Jan 01

Today’s News 1st January 2021

  • 2020's Bio-Economic World War: Communist China Lied; Millions Of Humans Died
    2020’s Bio-Economic World War: Communist China Lied; Millions Of Humans Died

    Authored by Austin Bay via The Epoch Times,

    The Chinese Communist Party’s COVID-19/Wuhan virus disinformation campaign (cover-up) rates as 2020’s biggest Big Lie. By any measure, especially body count, the CCP committed 2020’s most consequential and deadliest falsehood.

    The following analysis summarizes decisions and actions by China’s communist rulers from December 2019’s final days through the end of January 2020, when U.S. President Donald Trump shut down air travel between mainland China and America.

    (1) China’s rulers – or their frightened commissar and police apparatchiks – brutalized and jailed the doctors and researchers who identified the disease as a threat to life and sought to warn other Chinese and medical authorities worldwide.

    (2) As these brave MDs went to jail for doing a doctor’s duty, the dictatorship initiated narrative warfare. Lower-level government mouths and controlled media denied the epidemic’s outbreak.

    (3) While spinning up The Big Lie, totalitarian China, which employs The Great Firewall of China to block internet access, allowed Chinese travelers (especially Chinese New Year vacationers) to spread the disease to exotic and non-exotic – but always human biotic – international locales.

    Were these decisions and actions genocidal calculation or the usual dictatorial ineptitude? That isn’t the critical killer question. Note to readers: I originally wrote “strategic issue” instead of “killer question” and then realized that “strategic issue” was a beltway euphemism.

    The killer: Bio-economic attacks target everyone’s life first and wallet second. So you survive the disease. Your country suffers a costly hit to food and health.

    In early January, the CCP dictatorship confronted this strategic issue: a domestic epidemic that would damage the Chinese economy.

    Fact: China’s brutal dictatorship relies on economic success to pacify disgruntled citizens who know how to evade the Great Firewall and thus know the CCP ordered the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, which killed over 2,000 Chinese citizens. Economic success? Translation: material bribes like small electric cars and cellphones.

    What did the dictatorship do? It decided to export the contagion.

    The dictatorship’s cruel analysis: The Wuhan virus pandemic imperiled the CCP’s strategic plan to dominate the globe. Ipso facto, the CCP could not let China’s economy alone suffer the Wuhan virus. Exporting the epidemic would slow the economies of China’s free market and ideological competitors. Bonus: It might sow social discontent, particularly in the United States, where freedom of movement is regarded as a right.

    China’s dictatorship concealed its callous decision to infect planet Earth. It quickly deployed a propaganda and narrative warfare campaign utilizing its worldwide political, economic, academic, and intelligence agency assets.

    China’s communist dictatorship decided to wage a new form of bio-economic war on human beings worldwide.

    Pay careful attention (for bribed critics and ChiCom trolls will not). I’m not arguing the virus was a bio-weapon in the military and medical definition of a biological attack on animals or plants. I am arguing the CCP leadership allowed the virus to spread beyond China so every other nation would suffer the disease’s medical, economic, and social consequences.

    That decision amounts to waging bio-economic warfare on non-People’s Republic of China human beings and their economies, from wealthy nations to wretchedly poor nations.

    At the moment, the Wuhan virus savages sub-Saharan African nations. Over the last four weeks, U.N. agencies have issued warnings of starvation conditions in South Sudan. The epidemic inhibits food distribution in South Sudan. Thus, Chinese communist bio-economic warfare kills the poorest of the poor. Superficial media miss this story and miss the Wuhan virus-starvation connection.

    Perhaps the miss isn’t unintentional. Chinese-influenced organizations, particularly in academia and media, contributed to 2020’s Big Lie. U.S Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) is clearly a CCP-corrupted politician.

    As 2021 begins, the CCP cover-up will continue. A CCP court just sentenced citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan to prison for questioning the CCP’s early 2020 falsehoods.

    Zhan will spend four years in jail for telling the truth about communist China’s Big Lie.

    *  *  *

    Austin Bay is a colonel (ret.) in the U.S. Army Reserve, author, syndicated columnist, and teacher of strategy and strategic theory at the University of Texas–Austin. His latest book is “Cocktails from Hell: Five Wars Shaping the 21st Century.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 23:30

  • America's Top New Year's Resolutions For 2021
    America’s Top New Year’s Resolutions For 2021

    For many, 2020 has been ‘a year’, which makes getting a fresh start in 2021 feel very appealing.

    The turn of the calendar brings both the opportunity to reflect on the last 12 months and, as Statista’s Claire Jenik notes below, the chance to begin planning for the next dozen.

    For 2021, many Americans are making the resolution to adopt healthy habits – concerning their bodies, minds and finances.

    Infographic: America's Top New Year's Resolutions for 2021 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As the Holiday Season Report from our Statista Global Consumer Survey shows, out of all US participants who said they were making one or several new year’s resolutions, 44 percent wanted to exercise more, while 42% planned to eat healthier in 2021. More popular resolutions for the upcoming year also circled around improving one’s health, with weight loss and quit smoking being among the favorite answers.

    After almost a year of social distancing, often also from close family members and loved ones, 34 percent said that they wanted to spend more time with family and friends.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 23:05

  • These Are The 10 Worst Mayors In The Nation In 2020
    These Are The 10 Worst Mayors In The Nation In 2020

    Authored by Jennifer Oliver O’Connell via RedState.com,

    As one of our RedState diarists Dana Pico mused,

    “There are times that I wonder if today’s Democrats see George Orwell’s 1984 not as a warning but a model of good government.”

    In celebration of a 2020 that desperately needs to come to an end, here is a list of the Top 10 Worst Mayors in the nation. These mayors most definitely use Orwell’s 1984 as their policies and procedures manual, if not their Bible.

    It comes as no surprise that all 10 of the mayors on the list are Democrat (something about that political party), and that five of the 10 are mayors of West Coast cities (something about the Pacific Ocean).

    Several of the mayors have overseen a mass exodus of people from their cities, and even their state in a 10-month period. But most of all, every one of these mayors stand out as abject failures of governance, with constituents that literally despise them.

    Without further adieu, here is the Top 10 Worst Mayor’s list for 2020:

    10. Michael Hancock (Denver)

    Denver Mayor Michael Hancock could have stayed under the radar and never made it to the Top 10 on this list. But thanks to his Holiday Hypocrisy, he landed firmly in the final spot.

    My colleague, Scott Hounsell wrote:

    “According to the news report, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock was spotted leaving the state to go spend Thanksgiving with his daughter in Mississippi.  The Mayor’s office said that the Mayor had canceled his big holiday dinner this year, but “traveled alone” (aside from the whole public transportation and flying from a crowded airport thing).

    “His flight allegedly also took off 30 minutes after he posted this little gem to his Twitter account:”

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    Local investigative reporter Nicole Vap dropped the hammer, exposing Mayor Hancock’s hypocrisy of not only telling others to stay at home, but hopping a flight from Colorado to Mississippi without so much as an eyelash blink.

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    Hancock was “deeply regretful” about his decision, saying he led with his heart and not his head.

    When do they ever lead, let alone actually use their head to do so? Asking for a friend.

    9. Sam Liccardo (San Jose)

    Our first Coastie Mayor enters the fray. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, like Hancock of Denver, probably could have avoided this list too; but, when you dictate to people that they are required to follow certain behavior, you better make sure you’re dictating to yourself.

    Liccardo decided the City of San Jose needed to be scolded and reminded…

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    Another plug for local journalism, as I reported:

    “San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (Democrat-Duh), ignored his own protocols and had Thanksgiving with family members outside of his own household.

    “ ‘The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit has learned Liccardo celebrated with his elderly parents at their Saratoga home with an unknown number of other guests. While the mayor’s staff did confirm the dinner took place, they have not disclosed how many other people attended, how many different households were present, and whether any of those in attendance wore masks while not eating.’ ”

    So much for Liccardo avoiding the big gatherings and keeping people safe. The San Jose Mayor assumed because he wasn’t Governor Gavin Newsom, that no one would be watching. Dude, we’re all stuck at home—you know we’re watching.

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    8. Steve Adler (Austin)

    Austin Mayor Steve Adler has been a zealot for COVID rules and mask compliance. His Twitter profile shows he is the perfect poster child for mask adherents:

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    Between criticisms of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Adler makes sure to post statistics from the County Department of Health and information on how YOU can stop the spread. While he was gaslighting his constituents pretending to be “all in it together”, Adler was posting his crumbs of wisdom from a vacation home in… wait for it… Cabo San Lucas.

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    Kira Davis unveiled this stunning hypocrisy:

    “Adler agreed, and just ahead of Thanksgiving he posted a video to his Facebook page once again encouraging Austinites to stay home, avoid travel and forgo Thanksgiving with family in the name of safety. He suggested that Austin may have to close again if people did not comply.

    “What he did not disclose is that he sent the message from his family timeshare in Cabo San Lucas.

    “In case you’re not a big geography fan…that’s in Mexico.

    “In an exclusive report, The Statesman reveals that recently Adler hosted an outdoor wedding for his daughter with at least 20 guests.

    Even after being exposed, Adler had the unmitigated gall to post this to his Twitter account:

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    Maybe if he paid more attention to the home fires, he wouldn’t get called out by the Governor of Texas for the city’s crime problem.

    7. London Breed (San Francisco)

    Our second Coastie in the running for the Top 10 sweepstakes. Besides the most pretentious name this side of Stockton, the San Francisco mayor’s woke governance has seen an exponential increase in homelessness, drug use and public nudity on the streets, not to mention dodging fecal matter on all the major thoroughfares.

    Breed has also overseen the exodus of several Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Palantir’s Alex Karp, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Yet, like Governor Gavin Newsom, and another mayoral entry, Breed targets churches as vectors of COVID spread, and complains that Newsom’s replacement of Senator Kamala Harris with someone who isn’t a Black female is a slap in the face.

    Mayor Breed slapped her own constituents in the face when, on the heels of Newsom’s infamous visit, Breed also dined at the pricey French Laundry. As Jen Van Laar reported, Breed

    “attended the 60th birthday party of socialite Goretti Lo Lui at the exclusive restaurant – in the very same private dining room Newsom’s party occupied.

    “Breed’s spokesperson, Jeff Cretan, described the party as ‘a small family birthday dinner,’ comprised of eight people, but there’s no word on who the other attendees were and how many households were represented.”

    San Francisco is full of champagne elitists, but even they are getting fed up. These elected officials are constantly saying “we” must sacrifice our time with family and friends in order to stop the spread, without that sacrifice extending in their direction. Breed was still playing this game at the Christmas holidays:

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    And like many in the rest of the state, very few are playing along.

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    6. Jacob Frey (Minneapolis)

    Now to the frozen tundra of the Upper Midwest. Had it not been for the death of George Floyd, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey could have fallen into woke obscurity as another pajama boy running a major city into the ground.

    Thanks to Black Lives Matter’s and Antifa’s violent “protests” over the death of George Floyd, Frey is doing a horrible job of rebuilding from the ruins, especially with no federal funds to assist that. You broke it, you pay for it.

    Frey and the Minneapolis City Council led the rallying cry to defund the police after the Floyd-inspired violence, where Frey allowed rioters to burn down the police headquarters.

    Frey and the Council got their wish, cutting 8 million from the police budget. But that “Monkey’s Paw” grant came with a huge surge in violent crime.

    If Frey stays on track, he’ll move up the list come next year.

    5. Jenny Durkan (Seattle)

    Not only does our third Coastie entry, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, win the mid-slot prize, but she is fighting with Frey and our No. 4 entry for the award of Stupidest Mayor on the Planet.

    Seattle has tolerated Antifa violence for years, thinking as long as it was isolated to certain areas, that it was all good in the hood.

    When Black Lives Matter decided to up the ante and create an autonomous zone called CHOP, then CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) in the middle of downtown Seattle, Durkan had nothing but high praise for this expression of

    “first amendment rights, demanding we do better as a society and provide true equity for communities of color is not terrorism – it is patriotism.”

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    Durkan used it as a platform to condemn President Trump and praise Seattle, who was on the forefront of “true, meaningful change.”

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    Only after the radicals decided to protest at her house did she decide the protests and CHAZ needed to cease. Things had been going south fairly quickly, with rapes and murders piling up in the autonomous zone, but up to that point, to Durkan it was just one big “block party.”

    So what did the good Mayor Durkan do? She laid the blame for the fallout at the feet of her police chief Carmen Best, who happened to be the first woman of color to hold the position. After the Seattle City Council voted to slash Chief Best’s salary in half, Best chose to resign.

    My colleague Sister Toldjah wrote,

    “The irony here cannot be overstated. In an effort to appease radical “Black Lives Matter” activists, the City Council chose to show their support for diverse black voices by punishing one for expressing her disagreement.”

    So much for true equity.

    4. Ted Wheeler (Portland)

    Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Jenny Durkan are almost neck and neck, but the idiot Wheeler gets a higher ranking for being the worse form of a cuck. And that’s saying a lot when you have Minneapolis Mayor Jason Frey and the winner of the No. 1 slot in this mix.

    Wheeler decided to march in solidarity with violent protestors back in July, and tolerated his own version of a CHAZ. When President Trump offered to send in the National Guard to help quell the unrest, Wheeler doubled and triple-downed on his hatred for Trump and refused help. Instead he sat back and watched as his citizens’ businesses and the city were destroyed.

    Wheeler has had BLM and Antifa mount perpetual protests at his condo building, where rioters actually entered the lobby of the building and occupied it.

    It took over 100 days of violence and destruction of property for Wheeler to finally condemn it. Too little, too late.

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    3. Lori Lightfoot (Chicago)

    Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was one of the first passengers on the COVID Hypocrisy train. While she tweeted about “Stay Home, Save Lives” and threatened people if they broke the lockdowns and quarantine, she decided she needed a haircut.

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    My colleague Nick Arama documented her excuse:

    “ ‘I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye,’ she stated.

    “ ‘I’m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut,’ Lightfoot said. ‘I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?’ “

    It’s not her fault she needs her roots done. How dare you question her authority!

    Like Durkan, Mayor Lightfoot praised the Summer’s peaceful destructive protestors—until they showed up at her house. Then she banned them, but only from her block.

    “To quote Doc Holliday — or at least the Val Kilmer version of him — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s “hypocrisy knows no bounds”.

    According to the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Police Department is under orders from the Mayor’s Office that no protesters are allowed in the area of Logan’s Square where the Mayor lives.”

    Lightfoot continues to be a regular passenger on the Hypocrisy Express, leading a celebration rally after Joe Biden declared his victorious win in the presidential election.

    While she also continues to ignore weekend murders in Black neighborhoods, and blames them on… COVID.

    But Lightfoot is part of the intersectional Left (Black, Lesbian), so in Chicago, at least, she’ll always get a pass.

    2. Bill DeBlasio (New York)

    This was another almost neck-and-neck call, but Mayor de Bolshevik aka Marxist Mayor Marfan is still forced to take second string.

    At the beginning of the “15 days to stop the spread”, Mayor Marfan decided there needed to be a tip line to report New Yorkers who were not observing social distancing.

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    It went over as well could be expected, as my colleague Sister Toldjah reported:

    “Here we are just a few days later, and the New York Post is reporting that the text line has been “flooded” with obscene photos, comparisons of de Blasio to Hitler, and links/photos to the reports of him going to the gym as other New York residents were told to hunker down.”

    De Bolshevik made a big show of painting a Black Lives Matter street mural in the wake of the George Floyd Summer of unrest, and he spearheaded the successful defunding of the police, while watching crime rates spike out of control as a result.

    Marxist Mayor Marfan is a despised man, even by the state’s governor, who is no peach himself. Democrat Max Rose called him the worst Mayor in the history of the country:

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    Apparently Mayor Marfan continues to double down on that title with pride, pretending to care by beclowning himself with videos about mask usage. While making plans to stiff the Orthodox Jewish community on getting vaccinations, even though he has personally blamed them for the COVID spread in the city.

    You look up “Horrible Human” in the dictionary, and de Bolshevik’s photo is more than likely next to it.

    You look up “Useless Tool”, and you’ll find a picture of this West Coast treasure who took the No. 1 spot.

    1. Eric Garcetti (Los Angeles)

    Diarist Katlyn Batts said it best:

    “The situation isn’t any better on the west coast either, where Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s approach to the COVID-19 epidemic has only worsened many of the most pressing issues facing the city.

    “Homelessness, for example, has long been a major problem facing Los Angeles. Mayor Garcetti has promised to address the issue, but he has come up short time and again in finding a true solution. The city pledged to house 15,000 of its homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has continuously failed to meet that goal.

    While Garcetti referred to the homeless population as “horseshit” and has ignored the overflow of human detritus and waste that has filled every street and freeway underpass from Atwater Village to Woodland Hills, he has fixated on ensuring that every COVID-19 diktat spewed by Governor Hair Gel Newsom is enforced, even declaring that “snitches get rewards” to anyone who would report their neighbor for violating the Governor’s “safer at home” orders.

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    While cutting off water and power from homes and businesses who refused to adhere to the orders.

    However, Mayor Uselessness did show his concern for Angelenos by giving them a discount on parking violations. What a stand up guy!

    Unless it comes to any male who was sexually harassed by his Deputy Mayor and advisor Rick Jacobs, that is. Then he doesn’t know anything about it.

    What Garcetti never failed to do was miss a moment to be in front of the cameras as the West Coast surrogate for the Biden-Harris ticket. He even had his hopes of riding the ticket’s coattails to D.C., where his illusions of grandeur could be fully realized.

    BLM-LA helped to burst that bubble. They labeled him a white supremacist, and protested in front of his house in order to tank any chance that Biden would consider him for a cabinet position.

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    The good news is that BLM-LA succeeded, so the rest of the nation has been spared Garcetti’s abject incompetence.

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    The bad news is Los Angeles is still stuck with him.

    What a way to be No. 1.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 22:40

  • Fake Pastors Swindle Churchgoers In $28 Million FX/Crypto Ponzi Scheme 
    Fake Pastors Swindle Churchgoers In $28 Million FX/Crypto Ponzi Scheme 

    The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed charges against two Maryland companies and their principals allegedly defrauding more than 1,000 investors in a $28 million Ponzi scheme. 

    The SEC first filed the complaint against 1st Million LLC and Smart Partners LLC, and their principals, Dennis Jali, John Frimpong, and Arley Johnson, in August, for defrauding 1,200 investors, many of which were “African immigrants.” 

    The complaint said the trio “exploited common ancestry and/or religious affiliations to earn investors’ trust. Many of the investors were health care workers and/or members of churches attended by Jali, Frimpong, and/or Johnson.” 

    1st Million LLC Seminar 

    Investors were promised by Jali, Frimpong, and Johnson that they were “skilled and licensed traders that would invest in foreign currency exchange and cryptocurrency, “and guaranteed substantial monthly or quarterly returns while simultaneously protecting their principal from market forces,” the complaint read. 

    As always, like in any other classic Ponzi scheme, the complaint read:

    “Rather than invest money received from these targeted communities and others as promised, Defendants misappropriated investor funds for the personal use of Jali, Frimpong, and Johnson, and to temporarily keep the scheme afloat by making Ponzi payments to earlier investors.” 

    According to CBS Baltimore, officials from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland are trying to identify victims who may have lost money. 

    CBS Baltimore added more color into the trio’s scheme, indicating they posed as “pastors and attended church events to get investments from churchgoers.” 

    Here’s one of the many seminars the fake pastors lured unsuspecting victims from various churches. 

    The scheme went on for nearly two years, from August 2017 to May 2019.

    A couple of months ago, a Baltimore man was sentenced to 22-years in jail for the largest-ever Ponzi scheme in the state’s history.  

    Just imagine if these fools actually invested millions of dollars in Bitcoin back in 2017-19… 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 22:15

  • Military And Political Trends Of 2020 That Will Shape 2021
    Military And Political Trends Of 2020 That Will Shape 2021

    Via South Front,

    2020 was a year full of surprises. It marked the advent of a new reality which may, with an equal probability, lead humanity to a new dark age or to a global digital dystopia. In this context, there is little room for a positive scenario of sustainable development that would benefit people in general, as opposed to just a group of select individuals and special interest groups. The heft of shifts in 2020 is comparable to what European citizens felt on the eve of another change of the socio-economic formation in the early 17th and 20th centuries.

    The past year began with the assassination of the Iranian military genius General Qasem Soleimani by the United States, and it ended with the murder of the prominent scholar Mohsen Fakhrizadeh by the Israelis. In early January, Iran, expecting another aggressive action from the West, accidently shot down a Ukrainian civil aircraft that had inexplicably altered its course over Tehran without request nor authorization. Around the same time, Turkey confirmed the deployment of its military in Libya, beginning a new phase of confrontation in the region, and Egypt responding with airstrikes and additional shows of force. The situation in Yemen developed rapidly: taking advantage of the Sunni coalition’s moral weakness, Ansar Allah achieved significant progress in forcing the Saudis out of the country in many regions. The state of warfare in northwestern Syria has significantly changed, transforming into the formal delineation of zones of influence of Turkey and the Russian-Iranian-Syrian coalition. This happened amid, and largely due to the weakening of U.S. influence in the region. Ankara is steadily increasing its military presence in the areas under its responsibility and along the contact line. It has taken measures to deter groups linked to Al-Qaeda and other radicals. As a result, the situation in the region is stabilizing, which has allowed Turkey to increasingly exert control over most of Greater Idlib.

    ISIS cells remain active in the eastern and southern Syrian regions. Particular processes are taking place in Quneitra and Daraa provinces, where Russian peace initiatives were inconclusive by virtue of the direct destructive influence of Israel in these areas of Syria. In turn, the assassination of Qasem Soleimaniin resulted in a sharp increase in the targeting of American personnel, military and civil infrastructure in Iraq. The U.S. Army was forced to regroup its forces, effectively abandoning a number of its military installations and concentrating available forces at key bases. At the same time, Washington flatly rejected demands from Baghdad for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and promised to respond with full-fledged sanctions if Iraq continued to raise this issue. Afghanistan remains stable in its instability. Disturbing news comes from Latin America. Confrontation between China and India flared this year, resulting in sporadic border clashes. This situation seems far from over, as both countries have reinforced their military posture along the disputed border. The aggressive actions of the Trump administration against China deepen global crises, which has become obvious not only to specialists but also to the general public. The relationship between the collective West and the Russian Federation was re-enshrined in “the Cold War state”, which seems to have been resurrected once again.

    The turbulence of the first quarter of 2020 was overshadowed by a new socio-political process – the corona-crisis, the framework of which integrates various phenomena from the Sars-Cov2 epidemic itself and the subsequent exacerbation of the global economic crisis. The disclosure of substantial social differences that have accumulated in modern capitalist society, lead to a series of incessant protests across the globe. The year 2020 was accompanied by fierce clashes between protesters professing various causes and law enforcement forces in numerous countries. Although on the surface these societal clashes with the state appear disassociated, many share related root causes. A growing, immense wealth inequality, corruption of government at all levels, a lack of any meaningful input into political decision making, and the unmasking of massive censorship via big tech corporations and the main stream media all played a part in igniting societal unrest.

    In late 2019 and early 2020 there was little reason for optimistic projections for the near future. However, hardly anyone could anticipate the number of crisis events and developments that had taken place during this year. These phenomena affected every region of the world to some extent.

    Nevertheless, Middle East has remained the main source of instability, due to being an arena where global and regional power interests intertwine and clash. The most important line of confrontation is between US and Israel-led forces on the one hand, and Iran and its so called Axis of Resistance. The opposing sides have been locked in an endless spiral of mutual accusations, sanctions, military incidents, and proxy wars, and recently even crossed the threshold into a limited exchange of strikes due to the worsening state of regional confrontation. Russia and Turkey, the latter of which has been distancing itself from Washington due to growing disagreements with “NATO partners” and changes in global trends, also play an important role in the region without directly entering into the confrontation between pro-Israel forces and Iran.

    As in the recent years, Syria and Iraq remain the greatest hot-spots. The destruction of ISIS as a terrorist state and the apparent killing of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not end its existence as a terror group. Many ISIS cells and supporting elements actively use regional instability as a chance to preserve the Khalifate’s legacy. They remain active mainly along the Syria-Iraq border, and along the eastern bank of the Euphrates in Syria. Camps for the temporary displaced and for the families and relatives of ISIS militants on the territory controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in north-eastern Syria are also breeding grounds for terrorist ideology. Remarkably, these regions are also where there is direct presence of US forces, or, as in the case of SDF camps, presence of forces supported by the US.

    The fertile soil for radicalism also consists of the inability to reach a comprehensive diplomatic solution that would end the Syrian conflict in a way acceptable to all parties. Washington is not interesting in stabilizing Syria because even should Assad leave, it would strengthen the Damascus government that would naturally be allied to Russia and Iran. Opposing Iran and supporting Israel became the cornerstone of US policy during the Trump administration. Consequently, Washington is supporting separatist sentiments of the Kurdish SDF leadership and even allowed it to participate in the plunder of Syrian oil wells in US coalition zone of control in which US firms linked to the Pentagon and US intelligence services are participating. US intelligence also aids Israel in its information and psychological warfare operations, as well as military strikes aimed at undermining Syria and Iranian forces located in the country. In spite of propaganda victories, in practice Israeli efforts had limited success in 2020 as Iran continued to strengthen its positions and military capabilities on its ally’s territory. Iran’s success in establishing and supporting a land corridor linking Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iraq, plays an important role. Constant expansion of Iran’s military presence and infrastructure near the town of al-Bukamal, on the border of Iraq and Syria, demonstrates the importance of the project to Tehran. Tel-Aviv claims that Iran is using that corridor to equip pro-Iranian forces in southern Syria and Lebanon with modern weapons.

