn’t matter and that you have to conform. But this needs to change and we need to inspire more people to speak out, not just in the food industry, but in the fashion industry, and in tech as well.”

    For now, Sze and the rest of the group are focussed on the meal delivery aspect of the initiative and are continuing to raise funds for the effort. Details for the potential Instagram neighborhood food tours will follow in the near future.

    Here’s a full list of the restaurants participating in this effort:

    • 886
    • Junzi
    • Nguyen Coffee Supply
    • Fishcheeks
    • Saigon Social
    • Mala Project
    • Heart of Dinner
    • Double Chicken Please
    • Win Son
    • Nowon
    • Madame Vo
    • Ho Foods
    • Bessou
    • Very Fresh Noodles
    • Di An Di
    • Patisserie Fouet
    • Milk & Cream Cereal Bar
    • Feed Forward
    • Aqua Best
    • Essex Pearl
    • T.I.C Restaurant Group (Rai Rai Ken, Shabu Tatsu, Cha An, etc)
    • Southeast Asia Food Group

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 19:10

  • Kraft Heinz, Conagra Will Start Passing On Soaring Food Costs To Consumers
    Kraft Heinz, Conagra Will Start Passing On Soaring Food Costs To Consumers

    Stagflation for the masses?

    Cost of living is about to soar and all the average joe has to cover it is a $1400 check from Uncle Joe.

    Late last year we noted that SocGen’s Albert Edwards warning readers that it could be time to start “panicking” about soaring food prices. 

    Edwards’ research said, “keep a very close eye as to whether we see a repeat of the 2010/11 surge in food prices” because “on the 10th anniversary of the start of the Arab Spring, and with poverty having already been made much worse by the pandemic, another food price bubble could well be the straw to break the very angry camel’s back.”

    While it’s not quite the spring of 2021 just yet, there are indications that soaring food costs are about to get passed on to consumers – this is terrible news for working-poor folks who are already suffering from housing and food insecurities. 

    According to Reuters, Kraft Heinz Co and Conagra Brands Inc warned Tuesday that price increases of wheat, sugar, and other commodities are becoming more expensive due to elevated demand. 

    Conagra executives told Reuters that increased prices for edible oils, pork and eggs, and packaging might force it to pass it along to consumers in the form of higher prices. 

    Kraft Heinz CEO Miguel Patricio said inflation is everywhere in the agri complex.

    He said inflation in “everything related to grains” is being observed, and it may result in price increases of some categories, including mac and cheese and mayonnaise, later this year. 

    Is it time to worry about food inflation? 

    According to Edwards, the answer is “yes.” 

    In December’s CPI print, food inflation was very notable on Jan. 13. The report said:

    The food at home index increased 3.9 percent over the past 12 months. All six major grocery store food group indexes increased over the period. The largest increase was the meats, poultry, fish, and eggs index which rose 4.6 percent as the beef index increased 5.3 percent. The smallest increases were for the cereals and bakery products and the fruits and vegetables indexes, which both increased 3.2 percent over the last 12 months. The index for food away from home rose 3.9 percent over the last year. The index for limited service meals rose 6.0 percent and the index for full service meals rose 3.0 percent over the span.

    Also, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index rose for a seventh consecutive month in December, led by dairy products and vegetable oils. 

    So, as the surge in global food prices remains anything but transitory, major food producers are set to pass on those food costs for consumers at a time when millions of them can barely afford rent and or feed their families. 

    Of course, while food prices are surging around the world, the well-managed signals in official inflation data remains relatively low… enabling central planners to keep the spigots wide open (no matter what the consequences).

    As we noted previously, while central bankers walk around with their heads in the clouds, a team at C+R Research has surveyed more than 2,000 American consumers to find out how they have “adjusted” to these higher prices, which have come amid a surge in unemployment. Their findings aren’t all that surprising: 85% of consumers said that their budgets had been impacted by having to pay more for groceries. Milk, eggs and meat are the top staples that Americans are paying more for.

    And given the headlines today, things are about to get even worse.

    To sum up, prepare for major food companies to start jacking up food prices. We assume this will not sit well in the stomachs of already-broke consumers. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 18:50

  • Trump Declares War On Mitch McConnell, Calls Him "A Dour, Sullen, And Unsmiling Political Hack"
    Trump Declares War On Mitch McConnell, Calls Him “A Dour, Sullen, And Unsmiling Political Hack”

    Donald Trump has some choice words for Senate Mitch McConnell (R-KY), after the Senate Minority Leader voted to acquit the former president, only to go on a tirade on the Senate floor (followed by a Wall Street Journal interview) in which he blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 incursion into the US Capitol by Trump supporters.

    “They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth—because he was angry he’d lost an election,” said McConnell. “Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

    McConnell also blames Trump for the GOP losing control of the Senate in January after two GOP candidates lost their races after failing to support Trump’s multiple challenges to the 2020 US election. “We all know why that occurred,” McConnell told the Journal on Monday.

    Trump is having none of it, writing in a scathing Tuesday letter that “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”

    “McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse.”

    He also suggested that the McConnell family’s “substantial Chinese holdings” give him “no credibility on China.”

    The former president also had some thoughts on Georgia, which he said was a “complete election disaster,” in which “McConnell did nothing, and will never do what needs to be done to secure a fair and just electoral system into the future. He doesn’t have what it takes, he never did, and never will.“

    Trump’s only regret? That he backed McConnell after the Kentucky Senator “begged” for his support – without which Trump says McConnell would have lost. “He went from one point down to 20 points up, and won,” said the former president, adding “How quickly he forgets.“

    Read below:

    Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

    The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political “leaders” like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm. McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle—they’ve never had it so good—and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last.

    In 2020, I received the most votes of any sitting President in history, almost 75,000,000. Every incumbent House Republican won for the first time in decades, and we flipped 15 seats, almost costing Nancy Pelosi her job. Republicans won majorities in at least 59 of the 98 partisan legislative chambers, and the Democrats failed to flip a single legislative chamber from red to blue. And in “Mitch’s Senate,” over the last two election cycles, I single-handedly saved at least 12 Senate seats, more than eight in the 2020 cycle alone—and then came the Georgia disaster, where we should have won both U.S. Senate seats, but McConnell matched the Democrat offer of $2,000 stimulus checks with $600. How does that work? It became the Democrats’ principal advertisement, and a big winner for them it was. McConnell then put himself, one of the most unpopular politicians in the United States, into the advertisements. Many Republicans in Georgia voted Democrat, or just didn’t vote, because of their anguish at their inept Governor, Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and the Republican Party, for not doing its job on Election Integrity during the 2020 Presidential race.

    It was a complete election disaster in Georgia, and certain other swing states. McConnell did nothing, and will never do what needs to be done in order to secure a fair and just electoral system into the future. He doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will.

    My only regret is that McConnell “begged” for my strong support and endorsement before the great people of Kentucky in the 2020 election, and I gave it to him. He went from one point down to 20 points up, and won. How quickly he forgets. Without my endorsement, McConnell would have lost, and lost badly. Now, his numbers are lower than ever before, he is destroying the Republican side of the Senate, and in so doing, seriously hurting our Country.

    Likewise, McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings. He does nothing on this tremendous economic and military threat.

    Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership.

    Prior to the pandemic, we produced the greatest economy and jobs numbers in the history of our Country, and likewise, our economic recovery after Covid was the best in the world. We cut taxes and regulations, rebuilt our military, took care of our Vets, became energy independent, built the wall and stopped the massive inflow of illegals into our Country, and so much more. And now, illegals are pouring in, pipelines are being stopped, taxes will be going up, and we will no longer be energy independent.

    This is a big moment for our country, and we cannot let it pass by using third rate “leaders” to dictate our future!

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 18:30

  • Berkshire Reveals New Positions In Chevron, Verizon; Exits JPM; Trims Apple, Wells: Full 13F Summary
    Berkshire Reveals New Positions In Chevron, Verizon; Exits JPM; Trims Apple, Wells: Full 13F Summary

    Ahead of today’s 13F filing by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, rumors were rife that the Omaha billionaire would unveil a stake in Exxon or some other oil major. Well, the rumors were this close to being correct because instead of Exxon, Berkshire just filed 13F indicating that as of Dec 31, 2020 – in which it revealed stock holdings amounting to $270BN – it owned $4.1 billion or 48.5 million shares of the 2nd largest US major, Chevron, which it had accumulated previously in secret, sparking a 3% jump in its shares. Those wondering if and how much Exxon shares were purchased by Berkshire will have to wait another three months.

    Among the other most notable changes, Berkshire trimmed its Apple holdings by 6.4% from 947.5 million share to 887.1 million. The reduction left Berkshire with Apple stock valued $120 billion at the end of 2020, according to another filing.

    Berkshire also unveiled a sizable new position in Verizon (146.7MM shares which were worth $8.6BN on Dec 31) and a smaller new holding in insurer Marsh & Mclennan ($500MM stake for 4.3 million share). Curiously, these new positions had been granted confidential status and not revealed in a third-quarter regulatory filing, according to an updated document released Tuesday, which means that Buffett started as accumulating the shares in the 3rd quarter

    While Berkshire added to its stake in BoNY, T-Mobile and Kroger, the company also shifted a recent bet on drugmakers by increasing its a stake in Merck (+28.1%), Abbvie (+20.1%) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (+11.2%) while exiting completely a recent investment in Pfizer.  Buffett’s conglomerate also cut a few bank holdings, exiting JPMorgan, PNC Financial and M&T Bank while slashing its Wells Fargo & Co. stake by 58.8%. The company also trimmed its investment in General Motors cutting that holding by 7.5MM shares to a stake valued at roughly $3 billion at the end of the fourth quarter.

    Amusingly, after causing ripples in the precious metal market last year when Berkshire revealed a modest stake in gold miner Barrick Gold, in Q4 Berkshire completely exited said holding. As Bloomberg notes, “the investment was a surprise when it was revealed last year, given Buffett’s years of chiding the precious metal.”

    A full breakdown of Berkshire’s Q4 13F is below:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 18:08

  • Hello Clean Energy Advocates, What Do We Do When The Wind Turbines Are All Frozen?
    Hello Clean Energy Advocates, What Do We Do When The Wind Turbines Are All Frozen?

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    The wholesale price of electricity spikes 10,000% in a Texas power outage. Among other problems, the wind turbines are all frozen.

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

    Wholesale Price of Electricity Spikes 10,000% 

    As a background on the clean energy debate, please consider The Wholesale Price of Electricity Spikes 10,000% in Texas Power Outage.

    Let’s discuss wind turbines, natural gas, and coal.

    A Deep Green Freeze

    The Wall Street Journal editorial board says “Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas—and coal.” 

    I agree with some of what they say and disagree with parts of it as well.

    Please consider A Deep Green Freeze by the WSJ. 

    Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them. 

    A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves. Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

    Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”

    Wind’s share has tripled to about 25% since 2010 and accounted for 42% of power last week before the freeze set in. About half of Texans rely on electric pumps for heating, which liberals want to mandate everywhere. But the pumps use a lot of power in frigid weather. So while wind turbines were freezing, demand for power was surging.

    California progressives long ago banished coal. But a heat wave last summer strained the state’s power grid as wind flagged and solar ebbed in the evenings. After imposing rolling blackouts, grid regulators resorted to importing coal power from Utah and running diesel emergency generators.

    Liberals claim that prices of renewables and fossil fuels are now comparable, which may be true due to subsidies, but they are no free lunch, as this week’s energy emergency shows. The Biden Administration’s plan to banish fossil fuels is a greater existential threat to Americans than climate change.

    Greater Existential Threat 

    The Journal claims “The Biden Administration’s plan to banish fossil fuels is a greater existential threat to Americans than climate change.”

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

    I agree 100%. 

    But what to do about it? 

    Clean Energy

    I am a big fan of natural gas and believe it is clean energy. The byproduct of burning natural gas is carbon dioxide and water. 

    Neither is a pollutant in any way shape or form. Plants even need carbon dioxide to survive. 

    Coal is another matter. 

    Burning coal releases SO2 and NOx pollutants that cause Acid Rain, huge respiratory problems and will devastate forests.

    If the atmosphere is polluted with sulfur dioxide (SO2) or nitrogen oxides (NOx), rain becomes oxidized by ozone (O3) or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to form H2SO4 or HNO3 before falling to the ground. They are known respectively as sulfuric and nitric acid. 

    Acid rain will dissolve panty hose on the spot.

    There is a huge difference between burning coal and burning natural gas.

    Anti-Coal, Pro-Natural Gas

    For environmental reasons, I am anti-coal but very much in favor of Natural Gas. 

    Problems arise as happened last year in California and this week in Texas when pressure to eliminate all carbon wins over common sense. 

    Where is the CO2 Coming From? 

    CO2 Stats

    • Please note that the US reduced its carbon footprint from 6.13 billion tons in 2007 to 5.28 billion tons in 2019.
    • Meanwhile, China increased its footprint from 6.86 billion tons in 2019 to 10.17 billion tons in 2019.
    • In the same timeframe, global output rose from 31.29 billion tons to 36.44 billion tons.
    • In 2007, the US accounted for 19.6% of the total global carbon footprint.
    • In 2019, the US accounted for only 14.5% of the total global footprint.

    Wind Not Reliable

    Wind is not a reliable source, as we have just proven in spades, twice over. 

    Yet, despite the facts that US carbon output is shrinking and the US only accounted for  14.5% of the total global footprint, the absurd push to eliminate all US carbon presses on.

    John Kerry’s Straw Man Climate Arguments

    John Kerry is Biden’s climate czar.

    He blamed 4 hurricanes on climate change as if throwing any amount of money at the alleged problem would have stopped the hurricanes.

    For discussion, please see Kerry’s Straw Man Argument for Wasting Money on Climate Change

    GM to Phase Out Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035, Carbon Neutral by 2040

    One day after Kerry’s ridiculous rant, I noted GM to Phase Out Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035, Carbon Neutral by 2040.

    Assuming one believes CO2 is a problem, this is the way problems are solved.

    GM is not doing this to save the world, it is doing this because market forces mandate a change.

    Similarly, solar power will come into play as storage technology improves.

    The free market, not populist ideas will solve real world problems.

    $90 Trillion Solutions 

    In 2015, Business Insider noted A Plan Is Floating Around Davos To Spend $90 Trillion Redesigning All The Cities So They Don’t Need Cars

    The $90 trillion proposal came from former US vice president Al Gore, former president of Mexico Felipe Calderon, and their colleagues on The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. 

    “We cannot have these cities with low density, designed for the use of cars,” he said. “We recommend those cities should have more density and more mass transportation.” Together with a program for reforming land use, and bringing deforestation to zero, the total cost of this plan would most likely be $90 trillion in future investment, Calderon said.

    AOC’s New Green Deal

    Also recall AOC’s Green New Deal Pricetag of $51 to $93 Trillion vs. Cost of Doing Nothing.

    A Word About Cherry Picking Data

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

    On February 3, I noted Climate Change Moves to the Forefront of Biden’s Legislation

    “It’s long past time for the Senate to take a leading role in combating the existential threat of our time: climate,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

    The “existential threat” is politicians seeking $90 trillion solutions to hyped-up problems, not natural gas.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/16/2021 – 17:50

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 16

Today’s News 16th February 2021

  • World Won't Be Adequately Vaccinated From COVID-19 Until 2027: Specialist
    World Won’t Be Adequately Vaccinated From COVID-19 Until 2027: Specialist

    Authored by Jessie Zhang via The Epoch Times,

    An Australian infectious disease physician said it would take six years for the world to be adequately vaccinated against the CCP virus, so vaccines must be shared with developing countries to avoid “more sinister” strains emerging.

    Infectious diseases specialist and Australian National University lecturer Sanjaya Senanayake said about 70 countries have signed up for vaccination programmes. Presently, he estimates that the goal won’t be met in a year or two.

    “At the current rate of vaccination it is estimated we won’t reach global coverage of 75 percent with vaccines for about six years,” Dr Senanayake told the National Press Club on Feb. 10.

    “If we continue this global vaccine rollout while in other parts of the world infection continues unchecked, then we will see more sinister strains emerge which might have further impacts on vaccine efficacy.”

    Infectious Disease Physician Sanjaya Senanayake, Epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws and Honorary Professor of Paediatrics Robert Booy at the National Press Club in Canberra, Wednesday, February 10, 2021. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

    South Africa halted its rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine after a small-scale trial showed it gave minimal protection of merely 10 percent against the South African variant.

    But paediatrician Robert Booy said the trial was based on 2,000 people and was, in effect, not a concern to Australia.

    “We need better studies in larger numbers over longer periods of time,” he said.

    “Then we’ll have a better understanding whether this vaccine is a problem for the South African variant or not.”

    Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly also downplayed the reports, saying they were based on a small group of people in a study not yet peer-reviewed nor published.

    “At the moment, I can absolutely say … there’s no evidence anywhere in the world AstraZeneca effectiveness against severe infection is affected by any of these variants of concern,” Kelly told reporters in Canberra last Tuesday.

    Despite ambitious plans, mutant variants of CCP virus will delay the progress of vaccinating the world. Both the UK and South African variants have been spread in Australia’s hotel quarantine since Jan. 7.

    Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack confirmed on Monday that the first shipment of Pfizer vaccines is on schedule to arrive by the end of February.

    The government is also discussing the prospects of a nationwide effort in making jabs available to Australians before the end of October.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 23:30

  • Minneapolis Quietly Spends Millions To Hire More Cops Amid Ongoing "Defund Police" Campaign
    Minneapolis Quietly Spends Millions To Hire More Cops Amid Ongoing “Defund Police” Campaign

    It seems like just yesterday that the Minneapolis PD (along with city leadership) were abandoning the city’s third precinct to a chaotic mob assembled in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

    Not even nine months later – has led to a surge in violent crime as the city struggles from its largest wave of defections in history.

    Who could have seen that coming?

    While hundreds of thousands of Minneapolis residents have been left to struggle with the consequences, the city’s police department is quietly rushing to hire dozens of new officers (all of whom meet new conduct standards devised by the department and city leadership). City leadership has voted to spend $6.4MM on a “recruiting campaign” to hire new officers, after the city’s “available for service” headcount plummeted to 638 officers “available”, roughly 200 short of the average headcount from before the riots, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.

    Even though three members of the city council voted to defund the department in the aftermath of last year’s unrest, the council quietly, and unanimously, approved the money requested by the department.

    An unprecedented number of officers quit or went on extended medical leave after Floyd’s death and the unrest that followed. With its incoming recruiting class, the city anticipates that it will have a total of 674 officers available to service by the end of the year, with another 28 in the hiring process.

    Days before this most recent City Council vote, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo promised an “update” to the application process for police recruits to include questions about whether they have have lived in Minneapolis, have degrees in criminology, social work, psychology or counseling, and whether they volunteer or participate in programs such as the Police Activities League. Deputy Police Chief Amelia Huffman said the department leadership hopes the change “will help us to really feel confident that we are recruiting the kinds of candidates we want right from the beginning.”

    Meanwhile, as Mayor Frey continues his pleas to the city council not to de-fund the department (since that could create some pretty serious quality of life concerns in his city, like, well, anarchy and chaos, even with the bad winter weather gripping the US) Minneapolis has seen a surge in violent crime in a pattern that has plagued other protest-torn cities (some have dubbed it “the Ferguson Effect” after the small St. Louis suburb where Michael Brown was killed).

    In addition to the funding for the recruitment campaign, the city also authorized a nearly $230K contract with risk management company Hillard Heintze, which is expected to produce a report analyzing the city’s response to the rioting that followed Floyd’s death.

    And what’s more, “grass roots” campaigns seeking to collect more signatures to help permanently banish the department  have taken root.

    ‘Yes 4 Minneapolis’, a coalition of local community groups, is also collecting signatures to try to get a similar proposal aimed at “defunding” the “bad” Minneapolis Police Department, and using the money to build a new department of public safety in the city, on the ballot in November. Organizers are hoping to collect 20K signatures before March 31, with non-profit money that comes from a number of places, including a half-million-dollar-grant from the George Soros-linked Open Society Policy Center.

    Incidentally, the (sure-to-be highly publicized) trial of police officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with second-degree murder in Floyd’s killing, and three officers charged with abetting murder, is set to start next month.

    Unfortunately for the department, we doubt Chauvin’s trial will help morale – rather, it will likely serve as a potent counter-narrative for anybody even thinking about joining the department.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 23:00

  • Johnstone: Conspiracy Theories Are Caused By Government Secrecy
    Johnstone: Conspiracy Theories Are Caused By Government Secrecy

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    The DC Circuit has ruled that the CIA is under no obligation to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests pertaining to its involvement with insurgent militias in Syria, overturning a lower court’s previous ruling in favor of a Buzzfeed News reporter seeking such documents.

    As Sputnik’s Morgan Artyukhina clearly outlines, this ruling comes despite the fact that mainstream news outlets have been reporting on the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities in Syria for years, and despite a US president having openly tweeted about those activities.

    “In other words, the CIA will not be required to admit to actions it is widely reported as having done, much less divulge documents about them to the press for even greater scrutiny,” Artyukhina writes, calling to mind the Julian Assange quote “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”

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    The CIA’s brazen collaboration with dangerous extremist factions seeking to topple Damascus, and its equally brazen refusal to provide the public with any information about the extent of its involvement in Syria from the earliest stages of the violence in that nation onwards, will necessarily provide fodder for conspiracy theories.

    It is public knowledge that the CIA was involved in the Syrian war to some extent, it is public knowledge that the CIA has a well-documented history of doing extremely evil things, and it is public knowledge that the US government has long sought control over Syria. Due to the agency’s refusal to be transparent about the exact nature of its involvement in that nation, people are left to fill in the knowledge gaps with their own speculation.

    Of course they will do this. Why wouldn’t they? Why would anyone give the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering, psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency the benefit of the doubt and assume their actions in Syria have been benevolent just because the hard facts have been hidden behind a wall of government secrecy?

    Yet they will be expected to. Anyone with a sufficient degree of influence who comes right out and says the CIA knowingly armed violent jihadists with the goal of orchestrating regime change in Syria will be attacked as a crazy conspiracy theorist by the narrative managers of the establishment media. If their words are really disruptive to establishment narratives, there will be calls to deplatform, unemploy, and ban them from social media.

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    And really such is the case with all the melodramatic garment rending about the dangers of conspiracy theories today. All the fixation on the way unregulated speech on the internet has contributed to the circulation of conspiracy theories conveniently ignores the real cause of those theories: government secrecy.

    If the most powerful government in the world were not hiding a massive amount of its behavior behind increasingly opaque walls of secrecy, people would not need to fill in the gaps with theories about what’s happening, because there would be no gaps; they would simply see what’s happening.

    “But Caitlin!” one might object. “How could America engage in all its military operations around the world if it didn’t keep information about its behaviors a secret?”

    Exactly, my smooth-brained friend. Exactly.

    Government secrecy is indeed necessary for winning wars. Government secrecy is also necessary for starting those wars in the first place. US government agencies have an extensive history of using false pretenses to initiate military conflicts; if they could not hide the facts behind a veil of government opacity, the public would never engage in them. The American people would never have allowed their sons to go to Vietnam if they’d known the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie. They’d never have sent their sons and daughters to invade Iraq if they’d known weapons of mass destruction were a lie. They would lose the support of the public, and the international community would refuse to back them.

    Protecting the lives of foreign military and intelligence personnel is the primary argument against government transparency in the United States, a premise which takes it for granted that there need to be foreign military and intelligence personnel at all. The only reason the lives of troops and intelligence officers would be endangered without massive walls of government secrecy is because those personnel are out there facilitating imperialist acts of mass murder and tyranny. The argument is essentially “Well we can’t tell you the truth about what’s happening in our government, because it would mean we’d have to stop doing extremely evil things.”

    The argument that the internet needs strict censorship to eliminate dangerous conspiracy theories takes it as a given that simply eliminating government secrecy is impossible, which in turn takes it as a given that the US government cannot simply stop inflicting grave evils around the world. Our ability to share information with each other online is therefore ultimately being increasingly choked off by monopolistic Silicon Valley megacorporations because no one in charge can fathom the idea of the United States government ceasing to butcher human beings around the world.

    That is the real underlying argument over internet censorship today. Should people have free access to information about what their own government is doing, or should their government be permitted to do evil things in secret while people who form theories about what they’re doing are shoved further and further away from audibility? That’s the real debate here.

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    The powerful should not be permitted to keep secrets from the public. They should not be permitted to jail journalists who try to reveal those secrets to the public, and they should not be permitted to collaborate with monopolistic corporations to censor people who form theories about those secrets. The amount of secrecy you are entitled to should be directly inverse to the amount of power that you have.

    The US government has powerful agencies whose literal job is to conspire. The fact that people are punished and condemned for forming theories about how that conspiring might take place, even while those agencies are completely lacking in transparency, is abusive.

    If the government was not doing evil things in secret, then it wouldn’t need secrecy. If the government didn’t have secrecy, there would be no conspiracy theories. Stop pointing your attacks at powerless people who are just trying to figure out what’s going on in the world amidst a sea of government secrecy and propaganda, and point your attacks instead at the power structures that are actually responsible for the existence of conspiracy theories in the first place.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! 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 Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDF for five bucks) or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. 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
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 22:30

  • Hyundai's New Robocar Can Drive And Walk 
    Hyundai’s New Robocar Can Drive And Walk 

    Flying taxis, delivery drones, and other automated vehicles have been designed to boost economic activity and transform economies in metro areas. Very few companies have focused on new technologies and applied them for extreme environments, like in rural areas or the Moon. 

    Hyundai Motor Group is changing all that. With operations based out of its New Horizons Studio in California, the South Korean multinational automotive manufacturer has designed a robocar that is not just four-wheel-drive but can also walk to maneuver the world’s most challenging terrain. 

    Called the TIGER X-1, the intelligent ground excursion robot is designed to carry payloads, not humans. It’s based on a “modular platform architecture. It features include a sophisticated leg and wheel locomotion system, 360-degree directional control, and a range of sensors for remote observation,” according to a company press release. 

    Researchers at New Horizons Studio have partnered with U.S. firms Autodesk and Sundberg-Ferar to accelerate TIGER X-1’s development. 

    Applications for TIGER X-1 could include 360-degree surface evaluation in natural disaster areas while also carrying critical payloads to remote locations. 

    “Working closely with the team at Hyundai on the TIGER X-1 vehicle, using advanced technology such as generative design to push the boundaries of increasing strength while reducing weight in transportation, is exactly what we mean when we talk about creating the new possible,” said Srinath Jonnalagadda, Vice President of Business Strategy for Design and Manufacturing at Autodesk. 

    David Byron, Manager of Design and Innovation Strategy at Sundberg-Ferar, said the “the efficiency of wheeled motion with the articulation of a quadruped to expand the possibility of reaching more remote locations.” He said, “TIGER is a modular platform design allowing different bodies to be attached to the chassis for unique applications such as cargo delivery or surveillance in locations not suitable for humans.”

    Hyundai said TIGER X-1 even could explore the moon or other planet. 

    Hyundai has also purchased a $1.1 billion controlling stake in Boston Dynamics, and there’s still no world if dystopian robot dogs and TIGER X-1 vehicle will be integrated. 

    As for now, Hyundai has made no effort to hide its interest in robotics. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 22:00

  • What Did Pelosi Know, & When? Bipartisan Support Builds For 9/11-Style Commission On Capitol Riot
    What Did Pelosi Know, & When? Bipartisan Support Builds For 9/11-Style Commission On Capitol Riot

    Via Planet Free Will News,

    Bipartisan support for a 9/11-style commission to further investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has grown bipartisan support with lawmakers urging such a body to get to the root cause of the events that day.

    “I’d like to know, did the Capitol Hill police inform the House sergeant at arms and the Senate sergeant at arms the day before the attack that they needed more troops?” Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Sunday after mentioning he believed there was a preplanned element to the highly publicized actions that took place.

    “We need to look at did Nancy Pelosi know on January 5 that there was a threat to the Capitol…

    What did President Trump do after the attack… 

    We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” he continued.

    Graham would add that the preplanned element had no connection to former president Donald Trump’s speech during a rally earlier that day.

    Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who unlike Graham, voted to convict the former president during the impeachment trial, also called for a 9/11-style commission, telling ABC over the weekend that “there should be a complete investigation about what happened.”

    “I think there should be a complete investigation about what happened on Jan. 6. Why was there not more law enforcement, National Guard already mobilized, what was known, who knew it, and when they knew it, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again in the future,” Cassidy said.

    On the other side of the aisle, Democrat Senator Dennis Coons also vocalized support for such a commission, telling ABC “there’s still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear.”

    “A 9/11 commission is a way that we make sure that we secure the Capitol going forward and that we lay bare the record of just how responsible and how abjectly violating of his constitutional oath president Trump really was,” Coons said on Sunday.

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    Democrat House impeachment manager Rep. Madeleine Dean also appeared on the same ABC news program Sunday, saying:

    “Of course, there must be a full commission and impartial commission, not guided by politics, but filled with people who would stand up to the courage of their conviction, like Dr. Cassidy.”

    The growing calls for the commission preceded the failure of the Senate to obtain the 67-vote threshold to convict Trump on inciting an insurrection as charged in the House’s article of impeachment.

    A 9/11-style commission is in reference to the bipartisan body set up in the wake of the collapse of the 3 World Trade Center buildings in New York in 2001. The commission’s goal was to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 21:30

  • Largest US Museum Considers Dumping Art At Auction To Fund $150 Million Shortfall
    Largest US Museum Considers Dumping Art At Auction To Fund $150 Million Shortfall

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, otherwise known as “Met,” which happens to be the largest art museum in the US, is facing a massive shortfall of $150 million because the virus pandemic has resulted in a dramatic reduction in ticket sales, according to the NYTimes. 

    “This is the time when we need to keep our options open,”Max Hollein, Met’s director, said. “None of us have a full perspective on how the pandemic will play out. It would be inappropriate for us not to consider it, when we’re still in this foggy situation.”

    Like many museums, Met is under extreme financial distress, and thanks to the Association of Art Museum Directors, a professional group that manages its members’ best practices, a two-year window has opened up where proceeds from art sales can be directed to fund operations instead of only for future art purchases. 

    The Brooklyn Museum was the first to dump $31 million of art at auctions last fall to fund its budget shortfalls. Later in the year, the Baltimore Museum of Art followed suit and sold millions of dollars of art, including paintings by Brice Marden, Clyfford Still, and Andy Warhol, to fund operations. 

    Former director of the Met, Thomas Campbell, took to Instagram over the weekend to show his disgust at Met’s management to even consider selling art. 

    Here’s what Campbell had to say:

    “Disconcerted to read that The Met is considering deaccessioning art to support operating expenses. While I know as well as anyone the complexity of running that behemoth, and I have great sympathy for those in the driving seat, I fear that this is a slippery path.” 

    It remains to be seen what collection of artwork the Met is willing to dump at auction. 

    “Every museum in the US is having these conversations,” Hollein said. “‘Do we want to use this window? What would it mean for the institution? What would it mean for the collection?’ For us not to discuss this now would be irresponsible.

    A warning shot was fired by the American Alliance of Museums late last year, who reported that at least a third of directors of 760 museums said there was a “significant risk” of closing operations within 16 months. 

    Several months ago, referring to the museum downturn, we asked this question: “Does that mean cheap art is about the hit auction houses and reverse lofty prices? ” 

    … and perhaps to answer the question above, that could certainly be the case today. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 21:00

  • UC Berkeley Reverses Its Absurd Ban On Outdoor Exercise
    UC Berkeley Reverses Its Absurd Ban On Outdoor Exercise

    Authored by Thomas Lifson via AmericanThinker.com,

    Five days after instituting an embarrassing ban on students exercising outdoors, the University of California, Berkeley, reversed itself and reinstated the ability of 2000 students isolated in dorm rooms to leave them for the purpose of exercise. Angela Ruggiero of the San Jose Mercury-News reported Friday, Feb. 12:

    UC Berkeley has reversed a ban on students exercising outdoors that was imposed earlier this week after a rise in coronavirus cases on campus.

    About 2,000 students isolated in their dorm rooms will now be allowed to exercise outside again, Cal announced on Friday afternoon. However, students are still under a strict lockdown imposed Feb. 1 that is in effect until Monday. The exercise ban went into effect this week, along with stricter restrictions as the university saw a rise in daily coronavirus cases.

    “New positive COVID-19 cases have slowed and as a result we are permitting some limited additional activities for students who are in self-sequester,” read an email sent out to students Friday.

    Only those that are not under isolation or quarantine may leave their door rooms to exercise outside during daylight hours, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Student athletes also may now leave to practice as directed and monitored by Cal Athletics.

    The exercise ban had followed on and strengthened an earlier ban on leaving dorm rooms had been imposed Feb 1, and extended on Feb 8.

    The exercise ban made national and international headlines, and elicited surprise, laughter and even scorn.

    “‘Even prisoners get to exercise!’ UC Berkeley bans solo outdoor exercise for dorm-bound students,” headlined RT.

    Campus authorities may have been embarrassed when The University of Pittsburgh published a report the day before the ban was reversed that headlined,

    “COVID-Related Depression Linked to Reduced Physical Activity”

    New research from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, San Diego, found that 61% of surveyed university students were at risk of clinical depression, a value twice the rate prior to the pandemic. This rise in depression came alongside dramatic shifts in lifestyle habits.

    “Our findings indicate the pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the rate of anxiety and depression among young adults, especially among college students. It’s disheartening to see, since it’s been well-documented, even before the pandemic, that university-age young adults are reported as experiencing more mental health issues than previous generations,” said Osea Giuntella, assistant professor of economics at Pitt and research co-author.

    There is no Hippocratic Oath for campus bureaucrats, but if there were, the injunction “First, do no harm” would certainly apply to the exercise ban. The survival rate for people in their 20s, which would include nearly all students living on dormitories, is in the upper reaches of the 99th percentile, while, the effects of depression, including suicide, are severe.

    The University claimed its initial ban and subsequent strengthening, and then 5 days later loosening of it, were based on a “spike” in on-campus cases:

    UC Berkeley saw a spike of 164 cases the week of Jan. 31, including 154 undergraduate students, according to the university’s coronavirus dashboard. The number of cases has dropped to 84 this week, as of the latest data on Thursday, when 19 more people tested positive on campus. From Sept. 10 to Thursday of this week, the university has seen a total of 757 positive cases.

    But an examination of the dashboard reveals that it counts any positive test result as a case:

    The dashboard shows the number of positive cases for tests performed at UHS. It does not include saliva tests that were performed through the Innovative Genomics Institute’s FAST Study.

    This appears to go against the WHO’s change in its definition of a case that was announced one hour after President Biden was inaugurated:

    The guidance warned against diagnosing someone as having the virus just because he tests positive if he does not present with symptoms of COVID-19. It also warned about the high risk of false positives: “The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.”

    “As disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases. The probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity,” the WHO continued.

    The University’s own dashboard reveals that the rate of positive tests on campus is lower than in the surrounding City of Berkeley, where people freely shop and move about.

    (source)

    There doesn’t appear to be a lot of science behind the drastic restrictions on students at Cal Berkeley, as locals call it. Did the campus bureaucrats panic?

    The University of California, Berkeley has a solid claim to worldwide standing as one of the leading producers of scientific research in the world. No fewer than ten Nobel laureates (all in the hard sciences and economics) currently teach on its faculty, including two 2020 laureates. But the University’s draconian reaction to the Covid has embarrassed it and diminished its luster.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 20:30

  • BofA Hints That Weimar 2.0 Could Be Coming
    BofA Hints That Weimar 2.0 Could Be Coming

    It’s no secret that BofA’s Chief Investment Officer has been warning that 2021 – the  year of the vaccine – is one where real inflation (as opposed to financial) will run amok sooner or later, and in his latest Flow Show he repeats his two main contentions about how events will play out in the coming months, namely “the velocity of people will rise” and “the velocity of money will (also) rise”.

    Addressing the first,  Hartnett writes that since the core 2021 trends will be “vaccine>virus”,  and “reopening>lockdown”, this means that human mobility will rise & macro data will surge particularly in Q2 when investors should expect US GDP >10%, EPS >20% CPI 3-4% Y/Y, or an economy in fullblown overhating mode. 

    This taken in conjunction with secular trends of bigger government, economic nationalism, fiscal excess, dollar debasement, War on Inequality, there is little wonder inflation breakevens & lead indicators are surging…

    … and that small US business price plans over next 3 months are at highest since Nov’18…

    … although whether or not they can actually achieve this is a different matter.

    Stepping into the realm of monetary policy, and specifically its velocity, BofA reminds us that in the past 12 months, the US has raked in a $3.5TN (17% GDP) budget deficit, coupled with the injection of $13.3TN in global central bank liquidity (15% GDP).

    Then, unafraid anymore to step on anyone’s toes, Hartnett admits that “as in pretty much every one of past 12 years, policy stimulus in 2020/21 continues to flow directly to Wall St not Main St, inciting historic wealth inequality via asset bubbles,” and to think of the mockery we were subject to (by random idiots) back in 2009 in later years, when we said the Fed’s actions would lead to precisely this.

    Anyway, Back fo BofA, which expects the “rising velocity of people” (vaccine>virus) in 2021 to engender rise in velocity of money, with the “inflation mutating” from Wall Street to Main Street, resulting in a pop in the nihilistic bubble.

    And here is the punchline: BofA reflects back on the post-WW1 Germany (whose armistice was on Nov 1918) as the “most epic, extreme analog of surging velocity and inflation following end of war psychology, pent-up savings, lost confidence in currency & authorities” and specifically the Reichsbank’s monetization of debt, similar of course to what is going on now.

    There is, of course, another name for that period: Weimar Germany, and because we all know what happened then, it is understandable why BofA does not want to mention that particular name.

    So what does all this mean for investing? Here is how Hartnett is positioned:

    Real assets will outperform financial assets: we believe 2020 marked secular low for rates/inflation, and 2020s likely decade of inflation assets>deflation, and real assets>financial (i.e., buy commodity-linked exposure, sell duration, tech and growth).

    And to that point, Hartnett notes that since 1950 real assets (e.g. commodities, real estate, collectibles) have a > 70% correlation with inflation vs. just 5% correlation with financial assets (stocks & bonds).

    Translation: Stanley Druckenmiller, and his “thesis trio” of…

    • short long-end Treasuries
    • very long commodities
    • “very very” short the dollar.

    … is about to make another killing.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 20:05

  • The "Second Amendment Preservation Act": Missouri Passes Bill To Nullify Federal Gun Laws
    The “Second Amendment Preservation Act”: Missouri Passes Bill To Nullify Federal Gun Laws

    Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man

    A bill introduced in the Nevada legislature, with the backing of the Governor, would allow tech companies to create new towns called “Innovation Zones.” The purpose of the zones is to provide flexibility to experiment with government, particularly related to integrating “innovative technologies.” These technologies can include blockchain, autonomous technology, the Internet of Things, robotics, artificial intelligence, wireless technology, biometrics, and renewable resources.

    The zones would have to be created on at least 50,000 acres of currently unincorporated, unoccupied land, which is owned or purchased by the company. Also, prior to applying for the Innovation Zone status, company applicants are required to make a $250 million investment in the land. And the company must commit to spending another $1 billion over the following ten years.

    What this means:

    If the bill becomes law, this would give significant freedom for Innovation Zones to try new tax and fee systems for services at a local level. Nevada does not have a state income tax, which could allow these zones to form overall low-tax jurisdictions. It could also allow some experimentation with easing licensing requirements, since the legislation allows the zone to license businesses, but does not require it— although required state licensing would be unaffected.

    Even policing and courts would fall under the responsibility of the zone, which would certainly be an interesting development, since innovations in these areas are few and far between.

    Of course, the legislation has not even passed yet. And even if it does, it will be a long time before we see any actual Innovation Zones spring up.

    Still, it’s an encouraging development to see state governments developing plans for “Special Economic Zone” type arrangements. These have been successful in bringing business, innovation, and wealth to areas which suspend typical taxes and regulations in favor of free market principles (China has had particular success with this strategy.)

    As usual, the weak point comes down to federal taxes and regulations, which would remain unchanged in the zones.

    But there are some states that have passed legislation claiming to supersede federal control over the state governments. And you can already find many of the freedoms you desire, just by wisely choosing your local and state governments.

    What you can do about it:

    Over the past year, it has largely been state and local governments elevating their public health officials to dictator status.

    Local law enforcement have been the biggest perpetrators of civil asset forfeiture and overzealous policing. It’s the local schools which may or may not try to indoctrinate your child with the woke-Marxist Black Lives Matter curriculum we talked about last week.

    But, on the other hand, it’s county Sheriffs who sometimes openly refuse to enforce what they see as unjust laws handed down by state and federal politicians.

    You could improve your life significantly by sometimes only moving one town, county, or state away.

    There are also some interesting legal and tax structures you can take advantage of at state levels.

    For example, South Dakota law allows you to create self-settled trusts, a type of irrevocable trust that can provide asset protection from frivolous lawsuits, and reduce the amount of estate taxes owed upon death. South Dakota also has no state income or capital gains tax, meaning trust assets accumulate tax-free at the state level.

    And finally, some states have taken steps to nullify the influence of the federal government in their jurisdictions.

    For example, a bill recently introduced in the South Dakota legislature would nullify Presidential Executive Orders (EOs) if the state’s attorney general determines that the EOs violate the Constitution. Specifically, this would affect unconstitutional curbs on freedom related to COVID lockdowns, the right to keep and bear arms, and land use.

    A Missouri bill intended to nullify federal gun laws recently passed in the state’s House of Representatives.

    The Senate voted 23-8 to send the bill back to the House, where it passed earlier. The House can either accept the Senate’s changes or negotiate a compromise version. Senators voted for the bill along party lines with Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition. It would declare “null and void” any past, present or future federal law deemed to be an infringement on gun rights for law-abiding citizens.

    Federal agents who knowingly enforce those laws could face civil penalties stemming from lawsuits filed by Missouri residents who think their gun rights were infringed. Those workers would also be banned from future careers in state or local enforcement.

    “We want to cause a reason for law enforcement to have a healthy pause before they might infringe on the Second Amendment rights of Missouri citizens,” said Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington.

    Other states, such as Wyoming, South Dakota, Arizona, Tennessee, Kansas, and Alaska already have some version of federal gun law nullification on the books.

    Some of these laws prevent state law enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws, while others attempt to prevent federal agencies from enforcing federal gun laws in the state. In 2011, Utah started the trend of states enacting laws which formally recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.

    Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming all have laws on the books that either recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender, or eliminate sales and capital gains taxes on gold and silver coins, or both.

    Idaho is considering legislation that would, “hold some portion of state funds in physical gold and silver to help secure state assets against the risks of inflation and financial turmoil and/or to achieve capital gains as measured in Federal Reserve Notes.”

    This all shows that certain states are taking measures to protect their citizens from federal overreach, and to help maintain stability if the US dollar rapidly loses value. Remember, $8 trillion worth of government debt matures this year alone.  And with countries like China buying less US government debt, the Federal Reserve will likely need to step in as the buyer… with freshly printed dollars. That brings us back to wise state legislators – who see the dollar devaluation that’s ahead. 

    A lot of events took place over the past year, which many people thought were impossible. So, it makes sense to be prepared for anything.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 19:40

  • Not Again; Another Winter Storm To Batter South, Midwest, And Northeast
    Not Again; Another Winter Storm To Batter South, Midwest, And Northeast

    Our weather note last Friday titled ““Overwhelming Signal” – Major Winter Storm Threats For Million Of Americans Within Next Five Days” outlined the possibilities of major winter storms from Denver to Dallas to Chicago to Cleveland to Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states through Feb. 21. 

    As a major winter storm, named Uri by The Weather Channel, continues to spread a wintery mix across the South into parts of the Midwest and Northeast through Tuesday, another cross-country storm could be developing this week. 

    Winter Storm Viola will have a similar track as Uri and bring wintry weather to cities like Dallas-Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, and Cincinnati.

    The storm will impact areas from the Northwest into the Rockies through Monday night. Already winter storm watches and warnings have been posted. 

    Accumulating snowfall is expected on Tuesday for the southern Rockies into the Southern Plains. North Texas to Oklahoma City might also see a wintery mix. Freezing rain may be seen in Texas’s central and eastern parts and northwest Louisiana. 

    Another round of wintery weather for Texas could stress the state’s power grid operator ERCOT even further. Rolling blackouts are expected to remain through Tuesday but could extend further into the week as the second winter blast is expected in the coming days. 

    The storm will spread snow across Oklahoma and northern Texas into Arkansas, Missouri, and the Ohio Valley by Wednesday. Freezing rain and sleet could impede travel on major interstates in central and eastern Texas into northern Louisiana and the Lower Mississippi Valley. By evening, snow will spread to the Ohio Valley, central Appalachians and mid-Atlantic.

    Thursday is when the storm is expected to arrive in the Northeast. Metro areas surrounding the Interstate 95 corridor, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, could start with snow and transition to a wintry mix or even rain.

    An ice storm could be seen across Virginia. Snowfall will also continue around the Great Lakes into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.

    Snowfall forecasts show accumulating snow from Dallas to Boston between Tuesday and Friday. 

    Meanwhile, for much of the country, temperatures will remain well below their averages this week. 

    However, after this weekend, there is good news – heating degree days for the US appear to return to normal levels, which means warmer temperatures are ahead that will decrease energy demand usage.

    From the polar vortex split to major winter storm threat to energy crisis across the Great Plains – our readers were some of the first to know of this historic event. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 19:15

  • Inflation Fears And Soaring Oil Inflows: What Happens Next
    Inflation Fears And Soaring Oil Inflows: What Happens Next

    By Ryan Fitzmaurice of Rabobank

    Summary

    • Oil prices continue to be supported by a surge in capital inflows into broad-based commodity index products, in a stark reversal in trend from recent years
    • Investors want to own commodities at the moment and are willing to overlook some of the weaker fundamental inputs to focus on the bigger picture at hand
    • The one-year implied roll-yield has climbed to over 8% for both the ICE Brent contract and the Nymex WTIcontract, which is quite attractive in this extremelylow rate environment

    Board-Based Support

    It was more of the same for oil prices this week as flows into commodity index products propelled Brent crude firmly above the psychological $60/bbl level despite a rather mixed fundamental backdrop. To that end, money continued to pour into broad-based commodity ETFs this week with more than +500mm USD of capital inflows reported through Thursday, bringing the year-to-date total above the 2BN USD mark. It is worth noting that these inflows are simply what is publicly available from the ETF space, but one can be sure that the real figure is multiples of this number given institutional investors and high net worth individuals are also increasing their commodity allocations via separately managed accounts which are not required to disclose such information. These flows are all benchmarked to a predetermined commodity index, so anywhere from 25% to 50% of the notional invested winds up in the oil futures market depending on the index and the oil sector’s weighting. As noted though, the fundamental picture remains mixed at best for oil markets which can be seen in the weakening gasoline crack spread this month.

    So what exactly is driving this renewed interest in commodities if it’s not fundamentals? Well in our view, these large inflows speak to the fact that investors want to own commodities at the moment and are willing to overlook some of the weaker fundamental inputs to focus on the bigger picture at hand.

    Looking at things from a macro lens, inflation fears are increasing rapidly and there is a historic amount of capital filtering through global financial markets due to all of the stimulus programs. Ironically, the widespread inflation fears that have emerged in recent weeks and months are even becoming self-fulfilling, in a way, given investors are buying commodities to hedge these inflation fears which in turn drives commodity prices higher, thereby creating inflationary pressures.

    The “carry” trade

    On top of the renewed interest in commodity index products as an inflation hedge, the oil markets have also caught the attention of “carry” traders recently given the strong “backwardation” that has developed along the crude oil forward curves this year.

    As many experienced traders and investors know, roll-yield is a significant driver of commodity futures returns in the medium and long-term and, as such, roll-yield is a key input for many investment strategies. In fact, we wrote about the powerful impact roll-yield has on commodity futures returns in a primer we published last year and which can be found here.  As we discussed in that note, roll-yield in commodity futures is an implicit yield unlike the explicit yield that interest rate products offer. It is also dynamic in nature with no real way to effectively lock in roll-yield on a forward basis, however, the shape of the curve tends to be rather sticky as can be seen by the clusters of “backwardation” and “contango” exhibited in Figure 3 throughout the past twenty years.

    For reference, Figure 3 depicts the evolution of the WTI forward curve on a monthly basis with periods of “backwardation” shown in blue while “contango” is shown in orange. For our purposes, we are comparing the first contract maturity with the contract for the same month in the following year to determine the state of the curve. As it currently stands though, the one-year implied annual roll-yield has climbed to over 8% for both the ICE Brent contract and the Nymex WTI contract, which is quite attractive in absolute terms and even more so in relative terms, considering the 1yr US Treasury is yielding next to nothing. In addition to outright “carry” investments, there are a number of long/short systematic strategies that go “long” commodities that have positive yield and “short” commodities that do not. The dramatic shift in the oil forward curves in recent months has resulted in those strategies shifting from “short” to “long”. Roll-yield even plays a part in many of the new-age commodity indices where instead of placing a “long” position near the front of the curve, there are popular indices that seek to maximize roll-yield by going “long” the contract with the best implied roll-yield, generally within the next 13 months for liquidity purposes. So not only is roll-yield a factor for returns and determining directional money flows but also where on the forward curve those flows wind up which can be equally important.

    Looking Forward

    Looking forward, we expect to see more in the way of broad-based commodity flows this year giving the very supportive macro backdrop. Large asset allocators have been “underweight” commodities for some time now given the poor performance of the asset class this past decade. As such, we see that trend reversing and with that we are likely in the early stages of the industry shifting to an “overweight” commodity position. These investments dollars should continue to support oil prices on the margin but could ultimately weigh on the curve due to roll pressures.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 18:50

  • Eric Weinstein Implores Jack Dorsey To Stop Manipulating National Conversation, Allow 'Academic Freedom' To Overrule Twitter Police
    Eric Weinstein Implores Jack Dorsey To Stop Manipulating National Conversation, Allow ‘Academic Freedom’ To Overrule Twitter Police

    With Twitter serving as a de-facto town square to roughly 145 million daily active users, the need arises to ensure that divergent opinions are allowed to organically flourish without punishment, and that Twitter’s online ‘police force’ – the “Twitter Safety” team – can’t arbitrarily censor political rivals, or breathlessly label opinions as ‘misinformation’ because they run counter to (oft-contradictory) government policy.

    To that end, Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital and prolific opinionator, has implored Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to stop throttling opinions that challenge mainstream narratives, and allow certain ‘heterodox tweeters’ the academic freedom to ‘watch the watchers’ and provide oversight to the Twitter police.

    Of note, Weinstein has repeatedly called out Twitter all types of censorship, including discussion and support for a third political party, blocking private messages due to ‘suspicious content,’ and the company’s inconsistent enforcement of their own rules.

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

    Weinstein’s open letter to Dorsey, which leads with a now-deleted government flip-flop over mask use, is embedded below:

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

    *  *  *

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsNow if only @Jack, and the board, and major shareholders, and whoever else dictates the flow of information on Twitter, would listen.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 18:25

  • Citi Literally Needed A Bigger Chart To Show The Latest Market Euphoria
    Citi Literally Needed A Bigger Chart To Show The Latest Market Euphoria

    When it comes to market euphoria, what can we say here that we haven’t already said countless time in the past two months:

    Well, there is maybe one thing we can add.

    In late February, when looking at the latest Citi Panic/Euphoria index we noted that it is now “off the chart” and – to paraphrase a certain movie – Citi would soon need a bigger chart.

    That’s precisely what happened, because in Citi’s latest Panic/Euphoria index as of Feb 12, the chart has indeed gotten bigger – literally – with the upper index bound on the Y-axis increasing from 1.80 To 2.10.

    We expect this to keep increasing for quite some time – especially with hundreds of billions more in “stimmies” coming in, as DB’s Jim Reid previewed earlier today…

    The upcoming stimulus checks may find their way into equity markets so if there is a bubble it may inflate more first before any correction.

    … before the euphoria – and stocks – finally breaks.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 18:00

  • Parler Returns
    Parler Returns

    Authored by Jennie Taer via SaraACarter.com,

    Free speech social media app Parler returned Monday with new computer servers, according to Interim CEO Mark Meckler (a leading voice in the Tea Party movement).

    “When Parler was taken offline in January by those who desire to silence tens of millions of Americans, our team came together, determined to keep our promise to our highly engaged community that we would return stronger than ever,” Meckler said in a statement, per The Hill.

    “Parler is being run by an experienced team and is here to stay. We will thrive as the premier social media platform dedicated to free speech, privacy and civil dialogue,” Meckler continued.

    The company did not reveal which web service will host Parler, saying instead that it is now “built on robust, sustainable, independent technology.”

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

    “We are off of the big tech platform, so that we can consider ourselves safe and secure for the future,” Meckler said.

    He added that the app will utilize artificial intelligence and human editors to crack down on illegal speech, but will remain true to its censorship-free mission.

    The site is expected to preserve all previous user data, according to sources close to Parler who spoke with SaraACarter.com.

    Meckler was recently named Interim CEO after the company ousted John Matze earlier this month.

    “Cancel culture came for us, and hit us with all they had,” Parler shareholder Dan Bongino told Just the News Monday.

    “Yet we couldn’t be kept down. We’re back, and we’re ready to resume the struggle for freedom of expression, data sovereignty, and civil discourse. We thank our users for their loyalty during this incredibly challenging time.”

    Parler first went offline in early January when Google Play, Apple, and Amazon dropped the application from its hosting platforms in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

    However, it’s unclear if the Apple App Store will host the platform with the new changes. Apple didn’t immediately respond to this reporter’s request for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 17:35

  • South Korea Latest To Doubt AstraZeneca Jab As Cuba Joins COVID Vaccine Race
    South Korea Latest To Doubt AstraZeneca Jab As Cuba Joins COVID Vaccine Race

    Summary:

    • UK PM says likely won’t need “vaccine passport” to go to “the pub”
    • UK reportedly finishes vaccinating everyone over 70 who wanted a vaccine
    • EU anti-fraud office widens probe into fake vaccines
    • WHO: notion of vaccine passports should be discussed
    • Cuba joins COVID vaccine race
    • US COVID cases fall to lowest level since October
    • Global vaccine count nears 175MM
    • US COVID case tally nears 30MM
    • France warns on “variants” spreading
    • Indian Institute agrees to supply Canada with vaccines
    • Cambodia reports first cases of UK variant
    • Tokyo infection numbers fall on daily basis

    * * *

    As the number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the US races toward the 30MM mark (the tally was at 27.6MM confirmed cases as of Monday morning, according to Johns Hopkins), new cases are tumbling to their lowest daily tallies since October, as weather – if only for a brief moment – reasserts itself as America’s favorite national topic of discussion.

    Cuba has joined the race (via Mexico, according to Bloomberg) to produce COVID-19 vaccines (while also developing its own home-grown vaccine program), however, it appears doubts about the efficacy of new mRNA vaccines are lingering.

    The US isn’t the only country seeing falling COVID rates: the global daily rate of new COVID cases has fallen to 275.9K.

    But the US is also leading the world in vaccinations, at a rate of nearly 1.7MM people per day, while more than 173MM doses of various vaccines tracked by Bloomberg have been given, according to official data.

    Worries about “regional spread” of various COVID-19 “variants” (mutated strains showing higher levels of infectiousness and increased resilience to the first generation of vaccines) remains high around the world, as France worries about variants of the coronavirus that are spreading in some northern and eastern parts of France).

    But in Brussels, the EU anti-fraud office has warned the governments of its member states to be on alert to schemers looking to sell fake COVID-19 vaccines as some members “get desperate” after the Continent’s vaccine rollout, which has been criticized by some as painfully slow.

    In the UK, PM Boris Johnson announced Monday that the government and the NHS had achieved their goal of vaccinating everyone in the country over the age of 70 who wanted a vaccine. Meanwhile, the first wave of passengers temporarily staying in British airport hotels to begin 10 days of isolation as tough new quarantine measures, justified by news about the potentially more dangerous new variants, came into effect. BoJo also said during an interview earlier that while Britons likely won’t need a “vaccine passport” to visit the local pub, the policy is still “in the mix” when it comes to international travel.

    In other news out of the US, California’s 14-day positive test rate dropped to 4.6% yesterday, the lowest since Nov. 15, while Ohio reported 1.8K cases, the fewest since October.

    Here’s some more COVID news from overnight and Monday morning:

    • India’s Serum Institute has agreed to ship COVID-19 vaccines to Canada within a month, its CEO said, a sign that a diplomatic dispute between the two countries is cooling. India earlier took umbrage after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said months-long protests by farmers on the outskirts of Delhi were “concerning” (Source: Nikkei).
    • Cambodia reports its first cases of the highly contagious U.K. variant, after three foreigners who arrived from overseas tested positive while in quarantine (Source: Nikkei).
    • Tokyo reports 266 infections, down from 371 a day earlier. While figures on Monday tend to be lower than other days, it was the ninth consecutive day for the capital to register fewer than 500 cases (Source: Nikkei).

    Finally, in the latest setback for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, South Korea has decided not to use the AstraZeneca vaccine on people 65 and older until researchers can confirm the vaccine’s effectiveness on patients in the age group, continuing a trend that began in Europe, when Germany, followed shortly thereafter by France, declined to approve the vaccine in people 65+ without further study embarrassing the UK after its government became first in the world to approve the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 17:10

  • Does Elon Musk Own $3 Billion In Dogecoin?
    Does Elon Musk Own $3 Billion In Dogecoin?

    Authored by Jamie Redman via Bitcoin.com,

    Ever since the infatuation between Elon Musk and the meme-based cryptocurrency dogecoin, a number of people have looked at the asset critically. News.Bitcoin.com recently reported on the mysterious dogecoin wallet that absorbed more than 27% of the coin’s supply since February 6, 2019. This week, the dogecoin wallet with $3 billion worth of the crypto asset has been creating odd transactions with binary messages, further adding to the speculation that the address might be Musk’s wallet.

    Cryptic Binary Code, Elon’s Birthday, and Transaction Gibberish

    The cryptocurrency dogecoin has catapulted seeing ‘much value’ and shibes everywhere have been saying “wow.” The current CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, has been one individual who has created a lot of hype around the meme-based crypto asset.

    But Musk hasn’t been the only one, as people have placed signs in Times Square in New York telling people in the city they should “buy DOGE.” On social media, there are many dogecoin fans shilling the token relentlessly in an attempt to get the price to $1.

    In addition to the growing popularity of dogecoin, news.Bitcoin.com recently reported on the billion-dollar DOGE address that consumed over 27% of the entire supply since 2019.

    A touch over a month later, after the address received its first transaction on February 6, on April 2, Musk said: “dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency” Since then, the dogecoin address has managed to gather around 36.8 billion DOGE worth $3 billion today. In more recent days, speculators have assumed that the billion-dollar dogecoin address belongs to the Tesla founder.

    Then on Reddit, via the subreddits r/cryptomarkets and r/dogecoin, people have been discussing the mysterious address once again. People have begun to notice that the owner of the address has been sending odd transactions, some of which can be transcribed into binary code.

    One person who tried to figure out the binary code message said he couldn’t translate it, and that a lot of it was “gibberish.” Others discovered that one set of transactions displayed Elon Musk’s birth date. Some people have found messages being sent to the large address as well, asking if the wallet belongs to Musk. There are also a few assumptions from speculators who believe the address may belong to the exchange Robinhood.

    While trying to decipher a message one Redditor wrote:

    It’s not gibberish, I’ve gone through some of it and already found this: ?NOLEUOYTISI

    ‘One Coin to Rule Them All’

    Moreover, on Wednesday, Musk then tweeted about the meme currency again in another tweet that involved his baby son named “X Æ A-12.”

    “Bought some Dogecoin for lil X, so he can be a toddler hodler,” Musk tweeted to his followers with a video of his boy. Additionally, Musk tweeted a meme that said “one coin to rule them all,” with a picture of the hobbit’s ring from the J. R. R. Tolkien story “The Lord of the Rings.”

    Musk said:

    Frodo was the underdoge, All thought he would fail, Himself most of all.

    A lot of bitcoin proponents have been addressing the fact that Musk has been tweeting an awful lot about dogecoin (DOGE), but in the end, Tesla purchased bitcoin (BTC) for its balance sheet. To many people, this observation is meaningful and to others, specifically DOGE fans, it is not.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 16:45

  • Lincoln Project Fundraising Page Down After $90 Million Grift Unravels
    Lincoln Project Fundraising Page Down After $90 Million Grift Unravels

    The Lincoln Project, which raised over $90 million to oppose former President Trump and his allies during the 2020 election, has shuttered their fundraising page amid the organization’s spectacular implosion.

    According to the New York Post, the group’s donation page has been listed as inactive since Saturday, following weeks of turmoil which began with one of the (married) founders, John Weaver, being outed for sending lurid text messages to dozens of young men, which we then learned the group’s co-founders knew about and concealed as early as last June. What’s more, the group has been hit with accusations of misappropriation of funds, after more than half of the $90 million they raised was spent on consulting companies owned by the group’s founders – many of whom were saddled with debt when they founded the ‘project.’

    Two former Lincoln Project interns came forward last week with salacious text messages from Weaver, who was forced to resign from the organization after the story broke, and not when his co-founders found out about the allegations.

    According to the Associated Press, Lincoln Project leaders were informed in writing and phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against Weaver as early as last June.

    …

    On Saturday, co-founder Steve Schmidt resigned from the board, while Jennifer Horn split with the group last month after a contract dispute, causing a public spat with other members.

    The Post also first reported that Schmidt interviewed for a job on then-candidate Trump’s White House bid in 2016, but the campaign chief role ultimately went to Paul Manafort. –New York Post

    Sour grapes gone wrong?

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 16:20

  • Presidents Day: Carter's Prescient Farewell Address In 1981
    Presidents Day: Carter’s Prescient Farewell Address In 1981

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Regardless of our opinions about President Carter and his legacy, his Farewell Address is worthy of our attention and study.

    On Presidents Day 2021, I invite you to read/watch President Carter’s Farewell Address from 40 years ago. As a Washington outsider, Carter was relentlessly mocked and undermined by the Establishment, as insiders’ loathing of outsiders knows no bounds.

    In a similar fashion, the loathing of the corrupt and self-absorbed for the faithful aspiring to better world despite our weaknesses and flaws also knows no bounds, and so the establishment insiders that run the nation had no use for Carter other than as a handy whipping post.

    President Carter was not the only outsider president reviled by the Washington elites, of course; outsiders of both parties draw the fierce fire of a corrupt Establishment fearful of exposure.

    Although many reckon it good sport to make fun of President Carter’s initiatives (along with his grin, hair, accent, etc. etc. etc.), a strong case can be made that he was the first and only 21st century President the nation has elected. Every president since, regardless of party or ideology or canned speeches (Soaring Rhetoric (TM), has been embedded in a continuation of the 20th century economy, politics and Imperial Project.

    Carter was the first and only president to address DeGrowth, though the word had yet to be coined: DeGrowth is the idea that resources would eventually become scarce and thus unaffordable, and rather then pursue the insane fantasy of eternal growth on a finite planet, a new arrangement that did more with less would be needed.

    “There are real and growing dangers to our simple and our most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land which sustains us. The rapid depletion of irreplaceable minerals, the erosion of topsoil, the destruction of beauty, the blight of pollution, the demands of increasing billions of people, all combine to create problems which are easy to observe and predict, but difficult to resolve.

    But there is no reason for despair. Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world–water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution if we tackle them with courage and foresight.”

    President Carter was also prescient in his understanding that a nation’s greatest strength is its social cohesion, a cohesion that America’s unprecedented wealth/ income /power inequalities has undermined. Consider this excerpt from his Address:

    “Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater even than the bounty of our material blessings.”

    President Carter recognized that civil rights / liberties are not just fatuous PR to be trotted out in Soaring Rhetoric (TM) lip-service; they are the foundation of our national identity:

    “America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it’s the other way around. Human rights invented America. Ours was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded explicitly on such an idea. Our social and political progress has been based on one fundamental principle: the value and importance of the individual. The fundamental force that unites us is not kinship or place of origin or religious preference. The love of liberty is the common blood that flows in our American veins.

    We have no cause for self-righteousness or complacency, but we have every reason to persevere, both within our own country and beyond our borders.”

    President Carter recognized the fatal consequences of special interests dominating the political order, a danger that has now reached full flower in 2021:

    “Today, as people have become ever more doubtful of the ability of the Government to deal with our problems, we are increasingly drawn to single-issue groups and special interest organizations to ensure that whatever else happens, our own personal views and our own private interests are protected. This is a disturbing factor in American political life. It tends to distort our purposes, because the national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together, and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility.”

    Regardless of our opinions about President Carter and his legacy, his Farewell Address is worthy of our attention and study:

    President Carter’s Farewell Address to the Nation (16:56)

    *  *  *

    If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    *  *  *

    My recent books:

    A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

    The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

    Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 15:55

  • Cuomo Insists All NY Nursing Home Deaths "Accurately Reported" In First Briefing Since "COVID Coverup"
    Cuomo Insists All NY Nursing Home Deaths “Accurately Reported” In First Briefing Since “COVID Coverup”

    Update (1434ET): Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s epic President’s Day afternoon press briefing has just wrapped up, and just as we suspected, Cuomo wanted to talk about the groundswell of support in the Empire State to finally dethrone a governor who has survived numerous scandals and primary challengers (not to mention 2.5 terms as governor), about as much as reporters wanted to interrupt their holiday weekend to ask him about it.

    But in what was perhaps an encouraging sign, Cuomo was ready, and instead of waiting for reporters to ask the question at a post-briefing Q&A, the governor and his team apparently felt this was big enough to strike first, and launched a fusillade of Cuomo disinformation, a mix of “actually running things is hard”, “do you remember what life was like a year ago?”, with just a pinch of NY’s in-the-works reopening plan to keep people interested through the first ten minutes.

    Before actually working his way up to his office’s claim, Cuomo spun a narrative, which relied on a complicated timeline of the virus’s assault on New York State, with some sobbing about Dr. Fauci and NY’s top public health official. First, Cuomo tried to distract the press by claiming that the first case of the South African COVID strain had been identified in a New York hospital, but in a patient who had arrived after being “transferred” from neighboring Connecticut.

    “To be clear, all deaths in nursing homes and hospitals were fully, publicly and accurately reported,” Cuomo said.

    “There was a delay in providing the press and the public with providing all that additional information.”

    After the big denial, Cuomo continued by warning that the problem with the state’s nursing homes needs to be fixed before the next pandemic, and that hospitals that have “these issues” must be “improved”, or else they might “fail” during the next pandemic. Cuomo also repeated that the DoJ was asking about ‘private’ for-profit nursing homes, as if to try and shift more responsibility off the state.

    The governor concluded that “I understand the public had many questions and concerns…” but Cuomo and his office were so slammed trying to report data to the DoJ, that the state simply didn’t have time to give the full picture. This, in Cuomo’s terms, irresponsibly created a “vacuum” in which “conspiracy theorists” flourished.

    The governor laid it on pretty thick toward the end. Because even with the “best medical professionals and advice on the globe”, “the truth is…with all we know…people still die in nursing homes today…we’re testing the staff twice a week…you would have to hermetically seal the nursing home.” And we definitely don’t have the budget for that…not in New York State.

    For review, Cuomo’s real sin was “not providing the information”. That mistake “created a void” in which “conspiracy theorists” flourished and had the gall to question the governor’s handling of the pandemic after somebody gave a hot tape of Cuomo’s chief of staff talking to legislative leaders in political terms.

    “This past year there is a toxic political environment and everything gets politicized,” he added, saying that “[t]here is political spin and there are facts.”

    Cuomo laid it on thick, choking back tears at times and entering the now ubiquitious “whisper mode” made famous by President Biden when he really wants you to know he is emoting.

    During the Q&A, a local TV news reporter tried to sneak in what was probably a planted question, since Cuomo went on to reaffirm that his office prioritized the federal request from the DoJ, though Cuomo insists that both the State Senate and Assembly were made aware of the DoJ request.

    * * *

    Gov. Andrew Cuomo is holding his first press briefing since his alleged cover-up of New York’s nursing home deaths was exposed last week.

    The alleged coverup was first reported by the New York Post. In an audio recording obtained by the Post, Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s chief of staff, told a small group of Democratic lawmakers that the governor’s office “basically froze” when they were asked by the U.S. Department of Justice to turn in the data, because they worried that then-President Donald Trump would use the information as a “giant political football” against them.

    “[President Trump] starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said during the private call, according to the NY Post.

    “He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”

    As we detailed earlier, even New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday called for a “full accounting” of whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration withheld information about deaths from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus in nursing homes across the state.

    “It’s very troubling. We’ve got to know more. We now need a full accounting of what happened,” de Blasio said on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer show.”

    We suspect Cuomo will ignore it in all his prepared remarks and updates but hopefully at least one reporter will have the courage to ask…or can Cuomo somehow ‘filibuster’ his way through it unscathed?

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/15/2021 – 15:30

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Feb 15

Today’s News 15th February 2021

  • Opening The CIA's Can Of Worms
    Opening The CIA’s Can Of Worms

    Authored by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardian.org,

    “The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy,” wrote Douglas Valentine in his important book, The CIA As Organized Crime.

    This is true.  The corporate mainstream media are stenographers for the national security state’s ongoing psychological operations aimed at the American people, just as they have done the same for an international audience. 

    We have long been subjected to this “information warfare,” whose purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the American people and pacify them into victims of their own complicity, just as it was practiced long ago by the CIA in Vietnam and by The New York Times, CBS, etc. on the American people then and over the years as the American warfare state waged endless wars, coups, false flag operations, and assassinations at home and abroad.

    Another way of putting this is to say for all practical purposes when it comes to matters that bear on important foreign and domestic matters, the CIA and the corporate mainstream media cannot be distinguished.

    For those who read and study history, it has long been known that the CIA has placed their operatives throughout every agency of the U.S. government, as explained by Fletcher Prouty in The Secret Team; that CIA officers Cord Myer and Frank Wisner operated secret programs to get some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom among intellectuals, journalists, and writers to be their voices for unfreedom and censorship, as explained by Frances Stonor Saunders in The Cultural Cold War and Joel Whitney in Finks, among others; that Cord Myer was especially focused on and successful in “courting the Compatible Left” since right wingers were already in the Agency’s pocket. 

    All this is documented and not disputed.  It is shocking only to those who don’t do their homework and see what is happening today outside a broad historical context.

    With the rise of alternate media and a wide array of dissenting voices on the internet, the establishment felt threatened and went on the defensive. It, therefore, should come as no surprise that those same elite corporate media are now leading the charge for increased censorship and the denial of free speech to those they deem dangerous, whether that involves wars, rigged elections, foreign coups, COVID-19, vaccinations, or the lies of the corporate media themselves.

    Having already banned critics from writing in their pages and or talking on their screens, these media giants want to make the quieting of dissenting voices complete.

    Just the other day The New York Times had this headline: 

    “Robert Kennedy Jr. Barred From Instagram Over False Virus Claims.”

    Notice the lack of the word alleged before “false virus claims.”  This is guilt by headline.  It is a perfect piece of propaganda posing as reporting, since it accuses Kennedy, a brilliant and honorable man, of falsity and stupidity, thus justifying Instagram’s ban, and it is an inducement to further censorship of Mr. Kennedy by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company.

    That ban should follow soon, as the Times’ reporter Jennifer Jett hopes, since she accusingly writes that RFK, Jr. “makes many of the same baseless claims to more than 300,000 followers” at Facebook. Jett made sure her report also went to msn.com and The Boston Globe.

    This is one example of the censorship underway with much, much more to follow.  What was once done under the cover of omission is now done openly and brazenly, cheered on by those who, in an act of bad faith, claim to be upholders of the First Amendment and the importance of free debate in a democracy. We are quickly slipping into an unreal totalitarian social order.

    Which brings me to the recent work of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, both of whom have strongly and rightly decried this censorship. As I understand their arguments, they go like this.

    First, the corporate media have today divided up the territory and speak only to their own audiences in echo chambers: liberal to liberals (read: the “allegedly” liberal Democratic Party), such as The New York Times, NBC, etc., and conservative to conservatives (read” the “allegedly” conservative Donald Trump), such as Fox News, Breitbart, etc. 

    They have abandoned old school journalism that, despite its shortcomings, involved objectivity and the reporting of disparate facts and perspectives, but within limits. Since the digitization of news, their new business models are geared to these separate audiences since they are highly lucrative choices. It’s business-driven since electronic media have replaced paper as advertising revenues have shifted and people’s ability to focus on complicated issues has diminished drastically.

    Old school journalism is suffering as a result and thus writers such as Greenwald and Taibbi and Chris Hedges (who interviewed Taibbi and concurs: part one here) have taken their work to the internet to escape such restrictive categories and the accompanying censorship.

    Secondly, the great call for censorship is not something the Silicon Valley companies want because they want more people using their media since it means more money for them, but they are being pressured to do it by the traditional old school media, such as The New York Times, who now employ “tattletales and censors,” people who are power-hungry jerks, to sniff out dissenting voices that they can recommend should be banned.

    Greenwald says,

    They do it in part for power: to ensure nobody but they can control the flow of information. They do it partly for ideology and out of hubris: the belief that their worldview is so indisputably right that all dissent is inherently dangerous ‘disinformation.’”

    Thus, the old school print and television media are not on the same page as Facebook, Twitter, etc. but have opposing agendas.

    In short, these shifts and the censorship are about money and power within the media world as the business has been transformed by the digital revolution.

    I think this is a half-truth that conceals a larger issue. The censorship is not being driven by power-hungry reporters at the Times or CNN or any media outlet. All these media and their employees are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled. 

    These companies and their employees do what they are told, whether explicitly or implicitly, for they know it is in their financial interest to do so.  If they do not play their part in this twisted and intricate propaganda game, they will suffer. They will be eliminated, as are pesky individuals who dare peel the onion to its core.

    For each media company is one part of a large interconnected intelligence apparatus – a system, a complex – whose purpose is power, wealth, and domination for the very few at the expense of the many.  The CIA and media as parts of the same criminal conspiracy.

    To argue that the Silicon valley companies do not want to censor but are being pressured by the legacy corporate media does not make sense.  These companies are deeply connected to U.S. intelligence agencies, as are the NY Times, CNN, NBC, etc.  They too are part of what was once called Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to control, use, and infiltrate the media.  Only the most naïve would think that such a program does not exist today.

    In Surveillance Valley, investigative reporter Yasha Levine documents how Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are tied to the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex in surveillance and censorship; how the Internet was created by the Pentagon; and even how these shadowy players are deeply involved in the so-called privacy movement that developed after Edward Snowden’s revelations. 

    Like Valentine, and in very detailed ways, Levine shows how the military-industrial-intelligence-digital-media complex is part of the same criminal conspiracy as is the traditional media with their CIA overlords. It is one club.

    Many people, however, might find this hard to believe because it bursts so many bubbles, including the one that claims that these tech companies are pressured into censorship by the likes of The New York Times, etc.  The truth is the Internet was a military and intelligence tool from the very beginning and it is not the traditional corporate media that gives it its marching orders.

    That being so, it is not the owners of the corporate media or their employees who are the ultimate controllers behind the current vast crackdown on dissent, but the intelligence agencies who control the mainstream media and the Silicon Valley monopolies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.  All these media companies are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled.

    But for whom do these intelligence agencies work?

    Not for themselves.

    They work for their overlords, the super wealthy people, the banks, financial institutions, and corporations that own the United States and always have. In a simple twist of fate, such super wealthy naturally own the media corporations that are essential to their control of the majority of the world’s wealth through the stories they tell.

    It is a symbiotic relationship.

    As FDR put it bluntly in 1933, this coterie of wealthy forces is the “financial element in the larger centers [that] has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” Their wealth and power has increased exponentially since then, and their connected tentacles have further spread to create what is an international deep state that involves such entities as the IMF, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, those who meet yearly at Davos, etc.

    They are the international overlords who are pushing hard to move the world toward a global dictatorship.

    As is well known, or should be, the CIA was the creation of Wall St. and serves the interests of the wealthy owners. Peter Dale Scott, in “The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld,” says of Allen Dulles, the nefarious longest-running Director of the CIA and Wall St. lawyer for Sullivan and Cromwell:

    There seems to be little difference in Allen Dulles’s influence whether he was a Wall Street lawyer or a CIA director.”

    It was Dulles, long connected to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, international corporations, and a friend of Nazi agents and scientists, who was tasked with drawing up proposals for the CIA. He was ably assisted by five Wall St. bankers or investors, including the aforementioned Frank Wisner who later, as a CIA officer, said his “Mighty Wurlitzer” was “capable of playing any propaganda tune he desired.”

    This he did by recruiting intellectuals, writers, reporters, labor organizations, and the mainstream corporate media, etc. to propagate the CIA’s messages.

    Greenwald, Taibbi, and Hedges are correct up to a point, but they stop short.  Their critique of old school journalism à la Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing of Consent model, while true as far as it goes, fails to pin the tail on the real donkey.  Like old school journalists who knew implicitly how far they could go, these guys know it too, as if there is an invisible electronic gate that keeps them from wandering into dangerous territory.

    The censorship of Robert Kennedy, Jr. is an exemplary case.  His banishment from Instagram and the ridicule the mainstream media have heaped upon him for years is not simply because he raises deeply informed questions about vaccines, Bill Gates, the pharmaceutical companies, etc. His critiques suggest something far more dangerous is afoot: the demise of democracy and the rise of a totalitarian order that involves total surveillance, control, eugenics, etc. by the wealthy led by their intelligence propagandists.

    To call him a super spreader of hoaxes and a conspiracy theorist is aimed at not only silencing him on specific medical issues, but to silence his powerful and articulate voice on all issues. To give thoughtful consideration to his deeply informed scientific thinking concerning vaccines, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc., is to open a can of worms that the powerful want shut tight.

    This is because RFK, Jr. is also a severe critic of the enormous power of the CIA and its propaganda that goes back so many decades and was used to cover up the national security state’s assassination of both his father and his uncle. 

    It is why his wonderful recent book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, that contains not one word about vaccines, was shunned by mainstream book reviewers; for the picture he paints fiercely indicts the CIA in multiple ways while also indicting the mass media that have been its mouthpieces.

    These worms must be kept in the can, just as the power of the international overlords represented by the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum with its Great Reset must be.  They must be dismissed as crackpot conspiracy theories not worthy of debate or exposure.

    Robert Kennedy, Jr., by name and dedication to truth seeking, conjures up his father’s ghost, the last politician who, because of his vast support across racial and class divides, could have united the country and tamed the power of the CIA to control the narrative that has allowed for the plundering of the world and the country for the wealthy overlords.

    So they killed him.

    There is a reason Noam Chomsky is an exemplar for Hedges, Greenwald, and Taibbi.  He controls the can opener for so many. He has set the parameters for what is considered acceptable to be considered a serious journalist or intellectual.  The assassinations of the Kennedys, 9/11, or a questioning of the official Covid-19 story are not among them, and so they are eschewed.

    To denounce censorship, as they have done, is admirable. But now Greenwald, Taibbi, and Hedges need go up to the forbidden gate with the sign that says – “This far and no further” – and jump over it.  That’s where the true stories lie.  That’s when they’ll see the worms squirm.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 23:30

  • Mapping The Wealthiest Billionaire In Each U.S. State In 2021
    Mapping The Wealthiest Billionaire In Each U.S. State In 2021

    It is a testament to the burgeoning wealth of the U.S. that there is a billionaire in nearly every U.S. state. As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop notes, the country is home to around 800 billionaires among its 330 million people.

    This map from HowMuch.Net reveals the wealthiest billionaire in each U.S. state.

    The Richest of the Rich

    Billionaires are a constant across the United States. The only states that don’t house one of these high-net-worth individuals are: Alabama, New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware.

    Among the richest of the rich in the U.S., most are men, but there are 10 female billionaires who are the wealthiest in their respective states.

    Jeff Bezos is worth an astounding $193.8 billion. Amazon became increasingly successful during the pandemic, as lockdown orders caused many people to have to stay home and shop online rather than in stores.

    The runner up, Elon Musk, is worth $191.8 billion. The recent boom in Elon Musk’s net worth was due to the sharp rise in Tesla’s share prices. Recently, Elon Musk shifted his residence to the state of Texas, a move which is indicative of a larger trend of internal migration away from America’s most pricey urban areas.

    Mind the Gap

    Many of these individuals have actually become more wealthy during the COVID-19 pandemic, widening the existing gap of wealth inequality within the country.

    Together Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet (the five richest American billionaires) experienced a collective 85% increase in their wealth since the pandemic took hold. This equates to an added $303 billion in wealth.

    In contrast, the median wealth of American households is about $121,700, and due to COVID-19, there has been a rising inability to cover bills and a risk of mass home loss in the country.

    Overall, while we rely on companies like Amazon for our socially-distanced shopping and Facebook to keep us connected during the pandemic, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will likely continue to accrue immense fortunes. The wealthiest billionaires in the U.S. are likely to continue growing their net worth, pandemic or not, and have been consistently outpacing the lower to upper-middle income groups.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 23:00

  • America's Out Of Control Teens Are On A Historic Crime Spree
    America’s Out Of Control Teens Are On A Historic Crime Spree

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    Young people are running wild all over the country, and nobody seems to be able to come up with a solution to slow down the violence.  Following the tragic death of George Floyd, teens were disproportionally involved in the rioting, looting and arson that erupted in major cities throughout the nation for the remainder of 2020.  And sometimes they would just take out their frustrations on random people on the street. 

    But in addition to violence that was spurred by social movements, most of our urban areas also experienced dramatic spikes in their murder rates.  In fact, one recently released report found that murder rates rose by an average of 30 percent in 34 of our largest cities…

    THE HOMICIDE RATE across 34 American cities increased by 30% on average during 2020, according to experts, as the U.S. reeled from the coronavirus pandemic and widespread protests against police brutality.

    The newly released report from the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice found that homicides rose in 29 of the 34 cities studied and that the three largest cities in the sample – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago – accounted for 40% of the additional homicide victims in 2020.

    That 30 percent average increase was the biggest one year spike ever recorded, and way too much of the time these murders are being committed by Americans under the age of 20.

    For example, two Milwaukee teens were just charged with the rape and murder of a young woman named Ee Lee…

    Kamare Lewis, 17, and Kevin Spencer, 15 each face one count of first-degree intentional homicide, as party to a crime and one count of first-degree sexual assault (great bodily harm), as party to a crime.

    Lee was found Sept. 16, 2020 in Washington Park by “bystanders,” still breathing but unconscious, severely beaten and left for dead. She was undressed below the waist, indicating sexual assault. She suffered severe contusions to the face/head. A hospital examination confirmed the sex assault.

    Lee later died from her injuries on September 19th.

    But it wasn’t just Lewis and Spencer that were involved in this brutal attack.  In fact, we are being told that a total of 11 youths were seen leaving the area…

    Video from the Washington Park Library showed 11 people leaving the park — six in a group on bicycles; five in a separate group, some on bikes and others on foot.

    Sadly, young girls are also murdering one another.

    Here is an example of one young girl stabbing another young girl to death…

    Lyric D. Stewart, 14, of Rock Island, was stabbed to death Dec. 30 during a fight in the 1200 block of 11th Street.

    Jimena Jinez, 18, also of Rock Island, was arrested in the early morning of Dec. 31, 2020, and charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death. She has been in custody in Rock Island County Jail since then, and is being held on $1.5 million bond.

    Our nation is degenerating right in front of our eyes, and it is only going to get worse.

    In Jacksonville, Florida a group of teens recently ganged up to kill three people, including a very young mother…

    In the first time since a Washington Heights triple-murder, the family of one of the victims, Sara Urriola, is speaking out. The Jacksonville mother was murdered by four suspected teens at the Calloway Cove apartments.

    “We have lost a loving, caring, wife, mother, daughter, niece, cousin, sister, aunt, best-friend and friend today. Sara loved her friends and family very much and the friends that knew her know she was all about the well-being of her family. She loved to dance, dress up, and enjoyed all family events,” the family said in a statement to Action News Jax.

    How twisted do you have to be in order to do something like that?

    Horrific murders like this happen day after day, but they barely make a blip on the news anymore because they have become so common.

    Meanwhile, carjackings are on the rise all over the nation as well.

    According to NPR, the number of carjackings in Minneapolis more than tripled last year…

    In Minneapolis, for example, there were 405 carjackings last year — more than triple the number in 2019. The suspects arrested were often juveniles between the ages of 11 and 17.

    Other cities saw huge increases too, including New Orleans; Kansas City, Mo.; Louisville, Ky.; and Washington, D.C. Last year in Chicago, there were 1,400 carjackings.

    Speaking of Chicago, there are certain parts of the city that now resemble a war zone.  If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, there is a good chance that a kid could stick a gun in your face and demand the keys to your vehicle.

    What would you do if this happened to you?…

    On a sunny January afternoon, Amy Blumenthal drove to her Chicago home after picking up groceries. She turned off a street and into an alley, backed her car into her garage and started unloading the bags.

    “All of a sudden, I heard something and looked up and there was a boy with a COVID mask on holding a gun just inches from my face,” Blumenthal says. He demanded she hand over her keys. Another young male, also wearing a mask, told her to hurry up.

    Amy Blumenthal was not prepared to face this sort of a scenario.

    She eventually pulled herself together enough to give her two attackers the car keys, and she was later totally shocked to find out that they were both under 16 years of age…

    In shock, she fumbled as she complied — they let her keep her house keys. Then they jumped in the car and sped off. Chicago police officers noticed their erratic driving, gave chase and the two were quickly arrested after crashing the vehicle into a building.

    The robbery had left her shaken, but learning more about who they were left her stunned: They were just 15 and 13 years old.

    Thanks to decades of running in the wrong direction, this is what our country has become.

    We have become a completely and utterly lawless nation from the very top to the very bottom, and yet we continue to refuse to see the error of our ways.

    So the fabric of our society will continue to unravel, and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis will continue to disappear.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 22:30

  • China Shows Off "Super Soldiers" Equipped With Exoskeleton Suits On Heavily Disputed Border
    China Shows Off “Super Soldiers” Equipped With Exoskeleton Suits On Heavily Disputed Border

    While Beijing may already be engineering “super soldiers” through biological advancements, it’s unclear how far Chinese military researchers have gone. But what we do know is that the Chinese military has already deployed exoskeleton suits for troops along the heavily disputed Sino-Indian border. 

    In recent months, China has used top-secret weapons along the Ladakh Line of Actual Control (LAC), such as microwave weapons against Indian troops. Perhaps the heavily disputed border is a testing ground for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). 

    According to RT News, citing a state broadcaster CCTV report, PLA soldiers were seen with exoskeleton suits that enabled them to complete challenging tasks in high altitude environments around Ngari, located in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. These troops delivered much-needed supplies to border guards along the LAC during the Chinese New Year holiday. 

    It usually takes all-terrain vehicles three days to reach the high-altitude outpost, located more than 16,000 feet above sea level. With exoskeleton equipped troops, the delivery time was significantly reduced. 

    CCTV did not disclose much more information about the exoskeleton developer or endurance of the suit. In the past, China has displayed other types of exoskeletons that are battery-powered and allow PLA troops to carry upwards of 170 pounds. 

    The PLA has gone all-in to develop “super soldiers” as the US Army is not far behind with their “Ironman-like” soldier exoskeleton suit. 

    Bank of America’s equity strategist Haim Israel recently told clients of the increasing geopolitical tensions between the US and China and how it would likely flourish through the 2020s. 

    More or less, exoskeleton suits for the modern battlefield are no longer science fiction as both of the world’s superpowers are racing to deploy the suits ahead of the next conflict. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 22:00

  • Biden Initiates Process To Close Guantanamo Bay Prison Permanently
    Biden Initiates Process To Close Guantanamo Bay Prison Permanently

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The Biden administration is launching a review of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay with the aim of closing the facility, something the Obama administration promised to do but never followed through on.

    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced the review on Friday. When asked if President Biden plans to shut the prison before his presidency ends, Psaki said, “That certainly is our goal and our intention,” but an exact timeline was not given.

    Detainees on arrival to Camp X-Ray, the holding facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. DoD image

    National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne discussed the review with Reuters. “We are undertaking an NSC process to assess the current state of play that the Biden administration has inherited from the previous administration, in line with our broader goal of closing Guantanamo,” she said.

    Horne said the NSC will be working with the Pentagon, State Department, and the Justice Department to make progress towards closing Gitmo.

    There are currently 40 inmates being held in Gitmo. The prison costs over $530 million to operate each year, meaning each prisoner costs about $13 million per year.

    In January, a Gitmo inmate appealed to President Biden for his release in an article in the Independent. Ahmed Rabbani was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002, sold to the CIA, and mistakenly identified as an al-Qaeda member.

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    Before heading to Gitmo, Rabbani was tortured for 540 days at a CIA black site, according to the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee Report on CIA torture.

    Rabbani has been on a seven-year hunger strike to protest being detained on no charges with no trial. Each day, guards force-feed Rabani by strapping him to a chair and forcing a tube down his nose and throat.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 21:30

  • Oil Surges To Jan 2020 Highs Amid Permian Freeze, Supercycle Chatter
    Oil Surges To Jan 2020 Highs Amid Permian Freeze, Supercycle Chatter

    While the US cash market may be closed for holiday tomorrow, world traders aren’t wasting any time and are taking reflationary traders to the next level, starting with Brent which just rose 2% to $63.47, the highest level since January 2020.

    There are many catalyst for the surge:

    • As we noted last week, and as Bloomberg’s Javier Blas reminded commodity traders yesterday, “the Permian is suffering extremely low temperatures, with the worse expected the night of Sun-to-Mon with -3 Fahrenheit. Oil gathering lines may froze; NGLs / water may condense, clogging pipes. And oil trucking would be disrupted by snow and ice.” In short, a perfect storm for a sudden spike in oil.
    • Last week, Dylan Grice said that the stage is set for a new bull market in oil.
    • JPMorgan chimed in, and predicted that a new commodity – and especially oil – supercycle has started, and will accelerate in March once CTA cover their shorts and go long.
    • Morgan Stanley said a “high-pressure economy” is about to be unleashed, resulting in a major spike in inflation in the coming months.

    Among all these bullish indicators, there is just one potential downside risk: whereas OPEC has been remarkable resilient in keeping production quotas in place so far, Reuters’ John Kemp writes that “oil prices have reached a critical threshold where OPEC+ must decide whether to increase production, or risk losing market share again to U.S. shale producers.”

    As he further notes, after adjusting for inflation, Brent prices are now in the 58th percentile for all months since the start of 1990, which is consistent with slow but steady increases in output by non-OPEC producers.

    In the last decade, whenever Brent prices averaged more than about $57 per barrel, U.S. producers captured all the growth in global oil consumption, increasing their market share at the expense of OPEC and its allies.

    Responding to the earlier rise in prices, U.S. producers have already increased the number of rigs drilling for oil to nearly 300, up from a low of just 172 in August, according to oilfield services company Baker Hughes.

    More recent price increases are likely to ensure the number of active rigs increases at least until the end of June, when the count is likely to exceed 425 or even 450, if the current trend continues.

    Reflecting the rising rig count, U.S. production from the Lower 48 states excluding the Gulf of Mexico is already forecast to rise from current levels by 340,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2021.

    In short, if prices rise further, both drilling and production are likely to accelerate even faster in the second half of 2021 and 2022.

    On the other hand, traders don’t appear especially bothered and in the oil futures market, the price for Brent delivered in April is trading more than $2.70 per barrel higher than for deliveries in November, a price structure known as backwardation.

    Backwardation normally occurs when traders anticipate production will fall short of consumption and petroleum inventories are low and falling further.

     

    As Kemp concludes, “If that expectation proves correct, Brent prices are likely to increase further, perhaps significantly. Escalating prices and intensifying backwardation are both signalling the need for more production in the rest of the year.”

    And amid continued calls for sharp rises in inflation – consider the following stunning fact from Morgan Stanley…

    Cumulatively, the Covid-19 recession has cost US households US$400 billion in income, but they have already received more than US$1 trillion in transfers (even before the late December and forthcoming rounds of stimulus). Households have already accumulated US$1.5 trillion in excess saving, which is set to rise to US$2 trillion (9.5% of GDP) by early March once the additional fiscal package is enacted.

    … it is unlikely that the upward trajectory of oil, commodities, and the reflation trade in general will change any time soon.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 21:00

  • Lincoln Project Donors Include Romney's Bain Capital And China-Linked Companies
    Lincoln Project Donors Include Romney’s Bain Capital And China-Linked Companies

    Authored by Ben Wilson via SaraACarter.com,

    In the wake of several scandals rocking the infamous, and now failing, Lincoln Project, reports are surfacing of the organizations that contributed major donations to the group. And those that donated are facing backlash.

    The National Pulse reports that the major donors show a list of left-leaning groups, despite the group’s claims that it represents a disenfranchised Republican base.

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

    Hollywood figures, hedge fund managers, Mitt Romney’s firm Bain Capital, and other questionable sources make up the group’s largest donors.

    “The list also includes Michael Moritz, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia, who donated a sizable sum in three donations in May, June, and July of 2020: one worth $50,000 and two worth $25,000,” the Pulse reports.

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    See the full list of donors and reporting on the China connections here.

    The news comes after reports broke that the FBI is investigating allegations against Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver.

    Meghan McCain, the co-host of the The View and daughter of former U.S. Senator John McCain, said in a Tweet that “John Weaver and Steve Schmidt were so despised by my Dad he made it a point to ban them from his funeral.”

    “Since 2008, no McCain would have spit on them if they were on fire,” she added.

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    Weaver was accused by at least 21 men last week for sending inappropriate messages and in some instances offering political and employment opportunities for sexual favors.

    “John Weaver led a secret life that was built on a foundation of deception at every level,” the prominent never-Trump organization said in a statement last week. “He is a predator, a liar, and an abuser. We extend our deepest sympathies to those who were targeted by his deplorable and predatory behavior.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 20:30

  • Elderly Asians Targeted In Spate Of Vicious Bay Area Attacks
    Elderly Asians Targeted In Spate Of Vicious Bay Area Attacks

    Civil rights groups in California’s San Francisco Bay Area are demanding action following a recent surge in attacks on Asian Americans which have left one person dead and many others badly injured.

    The attacks, reminiscent of the ‘knockout game,’ typically happen during daytime – including one against a 91-year-old Asian man in Oakland’s Chinatown who was hospitalized with serious injuries after being shoved to the ground by an African American man who walked up behind him. Last week, a 64-year-old grandmother was assaulted and robbed of cash she had withdrawn ahead of the Lunar New Year. And in January, a 52-year-old Asian American woman was shot in the head with a flare gun, also in Chinatown. Weeks later, 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee was tackled to the ground by an assailant running at full speed through his San Francisco neighborhood, killing him, according to NPR. A 19-year-old man was arrested and charged with murder and elder abuse.

    A 28-year-old man, Yaha Muslim, charged with assault in the case of the 91-year-old man and two other elderly victims. Muslim, who was in custody on other charges, has two prior felony assault convictions, according to the Alameda County Sheriff and DA’s offices.

    “These attacks taking place in the Bay Area are part of a larger trend of anti-Asian American/Pacific Islander hate brought on in many ways by COVID-19, as well as some of the xenophobic policies and racist rhetoric that were pushed forward by the prior administration,” said Manju Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, a coalition of California community-based groups which apparently thinks black thugs have been taking direction from former President Trump (who received just 12% of the black vote).

    And while the much of the NPR report suggests that Trump’s rhetoric against China is responsible for the recent attacks, Black-on-Asian violence isn’t a new thing, and has been documented in the Bay area for more than a decade.

    Over two-dozen recent Bay Area assaults and robberies reportedly mirror a “national rise in hate crimes against older Asian Americans,” according to the report, which notes that there have been nearly 3,000 incidents of anti-Asian hate across 47 states and DC, according to Kulkarni’s group.

    “And roughly 7 to 8% of those, unfortunately, come from elders in our community who have experienced incidents, not unlike the ones that have taken place in recent days,” Kulkarni added.

    The spate of attacks have prompted many Chinatown businesses to reduce hours during an already-dire situation thanks to the pandemic, during what is normally a bustling period due to the Lunar New Year.

    “The fear is not only for the patrons but also employees,” said Carl Chan, head of Oakland’s Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. “They [businesses] are so fearful they prefer to close early. We also have many juveniles driving around Chinatown and carrying guns, so they’re also hurting people before they’re being robbed.”

    According to Chan, some Asians are taking matters into their own hands – with over half-a-dozen ad-hoc volunteer groups springing up in recent weeks to protect businesses and older residents when they shop.

    “Some of them are young people, they want to walk Chinatown,” said Chan. “And then also helping seniors pick up the groceries and then walk them home.”

    Meanwhile, over 200 people across the Oakland area have volunteered as “community strollers” in Chinatown beginning next week.

    And in a tone-deaf measure aimed at ‘helping’ the situation, somehow, the Oakland Anti-Police Terror Project has been asking people to “wear yellow” clothing to show support of the Asian community.

    In the wake of the attacks several Oakland city council members including Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, whose district includes Chinatown, have joined social justice groups warning against scapegoating and calling for solidarity between Asian American and African American communities. The Oakland Anti Police-Terror Project has asked people “to wear yellow to show you’re in support of Chinatown seniors and businesses.”

    The Bay Area attacks and increased harassment nationwide have rallied support from those in arts, too. Actor and director Daniel Wu, who also is an East Bay native, led an effort to help stop what he described recently as an epidemic of hate-fueled language. –NPR

    Oakland Police say they’ve added foot and car patrols, as well as set up a mobile command post in Chinatown – which the community has welcomed.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 20:00

  • Taibbi: The Bombhole Era
    Taibbi: The Bombhole Era

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News

    The new paperback edition of Hate Inc. has gone to print (for details about where to find the book, click here). The excerpt below is from the new chapter in the book, looking back at the Trump years. Thanks to Leighton Woodhouse for his great work on the animated video above. From the new foreword:

    A UTOPIA OF DIVISION

    News in the Trump years became a narrative drama, with each day advancing a tale of worsening political emergency, driven by subplots involving familiar casts of characters, in the manner of episodic television. It worked, but news directors and editors hit a stumbling block. If you cover everything like there’s no tomorrow, what happens when there is, in fact, a tomorrow?

    The innovation was to use banner headlines to saturate news cycles, often to the exclusion of nearly any other news, before moving to the next controversy so quickly that mistakes, errors, or rhetorical letdowns were memory-holed.

    The American Napoleon generated controversies at such a fantastic rate that stations like CNN and MSNBC (and Fox too) were able to keep ratings high by moving from mania to mania, hyping stories on the way up but not always following them down. The moment the narrative premise of any bombshell started to fray, the next story in line was bumped to the front.

    News outlets paid off old editorial promises with new headlines: Ponzi journalism.

    This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing — needed a polarized audience to work. As surveys by organizations like the Pew Center showed, the different target demographics in Trump’s America increasingly did not communicate with one another. Democrats by 2020 were 91 percent of the New York Times audience and 95 percent of MSNBC’s, while Republicans were 93 percent of Fox viewers. When outlets overreached factually, it was possible, if not likely, that the original target audience would never learn the difference.

    This reduced the incentive to be careful. Audiences devoured bombshells even when aware on a subconscious level that they might not hold up to scrutiny. If a story turned out to be incorrect, that was okay. News was now more about underlying narratives audiences felt were true and important. For conservatives, Trump was saving America from a conspiracy of elites. For “liberal” audiences, Trump was trying to assume dictatorial power, and the defenders of democracy were trying to stop him.

    A symbiosis developed. Where audiences once punished media companies for mistakes, now they rewarded them for serving up the pure heroin of shaky, first-draft-like blockbusters. They wanted to be in the trenches of information discovery. Audiences were choosing powerful highs over lasting ones.

    Moreover, if after publication another shoe dropped in the form of mitigating information, audiences were disinterested, even angry. Those updates were betrayals of the entertainment contract, like continuity errors. Companies soon learned there was a downside to once-mandatory ethical practices. Silent edits at newspapers became common, and old standards like the italicized editor’s note at the bottom of the page letting you know this or that story had been “updated” began to disappear.

    The political impact of all this was that the news watcher in the Trump years became more addicted to the experience of being outraged, while retaining less about specific reasons for outrage. Audiences remembered some big stories and big themes, but stopped digesting each story on its own, rarely bothering to look back at the meaning of various manias after they’d died down.

    As George Orwell understood when he created the “memory hole” concept in 1984, an institution that can obliterate memory can control history. In the Trump era, news audiences volunteered to stop the disobedient act of remembering.

    They brought a pure, virginal belief to watching news, and agreed to unquestioningly accept any new versions of the past put forward. This was Hate Inc. brought to its logical conclusion. Fox and MSNBC already knew how to monetize anger by setting audiences against one another. The innovation of the Trump era was companies learned they could operate on a sort of editorial margin, borrowing credibility for unproven stories from audiences themselves, who gave permission to play loose with facts by gobbling up anonymously-sourced exposes that tickled their outrage centers.

    Mistakes became irrelevant. In a way, they were no longer understood as mistakes.

    This is an excerpt from today’s subscriber-only post. To read the entire post and get full access to the archives, you can subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 19:30

  • If House Price Increases Of 10% Is Not Inflation. Then What Is it
    If House Price Increases Of 10% Is Not Inflation. Then What Is it

    Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist Alliance Bernstein

    Two Decades of Price Mismeasurement & Policy Confusion

    Two decades of price mismeasurement and policy confusion have left everyone bewildered and puzzled over inflation. Inaccuracies in inflation measurement are far from being merely academic; it reopens the fundamental issue of inflation and how policymakers should use price information in its conduct of monetary policy.

    Inflation – What Is It?

    There has not been a general discussion about inflation and how statisticians should measure it in about 25 years. In the mid-1990s, a controversy over the consumer price index (CPI) erupted when Former Federal Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that the CPI overstated actual inflation by at least one percentage point. And by using it to index government entitlement programs Congress was over-spending for cost-of-living adjustments and increasing the budget deficit in the process.

    Politicians always looking for an easy and quick fix jumped into the debate, calling for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to make an immediate change in the CPI measurement. The dispute over measurement issues was not as simple or clear-cut as politicians thought it was. So the Senate created a formal Advisory Commission, under the direction of Micheal Boskin, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, to study the CPI issue.

    The Commission recommended that BLS move the CPI more towards a cost-of-living index (COLI). As constructed, the CPI is a fixed-weighted index measuring price change between two periods. In contrast, a COLI would measure the prices of a comprehensive basket of goods and services that offers the same satisfaction to an average consumer as in the prior period. There is no consensus on what a true COLI is, nor is there a consensus on how such an index would be estimated.

    In its final report to the Senate, the Commission made a number of recommendations (e.g., quality changes, product substitution, and new business outlets) that would purportedly lower the CPI index and ignored or overlooked changes that would result in a higher index. In time, BLS incorporated several of the Commission measurement changes and also made a change at the same time in the measurement of owners’ housing costs.

    The change in owners’ housing costs had nothing to do with the CPI controversy, but it had a bigger impact on reported inflation. BLS statisticians argued that because of the ever-shrinking supply of owners’ occupied homes available for rent, data adequacy and quality did not meet their standards. BLS decided to link owners’ rent to the rental market even though the two markets were separate.

    The change in the measurement of owners’ housing costs was never challenged by the Federal Reserve or politicians, but its impact proved to be far bigger than the changes made by the Boskin’s Commission. In the past two decades, house price inflation has increased twice as fast as the owners’ rent index. And all of the outperformance has occurred during the expansion years, periods when policymakers have been confused why cyclical inflation has not run faster and why inflation seemed to be at times insensitive to changes in monetary policy.

    There is an old axiom in price measurement; that is, price indexes measure the rate of price change for the conditions of the index. The appropriate price index for monetary policy is an index based on market prices paid by the consumers (i.e., a buyers index). Excluding the price change for houses (or the implied rents from owners occupied homes) reduces the accuracy of reported inflation.

    Policy Confusion

    The Federal Reserve was one of the stakeholder groups that forced a change in the measurement of the CPI. So when it was time to select a price index initially as an informal policy tool, and later as a formal guide, policymakers were in a jam. Could policymakers select the CPI as the preferred index after saying it was flawed? No. In the end, policymakers choose the personal consumption expenditure deflator (PCE) reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) over BLS’s CPI.

    The Fed argued that BEA’s PCE index was a superior index. It’s not. First, BEA does not measure consumer prices. That’s the responsibility of BLS. The only direct measure of prices that consumers pay for is the CPI. Second, BEA uses the CPI data for 70% of the PCE index. Third, the remaining 30% of the PCE index is for goods and services that businesses and the government provide or give to people. That creates a price measurement problem since these items are not “sold” to the consumer and should disqualify it as the appropriate price index for monetary policy since it is not based solely on market prices paid by the consumer.

    Confusion over inflation and the appropriate measure of inflation has left policymakers adrift. Instead of acknowledging the errors in price measurement and the selection of the wrong price index, policymakers have doubled-down. They remain hell-bent on hitting a 2% inflation target with a flawed index and have introduced inflation-averaging as a new policy tool. Inflation-averaging doesn’t eliminate the flaws of price mismeasurement; it compounds them. In other words, a “donkey-indicator” is still a donkey after averaging!

    Inflation Outlook

    Several analysts have raised concerns that the recent explosion in the broad money supply is a harbinger of higher inflation. Similar comments on inflation were made nearly a decade ago when the Federal Reserve introduced quantitative easing.

    During the early years of quantitative easing (almost ten years ago), I made a bet that reported inflation could never rise above 5% again based on price measurement issues with Alliance Bernstein colleague Cathy Wood, who is the founder, CEO, and CIO of ARK Investments. I have never collected on that bet. And I would make the same bet today based on the construction of the price indexes.

    Reported inflation is different than experienced inflation. In 2020, core consumer prices rose 1.6%, but I would argue that experienced inflation was at least 100 to 150 basis points higher since house prices increased 500 basis points more than the owner’s rents index.

    In a speech titled “Problems With Price Measurement,” Former Chairman Alan Greenspan stated, “policymakers should be cognizant of the shortcomings of our published price indexes to avoid actions on inaccurate premises that will provoke undesired consequences.”

    Inflation can destabilize an economy even if faulty price indexes fail to reveal it. It already happened during the house price bubble of 2007-2009. Odds are high it will happen again because policy confusion over inflation lives on, evident by the current policy framework built upon the false premise that a single price index can identify economy-wide price imbalances. In the past two decades, reported inflation has veered off as a useful and accurate barometer of what prices matter. A flexible policy approach is needed because prices that matter nowadays have shifted from the goods and services markets to the asset markets.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 19:05

  • #SilverSqueeze Hits London As SLV Warns Of Limited Available Silver
    #SilverSqueeze Hits London As SLV Warns Of Limited Available Silver

    Submitted  by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com

    Less than a week ago in ‘Houston, we have a Problem”: 85% of Silver in London already held by ETFs’, we explained how with the emergence of the #SilverSqueeze, the silver-backed ETFs which claim to hold their silver in London, now account for 85% of all the silver claimed to be stored in the London LBMA vaults (over 28,000 tonnes of the LBMA total of 33,609 tonnes). This, for anyone who can out 2 and 2 together, does not leave very much available silver in London for silver ETFs or for anyone else, especially the largest silver ETF in the market the giant iShares Silver Trust (SLV), which let’s not forget has the infamous JP Morgan as custodian.

    That SLV has seen massive dollar inflows in late January and early February with corresponding jumps in claimed silver holdings is now widely known, but is worth repeating here, for what’s about to come next.

    3,416.11 Tonnes of Silver?

    The intense market interest in the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) started on 28January when a huge volume of 152 million shares traded on NYSE Arca. Again on Friday 29January, SLV traded a massive volume of 113 million shares. This led to an increase in SLV ‘Shares Outstanding’ on Friday 29 January of 37 million shares, and a same day claim by JP Morgan, the SLV custodian, that it had increased the silver held in the SLV by 37.67 million ozs (1,171 tonnes), all claimed to be sourced in the LBMA vaults in London.

    On Monday 01 February, an even larger 280 million SLV shares traded on NYSE, and by end of day SLV shares outstanding jumped by 20 million. On that day SLV claimed to add another 15.376 million ounces of silver (478.25 tonnes) within the LBMA vaults in London, about three-quarters of the value of the new SLV shares created on that day.

    On Tuesday 2 February, with SLV trading still elevated on NYSE, the iShares Silver Trust created a massive 61,350,000 new SLV shares, bringing the SLV shares outstanding to 729.1 million. On the same day, JP Morgan and Blackrock claimed to have added a huge 56.783 million ozs of silver (1,766 tonnes) to the SLV (again all in London), an incredible amount by any measure, but still short of reflecting the total of 118.45 million total of new shares that had been created between Friday and Tuesday (which led them to adjust down shares outstanding by 8.6 million on Wednesday 3 February).

    Over this time, you can see a nearly one for one relationship between the change in number of SLV shares outstanding and the amount of silver ounces claimed to be added to SLV.

    Between Friday 29 January and Wednesday 3 February inclusive, SLV shares outstanding increased by a net 109.85 million. Over the 3-day period from Friday 29 January to Tuesday 2 February, SLV claimed to have added an incredible 109.83 million ozs of silver (3,416.11 tonnes), with holdings of silver bars rising from 567.52 million ozs of silver to 677.35 million ounces (from 17,651.77 tonnes to 21,067.88 tonnes).

    According to the SLV daily bar lists, this extra 3,416.11 tonnes of silver added to SLV between 29 January and 2 February was in the form of 113,501 Good Delivery silver bars (the bars weighing approx. 1000 oz each). Again, according to the SLV bar list, these bars were added in five London vaults which SLV uses, namely Brinks vault in Premier Park London (45.5%), Loomis London vault (27.7%), Brinks Unit 7 vault Radius Park London (15.5%), Malca Amit London vault (6.0%) and JP Morgan’s own London vault (a measly 5.3%).

    In fact, according to the bar lists, SLV only started tapping into silver in the Brinks Premier park vault on Monday 1 February, and only started tapping to silver held in the Loomis London vault on Tuesday 2 February. Which to some people may look like a case of desperation or maybe even panic.

    SLV silver holdings over the 6 months from August 2020 to February 2021. Source: www.GoldChartsRUs.com

    Unable to Acquire Sufficient Silver

    Adding 3,416.11 tonnes of silver to SLV between 29 January and 2 February is not something that JP Morgan can easily claim to do again.

    Which is why it’s particularly interesting that on Wednesday 3 February, right after claiming to add 3416 tonnes of silver to SLV by frantically tapping the LBMA vaults in London, the iShares Silver Trust prospectus was changed, and the following wording added:

    “The demand for silver may temporarily exceed available supply that is acceptable for delivery to the Trust, which may adversely affect an investment in the Shares.

    To the extent that demand for silver exceeds the available supply at that time, Authorized Participants may not be able to readily acquire sufficient amounts of silver necessary for the creation of a Basket.

    Baskets may be created only by Authorized Participants, and are only issued in exchange for an amount of silver determined by the Trustee that meets the specifications described below under “Description of the Shares and the Trust Agreement— Deposit of Silver; Issuance of Baskets” on each day that NYSE Arca is open for regular trading. Market speculation in silver could result in increased requests for the issuance of Baskets.

    It is possible that Authorized Participants may be unable to acquire sufficient silver that is acceptable for delivery to the Trust for the issuance of new Baskets due to a limited then-available supply coupled with a surge in demand for the Shares.

    In such circumstances, the Trust may suspend or restrict the issuance of Baskets. Such occurrence may lead to further volatility in Share price and deviations, which may be significant, in the market price of the Shares relative to the NAV.”

    That the prospectus change was first drafted on Wednesday 3 February is clear by looking at prospectus pdf filename which is ‘p-ishares-silver-trust-prospectus-3-feb.pdf’ and the pdf title ‘Microsoft Word – slv20210203_s3asr_v1.docx’, which was authored by someone called ‘nick’. While the draft started in Word, the final version was saved as a pdf on 5 February.

    SLV Prospectus amendment draft created on Wednesday 3 February

    The final pdf date is the same day, 5 February, that the amended prospectus was quietly uploaded to the SEC Edgar website here with an effective date of 8 February. The previous version of the SLV prospectus was from 14 January

    SLV informs SEC of its amended prospectus, 5 February

    Below you can see the changes in the new 8 February version of the SLV prospectus compared to the 14 January version.

    SLV Prospectus” Left Hand Side – 14 January version, Right Hand Side New February version

    BullionStar picked up on the fact that there was a new prospectus with the suspicious 3 February date, and then a twitter user (h/t Roelzns) compared the two prospectus versions to pinpoint the amended text

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    In addition to the paragraph above about silver demand exceeding available silver supply, the SLV prospectus also added into two further paragraghs under the first, one of which ominously predicting volatile share price movements that could be uncorrelated to the silver price: 

    “Risks Related to the Shares

    A sudden increase in demand for Shares that temporarily exceeds supply may result in price volatility of the Shares.

    A significant change in the sentiment of investors towards silver may occur. Investors may purchase Shares to speculate on the price of silver or to hedge existing silver exposure. Speculation on the price of silver may involve long and short exposures. To the extent that the aggregate short exposure exceeds the number of Shares available for purchase, investors with short exposure may have to pay a premium to repurchase Shares for delivery to Share lenders.

    In turn, those repurchases may dramatically increase the price of the Shares until additional Shares are issued through the creation process. This could lead to volatile price movements in Shares that are not directly correlated to the price of silver.“

    Humorously, the third new paragraph inserted into the SLV prospectus explains that the silver price, which don’t forget is a paper price set by the dominance of bullion bank trading on COMEX and LBMA London, is subject to extreme fluctuations which are unrelated to physical silver demand and supply, but alas there is no mention of the years long silver price manipulations that JP Morgan and other LBMA cronies have been recently prosecuted for:   

    The trading price of the Shares has recently been, and could potentially continue to be, volatile.

    The trading price of the Shares has been highly volatile and could continue to be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors. The silver market in general has experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to factors such as silver’s uses in jewelry, technology, and industrial applications, or cost and production levels in major silver-producing countries such as China, Mexico, and Peru. In particular, supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak and investor speculation have significantly contributed to recent price and volume fluctuations.”

    If the short squeeze on GameStop caused fireworks among a few hedge funds on Wall Street, we hate to think what a short squeeze on the global silver supply will look like as hedge funds wake up to the possibility that SLV “cannot acquire sufficient silver acceptable for delivery to the Trust”.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 18:44

  • Rickards Warns 'Green New Deal' Is Already Underway
    Rickards Warns ‘Green New Deal’ Is Already Underway

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    By now, you’ve heard of the Green New Deal, an ambitious agenda to decarbonize the economy. The overall Green New Deal calls for ending the use of oil and natural gas, moving to electric vehicles, solar, wind and geothermal power, imposing carbon taxes to reduce C02 emissions and providing government subsidies to non-carbon-based energy technologies.

    The U.S. would also seek to embed these policies and priorities in new trade treaties and multilateral agreements. President Biden has already begun this process by rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, which actually doesn’t mean much; it’s mostly for show.

    The Paris Accord is also a platform for pursuing the Green New Deal.

    But it’s difficult to conceive of any other program that would do more harm to the U.S. economy and give more of a boost to the Chinese, Russians and Iranians.

    Biden has temporarily halted all new oil and gas drilling leases and permits on federal lands. He’s moving quickly to make the ban permanent. This ban will kill the fracking industry and help to destroy what’s left of the coal industry. Because of reduced supply, it will raise energy prices globally. New carbon emission taxes will raise prices even further.

    Why Kill the Keystone XL Pipeline?

    Very significantly, Biden has also canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. This is a pipeline that brings oil from Alberta, in Canada, to the central United States. The pipeline would then go to Nebraska, where there would be a hub and a distribution center.

    Killing the pipeline would cost tens of thousands of jobs. And when you count suppliers and subcontractors, it could be at least 100,000 high-paying lost jobs, mostly union jobs with benefits.

    But the fact is, the oil is still coming anyway. That oil from Canada is still coming to the United States, except it comes by truck and train. That’s the reason you build a pipeline. It’s faster and cheaper to move the oil by pipeline than it is to move it by truck and train. What we have now is just a pipeline on wheels with one difference…

    They release much greater CO2 emissions. All these trucks and all these trains are putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than a pipeline would. Again, that’s why you build a pipeline.

    So if you’re doing this for economic reasons, it makes no sense because you destroyed maybe 100,000 high-paying jobs. If you’re doing it for environmental reasons, it makes no sense because you will have more CO2 emissions from the trains and trucks than you would from the pipeline. But they’ve done it anyway.

    This is a good example of what I call the triumph of ideology over common sense. Common sense will say, build a pipeline for the reasons I just mentioned. But that doesn’t fit the ideology or their worldview. They’re immune to the facts. They just say pipelines are bad, so get rid of them.

    A Propaganda Cover for the Real Objectives

    Biden justifies the Green New Deal based on fear of climate change. I don’t want to dive into the climate change debate today. But there’s good science that says CO2 is more or less a harmless trace gas, not the existential threat that many environmentalists would have you believe.

    Climate science provides almost no evidence that slight observable temperature changes have anything to do with C02 emissions. It is far more likely that any temperature changes are the result of solar flare cycles and volcanic eruptions. Some data strongly suggests that the earth is slowly cooling, not warming.

    Scare tactics about the “costs” of hurricanes have more to do with expensive homes built on exposed barrier islands (subsidized by federal insurance programs) than the intensity of storms, which were actually greater and more frequent in the 1940s.

    Climate change is a propaganda cover for the real goals of higher taxes, more regulation, slower growth and favors for tech entrepreneurs. It’s a globalist’s dream.

    What About Congress?

    When you add it all up, Biden’s proposals will destroy high-paying jobs with benefits in the energy sector, raise energy costs for consumers and help flat-line economic growth.

    Still, given the ideological momentum behind the Green New Deal and the imperatives of getting policies enacted quickly, it seems likely that some of these misguided provisions will become law at great cost to consumers and the economy as a whole.

    But the prospects of the most radical parts of the Green New Deal becoming law are problematic. The projected adverse economic and geopolitical results will possibly derail the program in Congress. But, there can be no assurance of that. This will be one of the legislative priorities that Biden puts on a fast track because a Republican takeover of the House in 2022 would stop it indefinitely.

    But the climate change agenda is seeping into all aspects of policy, including monetary policy. The original role of central banks was to provide a sound currency, which, in turn, facilitated government borrowing.

    By the late 19th century, a new mission was added, which was to be a lender of last resort to banks themselves in a financial crisis. It held that in a crisis, the central bank should lend freely to solvent banks against sound collateral at a high rate of interest. That’s been flipped on its head.

    Today’s version is to lend freely to anyone without collateral at a zero rate of interest.

    From Lender of Last Resort To Climate Savior

    After 1934, the Federal Reserve and other central banks were given broad regulatory powers over the banks in their jurisdictions. Finally, in 1978 the Humphrey-Hawkins Act gave the Federal Reserve a dual mandate, which included price stability and job creation.

    With the job creation mandate in its portfolio, the Fed was empowered to interfere with almost every aspect of the real economy, including jobs, inflation, interest rates, liquidity and financial regulation.

    As if that weren’t enough, economist Barry Eichengreen now calls on central banks, especially the Fed, to use their regulatory powers to control climate change! Part of the agenda would address racial inequality, income inequality and credit access for underprivileged groups.

    These may be laudable goals, but it’s a long way from the Fed’s role as lender of last resort.

    What’s frightening about this push to expand the Fed’s mandate is not that it can’t work, but that it could. A central bank could require commercial banks to lend money to solar and wind generating companies and deny credit to oil companies.

    A central bank could require more loans to disadvantaged neighborhoods and require that no credit be made available to gun manufacturers or gun dealers.

    There is no aspect of the economy and business activity that could not be affected positively by mandatory credit or destroyed by the lack of credit and access to the payments system. This is already being done to some extent by cabals of commercial banks. It would be even more powerful if required by central banks.

    This is exactly the outcome that has been warned about for centuries by philosophers and political scientists. It is exactly the reason Americans abolished two U.S. central banks in the 19th century.

    Any party that controls money can control the world. One solution is to abolish the Fed. Another solution is to abandon the money and move to something the Fed cannot control — gold.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 18:40

  • Exposing The Robinhood Scam: Here's How Much Citadel Paid To Robinhood To Buy Your Orders
    Exposing The Robinhood Scam: Here’s How Much Citadel Paid To Robinhood To Buy Your Orders

    Frankly, we’ve had it with the constant stream of lies from Robinhood and neverending bullshit from the company’s CEO, Vlad Tenev.

    With Tenev scheduled to testify on Thursday, alongside the CEOs of Citadel, Melvin Capital and Reddit, the apriori mea culpas have started to emerge – if a little too late – the former HFT trader spoke late on Friday on the All-In Podcast hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, who had strongly criticized Robinhood over the trading restrictions, and Jason Calacanis, a Robinhood investor, and said that “no doubt we could have communicated this a little bit better to customers.”

    What he is referring to, of course, is Robinhood’s outrageous decision to restrict the buying of 13 heavily shorted stocks on Jan 28 that had been driven to record highs, including GameStop, whose shares had surged more than 1,600%.

    Tenev said the restrictions were necessary due to a large increase in collateral/deposit requirements by the DTCC, but that was not spelled out in automated emails sent to Robinhood customers early on Jan. 28.

    Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev

    And then he decided to pull the oldest trick and deflect attention from his own mistakes by blaming “conspiracy theories.”

    “As soon as those emails went out, the conspiracy theories started coming, so my phone was blowing up with, ‘how could you do this, how could you be on the side of the hedge funds,’” he said.

    What Tenev did not say, or explain, is why his company – which is merely a client-facing front of Citadel, which buys the bulk of Robinhood’s orderflow to use it perfectly legally in any way it sees fit – was so massively undercapitalized that the DTCC required several billion more in collateral to protect Robinhood’s own investors against the company’s predatory ways of seeking to capitalize on the gamification of investing making it nothing more (or less) than a trivial pursuit to millions of GenZ and millennial investors, a point which Michael Burry made so vividly.

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    Incidentally we know why Tenev did not mention it: it’s because Robinhood’s back office is a shambles of a shoestring operation, one which never anticipated either such a surge in trading not a multi-billion collateral requirement; had Robinhood been a true brokerage instead of pretending to be one, and run merely to open as many retail accounts as it could in the shortest amount of time, thus generating the most profit in the quickest amount of time to allow its sponsors a quick and profitable exit, it would actually have been on top of this.

    It’s also why Tenev’s ridiculous pleas for immediate settlement instead of the usual T+2 arrangement, which has not been an issue for any other brokers, is nothing but a strawman argument which he hopes to present in Congress.

    Which brings us to a totally separate topic, and one which Teven will one way or another have to address: the fact that Robinhood is a de facto subsidiary of Robinhood, whose entire business model is to sell retail orders to a handful of HFT market makers first and foremost… Citadel. In doing so the only ones who benefited from the surge in retail trading are Robinhood itself, by pocketing millions more from selling orderflow to Citadel, Virtu, Two Sigma, Wolverine and other HFT frontrunning “market-making” venues, as well as Citadel which made billions by having an advance look at the biggest surge in retail stock and option orders flow in history, and being able to trade ahead of and around it.

    And no, it’s not a conspiracy theory Vladimir – it is the stone cold truth, as Jeffrey Gundlach suggested last week when he said “Robin Hood (sic) should be forced to change its name to Hood Robbin’.  I grow so weary of lies through nomenclature, which are ubiquitous these days” adding “To be clear, the name change would reflect Robinhood robbing the little guy, nothing else.”

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    As an aside, how dare we allege that Citadel was buying orderflow to frontrun it? After all, that very allegation…

    … coupled with the reminder that Robinhood engages exclusively in a practice called payment-for-orderflow (or PFOF)…

    … which is what allowed Robinhood to provide “free” trading in the first place, that nearly destroyed us when last June Citadel’s lawyer army threatened to sue us into the ground for suggesting precisely that?

    Some key phrases of note from the above text:

    • “‘Frontrunning’ is an industry term of art that refers to an illegal form of trading.”
    • “Citadel Securites does not engage in such conduct [i.e., frontrunning] and there was no factual basis whatsoever for ZeroHedge to publish such an incendiary, false, and reckless allegation to its 742,000 Twitter followers” [it’s 771,000 now].
    • “ZeroHedge’s statement obviously disparages the lawfulness and integrity of Citadel Securities’ business pratices.”
    • “Quite obviously, this most recent iteration of this same harmful allegation was not made in jest.”
    • “We demand that ZeroHedge immediately retract this tweet by deleting it from ZeroHedge’s Twitter page… A refusal to promptly take down these remedial steps will be seen as further evidence of actual malice and will only increase the already substantial legal risk faced by you and ZeroHedge.”

    Well, we now officially know all about Citadel’s modus operandi because just a few days after we received that letter, none other than financial regulator FINRA, revealed that Citadel Securities was censured and fined for engaging in – drumroll – “trading ahead of customer orders” as Letter of Acceptance No. 2014041859401 revealed:

    Now we admit that our financial jargon is a bit rusty these days, but “trading ahead of customer orders” sounds awfully similar to another far more popular “term of art“, one which we know very well: frontrunning!

    Jargon aside, some of the other highlighted words we are very familiar with, such as “hundreds of thousands”… and “559 instances” in which Citadel traded ahead of customer orders.

    And while we may be getting a little ahead of ourselves here, it was Citadel’s own lawyers that informed us on more than one occasion that:

    “frontrunning” is an unethical and illegal trading practice.”

    So, what are we to make of this? Could it be that Citadel was engaging in at least 559 instance of what its lawyer called “unethical and illegal trading practice.” Surely not: after all the lawyers would surely know very well how ridiculous and laughable their letter and threats would look if it ever emerged that Citadel was indeed frontrunning its customers.

    But wait, it gets even funnier.

    Back in April 2004, long before Citadel became the dominant market maker – and buyer – of retail orderflow controlling a whopping 27% of total US equity volume market share in 2020 according to Bloomberg and a staggering 46% of retail orderflow, it was Citadel’s own General Counsel, Adam Cooper, who urged the SEC to ban payment for orderflow because it “distorts order routing decisions, is anti-competitive, and creates an obvious and substantial conflict of interest between broker-dealers and their customers.“

    As Cooper also revealed…

    “broker-dealers accepting payment for order flow have a strong incentive to route orders based on the amount of order flow payments, which benefit these broker-dealers, rather than on the basis of execution quality, which benefits their customers. Furthermore,  the  parties  making such payments (either voluntarily or through an exchange-mandated program) are forced  to  find  other  ways  to  recoup  the  amounts  of  such  payments,  whether  through  wider  spreads  or  a  reduction  in  other  benefits  that  otherwise  could,  and  should,  be  provided to customers.”

    And the punchline:

    Payment  for  order  flow  is  a  practice  that  on  its  face  is  at  odds  with  a  broker-dealer’s obligations to its customers.  A broker-dealer has a fiduciary obligation to obtain the best execution reasonably available for its customers’ orders under prevailing market conditions.    We  do  not  believe  that  a  broker-dealer  that  accepts  payment  for  order  flow  and does not pass such payments on to its customers (either directly or through reduced execution fees or commissions) can consistently fulfill its best execution obligations.

    Which leads us to the one time Citadel was actually telling the truth:

    Because  payment  for  order  flow  creates  fundamental  conflicts  of  interest  that  cannot  be  cured  by  disclosure,  the  Commission  should  ban  payment  for  order  flow  altogether.  It is crucial that this ban include not only exchange-sponsored programs, but also  payment  for  order  flow  arrangements  entered  into  privately  between  order  flow  providers   and   market   centers. 

    Little did Citadel know that just 15 years later it would be the single biggest beneficiary of paying for orderflow, a practice which has allowed Citadel founder to amass a trophy collection of some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

    We also know all this is true because we were also among the first to expose Robinhood as a client-facing front for Citadel back in 2018, when we wrote “Robinhood Is Said To Get 40% Revenue From HFT Firms Like Citadel” in which we said that…

    “Stealing from millennials to give to the rich. Robinhood app sells user customer data to make a quick buck from the high-frequency trading (HFT) firms on Wall Street,” that is what we wrote last month, in one of the first articles that expressed concern over the popular Robinhood investing app for millennials, which has shady ties to HFT firms and undermines its image of an anti-Wall Street ethos. 

    The conclusion was a searing prediction of what would happen a little over two years later:

    A few anonymous venture capitalists told Bloomberg that Robinhood has already begun to see the consequences of their cozy relationship with Wall Street firms, which has degraded the company’s image. 

    With six million clients, most of whom are millennials — seeking an anti-Wall Street investing culture, could soon find out, that, they too, have been conned by Robinhood founders into thinking the app offers free investing. The lesson at play: nothing in life is free, even if it is from Silicon Valley.

    That said, we were not the first to expose Robinhood’s ways. That honor falls to our friend Joe Saluzzi and Sal Arnuk, who for over a decade have led the crusade against high frequency trading, and who in November 2014 wrote “Beware of Those Offering Free Retail Trades.”

    We are always suspicious when somebody offers us something for free.  Usually, the one offering the free service has other ways of making money.  For example, Google offers lots of free services like Gmail, Google Maps or Youtube. While the services are free, Google is still making money by targeting ads and selling data. The latest free thing which is creating quite a buzz (the hot term for this is “disrupting”) is free retail trading by a company called Robinhood.

    What is Robinhood?  According to an article in the Irish Times yesterday:

    “Founded by Stanford mathematics graduate Vlad Tenev and  Baiju Bhatt last year, Robinhood is a stock brokerage that charges no commission.”

    Robinhood is offering free stock trades and no-cost real time market data.  How do they do it? According to the company:

    – They don’t have brick and mortar companies and don’t spend millions on Superbowl ads.

    – Technology has allowed them to eliminate much of the human intervention and paper confirms.

    And how do they make money?  According to their website:

    “Robinhood has two key revenue streams; charging interest for margin trading, and collecting interest on cash balances.”

    Call us crazy but relying on generating revenue from margin interest and collecting interest on cash balances (where the account minimum is $0) sounds a bit risky and overly ambitious in a market which has been saddled with zero percent interest rates for the past 5 years.  That’s why we think Robinhood must have another way of making money. Could it be that the founders, Vlad and Baiju, are planning on taking advantage of the rebates and payment for order flow that are embedded in the equity market?  But how could two guys who graduated from Stanford in 2008 know that much about the market structure of the US equity market? From their website:

    “After graduating from Stanford, roommates Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt moved to New York, where they built high-frequency trading platforms for some of the largest financial institutions in the world. They began to realize that electronic trading firms pay effectively nothing to place trades in the market yet charge investors up to $10 for each trade — and thus the idea for Robinhood was born. They soon ventured back to California to begin solving the problem of democratizing access to the markets.”

    Seems like Vlad and Baiju know a lot more about US equity trading than we thought.  Heck, they may even know that when a retail limit order is sent to the DirectEdge stock exchange, that order could qualify for a special rebate if it is attributed and displayed as a retail order.  Here is how DirectEdge describe their retail attribution program​ :

    “With this improvement, Members sending Retail Orders may elect to display those orders on the EdgeBook Attributed data feed with the generic retail identifier “RTAL” rather than their Market Participant ID (MPID).  Including a standard retail identifier gives retail brokers greater flexibility and choice to participate in the attribution program that has helped improve execution rates for retail orders.”

    Talk about leading the lambs to the slaughter.  Retail orders that are being attributed are basically flashing bright lights telling the world that they are retail.

    We’re not sure if Robinhood is planning on selling their order flow but it is certainly something that their customers should be asking them once they do start trading. While their website does not say anything about payment for order flow, in a CNBC interview from earlier this year, Vlad Tenev did say the company would be accepting payment for order flow:

     “So, Robinhood has many revenue streams on Day One. Those include margin lending, payment for order flow, interest on cash balances. We’ll have those on Day One,” Tenev said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report”.

    Right now, Robinhood is still busy attracting some high profile investors which include Snoop Dog, actor Jared Leto, the venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures (Robinhood raised $13 million in their latest financing round).

    Two points here: Vlad Tenev’s entire background is HFT – he knew from day one that he could create a “free brokerage” if only he were to quietly sell all the orderflow to a generous sponsor, say Citadel. It’s also why we find laughable his recent tweet asking, obviously rhetorically, “What exactly is high-frequency trading? And is it evil?”

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

    Tenev then went on into a rambling, nonsensical defense of HFT and why it is not evil, concluding that “high-frequency trading is just what you get when you apply technology to trading and getting data moving faster between trading centers will enhance trading for us all”…

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

    … what he did not say is that HFT is just a perfectly legal and widely accepted way of frontrunning retail orderflow (usually by the order of a few milliseconds, explaining the presence of lasers at the New York Stock Exchange in Mahwah), and then selling it to the highest bidder, something he knew almost a decade ago when he launched Robinhood. We almost wonder if he did so in some low-lit Chicago backroom while sitting across from Citadel’s Ken Griffin (this would be the other Citadel, not the one from 2004 which found payment for orderflow loathsome and deserving to be banned, but a Citadel which now considered PFOF a source of almost unprecedented riches and profit).

    The second point we would like to address from the Themis Trading 2014 post is that while back then it was unclear if RH sold their orderflow, we now know that not only is Robinhood selling your orders to other internalizers, but that sale represents the biggest source of RH revenue by orders of magnitude. And thanks to the company’s just filed latest Disclosure Form 606 we know just how much Robinhood made from selling your orderflow to Ken Griffin.

    The chart below shows Robinhood’s monthly revenues for the full year 2020, broken down in the three key categories: i) S&P500 stocks, ii) Non-S&P500 stocks and iii) Options. And while Robinhood made a not-too-shabby $247 million in 2020 from just selling access to your retail stock orders to such non-directed orderflow venue as Citadel, Vitru, Wolverine, Two Sigma, G1X, Morgan Stanley and others, it is the sale of option orderflow that has emerged as Robinhood’s golden goose, having generated an impressive $440 million in revenue in 2020.

    Which then brings us to the punchline: Robinhood is kind enough to break down not only revenue by product (going down to such granular detail as market orders and limit orders), starting several years ago the company also started disclosing who its biggest clients were. And here it will come as no surprise that in 2020, Citadel accounted for more than half of all Citadel revenues, or $362.5 million, exactly 53% of the company’s total revenues of $687.1 million.

    Would it therefore be farfetched to say that Robinhood is nothing more than a client-facing subsidiary of Citadel, one which pretends to offer free trades to tens of millions of young, naive traders, but in reality merely allows Citadel Securities to trade ahead and/or against this orderflow for which it paid over $300 million… and to generate record revenues of $6.7 billion!

    Probably not, but we won’t have a definitive answer until we find out just how much profit Citadel made from buying all this critical data, which gives it an early glimpse into not only each discrete individual trade but also a sense of which way the retail horde is moving, critical and extremely valuable data which until last August was public and available to all (with a slight delay) courtesy of Robintrack, and which last August was inexplicably halted.

    We are confident that this week’s Congressional hearings will quickly get to the bottom of this critical question of just how profitable this orderflow – which it paid Robinhood $362 million to procure – is for Citadel, because anything less will confirm that this latest hearing is nothing but a kangaroo court meant to appease retail investors that someone in Washington is doing something… when in reality everyone knows that what Citadel wants, Citadel gets and there is no sign that Citadel will ever tire of making billions out of the same orderflow for which it paid subpennies on the dollar to Robinhood.

    As for Robinhood’s trite virtue signaling of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, all it took was 30 billion subpenny rebates from Citadel for the firm to remember who really calls the shots.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 18:17

  • "The Coming High-Pressure Economy": Morgan Stanley Sees Imminent Spike In Inflation
    “The Coming High-Pressure Economy”: Morgan Stanley Sees Imminent Spike In Inflation

    By Chetan Ahya, Morgan Stanley chief economist

    The Coming High-PressureEconomy

    After hunkering down for much of 2020, people are eager to make up for lost time. Much the same can be said of policy-makers, who are taking action to recoup lost economic output and return to maximum employment as quickly as possible. To get there, we think they are aiming for a high-pressure economy – an environment of stronger-than-average economic growth that helps to reduce unemployment. That’s exactly where we think the US economy is headed in the coming quarters.

    Based on the experience of the past cycle, policy-makers believe that a high-pressure economy can help them to achieve a broad-based and inclusive economic growth environment. With the low rates of headline unemployment during 2017-19 came better employment opportunities for lower-income households. Even undershooting the estimated natural rate of unemployment failed to produce substantial inflationary pressures, and the natural rate of unemployment saw regular downward revisions.

    This belief has spawned a regime shift in both monetary and fiscal policy. The Fed has moved to a flexible average inflation targeting framework, making a temporary overshoot of the 2%Y inflation target an explicit policy goal. The Fed has also redefined its employment mandate from full to maximum employment, which Chair Powell called a more “broad-based and inclusive goal.” Similarly, fiscal policy is being deployed to address the pre-existing issue of inequality – witness the large-scale government transfers to low- and middle-income households.

    While any counter-cyclical policy response should be sizeable enough to fill the output hole, this time around, policy-makers have done much more. Cumulatively, the Covid-19 recession has cost US households US$400 billion in income, but they have already received more than US$1 trillion in transfers (even before the late December and forthcoming rounds of stimulus). Households have already accumulated US$1.5 trillion in excess saving, which is set to rise to US$2 trillion (9.5% of GDP) by early March once the additional fiscal package is enacted. These policy-making regime shifts also mean that policy-makers will tighten much later in the recovery than in the previous cycle.

    In the last cycle, a common complaint was that while the monetary policy response was aggressive, it didn’t transmit to the real economy. Risk-aversion meant that the boost in liquidity didn’t spur credit growth, instead ending up as excess reserves. In this cycle, critics are making a similar argument that despite fiscal transfers boosting excess saving, households will ultimately hold on to these funds.

    In contrast, we have argued that the policy response has averted significant scarring effects. Moreover, the impact of the exogenous shock is likely to fade, and we foresee a surge in demand as the economy reopens this spring. Spending patterns indicate that households have been forced to accumulate excess saving as restrictions on mobility have limited their opportunities to go out and spend. With warmer temperatures coming and vaccinations set to cover a large part of the vulnerable population, we are confident that the relaxation of restrictions, which has begun in the states with the tightest controls, will pick up speed as spring approaches.

    Our Chief US Economist Ellen Zentner now projects US GDP to grow by 6.5%Y in 2021 (7.6% 4Q/4Q) and 5%Y in 2022 (2.9% 4Q/4Q). These estimates imply that US GDP will rise meaningfully above its pre-Covid-19 path after 3Q21 and will be higher in 2022 than what we would have expected in the absence of the pandemic. That’s a particularly remarkable outcome, especially when you consider that in the post-GFC period the US economy never really returned to its pre-recession path.

    But running a high-pressure economy is not without risks.

    The speed and strength of the demand recovery will put a strain on the supply side, which has limited time to respond, and accelerated labor market restructuring will likely push the natural rate of unemployment higher in the near term. Against this backdrop, inflationary pressures will build up very quickly. In our base case, we expect core PCE inflation to overshoot 2%Y starting this year and into next, in line with the Fed’s stated policy goals. But the nature of the recovery – transfer-driven consumption – implies that inflation risks are to the upside. If underlying inflation momentum enters the acceleration phase after crossing the 2%Y mark in combination with low unemployment, it may precipitate a disruptive shift in Fed tightening expectations, raising the probability of a recession. In the end, whether the acceleration phase unfolds will depend on the extent and the pace at which households convert their savings into spending. The size of the prospective fiscal stimulus increases the chances that it will.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 17:50

  • Michael Burry Joins The Uranium Craze
    Michael Burry Joins The Uranium Craze

    For the past two months we have been especially constructive on the uranium sector (and its handful of beaten down stocks), which we believe are set to benefit tremendously as the sector gets swept up in the ESG euphoria. Some of our recent observations can be found at the following links:

    Then, as uranium stocks did move significantly higher in recent weeks as investors rekindled their love affair with a sector that had been left for dead for much of the past decade, at the start of February an TD Securities analyst said that the reddit short squeeze crowd had started to buy into the sector as well, shortly after a BofA analyst laid out an even more bullish fundamental case, on the assumption that the US could delay the closure of its aging nuclear fleet, boosting demand over the next few decades.

    Whether those two bullish takes are accurate remains to be seen, but the recent surge in Uranium stocks accelerated last week after Cameco smashed Q4 estimates and provided a positive sector outlook. The bullsh case was further bolstered by a lengthy tweetstorm by former iconic hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry who said “A lot of you are invested in uranium. I commend you. I wish I was. Uranium is the rockstar of commodities. It doesn’t mess around – bull and bear markets are of epic proportions.”

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    And while Hendry said that he didn’t know what the catalyst was for the recent “explosion” in uranium names…

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

    … our readers have once again been way ahead of the curve on this dramatic move higher, as we have previously repeatedly laid out the bullish case for uranium stocks in general, and Cameco (CCJ) – which controls the world’s largest high-grade uranium reserves and low-cost operations and is one of the largest global providers of the uranium fuel – in particular (here, here, here and here).

    And now, another iconic hedge fund manager has jumped on the uranium bandwagon.

    In a tweet from Michael “the Big Short” Burry (who communicates with the outside world almost exclusively by twitter with tweets that are spontaneously deleted after a few days), the hedge fund manager who recently made a killing on his Gamestop long, said that “If the government is going to spend $2 trillion, there is no better use than converting the US to nuclear.  Dems can do it! Jobs +”potentially limitless electricity…no greenhouse gas emissions” #greenfuture NOW!”

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    As for who would get to benefit from such a nuclear transformation?  Why uranium of course…

    … and the handful of uranium names that still are trading at depressed valuations, although judging by the recent surge in uranium stock prices, the market is starting to sense which way the wind is blowing. Needless to say, a commitment by the Biden admin to nuclear energy, would result in further massive outperformance for the sector.

    Uranium sector performance since our Dec 5 post, “Uranium Stocks Soar: Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze“

    Look for some substantial uranium exposure in Scion Asset Management’s latest 13F (Burry’s hedge fund) when it is published this week.

    Finally, for those who think the uranium rally may be fizzling, here are some of the latest observations from Larry McDonald’s BearTraps Report on why the recent 50% surge higher could be just the start:

    Mini Nuclear Reactors: (WSJ Link Here)

    Environmentalists hate nuclear yes but they hate thermal coal more, and right now we have 3B people on Earth addicted to coal (India – China). Not to mention Japan!