    The Palestinian question is also an important one for Israel’s leadership and its lobby in Washington. The highly touted “deal of the century” turned out to be no more than an offer for the Palestinians to abandon their struggle for statehood. As expected, this initiative did not lead to a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Rather the opposite, it gave an additional stimulus to Palestinian resistance to the demands that were being imposed. At the same time, Trump administration scored a diplomatic success by forcing the UAE and Bahrain to normalize their relations with Israel, and Saudi Arabia to make its collaboration with Israel public. That was a historic victory for US-Israel policy in the Middle East. Public rapprochement of Arab monarchies and Israel strengthened the positions of Iran as the only country which not only declares itself as Palestine’s and Islamic world’s defender, but actually puts words into practice. Saudi Arabia’s leadership will particularly suffer in terms of loss of popularity among its own population, already damaged by the failed war in Yemen and intensifying confrontation with UAE, both of which are already using their neighbor’s weakness to lay a claim to leadership on the Arabian Peninsula.

    The list of actors strengthening their positions in the Red Sea includes Russia. In late 2020 it became known that Russia reached an agreement with Sudan on establishing a naval support facility which has every possibility to become a full-blown naval base. This foothold will enable the Russian Navy to increase its presence on key maritime energy supply routes on the Red Sea itself and in the area between Aden and Oman straits. For Russia, which has not had naval infrastructure in that region since USSR’s break-up, it is a significant diplomatic breakthrough. For its part. Sudan’s leadership apparently views Russia’s military presence as a security factor allowing it to balance potential harmful measures by the West.

    During all of 2020, Moscow and Beijing continued collaboration on projects in Africa, gradually pushing out traditional post-colonial powers in several key areas. The presence of Russian military specialists in the Central African Republic where they assist the central government in strengthening its forces, escalation of local conflicts, and ensuring the security of Russian economic sectors, is now a universally known fact. Russian diplomacy and specialists are also active in Libya, where UAE and Egypt which support Field Marshal Khaftar, and Turkey which supports the Tripoli government, are clashing. Under the cover of declarations calling for peace and stability, foreign actors are busily carving up Libya’s energy resources. For Egypt there’s also the crucial matter of fighting terrorism and the presence of groups affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood which Cairo sees as a direct threat to national security.

    The Sahel and the vicinity of Lake Chad remain areas where terror groups with links to al-Qaeda and ISIS remain highly active. France’s limited military mission in the Sahara-Sahel region has been failure and could not ensure sufficient support for regional forces in order to stabilize the situation. ISIS and Boko-Haram continue to spread chaos in the border areas between Niger, Nigeria, Cameroun, and Chad. In spite of all the efforts by the region’s governments, terrorists continue to control sizable territories and represent a significant threat to regional security. The renewed conflict in Ethiopia is a separate problem, in which the federal government was drawn into a civil war against the National Front for the Liberation of Tigray controlling that province. The ethno-feudal conflict between federal and regional elites threatens to destabilize the entire country if it continues.

    The explosive situation in Africa shows that post-colonial European powers and the “Global Policeman” which dominated that continent for decades were not interested in addressing the continent’s actual problem. Foreign actors were mainly focused on extracting resources and ensuring the interests of a narrow group of politicians and entities affiliated with foreign capitals. Now they are forced to compete with the informal China-Russia bloc which will use a different approach that may be a described as follows: Strengthening of regional stability to protect investments in economic projects. Thus it is no surprise that influential actors are gradually losing to new but more constructive forces.

    Tensions within European countries have been on the rise during the past several years, due to both the crisis of the contemporary economic paradigm and to specific regional problems such as the migration crises and the failure of multiculturalism policies, with subsequent radicalization of society.

    Unpleasant surprises included several countries’ health care and social protection networks’ inability to cope with the large number of COVID-19 patients. Entire systems of governance in a number of European countries proved incapable of coping with rapidly developing crises. This is true particularly for countries of southern Europe, such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Among eastern European countries, Hungary’s and Romania’s economies were particularly badly affected. At the same time, Poland’s state institutions and economy showed considerable resilience in the face of crisis. While the Federal Republic of Germany suffered considerable economic damage in the second quarter of 2020, Merkel’s government used the situation to inject huge sums of liquidity into the economy, enhanced Germany’s position within Europe, and moreover Germany’s health care and social protection institutions proved capable and sufficiently resilient.

    Coronavirus and subsequent social developments led to the emergence of the so-called “Macron Doctrine” which amounts to an argument that EU must obtain strategic sovereignty. This is consistent with the aims of a significant portion of German national elites. Nevertheless, Berlin officially criticized Macron’s statements and has shown willingness to enter into a strategic partnership with Biden Administration’s United States as a junior partner. However, even FRG’s current leadership understands the dangers of lack of strategic sovereignty in an era of America’s decline as the world policeman. Against the backdrop of a global economic crisis, US-EU relations are ineluctably drifting from a state of partnership to one of competition or even rivalry. In general, the first half of 2020 demonstrated the vital necessity of further development of European institutions.

    The second half of 2020 was marked by fierce mass protests in Germany, France, Great Britain, and other European countries. The level of violence employed by both the protesters and law enforcement was unprecedented and is not comparable to the level of violence seen during protests in Russia, Belarus, and even Kirgizstan. Mainstream media did their best to depreciate and conceal the scale of what was happening. If the situation continues to develop in the same vein, there is every chance that in the future, a reality that can be described as a digital concentration camp may form in Europe.

    World media, for its part, paid particular attention to the situation in Belarus, where protests have entered their fourth month following the August 9, 2020 presidential elections. Belarusian protests have been characterized by their direction from outside the country and choreographed nature. The command center of protest activities is officially located in Poland. This fact is in and of itself unprecedented in Europe’s contemporary history. Even during Ukraine’s Euromaidan, external forces formally refused to act as puppetmasters.

    Belarus’ genuinely existing socio-economic problems have led to a rift within society that is now divided into two irreconcilable camps: proponents of reforms vs. adherents of the current government. Law enforcement forces which are recruited from among President Lukashenko’s supporters, have acted forcefully and occasionally harshly. Still, the number of casualties is far lower than, for example, in protests in France or United States.

    Ukraine itself, where Western-backed “democratic forces” have already won, remains the main point of instability in Eastern Europe. The Zelenskiy administration came to power under slogans about the need to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine and rebuild the country. In practice, the new government continued to pursue the policy aimed at maintaining military tension in the region in the interests of its external sponsors and personal enrichment.

    For the United States, 2020 turned out to be a watershed year for both domestic and foreign policy. Events of this year were a reflection of Trump Administration’s protectionist foreign policy and a national-oriented approach in domestic and economic policy, which ensured an intense clash with the majority of Washington Establishment acting in the interests of global capital.

    In addition to the unresolved traditional problems, America’s problems were made worse by two crises, COVID-19 spread and BLM movement protests. They ensured America’s problems reached a state of critical mass.

    One can and should have a critical attitude toward President Trump’s actions, but one should not doubt the sincerity of his efforts to turn the slogan Make America Great Again into reality. One should likewise not doubt that his successor will adhere to other values. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter or Make Global Moneymen Even Stronger, or Russia Must Be Destroyed, or something even more exotic, it will not change the fact America we’ve known in the last half century died in 2020. A telling sign of its death throes is the use of “orange revolution” technologies developed against inconvenient political regimes. This demonstrated that currently the United States is ruled not by national elites but by global investors to whom the interests of ordinary Americans are alien.

    This puts the terrifying consequences of COVID-19 in a new light. The disease has struck the most vulnerable layers of US society. According to official statistics, United States has had about 20 million cases and over 330,000 deaths. The vast majority are low-income inhabitants of mega-cities. At the same time, the wealthiest Americans have greatly increased their wealth by exploiting the unfolding crisis for their own personal benefit. The level of polarization of US society has assumed frightening proportions. Conservatives against liberals, blacks against whites, LGBT against traditionalists, everything that used to be within the realm of public debate and peaceful protest has devolved into direct, often violent, clashes. One can observe unprecedented levels of aggression and violence from all sides.

    In foreign policy, United States continued to undermine the international security system based on international treaties. There are now signs that one of the last legal bastions of international security, the New START treaty, is under attack. US international behavior has prompted criticism from NATO allies. There are growing differences of opinion on political matters with France and economic ones with Germany. The dialogue with Eastern Mediterranean’s most powerful military actor Turkey periodically showed a sharp clash of interests.

    Against that backdrop, United States spent 2020 continuously increasing its military presence in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea basin. Additional US forces and assets were deployed in direct proximity to Russia’s borders. The number of offensive military exercises under US leadership or with US participation has considerably increased.

    In the Arctic, the United States is acting as a spoiler, unhappy with the current state of affairs. It aims to extend its control over natural resources in the region, establish permanent presence in other countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ) through the use of the so-called “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs), and continue to encircle Russia with ballistic missile defense (BMD) sites and platforms.

    In view of the urgent and evident US preparations to be able to fight and prevail in a war against a nuclear adversary, by defeating the adversary’s nuclear arsenal through the combination of precision non-nuclear strikes, Arctic becomes a key region in this military planning. The 2020 sortie by a force of US Navy BMD-capable AEGIS destroyers into the Barents Sea, the first such mission since the end of the Cold War over two decades ago, shows the interest United States has in projecting BMD capabilities into regions north of Russia’s coastline, where they might be able to effect boost-phase interceptions of Russian ballistic missiles that would be launched in retaliatory strikes against the United States. US operational planning for the Arctic in all likelihood resembles that for South China Sea, with only a few corrections for climate.

    In Latin America, the year of 2020 was marked by the intensification Washington efforts aimed at undermining the political regimes that it considered to be in the opposition to the existing world order.

    Venezuela remained one of the main points of the US foreign policy agenda. During the entire year, the government of Nicolas Maduro was experiencing an increasing sanction, political and clandestine pressure. In May, Venezuelan security forces even neutralized a group of US mercenaries that sneaked into the country to stage the coup in the interests of the Washington-controlled opposition and its public leader Juan Guaido. However, despite the recognition of Guaido as the president of Venezuela by the US and its allies, regime-change attempts, and the deep economic crisis, the Maduro government survived.

    This case demonstrated that the decisive leadership together having the support of a notable part of the population and working links with alternative global centers of power could allow any country to resist to globalists’ attacks. The US leadership itself claims that instead of surrendering, Venezuela turned itself into a foothold of its geopolitical opponents: China, Russia, Iran and even Hezbollah. While this evaluation of the current situation in Venezuela is at least partly a propaganda exaggeration to demonize the ‘anti-democratic regime’ of Maduro, it highlights parts of the really existing situation.

    The turbulence in Bolivia ended in a similar manner, when the right wing government that gained power as a result of the coup in 2019 demonstrated its inability to rule the country and lost power in 2020. The expelled president, Evo Morales, returned to the country and the Movement for Socialism secured their dominant position in Bolivia thanks to the wide-scale support from the indigenous population. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that these developments in Venezuela and Bolivia would allow to reverse the general trend towards the destabilization in South America.

    The regional economic and social turbulence is strengthened by the high level of organized crime and the developing global crisis that sharpened the existing contradictions among key global and regional players. This creates conditions for the intensification of existing conflicts. For example, the peace process between the FARC and the federal government is on the brink of the collapse in Colombia. Local sources and media accuse the government and affiliated militias of detentions and killings of leaders of local communities and former FARC members in violation of the existing peace agreement. This violence undermine the fragile peace process and sets conditions for the resumption of the armed struggle by FARC and its supporters. Mexico remains the hub for illegal migration, drug and weapon trafficking just on the border with the United States. Large parts of the country are in the state of chaos and are in fact controlled by violent drug cartels and their mercenaries. Brazil is in the permanent state of political and economic crisis amid the rise of street crime.

    These negative tendencies affect almost all states of the region. The deepening global economic crisis and the coronavirus panic add oil to the flame of instability.

    Countries of South America are not the only one suffering from the crisis. It also shapes relations between global powers. Outcomes of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and the global economic crisis contributed to the hardening of the standoff between the United States and China.

    Washington and Beijing have insoluble contradictions. The main of them is that China has been slowly but steadily winning the race for the economic and technological dominance simultaneously boosting own military capabilities to defend the victory in the case of a military escalation. The sanction, tariff and diplomatic pressure campaign launched by the White House on China since the very start of the Trump Presidency is a result of the understanding of these contradictions by the Trump administration and its efforts to guarantee the leading US position in the face of the global economic recession. The US posture towards the South China Sea issues, the political situation in Hong Kong, human rights issues in Xinjiang, the unprecedented weapon sales to Taiwan, the support of the militarization of Japan and many other questions is a part of the ongoing standoff. Summing up, Washington has been seeking to isolate China through a network of local military alliances and contain its economic expansion through sanction, propaganda and clandestine operations.

    The contradictions between Beijing and Washington regarding North Korea and its nuclear and ballistic missile programs are a part of the same chain of events. Despite the public rhetoric, the United States is not interested in the full settlement of the Korea conflict. Such a scenario that may include the reunion of the North and South will remove the formal justification of the US military buildup. This is why the White House opted to not fulfill its part of the deal with the North once again assuring the North Korean leadership that its decision to develop its nuclear and missile programs and further.

    Statements of Chinese diplomats and top official demonstrate that Beijing fully understands the position of Washington. At the same time, China has proven that it is not going to abandon its policies aimed at gaining the position of the main leading power in the post-unipolar world. Therefore, the conflict between the sides will continue escalating in the coming years regardless the administration in the White House and the composition of the Senate and Congress. Joe Biden and forces behind his rigged victory in the presidential election will likely turn back from Trump’s national-oriented economic policy and ‘normalize’ relations with China once again reconsidering Russia as Enemy #1. This will not help to remove the insoluble contradictions with China and reverse the trend towards the confrontation. However, the Biden administration with help from mainstream media will likely succeed in hiding this fact from the public by fueling the time-honored anti-Russian hysteria.

    As to Russia itself, it ended the year of 2020 in its ordinary manner for the recent years: successful and relatively successful foreign policy actions amid the complicated economic, social and political situation inside the country. The sanction pressure, coronavirus-related restrictions and the global economic crisis slowed down the Russian economy and contributed to the dissatisfaction of the population with internal economic and social policies of the government. The crisis was also used by external actors that carried out a series of provocations and propaganda campaigns aimed at undermining the stability in the country ahead of the legislative election scheduled for September 2021. The trend on the increase of sanction pressure, including tapering large infrastructure projects like the Nord Stream 2, and expansion of public and clandestine destabilization efforts inside Russia was visible during the entire year and will likely increase in 2021. In the event of success, these efforts will not only reverse Russian foreign policy achievements of the previous years, but could also put in danger the existence of the Russian statehood in the current format.

    Among the important foreign policy developments of 2020 underreported by mainstream media is the agreement on the creation of a Russian naval facility on the coast of the Red Sea in Sudan. If this project is fully implemented, this will contribute to the rapid growth of Russian influence in Africa. Russian naval forces will also be able to increase their presence in the Red Sea and in the area between the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman. Both of these areas are the core of the current maritime energy supply routes. The new base will also serve as a foothold of Russia in the case of a standoff with naval forces of NATO member states that actively use their military infrastructure in Djibouti to project power in the region. It is expected that the United States (regardless of the administration in the White House) will try to prevent the Russian expansion in the region at any cost. For an active foreign policy of Russia, the creation of the naval facility in Sudan surpasses all public and clandestine actions in Libya in recent years. From the point of view of protecting Russian national interests in the Global Oceans, this step is even more important than the creation of the permanent air and naval bases in Syria.

    As well as its counterparts in Washington and Beijing, Moscow contributes notable efforts to the modernization of its military capabilities, with special attention to the strategic nuclear forces and hypersonic weapons. The Russians see their ability to inflict unacceptable damage on a potential enemy among the key factors preventing a full-scale military aggression against them from NATO. The United Sates, China and Russia are in fact now involved in the hypersonic weapon race that also includes the development of means and measures to counter a potential strike with hypersonic weapons.

    The new war in Nagorno-Karabakh became an important factor shaping the balance of power in the South Caucasus. The Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc achieved a sweeping victory over Armenian forces and only the involvement of the Russian diplomacy the further deployment of the peacekeepers allowed to put an end to the violence and rescue the vestiges of the self-proclaimed Armenian Republic of Artsakh. Russia successfully played a role of mediator and officially established a military presence on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan for the next 5 years. The new Karabakh war also gave an additional impulse in the Turkish-Azerbaijani economic and military cooperation, while the pro-Western regime in Armenia that expectedly led the Armenian nation to the tragedy is balancing on the brink of collapse.

    The Central Asia traditionally remained one of the areas of instability around the world with the permanent threat of militancy and humanitarian crisis. Nonetheless, despite forecasts of some analysis, the year of 2020 did not become the year of the creation of ISIS’ Caliphate 2.0 in the region. An important role in preventing this was played by the Taliban that additionally to securing its military victories over the US-led coalition and the US-backed Kabul government, was fiercely fighting ISIS cells appearing in Afghanistan. The Taliban, which controls a large part of Afghanistan, was also legalized on the international scene by direct talks with the United States. The role of the Taliban will grow and further with the reduction of the US military presence.

    While some media already branded the year of 2020 as one of the worst in the modern history, there are no indications that the year of 2021 will be any brighter or the global crises and regional instability will magically disappear by themselves. Instead, most likely 2020 was just a prelude for the upcoming global shocks and the acute standoff for markets and resources in the environment of censorship, legalized total surveillance, violations of human rights under ‘democratic’ and ‘social’ slogans’ and proxy wars.

    The instability in Europe will likely be fueled by the increasing cultural-civilizational conflict and the new wave of newcomers that have acute ideological and cultural differences with the European civilization. The influx of newcomers is expected due to demographic factors and the complicated security, social situation in the Middle East and Africa. Europe will likely try to deal with the influx of newcomers by introducing new movement and border restrictions under the brand of fighting coronavirus. Nonetheless, the expected growth of the migration pressure will likely contribute to the negative tendencies that could blow up Europe from inside.

    The collapse of the international security system, including key treaties limiting the development and deployment of strategic weapons, indicates that the new detente on the global scene will remain an improbable scenario. Instead, the world will likely move further towards the escalation scenario as at least a part of the current global leadership considers a large war a useful tool to overcome the economic crisis and capture new markets. Russia, with its large territories, rich resources, a relatively low population, seems to be a worthwhile target. At the same time, China will likely exploit the escalating conflict between Moscow and the US-led bloc to even further increase its global positions. In these conditions, many will depend on the new global order and main alliances within it that are appearing from the collapsing unipolar system. The United States has already lost its unconditional dominant role on the international scene, but the so-called multipolar world order has not appeared yet. The format of this new multipolar world will likely have a critical impact on the further developments around the globe and positions of key players involved in the never-ending Big Game.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 21:50

  • The Wokest News Stories Of 2020: Taibbi
    The Wokest News Stories Of 2020: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    The year 2020 will be remembered in the real world for a terrifying pandemic, mass unemployment, a nationwide protest movement, and a historically uninspiring presidential race. The year in media, meanwhile, was marked by grotesque factual scandals, journalist-cheered censorship, and an accelerating newsroom mania for political groupthink that was equal parts frightening and ridiculous.

    The tiniest violations of perceived orthodoxies cost jobs. Reporters and editors were whacked en masse in uprisings at the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, Vox, the Miami Herald, and countless other places.

    Some of the purges were themselves amazing news stories. Reporter Sue Schafer was fired after her paper, the Washington Post, published a 3,000-word expose about a two-year-old incident in which she attended a Halloween party dressed as Megyn Kelly, who herself had been fired from NBC for defending blackface costumes. Schafer, in other words, was fired for dressing in blackface as a satire of blackface costumes, in an incident no one heard of until her own editors decided to make an issue of it. This was one example of what the New Yorker recently exulted as the “expensive and laborious” process of investigative journalism, as practiced in 2020.

    …

    If in looking at the following list it strikes you to wonder, “Where were the editors?”, it turns out an atmosphere in which even senior New York Times bosses have to be afraid of staff is almost like having no editors at all! Given their importance in preventing the scourge of what the New Yorker called “journalistic individualism,” i.e. reporters allowed to operate outside the “collective interest,” this was really too bad. In honor, then, of that sacred covenant between writers and editors — well, the ones not purged, reassigned, or forced out this year — here’s a shortlist of the most remarkable (and presumably edited) articles of 2020, the year of the woke headline…

    Continue reading here.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 21:25

  • Goldman's Top Charts Of 2020
    Goldman’s Top Charts Of 2020

    In the year’s final report published by Goldman’s economists the bank has summarized key global themes that stood out this year and are likely to shape 2021 in a series of charts.

    First, here are some of Goldman’s key observations on the global economy:

    • The global economy came to a sudden pandemic stop with a peak hit to global GDP in mid-April of 20% that varied significantly in magnitude across economies.
    • Unprecedented policy easing and adaptation drove the rapid but partial global recovery in the second half of 2020.  Fiscal easing led to relatively stable real disposable income in most DMs and an actual surge in the US despite a historic collapse in GDP.  Monetary easing stabilized financial markets and brought the most accommodative financial conditions on record.  Targeted policies such as mask wearing mandates and other consumer and business adaptations including surges in e-commerce and work from home lowered the relative impact on economic activity from successive virus waves.
    • Relatively low bankruptcies, increased business formations, limited increases in unemployment in Europe and Japan, and sharp declines in unemployment in North America all point to surprisingly limited long-term damage to the supply side of the economy.
    • We expect the virus situation to improve sharply in 2021, driven by warmer weather in the Northern hemisphere, rising immunity from natural infections and—most importantly—a successful global vaccination campaign.  Vaccine supply is well below demand at present, but it should become plentiful in DMs in the next several months and in EMs later in the year.  The remaining issues are mostly logistical, but the speed of the rollout in Israel in recent weeks suggests that they are surmountable.
    • Slowing virus spread should boost activity in virus-sensitive sectors that account for the bulk of the output gap and the 2020 decline in inflation and drive our 2021 above-consensus global growth forecast of +6.4%

    And here are the charts, starting with the Global Sudden Stop, with China becoming the first country to lock down followed promptly by other countries in March…

    … leading to a 20% collapse of global GDP in April…

    … yet the decline wasn’t uniform and varied in both speed and magnitude across economies.

    The collapse reversed rapidly if partially in the second half, thanks to a panicked policy response and behavioral adaptation…

    Meanwhile, the historic $20 trillion QE unleashed by global central banks…

    … helped push stocks to all time highs while pushing financial conditions to the easiest on record.

    Looking ahead, Goldman sees limited supply side damage and improved virus control which drive the bank’s above-consensus 2021 global GDP forecast of +6.4%…

    … boosted by a strong business sector which “experienced surprisingly few bankruptcies and elevated business formations”

    Adding to its optimistic outlook, Goldman sees the virus spread slowing once the weather warms up in the Northern hemisphere…

    … and as natural immunity from infections builds…

    … while distribution of plentiful vaccines will further cut down on virus spread…

    … benefiting DM countries most and helping drive successful vaccination campaigns…

    … with the assumption that logistic issues get resolved, something which Goldman is optimistic about referring to Israel’s “rapid rollout”:

    The gradual elimination of covid should boost activity in virus-sensitive and restricted sectors that account for the bulk of the output gap according to Goldman…

    … which concludes by putting all of the above together, and predicting a jump in inflation in the coming years.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 21:00

  • ISIS Kills 28 Syrian Troops Near Palmyra In Most Devastating Ambush In Years
    ISIS Kills 28 Syrian Troops Near Palmyra In Most Devastating Ambush In Years

    Via AlMasdarNews.com,

    This week ISIS terrorists carried out a devastating attack on a passenger bus that was carrying dozens of Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers and civilians in the eastern region of the country.

    On Thursday the Islamic State announced responsibility for the attack that claimed the lives of at least 20 Syrian Army soldiers and eight civilians between the cities of Palmyra (Tadmur) and Deir Ezzor.

    The attack, which was carried out on December 30th at 4 P.M. (Damascus Time), was the deadliest single ambush of the year by the Islamic State and one of the few attacks they have carried out in the eastern region of the country recently.

    Al Jazeera detailed that a bus “carried soldiers and pro-government fighters who had finished their leave and were on their way back to their base in the desolate, sparsely populated area.”

    “Another source said at least 30 soldiers were killed, mostly from the Syrian army’s elite Fourth Brigade, which has a strong presence in the rich oil-producing province since the ISIL, also known as ISIS group fighters were pushed out at the end of 2017,” Al Jazeera added.

    In response to the devastating attack by the Islamic State, the Russian Aerospace Forces unleashed a massive barrage of airstrikes over the central and eastern regions of Syria, hitting several terrorist sites in the Badiya Al-Sham region.

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

    According to a field source in the Homs Provinice, the Russian Aerospace Forces launched dozens of strikes on the terrorist positions, inflicting heavy losses within the ISIS ranks.

    Furthermore, the Syrian Arab Army also carried out a number of artillery strikes and air raids over the terrorist positions, hitting the ISIS positions in the Homs, Deir Ezzor and Sweida governorates.

    The Islamic State has increased their attacks against the Syrian Arab Army in 2020, moving between different governorates to wreak havoc in the Arab Republic.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 20:35

  • YouTube's Top-Earner In 2020… Is 9 Years Old
    YouTube’s Top-Earner In 2020… Is 9 Years Old

    YouTube stars are regularly bombarded with the question “how much do you earn doing this?”.

    Statista’s Martin Armstrong provides this infographic to shed some light on the most lucrative end of the YouTube money list.

    Infographic: YouTube's Top-Earners 2020 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Ryan Kaji earned $29.5 million from June 1, 2019 to June 1, 2020, keeping him in the number 1 spot on the Forbes ranking. The special thing about the Texan? He is just nine years old.

    Kaji has become famous with videos in which he presents new toys and rates them.

    Even younger is Russia-born Anastasia Radzinskaya (known as Nastya and 6 years old), whose videos have generated revenues of $18.5 million.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 20:10

  • The Year In Review: 2020 In 20 Visualizations
    The Year In Review: 2020 In 20 Visualizations

    Authored by Nick Routley via VisualCapitalist.com,

    Can you remember a year more life-changing than 2020?

    Over a million lives were lost in the pandemic, oil prices turned negative, and protests swept the streets. At the same time, 10 years of technology advancements seemed to happen in mere months—and now vaccinations are rolling out at a record speed.

    Below, we round up some of the year’s biggest news events with charts and visualizations.

    The Year in Review: 2020 in 20 Visualizations

    Graphic #1   ⟩⟩   January 2020 – Australian Bushfires

    For some in the Southern Hemisphere who ushered in the new year first, it started on fire.

    Reuters assessed the scale of the damage caused by bushfires across Australia. In fact, total burned areas reached 18.6 million hectares (186,000km²) by March, bigger than the total land mass of entire countries like Cuba.

    Here’s the damage done in the state of New South Wales alone, compared to previous years:

    While bushfires are common in Australia, this year, dry conditions fueled the flames. The fires raged for nearly 80 days, displacing or killing nearly 3 billion animals—a devastating biodiversity loss for the country.

    Graphic #2   ⟩⟩   January 2020 – Rising Iran–U.S. Tensions

    In early January, a U.S. air strike incinerated the car of General Qassim Suleimani, a security mastermind and one of Iran’s most powerful military strategists. U.S. officials claimed that Iran was planning an “imminent” attack.

    In retaliation, Iran fired two rockets at U.S. military bases located in Iraq. No one was killed. As tensions escalated, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to try and restrict President Trump’s use of military power against Iran without approval.

    Later, in mid-January, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard admitted that it mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, responsible for the death of 176 people.

    Graphic #3   ⟩⟩   March 2020 – The Spread of the “Novel Coronavirus”

    You’ve heard of Patient Zero, but what about Patient 31?

    Before February, cases of the still unnamed virus were largely contained within China, with the rest of the world cautiously observing the country’s containment efforts. Slowly, but surely, the virus began to spread beyond China’s borders.

    South Korea’s 31st confirmed COVID-19 case—which was behind the rapid spread of the virus to potentially up to 1,160 contacts in the country—served as a warning to the rest of the world of how fast the virus could spread.

    » See the full graphic by Reuters

    Reuters’ unique graphic explainer uncovers how just one typical day of multiple “normal” interactions had significant super-spreader effects.

    Graphic #4   ⟩⟩   March 2020 – The Coronavirus Crash

    The S&P 500 erased over a third of its value in under a month—the fastest 30% decline ever recorded on the benchmark index.

    As a result, the global tourism industry suffered dramatic losses, with countless cruise ships docked and passenger flights traveling at half-capacity.

    This graphic shows the BEACH stocks—booking, entertainment & live events, airlines, cruises & casinos, hotels & resorts—that were most impacted by worldwide travel bans.

    While some of these stocks have since recovered, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 is still most widely being felt among companies in these types of industries.

    Graphic #5 & 6   ⟩⟩   March 2020 – Lockdown Life Begins

    From toilet paper hoarding to limits on gatherings, the pandemic’s immediate effects on our surrounding environment became clear as early as March. As daily life came to a standstill, commuter activity in major cities plummeted throughout the month.

    One unintended positive consequence of these shutdowns? Air pollution, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emissions also steeply dropped alongside these restrictions on movement.

    Possibly the most well-known diagram of the pandemic is the one that introduced the world to the phrase “flatten the curve”, showing why it was important to prevent and delay the spread of the virus so that large portions of the population aren’t sick at the same time.

    Graphic #7   ⟩⟩   April 2020 – Historic U.S. Job Losses

    After the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, unemployment figures soon hit historic proportions.

    Within a month, 22 million in the U.S. had filed jobless claims.

    To put this in perspective, U.S. unemployment levels in 2020 were roughly 10 times higher than previous peak unemployment levels in absolute terms. Or, to look at it another way, this is equivalent to the entire population of Chile or Taiwan.

    Graphic #8   ⟩⟩   April 2020 – Stimulus Announced in the U.S.

    On March 27, the $2 trillion CARES Act came into law after facing minimal resistance from the House and Senate. We broke down the historic relief package in the Sankey diagram below.

    The relief package included $1,200 direct deposits to individuals, over $350 billion in relief for small businesses, and an excess of $100 billion for the U.S. health system.

    Graphic #9   ⟩⟩   April 2020 – Oil Prices Go Negative

    In another historic event, oil prices went negative for the first time in history. Futures contracts for WTI oil fell to a stunning -$37.63 on April 20th, with producers actually paying traders to take oil off their hands.

    Oil has since recovered from this shock, cruising back to more typical price levels.

    Graphic #10   ⟩⟩   May 2020 – Black Lives Matter Protests

    “I can’t breathe.” These few words sparked the ongoing flames of a significant movement this summer: Black Lives Matter (BLM).

    After the killing of George Floyd on May 25, by police, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded over 7,750 BLM-linked demonstrations over a three month span.

    The nationwide pattern of civil unrest is well-documented, but there’s been no time like the present to demand change. Though images of burning cars and police clashes dominated the headlines, in the end, 93% of the protests were peaceful.

    There’s also been a ripple effect, with thousands of similar rallies reported in countries around the world.

    Graphic #11 & 12  ⟩⟩   May 2020 – The World Works from Home

    The dramatic shift to staying at home has resulted in a much higher reliance on technology for many people. Nowhere were these trends exemplified more than the rise of video conferencing software Zoom—the platform was used for work, education, and socializing alike.

    As monthly users swelled, those who typically take to the skies also declined in a steep fashion. In this graphic from May, we noted that Zoom’s market capitalization had skyrocketed to eclipse the top seven airlines by revenue, combined.

    As remote work became the new normal for significant shares of the workforce, unique benefits of this adjusted lifestyle arose, but it didn’t come without its challenges.

    Perhaps the most significant lasting change from the COVID-19 pandemic might be the adoption of flexible work, even by firms that resisted the trend in the past.

    If many employees continue to work remotely, even part of the time, then that will have a big impact on everything from the commercial office market to the bottom line of SaaS companies that help facilitate remote collaboration among teams.

    Graphic #13   ⟩⟩   July 2020 – Tesla becomes World’s Most Valuable Automaker

    2020 was a hallmark year for Tesla. In June, it became the most valuable automaker in the world—surpassing the likes of Toyota, Volkswagen, and Honda.

    Tesla’s market valuation climbed over 375% since June 2019. While these soaring figures are one factor behind its rise, others include record Model 3 sales, which prompted market euphoria.

    But Tesla’s story is far from over.

    The company is now worth more than the largest nine automakers combined, and is set to enter the S&P 500 officially on December 21, 2020. Tesla will be the most valuable company to ever enter the index, ranking as the eighth-largest overall.

    Graphic #14   ⟩⟩   July 2020 – Big Tech’s Dominance

    In many ways, COVID-19 only accentuated differences in market share, earnings, and wealth.

    For one, Big Tech’s market cap share of the S&P 500 soared. In the seven years preceding July, the market cap of the six stocks—Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Alphabet, and Microsoft—grew over 500%. By contrast, the S&P 500 rose just 110%.

    At the same time, Big Tech’s concentration reached record levels, with the five largest companies accounting for over 20% of the index’s total value.

    Graphic #15   ⟩⟩   August 2020 – Beirut Explosion

    While the world grappled with numerous biological and natural disasters, human-error led to a deadly explosion that rocked Beirut’s port. The blast was broadcast around the world in real time as people filmed the fire on their devices.

    Using satellite data, NASA and NYT mapped the extent of the damage, which claimed 135 lives and affected 305,000 more.

    » See the full interactive explainer by NYT

    This explosion was the biggest accident of its kind in modern history, triggered by the exposure of combustible ammonium nitrate—a key ingredient in fertilizers—to an open flame due to poor storage. Beyond the human toll, the financial cost of this explosion is estimated at above $15 billion.

    Graphic #16   ⟩⟩   August 2020 – Shortest Bear Market in History Ends

    In a stunning reversal, the bear market of 2020 ended on August 18 when the S&P 500 exceeded previous February highs. As trillions of dollars in stimulus response got injected into global economies, markets recovered in record time.

    Just two weeks before the shortest bear market in history ended, we published a graphic comparing previous stock crashes—from 1987’s Black Monday to the Nixon Shock of 1973—exposing the duration and intensity of market downturns since 1929.

    Graphic #17   ⟩⟩   August 2020 – U.S. Wildfire Season

    Reddish-orange skies might seem otherworldly, but this fall, they were a common sight across the West Coast of North America, where air quality reached the “hazardous” category for long stretches of time.

    2020 was the most active year on record for wildfires yet, with California and Oregon being particularly hard-hit. While some wildfires are caused by natural occurrences like lightning strikes, an overwhelming majority (85-90%) happen because of human causes such as discarded cigarettes and campfire debris.

    This is an unprecedented event. We now have the largest wildfire in [California’s] history, as well as the third largest and the fourth largest and five of the Top 10.

    – Noah Diffenbaugh, professor and senior fellow at Stanford University

    Graphic #18   ⟩⟩   November 2020 – The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

    In 2020, U.S. election spending hit over $13 billion, more than twice the amount spent on the entire 2016 election.

    Of this total, congressional spending topped $7 billion, with Democrats spending 64% more than Republican candidates for the House and Senate.

    President Biden was the first candidate ever to raise $1 billion, while Trump raised $596 million.

    Graphic #19   ⟩⟩   December 2020

    COVID-19’s Third Wave

    Like history tells us, pandemics come in waves. The third wave of COVID-19 escalated in November, when cases began to surge.

    On November 8, the seven-day average of new daily cases hit 100,000 in America. By the end of November, global cases soared to 60 million. Since then, cases have trended upward, leading local governments worldwide to enforce social distancing requirements for the winter holiday season.

    The below graphic from Reddit helps show the latest surge in cases in the U.S.:

    Graphic #20   ⟩⟩   December 2020 – Global Vaccination Effort Kicks Off

    In more recent news, Pfizer made waves when it announced it was rolling out a 95% effective COVID-19 vaccine. Then followed Moderna, at 94.5% in mid-November. As the global vaccination race intensifies, Bloomberg tracks the progress of nine vaccines and 80 publicly disclosed distribution deals representing 7.95 billion vaccination doses.

    However, even with viable vaccines, challenges still exist. All around the world, perceptions of vaccine safety have dropped significantly, which may complicate an economic recovery.

    On to the Next One

    After the wild ride that was 2020, many people are wondering what 2021 will have in store.

    In the first half of the year, vaccine distribution will surely take center stage. As well, economic recovery will be in focus as physical businesses resume more typical activity and regions slowly open up travel and tourism again.

    Much like the financial crisis of 2008 was an inflection point for the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the course of human history. Chaos can breed opportunity, and even though unemployment spiked to record highs in the U.S., new business applications did as well.

    Will things return to “normal”? As the many twists and turns of the past year have demonstrated, our complex, interconnected world is far from static. The next black swan is always just around the corner.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 19:45

  • More Than Half Of Chinese Adults Overweight As Obesity Becomes Latest Health Crisis 
    More Than Half Of Chinese Adults Overweight As Obesity Becomes Latest Health Crisis 

    The prevalence of obesity has become a worldwide phenomenon, and in China, the world’s most populous country, adults are becoming increasingly overweight. 

    It seems that over the last few decades, China has “absorbed” the best the “West” has had to offer, which includes fast-food restaurants, credit cards, smartphones, apps, and also all the stolen intellectual property, but at the same time imported the worst. 

    We outlined in 2013 that American influence (“lazy lifestyles”) was quickly spreading across China, creating a massive and unspoken diabetes crisis.  

    Fast forward seven years later, shocking new statistics show the percentage of overweight Chinese adults has skyrocketed since the early 2000s, according to BBC News. 

    China’s National Health Commission wrote in a new report that in 2002, 29% of adults were overweight. As of 2020, the figure is now 50% of adults are classified as overweight, of whom 16.4% are obese. 

    Over the last couple of decades, China’s economic miracle has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class. This ultimately changed their lifestyles to those that closely resembled ones in America: one that is exceptionally lazy. 

    The report outlines how Chinese citizens infrequently exercise, specifying stating that less than 25% of adults workout at least once per week. It was also noted that meat consumption has soared while healthy food intake has dropped. 

    Wang Dan, a nutritionist in the country, was quoted by AFP as saying that an abundance of Chinese adults “exercise too little, are under too much pressure, and have an unhealthy work schedule.”

    The report’s release came when China’s leaders recently unveiled plans to suppress the obesity crisis.  

    It was noted in August that Beijing requested citizens to reduce food waste and asked them to decrease food intake. 

    Shanghai officials asked residents to snitch on people who overate. The government asked diners to order one fewer dish than usual to conserve food. There was even a restaurant in southern Hunan province that weighed patrons before they ate to adjust their meal size. 

    The topic of obesity comes into focus as the pandemic has shown overweight or obese people suffer more severe complications or death from COVID-19. 

    Perhaps in Karl Marx’s eyes, he would see this as just another symptom as the Chinese have betrayed their socialist ideals and instead placed cheap consumerism on a pedal stool. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 19:20

  • Iran Says US B-52 Flyover Part Of Trump's "Plot To Fabricate Pretext For War"
    Iran Says US B-52 Flyover Part Of Trump’s “Plot To Fabricate Pretext For War”

    Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,

    Hours after the U.S. flew two nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf for the second time this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed Thursday that he is aware of intelligence suggesting that President Donald Trump’s administration is engaged in a “plot to fabricate a pretext for war”during its final days in power.

    “Instead of fighting Covid in the U.S., Donald Trump and cohorts waste billions to fly B-52s and send armadas to our region,” Zarif tweeted, referring to a Wednesday maneuver by the U.S. that American officials predictably characterized as defensive. The flight came just over a week after the U.S. sailed a nuclear submarine through the Persian Gulf and touted the vessel’s “ability to carry up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.”

    Foreign Minister of Iran, Javad Zarif, Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    “Intelligence from Iraq indicates a plot to fabricate a pretext for war,” Zarif said Thursday. “Iran doesn’t seek war but will openly and directly defend its people, security, and vital interests.”

    The warning from Iran’s top diplomat, a key negotiator of the nuclear agreement that Trump violated in 2018, came after U.S. officials blamed Iran for a recent missile attack on the American embassy in Baghdad and claimed without evidence that Tehran is preparing a “possibly imminent attack” on U.S. forces in the Middle East.

    “Our embassy in Baghdad got hit Sunday by several rockets. Three rockets failed to launch,” Trump tweeted last week. “Guess where they were from: IRAN. Now we hear chatter of additional attacks against Americans in Iraq.”

    Iran denied responsibility for the embassy attack—which injured one Iraqi and damaged two buildings—and accused the Trump administration of “seeking to increase tensions” in the region with baseless allegations.

    One unnamed senior U.S. defense official expressed concern to CNN Wednesday that “some within the government are painting the situation with Iran as more dire than it actually is and are preoccupied with the potential for retaliatory attacks by Iran to mark the anniversary of [Gen. Qasem] Soleimani’s assassination,” which Trump ordered nearly a year ago. Denounced as a violation of international law, the killing nearly provoked an all-out war between the U.S. and Iran.

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

    “When you need a show of force to deter attacks around the anniversary of an assassination that you originally justified as ‘reestablishing deterrence,’ you haven’t reestablished deterrence,” tweeted Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in response to the B-52 flight Wednesday. “And yes, obviously the whole ‘reestablishing deterrence’ claim was dishonest nonsense from the beginning, but it’s worth pointing out that it’s been disproven even according to its own dishonest, nonsensical terms.”

    The latest B-52 maneuver took place amid simmering fears that Trump and the warhawks in his administration could be angling to attack Iran in a last-ditch effort to undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s push to reestablish diplomatic relations with Tehran and return the U.S. to compliance with the nuclear accord. Just last month, Trump reportedly asked his advisers for a strike on Iran’s primary nuclear energy site.

    In an op-ed for Responsible Statecraft over the weekend, former CIA analyst Paul Pillar wrote that the “the objective of sabotaging the next administration points to one of the most likely and dangerous things that the unhinged lame duck president might do in his final days in office, which is to initiate a military clash with Iran.”

    Sina Toossi, senior research analyst with the National Iranian American Council, echoed Pillar’s warning in a tweet on Wednesday. “War with Iran,” wrote Toossi, “could be Trump’s final punishment on the American people for rejecting him and a massive act of sabotage against Biden for defeating him.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 18:55

  • Pfizer, GSK & Others Quietly Hike Prices On 100s Of Drugs
    Pfizer, GSK & Others Quietly Hike Prices On 100s Of Drugs

    With just hours to go until the new year, Reuters reports that a group of the world’s largest drug companies is preparing to hike drug prices, defying President Trump to issue a last-minute rebuke, as he has done in the past.

    Drugmakers including Pfizer Inc, Sanofi SA, and GlaxoSmithKline Plc plan to raise U.S. prices on more than 300 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1, according to drugmakers and data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.

    The hikes come as drugmakers are reeling from effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced doctor visits and demand for some drugs. They are also fighting new drug price cutting rules from the Trump administration, which would reduce the industry’s profitability.

    The companies kept their price increases at 10% or below, and the largest drug companies to raise prices so far, Pfizer and Sanofi, kept nearly all of their increases 5% or less, 3 Axis said. 3 Axis is a consulting firm that works with pharmacists groups, health plans and foundation on drug pricing and supply chain issues.

    During the early days of the Trump presidency, reports of price hikes elicited angry tweets from the president. This dynamic was credited with staving off a hike or two, but that doesn’t change the fact that drug companies tend to raise prices on their inventory at least once, usually twice, per year. Still, even Reuters pointed out that the pace of drug price increases has “slowed substantially” since 2015, per Reuters.

    And the Trump Administration is pushing legislation that would constrain drugmakers’ ability to raise prices.

    Nevertheless, with drugmakers’ dedicating themselves to defeating COVID-19 (of course, the state has doled out billions of dollars in subsidies, which sort of diminishes the selflessness narrative), the industry is insisting that profits must be made up elsewhere. So prices on some 300 drugs will rise, with more formal announcements expected on Friday, and over the weekend.

    GSK did raise prices on two vaccines – shingles vaccine Shingrix and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine Pediarix – by 7% and 8.6%, respectively, 3 Axis said.

    Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc hiked prices on 15 drugs, including Austedo, which treats rare neurological disorders, and asthma steroid Qvar, which together grossed more than $650 million in sales in 2019 and saw price hikes of between 5% and 6%. Teva hiked prices for some drugs, including muscle relaxant Amrix and narcolepsy treatment Nuvigil, as much as 9.4%. More price hikes are expected to be announced on Friday and in early January.

    […]

    In 2020, drugmakers raised prices on more than 860 drugs by around 5 percent, on average, according to 3 Axis. Drug price increases have slowed substantially since 2015, both in terms of the size of the hikes and the number of drugs affected.

    Pfizer, which threw money at its “partner”, BioNTech, to help develop and distribute a vaccine using the latter’s revolutionary mRNA technology, is one of the biggest offenders, hiking prices on cancer drugs, and the ubiquitous rheumatoid arthritis treatment Xeljanz, famous for commercials that have spawned satirical takes on social media.

    Pfizer plans to raise prices on more than 60 drugs by between 0.5 % and 5%. Those include roughly 5% increases on some of its top sellers like rheumatoid arthritis treatment Xeljanz and cancer drugs Ibrance and Inlyta.

    Pfizer said it had adjusted the list prices of its drugs by around 1.3% across all products in its portfolio, in line with inflation.

    “This modest increase is necessary to support investments that allow us to continue to discover new medicines and deliver those breakthroughs to the patients who need them,” spokeswoman Amy Rose said in a statement, pointing in particular to the COVID-19 vaccine the company developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE.

    It said that its net prices, which back out rebates to pharmacy benefit managers and other discounts, have actually fallen for the last 3 years.

    By contrast, China is cracking heads to ensure that drugmakers are responding to the public’s need with massive price cuts. According to state-run media, some drugmakers are cutting prices by as much as 51%. Chinese patients can now get reimbursement for 2.8K medicines, including 1.4K Western drugs and 1,374 traditional Chinese medicines.

    With holiday parties about to start, we wonder, will President Trump take another stand on twitter?

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    Though, at this point, even if he does, it would only serve to further complicate the relationship with these companies as ‘Operation Warp Speed’ lags further behind its target.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 18:30

  • 2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong
    2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

    How today’s energy problem is different from peak oil

    Many people believe that the economy will start going badly wrong when we “run out of oil.” The problem we have today is indeed an energy problem, but it is a different energy problem. Let me explain it with an escalator analogy.

    Figure 1. Holborn Tube Station Escalator. Photo by renaissancechambara, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    The economy is like a down escalator that citizens of the world are trying to walk upward on. At first the downward motion of the escalator is almost imperceptible, but gradually it gets to be greater and greater. Eventually the downward motion becomes almost unbearable. Many citizens long to sit down and take a rest.

    In fact, a break, like the pandemic, almost comes as a relief. There is suddenly a chance to take it easy; not drive to work; not visit relatives; not keep up appearances before friends. Government officials may not be unhappy either. There may have been demonstrations by groups asking for higher wages. Telling people to stay at home provides a convenient way to end these demonstrations and restore order.

    But then, restarting doesn’t work. There are too many broken pieces of the economy. Too many bankrupt companies; too many unemployed people; too much debt that cannot be repaid. And, a virus that really doesn’t quite go away, leaving people worried and unwilling to attempt to resume normal activities.

    Some might describe the energy story as a “diminishing returns” story, but it’s really broader than this. It’s a story of services that we expect to continue, but which cannot continue without much more energy investment. It is also a story of the loss of “economies of scale” that at one time helped propel the economy forward.

    In this post, I will explain some of the issues I see affecting the economy today. They tend to push the economy down, like a down escalator. They also make economic growth more difficult.

    [1] Many resources take an increasing amount of effort to obtain or extract, because we use the easiest to obtain first. Many people would call this a diminishing returns problem.

    Let’s look at a few examples:

    (a) Water. When there were just a relatively few humans on the earth, drinking water from a nearby stream was a reasonable approach. This is the approach used by animals; humans could use it as well. As the number of humans rose, we found we needed additional approaches to gather enough potable water: First shallow wells were dug. Then we found that we needed to dig deeper wells. We found that lake water could be used, but we needed to filter it and treat it first. In some places, now, we find that desalination is needed. In fact, after desalination, we need to put the correct minerals back into it and pump it to the destination where it is required.

    All of these approaches can indeed be employed. In theory, we would never run out of water. The problem is that as we move up the chain of treatments, an increasing amount of energy of some kind needs to be used. At first, humans could use some of their spare time (and energy) to dig wells. As more advanced approaches were chosen, the need for supplemental energy besides human energy became greater. Each of us individually cannot produce the water we need; instead, we must directly, or indirectly, pay for this water. The fact that we have to pay for this water with part of our wages reduces the portion of our wages available for other goods.

    (b) Metals. Whenever some group decides to mine a metal ore, the ore that is taken first tends to be easy to access ore of high quality, close to where it needs to be used. As the best mines get depleted, producers use lower-grade ores, transported over longer distances. The shift toward less optimal mines requires more energy. Some of this additional energy could be human energy, but some of the energy would be supplied by fossil fuels, operating machinery in order to supplement human labor. Supplemental energy needs become greater and greater as mines become increasingly depleted. As technology advances, energy needs become greater, because some of the high-tech devices require materials that can only be formed at very high temperatures.