    China loves the idea of producing alt energy for the US using cheap coal. They grow, our energy becomes more expensive. However, we could be slowly giving up our energy independence to be dependent upon a communist country to export to us. Micro nuclear is the answer but environmentalists and the “not in my backyard” crowd don’t want it for the time being. Meanwhile, Lake Norman north of Charlotte is the result of damning a river for nuclear. Same with Lake Anna in VA. Huge recreational potential. Yet, San Onofre in CA was shutdown. SO’s GA nuclear project has huge cost overruns.

    Nuclear Pros and Cons

    Nuclear is so much better for the environment but the two major issues environmentalists site as problems is discharged cooling water than harms fish due to warmer temp and micro leaks that go undetected. How to dispose of contamination is an issue too. I believe all these things have been addressed in the last couple decades and micronuclear sites are a way to limit fallout concerns, albeit extremely low. However, Japan didn’t do proponents of nuclear any favor and hard to ensure total safety when the Earth can move below you…

    URA Uranium ETF, Holdings 

    URA: 1 Million URA Uranium shares created yesterday, growth AUM to just US$337.6M. In our view, this $337M AUM will grow exponentially as politicians realize they must grow nuclear power. This space is so small, significant upside, attractive risk-reward.

    We have the U.cn premium marked at about 3% right now, using Numerco mid spot price

    U (Uranium Participation Corp)(CAD4.935) (+2.39%)

    Premium to NAV is continuing. we have long said it should trade at a premium given the issues with trading spot uranium and how attractive it is to gain direct exposure to the spot commodity with a history of making huge moves. Any day now we should see the trust selling more shares and using the proceeds to add to their holdings. This will sequester more material from the market, thus creating a reflexive catalyst that could feed on itself for awhile.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 17:35

  • Demand For Used Private Jets Takes Off During Pandemic 
    Demand For Used Private Jets Takes Off During Pandemic 

    In a troubling sign that economic inequality continues to widen in the pandemic recession and recovery, the luxury-jet market is taking off as millions of working-poor Americans face food and housing insecurities. 

    The Federal Reserve’s wealth effect of boosting stocks and housing prices, along with shifting travel trends due to the pandemic, has not just produced a “K-shaped” recovery for the rich but also allowed them to splurge on used private jets. 

    Credit Suisse Group AG, BNP Paribas SA, and other bankers told Bloomberg that used private jet demand in the second half of 2020 increased. Momentum in the market is expected to roll into 2021 as vaccination efforts drive corporate demand. 

    Werner Slavik, chief of aviation for the equipment-finance unit of Societe Generale SA, told attendees at a virtual Corporate Jet Investor conference last week that “the smaller jet market has strong demand.” He was surprised that 2020 was a “very good year.”

    Bankers said international travel restrictions had reduced the need for larger corporate jets. They reported an increase in first-time purchasers at the lower end of the market. 

    Virtual meetings and remote working for white-collar workers have reduced the need for business travel and private jet demand, though leisure travel among the wealthy using private jets surged. U.S. business-jet flight operations plunged by nearly a quarter last year. 

    More on the shifting travel trends is Airbnb Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky who told Reuters last month domestic travel trends will never be going back to the way it was before the virus pandemic. He said business travel is shifting to leisure travel because technologies like Zoom can make teleconferencing possible. 

    A JETNET iQ Market Report showed used private jet sales rose slightly in 2020 from the previous year to 2,598 transactions.

    While demand for private planes built within the last decade is increasing, sales for new jets have declined, forcing jet manufacturers to slash production. 

    Textron delivered 132 in 2020, down from 206 a year before. General Dynamics Corp. delivered 127 Gulfstream jets, 20 fewer than in 2019. 

    JetHQ, which brokers private jet sales worldwide, said deals for aircraft surged in the fourth quarter of 2020. Rebecca Johnson, president of the broker’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, expects sales will increase through 2021.

    “We have a lot of first-time buyers,” Johnson said. “Covid has just seemed to drive most people over the edge.”

    Those with economic mobility appear to be dipping their toes in the used private jet market as they want to travel for leisure. The pandemic is expected to keep commercial airlines in a state of depression for a few years. 

    Rich people need to get to their vacation homes somehow – and certainly, they’re not flying commercial. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 17:25

  • Energy Trader: We've Officially Hit "Holy S*it Levels"
    Energy Trader: We’ve Officially Hit “Holy S*it Levels”

    Update (1715ET): As the day has progressed, amid deteriorating weather forecasts and no let up in demand (despite ERCOT’s urgings), our trader contact at a Houston energy firm sums the situation up as eloquently and succinctly as ever:

    “we’ve officially hit the ‘Holy Fucking Shit Levels’ here…”

    As he shows in the tables below, the Day Ahead clear for energy has basically gone offer-less…

    $7,413 for North Hub (the most liquid hub).

    Ancillary Services, specifically Responsive Reserves which ercot issued an operational notice stating they needed more offers, does not have the same $9,000 cap level. I

    t cleared a comical eleventy gabillion; actually a cheap $11,950…..PER MEGAWATT.

    Do the simple math on that.

    If you are a retailer, obligated to, lets just say, 25MW, and did not hedge (meaning you left it to get filled by ERCOT at market clearing price), you just incurred a $7.1M cost on an around the clock basis for a single day.

    If I was a betting man, I’d say folks are going to go out of business and we’ll see more consolidation in this market, prior to a massive overhaul of market structure.

    How long before Washington steps in with a probe of the power markets? A bailout for grid operators and perhaps some relief for actual residents who – we are desperately sad to say – may just freeze to death amid this ‘perfect storm’ of freezing temps and no supply of power to provide heat.

    *  *  *

    Wholesale power for delivery Sunday was trading at anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 a megawatt-hour in some places, triple the records set in some places Saturday and a staggering 2,672% increase from Friday at Texas’s West hub. Average spot power prices were just shy of $1,000 per megawatt hour during peak hours Sunday morning, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    As one Houston energy trader so eloquently explained, Texas electricity customers are about to get “lubelessly pounded” as prices explode:

    Scary as shit surge…

    Sunday day ahead cleared 4765 for the peak and 2297 for the offpeak. HANDS DOWN BY FAR HIGHEST CLEAR ON RECORD.

    And yep, all those folks on griddy were paying 9$ per KWh earlier today and continue to get lubelessly pounded

    “Spot prices are expected to hit $9,000 on both Monday and Tuesday,” said Brian Lavertu, a trader for Active Power Investments.

    “Power is going to be wild through Tuesday.”

    “It is a pretty brutal air mass,” said Bob Oravec, senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.

    “The cold air is entrenched across the middle part of the country. High temperatures are amazingly cold, some 50 degrees below average.”

    And, the situation in Texas doing from bad to worse: Weather forecast models suggest the polar vortex will continue pouring Arctic air into much of the central US through Feb. 20.

    As a result of this, Texas power grid operator ERCOT, has issued a statement warning of an “energy emergency” and threatening “rotating outages” just when residents need the power to heat their homes the most:

    The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is asking consumers and businesses to reduce their electricity use as much as possible Sunday, Feb. 14 through Tuesday, Feb. 16.

    “We are experiencing record-breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness.

    “At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units. We are asking Texans to take some simple, safe steps to lower their energy use during this time.”

    Here are some tips to reduce electricity use:

    • Turn down thermostats to 68-degrees.

    • Close shades and blinds to reduce the amount of heat lost through windows.

    • Turn off and unplug non-essential lights and appliances.

    • Avoid using large appliances (i.e., ovens, washing machines, etc.).

    • Businesses should minimize the use of electric lighting and electricity-consuming equipment as much as possible.

    • Large consumers of electricity should consider shutting down or reducing non-essential production processes.

    • Given the prolonged, below-freezing temperatures, conservation measures should be implemented safely and within reason.

    ERCOT has the tools and procedures in place to maintain a reliable electric system during tight grid conditions. If power reserves drop too low, ERCOT may need to declare an Energy Emergency Alert, or EEA. Declaring an EEA allows the grid operator to take advantage of additional resources that are only available during scarcity conditions.

    There are three levels of EEA, and rotating outages are only implemented as a last resort to maintain reliability of the electric system.

    Other markets moving on the cold:

    • Gas in Chicago hit $220 per mmBtu, traders said.

    • Physical gas was going for as much as $300 per mmBtu at a Texas hub.

    • Oklahoma gas prices have swung anywhere between $50 to the high of $600.

    • Spot gas prices across the eastern U.S. remained subdued amid milder temperatures, assessed at anywhere from $4 per to $12 per mmBtu on Friday, pricing data compiled by Bloomberg show.

    This decision from ERCOT comes after we first warned of an imminent crisis on Thursday, when we reported that nat gas prices across the plains states had soared to never before seen levels as a result of a brutal polar vortex blast…

    … which literally cut off nattie supply amid wellhead freeze-offs, cutting production receipts just when they’re most needed by customers’ demand for heating, we said that since the winter blast is expected to last for the duration of the week, it is likely that nattie prices across the plains states could hit GME batshit levels.

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    One day later that’s exactly what happened because as frigid temperatures caused equipment failures, temporarily shutdowns and flaring in at least four nat gas processing plants …

    • Targa Resources’ Benedum Gas Plant in Upton County affected for 7 hours overnight, co. said in a filing
    • Occidental Petroleum’s Bennett Ranch Unit RCF Facility in Yoakum County, which is used for EOR, was affected for 9 hours Thursday: filing
    • DCP Midstream’s Goldsmith Gas Plant in Ector County affected for 1 hour Thursday: filing
    • Occidental’s nearby gas plant, another EOR facility, was affected by DCP Midstream incident: filing

    … we hit the proverbial offerless market where any natgas that was available would be purchased at virtually any price, which is why midcontinent prices such as the Oneok OGT nat gas spot exploded from $3.46 one week ago, to $9 on Wednesday, $60.28 on Thursday and an insane $377.13 on Friday, up 32,000% in a few days. This is one of those places where having a limit up circuit breaker could actually be useful, even though there simply is nowhere near enough product to satisfy demand at any price hence the explosive move.

    Hubs across the Midcontinent led the surge in prices again Feb. 12 as weather forecasts predicted the coldest temperatures in more than a decade would hit the region over the upcoming holiday weekend. Platts reported that at locations across Kansas, Oklahoma and Eastern Arkansas, hub prices were trading at single-day record highs around $200 to $300/MMBtu. Regional hubs, which typically service only limited local demand, saw fierce competition among shippers, utilities and end-users looking to meet weekend requirements.

    At one Enable Gas Transmission location, the cash market traded as high as $500 with weighted-average prices holding steady by mid-session around $359/MMBtu. At other nearby hubs, cash markets moved to dizzying, record highs with One Oak Oklahoma at $374 (chart above), Southern Star at $275, Panhandle at $225 and ANR Oklahoma at $205. At the region’s benchmark location, NGPL Midcontinent, the market was holding around $205/MMBtu, data from the Intercontinental Exchange showed.

    And as end-users across the Midcontinent compete for available gas, shippers moved quickly to cut transmissions to neighboring markets. On Feb. 12 net, inbound shipments of gas climbed to 180 MMcf/d – their highest on record dating back to 2005. In January, the Midcontinent region – which typically delivers gas to neighboring markets – saw net outbound transmissions average nearly 3.1 Bcf/d.

    Of course, as natgas went offerless it was just a matter of hours before the immediate downstream commodity, electricity, would follow suit and that’s precisely what happened overnight as wholesale electricity prices across all US markets on Friday.

    Echoing what we said on Friday, Platts wrote that “as arctic air mass continues to blanket much of the central US, the US National Weather Service has issued multiple severe weather notices. Widespread wind chills warnings and advisories are extended through Feb. 14 and likely into the next week for much of the Upper Midwest and Midcontinent, as well as some areas in the Northwest and northern Texas. Daily temperatures across some of the locations will range between 30 to 40 degrees below average, according to the NWS. Eastern PJM, Northwest and much of Texas are also under winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories.”

    This is catastrophic news not only for the continued freeze in nat gas distribution, but for the explosion in electricity prices which could see many customers see a February electricity bill in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. This is what a power trader at a Houston energy company advised us on Friday:

    Prices in response to the persistent cold have pushed load expectations to all time winter highs, and on par with the hottest summer days the ISO has experienced.  Actual shortages could persist if units aren’t weatherized and fail at any point.  Monday peak is currently bid 4000, and balweek inclusive of Tuesday through Friday is 1000@2000.  Off peak (nights) have traded insane levels as well, with the balance of the month trading 650$.  For reference, summer of 2018 never came close to touching these levels.  The highest trade on a balday was around 2000$, if i’m not mistaken. 

    The PUC is meeting today to discuss coordination and potential conservation efforts, but this event will likely crush several firms who are not collateralized enough to weather (no pun intended) the storm IMO.  And all those folks on griddy could literally be looking at paying 4$+ per KWh across the state (as opposed to 12 cents or whatever rate you got at your house), pushing power bills to the moon.

    One day later, and the peak price in Ercot west real-time hit an absolute all time high of $5,500, up from $302 the day before. If anyone has a little extra nat gas in storage, this is the time to sell it and buy a private island.

    What follows is a breakdown of how the nat gas supply collapse is impacting soaring electricity prices across the US, courtesy of Platts:

    Texas

    ERCOT next-day prices reached record highs on the Intercontinental Exchange as temperatures throughout Texas were forecast to tumble double digits on Feb. 15. Dallas temperatures were forecast to drop to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, and Houston was forecast down to 34 F, according to CustomWeather.

    The brutally cold temperatures also affected wind supply in ERCOT, generation for Feb. 15 was forecast to tumble down 52.5% to 27.8 GWh of generation as cold temperatures impacted wind turbines. DeAnn Walker, chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, said at a meeting on Feb. 11 that there were some “issues with some gas generation plants being curtailed” and that “wind turbines are all frozen,” further placing upward pressure on already sky-high prices.

    ERCOT North Hub real-time next-day Feb. 15 on-peak power prices skyrocketed to trade above $3000, up from its previous settlement of $325/MWh. Next-day prices broke high records, and they had not seen similar four-digit prices since Aug. 15 2019, when prices settled around $1848/MWh.

    ERCOT North Hub real-time balance-of-the-week for Feb. 16 through Feb. 19 surged to top $1500/MWh, and the balance-of-the-month off-peak package for Feb. 16 through Feb. 28 climbed about $499.75 to trade at $650/MWh.

    In response to the unprecedented scramble, the Texas oil/gas regulator, the RRC, approved emergency provisions, and warning that the deep freeze may have a “severe impact” on energy supplies, said that power plants may struggle to acquire gas for generators.

    Bloomberg’s Javier Blas said, “Texas utilities are asking citizens to conserve electricity if possible as ERCOT prices surge across the board above $5,000 Per MWh (!!!) and hit the $9,000 cap in many nodes. Texas electricity grid is facing massive demand as cold weather hits southern and central U.S. states.” 

    Bloomberg’s Rachel Adams-Heard shared a tweet from a Texas power trader… 

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

    Central

    In the Midcontinent ISO, Indiana Hub on-peak jumped to its highest price since January 2019 to trade above $100/MWh. Bal-of the-week also rallied to price on par with the next-day flow package. As polar vortex continues to impact the region, the February-to-date average day-ahead price jumped almost 70% month on month and nearly doubled year on year. MISO demand forecast for Feb. 15 is the strongest since August 2020 at 98.63 GW.

    As of Feb. 12, MISO is declaring conservative operations due to extremely cold temperatures and generator fuel supply risks through Feb. 16. All transmission and generation maintenance will be suspended in the affected areas, and all outages plans should be reviewed, according to the most recent grid operator’s notice.

    In PJM, AD Hub on-peak traded in the upper $70/MWh, rising double digits day on day. PJM West Hub also rose to trade in the mid-$60s/MWh. Power demand was forecast to begin retreating slightly in the upcoming days, however, it was still expected to remain relatively strong.

    West

    West power prices surged to the triple digits, the highest prices of the year so far, as a Pacific storm system was forecast to hit the Pacific Northwest to generate heavy snow and ice accumulations from Portland to Seattle. Mid-Columbia on-peak for Feb. 15 and Feb. 16 delivery boosted about $116.25 to trade at $155/MWh, and the off-peak package hiked about $113.50 to trade around $146.75/MWh.

    California packages for Feb. 15 and Feb. 16 rose, with SP15 on-peak up about $117/MWh to trade around $193/MWh, and NP15 on-peak climbing $32.75 to trade around $106.75/MWh. California Independent System Operator peakload demand supported the rally in prices, with forecast demand for Feb. 15 up 1.9% to 26.7 GW.

    Southwest packages saw price increments in the $200s/MWh across the board also as the weather service forecast wind chills between -10 and -25 degrees common across eastern New Mexico. Palo Verde on-peak priced around $270.25/MWh, and Four Corners on-peak traded at $314/MWh.

    Northeast

    Power packages in the ISO New England and NYISO were more mixed in Feb. 12 trading. Mass Hub on-peak tumbled from its recent highs to trade in the mid-$70s/MWh. Bal-of-the-week, in contrast, rose $3 to price at $87.50/MWh.

    The locational marginal prices in the New York Independent System Operator were also rangebound, with Zone G adding about $2.50 to trade around $91.25/MWh and Zone J NYC falling about $7 to $94.50/MWh. The corresponding off-peak packages each rose about $5.50 to trade in the mid-$70s/MWh. Despite some of the declines, regional power prices in both ISOs remained elevated.

    Unlike the rest of the country, the US Northeast is set to experience more settled weather, with high temperatures in Boston and New York City forecast to slightly increase to the low 30s on Feb. 15 with moderate chances of snow and rain, according to the weather service.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 17:22

  • Trump Lawyer Rage-Quits "Slanted" CBS Interview: "You [Media] Are Bloodthirsty For Ratings… Trying To Divide America"
    Trump Lawyer Rage-Quits “Slanted” CBS Interview: “You [Media] Are Bloodthirsty For Ratings… Trying To Divide America”

    One of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers blasted the mainstream media companies of trying to push a narrative instead of reporting on facts, saying news outlets are “trying to divide this country.”

    “What this country wants and this country needs is this country to come together,” Michael T. van der Veen said, adding that the reason why there is so much divisiveness is “because of the media.”

    “Because the media wants to tell their narrative rather than just telling it like it is,” he said, adding that corporate media outlets have “to start telling the right story in this country” and that “media is trying to divide this country” to make a profit.

    “You are bloodthirsty for ratings. You’re asking questions that are already set up with a fact-pattern,” van der Veen said.

    “When I watch the news, I watch one station, and it is raining. And I watch another station at the same time, and it is sunny. Your coverage is so slanted, it’s got to stop. You guys have to stop and start reporting more like PBS does rather than TV news show that does not have any journalistic integrity at all. What I’m telling you is they doctored evidence,” he said.

    Michael van der Veen, attorney for former President Donald Trump, is seen in the Senate Reception Room before the fifth day of the Senate Impeachment trials for former President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 13, 2021. (Greg Nash/Getty Images)

    As The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports, he was responding to a comment and question from a CBS News reporter, Lana Zak, after the Senate acquitted Trump. She was asking him about what he described was doctored evidence that was presented by Democratic House managers during the trial, including the addition of a Twitter checkmark on a tweet and selectively edited videos of the Capitol riots.

    For some unusually honest (and at length) discussion of the media’s bias, watch the whole thing…

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

    The reporter, in her question, framed her question in a way that van der Veen suggested was an attempt to downplay the apparently doctored evidence.

    “It’s not OK to doctor a little bit of evidence,” he said.

    “Prosecutors in this case doctored evidence. They did not investigate this case, and when they had to come to the court of the Senate to put their case on, because they had not done any investigation, they doctored evidence. It was absolutely shocking. I think when we discovered it and were able to expose it and put it out, I think it turned a lot of senators,” van der Veen said.

    Zak had interjected, “To be clear for our viewers, what you’re talking about now is a check mark, a verification on Twitter that did not exist on that particular tweet 2020 that should have actually read 2021. And the selective editing, you say, of the tapes.”

    Van der Veen then has enough and removes his mic, slamming it to the ground…

    “Michael Van der Veen. Citizen.”

    According to a poll from Gallup last fall, only 9 percent of Americans trust mass media “a great deal” and 31 percent trust the media “a fair amount.” Meanwhile, 33 percent have no trust “at all” in the media, while 27 percent have “not very much trust” in the media, a poll says.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 17:00

  • Flaw Of Large Numbers: Cathie Wood's ARK Invest Risks Having Too Much Cash
    Flaw Of Large Numbers: Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Risks Having Too Much Cash

    We were one of the first to highlight how the law of large numbers could eventually stand in the way of Cathie Wood’s success at ARK Invest. 

    Her firm has added $7 billion in assets in February, topping the $8 billion she added in January. That brings her total ETF assets to a stunning $58 billion.

    The problem is that the amount of cash she has amassed is so large, she’s actually running out of companies to invest in. Wood’s funds invest in niche names that deal in sectors like genomics and robotics and, for now at least, the potential investments are relatively limited. ARK already “owns 10% or more of at least 24 companies,” Bloomberg noted over the weekend. 

    The problem is literally that there’s too much money. 

    “Carlos, this is a stupid f*cking problem to have”​​​

    James Pillow, managing director at Moors & Cabot Inc., said: “There is risk with so much money flowing into so few. When the flows stop, or worse yet reverse, one should expect a day of reckoning.”

    In addition to concentration risk, which could eventually cause a feedback loop at any point when Ark decides to sell in names and sectors that it is heavily weighted in, ARK must now find new places to put cash to work. 

    The Janus Twenty mutual fund has similar issues in the 1990s, Bloomberg notes. It rose more than 500% in size over the decade and had $38 billion under management at one point. It plunged 50% during the dot com bubble and then had an “evenly paced” recovery. 

    That fund’s former manager, Scott Schoelzel, said recently of Wood: “Probably the one thing she is going to have to figure out a way to navigate is size. I don’t know if it’s $50 billion or $70 billion or $100 billion or $150 billion, but there will be a point where size will become her enemy.”

    Wood fired back during a webinar this week, claiming companies she invests in can scale quickly: “When people say, ‘oh, they’re forced into larger-cap stocks,’ well, I can give you a few examples.” She pointed out Invitae, which grew from “roughly $250 million, if I’m not mistaken, to $8 billion.”

    All 5 of ARK’s actively managed products have returned more than 100% over the past year. The ARKK ETF is up 164% in the last 12 months alone, far outpacing the 43% rise in the QQQ. 

    Her recent announcement that she would be taking a stake in DraftKings caused the company’s stock to pop higher. An announcement that she was considering an outer space-themed ETF saw space names rally. There’s no doubt, Wood now has clout on the street. 

    We posited yesterday that perhaps Wood was getting so much investor attention because she is constantly a topic of discussion in financial media. Several people yesterday responded, with one noting that the entire basis for all of Wood’s recent fame and fortune is still due to what appeared to be someone manipulating the options market in Tesla for a year:

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

    But we digress. And what goes up always comes down. 

    Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird, concluded: “I’m sure Ark is happy to have the assets, but at the same time, if you look at the history of chasing hot active-managers in the mutual fund or hedge fund space there’s a lot of mean reversion, and lot of time that happens after big inflows.”

    We noted several weeks ago that short interest in ARK funds had “exploded” after ARK’s banner 2020. Short interest as a percentage of shares outstanding for the firm’s flagship $21 billion ARK Innovation ETF spiked to an all time high of 1.9% from just 0.3% two months ago, according to data from IHS Markit Ltd. and Bloomberg. 

    Shorts were also piling into the firm’s other ETFs, including its $9.4 billion Genomic Revolution ETF and its $5.9 billion Ark Next Generation ETF. ARKK rose almost 150% in 2020 and brought in $9.6 billion in new money. So far, they have been unsuccessful. 

    Dave Nadig of ETF Trends told Bloomberg: “You can’t expect any shortable asset to have the kind of meteoric rise ARKK has had and not attract almost mechanical short-selling. There are, quite literally, traders who have screens for ‘ETFs that went up X far over Y time’ to use as contrarian short indicators.”

    ETF expert Eric Blachunas commented at the time: “The Ark phenomenon is the first time ever that a rock-star portfolio manager has been shortable. Typically, they’re in a mutual fund or a hedge fund, which you can’t short. This is breaking new ground in a way.”

    In late December 2020, Cathie Wood entered into an agreement with Resolute Investment Managers that will allow her to remain the firm’s majority shareholder. The firm is going to retain Resolute’s distribution services as part of the deal. Wood purchased the option for an undisclosed sum and it was financed through a “multi-tranche term loan financing facility provided by Eldridge Corporate Funding LLC,” according to Bloomberg. 

    Recall, late last year we published a report highlighting Balchunas’ take on how ARK Funds could wind up becoming victims of their own success. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/14/2021 – 16:35

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 14

Today’s News 14th February 2021

  • Is China Creating A New Master Race?
    Is China Creating A New Master Race?

    Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

    Bing Su, a Chinese geneticist at the state-run Kunming Institute of Zoology, recently inserted the human MCPH1 gene, which develops the brain, into a monkey. The insertion could make that animal’s intelligence more human than that of lower primates. Su’s next experiment is inserting into monkeys the SRGAP2C gene, related to human intelligence, and the FOXP2 gene, connected to language skills.

    Has nobody in China seen Planet of the Apes?

    Or maybe they have. “Biotechnology development in China is heading in a truly macabre direction,” writes Brandon Weichert of The Weichert Report in an article posted on the American Greatness website.

    In a communist society with unrestrained ambition, researchers are pursuing weird science. What happens when you mix pig and monkey DNA? Chinese experimenters can tell you. How about growing human-like organs in animals? Yes, they have done that as well.

    Moreover, Beijing may already be engineering “super soldiers.” “U.S. intelligence shows that China has conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities,” wrote then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a December 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “China Is National Security Threat No. 1.”

    It is not clear how far Chinese military researchers have gone. They are, however, advocating use of the CRISPR gene-editing tool to enhance human capabilities, and the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission is “supporting research in human performance enhancement and ‘new concept’ biotechnology.”

    The People’s Liberation Army has gone all-in on gene editing of humans. As leading analysts Elsa Kania and Wilson VornDick report, there are “striking parallels in themes repeated by a number of PLA scholars and scientists from influential institutions.”

    All these Chinese moves are meant to obtain “biological dominance.” “There are,” as Ratcliffe noted, “no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”

    It is clear that the Communist Party is thinking about more than just soldiers. A Chinese researcher is also the first — and so far only — person to gene-edit human embryos that produced live births.

    He Jiankui, while at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, used the CRISPR-Cas9 tool to remove gene CCR5 to give twin girls, born in late 2018, immunity to HIV but perhaps also to enhance intelligence. The experiment evoked the eugenics program of the Third Reich to create a “master race.”

    China is in the process of creating the “perfect Communist,” Weichert, also the author of Winning Space, told Gatestone. “China is run by a regime that believes in the perfectibility of mankind, and with the advent of modern genetic and biotechnology research, China’s central planners now have the human genome itself to perfect according to their political agenda.”

    Chinese scientists already are on the road of “gene-doping” to make future generations smarter and more innovative than those in countries refusing to embrace these controversial methods. “What you are witnessing in China,” Weichert has written, “is the convergence of advanced technology with cutting-edge bio-sciences, capable of fundamentally altering all life on this planet according to the capricious whims of a nominally Communist regime.”

    Shenzhen’s He, after an international uproar caused by news of his dangerous and unethical work, was fined and jailed for “illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing,” but in the Communist Party’s near-total surveillance state, he obviously had state backing for his experiments.

    He’s efforts are not isolated. Nature magazine’s news team reported in April 2015 that Chinese researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, in another world-first experiment, edited “non-viable” human embryos with CRISPR-Cas9. “A Chinese source familiar with developments in the field said that at least four groups in China are pursuing gene editing in human embryos,” the magazine’s website stated.

    Beijing’s prosecution of He, therefore, looks like an attempt to cool down the furor and prevent the international scientific community from further inquiry into China’s activities.

    Unfortunately, China’s advances in gene editing human embryos for super soldiers is persuading others they must do the same. Soon, for instance, there will be “Le Terminator.” The French government has just given approval for augmented soldiers. “We have to be clear, not everyone has the same scruples as us and we have to prepare ourselves for such a future,” declared French Minister for the Armed Forces Florence Parly.

    Michael Clarke of Kings College London told the Sun, the British tabloid, there is now a biological competition fueled by China. Will we soon have, as the International Society for Military Ethics has dubbed it, a race of “homo robocopus”?

    If we do, China will not be the only party to blame. “What is most disturbing about these endeavors is that China has gleaned access to CRISPR and advanced genetic and biotech research, thanks to their relationship with the United States and other advanced Western nations,” Weichert told Gatestone this month. “American research labs, biotech investors, and scientists have all striven to do research and business in China’s budding biotech arena explicitly because the ethical standards for research on this sensitive issue are so low.”

    “This will prove to be a long-term strategic threat to the United States that few in Washington, on Wall Street, or in Silicon Valley understand,” Weichert says, referring to China’s rapid weaponization of biotechnology.

    China’s regime does not have ethics or decency, is not bound by law, and does not have a sense of restraint. It does, however, have the technology to start a whole new species of genetically enhanced, goose-stepping humans.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 23:30

  • 'Matrix'-Style Wearable Device Turns Humans Into Battery 
    ‘Matrix’-Style Wearable Device Turns Humans Into Battery 

    The race is now on to convert body heat into battery power. Just like the action/sci-fi movie The Matrix.  

    In The Matrix, it was revealed to Neo (Keanu Reeves) that humans are flesh batteries powering artificial intelligence machines that have taken control of Earth. 

    Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have come one step closer to harness the human bodies’ thermoelectric energy to power low-cost wearable devices. 

    “In the future, we want to be able to power your wearable electronics without having to include a battery,” said Jianliang Xiao, senior author of the new paper and an associate professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder.

    As we noted above, the human-powered battery to power machines is straight out of The Matrix film. Xiao said the battery could generate about 1 volt of energy for every square centimeter of skin – allowing it to power wearable devices, such as fitness trackers. 

    In a short informational video, CU Boulder explains how the new battery works. 

    “Whenever you use a battery, you’re depleting that battery and will, eventually, need to replace it,” Xiao said. “The nice thing about our thermoelectric device is that you can wear it, and it provides you with constant power.”

    Though the technology is still in its infancy, he said it generates less voltage per area than a conventional battery.

    While more research is needed to increase the amount of power produced before it can be commercialized. He figured it would take about a decade before the new battery is introduced for the retail market. 

    “Just don’t tell the robots. We don’t want them getting any ideas,” Xiao concluded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 23:00

  • Escobar: Why Russia Is Driving The West Crazy
    Escobar: Why Russia Is Driving The West Crazy

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Future historians may register it as the day when usually unflappable Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decided he had had enough:

    We are getting used to the fact that the European Union is trying to impose unilateral restrictions, illegitimate restrictions and we proceed from the assumption at this stage that the European Union is an unreliable partner.

    Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, on an official visit to Moscow, had to take it on the chin.

    Lavrov, always the perfect gentleman, added, “I hope that the strategic review that will take place soon will focus on the key interests of the European Union and that these talks will help to make our contacts more constructive.”

    He was referring to the EU summit of heads of state and government at the European Council next month, where they will discuss Russia. Lavrov harbors no illusions the “unreliable partners” will behave like adults.

    Yet something immensely intriguing can be found in Lavrov’s opening remarks in his meeting with Borrell: “The main problem we all face is the lack of normalcy in relations between Russia and the European Union – the two largest players in the Eurasian space. It is an unhealthy situation, which does not benefit anyone.”

    The two largest players in the Eurasian space (italics mine). Let that sink in. We’ll be back to it in a moment.

    As it stands, the EU seems irretrievably addicted to worsening the “unhealthy situation”. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen memorably botched the Brussels vaccine game. Essentially, she sent Borrell to Moscow to ask for licensing rights for European firms to produce the Sputnik V vaccine – which will soon be approved by the EU.

    And yet Eurocrats prefer to dabble in hysteria, promoting the antics of NATO asset and convicted fraudster Navalny – the Russian Guaido.

    Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, under the cover of “strategic deterrence”, the head of the US STRATCOM, Admiral Charles Richard, casually let it slip that “there is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state.”

    So the blame for the next – and final – war is already apportioned to the “destabilizing” behavior of Russia and China. It’s assumed they will be “losing” – and then, in a fit of rage, will go nuclear. The Pentagon will be no more than a victim; after all, claims Mr. STRATCOM, we are not “stuck in the Cold War”.

    STRATCOM planners could do worse than read crack military analyst Andrei Martyanov, who for years has been on the forefront detailing how the new hypersonic paradigm – and not nuclear weapons – has changed the nature of warfare.

    After a detailed technical discussion, Martyanov shows how “the United States simply has no good options currently. None. The less bad option, however, is to talk to Russians and not in terms of geopolitical BS and wet dreams that the United States, somehow, can convince Russia “to abandon” China – US has nothing, zero, to offer Russia to do so. But at least Russians and Americans may finally settle peacefully this “hegemony” BS between themselves and then convince China to finally sit as a Big Three at the table and finally decide how to run the world. This is the only chance for the US to stay relevant in the new world.”

    The Golden Horde imprint

    As much as the chances are negligible of the EU getting a grip on the “unhealthy situation” with Russia, there’s no evidence what Martyanov outlined will be contemplated by the US Deep State.

    The path ahead seems ineluctable: perpetual sanctions; perpetual NATO expansion alongside Russia’s borders; the build up of a ring of hostile states around Russia; perpetual US interference on Russian internal affairs – complete with an army of fifth columnists; perpetual, full spectrum information war.

    Lavrov is increasingly making it crystal clear that Moscow expects nothing else. Facts on the ground, though, will keep accumulating.

    Nordstream 2 will be finished – sanctions or no sanctions – and will supply much needed natural gas to Germany and the EU. Convicted fraudster Navalny – 1% of real “popularity” in Russia – will remain in jail. Citizens across the EU will get Sputnik V. The Russia-China strategic partnership will continue to solidify.

    To understand how we have come to this unholy Russophobic mess, an essential road map is provided by Russian Conservatism, an exciting, new political philosophy study by Glenn Diesen, associate professor at University of Southeastern Norway, lecturer at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, and one of my distinguished interlocutors in Moscow.

    Diesen starts focusing on the essentials: geography, topography and history. Russia is a vast land power without enough access to the seas. Geography, he argues, conditions the foundations of “conservative policies defined by autocracy, an ambiguous and complex concept of nationalism, and the enduring role of the Orthodox Church” – something that implies resistance to “radical secularism”.

    It’s always crucial to remember that Russia has no natural defensible borders; it has been invaded or occupied by Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, the Mongol Golden Horde, Crimean Tatars and Napoleon. Not to mention the immensely bloody Nazi invasion.

    What’s in a word? Everything: “security”, in Russian, is byezopasnost. That happens to be a negative, as byez means “without” and opasnost means “danger”.

    Russia’s complex, unique historical make-up always presented serious problems. Yes, there was close affinity with the Byzantine empire. But if Russia “claimed transfer of imperial authority from Constantinople it would be forced to conquer it.” And to claim the successor, role and heritage of the Golden Horde would relegate Russia to the status of an Asiatic power only.

    On the Russian path to modernization, the Mongol invasion provoked not only a geographical schism, but left its imprint on politics:  “Autocracy became a necessity following the Mongol legacy and the establishment of Russia as an Eurasian empire with a vast and poorly connected geographical expanse”.

    “A colossal East West”

    Russia is all about East meets West. Diesen reminds us how Nikolai Berdyaev, one of the leading 20th century conservatives, already nailed it in 1947: “The inconsistency and complexity of the Russian soul may be due to the fact that in Russia two streams of world history – East and West – jostle and influence one another (…) Russia is a complete section of the world – a colossal East West.”

    The Trans-Siberian railroad, built to solidify the internal cohesion of the Russian empire and to project power in Asia, was a major game-changer: “With Russian agricultural settlements expanding to the east, Russia was increasingly replacing the ancient roads who had previously controlled and connected Eurasia.”

    It’s fascinating to watch how the development of Russian economics ended up on Mackinder’s Heartland theory – according to which control of the world required control of the Eurasian supercontinent. What terrified Mackinder is that Russian railways connecting Eurasia would undermine the whole power structure of Britain as a maritime empire.

    Diesen also shows how Eurasianism – emerging in the 1920s among émigrés in response to 1917 – was in fact an evolution of Russian conservatism.

    Eurasianism, for a number of reasons, never became a unified political movement. The core of Eurasianism is the notion that Russia was not a mere Eastern European state. After the 13th century Mongol invasion and the 16th century conquest of Tatar kingdoms, Russia’s history and geography could not be only European. The future would require a more balanced approach – and engagement with Asia.

    Dostoyevsky had brilliantly framed it ahead of anyone, in 1881:

    Russians are as much Asiatics as European. The mistake of our policy for the past two centuries has been to make the people of Europe believe that we are true Europeans. We have served Europe too well, we have taken too great a part in her domestic quarrels (…) We have bowed ourselves like slaves before the Europeans and have only gained their hatred and contempt. It is time to turn away from ungrateful Europe. Our future is in Asia.

    Lev Gumilev was arguably the superstar among a new generation of Eurasianists. He argued that Russia had been founded on a natural coalition between Slavs, Mongols and Turks. The Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe, published in 1989, had an immense impact in Russia after the fall of the USSR – as I learned first hand from my Russian hosts when I arrived in Moscow via the Trans-Siberian in the winter of 1992.

    As Diesen frames it, Gumilev was offering a sort of third way, beyond European nationalism and utopian internationalism. A Lev Gumilev University has been established in Kazakhstan. Putin has referred to Gumilev as “the great Eurasian of our time”.

    Diesen reminds us that even George Kennan, in 1994, recognized the conservative struggle for “this tragically injured and spiritually diminished country”. Putin, in 2005, was way sharper. He stressed,

    the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. And for the Russian people, it was a real drama (…) The old ideals were destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or simply hastily reformed…With unrestricted control over information flows, groups of oligarchs served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty started to be accepted as the norm. All this evolved against a background of the most severe economic recession, unstable finances and paralysis in the social sphere.

    Applying “sovereign democracy”

    And so we reach the crucial European question.

    In the 1990s, led by Atlanticists, Russian foreign policy was focused on Greater Europe, a concept based on Gorbachev’s Common European Home.

    And yet post-Cold War Europe, in practice, ended up configured as the non-stop expansion of NATO and the birth – and expansion – of the EU. All sorts of liberal contortionisms were deployed to include all of Europe while excluding Russia.

    Diesen has the merit of summarizing the whole process in a single sentence: “The new liberal Europe represented a British-American continuity in terms of the rule of maritime powers, and Mackinder’s objective to organize the German-Russian relationship in a zero-sum format to prevent the alignment of interests.”

    No wonder Putin, subsequently, had to be erected as the Supreme Scarecrow, or “the new Hitler”. Putin rejected outright the role for Russia of mere apprentice to Western civilization – and its corollary,  (neo) liberal hegemony.

    Still, he remained quite accommodating. In 2005, Putin stressed, “above all else Russia was, is and will, of course, be a major European power”. What he wanted was to decouple liberalism from power politics – by rejecting the fundamentals of liberal hegemony.

    Putin was saying there’s no single democratic model. That was eventually conceptualized as “sovereign democracy”. Democracy cannot exist without sovereignty; so that discards Western “supervision” to make it work.

    Diesen sharply observes that if the USSR was a “radical, left-wing Eurasianism, some of its Eurasian characteristics could be transferred to conservative Eurasianism.” Diesen notes how Sergey Karaganov, sometimes referred to as the “Russian Kissinger”, has shown “that the Soviet Union was central to decolonization and it mid-wifed the rise of Asia by depriving the West of the ability to impose its will on the world through military force, which the West had done from the 16th century until the 1940s”.

    This is largely acknowledged across vast stretches of the Global South – from Latin America and Africa to Southeast Asia.

    Eurasia’s western peninsula

    So after the end of the Cold War and the failure of Greater Europe, Moscow’s pivot to Asia to build Greater Eurasia could not but have an air of historical inevitability.

    The logic is impeccable. The two geoeconomic hubs of Eurasia are Europe and East Asia. Moscow wants to connect them economically into a supercontinent: that’s where Greater Eurasia joins China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But then there’s the extra Russian dimension, as Diesen notes: the “transition away from the usual periphery of these centers of power and towards the center of a new regional construct”.

    From a conservative perspective, emphasizes Diesen, “the political economy of Greater Eurasia enables Russia to overcome its historical obsession with the West and establish an organic Russian path to modernization”.

    That implies the development of strategic industries; connectivity corridors; financial instruments; infrastructure projects to connect European Russia with Siberia and Pacific Russia. All that under a new concept: an industrialized, conservative political economy.

    The Russia-China strategic partnership happens to be active in all these three geoeconomic sectors: strategic industries/techno platforms, connectivity corridors and financial instruments.

    That propels the discussion, once again, to the supreme categorical imperative: the confrontation between the Heartland and a maritime power.

    The three great Eurasian powers, historically, were the Scythians, the Huns and the Mongols. The key reason for their fragmentation and decadence is that they were not able to reach – and control – Eurasia’s maritime borders.

    The fourth great Eurasian power was the Russian empire – and its successor, the USSR. A key reason the USSR collapsed is because, once gain, it was not able to reach – and control – Eurasia’s maritime borders.

    The US prevented it by applying a composite of Mackinder, Mahan and Spykman. The US strategy even became known as the Spykman-Kennan containment mechanism – all these “forward deployments” in the maritime periphery of Eurasia, in Western Europe, East Asia and the Middle East.

    We all know by now how the overall US offshore strategy – as well as the primary reason for the US to enter both WWI and WWII – was to prevent the emergence of a Eurasian hegemon by all means necessary.

    As for the US as hegemon, that would be crudely conceptualized – with requisite imperial arrogance – by Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski in 1997: “To prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together”. Good old Divide and Rule, applied via “system-dominance”.

    It’s this system that is now tumbling down – much to the despair of the usual suspects. Diesen notes how, “in the past, pushing Russia into Asia would relegate Russia to economic obscurity and eliminate its status as a European power.” But now, with the center of geoeconomic gravity shifting to China and East Asia, it’s a whole new ball game.

    The 24/7 US demonization of Russia-China, coupled with the “unhealthy situation” mentality of the EU minions, only helps to drive Russia closer and closer to China exactly at the juncture where the West’s two centuries-only world dominance, as Andre Gunder Frank conclusively proved, is coming to an end.

    Diesen, perhaps too diplomatically, expects that “relations between Russia and the West will also ultimately change with the rise of Eurasia. The West’s hostile strategy to Russia is conditioned on the idea that Russia has nowhere else to go, and must accept whatever the West offers in terms of “partnership”. The rise of the East fundamentally alters Moscow’s relationship with the West by enabling Russia to diversify its partnerships”.

    We may be fast approaching the point where Great Eurasia’s Russia will present Germany with a take it or leave it offer. Either we build the Heartland together, or we will build it with China – and you will be just a historical bystander. Of course there’s always the inter-galaxy distant possibility of a Berlin-Moscow-Beijing axis. Stranger things have happened.

    Meanwhile, Diesen is confident that “the Eurasian land powers will eventually incorporate Europe and other states on the inner periphery of Eurasia. Political loyalties will incrementally shift as economic interests turn to the East, and Europe is gradually becoming the western peninsula of Greater Eurasia”.

    Talk about food for thought for the peninsular peddlers of the “unhealthy situation”.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 22:30

  • Duterte Tells US "You Have To Pay" To Station Troops In Philippines
    Duterte Tells US “You Have To Pay” To Station Troops In Philippines

    In what sounds like a bit of a Trump move, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday declared provocatively to the US that it will now “have to pay” to maintain the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which allows for American forces to be stationed in the Philippines.

    The remarks came during a speech given to Philippine troops where he said of allied US forces: “I’d like to put on notice if there is an American agent here, from now on, you want the Visiting Forces Agreement done? You have to pay,” he said. “It is a shared responsibility, but your share of responsibility does not come free, after all, when the war breaks out we all pay.”

    Getty Images

    Tensions between the US and Philippines have been on edge for years as recently Duterte openly called for the government to kick out US forces and scrap the VFA altogether, however, the country’s military at this point appears to be more concerned with the growing threat from Beijing in the South China Sea. 

    Tensions came to a head when last year Duterte told Washington he would cancel the deal, citing the US denying top allies within his government visas over human rights abuses.

    According to a Reuters summary of his remarks:

    Duterte reiterated that he wanted to avoid confrontation with China over maritime claims that “would lead to something we can hardly afford”.

    “(The US) is free to advance their troops in our land … We do not like it because we want to remain neutral,” the ultra-nationalist Duterte added in his speech. “But the exigency of the moment requires their presence here, I am okay with that.”

    The troop agreement was recently extended as part of military-to-military talks, and it’s unclear whether the Philippine side will actually push for compensation, or whether Duterte has a specific figure in mind, which he did not specify in the remarks.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 22:00

  • Venezuelan Collapse Scam: "Damaged" US Dollar Bills Being Exchanged For Less Than Actual Value
    Venezuelan Collapse Scam: “Damaged” US Dollar Bills Being Exchanged For Less Than Actual Value

    Authored by J.G.Martinez via The Organic Prepper blog,

    When a collapse occurs, aside from the obvious, there are plenty of things that happen. Chaos theory kicks in, and depending on the location, crazy things transpire. An example of this is Singapore and what happened that led to it being one of the world’s safest countries.

    A brief history of Singapore: Singapore in the middle 50s and 60s had serious problems: unemployment, housing shortage because of over-population, racial tension, and corruption. Though hospitals were still running, if you wanted care, a bribe was necessary. Mafia and crime were a concern also.

    PAP (The People’s Action Party Est 1954) became the ruling political party of Singapore in 1965. PAP took steps to increase the penalties for corruption, something that many countries take lightly. The worst punishments were for those robbing the social programs with the most impact, like health, education, or childhood/elderly care. The governing party also proceeded to pass bills regarding state employees, their positions, and their financial accounts. The reason for monitoring the accounts was to track down those who were giving or accepting bribes. As a result of the new bills, many state employees were sent to jail, thereby cutting down corruption. Some of them even received the death penalty. Drug dealing was another crime punishable by death.  

    It is important to note Singapore’s justice system collaborated from the beginning to make this happen. Something I believe will never happen in my country.

    A new scam has started in Venezuela’s twisted economy

    Something I never thought could happen, as it doesn’t have any precedents, has. And it is something that caught me entirely by surprise.

    I know my countrymen. They can be so creative they indeed could deserve some award to survive (and even thrive) in harsh environments. They can twist and bend the rules to extreme degrees not seen in other parts of the world, even in South America. And I’m afraid we’re going to see more of this soon.

    There is a vast exchange market somewhere – a very dark exchange market.

    A deposit is made to someone of 35 Peruvian soles. In turn, they deposit roughly 12-13 million Bolivares, no questions asked. Where did they get the Bolivares? Well, that is a good question. To me, it remains a mystery. Bank fees are ridiculously low, and I doubt they are making money enough to pay the power bill.  

    They are buying USD, cash, banknotes, considered “in bad shape” or “partially damaged” by the general public. (Public meaning those who have never been outside our borders, of course.)

    Not one country I have visited would say this is damaged currency.

    However, the shops and supermarkets are demanding banknotes to be in excellent shape. Does this seem suspicious to you? It does to me. (Ok, maybe I have too many TV shows bouncing around in my mind. But it does remind me of a couple of competitors giving El Don, the more significant drug dealer, a bunch of cash. One of them with the banknotes rolled up, a dirty mess in a duffel bag, and the other one a neat series of blocks, wrapped in plastic. You get the point.)

    Suppose you are buying groceries or clothes and the banknote has very slight “damage” (a small ink stain, for example, or too many wrinkles). In that case, they immediately try to force the customer to accept less for their money. For example, the customer is told, “This bill is not worth 20$, as it is damaged. We will take it if you accept that it is worth only $15 (or $18, $19…at the cashier’s discretion) in groceries.” 

    What the…? Come on. How does this work?

    “Smart” people will buy “defective” banknotes from an unknowledgeable population that has hardly seen cash dollars in their lives. To them, a little ink stain is a defect. Those “smart” people take advantage of this by blatantly offering 15$ for a 20$ that is quite used or with an ink stain.

    Many shops won’t accept these banknotes. Poor people are often forced to sell their damaged notes for less than the actual worth. They will offer 8$ for a 10$ note and 90$ for a 100$ with some “damage.”

    Repeat this operation 100 times, and you will collect enough “damaged” cash that will be entirely acceptable across the border. People travel with this stash to buy national currency and return a few hours later to exchange them again. No matter the loss, as it has been indeed already covered with the abuse.

    And this, ladies and gentlemen, is an entire commercial activity by itself

    It is shameful that people are more than willing to kick their honesty through the window if there is a way to make money with less effort. And if that means they scam a few fellow citizens in the meantime, too bad.  

    I have to wonder where all of that exchanged money goes. The people have nearly dropped the national currency, mostly electronic, and are using other countries’ currency, such as Colombian peso, Euros, USD, and Brazilian Reals (BRL). 

    As there is no real exchange system of currency with the outside world, the Bolivares remain whirling endlessly inside our border as it cannot be considered a “reserve” currency. And a real problem in my country as the so-called “dollarization” process (which is NOT) occurs is a shortage of coins and small bills. 

    To me, this is not a real way to make money. It is part of a subculture that brings out the worst of the human species. How quickly this practice has extended throughout the country makes me realize how some past myths have remained as something forbidden and terrible. As Selco has said, there will always be new rules in a collapse and someone will enforce them.

    Oh, and if you are a Venezuelan and are reading this, feel free to send me all of your “damaged” 20$ banknotes you don’t want messing up your wallet anymore. I will be happy to receive them. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 21:30

  • Meet The $4,460 EV Some Are Saying Could Dethrone Tesla In China
    Meet The $4,460 EV Some Are Saying Could Dethrone Tesla In China

    It’s an unlikely adversary, but SAIC-GM-Wuling’s new $4,460 EV could wind up being a Tesla-killer in China.

    At least that was the take from Nikkei, who profiled the Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV and called it a car that was “quickly” winning over drivers in China. The car is marketed as a utilitarian “commuting tool”. It measures less than 3 meters long and 1.5 meters wide, yet it can still hold four people (and it’s still probably more comfortable than the third row in a Model Y). 

    The price starts at 28,800 yuan, or about $4,460. A model with air conditioning sells for $5,000. “If you make a 13,000 yuan down payment, the rest will be interest-free,” a salesman told Nikkei. 

    While it can’t meet Tesla’s range or performance, it is convenient and is priced well, making it one of China’s best selling new EVs. It has been a win for SAIC Motor, which holds a majority stake in SAIC-GM-Wuling. 

    The car is called “the people’s commuting tool,” and can go 120 km on a full charge, at up to 100 kph. It can be charged from a standard outlet. “Consumers give high marks to its low cost and its design,” auto analyst Alan Kang said. “It’s sold especially well in Henan and Shandong provinces.”

    The EV can be operated without a license, but cannot be driven on highways. But that has just increased its embrace in third tier cities, where more than 60% of its sales take place. 

    Wuling also says it plans on selling its Hong Guang Mini outside of China eventually. It has already “partnered with a Latvian automaker to sell a version of the car in Europe,” according to Nikkei. 

    “There was a lot of support from consumers whose incomes fell due to the coronavirus,” one dealer said. “Purchases from the middle class have grown due to the pent-up urge to spend from being unable to go on vacation overseas,” an industry source said. 

    One thing is for certain: there is no lack of EV competition in China:

    Nio has more than doubled its unit sales, putting the company eighth in new-energy vehicle sales last year, up from 13th place. Li Auto multiplied its unit sales 25 times to reach 10th place.

    Altogether, China’s five largest EV startups, including WM Motor and Xpeng, expanded unit sales by 150% last year.

    And while Tesla has tripled sales in China over the last year, we have documented signs that the fairy tale between Elon Musk and the Chinese government could very well be coming to an end.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 21:00

  • The US Ministry Of Woke Propaganda Wants To Cancel You, Me, Fox, & Anyone Else Who Disagrees
    The US Ministry Of Woke Propaganda Wants To Cancel You, Me, Fox, & Anyone Else Who Disagrees

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    There’s a saying that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

    But I think that there are people who learned from history and want to repeat it.

    Don’t get me wrong. If you walked up and asked someone like the little short guy from Facebook who sat on some books at his congressional hearing so he could see over the table or that dude with the dirty looking beard from Twitter or all those so-called journalists frothing at the mouth on CNN whether they wanted to turn our nation into a carbon copy of Hitler’s Germany, they’d be positively aghast at the very notion.

    Yet every day on social media, people like me try to share innocuous things, like an article about taco seasoning, I kid you not, and we’re told we aren’t following “community standards.”

    For the record, I had waited 15 minutes between posting that article on my personal timeline and was then trying to share it on my frugal living Facebook page. If I’m in trouble for taco seasoning, it probably won’t be long until they kick me off entirely, so if you found this post on social media and want to make sure you see all of our articles, please go here and subscribe  – you’ll get a free, full-length copy of The Prepper’s Workbook when you do. You can also find me on Gab, MeWe, and Twitter (for the moment).

    If you think this is only happening to conservatives, you’re wrong. I’m an anti-politician, anti-war, lower-case L libertarian who believes that gay married couples should be able protect their legally grown weed with guns.

    The American Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

    The concept that they and their platforms might be the modern version of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda has probably never even crossed their mind. In fact, these people think they’re actively fighting Nazis.

    In this essay, I’m not even talking about the horrors of the Holocaust itself. I’m explaining about the very idea that media should all be government-mandated, dissent should be silenced, and those who have different opinions should be crushed was at the very heart of the Reich.

    Censorship in WWII Germany was the key to controlling the populace and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels eagerly took control of the news, literature, filmmaking, theatre, music, and all forms of broadcasting in order to present the illusion of a united front that eagerly and vehemently supported Adolph Hitler and all the evils that occurred under his reign.

    Does this sound familiar?

    The current culture of outrage and cancellation is busily trying to shut down dissenting opinions. They’re picking through social media posts from a dozen years ago and “canceling” someone for a meme they posted or an offhand remark they made way back when. It’s obvious that the goal is to silence anyone who might have some small amount of influence over others in order to show the rest of the country, “Look, everyone agrees! We must be right because all the popular people say we are!”

    It’s a worrisome fact that most of the people holding the microphones right now have the influence, power, and money to set the tone for our country. They have the platforms, the money, the power, and the ability to silence the rest of us peons who simply want to be left alone with our guns, our gardens, our favorite websites, and our own religious beliefs.

    The fact that the United States is even considering a position called the “reality czar” should alert you to the fact that reality will not be judged by what’s happening – you know, actual reality – but by what this “czar” is told the people should believe to be the truth. And yes, there are people who really, truly believe there should be a reality czar like this yahoo at the New York Times.

    Several experts I spoke with recommended that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a “reality czar.”

    It sounds a little dystopian, I’ll grant. But let’s hear them out.

    Right now, these experts said, the federal government’s response to disinformation and domestic extremism is haphazard and spread across multiple agencies, and there’s a lot of unnecessary overlap.

    Renée DiResta, a disinformation researcher at Stanford’s Internet Observatory, gave the example of two seemingly unrelated problems: misinformation about Covid-19 and misinformation about election fraud. (source)

    He even admits it “sounds a little dystopian.” You THINK? Perhaps that is because it is positively and unarguably dystopian. That might be why it sounds that way. And he’s not alone.

    Another dude at Wired thinks we need a literal federal Ministry of Truth to monitor deepfakes and disinformation. (Much like the Patriot Act is not patriotic, I’m pretty sure we should not expect a Ministry of Truth to be truthful.)

    So, what about a new federal agency? A central body tasked with combating disinformation, parsing fact from fiction and thereby ensuring Americans’ collective sanity when the flood of fakes truly arrives: a Bureau of Information, a Department of Facts, a Ministry of … Truth!

    Full circle, and we’re back at dystopia. The idea might sound absurd, unimaginable even: Washington bureaucrats regulating reality itself, dictating to Americans what’s true and what isn’t.

    Is it really so crazy? The EPA protects our environment, the FDA protects our bodies, the DHS protects our borders. In the era of indistinguishability, difficult choices will need to be made in order to protect our minds. When the fakes come for you and yours—when, for example, your adolescent child is deepfaked by an internet bully—you might want a Ministry of Truth that actually lives up to the name, that doesn’t falsify but certifies the truth, that assertively stamps its authority atop fake videos: “This content is not real.” American history includes no shortage of necessary (if at first uneasy) interventions, in which citizens trade some degree of individual autonomy for collective peace of mind: “FDA-approved” food and drugs; “MoT-approved” audio and video. (source)

    All these people are admitting these ideas are dystopian but they’re absolutely and totally cool with that and they want you to be cool with it too. THEY LITERALLY WANT A F*CKING DYSTOPIA. 

    A bunch of people think we need a “reality czar” in the United States of America.

    Any person who suggests that shutting every opinion that is different from theirs is “disinformation and domestic extremism” is actually the person committing the act of domestic extremism. That’s because our founding document states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

    A government-appointed reality czar would most certainly abridge the freedom of speech and the press and while it would not be a law passed by Congress, it would be an arm of the government, making such a position undeniably unconstitutional.

    First of all, we aren’t a kingdom and we don’t need any czars. The term “czar” comes from Tsarist Russia (and here everyone said Trump was in bed with Russia. The irony pretty much writes itself.) A quick refresher on tsars:

    Russia was ruled by Tsars who had ultimate authority on all matters of governance. The oppressive system left no room for change and brewed revolutionary ideas and aspirations…Tsars believed that they had a divine right to rule Russia, their position and power had been given to them by God. (source)

    Let’s just get rid of that whole icky term, “czar,” shall we?

    In fact, we already have a Ministry of Propaganda and they manipulated the election.

    Many of our problems in the United States today stem from the mainstream media, which has been sh*t-disturbing and causing near-civil war for years now, and social media, which is manipulated to make us feel a certain way emotionally or to make us believe a certain way socially because “everyone else does.”

    And that’s a lot more troubling than you might think. These manipulations can change something as massive as the presidential and congressional elections. There was, in fact, a joint effort to do just that and they aren’t even being coy about it.

    Time magazine flat out admitted that the election was “swayed” by “steering media coverage” and “controlling the flow of information.”

    And if you don’t like it? You’d better be quiet about it or you’ll get “canceled” too. Just look at what happened to Parler and what’s happening right now to Gab. Parler got kicked off their server and Gab has lost access to nearly every way they can take payments.

    If you dissent, the Woke Folks will make an example of you. You lose your job. You lose your business. You get starved out. You get publicly humiliated. You get doxxed.

    Now even the press is trying to silence the press.

    Also, I have a news flash: “the press” is not just CNN and other left-leaning media outlets. Legally, “the press” is defined as follows:

    All men have a right to print and publish whatever they may deem proper, unless by doing so they infringe the rights of another, as in the case of copyrights, (q.v.) when they may be enjoined. For any injury they may commit against
    the public or individuals they may be punished, either by indictment, or by a civil action at the suit of the party
    injured, when the injury has been committed against a private individual. Vide Const. of the U. S. Amend. art. 1, and Liberty of the Press. (source)

    With the advent of the internet, “the press” became much, much bigger. Alternative news outlets are the press. Citizen journalists are the press. YouTubers, bloggers, and authors. We are all the press, every single one of us, and we are free human beings who have a constitutional right to dissent.

    And it isn’t just the little people they want to silence. The Woke Folks want to “take down” Fox News. I’m not saying Fox is perfect – I rarely ever watch mainstream news – but they are the only mainstream holdout that isn’t far left and ready to cancel everybody.

    Loads of pundits are unironically accusing Fox of doing precisely what they do – brainwashing the masses. It’s utter madness, even if they weren’t also sharing their own opinions like they are the Gospel, to believe that opinions should be punished, outlawed, and disappeared like a terrorist getting black-bagged to Guantanomo.

    A guy at The Daily Beast is rubbing his hands together in glee at the very idea of people refusing to pay for Fox on basic cable, taking away a couple of bucks per person because he believes that a report from The Lancet about the spread of Covid “put the cherry on top of the “this was basically Trump’s fault” sundae.”

    Some fellow on the Washington Post doesn’t think boycotting Fox’s advertisers is extreme enough. He isn’t happy about the financial impact of defamation suits. He’s bitterly disappointed that “cable giants like AT&T, Comcast and Charter Spectrum” have failed to removed Fox and Newsmax from the airways, stating sadly,  “But the cable systems have shown little willingness to police their offerings.” He fervently wishes Fox could be “impeached.”

    And he’s not alone.

    On the program “Morning Joe,” Anand Giridharadas of MSNBC questioned whether Fox News “is a thing that should exist in America.”

    …

    Nicholas Kristof from the Times wrote, “We must clear an ecosystem of mass delusion spread by Fox News and many Republicans” in a recent opinion piece.

    And Oliver Darcy from CNN again pointed fingers at AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, and Dish—which host channels like Fox News—and said, “it is time TV carriers face questions for lending their platforms  to dishonest companies that profit off of disinformation and conspiracy theories.” (source)

    Journalists who should be the people fighting the hardest for a free press are going to the mat to shut down those who they believe are engaged in Wrongthink. It’s like we woke up and instead of 2021, we’ve been transported straight into Orwell’s version of 1984.

    And here’s how a real Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment works.

    Once the opposition has been crushed and silenced, all that will be left is state-run media.

    Like the Xinhua News Agency in communist China, everything that is published will be government approved. Let’s take a look at that news agency (emphasis mine):

    Xinhua News Agency or New China News Agency is the official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China. Xinhua is the biggest and most influential media organization in China, as well as the largest news agency in the world in terms of correspondents worldwide. Xinhua is a ministry-level institution subordinate to the State Council and is the highest ranking state media organ in the country alongside the People’s Daily. Its president is a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party…

    …The news agency has faced criticism of spreading propaganda and criticising people or movements critical of the CCP.

    Xinhua is a publisher as well as a news agency—it owns more than 20 newspapers and a dozen magazines and it publishes in several languages, besides Chinese, including English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Korean. Scholars have noted that Xinhua tailors its pro-CCP message to the nuances of each audience. (source)

    The United States of America is behaving like Communist China and Americans are not just watching, they’re cheering it on. The major mainstream networks are all vying to don the cloak of being the state-approved media outlet and they’ll probably all get a kick at it to make us believe we have a choice about the “news” we consume.

    Today it might be libertarians and conservatives in the domestic terrorist crosshairs. But I assure you, if these people have their way, the target will be ever-moving until nothing is left but a shell of our great country, picked clean by the elite who planned the ultimate coup.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 20:30

  • "Embarrassed & Disgusted" Biden Spox "Resigns" After Threatening To "Destroy" Reporter
    “Embarrassed & Disgusted” Biden Spox “Resigns” After Threatening To “Destroy” Reporter

    Update (Sat 2/13, 2000ET): Facing a torrent of shockingly unsupportive headlines over the hypocrisy of the treatment of a Biden spokesperson’s threats to “destroy” a female reporter, it appears TJ Ducklo is no longer working at The White House.

    After being merely suspended for just one week, White House deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo has “resigned”

    “We accepted the resignation of TJ Ducklo after a discussion with him this evening,” White House press secretaryPsaki said in a statement.

    She added that “This conversation occurred with the support of the White House Chief of Staff.”

    And ended with some good old-fashioned virtue-signaling:

    “We are committed to striving every day to meet the standard set by the President in treating others with dignity and respect, with civility and with a value for others through our words and our actions.”

    And in an effort that is surely meant to be the beginning of an effort to ever get another job in Washington, Ducklo also issued a statement on Twitter:

    “No words can express my regret, my embarrassment, and my disgust for my behavior. I used language that no woman should ever have to hear from anyone, especially in a situation where she was just trying to do her job. It was language that was abhorrent, disrespectful and unacceptable,” he said.

    “I am devastated to have embarrassed and disappointed my White House colleagues and President Biden, and after discussion with White House communications leadership tonight, I resigned and will not be returning from administrative leave.”

    “I know this was terrible. I know I can’t take it back. But I also know that I can learn from it and do better. This incident is not representative of who I am as a person, and I will be determined to earn back the trust from everyone I have let down because of my intolerable actions.”

    We wonder how long before CNN or MSNBC hire him?

    *  *  *

    Biden Deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo, famous for having an on-air meltdown during the election over a teleprompter question, has been placed on a one-week suspension without pay after he threatened to “destroy” a Politico reporter working on a story about Ducklo’s previously undisclosed relationship with Axios political reporter, Alexi McCammond – who covered the Biden campaign.

    As Vanity Fair reported on Friday, Ducklo lashed out at a Politico reporter who was working on a story about his relationship with McCammond – except, instead of contacting the male reporter who reached out to him for comment, Ducklo instead called and threatened a female co-author – Politico‘s Tara Palmieri, in what Vanity Fair describes as sexual harassment.

    “I will destroy you,” said Ducklo, according to the report – adding that he would ruin her reputation if she published it.

    During the off-the-record call, Ducklo made derogatory and misogynistic comments, accusing Palmeri of only reporting on his relationship—which, due to the ethics questions that factor into the relationship between a journalist and White House official, falls under the purview of her reporting beat—because she was “jealous” that an unidentified man in the past had “wanted to fuck” McCammond “and not you.” Ducklo also accused Palmeri of being “jealous” of his relationship with McCammond. (Palmeri had no prior relationship or communication with McCammond before calling her to report on the Playbook item, which was a story that she was assigned and had not independently pursued.) –Vanity Fair

    As an aside, this is exactly the type of behavior President Biden promised to fire people “on the spot” for. 

    Apparently threatening to ‘destroy’ a journalist doesn’t ‘meet their standard’ for firing.

    Of course, the White House issued an apology and all is better now. Ducklo won’t be “assigned to work with any reporters at Politico” when he’s back from his one-week slap on the wrist. 

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    Following the incident, an editor at Politico reached out to the White House about the threats – which led to multiple conversations with White House officials on January 21, “including White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, White House Communications director Kate Bedingfield, and Anita Dunn, director of West Wing operations.”

    In one of those calls, senior White House officials acknowledged that Ducklo’s handling of the call with Palmeri was inappropriate and said he would send a note to her apologizing for the comments. In another conversation, the same White House officials took aim at Palmeri by accusing her of breaking an off the record agreement with Ducklo and pressing Politico as to why the contents of the call had been revealed. Palmeri had only informed her editors of the contents of the call, which she had transcribed into her notes as it was happening, after they asked her about it. –Vanity Fair

     Imagine the two-week news cycle this would have created if it had been a Trump spox…

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 20:05

  • Incoming SEC Chair Gary Gensler Could Be Worth Up To $119 Million
    Incoming SEC Chair Gary Gensler Could Be Worth Up To $119 Million

    President Joe Biden’s nominee to be chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, who we profiled here and is referred to as “the sheriff”, could have a net worth between $41 million and $119 million. 

    Gensler was previously the chairman of the CFTC and a partner at Goldman Sachs. He disclosed his net worth as part of disclosures he had to file with the Office of Government Ethics, Bloomberg noted on Friday. A majority of his money was made at Goldman, where he joined in the late 1970’s after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. He became one of the youngest partners in Goldman Sachs history. 

    Gensler’s largest holding is a stake worth $25 million and $50 million in the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. He also disclosed that he had between $50,000 and $100,000 in capital gains from holding shares of Tesla, the only stock that is listed individually on his disclosures. He has since sold the position.

    He also disclosed that he will participate in a benefit plan from Goldman Sachs which is expected to pay out $977 per month starting at age 71. 

    Recall, we wrote about Gensler’s nomination in mid-January. 

    His arrival will likely be a stark difference from the last 4 years of Jay Clayton, as Gensler’s resume includes going to war with major financial titans when he was head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission – and winning. Financial lobbyists sometimes simply called him “the enemy” during the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act battle. 

    Justin Slaughter, a consultant at Mercury Strategies, said: “The sheriff is coming to the preeminent financial regulator in the world. It means regulation and enforcement are about to get much tougher.”

    When he arrives at his post, Gensler will not only have to deal with a Fed-induced stock market mania, but also tensions with China and the growth of private equity. 

    Graham Steele, who served as an aide to Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, said: “He developed a reputation for being adversarial to Wall Street because he came from the industry and understood the business so he could push back against their arguments when they were hollow.”

    Ian Katz, an analyst at Capital Alpha Partners in Washington, commented: “What’s really unnerving to a lot of people is that it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t need them. He doesn’t need to go back there for a job, he’s made his money. He’s not terribly interested in who he ticks off or not and that’s very powerful.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 20:00

  • Socialism Never Works
    Socialism Never Works

    Authored by John Stossel, op-ed via Townhall.com,

    Last week, I reported on two myths about socialism. My new video covers three more.

    Myth No. 3: Socialism works if it’s “democratic.”

    As the Democratic Socialists of America put it, “Society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.”

    Sounds nice. If socialists are elected, then we’ll have a more just society.

    But Venezuela’s socialists were elected.

    “They can start off democratically elected,” says economist Ben Powell, director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech, but “once they centralize control over the economy, it becomes impossible to ‘un-elect’ them.”

    Hugo Chavez was elected but became an authoritarian who chose his successor, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro now gets “elected,” by having opponents arrested and “ordering state employees to vote for him or they lose their job,” says Powell.

    “Socialism always becomes authoritarian?” I ask.

    “Everywhere you try socialism, that’s what you get,” he replies. “It’s hard to exercise political freedom if you don’t have economic freedoms. If you’re dependent upon the state for your livelihood, you lose your ability to use your voice to oppose (the state) because you can be punished.

    And if the state directs the economy, some government department must manage millions of production decisions and prices. That never works. No bureaucrat can anticipate the needs and wants of millions of people in different places. No politician can match the wisdom of decentralized entrepreneurs making subtle adjustments constantly.

    Celebrities like Rosario Dawson, Susan Sarandon and Danny DeVito star in videos selling “democratic” socialism as “public schools” and “interstate highways.”

    They are not wrong. “Some industries are government-owned,” replies Powell, but “when you look at things that are inefficiently done — public education, our congested streets — (it’s clear) socialized industries don’t work well.”

    “They do in Scandinavian countries!” say socialism’s promoters.

    That’s myth No. 4.

    Scandinavia does have big welfare programs, but capitalism pays for them.

    The socialists call Sweden socialist, but that’s just wrong. “Volvo is a private company,” says Powell. “Restaurants and hotels are privately owned. Markets organize the vast majority of Swedish economic activity.”

    Sweden did once try socialism. The result was high taxes, inflation and economic decline. It’s an example of how people in prosperous places often don’t know what made their lives better.

    In 1950, Sweden was the world’s fourth-richest country. Then Sweden tried socialism. Suddenly, once industrious Swedes started taking sick days. Wealth creation stopped.

    “Talent and capital stormed out of Sweden to escape taxes and red tape,” writes Swedish historian Johan Norberg. “Businesses moved headquarters and investments to more hospitable places. IKEA left for the Netherlands… Bjorn Borg and other sports stars fled to Monaco.”

    Sweden recovered only when it ended its socialist experiment. They cut taxes, government spending, and sold state-owned businesses.

    After economically ignorant politicians like Bernie Sanders called Scandinavia “socialist,” Denmark’s prime minister even came to America to say: “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”

    In fact, in rankings of economic freedom, Denmark ranks as more free market than the United States.

    Myth No. 5: Socialism is completely different from fascism.

    In Congress, Rep. Louie Gohmert called Hitler a “socialist.” Rep. Steve Cohen took offense, shouting, “It’s the Nazis that were terrible, not the socialists!”

    But Nazis were “national socialists.” There are differences between fascism and socialism, but “both replace market decision-making with command and control,” says Powell. Fascism “leaves private ownership in nominal terms” but neither system allows individual freedom. “You lose… control over your own future. Only under capitalism do you have the freedom to say, ‘No.'”

    Socialism appeals to people today because it promises “equality and social justice,” but look at its track record. In Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam and China, socialism has meant a loss of freedom.

    Socialist experiments also failed in Israel, India, Great Britain, Afghanistan, Syria, Algeria, Cambodia, Somalia, etc. There are no socialist success stories.

    Only capitalist countries create real wealth.

    “The history of humanity is poverty, starvation, early death,” Powell points out. “In the last 20 years, we’ve seen more humans escape extreme poverty than any other time in human history. That’s because of markets!”

    Yet, millions vote for socialism.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 19:30

  • Top US Nuclear Lab At Risk Of Major Wildfire, Warns Audit 
    Top US Nuclear Lab At Risk Of Major Wildfire, Warns Audit 

    An audit by the US Department of Energy, Office of Inspector General (DOE-OIG) found that the nation’s top nuclear laboratory is not taking the necessary precautions to safeguard the facility from wildfires. 

    The audit, titled “The Department of Energy’s Wildland Fire Prevention Efforts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory,” raised concerns about fire management plans have not properly been followed and may pose a significant risk to the facility if a wildfire were to materialize in the area. 

    DOE-OIG’s audit comes as the West Coast experienced one of the worst years for wildfires. Presently, the US Drought Monitor, prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), shows LANL and the surrounding region are experiencing severe drought conditions. 

    The audit found LANL’s plan to mitigate wildfire risks have lacked in recent years: 

    Specifically, mitigation measures such as tree thinning identified in the 2014 LANL Forest Management Plan (Forest Plan) and 2016 LANL Five-Year Wildland Fire Management Plan (Wildland Fire Plan), which are necessary to reduce the risk of crown fires, were not always performed, increasing the potential for a devastating wildland fire to spread

    In addition, not all fire roads were maintained in a state to ensure safe passage for firefighters and equipment responding to wildland fires in undeveloped areas of LANL, which could create dangerous conditions for emergency responders and delay response times

    Further, we could not obtain evidence demonstrating that annual planning and preparedness activities were completed as required. Without documenting planning and preparedness activities, there was no assurance that all prevention and mitigation options were considered and that the site was fully prepared for wildland fire events.

    These issues occurred, in part, because a comprehensive, risk-based approach to wildland fire management had not been developed at LANL in accordance with the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy (Federal Policy).

    The National Nuclear Security Administration’s LANL is the home to the atomic bomb, and development continues today in nuclear technology research. The facility is also home to the world’s largest science and technology research labs. 

    The audit included one picture that depicted an overgrown fire road. In this area, DOE-OIG said, “there were approximately 400–500 trees per acre in this canyon; however, the ideal number should be 40–50 trees per acre.”

    Here’s another example of a poorly maintained fire road.

    It was not immediately clear what LANL’s 2021 fire management plans are to mitigate the emerging threat of wildfires that could cripple the nation’s top nuclear lab. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 19:00

  • Indoor Dining At 25% Capacity Is Not Enough To Stay Alive, NYC Restaurateurs Say
    Indoor Dining At 25% Capacity Is Not Enough To Stay Alive, NYC Restaurateurs Say

    Authored by Erika Abrams via NY.Eater.com,

    Even if NYC returns to indoor dining at 25 percent capacity this winter, some restaurant owners say the allowance is still not enough to make a meaningful impact on business during the pandemic.

    According to a New York Post report, some owners are aghast that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is once again considering limiting NYC to 25 percent capacity indoors while neighboring areas including Long Island can operate at 50 percent capacity indoors.

    Syed Hossain, the owner of Tikka Indian Grill in Williamsburg, tells the Post that the allowance is “stupid” and the restaurant would be “losing money” at 25 percent capacity.

    Staten Island restaurateur Vincent Malerba added that the capacity limit was a “joke” and then speculated to the Post that maybe Cuomo hated the industry because his former girlfriend, Sandra Lee, was a celebrity chef.

    “The restaurants are packed in Nassau and I feel like I’m going to f—ing shoot myself! Are you f—ing kidding me?!” fumed Rocco Sacramento, the owner of Trattoria L’Incontro in Astoria, Queens.

    NYC restaurants were previously allowed to reopen at 25 percent capacity indoors last fall following an initial ban in March. A little over two months later, in December, indoor dining was banned for a second time following a rise in positive COVID-19 case counts in the city.

    Cuomo said on Wednesday that the state will unveil a plan detailing how NYC restaurants may return to indoor dining – at 25 percent capacity – by the end of this week.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 18:30

  • Third Of Americans Skeptical Of COVID Vaccine, Says Poll 
    Third Of Americans Skeptical Of COVID Vaccine, Says Poll 

    Good news (and bad news) America!

    The great news is that on Wednesday, approximately 33.8 million people have received at least one COVID-19 shot, including 10.5 million people who have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Now for the bad news. A new study shows about 1 in 3 of respondents won’t get the vaccine. 

    The poll, commissioned by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found 67% of respondents are willing to get vaccinated, are in the process of waiting for a shot, or have already done so. The poll uncovered a surprisingly large part of respondents who are vaccine skeptics. 

    About 15% of the respondents said they wouldn’t take the vaccine, and 17% said probably not. Many of these people were concerned about their health since there was no extensive vaccine testing. They questioned the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. 

    About a month and a half into the vaccine rollout, the poll suggests vaccine skeptics continue to increase. 

    “Resistance was found to run higher among younger people, people without college degrees, Black Americans and Republicans,” AP said. 

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House pandemic adviser, has said between 70% and 85% of the US population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity and defeat the outbreak. 

    … and at 67% of Americans planning to get vaccinated – that may not be enough. 

    A similar survey via the Kaiser Family Foundation recently found that 31% of Americans said they want to see more results about the vaccine’s effectiveness and side effects before committing to the shot.

    Additionally, 13% of respondents completely refused to take it, and another 7% claim they only will if forced, bringing the total of respondents reluctant to take or hesitant of the vaccine to 51%. 

    The latest numbers reflect American’s growing distrust in the governmental effort to distribute and have the vaccine administered.

    One health expert was concerned with AP’s poll results. 

    “No. No, no, no, no,” said William Hanage, a Harvard University expert on disease dynamics.

    Hanage added: “You’re going to need to get quite large proportions of the population vaccinated before you see a real effect.”

    AP’s poll was conducted among 1,055 adults between Jan. 28 through Feb. 1, which provides further insight into the growing skepticism behind the federal government and mega-corporations pushing the population to get vaccinated. 

    After all, Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky told CNBC on Tuesday that Americans may need to be vaccinated yearly against COVID-19. 

    Vaccine skepticism has been growing beyond the US and, according to Katie Jones of VisualCapitalist, has become an international phenomenon, with at least a third of the global population having some concerns. 

    View the high-resolution of the infographic by clicking here.

    To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate? That is the question.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 18:00

  • Two Hedge Fund Billionaires Spend Over $200 Million On Palm Beach Mansions
    Two Hedge Fund Billionaires Spend Over $200 Million On Palm Beach Mansions

    They made the money, now it’s time to spend it.

    Just days after we learned that the rich got much richer in 2020 as the top 15 hedge fund billionaires added a cool $23 billion to their net worth, we now find out how they are spending it.

    Back in 2016, when David Tepper announced he was moving his home and business to Florida, he set off alarms with the tax accountants at his prior home state of New Jersey: He and his hedge fund Appalloosa paid so much in state tax that his departure put New Jersey’s budget at risk. Four year later however, in 2020, New Jersey lawmakers breathed a sigh of relief when Tepper returned, shoring up the state’s finances.

    But for the perpetually fiscally-challenged Garden State it may be time to freak out again. As the WSJ reports, Tepper has rekindled his love affair with the Sunshine State and has planted a new flag in Florida soil. The billionaire “balls to the wall” hedge-fund manager and owner of the Carolina Panthers football team is reportedly in contract to buy a $73 million mansion in Palm Beach.

    Amid the exodus of hedge funders from the tri-state area who are fleeing New York’s soaring taxes and piling into the tax-free state, it wasn’t immediately clear whether Tepper and his family will make Florida their primary residence again; a WSJ call to New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney’s office was not immediately returned.

    If it closes, the WSJ notes that the deal would be the latest in a string of ultra-pricey transactions in Palm Beach where billionaires are running out of houses to buy.

    The sellers of the Tepper home are longtime Palm Beach residents Patrick and Lillian Carney. The property, which wasn’t publicly listed for sale, sits directly on the ocean and on the edge of the Palm Beach Country Club. The Carneys had approval to build a roughly 12,000-square-foot Bermuda-style house on the site, records show.

    Tepper’s new house sits directly on the ocean and on the edge of the Palm Beach Country Club.

    Records show Tepper still owns a condominium at the Ocean House condominium complex in Miami Beach, which he bought for $10.7 million in 2017.

    At the same time, in another transaction involving land formerly owned by Donald Trump, Tiger Global Management executive Scott Shleifer who is co-founder of the firm’s private-equity unit which oversees $40 billion, bought a nine-bedroom, 21,000-square-foot house which was listed for $140 million a few weeks ago, Bloomberg reported.

    The purchase price set a new price record, not only in Palm Beach but likely for Florida, according to Palm Beach Daily News.

    Scott Shleifer is the owner of a $140 million house at 535 N. County Road which has an oceanfront pool. The transaction price broke all previous records.

    The never-lived-in house was developed on speculation and listed for sale in early January with a record-setting price tag for Palm Beach of $140 million, completely furnished.

    A separate guesthouse at 535 N. County Road has its own pool. The estate was developed on land once owned by Donald Trump.

    The house and its separate guest house have a total of nine bedrooms and 21,066 square feet of living space, inside and out, of which 15,350 is under air conditioning, the sales listing shows. Just south of the estate owned by billionaire Nelson Peltz, the property lies on a stretch of beachfront sometimes called the North End’s Billionaires Row.

    A trust associated with Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the investment estate in the 500 block of North County Road from Trump in July 2008 and eight years later razed a mansion there to subdivide the land. In October 2017, Rybolovlev sold the lot at No. 535 to the developers of the house that changed hands this week.

    Naturally the mansion comes with its own local watering hole.

    As noted earlier this week, Tiger Global earned its investors $10.4 billion in 2020 “the most of any hedge fund that made the annual list of the top 20 managers compiled by London fund-of-funds firm LCH Investments,” InstitutionalInvestor.com reported in late January.

    The property faces 150 feet of oceanfront on a 2 acre lot.

    The transaction smashed a previous price record set in June 2019 by Ken Griffin who bought an oceanfront house at 60 Blossom Way adjacent to his massive South End estate for $99.13 million from investor Frank McCour.

    For their sake, and also for the sake of other billionaires, one can only hope that the rioters du jour never figure out that instead of burning down pastry shops and looting Nike stores, if they want to achieve tangible change they should focus all their attention on Palm Beach which has more billionaires per square mile than any other place in the world.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 17:55

  • Where Energy Modeling Goes Wrong
    Where Energy Modeling Goes Wrong

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

    There are a huge number of people doing energy modeling. In my opinion, nearly all of them are going astray in their modeling because they don’t understand how the economy really operates.

    The modeling that comes closest to being correct is that which underlies the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others. This modeling was based on physical quantities of resources, with no financial system whatsoever. The base model, shown here, indicates that limits would be reached a few years later than we actually seem to be reaching them. The dotted black line in Figure 1 indicates where I saw the world economy to be in January 2019, based on the limits we already seemed to be reaching at that time.

    Figure 1. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil,” with dotted line added corresponding to where I saw the world economy to be in January 2019, based on how the economy was operating at that time.

    The authors of The Limits to Growth have said that their model cannot be expected to be correct after limits hit (which is about now), so even this model is less than perfect. Thus, this model cannot be relied upon to show that population will continue to rise until after 2050.

    Many readers are familiar with Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) calculations. These are favorites of many people following the Peak Oil problem. A high ratio of Energy Returned to Energy Invested is considered favorable, while a low ratio is considered unfavorable. Energy sources with similar EROEIs are supposedly equivalent. Even these similarities can be misleading. They make intermittent wind and solar appear far more helpful than they really are.

    Other modeling, such as that by oil companies, is equally wrong. Their modeling tends to make future fossil fuel supplies look far more available than they really are.

    This is all related to a talk I plan to give to energy researchers later in February. So far, all that is pinned down is the Summary, which I reproduce here as Section [1], below.

    [1] Summary: The economy is approaching near-term collapse, not peak oil. The result is quite different.

    The way a person views the world economy makes a huge difference in how one models it. A big issue is how connected the various parts of the economy are. Early researchers assumed that oil was the key energy product; if it were possible to find suitable substitutes for oil, the danger of exhaustion of oil resources could be delayed almost indefinitely.

    In fact, the operation of the world economy is controlled by the laws of physics. All parts are tightly linked. The problem of diminishing returns affects far more than oil supply; it affects coal, natural gas, mineral extraction in general, fresh water production and food production. Based on the work of Joseph Tainter, we also know that added complexity is also subject to diminishing returns.

    When a person models how the system works, it becomes apparent that as increasing complexity is added to the system, the portion of the economic output that can be returned to non-elite workers as goods and services drops dramatically. This leads to rising wage disparity as increasing complexity is added to the economy. As the economy approaches limits, rising wage disparity indirectly leads to a tendency toward low prices for oil and other commodities because a growing number of non-elite workers are unable to afford homes, cars and even proper nutrition. 

    A second effect of added complexity is growing use of long-lasting goods available through technology. Many of these long-lasting goods are only affordable with financial time-shifting devices such as loans or the sale of shares of stock. As non-elite workers become increasingly unable to afford the output of the economy, these time-shifting devices provide a way to raise demand (and thus prices) for commodities of all types, including oil. These time-shifting devices are subject to manipulation by central banks, within limits.

    Standard calculations of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) ignore the fact that added complexity tends to have a very detrimental impact on the economy because of the diminishing returns it produces. To correct for this, today’s EROEI calculations should only be used to compare energy systems with similar complexity. The least complex energy systems are based on burned biomass and power from animals. Fossil fuels represent a step upward in complexity, but they still can be stored until their use is required. Intermittent renewables are far ahead of fossil fuels in terms complexity: they require sophisticated systems of storage and distribution and therefore cannot be considered equivalent to oil or dispatchable electricity.

    The lack of understanding of how the economy really works has led to the failure to understand several important points:

    (i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,

    (ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices,

    (iii) The economy is experiencing the historical phenomenon of collapse, rather than peak oil, and 

    (iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns.   

    [2] The world’s energy problem, as commonly understood by researchers today

    It is my observation that many researchers believe that we humans are in charge of what happens with future fossil fuel extraction, or with choosing to substitute intermittent renewables for fossil fuels. They generally do not see any problem with “running out” in the near future. If running out were imminent, the problem would likely be announced by spiking prices.

    In the predominant view, the amount of future fossil fuels available depends upon the quantity of energy resources that can be extracted with available technology. Thus, a proper estimate of the resources that can be extracted is needed. Oil seems to be in shortest supply based on its reserve estimates and the vast benefits it provides to society. Thus, it is commonly believed that oil production will “peak” and begin to decline first, before coal and natural gas.

    In this view, demand is something that we never need to worry about because energy, and especially oil, is a necessity. People will choose energy over other products because they will pay whatever is necessary to have adequate energy supplies. As a result, oil and other energy prices will rise almost endlessly, allowing much more to be extracted. These higher prices will also enable higher cost intermittent electricity to be substituted for today’s fossil fuels.

    A huge amount of additional fossil fuels can be extracted, according to those who are primarily concerned about loss of biodiversity and climate change. Those who analyze EROEI tend to believe that falling EROEI will limit the quantity of future fossil fuels extracted to a smaller total extracted amount. Because of this, energy from additional sources, such as intermittent wind and solar, will be required to meet the total energy demand of society.

    The focus of EROEI studies is on whether the EROEI of a given proposed substitution is, in some sense, high enough to add energy to the economy. The calculation of EROEI makes no distinction made between energy available only through highly complex systems and energy available from less complex systems.

    EROEI researchers, or perhaps those who rely on the indications of EROEI researchers, seem to believe that the energy needs of economies are flexible within a very wide range. Thus, an economy can shrink its energy consumption without a particularly dire impact.

    [3] The real story seems to be that the adverse outcome we are reaching is collapse, not peak oil. The economy is a self-organizing system powered by energy. This makes it behave in very unexpected ways.

    [3a] The economy is tightly connected by the laws of physics.

    Energy consumption (dissipation) is necessary for every aspect of the economy. People often understand that making goods and services requires energy dissipation. What they don’t realize is that almost all of today’s jobs require energy dissipation, as well. Without supplemental energy, humans could only gather wild fruits and vegetables and hunt using the simplest of tools. Or, they could attempt simple horticulture by using a stick to dig a place in the ground to plant a seed.

    In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure, which is a self-organizing structure that grows over time. Other examples of dissipative structures include hurricanes, plants and animals of all types, ecosystems, and star systems. Without a supply of energy to dissipate (that is, food to eat, in the case of humans), these dissipative structures would collapse.

    We know that the human body has many different systems, such as a cardiovascular system, digestive system and nervous system. The economy has many different systems, too, and is just as tightly connected. For example, the economy cannot get along without a transportation system any more than a human can get along without a cardiovascular system.

    This self-organizing system acts without our direction, just as our brain or circulatory system acts without our direction. In fact, we have very little control over these systems.

    The self-organizing economy allows common belief systems to arise that seem to be right but are really based on models with many incorrect assumptions. People desperately need and want a “happily ever after” solution. The strong need for a desirable outcome favors the selection of models that lead to the conclusion that if there is a problem, it is many years away. Conflicting political views seem to be based on different, equally wrong, models of how world leaders can solve the energy predicament that the world is facing.

    The real story is that the world’s self-organizing economy will determine for us what is ahead, and there is virtually nothing we can do to change the result. Strangely enough, if we look at the long term pattern, there almost seems to be a guiding hand behind the result. According to Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee in Rare Earth, there have been a huge number of seeming coincidences that have allowed life on earth to take hold and flourish for four billion years. Perhaps this “luck” will continue.

    [3b] As the economy reaches limits, commodities of many types reach diminishing returns simultaneously.

    It is indeed true that the economy reaches diminishing returns in oil supply as it reaches limits. Oil is very valuable because it is energy dense and easily transported. The oil that can be extracted, refined, and delivered to needed markets using the least amount of resources (including human labor) tends to be extracted first. It is later that deeper wells are built that are farther from markets. Because of these issues, oil extraction does tend to reach diminishing returns, as more is extracted.

    If this were the only aspect of the economy that was experiencing diminishing returns, then the models coming from a peak oil perspective would make sense. We could move away from oil, simply by transferring oil use to appropriately chosen substitutes.

    It becomes clear when a person looks at the situation that commodities of all kinds reach diminishing returns. Fresh water reaches diminishing returns. We can add more by using desalination and pumping water to where it is required, but this approach is hugely expensive. As population and industrialization grows, the need for fresh water grows, making diminishing returns for fresh water a real issue.

    Minerals of all kinds reach diminishing returns, including uranium, lithium, copper and phosphate rock (used for fertilizer). The reason this occurs is because we tend to extract these minerals faster than they are replaced by the weathering of rocks, including bedrock. In fact, useable topsoil tends to reach diminishing returns because of erosion. Also, with increasing population, the amount of food required keeps increasing, putting further pressure on farmland and making it harder to retain an acceptable level of topsoil.

    [3c] Increased complexity leads to diminishing returns as well.

    In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter points out that complexity reaches diminishing returns, just as commodities do.

    As an example, it is easy to see that added spending on healthcare reaches diminishing returns. The discovery of antibiotics clearly had a huge impact on healthcare, at relatively little cost. Now, a recent article is entitled, The hunt for antibiotics grows harder as resistance builds. The dollar payback on other drugs tends to fall as well, as solutions to the most common diseases are found, and researchers must turn their attention to diseases affecting only, perhaps, 500 people globally.

    Similarly, spending on advanced education reaches diminishing returns. Continuing the medical example above, educating an increasing number of researchers, all looking for new antibiotics, may eventually lead to success in discovering more antibiotics. But the payback with respect to the education of these researchers will not be nearly as great as the payback for educating the early researchers who found the first antibiotics.

    [3d] Wages do not rise sufficiently so that all of the higher costs associated with the many types of diminishing returns can be recouped simultaneously.

    The health care system (at least in the United States) tends to let its higher costs flow through to consumers. We can see this by looking at how much higher the Medical Care Consumer Price Index (CPI) rises compared to the All Items CPI in Figure 2.

    Figure 2. Consumer price index for Medical Care versus for All Items, in chart made by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis.

    The high (and rapidly rising) cost of advanced education is another cost that is being passed on to consumers–the students and their parents. In this case, loans are used to make the high cost look less problematic.

    Of course, if consumers are burdened with higher medical and educational costs, it makes it difficult to afford the higher cost of energy products, as well. With these higher costs, young people tend to live with their parents longer, saving on the energy products needed to have their own homes and vehicles. Needless to say, the lower net income for many people, after health care costs and student loan repayments are deducted, acts to reduce the demand for oil and energy products, and thus contributes to the problem of continued low oil prices.

    [3e] Added complexity tends to increase wage disparities. The reduced spending by lower income workers tends to hold down fossil fuel prices, similar to the impact identified in Section [3d].

    As the economy becomes more complex, companies tend to become larger and more hierarchical. Elite workers (ones with more training or with more supervisory responsibility) earn more than non-elite workers. Globalization adds to this effect, as workers in high wage countries increasingly compete with workers in lower wage countries. Even computer programmers can encounter this difficulty, as programming is increasingly moved to China and India.

    Figure 3. Figure by Pew Research Center in Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality, published January 9, 2020. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/

    Individuals with low incomes spend a disproportionately large share of their incomes on commodities because everyone needs to eat approximately 2,000 calories of food per day. In addition, everyone needs some kind of shelter, clothing and basic transportation. All of these types of consumption are commodity intensive. People with very high incomes tend to buy disproportionately more goods and services that are not very resource intensive, such as education for their children at elite universities. They may also use part of their income to buy shares of stock, hoping their value will rise.

    With a shift in the distribution of incomes toward those with high earnings, the demand for commodities of all types tends to stagnate or even fall. Fewer people are able to buy new cars, and fewer people can afford vacations involving travel. Thus, as more complexity is added, there tends to be downward pressure on the price of oil and other energy products.

    [4] Oil prices have been falling behind those needed by oil producers since 2012.

    Figure 4. Figure created by Gail Tverberg using EIA average monthly Brent oil price data, adjusted for inflation using the CPI Index for All Items for Urban Consumers.

    Back in February 2014, Steven Kopits gave a presentation at Columbia University explaining the state of the oil industry. I wrote a post describing this presentation called, Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending. Oil companies were reporting that prices had been too low for them to make an adequate profit for reinvestment, back as early as 2012. In inflation-adjusted terms, this was when oil prices were about $120 per barrel.

    Even Middle Eastern oil exporting countries need surprisingly high oil prices because their economies depend on the profits of oil companies to provide the vast majority of their tax revenue. If oil prices are too low, adequate taxes cannot be collected. Without funds for jobs programs and food subsidies, there are likely to be uprisings by unhappy citizens who cannot maintain an adequate standard of living.

    Looking at Figure 4, we see that there has been very little time that Brent oil prices have been above $120 per barrel. Even with all of the recent central bank stimulus and deficit spending by economies around the world, Brent oil prices remain below $60 per barrel.

    [5] Interest rates and the amount of debt make a huge difference in oil prices, too.

    Based on Figure 4, oil prices are highly irregular. Much of this irregularity seems to be associated with interest rate and debt level changes. In fact, in July 2008, what I would call the debt bubble associated with the subprime housing and credit cards collapsed, bringing oil prices down from their peak abruptly. In late 2008, Quantitative Easing (QE), (aimed at bringing interest rates down) was added just prior to an upturn on prices in 2009 and 2010. Prices fell again, when the United States discontinued QE in late 2014.

    If we think about it, increased debt makes purchases such as cars, homes and new factories more affordable. In fact, the lower the interest rate, the more affordable these items become. The number of purchases of any of these items can be expected to rise with more debt and lower interest rates. Thus, we would expect oil prices to rise as debt is added and fall as it is taken away. Now, there are many questions: Why haven’t oil prices risen more, with all of the stimulus that has been added? Are we reaching the limits of stimulus? Are interest rates as low as they can go, and the amount of debt outstanding as high as it can go?

    [6] The growing complexity of the economy is contributing to the huge amount of debt outstanding.

    In a very complex economy, a huge number of durable goods and services are produced. Examples of durable goods would include machines used in factories and pipelines of all kinds. Durable goods would also include vehicles of all types, including both vehicles used for businesses and vehicles used by consumers for their own benefit. As broadly defined here, durable goods would include buildings of all types, including factories, schools, offices and homes. It would also include wind turbines and solar panels.

    There would also be durable services produced. For example, a college degree would have lasting benefit, it is hoped. A computer program would have value after it is completed. Thus, a consulting service is able to sell its programs to prospective buyers.

    Somehow, there is a need to pay for all of these durable goods. We can see this most easily for the consumer. A loan that allows durable goods to be paid for over their expected life will make these goods more affordable.

    Similarly, a manufacturer needs to pay the many workers making all of the durable goods. Their labor is adding value to the finished products, but this value will not be realized until the finished products are put into operation.

    Other financing approaches can also be used, including the sale of bonds or shares of stock. The underlying intent is to provide financial time-shifting services. Interest rates associated with these financial time-shifting services are now being manipulated downward by central banks to make these services more affordable. This is part of what keeps stock prices high and commodity prices from falling lower than their current levels.

    These loans, bonds and shares of stock are providing a promise of future value. This value will exist only if there are enough fossil fuels and other resources to create physical goods and services to fulfill these promises. Central banks can print money, but they cannot print actual goods and services. If I am right about collapse being ahead, the whole debt system seems certain to collapse. Shares of stock seem certain to lose their value. This is concerning. The end point of all of the added complexity seems to be financial collapse, unless the system can truly add the promised goods and services.

    [7] Intermittent electricity fits very poorly into just-in-time supply lines.

    A complex economy requires long supply lines. Usually, these supply lines are operated on a just-in-time basis. If one part of a supply line encounters problems, then manufacturing needs to stop. For example, automobile manufacturers in many parts of the world are finding that they need to suspend production because it is impossible to source the necessary semiconductor chips. If electricity is temporarily unavailable, this is another way of disrupting the supply chain.

    The standard way to work around temporary breaks in supply chains is to build greater inventory, but this is expensive. Additional inventory needs to be stored and watched over. It likely needs financing, as well.

    [8] The world economy today seems to be near collapse.

    The self-organizing economy is now pushing the economy in many strange ways that indirectly lead to less energy consumption and eventually collapse. Even prior to COVID-19, the world economy appeared to be reaching growth limits, as indicated in Figure 1, which was published in January 2019. For example, recycling of many renewables was no longer profitable at lower oil prices after 2014. This led China to discontinue most of its recycling efforts, effective January 1, 2018, even though this change resulted in the loss of jobs. China’s car sales fell in 2018, 2019, and 2020, a strange pattern for a supposedly rapidly growing country.

    The response of world leaders to COVID-19 has pushed the world economy further in the direction of contraction. Businesses that were already weak are the ones having the most difficulty in being able to operate profitably.

    Furthermore, debt problems are growing around the world. For example, it is unclear whether the world will require as many shopping malls or office buildings in the future. A person would logically expect the value of the unneeded buildings to drop, reducing the value of many of these properties below their outstanding debt level.

    When these issues are combined, it looks likely that the world economy may not be far from collapse, which is one of my contentions from Section [1]. It also looks like my other contentions from Section [1] are true:

    (i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,

    (ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices, and

    (iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns. 

    Regarding (iv), the available energy supply from wind and solar (net or otherwise) is tiny relative to the total energy required to operate the world economy. This issue, alone, would disqualify a Great Reset using wind and solar from truly being a solution for today’s problems. Instead, plans for a Great Reset tend to act as a temporary cover-up for collapse.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 17:30

  • This Is Why Hospitals Can Charge $6,000 Or $60,000 For The Exact Same Procedure
    This Is Why Hospitals Can Charge $6,000 Or $60,000 For The Exact Same Procedure

    Several months back, we pointed out how new disclosure laws would be forcing hospitals to disclose the cost of services and rates negotiated by insurers. Now, the numbers are starting to trickle in – and they’re ugly. 

    Roughly 6,000 hospitals across the nation are starting to reveal the rates they negotiate with insurers for a number of procedures. The figures show how widely prices vary for the same procedure depending on who is paying, as highlighted by a new Wall Street Journal report.

    For example, the report found that a C-section can cost between $6,241 and $60.584 – all depending on which insurer covers it. Niall Brennan, chief executive of the Health Care Cost Institute said: “It is shining a light on the insanity of U.S. healthcare pricing. It’s at the center of the affordability crisis in American healthcare.”

    The rates are a key driver of the massive healthcare costs in the U.S., some of the highest in the world. It was a Trump administration rule that shed light on the differences in procedure pricing – some of the widest gaps in pricing of any U.S. industry. Gerard Anderson, a healthcare economist at Johns Hopkins University, commented: “These price differentials are unique to the healthcare and hospital industry.”

    The prices have a direct effect on consumers, as they push up premiums and deductibles. And, in a stunning revelation, “total U.S. expenditures on private health insurance have increased 50% in the past decade through 2019, according to federal figures,” the Journal wrote. 

    The report found that a Northern California system of 24 hospitals had sometimes “extreme” pricing ranges for procedures. One cardiac procedure varied between $89,752 to $515,697, depending on insurer. For those paying out of pocket, the procedure cost $325,703. The system, called Sutter Health, did $13 billion in 2019 revenue is is known for drawing an antitrust suit from the California state AG in 2018. The system paid $575 million to settle the claims.

    Sutter Chief Financial Officer Brian Dean commented: “We enter into negotiations with every health-insurance company or payer in good faith and with the end goal of providing access to quality, affordable care for patients.”

    “The variation in the data reflects robust competition in the markets for commercial insurance,” he argued.

    One former insurance executive told the Journal that they could expect the same types of wide ranges for pricing across the country:

    “The California system’s pricing spread for the procedures reviewed by the Journal are likely at the upper end, but similar patterns will be found at many hospitals around the country, said Alan Muney, a former Cigna Corp. executive. “This is probably typical of what you’re going to see across big delivery systems,” he said.

    Prices paid by private insurers in the nation’s $1.2 trillion hospital sector are often far higher than the amounts paid to hospitals by the Medicare program, which are set by the government. Plans offered by insurers under Medicare or Medicaid often get rates tied to those mandated prices.”

    Insurers have a better chance of winning better rates if they can drive more patients to a certain hospital, another former insurance executive said. Hospitals, meanwhile, sometimes set their prices with “little bearing on the actual cost or value of a service”, the report says. Rather, hospitals set prices based on their own targets for margins and according to what the market will pay. 

    Privately insured patients drive margins typically – and hospitals that boosted margins generally didn’t cut costs, but rather raised revenue by increasing rates billed to commercial insurers, one study found. Economists have found that quality is generally no better at more expensive hospitals. Michael Chernew, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, said: “We have not found evidence that price is a great signal for quality.”

    The new data will draw the eyes of insurers and hospitals, moreso than consumers. Elizabeth Mitchell, chief executive of the Purchaser Business Group on Health, which represents major employers, said they will use the data to help choose which hospitals to use and how to negotiate with insurers.  

    The Journal examined one cardiac code for cardiac-valve procedures involving catheterization performed on patients with risk factors. It confirmed that the largest spreads on pricing were in procedures that cost the most:

    Seven insurers pay the lowest negotiated rate, $89,752, for their Medicare plans. The lowest price for a commercial-insurance plan, the type offered to employers, is $197,900. At the top end, the charge is $515,697 for patients whose health plans don’t have the hospital in-network.

    For hip- and knee replacements, Medicaid and Medicare plans paid the lowest prices at the Modesto hospital, $3,264 and $16,349, respectively. The lowest price paid by a commercial insurer totaled $51,895. The highest rate reached $81,617, again for patients whose insurance didn’t include the Modesto hospital in-network.

    Recall, we first brought up President Trump’s plans to institute these transparency plans back in January.  

    The $1.2 trillion industry comprising some 6% of the country’s economy is now subjected to more transparency than it has seen in decades. The point of instituting the disclosures, according to the Trump administration, was the hope that good ol’ fashioned market dynamics will kick in, and help lower prices across the board.

    Previously, hospital pricing was negotiated confidentially between hospitals and the employer groups and insurance companies that pay for care.

    Many criticized this system for obscuring market rates and helping drive up the cost of health insurance premiums paid by employers and workers. Rising hospital prices accounted for about one-fifth of the nation’s health spending growth over the last 50 years.

    Now, we will see first hand if a free and open market can help solve some of the industry’s problems. At least, until President Biden reverses the new rules. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 17:00

  • "It Would Be A Great Honor To Speak To You": Musk Seeks To Speak To Putin
    “It Would Be A Great Honor To Speak To You”: Musk Seeks To Speak To Putin

    In the latest surprising development from the world’s richest man, moments ago Elon Musk tweeted the official English twitter account of the Kremlin, i.e., Vladimir Putin, saying “would you like join me for a conversation” on the popular (and so far invite-only) new audio social network Clubhouse.

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

    He then followed up in google-translated Russian “it would be a great honor to speak with you.”

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

    While we await for more context on this rather startling development, and the Kremlin’s response to this startling invitation, we fear that Tesla may have just lost all future neocon orders. We also wonder if there will soon be a nice, little – or not so little – dachia on the Black Sea coast with Musk’s name on it.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 16:33

  • The Foundation For Potential Price Hyperinflation Is Being Laid
    The Foundation For Potential Price Hyperinflation Is Being Laid

    Via Birch Gold Group,

    The Federal Reserve sure seems to have a tough time finding and reporting signs of rising inflation – especially when it’s hidden in other sectors like a lack of demand for energy.

    A recent example of the Fed’s “inflation blindness” comes from a speech Chairman Jerome Powell gave to the Economic Club of New York. According to a MarketWatch piece that reported on that speech:

    Powell said he doesn’t expect “a large nor sustained” increase in inflation right now. Price rises from the “burst of spending” as the economy reopens are not likely to be sustained.

    It’s odd that Powell would say he doesn’t expect a sustained increase in inflation, because food price inflation has consistently run 3.5 to 4.5 percent since April last year. That sure seems like a sustained increase in food prices.

    What Powell seems to have “forgotten” is that some of the overall inflation includes negative energy price inflation (as low as negative 9 percent at one point). But now that the demand for fuel is returning, the official gasoline index rose 7.4 percent in January.

    It will be much more challenging for Powell to keep downplaying the risk of hyperinflation once energy price inflation rises back to “pre-pandemic” levels.

    In fact, Robert Wenzel thinks the main inflation event is “just about to hit.” If it does, and inflation does rise past Powell’s two percent target, it isn’t likely to stop there. Jim Rickards thinks that’s when hyperinflation can gain momentum:

    If inflation does hit 3%, it is more likely to go to 6% or higher, rather than back down to 2%. The process will feed on itself and be difficult to stop. Sadly, there are no Volckers or Reagans on the horizon today. There are only weak political leaders and misguided central bankers.

    Keep in mind that Rickards is talking about overall inflation. Food price inflation has already been consistently high for almost a year. In a hyperinflation scenario, those prices could skyrocket, and possibly even faster.

    Not too many people like the idea of suddenly paying $8 (or more) for a gallon of milk. If $7 per gallon gasoline suddenly becomes the norm, a lot more retirement savers would struggle to make ends meet.

    Even worse, it appears the foundation is already being laid for the “process to feed on itself” — just as Rickards mentioned.

    Inflation Pressures are Building Up Fast

    Wolf Richter wrote on the economic impacts from pandemic mitigation efforts in 2020,  and said: “The story is that prices are rising because components and commodities are in short supply, and supply chains are dogged by production issues, and are facing transportation constraints, as demand for those goods has suddenly surged.”

    When supply chain, production and transportation issues combine with surging demand, it creates price inflation. That certainly seems like one explanation for the long period of rising food prices.

    But add in direct manufacturer price pressures and things can go haywire in a hurry. According to the same WolfStreet article, that’s exactly what is happening:

    The Prices Index “surged dramatically in January” to a level of 82.1%, after an eight-month upward trajectory, the highest since April 2011, “indicating continued supplier pricing power.”

    He added that “manufacturers were able to pass these higher costs on to their customers via higher prices, ‘with selling prices rising at the fastest pace since July 2008.’”

    Couple these rapidly increasing price pressures with Federal debt reaching 107 percent of GDP in 2020, and the potential for runaway inflation exists, especially since the Fed is “monetizing most of the new spending,” according to Wenzel.

    Who knows how high inflation will rise this year? With pent-up demand about to be unleashed, it will probably be higher than last year. Just a little inflation, you might think, that doesn’t sound so bad. Here’s why that’s simply not the case.

    Don’t worry about hyperinflation; by then it’s too late

    Jim Rickards explains that, while “hyperinflation” works its way into headlines and draws attention, it’s really sub-hyper inflation that does the damage:

    Hyperinflation doesn’t emerge instantaneously. It begins slowly with normal inflation and then accelerates violently at an increasing rate until it becomes hyperinflation. This is critical for investors to understand because much of the damage to your wealth actually occurs at the inflationary stage, not the hyperinflationary stage.

    Using one of the most well-known and well-researched cases of hyperinflation in the last century, Weimar Germany, Rickards demonstrates how pernicious “regular” inflation can be.

    From January 1919 to January 1922, the reichsmark’s value slowly dropped from $0.13 to $0.005 ‑ a loss of 96% value in just three years. This doesn’t meet the definition of hyperinflation because the decay of purchasing power happened over three years and never exceeded the hyperinflation threshold in any single month.

    One year later, hyperinflation kicked in and the reichsmark was debased 58 billion percent. That’s the period most interesting to economists and historians. That’s when we see pictures of hollow-eyed laborers pushing wheelbarrows full of currency, or malnourished children playing with bundles of worthless money.

    The lesson here? Hyperinflation only destroyed the final 4% of the reichsmark’s value. By the time the word “hyperinflation” hit headlines, it was too late to do anything about it.

    Rickards explains the winners and losers in a hyperinflationary scenario:

    Hyperinflation doesn’t affect everyone in a society equally. There are distinct sets of winners and losers. The winners are those with gold, foreign currency, land and other hard assets. The losers are those with fixed income claims such as savings, pensions, insurance policies and annuities.

    All this means it’s a really good idea to make sure your portfolio is positioned to survive regular, non-hyperinflation.

    Success Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity

    Jim Rickards finished his letter with a wise bit of advice when it comes to potential hyperinflation:

    You can’t wait until serious inflation arrives. By then it’ll be too late. Make sure you have your gold and other hard assets beforehand. There’s no time like the present.

    It makes sense that if you want to maximize your chances of riding out the coming inflation storm, you need to prepare for it, rather than react to it. As we’ve seen from the historical example, inflation doesn’t need to be newsworthy in order to eat away your savings.

    Hard assets including precious metals, especially gold and silver, can strengthen your savings against inflation. Owners of physical precious metals enjoy the benefits of diversified savings. Furthermore, gold and silver preserve your purchasing power by acting as an internationally-recognized store of value.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 16:30

  • "I'm A Normal Working Person": Dogecoin Creator Sold His Coins In 2015 To Buy A Used Honda
    “I’m A Normal Working Person”: Dogecoin Creator Sold His Coins In 2015 To Buy A Used Honda

    Even Dogecoin’s creator can’t understand why the price has run up so much.

    Billy Markus, who created the cryptocurrency, cashed in all of his Dogecoin in 2015 to buy a Honda Civic. Since then, Dogecoin has reached a market cap of $9.1 billion, up 1400% so far in 2021. Markus, who is 38 years old, works as a software engineer in the Bay Area. 

    Markus wants people to know he is no longer involved in the project and “can’t limit the coin’s supply to help make them rich,” according to Bloomberg. 

    He wrote in an open letter on the r/Dogecoin subreddit this week: “I’m no longer part of the Dogecoin project, I left around 2015 as the community started to strongly shift from one that I was comfortable with. I don’t currently own any Dogecoin except what has been tipped to me recently, I gave away and/or sold all the crypto I had back in 2015 after being laid off and scared about my dwindling savings at the time, for about enough in total to buy a used Honda Civic.”

    He told Bloomberg: “I see this random crap on the internet saying I have all this money. That’s cool, but where is it? I’m a normal working person. I’m not in trouble or anything, but I’m not rich.”

    “I’m half detached, but it’s weird that something I made in a few hours is now part of internet culture. It’s amusing to see Elon Musk talk about it. It feels silly, but there’s this huge upwelling behind it,” he continued. 

    One explanation for the coin’s longevity is that it has been around almost for as long as cryptocurrencies themselves. Bloomberg attributes the coin’s “success” to the Lindy effect: 

    The Lindy effect is a rule of thumb that says the remaining lifespan for a non-perishable item, like say how long a book will remain in print, is equal to how long it has been in existence. The idea boils down to this: the older something is, the more likely it is to continue to survive the tests of time.

    Dogecoin was created in 2013, making it downright elderly in crypto-terms. According to the Lindy effect, its more than seven years of survival, with much of that coming through the so-called crypto-winter when prices plunged in 2018, is a sign of resilience and evidence that it’s more than just a fad.

    Markus concluded his thoughts by channeling some of the objective reality that doesn’t seem to exist in the altcoin-sphere. 

    “If this is my contribution to the world, it’d be nice to offset all the burning of fossil fuel used to mine the currency,” he said, raising a serious issue that many crypto bears, including bitcoin bears, continue to bring up. “Maybe it’s that Dogecoin can be a good barometer for how far from reality things can get,” Markus concluded. 

    We couldn’t have said it better, Markus. We’ll tip you in Doge. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/13/2021 – 16:00

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  • One Man's Terrorist Is Another Man's Freedom Fighter
    One Man’s Terrorist Is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    In order for tyranny to be established, people who love freedom must first be demonized.

    It seems like this would be an easy historic fact to accept, however, it’s very common for state propagandists and establishment shills in the media to cloud the argument. The conflict between the political left, globalists, conservatives and patriots is awash in misdirection. This article is my appeal to cut through that engineered fog, but before anything else is discussed, we need to recognize a fundamental truth:

    If leftists and globalists were not trying to take away our individual and inherent liberties, then we conservatives and moderates would have no reason to fight.

    The political left and the globalists are the ONLY people consistently using censorship, mob intimidation, violence, economic ransom, subversion and government oppression to get what they want. And, what they want is control; there is no denying it.

    Again, let’s think about this for a moment: Who are the real villains in this story? The people who want to be left alone to live their lives in quiet freedom? Or, the people that want to forcefully impose their will on the world by any means necessary?

    They can call it “progress”, they can call it futurism, they can call it the “great reset”, they can call it Utopia, but there is no getting around the reality that leftists and globalists have a vision of the world that is distinctly hostile to independent thought. What’s worse is, they think THEY are the good guys.

    Conservatives and constitutionalists are “monsters” to them. Why? Because we exist and we refuse to comply. That is all there is to it. Otherwise, we have done NOTHING to them except defend ourselves in the most limited ways.

    In recent months the words “terrorist” and “insurrectionist” have been used monotonously in the media to describe conservatives. The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, introduced in Congress this year, goes even further and specifically targets conservative activist groups as the primary threat to the stability of the US government. Leftists are still calling the protest at the Capitol Building an “attack on democracy” by “terrorists and white supremacists”.

    If people walking unarmed into a building and then leaving quietly after an hour is terrorism and insurrection, then what would they call it if we actually physically defended ourselves against the usurpation of our civil rights?

    These are labels some of us in the alternative media have been expecting for many years. We knew that the numerous pieces of national security and surveillance legislation passed under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, supposedly aimed at Islamic terrorists, would one day be used against all of us. It was only a matter of time. We were called “conspiracy theorists” 15 years ago for suggesting as much, now we are prophetic, but the mainstream will never admit it.

    The argument on the other side of the aisle is that conservatives represent an “outdated” ideal; a philosophy which disrupts the betterment of human society. But is this really true? And, who gets to decide the definition of “betterment”, or the definition of “progress”?

    In my article ‘The Real Reasons Why The Liberty Movement Is Preparing To Fight’, published way back in 2013, I stated that:

    “Some principles, like the liberties embodied in natural law and outlined in the U.S. Constitution, NEVER become outdated. They exist in the heart of mankind, and will remain as long as humanity remains. They cannot be erased, and they cannot be undone. They are inherent and eternal.

    The Liberty Movement is not some dying vestige of America’s past clinging to an antiquated philosophy. We are the new wave; the messengers of an ideal of freedom that in the grand scheme of history has been around for only a blink of an eye. Constitutional liberty IS the progress that humanity has been waiting for. We have only been led astray by those who would sell us on our own bondage.

    The SPLC and others within the establishment accuse the Liberty Movement of arming for conflict against the government. I am here to tell them that is EXACTLY what we are doing. We are arming because the establishment is arming against us. Yes, we are a threat, but only to political and corporate criminals who use subversion and violence to wrest freedom from the hands of good people. I am not afraid to openly admit it. I and many others will fight against any measure or man that seeks to undermine the rights of the people or destroy the founding principles of this nation…”

    Every facet of full blown tyranny is being implemented in the US and around the world in one stage or another. A fascist/communistic state is being established piece by piece right now. Mass surveillance of the public is the norm. Economic lockdowns are the norm. Medical passports are being instituted and the only reason they are not yet prominent in the US yet is because of conservative and moderate resistance. 24/7 contact tracing of every citizen is being suggested. Organization of large groups is being restricted or prohibited. Big Tech and the government are working hand-in-hand to censor dissent. And now, they are even trying to eliminate our gun rights under HR 127.

    In 2011 in an article titled ‘The Essential Rules Of Tyranny’, I outlined a list of steps that an oligarchy would have to take before they could impose a centralized control grid in the US. Here is that list:

    Rule #1: Keep Them Afraid

    Rule #2: Keep Them Isolated

    Rule #3: Keep Them Desperate

    Rule #4: Send Out The Jackboots

    Rule #5: Blame Everything On The Truth Seekers

    Rule #6: Encourage Citizen Spies

    Rule #7: Make Them Accept The Unacceptable

    Most of these steps have been openly pursued in the past year and time is running out. This is how oppressive and murderous regimes begin, right under people’s noses, all in the name of the “greater good of the greater number”.

    And that is the only argument left for skeptics to make: That it is government dominance, but dominance by necessity. In other words, the government “must do these things” for our own good. Of course, it’s not for our own good. There are only a select handful of people that benefit from aggressive government intrusion into our lives and they do not care about anyone but themselves.

    So, here we are, on the edge of an event which the liberty movement has been predicting for well over a decade. We have been preparing for it. We have been organizing to stand against it. And, we know that we will be painted as the worst devils imaginable for opposing it. None of this is surprising to us.

    Every time we defend ourselves, it will be called an act of terror and insurrection. Every terrible event will be immediately blamed on us, even if we had nothing to do with it. There may be false flag attacks carried out in our names and designed to defame us. This is how tyrants operate. This is nothing new.

    I will say this, however: One man’s terrorists is often another man’s freedom fighter. All the hyperbolic labels used to demonize us aren’t going to stick with millions of Americans. They just aren’t buying it.

    Are we white supremacists? How is that possible when millions of minorities are also conservatives and patriots? Are we dangerous extremists? If that’s the case, then why is there only ONE violent riot to our name the past year while there are hundreds of riots (and deaths) in the name of leftists and social justice cultists? Are we insurrectionists? How is that possible when we are trying to maintain the constitutional foundations of our country, not tear them down like the political left?

    Do the globalists and leftists really think they can take 74 million-plus Americans and marginalize us all with a word like “terrorist”? Do they really think they can shut us down, lock us up or remove us from the evolution of this nation’s destiny? The only way they could achieve that is if we go quietly. I have a revelation for them: We will not be going quietly.

    Perhaps that is what they expect. Maybe they think they WANT us to fight. Maybe all of these attacks on conservatives are an attempt to provoke us. It is a Catch-22 after all – Damned if we defend ourselves and damned if we do nothing, right? If this is their strategy, then they must assume they can control the outcome of such a conflagration. It is that type of arrogance that will be the end of them in the long run.

    Deep down, slavery is NOT what people want (despite what the propagandists might tell you). No, most people want self determination, they just have problems letting their fear get in the way of their freedoms. Deep down, most people are on our side, not on the side of totalitarianism, and this is where despots consistently fail in their designs. The establishment thinks they can convince the world that freedom fighters are terrorists, while secretly, in their heart of hearts, the majority of people want us to win, and in the end, we will.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 23:40

  • Israel Develops Drone That Navigates Without GPS 
    Israel Develops Drone That Navigates Without GPS 

    The inevitable is coming. Either cheap GPS signal jamming technology or hypersonic missiles destroying a mesh network of GPS satellites will threaten drones on the modern battlefield when the next conflict breaks out. 

    That’s why Israeli startup Sightec developed the first-ever artificial intelligence-powered drone that can navigate without GPS connectivity. The drone uses “its own judgment powered by computer vision and smart tech, to reach its destination and avoid crashes without human assistance,” said Mashable. 

    The drones are embedded with special software called NaviSight, which transforms cameras embedded on the device into sensors that in real-time uses artificial intelligence to navigate like a human pilot, without depending on GPS. 

    A recent test was conducted in Southern Israel using a drone with the startup’s NaviSight technology. The drone successfully operated five routes. 

    “Drones which can find their own way won’t have to depend on GPS which is vulnerable to cyber attacks, and the innovation also protects people from drones crashing into building when they lose connectivity to navigation systems. The autonomous ops are being pitched as a provision for emergency situations, and the drones also deploy 3D mapping to help the software sidestep obstacles,” Mashable added. 

    This technology will come in very handy during the next global conflict between the US and China or the US and Russia. Either side will attempt to paralyze their opponent’s GPS satellites in low Earth orbit, which would create widespread chaos on the modern battlefield. 

    There is another threat to GPS-dependent devices, that is, the strongest solar cycle on record is imminent. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 23:20

  • Court Docs Show FBI Can Intercept Encrypted Messages From ‘Signal’ App
    Court Docs Show FBI Can Intercept Encrypted Messages From ‘Signal’ App

    Authored by Shane Trejo via Big League Politics (emphasis ours),

    Recent court documents have indicated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possesses a tool allowing them to access encrypted messages on the Signal app.

    Signal has rapidly gained in popularity as Silicon Valley monopolists have grown more openly hostile to free speech, but the platform may be vulnerable to backdoors that undermine the privacy protections provided through the encrypted messaging service.

    According to documents filed by the Department of Justice and first obtained by Forbes, Signal’s encrypted messages can be intercepted from iPhone devices when those Apple devices are in a mode called  “partial AFU,” which means “after first unlock.”

    Latest: Project Veritas Blocked From Twitter After Posting Video of Confrontation with Facebook VP of Censorship

    When phones are in partial AFU mode, Signal messages can be seized by federal authorities and other potentially hostile interests. GrayKey and Cellebrite are the tools typically used by the FBI to gain this sensitive information, an expert has explained.

    “It uses some very advanced approach using hardware vulnerabilities,” said Vladimir Katalov, who founded the Russian forensics company ElcomSoft, believing that GrayKey was used by federal authorities to crack Signal.

    This vulnerability within the Signal app may not be a design flaw, but rather a deliberate backdoor to allow authorities to access private messages. The app was initially funded with backing from the deep state, after all.

    Big League Politics has reported about the rise of Telegram, a pro-privacy app that is Signal’s most direct competitor:

    The New York Times is prodding Telegram to censor right-wing voices and hamper the platform’s amazing growth as mainstream social media platforms enact Draconian censorship.

    The notorious fake news rag published an article on Tuesday imploring Telegram to do more to stop so-called “far-right conspiracy theorists, racists and violent insurrectionists” from using the app to communicate.

    “There’s a real push and pull between the people that are using Telegram — and messengers like it — for good, and the people who are using them to undermine democracy,” said Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation analyst at the globalist Wilson Center.

    “We see the same openness and sense of connection that is used by democratic activists opportunistically exploited by extremists,” she added…

    “Telegram has never yielded to pressure from officials who wanted us to perform political censorship,” Durov wrote several years ago.

    Durov, a Russian-born libertarian, has run into trouble with the Kremlin over Telegram, but the Russian government has come around on the platform and now regularly use it. Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, even urged former President Donald Trump to get on the platform after he was banned by Big Tech.

    “Seems like you don’t enjoy freedom of speech in your own country any more!” Mr. Polyanskiy wrote.

    Although Trump is not currently on the platform, his son, Donald Trump Jr., has joined Telegram and already commands a massive following on the pro-free speech app.

    Telegram may be a better option than Signal for individuals hoping to safeguard their rights, considering Signal’s vulnerabilities and deep state ties.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 23:00

  • America's Most-Hated Office Jargon
    America’s Most-Hated Office Jargon

    The pandemic might have brought office life to a shuddering halt across much of the world but, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, it hasn’t allowed workers to breathe a sigh of relief and escape arguably one of the most annoying aspects of office culture – business jargon.

    Even while working remotely, many office workers are still exposed to buzz words when they “touch base” with the boss over email, Teams, Slack and Zoom. Some phrases tend to get under people’s skin more than others and a 2019 GetResponse survey polled 1,000 U.S. employees to determine the absolute worst of the worst.

    This infographic focuses on the 15 worst offenders with the survey’s respondents hating the term “Synergy” the most.

    Infographic: America's Most Hated Office Jargon | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    It was followed by the seemingly innocuous “Teamwork” and the possibly more irritating “Touch base”. Further down, some well known and cringe-inducing terms make an appearance such as “The next time you feel the need to reach out…” and of course “Circle back”.

    Despite the dislike for many of these phrases, bosses no doubt feel they are justified. The issue may be more down to senior figures in companies using all of these buzzwords a little bit too often for their employees’ liking.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 22:40

  • The Globalist Dilemma: How To Implement A 4th Industrial Revolution Without Losing Power
    The Globalist Dilemma: How To Implement A 4th Industrial Revolution Without Losing Power

    Authored by Joaquin Flores via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The changes underway are a revolutionary change from one historic epoch to another…

    Ephesians 6: 10 – 12 – 10Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. 11Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

    The sci-fi horror film we are now living in, being presented as the 4th Industrial Revolution, is only one possible outcome, and not a necessary one. However, the one being put forward in Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, is what we see being implemented across the Western world in the aftermath of the collapse of NATO and the winding down of the globalists’ Trans-Atlantic banking establishment.

    As we have previously established, the declining rate of profit has created an impasse in the logic of the speculative based finance economy, one which is in fact undermined by the rise of robotics, AI, and automation. Therefore, the ruling class as moved to transform itself from a financialist plutocracy into a technocratic oligarchy.

    There inherent problem for these globalist elites is the fact that in history, massive changes to the organization of society have also been accompanied by big changes in who holds power, known also as Pareto’s “circulation of elites”, (but we will term ‘rotation’ for clarity).

    Their version of the 4IR is based on a fallacious understanding of humanity and consciousness; premised within a demiurgic conception of power. Moreover, their efforts will fail for any number of practical reasons.

    The 4th Industrial Revolution of home garage production is around the corner, it is really only a matter of a few short years before it is practicable to be entirely realized. And this is why there has been such a tremendous effort to subvert this back into some attempt to reconstruct a single-mind centralized model dependent upon ID2020.

    With ID2020 we see the beginning of a freedom-pass and a subscription to ‘anti-virus’ and ‘anti-malware’ shots for the human body, in order for citizens to stay alive, having already been infected with some ostensibly communicable illness created by the creators of the vaccines themselves.

    The shots will not be ‘mandatory’, rather the enslaved people will clamor for them, and their qualification to receive these in a timely way will be based upon their social-credit score. A lower social-credit score will see longer periods of real illness and forced quarantine at-home, in “eco-friendly” 15 meter square apartments. Suburban populations will have their mortgages foreclosed, assets will be seized, and people will be forced to live in ‘smart cities’ and rely on UBI payments, in order to ‘save energy’ through eliminating trucking and supply-lines to rural parts.

    A Paradigm in Collapse – Avoiding a Rotation of Elites

    Are we transitioning to a new phase in a series of industrial revolutions within modernity, or are we on the precipice of a post-industrial phase in the development of human civilization? These are starkly differing conceptions of the changes underway, and provide two very different ways of approaching the problem and any possible solutions.

    The very same failing paradigm which has brought about both the need and the possibility of a genuine 4th Industrial Revolution based in liberatory concepts of the 4th Great Awakening, is trying to get ahead of the curve to control and contain it. Towards that end, they have possessed the very name ‘4IR’.

    The real problem with technology and the coming 4th Industrial Revolution appears to be two-fold. There has been a scientific attempt to manage the changes that technology brings, which are historically destabilizing to elites. This means that now, through the science of sociology and social-psychology as well as other social-engineering technologies (as seen through big tech and big pharma), the effort is one of intentionally directing the development of certain technologies towards the end of continued control by our present financial elites. All this, as we move towards a post-financial order.

    In effect this has meant the holding back the development of other technologies which they rightly see as destabilizing for them, until new coercive control-technologies can be better produced and applied. This is why we see the focus on neuralink and cybernetics involved in a discussion of the 4IR, even though it is not very much related.

    The process of a rotation of elites is, again, what the elites want to avoid. But there has never been a successful revolution in the productive forces without a rotation of elites.

    That is why they are trying to ‘downscale’ the historical perspective, and speak in terms of industrial revolutions plural, instead of the fact that the 4th industrial revolution is a post-industrial revolution.

    The dying-out elites want to frame things in terms of the phases of the industrial revolution on a small scale within the span of hundreds of years, instead of looking at broad socio-economic transformations over the span of thousands of years.

    By framing it in this limited way, they can try to insert themselves as an ongoing elite. The problem, however, is in their theory. It is true that the banking dynasties from the 1700’s have remained in power throughout the series of ‘industrial revolutions’ – three of them before as we have it – but in fact this past three-hundred years as all been the singular ‘industrial revolution’, or the epoch of modernity.

    Therefore, they are trying to promote a future vision where they simply carry-on in the ‘next’ of a series of industrial revolutions, when in fact this is not the case. The three prior paradigmatic revolutions in the productive forces have been much larger in scope (slavocratic, feudalist, capitalist) and were carried out over much longer periods of time. In short, we are on the brink of a paradigm shift, not simply an innovation resting atop the old order with the old elites. We are on the precipice, if we stand and make it ours, of a post-modern, post-industrial order.

    That is our 4th Industrial Revolution. That is the 4th Great Awakening.

    One the one hand is the fact that the present elites wish to avoid their displacement that comes with a rotations of elites, a rotation which historically arises from new modes of production. The rise of early medieval Europe saw the descendants of Roman slavocratic elites replaced by feudal elites. Some eight centuries later, after the Inclosure Acts in England and in the period of the Reformation, saw the early origins of industrial elites who first built small workshops that in the coming centuries became large factories. It is they who replaced the feudal elites.

    With this revolutionary change in the entire organization of society, came an entire shift in consciousness, from medieval into modern thinking and being, and the entrance of a consciousness commensurate with modernity, onto the world-historical stage.

    Therefore, less paradigmatic changes that then the rise of scientific management in the early 20th centuries saw the rise of technocratic and financial elites who replaced the industrial. But this did not include a shift in consciousness, as this change took place within the rubric of modernity.

    Changes of epochs were signaled by a true rotation of elites, which came with tremendous social turmoil, and was accompanied by political chaos and often times great wars between classes and nations, which were also ruinous to many of the old elites. Each rotation of elites came with a revolution in the mode of production.

    We can see that these broad historical developments take shape over the course of many centuries, and not merely decades. They are larger than what any secular conspiracy or intrigue could ever possibly account for. The rise and development of ever-more complex social relations has given society itself its own artificial intelligence of sorts, its own internal logic which drives society towards its own ends, entirely divorced from the real needs of humanity.

    The scientific management revolution of the 1920’s and 30’s, fueled by sciences like sociology, a type of soulless Marxism – presented a new possibility, now being implemented. This was to manage the implementation of new technologies while minimizing any chaos associated with the rotation of elites, by avoiding any rotation of elites at all.

    For the first time, society is conscious of itself as an entity towards its own end, as an Artificial Intelligence (AI), and is alienated from humanity which in Heidegger’s distant pre-Socratic past was an end in itself and for itself. A golem of sorts. A Frankenstein’s monster.

    For the first time, the changes which historically overthrew societies and transformed them, could theoretically by managed by a self-conscious AI, as a technocratic leviathan, as ‘society’ in itself and for itself, and introduce revolutionary changes without overturning itself.

    By minimizing the rotation of elites, it is believed that the turmoil experienced by elites can be minimized, and the costs can be externalized entirely onto the relatively disempowered social classes below. The elites have used the ‘magic’ of the machine-age – technology – to create a synthetic god of sorts, which they believe can preserve their place in a type of hierarchy, in perpetuity.

    In the past, because of demagogic mechanisms and the historic power of numbers, (increased many-fold with the invention of firearms and the relative decrease in the relative power of the warrior caste), a group of elites representative of the new technology and unfolding new means of production could work in tandem with relatively disempowered classes who had numerical superiority. Socio-political ends of the disempowered could piggy-back onto the program of new elites who overthrew the old. The American, French, Mexican, Russian, and Chinese revolutions are well-known examples of this process.

    Today, elites wish to implement new technology based upon the self-awareness of their machine wherein new technologies – if not managed from alpha to omega – will result in a problematic and self-defeating rotation of elites. Part of their solution is not only to create a homogeneous and highly regimented anti-intellectual culture for the masses, but to also reify and reproduce this singular homogenous worldview in and between themselves. In short, if they are all on board with the same program and for the same reasons, they can avoid the inter-elite conflicts which hitherto characterize transformations that come with new means of production.

    But this is pure folly. The changes underway cannot be managed by the science of sociology, and these changes are not merely one in a series of revolutionary changes within modernity, but rather a revolutionary change from one historic epoch to another.

    Hence, what is being presented as the 4IR is an attempt to prevent that change into post-modernity, post-industrialism (going past the old the global supply chain, the age of the industrial wage-worker, etc. towards a liberatory rubric). In this critical sense, it is not a 4IR at all, but takes more from Orwell’s conception of 1984 of a system based on the freezing of technological development in terms of the productive forces. Instead, the science of social-psychology and other coercive mechanisms are further perfected in order to ‘freeze time’.

    Looking at our next installment, we will take from this point and move to demonstrating that in addition to a rotation of elites, what was historically essential and missing from the elite plan, was a paradigm shift in consciousness not only among the people, but also among the elites. That shift in consciousness is today called the ‘Great Awakening’.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 22:20

  • Spot, The Robot Dog, Is Now "Battery Trained"
    Spot, The Robot Dog, Is Now “Battery Trained”

    On Tuesday, Boston Dynamics uploaded a video of Spot, the autonomous robot dog designed to inspect hazardous job sites, with a new trick. The robot dog has been programmed to self-charge, allowing it to replenish its batteries without humans’ help.

    In recent months, an industrial version of Spot has been deployed to an oil rig, a Ford Motor Company factory, and even at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, conducting tasks that humans would normally complete. But during those deployments, human intervention was needed with the robot to replace batteries. 

    The upgraded version of industrial Spot with self-charging capabilities allows it to operate in dangerous areas for longer while mitigating health risks to humans.

    The robot has a vast amount of inspection capabilities, including visual inspection, gauge reading, thermal sensing, leak detection, and laser scanning. Usually, these tasks would be completed by humans, but not anymore. 

    Spot’s autonomous self-charging capabilities are seen in Boston Dynamics’ video published on Tuesday. 

    According to Engadget, more than 400 Spots have been sold since June. Boston Dynamics is only selling the robot to corporations. 

    It appears Spot is getting better at doing human jobs. That’s great for productivity but will have profound implications down the line for the labor force.

    By the end of the decade, automation and artificial intelligence could displace tens of millions of jobs – this trend has been thrown into hyperdrive since the virus pandemic. Lawmakers have to see the downside to the robot revolution, that is, one where income inequality will continue to expand. 

    The great displacement is underway – if you’re a reader and work in an industry that could be highly disruptive due to automation, such as working in a warehouse – maybe now is the time for job retraining. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 22:00

  • Johnstone: The Real World And The Narrative World
    Johnstone: The Real World And The Narrative World

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    We each inhabit two very different worlds simultaneously: the real world, and the narrative world.

    The real world is the physical world of matter, of atoms and molecules and stars and planets and animals wandering around trying to bite and copulate with each other. Science does not yet understand much of this world, but it can reasonably be said to have some degree of existence to it.

    The narrative world is made of stories, of mental chatter about what’s going on. It is only related to the real world in the loosest of terms, and commonly has no relation to the real world whatsoever.

    In the narrative world you exist as a person with a certain name and a certain life story with a mountain of adjectives attached to you, some believed consciously and some believed subconsciously. You are this, you are that. You are inadequate. You are inferior. You are clever. You are fat. You are unlovable. Whatever. Words, words, words, words, words.

    In the real world what you think of as “you” exists as an organism, breathing and digesting and pulsing and moving in the appearance of time. No thoughts or words need to occur for this organism to exist; it just is whatever it is.

    In the narrative world, your surroundings are experienced as friends and foes, good and bad, right and wrong, threatening and non-threatening. Churning, babbling stories about what’s happening pervade the experience of the narrative world: those people over there are bad people and should be punished. Those people over there are the good people and they should be rewarded. That man is blah blah blah. That woman is this and that.

    In the real world, your surroundings are experienced as raw sensory data: sensory impressions arising in each point in spacetime. Breath going in, breath going out. The feeling of feet on the ground. Sound of a bird call. Sight of a passing car. It’s all just happening as it is, as whatever it is. Simple. Present.

    In the narrative world, the United States changed dramatically on the 20th of January. If you live in one narrative echo chamber it changed dramatically for the better, if you live in the other narrative echo chamber it changed dramatically for the worse. But throughout the narrative world most agree that the 20th of January 2021 marked a very real and significant turn of events.

    In the real world, things are moving in pretty much the same ways they were on January 19th. The money is moving in more or less the same directions at more or less the same rates. The weapons and troops are moving to more or less the same places in basically the same ways as before. The resources are behaving in essentially the same way. The people are moving in pretty much the same way. The actual, physical dynamics have remained predominantly unchanged.

    The real world and the narrative world could not be more different. Skilled manipulators exploit these differences for their benefit like foreign exchange traders exploit the differences in world currency values. A religious manipulator can get you to hand over your real currency in exchange for narrative currency about eternal salvation or spiritual purification. A sexual predator can manipulate you into trading the real currency of sex for the narrative currency of “I think I’m in love with you”. A politician can manipulate you into trading the real currency of votes for the narrative currency of whatever they say on the campaign trail.

    It’s very hard to control people in the real world by just using the means that are available in the real world. If you’re bigger and stronger than someone you can get them to hand over their sandwich by hitting them, or if you have a big stick or something. If you want to exert a large amount of control over a large number of people, though, you generally have to seize that control through the narrative world.

    It’s easier to control people through the narrative world than the real world because the narrative world and its relationship with the real world is too complicated for most people to understand, whereas the real world is quite simple and straightforward. For this reason, a tremendous amount of energy goes into controlling the dominant narratives, the dominant stories that people tell about what’s going on in the world.

    Convince people to accept the narrative that a government’s leader is an evil dictator in need of regime change, and you can trade that narrative for real world control over a crucial geostrategic region. Convince people to accept that the status quo is working fine and any attempts to change it are dangerous insanity, and you ensure that people will never rise up and take away your real world control. Convince people that anyone questioning your narratives is a conspiracy theorist or a Russian propagandist, and you ensure your continued hegemonic control over the narrative world.

    The most powerful manipulators are the ones who have succeeded in exerting control over both the real world and the narrative world, and they pursue both agendas with equal emphasis. Populations in the real world who insist upon their own national, resource, financial, economic or military sovereignty are subject to real world attacks by bombs, starvation sanctions and special ops. Entities in the narrative world which threaten imperial narrative domination are attacked, smeared, marginalized and censored.

    That’s all we are seeing with the increasingly shrill mainstream panic about disinformation, conspiracy theories, foreign propaganda and domestic extremism. Our rulers and their media lackeys are not compassionately protecting us from deception, they are ensuring that they remain the only ones authorized to administer deception. By golly the only ones allowed to deceive us should be our government, our news media, our teachers and our priests.

    As China and its allies increasingly threaten the real world hegemony of the US and its allies, operations in the narrative world are getting increasingly heated and intense. Expect continued demonization of Russia, and expect anti-China propaganda to get more and more noisy. Expect people to be herded into partisan echo chambers with thicker and thicker walls in the narrative world, because dividing them up in this way makes it much easier to administer propaganda to them.

    The narrative world is getting more and more frenzied while the real world is headed toward disaster due to the military and ecological pressures created by our status quo. There are only a few ways this can possibly break, with the most obvious being mass scale climate disaster or nuclear war.

    There is also the possibility that the human species goes the other way and adapts. Organisms always wind up hitting a juncture where they either adapt to a new situation or go extinct, and we are approaching our juncture now.

    Throughout recorded history, all around the globe, wise humans have been attesting that it is possible to transcend our delusion-rooted conditioning and come to a lucid perception of the narrative world and reality. There are many names for this lucid perception, but the one that caught on most widely is enlightenment.

    We all have this potential within us. It has been gestating in us for many millennia. As we approach our adaptation-or-extinction juncture, we are very close indeed to learning if that potential will awaken in us or not.

    If it does, a healthy and harmonious world will shift from being an unimaginable pipe dream to something very achievable. No longer confused about the relationship between the real world and the narrative world, we will be able to perceive our actual situation clearly, unfiltered by manipulation, and begin collaborating to build something beautiful and unprecedented. Once we move out of our narrative manipulation-driven model of competition and domination, and into a lucidity-driven model of collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem, a lasting peace will open up to us all.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! 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 Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDF for five bucks) or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. 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.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 21:40

  • Luxury Homes On Manhattan's Upper East Side Are Back In Vogue
    Luxury Homes On Manhattan’s Upper East Side Are Back In Vogue

    After spending the last 18 months writing about how real estate in New York was collapsing due to the pandemic, we have to admit is it nice to see some signs of life anywhere in the city.

    Those signs of life appear to now be on the Upper East Side, where the borough’s priciest real estate deals have been every week since November, according to Bloomberg. In all but three of the last 14 weeks, the priciest or second-priciest deals in the city have been on the Upper East Side. 

    Many of these new sales have been in new towers “designed to mimic the style of century-old co-ops, but without the onerous restrictions of those buildings,” the report notes.

    “I’m not saying the glass box is over. But it might be over. It may have had its day,” said broker President Donna Olshan.

    Sales of luxury apartments have outperformed the rest of the Manhattan market, despite us perpetually noting that real estate in places like “Billionaire’s Row” continues to be sold at massive discounts. Upper East Side deals have also been helped along by discounts. 