    (c) Wild Animals Including Fish. When pre-humans moved out of Africa, they killed off the largest game animals on every continent that they moved to. It was still possible to hunt wild game in these areas, but the animals were smaller. The return on the human labor invested was smaller. Now, most of the meat we eat is produced on farms. The same pattern exists in fishing. Most of the fish the world eats today is produced on fish farms. We now need entire industries to provide food that early humans could obtain themselves. These farms directly and indirectly consume fossil fuel energy. In fact, more energy is used as more animals/fish are produced.

    (d) Fossil Fuels. We keep hearing about the possibility of “running out” of oil, but this is not really the issue with oil. In fact, it is not the issue with coal or natural gas, either. The issue is one of diminishing returns. There is (and always will be) what looks like plenty left. The problem is that the process of extraction consumes increasing amounts of resources as deeper, more complex oil or gas wells need to be drilled and as coal mines farther away from users of the coal are developed. Many people have jumped to the conclusion that this means that the price that buyers of fossil fuel will pay will rise. This isn’t really true. It means that the cost of production will rise, leading to lower profitability. The lower profitability is likely to be spread in many ways: lower taxes paid, cutbacks in wages and pension plans, and perhaps a sale to a new owner, at a lower price. Eventually, low energy prices will lead to production stopping. Without adequate fossil fuels, the whole economic system will be disrupted, and the result will be severe recession or depression. There are also likely to be many job losses.

    In (a) through (d) above, we are seeing an increasing share of the output of the economy being used in inefficient ways: in creating deeper water wells and desalination plants; in drilling oil wells in more difficult locations; in extracting metal ores that are mostly waste products. The extent of this inefficiency tends to increase over time. This is what leads to the effect of an escalator descending faster and faster, just as we humans are trying to walk up it.

    Humans work for wages, but they find that when they buy a box of corn flakes, very little of the price actually goes to the farmer growing the corn. Instead, all of the intermediate parts of the system are becoming overly large. The buyer cannot afford the end products, and the producer feels cheated by the low wholesale prices he is being paid. The system as a whole is pushed toward collapse.

    [2] Increasing complexity can help maintain economic growth, but it too reaches diminishing returns.

    Complexity takes many forms, including more hierarchical organization, more specialization, longer supply chains, and development of new technology. Complexity can indeed help maintain economic growth. For example, if water supply is intermittent, a country may choose to build a dam to control the flow of water and produce electricity. Complexity tends to reach diminishing returns, as noted by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies. For example, economies build dams in the best locations first, and only later build them at less advantageous sites. These are a few other examples:

    (a) Education. Teaching everyone to read and write has significant benefits because it allows the use of books and other written materials to disseminate information and knowledge. Teaching a few people advanced subjects has significant benefits as well. But after a certain point, the need for additional people to study a subject such as art history is low. A few people can teach the subject but doing more research on the subject probably won’t increase world GDP very much.

    When we look at data from about 1970, we find that people with advanced education earned much higher incomes than those without advanced degrees. But as we add an increasing large share of people with these advanced degrees, jobs that really need these degrees are not as plentiful as the new graduates. Quite a few people with advanced degrees end up with low-paying jobs. The “return on investment” for higher education drops increasingly lower. Some students are not able to repay the debt that they took out in order to pay for their education.

    (b) Medicines and vaccines. Over the years, medicines and vaccines have been developed to treat many common illnesses and diseases. After a while, the easy-to-find medicines for the common unwanted conditions (such as diabetes, high blood pressure and inflammation) have already been found. There are medicines for rare diseases that haven’t been found, but these will never have very large total sales, discouraging investment. There are also conditions that are common in very poor countries. While expensive drugs could be developed for these conditions, it is likely that few people could afford these drugs, so this, too, becomes less attractive.

    If research is to continue, it is important to keep expanding work on expensive new drugs, even if it means completely ignoring old inexpensive drugs that might work equally well. A cynical person might think that this is the reason why vitamin D and ivermectin are generally being ignored in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Without an expanding group of high-priced new drugs, it is hard to attract capital and young workers to the field.

    (c) Automobile efficiency. In the US, the big fuel efficiency change that took place was that which took place between 1975 and 1983, when a changeover was made to smaller, lighter vehicles, similar to ones that were already in use in Japan and Europe.

    Figure 2. Estimated Real-World Fuel Economy, Horsepower, and Weight Since Model Year 1975, in a chart produced by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Source.

    The increase in fuel efficiency between 2008 and 2019 (an 11 year period) was only 22%, compared to the 60% increase in fuel efficiency between 1975 and 1983 (an 8 year period). This is another example of diminishing returns to investment in complexity.

    [3] Today’s citizens have never been told that many of the services we take for granted today, such as suppression of forest fires, are really services provided by fossil fuels.

    In fact, the amount of energy required to provide these services rises each year. We expect these services to continue indefinitely, but we should be aware that they cannot continue very long, unless the energy available to the economy as a whole is rising very rapidly.

    (a) Suppression of Forest Fires. Forest fires are part of nature. Many trees require fire for their seeds to germinate. Human neighbors of forests don’t like forest fires; they often encourage local authorities to put out any forest fire that starts. Such suppression allows an increasing amount of dry bush to build up. As a result, future fires spread more easily and grow larger.

    At the same time, humans increasingly build homes in forested areas because of the pleasant scenery. As population expands and as fires spread more easily, forest fire suppression takes an increasing amount of resources, including fossil fuels to power helicopters used in the battles. If fossil fuels are not available, this type of service would need to stop. Trying to keep forest fires suppressed, assuming fossil fuels are available for this purpose, will take higher taxes, year after year. This is part of what makes it seem like we are trying to move our economy upward on a down escalator.

    (b) Suppression of Illnesses. Illnesses are part of the cycle of nature; they disproportionately take out the old and the weak. Of course, we humans don’t really like this; the old and weak are our relatives and close friends. In fact, some of us may be old and weak.

    In the last 100 years, researchers (using fossil fuels) have developed a large number of antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines to try to suppress illnesses. We find that microbes quickly mutate in new ways, defeating our attempts at suppression of illnesses. Thus, we have ever-more antibiotic resistant bacteria. The cost of today’s US healthcare system is very high, exceeding what many poor people can afford to pay. Introducing new vaccines results in an additional cost.

    Closing down the system to try to stop a virus adds a huge new cost, which is disproportionately borne by the poor people of the world. If we throw more money/fossil fuels at the medical system, perhaps it can be made to work a little longer. No one tells us that disease suppression is a service of fossil fuels; if we have an increasing quantity of fossil fuels per capita, perhaps we can increase disease suppression services.

    (c) Suppression of Weeds and Unwanted Insects. Researchers keep developing new chemical treatments (based on fossil fuels) to suppress weeds and unwanted insects. Unfortunately, the weeds and unwanted insects keep mutating in a way that makes the chemicals less effective. The easy solutions were found first; finding solutions that really work and don’t harm humans seems to be elusive. The early solutions were relatively cheap, but later ones have become increasingly expensive. This problem acts, in many ways, like diminishing returns.

    (d) Recycling (and Indirectly, Return Transport of Empty Shipping Containers from Around the World). When oil prices are high, recycling of used items for their content makes sense, economically. When oil prices are low, recycling often requires a subsidy. This subsidy indirectly goes to pay for fossil fuels used to facilitate the recycling. Often this goes to pay for shipment to a country that will do the recycling.

    When oil prices were high (prior to 2014), part of the revenue from recycling could be used to transport mixed waste products to China and India for recycling. With low oil prices, China and India have stopped accepting most recycling. Instead, it is necessary to find actual “goods” for the return voyage of a shipping container or, alternatively, pay to have the container sent back empty. Europe now seems to have a difficult time filling shipping containers for the return voyage to Asia. Because of this, the cost of obtaining shipping containers to ship goods to Europe seems to be escalating. This higher cost acts much like diminishing returns with respect to the transport of goods to Europe from Asia. This is yet another part of what is acting like a down escalator for the world economy.

    [4] Another, ever higher cost is pollution control. This higher cost also exerts a downward effect on the world economy, because it acts like another intermediate cost.

    As we burn increasing amounts of fossil fuels, increasing amounts of particulate matter need to be captured and disposed of. Capturing this material is only part of the problem; some of the waste material may be radioactive or may include mercury. Once the material is captured, it needs to be “locked up” in some way, so it doesn’t pollute the water and air. Whatever approach is used requires energy products of various kinds. In fact, the more fossil fuels that are burned, the bigger the waste disposal problem tends to be.

    Burning more fossil fuels also leads to more CO2. Unfortunately, we don’t have suitable alternatives. Nuclear is probably as good as any, and it has serious safety issues. In my opinion, the view that intermittent wind and solar are a suitable replacement for fossil fuels represents wishful thinking. Wind and solar, because of their intermittency, can only partially replace the coal or natural gas burned to generate electricity. They cannot be relied upon for 24/7/365 generation. The unsubsidized cost of producing intermittent wind and solar energy needs to be compared to the price of coal and natural gas, not to wholesale electricity prices. There are a lot of apples to oranges comparisons being made.

    [5] Among other things, the growth of the economy depends on “economies of scale” as the number of participants in the economy gradually grows. The response to COVID-19 has been extremely detrimental to economies of scale.

    The economies of many countries changed dramatically, with the initial spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, we cannot expect these changes to be completely reversed anytime soon. Part of the reason is the new virus mutation from the UK that is now of concern. Another reason is that, even with the vaccine, no one really knows how long immunity will last. Until the virus is clearly gone, vestiges of the cutbacks are likely to remain in place.

    In general, businesses do well financially, as the number of buyers of the goods and services they provide rises. This happens because overhead costs, such as mortgage payments, can be spread over more buyers. The expertise of the business owners can also be used more widely.

    One huge problem is the recent cutback in tourism, affecting almost every country in the world. This cutback affects both businesses directly related to tourism and businesses indirectly related to tourism, such as restaurants and hotels.

    Another huge problem is social distancing rules that lead to office buildings and restaurants being used less intensively. Businesses find that they tend to have fewer customers, rather than more. Related businesses, such as taxis and dry cleaners, find that they also have fewer customers. Nursing homes and other care homes for the aged are seeing lower occupancy rates because no one wants to be locked up for months on end without being able to see other members of their family.

    [6] With all of the difficulties listed in Items [1] though [5], debt based financing tends to work less and less well. Huge debt defaults can be expected to adversely affect banks, insurance companies and pension plans.

    Many businesses are already near default on debt. These businesses cannot make a profit with a much reduced number of customers. If no change is possible, somehow this will need to flow through the system. Defaulting debt is likely to lead to failing banks and pension plans. In fact, governments that depend on taxes may also fail.

    The shutdowns taken by economies earlier this year were very detrimental, both to businesses and to workers. A major solution to date has been to add more governmental debt to try to bail out citizens and businesses. This additional debt makes it even more difficult to maintain promised debt payments. This is yet another force making it difficult for economies to move up the growth escalator.

    [7] The situation we are headed for looks much like the collapses of early civilizations.

    With diminishing returns everywhere, and inadequate sources of very inexpensive energy to keep the system going, major parts of the world economic system appear headed for collapse. There doesn’t seem to be any way to keep the world economy growing rapidly enough to offset the down escalator effect.

    Citizens have not been aware of how “close to the edge” we have been. Low energy prices have been deceptive, but this is what we should expect with collapse. (See, for example, Revelation 18: 11-13, telling about the lack of demand for goods of all kinds when ancient Babylon collapsed.) Low prices tend to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They also tend to discourage high-priced alternatives. Unfortunately, all the wishful thinking of the World Economic Forum and others advocating a Green New Deal does not change the reality of the situation.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 18:10

  • Eastern Caribbean Issues Rare Volcano Alert 
    Eastern Caribbean Issues Rare Volcano Alert 

    Rarely do we hear about volcanoes in the eastern Caribbean, but this week, rumblings from down under prompted officials to issue volcanic alerts in Martinique and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. 

    On Tuesday, warnings were issued for La Soufriere volcano in St Vincent and the Grenadines after tremors, powerful gas emissions and a new volcanic dome were observed. 

    The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) said that scientists observed an “effusive eruption within the crater, with visible gas and steam.”

    CDEMA issued an “Orange” alert for the surrounding area around the La Soufriere volcano due to the threat of increased volcanic activity. 

    “Monitoring systems, satellite imagery and visual observations have confirmed increased seismic and fumarolic activity, strong gas emissions, emergence of a satellite dome on the SE of the existing volcanic dome and changes to the crater lake.

    “An effusive eruption within the crater, with visible gas and steam, was also observed on 29th December 2020,” CDEMA wrote in an update. 

    Full CDEMA Update: 

    A team of scientists from the Seismic Research Centre (SRC) of the University of the West Indies (UWI) will arrive in the region by the end of the week to assess the situation. 

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    An Orange Level alert means “eruptions may occur with less than 24 hours notice.” 

    CDEMA said monitoring systems are closely watching the volcano for any sudden changes. 

    UWI tweeted an image of a black mound of magma protruding from the surface of the existing dome in the crater at La Soufriere.

    La Soufriere’s Eruption History 

    While no evacuation orders have been issued for residents in the surrounding communities, the threat of volcanic activity and a virus-related downturn in travel and tourism could result in more devastating impacts for the economy of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 17:50

  • The Lesson Of 2020: What's The Point Of Pointing Out The Hypocrisy?
    The Lesson Of 2020: What’s The Point Of Pointing Out The Hypocrisy?

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    I’ve been on vacation in Mexico for the past two weeks. But that isn’t the reason content from me has been scarcer than normal. Yes, vacations are supposed to be for recharging and taking a break from your routine.

    But as I sat down to write this morning the overwhelming sense of futility washed over me. And nothing saps your will to work more than reading through the headlines and noting the complete lack of conscience on display by the media, our political leadership or frankly anyone with half a brain.

    We live in a world today where the legislature of one of the most important states in the Union, Pennsylvania, released a report where more than 200,000 votes were counted than were actually cast. And no one in our media seems to think this is news.

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    Worse, most people in America can’t even be bothered to care about such things. And if you were to confront them with the evidence there must be some good reason why that ‘just can’t be true.’

    The FBI, which couldn’t find any issues with Hunter Biden’s laptop for months nor ever do anything substantial with Anthony Weiner’s laptop in FOUR YEARS somehow solved the case of the Nashville bomber in less than 48 hours conclusively.

    And that conclusion was the same as every other major terrorist event in this country’s recent history – a lone crackpot blew himself up to make a half-formed political statement. At least this time they had the good sense to vaguely tie the patsy to the political left versus turn him into a mouth-breathing MAGAtard with a Q-complex.

    And somehow no one seems to care. Nor does anyone care about the lack of conclusion about the shooting in Las Vegas a few years back.

    Notice the trend? Major stories that are supposed to matter are dropped the moment they get anything close to uncomfortable for those in power who are chosen to remain in power.

    I’ve always thought Donald Trump’s biggest flaw was that he was an incurious man, but compared to the so-called journalists of our corporate media Trump is the second coming of Sherlock Holmes for pity’s sake.

    There are voter irregularities of a type and kind which demand real coverage, even if it turns out to be easy to cast doubt on them. And yet, after haranguing Americans TO CARE about voter fraud in places like Belarus, Crimea, Venezuela, Iran, Serbia, Georgia we’re supposed to swallow the lie this was the ‘most secure election in this country’s history’ without even a bottle of ketchup?

    No matter where you are on the political spectrum, nor who your Twitter spirit guide is, all of these things should disturb you.

    And yet, it doesn’t seem to. It is not CNN’s nor Fox’s decision to not report on them because they don’t want to engage in searching out the truth.

    The hearings in the Georgia State Senate going on as I write this are hair-raising, painting a picture of corruption so detailed you’d think it was a Mandelbrot set.

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    Every rabbit hole you go down forks into a deeper one, revealing even more information about how truly corrupt and inhuman our political systems are and yet our media stands there like a thousand monkeys banging away on their iPhone keyboards trying to convince us what they are producing is Shakespeare and not auto-corrected Engrish.

    If we’ve reached this level of whitewashing of the news and the truth to this point, I’m having to wonder why it is North Korea is so hated? I’m at a loss to come up with anything more accurate than competitive envy at fiction writing.

    Hundreds of millions of people’s lives are being actively destroyed by overzealous governors and heads of state issuing draconian lockdown orders over a virus with multiple vaccines that are less effective than our own immune systems. A compromised WHO and CDC issue conflicting recommendations weekly and Dr. Mengele Fauci openly admits to lying to us.

    They all do this without any sense of shame, shedding crocodile tears so unconvincing they could be runner-ups at a Miss America pageant. But we’re supposed to think we’re saved because Congress decided to give us a $600 advance to pay our 2020 income taxes with?

    And I haven’t even scratched the surface here. We know why they are doing this — to support to open hostile takeover of what’s left of private capital markets and property in support of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.

    Yet here I sit watching otherwise reasonable and naturally skeptical people still live within their normalcy bias to refuse the obvious propaganda and blame the victims.

    It can’t be this bad right?

    No conspiracy can be this big?

    There was fraud but it’s trivial.

    Y’all are just sore losers and Trump really did lose his base because of his horrific foreign policy. I swear I’ve never been sadder to call myself a libertarian than I am right now.

    That is nothing but rationalization to evade the reality of what has happened and what will happen. Because the sad truth is that no matter who you are when confronted with monstrous evil most people’s first reaction is to reject it.

    And they do this not because they don’t believe people are capable of it.

    No, we reject evil of this magnitude because in order for us to maintain our sense of self-image as rational, caring people admitting its reality implies a responsibility to do something about it.

    And stopping evil takes away from “me time.”

    The same operation has been done with COVID-19, any and all data associated with it, the death statistics, the miraculous immunity to influenza Americans now seem to have, etc.

    And if we are going to just sit back, mask up, accept the $600, put our heads down and “believe all talking heads” then what’s the point in pointing out the hypocrisy of it all?

    The new Super-COVID is here and it’s time to believe it all again.

    Isn’t that the real lesson of 2020? Don’t fight the crazy just cling to the delusion that a mask isn’t a muzzle, guns can’t protect you and we still live in a society with something approximating rules.

    Isn’t that what all of this irreality is for, to desensitize us to their outrageousness? To normalize their grotesquerie? I mean, really, does anyone honestly believe any single word that comes out of Nancy Pelosi’s mouth?

    I didn’t think they made masks big enough to contain the Pinocchio nose she has to have at this point. Maybe she’s had to have so much plastic surgery to contain it that it collapsed like Michael Jackson’s and it’s actually now just negative space.

    I don’t know anymore.

    It would almost be okay going along with all of this nonsense if they were in any way artful about it. If I could, at the very least, appreciate the craft, you know, as a writer and an artist then it would make the double whiskies go down a little easier.

    I could almost stomach it if they even put in the least little effort to convince me through something approximating a good performance. I gave up on them trying to convince me with argument ages ago. But a little sincerity to go with the virtue signaling would make the game worth playing.

    But they can’t even give us that anymore. That’s how much contempt they have for us.

    And it’s easy for them to have that contempt because, frankly, that’s how much contempt we must have for ourselves to go along this perfunctorily towards their dystopia.

    Unless 2021 is the year everything changes. Unless 2021 is the year we finally show the barest minimum of self-respect, take off the masks, turn off the screens and get prepared to fight harder than we ever have.

    I’ll be here even though, at times, it feels futile. Because it is just that, a feeling. And feelings are as ephemeral and temporary as Anderson Cooper’s dalliances with the truth.

    Which, I guess, is as good a lesson to absorb from 2020 as anything else.

    *  *  *

    Join My Patreon if you you too feel there is something horribly wrong with this world.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 17:30

  • 2020 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead
    2020 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead

    One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2019, we pointed to a certain undertone of artificial stability permeating capital markets and society, with the economy firing on all cylinders (thanks to the massive dual deficits and debt that had exploded under the current administration), with the market surging 30% last year and at all time highs (despite flat earnings and entirely thanks to the Fed’s resumption of “NOT QE” last September in order to bail out JPMorgan and a handful of hedge funds’ treasury basis trades), and with Trump cruising to re-election victory in what we thought one year ago would be the most important even of 2020: the US presidential election. It’s also why we said that “with the Fed fully behind Trump and helping the S&P return nearly 30% in 2019, 4 more years of Trump is now virtually assured (barring some unexpected calamity in 2020).”

    Oh how prudent that disclaimer proved to be, as well as this next caveat we casually mentioned in our last year review, warning that “with the 2020 elections looming, it is certainly true that anything can still happen, only as with all true “black swans”, it won’t be what anyone had expected.”

    It certainly wasn’t because around the time we were penning our year-end wrap post exactly one year ago, a highly contagious coronavirus strain had escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology (China’s first and only biosafety 4 lab) whether purposefully or intentionally, and was set to spread around the globe, unleashing the biggest global black swan in the past 100 years, triggering personal and economic hell for hundreds of millions around the world who lost their jobs or loved ones as a result of the China virus, markets nirvana for millions of 16-year-old Robinhood and hedge funds traders who benefited from the greatest stock market rally in history, and ultimately helped Joe Biden emerge from complete obscurity and with virtually no chances of defeating Trump, to eventually winning the Nov 3 presidential election, Trump’s ongoing challenges to the outcome notwithstanding.

    The arrival of the virus that would eventually be called Covid-19 by the global scientific community (to remove any links to China) – and which would lead to a historic pandemic the likes of which nobody expected one year ago – shook the world, and would lead to a slew of historic events taking place in just a few months, including a staggering lockdown of the global economy, the official arrival of global Helicopter Money, tens of trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus, an overhaul of the global economy punctuated by an unprecedented explosion in world debt, an Orwellian crackdown on civil liberties by governments everywhere, and ultimately set the scene for what even the World Economic Forum called simply “The Great Reset.”

    Needless to say, it would be impossible to describe everything that happened in 2020, or all the black swans that the pandemic and its associated lockdowns let loose upon the world, in one article: those looking for a detailed breakdown of all the major events this year are urged to read the latest magnum opus “Year in Review” by David Collum (part 1 here and part 2 here), but a quick recap of some of the most prominent and bizarre events that shook the world in the past 365 days, what Mark Orsley called “the year of years“, is as follows:

    • WW3 fears run rampant on social media as the US strikes Iranian army general Soleimani
    • Black swan health event that leads to a historic equity market crash, and funding strains
    • Fed takes US policy rates to near 0% and institutes QE at a magnitude that puts the post GFC period to shame
    • Treasury institutes trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus
    • Unprecedented lockdowns lead to Tiger King craze
    • The world learns how to school and work remotely, changing the office space landscape forever
    • WTI front month contract trades with a negative price
    • Subsequent epic equity bull market recovery rally that pierces March highs
    • Australia burns
    • Kobe Bryant tragically dies
    • We begin to watch sports with no fans
    • Pentagon releases UFO footage
    • Quantas offers flight to nowhere
    • California wildfires burn uncontrollably and wipe out parts of Napa
    • US social unrest turns violent
    • Murder hornets
    • Ruth Bader Ginsberg dies
    • Overhyped US election event that leads to a volatility collapse, year-end rally
    • A middle-aged skateboarder, drinking Cranberry juice to a 70s rock hit brings calm to the world

    That list could have gone on forever. The point is, there could not have been more regime shifts, volatility moments, and memes than 2020 (we hope).

    Yet for all the chaos and panic unleashed by covid, a certain undertone of pre-determination and almost tangible order was felt just below the surface: after all, the virus, crash, lockdown and recession provoked an unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy panic which sparked a record $22 trillion of stimulus in just the past 9 months around the world. As a result, central banks spent over $1 trillion a month on financial assets via QE, crushing yields, volatility, and spreads, and pushing stocks to all time highs at the end of 2020 even as earnings continue to slide.

    It’s almost as if the world’s richest asset owners requested the covid pandemic. It wasn’t just them however: politicians the world over would benefit from the transition from QE to outright helicopter money and MMT which made the over monetization of deficits widely accepted in the blink of an eye. And in the span of just a few months, $14 trillion in fiscal stimulus was announced, with central banks monetizing most of it, and pushing the quantity of global debt to a record $277 trillion, a number which the Institute For International Finance expects to hit a record $360 trillion by 2030…

    … while thanks to central bank intervention, the price of world debt dropped to a record 5,000 year low, with global negative yielding debt now at an all time high $18tn.

    The common theme here was simple: no matter what happens, capital markets can never again be allowed to drop, regardless of the cost or how much more debt has to be incurred. Indeed, as we look back at the news barrage over the past year, and past decade for that matter, the one thing that becomes especially clear amid the constant din of markets, of politics, of social upheaval and geopolitical strife – and now pandemics –  in fact a world that is so flooded with constant conflicting newsflow and changing storylines that some say it has become virtually impossible to even try to predict the future, is that despite the people’s desire for change, for something original and untried, the world’s established forces will not allow it and will fight to preserve the broken status quo at any price – even global coordinated shutdowns – which is perhaps why it always boils down to one thing – capital markets, that bedrock of Western capitalism and the “modern way of life”, where control, even if it means central planning the likes of which have not been seen since the days of the USSR, and an upward trajectory must be preserved at all costs, as the alternative is a global, socio-economic collapse.