    For example, 1010 Park Ave. had lowered asking prices on two units that turned out to be the second-biggest contracts for two weeks in January. Gary Barnett, chairman and founder of Extell, the developer of the property, commented: “Buyers are responding to getting something truly exceptional at a very favorable price in today’s market.”

    One townhouse that sold in December had been reduced 48% but still wound up as the second most expensive contract in the city, at $9.75 million. 

    One popular tower has been The Benson, which is still under construction on Madison Avenue near 80th Street. The report notes that 8 of the 15 full-floor units have been sold already. One apartment on the 15th floor recently went under contract for $14.15 million, marking the second most expensive deal that week.

    The next week, the Upper East Side saw the most expensive transaction in the city when two apartments at 1228 Madison Ave. sold for a combined $27.85 million. During the week of January 4, a penthouse listed for $32.5 million at 109 E. 79th St. was the top pending sale of the week. 

    New projects allow people who want to stay on the Upper East Side to find new property without having to deal with the renovation logistics of co-op approvals. John Usdan, chief executive officer of Midwood Investment & Development said: “Younger people who are in the market for the first time, to really buy a permanent home, just don’t have the time or expertise to navigate those kind of issues.”

    He continued: “When you look historically about what’s happened in pandemics, wealthy people have been the first to leave the centers of diseases. Then they come back.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 21:20

  • Why Trust The 'Experts'?
    Why Trust The ‘Experts’?

    Authored by Lipton Matthews via The Mises Institute,

    It has now become commonplace to accuse anyone who opposes covid lockdowns of being “antiscience.” This sort of treatment persists even when published scientific studies suggest the usual prolockdown narrative is wrong. support the antilockdown position.

    There are sociological, economic, and cultural reasons why experts will take the politically popular position, even when the actual scientific evidence is weak or nonexistent.

    Experts Are Biased and Are Self-Interested like Everyone Else

    Though we are often encouraged to listen to experts because of their intelligence and expertise, there is a strong case for us to be skeptical of their pronouncements.

    Beliefs serve a social function by indicating one’s position in society. Hence to preserve their status in elite circles, highly educated experts may subscribe to incorrect positions, since doing do so can confer benefits. Refusing to hold a politically popular viewpoint could damage one’s career. And since upper-class professionals are more invested in acquiring status than working people, we should not expect them to jettison incorrect beliefs in the name of pursuing truth.

    Cancel culture has taught us that promoting the world view of the elite is more important than truth to decision makers.

    So why should we listen to experts when they give greater primacy to appeasing elites than solving national problems? In contrast to what some would want you to believe—revolting against experts is not an attack on science, considering that little evidence suggests that they care about scientific truth. Let us not fool ourselves. People occupying powerful offices are uninterested in being toppled from positions of influence, and as such, they will seek to minimize views that threaten their professional or intellectual authority. As a result, expecting influential bureaucrats to value truth is unwise. Truth to a bureaucrat is merely the consensus of the intelligentsia at any given time.

    Of note is also the lesser ability of intelligent people to identify their own bias. Stemming from their greater levels of cognitive development, it is easier for intelligent people to rationalize nonsense. Justifying extreme assumptions requires a lot of brainpower, so this could possibly explain why highly intelligent people—specifically, people “higher in verbal ability”—are inclined to express more extreme opinions. Our culture has immense faith in expert opinion, although the evidence indicates that such confidence must be tempered by skepticism. Intelligent people, whether they be experts or politicians, do not have a monopoly on rationality.

    Admittedly, intelligence may act as a barrier to objective thinking. Brilliant people are adept at forming arguments, therefore even when confronted with compelling data, they are still able to offer equally riveting counterpoints. Smart people can engage opponents without resorting to a bevy of studies to buttress their conclusions. Thus, clearly, the proposals of experts ought to be held to a higher standard primarily because they are smarter than average.

    The capacity of an intelligent person to provide coherent arguments in favor of his ideas can be impressive, and may only serve to solidify him or her in his or her conclusions. For instance, in the arena of climate change experts have recommended policies that are consistent with data on nothing but the claim that a consensus supports such proposals. Promoting the wide-scale use of renewables, for example, is usually touted as a sustainable climate strategy despite the fact that studies argue the reverse.

    Counter to the rantings of the intelligentsia, we should implore more people to express skepticism of experts. Due to their high intelligence, experts tend to be more inflexible and partisan than other people. This is solid justification for ordinary people to be skeptical of the intellectuals in charge of national affairs. Unlike wealthy bureaucrats, who are insulated from the economic fallout of their bad ideas, the poor usually bear the burden.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 21:00

  • US Air Travel Hits New Turbulence Despite Vaccines & 'Recovery'
    US Air Travel Hits New Turbulence Despite Vaccines & ‘Recovery’

    Trading the recovery and sensitive stocks linked to the reopening following a month and a half of vaccine rollouts have benefited traders who have piled into these stocks, such as airlines. For example, U.S. Global Jets ETF (JETS) has more than doubled since March 2020 low but remains well off its 2019 highs. There are new indications from travel-data firm Cirium that show the recovery in airlines could be reversing, this could be bad news for traders who have piled into JETS. 

    Bloomberg, citing a new Cirium report, said the number of single-aisle aircraft in service has plunged since the beginning of the year amid a flare-up in COVID-19 cases across the country and fresh restrictions. 

    Cirium’s data showed single-aisle aircraft in service fell below the 8.8k mark on Feb. 5, a drop of 15% compared with Jan. 3 figures. 

    “Wide-body usage slumped 14% from a Dec. 19 peak, though bigger aircraft remain comparatively far less popular, with just half the number in service compared with pre-pandemic levels as long-haul travel remains largely out of bounds,” Bloomberg said, quoting the report.

    Following months of soaring air travel numbers into the 2020 holiday season, U.S. passenger volumes dove in late January to their lowest levels in six months. 

    The plunge in air travel comes as the Biden administration rolled out new virus travel restrictions through an executive order that requires negative COVID-19 tests of all travelers into the U.S., as well as a one week quarantine period. 

    What could send passenger volumes even lower is the White Houses’ proposed plan to test domestic travelers for the virus. 

    Emerson Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association, was not pleased this week with the Biden administration mulling over the idea of domestic testing. 

    “We really think that this is something that would really decimate the industry further,” Barnes said. 

    Heading into 2021, optimism was high for a rebound in global air travel, but that appears to be fading despite vaccine rollouts, with not just the U.S. air travel industry beginning to slump once more. Still, also Europe’s air travel industry “looks like a black hole,” according to a separate Bloomberg report. 

    “Tourism flows, on the whole, are not expected to recover to their pre-crisis levels in 2021 fully,” European Commission said. 

    More or less, reverting our attention to the JETS ETF, the question we ask readers: Is upside limited? 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 20:40

  • Desperate Americans Who Can't Afford Housing Are Becoming "Modern-Day Nomads"… But Not By Choice
    Desperate Americans Who Can’t Afford Housing Are Becoming “Modern-Day Nomads”… But Not By Choice

    Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

    A recent story floating around mainstream media regarding “modern-day nomads” reads like a contemporary article on Henry David Thoreau. It shares stories of people looking to downsize their life and live simply and stories of people who have fallen on hard times, unable to afford rent. 

    However, what is lacking is the exposure of the dark underbelly of the “modern-day nomad” culture. In other words, they neglect to mention the fact that the enormous growth of the “modern-day nomad” is rooted in the fact that the world economy has all but collapsed, now mired in a global economic depression of unemployment, low wages, and personal financial catastrophes.

    While it sounds romantic, it’s often rooted in desperation.

    Nevertheless, some of the stories begin in the following way:

    If you look closely on city streets, campgrounds, and stretches of desert run by the Bureau of Land Management, you’ll see more Americans living in vehicles than ever before. It was never their plan.

    “I wasn’t prepared when I had to move into my SUV. The transmission was going. I had no money saved. I was really scared,” said April Craren, 52, bundled in blankets atop a cot inside her new minivan, a 2003 Toyota Sienna.

    She flipped the camera on her phone to show me the camp stove she uses to make coffee and her view of the sun rising over the Colorado River. She has no toilet, shower, or refrigeration.

    After separating from her husband, April found herself homeless in June 2020, exacerbating the depressive disorder for which she receives $1,100 a month in disability benefits.

    “I could have gotten an apartment but in a crappy unsafe place with no money to do anything at all,” she explained.

    Last year, where April lived in Nixa, Missouri, the average rent for an apartment was $762, slightly less than the national average. Like nearly half of American renters, she would have been crippled by the cost.

    It’s not surprising, then, that job loss, divorce, or, say, the sudden onset of global health or financial crisis can push so many over the edge.

    Many Americans have found themselves trapped in a spiral of poverty from which they simply can’t recover.

    It doesn’t sound so bad to those of us with minimalist persuasions

    At 52, April Craren didn’t choose this life. It was thrust upon her by unfortunate life circumstances. Craren couldn’t afford the exorbitant rent that is now average across the country on a fixed income. (Partly due to inflation but mostly due to the housing crash in 2008.)

    The coordination of lockdowns and COVID restrictions have plunged the world into a deep depression of which we are only beginning to see. Even Wall Street couldn’t have caused this much damage. 

    “If the Great Recession was a crack in the system, Covid and climate change will be the chasm,” says Bob Wells, the nomad who plays himself in the film Nomadland. Thankfully, Wells was able to help Craren adopt her lifestyle so she can now survive as a “nomad” through his Home On Wheels Alliance.

    Wells’s lifestyle was a choice. But the newfound interest in the nomadic lifestyle is not a choice for many.

    From Yahoo:

    Realizing he had something valuable to share, he bought the domain name Cheap RV Living in 2005. He posted tips and tricks about better vehicle-dwelling, but what he was really offering was a road map to a better life.

    Four years later, when close to 10 million Americans were displaced after the Great Recession, traffic to his site exploded. Finding himself at the center of a growing online community, he decided to create a meet-up in Quartzsite, Arizona. He dubbed it the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (RTR), and in January 2011, 45 vehicles showed up. Eight years later, an estimated 10,000 vehicles convened for what was said to be the largest nomad gathering in the world.

    The event’s explosive growth is undoubtedly a reflection of America’s increasing interest in van life as an answer to the affordable housing crisis, an idea made accessible by Bob on his YouTube channel, also named Cheap RV Living, created in 2015.

    The “increasing interest in van life” that Yahoo News refers to is not some petit-bourgeois fantasy being realized by privileged middle-class white kids, able to go home at any time. It is the necessity of formerly middle class, working-class, and poor people all across America who are out of work or are working but cannot afford housing.

    Minimalism is a legitimate lifestyle for some; others have no choice

    For many, this culture of minimalism is genuinely how they wish to live. Nomads have a genuine desire to see empty overconsumption come to an end. However, we can not ignore that minimalism is being promoted to prepare the Western population who are used to high living standards to accept those that are much lower.

    Why do you think we continually see articles promoting insects as a legitimate dining option? Why are The Great Reset promoters at the World Economic Forum telling the public that they will soon own nothing and learn to love it?

    Being a nomad doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared.

    For those who are already nomads, whether by choice or forced by economic circumstance, it might be helpful to know that there are many prepping options available to you. There is no need to be left to the mercy of wherever you are right now. 

    I highly encourage you to access Daisy Luther’s article, “There’s Another Option Besides Hunkering Down and Bugging Out: Nomadic Living.” It will give you the perspective of someone who has voluntarily experienced and lived the nomadic lifestyle while also the mindset of remaining prepared for anything and everything. 

    At the rate the Great Reset is taking shape, many of us may find ourselves embracing the nomadic lifestyle, willingly or not.

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

  • 'High Steaks' As Israeli Startup Prints World's First Ribeye
    ‘High Steaks’ As Israeli Startup Prints World’s First Ribeye

    Israeli-based Aleph Farms Ltd. has created the world’s first slaughter-free steak using three-dimensional “bio-printing” and real cells from a cow. 

    Aleph teamed up with biomedical researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to print lab-grown ribeyes intended for human consumption without slaughtering an animal. 

    “It incorporates muscle and fat similar to its slaughtered counterpart,” the company said in a press release, adding that its steaks taste just like a “juicy ribeye steak you’d buy from the butcher.” 

    Aleph’s technology is unique. It prints “actual living cells that are then incubated to grow, differentiate, and interact, in order to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak,” the release said.

    “A proprietary system, similar to the vascularization that occurs naturally in tissues, enables the perfusion of nutrients across the thicker tissue and grants the steak with the similar shape and structure of its native form as found in livestock before and during cooking,” the release continued.

    Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, called the 3D printed meat a “breakthrough.” He added, “this milestone for me marks a major leap in fulfilling our vision of leading a global food system transition toward a more sustainable, equitable, and secure world.” 

    While lab-grown meat is in its infancy, it will take the company a couple of years to advance the technology to scale production up to be commercially available. 

    If you thought 3D printed steaks are weird – readers may recall not too long we reported California food company Eat Just Inc. received the all-clear by Singapore to sell lab-grown chicken meat. 

    So the question we ask readers: Will lab-grown meat cut down on Co2 emissions as livestock herds would be decreased, or will the fake meat produce more Co2 emissions as it would take more energy in labs to grow it? 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 20:00

  • Trump Legal Team Plays Scorching Montage Of Democrats 'Inciting' And Challenging Past Elections
    Trump Legal Team Plays Scorching Montage Of Democrats ‘Inciting’ And Challenging Past Elections

    Update (1540ET): Trump’s legal team wrapped up their case in just over three of the allotted 16 hours.

    The next phase will consist of up to four hours of questions from senators to both the House managers and Trump’s legal team – though several senators have said they don’t think it will take that long.

    “Our country needs to get back to work. I know that you know that. But instead we are here. The majority party promised to unify and deliver more Covid relief. But instead, they did this,” said Trump attorney Bruce Castor in closing remarks.

    Castor called Trump “the most pro-police, anti-mob president’ in US history – suggesting that Democratic lawmakers turned a blind eye to BLM protests. He also said that the attack on the Capitol was in no way an “insurrection.”

    “Insurrection is a term of art. It’s defined in the law,” argued Castor. “It involves taking over a country, a shadow government, taking the TV stations over and having some plan on what you’re going to do when you finally take power. Clearly this is not that.”

    *  *  *

    Update (1410ET): After spending much of the morning laying out their case for why the impeachment is a sham, former President Trump’s legal team proceeded to play several montages of Democrats doing the exact same thing they’ve impeached Trump over – namely, calling for violence against Republicans. Interspersed throughout are clips of leftists committing violence against conservatives following the ‘incitement.

    Watch:

    They also played clips of Democrats objecting to election results:

    As well as clips of Democrats gunning for a Trump impeachment at all costs:

    *  *  *

    Watch Live:

    *  *  *

    After Democratic impeachment managers spent the last two days dissecting videos and tweets – and in one case fabricating evidence to try and convince the world that former President Trump incited the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, it’s now time for the defense to counter.

    In what is expected to last just one day, Trump’s impeachment lawyers will reportedly present a montage of prominent Democrats similarly ‘inciting’ their base, as BLM and Antifa extremists spent much of last year committing violent and destructive crimes throughout the country.

    If anything, it might serve as some Friday entertainment as Trump’s second impeachment draws to a close. The proceedings begin at Noon, ET.

    As we’ve noted several times, this is nothing more than political theater, as Democrats simply don’t have the votes to convict the former president – which would require at least 17 Republicans to cross the aisle for a conviction. So far, they’ve got six.

    “Many of them are loyal to Donald Trump even to this day, despite what he may have said about them or their families in the past,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Bloomberg Television on Thursday, adding “And more of them are afraid of Donald Trump’s political power.”

    According to Trump attorney David Schoen, the defense might only need three or four hours on Friday for an opening argument, while a person familiar with their strategy told Bloomberg that they decided to “slim down” their presentation based on what the Democrats presented earlier in the week.

    According to Schoen, the trial “could be over Saturday.”

    “We’re just putting on the evidence, the evidence speaks for itself,” said Schoen, referring to the Democrats’ impeachment effort “a politically partisan process.”

    After the House managers concluded their arguments, Schoen met for about an hour Thursday night with several Republican senators. He defended having a discussion with lawmakers who are also jurors in the case, saying, “That’s the practice here. There’s nothing about this thing that has any semblance to due process whatsoever.”

    The trial is all but certain to end with Trump’s acquittal. A conviction would require 17 Senate Republicans to join with Democrats and independents in finding Trump guilty to reach the two-thirds majority necessary. Even the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat said he saw little indication that many Republicans would back conviction. –Bloomberg

    Check back for more updates and a live feed when the trial starts…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 19:55

  • New Video Shows Massive California Container Ship Traffic Jam
    New Video Shows Massive California Container Ship Traffic Jam

    By Greg Miller of American Shipper

    Newly released U.S. Coast Guard video offers visceral proof of just how extreme the congestion has become at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The new view from above reveals a vast armada of container ships scattered at anchor across California’s San Pedro Bay.

    As the Coast Guard footage paints the picture, the latest data from the Port of Los Angeles and from the Marine Exchange of Southern California tells the story behind those images.

    The data confirms that there has been no real let-up in the historic container-ship traffic jam off California’s coast. 

    As of Thursday, there were 25 container ships at berth in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Thirty-two container ships were at anchorage. That’s roughly the same level that has been at anchor since the beginning of this year. (The record of 40 container ships at anchor was hit on Feb. 1).

    The Port of Los Angeles, via its platform, The Signal, recently began disclosing the number of days at anchor for specific container ships. The numbers confirm that some vessels are spending almost as much time at anchor as it takes to traverse the Pacific Ocean.

    As of Thursday, the Ever Envoy, with a capacity of 6,332 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), had been at anchor for 11 days. Other ships that had just gone to berth had been waiting just as long: As of Tuesday , the 9,400-TEU MSC Romane had been at anchor for 12 days. The 11,356-TEU CMA CGM Andromeda, 8,452-TEU Ever Liven and 4,888-TEU NYK Nebula for 11 days.

    The Signal indicated that the average time at anchor for ships calling in Los Angeles was 8 days as of Thursday, up from 6.9 days on Tuesday. The Signal has provided information on ship waiting times since Jan. 27. Waiting time has remained at an average of around one week since then.

    What’s Causing the Traffic Jam

    Extended anchorage times have forced some ocean carriers to cancel multiple sailings this month. Not due to lack of cargo demand, but rather, due to lack of available ships to handle those services.

    Delays on the landside are causing the logjam at sea. Extremely high inbound volumes combined with logistical complications both inside and outside the ports are causing the landside delays. One of the challenges inside the ports involves COVID infections among dockworkers. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) reported 694 of its members had tested positive as of Jan. 17. By Jan. 25, the number had jumped to 803.

    Charting the course of congestion

    As previously reported by American Shipper, the number of container ships at anchor already exceeds the number during the labor dispute between the ILWU and their employers in 2014-15.

    The Marine Exchange provided American Shipper with historical data starting in January 2019 to put the current backlog of container ships into perspective.

    The data shows that the number of container ships at berth started to ramp up in July. A steady rise in the number of ships at anchor began in November. By year end, the number of container ships at anchor had risen to 30. It has remained between the high 20s and up to 40 ships ever since. Meanwhile, the number of ships at the berths in Los Angeles and Long Beach has remained in the high 20s and low 30s.

    Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, told American Shipper: “We seem to have settled into a new, new normal of roughly 30 container ships at anchor. Whether that will continue or not, I don’t know.”

    Consumers to see emptier shelves

    That new, new normal will be increasingly felt by consumers. Lauren Brand, president of the National Association of Waterfront Employers, testified at a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday that ships currently offshore hold around 190,000 truckloads of goods.

    “Right now, there are containers holding parts for manufacturing and assembly sites in the United States. We’re going to see some of those start to falter in their schedules the longer this goes on.

    “I asked one of my local retailers, Chico’s, if they had certain spring colors. They said ‘no,’ because they were stuck at the port,” said Brand.

    “We’re seeing a decline in the fashion market. Maybe some Valentine’s Day goods are stuck. We’ll see Easter goods getting stuck. And we’ll see things that are actually arriving too late to go to market. So, there will be an economic impact, from consumer goods to manufacturing.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 19:40

  • Cuomo Guilty Of Obstruction? GOP Rep Calls For Investigation Into Nursing Home Cover-Up
    Cuomo Guilty Of Obstruction? GOP Rep Calls For Investigation Into Nursing Home Cover-Up

    New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration should be investigated over possible obstruction of justice after a Thursday revelation in the New York Post that officials purposefully concealed the death toll in New York nursing homes during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY).

    In a Friday appearance on Fox News’ “America Reports,” Zeldin, an attorney and Iraq war veteran, opined on the bombshell report that Cuomo’s secretary, Melissa DeRosa, admitted to state lawmakers on a videoconference that the data was withheld out of fear the Trump DOJ would use it against them.

    Via Fox News (emphasis ours):

    REP. LEE ZELDIN: “I just want to say that [Fox News senior meteorologist] Janice Dean has done a fantastic job for many months, going back to last spring and summer, to bring this issue to light … AP reported that over 9,000 infected patients were placed with healthy nursing home residents, so as a result of the deaths that came in the weeks and the months following this late March policy, this mandate, there were a lot of requests for information, for data, for numbers on nursing home deaths and more, and then a cover-up started. 

    There were requests from the feds to the state for information on it, and the state wasn’t providing … I believe, and my colleagues in the New York congressional delegation believe and many others as well, that there should be a an investigation into this … There is an admission of what could be obstruction of justice …

    The investigation is what you need to do to determine who specifically should be held accountable from the criminal justice standpoint. Obstruction of justice seems to be admitted in what the New York Post was reporting late yesterday … There are thousands of New York seniors who passed away as a result of this policy, and you can’t look at this as data or numbers. It’s families like Janice’s and so many others where they lost a father or a mother or grandmother or grandfather and aunt and uncle and they’re demanding accountability …

    There are a lot of Democratic state legislators who are outraged over what happened, because regardless of any type of relationship they might have with the governor and his office of their same party, it’s their duty to represent their constituents … They don’t want to be part of a cover-up …

    Watch:

    https://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=6231770737001&w=466&h=263Watch the latest video at foxnews.com

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 19:20

  • Lincoln Project Co-Founder Resigns Amid Accusations Of Criminality
    Lincoln Project Co-Founder Resigns Amid Accusations Of Criminality

    Update (1900ET): Shortly after completing this post, news broke, via Axios, that Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt is resigning from the group’s board amid a series of scandals.

    As a reminder, here is what he said earlier:

    “The Lincoln Project will be delighted to open its books for audit immediately after the Trump campaign and all affiliated super PACs do so,” Steve Schmidt said in response to inquiries about how much of the donations went into their personal bank accounts rather than ads designed to defeat Trump.

    Maybe he didn’t like what he saw when ‘he’ opened the books?

    In his statement he claims he was molested as a 13 year old. Because when all else fails, just fall back to #MeToo.

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

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

    *  *  *

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald,

    The group of life-long Republican Party consultants who, under the name “The Lincoln Project,” got very rich in 2020 with anti-Trump online messaging has spent weeks responding to numerous scandals on multiple fronts. Despite the gravity of those scandals, its conduct on Thursday night was in a whole new category of sleaze. It not only infuriated their long-time allies, but also constituted the abuse of Twitter’s platform to commit likely illegal acts.

    Lincoln Project founders from l to r: Mike Madrid, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, Reed Galen (credit: 60 Minutes screen capture)

    That the primary effect of the Lincoln Project was to personally enrich its key operatives by cynically exploiting the fears of U.S. liberals has long been obvious. Reporting throughout 2020 conclusively demonstrated that the vast majority of the tens of millions of dollars raised by the group was going to firms controlled by its founders. One of its most prominent founders — GOP consultant Rick Wilson — personally collected $65,000 from liberals through GoFundMe for an anti-Trump film he kept promising but which never came; to this date, he refuses to explain what he did with that money.

    A study conducted after the 2020 election found that the group’s effect on the election’s outcome was trivial to non-existent — not surprising given its penchant for spending money on ads that aired in electorally irrelevant places such as Washington, D.C. or which circulated almost exclusively in liberal cable news and social media venues, and thus had no purpose other than to enable its consultants to take large commissions from the ad spending. They were producing ads solely for liberals, with the overriding intent not of defeating Trump but inflating their net worth. And it worked: until they were no longer needed.

    Heading into the 2020 election, most of the U.S. media was uninterested in, if not outright hostile to, any reporting that might have helped President Trump’s re-election bid. As a result, the Lincoln Project continued to enjoy media veneration even as the magnitude of its scam became increasingly obvious. But with Trump now safely vanquished, the Lincoln Project is dispensable, and the protective shield it enjoyed against any real journalistic scrutiny is — like its reputation and prospects for future profiteering — rapidly crumbling.

    On Monday, the Associated Press published a comprehensive exposé with new facts about two of the group’s growing scandals. It reported that “in June 2020, members of the organization’s leadership were informed in writing and in subsequent phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against co-founder John Weaver, including two involving Lincoln Project employees” — directly contradicting the group’s emphatic denial that it knew nothing about Weaver’s misconduct until the New York Times reported on them at the end of January. As AP delicately put it, these new materials “raise questions about the Lincoln Project’s statement last month that it was ‘shocked’ when accusations surfaced publicly this year.” The gay news outlet The Washington Blade on Tuesday published emails and other correspondence similarly demonstrating the high likelihood that the group’s denials regarding its past knowledge of Weaver’s misconduct were false, as did New York Magazine.

    The Washington Blade, Feb. 9, 2021

    AP’s exposé also included highly incriminating reporting about what the group did — and did not — do with the close to $100 million it received in the name of fighting Trump and converting Republican voters into Biden supporters:

    For the collection of GOP consultants and former officials, being anti-Trump was becoming very good for business. Of the $90 million Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50 million has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders….

    Since its creation, the Lincoln Project has raised $90 million. But only about a third of the money, roughly $27 million, directly paid for advertisements that aired on broadcast and cable, or appeared online, during the 2020 campaign, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures and data from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.

    That leaves tens of millions of dollars that went toward expenses like production costs, overhead — and exorbitant consulting fees collected by members of the group.

    “It raises questions about where the rest of the money ultimately went,” said Brendan Fischer, an attorney with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “Generally speaking, you’d expect to see a major super PAC spend a majority or more of their money on advertisements and that’s not what happened here.”

    The vast majority of the cash was split among consulting firms controlled by its founders, including about $27 million paid to a small firm controlled by Galen and another $21 million paid to a boutique firm run by former Lincoln Project member Ron Steslow, campaign finance disclosures show.

    But in many cases it’s difficult to tell how much members of the group were paid. That’s because the Lincoln Project adopted a strategy, much like the Trump campaign they criticized, to mask how much money they earned.

    These scandals multiplied even further in the last week. In the wake of the New York Times report about the serial sexual misconduct by Weaver — he has “been accused of sending unsolicited and sexually provocative messages to 21 men, one as young as 14 when the messages began” — one of the group’s co-founders, Jennifer Horn, announced: “I have terminated my relationship with the Lincoln Project, effective immediately,” citing the group’s mishandling of the Weaver scandal.

    The Lincoln Project then published a statement attacking Horn by claiming her resignation was motivated not by noble objections to what appeared to be their protection of a sexual predator but instead — in an unsurpassed case of projection — accused her of being driven solely by money: namely, that she had demanded, and they rejected, “an immediate ‘signing bonus’ payment of $250,000 and a $40,000-per-month consulting contract.” Revealingly, the group refused to say how Horn’s supposedly outrageous pecuniary demands compare to the payments actually received by her male co-founders and other Lincoln Project operatives.

    When AP inquired about this, they bizarrely proclaimed that they would provide transparency of their finances only after Trump does. “The Lincoln Project will be delighted to open its books for audit immediately after the Trump campaign and all affiliated super PACs do so,” Steve Schmidt said in response to inquiries about how much of the donations went into their personal bank accounts rather than ads designed to defeat Trump.

    And then, on Thursday night, The New York Times reported that “leaders of the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump media venture, came under fire on Thursday night from six former workers demanding to be released from nondisclosure agreements in order to talk about John Weaver, a co-founder who harassed young men online.” Those six former employees accused the Lincoln Project of having “protected” a “predator.” The article also cited Horn’s claims that when she raised objections about the group’s treatment of the Weaver allegations, she was “yelled at, demeaned and lied to.”

    So that has been the trajectory of the Lincoln Project over the past couple of months. They are drowning in allegations of financial scamming, lying to the public and to their own employees about what they knew about a predator at the top level of their organization, and engaging in open warfare among themselves playing out in public in the pettiest yet most vindictive ways.

    But even by their lowly standards, the Lincoln Project’s behavior last night was so appalling and likely illegal that it provoked widespread denunciations even from many of the group’s most prominent supporters, who have thus far been willing to tolerate every deceitful, grifting, unethical and profiteering transgression. Accusations that their behavior was a “violation of federal law” were notably led by long-time lawyer George Conway, who shot to cable news and social media stardom in the Trump years by vehemently denouncing Trump despite being married to the former President’s close adviser, Kellyanne Conway. But what made Conway’s accusations so stinging is that he is one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project, one of the most prominent representatives of the group since its inception.

    Conway’s public accusation of criminality against his own group came after they tried to intimidate a journalist, Amanda Becker, who was working to report on the group’s various scandals. Shortly before 11:00 pm ET on Thursday night, the Lincoln Project Twitter account, which has close to three million followers, announced that it was posting the private communications between Becker and Jennifer Horn, the group’s co-founder who recently resigned, in order to reveal how the two were, in their words, conspiring to produce “a smear job on the Lincoln Project.”

    The unknown person operating the Lincoln Project’s Twitter page then posted excerpts of the inbox of Jennifer Horn’s personal Twitter account as well as the private messages she was exchanging with Becker about the story. Whoever saw those tweets could therefore read not only Horn’s private messages with Becker but also the identity of the last six or seven people with whom Horn had privately communicated, as well as parts of their conversations. In a subsequent tweet, the group posted even more extensive conversations between their now dissident co-founder and this journalist.

    Now-deleted tweet posted to the Lincoln Project’s Twitter account on the evening of Feb. 11, 2021

    How did the Lincoln Project get access to Horn’s private Twitter account? Horn herself quickly proclaimed that she did not consent to the publication of those messages. While Becker, as a party to this exchange, would have the legal authority to grant consent to the publication of this particular conversation, only Horn has the right to provide the legally required consent to access her private Twitter account and publish its contents. But that is academic, since Becker made clear in a series of tweets that she was outraged by what the Lincoln Project did, negating any possibility that she provided her consent to their publication of her conversations with Horn.

    After Conway, the group’s own co-founder, strongly suggested that they had violated federal law with these tweets, the Lincoln Project deleted them without comment. Neither the group nor its typically vocal operatives have addressed any of the fallout despite numerous media inquiries and extensive commentary. They have, for once, fallen silent.

    Due to their hiding, it remains unknown which specific Lincoln Project functionary accessed and posted Horn’s private messages. But one of them, Rick Wilson, shortly after publication, boasted of it as though it were some great accomplishment of which he was proud:

    A now-deleted tweet from Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, posted on the evening of Feb. 11, 2021

    Conway’s accusation that the Lincoln Project’s behavior here “looks on its face to be a violation of federal law” is clearly accurate (for disclosure: my first job after law school back in 1994 was with the law firm where Conway was and is a partner, though I remained there only 18 months and had little to no interaction with him then or since).

    The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) makes it a federal crime for anyone who has “knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and thereby obtains” information from that computer. A separate section makes it a crime to cause harm or damage to the person through that unauthorized access by, for instance, making the contents public. The law provides for punishments ranging from fines to years in prison depending on the motive of the unauthorized access.

    The Lincoln Project may claim that it possessed authorized access to Horn’s computer because she had previously worked there. But that authorization would almost certainly be deemed to terminate upon Horn’s termination of her relationship with the group, which preceded her private conversations with Becker. Beyond that, Yashar Ali reported that Horn “did not have a laptop or phone issued by the Lincoln Project,” rendering it even more implausible that they were somehow authorized to access her computer.

    But even if one brushes all that to the side and still insists that the Lincoln Project somehow had authorization to access Horn’s computer, their behavior would still likely be illegal since the CFAA criminalizes not only unauthorized access to a computer but also any access “exceeding authorized access.” In other words, if you are authorized to access someone’s computer for specific purposes, but instead abuse that access for unauthorized purposes, then you are still guilty of crimes under this statute.

    Clearly, accessing Horn’s computer in order to publish her private communications without her consent, after she left, wildly “exceeds” whatever “authorized access” the group can plausibly claim it possessed. Indeed, it is very difficult to imagine a scenario under which the Lincoln Project and its employees who participated in this breach did not violate federal law, which is presumably why Conway, a very careful and accomplished litigator, barely caveated his serious accusation against this notoriously litigious group:

    Not only have the Lincoln Project’s boisterous leaders fallen completely silent, but they also are refusing to answer basic questions about what happened here. Earlier this morning, I submitted a list of questions to them (published below) and they have failed to respond in any way, including even with their characteristic fake bravado, insults and threats.

    They have transformed into meek, mute little mice, hiding somewhere out of sight. Anyone who has their best interests at heart should hope they are huddled in their criminal lawyers’ offices. All of this silence and hiding and evasion is particularly ironic given the Abraham Lincoln quote they chose to define themselves, that still sits atop their now-dormant Twitter profile, which admonishes: “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” Indeed.

    Email sent to The Lincoln Project seeking comment, Feb. 12, 2021 at 8:58 a.m. ET

    From the start, it was obvious that this disgraceful collapse was the inevitable end for this group. The very idea that this freakish hodgepodge of life-long D.C. Republican consultants were men of profound conscience defending the Republic was a complete and total joke. They are life-long grifters, responsible for some of the most grotesque and amoral attack ads in the modern era, with a very long and recent history of advocating the exact opposite values of what they claimed to represent once they opportunistically identified the optimal Trump-era profit model: namely, relentlessly fleece scared and gullible #Resistance liberals of their cash by posturing as brave and principled warriors against Trumpism.

    But their lucrative scheme could never have succeeded without the knowingly fraudulent cooperation of liberal networks such as MSNBC and CNN. Over and over, those Democratic Party spokespeople masquerading as TV journalists — knowing exactly who these bottom-feeding GOP operatives have always been — encouraged their misguided and trusting viewers to regard the Lincoln Project as a selfless and noble bulwark against Trumpism rather than the scamming, grifting, lowlife con it so obviously was from the start.

    What this sorry episode reveals above all else is that much of American liberalism, including its all-but-official arm in corporate media, replicated, in the name of combatting Trump, every unethical tactic, every deceitful method, and every toxic assault on basic decency that they insisted Trump singularly represented. They allied with the most amoral societal actors, venerated the most corrupt factions, and vouched for the sleaziest operatives in the name of uprooting amorality, corruption and sleaze. The claimed Trump acted without limits or respect for normalcy and truth while proudly relinquishing all boundaries, principles and constraints of truth in order to fight him.

    In doing so, they became everything they claimed they were fighting. And unlike Trump, who is now gone, these unholy alliances and ethic-free habits that define them will remain and fester forever. That is why when American liberals, including in the media, look in the mirror, what they see staring back is Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt and John Weaver. That is the perfect reflection of what they have become, of who they now are.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 19:00

  • Alabama Is The Weakest Link In The U.S. Vaccination Chain
    Alabama Is The Weakest Link In The U.S. Vaccination Chain

    In terms of Covid vaccinations, Alabama seems to be the odd state out.

    The state was able to administer only 10,013 doses per 100,000 people as of Tuesday this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those numbers mark the lowest rate of all states, according to the CDC. 

    The state’s vaccination data contrasts with its infection data, where Alabama had among the “highest rates in the U.S. for positive coronavirus tests over the past month at 29.1%, based on data compiled by Johns Hopkins University,” the WSJ notes.

    The blame for the lag falls on Alabama’s broke public health system, which has left some counties without health departments at all. The state’s hotline for vaccine appointments didn’t have enough lines to meet demand and, last month the state suffered a “reservation glitch” which found people showing up to a vaccination site where no one ever showed up with the vaccine.

    Seven hospitals in rural areas have shut down in the state since 2009. It’s part of a larger picture of closures in Alabama’s rural – and often poverty stricken – areas. Alabama’s population is 41% rural, among the highest rates in the U.S. In counties like Macon County, conservatives and black people are hesitant to get the vaccine. The county’s population is 83% black and the Journal notes that “memories linger of the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study of Black men that ended in 1972 and was deemed unethical by a federal panel.”

    Mark Holmes, director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services at the University of North Carolina said that the state’s challenges are “indicative of the general erosion of the rural health-care infrastructure across the country.”

    State health officer Scott Harris said that the state has actually administered more doses than published by the CDC and that the mistake is due to technical problems. He also noted that unpredictable supplies of the vaccine from the government has been a challenge. He told WSJ: “We need people to understand there’s not enough to go around. We’re going to do our best to get it out as quickly as we can.”

    Resident Virginia Brasher said she dialed the state’s hotline 200 times in a day before she got through. Then, she was referred to her county’s office. After spending another day calling pharmacies and medical offices, he found there were no doses. “It’s just kind of a mess,” she said. After securing an appointment, she said: “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

    The state has 66 county health departments. of them, 36 either have just one nurse or none. Staffing at these departments in 2019 was at 65% of 2010 levels. Jim Carnes, policy director at Alabama Arise, a nonprofit focused on poverty issues, said: “We have really tied our own hands in Alabama by undercutting the public-health infrastructure in our budgets.”

    Hospitals in the state have been picking up slack. Huntsville Hospital has 70 to 75 people working on vaccinations and is administering about 1,000 doses per day. Chief Executive David Spillers said: “We’re a hospital, not a health department, but we have taken the role of a health department.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 18:40

  • Lockdowns Have Devastated The Global Poor
    Lockdowns Have Devastated The Global Poor

    Authored by Ethan Yang via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    In North America and Europe, it has become abundantly clear that Covid-19 and the lockdowns that followed have devastated society. In the United States, unemployment is through the roof and 2020 saw the largest economic contraction in modern history. Social and cultural depression continue to weigh down society as restaurants close, the arts are stunted, and everything that it means to be human is taken from us. 

    We have plenty of data to paint a picture of the devastation in countries like the United States but there has been little analysis done in developing countries, more than likely due to lack of infrastructure. We know that many developing countries closed their economies in response to Covid-19 but we are unsure of how they fared. 

    In particular, developing countries likely do not have the same support structures be it private or public as countries like the United States do. They cannot simply print trillions of dollars to finance quantitative easing policies to prop up the stock market or send stimulus checks to ailing citizens. They also likely lack the private safety nets created by nonprofits and the general flexibility of an advanced business sector. One can only imagine the damage economic depression would bring upon such communities. 

    That was until a team of researchers published a study with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The study provides a glimpse into the extent of the damage caused by the economic contraction in Africa, Asia, and South America. It details how living standards have fallen due to decreased access to basic needs such as food, unemployment, and the likely long-term consequences that will arise. Much like how in the United States there has been a noted correlation between economic shocks and decreases in life expectancies, we can expect similar if not worse consequences in developing countries.

    It is worth noting, to be fair to the intent of the authors, that they are not making a judgment that the economic damage they note is in part or fully due to lockdown policies. Either way, it should be abundantly clear to everyone that the economic damage that has been wrought on societies across the world is not simply a minor inconvenience. It is a serious problem that has led to long-term as well as short-term adverse consequences in affluent countries like the United States and likely worse consequences for those who live in developing countries.

    The Study 

    The methodology for the study made use of a series of household surveys conducted via phone calls in different developing countries. The authors explain,

    “We assemble evidence from over 30,000 respondents in 16 original household surveys from nine countries in Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone), Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines), and Latin America (Colombia).”

    They noted that,

    “The data paint a consistent picture: The economic shock and attendant disruptions to livelihoods during the early stages of pandemic appear to be large across a range of populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The scale of the disruption may even exceed the effects that economists have documented in other recent global crises, including the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 2008 Great Recession, and the Ebola outbreak of 2014.”

    AIER has frequently noted that large-scale lockdown policies have no precedent in the history of public health policy, which may explain why the economic contraction was so large compared to previous years. I would contend that consciously working to shut down businesses rather than attempting to support them, as would be the case in a normal recession, leads to highly unusual economic damage. 

    After analyzing the household data the authors report,

    “A full 50 to 80% of sample populations in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone report income losses during the COVID-19 period. If these effects persist, then they risk pushing tens of millions of already vulnerable households into poverty.”

    Such income reductions have then led to subsequent food insecurity and even the reduction of net wealth as families are forced to sell off their belongings. On this the authors note,

    “By April, many households were already unable to meet basic nutritional needs. For example, 48% of rural Kenyan households, 69% of landless agricultural households in Bangladesh, and 87% of rural households in Sierra Leone were forced to miss meals or reduce portion sizes to cope with the crisis. Comparing to preexisting baseline data verifies that these levels greatly exceed the food insecurity normally experienced at this time of year.”

    It was clear before the pandemic that developing countries such as the ones in this study were already dealing with these issues. Now they have only been exacerbated, likely reversing years of hard work to combat poverty and hunger. 

    Provided below are graphs from the study detailing the recorded increases in food insecurity in Kenya and Sierra Leone. It is important to note that like all studies there are limits to this data and its accuracy as household surveys can only provide so much information. 

    For reference, provided below are the stringency indexes (Our World in Data) for both countries with the United Kingdom as a comparison. The UK is known to have one of the strictest lockdowns and also one of the hardest hit for Covid-19. It seems reported food insecurity in both countries seems to mirror the timeline of the implementation of lockdowns. Of course, there could be a variety of factors at play such as the possible correlation of lockdown severity and the spread of Covid-19 and the individual circumstances unique to each country. 

    The study also charts the levels of food insecurity in relation to historical harvest cycles in Nepal and Bangladesh. It notes that there is a clear and unprecedented increase in food insecurity even though the pandemic occurred after the rice harvest periods. It notes that historically food insecurity has always increased in the “lean season” which is the period preceding the rice harvest. However, the pandemic occurred after the harvest so the sharp increase in food insecurity cannot be attributed to the historic patterns of food scarcity. It is clearly a result of Covid-19 and the lockdowns that followed. Provided below are the graphs included in the study. The blue lines represent the most recent cycle which clearly follows historic trends until the March-April period of 2020 which is when most of the world entered strict lockdowns.

    Provided above are the stringency indexes for both countries with the United Kingdom for context, again being a country that implemented highly strict lockdowns. The food insecurity spikes were reported during the March-April period in both Nepal and Bangladesh which directly follows the implementation of lockdowns. 

    Across all the countries in the study, substantial decreases in standards of living arising from food insecurity, unemployment, income reduction, and a lack of access to markets have had devastating results. The authors warn that,

    “The economic crisis precipitated by COVID-19 may become as much a public health and societal disaster as the pandemic itself. The link from severe economic crisis during childhood to subsequent deterioration in adult health, nutrition, education, and earnings capacity has been demonstrated in many contexts.”

    As explained earlier and often repeated by AIER, there are serious consequences that come from economic shocks that affect everything from mental health to life expectancies here in America. One can only imagine how much more devastating such economic disruption has been in developing countries that lack the infrastructure and resources to support those in need. 

    Key Takeaways

    The global poor, especially those living in developing countries, have always suffered from a long list of disadvantages, whether it be lack of social capital, technology, infrastructure, or food insecurity. These problems are only exacerbated when their societies, which are already in poor shape, are abruptly shut down. 

    Although the authors of the study do not make a definitive judgment on whether these economic shocks have become as severe as they are because of lockdowns, it is clear that shutting down economies, be it voluntary or involuntary, is a dangerous policy. It affects the global poor as well as the global elite and it seems that the poorer countries have seen a dangerous decline in living standards which will have lasting consequences that are a public crisis in and of themselves. 

    Regardless of where one stands on lockdowns, it should now be abundantly clear that economic hardship is not a minor inconvenience and action must be taken to alleviate existing damage and to prevent the further exacerbation of existing calamity. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 18:20

  • Living In Florida Becomes More Expensive As Insurers Jack Up Rates By Double-Digits
    Living In Florida Becomes More Expensive As Insurers Jack Up Rates By Double-Digits

    Florida has no income tax. Tens of thousands of middle-class and wealthy families living in tax burden blue states are packing up their bags and moving to the tax-friendly Sunshine State. While tropical weather and lower taxes are a relief for many Northerners who have moved, many are now finding out that property insurance rates are out of control. 

    Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation had approved a wave of insurance rate increases due to soaring litigation costs, higher catastrophe claim losses following multiple natural disasters over the past few years, and rising reinsurance costs.

    Insurance Business Magazine reports some property insurance companies registered with the state to increase their rates by double-digit rates.

    “Florida’s insurance market is one of the most complexes in the world,” Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation spokesperson Karen Roach told News 6 WKMG. 

    “The property market is facing significant challenges, as the frequency of claims increases and those claims become more expensive,” Roach said. 

    Roach explained the insurance industry was facing multiple challenges in the state due to increased litigation, higher catastrophe claim losses, and rising reinsurance costs.

    Federal Association of Insurance Reform president Paul Handerhan said that after years of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, “the vast majority of the insurers who are writing homeowners’ insurance in the state of Florida have been posting underwriting losses for the last five years.” 

    Handerhan warned the state’s insurers are “definitely in a tenuous financial position right now.”

    Rate increases among property insurers are bad news for the working-poor as it could make owning a home in the state unaffordable. 

    “I was flabbergasted,” Karlos Horn,35, told Reuters, who owns a single-family home in Hendry County, Florida. He said his premium doubled to $200 per month last August. 

    Horn said his monthly insurance payment is about half of his $400 mortgage payment. For many low-income folks, like Horn, owning a home in the state as insurance premiums surge will take away consumption to much-needed services industries, such as restaurants and department stores. 

    Lee Gorodetsky, an insurance agent in Fort Lauderdal, said he could not remember such steep rate hikes during his three-decade career. “The last two years have been the worst we’ve seen,” he said.

    Florida’s insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corp, have said many folks are turning to them. The firm handles high-risk customers who cannot obtain other insurance or must pay too high rates.

    As of Feb. 5, Citizens reported a 23% increase in policies from a year ago. “The growth signals an unhealthy broader market by showing that industry experts said that typical coverage is not as widely available,” Reuters said. 

    Insurers pass along costs to consumers in the form of premium increases making affordable living in some parts of the state unaffordable. These are some of the hidden landmines that one should consider when moving to the state. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/12/2021 – 18:00

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Feb 12

Today’s News 12th February 2021

  • Great Reset? Putin Says, "Not So Fast"
    Great Reset? Putin Says, “Not So Fast”

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    Did you happen to catch the most important political speech of the last six years?

    It would have been easy to miss given everything going on.  In fact, I almost did, and this speech sits at the intersection of nearly all of my areas of intense study.

    The annual World Economic Forum took place last week via teleconference, what I’m calling Virtual Davos, and at this year’s event, of course, the signature topic was their project called the Great Reset.

    But if the WEF was so intent on presenting the best face for the Great Reset to the world it wouldn’t have invited either Chinese Premier Xi Jinping or, more importantly, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    And it was Putin’s speech that brought down the house of cards that is the agenda of the WEF.

    The last time someone walked into a major international forum and issued such a scathing critique of the current geopolitical landscape was Putin’s speech to the United Nations on September 29th, 2015, two days before he sent a small contingency of Russian air support to Syria.

    There he excoriated not only the U.N. by name but most importantly the U.S. and its NATO allies by inference asking the most salient question, “Do you understand what you have done?” having unleashed chaos in an already chaotic part of the world?

    As important as that speech was it was Putin’s actions after that which defined the current era of geopolitical chess across the Eurasian continent.   Syria became the nexus around which the resistance to the “ISIS is invincible” narrative unraveled

    And the mystery of who was behind ISIS, namely the Obama administration, was revealed to anyone paying attention.

    President Trump may have taken credit for beating ISIS, but it was mostly Putin and Russia’s forces retaking the Western part of Syria which allowed that to happen, while our globalist generals, like James Mattis, did as much damage to Syria itself and as little to ISIS as possible, hoping to use them again another day.

    And regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the U.S.’s policy in Syria, which I most definitely do not, it is hard to argue that Russia’s intervention there fundamentally changed the regional politics and conflicts for the foreseeable future.

    It was the beginning of the voluntary disconnection of China, Russia and Iran from the West.

    For standing athwart U.S. and European designs on consolidating power in the Middle East, Russia has been vilified in the West in ways that make the indoctrination I received as a kid growing up in the Cold War look like vacation advertisements for spending the summer in Crimea.

    But it is that strength of purpose and character that has defined Putin’s two decades in power. He’s done wonders in rebuilding Russia. 

    He’s made many mistakes, mostly by first trusting American Presidents and second by underestimating just how arrogant and rapacious the leadership in Europe is.  

    That said, he’s now reached his limit, especially with Europe, and he’s set a firmly independent path for Russia regardless of the short-term costs.

    And that’s why his speech at the World Economic Forum was so important. 

    Putin hadn’t spoken there for nearly a decade.  In a time when WEF-controlled puppets dominate positions of power in Europe, the U.K., Canada and now the U.S., Putin walked into Virtual Davos and dumped his coffee on the carpet.

    In terms I can only describe as unfailingly polite, Putin told Klaus Schwab and the WEF that their entire idea of the Great Reset is not only doomed to failure but runs counter to everything modern leadership should be pursuing.

    Putin literally laughed at the idea of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – Schwab’s idea of a planned society through AI, robots and the merging of man and machine. 

    He flat-out told them their policies driving the middle class to the brink of extinction over the COVID-19 pandemic will further increase social and political unrest while also ensuring wealth inequality gets worse.

    Putin’s no flower-throwing libertarian or anything, but his critique of the hyper-financialized post-Soviet era is accurate. 

    The era dominated by central banking and the continued merging of state and corporate powers has increased wealth inequality across the U.S. and Europe, benefiting millions while extracting the wealth of billions.

    Listening to Putin was like listening to a cross between Pat Buchanan and the late Walter Williams.  According to him the neoliberal ideal of “invite the world/invade the world” has destroyed the cultural ties within countries while hollowing out their economic prospects.  Putin criticized zero-bound interest rates, QE, tariffs and sanctions as political weapons.

    But the targets of those weapons, while nominally pointed at his Russia, were really the West’s own engines of vitality, as the middle classes have seen their wages stagnate, and access to education, medical care, and the courts to redress grievances fall dramatically.

    Russia is a country on the rise, so is China.  Once their ties are embedded deeply enough to stabilize its economy, so too will Iran rise.

    Together they will lead the central Asian landmass out of the nineteenth-century quagmire that exists thanks to British and American intervention in the region.  Putin’s speech made it clear that Russia is committed to the process of finding solutions to all people benefiting from the future, not just a few thousand holier-than-thou oligarchs in Europe.

    In a less confrontational address, Chairman Xi said the same thing. 

    He gave lip service, like Putin, to climate change and carbon neutrality, focusing instead on pollution and sustainability. 

    Together they basically told the WEF to stuff the Great Reset back into the hole in which it was conceived. 

    I’ve followed Putin closely for nearly a decade now.  I got the feeling that if he was speaking to a college-level political science class and not a convocation of some of the most powerful people in the world he would been laughed in their faces.

    But, unfortunately, he understands better than any of us having been the object of their aggression for so long, he had to treat them seriously as their grasp of reality and connectedness to the people they ruled was nearly severed.

    At the end of his planned remarks, Klaus Schwab asked Putin about Russia’s troubled relationship with Europe and could it be fixed.  Putin pulled no punches. 

    If we can rise above these problems of the past and get rid of these phobias, then we will certainly enjoy a positive stage in our relations.

    We are ready for this, we want this, and we will strive to make this happen. But love is impossible if it is declared only by one side. It must be mutual.

    I don’t get the sense from anything I’ve seen from the Biden Administration or the European Commission in Brussels that anyone heard a word he said.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 23:50

  • House Panel Advances Stimulus: Approves $1,400 Payments, Personal Tax Credits, Loans For Insolvent Pensions
    House Panel Advances Stimulus: Approves $1,400 Payments, Personal Tax Credits, Loans For Insolvent Pensions

    On Thursday we noted that the biggest winners from the upcoming $1.9 trillion stimulus would be a family of four making up to $150,000 per year, which would entitle them to $12,800 in federal income support over the next 15 months.

    Part of this is of course the $1,400 (not $2,000) in direct payments – which just cleared a key hurdle on Thursday when the House Ways and Means Committee passed legislation which also included tax credits for children that will be sent to households on a monthly basis, according to Bloomberg.

    “The $600 rebates that Congress delivered in December didn’t do enough,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) during the Ways and Means Committee debate on Thursday. “This is critical relief to help families weather this crisis.”

    The measures, which passed along party lines 24-18, were just one component of different elements of the Biden stimulus, while eleven other House committees are working on their own measures for the package which are slated for completion on Friday – with the full house voting the week of Feb. 22 on the overall package.

    Democrats eventually want the monthly tax-credit payments to become a permanent annual feature in future legislation.

    Meanwhile, low-income workers and families footing the bill for childcare or adult care will receive expanded tax credits, while benefits for health care and paid sick leave will also receive a boost, along with employers – who will receive extended incentives to keep workers employed.

    Democrats say the payments are critical to help bolster household income amid the elevated unemployment rate and additional costs burdening American families. Republicans have criticized the proposal, saying it includes many items Democrats have championed before the pandemic and that many higher-income households that aren’t struggling would benefit.

    The Internal Revenue Service is planning to issue the stimulus payments as quickly as possible if the legislation is signed into law.

    Households would get the child tax credit in the form of a $300 a month payment for children five and under or $250 a month for those six and older starting in July. That amounts to a $3,600 benefit for younger children or $3,000 for older ones — an increase from the current $2,000 maximum credit. The tax break is currently paid out as a tax refund, rather than in monthly payments. –Bloomberg

    Households making up to $91,000 per year will receive approximately two-thirds of the benefits, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, while around 11% would go to the top 20% of taxpayers – those making $164,000 or more.

    In addition, multi-employer pension plans on the verge of collapse would be bailed out under the House-approved legislation – allowing for insolvent plans which have collective bargaining agreements to obtain loans in order to maintain distributions.

    Single-employer pensions, meanwhile, will receive more time to make up losses – and will receive a few new loopholes to calculate their liabilities, “which are inflated while interest rates remain low,” according to the report.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 23:30

  • Troop Deployments In Washington Are A Disaster Waiting To Happen
    Troop Deployments In Washington Are A Disaster Waiting To Happen

    Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

    “Tyranny in form is the first step towards tyranny in substance,” warned Senator John Taylor two hundred years ago in his forgotten classic, Tyranny Unmasked. As the massive National Guard troop deployment in Washington enters its second month, much of the media and many members of Congress are thrilled that it will extend until at least mid-March. But Americans would be wise to recognize the growing perils of the militarization of American political disputes.

    The military occupation of Washington was prompted by the January 6 clashes at the Capitol between Trump supporters and law enforcement, in which three people (including one Capitol policeman) died as a result of the violence. Roughly eight hundred protestors and others unlawfully entered the Capitol, though many of them entered nonviolently through open doors and most left without incident hours later.

    The federal government responded by deploying twenty-five thousand National Guard troops to prevent problems during President Joe Biden’s swearing-in—the first inauguration since 1865 featuring the capital city packed with armed soldiers. Protests were almost completely banned in Washington for the inauguration.

    Instead of ending after the muted inauguration celebration, the troop deployment was extended for the Senate impeachment trial.

    Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) declared:

    “So long as Donald Trump is empowered by Senate Republicans, there is still the chance that he is going to incite another attempt at the Capitol.”

    But the Senate vote on Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) motion labeling the trial as unconstitutional signaled that the trial will be anticlimactic because Trump is unlikely to be convicted. The actual trial may be little more than a series of pratfalls, alternating between histrionic Democratic House members and wild-swinging, table-pounding Trump lawyers. A pointless deluge of political vitriol will make a mockery of Biden’s calls for national unity.

    Then the troop deployment was extended into at least mid-March because of unidentified threats made to members of Congress. Acting Army Secretary John Whitley announced last week:

    “There are several upcoming events—we don’t know what they are—over the next several weeks, and they’re concerned that there could be situations where there are lawful protests, First Amendment–protected protests, that could either be used by malicious actors, or other problems that could emerge.”

    “We don’t know what they are” but somebody heard something somewhere, so the military deployment will continue. Threats have occurred in waves toward members of Congress at least since the farm crisis of the 1980s, but prior menacing did not result in the occupation of the capital city.

    Perpetuating the troop deployment is also being justified by melodramatic revisionism. In congressional testimony last week, Capitol Police acting chief Yogananda Pittman described the January 6 clash at the Capitol as “a terrorist attack by tens of thousands of insurrectionists.” Apparently, anyone who tromped from the scene of Trump’s ludicrous “I won by a landslide” spiel to the Capitol was a terrorist, or at least an “insurrectionist” (which is simply “terrorist” spelled with more letters). Is “walking on the Mall with bad thoughts” sufficient to get classified as a terrorist in the Biden era? 

    Placing thousands of troops on the streets of the nation’s capital could be a ticking time bomb. The longer the National Guard is deployed in Washington, the greater the peril of a Kent State–caliber catastrophe. The Ohio National Guard’s volley of fire in 1970 that killed four students and wounded nine others was a defining moment for the Vietnam era. 

    Forty years later, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published an investigation of the Kent State shooting based on new analyses of audio recordings from the scene. The Plain Dealer concluded that an FBI informant who was photographing student protestors fired four shots from his .38-caliber revolver after students began threatening him. That gunfire started barely a minute before the Ohio National Guard opened fire. Gunshots from the FBI informant apparently spooked guard commanders into believing they were taking sniper fire, spurring the order to shoot students. The informant denied having fired, but witnesses testified differently. (The FBI hustled the informant from the scene and he later became an undercover narcotics cop in Washington, DC.) Though there is no evidence that the FBI sought to provoke carnage at Kent State, FBI agents involved in COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program) in the 1960s and 1970s boasted of “false flag” operations which provoked killings.

    If some malicious group wanted to plunge this nation into chaos and fear, National Guard troops at a checkpoint would be an easy target—at least for the first moments after they were fired upon (most of the troops do not have ammo magazines in their rifles). The sweeping reaction to January 6 might be far surpassed if troops are gunned down regardless of whether the culprits were right-wing extremists, Antifa, or foreign infiltrators. An attack on the troops would likely perpetuate the military occupation and potentially spur Biden to declare martial law.

    Last spring, when riots erupted after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, President Trump warned that “the Federal Government will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.”

    Many activists were justifiably appalled at the specter of Trump seizing dictatorial power over areas wracked by violent protests.

    But the danger remains regardless of who is president.

    Martial law is the ultimate revocation of constitutional rights: anyone who disobeys soldiers’ orders can be shot. There are plenty of malevolent actors here and abroad who would relish seeing martial law declared in Washington, the paramount disgrace for the world’s proudest democracy.

    Unfortunately, Biden would have plenty of support initially if he proclaimed that violence in Washington required him to declare martial law. As the Washington Post noted in 2018, a public opinion poll showed that 25 percent of Americans believed “a military takeover was justified if there were widespread corruption or crime.” The Journal of Democracy reported that polls showed that only 19 percent of Millennials in the US believed that it would be illegitimate “in a democracy for the military to take over when the government is incompetent or failing to do its job.” But trusting to military rule for Millennial wish fulfillment would be the biggest folly of them all. Support for martial law is the ultimate proof of declining political literacy in this nation.

    Regardless of the risks, some politicians are clinging to the presence of the troops in Washington like Linus clutching his “security blanket” in a Peanuts cartoon. Will we now see regular alarms from a long series of politicians and political appointees working to “keep up the fear”?

    History is littered with stories of nations scourged by “temporary” martial law that perpetuated itself. Anyone who believes America is immune should recall Senator Taylor’s 1821 warning against presuming “our good theoretical system of government is a sufficient security against actual tyranny.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 23:10

  • Kalashnikov Makes Gadget-Packed Shotgun For "Hipsters" 
    Kalashnikov Makes Gadget-Packed Shotgun For “Hipsters” 

    The American-made Standard Manufacturing DP-12 is a modern bullpup pump-action shotgun that looks and feels like a futuristic weapon but lacks high-tech systems embedded within the firearm. That’s where Russia comes in, with legendary Kalashnikov Group, now planning to manufacture a “gadget-packed shotgun” for hipsters. 

    According to AFP, Kalashnikov, the AK-47 assault rifle maker, has developed and is set to series manufacture a semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun called the “MP-155 Ultima.” The high-tech shotgun features a built-in computer that teaches users how to become better shooters. 

    Source: AFP via Getty Images 

    “It’s the first gadget weapon. The task is to attract that part of the audience who was born with gadgets and cannot imagine themselves without them,” Kalashnikov’s director Dmitry Tarasov told RBK business daily.

    “Classic hunting today is becoming more rare, even outlandish. Therefore, I would like to involve … hipsters, Generation Z,” Tarasov said, referring to those born from the mid-1990s onwards.

    “I really want people to own weapons responsibly and at the same time get a kick out of it,” he added. 

    The MP-155 Ultima will retail for 100,000 roubles ($1,354) or about the same cost as an American-made DP-12. 

    “It can be adapted with gadgets including a compass and a video camera,” Tarasov said.

    … and perhaps all it will take to get the younger generation into firearms is add a computer chip to it. 

    Though we must say, youngsters are more intrigued by printing their own guns. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 22:50

  • Big Brother Is Spying On You In Thousands Of Ways, And All Of That Info Now Goes Into Centralized "Fusion Systems"
    Big Brother Is Spying On You In Thousands Of Ways, And All Of That Info Now Goes Into Centralized “Fusion Systems”

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

    Big Brother is watching you.  Sadly, most people don’t realize how extensive the surveillance grid has now become.  As you drive to work or to school, license plate readers are systematically tracking where you travel.  In major cities, thousands of highly advanced security cameras (many equipped with facial recognition technology) are monitoring your every move.  If authorities detect that you are doing something suspicious, they can quickly pull up your criminal, financial and medical records.  Of course if they want to dig deeper, your phone and your computer are constantly producing a treasure trove of surveillance data.  Nothing that you do on either one of them is ever private.

    In the past, compiling all of that information would take a great deal of time.  But now tech giants such as Microsoft, Motorola, Cisco and Palantir are selling “fusion systems” to governments all over the planet.  These “fusion systems” can instantly integrate surveillance data from thousands of different sources, and this has totally transformed how law enforcement is conducted in many of our largest cities.

    Arthur Holland Michel is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and he was given a tour of a “fusion system” that is used by the city of Chicago called Citigraf…

    He clicked “INVESTIGATE,” and Citigraf got to work on the reported assault. The software runs on what Genetec calls a “correlation engine,” a suite of algorithms that trawl through a city’s historical police records and live sensor feeds, looking for patterns and connections. Seconds later, a long list of possible leads appeared onscreen, including a lineup of individuals previously arrested in the neighborhood for violent crimes, the home addresses of parolees living nearby, a catalog of similar recent 911 calls, photographs and license plate numbers of vehicles that had been detected speeding away from the scene, and video feeds from any cameras that might have picked up evidence of the crime itself, including those mounted on passing buses and trains. More than enough information, in other words, for an officer to respond to that original 911 call with a nearly telepathic sense of what has just unfolded.

    But these systems are not just used to track down criminals.

    In fact, they can be used to investigate literally anyone.

    On another occasion, Arthur Holland Michel got the opportunity to test out the “fusion system” that Microsoft had built for New York City…

    The NYPD official showed me how he could pull up any city resident’s rap sheet, lists of their known associates, cases in which they were named as a victim of a crime or as a witness, and, if they had a car, a heatmap of where they tended to drive and a full history of their parking violations. Then he handed me the phone. Go ahead, he said; search a name.

    A flurry of people came to mind: Friends. Lovers. Enemies. In the end, I chose the victim of a shooting I’d witnessed in Brooklyn a couple of years earlier. He popped right up, along with what felt like more personal information than I, or even perhaps a curious officer, had any right to know without a court order. Feeling a little dizzy, I gave the phone back.

    If this is what is going on in major cities such as Chicago and New York, can you imagine the technology that the alphabet agencies of the federal government must now possess?

    Of course this isn’t just happening in the United States.

    On the other side of the Atlantic, a joint European surveillance project known as ROXANNE is causing a great deal of concern…

    An acronym for Real time netwOrk, teXt, and speaker ANalytics for combating orgaNized crimE, it was announced in November the Republic’s involvement in the project currently being developed in Switzerland.

    A biometrics based platform ostensibly to monitor and crack down on organised crime, an additional application of ROXANNE which its creators advertise freely is the ability to monitor those guilty of alleged hate speech and political extremism.

    Strict new laws against “hate speech” and “political extremism” are being instituted all over Europe, and this new tool will help to track down “thought criminals”.

    In particular, this new tool will be heavily monitoring “social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube as well as normal telecommunications platforms”…

    A product of the EU funded Horizon 2020 to foster new surveillance technology, ROXANNE works across social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube as well as normal telecommunications platforms to identify, categorise, and track faces and voices enabling authorities to paint a more in depth picture of the network being investigated, whether it be in relation to criminal activity or those deemed politically extreme.

    Enabling authorities to draw on raw data from a variety of sources and platforms in order to recognise common speech patterns, facial features, and geolocation, the end result is both to identify suspects and paint an intricate picture of the networks being put under the microscope.

    So if you live in Europe and you think that you might be guilty of “thought crime” at some point, you might want to get rid of your phone and your computer.

    Seriously.

    Things really have gotten that bad over there, and it is just a matter of time before the madness gets to the same level in the United States, because we are going down the exact same road.

    Here in the U.S., more political voices are being “deplatformed” with each passing day.  Progressive reporter Jordan Chariton originally cheered when conservatives were being deplatformed, but at this point he regrets his calls for censorship now that YouTube has taken down one of his videos…

    However, after YouTube pulled video from his own channel featuring footage of the January 6 riot for violating the platform’s policies against “spam and deceptive practices,” the Chariton reversed his position.

    “With time to reflect, & seeing Silicon Valley’s censorship onslaught, I regret this tweet made in [the] heat of moment,” the progressive journalist wrote. “Whether certain cable/YouTube outlets mislead audiences w/ dishonest claims lacking real evidence, they shouldn’t be targeted.”

    It is all fun and games when it is happening to “the other side”, but when it happens to you suddenly it becomes real.

    They really do want to control what all of us do, say and think, and the Big Brother surveillance grid is becoming more suffocating with each passing year.

    If we do not put limits on this technology while we still can, it is just a matter of time before our society becomes a dystopian nightmare far more horrible than anything than George Orwell ever dared to imagine.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 22:30

  • Supreme Court To Decide Whether Police Can Enter Homes Without Warrant To Seize Guns
    Supreme Court To Decide Whether Police Can Enter Homes Without Warrant To Seize Guns

    The US Supreme Court is set to rule on a Fourth Amendment case which will determine whether police or any other government official can enter one’s home with a warrant to seize guns under limited exceptions.

    The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, and requires authorities obtain a search warrant supported by probable cause.

    There are a few limited exceptions to this right, according to Forbes contributor Evan Gerstmann:

    There is an “exigent circumstances” exception. If a police officer looks through a home’s window and sees a person about to stab another person, the officer can burst through the door to prevent the attack. There is also the “emergency aid” exception. If the officer looked through the same window and saw the resident collapsing from an apparent heart attack, the officer could run into the house to administer aid. Neither of these cases violates the Fourth Amendment and few would argue that it should be otherwise. 

    However, there is a broader cousin to these exceptions called the “community caretaking” exception. It derives from a case in which the police took a gun out of the trunk of an impounded vehicle without first obtaining a warrant.

     The Supreme Court previously held that there is a community caretaking exception since police perform “community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute,” and that police activity conducted under this exception don’t violate the Fourth Amendment as long as they are done in a “reasonable” manner.

    Notably, the community caretaking exception isn’t limited to immediate emergencies like the first two exceptions.

    All three exceptions allow for warrantless searches as long as an officer acts “reasonably,” a legal standard which is ‘significantly lower’ than “probable cause,” which is required to obtain a warrant, according to the report.

    “As long as an officer might reasonably think that a warrantless search will alleviate a danger to the community, the search is considered constitutional.” -Forbes

    Now, the Supreme Court has announced that it will hear arguments next month in Caniglia v. Strom, in which Mr. Caniglia was arguing with his wife, when he placed an unloaded gun on the table and told her to “shoot me now and get it over with.”

    His wife called a non-emergency police line, resulting in several officers being dispatched to the residence. The police disagreed over whether MCaniglia was acting “normal” or “agitated,” but he agreed to go to a local hospital for evaluation via ambulance. While en route, his wife told police that he kept two handguns in the house – prompting the officers to search his home without obtaining a warrant.

    According to Forbes, Mrs. Caniglia’s consent to have the police search their home was legally negated “because the police untruthfully told her that her husband had consented to the seizure of any guns.”. Mr. Caniglia sued the police, claiming a violation of his Fourth Amendment right to privacy as well as his Second Amendment right to keep handguns in the home for self-protection.

    The case has worked its way through the legal system, finally ending up at the Supreme Court:

    The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals (which is the federal court just below the Supreme Court in Caniglia’s jurisdiction) sided with the police. The court wrote: “At its core, the community caretaking doctrine is designed to give police elbow room to take appropriate action when unforeseen circumstances present some transient hazard that requires immediate attention. Understanding the core purpose of the doctrine leads inexorably to the conclusion that it should not be limited to the motor vehicle context. Threats to individual and community safety are not confined to the highways.”

    It is certainly true that the police need a good deal of discretion in carrying out their varied, complex, and sometimes dangerous duties. But they are also powerful agents of the government and their power is supposed to be restrained by the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect the home above all other places. And whatever one’s views on gun control may be, the Supreme Court has clearly held that the right to keep handguns in the home is at the core of the Second Amendment. -Forbes

    Gerstmann makes a great point – that unlike “exigent circumstances” and “emergency aid” exceptions, the “community caretaking” exemption is not limited to time-sensitive circumstances where there is no time to apply for a warrant.

    “The question of what sort of caretaking falls under this exception is extremely vague. Will the police be able to use it, for example, to conduct warrantless searches of political protesters’ homes to make sure they aren’t planning on violent behavior at their next political rally?“

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 22:10

  • Panic Across The Plains States As Nat Gas Prices Explodes To $80
    Panic Across The Plains States As Nat Gas Prices Explodes To $80

    One look at the price of nat gas in the central states and you’d think it was a pennystock with a 1000% short interest: behold the price of Southern Star nat gas spot (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas). It just hit $38 and is normally $2. Other spot prices for the same region are more than twice as high as we explain below.

    Why the stratospheric increase in prices?

    As S&P Global Platts explains, the Midcontinent led the surge in US gas prices in Feb. 11 trading as a sharp rise in heating demand met a sudden collapse in supply due to regional production freeze-offs, significantly tightening balances across the much of the Central US, where many places found themselves with virtually no nat gas.

    In morning trading, cash prices at hubs in Kansas, Oklahoma and eastern Arkansas hit levels not seen since 2014, with select locations hitting record highs, ICE data showed.

    At One Oak Gas Transmission, Southern Star and Enable Gas, spot prices reached record highs around $85, $45 and $30/MMBtu, respectively.

    At other hubs, including ANR Oklahoma, Panhandle and NGPL Midcontinent, prices hit their highest in seven years, topping $16, $14 and $12/MMBtu, respectively.

    The culprit behind this unprecedented supply/demand imbalance: freezing cold.  During the upcoming holiday weekend, the Midcontinent population-weighted temperature is forecast to dip below 0 degrees Fahrenheit before slowly thawing to above freezing by the following weekend.

    As heating demand from homes and businesses rises, topping 5 Bcf/d on Feb. 11, colder temperatures have also prompted wellhead freeze-offs, cutting production receipts just when they’re most needed. Mid-continent gas production was estimated at 5.5 Bcf/d, down about 800 MMcf/d, or 13%, compared with the prior 30-day average, S&P Global Platts Analytics data shows.

    So as regional production gets squeezed and hub prices rise, Midcon markets have sharply reduced net gas transmissions to neighboring markets – most notably Texas and the Southeast. On Feb. 11, net volumes leaving the Midcon fell by a whopping 90% to about 335 MMcf/d – down from an average 2.9 Bcf/d in the 30-days prior.

    Other markets across the US – particularly those supplied by the Midcon – saw a similar, though less pronounced, uptick in gas prices in Feb. 11 trading.

    Texas

    In neighboring Texas, the cash price for Houston Ship Channel increased $6.26/MMBtu on the day to $10.796/MMBtu – its highest level since July 2008. Across the state, the population-weighted average temperature is expected to fall from 15 degrees F below normal Feb. 11 to 37 F below normal by Feb.15, Platts Analytics data showed.

    Texas demand sat at 15.5 Bcf on Feb. 11 and was forecast to tick higher to 23.6 Bcf as temperatures continue to fall. As Texas keeps more gas at home to meet the higher demand, net outflows fell by 1 Bcf on Feb. 11 to 10.6 Bcf/d.

    Rockies & West

    Spot gas prices in the Rockies soared to levels rarely seen in the last 10 years. Cheyenne Hub was trading $9.07 higher at $14.70/MMBtu – the highest price since February 2014. CIG, Rockies saw a similar upward trajectory, trading $8.45 higher to $13.28/MMBtu.

    Heightened demand for Rockies gas in other regions comes just as local demand hits seasonal highs. The average temperature in the Rockies was forecast to fall to 19 F on Feb. 12, plunging to 6 F on Feb. 14. Frigid temperatures pose additional upside risk for prices amid possible production freeze-offs. Cash gas prices in the Permian Basin, another production region which has seen increased competition for supply, also surged in Feb. 11 trading. Waha Hub was trading $5.88 higher at $10.42/MMBtu – also the location’s highest since February 2014.

    Midwest

    Prices gains in the upper Midwest were muted in comparison to the Midcontinent. At Chicago city-gates, prices spiked to new highs reaching $8.11/MMBtu, up $4.13 from the day prior, to its highest level since March 2019. The spread between Chicago city-gates and Henry Hub reached a $2.19 premium, the first time a premium has been this high since January 2019, S&P Global Platts data showed.

    Across the entire central US, including the Midcon and Upper Midwest, demand is projected to hit 49.5 Bcf/d on Feb. 15, an all-time high since Platts began recording data in 2005. Heating demand, meanwhile, is expected to reach its highest level since 2019 at 42.5 Bcf/d, about 29 Bcf higher than the five-year average, analytics data shows.

    Northeast

    Historically the most volatile region for gas prices, the Northeast remained comparatively insulated from the Feb. 11 market surge. At Algonquin city gates, prices rose $1.57 to $12.67/MMBtu; Iroquois Zone 2 rose $2.12 to $12.49/MMBtu. Both locations marked their highest prices since December 2019. According to the US National Weather Service, Boston temperatures are expected to reach a low of 11 degrees F on Feb. 12, while New York City temperatures are forecast to reach a low of 21 F – both adding upward pressure to gas prices on the day.

    Frigid weather is expected to persist throughout the next week, continuing to evaporate storage inventories and likely keeping spot gas prices elevated across the region.

    * * *

    Needless to say, if anyone was short any midcontinent nat gas,  they just experienced a short squeeze orders of magnitude worse than the one that almost destroyed Melvin Capital. May they rest in peace.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 21:50

  • 9 Things Cannabis Investors Should Know In 2021
    9 Things Cannabis Investors Should Know In 2021

    Unlike dozens of other industries across the globe, cannabis experienced significant growth as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in recent days has seen a renewed trading interest, thanks to WallStreetBets.

    In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones notes, with consumption for both medical and recreational products on the rise, 2020 was a record-breaking year for the industry.

    After years of investor uncertainty, analysts are predicting a continued bull market in 2021, with several new and exciting developments on the horizon.

    Here are nine things cannabis investors need to know.

    1. Cannabis Stocks on the Rise

    While asset prices took a dip during the initial stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in March, the cannabis sector recovered swiftly after reporting impressive numbers.

    Even though cannabis investors have experienced some ups and downs in the last several years, 2021 looks more hopeful.

    2. COVID-19 and Cannabis

    Cannabis has become an attractive option for people spending more time at home, both as a means of entertainment, and to reduce stress and anxiety associated with the pandemic.

    As a result, cannabis sales are soaring. In Canada, monthly sales reached an all-time high of $270 million (CAD) in October 2020, a dramatic increase from $180 million just six months earlier.

    3. Cannabis Black Market No More?

    For millions of U.S. citizens who live in states where the sale of cannabis is still restricted, the illicit market continues to be their only option.

    But with loosening restrictions and legal cannabis becoming more widely available, legal sales are predicted to reach $50 billion by 2026 while illegal sales will plummet to less than $1 billion by the same year.

     

    4. Political Change Driving Market Growth

     

    Almost 70% of Americans now support the full legalization of cannabis—the highest figure ever recorded.

    States where cannabis is legal are now paving the way for cannabis sales, with California expected to pull in over $6 billion by 2021 alone. If federal legalization comes to fruition over the next several years, the already booming U.S. market could see further growth.

    5. All Eyes on the European Cannabis Market

    The European cannabis market has been on investors’ radar for several years, and with good reason—it is one of the largest cannabis markets in the world.

    Driven primarily by medicinal products, the market will be valued at over $39 billion by 2024, with countries like Germany—Europe’s largest economy—leading the way.

    In late 2020, the market experienced its biggest breakthrough yet, with the European Union ruling that products containing CBD (one of the most active ingredients in cannabis) are no longer listed as narcotics.

    6. Making History in Mexico

    Mexico is another market that is piquing the interest of investors and cannabis companies the world over. That’s because it could soon be the third country in the world to legalize recreational cannabis by court order.

    With a total addressable market of $2 billion and the potential to support up to 75,000 jobs, these new regulations could change the dynamic of the global market for the better.

    7. Most Popular Cannabis Products

    Given the flurry of product innovation in the market, consumption of cannabis is quickly changing.

    Relatively new products such as edibles and oils are gaining traction, while consumption of flower appears to be declining. This could be due in part to oral products being perceived as a healthier alternative to smoking.

    8. CBD Products are Moving into the Mainstream

    Although CBD was once considered a niche product that could only be found in dispensaries, growing awareness of the benefits and safety of these products are causing companies operating in the consumer packaged goods industry to take notice.

    The cannabis compound is a new addition to a wide range of products such as skincare, makeup, and supplements that can now be purchased almost anywhere—from ecommerce sites to local grocery stores.

    9. The New Cannabinoids on the Block

    Beyond CBD, scientists have discovered over 100 rare, or minor cannabinoids such as CBG and CBN, that could have even more significant benefits than their major cannabinoid counterparts.

    For example, preliminary research shows that CBG could inhibit cancer growth, help treat glaucoma, bladder dysfunction, and kill drug-resistant bacteria.

    These discoveries are not only attracting huge attention from the cannabis industry, but from the pharmaceutical industry as well.

    Milestones in the Making

    With all of these exciting developments coming to the fore, it’s safe to say 2021 could be one of the cannabis industry’s most transformative years to date.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 21:30

  • The Stage Is Set For A Bull Market In Oil
    The Stage Is Set For A Bull Market In Oil

    Authored by Dylan Grice via TheMarket.ch,

    In late 2019, we published a report and recommended an exposure in the oil and especially the oil services sector. Down by over a third since we first did our research back in December of 2019, and down by as much as 70% during the March crash, it has been our worst performing idea by a wide margin. Hence, we felt it was high time for an update.

    We’ll start by retracing our original idea. Then we’ll try to understand what was missing from it, and why it went so badly for us. We’ll end by bring the idea up-to-date and in so doing, make the case that the oil industry has an essential role to play for coming generations.

    Yes, energy transition is real and, for what it’s worth, something we are completely in favour of. The question is when it happens, not if it happens, but the implications from it taking several decades rather than several years vary enormously. The cornerstone of our thesis is really that the oil industry is being written off prematurely. From that premise, everything else follows.

    A shortage of capital

    In very simple terms, writing in December 2019, as the first reports of a mysterious virus circulating in the Chinese city of Wuhan reached Europe, we felt that the energy slump was behind us. The excesses which had led to the shale crash were being worked out, bankruptcies had soared, and capacity had been reduced. Yet the world still needed oil, and the oil majors were beginning to sanction large projects again. There was a shortage of capital, not opportunity.

    We also liked the people driving capital allocation in the energy market. In particular, we liked that experienced and successful investors like Sam Zell and John Fredriksen were moving in, self-made billionaires who’d made their fortunes partly by buying things that no one else wanted over the years. On the other side, the «sellers», were politicians, bureaucrats and other non-economically motivated players (primarily ESG-driven investors).

    We were comfortable that the energy transition was real but concluded that this was a) glacially moving, and importantly, b) a widely understood shift. Oil was still needed in the meantime, and so «low-risk» oil extraction from relatively low-risk short-cycle projects which could be quickly ramped up was more than merely viable, it was essential.

    Only shale-oil players and the shallow-water projects fit this bill, but we’d had terrible experiences with shale oil producers in the past – they are hopelessly drill-addicted capital misallocators. Shallow-water drillers and servicers were our sweet spot by default. Given the near-term uncertainty in the space, we felt those with strongest balance sheets were best positioned to ride out any remaining volatility. We gave Tidewater and Standard Drilling as examples.

    What happened?

    Our thesis was coming good as we started 2020. The majors were increasing their capex targets. Our belief that the lower-risk shallow water deposits would be prime production targets was panning out too, with the number of jack-ups (shallow-water drillers) which were active globally clearly trending higher, in contrast to the activity of floaters (mid-to-deep water drillers) which remained stagnant.

    Saudi Aramco awarded a string of contracts to Shelf Drilling, the majority of which were for ten years (maturities not seen since the heydays of the offshore drilling boom).

    But then COVID hit, and the global lockdown led to a cessation of nearly all physical economic activity. There’s no need for us to expand upon just how ugly the macro data was during that time. Weekly US initial jobless claims rising by 244 standard deviations in the middle of March says it all. As far as the energy markets went, the collapse in world oil demand was more muted. The fall from 100 million barrels per day (mbd) to 80 mbd in the three months to April was only a 10 standard deviation event…

    The world’s energy infrastructure wasn’t designed with such a sudden decline in demand in mind. The physical market was turned on its head as refineries turned away crude oil, as did storage facilities which had no capacity. Financial markets behaviour was even more chaotic with the WTI contract (which is for physical delivery) turning negative in case any of you had forgotten.

    It seems as though the WTI-tracking ETFs which mechanically roll their futures at the end of each month weren’t paying attention, and as expiry approached, they were the only holders of the May contract.

    It wasn’t so much panic selling by ETF funds that drove prices into negative territory (although it’s hard to imagine there wasn’t plenty of that too), it was that there were literally no buyers left in the market for that contract. It’s the most concise way we can think of for conveying how utterly chaotic those days were for everyone involved in the oil market. Despite the recovery from those lows, we can still see the effects of the trauma today.

    The financial panic also reached boardroom level for the oil majors. According to Rystad Energy, 20 bn $ was cut from projected E&P capex by the majors, as the following chart shows. Activity in the jack-up and floater markets also tracked lower once more.

    Crude prices expected in the medium term, as measured by the rolling sixty-month-out WTI contract, averaged 53 $ before COVID, but have averaged only 45 $ since. And if we look further out, at the rolling one-hundred-twenty-month out WTI contract (i.e. the market’s ten year expectation) prices have fallen by around 5 $ in the last few months. That’s only a few dollars higher than the March 2020 liquidity puke. The crude oil market’s verdict is clear: COVID has permanently impaired it.

    Meanwhile, the market capitalization of Tesla is today roughly the same size as that of the entire S&P 500 Oil sector, which includes the majors, the independents, the drillers, the service companies AND the refiners.

    So the equity market’s view seems similarly equivocal: oil has no future, the energy transition is here.

    Three reasons why the oil market has an investable future

    Except that it isn’t. Or at least according to Bloomberg, which in its annual Electric Vehicle Outlook summary projects that Electric Vehicles (EVs) will only make up around 8% of the total fleet of passenger cars by 2030. Bloomberg expect the number of cars to rise from today’s 1.2 billion vehicles to 1.4 billion, but only for 110 m of them to be EVs. So the number of oil-consuming Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles on the road by then will still be around 1.3 bn, which is a forecast rise of around 0.7% per year.

    Moreover, while passenger vehicles contribute around 60% of the global demand for crude oil, the rest comes from heavy duty vehicles, aviation and the petrochemicals industry for which there are as yet, few alternatives.

    We’re not saying this is a good thing or that it’s something we’re especially happy about, but as investors our job is to allocate capital according to the way we think the world is, not the way we want it to be. And it’s obvious to us that the oil market will continue to play a central role in the global economy in the coming decades.

    A second fact we think is important to understand is that the transition to EVs is a risk which is widely recognised and understood. BP has gone further than most in pivoting away from hydrocarbons, and very few oil executives are carrying on as normal, or are under any delusion about the reality of their industry.

    The question isn’t whether or not oil demand peaks, the question is when. Project appraisals and capital allocation factor this in before sign-off. The general trend within the industry is very understandably that of moving towards a perfectly rational risk-aversion.

    Lower-risk shorter-cycle projects, such as those we already mentioned, in shallow waters or in shale formations are clearly more attractive and easier to sign off on than those in deep waters, even if that’s where the largest deposits are ordinarily expected to be found.

    Even the gunslingers of the shale patch seem to have gotten this memo. Scott Sheffield, CEO and co-founder of Pioneer Natural Resources, the largest owner of Spraberry acreage in the Permian, told attendees at a recent Goldman Sachs investor call that he didn’t expect much increase in Permian or wider US shale over the next several years, and that the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale regions might never see growth again. As for his own company, the message was clear: «I never anticipate growing above 5% under any conditions. Even if oil went to $100 a barrel and the world was short of supply».

    The CEO of Devon echoed the sentiments, «I have a hard time seeing the need for U.S. producers over the next several years to get back to double-digit growth. For this management team, if we really think about 2021, let’s keep it flat.»

    Which brings us neatly to the third point. Global production outside of shale oil has been flat since 2015. All incremental growth was driven by shale. Yet oddly enough, it’s still not quite clear how profitable that growth was. According to Deloitte, the shale industry registered net cumulative free cash flows of negative $300 billion since 2010, impaired more than 450 bn $ of invested capital, and saw more than 190 bankruptcies. Indeed, companies accounting for nearly 50% of shale output are so operationally and financially weak that Deloitte considers them «superfluous».

    If Deloitte are right, and the shale patch’s newfound aversion to excessive risk sticks, global oil production may well surprise on the downside in coming years.

    Arguably, the outlook is more bullish for oil today than it was pre-COVID. Regardless, the energy transition isn’t going away. Low-risk, short-cycle barrels will be in relatively higher demand, which argues not only for the higher quality shale assets, but the shallow water players. Which brings us back to where we started: shallow water services.

    Shallow water drillers in the sweet spot

    We don’t want to go into too much detail here. But since we discussed Tidewater in our original piece in December 2019, let’s consider it again. You may recall that having acquired Gulfmark it is now the largest listed Offshore Service Vessel (OSV) player and has been through a savage restructuring (G&A reduced by 45%, fleet reduced by 24%). It has an EV of around $500 million, of which net debt is $60 m, no maturities due until August 2022, and expects to generate free cashflow in 2020 of $42 m.

    The combined EBITDA for Tidewater and Gulfmark in 2014 was $590 m, since then $60 m of cost synergies have been extracted. So call it $650 m peak EBITDA. If they can recover to just half of that, they’ll be at a normalized EBITDA of $325 m. Historically, their EV/EBITDA averaged 7x, but let’s assume that we’re wrong on the relative attractiveness of anything operating in shallow waters, and that anything oil can only expect to trade at a 50% discount compared to its former glories, given the perception that oil is now a permanently shrinking industry.

    Let’s put that new EBITDA on an EV multiple of 3.5x. That implies an EV of $1.14 bn, which assuming a constant net debt of $60 m implies an equity value of just under $1.1 bn, compared to today’s $440 m. That’s around 2.4x. Of course, if we’re right about the attractiveness of shallow waters, EBITDA could surprise on the upside, and the market could reappraise its view on the sector’s longevity, which would translate into a significant rerating. It’s not difficult to see 4-8x returns here in the coming years.

    And what happened to the supposed «smart money» which was buying in late 2019? Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, it shows that while skin-in-the-game might be important, it’s not a guarantee of success. Nevertheless, in an interview with CNBC in March of last year – during the teeth of the market rout – Sam Zell said he’d been adding to his energy holdings: «We think the energy space is really cheap … what helps is we were not in the energy space before.»2 John Fredriksen, who has been in the energy space before, remains fully committed, and has recently appointed Tor Andre Svelland to run his interests.

    The smart money, it seems, is still invested.

    *  *  *

    Dylan Grice is co-founder of Calderwood Capital Research, an investment company specialising in portfolio construction and alternative investments. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 21:10

  • China's Industry Ministry Urges Chipmakers To Increase Production Capacity
    China’s Industry Ministry Urges Chipmakers To Increase Production Capacity

    All does not seem to be well in the world’s largest auto market – especially now as the ongoing global semiconductor shortage is hitting the country where it hurts. 

    China’s industry ministry said this week that it met with automotive and chip manufacturers to try and help ease what is now being called a “crisis” of a shortage in global semiconductors. 

    The country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has told companies to “place high importance on” and “increase production capacity allocation” for China’s auto market, according to Reuters. 

    The Ministry also urged companies to improve logistics and supply chain coordination to support China’s auto industry. 

    As if any of that needed to actually be said at this point…

    The auto industry has been struggling with the shortage in semi chips for weeks now, as we have been reporting. Major manufacturers like Toyota, Nissan and GM have all felt the sting of the shortage, with many automakers shutting down shifts and slowing production as a result. 

    In fact, just yesterday, General Motors noted that the chip shortage was going to cost the company $1 billion to $2 billion in earnings in 2021. And it isn’t just the auto industry that is feeling the pain. 

    We also wrote that Taiwan Semiconductor was rushing to build infrastructure to try and meet demand. TSMC is one of the biggest suppliers of chips to company like Apple, Google and Qualcomm. As a result of a worldwide shortage in chips that was brought on due to the pandemic, they are now rushing to try and get a new factory in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan built. It’ll be “the world’s most advanced 3-nanometer chip production plant,” according to Nikkei. The company is also building a research and data center in Hsinchu. 

    Construction the new facility will take place throughout 2021, with completion expected in 2022. 

    One executive said of TSMC’s expansion: “We received a notice from TSMC that it is giving 4,000 New Taiwan dollars ($145) a day as an extra bonus for every worker willing to come during the Lunar New Year… that is literally at least double the average daily wage for front line workers. Even if that’s only roughly a few extra days of building time [during the holiday], they don’t want to fully stop at all. That shows their commitment to speed up construction and development and confidence for future demand.”

    Recall, we wrote days ago that the shortage is being referred to as the “most serious shortage in years”, with Qualcomm’s CEO saying two weeks ago that there were now shortages “across the board”, according to Bloomberg. 

    But it isn’t just Qualcomm executives speaking out: other industry leaders have warned in recent weeks that they are susceptible to the shortages. Apple said recently that its new high end iPhones were on hold due to a shortage of components. NXP Semiconductors has also warned that the problems are no longer just confined to the auto industry. Sony also said last week it may not be able to to fully meet demand for its new gaming console in 2021 due to the shortage. Companies like Lenovo have also been feeling the crunch.

    Neil Mawston, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, said: “The virus pandemic, social distancing in factories, and soaring competition from tablets, laptops and electric cars are causing some of the toughest conditions for smartphone component supply in many years.” 

    Mawston says that prices for some smartphone components are up as much as 15% the last 6 months. 

    To make matters worse, Huawei is being blamed for hoarding components in 2020 (almost as if they knew this was going to happen). This set off other manufacturers to do the same. According to the report:

    Industry executives also blame excessive stockpiling, which began over the summer when Huawei Technologies Co. — a major smartphone and networking gear maker — began hoarding components to ensure its survival from crippling U.S. sanctions. Led by Huawei, Chinese imports of chips of all kinds climbed to almost $380 billion in 2020 –– making up almost a fifth of the country’s overall imports for the year.

    Rivals including Apple, worried about their own caches, responded in kind. At the same time, the stay-at-home era spurred sales of home appliances from the costliest TVs to the lowliest air purifiers, all of which now come with smart, customized chips. TSMC executives said on its two most recent earnings calls that customers have been accumulating more inventory than normal to hedge against uncertainties, a maneuver they see persisting for some time.

    “There’s a chip stockpiling arms race,” said Will Bright, co-founder and chief product officer at Drop. Analyst Mario Morales of IDC said: “A lot of it can be traced back to the second quarter of last year, when the whole world basically shut down. Many auto companies shut down manufacturing and their suppliers re-prioritized. Not until the second half will we see relief for some of these markets.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 20:50

  • Cuomo Coverup? Aide Admits Nursing Home Data Purposefully Concealed So Feds Wouldn't Find Out
    Cuomo Coverup? Aide Admits Nursing Home Data Purposefully Concealed So Feds Wouldn’t Find Out

    New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers over a decision to withhold the state’s nursing-home COVID-19 death toll out of fear that it would be “used against us” by the Trump Justice Department, according to the New York Post.

    Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor, made the shocking admission during a two-hour video conference call with Democratic leaders – telling them that the Cuomo administration stonewalled after the State Senate requested the information in August.

    NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa

    “Right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football, says DeRosa in an audio recording of the meeting.

    “He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” she continues. “He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”

    DeRosa then suggested that Trump “directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us,” and because of this, “basically, we froze” she said.

    “Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.“

    “That played a very large role into this,” DeRosa added.

    After dropping the bombshell, DeRosa asked for “a little bit of appreciation of the context” and offered what appears to be the Cuomo administration’s first apology for its handling of nursing homes amid the pandemic.

    But instead of a mea culpa to the grieving family members of more than 13,000 dead seniors or the critics who say the Health Department spread COVID-19 in the care facilities with a March 25 state Health Department directive that nursing homes admit infected patients, DeRosa tried to make amends with the fellow Democrats for the political inconvenience it caused them.

    “So we do apologize,” she said. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans.” –New York Post

    Democratic Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried (Manhattan) was livid, shooting back ““I don’t have enough time today to explain all the reasons why I don’t give that any credit at all.” Gottfried had requested the death-toll data in August along with several other lawmakers.

    Another state lawmaker who was “battered during her re-election bid last year over the issue of nursing home deaths” slammed DeRosa as well – saying that her former opponent used the nursing home scandal against her.

    “And the issue for me, the biggest issue of all is feeling like I needed to defend — or at least not attack — an administration that was appearing to be covering something up,” said State Senate Aging Committee Chairwoman Rachel May (D-Syracuse). “And in a, in a pandemic, when you want the public to trust the public-health officials, and there is this clear feeling that they’re not coming, being forthcoming with you, that is really hard and it remains difficult.”

    Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim (D) told the Post that DeRosa’s remarks came off “like they admitted that they were trying to dodge having any incriminating evidence that might put the administration or the [Health Department] in further trouble with the Department of Justice.”

    “That’s how I understand their reasoning of why they were unable to share, in real time, the data,” Kim added. “They had to first make sure that the state was protected against federal investigation.”

    “It’s not enough how contrite they are with us,” Kim continued. “They need to show that to the public and the families — and they haven’t done that.”

    In addition to stonewalling lawmakers on the the total number of nursing home residents killed by COVID-19, Cuomo’s administration also refused requests from the news media — including The Post — and fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Empire Center on Public Policy.

    Instead, it only disclosed data on the numbers of residents who died in their nursing homes.

    But after Attorney General Letitia James last month released a damning report that estimated the deaths of nursing-home residents in hospitals would boost the grim tally by more than 50 percent, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker finally released figures showing the combined total was 12,743 as of Jan. 19.

    Just a day earlier, the DOH was only publicly acknowledging 8,711 deaths in nursing homes. –New York Post

    Following the release of AG James’ report, Cuomo callously said during a news conference that it didn’t matter where nursing home fatalities ultimately occurred.

    “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died,” he said.

    Cuomo’s office appears to have made this disclosure after they figured they were in the clear.

    “All signs point to they are not looking at this, they’ve dropped it,” said DeRosa, of the Biden DOJ. “They never formally opened an investigation. They sent a letter asking a number of questions and then we satisfied those questions and it appears that they’re gone.”

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 20:30

  • Desperate Manhattan Landlords Offer Record Incentives To Fill Vacant Apartments 
    Desperate Manhattan Landlords Offer Record Incentives To Fill Vacant Apartments 

    Manhattan apartment landlords are getting desperate as inventory swells, and they are offering some of the most concessions ever to attract new tenants, according to Bloomberg. 

    Appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate published a report this week that showed the value of incentives for new tenants averaged out to 2.3 months of free rent in January, the most on record. 

    “You’ve got to keep sweetening the pot,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel. He added the purpose of incentives is “to temper the decline.” 

    The “decline” Miller refers to is the plunge in the borough’s residential real estate market following the pandemic. Work-at-home continues to dominate as office buildings remain empty. Tens of thousands of city dwellers have moved to suburbs or rural communities to escape the metro area’s socio-economic implosion. All this has culminated into record-high inventory, and a sharp drop in rental rates as supply becomes an issue. 

    However, there was some good news. Last month, new lease signings soared 58% from a year earlier to 6,255. Even with the influx of new tenants, inventory still sits at a decade high. 

    The last year has been painful for landlords. In a past report, Miller warned that a surge in new leases should not be viewed as an “imminent recovery.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 20:10

  • Rickards: The Only Way Out Of The Death Trap
    Rickards: The Only Way Out Of The Death Trap

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    I’ve said the U.S. is caught in a debt death trap.

    Monetary policy won’t get us out because the velocity of money, the rate at which money changes hands, is dropping.

    Printing more money alone will not change that.

    Fiscal policy won’t work either because of high debt ratios. At current debt-to-GDP ratios, each additional dollar spent yields less than a dollar of growth. But because it must be borrowed, it does add a dollar to the debt. Debt becomes an actual drag on growth.

    The ratio gets higher, and the situation grows more desperate. The economy barely grows at all while the debt mounts. You basically become Japan.

    The national debt is $27.8 trillion. A $27.8 trillion debt would not be an issue if we had a $50 trillion economy.

    But we don’t have a $50 trillion economy. We have about a $21 trillion economy, which means our debt is bigger than our economy.

    The debt-to-GDP ratio is about 130%. Before the pandemic, it was about 105% (the policy response to the pandemic caused the spike).

    Already in the Danger Zone

    But even a ratio of 105% is in the danger zone.

    Economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart carried out a long historical survey going back 800 years, looking at individual countries, or empires in some cases, that have gone broke or defaulted on their debt.

    They put the danger zone at a debt-to-GDP ratio of 90%. Once it reaches 90%, debt becomes a drag on growth.

    Meanwhile, we’re looking at deficits of $1 trillion or more, long after the pandemic subsides.

    In basic terms, the United States is going broke. We’re heading for a sovereign debt crisis.

    I don’t say that for effect. I’m not looking to scare people or to make a splash. That’s just an honest assessment based on the numbers.

    Tax cuts won’t bring us out of it, neither can structural changes to the economy. Both would help if done properly, but the problem is simply far too large.

    So, an economic time bomb is ticking. Velocity is dropping. Debt is growing while growth is slowing. The explosion will come in the form of asset bubbles bursting and stocks crashing.

    There’s no way out of the debt death trap. Or is there?

    There is actually a way out. It’s the only solution left, really. And that’s inflation.

    Deadbeats Love Inflation

    Deflation increases the real value of debt. With deflation, the value of money increases, making it more burdensome to pay off debt. This is why debtors hate deflation.

    And guess who is the world’s largest debtor nation? That’s right, the U.S.

    On the other hand, inflation decreases the real value of debt. It’s easier to pay down debt because you’re paying back debt with dollars that are less valuable than when you originally borrowed them.

    But the Fed has failed to produce inflation for over a decade now, despite all the trillions of dollars it’s fabricated.

    Then how can the government and the Fed produce inflation now?

    The solution is to increase the price of gold in order to change inflationary expectations. That will increase money velocity and get the growth engine running again. The Fed could actually cause inflation in about 15 minutes if it used this method.

    FDR did this to perfection in 1933, and his actions began to dig us out of the Great Depression. Jerome Powell, Biden and his Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen could do it again if they wanted to (assuming they know how, which is probably too much to assume).

    But how could they increase the gold price to increase money velocity and change inflation expectations?

    Inflation in 15 Minutes

    I’ve written about it before, but it bears revisiting, especially since there are newer readers who may be unfamiliar with it. Here’s how they can do it:

    The Fed can call a board meeting, vote on a new policy, walk outside and announce to the world that effective immediately, the price of gold is $5,000 per ounce.

    They could make that new price stick by using the Treasury’s gold in Fort Knox and the major U.S. bank gold dealers to conduct “open market operations” in gold.

    The Fed will be a buyer if the price hits $4,950 per ounce or less and a seller if the price hits $5,050 per ounce or higher. They will print money when they buy and reduce the money supply when they sell via the banks.

    The Fed would target the gold price rather than interest rates.

    The point is to cause a generalized increase in the price level. A rise in the price of gold from $1,900 per ounce to $5,000 per ounce is a massive devaluation of the dollar when measured in the quantity of gold that one dollar can buy.

    There it is — massive inflation in 15 minutes: the time it takes to vote on the new policy.

    It’s Happened Before

    The first time this happened was in 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt ordered an increase in the gold price from $20.67 per ounce to $35.00 per ounce, nearly a 75% rise in the dollar price of gold.

    He did this to break the deflation of the Great Depression, and it succeeded. The economy grew strongly from 1934-36.

    The second time was in the 1970s when Nixon ended the conversion of dollars into gold by U.S. trading partners. Nixon did not want inflation, but he got it.

    Gold went from $35 per ounce to $800 per ounce in less than nine years, a 2,200% increase. U.S. dollar inflation was over 50% from 1977-1981. The value of the dollar was cut in half in those five years.

    History shows that raising the dollar price of gold is the quickest way to cause general inflation. If the markets don’t do it, the government can. It works every time.

    Would the government and the Fed consider the gold trick I just described? They may have no choice ultimately.

    ‘What Can I Do?’

    The real message is that the solutions to current debt levels are inflationary. That means revaluing the dollar either through a higher gold price or marking the gold to market and giving the government money.

    There are a lot of moving parts here, but they all point in one direction, which is higher inflation.

    It’s the only way to keep America from going broke and falling into a sovereign debt crisis.

    Unfortunately, it will also slash the value of the dollar. Your savings could quickly evaporate, and your standard of living will suffer.

    That’s why I recommend you put around 10% — but no more than 20% — of your investable assets into physical gold.

    I also recommend select gold stocks, which can massively leverage the spot price of gold to produce enormous returns.

    That will give you the protection you need to safeguard your wealth and grow it.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 19:50

  • Biden 'Eager' To Take On NRA After Pledging To Defeat Gun Rights Organization
    Biden ‘Eager’ To Take On NRA After Pledging To Defeat Gun Rights Organization

    President Biden is ‘eager’ to take on the National Rifle Association, and has refused to rule out using executive action to circumvent the Congressional process to do so, the White House signaled on Thursday.

    When asked whether Biden will resort to According to the Washington Times, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the president hasn’t yet formulated a strategy, but that he’s ‘eager’ to do so, according to the Washington Times.

    “First I will say that the president addressing gun violence in the country and putting in place additional safety measures is something that the president has a personal commitment to, and his history on this issue is evidence of that,” said Psaki, adding “He has obviously taken on the NRA twice and won and he is happy and eager to do that in the future.“

    During the 2020 presidential race, Mr. Biden touted the lead role he played in passing the 1994 assault weapons ban and the Brady background check bill.

    Mr. Biden has issued a series of executive actions since taking office and is facing mounting pressure to do something about cracking down on guns. –Washington Times

    On January 8, Biden promised to “defeat” the NRA while he’s in office – responding via Twitter to former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), who was wounded in a 2011 shooting rampage in Tucson.

    “Your perseverance and immeasurable courage continue to inspire me and millions of others. I pledge to continue to work with you—and with survivors, families, and advocates across the country—to defeat the NRA and end our epidemic of gun violence,” Biden’s account responded.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAnd as we noted last month, gun sales have erupted – with 2020 marking a record year in FBI firearm background checks.

    FBI Firearm Background Checks (Monthly) 

    The panic grab for guns and ammo began in March/April when the virus pandemic and economic crash triggered the first wave.

    Then the second wave of buying occurred in the summer during social unrest sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. With a transition of power from gun-friendly Republicans to gun-hating Democrats, the next wave of buying should be underway before bans or restrictions come into law. 

    Last year, a total of 39,695,315 completed background checks – up from 28,369,750 in 2019 – the year marked the most firearm checks in history, since the FBI began recording firearm sales in 1998.

    FBI Firearm Background Checks (Annual) 

    Nine of the top ten highest firearm-check weeks occurred last year during the heights of the pandemic and social unrest.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 19:30

  • No, We Don't Need A 'Reality-Czar': Let Truth And Falsehood Grapple
    No, We Don’t Need A ‘Reality-Czar’: Let Truth And Falsehood Grapple

    Authored by Gary Galles via The Foundation for Economic Education,

    New York Times writer Kevin Roose recently surveyed “our truth-challenged information ecosystem” and found a proliferation of “hoaxes, lies and collective delusions.” As he put it, that limits the Biden administration’s ability to “unite a country,” because “millions of people have chosen to create their own version of reality.”

    In response, he called for the creation of a “reality czar”-led government task force to root out disinformation.

    Roose admits such a call for a “truth commission” sounds “dystopian,” before proceeding to ignore many ways it would be exactly that. For instance, the Times, the Biden campaign, the Democrat leadership, and others on board with the idea have come nowhere close to pursuing “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Yet despite a history of disseminating misinformation, clear biases, and suppression of those with different views, they would select the arbiters of Orwellian truth.

    So who could be trusted as the reality czar? No one.

    Just ask Democrats why they never suggested having one when Trump was in office. In politics, truth is subservient to power. But since any attempt to provably establish the truth would be littered with obstacles and controversies, and often beyond possibility, while creating a substantial threat to Americans’ freedoms, only someone who was indisputably committed to both truth and freedom could possibly be trusted to lead such an enterprise. And there are precious few who would qualify. If he wasn’t long dead, I would nominate John Milton.

    Why Milton?

    Before America’s founding, he argued for freedoms of speech and the press, and against censorship, in England. His defense of freedom of conscience later powerfully resonated with America’s founders, reflected in our First Amendment. So it is worth considering the principles he would follow to establish truth and preserve freedom, in his own words.

    1. If it come to prohibiting, there is aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself.

    2. Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized.

    3. When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained that wise men look for.

    4. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

    5. Truth…Let her and falsehood grapple.

    6. Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

    7. Truth…needs no policies or stratagems…to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defenses that error uses against her power.

    8. There is no learned man but will confess be hath much profited by reading controversies–his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds firmly established…should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write…it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth.

    9. Discern…in what things persuasion only is to work.

    10. No institution which does not continually test its ideals, techniques and measure of accomplishment can claim real vitality.

    11. Liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.

    12. None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants.

    13. How oft [have] nations gone corrupt…by their own devices brought down to servitude.

    14. What do terms…which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people…ripe for servitude?

    15. Is it just or reasonable, that…voices against the main end of government should enslave [those] that would be free?

    16. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always right to win it and to keep it…be the voices ever so numerous that oppose it.

    In addition, Milton would have some other important qualifications in evaluating reality. He would not be misled by government promises that threaten the rights that comprise our liberty, just because the government doesn’t mention that fact.

    Similarly, when benefit promises far out-weigh promised exactions from citizens, he would recognize that they are omitting some of the truth. As one of history’s most important poets, he would have expertise in what should be considered poetic license. As the second most important author in the English language, after Shakespeare, he would certainly also be alert to the abuse of language not in pursuit of truth, but of power over others. Just some of the words that have had their meanings warped are unity, we, rights, freedom, fair, justice, social, capitalism, need, and greed. And there has been plenty of added word twisting recently, with insurrection being near the top of the list.

    It is obvious that discussing John Milton as a reality or truth czar is not a serious proposal. But that discussion reveals the position’s necessary requirements of the love of truth and the love of freedom our country was founded on.

    Further, it shows that anyone fully meeting those requirements, if given the task, would find a great deal about the positions, promises and policies of those who appointed them both untrue and unworthy of freedom.

    Consequently, no such czar would ever be appointed. And it is hard to see how Americans’ well-being would be advanced by anyone less trustworthy for the job.

    https://fee.org/Scripts/fee-repub.js

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 19:10

  • Crackdown Begins As SEC Suspends Trading In Pennystock
    Crackdown Begins As SEC Suspends Trading In Pennystock

    It appears that there’s such a thing as pumping a worthless stock too far.

    Today the SEC made it clear that it won’t sit idly by as millions of daytraders gang up and pump pennystocks to the moon after it announced it would bar trading in SpectraScience , a Minnesota healthcare company, the FT reported. The suspension comes as new and inexperienced retail traders have flooded into the market drawing scrutiny from policymakers in Washington.

    In addition to launching a probe in “market manipulation” by Reddit raiders and Robinhood earlier today, the SEC said social media accounts may have been used in a coordinated attempt to “artificially influence” the share price of the company, which does not have a working phone line or website and has not filed quarterly financial results since 2017.

    Lack of actual business notwithstanding, trading of the company’s stock exploded in December and has continued at elevated levels. On January 28, the day a retail-fuelled rally sent the stock of retailer GameStop to a record high, more than 3bn shares of SpectraScience changed hands. 

    The coordinated flood of bids pushed SSEC shares briefly above half a penny, its highest level in more than four years. The company’s stock last traded above a penny in 2015.

    “The commission is of the opinion that the public interest and the protection of investors require a suspension of trading in the securities,” Vanessa Countryman, the secretary of the SEC, wrote in the commission’s order, in which she said that the suspension in SpectraScience shares would last to February 25, although expect another immediate re-suspension if the stock does not drop.

    While much of the original coordination took place on reddit, some activity appears to have been orchestrated via Twitter, where the FT notes that clusters of day trader accounts tagging the SCIE ticker “spoke in bombastic terms about the stock and their recent investments as they discussed so-called penny plays.”

    One account under the name Alexander Delarge, which had amassed around 50,000 followers, tweeted a post encouraging users in late January to buy the stock, adding that it was likely to go to $1.

    “Ill be buying a million shares at a Dollar showing my buy order to keep it going! As we all should!” the user wrote.

    Among later tweets by the same account, one showed a screenshot of a portfolio of 5.5m SpectraScience shares saying it had gained 50 per cent in one day, adding: “Let the haters watch when this blasts off!”

    Another popular day trader “Canadian Jennifer”, also joined the chorus in early February saying “Yes I bought more! I’m not telling you to buy it. I’m just posting what I SEE and that I’m holding. When my instincts kick in I listen.”

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

    And while the SEC is now scrambling to put the genie in the bottle, the reality is that in a world where infinite Fed liquidity has terminally broken any link between stock prices and underlying facts, news or cash flows, such ramps are going to become an increasingly more frequent occurrence. And sadly since no regulator can admit that we now live in the biggest asset bubble ever, they will continue going after the symptoms – speculative daytraders organizing bull raids which by the way have been around ever since the South Sea Bubble – instead of actually focusing on the underlying cause.

    Incidentally, if anyone is still long SRMX whose explosive performance we profiled earlier and which was outperformed SCIE almost threefold, it is only a matter of time before the SEC suspends trading in that company too.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 18:50

  • Biden Appoints Pentagon Task Force To Review China Policy Under Well-Known Hawk
    Biden Appoints Pentagon Task Force To Review China Policy Under Well-Known Hawk

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    On Wednesday, President Biden announced a new Pentagon task force that will be reviewing the US military’s policy towards China, another sign that the new administration is prioritizing confronting Beijing.

    Pentagon officials said the task force is a “sprint effort” that will examine things like US troop presence in the region, intelligence, and the role of US allies and partners in countering China. Leading the task force is Ely Ratner, a China hawk who Biden appointed as a special advisor to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

    Via DoD News

    Before his new position at the Pentagon, Rather worked at the interventionist Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank. Despite the Trump administration’s hardline policies towards Beijing, Ratner didn’t believe Trump was tough enough. In September 2020, he co-authored an op-ed titled “Trump Has Been Weak on China, and Americans Have Paid the Price”.

    From his post at CNAS, Ratner led a congressionally mandated study on China that was released in January 2020. The report outlined various ways the US could compete with Beijing in Asia, including military deterrence or a “combat-credible posture in the Indo-Pacific,” as the study put it.

    The study says the US should help its allies in the region build up their militaries to counter China, with a focus on India. “The United States should pay particular attention to supporting India’s efforts to pose military dilemmas for China,” the report reads.

    Both Secretary Austin and Kathleen Hicks, his deputy secretary of defense, identified China as the “pacing threat” to the US military. With Ratner leading the review and China the Pentagon’s priority, the likely result of the task force will be an expanded US military presence in Asia.

    The announcement of the task force comes as the new administration is stepping up provocations in the South China Sea. On Tuesday, two US aircraft carriers entered the disputed waters and held rare dual-carrier drills.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 18:30

  • Up 3,800% In Two Weeks… And It's Not Gamestop
    Up 3,800% In Two Weeks… And It’s Not Gamestop

    Two weeks ago, when the world was still gripped by the Gamestop euphoria, we predicted that it was only a matter of time before the daytrading army set its sights on not just shorted companies but the universe pennystock/microcap/illiquid names. We then ran a screen focusing that highlighted two specific names: SRMX and KYNC, to wit:

    The results were interesting: while most companies from the two screens overlapped – including GME, BBY, ANC, FIZZ, DDS, GOGO, SRG and so on, there were also some even smaller companies that we never noticed initially…

    …. such as Saddle Ranch Media (SRMX) – whose stock costs one-hundredth of a nickel (probably for good reasons) and which “is a diversified media and entertainment company operating three divisions: Saddle Ranch Digital, Saddle Ranch Film, and Saddle Ranch TV”, and KYN Capital Group (KYNC) – a “capital-finance leasing company”  and both of which are pink sheet, microcap companies – the first has a market cap of just $9MM and, according to Bloomberg, a short-to-float ratio of 129%, or just below that of Gamespot…

    … while KYNC is a $15MM microcap, which according to BBG has an even more ridiculous 399% SI/Float ratio.

    As a note: these are certainly “worthless” stocks and are trading where they are trading for a reason… but as the events in the past few days have shown, none of that actually matters in a bubble where the only thing that does matter is flow of capital.

    Fast forward to today when after occasionally discussing these two names both in our public…

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

    … and private twitter account (open to subs) we decided to take a look at how these two names have performed since we highlighted them and the result was stunning. As of this morning KYNC has more than doubled, but it is SRMX that is the winner, with the stock up a whopping 2800%.

    Putting this move in context, it took Gamestop about a month to rise 2,500% from mid-December, so we already have a new champion – an arguably worthless pennystock has managed to significantly outperform the biggest meme stock of all time.

    UPDATE:

    Make that 3,800%:

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 18:22

  • ​​​​​​​Hudson Yards A Ghost Town, Investors Panic As Company 'Admits' Financial Problems
    ​​​​​​​Hudson Yards A Ghost Town, Investors Panic As Company ‘Admits’ Financial Problems

    Hudson Yards is open for business – but who is coming?

    Hudson Yards, the largest private development in the US, opened nearly two years ago with much optimism. It’s a massive complex on Manhattan’s Far West Side with condos, office space, and retailers built over a massive railroad yard. But since the virus pandemic, shoppers have vanished, and retailers have shuttered their doors, transforming the area into a ghost town – raising questions about the $25 billion development’s future, according to NYTimes. 

    Hudson Yards has become so depressing that the spiraling staircase structure, known as the “Vessel,” has been closed after the third suicide in less than a year. The virus pandemic has turned the development into a lifeless area as many shops and restaurants have been empty since early last year.

    Inventory of condominiums continues to swell in the development. The surrounding office buildings are empty as work-at-home dominates. The mall, featuring about 100 retail shops, saw its anchor tenant, Neiman Marcus, file for bankruptcy and closed permanently.

    Owner and developer Related Companies has been banking on wealthy buyers to fill its condos, along with tourists and residents to fill its shops, but all that came to a screeching halt in early 2020 as the pandemic began. 

    “The challenges facing Hudson Yards aren’t unique,” Danny Ismail, an analyst and lead of office coverage for the real estate research firm Green Street, told NYTimes. 

    “All commercial real estate in New York City has been impacted by Covid-19. However, I would argue that post-pandemic, Hudson Yards and the area around it will be one of the better office markets in New York City,” Ismail said. 

    Related told NYTimes, it faces financial difficulties related to the virus pandemic but said commercial tenants were still moving in, hoping for a rebound in the economy due to vaccine rollout. 

    There are four office buildings at Hudson Yards, with 50 Hudson Yards still under construction. A spokesman for Related said 93% of the commercial space is leased. 

    “Our strong office leasing, even during the pandemic, is why we’re well-positioned to lead New York’s comeback from Covid and why the adjacent neighborhoods and the entire West Side will recover faster,” the spokesman, Jon Weinstein, said.

    Hudson Yards has been planning to expand across the railroad yard but first needs to construct the second half of a massive deck. Though the company would need billions of dollars for the expansion, a delay in the expansion is possible with the local economy still in tatters. 

    … and a recovery in borough could take years (read: “”A Long Slog” – NYC Recovery Lags Rest Of Country As Downturn Could Last Years”). 

    “The residential is going to have to recover, or they switch it up and look at a different product mix over there,” CBRE’s Robert Alexander said. 

    Related is also facing pressure from investors who allege the company refuses to open its books.

    NYTimes expands more on this: 

    Related is also facing pressure from its investors to deliver a fuller accounting of the project’s finances. A group of 35 investors from China — a sliver of the roughly 2,400 who contributed $1.2 billion to Hudson Yards — sued the company last year, accusing it of refusing to open its books or say when it might repay their investments.

    An arbitrator in the case recently denied the investors’ claims and ruled that Related was not required to disclose detailed financial information.

    The company’s lawyers said that Hudson Yards was facing “significant headwinds as a result of Covid-19” and that because of the economic downturn and lockdown restrictions, it may be unable to recoup its investment in at least one property there, 35 Hudson Yards, a mixed-use tower with a hotel, according to filings in the case obtained by The New York Times.

    Another group of Chinese investors, whose contributions of $500,000 per person were part of a United States visa program that can grant them a path to citizenship, are said to also be considering filing a similar lawsuit against Related, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

    Before the pandemic, Related said most of its revenue streams were to be derived through its condos and shopping area. 

    Real estate firm Miller Samuel told NYTimes that condo sales at Hudson Yards have fallen off a cliff. In 2019, 157 units were sold in the development, but only 30 were sold in all of 2020. 

    Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy, warned Manhattan is facing a massive supply of condos for sale at the moment. To get through all the supply, it could take years for the borough’s condo market to recover, an indication that Related’s financial outlook looks bleak. 

    The lack of people traversing Hudson Yards is also troubling. 

    Weekday traffic at the Hudson Yards subway station plunged to an average of 6,500 riders in December, compared with 20,000 daily average in 2019. 

    While everyone was expecting things to go back to normal in 2021, Hudson Yards is still a ghost town and could take years to recover. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 18:10

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Feb 11

Today’s News 11th February 2021

  • New NORAD Warfare Strategies And Canada's Role In The Great Game Revisited
    New NORAD Warfare Strategies And Canada’s Role In The Great Game Revisited

    Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    As relations between the USA and Russia continue to fall ever deeper into the abyss, and as China’s Belt and Road Initiative continues to evolve deep into the Eurasian Arctic via the Polar Silk Road, a new era of potential for cooperation as well as nuclear war awaits humanity. The decisions made over the coming months will determine which of those two opposing destinies are selected.

    For the time being, things are looking bad.

    On February 5, 2021 the Canadian press was lit abuzz with the headline NORAD Modernization to Dominate Agenda of Canada-U.S. Defence Relations citing various military think tanks and ivory tower game theorists who should be kept as far from any actual policy making circles if the world is going to survive beyond the coming decade.

    Citing the recent Biden-Trudeau meeting which featured a long discussion about Russian-Chinese aggression and Arctic defense, Andrea Charron (head of Manitoba’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies) states:

    “Where as before the primary threat during the Cold War was one peer competitor, who wasn’t using greyzone tactics, or at least not to the same extent as now, we now have two peer competitors to the U.S. – China and Russia – and they are using greyzone tactics, and they’re developing more sophisticated weapons like hypersonic glide vehicle weapons,”

    The idea being conveyed here is that Russian hypersonic air launched Kinzhal ballistic missiles will soon be stationed in Russia’s north which should cause NORAD to be completely revamped.

    Of course, these academics are quick to ignore all evidence of NATO encirclement of Russia and China under the insane “full spectrum dominance” game plan which certain geopoliticians believe will make nuclear war somehow winnable with 21st century technology.

    In the face of this supposed Russian and Chinese aggression, NATO-philes are screeching for Canada’s speedy entry into the NORAD Ballistic Missile shield which it abandoned over 15 years ago.

    Citing the 2020 Wilson Center report co-written by former NORAD chief Terrance O’Shaughnessy, and published by the Canada Institute, artificial intelligence programs (“SHIELD” and “Pathfinder”) are introduced as the key to the total overhaul of Canada-USA arctic strategy. O’Shaughnessy wrote of SHIELD that “It pools this data and fuses it into a common operational picture. Then, using the latest advances in machine learning and data analysis, it scans the data for patterns that are not visible to human eyes, helping decision-makers understand adversary potential courses of action before they are executed.”

    Anyone who has read Cynthia Chung’s Dr. Strangelove’s Spoonbenders will quickly realize why using AI to pick up algorithms that would normally be missed by human analysts, and generate hair-trigger decisions to counter threats from Eurasia creates a mountain of trouble for humanity, as glitches and mis-readings of Russian/Chinese intentions can easily escalate unstoppably into a nuclear retaliation by deductive/inductive machine thinking.

    Now at this point, many onlookers might make the mistake of brushing off these obvious plans for a revamped NORAD-NATO Arctic doctrine since Canada’s military is negligible, and it is merely a “middle power” that couldn’t possible do great damage anywhere.

    It is to the person asking this question that this report was written.

    The British Great Game Past and Present

    The first factor which such a person must recognize is the nature of the British Empire as an efficient power structure dominating the world even today.

    Anyone confused about this still-existing power structure need only read Eric Zuess’ new report ‘Further Proof that the U.S. and UK are One Empire’ where the author astutely writes:

    “Although the “Special Relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom was first announced by Winston Churchill at Fulton Missouri on 5 March 1946, in the company of an approving U.S. President Harry S. Truman, it was actually started by Cecil Rhodes in 1877 when he drew up his plan for England secretly to retake America and use it so as to preserve and expand Britain’s empire throughout the world, via the Rhodes Trust. Rhodes was the first person to think up a “U.S. empire,” but it was actually only as a tool for the preservation and extension of England’s existing empire. And Winston Churchill, as a young man at the start of the 20th Century, was an acolyte and friend of Rhodes, and was viewed by Rhodes as being one of his most promising young followers.”

    The Post-WWII Order and the Rhodes Trust Origins of NATO

    In the Post-WWII order, the important tendency for U.S.-Russian partnership which shaped the 1780 League of Armed Neutrality, Russia’s support for the union in 1863 and the U.S.-Russia friendship that made WWII a success was overthrown.

    This historic friendship was directly targeted by forces loyal to the British Empire’s grand strategy for global Anglo-Saxon Dominance exemplified by Sir Winston Churchill’s unveiling of the Cold War during his March 5, 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton Missouri and the follow-up creation of NATO in 1949 as a military bloc which would operate independently of the UN Security Council.

    An under-appreciated role in the formation of NATO and international dis-order more generally during these Cold War years is the British Deep State of Canada and due to the neglect of this fact, a few words should be said about this problem here and now.

    While official narratives have tried to spin NATO’s origins as the effect of an agreement amongst all western powers, the fact is that British intelligence operations are the true source, with British-trained Rhodes Scholar Escott Reid laying out the thesis for a supranational military body outside of the influence of the UN Security Council as early as August 1947. It was another two years before the design would materialize as an anti-Soviet military coalition based on the binding agreement that if one member enters a conflict, then all members must so enter.

    At a Round Table-directed Conference on August 13, 1947, Reid, an ardent globalist and co-founder of the Canadian branch of the London Fabian Society “recommended that the countries of the North Atlantic band together, under the leadership of the United States, to form ‘a new regional security organization’ to deter Soviet expansion.” He went on to state “In such an organization each member state could accept a binding obligation to pool the whole of its economic and military resources with those of the other members if any power should be found to have committed aggression against any one of the members.”

    The name of the British Imperial game has always been “balance of power”. Manipulate society as a single closed system by monopolizing resources, and then manage the diminishing rates of return by creating conflict between potential allies. This process can be seen clearly today behind the conflicts manipulated in the South China Sea between China and Philippines, the Diaoyu-Senkaku Islands between China and Japan, wars for oil in the Middle East and the new tension being created in the Arctic. The opposing, typically “American System of Political Economy” has always disobeyed this game of “balancing a fixed system” by introducing creative change.

    The American System on the other hand, has traditionally located its point of emphasis primarily upon creating new resources, through inventions and discoveries, rather than simply looting, consuming, and distributing what already exists. This system formulated by Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt proved that more energy could always be produced than was consumed IF discoveries and inventions were cultivated in a creatively developing society, shaped by concrete national intentions and bold visionary goals to increase the powers of production of society. The American System is thus understood as an open-system founded upon win-win cooperation while the British System is based on a closed-system worldview under a win-lose operating system where the elite managing nations from above dictate the wars, and diminishing rates of returns to a depopulated society.

    Since the British system implies that the world resources are limited, then the stronger will necessarily have to loot the weaker… Hence, the system is also “zero-sum”.

    Throughout the Cold War, Canada’s role as a “middle power” was defined most succinctly by Fabian Society asset Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who, when asked what his foreign policy was, explained simply: “to create counterweights”. That is, when the “geopolitical center of gravity” moves towards “capitalist America”, then Canada must move towards befriending “socialist” Russia and its allies. When the center of gravity moves towards a Russian edge within the Great Game, then do the opposite. Although the Cold War “officially” ended in 1991, the imperial Great Game never did, and Canada’s role as a British chess piece continues unabated to the present.

    The future battleground which Canada is being prepared to set up is to be found in the Arctic.

    The Strategy of the Arctic in History

    The struggle for Arctic dominance is currently being defined by the rules of British geopolitics. The above map features the layout of the arctic with dotted lines defining areas still not under the control of any particular nation.

    Today, the northern Arctic is among the last unexplored and undeveloped frontiers on the earth. With an area over 14 million square kilometers, this area is rich in a variety of mineral and gas deposits containing approximately 90 billion barrels of oil and 1670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This abundance is complicated by the fact that its borders are highly undefined, overlapping eight major nations with Canada and Russia as the dominant claimants.

    In recent history, American System methods were attempted in the opening up of the Arctic for mutual development and cooperation beginning with the sale of Alaska to America in 1867 by the “American system Czar” Alexander II to the allies of Abraham Lincoln. These same forces orchestrated the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway and heavily promoted the Bering Strait Rail tunnel connecting the two great continents which arose by the turn of the century. Early designs for the Russian-American rail connection were published in 1893 by Governor William Gilpin of Colorado which gained renewed support by the soon-to-be-deposed Czar Nicholas II in 1905. Russia again revived this project in 2011.

    Throughout the 20th Century, Russia has developed a far greater aptitude at creating corridors of permanent habitation in the Arctic relative to their North American counterparts which are expanding at a fast pace under Putin’s Eastern vision and China’s Polar Silk Road. Due to the post WWII Cold War dynamic of tension, much that could have been accomplished, had resources not been so badly drained by Cold War militarization, was not.

    The beacon of light during this Cold Dark process was to be found in Canada’s 13th Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, whose Northern Vision, unveiled in 1958, hinged upon his $78 million allocation for funds to construct a permanent domed nuclear-powered city in Frobisher Bay (now named Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut), as a test case for a greater nation building program in the Arctic. When Diefenbaker was run out of office in 1963 through a British-steered operation, his vision was scrapped, and a new Arctic doctrine was artificially imposed upon Canada.

    False Polarizations Imposed onto Arctic Grand Strategy

    This new imperial Arctic doctrine was modeled around the two (anti-nation building) measures of “conservation” of fixed ecosystems and indigenous cultures on the one side, and rapacious mineral exploitation for the increasingly deregulated “global markets” on the other. Canadian examples of this operation can be seen in the Munk School of Global Affairs, the World Wildlife Fund of Canada (whose 2nd president was the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell), and their powerful affiliate, the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, presided over by Pierre Trudeau’s former Principal Secretary Thomas Axworthy. Barack Gold Founder and CEO Peter Munk was one of hundreds of oil barons who acted as founding members of the 1001 Club which was created by Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands and Prince Philip of England in order to fund the WWF in its early years. Other Canadian Deep State founding members of the 1001 Club included WWF Vice Presidents Maurice Strong and Louis Mortimer Bloomfield.

    Axworthy is a major player in the Canada 2020 machine associated with the current Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau. The overlap of major banking institutions like the Royal Bank of Canada and Scotiabank with the mineral cartels, holding companies and environmental organizations in this structure produces a very real picture that the left and the right are merely two sides of the same imperial beast.

    The role of the above interests in creating the Arctic Council in 1996 (and the later Circumpolar Business Forum) was designed to trap nations into an intellectual cage of resource exploitation under free market doctrines of zero national planning on the one side, with eco-systems management and zero national planning on the other. Now that the post-1971 world financial order is on the verge of collapse, these technocrats believe that a new replacement system will allow for national planning, but only on condition that it be directed by Malthusian technocrats and aimed at the goal of lowering the population potential of the planet. This agenda has come to be known as the Green New Deal in 2018 and since evolved into the Great Reset Agenda.

    To re-emphasize: When observed from a top-down perspective, both the “left” eco-green movement and the “right” monetarist institutions are one single thing. It is only by foolishly looking at this process from the “bottom up” that apparent differences are perceived. This is just an illusion for the credulous victims of an imperial education system who have been taught to believe their sense perceptions more than their powers of reason. The reality is that this is nothing more than British Malthusian geopolitics.

    Breaking Out of the Great Game

    The fact is that while the Atlantic economies have currently submitted to the City of London- Wall Street and Troika demands for policies of depopulation, austerity and hyperinflation, Russia and China are committed to true development. Both countries are intent on creating a unified block of win-win cooperation based upon the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Eurasian Economic Union and BRICS and that intention is based on anti-Malthusian scientific and technological progress. The Belt and Road Initiative which now involves over 135 countries exemplifies this spirit.

    The financial system of the trans-Atlantic is collapsing and it will be reset. The only question is, will it be reset by the open system agenda advocated by Russia and China or will it be the closed system unipolar agenda promoted by sociopathic Davos creatures?

    If western societies should wish to have any claim to being morally fit to survive, then this is an optimistic power that we must re-awaken in ourselves fast. For it is only by acting on principles of scientific discovery and progress that a proper perspective can be discovered to overcome the current obstacles to our survival. That is, the discovery of what the future can and must become IF a creative change is introduced into the system.

    The only pathway to avoiding the collapse of the financial system and a thermonuclear war is to be found in imposing Natural Law vigorously upon the claimed “debts” which Wall Street, and the City of London wishes to have bailed out. The expression of this Natural Law takes the form of the restoration of Glass-Steagall laws across the trans-Atlantic economies, eliminating the $1.5 quadrillion debt bomb before it explodes and returning to the principles of national banking for all countries. Under such a reform and by joining in common interest with other nations in the Eurasian zone, a commitment to progress and security can be realized, and such poisonous agendas as the Great Reset can be avoided.

    Escaping the British two-sided trap of monetarism and ecologism means going to fusion energy, space exploration, and mining the moon for Helium-3 as China is already preparing to do. It means closing the fuel cycle, and scrapping low quality “green” energy boondoggles.

    The applications of a forward-looking space age society using fusion power, involves not only rendering imperial wars for oil and water obsolete (as energy and water will be made both incommensurably cheap and abundant relative to the fossil fuel based system now defining society’s limits), but gives mankind the tools to green deserts, build great projects, create a system of Asteroid Defense and construct the long-overdue Bering Strait Tunnel, a key link in the World Land Bridge. These are the sorts of long term projects which not only remind us of our common self interests, but as JFK described the space program in 1962, create goals which “will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills”.

    Without this sort of “outside the box” thinking, it is safe to say that the current rules of the game now in place are set for total self-destruction.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/11/2021 – 00:00

  • Visualizing Global Attitudes Towards The COVID-19 Vaccines
    Visualizing Global Attitudes Towards The COVID-19 Vaccines

    To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate? That is the question.

    In order to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, some experts believe that between 70% to 80% of a population must be vaccinated.

    But, as Katie Jones of VisualCapitalist notes, attitudes towards these vaccines are undoubtedly mixed. In fact, it’s estimated that one-third of people globally have some major concerns.

    View the high-resolution of the infographic by clicking here.

    Using survey data from eight different countries, Global Web Index created five archetypes to help illustrate how typical attitudes towards vaccines differ depending on a range of factors, such as age, income, lifestyle, and values.

    Countries surveyed: United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Brazil, China, India, Japan, and Italy.

    Which segment are you most likely to fall under, according to these segments?

    Vaccine Supporters

    Which segment are you most likely to fall under, according to these segments?

    [People who say they will get the COVID-19 vaccine.]

    Out of all participants surveyed, 66% of them support the idea of getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Within this group, there is a skew towards younger people (aged 18-34) who are likely working professionals earning a high income and living in a city.

    Despite their optimism towards COVID-19 vaccines, however, one-third of vaccine supporters say they will wait to get one, due to lingering concerns regarding issues with vaccine distribution and any potential side-effects.

    Interestingly, this procrastination mindset has been seen before during the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic when both members of the general public and healthcare workers showed low levels of vaccine acceptance due to safety concerns.

    Vaccine Hesitant

    [People who are not sure if they will get the COVID-19 vaccine.]

    The vaccine hesitant group, which is more common among cautious suburban parents, makes up 12% of the total study. They are more likely to be female, and feel anxious about the length of time spent testing vaccines and therefore require more transparency around the science.

    With that being said, this group could be easily swayed, as they are more receptive to word-of-mouth and messaging boards to get advice from their peers over any other medium.

    Vaccine Obligated

    [People who will only get the vaccine if it’s necessary for travel, school, work etc.]

    The vaccine obligated group makes up 11% of the total, and has a skew towards males aged between 16 and 24 years old.

    While this group is also concerned with potential side-effects, their responses suggesting that a vaccine may not be necessary to combat COVID-19 was above average compared to other segments in the study. They also index above average when it comes to viewing themselves as traditionalists.

    Vaccine Skeptical

    [People who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.]

    The vaccine skeptical group makes up another 11% of the total. However, this group is mostly female, who are aged between 45-64 and earn a lower-than-average income. They are less likely to have a college degree, and are more likely to live in a rural area.

    Along with the worry of potential side-effects, this group is generally more pessimistic about containing COVID-19 at all. Therefore a small percentage do not believe a vaccine will help tackle the global health crisis.

    With notably low trust levels, this group is one of the hardest to reach and potentially persuade. What makes them unique however, is their lack of faith in the scientific process.

    Anti-Vaxxers

    [People who will not get the vaccine, because they are against vaccines in general.]

    It is important to note that those who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine should not be confused with anti-vaxxers.

    Anti-vaxxers are a sub-segment of the vaccine skeptical group that makes up 1.4% of the total population. The difference is, anti-vaxxers do not believe in getting any vaccine due to safety concerns, not just not a vaccine for COVID-19.

    According to the study, anti-vaxxers tend to fall into one of two age brackets, between 16-24 years or 55-64 years old, and are typically males with lower incomes.

    Another Tool in the Arsenal Against COVID-19

    The study demonstrates that broad segments of society—regardless of their demographic or views—are at least somewhat concerned about COVID-19 vaccines becoming widely available.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 23:45

  • Facebook Hires Former NATO Press Officer As Its 'Intelligence Chief'
    Facebook Hires Former NATO Press Officer As Its ‘Intelligence Chief’

    Authored by Alan Macleod via MintPressNews.com,

    Ben Nimmo, a former NATO press officer and current senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has announced Facebook has hired him to “lead global threat intelligence strategy against influence operations” and “emerging threats.” Nimmo specifically named Russia, Iran and China as potential dangers to the platform.

    His announcement was greeted with joy by several NATO officials but was not met with such enthusiasm by others. “More censorship on the way as the former NATO press officer turned Pentagon-funded ‘researcher’ who labeled real people as Russian bots and peddled disinformation to link Jeremy Corbyn to Russian active measures moves to big tech,” responded investigative journalist Max Blumenthal.

    Ben Nimmo

    Nimmo’s questionable past certainly raises questions over whether such an official having a substantial say in what 2.8 billion Facebook users worldwide see in their feeds is such a positive step for the free and open exchange of information.

    “Disinformation Agents”

    For example, in 2019, U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn revealed secret Conservative Party documents showing negotiations the Tory government had with the U.S. over the privatization of the National Health Service (NHS). With just days to go before the U.K. general election, the scandal could have toppled the government and brought into power the most radical antiwar, anti-establishment government in the country’s history. Corporate media went into overdrive to spin the news, and Nimmo was a key part of this, immediately announcing, without evidence, that the documents “closely resemble…a known Russian operation.” His supposedly expert conjecture allowed the story to become “Corbyn’s links to Russia” rather than “Tories privatizing the NHS in secret.” Nimmo’s work helped the Conservatives to an election victory and consigned Corbyn to the scrapheap.

    This was much to the relief of Nimmo’s Atlantic Council, who had branded Corbyn the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horse” — someone pushing Moscow’s agenda abroad. A British Army general was of a similar opinion, claiming that if Corbyn were to win the election, the military would respond. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said that the U.S. government was “doing its best” to prevent a radical leftist from winning power in the U.K.

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    Nimmo has been extremely liberal with whom he labels Russian disinformation agents. In 2018, his research identified one Twitter user, @Ian56789, as a “Kremlin troll.” In reality, the user, Ian Shilling, was a British pensioner, as Sky News was easily able to confirm, interviewing him on air and asking him the patently absurd question if he was actually a Russian bot or not. Despite clearly being a flesh and blood human, Shilling’s account was later deleted anyway.

    In the past, Nimmo has also insisted that Ruslana Boshirova was an influential Russian bot. In reality, she is an internationally known concert pianist, as one Google search would have shown. This sort of behavior does not augur well for those critical of Western foreign policy, who have faced constant harassment, suspension, or outright bans from social media.

    Pro-war Putsch

    The Atlantic Council began as an offshoot of NATO itself and maintains extremely close connections to the military alliance. It continues to receive major funding from Western governments and weapons contractors, and its board of directors is filled to the brim with senior American statespersons, such as Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Henry Kissinger. Also appearing on the board are no fewer than seven former CIA directors and a number of top military generals, such as Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, Wesley Clark, and David Petraeus.

    In recent years, the council’s employees have penetrated deep into big tech and social media organizations. In 2018, it announced it had partnered with Facebook to aid in the curation of Facebook news feeds of users worldwide, giving it considerable power over what sort of views to highlight and which to demote. One year previously, Jessica Ashooh left the position of the council’s Deputy Director of Middle Eastern Strategy to take the position of Director of Policy at Reddit, the eighth-most visited website in the United States. However, as with many intelligence agencies, it is unclear whether one truly “leaves” the Atlantic Council.

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    It is not just Russia that is in NATO’s crosshairs. Last week, the Atlantic Council published an anonymous, 26,000-word report stating that their goal for China was regime change and advising President Biden to draw a number of “red lines” around it, beyond which the U.S. would respond militarily. Meanwhile, the head of STRATCOM, Admiral Charles A. Richard, wrote that the U.S. must prepare for a potential nuclear war with Beijing.

    Greater Control

    The military escalation has been mirrored by an intensifying online propaganda war, where the U.S. has attempted to isolate China economically and stop advancing Chinese technologies such as Huawei’s 5G network, mobile phone, and semiconductor manufacturer Xiaomi, and video sharing app TikTok. Nimmo has played his part in ramping up suspicions of nefarious Chinese activity online, claiming the existence of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing bot network encouraging Americans to believe that China has handled the COVID-19 pandemic far better than the United States. That Americans might have come to that conclusion on their own appears not to have been considered.

    There is an enormous government effort to convince its population of the existence of (foreign) government efforts to manipulate their opinions online. In a massive case of projection, Western governmental organizations point the finger at their enemies, all the while securing greater access and control over the means of communication themselves, to the point where it is now difficult to distinguish where the deep state ends and the fourth estate begins.

    Nimmo’s move from NATO to NATO-aligned think tank to Facebook is just another example of this phenomenon. Perhaps the reason Nimmo is not looking for any Western influence operations online is that he is part of one.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 23:25

  • Struggling Airlines Abandon Business Hubs And Reroute Flights To Tropical Areas 
    Struggling Airlines Abandon Business Hubs And Reroute Flights To Tropical Areas 

    Struggling airlines such as United, Delta, and American airlines have dealt with the most challenging year in their companies’ history. Even with vaccine rollouts, 2021 business travel demand is not lifting off as previously anticipated, resulting in airlines routing flights for leisure travel, to areas such as Florida, according to Bloomberg. 

    Travelers departing from Boston, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis have noticed an abundance of non-stop flights to warmer regions in Florida such as Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Orlando, Key West, and Tampa.

    Ankit Gupta, United’s vice president for domestic network planning, said this has to do with “demand.” He said, “the sunshine states are seeing much more travel demand than before, on a relative basis, while it evaporated in the Northeast.”

    Another high demand area is Los Cabos, Mexico, said Paul Tumpowsky, founder and chief executive officer of high-end travel agency Skylark.

    Tumpowsky said flights from the Northeast to Los Cabos, Mexico, were increased by United, Delta, and American this winter as demand for warmer climates booms. He said the ease of access to warmer areas such as Hawaii, Guatemala City, and the Caribbean with non-stop flights would soon increase among other carriers. 

    Routes from Northeast states to Europe will likely remain limited, said Patrick Quayle, United’s vice president of international network and alliances. He noted entry requirements that range from vaccine passports to quarantines would continue to suppress demand for European travel markets. 

    As of January, seat capacity remained at 50% compared with the same month last year. Travel analytics company Cirium estimates that 30% of the global commercial airplanes are in storage. 

    Airlines are becoming more data-sensitive and will shift flights to hotspot areas. Savvy travelers are taking advantage of cheap airfare this winter to beach towns in the tropics. 