    And since it is the daily gyrations of stocks that sway popular moods – and why none other than the US president was tweeting almost daily ahead of the November election at what level the S&P closed on any given day to boost his approval rating and bolster his credibility – the interplay between capital markets and politics has never been more profound or more consequential. Indeed, in a historic moment when the president was impeached by the House (if not the Senate), Trump’s natural response was to point to the record high hit that very day in the S&P500.

    The more powerful message here is the implicit realization and admission by politicians, not just Trump but also his peers and challengers, that the stock market is now seen as the consummate barometer of one’s political achievements and approval. Which is also why capital markets are now, more than ever, a political tool whose purpose is no longer to distribute capital efficiently and discount the future, but to manipulate voter sentiments far more efficiently than any Russian election interference attempt ever could.

    Which brings us back to 2020 and the past decade, which was best summarized by a recent Bill Blain article who said that “the last 10-years has been a story of massive central banking distortion to address the 2008 crisis. Now central banks face the consequences and are trapped. The distortion can’t go uncorrected indefinitely.“

    He is right: the distortion will eventually collapse, but so far the establishment and the “top 1%” have been successful – perhaps the correct word is lucky – in preserving the value of risk assets: on the back of the Fed’s firehose of liquidity the S&P500 returned an impressive 15.5% following the 28.50% return in 2019. It did so by staging the greatest rally off all time from the March lows, surpassing all of the 4 greatest rallies off the lows of the past century (1929,1938, 1974, and 2009).

    Yet this continued can-kicking by the establishment – all of which was made possible by the covid pandemic and lockdowns which served as an all too convenient scapegoat for the unprecedented response that served to propel risk assets (and fiat alternatives such as gold and bitcoin) to all time highs – has come with a price… and an increasingly higher price in fact. As even Bank of America CIO Michael Hartnett admits, Fed’s response to the the pandemic “worsened inequality in 2020” as the value of financial assets – Wall Street –  relative to economy – Main Street – hit all-time high of 6.3x.

    And as we said previously, with the system now caught in a vice operated by a handful of people, there is no longer any chance that the status quo will change without a revolution, a revolution which is increasingly unlikely in a world where “generous” governments hand out $600 “stimulus checks” to a population that has no other means of providing for itself besides relying on the same government that is pillaging and plundering the middle class.

    In other words, going back to what we said above, 2020 helped further crystalize the realization that politics is now markets, and markets have become political weapons, and why the past decade was, as Bill Blain put it, “a story of massive central banking distortion to address the 2008 crisis.” The problem is that this distortion has only made the mess even greater, and the only hope central banks have – in their own words – is if government fiscal stimulus takes over where monetary stimulus ends, and this is where covid came in: almost overnight it ushered in MMT – the fusion of fiscal and monetary policy, the fusion of the Fed and the Treasury. In other words, 12 years after we predicted it would come, helicopter money finally arrived. 

    Only there is just one problem, or rather 277 trillion problems as shown above, because whereas one could argue that fiscal stimulus is a credible option if the world’s wasn’t drowning in debt, when global debt to GDP is 330%, it is tantamount to saying that only more debt can fix a debt crisis. Which is effectively what the world’s smartest people are saying.

    Meanwhile, the trends observed in recent years will continue: coming years will be marked by even bigger government (because only more government can “fix” problems created by government), higher stock prices and dollar debasement (because only more Fed intervention can “fix” the problems created by the Fed), and a policy flip from monetary and QE to fiscal & MMT, all of which will attempt to spark an unprecedented inflationary wave. As Hartnett writes, “if 2020 was year of COVID-19 pandemic; it will, according to Hartnett, “also be remembered as the secular low point for both inflation & interest rates.”

    He is, of course, right because once all other conventional methods to spark reflation fail, central banks will activate Plan B which is also the core pillar of the coming Great Reset: the roll out of digital currencies which can be deposited by central banks directly into digital wallets, bypassing the entire commercial banking fractional banking infrastructure, in a last ditch effort to spark the inflation that will be needed to inflate away the $300+ trillion in debt suffocating world growth. For those wondering when this will happen, tentative schedules show this historic transfer to an all digital payments infrastructure taking place as early as the second half of 2021…

    … so it is very likely that while 2020 was an insane year, it may prove to be just an appetizer to the shockwaves that will be unleashed in 2021 when we see the first stage of the most historic overhaul of the fiat payment system in history.

    Here we should note one thing: in a world undergoing historic transformations, any free press must be throttled and controlled, and over the past year we have seen unprecedented efforts by legacy media and its corporate owners, as well as the new “social media” overlords do everything in their power to stifle independent thought. For us it was especially “personal” on not one but two occasions. In January, Twitter suspended our account because we dared to challenge the conventional narrative about the source of the Wuhan virus. It was only six months later that Twitter apologized, and set us free, admitting it had made a mistake.

    Yet barely had twitter readmitted us, when something even more unprecedented happened: for the first time ever (to our knowledge) Google – the world’s largest online ad provider and monopoly – demonetized our website not because of any complaints about our writing but because of the contents of our comment section. It then held us hostage until we agreed to implement some prerequisite screening and moderation of the comments section. This was a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which resembles the dystopia of 1984 more and more each day, and we have since taken measures. In December for the first time in our 12 year history, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn’t our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us again. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the censorship bandwagon rolls out much more aggressively in the coming year.

    That said, whether the story of 2021, and the next decade for that matter, is one of helicopter or digital money, of (hyper)inflation or deflation: what is key, and what we learned in the past decade, is that the status quo will throw anything at the problem to kick the can, it will certainly not let any crisis go to waste… even the deadliest pandemic in over a century. And while many already knew that, the events of 2020 made it clear to a fault that not even a modest market correction can be tolerated going forward. That in turn may explain why the last quarters of 2020 were a mirror image of events from the first quarter when stocks tanked. After all, if central banks aim to punish all selling, then the logical outcome is to buy everything, and investors, traders and speculators did just that armed with the clearest backstop guarantee from the Fed, which in March crossed the Rubicon when it formally nationalized the bond market as it started buying both investment grade bonds and junk bond ETFs in the open market. As such it is no longer even a debatable issue if the Fed will buy stocks after the next crash – the only question is when.

    Meanwhile, for all those lamenting the relentless coverage of politics in a financial blog, why finance appears to have taken a secondary role, and why the political “narrative” has taken a dominant role for financial analysts, the past year showed vividly why that is the case.

    As for predictions about the future, as 2020 so vividly showed when it comes to true surprises and all true “black swans”, it won’t be what anyone had expected. And so while many themes, both in the political and financial realm, did get some accelerated closure courtesy of China’s covid pandemic, dramatic changes in 2020 persisted, and will continue to manifest themselves in often violent and unexpected ways – from the ongoing record polarization in the US political arena, to “populist” upheavals around the developed world, to the gradual transition to a global Universal Basic (i.e., socialized) Income regime, to China’s ongoing fight with preserving stability in its gargantuan financial system which is now more than double the size of the US.

    As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website – which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from the KGB either, although now that the entire Russian hysteria episode is over, those allegations have finally quieted down), and has never spent one dollar on marketing – a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine.

    Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we – and others who do not comply with the established narrative – have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, we find it a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world – is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from “dangerous, fake information.” It’s also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website.

    In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech to accelerate in the coming year, especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2020 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch out of fear of repercussions, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an orchestrated information vacuum and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which the public relations arm of established media outlets refused to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory “fake news” condemnation.

    We are grateful that our readers – who hit a new record high in 2020 – have realized it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn’t “fake news.”

    *  *  *

    And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, almost 11-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

    So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year.

    • In 20th spot with 690,000 readers, was an article that touched on one of the most sensitive topics of 2020 – the origins of the Covid virus. As readers are all too aware, the great debate here has been whether the virus emerged due to something as innocuous as a Chinese citizen eating a bat soup, a narrative espoused by the China-controlled media, or if it escaped from a Wuhan biolab. And as AP journalists are now discovering, all signs increasingly point to the latter, something which Luc Montagnier the man who discovered the HIV virus back in 1983 first said back in April, shocking the world with his claim that the virus was man made as we explained in “COVID-19 Is A Man-Made Virus: HIV-Discoverer Says “Could Only Have Been Created In A Lab“.” Eventually he will be proven correct, confirming once again that the biggest “fake news” is whatever the mainsteam media pushes as the narrative du jour.
    • In 19th spot of the year’s most popular articles, we received another reminder that not all is as it seems when it comes to stoking tensions within US society, as 718,000 readers clicked on a story pointing out that “More Bricks Appear In Advance Of Monday Demonstrations In Baltimore, Texas.” While a wave of protests and violent riots swept across the nation, ostensibly as a grassroot movement condemning police violence against blacks, it had dramatic consequences across the country, leading to the defunding of countless police forces across mostly liberal cities and yet many wondered about who the puppetmaster behind this wave of violence was, because as even Jeff Gundlach mused recently, “It’s Interesting How The Violent Riots Of 2020 Ended Right After The Election.” Hopefully, one day someone will get to the bottom of who and how organized the protest deadly movement of the summer of 2020.
    • In 18th spot, addressing what may be the most critical topic of the next four years, nearly 720,000 readers were presented with a “Blockbuster Report” which in impressive detail “Revealed How THE Biden Family Was Compromised By China.” As a reminder, when news reports of Hunter Biden’s relationship with China first emerged, the social networks were quick to censor any mention of the original report. However, just a few weeks later (and certainly after the election) we learned that Hunter was indeed being probed by tax evasion stemming from his shady Chinese deals which sought just one thing: to buy favor with the family of Joe Biden. Of course, it won’t be the first time foreign powers have sought such undue influence on US politicians – after all that’s what the whole point behind the existence of the Clinton foundation, which did nothing for starving African children or Haiti earthquake survivors, but sure made Bill and Hillary filthy rich.
    • Pivoting from China’s attempts to influence the White House, we once again find ourselves in the middle of the social unrest which defined much of the summer of 2020. Only this time there was a twist: 726,000 readers were fascinated how an “Antifa Attempt To Riot In California Suburb Goes Awry” when a group of Antifa ‘protesters’ were met with instant justice at the hands of angry residents in the suburban town of Yucaipa, California. Unfortunately, we expect this violent left-right split across the heart of America to only get worse in 2021 as none of the fundamental reasons for the growing anger and resentment across US society has been addressed yet, and if anything, it has become the media’s duty to stoke even more anger and hatred.
    • Confirming the scientists at best can only make(un)educated guesses about the future (especially if they have paid conflicts of interest) was an analysis from the early spring when the covid pandemic was first sweeping across the country, and which “found” that “All Hospital Beds In The US Will Be Filled With Patients ‘By About May 8th’ Due To Coronavirus.” This article, which was based on official research and was the 16th most read of 2020, with some 764,000 views, merely showcased something that never happened, and in fact the virus rapidly faded away as soon as various containment measures were rolled out. But not before it demonstrated how the media successfully instills a sense of panic amid the population, which continues to this day even as the most apocalyptic predictions postulated by “scientists” never actually came true.
    • By now a clear pattern is emerging: 2020 was without doubt the year of Covid, and it also served as the foundation of the 15th most popular article of 2020, which discussed a “Chilling Documentary Mapping Out Likely Origin Of COVID-19.” Some 767,000 readers got their first glimpse of covid not as a virus that emerged by accident in nature but one that was created in a Chinese lab; more troubling was the hint that China released the virus on purpose in hopes of overturning the socio-economic status quo. While the jury of “scientists” is still out on the real origins of covid (even if the broader public knows all too well where it came from), one thing is certain: the unprecedented transformations sparked by covid left China as one of the biggest geopolitical winners. If nothing else, this should at least prompt some more questions about who stood to benefit from the release of the virus.
    • Covid continued to dominate the most popular list, and the 14th most read article of 2020 with 820,000 views was the report that triggered the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression when on March 12, Trump finally bent under pressure and announced a ban on all travel from Europe, in the process triggering both widespread and targeted shutdowns that have lasted to this day, resulting in millions of job losses and countless small and medium business failing in response to the shotgun approach to deal with the pandemic which while crippling most of the population, made a handful of ultra rich investors and mega corporations extremely rich.
    • The 13th most popular article of 2020 touched on the year’s other biggest event, the US presidential election, and whose outcome Trump contests to this day as a result of countless allegedly fraudulent votes being cast on Nov 3. Some 830,000 readers were interested to learn how and why Trump’s then lawyer Sidney Powell intended to “Overturn Election Results In Multiple States.” So far, that has not happened, and in fact it is unlikely that it will after the Supreme Court refused to hear to Trump’s challenge last month. That said, with 3 weeks to go until the inauguration, Trump still refuses to concede although it remains unclear on what grounds he hopes to launch any upcoming legal challenges, even as Joe Biden has already hired his movers in preparation for his transition to the White House.
    • For the 12th most popular article of the past year, we once again shift back to Covid and specifically China’s massive obfuscation campaign, according to which the country which sparked the global covid pandemic has had less than 100,000 cases, even as the rest of world has arounf 500,000 new cases daily. Beijing’s facade of lies almost cracked in February when as asked whether “China’s Tencent Accidentally Leaked The True Terrifying Coronavirus Statistics.” It did, but since the truth in China has a halflife that is shorter than a virus in the wild, everyone quickly moved on and to this day the world continues to drink some bizarre Kool Aid according to which China has just a handful of new cases daily. 
    • The 11th most popular article of the year was something different: it had to do with what may well have been the most underreported story of 2020 (and 2019) – the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful, rich pedophile friends. Of course, most of Epstein’s secrets died with him when he “committed suicide” in the summer of 2019, although some hope for justice remains and it is tied to the ongoing incarceration of Epstein’s madame and girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who knew everything and everyone in Jeffrey’s circle. It’s also why 835,000 read the article laying out “The Top Highlights From Ghislaine Maxwell’s Unsealed Court Records.” Unfortunately, so far Ghislain has refused to shine a light into the true scandal surrounding Epstein and his “friends”, and we are confident that if that were to ever change then the daughter of Robert Maxwell – who died in mysterious circumstances back in 1991 – will face a similar fate.
    • With 864,000 page views, the 10th most popular story of 2020 was neither Covid, nor Trump, nor Epstein-related, but instead exposed China’s giant gold counterfeiting underworld as we explained in “83 Tons Of Fake Gold Bars: Gold Market Rocked By Massive China Counterfeiting Scandal.” Over the years there has been much speculation about just how much of the $11 trillion notional in above-ground gold is legitimate, and how much gold-plated tungsten, and the shocking news that emerged out of China in June underscored that one should always check the authenticity of one’s gold holdings, especially if there is any link to China, the country that has taken counterfeiting to an art.
    • Having entered the top 10 most popular stories of 2020, we find that covid makes another appearance in 9th spot with 915,000 reads, this time with the claim made by a top pathologist, Dr. Roger Hodkinson, who made the shocking allegation that the coronavirus Is “The Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated On An Unsuspecting Public” and claimed that “There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians, it’s outrageous, this is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.” One can easily see why any reference to the story or the doctor was promptly scrubbed by the world’s social media censors who have taken it upon themselves to also be “fact-checkers” on any claim related to covid, even if as we reported previously, most of those ‘fact-checkers’ are deeply conflicted individuals who have a vested interest in perpetuating the far more lucrative, fake narrative about covid.
    • In 8th spot, with just a few hundred more page views, was our report about the scientific analysis conducted on voting patterns in the Nov 3 election. In “It Defies Logic”: Scientist Finds Telltale Signs Of Election Fraud After Analyzing Mail-In Ballot Data” we showed a statistical anslysis “which strongly suggested that fraud occurred” on election night, when several swing states inexplicably stopped reporting vote counts while President Trump maintained a healthy lead over Joe Biden. To this date, this remains a deeply polarizing issue, and even though the courts – including SCOTUS – have refused to investigate further, millions of Americans believe that there are telltale signs that Biden’s victory on Nov 3 was not proper and is why so many Americans refuse to accept Joe Biden as their president.
    • With just over 1.1 million page views and in 7th spot, was the article that got us suspended (for 6 months) from Twitter: in “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?” we asked if Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist Peng Zhou (whose data was available publicly to anyone), was the person responsible for unleashing the pandemic. While Twitter unceremoniuosly banned our account for merely asking this question, a few months later the joke was on Jack Dorsey after we reported that “Western Spy Agencies Investigating Wuhan Scientist Highlighted By Zero Hedge In January.” Of course, since the question of China’s involvement in the creation and spread of the covid virus has tremendous political consequences, so far there has been no official finding or conclusion either way.
    • The 6th most popular article of 2020 was another notable question probing the validity of the November election, namely: “Why Does Biden Have So Many More Votes Than Democrat Senators In Swing States?” Another way of asking the same question – which 1,113,129 readers also wanted answered – was “what’s going on here? If it were “never-Trumpers” pairing Biden with their GOP Congressional picks, wouldn’t one expect fewer votes for Trump than GOP Senators?” So far we have not received an answer.
    • Questions about the credibility of the presidential election continued into the Top 5 posts as well, and with 1,245,000 was out post covering the rollercoaster event which was the Nov 3 election, which had Biden winning at first, then odds overwhelmingly shifted in Trump’s favor after he won Florida and Ohio, only to see Biden be declared winner after mail in votes in most swing states came overwhelmingly in Biden’s favor. Not surprisingly, “Trump Blasts Vote-Count Delays As “Fraud On The American Public” and yet it was precisely those same vote counts, as well as various documented reports of mystery ballot boxes emerging in the deep of the night, that ultimately handed Biden the election. Trump is still contesting the outcome.
    • The devastating consequences from the covid pandemic may have been more limited than many expected, largely thanks to an unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, which made life especially easy for companies that had access to capital markets, however it was quite the opposite for millions of small and medium businesses for whom the PPP loans handed out at the peak of the covid crisis provided at best a brief respite. As a result, and as we reported in “Bankruptcy Tsunami Begins: Thousands Of Default Notices Are “Flying Out The Door“,”  well over 1.2 million readers were shocked to learn just how bad the economy was for all those “mom and pop” small business operators who had no choice but to fold as the lockdowns resulting from the covid pandemic crippled the service economy and led to a historic bankruptcy filing spree.
    • The 3rd most popular article of 2020, read over 1.3 million times, had to do with another topic which the mainstream media would not come within 10 feet of, namely whether or not the highly popular Black Lives Matter movement was credible, or if it was just another way of sabotaging the popular narrative in hopes of benefiting a certain social class. One person who took the other side of the argument was an Anonymous Berkeley Professor who “Shredded the BLM Injustice Narrative” only to be met with a furious rebuke from Berkeley, which ironically validated one of the letter’s core claims that dissent outside “a tightly policed, narrow discourse” is not welcome. Sadly, to this day any truly open discourse on the topic of whether BLM’s claims are valid remains taboo, and is the surest and quickest way to ending one’s career.
    • The year’s second most popular article with just over 1.5 million reads, was also an example of conventional media cracking down on anything it found disagreeable to the popular narrative. Shortly after the first reports of covid’s spread, we published our take on a research report which found that “Coronavirus Contains “HIV Insertions”, Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon.” This prompted an immediate panic among the “factcheckers” whose job was to perpetuate the mainstream narrative, and they promptly conceded that while HIV insertions are present, such insertions can also be found in other viruses. Unfortunately, their attempts to discredit the theory that covid was a manmade bioweapon have so far failed to be scientifically validated, while covid’s surprising ability to mutate and force the immune system to attack the host body itself, which are now widely accepted even by the so-called “scientists” have failed to ease concerns that covid is, in many ways, an airborne version of HIV.
    • Finally, in the top #1 spot, and cementing 2020’s status as the year of covid, was an article from March that tried to take on the mass hysteria spread by everyone from (conflicted) politicians to (conflicted) mainsteadm media to (conflicted) pharma companies, all of which had a vested interest in creating the biggest ever crisis possible. With 1.7 million page views, in “COVID-19 – Evidence Over Hysteria” we laid out one take why the widespread panic resulting from covid may be ultimately self-defeating especially when juxtaposed side by the side with the far greater (and far wider reaching) economic damage sparked by lockdowns. Alas, to this day, the hysteria dominates confirming the old saying to let no crisis go to waste, especially when the crisis in question is the biggest one in generations and allows the establishment to rollout socially and economically transformational changes that would never be possible without the scapegoat that is covid.

    With all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2021, and the next decade?

    We don’t know: as frequent and not so frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don’t try despite endless allegations that we constantly predict the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the “smartest people in the room” who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2020, which destroyed the reputation of central banks, of economists, of conventional media and the professional “polling” and “strategist” class forever. We merely observe, try to find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it.

    We do know, however, that after a record $22 trillion in stimulus was been conjured out of thin air by the world’s central banks and politicians in just the past 9 months, as helicopter money makes a triumphal arrival in both the US and Eurozone, and as interest rates are on the cusp of breaking out, the entire world is floating on an ocean of excess money, which in 2020 once again succeeded in masking just how ugly the truth beneath the calm surface is.

    We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will eventually be revealed as fully naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone’s guess. But, as we have promised – and delivered – every year for the past 12, we will be there to document every aspect of it.

    Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2021, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2020 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day – usually with a cynical smile – helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that the system is reduced to (ab)using each and every day just to keep this grand tragicomedy going for at least one more year.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 17:10

  • Georgia Judge (Sister Of Top Democrat) Reverses Order To End Voter Roll Clean-Up
    Georgia Judge (Sister Of Top Democrat) Reverses Order To End Voter Roll Clean-Up

    As we detailed previously, U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner attracted considerable criticism when she declined to recuse herself from a challenge over voter eligibility.  Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams who has led the effort to register voters in the state.

    Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks during a conversation about criminal justice reform at the New York Public Library in New York City on April 10, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Many felt it was inappropriate for Gardner to rule on the case, a concern that was magnified by her quick rejection of a purging of the rolls of roughly 4000 inactive voters. 

    Now, as Jonathan Turley details below, it appears that Gardner has not recused herself but did reverse herself.  A new order has been issued, upholding the purge in the face of an appeal.

    Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took issue with the original order as fundamentally wrong as to the applicable Georgia election laws.

    The new order is a substantial rollback on the original order and the change was praised by Raffensperger’s office.

    It will allow the requirement of provisional ballots from those voters. Gardner however directs that no challenges to their eligibility be upheld based exclusively on data in the National Change of Address Registry, which Democrats have challenged as unreliable.

    At a time of heightened tensions over election integrity, Gardner’s decision not to recuse herself fueled further uncertainty. 

    Stacey Abrams’ organization Fair Fight donated $2.5 million to Senate Majority PAC.

    That is the group which used Majority Forward as its nonprofit arm, and the donation was the largest to Senate Majority PAC since the November election.

    So Gardner is ruling on an issue closely associated with her sister and originally ruled in favor of the group which lists her sister’s organization as its largest contributor. 

    At a minimum, that creates an appearance of a conflict. 

    I can understand Judge Gardner’s view that there is no real conflict. These two very successful women continue to work in the same state. Judge Gardner may have been concerned that a recusal would encourage endless such challenges over tangential links to her sister’s work. 

    Yet, she could have recused while stressing that this is a unique time and a unique set of circumstances. A recusal could have been simply a recognition of the court that her familial tie could undermine confidence in the review.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:52

  • Perdue In Quarantine Days Before Critical Georgia Runoff
    Perdue In Quarantine Days Before Critical Georgia Runoff

    With just days to go until the special election vote in Georgia where he – alongside Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is facing her own opponent – will face off against Democrat Jon Ossoff, Republican Sen. David Perdue is being forced to quarantine, alongside his family, after coming into contact with a COVID-positive individual.

    The news comes at a particularly inopportune moment for Perdue and his family. Polls show Perdue’s lead over Ossoff, a progressive Democrat from the Atlanta suburbs who has gained a degree of national prominence after putting up a good fight (but still losing) in an earlier Georgia special election, has been slipping as national anger simmers over the Senate GOP’s decision to block the $2K stimulus checks pushed by President Trump.

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

    Here’s a statement from Perdue and his campaign.

    “This morning, Senator Perdue was notified that he came into close contact with someone on the campaign who tested positive for COVID-19. Both Senator Perdue and his wife tested negative today, but following his doctor’s recommendations and in accordance with CDC guidelines, they will quarantine. “The Senator and his wife have been tested regularly throughout the campaign, and the team will continue to follow CDC guidelines. Further information will be provided when available.”

    Perdue’s race has tremendous implications for Republicans nationwide, as their grip on the Senate is hanging in the balance.Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority of 50-48 in the Senate. If Democrats win both seats, then the balance of the Senate would be 50-50, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be empowered to cast the tie-breaking vote.

    But even losing one seat would put Democrats just one Mitt Romney away from doing whatever they want.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:40

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Dec 31

Today’s News 31st December 2020

  • COVID "Mutation" Stories Show That The Lockdowns Are Designed To Last Forever
    COVID “Mutation” Stories Show That The Lockdowns Are Designed To Last Forever

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    For many months now I have been warning that the design behind the pandemic lockdowns is a perpetual one; meaning, the lockdowns are MEANT to last forever. We can see this in the very commentary of the establishment elites that are pushing for the mandates; their most frequent argument being that the pandemic restrictions are the “new normal”. This assertion is outlined by globalists like Gideon Lichfield of MIT in his article ‘We’re Not Going Back To Normal’. In it he states:

    “Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating – legally – against those who are.