    So with airlines ditching business hubs and rerouting flights to tropical beach towns, the shift in travel type might forever change as companies adopt remote working. Goodbye business travel means the airline industry may experience a permanent decline. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 23:05

  • US Shifts Official Justification Of Its Illegal Presence In Syria From "Guarding Oil" To "Fighting ISIS"
    US Shifts Official Justification Of Its Illegal Presence In Syria From “Guarding Oil” To “Fighting ISIS”

    Submitted by Khaled Iskef via SouthFront.org,

    On February 9, the Pentagon announced that its forces in Syria are no longer responsible for the protection of the oil wells.

    A Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said that the employees and contractors of the US Department of Defense are no longer allowed to assist any private company seeking to exploit the oil resources in Syria, nor to help the employees of this company or its agents.

    Kirby added that the 900 personnel stationed in the region are there to support the mission of fighting ISIS only, which is the main reason for their presence.

    The announcement of the US Department to shift the formal objectives of its military presence in Syria goes contrary to the position of the administration of former President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden announced that it would fix what Trump ‘sabotaged’ in the US policies.

    Two years ago, Trump that he would keep a limited contingent of US forces in Syria to protect the oil wells, and said at the time that the US forces would take their share of the Syrian oil.

    Last July, the SDF signed an agreement with a private US company called Delta Crescent Energy to modernize the oil wells seized by the SDF with the support of US forces, and to smuggle the oil extracted from them outside the Syrian territories.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 22:45

  • Biden Holds First Phone Call With Xi, Both Sides Offer Vastly Different Accounts Of What Was Said
    Biden Holds First Phone Call With Xi, Both Sides Offer Vastly Different Accounts Of What Was Said

    Nearly a month after his inauguration and more than three months since the presidential election, Joe Biden held his first call with Xi Jinping since entering the White House, just days after his secretary of state warned Beijing that Washington would hold China accountable for its “abuses”.

    In a Wednesday night tweet, Biden said that he spoke today with President Xi “to offer good wishes to the Chinese people for Lunar New Year.” He also shared concerns “about Beijing’s economic practices, human rights abuses, and coercion of Taiwan” and told him that Biden “will work with China when it benefits the American people.”

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    The White house also chimed in saying that “President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan. President Biden committed to pursuing practical, results-oriented engagements when it advances the interests of the American people and those of our allies.”

    “The two leaders also exchanged views on countering the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shared challenges of global health security, climate change, and preventing weapons proliferation. President Biden committed to pursuing practical, results-oriented engagements when it advances the interests of the American people and those of our allies” the White House said.

    The call, however, had vastly different content when retold from China’s side.

    According to an account of the conversation reported by Chinese state television, Xi said that “cooperation was the only choice and that the two countries need to properly manage disputes in a constructive manner.” Xi also told Biden that “confrontation between China and the United States would be a disaster and the two sides should re-establish the means to avoid misjudgments.”

    Xi also said Beijing and Washington should re-establish various mechanisms for dialogue in order to understand each others’ intentions and avoid misunderstandings, the report said.

    Finally, and most bizarrely, Xi told Biden that he hopes the United States will cautiously handle matters related to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang that deal with matters of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Quite the opposite of what Biden reportedly told Xi…

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    How is it possible that both sides came away with such profoundly different summaries of what was said: maybe the two were talking without a translator?

    Ahead of the call, a senior US official said Biden had planned to raise a number of issues with Xi, including China’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and its repression of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. It wasn’t clear if Hunter Biden was also discussed.

    “The president will raise [Hong Kong and Xinjiang] directly with Xi Jinping on the call . . . and indicate that this is not just about American values, it’s about universal values,” the official said. “It is about obligations that China itself has signed on to with respect to core international agreements.”

    Biden’s secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, angered the Chinese last month when speaking to his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in the first high-level interaction between the countries since Biden became president, Blinken said the US viewed the detention of an estimated 1 million Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang as “genocide”.

    China’s treatment of its Muslim population has sparked calls for countries to boycott the 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing. Asked if Biden would raise the games in the call, the senior US official said it would “not be on the agenda”. In fact, we doubt that any truly controversial topics were breached for the reason discussed in “Blockbuster Report Reveals How Biden Family Was Compromised By China.“

    Meanwhile, relations between China and the US remain at rock bottom. After years of escalating trade wars between Trump and Xi, the Financial Times reported that Chinese warplanes entered Taiwan’s air defence zone just after Biden’s inauguration and simulated missile attacks on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. Which may explain why the US has now sent a second aircraft carrier in the South China Sea where it is holding naval exercises even as Beijing blasts the “blow to peace and stability.”

    On Sunday, Biden told CBS News that China would face “extreme competition” from the US. While he praised his Chinese counterpart — whom he knows from his time as Barack Obama’s vice-president — as “very bright”, he said he “doesn’t have a democratic . . . bone in his body”.

    Just a few days prior, Blinken told Yang the US would stand up for democracy and human rights, signalling a hawkish stance towards China. “I made clear the US will . . . hold Beijing accountable for its abuses of the international system,” Blinken wrote on Twitter following the call. In response, Yang warned the US not to interfere in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, saying “no one can stop the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

    It’s unclear if that means that “10 for the big guy” will now stop.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 22:37

  • Salary Transparency? Survey Reveals Older Employees Far Less Likely To Disclose Pay
    Salary Transparency? Survey Reveals Older Employees Far Less Likely To Disclose Pay

    Over the last several years, a movement has emerged promoting salary transparency throughout various industries, which, according to Glassdoor.com “helps expose pay gaps between otherwise similar workers, encouraging underpaid employees to negotiate or move to better-fitting jobs, improving overall efficiency in labor markets.”

    “In recent years, there has been a gradual shift away from traditional workplace secrecy and toward more transparent salary policies,” according to a 2015 report by Glassdoor chief economist, Andrew Chamberlain.

    Fast forward six years, and the salary transparency movement is still trying to go mainstream.

    According to a January survey of 1,500 workers conducted by career resource site Zippia, it may simply be suffering from a lack of participation – particularly among older workers. In fact, 50% of workers overall are unwilling to share their salary information, while 30% of workers say they would be uncomfortable sharing their salaries, period.

    Workers 25-34 years old are most comfortable sharing salary information- a whopping 58% are willing to discuss salary. Who is less eager to share? Older workers. In particular, those over 45.

    As this age group ages and advances in their careers, this open attitude could increase salary transparency. However, it is possible younger workers will shed their desire to freely share salary information as they are promoted. –Zippia

    More findings via Zippia:

    • Another are 20% uncertain about whether or not they’d share how much they make.
    • Only 45% of workers feel they are adequately paid; Another 25% say they are “somewhat” fairly paid.
    • 25-34 year olds are most comfortable sharing salary information- a whopping 58% are willing to discuss salary.
    • Those over 45 are least willing to share their salary at work.
    • Half of workers would ask for more money if they knew coworkers made more than them.
    • It pays to make friends: 29% of workers report they would only feel comfortable discussing salary at work with close, friendly coworkers.
    • Good luck finding our your boss’ salary: Only 6% would feel comfortable telling someone who directly reports to them how much they make.

    Here’s a US map with salary transparency by state:

    So, does salary transparency lead to higher pay? That’s unclear – but workers who are expecting a ‘large raise’ were most likely to disclose their salary than those not expecting a large raise.

    Meanwhile, Indeed.com found in January that most workers and job seekers want to know where they stand. They also found that 66% of those surveyed have never shared their salaries on a job website, while only half have shared their pay with friends, and 60% say they’ve never asked a co-worker what they make.

    21% of those surveyed say it feels taboo to discuss pay, with around the same number of people saying that they don’t want to create drama at work, according to Indeed. 14% worry about getting in trouble with management for asking or telling.

    The bottom line, “For employers, fair pay and salary transparency aren’t just noble aims—they are proven strategies to attracting and retaining talent while also encouraging higher engagement and productivity. “

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 22:25

  • Meanwhile In China, A Bankrupt Solar Firm Just Sold $117 Million In Shares
    Meanwhile In China, A Bankrupt Solar Firm Just Sold $117 Million In Shares

    In what at the time was a historic event, taking advantage of the early signs of retail euphoria, back in June bankrupt Hertz tried and almost succeeded in selling shares while in bankruptcy. Only the last minute intervention of a bankruptcy judge prevented what would have been a $1 billion “at the money” offering to Robinhood traders.

    But where Hertz failed a Chinese company has succeeded.

    Bloomberg reports that a Chinese solar power plant firm raised $117.4 million overnight selling 2 billion new shares in Hong Kong — an unremarkable placement at first sight… except that GCL New Energy Holdings is technically bankrupt, having defaulted on a $500 million bond just last week.

    Its stock predictably fell on Wednesday after the share placement, but it’s still up almost 54% this year. In fact, it has risen 49% since announcing the default on Feb. 1.

    The fact that a company in default was able to successfully sell new shares is perhaps not all that surprising as stocks continue to hit new highs on expectations of more stimulus. The rally has prompted companies and shareholders to sell shares, with equity sales and initial public offerings having a record start to the year.

    GCL New Energy is among renewable power developers that have been hurt by China’s government delaying subsidy payments. The firm’s accounts and notes receivable rose to more than 4.5 billion yuan ($699 million) as of June 30, up from 1.9 billion yuan four years earlier.

    And while the company had been selling renewable plants to help pay down debt, but it wasn’t enough to avoid the default earlier this month. As of June, the company had net current liabilities of 6.5 billion yuan, which cast doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern, according to a statement on Dec. 23.

    That’s when an army of new shareholders stepped in, eager to provide the company with much needed liquidity.

    And while Americans watch in disbelief as retail traders take worthless companies orders of magnitude higher, in China this is a routine occurrence: when short-video company Kuaishou Technology went public this month, investors put in hundreds of billions of dollars of orders as “investors, both retail and institutional, have flocked to share offerings in an effort to put idle cash to work given ultra-low interest rates.”

    And while we now know that Ken Griffin, Citadel’s billionaire founder, is expected to testify next week at a House hearing on wild market swings in shares of GameStop and other stocks, we doubt that the real perpetrator of the current bout of market insanity – the Chairman of the Fed – will be present.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 22:05

  • CDC Begins Recommending Wearing Two Masks
    CDC Begins Recommending Wearing Two Masks

    We already know based on objective, impartial, empirical data, that there is effectively no difference in covid case counts/hospitalizations/deaths in states that mandate masks and business restrictions (such as North Dakota) vs states which do not (such as its southern neighbor).

    So, perhaps while looking at this graphic, the CDC had a brilliant idea: ok, one mask does not work, but what about… two masks!

    That’s right: starting Wednesday, the CDC (aka the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) began recommending that Americans wear two masks, or specifically a cloth mask over a medical mask to slow the spread of Covid-19.

    The guidance followed the release of an agency study (because “scientists”) that found double masking can boost protection from aerosolized particles.

    Whereas government officials previously said the CDC was waiting to gather evidence on double masking, they now appear to have a greenlight to mandate double-masking. The new study, part of the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also examined the efficacy of modifications made to improve the fit of a medical mask. Either double masking or tightening a mask’s fit reduced exposure to aerosols that could be infectious by about 95%, the research concluded.

    “These experiments highlight the importance of good fit to maximize mask performance,” the authors wrote.

    “There are multiple simple ways to achieve better fit of masks to more effectively slow the spread of Covid-19.”

    The findings came from experiments done by the agency last month, which tested how double masking and changes to improve mask fit worked amid coughing, which the researchers simulated. Knotting the loops of a surgical mask and tucking in extra fabric near the face was found to reduce exposure, as was wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask.

    As a result, the CDC’s new guidance now recommends that Americans should ensure that masks fit tightly on their face and have layers, both of which improve protection.  There are several routes to do that, including wearing a disposable mask beneath a cloth mask or choosing a mask with multiple layers of fabric, according to the recommendation.

    That said, double-masking with two disposable masks, or with a KN95, isn’t recommended.

    “The bottom line is this: Masks work and they work best when they have a good fit and are worn correctly,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing on Wednesday.

    And while the CDC may argue that “the bottom line” is whatever it wants it to be, at least until it changes its mind in a month to suit some political interest du jour, the reality is that wearing just one mask has shown no tangible improvement on infection numbers.

    In fact, none other than Dr Anthony Fauci said one week ago that “there’s no data that indicates that [double masking] is going to make a difference.”

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    But that was science in January. We now have February science. As a result, it’s time to reset the count and start with two…. then three masks…. then four…. until eventually we all will look like this…

    … at least for a few minutes before everyone dies from asphyxiation.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 21:55

  • Biden Admin Says It Will Continue Trump DOJ's Extradition Of Julian Assange
    Biden Admin Says It Will Continue Trump DOJ’s Extradition Of Julian Assange

    It comes as no surprise that President Biden doesn’t plan to let up on the US pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, after widespread hopes and expectations that Trump was going to pardon Assange during his last days in office, which didn’t happen.

    Despite the US losing its push in a London court for the UK to extradite him in a ruling early last month on grounds that he would likely be subject to cruel punishment, the US government now has until a February 12 deadline to submit its “grounds for appeal”. It’s now been confirmed that the Biden administration intends to do just that.

    “We continue to seek his extradition,” said Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi on Tuesday. This is exactly what Assange’s legal team and supporters feared — Washington plans to drag this out as long as possible, leaving him to languish at Belmarsh prison, tied up in the seeming endless legal process.

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    Initially last year the Trump administrated formally indicted Assange on 17 counts of espionage and one count of conspiracy to commit a computer crime, which together would mean 175 years in prison if convicted.

    Interestingly, Biden’s stance is however a departure from the prior Obama policy. As one of the journalists most closely following Assange’s confinement and trial notes:

    The statement represents a departure from President Barack Obama’s administration, which declined to prosecute Assange. Justice Department officials were reportedly concerned about the threat it would pose to press freedom.

    If he were brought to the United States it would most certainly mean he’d spend the remainder of his life at the notorious at ADX Florence, the supermax facility that currently houses terrorists, murderers, and traitors to the US government – where inmates spend 23 out of 24 hours in a small cell with no view of the outside world.

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    Based on this British district judge Vanessa Baraitser’s January 4th decision cited that Assange’s fragile mental state was “such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.”

    Thus it appears the legal saga and Assange’s imprisonment could press on for months more, and according to the worst-case scenario, even years.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 21:45

  • A Third Of All US Homeowners Own Property Worth Double The Underlying Mortgage
    A Third Of All US Homeowners Own Property Worth Double The Underlying Mortgage

    In the midst of a virus pandemic, with millions of Americans out of work facing housing and food insecurities, the Federal Reserve has managed to keep interest rates near zero, unleashing a real estate boom, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in years. 

    The central-planning mega brains at the Marriner Eccles building in Washington, D.C., have managed to boost home prices almost everywhere. The latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values is accelerating at the fastest pace since May 2014. 

    Although the full history of the pandemic’s impact on the housing market is yet to be determined, housing data from ATTOM Data Solutions for 4Q20 shows low-interest rates boosted the number of equity-rich properties. 

    ATTOM showed at least 30% of U.S. homeowners were equity rich, which means their property was worth twice as much as their mortgage. Last quarter’s equity-rich properties were about 30.2%, or about one in three, of the 59 million mortgaged U.S. homes. The figure was up from 28.3% in the third quarter, 27.5% in the second quarter, and 26.7% in the fourth quarter of 2019.

    Despite the virus pandemic crushing the working-poor and devastating tens of millions of American households, the central planners in the Eccles building decided to inflate the housing market with low-interest rates. The federal government also played its part by initiating forbearance programs to keep homeowners from panic selling properties they could no longer afford.   

    “The housing market kept booming despite the damage caused by the virus pandemic to the broader economy,” said Todd Teta, ATTOM’s chief product officer.

    “Homeowners are sitting pretty on a growing reserve of personal wealth.”

    Why does this matter? Simple: The Fed is creating a wealth effect with rising home values to make people feel more wealthy, so they spend more. Though the wealth effect benefits certain homeowners and others who own assets have created a failed recovery, known as a “K-shape,” where the working-poor (tens of millions of folks) are left behind. 

    Bloomberg notes the increase in property values has helped reduce the number of underwater properties. These homes have mortgages worth at least 25% more than the market value, have dropped by a full percentage point over the past year, and only account for 5.4% of all mortgaged U.S. properties.

    However, there were six states (Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, Iowa, Arkansas, and Illinois) where the percentage of underwater homes remains above 10%. In Vermont and California, the gap between equity-rich homes and those that are underwater is at 44.7% and 43.6%, respectively. Homes in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have a larger percentage of underwater homes than equity-rich ones.

    Source: Bloomberg 

    Out of the 107 metropolitan areas with a population over 500k examined by ATTOM, the ten largest equity-rich areas last quarter were in the western part of the country, five of which were in California. The report also showed the top zip codes with the highest share of underwater properties. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    Despite the Fed buying tens of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities every month, allowing rates to stay low to continue its circus act of bubble blowing, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently suggested that the housing market boom was unsustainable and likely to end soon.

    “Some of the tightness in housing markets, which has led to the significant price increases this year, we think is a passing phenomenon,” Powell said.

    Quoting Powell, the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center warned that “the housing sector has more than fully recovered from the downturn,” adding that “there is no justification for continuing or increasing investment in agency mortgage-backed securities.”

    With the labor market deteriorating and the economy stalling, the Fed will have no other choice but to continue inflating the housing bubble until it bursts.

    Powell and the rest of the central-planners better wake up to the reality that their so-called ‘recovery’ has left tens of millions of people behind. Simply put, trillions in stimulus aren’t working… and if the delusion of printed-money-driven home equity sparks a consumer re-leveraging (which, it would appear, is the only reason for The Fed to be enabling this farce), then we all know how that ends (or did we all forget 2008?)… Except this time it’s everything!

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 21:25

  • JPMorgan: Investors Have Been Asking Questions About The Potential For Hyperinflation
    JPMorgan: Investors Have Been Asking Questions About The Potential For Hyperinflation

    The following excerpts from today’s JPMorgan Market Intelligence report (Afternoon Briefing) from JPM’s Andrew Tyler:

    EQUITY AND MACRO NARRATIVE: The CPI print today may assuage some of the building anxiety regarding inflation. While the reflation trade is approaching consensus long, investors across all asset classes have been asking questions about the probability/risk of inflation occurring this year as well as the potential for hyperinflation. Hyperinflation seems unlikely while the US labor market recovers.

    That said, it is possible to see some transitory spikes to inflation due to COVID-induced bottlenecks. The market’s  expectations for inflation continue to trend higher, evidenced by US breakeven rates and 5Y5Y inflation swaps.

    Insert photo of guy with wheelbarrow full of cash here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 21:05

  • Rights Groups Outraged After Twitter Purges Accounts Of Saudi Political Prisoners
    Rights Groups Outraged After Twitter Purges Accounts Of Saudi Political Prisoners

    Twitter is once again being called out for its free speech hypocrisy and double-dealing when it comes to influential and wealthy foreign governments allied closely with Washington. In this latest case Twitter has purged accounts of recent Saudi political prisoners. 

    A number of prominent Saudi activists and public intellectuals that ran afoul of the royal family have languished in Saudi prisons since the 2017 crackdown under the auspices of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), which most famously saw a number of princes and high profile officials temporarily confined to the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh.

    According to Middle East Eye (MEE) Twitter has removed ‘blue check’ verification badges of many of these prisoners given their account inactivity, or in other cases suspending them altogether. 

    The report details some of the following instances: 

    Among those whose verification label has been removed are Ali al-Omary and Awad al-Qarni, two senior religious figures who have been jailed since 2017. They were seized during a purge that followed Mohammed bin Salman‘s rise to the position of crown prince.

    Similarly, the accounts of the Saudi philanthropist Khaled al-Mohawesh and journalist Khaled al-Alkami, also jailed in the 2017 purge, had their blue tick removed, according to the advocacy Twitter account Prisoners of Conscience. It added that the account of economist Essam el-Zamil, another political prisoner, has been suspended. He tweeted under the handle @Essamz.

    Some of the activists were reportedly targeted by MbS because they publicly spoke out against the economic blockade on neighboring Qatar, a diplomatic crisis which has since been largely resolved, with the Saudi-UAE sanctions on Qatar lifted. 

    Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey & Mohammed bin Salman in a photo posted by Bader al-Asaker to Instagram in June 2016, via MEE

    Others were reportedly women’s rights activists and those seen as luke-warm or doubtful on MbS’ promises of “reform” in the kingdom. 

    In many instances, activists or protesters had “terrorism”-related charges brought during their trials, which in Saudi Arabia is often broadly applied to enemies of the ruling family, especially when it comes to Shia dissidents in the country’s east. 

    The controversy comes amid international pressure for Riyadh to free imprisoned activists in the kingdom:

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

    Twitter has a current policy of removing or de-verifying “inactive and incomplete” accounts, including for the deceased, but regional human rights observers say that in this context it’s “uncalled for” and could potentially be seen as rewarding oppressive governments like Saudi Arabia. 

    Two such high-profile religious figures which have recently been ‘de-verified’ were featured in the MEE report:

    Abdullah Alaoudh of the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), explained: “While there is a policy to remove inactive accounts, those who are forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained should be treated as an exception,” he told Middle East Eye.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 20:45

  • Platinum Soars To Six Year Highs Amid Supply Shortage, Industrial Demand Hope
    Platinum Soars To Six Year Highs Amid Supply Shortage, Industrial Demand Hope

    The epidemic of catalytic converter theft should have been the most recent tell; but combining the recent supply shortage (the US Mint unable to meet platinum coin investment demand and South African mining issues) with demand hopes from a post-pandemic vaccine-supported industrial rebound (as well as an increasingly green global agenda against emissions) has sent platinum prices soaring in recent weeks, and much more so this week, to the highest since Jan 2015.

    “The combination of supply losses due to pandemic-driven mine closures, ongoing South African processing disruption, and strong investment demand more than offsets lower Covid-19-impacted automotive, jewellery and industrial demand.”

    Source: Bloomberg

    A perfect storm this week has seen the precious metal dramatically outperform its peers against a backdrop of dollar weakness…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Heavily used in catalytic converters – to reduce emissions from cars and trucks – Bloomberg notes that Palladium has been trading at a big discount to sister-metal palladium, which is also used primarily in catalytic converters. The price disparity between the two, as well as tougher regulations on emissions, has raised expectations that platinum will see greater use.

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, Platinum’s shortfall of supply over demand came even as auto-catalyst consumption “plunged by 22%, with steep falls in European diesel car production,” says technology specialist Johnson Matthey in its new PGM Market Report.

    “Autocatalyst demand will recover strongly on higher car output and stricter emissions limits for trucks in China. Industrial consumption will remain robust, with PGM use in chemicals [manufacturing] set to reach an all-time high.”

    There are also pressures on the supply side, as BullionVault.com reports, South Africa’s struggling power utility Eskom imposed a fresh round of electricity cuts – extending a run starting last Saturday – on households and business, running from 1pm through to 6am Thursday local time.

    “The mining industry is heavily reliant on electric output,” notes the precious metals team at French bank and London bullion market makers BNP Paribas, “and so is likely to suffer production slowness…That obviously translates into higher prices of PGMs today.”

    Looking ahead to 2021, “PGM supply and demand are forecast to bounce back in a V-shaped recovery,” says Johnson Matthey’s new report.

    “Oil is going up and commodities in general are going up,” Johan Theron, spokesman for Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd.

    “On a relative basis platinum is low on a historical level. So it’s definitely receiving a lot of investor attention and not necessarily that anything fundamentally has changed in the short-term outlook.”

    Strong investment demand from those expecting a catch-up to gold and palladium also has been supportive, and today’s CPI miss sparked more ‘bad news is good news’ support in the hopes that more stimulus will be delivered sooner, enabling even more of an industrial rebound.

    Source: Bloomberg

    “Optimism on the outlook for industrial and car demand, more stringent emission regulations and, in the last couple of days, some weakness in the dollar” have driven platinum higher, said Georgette Boele, senior precious metals strategist at ABN Amro Bank NV.

    “Longer-term there is much more potential” for the price to rise, she said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 20:25

  • Biden Mulls Domestic Travel Restrictions Despite Improving COVID Backdrop
    Biden Mulls Domestic Travel Restrictions Despite Improving COVID Backdrop

    Despite headlines discussing COVID ‘plateaus‘ and ‘dramatic declines‘ in the United States, the Biden administration is mulling whether to impose domestic travel restrictions over concerns that “coronavirus mutations are threatening to reverse hard-fought progress on the pandemic,” according to the Miami Herald.

    Outbreaks of the new variants — including a highly contagious one first identified in the United Kingdom, as well as others from South Africa and Brazil that scientists worry can evade existing vaccines — have lent urgency to a review of potential travel restrictions within the United States, one federal official said.

    Discussions in the administration over potential travel restrictions do not target a specific state but focus on how to prevent the spread of variants that appear to be surging in a number of states, including Florida and California. –Miami Herald

    “There are active conversations about what could help mitigate spread here, but we have to follow the data and what’s going to work. We did this with South Africa, we did this with Brazil, because we got clear guidance,” said one White House official. “But we’re having conversations about anything that would help mitigate spread,” the official added regarding the discussions aimed at targeting the spread of the UK mutation in places like Florida – where over a third of all UK variant cases in the US have been identified.

    Two federal officials made clear that no policy announcements are imminent, and that any travel restrictions would be undertaken in coordination with state and local governments.

    “No decisions have been made, but we certainly are having conversations across government,” said the White House official, adding “This is a war and we’re at battle with the virus. War is messy and unpredictable, and all options are on the table.”

    The potential action comes after Biden directed the CDC, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation to “promptly” create a list of recommendations on “how their respective agencies may impose additional public health measures for domestic travel.”

    Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the second gay man in US history to hold a cabinet position, has been examining whether to require COVID-19 testing for domestic flights – a suggestion that has drawn criticism from airline execs as “a horrible idea.”

    “We had been pushing the use of a mask mandate, so we were very pleased to see the Biden administration put an executive order in place requiring masks in general spaces and in the airspace. That’s absolutely critical,” said Tori Emerson Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association who has spoken with the Biden administration on the matter. “We have some concerns around the idea of a domestic testing requirement, because not only would it require a 42% increase in the testing capacity nationwide, but it’s really not scalable, feasible or effective.”

    <!–*/

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    The Herald notes that “COVID-19 cases in Florida have declined in recent weeks,” however the UK variant has “spread rapidly in the state during that time,” and now accounts for up to 15% of new cases in the state, according to estimates from researchers modeling the variant’s spread across the country.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “opposes travel restrictions and does not believe diagnostic tests should be a prerequisite to domestic air travel,” acording to spokeswoman Meredith Beatrice, while Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote Biden to warn that travel restrictions on the state would be “reckless and economically harmful.”

    “Instituting a travel ban, or any restriction of movement between the states, would be an outrageous, authoritarian move that has no basis in law or science,” wrote Rubio.

    Speaking of science, Bank of America just noted that COVID-19 hospitalizations have “declined dramatically” and are down 40% from the peak which occurred on January 5, which they described as “a rapid turn in the crisis.”

    The decrease is broad-based (all 50 states+DC saw no increases over the past week without exception). The weekly percentage change in US Covid-19 hospitalized is consistent with the largest declines seen during the Coronavirus crisis.

    Moreover the 7-day test positivity rate has declined to 6.9% from the 13.6% peak on January 8th. Since  hospitalizations are lagged relative to time
    of infection the US Corona outbreaks peaked back in the second half of December. -Bank of America

     

    According to Robert Bednarczyk, a public health expert and assistant professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, nobody knows whether travel restrictions will help, and implementing then now could amount to “closing the barn door once the horse is out.”

    “With only a small fraction of samples tested for specific mutations, this is likely underestimating the amount of spread,” Bednarczyk added, noting that the UK’s B.1.1.7 variant has already spread to 34 other states despite the fact that it’s more concentrated in California and Florida. “In addition to what we’ve been asking of the population — masks, distancing, avoiding large gatherings — I think people should consider avoiding travel, especially to tourist destinations where there’s a greater chance of disease spread to individuals who can take it to more places.”

    Read the rest of the report here.

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 20:05

  • Kolanovic: A New Commodity Supercycle Has Begun
    Kolanovic: A New Commodity Supercycle Has Begun

    Having dabbled in the fields of viral epidemiology and presidential polling, JPM quant Marko Kolanovic is set to conquer yet another “cross-asset”: commodities.

    Two days after Dylan Grice published an article “The Stage is Set for a Bull Market in Oil“, with various commodities around the world soaring, and the price of oil up a stunning 64% since November, today Marko Kolanovic made a bold prediction – that the world has entered a new commodity supercycle:

    It is generally agreed that over the past 100 years, there were 4 Commodity supercycles and that the last one started in 1996 . We  believe that the last supercycle peaked in 2008 (after 12 years of expansion), bottomed in 2020 (after a 12-year contraction) and that we likely entered an upswing phase of a new commodity supercycle.

    The croatian quant first looks at history to answer “what drove the last supercycle” – according to him, “on the upswing, the most important driver was the economic rise of China (and EMs more broadly). USD was weakening and asset managers increasingly added commodity exposure to diversify portfolios.” Then the 2008 global recession hit, coupled with further slowdown in Europe (2011) and China (2015) which sent commodities lower, defining the 12 year down cycle whose last leg “was marked by trade wars the ensuing global manufacturing recession, and the disastrous pandemic that sent oil prices into negative territory for the first time ever.” This is summarized in the chart below.

    Well, according to the JPM quant, the downcycle is now over, and “the new commodity upswing, and in particular Oil up cycle, has started” driven by the following factors:

    Of these, Kolanovic says that the upcycle will mostly be a story of:

    • postpandemic recovery (‘roaring 20s’),
    • ultra-loose monetary and fiscal policies,
    • weak USD,
    • stronger inflation,
    • unintended consequences of environmental policies and their friction with physical constraints related to energy consumption and production.”

    What he means by the last bullet is that as a result of dramatic capex curbs in recent years, with capital instead flowing to various pet ESG projects, there is not nearly enough capacity to meet future demands and the immediate outcome will be far higher prices.

    It’s not just the fundamental factors that form the basis for JPM’s bold call: the bank also believes that the coming years will see a substantial repurposing of financial flows which have “an increasing role in asset pricing (e.g. vs. fundamentals)” is a consequence of “the electronification of liquidity provision, increased use of leverage, and rise of systematic trading strategies and related flows.”

    It is these increasingly fast and furious flows that “exacerbated the size and velocity of price moves both in commodities and related equities” during the last downturn, and these same financial flows “can have a similar impact on prices in the up cycle.”

    Marko then discuss some of the financial flows that he believes will impact commodity and related equity prices: we have excerpted his view on some of the key ones:

    Inflation hedging: The past decade was marked by low growth and low inflation. Bonds, bond proxies and secular growth stocks were in a bull market, while commodities, value and cyclical stocks performed poorly. Kolanovic believes that the tide on yields and inflation is turning, which will pose “a major risk to multi-asset portfolios” and in light of the consensus view that commodities are the best way to hedge rising inflation, the JPM quant expects “these multi-asset portfolios to add commodity and commodity equity exposure to hedge inflation.”

    Bond-equity correlation hedging: Claiming that “bond-equity correlation is a critical input into portfolio construction (selection of assets, weights, leverage)” the quant found that Bond-equity correlation shifted regimes when the last supercycle started in 1997 and when central bank actions started intervening in bond markets to backstop equity risk. Coincidentally, Kolanovic notes, “with the end of the commodity supercycle, short-term rates have dropped globally to zero, and the ability of CBs to reinforce the bond-equity relationship without driving inflation has diminished.” So as the world recovers from Covid on the back of a “monetary and fiscal engineered recovery”, JPMorgan expects volatility to decline and inflation to increase, “delivering a 1-2 punch to bond-equity  correlation.” This means that energy equities “could present a good hedge for bond-equity correlation – they often deliver a yield (like bonds) but also hedge the inflation and bond-equity correlation risk.” Incidentally, Exxon still offers a 7% dividend yield despite oil prices being high enough to where the risk of the dividend being canceled is virtually gone.

    Quants and Momentum Investing: In a market where algos and trend-followers have emerged as one of the dominant price-setting forces, it is hardly a surprise that the JPM quant focuses on their influence as the driver behind a commodity supercycle. Indeed, he writes that after “CTAs played significant role in the 2014 oil price downturn” more recently, “CTA funds have been adding Energy exposure. The reason is that 12-month momentum turned positive on Oil, and going forward signals will remain solidly positive.” And since vol-control funds are some of the dumbest money around and their actions can be anticipated well in advance, JPM notes that “a further decline in volatility will likely result in larger and more stable cross-asset quant allocations. A larger momentum impact may affect Energy equities, which is the only sector that still has a strongly negative momentum signal and is hence heavily shorted in the context of factor investing.” That, JPMorgan believes, will “change in mid-March, when the momentum signal for energy equities turns  positive” which may be a hint to the redditors out there: if you want to squeeze the systematic shorts, do it where it hurts and buy some energy stocks to crush the CTAs. You have about a month to do so because JPM’s model momentum factor “will need to rebalance in March by closing ~20% of its allocation to Energy equity shorts, and adding ~2% to energy longs, for a ~22% net buying in Energy.”

    What is the quantitative significance of these flows? Kolanovic calculates that if one roughly assumes that there is about ~$1Tr in equity long-short quant funds and that half of these funds are not sector neutralized, “the flows could be quite significant, roughly $20-$30bn.” As shown in the chart below, the ratio of energy shares shorted vs all other S&P 500 shares shorted, closely followed the commodity supercycle. Remarkably, most recently the number of shares shorted for energy was 4 times the S&P 500 average (note that given the decline of the sector’s weight, energy share prices declined, and the effective $ amount shorted was only 2 times larger). In other words, one doesn’t even need to squeeze the shorts: come March – absent some major new crisis – as a result of broader market technicals the prevailing shorts will close them out on their own and go long.

    Another “flow factor” behind the “supercycle” is rotation by discretionary funds and retail: In the period from 2010 to 2015, the Energy sector had a 10.6% allocation in conventional equity portfolios. Since then, this has declined to a 3.1% weight currently (Figure 4). The largest decline was in active allocations, which declined from 7% to 1.5% (while passive allocations decreased from 3.6% to 1.8%), which is understandable – investors dumped “dead stocks” to chase growth and momentum, but the tide is now turning, and “any retracement of this decline, on a US equity fund asset base of ~$14T would result in significant inflows and re-pricing.” According to Kolanovic, as economies reopen, inflation moves higher, and yield curves steepen, active funds are expected to first close cyclical shorts, and then rotate from long secular growth towards value and cyclicals. His next point is critical: given that equity assets significantly increased over the last 10 years, and the energy sector significantly decreased, even a small rotation could produce an outsized move.

    Finally, retail investors also reduced energy equity allocation from 4.4% to only 0.6% currently. However, as the quant notes, “given the increased retail activity and interest in stocks that are volatile, have high short interest, are smaller in size and have thematic news/social media coverage, the sector will likely also be of interest to retail investors.”

    By which he means that we may soon have hedge funds, pardon, reddit mods and WSB participants drafting long posts discussing the relative merits of energy as the next sector to go long, and creating a critical mass of buyers which then cascades across the ranks of market participants, from ultra-fast HFTs, to fast momentum and trend-followers, to slow ETFs and eventually ultra slow pension fund money rushing to buy energy stocks and oil.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 19:45

  • MasterCard Joins Visa, PayPal On The Crypto Payments Bandwagon
    MasterCard Joins Visa, PayPal On The Crypto Payments Bandwagon

    Less than two weeks after Visa CEO Al Kelly said the payments giant is in a position to make cryptocurrencies more “safe, useful and applicable” and may add them to the company’s payments network; MasterCard has tonight laid out in great detail why it also plans to start supporting select cryptocurrencies directly on its network.

    In a detailed and lengthy statement, Raj Dhamodharan, MasterCard’s EVP of Digital Asset & Blockchain Partnerships, adds color to CEO Michael Miebach’s Q4 pledge to integrate digital currency payments “directly on our network.”

    The company has not yet disclosed which digital currencies it intends to support, or where.

    As CoinDesk notes, previously, Mastercard supported limited cryptocurrency transactions through its cryptocard partners Wirex and Uphold. But those programs only cover payment, not settlement; the coins are converted to fiat currency well before reaching the merchant.

    Full note:

    Why Mastercard is bringing crypto onto its network

    Whatever your opinions on cryptocurrencies – from a dyed-in-wool fanatic to utter skeptic – the fact remains that these digital assets are becoming a more important part of the payments world.

    We are seeing this fact play out on the Mastercard network, with people using cards to buy crypto assets, especially during Bitcoin’s recent surge in value. We are also seeing users increasingly take advantage of crypto cards to access these assets and convert them to traditional currencies for spending.

    To be clear, this data is not of any individuals – it’s anonymized and in aggregate – but the trend is unmistakable.

    We are preparing right now for the future of crypto and payments, announcing that this year Mastercard will start supporting select cryptocurrencies directly on our network. This is a big change that will require a lot of work. We will be very thoughtful about which assets we support based on our principles for digital currencies, which focus on consumer protections and compliance.

    Our philosophy on cryptocurrencies is straightforward: It’s about choice. Mastercard isn’t here to recommend you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value

    Doing this work will create a lot more possibilities for shoppers and merchants, allowing them to transact in an entirely new form of payment. This change may open merchants up to new customers who are already flocking to digital assets and helping sellers build loyalty with existing customers who want this additional option. And customers will be able to save, store and send money in new ways.

    We want to help these concepts flourish and reach their potential, while also developing and encouraging the necessary guardrails.

    “We are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value — traditional or crypto — however they want. It should be your choice, it’s your money.”

    To be completely clear, not all of today’s cryptocurrencies will be supported on our network. While stablecoins are more regulated and reliable than in the recent past, many of the hundreds of digital assets in circulation still need to tighten their compliance measures, so they won’t meet our requirements. We expect consumers and the ecosystem as a whole will start to rally around the crypto assets that offer reliability and security. It’s those very same stablecoins that we expect to bring into our network.

    What are we looking for? Four key items.

    • First and foremost we need consumer protections, including privacy and security of consumers’ information — the same level of security people have come to expect in their credit cards.

    • Next, strict compliance protocols will be needed, including Know Your Customer, a requirement meant to snuff out illegal activity and deception in  payment networks.

    • Also, these digital assets must follow local laws and regulations in the regions they are used.

    • Lastly, people will want to use these digital assets for payments, so that is one of our criteria too. To reach our network, crypto assets will need to offer the stability people need in a vehicle for spending, not investment.

    We are already working hard to provide this consumer choice for cryptocurrencies. We teamed up with Wirex and BitPay last year to create crypto cards that allow people to transact using their cryptocurrencies. We added to those partnerships this year by joining forces with LVL, an up-and-coming cryptocurrency exchange. These relationships — with many more planned in the pipeline — build on our many years of crypto collaborations.

    In all of these cases, cryptocurrencies still don’t move through our network. Our crypto partners convert the digital assets on their end to traditional currencies, then transmit them through to the Mastercard network. Our change to supporting digital assets directly will allow many more merchants to accept crypto — an ability that’s currently limited by proprietary methods unique to each digital asset. This change will also cut out inefficiencies, letting both consumers and merchants avoid having to convert back and forth between crypto and traditional to make purchases.

    Added to this work, Mastercard is actively engaging with several major central banks around the world, as they review plans to launch new digital currencies, dubbed CBDCs, to offer their citizens a new way to pay. Last year, we created a test platform for these banks to use these currencies in a simulated environment. Using our deep experience in payments technologies, we look forward to continuing these partnerships with governments and helping them explore the best ways to develop these new currencies.

    With 89 blockchain patents granted globally with an additional 285 blockchain applications pending worldwide, we already have one of the payments industry’s biggest blockchain patent portfolios to draw from to make these projects successful.

    We are inspired by so much of the work going on in the payments world – in banking, in emergent fintechs, in crypto – to push forward change. And we are doing as much as we can to set the stage for these players to take the next step forward.

    As CoinDesk notes, the payments space is rushing to support blockchain-based currencies at a pace not seen since Bitcoin pioneered the concept of stateless, peer-to-peer immutable transactions in 2009.

    For now there has been no reaction in Bitcoin…

    Source: Bloomberg

    We do find it quite ironic that in the same week as Tesla announces a major investment, MicroStrategy presents their bitcoin-funded-reserves concept to thousands of firms, and now Visa and Mastercard show support, Tim Lane, the deputy governor of The Bank of Canada, proclaimed costly verification methods and unstable purchasing power makes cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin a “flawed” method of payment.

    In a speech on “payments innovation,” Lane desperately attempted to pour cold water on the decentralized system of payments would entirely disrupt his industry, exclaiming further that, “the recent spike in their prices looks less like a trend and more like a speculative mania – an atmosphere in which one high-profile tweet is enough to trigger a sudden jump in price.”

    He doth protest too much we think.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 19:25

  • 14 State Attorneys Say Keystone Cancellation Delivers "Crippling Economic Injuries", Threaten Legal Action
    14 State Attorneys Say Keystone Cancellation Delivers “Crippling Economic Injuries”, Threaten Legal Action

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    Fourteen Republican attorneys general are urging President Joe Biden to reconsider his decision to cancel a permit for the construction of the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, alleging severe economic harm and threatening to take legal action.

    “We write with alarm regarding your unilateral and rushed decision to revoke the 2019 Presidential Permit” for the pipeline, the officials wrote in a Feb. 9 letter (pdf), initiated by Montana’s Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

    Calling cancellation of the pipeline a decision “to impose crippling economic injuries on states, communities, families, and workers across the country,” the attorneys general urged Biden to reconsider, while warning that they are “reviewing available legal options.”

    In the letter, Knudsen denounced Biden’s decision to pull the permit as “a symbolic act of virtue signaling” that would do little to accomplish its stated objective of protecting Americans and the domestic economy from harmful climate impacts.

    “The real-world costs are devastating,” Knudsen contended. “Nationally, your decision will eliminate thousands of well-paying jobs, many of them union jobs.”

    Keystone XL pipeline facilities are seen in Hardisty, Alta., in a file photo. The now-canceled pipeline would have carried oilsands crude from Hardisty to the U.S. Gulf Coast. (The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh)

    The State Department determined in 2014 (pdf) that the Keystone XL pipeline project would support a total of 42,100 jobs and create roughly 3,900 direct jobs in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas over what was expected to be one or two years of construction.

    After the pipeline entered service, operations would require around 50 employees in the United States, including 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors, the State Department found.

    While construction of Keystone XL would contribute roughly $3.4 billion to U.S. gross domestic product, according to a National Regulatory Research Institute review of State Department estimates (pdf), the pipeline would also offer tax revenues for local and state governments. Property taxes resulting from the project would generate roughly $55.6 million in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.

    Knudsen argued that axing the pipeline would deprive counties and states of future tax revenue.

    “Montana will lose the benefits of future easements and leases, and several local counties will lose their single-biggest property taxpayer. The loss of Keystone XL’s economic activity and tax revenues are especially devastating as five of the six impacted counties are designated high-poverty areas,” Knudsen wrote.

    In canceling the permit, Biden said the pipeline would do little to benefit the country’s energy security and economy, while approving it would undermine the administration’s efforts to combat climate change.

    “In 2015, following an exhaustive review, the Department of State and the President determined that approving the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the U.S. national interest,” Biden wrote in his Jan. 20 executive order.

    “That analysis, in addition to concluding that the significance of the proposed pipeline for our energy security and economy is limited, stressed that the United States must prioritize the development of a clean energy economy, which will in turn create good jobs,” he wrote.

    “The analysis further concluded that approval of the proposed pipeline would undermine U.S. climate leadership by undercutting the credibility and influence of the United States in urging other countries to take ambitious climate action,” he wrote, adding that, “The world must be put on a sustainable climate pathway to protect Americans and the domestic economy from harmful climate impacts.”

    Knudsen contended in the letter that Biden did not explain “how killing the Keystone XL pipeline project directly advances the goals of ‘protect[ing] Americans and the domestic economy from harmful climate impacts,’” nor does his decision “actually cure any of the climate ills” that the president referenced.

    “Observers are thus left with only one reasonable supposition: it is a symbolic act of virtue signaling to special interests and the international community,” he wrote.

    The Keystone XL pipeline was first proposed in 2008 but reached a snag under the Obama administration. Former President Donald Trump revived the project and was a strong proponent.

    Cancellation of the Keystone construction permit has also drawn heavy fire from industry groups and Republican lawmakers.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 19:05

  • Manhattan Luxury Real Estate Market Records Best Week Since 2019
    Manhattan Luxury Real Estate Market Records Best Week Since 2019

    Manhattan’s high-end real estate market recorded an unseasonably strong performance last week (Feb. 1-7), with the largest amount of contracts for properties asking plus $4 million since November 2019, according to Mansion Global. 

    The latest market report from Olshan Realty shows 30 luxury home contracts were signed last week. Twenty-one of those were condo units, four were co-ops, and five were townhomes.

    A surge in buying interest comes as developers and sellers have slashed luxury property prices following the virus pandemic. Even before the pandemic, around half of all new condo units built after 2015 were unsold. A lot of inventory still sits on the sidelines. 

    However, Donna Olshan, who tracks luxury sales, said last week’s report is “very optimistic because really what it’s showing is the consumer is out there and aggressively looking at New York as a place to buy and live.” 

    In the last two weeks, 57 contracts were signed, 48 of which were apartments. Of those, half were sold by developers. The totals in the previous two weeks “continued a trend that started after the November election—a cocktail stirred with ingredients ranging from the Covid-19 vaccine to low interest rates, a robust stock market and meaningful discounts,” Olshan continued. 

    Last week, the total weekly transaction volume for luxury Manhattan homes was around $244 million. 

    The priciest condo to find a buyer last week were the 10th and 11th floors at 1045 Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, which sold for $27.95 million. The buyer plans to combine both floors into one unit with 8,386-square-foot duplex apartments.

    The second priciest condo sold last week was at One57, a 75-story building located on Billionaires’ Row, for $19.9 million, reduced from $25.2 million.

    Buyers remain in control of the market. Average asking prices for luxury properties fell 10% last week to the final price. Many of the homes took an astonishing 743 days to sell.

    The surge in buying interest among luxury properties in Manhattan is only among the ultra-rich who can obtain cheap loans, unlike average folks who are still having trouble finding mortgages as bank lending standards remain tight. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/10/2021 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 10

Today’s News 10th February 2021

  • China Injects Record Amount Of Loans In January
    China Injects Record Amount Of Loans In January

    On one hand China is desperate to tell the world that this time it is taking deleveraging of the world’s largest and most indebted financial system seriously. On the other hand, it is doing this:

    The chart shows that in January, China created a staggering, record 3.58 trillion in new yuan loans, a number which easily surpassed the previous record of 3.340 trillion set last January just as the Chinese economy shut down as a result of covid, when only gargantuan credit injections prevented a total economic collapse in the world’s 2nd largest economy. It’s almost as if only ever greater credit injections are keeping China alive.

    Because it wasn’t just new loans: the broadest Chinese credit aggregate, Total Social Financing which includes new loans as well as shadow debt creation and bond issuance, also exploded to a monstrous 5.170 trillion yuan, which at today’s exchange rate is roughly $800 billion.

    That’s right: in one month China injected roughly 6 months of QE into the economy. And to think of all the praise Stanley Druckenmiller heaped just a few days ago on China for its “fiscal sanity”.

    Here are the details:

    • New CNY loans: RMB 3580Bn in January vs. consensus: RMB 3500bn. Outstanding CNY loan growth: 12.7% yoy in January; December: 12.8% yoy (12.1% SA ann mom).
    • Total social financing: RMB 5170bn in January, vs. consensus: RMB 4600bn.
    • TSF stock growth (after adding all government bonds) was 13.2% yoy in January, lower than 13.4% in December. The implied month-on-month growth of TSF stock accelerated to 12.0% (seasonally adjusted annual rate) from 7.8% in December.
    • M2: 9.4% yoy in January (1.0% SA ann mom) vs. GSe: 10.0% yoy, Bloomberg consensus: 10.1% yoy. December: 10.1% yoy (2.6% SA ann mom estimated by GS).

    So yes, anyone who only looks at the M2 – like Druck – would be left with the impression that China is barely adding to the Chinese debt. That would be dead wrong as nothing could be further from the truth.

    As Goldman summarizes, the sequential growth of total social financing soared in January from a significant slowdown in December, mainly on decent loans growth, less drag from shadow lending (especially a rebound in banks’ undiscounted acceptance bills), and recovery in corporate bond issuance. How to read this conflicting signal amid China’s overall posture of urgent deleveraging? Well, if one listens to how Goldman justified it, this is just a Golidlocks scenario – the garguantuan amount of debt could have been even more Gargantuan:

    Overall, as suggested by the Q4 monetary policy report and December’s Central Economic Working Conference, the PBOC will avoid sharp tightening to jeopardize growth recovery, but will also likely avoid too dovish a policy to prevent risks (e.g., financial leverage).

    Goldman’s main points:

    1. The sequential growth of TSF picked up to 12.0% mom annualized sa in January, from 7.8% in December, mainly on decent loans growth, less drag from shadow lending (especially a rebound in banks’ undiscounted acceptance bills), and recovery in corporate bond issuance, despite a decline in net government bond issuance. In year-on-year terms, TSF stock growth moderated to 13.2% yoy in January. M2 growth decelerated to 9.4% yoy in January from 10.1% in December, in part due to larger-than-seasonality increase in fiscal deposits.
    2. Among major TSF components, new Rmb loans was decent in January, reflecting robust activity growth in manufacturing and construction suggested by January PMI data, and the government’s continued support for SMEs. Net increase in mid-to-long term loans to corporates was higher in January, and mid-to-long term loans to households also gained pace, although some news reports mentioned banks slowed the lending pace for mortgage loans. Banks’ undiscounted acceptance bills rebounded significantly in January (even after seasonal adjustment), partially due to lower interbank interest rates (though rates up in late January). Contraction in trust and entrusted loans also narrowed, in part due to smaller maturities. Corporate bond issuance recovered roughly to the average levels before the shock from bond defaults in November, while net government bonds issuance in January slowed notably. The government has delayed pre-allocation of part of local government special bond quota this year, and news reports seemed to suggest there remains a chance the government will pre-allocate part of quota to local governments.

    There is another reason why China injected such a massive amount of debt in the economy: the real reason. Recall that interbank interest rates in late January soared leading to concerns that PBOC may tighten monetary policy. Well, it was up to Beijing to ease nerves and to demonstrate that while rates won’t be cut, China can easily inject trillions into its economy, if needed.

    It was needed, because the PBOC scrambled to inject enough liquidity to unfreeze the repo market (even as it still pretended that it was tightening conditions as part of its deleveraging) and as Goldman elaborates “in a monetary policy framework with policy rates increasingly emphasized as an anchor for market rates (DR007 in particular), this is more like a normalization of market rates to the average levels (fluctuating around OMO rates) prior to the shock from bond defaults in November, and accordingly narrow the deviation of market rates from the policy rate (OMO rate).”

    And while a decent liquidity injection from PBOC and significant decline in interbank interest rates in December and early January helped corporate bond issuance recovery, it had also led to significant rise in leveraging in bond market. So to make sure the credit markets were well greased, China had no option but to flood even more new loans.

    Goldman’s conclusion is that “as suggested by the Q4 monetary policy report and December’s Central Economic Working Conference, the PBOC will avoid sharp tightening to jeopardize growth recovery, but will also likely avoid too dovish a policy to prevent risks (e.g., financial leverage).”

    Yawn. What the credit data really means is that Beijing continues to engage in a giant magic trick with the rest of the world, one where it pretends to shrink its debt even as it injects record amount of debt at the same time.

    And yes, massive credit injections are all that really matter because on Wednesday, Chinese bank stocks outperformed in Hong Kong “after financial institutions offered a record amount of new loans last month” Bloomberg reported adding that half of the 12 biggest gainers Wednesday morning in Hang Seng Index are lenders, led by Bank of Communications rising as much as 4.3% while major banks also rally in mainland trading.

    In other words, such an amount of debt was not expected, and should not have been expected if indeed China was doing as well as Beijing has been claiming.

    In short: Beijing continues to lie about everything.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 23:29

  • Accused 'Oath Keeper' Denies All Charges, Claims To Be Former FBI Section Chief Who's Held Top Secret Clearance For Decades
    Accused ‘Oath Keeper’ Denies All Charges, Claims To Be Former FBI Section Chief Who’s Held Top Secret Clearance For Decades

    A Virginia man accused of helping to ‘plan and coordinate’ the January 6th Capitol breach claims he’s not a member, much less a leader, of the Oath Keepers – a group commonly described in the press as ‘far-right’ extremists – and that he wasn’t at the Capitol on January 6th due to what his attorney described as “physical limitations” that would have prevented his travel in the first place.

    Thomas Caldwell denies belonging to the Oath Keepers and says he wasn’t at the Capitol riot

    In a Monday court filing, 66-year-old Thomas Caldwell also claimed he’s held a top-secret security clearance since 1979, ran a consulting firm that did classified work for the US government, and worked as a FBI section chief from 2009 to 2010 – a job the Associated Press says typically requires ‘rising through the ranks of the bureau.’

    Thomas Caldwell, who authorities believe holds a leadership role in the extremist group, worked as a section chief for the FBI from 2009 to 2010 after retiring from the Navy, his lawyer, Thomas Plofchan, wrote in a motion urging the judge to release him from jail while he awaits trial.

    The defense said Caldwell, who has denied being part of the Oath Keepers, has held a top-secret security clearance since 1979, which required multiple special background investigations, according to Plofchan. Caldwell also ran a consulting firm that did classified work for the U.S. government, the lawyer said.

    …

    Caldwell’s lawyer said his client retired as a lieutenant commander with the Navy and that he was a “100% disabled veteran.” Caldwell suffered from complications related to a “service-connected injury,” including shoulder, back and knee issues, the attorney said. In 2010, Caldwell had spinal surgery, which later failed and led to chronic spinal issues and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the court filing. -Associated Press

    “Moving, sitting for extended periods of time, lifting, carrying, and other physical activities are extremely painful and Caldwell is limited in his ability to engage in them,” Caldwell’s motion seeking pre-trial release continues.

    Caldwell was arrested at his Berryville, VA home on January 19 after being accused of conspiring “to forcibly storm the US Capitol.”

    Authorities claimed in charging documents to have connected Caldwell and two other individuals, Donovan Crowl and Jessica Watkins, to the Oath Keepers through “social media messages, photos and video,” where they allegedly arranged hotel rooms in DC days before the incident. In another message, Caldwell is allegedly referred to as “commander.” An FBI witness also referred to a “Commander Tom” which investigators believe refers to Caldwell.

    Charging documents show messages between Caldwell and the others about arranging hotel rooms in the Washington area in the days before the siege. In one Facebook message from Crowl to Caldwell, Crowl states: “Will probably call you tomorrow … mainly because … I like to know wtf plan is. You are the man COMMANDER.”

    The FBI wrote that Caldwell is believed to have referenced the leader of the Oath Keepers, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, in a Facebook message to group members in the days before the riot.

    “I don’t know if Stewie has even gotten out his call to arms but it’s a little friggin late,” Caldwell wrote, according to the FBI. “This is one we are doing on our own. We will link up with the north carolina (sic) crew.” –Associated Press, Jan. 19

    Caldwell also allegedly posted a Facebook video, followed two minutes later with the comment “Us storming the castle. Please share. Sharon was right with me! I am such an instigator! She was ready for it man! Didn’t even mind the tear gas.”

    He then posted two minutes later: “Proud boys scuffled with cops and drove them inside to hide. Breached the doors. One guy made it all the way to the house floor, another to Pelosi’s office. A good time.”

    Authorities also claim the Oath Keepers communicated during the Capitol riot about the whereabouts of lawmakers – with Caldwell allegedly having received a message that read: “all members are in the tunnels under the capital,” and “Seal them in turn on gas.”

    “Tom all legislators are down in the Tunnels 3floors down,” read another message, and “go through back house chamber doors facing N left down hallway down steps.”

    Roughly 200 people including Caldwell have been charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 incident, ranging from disorderly conduct and assault to disrupting Congress. According to the report, a special group of prosecutors is considering whether to bring sedition charges.

    The Oath Keepers, founded by Yale Law graduate Stuart Rhodes, bills itself as an association of non-partisan current and former military officers, cops and first responders and notably provided disaster relief to Texas, Louisiana and Puerto Rican hurricane victims. They also have a policy to physically remove any white supremacists from their rallies.

    Of note, on January 13, one week after the Capitol Riot, US intelligence agencies warned that violent extremists with “political grievances” will likely pose the “greatest domestic terrorism threats in 2021.“

    Two weeks later, we found that one of the leaders of the Proud Boys, a group roundly labeled a “far-right extremist group” by the media and recently designated a terrorist entity by Canada, was a ‘prolific’ FBI informant who was notably ordered to stay away from Washington D.C. one day before the January 6 Capitol riot after he was arrested on vandalism and weapons charges. Several members of the Proud Boys leadership were taken down after the ‘insurrection.’

    Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the Proud Boys who in 2014 legal documents was revealed to have been an FBI informant

    Read the original Caldwell affidavit below:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 23:26

  • Don't Impeach Trump. Impeach The Deep State For Its Conspiracy To Kill The Constitution
    Don’t Impeach Trump. Impeach The Deep State For Its Conspiracy To Kill The Constitution

    Authored by John Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.”

    – George Orwell, 1984

    Let’s be clear about one thing: the impeachment of Donald Trump is a waste of time and money.

    Impeaching Trump will accomplish very little, and it will not in any way improve the plight of the average American. It will only reinforce the spectacle and farce that have come to be synonymous with politics today

    While the nation allows itself to be distracted by yet more bread-and-circus politics, the American kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

    So here’s what I propose: let’s impeach the Deep State and its cabal of government operatives from every point along the political spectrum (right, left and center) for conspiring to expand the federal government’s powers at the expense of the citizenry.

    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.

    Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war, not because the American people are so divided but because that’s how corrupt governments control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).

    These are dangerous times.

    These are indeed dangerous times but not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because the borders are being invaded by foreign armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute, or because a pandemic is spreading like a contagion, or even because raging mobs of so-called domestic terrorists are trying to overthrow elections.

    • No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing armies to rob, steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill American citizens with immunity.

    • The danger “we the people” face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.

    • This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.

    • This danger comes from greedy, power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.

    • This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.

    • This danger comes from a surveillance state that grows more and more ominous.

    Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly, devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating, deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved, dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory, dictatorial schemes inflicted on “we the people” by a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long since ceased to be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

    Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What remains all-too-usual, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

    Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

    Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Likewise, by subjecting Americans to full-body scans and license-plate readers without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the scans for later use, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

    Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. In the wake of various shootings in recent years, “gun control” has become a resounding theme. Those advocating gun reform see the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms as applying only to government officials. As a result, even Americans who legally own firearms are being treated with suspicion and, in some cases, undue violence. In one case, a Texas man had his home subjected to a no-knock raid and was shot in his bed after police, attempting to deliver a routine search warrant, learned that he was in legal possession of a firearm. In another incident, a Florida man who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm found himself detained for two hours during a routine traffic stop in Maryland while the arresting officer searched his vehicle in vain for the man’s gun, which he had left at home.

    Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

    Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. In early America, citizens were considered equals with law enforcement officials. Authorities were rarely permitted to enter one’s home without permission or in a deceitful manner. And it was not uncommon for police officers to be held personally liable for trespass when they wrongfully invaded a citizen’s home. Unlike today, early Americans could resist arrest when a police officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a warrant—which the police had to allow citizens to read before arresting them. (Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is armed with high-tech military weapons and tasers would be nothing short of suicidal.) As police forces across the country continue to be transformed into outposts of the military, with police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware in droves, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.

    Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search us, and probe us intimately. It’s no longer unusual to hear accounts of men and women being subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops. What remains to be seen is how the emerging hypervigilance over COVID-19 vaccines will impact that right to bodily integrity.

    Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., little to nothing has been done to counteract these abuses. Instead, we are daily being accustomed to life in this electronic concentration camp.

    Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

    Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age, let’s call it the age of authoritarianism. In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

    It is not overstating matters to say that Congress, which has done its best to keep their unhappy constituents at a distance, may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America.

    In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism: a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

    Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

    Sound familiar?

    Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism. Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many.

    History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a totalitarian state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.

    Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

    From Clinton to Bush, Obama to Trump, and now Biden, it’s as if we’ve been caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the powers-that-be want us to remain distracted, divided, alienated from each other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our religion, our race and our value systems.

    Yet as George Orwell observed, “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 23:25

  • "Collapse Of Newborn Population Is Really Here": Births In China Plummeted 15% In 2020
    “Collapse Of Newborn Population Is Really Here”: Births In China Plummeted 15% In 2020

    Preliminary numbers assessing China’s births in 2020 released by the country’s household registration system are setting off alarm bells for Beijing, suggesting a continued severe population decline, given the new numbers for last year show a whopping 15% decline in births from the year before.

    “Concerns over the outlook for China’s population have grown after the number of newborns recorded in the country’s household registration system declined 15 per cent during a coronavirus-hit 2020,” South China Morning Post observes of the new numbers. “Last year, a total 10.035 million of newborns were recorded in the household registration system, known as hukou in China, down from 11.79 million in 2019, according to figures released by the Ministry of Public Security on Monday.”

    AFP via Getty Images

    While the hukou system only reveals preliminary information on total births across the population, it’s official demographic stats for COVID-impacted 2020 is expected to come out soon via China’s National Bureau of Statistics based on a once in ten year national census it recently conducted. As SCMP underscores it’s predicted that when total official stats do come out, expectations are for a further decline after previously 2019 saw “the lowest level since 1961” and down from 2018 as well.

    China is the world’s most populous country with the number of people commonly estimated at just over 1.4 billion. When the current working-age population hits retirement, there are fears the decline in births trend will severely impact the world’s second largest economy.

    This also given the latest official figures out of the National Bureau of Statistics show that some 18% of the population is already over 60, with this ageing demographic to grow to one-third of the entire population by 2050.

    The SCMP report cited one prominent research economics professor to say the writing is on the wall. “The collapse of the newborn population is really here,” he warned, writing that:

    “Although we cannot deduce the decline in the birth population in these regions as the annual decline in the country, we consider that idea of having two children is weak and the number of women of childbearing age has decreased, so we need not anticipate further that the birth population in 2020 will drop significantly compared with 2019. The collapse of the newborn population is really here,” said James Liang, a research professor of applied economics at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, in a blog post last week.

    The obvious irony is of course that China is responsible for its own undoing on this front, given it’s now feeling the full impact of its draconian and dystopian/totalitarian “one child policy” which was enforced harshly and in effect from 1975 through 2015.

    Statistic: Population distribution in China in 2019, by broad age group | Statista
    Find more statistics at Statista

    In 2016 and after couples were allowed to have two children, which the government began vocally encouraging, though it increasingly appears too little, too late.

    Sensing the coming population and birth rate woes, the Communist-run People’s Daily in 2018 put out a rare full page editorial urging the following: “Giving birth is a family matter and a national issue too,” and warned that “the impact of low birth rates on the economy and society has begun to show.”

    Thus seemingly overnight the central planners in Beijing went from punishing those who dared to have more children to then claiming bigger families were ‘patriotic’ as part of a national duty. Based on the latest preliminary numbers, it naturally doesn’t appear the population got the message in time. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 23:05

  • The US Has FANG, China Has A Booze Company
    The US Has FANG, China Has A Booze Company

    By Cahterine Ngai, Bloomberg reporter and commentator

    China’s equity market is increasingly dominated by just one stock, and that makes gains in its benchmarks look precarious.

    Liquor maker Kweichow Moutai has surged 20% this year to be worth $461 billion, in large part because mutual funds will lag rivals and lose clients if they don’t own it.

    Moutai is now the 12th-largest listed company in the world. For comparison, that’s about twice as valuable as Diageo and Anheuser-Busch InBev combined. The stock accounts for 64% of the Shanghai Composite Index’s gain this year, up from 21% of its advance over the past 12 months.

    As well as betting that a stick-with-your-winners momentum trade will continue to be successful, investors are counting on what appears to be an implicit endorsement from Beijing.

    That can be risky: last year, the stock tumbled as much as 8.4% after the influential People’s Daily criticized the high price of Moutai’s liquor. Back in November 2017, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said Moutai shares were rising too fast. The report triggered a plunge in the stock and a broader selloff. As illustration of the company’s rising profile, check out this rap video.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 22:45

  • JPMorgan Again Tries To Slam Bitcoin, Fails Spectacularly
    JPMorgan Again Tries To Slam Bitcoin, Fails Spectacularly

    With Bitcoin hitting a new all time high again today, rising above $48,000 before easing back a little, it was clearly time for JPMorgan to publish its latest hit piece against the cryptocurrency.

    In its now fourth attempt to talk down bitcoin in the past two months (see here for failed attempt #1, attempts #2, and attempt #3), JPMorgan has published a new report, this time aimed at all those bitcoin fans who buy the currency because other major corporations or funds may follow in Tesla’s footsteps , and purchase millions (or billions) of the cryptocurrency because “while bitcoin got another boost with Tesla’s announcement this week, the 8% allocation of its cash reserves to bitcoin is unlikely to be followed by more mainstream corporates”.

    We disagree completely not least of all because one month ago we predicted exactly that not only would Tesla buy bitcoin following the brilliant example set by Microstrategy, but that many more companies would follow in Elon Musk’s footsteps. As a reminder, this is what we said:

    One such company which we are convinced will announce it is converting billions of its existing cash into bitcoin, is none other than Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk was urged by MSTR CEO Saylor to make a similar move with Tesla’s money. And since Musk, already the world’s richest man thanks to the most aggressive financial engineering on the planet, has never been one to shy away from a challenge, we are absolutely confident that it is only a matter of time before Tesla announces that it has purchased a few billion in bitcoin.

    But before we demolish the latest joke of an argument presented by JPMorgan, we would like to remind readers of the joke of a thesis that JPM laid out just over two weeks ago, when Bitcoin rose above $40,000 for the first time, and when the largest US bank once again tried to convince its clients that it would not go any higher. In a nutshell, the company warned that because bitcoin now correlates with risk assets, it does not provide “diversification” to investors who seek a safe haven from conventional risk exposure.

    To this our counterargument was simple:

    … so bitcoin sells off as much as or more than stocks do during risk off periods. But why is that any news? And why does JPM even care about bitcoin’s diversification abilities, when instead one should look at it from a very different lens: bitcoin – and all crypto – are merely extremely volatile, ultra-high beta assets which rise much more than stocks during times of massive liquidity injection and drop at or near the pace that stocks drop when liquidity is withdrawn. Over the long run, this means that bitcoin will always win. There is no advanced calculus that one needs to figure this out.

    Indeed, if one want a truly diversified and safe asset one would just buy gold. But that’s not why anyone is buying bitcoin, least of all corporate CFOs and Treasurers, who have made their case for the crypto very clearly: in a world in which just under 1% of US GDP enters the market in the form of newly created central bank liquidity, bitcoin is becoming an asset that while not safe from high beta correlation to other risk assets, is certainly a hedge to not just infinite monetary dilution but to outright fiat and monetary collapse. Ironically, it was JPM itself that admitted this:

    Relative to any other asset class or portfolio hedge, cryptocurrencies would uniquely protect portfolios against a simultaneous loss of faith in a country’s currency and its payments system, because they are produced and they circulate outside conventional and regulated channels.

    Well… yeah, that’s exactly the point guys. And the in the biggest headscrather, JPM itself admitted what Elon Musk just did, namely that “as insurance (or a lottery ticket) against dystopia, some exposure to these assets could be always justified irrespective of liquidity and volatility concerns.“

    Our conclusion was simple:

    Well, in this insane world where everyone should be seeking insurance against “dystopia”, we would be delighted to own as much of the cryptocurrency as we possibly can, “irrespective of liquidity and volatility concerns”. So just like your boss back in 2017, thanks for making the decisive case for bitcoin yet again, John.

    But the clearest and simplest reason why JPM was dead wrong is that since JPM’s latest hit piece was written on Jan 21, bitcoin is up a whopping 50% and anyone who shorted it on bitcoin’s latest “advise” has suffered terminal losses.

    That particular JPM report was written by the head of the bank’s cross-asset strategy, John Normand. A similar bitcoin hitpiece was written just days prior by one of the bank’s quants, the author of the popular Flows and Liquidity newsletter, Nick Panigirtzoglou, whose argument was more technical: with bitcoin failing to breach $40K, CTAs, trend followers and momentum-chasing algos and quants would no longer pursue it. Needless to say that argument was also absolutely dead wrong because while momentum-chasing quants may or may not have been long, bitcoin did find enough marginal buyers to push it up from the $30,000 level to just shy of $50,000. Not only that, but in the process it forced short-covering amid what was until recently a record short base…

    … with much more squeeze pain coming (incidentally those short bitcoin, are the same people who listened to JPM in the past three months when the megabank was bashing crypto at every opportunity). Which is sad because it was Panigirtzoglou that first came out with the (quite credible) forecast that bitcoin would hit $140,000 as it becomes the millennials’ “digital gold” and keeps rising until the value of gold and bitcoin reach rough parity. Clearly, since then JPM’s Greek quant got the infamous tap on the shoulder, although it remains unclear why: because he truly believes that bitcoin should be lower (why, when even his colleague Normand made the case that bitcoin is the ultimate “dystopia insurance”), or because JPM’s prop traders are hoping to get in and are eager to buy anything that JPM’s clients will sell.

    In any case, fast forwarding to today, when the same Nikolas Panigirtzoglou switched places with John Normand to became the latest JPM banker tasked with sparking at least a model selloff in bitcoin. His argument: try to build a persuasive case against the latest prevailing narrative – as laid out yesterday by Mike Novogratz who in turn took it verbatim from us one month earlier, when we explained that this is the way bitcoin hits $100,000 – that an avalanche of companies will follow in Tesla’s footsteps and buy bitcoin. This is how the JPM quant lays out his argument:

    Tesla’s announcement this week that it has invested $1.5bn in bitcoin or 8% of its corporate cash reserves surprised markets by the magnitude of the purchases and re-invigorated expectations that other corporates will follow with their cash reserves.

    It may have surprise you, Nick, but our readers were warned one month in advance that this is precisely the next key catalyst that will send bitcoin much higher. As for expectations that “other corporates” will buy bitcoin, that’s precisely what they will do. But not according to JPM because…

    … In our opinion, the main issue with the idea that mainstream corporate treasures will follow the example of Tesla is the volatility of bitcoin. The typical portfolio of a corporate treasury consists of bank deposits, money market funds and short-dated bonds. As a result, the annualized vol of a typical corporate treasury portfolio is around 1%.

    This to JPM implies that even small allocations of 1% to bitcoin “would cause a big increase in the volatility of the overall portfolio. For example, if a corporate treasurer allocates 1% of her 1% vol portfolio to bitcoin, the overall portfolio volatility will rise from 1% to 8%. This is because of the large 80% annualized vol of bitcoin.”

    On its surface this argument – which comes from the man who recently predicted that bitcoin would run out of buying power because it had somehow lost momentum when it was down for a day or two – is reasonable unfortunately it is also dead wrong, because no corporate treasurer is buying (or not buying) bitcoin because of its potential volatility. The reason why they would be buying bitcoin is also the main reason why corporate officers do anything: to boost their stock price. And as the case of MicroStrategy (MSTR), which was the first company to convert most of its cash into bitcoin demonstrates so vividly, there is a lot of stock price upside once companies load up on bitcoin.

    In fact, we are certain that this is one of the two key reasons behind Musk’s decision to buy bitcoin, especially after he and MSTR CEO Michael Saylor had a conversation in late December, in which Saylor told Musk “If you want to do your shareholders a $100 billion favor, convert the $TSLA balance sheet from USD to #BTC . Other firms on the S&P 500 would follow your lead & in time it would grow to become a $1 trillion favor.”

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    While Panigirtzoglou clearly missed this exchange, Musk did not… and did precisely as instructed. And it’s only a matter of time before countless other companies do precisely as Musk has done, now that he has shown that it is perfectly acceptable to convert as much as 8% of one’s cash reserves into the cryptocurrency.

    There is another reason why companies will want to buy bitcoin and it is precisely the one mentioned by the JPM quant, only for a diametrically opposite rationale. By having such a volatile asset on their books, whose mark-to-market swings have to be captured in the net income line, it gives companies enough of a diversionary buffer which, when applied to some creative accounting, will allow them to either always beat bottom line estimates, or otherwise blame any miss on “one-time” bitcoin volatility. Meanwhile, thanks to having bitcoin on their books, not only do CFOs stand to benefit greatly from its appreciation (see the price of MSTR), but it makes them publicly traded proxies for bitcoin.

    Yes, in a country in which there is still no bitcoin ETF, companies who are loaded to the gills with bitcoin are a perfectly acceptable, DTCC-validated proxy for bitcoin exposure! It wouldn’t surprise us if Musk announced another $1.5 billion bitcoin purchase, and then another… as he hopes to make TSLA a company that becomes a publicly-traded proxy for bitcoin. And that’s why countless other companies will follow suit, perhaps even Apple, which RBC predicted yesterday could buy as much as $5BN in bitcoin as part of launching an “apple exchange” where bitcoin is one of the permitted currencies.

    In short: buying bitcoin is a win-win for all companies involved.

    * * *

    Perhaps knowing in the back of his head that his latest attempt to hammer bitcoin will crash spectacularly (again), Panigirtzoglou concedes that his previous skepticism was wrong, and that perhaps he is wrong this time too…

    there is no doubt that this week’s announcement changed abruptly the near-term trajectory for bitcoin by bolstering inflows and by helping bitcoin to break out above $40k. This reduces one downside risk that we saw previously with bitcoin, i.e. the idea that if its price fails to break out above $40k, the momentum signals would keep decaying till the end of March, inducing further unwinding by momentum traders. The opposite is now happening.

    Yes, Nick, precisely the opposite of what you predicted is now happening. And we suggest you get used to saying that if you plan on continuing to bash bitcoin. As for what this particular “opposite” is…

    With bitcoin breaking out above $40k, momentum traders are forced to amplify the current up move by rebuilding their long bitcoin  futures positions.

    Not only that but those shorts who built up a record bearish position in bitcoin futs as recently as the end of 2020 are now forced to cover at ever higher prices in a market in which the bitcoin float keep shrinking day after day (because every incremental institutional purchase just leaves less tokens freely traded). JPM admits this as well:

    Indeed, our position proxy based on CME bitcoin futures, the preferred vehicle of momentum traders and other speculative investors, saw a sharp almost $1bn increase this week pointing to intense buildup of futures positions.

    Obviously, the above observation does not help his case, so the JPMorganite needs to goalseek at least one argument in his behaf which he did by pulling the “flow” pace in the GBTC (grayscale bitcoin trust), the closest thing to an ETF, and which according to the JPM quant has seen a much “subdued” inflow of “$300m per week relative to the torrid $500m per week pace seen in December.” This to Panigirtzoglou suggests that “the additional flow impulse that helped bitcoin to break out above $40k came from more speculative institutional investors like those behind bitcoin futures rather than the ones behind the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.”

    Well that… and also major corporations like Tesla, which bought bitcoin outright and not via the GBTC and in fact, the whole point of the argument is that as more companies buy bitcoin – as in tokens, not trusts or paper futures – they themselves become bitcoin proxies for others.

    In fact, we are shocked that Panigirtzoglou fails to grasp this simplest counterargument to his entire narrative. It’s shocking because even retail investors now get it, as the JPM analysts points out as well:  “In addition, there appears to have been an increase in the flow impulse by retail investors also this week, as suggested by the spike in volumes at itBit i.e. the exchange via which retail purchases via Paypal are routed.”

    So momentum chasers are buying, Elon Musk is buying, retail is buying, companies such as MSTR buy it and see their stock price explode 10 fold but… other companies won’t buy it. Well, that’s pretty much the gist of JPM’s argument:

    In all, while bitcoin got another boost with Tesla’s announcement this week, the 8% allocation of its cash reserves to bitcoin is unlikely to be followed by more mainstream corporates.

    At this point it makes the most sense to just agree to check back in a month and see just how off the JPMorgan strategist was… again. Amusingly, at the very end of his note, the quant himself realizes that his entire argument is as hollow as the Marriner Eccles building, and does a “yes but…”:

    Irrespective of how many corporates eventually follow Tesla’s example, there is no doubt that this week’s announcement changed abruptly the near-term trajectory for bitcoin by bolstering speculative institutional flows via bitcoin futures as well as retail flows. How sustained this week’s price surge becomes would depend in our opinion on whether less speculative institutional flows like those behind the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust follow suit.

    No, Nick, you are painfully wrong again… just like you were wrong the last time you looked at your favorite GBTC as a proxy of… something… and predicted that bitcoin would drop. It did not. Furthermore, it’s not “irrespective of how many corporates follow Tesla’s example” – that’s precisely the ballgame right there. Once we get two more companies, then 4, then 8, well even quants know what sequences that is.

    But while we have no question that many more companies – including blue chip names like Apple – will eventually buy bitcoin, the real question we have is when JPM’s biggest clients, like Bridgewater for example, will announce that they too have bought bitcoin. And Bridgewater will. And since Nick completely missed the Tesla purchase of bitcoin when he could have simply read our post on the matter (as a reminder, JPMorgan analysts, you guys are paid to predict the future, as in what will happen, not explain the past and yet that’s all you’ve been doing here for the past three months) we will be helpful and point Mr. Panigirtzoglou to what Ray Dalio said just two weeks ago:

    “I and my colleagues at Bridgewater are intently focusing on alternative storehold of wealth assets and expect Bridgewater to soon offer an alt-cash fund and a storehold of wealth fund in order to better deal with the devaluation of money and credit that we consider to be a major risk and opportunity, and Bitcoin won’t escape our scrutiny.”

    And the punchline:

    “It seems to me that Bitcoin has succeeded in crossing the line from being a highly speculative idea that could well not be around in short order to probably being around and probably having some value in the future….To me Bitcoin looks like a long-duration option on a highly unknown future that I could put an amount of money in that I wouldn’t mind losing about 80% of.”

    Translation: in the next few weeks, Bridgewater will announce on its own or in response to external prodding…

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    … that it has bought billions worth of bitcoin, and that will be the catalyst that sends the crypto above $50,000, $60,000 or perhaps even $100,000. Meanwhile, JPM will still be looking at the GBTC and scratching its head wondering how it could give its clients such terrible advice… again.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 22:25

  • Trump’s Maximum Pressure Campaign Lives On Under Biden’s Command
    Trump’s Maximum Pressure Campaign Lives On Under Biden’s Command

    Submitted by Southfront,

    The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps received 340 new speedboats during a ceremony at the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.

    The delivered speedboats are co-produced by the IRGC Navy and the Defense Ministry and are capable of carrying various types of missiles to attack enemy targets. The delivery took place alongside the celebration of the 42nd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. These boats are to be actively used in the Persian Gulf, Sea of Oman, and the Caspian Sea.

    The IRGC Navy is focused on smaller vessels, aimed at swarming a potential adversary. The newly-delivered speedboats were described as agile, maneuverable and equipped with radar-evading stealth technology.

    Tehran is continuing to reinforce its positions and pursue its interests. This is prompted by the fact that US President Joe Biden’s vow to rejoin the Nuclear Deal turned out to be entirely hollow. Iran demanded that the sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration be removed, otherwise rejoining the deal meant nothing.

    On February 8th, Biden confirmed that sanctions on Iran wouldn’t be lifted, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki saying that such a “big policy change” wasn’t planned.

    To show some “reduction in pressure”, the USS Nimitz carrier strike group was pulled out of the region, in a signal that an escalation with Iran isn’t planned. That happened as Tehran, Moscow and Beijing announced they would hold joint naval drills.

    In response, US Central Command’s Gen Kenneth McKenzie said that Iran was the “Main Driver of Instability”, in his first public address since Biden became president. McKenzie repeated a usual a US accusation against Tehran, claiming that for more than forty years it “has funded and aggressively supported terrorism and terrorist organizations.” The “maximum pressure” campaign is simply “on hold”, but is not canceled.

    Iranian allies in the Middle East continue actively operating, hammering US interests and those of their allies.

    US convoys continue suffering regular attacks in Iraq, with two being subject to attacks on February 7th. In Lebanon, Hezbollah said that it would continue targeting and downing Israeli drones and more. Israel’s lack of activity in the previous days is quite notable.

    The most significant success is being achieved in Yemen, by the Houthis. The Ansar Allah movement is pushing the Saudi-led coalition back, as it destroyed ammunition depots and weapons in Marib. Riyadh also intercepted a swarm of suicide drones attributed to the Houthis, but there was no confirmation.

    Saudi Arabia is also remaining active in airstrikes, and violating the al-Hudaydah ceasefire, but with few results to show.

    US and allied interests are being pressured all around the Middle East, as the Biden administration refuses to turn its back on any of Trump’s “maximum pressure” policies. The withdrawal of the USS Nimitz CSG is a likely a welcome sign, but the sanction regime remaining, surely, spoils the party.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 22:05

  • Japanese Submarine Collides With Bulk Carrier While Surfacing
    Japanese Submarine Collides With Bulk Carrier While Surfacing

    A Japanese submarine collided with a massive dry bulk carrier as it attempted to surface on Monday off the southwestern coast of Japan, according to Nikkei Asia. 

    The Soryu-class diesel-electric attack submarine, which first entered service with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) in 2009, was attempting to surface 31 miles off the Cape Ashizuri in southwestern Japan on Monday morning, around 11:00 a.m. 

    Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said the submarine was on a training exercise while surfacing and tried to avoid the Hong Kong-registered dry bulk carrier Ocean Artemis, at the very last minute, but failed to do so, severely damaging the submarine’s communication systems and diving planes. 

    Refinitiv shipping data plots Ocean Artemis’ movements in the last 48 hours with the approximate incident area. 

    “Soryu scraped the hull of the vessel as it was surfacing. It is extremely regrettable the MSDF submarine has collided with a commercial ship,” Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said. He added an investigation has already been launched.

    Bradley Martin, a RAND Corp analyst and former US Navy captain, analyzed the submarine’s damage via photographs. Due to the damage sustained in the collision, he said the submarine’s capabilities were extremely limited.

    “I wouldn’t call the damage minor. The submarine can’t dive and can’t communicate,” Martin told CNN.

    Photos taken from the Coast Guard’s Saab 340B maritime patrol aircraft show the badly damaged submarine. 

    The question remains why didn’t the submarine’s crew use active sonar to detect incoming objects while surfacing? Though one downfall to using active sonar is that it emits signals that other submarines and vessels in the area can detect. However, passive sonar could have also been used while it provides less information about the surrounding area than its active counterpart, a massive dry bulk carrier underway should’ve been detected. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 21:45

  • Our Animal Farm
    Our Animal Farm

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AMGreatness.com,

    George Orwell published Animal Farm in August 1945, in the closing weeks of the Pacific War. Even then, most naïve supporters of the wartime Soviet-British-American alliance were no longer in denial about the contours of Moscow’s impending postwar communist aggression. 

    The short, allegorical novel’s human-like farm animals replay the transition of supposedly 1917 revolutionary Bolsheviks into cynical 1930s Stalinists. Thereby, they remind us that leftist totalitarianism inevitably becomes far worse than the supposed parasitical capitalists they once toppled.

    Orwell saw that the desire for power stamps out all ideological pretenses.

    It creates an untouchable ruling clique central to all totalitarian movements. Beware, he warns, of the powerful who claim to help the helpless.

    Something so far less violent, but no less bizarre and disturbing, now characterizes the American New New Left. It is completing its final Animal Farm metamorphosis as it finishes its long march through our cultural, economic, and social institutions. Leftists may talk of revolutionary transformation, but their agenda is to help friends, punish enemies, and to keep and expand power.

    First, remember the 1960s and 1970s agendas of the once impotent, young, and supposedly idealistic leftist revolutionaries.

    We were lectured 60 years ago that “free speech” preserves were needed on university campuses to be immune from all reactionary administrative censorship. Transparency and “truth” were the revolution’s brands.

    The First Amendment was said by them to be sacred, even as the “free speech movement” transitioned to the “filthy speech movement.” Leftists sued to mainstream nudity in film. They wanted easy access to pornography. They mainstreamed crude profanity. The supposed right-wingers were repressed. They were the “control freaks” who sought to stop the further “liberation” of the common culture. 

    Ullstein bild via Getty Images

    In those days, the ACLU still defined the right of free expression as protecting the odious, whether the unhinged Nazis, the pathetic old-Left Communists, or nihilistic Weather Underground terrorists. 

    “Censorship” was a dirty word. It purportedly involved the religious bigots and medieval minds that in vain had tried to cancel ideological and cultural mavericks and geniuses from Lenny Bruce to Dalton Trumbo. “Banned in Boston” was a sign of cretinism. Only drunken “paranoids” like Joe McCarthy resorted to “blacklists.” We were reminded that the inferior nuts tried to cancel the brilliant careers of their betters whom they disliked, or feared.

    The Right supposedly had sunk into fluoride and “precious bodily fluid” paranoias, and “Who lost China?” conspiracy theories. Conservatives, the radicals lectured us, masked the poverty of their thinking by “red-baiting.” They talked as if “commies” and “insurrectionists” were around every corner—in hopes of militarizing the country, and using police and troops to intimidate the “people.”

    Snooping, surveillance, wiretaps—all that and more was awful—the purported work of nutty J. Edgar Hoover. His flat-topped, wing-tipped “G-men” usually outnumbered Black Panthers, Weathermen, and SDS members at secret strategy sessions. 

    Hollywood went wild in the 1960s and 1970s by warning us about “them.” Endless movies detailed the solo efforts of heroes, who were watched and threatened by the “government,” working hand in glove, of course, with either corporations or the “rich.” In films like “Three Days of the Condor,” “The Conversation,” or “Blowup,” we were warned of the nefarious powers of surveillance. 

    Fearing Russia was the mark of a conspiracist nut. In films like “The Russians are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” we were reminded that the paranoia about the Soviets was as deadly as the Soviets themselves, who were pleasant enough, not much different from us.

    Students in the 1960s high schools were spoon-fed Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Brave New World, and other dystopian novels. Orwell and Huxley warned them of the dangers of a super-spy apparat, a one-party state that reorders a docile subservient population, and the combination of “science” with thought control—the sort of stuff that Nixon or Goldwater was no doubt plotting.  

    So better to be an individualist, the Left preached, a rebel at war with all orthodoxy and conformity, a “Rebel Without a Cause,” Holden Caulfield, or one of the good renegades in “The Wild Ones.” We were to worship James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen because they were “free,” “didn’t give a s—t,” and demolished “the Man’s” silly imposed “rules and regulations.” “Easy Rider” was the 1960’s bible.

    On campus, professors began to drop F-bombs in class. They dressed like students, tore down hierarchies between student and teacher (“Just call me Mike”). Once staid academics now invited edgy campus speakers to blast America. In melodramatic fashion, they considered themselves perennially teaching from the barricades. 

    We were told that they were the frontline speakers of truth to power. These were the nonconformists who had defeated loyalty oaths. After all, they dated their students and joined radicals to storm the college president’s office. They preached a “do your thing” credo of letting professors pretty much say whatever they wished.

    Reporters were either iconoclastic Gonzos or shoe-leather investigators on the scent of deep state overreach. They were obsessed with wrongdoing at the CIA and FBI. Politicians, of course, weren’t to be trusted—given the corporations who pulled their puppet strings.

    The enemy of America, we were told, was the “big guys,” especially the international conglomerates like ITT with global reach. The corporationists refined the arts of the cartel, trust, and monopoly. “Small is beautiful” was the antithetical mantra. 

    Radical sons of the Left crusaded against “dirty money” and “the plutocratic rich” with their “concentration of wealth”—as if the Rockefellers or the Gettys posed existential threats to America by their abilities to insert huge amounts of cash to warp elections or to buy officials. 

    Generals were caricatured as caudillos, cigar choppers with shades, showy ribbons and bronze on their chests, and oversized hats and epaulets. We were warned they threatened us with a militarized police state. 

    The “revolving door” was a mortal sin, as the tentacles of the Pentagon octopus now squeezed out public money for bombs, rockets, and jets to fight needless wars. About every three weeks Ike’s farewell warning about the “military-industrial complex” was trotted out by liberal columnists to remind us of felonious corruption. 

    Civil and women’s rights were the twin pillars of the 1960s radicals. From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Malcolm X, the themes were for “white America” to live up to the ideals of their Constitution, to finally realize the “promises of the Declaration of Independence” and to treat people on the basis of the “content of their character” and not on “the color of their skin.” The problem was never 1776 or 1787, but those who had not yet fully met the Founders’ exceptional ideals.

    A “color-blind society” was a ’60s sobriquet. Women strove to ensure girls had the same rights as boys, from leadership roles to sports. 

    The point of the 1960s, again we were taught, was to tear down the rules, the traditions and customs, the hierarchies of the old guys. The targets were supposedly the uptight, short-hair, square-tie, adult generation who grew up in the Depression, won World War II, and were fighting to defeat Cold War Soviet Union. 

    The good guys, the students, and the activists, if they only had power, were going to break up corporations, shame (or “eat”) the rich, and bring in young, hip politicians. Reformers like the younger Kennedy brothers, the John Kerry war hero-resisters, the Bay Area Dianne Feinsteins, and the hip Nancy Pelosis would disrupt the “status quo” of politics.  

    They would all push hard for assimilation and integration of the races, and the equality of the sexes in pursuit of universal equality of opportunity. The mantra of the 1960s and 1970s was “opportunity,” Remember the 1964 federal EEOC—the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

    Ullstein bild via Getty Images

    Our Nightmare, 2021

    Fast forward a half-century. What did these now-late septuagenarians give America? 

    Yes, the downtrodden pigs, the exploited horses, and the victimized sheep finally did expel Farmer Jones from America’s Animal Farm. 

    But in his place, as Orwell predicted, revolutionary pigs began walking on two feet and absorbed all the levers of American cultural influence and power: the media, the bureaucracies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, publishing, the academy, K-12 education, professional sports, and entertainment. And to them all, the revolutionaries added their past coarseness and 1960s-era by-any-means-necessary absolutism.

    We are now finally witnessing the logical fruition of their radical utopia: Censorship, electronic surveillance, internal spying, monopolies, cartels, conspiracy theories, weaponization of the intelligence agencies, pouring billions of dollars into campaigns, changing voting laws by fiat, a woke revolutionary military, book banning, bleeding the First Amendment, canceling careers, blacklisting, separate-but-equal racial segregation and separatism. 

    Conspiracies? Now they brag of them in Time. Read their hubristic confessionals in “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” Once upon a Time, radicals used to talk of a “secret history” in terms of the Pentagon Papers, or a “shadow campaign” in detailing Hollywood blacklisting. They are exactly what they once despised, with one key qualifier: Sixties crudity and venom are central to their metamorphosis. 

    Our left-wing American revolutionary cycle from the barricades to the boardroom was pretty quick—in the manner that the ideology of the Battleship Potemkin soon led to Stalin’s show trials, or Mao’s “long march” logically resulted in the Cultural Revolution. The credo, again, is that the noble ends of forced “equity” require any means necessary to achieve them. 

    The Left censors books in our schools, whether To Kill a Mockingbird or Tom Sawyer. It is the Left who organizes efforts to shout down campus speakers or even allows them to be roughed up.  

    The Left demands not free-speech areas anymore, but no-speech “safe spaces” and “theme houses”—euphemisms for racially segregated, “separate-but-equal” zones. “Microaggressions” are tantamount to thought crimes. The mere way we look, smile, or blink can indict us as counterrevolutionaries. Stalin’s Trotskyization of all incorrect names, statues, and commemoratives is the Left’s ideal, as they seek to relabel Old America in one fell swoop. No one is spared from the new racists, not Honest Abe, not Tom Jefferson, not you, not me.

    For “teach-ins,” we now have indoctrination sessions. But the handlers are no longer long-haired 1960’s dreamy, sloppy, and incoherent mentors. They are disciplined, no-nonsense brain-washers.

    The Left’s Russia is our new old bogeyman. Putin is the new “We will bury you” Khrushchev. 

    The Left spun conspiracy theories about computer pings in Trump Tower, and nefarious meetings of Trump’s campaign officials colluding with Russian agents. CNN and MSNBC tell us that the whole plot was laid out in a bought dossier—as the fantasies of Christopher Steele’s canonical hired hit piece became the Left’s version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

    No longer were we told that our toothpaste and water were making us sterile. Instead, the Duke Lacrosse team was emblematic of the return of epidemic 1930s-style racial rape. The Virginia frat boys routinely roughed up and had their way with girls. The racist Covington kids, on the National Mall no less, mocked and insulted a noble indigenous combat veteran. And Jussie Smollett fought off racist thugs while managing to hold his sandwich and cell phone, as he stumbled home with a racist rope around his neck, stained with iconic bleach. “Hands up, don’t shoot” should have been true, even if it wasn’t.

    Assimilation and integration are not our goals. Instead, we are to ferret out “cultural appropriation” and the odious culture of “white supremacy” and “unearned privilege.” “All men are created equal. But some are more equal than others” is now posted on the electric barn wall.  

    Deprogramming 74 million “whites” and “Republicans” is the advice on the pages of the progressive Washington Post. Don’t like an idea? Then wash clean the polluted minds of those who embraced it.

    The new and improved ACLU’s job is to encourage the suppression of conservative free speech. ACLU trains its handlers not to protect unfettered speech, but to spot “hate speech.” 

    To advocate burning or destroying a book is not some nightmare from Fahrenheit 451, but a woke way to “stop the hate.” 

    A new Orwellian phrase is “free speech is not free reach”—as leftists become the intellectual inheritors of the racists of the open-housing fights of the 1950s and 1960. The old racist boilerplate of apartment owners and realtors was “You can live anywhere you want, just not here.” The new hate mantra of Silicon Valley cartels is, “You can tweet or socially post anywhere you like—if you can manage to find a place.”

    Surveillance and spying are now good. How else to ferret out “right-wingers,” “white supremacists,” and “insurrectionists”? 

    So the FBI and CIA have transmogrified into heroic agencies run by stalwart social activist fighters like John Brennan, the old Gus Hall supporter, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe. They cut to the quick to achieve social justice, without the messy give and take of Congress, or that albatross, the relic Constitution.

    What a wonderful world they have created: Eavesdropping on the national security advisor, forging FISA documents, spying on American citizens, aiding one presidential candidate by surveilling another. 

    Finally, they can use their skills and surveillance to investigate and hound the “right” enemies, for the “right” causes.” The CIA and FBI always secretly wished to be beloved by the Left. Now they are deified.

    And the military elite?

    Militarization is now beautiful. The U.S. Army may become our People’s Revolutionary Army as generals sniff out counterrevolutionaries hidden deeply in their ranks. Maybe a cleansing purge or two is necessary, in the Soviet fashion.

    Barb-wiring the capitol and stocking it with camouflaged troops send the message that the military is, at last, woke and in control of America’s central nervous system. Corporate profiteering for retired generals and admirals is a necessary amplifier of their critical work. How else to have the resources to spot new Mussolinis, Nazi tactics, Auschwitz caging, and the al-Qaeda-like terrorists among us? 

    Bank of America helps to find out which enemy of the people bought which coffee where. The financial heroes are not hip basement day traders taking down hedge funds by boomeranging them their own manipulative tactics, but Wall Street hedge fund traders, the holy wall between sober investment and Trumpian barbarians at the gate.

    Could we have ever stopped the hate without the help of billions of dollars from Mark Zuckerberg and George Soros? Why break up monopolies and cartels when their profits pour into progressive wokeness? Only their warping of communication and knowledge retrieval correctly guides Americans to the “right” conclusions. Jeff Bezos’ net worth alone is as much as the combined GDP of Idaho and Alaska. But then again, we are to think he is far more valuable than two states full of bitter clingers, dregs, and deplorables. 

    The media? It is a Ministry of Truth. Informers and readers beg the Great Leader to let drop his favorite flavor of ice cream or the details of the Oval Office makeover. There is no need for censorship: the media are the censors. Whatever sinister idea a paranoid politician has for muzzling journalists, reporters themselves have already trumped it. Pravda is their model. Who can be disinterested when there is a war to be fought for diversity and equity, against climate change and white supremacy?

    The revolutionary animals are now running the farm in a way that would be nightmarish even to Farmer Jones.  

    They won. They are now one with—but also far, far worse than—what they rebelled against.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 21:25

  • "They Don't Want To Stop At All": Facing Shortage Shockwaves, Taiwan Semi Rushes To Build Infrastructure
    “They Don’t Want To Stop At All”: Facing Shortage Shockwaves, Taiwan Semi Rushes To Build Infrastructure

    In the midst of a massive semiconductor shortage that we have been documenting at length, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is rushing to try and build new facilities through the Chinese New Year in order to meet demand. 

    TSMC is one of the biggest suppliers of chips to company like Apple, Google and Qualcomm. As a result of a worldwide shortage in chips that was brought on due to the pandemic, they are now rushing to try and get a new factory in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan built. It’ll be “the world’s most advanced 3-nanometer chip production plant,” according to Nikkei. The company is also building a research and data center in Hsinchu. 

    Construction the new facility will take place throughout 2021, with completion expected in 2022. 

    One executive said of TSMC’s expansion: “We received a notice from TSMC that it is giving 4,000 New Taiwan dollars ($145) a day as an extra bonus for every worker willing to come during the Lunar New Year… that is literally at least double the average daily wage for front line workers. Even if that’s only roughly a few extra days of building time [during the holiday], they don’t want to fully stop at all. That shows their commitment to speed up construction and development and confidence for future demand.”

    In addition to the 3nm plant, the company is also preparing to boost its capacity to make 5nm chips. These chips are using in the latest 5G iPhone 12s and new Mac core processors. TSMC wants to boost production by 70% from the end of last year. 

    It’ll be resuming construction “a few days earlier” than most coming out of the Lunar New Year in southern Taiwan. TSMC is also boosting capex by $25 billion, to $28 billion, this year. 

    Bill Chiu, chairman of Gudeng Precision, a TSMC supplier, said: “Construction workers across Taiwan are all attracted to TSMC’s sites as it is paying much higher wages than elsewhere… It’s really the strong pillar of Taiwan’s economy and the center of the tech ecosystem.”

    One local fire safety manager said: “For electroplating specialists on construction sites, the daily wage has recently jumped from NT$6,000 to NT$12,000 a day. It’s stunning and unprecedented.”

    As a result, a worker shortage has continued to intensify heading into the final quarter of 2020, one construction supervisor told Nikkei: “TSMC is a key reason… The company and its suppliers are attracting many workers from northern to southern Taiwan, while in the past year there are also many new construction projects for residential and commercial buildings in Greater Taipei. People are all fighting over labor resources. Even with higher wages, we still have a hard time finding enough workers.”

    “The average daily wage for regular construction workers has risen from NT$3,000 to NT$4,000 in less than a year,” the Nikkei report noted.

    The boom has taken over Taiwan – so much so that many tech executives refer to Taiwan as the “island that TSMC built”. TSMC is Taiwan’s largest company by market cap and accounts for 33% of its local stock market value and 20% of private sector investment. Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has been thrust into the spotlight this year amidst the ongoing semi shortage. 

    As we documented just days ago, the semi shortage is turning into a full blown crisis. It is now being referred to as the “most serious shortage in years”, with Qualcomm’s CEO saying last week that there were now shortages “across the board”, according to Bloomberg. 

    But it isn’t just Qualcomm executives speaking out: other industry leaders have warned in recent weeks that they are susceptible to the shortages. Apple said recently that its new high end iPhones were on hold due to a shortage of components. NXP Semiconductors has also warned that the problems are no longer just confined to the auto industry. Sony also said last week it may not be able to to fully meet demand for its new gaming console in 2021 due to the shortage. Companies like Lenovo have also been feeling the crunch.

    Neil Mawston, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, said: “The virus pandemic, social distancing in factories, and soaring competition from tablets, laptops and electric cars are causing some of the toughest conditions for smartphone component supply in many years.” 

    Mawston says that prices for some smartphone components are up as much as 15% the last 6 months. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 21:05

  • Get Ready For More "Fisker"-Like Follies
    Get Ready For More “Fisker”-Like Follies

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

    A folly is a costly undertaking having an absurd or ruinous outcome. Those who are glad to see the return of the “Old Guard” to power may have forgotten the many scandals of the Obama years or how upon leaving the White House the Clintons took with them “the china.” While Trump’s style may not have appealed to everyone the vindictiveness and malicious calls to go after him and his supporters will do little to bring America together.

    A song written and performed by American popular music singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett titled, “Gypsies in the Palace” describes what happens when those in charge take advantage of their position. In the song, Buffett talks about how, “In days of old, when knights were bold and journeyed from their castles, they would leave what they thought were “trusty men” to watch over things. Unfortunately, it was not uncommon for these men to soon help themselves to pig and peach then drink from the King’s own chalice. In short, to do a bit of plundering for their amusement and benefit.

    With the above in mind, I would like to re-post an old article from this blog. The article contains all the good stuff, like villains, and theft. Some parts have now been put into bold type to highlight the irony of what could be considered an interesting coincidence. It also stands as a reminder as to the limits of big government and suggests that we be careful of what we wish for. 

    The current political atmosphere is ripe for crony capitalism to flourish and boondoggles to sprout up everywhere, especially when it comes to going “green.” 

    Consider this a trip down memory lane, please enjoy.

    *  *  *

    Fisker Automotive Another Government Folly 

    Sunday, April 28, 2013

    Great Looking Car

    Fisker should be renamed “fiasco”, for that is what it has become. It appears that the Obama administration. was warned as early as 2010 that electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. was not meeting milestones set up for a half-billion-dollar government loan, nearly a year before U.S. officials froze the financing in June 2011. This was done after Fisker presented new information that called into question whether key milestones – including the launch of the company’s signature, $100,000 Karma hybrid – had been achieved, according to a credit report prepared by the Energy Department.  Fisker had received a total of $192 million of the $529 million loan before it was suspended. It should be noted that the plant was never completed and never produced any Fisker cars.

    The Company Failed!

    In the June 2010 email, Sandra Claghorn, an official in the Energy Department loan program office, wrote that Fisker “may be in limbo due to a lack of compliance with financial covenants” set up by the department to protect taxpayers in the event of default. Another document, from April 2010, listed milestones that Fisker had not yet met. The potential loss of $171 million would be the largest loss of federal loan money since the failure of Solyndra a solar panel maker. That company’s collapse, which came despite a $528 million loan from the Energy Department, has triggered criticism of the Obama administration’s green energy program. The Energy Department seized $21 million from Fisker this month as it continued to seek repayment from the carmaker for the 2009 loan. A payment from Fisker was due Monday but was not made.

    Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Oversight subcommittee on economic growth and regulation, said it is hard to understand why the Energy Department ever thought Fisker was a viable company that should receive taxpayer money. Henrik Fisker, the company’s namesake, and founder was scheduled to testify at Wednesday’s hearing. Fisker, who was forced out as CEO as the company’s troubles mounted, said in prepared testimony that he remained proud of the company’s “cutting edge technology,” which he said could “pave the way for a new generation of American car manufacturing.” Fisker disputed claims by some critics that the Anaheim, Calif.-based company needed the federal loan to survive. Fisker said a high-ranking Energy Department official approached him in 2008 and asked him to apply for the loan, which is intended to boost electric cars and other advanced vehicles.

    It was Vice President Joe Biden who announced in late 2009 that Fisker would reopen a shuttered former General Motors factory in Wilmington, Del., to produce plug-in, electric hybrid vehicles. What does Joe Biden have to do with Fisker Automotive? On the surface, the answer would seem to be nothing at all, or at least it did until Biden himself revealed the startup automaker’s plans to introduce a new series of electric vehicles under the Project Nina banner. Not only that, Fisker just so happens to have decided to build cars in Biden’s home state. Coincidence? Fisker has denied that any political influence was used to obtain the loan or in negotiations over its terms, according to Russel Datz spokesman for Fisker, coincidence is exactly what it is, a good number of reasons exist to choose the former GM plant in Wilmington, Deleware, and the fact that it’s Biden’s home state is not one of them. Claymont, Deleware  home of Biden is roughly eight and a half miles from Wilmington.

    Nicholas Whitcomb, who directed the Energy Department’s advanced-vehicle loan program, testified that $8.4 billion in advanced-vehicle loans have been given out to five auto companies so far. While Fisker has performed poorly, he said, loans to firms like Ford, Nissan, and Tesla have helped build factories and are all scheduled to be repaid. Fisker ran into trouble from the get-go. The company’s business model was to design an attractive sports car and then purchase off-the-shelf parts from suppliers. But that unusual strategy carried risks. Fisker’s real legacy may be the damage it has done to federal support for other electric vehicles. The Energy Department hasn’t ”closed on a loan or loan guarantee or conditionally committed to doing so under either program since September 2011.” The reasons? Applicants are skittish about going through a “lengthy and burdensome” application process and facing the same pressures that faced companies like Solyndra and Fisker.

    Efforts have been made to blunt other criticism of the loan by the Obama administration, by stressing that Fisker was an anomaly. Supporters of the Obama Administration’s “green energy” loan program have banged away at the idea that Fisker’s problems stem from a lack of demand for electric cars in general, but the government should press on because it is in their opinion the right thing to do. It was announced in August 2012 GM,  would be halting the manufacture of its infamous Chevrolet Volt for at least four weeks, few were shocked. The Volt was awarded the 2010 “car of the year” title, but As of this writing, GM has sold 10,666 Volts through July, which, luckily for the automaker, is a major improvement over the 2,870 it sold at this time a year earlier. GM had made predictions that this year, over 45,000 units of the car would be sold. In other words, even if Fisker is an outlier, it’s casting a long-shadow over electric-car policy.

    Back in October of 2011 the Obama administration has defended its decision to allow Fisker Automotive to assemble its high concept electric sports sedan, the Karma, in Finland, even though U.S. taxpayers had made a major investment in the car’s development, saying none of the American money was spent on the car’s overseas assembly. But Republican critics this weekend challenged the administration’s explanation, saying federal loans should have only supported applicants who would be building their cars on American soil. “The Department of Energy and Fisker executives are splitting hairs about where the money went,” said Rep. Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican who sits on the House committee that has been investigating the Obama Administration’s “green energy” loan program. “Ultimately, American taxpayer dollars went to a Finnish automaker to build high-end luxury automobiles for Hollywood.”

    A report on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” about Fisker Automotive, the recipient of a “green energy” loan in 2010, quoted auto industry experts who said Fisker’s loan invited comparisons to the ill-fated Energy Department loan to Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer support, declared bankruptcy earlier this year. That federal loan is now the subject of investigations by the Justice Department and by inspectors general from the Energy and Treasury departments. The Washington Post has discovered that the Energy Department quietly eased expectations for Fisker’s projected car sales volume after it conditionally approved the loan, and made allowances for scaling back projections in the final loan agreement, this is not the way taxpayer money should be spent. The Fisker folly, and its failure, reeks of government cronyism and waste, someone should be held accountable.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 20:45

  • Ex-Robinhood Employees Detail Inadequate Customer Support In Suicide Lawsuit
    Ex-Robinhood Employees Detail Inadequate Customer Support In Suicide Lawsuit

    Former employees of Robinhood have detailed a pattern of inadequate customer support, including unqualified customer service agents offering financial advice, licensed brokers “too busy” to help on urgent matters, and unanswered pleas from customers, according to CBS News.

    The stock trading app company – a major player in last month’s short-squeeze insanity – is now the subject of a Monday lawsuit brought by the family of 20-year-old college student Alex Kearns, who committed suicide last June after mistakenly thinking he was on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock market losses over options held in his Robinhood account.

    The ex-employee accounts are included in the suit which claims wrongful death, negligent infliction of emotional distress and unfair business practices. Kearns’ parents told CBS News they believe their son would still be alive if Robinhood had answered any of his three urgent customer support inquiries before he killed himself.

    “He just needed a little help,” said his father, Dan Kearns.

    According to documents obtained by CBS News through a Freedom of Information Act request, other customers have also taken issue with Robinhood’s customer service, with many raising concerns about the company’s response time. In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 650 complaints from customers about Robinhood Financial LLC and its subsidiaries, more than twice as many as its competitors Etrade, Schwab, Fidelity and TD Ameritrade. A common theme among the complaints filed against Robinhood: getting “no response” from the company. -CBS News

    “I am unable to withdraw my money or invest in stock from my account,” wrote one user, who noted that Robinhood hadn’t responded to his last email in over a week. “In need of money in these difficult times as i lost my job yesterday.”

    Another disgruntled user was upset at the company’s automated responses, writing “I do not have a clue what is happening to my claim or if it’s even open anymore,” adding “They have no way to contact by phone so i can’t even communicate with anyone.”

    Robinhood used to have a telephone hotline for customers, however according to one former call center employee, Katy LaPlante (who worked as an independent contractor for Robinhood in 2016 and 2017), customers with serious financial issues were not receiving the help the needed.

    The people who called the hotline were losing money, she said, but she was unable to help. “But when we’re talking about, like, ‘Why couldn’t I sell my stock?'” she said, “What service could I give you? I couldn’t give you a service. I had to basically put you off.”

    Five other former customer service workers — including one who left the company last fall — all told CBS News Robinhood’s brokers were rarely available to help users who needed financial advice.

    LaPlante said she pushed to get people the help they needed. “If it was really egregious, I would pitch a huge fit. And I mean, a fit. Like, put down my phone, put you on hold, start really getting aggressive with my supervisors But how many times in a day can you do that?” -CBS News

    The company eventually got rid of the customer support phone line because they could not keep up with the volume of calls.

    “I feel sick,” said LaPlante following the news of Kearns’ death. “because [customer service] was an issue then. It’s an issue now. Why didn’t you fix it?”

    Dan and Dorothy Kearns say Robinhood never should have allowed such an inexperienced person access to the types of trading he was engaged in.

    “I’m angry that they can put a number like that in front of someone, whether it’s a 20-year-old kid or a 60-year-old experienced trader,” said Dorothy Kearns.

    “I think he was in just pure terror about his situation,” added Dan.

    Before his death, Alex wrote to the company three times seeking clarification. “I was incorrectly assigned more money than I should have,” he wrote, explaining that he’d structured his options trade in a way that should have protected him from losing this much money. “Could someone please look into this?”

    The company sent Alex an automated reply that assigned a case number and told him the company’s response time may be delayed.

    “Alex had written them asking for help,” said Dan Kearns. “And unfortunately, that’s the only way that Robinhood communicates, is through email. And their response was a canned reply, basically, ‘We’ll get back to you later.'” -CBS News

    After Alex’s suicide, Robinhood sent him an automated email suggesting that he didn’t owe any money at all.

    According to attorneys for the family, had anyone at Robinhood “bothered to respond,” Alex Kearns “would have been alive and well today.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 20:25

  • If You Thought The 2020 Elections Were Chaotic, Just Wait
    If You Thought The 2020 Elections Were Chaotic, Just Wait

    Authored by J.Christian Adams via The Gatestone Institute,

    H.R.1 packs into one 791-page bill every bad idea about how to run elections and mandates that the states must adopt — the very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess. It includes all of the greatest hits of 2020: Mandatory mail ballots, ballots without postmarks, late ballots and voting in precincts where you don’t live. It includes so many bad ideas that no publication has satisfactory space to cover all of them. The Senate companion bill, S.1, might be even worse.

    These bills rearrange the relationship between the states and the federal government. The Constitution presumes that states regulate their own elections, but the Constitution has a big “but” in what is called the Elections Clause. The Constitution says, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” For over 200 years, Congress rarely used this power. After all, the power was put in the Constitution only to prevent the states from suffocating the federal government out of existence by never holding federal elections.

    Do not assume that the bills will stall and wither in the process. They are named H.R.1 and S.1 for a reason. The bills are the top priority of the newly empowered Democrats in Congress.

    Dissatisfied with the effectiveness of the last federal mandate — 1993’s Motor Voter law — H.R.1 dispenses with the idea that an American should go affirmatively register to vote.

    In 2020, states such as Nevada and New Jersey sent ballots through the mail to anyone on their registration lists despite having voter rolls full of errors. The Public Interest Legal Foundation documented thousands of ineligible registrations in Nevada alone that received mail ballots. Some were sent to vacant lots, abandoned mines, casinos and even liquor stores.

    States also would be blocked by H.R.1 from signature verification procedures.

    H.R.1 rigs the system for any lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the law. All lawsuits can only be filed in one court – federal court in the District of Columbia. And all opposition must be consolidated into one brief with only one attorney being able to argue the merits. It also grants automatic intervention to any legislators who want to join in the fight against the lone opposition.

    It prohibits states from conducting list maintenance on the voter rolls. That means deadwood and obsolete registrations will stack up.

    HR.1 and S.1 are omnibus bills that would change every American citizen’s — and foreigner’s — relationship to voter registration.

    Universal automatic voter registration has, for years, been a top priority of the institutional left. In fact, H.R.1 would do away with actual voter registration and instead make the voter rolls merely a copy of anyone already on a government list — such as welfare recipients and other social service beneficiaries. The bills would expand well beyond to federal entities like the Social Security Administration, Department of Defense, Customs and Immigration, and elements of Health and Human Services.

    Naturally, a giant federal database would serve as the home for this list of people who must be automatically registered to vote, whether they know it or not.

    Imagine the number of government databases in which your information is contained. Do your names and addresses all match? Does Social Security know you moved out of your birth state? Are your married and maiden names different? Did you get a driver’s license before obtaining American citizenship?

    You can see the pitfalls. One person will be “registered” to vote multiple times, with slight variation in names, and perhaps greater variation in residence addresses.

    Making it “easier” to get registered to vote through automatic registration from government lists might seem attractive, until you consider the disaster of universal auto-mail voting as we saw in 2020.

    H.R.1 and S.1 will force states to push ballots into the mail. It builds slack into the election system. Decentralized mail elections introduce error because of error-filled rolls. Mail-in ballots delay results, create uncertainty and push the elections into kitchens and bedrooms where election officials cannot observe the voting process and cannot protect the voter from coercion.

    H.R.1 takes the absolute worst emergency rule changes of 2020 and enshrines them as federal law. Gone also are state witness and notary requirements during the mail ballot application process. Nor may states enact identification requirements of “any form” for those requesting a ballot. That means no more voter ID as a matter of federal law.

    States also would be blocked by H.R.1 from signature verification procedures.

    It gets worse. The 791-page bill also includes:

    • “Congress can reduce a state’s representation in Congress when the right to vote is denied.” Without qualification or definition, Congress could rely on this sentence unilaterally to cut the number of House members from any state it claims is denying the right to vote.

    • It criminalizes anyone who uses state challenge laws to question the eligibility of registrants wrongly. The penalty is up to one year in prison per instance.

    • It prohibits states from conducting list maintenance on the voter rolls. That means deadwood and obsolete registrations will stack up.

    • It criminalizes publishing “false statements” about qualifications to vote and “false statements” about which groups have endorsed which candidates. Information banned from being published includes false qualifications to vote and the penalties for doing so. What is a false statement will apparently be in the minds of the Justice Department lawyers who bring the charges. And if they do not act, the law provides a private right of action to individual plaintiffs to drag speakers to court. You can be sure this provision would be used as a merciless weapon against political opponents.

    • And in case it was not clear that H.R.1 was dismantling state power to run their own elections, the bill makes it clear: “The lack of a uniform standard for voting in Federal elections leads to an unfair disparity and unequal participation in Federal elections based solely on where a person lives.” In other words, state laws which have the Constitutional authority to determine the voting eligibility of its residents, will be preempted by a federal uniform standard.

    That is not all. Nationwide, states must accept mail ballots on Election Day plus 10 days later. States are allowed to add extra time to the window. No more election day. It will be election season, with a month of early voting and weeks of ballots arriving and being counted.

    And of course, unlimited ballot harvesting — having a third party “help” to fill in and gather up ballots, then drop them off at a polling station or other designated station — is guaranteed.

    Misinformation, protests, unrest, and even violence were all symptoms of the trauma of 2020. Activist groups and collusive officials in 2020 turned courts into weapons to transform state laws into election procedures that were favorable to one particular party. H.R.1 would finish the job, and federalize the policies and election procedures that made 2020 such a mess.

    It is no solution to presume that federal rules, even if they were crafted the right way, would solve the problem. When Washington D.C. gets control over elections, the policy always skews in one direction.

    I worked at the Justice Department, where career staff ignored federal laws they didn’t like, and only enforced the ones they thought would help advance their political beliefs. Motor Voter, for example, had a federal mandate that states clean voter rolls. Guess what happened after that rule passed in 1993? No private enforcement actions were brought for two decades until I brought one against Indiana.

    There is a federal mandate, passed in the 19th Century, to have one single election day. The bureaucrats in Washington in charge of enforcing that law ignore that law. Federal mandates are a one-way political ratchet. They always and only help one political party.

    The nation has seen this line of thinking before. Like Obamacare earlier, H.R.1 transitions our federalist Republic to some other brave new system that purports to right generations of structural wrongs, while at the same time entrenching other wrongs. Unifying American experiences such as coming together to vote on one single Election Day, governed by rules passed by state legislators, well, to the authors of H.R.1, that is just old fashioned.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 20:05

  • China Economy Rolling Over Hard Ahead Of Lunar New Year
    China Economy Rolling Over Hard Ahead Of Lunar New Year

    First the good news: after a recent spike in “domestic” new Covid cases across China (as opposed to the laughable “imported” cases), Beijing’s measures of targeted lockdown and massive testing and tracing appear to be effective in containing the recent Covid outbreak in Northern China. The seven-day average of domestic cases fell to 27 as of 5 Feb from the peak of 111 on 18 Jan.

    Shijiazhuang city of Hebei Province, one of the hotspots, lifted the lockdown on 29 Jan and started to resume work/production on 3 Feb. Meanwhile, on 30 Jan, the central government urged local governments not to ratchet up unnecessary travel barriers and social distancing measures in low-risk areas.

    Naturally, it was Beijing’s prerogative to halt any local outbreak ahead of the Lunar New Year week which begins this Friday, and which would have made any containment during the peak travel period impossible.On the other hand, tightened travel controls will adversely affect nationwide economic activities around the LNY time.

    And so, whether it is due to partial covid-linked lockdowns, due to China’s ongoing attempts to contain and deleverage the country’s massive debt load, or simply as a byproduct of China’s credit impulse which as we discussed last December, is now rapidly shrinking, but most real-time indicators of China are showing a sharp slowdown across the economy which appears to be rolling over in everything from traffic and mass transit, to manufacturing even as prices of many goods (especially food) rose sharply, in what some may call a pre-stagflationary outcome

    First, a look at traffic volumes, subway and migration which have clearly slowed down.

    Industrial production has seen a more modest hit, mostly in just the past few weeks, even as copper and rebar prices have soared.

    On the services side, the picture has remained more robust with both property and auto transactions solid although the recent surge in food prices has sparked some concerns about stagflation.

    Perhaps the most interesting chart is one tracking the recent liquidity squeeze which sent overnight and 7-day repo rates soaring in late January, only to ease substantially after the PBOC resumed net OMO injections, which have been in line with recent years. Meanwhile, both government and corporate bond issuance have picked up in the days ahead of the LNY.

    Putting the above data together, Nomura’s China economist Ting Lu writes that “the latest Covid-19 wave should be brought under control in coming months, but at the cost of a slower services sector recovery and a pause in policy normalization.” The bank lowered its 2021 real GDP growth forecast to 8.8% (from 9%), trimming Q1, but raising Q2 on the resurgence of Covid-19 and government countermeasures, while also trimming forecasts for activity, inflation and credit indicators. This is why:

    • Activity: To fight the worst wave of Covid-19 since the initial outbreak, central and local governments have tightened social distancing measures, reimposed some lockdown measures and travel bans, and encouraged migrant workers to stay in their workplace cities for the Lunar New Year (LNY) holiday. We believe these measures will impair the recovery in the services sector, but may provide a small boost to industrial production and construction in South China, as workers would remain at their workplaces. To reflect this, we recently cut our Q1 real GDP growth forecast to 18.0% y-o-y from 19.0%, but raised our Q2 forecast to 8.1% from 7.9%, as we expect some pent-up demand to be released once these restrictions are eased. Our Q3 and Q4 growth forecasts remain  nchanged. As a result, we lowered our 2021 annual growth forecast to 8.8% from 9.0% earlier.
    • Policy: Due to the resurgence of Covid-19 and the related growth slowdown, we believe Beijing will maintain its pledge to avoid any sharp shift in policies and its pace of normalisation will thus be highly contingent on the Covid-19 situation. We expect the PBoC to maintain its “wait-and-see” approach in the near term before resuming its gradual policy normalisation. We believe the recent surge in interbank rates was partly due to some special factors linked to RMB appreciation and cross-border RMB settlement, and expect the PBoC to ramp up short-term liquidity injections to keep interbank rates largely stable around the LNY holidays, though it may not inject as much liquidity as in previous years as the new Covid-19 wave also reduces liquidity demand.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 19:45

  • McDonald's Readies MyMcDonald's But Are Franchisees Happy?
    McDonald’s Readies MyMcDonald’s But Are Franchisees Happy?

    Submitted by Market Crumbs,

    Loyalty programs have been a hit among customers for countless quick-service restaurants. Starbucks, Dunkin’, Chipotle, Taco Bell and Domino’s are just some of the companies that have built a dedicated customer base by offering rewards and promotions to members.

    While these loyalty programs have proven successful, fast food giant McDonald’s has been slow to introduce a loyalty program of its own in the U.S. despite long having a loyalty program for its McCafé drinks.

    McDonald’s announced in November it would finally pilot a new loyalty program called MyMcDonald’s in Phoenix before launching across the U.S in 2021. Like most loyalty programs, MyMcDonald’s aims to provide a personalized service while rewarding diners the more they spend.

    With a national launch of MyMcDonald’s anticipated this year, McDonald’s confirmed the pilot is now being tested in New England, Nevada and Arizona. Approximately 900 of McDonald’s 14,000 U.S. locations are currently part of the pilot.

    Customers who use MyMcDonald’s will earn 100 points for each dollar that they spend, while McDonald’s will run targeted promotions that offer additional rewards opportunities. Rewards members will be able to redeem points across 16 menu items after hitting milestones of 1,500, 3,000, 4,500 and 6,000 points.

    “Our customers have been clear, they want even easier ways to order a Big Mac and World Famous Fries and to be rewarded for their loyalty. With MyMcDonald’s Rewards we’re doing just that,” McDonald’s U.S. Vice President, digital customer experience and media Alycia Mason said. “These tests are the first step to gather valuable customer feedback ahead of a nationwide launch later this year.”

    McDonald’s says more than 85% of the MyMcDonald’s Rewards members that have participated in the pilot are satisfied.

    However, not everyone is satisfied with the rapid changes taking place at McDonald’s to improve the customer experience as the costs of doing so are coming due. According to Restaurant Business, McDonald’s franchisees are reportedly unhappy about a handful of charges and subsidy cuts that could cost them an estimated $170 million this year.

    McDonald’s will now charge franchisees monthly for technology investments instead of every six months as McDonald’s operators feel the company is increasingly passing along costs to them. Operators are paying McDonald’s $250 million every year for technology fees as they also fight to gain more control over how much McDonald’s spends on digital strategies.

    While McDonald’s is preparing for the launch of MyMcDonald’s to give customers an improved experience, it may be coming at the expense of its relationship with its franchisees.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 19:25

  • Two US Carriers Hold Exercises In South China Sea As Beijing Blasts 'Blow To Peace & Stability'
    Two US Carriers Hold Exercises In South China Sea As Beijing Blasts ‘Blow To Peace & Stability’

    China is condemning what it’s deemed a blow to “regional peace and stability” after no less than two US aircraft carrier strike groups have initiated coordinated military exercises and maneuvers in the South China Sea on Tuesday. It comes further after China blasted the latest provocative sail by of the USS John S. McCain destroyer near the China-claimed Paracel Islands last week, as well as repeat incursions of Taiwan air space by PLA bombers and jets. 

    The USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Nimitz carriers “conducted a multitude of exercises aimed at increasing interoperability between assets as well as command and control capabilities,” a US Navy statement indicated.

    Image of the last time the US had dual carriers in the South China Sea, in July. Via Reuters

    It marks the first such dual carrier operation in the South China Sea since the last one in July 2020, and represents the most serious posture of defense readiness signaled to Beijing since Biden took office. 

    “Biden is taking a strong stance to oppose China’s territorial claims in the disputed waters,” underscores Bloomberg in its reporting.

    Early this month we noted that in a reflection of the new administration’s intent to generally shift its foreign policy priorities from the Middle East to South East Asia and China in particular, the USS Nimitz was called “home” and away from its Indian Ocean-Mideast region of responsibility, but not before stopping or “pausing” provocatively in “China’s backyard” (as Beijing sees it):

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    Pentagon press secretary John Kirby had initially announced at the start of this month that “USS Nimitz has left Arabian Sea and 5th Fleet after being deployed for over 270 days amid tensions with Iran,” while indicating it was  “currently in the Indo-Pacific.” So now we know why.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin was quick to condemn the dual carrier “show of force” on Tuesday:

    “China will continue to take necessary measures to firmly safeguard national sovereignty and security and work with countries in the region to firmly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea,” according to the statement.

    Initially the Nimitz had remained out at sea past its scheduled date to return home to its US West Coast base.

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

    With the Biden administration apparently looking for rapid de-escalation with Iran, perhaps considering that particular geopolitical hotspot to be much more manageable, it appears Beijing now fully occupies the attention of Washington and the Pentagon.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 19:05

  • Buchanan: Of Rioters, Protesters, & Patriots
    Buchanan: Of Rioters, Protesters, & Patriots

    Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    To Parliament, in the London of George III, the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the Tea Party of 1773 were not seen in the same light as they were by the Sons of Liberty in the Massachusetts colony.

    To Parliament, this was mob violence, and the shooting and killing at Lexington and Concord were acts of insurrection and treason.

    But because we won the Revolution, those events are portrayed and remembered differently. For when it comes to riots and revolutions, all depends on who writes the narrative of history. It is the winners.

    “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” said George Orwell in his novel “1984.”

    To the media, the long hot summer of rioting, looting and arson that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was driven by “racial justice” protests against a “systemic racism” that permeates society.

    The rioters were calling attention to injustices we Americans have failed to address, like police brutality. And almost all of these “peaceful protesters” were calling us to be a better people.

    And did not the riots produce beneficial results?

    Joe Biden and his party have responded by setting as a goal the replacement of “equality of rights” with “equity,” an equality of results, where gaps in test scores, incarcerations, incomes and wealth between white and black are to be closed by government action.

    However, as for the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 by Trumpists, to protest and perhaps change the outcome of the election, that was an act of insurrection, a treasonous attempt to overturn a democratic election and overthrow a democratic government.

    Of all the riots in 2020 and 2021, that was the unforgivable one.

    The proper response to that riot is not to heed its angry voices but to impeach the president on whose behalf they acted, to strip him of any right to serve again in public office, and to write new laws to deal with the horrific “domestic terrorism” we witnessed at the Capitol.

    About the morality and justice of the rampage of rioting in the wake of Floyd’s death, and the sole riot at the Capitol, the media are the self-anointed judges. They decide which riots are benign and which are malignant, which should receive an empathetic response, and which should end with every participant in prison.

    Western democracies almost always grant favorable publicity and moral support to popular uprisings against autocratic regimes.

    The Hong Kong protests were cheered on by the West until there arose a fear in China they were getting out of hand. Beijing then stepped in, ordered the protests halted and imposed law and order.

    In Russia, there have been protests in many cities over the recent jailing of dissident Alexei Navalny. But winter weather and thousands of police arrests have cooled the protests, and Vladimir Putin booted out of the country three EU diplomats from Poland, Germany and Sweden who attended the pro-Navalny demonstrations.

    When it comes to illegal and disorderly protests, Xi Jinping and Putin take them seriously and play hardball. They see mass protests and riots as Western-inspired, if not Western-planned, and deal with them as subversive activities.

    “The messages sent by Russian authorities during this visit confirmed that Europe and Russia are drifting apart,” EU minister Joseph Borrell blogged on his return from Moscow to Brussels.

    “It seems that Russia is progressively disconnecting itself from Europe and looking at democratic values as an existential threat.”

    In Turkey, demonstrations by staff and students erupted in January over the installation of an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as rector of Bogazici University, among the most acclaimed schools in the country. Hundreds have been arrested in clashes between protesters and police in one of the largest displays of civil unrest in Turkey in years.

    In Myanmar, thousands took to the streets this weekend to protest a generals’ coup that took over the country a week ago and ousted the elected civilian regime of Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

    The American media defended the Hong Kong protesters and tended to minimize, excuse or ignore its excesses and violence.

    But in Moscow, Beijing, Istanbul and Myanmar, the protests are seen as insurgencies, as sappers of the state and regime, and the governments are predisposed to deal with them in every way — save capitulation. They see them as the work of “regime change” ideologues in the West.

    In Western nations, protests and riots come largely from the left and rail against what is claimed to be indifference or resistance to the rights of minorities. And the natural tendency of the media is to sympathize with protesters, especially those bedeviling autocracies.

    Again, all except the occupation of the Capitol on Jan. 6. That one was different. That one got the sympathy of no one because its premise was that an elite-backed establishment stole the election.

    Such accusations against our elites are intolerable and immoral.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 18:45

  • "Never Seen Anything Like This": Junk Bond Yields Slide Below 4% For First Time Ever In Record Buying Spree
    “Never Seen Anything Like This”: Junk Bond Yields Slide Below 4% For First Time Ever In Record Buying Spree

    It’s party time for zombie companies everywhere as “high yield” is now officially “low yield.”

    The record stock market euphoria and the resulting “dash for trash” seen in recent days as pennystock after pennystock has exploded higher on the back of bull raids orchestrated by redditors and complicit hedge fund managers, has spilled over into the junk bond market where the average yield on US junk bonds just dropped below 4% for the first time ever as investors keep piling into an asset class historically known for its “high yields” (hence the name), although if sub-4% is considered high then there is a problem.

    As shown below, the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate High-Yield index dipped to 3.96% on Monday evening, its sixth straight session of declines.

    Despite the recent rise in nominal treasury yields amid surging 10Y breakevens, investors have continued to gobble up junk bonds at a record pace as an alternative to the “not so high yield” offered by what is known as less-risky bonds such as Treasurys.

    The surge in demand for junk, which is now also explicitly backstopped by the Fed which last year purchased various high yield ETFs effectively removing risk from the equation, has led to the strongest start to any year on record according to Goldman.

    As a result of this unprecedented demand for junk, a majority of new issues, even those rated in the riskiest CCC tier of junk, have been hugely oversubscribed. So much so, in fact, that according to Credit Suisse, this  year  has  witnessed  a  remarkable  rally in lower quality HY paper with the “triple hooks”, i.e., the lowest quality CCC bonds up already +1.9% for the year and yields now sitting at record lows at 6.7% for our the broad Credit Suisse index. 

    While CCC bonds have outperformed the rest of the market for three consecutive months, according to Bloomberg, the spread compression means that there is now virtually no difference between the various junk bond tranches: notes rated single-B now average a 4.30% yield, while BBs yield 3.05%.

    “I’ve never seen anything like this”, said a fixed income bond manager who has lived through the euphoria of the housing bubble and lived to tell about it.

    Meanwhile, as Bloomberg adds, demand for the debt has outweighed supply by so much that in a novel spin on reverse inquiry “some money managers are even calling companies to press them to borrow instead of waiting for deals to come their way.” 

    Indeed, the ravenous appetite for the lowest quality paper has fueled a spike in issuance with January seeing $8.2bn in CCC supply,  the busiest month for that rating since… the financial crisis.

    It also means that the infamous PIK are back. According to Bloomberg, the relentless demand for crap means that “some of the riskiest types of transactions come to market, such as bonds that are used to fund dividends to a company’s owners and so-called pay-in-kind bonds that allow a borrower to pay interest with more debt.”

    Furthermore, in a remarkable twist, the rally has now become self-sustaining because as CS also note, the rally has opened up a  rare window of opportunity for CCC names to refinance as average coupons now sitabove average yield, which means that the lower yields drop, the more CCC issuance will flood the market!

    While this avalanche of junk is great news for zombie corporations which will be able to obtain cheap access to cash, allowing them to continue their cash burning, deflationary existence for another year or two, it’s an ominous sign for the bond investors buying paper at the absolute top of the market because even the smallest hiccup would send yields soaring. Then again, judging by their comments, not only are they not worried, they just want moar: Speaking to Bloomberg, David Norris, head of U.S. credit at TwentyFour Asset Management, said that CCCs bonds which have accounted for a significant chunk of recent supply, may be one of the best parts of credit this year:

     “This robust new issue pipeline of lower-quality credit is worth poring over as there are likely to be some good stories in here for investors with sufficient liquidity to get involved,” he said.

    It wasn’t clear if he was trying to convince others or himself that his purchases are prudent, because while the party can and will go on as long as there are greater fools, one look at the fundamentals…

    … confirms that the party will only last as long as central banks keep injecting hundreds of billions into the market each and every month.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 18:25

  • "A Strange Game", Part 2
    “A Strange Game”, Part 2

    Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

    In Part One of this article I laid out the dire situation we find ourselves facing, as the illegitimate Biden administration inflicts the coup de grace to our dying empire of debt. I will now provide a possible framework of resistance and methods of undermining the corrupt pillaging system we call government.

    The concept of passive resistance has existed in various forms for centuries and has been used effectively in toppling enemies. A few weeks ago I was introduced to a concept I had never heard before in Doug Lynn’s article  Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair: Hover Through the Fog and Filthy Air. The passage below references “Irish Democracy” as a method for bringing an authoritarian regime to their knees.

    More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy”—the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people—than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.

    The premise behind “Irish Democracy” is that the State lacks the enforcement power to have its way with millions upon millions of rebels. It’s Mohandas Gandhi’s strategy, albeit without his overt confrontations with the institutions of government. “You can ignore the State and do as you please, as long as you keep your head down.”

    Removing the overt confrontations makes “Irish Democracy” much safer than any other form of rebellion. The State needs conspicuous, targetable rebels. It cannot use terror of its forces without someone to turn into an “example.” No conspicuous rebels means nothing for the State to crucify for the edification of the public.

    The description of Irish Democracy was put forth by Yale professor James C. Scott in his book, “Two Cheers for Anarchism“:

    “Quiet, anonymous, and often complicitous, lawbreaking and disobedience may well be the historically preferred mode of political action for peasant and subaltern classes, for whom open defiance is too dangerous. One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy.”

    Widespread non-coordinated resistance to the mandates and dictates of a totalitarian state can succeed, as millions of individual actions result in having an overwhelming cumulative negative impact on the state’s functioning. As Scott reflects, the state needs conspicuous targetable enemies, which we have clearly seen, as this fledgling communist regime continues to promote the white supremacist insurrection fabrication and Trump’s guilt in provoking pretend Vikings to steal podiums and take selfies in Pelosi’s office.

    The goal of these mendacious totalitarians is to provoke Trump supporters into a violent response, so they can usher in their Domestic Terrorism Act (Patriot Act 2.0) and implement a modern-day techno gulag solution. We cannot take the bait. It is time to arrange our affairs in such a way that denies the State their claimed piece of your pie, while doing so in such a way the State does not scrutinize your “unlawful” acts. Ignoring ridiculous decrees, demands, and laws are the duty of every right-thinking American.

    As the cancel culture social justice warriors seek their next prominent victim to crucify across their media empire, it behooves us “little people” to deny them the satisfaction of ruining our lives. They want nothing more than to de-platform you, get you fired from your job, and destroy your reputation. This is where Irish Democracy, Going Galt, and numerous other variations of these strategies, along with heeding the wisdom Sun Tzu, need to be utilized to defeat our now firmly entrenched enemy.

    There are no white hats coming to save us. It is now up to millions of truculent, disagreeable, angry, deplorable citizens to undermine the establishment and force this empire built on a foundation of unpayable debt to collapse. It might seem like a daunting task, but each individual act of resistance is like a grain of sand added to the unstable pile. No one knows which grain will trigger the catastrophic failure of the system. We are all capable of becoming the straw that broke the camel’s back.

    John Galt’s speech in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is over 33 thousand words, but these passages capture the essence of Going Galt:

    “For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing—you who dread knowledge—I am the man who will now tell you.

    You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster. In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.

    You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:

    I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

    The key point is to deprive the Marxist/Deep State/Oligarchy of victims who they can use to further their warped, non-sensical, totalitarian agenda of control, force and wealth extraction for the greater good – of the oligarchs. They create a crisis with their laws, regulations, legislation, mandates, executive orders, and decrees and then make it far worse with their “solutions”, while demanding more sacrifices by the little people to keep their sinking ship afloat. This is their Achilles heel.

    If millions of individuals Go Galt and Starve the Beast, one transaction at a time, withdrawing our consent because we believe those governing us are illegitimate, the State lacks the enforcement power and means to punish people they cannot find or identify as criminals. This is guerilla warfare in a modern technological dystopian world. Each of us has different life circumstances, financial capacity, and constraints, but everyone can contribute something to toppling our oppressors. Here are some thoughts. I am sure you can creatively add to this list:

    • Reduce your taxable footprint as much as possible, rendering as little to Caesar as possible. Spending less deprives them of sales tax.

    • Do home improvement projects yourself and buy supplies from local retailers, rather than big box mega-stores.

    • Don’t buy anything from Amazon. If you are still on Facebook or Twitter, depart for a platform that does not censor. Don’t use Google for searches. Cancel Netflix and Amazon Prime.

    • Boycott any organization pushing the BLM agenda or critical race theory.

    • Take a course or two at the local tech school in electrical, plumbing, or other practical skill, so you can do it yourself.

    • No matter how small your plot of land, learn to grow some food – the more the better. See if hydroponics is possible. Deny the mega-food industry your business.

    • Make friends with local farmers, source meat, eggs, corn, milk, etc. from them and pay in cash. The government cannot track the transaction.

    • If you need to utilize a contractor, landscaper, painter, etc. find a local guy and pay in cash. They often will give a discount and the government will not get their slice.

    • If your circumstances warrant, bartering with locals can satisfy the needs of both parties and keeps the government out of your business.

    • Only frequent small family-owned restaurants and always pay in cash, including the tip for your waitress. The government will absolutely get their slice if you pay using a credit card.

    • If you have money in a Wall Street bank, withdraw it and put it in credit union or small local bank.

    • Do not carry any credit card debt. Pay down your mortgage. Do not borrow to buy a new car. Buy a used car.

    • Reduce your driving, not to save the environment, but to deny the State gasoline taxes and toll revenue.

    • If possible, own some precious metals, in preparation for the inevitable collapse of the USD. Crypto currencies may also be a hedge but may be too risky for most people.

    • Learn how to communicate with allies using encrypted messaging.

    • Don’t wear a mask or get the experimental DNA altering jab. Ridicule those who do.

    • The IRS is a dysfunctional, understaffed, bureaucratic calamity of an organization. You are small potatoes. They don’t have the resources to check whether your return is accurate. If the Fed can print $4 trillion out of thin air, why do they need your taxes anyway. Act accordingly.

    • If you live in an urban area, and have the means, get the hell out, preferably to a rural area inhabited by like- minded people.

    • If you live in a blue state or blue county, and can do so, move to a red state or red county. As states raise income tax rates, move to states with little or no income taxes. PA governor Wolf just proposed increasing the state income tax by 46% to give my money to teachers’ unions. Florida is looking awfully inviting.

    • With federal, state and local taxes surely going to rise, if you are near retirement, and can afford to, just drop out now and stop paying income taxes.

    • As these Going Galt actions are sure to infuriate those wielding power, make sure you are armed, have firearms training, and have a sufficient supply of ammo. Be mentally prepared to defend your homestead.

    Some of these actions are easier than others, but they would all contribute to an undetected rebellion against the State. If you are interested in going full Galt, this article from Marc Moran (aka Hardscrabble Farmer) –  Five Things To Do When Going Galt –details his family’s journey from being trapped in the Matrix to the freedom of controlling your own destiny – also known as the liberty to live life as you choose.

    None of what I’ve described is easy, but direct confrontation would be futile, as the majority of sheep would support the government because they are incapable of critical thought, distracted by their technological gadgets, and fearful of their own shadows. Since there is no doubt we are already at war, as the new regime has already classified us as domestic terrorists, we should heed the wisdom of Sun Tzu in confronting the enemy.

    “If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him.  Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    If ever an opponent had a choleric temper it is the Marxist regime currently in power, with the hateful Pelosi, wrathful Schumer, venomous AOC, angry Biden, malevolent Harris, and malicious Deep State apparatchiks easily irritated and can be goaded into making irrational decisions. Their arrogance, lack of self-awareness, and continuous barefaced hypocrisy, leaves them exposed to ridicule and scorn on a daily basis, which makes them angrier and more susceptible to contempt and mockery from their opponents.

    There is no need to interrupt the enemy when they continue to issue executive orders and pass legislation which will have disastrous consequences. Even though the Reddit guys eventually had their asses handed to them, they proved a strategized sneak attack by the little guys could create havoc and disarray on Wall Street. The entire episode tore back the curtain and revealed the game is perpetually rigged in favor of billionaire hedge fund managers and the Wall Street cabal.

    This war is winnable if we use Irish Democracy and Going Galt tactics and out-think our narcissist, intellectually deficient, liberal arts major enemies. The danger is when they become frustrated by being out-smarted and out-maneuvered, they will lash out violently against men who just want to be left alone to live their lives as free men. When the financial system implodes, and it certainly will, they will attempt to scapegoat the deplorables.

    If they endeavor to violently enforce their mandates, they will unleash hardened men who will give no quarter in inflicting their vengeance upon those who chose not to leave them to peacefully liver their lives. The electrical grid and government computer systems are highly susceptible to attack. Strategic strikes of truckers could create food shortages in a matter of days in Democrat run urban enclaves of peaceful protests.

    The 300 million guns in this country are owned by men who know how to use them. These political animals will pay a dear price for awakening the inner Outlaw Josey Wales in millions of angry men. This unattributed quote captures what will happen when they push us too far.

    “The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of ‘Men who wanted to be left Alone’.

    They try, so very hard to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love.

    They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it.

    They know the moment they fight back, the lives as they have lived them, are over.

    The moment the ‘Men who wanted to be left Alone’ are forced to fight back, it is a small form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be.

    Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these ‘Men who wanted to be left Alone’, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives.

    They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror.

    TRUE TERROR will arrive at the Left’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy, but it will fall upon deaf ears.”

    *  *  *

    The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/09/2021 – 18:05

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