    …one can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.”

    In my article ‘Waves Of Mutilation: Medical Tyranny And The Cashless Society’, I dismantled Lichfield’s arguments and outlined why the controls the establishment is attempting to put in place have been planned far in advance. The so-called “great reset” and “Fourth Industrial Revolution” has been in development since at least 2014 when the terms were first being injected into the mainstream economic media. The ideas of a cashless society, the “sharing economy”, biometric mass surveillance, social credit scores, etc, have all been part of the globalist agenda for decades. The coronavirus is merely a useful crisis for them to exploit as a rationale for the draconian measures they have always wanted.

    The plan was so predictable that I even pointed out at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak that lockdowns would not end even if a working vaccination was developed because all they have to do is declare that a “new mutation” of the virus has been found which is resistant to existing treatments. Or, they could engineer a whole new virus and release it into the population in order to keep the Reset machine rolling forward.

    Not surprisingly, just as news hit the wires that the barely tested and highly suspect Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were being released to the public, reports have begun to trickle in of “more infectious” Covid mutations found in places like the UK, India and South Africa.

    I’m not sure how much more transparent the elites can get.

    Take the Pfizer vaccine now and you might receive an immunity passport for a few months, and then it will become void with every new mutation of the virus. So, you must then submit to ENDLESS vaccinations, many of then untested and potentially hazardous. As the former VP of Pfizer and other medical professionals have warned, these vaccines are like Russian Roulette and could cause an autoimmune response that leads to sterility or other harmful reactions.

    The vaccines themselves are a conveniently short lived solution even if they do work. They require multiple doses over the course of a month, and renewed vaccinations are to take place possibly every few months. Basically, it never ends. With the mutations and limited antibodies from the vaccines, the elites could keep the lockdowns and mandates in place for many years to come.

    The World Health Organization is making it clear that vaccination will not necessarily be considered a solution to viral spread. Meaning, even if you are vaccinated you will still be considered a potential carrier and transmitter of Covid, therefore the lockdowns and mask mandates will not stop. This begs the question – What’s the point of the vaccine?

    The WHO chief scientist cites the fact that there is not enough evidence to prove that the vaccines prevent transmission. By that logic, we could also argue that there is no evidence that the vaccines are 95% effective, or that they are safe in the slightest.

    In the meantime, the WHO and our friendly neighborhood fascist Dr. Anthony Fauci are consistently spreading the narrative that the “worst outbreak” is yet to come. Gotta keep that fear train chugging forward on the track to the “Great Reset”, right?

    For the people that actually believe that the covid crisis will end after mass vaccinations, I’m sorry to say, but you have been duped. Every single element of the establishment response and every public statement they make indicates that they plan to violate your civil liberties for a long time to come. Those promises of relief right around the corner? All lies. The claim that if you go along to get along everything will go back to normal? It’s a con. It is hollow rhetoric designed to make you shut up and submit to medical tyranny for just long enough that it becomes irreversible.

    I suspect they are hoping they can condition the public over the next few years to simply adapt to the controls until we forget what life was like before the pandemic and the reset. It seems, however, that the globalist reset plan is not going very well.

    The vaccines and the mutation news feel rushed, to say the least. Initially, the establishment said that it would take at least 18 months just to develop a vaccine for trials and testing, and that the lockdowns would continue well beyond that time frame until a majority of the population was shown to have immunity. Instead, they tossed out multiple vaccines within 6 months and the mutation narrative is already in the news.

    I believe this is because resistance to the pandemic lockdowns is growing and the number of people refusing to take the vaccines appears to be high. As they say, the revolution will not be televised, but it is still impossible to hide completely.

    In Europe, a huge percentage of the population (around 50% or more depending on the country) are hesitant to take the vaccine. In the US, polls show that at least 30% of the population will refuse outright, while 60% of people are hesitant about effectiveness.

    Even large numbers of health care workers are refusing the vaccine, and these are the people with the most pressure to submit or face consequences.

    Hilariously, the media is arguing that though there have been “some allergic reactions” to the shot, there is “no evidence of serious long term side effects”. Perhaps that is because there are NO STUDIES of the long term effects and there were minimal trials before the vaccines were released? I mean, is this not basic logic? Do they really think we are that dumb?

    So far it seems hundreds of millions of people are not that dumb. Surprisingly, even sheriffs and police across the country are openly refusing to enforce mandates and carry out color-of-law punishments against citizens that do not submit. This is really a huge obstacle for the globalists and their reset.

    The virus has produced a 0.26% IFR (Infection Fatality Ratio) among anyone not in a nursing home with preexisting conditions. Over 40% of Covid deaths are attributed to elderly people that were already suffering from numerous ailments. Only around 10% of people that end up hospitalized for covid suffer from long term health concerns (more than three months). And, only around 15% of ICU beds are in use across the US, meaning that the claims of over-capacity and full hospitals were nothing more than fear mongering all along.

    Consider the fact that hundreds of thousands of people already die each year from infectious diseases like the flu and pneumonia and Covid starts to seem far less threatening. It is certainly not an excuse for medical lockdowns and Orwellian contact tracing measures.

    On top of that, numerous studies are revealing that the lockdowns and the masks are completely ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus. The states and countries with some of the most strictly enforced mandates also tend to be the places with the highest infection spikes.

    Because of this, it makes sense that many people are refusing to comply with the mandates. The media claims we are conspiracy theorists that believe the virus “doesn’t exist”; this is not the case. In fact, I have long suspected that the narrative that the virus “doesn’t exist” was a psyop or strawman that would be used against the liberty movement later to discredit our resistance to medical lockdowns.

    Most of us are well aware the virus exists. Some of us have already dealt with it and recovered from it. What we are saying is that the CDC, the WHO and the medical community’s OWN STATISTICS show that Covid is not a threat to more than 99% of the population. If we are to accept their stats as even remotely accurate, then Covid becomes a non-issue for most people.

    Again, I will ask the question that the mainstream refuses to ask:

    Why is 99% of the population being told they must sacrifice their jobs, their businesses and their liberties in the name of making less than 1% of the population feel safer? Why not ask the 0.26% of the people under threat from the virus to volunteer to stay home so that the rest of us can get on with normal life? Why are we doing the opposite of what makes the most sense?

    The answer is that the pandemic response is about dominance, not public health. People are starting to recognize this, and they are about to revolt.

    So, the next logical step for the establishment if they really want to institute their reset agenda is to introduce a new threat. Meaning, they need a “mutation” of the virus or a completely new virus in order to create the kind of fear that is required to manipulate the public into going along with further control.

    Will a new and deadlier virus be found? Maybe. In most cases viruses tend to evolve into less deadly strains of the original. They also tend to balance out their rate of spread versus their rate of mortality. In other words, like any other creature, viruses evolve to survive, and a virus cannot survive if it kills off a majority of its potential hosts. So, they mutate to become more infectious, but invariably less deadly.

    If a “mutation” does show up on the scene that is more deadly than the current form of Covid-19, then I would be highly suspicious of its origins. What is most likely is that that the elites are in a panic and they are using the mutation narrative as a propaganda tool to illicit terror and conformity in the public. There may be no mutation at all, or the mutations will have no significant bearing on the death rate.

    Ironically, by rushing out the vaccines as well as the mutation stories, the elites have sabotaged themselves. They wanted to blitzkrieg the public with the lockdowns and they met heavier resistance than they expected. So, they put the vaccination program on a bullet train and now the public is wary of being injected with a vaccine model that is barely tested. Now, they are promoting the mutation bogeyman and this only makes people question why they should take any vaccine at all? If the virus is going to continually mutate then why take a questionable vaccine that could be useless in a matter of a months?

    All the mutation narrative does is further expose what the true agenda is – What the elites want is never-ending lockdowns. There is no program to save lives or flatten the curve. The entire health argument is utter nonsense. Nothing that has been done so far supports the notion that public health is the priority. Instead, what we are seeing is a mad dash towards totalitarianism using Covid as the excuse, and the effort is failing.

    *  *  *

    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
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 23:40

  • Xi's Feigned Economic 'Success' A Mounting 'Powder Keg' With World
    Xi’s Feigned Economic ‘Success’ A Mounting ‘Powder Keg’ With World

    “The gap between Xi’s confidence and the world’s grim reality is glaring,” analysis in Nikkei Asia Review recently observed. This need “to portray ‘success’ at party anniversary will be powder keg with the world.”

    The analysis begins, “When it comes to statements issued after key meetings of the Chinese Communist Party, what is not written – especially what has been deleted from previous statements – often carries much more significance than the complex language that remains.”

    Nikkei’s Katsuji Nakazawa has highlighted a key phrase which was indeed glaringly absent from a statement of President Xi’s released upon this year’s Central Economic Work Conference, which ran Dec. 16 through 18, focused on China’s economic management for 2021. The absence is quite telling.

    Via FT

    The prior year’s fundamental acknowledged concern for the Chinese economy’s near and future outlook as expressed by Xi — that it faces “downward economic pressure” — was this year quietly dropped from the statement. Nakazawa observed:

    A year has made a big difference. At the previous Central Economic Work Conference, which began on Dec. 10, 2019, Chinese President and party General Secretary Xi Jinping issued a warning using those words.

    Looking back, the conference was held weeks before the outbreak of the new coronavirus began to terrorize the global economy. Two days before the meeting, the first virus patient in Wuhan, Hubei Province, began showing symptoms, according to Chinese authorities.

    As it began to unfold, however, Chinese citizens and people around the world were left in the dark about the outbreak. Information did not surface, at least not widely, for a while.

    Belatedly, by January 20, Chinese health officials went public with their findings of “human-to-human transmission” in perhaps a first dire warning to the globe of just how serious the emerging pandemic was.

    In 2019 while likely having little clue as to the devastating impact of the coronavirus on both the national and global economy about to be unleashed, Xi still used those words: “downward economic pressure”… and yet now silence:

    A year later, and despite China and the world going through a historic bout of economic turbulence, Xi made no mention of and ignored any “downward economic pressure.” True, the Chinese economy is recovering, but something seems off.

    It hints at Xi’s desire to declare to the world that China has become “the only major economy with positive growth this year,” as the Central Economic Work Conference statement put it.

    In China, the country’s fight against the virus and its success in fending off the outbreak’s economic effects are already regarded as a part of history Chinese can be proud of. There is even a virus-themed exhibition being held in Wuhan.

    It was a very different world just a year ago: “When the party in 2019 talked of downward economic pressure, the biggest factor weighing on the Chinese economy was the impact of the country’s fierce economic confrontation with the U.S. and President Donald Trump.”

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    “The 2019 Central Economic Work Conference came one month before Vice Premier Liu He, a close aide to Xi, flew to Washington and signed the ‘phase one” trade deal,’ Nikkei observes.

    And then, the “unimaginable coronavirus-related nightmares would go on to play out around the world. Trump, who leaves office in less than a month, failed to cope with the outbreak, allowing it to ravage the U.S. So far, the virus has killed more than 322,000 people in the country.” Now there’s certainly no “round two” trade talks anywhere in sight also amid a ratcheting Trump trade war and sanctions.

    Something seems very “off” in Xi’s portrayal of ‘success’ observes Nakazawa. Read the rest of the Nikkei analysis here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 23:20

  • The Year In Which Comforting American Myths Were Ravaged
    The Year In Which Comforting American Myths Were Ravaged

    Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Thanks in large part to Covid lockdowns, this year has left vast wreckage in its wake, with ten million jobs lost, more than 100,000 businesses and dozens of national chains bankrupted or closed. Up to 40 million people could face eviction in the coming months for failing to pay rent, and Americans report that their mental health is at record low levels.

    But the casualty list for 2020 must also include many of the political myths that shape Americans’ lives. 

    Perhaps the biggest myth to die this year was that Americans’ constitutional rights are safeguarded by the Bill of Rights. After the Covid-19 pandemic began, governors in state after state effectively placed scores of millions of citizens under house arrest – dictates that former Attorney General Bill Barr aptly compared to “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties” since the end of slavery. Politicians and government officials merely had to issue decrees, which were endlessly amended, in order to destroy citizens’ freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of choice in daily life. Los Angeles earlier this month banned almost all walking and bicycling in the city, ordering four million people to “to remain in their homes” in a futile effort to banish a virus. 

    The Rule of Law is another myth impaled by 2020’s dire developments. Courts have repeatedly struck down sweeping restrictions. Federal judge William Stickman IV invalidated some of Pennsylvania’s restrictions in a September ruling: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.” After the Michigan Supreme Court effectively labeled Governor Gretchen Whitmer a lawless dictator, she responded by issuing “new COVID-19 emergency orders that are nearly identical to her invalidated emergency orders,” as the Mackinac Center noted. How many governors and mayors have you seen on the television news being led away in handcuffs after their arrest for violating citizens’ rights this year? None.

    Another myth that 2020 obliterated was the notion that politicians spending more than a hundred billion dollars every year for science and public health would keep Americans safe. 

    The Centers for Disease Control utterly botched the initial testing regime, sending out bogus tests to state and local health departments and taking a month and a half to do what the Thai government achieved in one day. The Food and Drug Administration helped turn the coronavirus from a deadly peril into a national catastrophe. Long after foreign nations had been ravaged and many cases had been detected in America, the FDA continued blocking private testing. The FDA continued forcing the nation’s most innovative firms to submit to its command-and-control approach, notwithstanding the pandemic.

    The benevolence and compassion of public school teachers was another myth that 2020 obliterated. Teacher unions helped barricade school doors the same way that segregationist governors in the 1950s and 1960s refused to obey federal court orders to admit black students. The Chicago Teachers Union proclaimed: “The push to reopen schools is based in sexism, racism, and misogyny.” 

    Black and Hispanic students suffered much larger learning losses due to school shutdowns, leading former Education Secretary John King to warn of a “lost generation of students.” Despite a deluge of studies that showed that schools posed little risk of fueling the pandemic, teachers insisted that they were entitled to both their salaries and to stay at home as long as they considered necessary. 

    This was part of the collapse of the broader myth that the rulers and ruled have common interests. Among other splits, the response to the pandemic divided Americans into those who work for a living, and those who “work” for the government. Government employees in most states and at the federal level have been the Untouchables, continuing to draw full pay even when they were no longer even required to show up for work. One exception to this trend is government tax collectors, who continue commandeering as much as ever from citizens and property owners regardless of the collapse in public services in many places this year. 

    Another myth that perished in 2020 was that social media and the Internet could be a powerful propellant of free information. Instead, the biggest players pulled the most strings to suppress criticisms or dissent from the latest Covid policies promulgated by officialdom. On March 18, Twitter announced that, in response to Covid-19, it would ban tweets guilty of “denial of expert guidance” or “misleading content purporting to be from experts or authorities.” 

    The World Health Organization initially overestimated the Covid fatality rate by 50-fold but they remain Twitter-approved. Facebook recently launched far more aggressive policies, including directly contacting anyone who liked or commented on a piece that was later ruled erroneous by Facebook guardians and is refusing any ads that discourages people from getting vaccinations. Will they ban WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan for declaring on Monday that there was “no evidence to be confident [vaccine] shots prevent transmission” of Covid? Google sought to suppress any doubts about lockdowns: “Most users in English-speaking countries, when they google ‘Great Barrington Declaration’, will not be directed to the declaration itself but to articles that are critical of the declaration,” a Spiked-Online analysis noted. 

    This year’s presidential election put a helluva dent in the credo that politicians rule with the “consent of the governed.” The pandemic provided the pretext to radically change voting procedures, spurring 65 million mostly unverified mail-in ballots. The New York Times warned in 2012 that “fraud in voting by mail is… vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention.” Many states solved that problem by “defining down fraud” and expunging the verification procedures previously used to routinely invalidate 20% or more of mailed-in ballots. The controversies around mail-in ballots, questionable software, ballot harvesting and other practices mean that a record number of Americans will doubt Joe Biden’s legitimacy even before he takes his oath of office. 

    Perhaps the saddest casualty of 2020 is the myth that average Americans cherish their personal freedom. Politicians continually shifted the rationale for lockdowns – from flattening the curve, to ending “community spread,” to reducing cases to near zero. Regardless of the proclaimed rationale, most people submitted without a fight, and usually without even a whimper. Politicians and bureaucrats fanned mass fears which quickly ripened into hatred of anyone who did not comply with the latest edict.

    States and cities across the country set up snitch lines that were soon deluged with complaints of people outside without a mask, meeting friends, or having more visitors in their homes than could fit in a phone booth. Many, if not most, people quickly acquiesced to the “new normal” where any government hack who recited the phrase “science and data” became entitled to rule their lives with an iron fist. 

    As the Harvard International Review warned, “The very methods that liberal democracies are currently using to effectively fight the virus are the same tactics that authoritarian leaders use to dominate their people. The tools that have been temporarily deployed in the fight against a once-in-a-lifetime disease may become permanent.” That was written on May 23, more than 15 million Covid cases ago – proof of the failure of lockdowns and pervasive restrictions to make Covid-19 vanish. But the miserable batting average of officialdom will vanish into the Memory Hole if politicians launch a campaign to make Covid vaccinations mandatory, complete with boundless vilification of anyone who balks at the injection. 

    Perhaps it has long been a myth that we live in a self-governing republic rather than a Leviathan Democracy where citizens merely make cameo appearances every few years at the voting booth. It is still possible that the catastrophic and pointless losses imposed by Covid crackdowns will finally awaken enough people to their growing subjugation. But the most dangerous myth is that Americans will finally become safe after they cease making any efforts to leash their rulers.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 23:00

  • Pompeo Poised To Put Cuba On Terrorism Sponsor List To Disrupt Biden Rapprochement
    Pompeo Poised To Put Cuba On Terrorism Sponsor List To Disrupt Biden Rapprochement

    The Trump White House has on multiple foreign policy fronts of late attempted to “box in” the incoming Biden administration – limiting its ability to roll back Trump policies – particularly on Iran and China.

    President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are now poised to do the same on Cuba. This after it’s been widely reported in the past weeks that Biden’s team will seek for greater ‘normalized’ relations with the communist-run Caribbean country, which would involve rolling back current restrictions on travel, investment, and remittances.

    The New York Times has cited two US officials in a report Tuesday who say the US is preparing to once again place Cuba on the state sponsor of terrorism list. 

    Via Miami Herald

    Cuba had been formally delisted under Obama in 2015 during his attempt at rapprochement, which also saw a number of sanctions briefly removed. 

    A proposal for a return to naming Cuba as a ‘state sponsor’ has reportedly been prepared under the aegis of the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, but for it to actually go through insiders say that the Counterterrorism Bureau would have to sign off.

    The other major hurdle would be the timeline, given the Trump admin is now running out of time to push it through, as CNN underscores:

    Whether Pompeo will approve the plan remains unknown, but a Biden administration reversal of the move could take months, the Times reported. Designation as a state sponsor of terrorism can trigger sanctions including “restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions,” according to the State Department.

    But the problem could go the other way too, as The Hill on Wednesday notes of the original NYT report, “While Biden could quickly move to remove Cuba from the list upon taking office, the Times reported that this could require a months-long formal review process.”

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    But this appears part of the Trump strategy to begin with: create enough massive hurdles for Biden with weeks just left as to disrupt plans to continue Obama’s policy of restored normalized relations.

    Previously any positive gains in restoring relations under Obama, which included the US embassy’s reopening in Havana in 2015, were reversed when in 2017 Trump barred Americans from traveling to Cuba and other punitive economic measures.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 22:40

  • Australian Authorities Ban New Year's Eve Kissing And Hugging To Stop COVID
    Australian Authorities Ban New Year’s Eve Kissing And Hugging To Stop COVID

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Authorities in Victoria, Australia have banned kissing and hugging on New Year’s Eve despite the fact that there have been no new cases of COVID-19 in two months.

    State Premier Dan Andrews said hugging and kissing should not take place during celebrations between anyone but immediate family members.

    “Just as Christmas was a little different this year, New Year’s Eve will be too,” the Victorian Government said.

    “Take some hand sanitiser with you, don’t share drinks with others and [new year] kisses and hugs should [only] be shared with those in your immediate family.”

    Quite how authorities expect to enforce such a measure is unfathomable.

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    There have been no new cases of COVID-19 in Victoria for two months, but the New Year’s Eve fireworks display in Melbourne has been cancelled.

    As we previously highlighted, Australians were subject to one of the most draconian lockdowns in the developed world.

    A pregnant woman was arrested in her own home for promoting a lockdown protest on Facebook while authorities also made home visits to people planning to attend.

    A new law would have also given police the power to arrest coronavirus “conspiracy theorists” if it was thought they may commit a crime in the future.

    In October, we also highlighted how four newborn babies in Adelaide, Australia died after being denied life-saving heart surgery due to coronavirus travel restrictions.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here. In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 22:20

  • Vaccine "Passports" Could Be Mandatory For Travel, Shopping And Even The Movies, CNN Says
    Vaccine “Passports” Could Be Mandatory For Travel, Shopping And Even The Movies, CNN Says

    The Covid-19 vaccine isn’t even in the hands of most Americans yet and already CNN is prepping the masses for the idea of a “vaccine passport”, which it says could be needed to travel, and even “shop and go to the movies again”. 

    “In order to do those activities, you may eventually need something in addition to the vaccine: a vaccine passport application,” an article from this week proudly proclaims. “Rest assured, the nerds are on it,” CNN playfully writes, possibly hoping to distract readers from the idea of authoritarian globalization with a joke or two. 

    The article notes that several technology companies have begun developing apps to upload details of vaccinations – as if the tech giants didn’t have enough of your data or enough information about you. These companies could require you to show your “credentials” at “concert venues, stadiums, movie theaters, offices, or even countries.”

    But don’t worry, the article notes, the Common Trust Network, “an initiative by Geneva-based nonprofit The Commons Project and the World Economic Forum” has partnered with several airlines to help with the project. Their app allows you to upload medical data that will generate a QR code for travel. Because nothing says “secure” quite like the World Economic Forum having access to your medical records. 

    Thomas Crampton, chief marketing and communications officer for The Commons Project, said: “You can be tested every time you cross a border. You cannot be vaccinated every time you cross a border.”

    IBM, possibly bored and looking for something to involve itself in other than gaming its annual effective tax rate and buying back stock, also developed its own app called “Digital Health Pass”.  It allows you to keep your credentials in a mobile wallet.

    Jenny Wanger, who leads the exposure notification initiatives for Linux Foundation Public Health, told CNN about challenges early on in coordinating a digital notification response to Covid-19: “I think where exposure notification ran into some challenges was more of the piecemeal implementation choices, lack of federal leadership … where each state had to go it alone and so each state had to figure it out independently.”

    The Linux Foundation has also partnered with IBM and CommonPass to help develop “universal standards” for a vaccine app. 

    Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Linux Foundation, said: “If we’re successful, you should be able to say: I’ve got a vaccine certificate on my phone that I got when I was vaccinated in one country, with a whole set of its own kind of health management practices… that I use to get on a plane to an entirely different country and then I presented in that new country a vaccination credential so I could go to that concert that was happening indoors for which attendance was limited to those who have demonstrated that they’ve had the vaccine.”

    He concluded: “It should be interoperable in the same way that email is interoperable, the same way that the web is interoperable. Right now, we’re in a situation where there’s some moving parts that get us closer to that, but I think there’s a sincere commitment from everybody in the industry.”

    “A point of entry — whether that’s a border, whether that’s a venue — is going to want to know, did you get the Pfizer vaccine, did you get the Russian vaccine, did you get the Chinese vaccine, so they can make a decision accordingly,” Crampton concluded.

    And we’re sure the front of the line to help lobby for these new draconian rules will look something like this:

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 22:00

  • Trump Administration Approves $290 Million Bomb Sale To Saudi Arabia
    Trump Administration Approves $290 Million Bomb Sale To Saudi Arabia

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The State Department approved a potential sale of Boeing-made precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia worth an estimated $290 million. The Trump administration notified Congress of the deal on Tuesday.

    Last week, the Trump administration moved forward with a plan to issue a license to Raytheon that would enable the weapons dealer to directly sell the Saudis a package of “smart” bombs worth approximately $478 million.

    President Trump has continued to arm the Saudis despite opposition to the sales in Congress. The opposition is mainly due to the US-backed Saudi-led war in Yemen, where the coalition frequently targets civilian infrastructure with US-made bombs. The coalition’s siege tactics have caused widespread disease, food shortages, and mass starvation.

    In 2019, Congress passed legislation to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which President Trump vetoed. The president also used his veto powers that year on a bill that called for an end to US involvement in the war in Yemen.

    The incoming Biden administration is expected to reevaluate the US-Saudi relationship. Joe Biden has said he will cut off arms sales to the Kingdom. But there is some concern that weapons sales will continue due to Biden’s pick for secretary of defense, Retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, who sits on the board of Raytheon.

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    While Austin could be expected to advance the interests of the arms industry, it’s worth noting that he strongly opposed the Saudi’s intervention in Yemen in 2015 while he was the head of US Central Command. Austin opposed the intervention because Yemen’s Houthis were an intelligence-sharing partner of the US in the fight against al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

    The Trump administration also notified Congress on Tuesday of a potential sale to Kuwait of Apache helicopters and spare parts for the Patriot missile system worth an estimated $4.2 billion.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 21:40

  • Trump Declassifies Intelligence Report On Chinese Bounties In Afghanistan
    Trump Declassifies Intelligence Report On Chinese Bounties In Afghanistan

    The Trump administration is declassifying a US intelligence report that China offered to pay non-state actors in Afghanistan to attack American forces, according to Axios, citing two senior administration officials.

    Amusingly, Axios prominently disclaims the intel as ‘unconfirmed’ in their headline – a word which somehow escaped the MSM’s vocabulary when a nearly identical report came out in June regarding alleged Russian bounties on American soldiers, which remains — unconfirmed.

    According to the report, Trump was briefed on the ‘as-yet uncorroborated’ Chinese bounty intelligence on December 17, and discussed it with national security adviser Robert O’Brien the same day according to officials.

    “The U.S. has evidence that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] attempted to finance attacks on American servicemen by Afghan non-state actors by offering financial incentives or ‘bounties’” and said the National Security Council “is coordinating a whole-of-government investigation,” one official told Axios, who would not say if he was referring to the Taliban or other ‘non-state actors.’

    The same person said that the Trump administration received earlier intelligence regarding “PRC weapons illicitly flowing into Afghanistan.”

    The British and U.S. governments have previously complained about Chinese-made weapons being used by the Taliban.

    • The interest in Afghanistan stems in part from Beijing’s desire to prevent Chinese Muslim separatist groups from using the country as a base.
    • Afghan security officials recently discovered an alleged Chinese spy ring operating in the country apparently seeking to target Uighurs there, according to a Dec. 25 report from the Hindustan Times. -Axios

    It’s unknown if members of Congress or President-elect Joe Biden have been briefed, however Biden currently has access to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). When contacted for comment, the Chinese embassy in D.C. didn’t respond to the news outlet, while President Trump is not believed to have discussed it with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Also unclear is when the alleged bounties were offered – though the source says it happened sometime after late February after the United States struck a deal with the Taliban.

    One senior official involved in the latest China discussions told Axios “Like all first reports, we react with caution to initial reports,” adding “any intel reports relating to the safety of our forces we take very seriously.”

    Following up on the briefing, officials conducted a Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC) meeting to discuss the intelligence. The meeting had two objectives; gain more insight from the intelligence community to verify the initial reports, and to consult with the intelligence and defense communities involved in the force protection posture for the remaining US forces in Afghanistan.

    More via Axios:

    Behind the scenes: The intelligence was included in the president’s briefing on Dec. 17, and Trump was verbally briefed on the matter by National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, officials said.

    • Administration officials across multiple agencies are currently working to corroborate the initial intelligence reports.
    • Axios was not able to visually inspect any reports detailing the intelligence. A summary was described by phone by the officials.

    Why it matters: If this intelligence were to be confirmed, it would represent a dramatic strategic shift for China, and sharply escalate tensions between China and the U.S. If the intelligence does not prove accurate, it raises questions about the motivations of the sources behind it as well as the decision to declassify it.

    • China has long played a quiet diplomatic role in Afghanistan, inviting Afghan Taliban officials to Beijing to discuss plans for a peace deal and encouraging an Afghan-led solution, though Chinese-made weapons and financing have at times also flowed into the conflict there.
    • It seems “incongruous” that China would take such a provocative action in Afghanistan, Andrew Small, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who specializes in China-Afghanistan affairs, told Axios.
    • Pursuing peace in Afghanistan is “one of the extremely rare areas where the US and China still have a willingness to work together on an area of importance,” Small said. “They know the drawdown is taking place. We’re not in the context where anything else needs to happen to US troops in Afghanistan. There is no reason to create additional pressure on US forces.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 21:20

  • It's Interesting How The Violent Riots Of 2020 Ended Right After The Election
    It’s Interesting How The Violent Riots Of 2020 Ended Right After The Election

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    Lest people think that 2020 was only about Covid-19, lockdowns, and economic disaster, don’t forget about the protests, riots, and escalating exhibits of rage.

    The triggering event was the death of George Floyd. He was killed during an arrest on May 25th in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The entire thing was caught on video. It had all the potential to be a turning point with regard to police brutality and race – the nation was riveted and outraged.

    But then, as often occurs, the protests were co-opted. Extremists took over, extremists on the other side took umbrage, and  Mr. Floyd became a footnote.

    2020 devolved into ongoing violence in American streets that most of us haven’t seen in our lifetimes. Distinct sides were chosen, lines were drawn, and those who saw the middle ground were quickly shouted down while America burned.

    May

    Minneapolis immediately erupted into violent riots that turned deadly.

    Rioters set the police station on fire.

    Within a week of Mr. Floyd’s death, demonstrations had spread to 30 cities across the United States, many turning from peaceful protests to riots.

    Riots in Denver:

    Seattle was the site of particularly destructive and violent riots.

    In fact, protestors took over a six-block area in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, driving out police and maintaining their presence there for months. They even strategically changed the name of the area to make it part of a bigger movement.

    June

    The National Guard was deployed to cities across the country in an attempt to quell the violence.

    Seattle:

    Atlanta:

    Los Angeles and Hollywood:

    In this article, a National Guardsman shared a personal account of what was really going on during the Seattle riots.

    July

    In July, police and rioters in cities across the country were engaged in violent clashes.

    Federal police squared off with rioters in Portland.

    August

    On August 23, fuel was added to the raging inferno when Jacob Blake was shot and killed by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. At this point, the facts of the shootings were no longer relevant – any police violence against a black suspect was going to result in riots.

    By that evening, Kenosha was on fire.

    The destruction of Kenosha, a moderate-sized town, was shocking.

    We ran the first-person account of a Kenosha resident who said, “Everyone in the city was getting ready for a war.”

    Looting and rioting broke out in Chicago after another police shooting and the “Magnificent Mile” was trashed by angry mobs.

    It got so bad that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the drawbridges raised.

    Interestingly, activists attempted to justify the looting as “reparations.”

    September

    By September 1st, riots occurred for the 95th consecutive day in Portland.

    Violence also erupted in Louisville, Kentucky when the Grand Jury declined to charge the officers accused of killing Breonna Taylor, a local paramedic, with homicide.

    These protests also spread across the nation.

    Some of those arrested in the New York City riots were entitled kids from wealthy families who were “enacting their revolutionary strategy.”.

    October

    In October, Walter Wallace was shot sixteen times by Philadelphia police during a mental health call after he refused to drop a knife.

    Looting soon followed the rioting.

    November

    While America braced itself for riots based on the outcome of the hotly contested US presidential election, these fears did not come to fruition. In fact, the violence has slowed down since the outcome (which is still being argued by attorneys for President Trump.)

    Did police shootings suddenly cease? Did racially-motivated violence end? Did the justice system radically evolve? Did everyone finally agree and settle their differences amicably?

    It’s almost enough to make a person ask questions about the widespread violence from May through October.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 21:00

  • UN Condemns Trump Blackwater Pardons As "Violation Of International Law"
    UN Condemns Trump Blackwater Pardons As “Violation Of International Law”

    Officials on a United Nations working group specializing in monitoring the role of mercenaries in conflicts on Wednesday blasted President Trump’s pardons last week of four Blackwater contractors convicted of murdering unarmed Iraqi civilians as “an affront to justice”. 

    “Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, who chairs a UN working group on the use of mercenaries. “These pardons violate U.S. obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level.”

    The committee of five UN experts further underscored that Trump’s move flies in the face of the Geneva Conventions, which obliges states to hold all war criminals accountable regardless of if they represent national forces or operate as private contractors. 

    The four men opened fire on a busy traffic square in Iraq in 2007, killing 17, in what became known as the Nisour Square Massacre. Fourteen among the killed had been unarmed civilians and innocent bystanders. Twenty others suffered injuries.

    Trump’s pre-Christmas pardons included Nicholas Slatten, previously convicted of first-degree murder, and Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, and Paul Slough – convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter.

    The UN as well as other international critics of the pardons now fear private security contractors will be given greater license to “operate with impunity in armed conflicts”.

    From left: Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten and Paul Slough

    The example could also embolden states to use mercenaries to do their ‘dirty work’ as proxies – for example contractors operating on behalf of the Saudis and UAE in the Yemen war.

    For its part the White House claimed to have had broad support from the American public in issuing the pardons, without citing any specifics to back it up.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 20:40

  • Los Angeles Seeks $3.9 Billion Bailout Despite Paying Its "Tree Surgeons" Up To $207,000
    Los Angeles Seeks $3.9 Billion Bailout Despite Paying Its “Tree Surgeons” Up To $207,000

    By Adam Andrzejewski, the CEO/Founder of OpenTheBooks.com. Originally published in Forbes,

    The Los Angeles area comprises the Hollywood movie studios, Beverly Hills, Muscle Beach, and a previously booming economy that trailed only New York City and Tokyo. The city is also home to powerful politicians such as U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, Chairman of House Judiciary Committee; U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, Chief Deputy Whip; and Mayor Eric Garcetti, the National Co-Chairman of Biden for President.

    However, LA itself is in trouble. Whenever we open the books, the city consistently ranks among the worst tax and spend offenders.

    Last year, there were 20,000 highly compensated city employees whose average pay exceeded $147,000 and cost taxpayers $3 billion. All of them made more than $100,000 and nearly 2,000 out-earned California Governor Gavin Newsom ($202,000).

    Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found painters making $113,943; “tree surgeons” trimming $207,058; police officers with an arresting $325,942; legislative analysts earning $399,631; firefighters hosing down $486,674; and “harbor boat pilots” swimming in $515,000.  

    Mayor’s Office – Mayor Garcetti cost taxpayers $269,375 in salary – $67,000 more than Gov. Newsom. Seven “deputy mayors” earned $1.44 million with individual salaries each exceeding $200,000. Chief of staff, Ann Guerrero, made $232,205– compensation out earning the mayor of Chicago ($216,000).

    Garcetti has an executive staff larger than 48 of the 50 state governors. The mayor employed 261 people last year for $20+ million in salary cost.

    While permanent staff enjoy handsome salaries, Garcetti also relies on unpaid labor. Although intern positions are available in dozens of departments working on issues such as homelessness, sustainability, and immigration, those internships are not compensated.

    The Police Department (LAPD) — Chief Michael Moore pulled down $590,764 last year – double dipping a $350,764 salary and a $240,000 pension. In 2018, Moore “officially” retired, but was rehired 30-days later. The golden handshake helped Moore capture a $1.27 million lump sum payout and another $170,000 check for unused sick and vacation days. Garcetti blessed the scheme.

    Last year, LAPD had 14,119 employees on the payroll with cash compensation totaling $1.6 billion. 9,280 employees earned $100,000+ and 451 officers made more than $200,000. The top five police officers, sergeants, and detectives made between $300,000 and $325,000 thanks to generous overtime benefits ranging from $129,256 to $152,807.

    Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (L)

    The Fire Department (LAFD) — LAFD employed 3,934 last year and 3,409 made at least $100,000. Almost 30-percent of the payroll (1,128) made over $200,000. Generous overtime benefits spiked the pay: 540 employees made at least $100,000 in overtime alone. Extreme wildfires in the Los Angeles area in 2019, which continue in 2020, certainly contributed to the costs.

    The top ten firefighters cost the city $4.3 million—an average of $428,307 each. Firefighter Donn Thompson took home $486,674 in pay with $359,416 in overtime. Fire captain Charles Boswell earned $481,020 in compensation with $329,991 in overtime. Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas took home $332,952—and was still out earned by 67 LAFD colleagues. The total department payroll cost was $654.6 million.

    Housing and Community Investment Department—The agency aids people in poverty by administering Section 8 federal grants, rent stabilization policies, the housing code, and services to the homeless population with a 737-employee payroll costing $55 million. In 2020, the director, Rushmore Cervantes, brought home $254,937 and out earned the Secretary of U.S. Housing & Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson, a cabinet-level position ($199,700). Furthermore, four assistant general managers earned more than $200,000.

    Despite the high pay and good intentions, the number of homeless people living in LA continued to escalate. Numbers from the city’s own census show 40,000 homeless persons (2020), up 14.2 percent from last year. A voter-approved $1.2 billion bond issue in 2016 promised 10,000 new apartments for the homeless. However, the actual number of units are now projected to be around 7,600 as construction overruns and consultant fees pushed the cost of some housing units to over $700,000 apiece.

    So, the problems seem to be getting much worse. Encampment complaints to city 311 reached nearly 100,000 calls in the 20 months between January 2019 and August 2020.

    There are nearly 100,000 homeless encampment complaints in LA 2020

    Port of Los Angeles – Last year, chief port pilots John Dwyer ($515,991) and David Flinn ($503,360) out-earned eleven senior pilots whose pay averaged $417,000. Port pilots help incoming ships navigate the harbor and are the most highly compensated public employees in the city. The LA port also has their own police force. Top paid police lieutenant Nathanael Blair made $307,530 including $104,082 in overtime pay. Seven more lieutenants earned between $212,759 and $277,314 last year.

    The port authority has a public beach staffed by lifeguards from the county. Last year, 44 LA County lifeguards cost taxpayers $200,000 to $365,000 each – with free sunscreen allowance and other benefits. The agency responded to our comment request saying port pilot salaries are competitive with other ports; it is more costly to hire additional police officers compared to overtime costs; and the port does not pay or have authority over lifeguard staffing.

    City Council — There are fifteen city council districts in Los Angeles. Each has an elected member charged with levying taxes, authorizing public improvements, and passing ordinances, among other duties.

    Council members earn $207,000 annually – more than every member of the U.S. Congress except Speaker Nancy Pelosi ($223,500). Each office employs 22 to 36 aides. Last year, 58 city council aides took home over $100,000. Andrew Westall of Council District 10 was the top-paid aide ($193,886) and out-earned every state governor except Newsom.

    Sharon Tso is the chief legislative analyst to the city council. Appointed in 2014, Tso was paid $283,000. Last year, Tso’s pay spiked to $399,631, making her the 20th top-paid city employee.

    Public Works – In 2019, wastewater supervisor, James Pearl was paid-out $2.4 million from his judgement against the city. Pearl, a straight man, alleged sexual harassment from other men on the job at Public Works- Sanitation. The judge awarded Pearl $12 million. The city appealed the verdict; however, the award was affirmed.

    In the Street Services division, we found 37 “tree surgeons” and supervisors made between $100,000 and $207,058 last year. Known as tree trimmers in most communities, these surgeons and their supervisors trimmed off a lot of overtime: the top eleven earned overtime pay between $45,206 and $86,306.

    Top 10 “Tree Surgeon Supervisors” in LA 2019

    Los Angeles’s long-term financial situation looks bleak and the city is asking Congress for a $3.9 billion “coronavirus” bailout. For example, LA has guaranteed $64.3 billion in retirement benefits to public employees.

    Unfortunately, $10.7 billion in retirement benefits hasn’t been funded: pensions ($7.9 billion) and retiree healthcare ($2.8 billion). Therefore, each city taxpayer owes $4,000 just to cover the unfunded liability, according to data provided by fiscal accountability organization Truth In Accounting (2019).

    Los Angeles is a progressive utopia, so well-meaning fiscal hawks are going to have to cry a lot louder – or they won’t even have a voice at the table.

    NOTE: Every agency mentioned in the piece received two requests for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 20:20

  • China Forces Drugmakers To Slash Prices By 51% To Be Eligible For Insurance Reimbursement
    China Forces Drugmakers To Slash Prices By 51% To Be Eligible For Insurance Reimbursement

    Whereas both the Obama and Trump administrations have been engaging in largely futile crusades with US pharmaceutical companies to force them to, if not cut prices, then at least slow the pace of price hikes, China shows how it’s done.

    As Caixin reports, drugmakers agreed to cut prices on some of their newest drugs in China by an average of 51% to become eligible for reimbursement under government-backed insurance plans. Some of most expensive drugs weren’t included in the annual negotiations for inclusion on the national reimbursement list, a signal to drugmakers from the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA), said Xiong Xianjun, director of the NHSA’s Medical Service Department, at a press conference Monday in Beijing.

    Most of China’s 1.4 billion population are covered by state-run basic medical insurance systems, which can provide 60% to 90% reimbursement for basic medical costs. The state insurance programs mainly cover services in public hospitals and common diseases. The list of medicines covered by the programs has been updated annually with new entries since 2017.

    That said, even though drug prices can be lowered after negotiations with the government, inclusion on the list can still mean big profits for drug companies as reimbursable drugs are more likely to be widely used.

    A total of 162 new drugs were involved in the talks. Of them, 119 were added for insurance coverage, including treatments for Covid-19 such as the antivirals ribavirin and arbidol, according to an updated catalog released by the NHSA.

    Chinese patients can now get reimbursement for 2,800 medicines, including 1,426 Western drugs and 1,374 traditional Chinese medicines. The new version of the drug-reimbursement list will be effective March 1. It means that Chinese citizens purchasing US drugs will be a price far, far lower than the price charged for the same drug stateside.

    For the first time in drug price negotiations, the state insurance fund slashed prices an average of 43% for 14 drugs whose annual sales exceed 1 billion yuan ($153 million) each.

    This year’s drug list also includes more cancer drugs known as PD-1 inhibitors, which use the body’s immune system to fight tumors. China has around 4 million new cancer patients and 2.8 million deaths from cancer annually. According to Caixin, in 2019, Tyvyt – co-developed by Suzhou-based Innovent Biologics and U.S. drug giant Eli Lilly – became the only PD-1 inhibitor to be included on the national reimbursement list. PD-1 inhibitors added this year include medicines developed by local companies BeiGene, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. and Shanghai Junshi Biosciences. Innovent’s Tyvyt was priced last year at 2,843 yuan ($433) for one dose. The prices of the newly added PD-1 inhibitors are lower than for Tyvyt, the NHSA’s Xiong said. The agency hasn’t disclosed prices for specific drugs.

    This year’s negotiation also sought to lower prices of drugs already included on the list as some of them were originally added without price negotiations, Xiong said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 20:00

  • The Threat of Authoritarianism In The U.S. Is Very Real, And Has Nothing To Do With Trump: Greenwald
    The Threat of Authoritarianism In The U.S. Is Very Real, And Has Nothing To Do With Trump: Greenwald

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

    Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

    (L-R): Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY,TOBIAS SCHWARZ,ANGELA WEISS,MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

    In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.

    But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator.

    A similar dynamic prevailed during the sustained protests and riots that erupted after the killing of George Floyd. While conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), in his controversial New York Times op-ed, urged the mass deployment of the military to quell the protesters, and while Trump threatened to deploy them if governors failed to pacify the riots, Trump failed to order anything more than a few isolated, symbolic gestures such as having troops use tear gas to clear out protesters from Lafayette Park for his now-notorious walk to a church, provoking harsh criticism from the right, including Fox News, for failing to use more aggressive force to restore order.

    Virtually every prediction expressed by those who pushed this doomsday narrative of Trump as a rising dictator — usually with great profit for themselves — never materialized. While Trump radically escalated bombing campaigns he inherited from Bush and Obama, he started no new wars. When his policies were declared by courts to be unconstitutional, he either revised them to comport with judicial requirements (as in the case of his “Muslim ban”) or withdrew them (as in the case of diverting Pentagon funds to build his wall). No journalists were jailed for criticizing or reporting negatively on Trump, let alone killed, as was endlessly predicted and sometimes even implied. Bashing Trump was far more likely to yield best-selling books, social media stardom and new contracts as cable news “analysts” than interment in gulags or state reprisals. There were no Proud Boy insurrections or right-wing militias waging civil war in U.S. cities. Boastful and bizarre tweets aside, Trump’s administration was far more a continuation of the U.S. political tradition than a radical departure from it.

    The hysterical Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and, most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside.

    The Trump administration was by no means free of authoritarianism: his Justice Department prosecuted journalists’ sources; his White House often refused basic transparency; War on Terror and immigration detentions continued without due process. But that is largely because, as I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in late 2016, the U.S. Government itself is authoritarian after decades of bipartisan expansion of executive powers justified by a posture of endless war. With rare exception, the lawless and power-abusing acts over the last four years were ones that inhere in the U.S. Government and long preceded Trump, not ones invented by him. To the extent Trump was an authoritarian, he was one in the way that all U.S. presidents have been since the War on Terror began and, more accurately, since the start of the Cold War and advent of the permanent national security state.

    The single most revealing episode exposing this narrative fraud was when journalists and political careerists, including former Obama aides, erupted in outrage on social media upon seeing a photo of immigrant children in cages at the border — only to discover that the photo was not from a Trump concentration camp but an Obama-era detention facility (they were unaccompanied children, not ones separated from their families, but “kids in cages” are “kids in cages” from a moral perspective). And tellingly, the single most actually authoritarian Trump-era event is one that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media: namely, the decision to prosecute Julian Assange under espionage laws (but that, too, is an extension of the unprecedented war on journalism unleashed by the Obama DOJ).

    The last gasp for those clinging to the Trump-as-dictator fantasy (which was really hope masquerading as concern, since putting yourself on the front lines, bravely fighting domestic fascism, is more exciting and self-glorifying, not to mention more profitable, than the dreary, mediocre work of railing against an ordinary and largely weak one-term president) was the hysterical warning that Trump was mounting a coup in order to stay in office. Trump’s terrifying “coup” consisted of a series of failed court challenges based on claims of widespread voter fraud — virtually inevitable with new COVID-based voting rules never previously used — and lame attempts to persuade state officials to overturn certified vote totals. There was never a moment when it appeared even remotely plausible that it would succeed, let alone that he could secure the backing of the institutions he would need to do so, particularly senior military leaders.

    Whether Trump secretly harbored despotic ambitions is both unknowable and irrelevant. If he did, he never exhibited the slightest ability to carry them out or orchestrate a sustained commitment to executing a democracy-subverting plot. And the most powerful U.S. institutions — the intelligence community and military brass, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the corporate media — opposed and subverted him from the start. In sum, U.S. democracy, in whatever form it existed when Trump ascended to the presidency, will endure more or less unchanged once he leaves office on January 20, 2021.

    Whether the U.S. was a democracy in any meaningful sense prior to Trump had been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. A much-discussed 2014 study concluded that economic power has become so concentrated in the hands of such a small number of U.S. corporate giants and mega-billionaires, and that this concentration in economic power has ushered in virtually unchallengeable political power in their hands and virtually none in anyone else’s, that the U.S. more resembles oligarchy than anything else:

    The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

    The U.S. Founders most certainly did not envision or desire absolute economic egalitarianism, but many, probably most, feared — long before lobbyists and candidate dependence on corporate SuperPACs — that economic inequality could become so severe, wealth concentrated in the hands of so few, that it would contaminate the political realm, where those vast wealth disparities would be replicated, rendering political rights and legal equality illusory.

    But the premises of pre-Trump debates over how grave a problem this is have been rendered utterly obsolete by the new realities of the COVID era. A combination of sustained lockdowns, massive state-mandated transfers of wealth to corporate elites in the name of legislative “COVID relief,” and a radically increased dependence on online activities has rendered corporate behemoths close to unchallengeable in terms of both economic and political power.

    The lockdowns from the pandemic have ushered in a collapse of small businesses across the U.S. that has only further fortified the power of corporate giants. “Billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes,” reported The Guardian in September. A study from July told part of the story:

    The combined wealth of the world’s super-rich reached a new peak during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBC on Wednesday. The more than 2,000 billionaires around the world managed to amass fortunes totalling around $10.2 trillion (€8.69 trillion) by July, surpassing the previous record of $8.9 trillion reached in 2017.

    Meanwhile, though exact numbers are unknown, “roughly one in five small businesses have closed,” AP notes, adding: “restaurants, bars, beauty shops and other retailers that involve face-to-face contact have been hardest hit at a time when Americans are trying to keep distance from one another.”

    Employees are now almost completely at the mercy of a handful of corporate giants which are thriving, far more trans-national than with any allegiance to the U.S. A Brookings Institution study this week — entitled “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers” — found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—but next to nothing for workers.”

    These COVID “winners” are not the Randian victors in free market capitalism. Quite the contrary, they are the recipients of enormous amounts of largesse from the U.S. Government, which they control through armies of lobbyists and donations and which therefore constantly intervenes in the market for their benefit. This is not free market capitalism rewarding innovative titans, but rather crony capitalism that is abusing the power of the state to crush small competitors, lavish corporate giants with ever more wealth and power, and turn millions of Americans into vassals whose best case scenario is working multiple jobs at low hourly wages with no benefits, few rights, and even fewer options.

    Those must disgusted by this outcome should not be socialists but capitalists: this is a classic merger of state and corporate power —- also known as a hallmark of fascism in its most formal expression — that abuses state interference in markets to consolidate and centralize authority in a small handful of actors in order to disempower everyone else. Those trends were already quite visible prior to Trump and the onset of the pandemic, but have accelerated beyond anyone’s dreams in the wake of mass lockdowns, shutdowns, prolonged isolation and corporate welfare thinly disguised as legislative “relief.”

    What makes this most menacing of all is that the primary beneficiaries of these rapid changes are Silicon Valley giants, at least three of which — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — are now classic monopolies. That the wealth of their primary owners and executives — Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai — has skyrocketed during the pandemic is well-covered, but far more significant is the unprecedented power these companies exert over the dissemination of information and conduct of political debates, to say nothing of the immense data they possess about our lives by virtue of online surveillance.

    Stay-at-home orders, lockdowns and social isolation have meant that we rely on Silicon Valley companies to conduct basic life functions more than ever before. We order online from Amazon rather than shop; we conduct meetings online rather than meet in offices; we use Google constantly to navigate and communicate; we rely on social media more than ever to receive information about the world. And exactly as a weakened population’s dependence on them has increased to unprecedented levels, their wealth and power has reached all new heights, as has their willingness to control and censor information and debate.

    That Facebook, Google and Twitter are exerting more and more control over our political expression is hardly contestable. What is most remarkable, and alarming, is that they are not so much grabbing these powers as having them foisted on them, by a public — composed primarily of corporate media outlets and U.S. establishment liberals — who believe that the primary problem of social media is not excessive censorship but insufficient censorship. As Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Mark Zuckerberg when four Silicon Valley CEOs appeared before the Senate in October: “The issue is not that the companies before us today is that they’re taking too many posts down. The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.”

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

    As I told the online program Rising this week when asked what the worst media failings of 2020 are, I continue to view the brute censorship by Facebook of incriminating reporting about Joe Biden in the weeks before the election as one of the most significant, and menacing, political events of the last several years. That this censorship was announced by a Facebook corporate spokesman who had spent his career previously as a Democratic Party apparatchik provided the perfect symbolic expression of this evolving danger.

    These tech companies are more powerful than ever, not only because of their newly amassed wealth at a time when the population is suffering, but also because they overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party candidate about to assume the presidency. Predictably, they are being rewarded with numerous key positions in his transition team and the same will ultimately be true of the new administration.

    The Biden/Harris administration clearly intends to do a great deal for Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley is well-positioned to do a great deal for them in return, starting with their immense power over the flow of information and debate.

    The dominant strain of U.S. neoliberalism — the ruling coalition that has now consolidated power again — is authoritarianism. They view those who oppose them and reject their pieties not as adversaries to be engaged but as enemies, domestic terrorists, bigots, extremists and violence-inciters to be fired, censored, and silenced. And they have on their side — beyond the bulk of the corporate media, and the intelligence community, and Wall Street — an unprecedentedly powerful consortium of tech monopolies willing and able to exert greater control over a population that has rarely, if ever, been so divided, drained, deprived and anemic.

    All of these authoritarian powers will, ironically, be invoked and justified in the name of stopping authoritarianism — not from those who wield power but from the movement that was just removed from power. Those who spent four years shrieking to great profit about the dangers of lurking “fascism” will — without realizing the irony — now use this merger of state and corporate power to consolidate their own authority, control the contours of permissible debate, and silence those who challenge them even further. Those most vocally screaming about growing authoritarianism in the U.S. over the last four years were very right in their core warning, but very wrong about the real source of that danger.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 19:40

  • Soybean Prices Fade From 6-1/2-Year High As Argentine Strike Ends
    Soybean Prices Fade From 6-1/2-Year High As Argentine Strike Ends

    On Wednesday, Chicago Board of Trade soybean prices flirted with a 6-1/2-year high on tight global supply as investors shrugged off a deal between Argentine soy crushers and oilseed workers. 

    On late Tuesday night, Argentina’s soy crushing companies signed an agreement with oilseed worker unions, ending the two-week strike over wages that halted all exports of soybeans from the South American country, according to Reuters. 

    “An agreement was reached with the oilseed workers’ unions in a meeting held at the Ministry of Labor, to lift the strike that had paralyzed port terminals and the agro-industrial complex,” Argentina’s CIARA soy crushing chamber said in a statement.

    CBoT soybean futures have been on a tear in the last couple of weeks, jumping more than 13% on supply concerns due to the Argentinean strike. Now with a deal, prices are beginning to fade the $13 per bushel line. 

    By comparison, CBoT soybean futures were trading around $9.40 per bushel when the U.S.-China Phase 1 trade deal was signed in mid-January. Now prices of beans are approximately 45% higher, hovering a little under $13 per bushel, or at six-year highs. 

    The meteoric rise in soybean prices was triggered by China’s strong demand this past summer when prices were trading at multi-year lows. 

    However, in late November, trade sources told Reuters that Chinese soybean importers and processors are preparing to cancel deals signed with U.S. firms for December and January shipments. 

    The sources explained that crushing margins have collapsed following an exponential rise in bean prices on Chicago futures.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 19:20

  • Biden's Brave New (Woke) World
    Biden’s Brave New (Woke) World

    Authored (satirically) by Titania McGrath via TheCritic.co.uk,

    Before 2020, the world was a bleak dystopia overrun by Nazis. It never ceased to amaze me how many Nazis I would encounter on a daily basis once I had decided that everyone but me was a Nazi.

    Thankfully, 2020 came along and changed everything.

    This was the year that intersectional identity politics went mainstream, and there is no going back. The gender-neutral genie is out of the bottle, and xe is fabulous.

    There were uprisings against systemic injustice, statues of straight white males were torn down, and Ben and Jerry’s reminded their customers how racist they all were in order to encourage them to buy more of their New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.

    This was all made possible because Covid-19 refused to spread during our mass protests, which just goes to show that even pathogens have gone woke.

    The world finally accepted that there are more than 400 genders, and that all of these have been persecuted throughout history. Even the ones we invented last week.

    Intersectional feminism triumphed over transphobia. All of a sudden, major companies were using phrases such as “menstruators”, “vulva owners” and “people with a cervix”. All of which is far more respectful to women: or, as I like to call them, bipedal gestation units.

    We are now living in a post-BLM world, where Critical Race Theory has been received as the hallowed truth that shall guide us towards salvation. At last, we are amplifying voices of colour that have been historically marginalised. (Except for the ones who don’t agree with defunding the police or dismantling capitalism, who are just white-adjacent scumbags that are best ignored.)

    Best of all, Joe Biden triumphed over that malevolent incubus Donald Trump. Already Biden has discovered a vaccine for Covid-19, which explains why he spent most of his election campaign in a basement.

    As we move into 2021, Biden’s brave message resounds throughout our new woke empire. It is time for healing. It is time for hope. Above all, it is time for unity.

    So let’s make a list of everyone who voted the wrong way and deal with them as soon as possible.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 19:00

  • "Pay Me In Bitcoin": NFL Star Russell Okung Coverts Part Of His $13 Million Paycheck To Crypto
    “Pay Me In Bitcoin”: NFL Star Russell Okung Coverts Part Of His $13 Million Paycheck To Crypto

    A litany of articles went out yesterday suggesting that NFL star Russell Okung was the first player to be paid in bitcoin. While that lede isn’t exactly true (Okung is converting his dollars to BTC after being paid in USD), it speaks to a larger point about Bitcoin’s growing adoption with the masses.

    Okung has been lobbying the NFL to be paid in bitcoin since 2019, where he publicly proclaimed his request on Twitter. But yesterday’s headline about him being paid in Bitcoin isn’t entirely true, according to the Verge. The NFL told the media outlet that it was “not accurate” and that “his people are converting some of the money into bitcoin”. Okung’s team, the Carolina Panthers, also confirmed he was being paid in dollars. 

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

    Okung’s claim on Twitter that he was “paid in bitcoin” appears to have been a push for a company called “Zap” that allows you to convert any percentage of your paycheck into bitcoin. Perhaps a deal with Zap is why Okung Tweeted 14 times on Tuesday about converting his paycheck to bitcoin, The Verge speculated. 

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

    Regardless of whether there is a deal with Zap or not, it’s likely in Okung’s best interest to call attention to BTC – after all, the more people who adopt BTC, the higher the price will likely go. After all, when you are looking for bids, drumming up excitement on social media is one way to go about it. Perhaps that is what led to the not totally accurate headlines about Okung being paid in BTC on Tuesday:

    To generate that kind of excitement, it helps to have headlines like “First NFL player to be paid in Bitcoin” spread around the web. It certainly sounds more intriguing than “NFL player decides to spend 50 percent of his salary on Bitcoin,” right? It’ll be interesting to see if any of those headlines change overnight.

    Okung has reportedly converted half of his $13 million NFL salary into Bitcoin. 

    Regardless of his motivation, it is undeniable proof that BTC adoption continues to move in a positive direction. And make no doubts about it, Okung isn’t just some BTC shill – his Twitter leads on that he is far more “woke” than your average NFL player. Case in point:

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 18:40

  • Remember, We're All In This Together…
    Remember, We’re All In This Together…

    Authored by Eric Peters via Eric Peters Autos,

    An easy way to establish the fatuity –  the evil – at the core of what’s going on would be to apply it universally.

    Every “lockdown” applies to everyone – including every politician and every government worker. If anyone is forced by decree to stop earning their living then everyone is forced to stop earning their living. The big box stores are shuttered, too.

    Aren’t we “all in this together”?

    Of course, “we” aren’t. There is the essential class – which issues and enforces the “mandates” – which it is important to constantly repeat are not laws but literally the arbitrary decrees of politicians grown fat, like blood-gorged ticks, with limitless power somehow acquired in the name of gesund – even though we’re healthy, thanks – and there is the rest of us, deemed non-essential.

    We are supposed to just make do; figure out a way to keep a roof over our heads and food in the ‘fridge – without a paycheck. Or a third of one. To pay 100 percent of our mortgages/rent and power bills and so on.

    Shutter our businesses; send our employees home to do nothing — while their bills pile up.

    The essentials  lecture, finger-point – and enforce. But never miss a paycheck. Which we are forced to pay for.

    Their bills do not go unpaid. There is no sacrifice by those demanding it – the usual practice of the coercive sector as distinct from the private sector. The latter can only ask for your business; the former can force you to close it – and then make you pay them for doing it.

    How about we all pay?

    Them and us – alike.

    If they decree we may not work, then they must be “in it” with us, together. No paycheck for us? None for them as well. No forcing us to pay for their paychecks, either. The taxes that pay for them held in abeyance until the cases! the cases! recede.

    If, in fact, that is truly what this is all about.

    In fact – literally – it’s not.

    This store is not “closed due to COVID.” It is closed by decree of “essential” government workers.

    As should by now be obvious to anyone still capable of rational thought. What conclusions can be drawn from the coercive class declaring itself essential – and us, not? From our being “locked down” – told by them we may not move without their permission, while they are free to move as they like?

    Ordered to accept economic death while they continue to feed – off of us?

    While we get to watch them ignore their own “mandates”?

    The restaurant owner in California who used his truck prevent an essential government worker from working was trying to make the point – to both the essential government worker and the essential government enforcers who came to make sure the essential government worker could go about his essential work.

    It is easy to be unctuous when there is no cost to you – and possibly much to gain.

    The essentials who are getting paid – by us – have more than just our money to pay their bills. The have our money to buy our losses. When a non-essential’s home goes into foreclosure or his business is shuttered, someone else is going to acquire the property. It will inevitably be someone with the means to pay for it.

    That will be someone who hasn’t been bled white. It will probably be someone essential, who has spent the past year bleeding the non-essentials white.

    Who, having taken everything away from the previous owner will now use the previous owner’s money – transferred via taxes – to own everything that was taken away.

    Probably at a fire-sale price, too.

    The same process is under way at the corporate level. The Big Box retailers were not locked down – which is why their profits have gone up (skyrocketed up) during the worst year – for us – since 1929. It is not hard to understand why. Wal-Mart and the rest were open while everything not Big Box wasn’t, by “mandate.”

    The non-essentials were forced to do business with the essentials. Forced to facilitate the transfer of wealth from local, privately owned stores to massive, shareholder-owned corporations, who sold the same stuff and were not attacked by swarms of gesundpolizei for allowing more than 10 people within their stores at a time.

    A simpleton should be able to draw the obvious conclusions.

    The essentials want to use the corporations as feed lots are used for cattle. We – the nonessentials – are to be herded onto these feedlots, where we will be obliged to be obliging, else no more “corn” for us. The essentials want to be able to partner with a handful of big corporations who will employ everyone who is still allowed to work and sell everything we’re still allowed to buy.

    When there are no alternatives, there are no options.

    When you can work for yourself or work for someone who owns the business you work for, you are much less under the thrall of a pyramidal hierarchy that mandates things which can be appealed – or avoided.

    When there is no work except corporate work, the corporations own you. And then the coercive sector controls you . . . via the corporations. Neat, sweet and not petite.

    It is all very essential – and has nothing to do with “stopping the spread.” If it did, then everything would be closed, everyone “locked down.”

    If, in fact, we are “all in this together.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 18:20

  • Boston Dynamics Robots Learn How To Dance In Creepy New Video 
    Boston Dynamics Robots Learn How To Dance In Creepy New Video 

    On Tuesday, Boston Dynamics uploaded a video to YouTube of their robots creepily dancing to The Contours’ Do You Love Me.

    The video shows Atlas, Spot, and Handle – Boston Dynamics’ top robots, performing moves choreographed to the music. 

    The dance starts with Atlas, a bipedal humanoid robot, dancing to the music, and before you know it, another Atlas joins in. Then out of nowhere, robodog Spot hops in and starts dancing with the crew. 

    About halfway through the video, Handle, a warehouse robot, slides into the frame – as everyone is getting down with the catchy tune. 

    Tesla’s Elon Musk chimed in this morning after he watched the video. He tweeted:

    “Snake-head dog had my undivided attention until winder-head ostrich came gliding through all nonchalant.” 

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    Box CEO Aaron Levie tweeted:

    “We’ve collectively learned nothing from sci-fi movies. This is definitely the moment we’re supposed to turn back.” 

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    The robots are impressive. They dance with remarkable accuracy, performing moves that only baby boomers would know how to do. 

    This is not the first time that the robotics company has demonstrated the dance capabilities of its machines. In 2018, it published a video titled “UpTown Spot,” where Spot got down with some funk.

    Maybe the elaborate dance party was celebrating the recent acquisition of Boston Dynamics by Hyundai. 

    “This is the beginning of The Terminator,” one commentator said on YouTube. 

    Another said, “Only need to get a human skin then there goes backup dancers job.. welcome to the unemployed.”

    Watch Full Video Here:

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 18:00

  • As Anti-Cop Protests Continue, Americans Are Murdering Each Other In Record Numbers
    As Anti-Cop Protests Continue, Americans Are Murdering Each Other In Record Numbers

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    We have seen spikes in certain major cities before, but there has never been a year quite like this.  In 2020, murder rates have been soaring dramatically from coast to coast, and many are deeply concerned about what our big metropolitan areas will look like if this trend continues into 2021 and beyond.  The civil unrest that erupted in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd certainly contributed to the rising numbers, but authorities have been shocked that murder rates have remained so elevated all year long. 

    Americans are killing Americans in record numbers, and nobody seems to have a solution to this growing national crisis.

    Let’s take a look at some of the hard numbers. 

    In New York City, the number of murders has risen 41 percent compared to 2019…

    The city – heralded as the safest big city in America in recent years – has recorded 447 killings this year as of Tuesday, a 41 percent increase over last year and the largest number since 2011.

    The number of people shot has more than doubled last year´s total, nearing a 14-year high.

    At one time NYC was considered to be one of the safest cities in America, but those days are long gone.

    But at least New York is not as bad as Chicago.  In fact, the number of murders in Chicago this year is almost twice as high as the number of murders in NYC…

    At least eight people were killed and 30 more were wounded in citywide shootings over the extended holiday weekend, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday. Three people were shot and killed on Christmas Day.

    “We’re over 700 homicides by gun in Chicago this year and close to 800 total homicides for the year,” Chicago FOP President John Catanzara told Fox News Tuesday. “It’s reaching historic levels, and this when the city council and the mayor’s budget just cut over 600 jobs from the police department’s budget when crime is soaring. It’s ridiculous.”

    Out on the west coast, rates of violent crime seem to be rising faster than anywhere else.  For example, the number of shootings in Portland is up 116 percent compared to last year…

    Fox News reports based on local crime statistics that murders are surging in Portland, Oregon. “As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019.”

    2020 numbers dwarf the prior year’s, having reached over 850 shootings. Among these are more single-year homicides than in any year over the prior nearly three decades.

    Almost everywhere you look, records have either already been broken or are in danger of being broken.

    In Philadelphia, if 15 people get murdered by January 1st they will break the all-time record which was originally established 30 years ago…

    A violent night pushes Philadelphia closer to reaching a grim milestone. The city could be on track to surpass the most homicides ever in a calendar year.

    The record is 504 homicides which was set in 1990 and with three days left to go in this year the city is has had at least 490.

    And in south Florida, the number of murders in Miami-Dade County has already broken the old record by a good margin…

    Officials recorded 272 homicides through Dec. 24 across Miami-Dade County, up 31 cases from all of 2019, records show. The year isn’t even over and it’s a recent high — up from 232 in all of 2017, and 252 in 2015.

    Many Republicans have pointed out that murder rates seem to be rising fastest in cities that are governed by Democrats.  In Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms says that she is “open to suggestions” because at this point she is at a total loss for how to stop the dramatic escalation of violent crime in her city…

    Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a rising star in the Democratic Party who was recently considered for a position in President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet, is coming under fire for her administration’s handling of a surge in violent crime in her city.

    Saying she was ‘open to suggestions’ on stopping the crime wave, the mayor was on the defensive over the holiday weekend after three people were fatally shot in the city, bringing Atlanta’s homicide count to its highest in more than two decades.

    Shall I share more examples, or do you get the point?

    To call this a “crime wave” would be a major understatement.  Compared to last year, carjackings in Minneapolis were up 537 percent last month.

    Just think about that.

    When something is rising 537 percent, you are talking about an exponential increase.

    Of course it might help if Minneapolis and other major cities were to actually increase police funding instead of decreasing it.

    You can put as much money into “mental health programs” as you want, but the truth is that very few criminals will ever be talked out of committing crimes.

    What keeps criminals from committing crimes is the fear of being caught and going to prison, and our politicians should never forget that.

    Also, the reality of the matter is that so many of our law enforcement resources are being wasted right now.  Instead of brutally assaulting a disabled veteran for not wearing a mask, our law enforcement personnel need to be out in the streets battling one of the greatest crime waves that we have ever seen in all of U.S. history.

    Our society is literally in the process of melting down all around us.  The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is in grave danger, and many believe that very dark days are ahead for our country.

    If we are seeing this much violent crime now, what will happen when economic conditions in this country become far worse?

    Yes, reform is desperately needed in police departments all over the nation.

    But we should be incredibly thankful for the boys in blue, because they are putting their lives on the line for us on a daily basis.

    When someone is trying to break into your home, you will definitely want someone to be there on the other end of the phone when you dial 911.

    And the way things are going, more Americans than ever will be facing that sort of a scenario in 2021.

    *  *  *

    [ZH: One thing of note, as Daily Caller reports, nine of the ten cities with the highest murder rate increases and more than 20 killings hosted sustained Black Lives Matter protests and riots during the summer.

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    These are evidence of what Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald calls the Ferguson Effect, wherein anti-police protests and rioting lead to less proactive policing.

    The absence in police presence then leads to a spike in violent crime.]

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 17:40

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Dec 30

Today’s News 30th December 2020

  • 2020: The Year The Tree Of Liberty Was Torched
    2020: The Year The Tree Of Liberty Was Torched

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”

    – John Lennon

    No doubt about it: 2020 – a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom – was the culmination of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decade for freedom.

    Government corruption, tyranny, and abuse coupled with a Big Brother-knows-best mindset and the COVID-19 pandemic propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which nationwide lockdowns, egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians were accepted as the norm.

    Here’s just a small sampling of the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government over the past two decades and in the past year, in particular.

    The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

    The American President became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers that have been amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

    Militarized police became a power unto themselves, 911 calls turned deadly, and traffic stops took a turn for the worse. Lacking in transparency and accountability, protected by the courts and legislators, and rife with misconduct, America’s police forces continued to be a menace to the citizenry and the rule of law. Despite concerns about the government’s steady transformation of local police into a standing military army, local police agencies acquired even more weaponry, training and equipment suited for the battlefield. Police officers were also given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons and subject them to forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases.

    The courts failed to uphold justice. With every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts more concerned with protecting government agents than upholding the rights of “we the people.” This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution. A review of critical court rulings over the past two decades, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

    COVID-19 allowed the Emergency State to expand its powers. What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) became yet another means by which world governments (including our own) could expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. While COVID-19 took a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, it also allowed the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, with talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports, forced vaccinations, snitch tip lines and onerous lockdowns.

    The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans have become sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

    America became a red flag nation. Red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws generally push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States. Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

    The cost of policing the globe drove the nation deeper into debt. America’s war spending has already bankrupted the nation to the tune of more than $20 trillion dollars. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense. The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Yet America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world. This is how a military empire occupies the globe. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is falling apart.

    Free speech was dealt one knock-out punch after another. Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, shadow banning on the Internet, and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow. The reasons for such censorship varied widely from political correctness, so-called safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of free speech.

    The Deep State took over. The American system of representative government has been overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.

    The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.

    So how do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels, sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs, and then locked down and stripped of any semblance of personal freedom?

    No matter who sits in the White House, politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.

    For that matter, protests and populist movements also haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.

    So how do you not only push back against the government’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?

    You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.

    Take your cue from the Tenth Amendment and nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

    In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.

    For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.

    Nullification is one way of doing so.

    America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point.

    Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Attend local city council meetings, speak up at town hall meetings, organize protests and letter-writing campaigns, employ “militant nonviolent resistance” and civil disobedience, which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.

    The power to change things for the better rests with us, not the politicians.

    As long as we continue to allow callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism, militarism, materialism, meanness and injustice—magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality—to trump justice, fairness and equality, there can be no hope of prevailing against the police state.

    We could transform this nation if only Americans would work together to harness the power of their discontent and push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the police state is marching forward, more powerful than ever.

    If there is to be any hope for freedom in 2021, it rests with “we the people.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 00:05

  • Chinese Submarine Drone Discovered Near Gateway To Indian Ocean
    Chinese Submarine Drone Discovered Near Gateway To Indian Ocean

    Indonesian fishermen found an underwater drone on December 20th, local media reported. Analyzing photos of the drone, Naval News concludes that the drone is closely related to the Chinese Sea Wing family.

    The drone was discovered near Selayar Island in the South Sulawes, far away from China’s adjacent waters. The location is close to two potential routes between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, according to Naval News. These routes, the Sunda Strait and Lombok Strait, “may be important in wartime” and “Intelligence gathered by the drone may be valuable to the Chinese Navy if their submarines intend to use these straits” according to the report.

    The discovered object is a type of drone known as a glider. These are unpowered and use something called variable-buoyancy propulsion. This involves inflating and deflating a balloon-like device filled with pressurized oil. This causes them to sink before rising to the surface again. As they do so they travel along, aided by “wings”, gathering data on the ocean environment.

    Indonesian based security & defense poster @Jatosint was quick to post the find on Twitter, and make the connection to the Chinese-made Sea Wing glider. Note that the device is upside down in the photos.

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    The drone collects such data as temperature, turbidity, salinity, chlorophyll and oxygen levels. While this data may sound innocuous and it is often used for scientific research, it can also be extremely valuable to naval planners. Especially supporting submarine operations. The better a navy knows the waters, the better it is able to hide its attack subs.

    The US, France and other countries build and operate similar gliders. However, key characteristics of the Chinese type, which are not found on other similar underwater glides, are present. The nose cone has three circular sensor windows with the central one larger than the outer two. The wings have a folding mechanism and the antenna extends directly out of the center of the tail cone. The vertical stabilizer, like a tail fin, is seen underneath.

    Sea Wing gliders are known to be launched by China’s specialist survey ships. In December 2019 the survey ship Xiangyanghong 06 launched around 12 of the drones into the Eastern Indian Ocean. The one found may be one of these, but it seems unlikely given the ocean currents.

    Another Sea Wing glider was found by Indonesian fishermen in March 2019. This was in the Riau Islands, much closer to the South China Sea. The exact variant of Sea Wing was different, but the craft was very similar. However this is enough to suggest that they were deployed at different times and likely in different places. Additionally, camera-like sensors were apparently still operating when it was recovered. This suggests that it was deployed more decently.

    Where the glider was originally deployed, and what it was doing, remains unclear. But these craft can provide valuable military intelligence.

    China previously protested when it found a similar US Navy glider in international waters near its coast. On December 15, 2016 a Chinese ship plucked a US Navy LBS-G ( Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Glider) out of the South China Sea. The glider was in the process of being recovered by USNS Bowditch. The drone was only returned after the incident escalated.

    This particular incident is unlikely to escalate in a similar fashion, but it does draw attention to China’s increasingly assertive maritime activities in the South China Sea and close to major naval lanes. These gliders may serve as evidence that China is analyzing  potential submarine routes into the Indian Ocean through Indonesian waters.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 23:45

  • Australian Lawmaker Predicts War Between US & China In "Three To Five Years"
    Australian Lawmaker Predicts War Between US & China In “Three To Five Years”

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    With US-China relations at their lowest point in decades, one of Washington’s closest allies in the Pacific is gearing up for a potential war between the two superpowers. In an interview with Australia’s Seven News, Australian Senator Jim Molan said he expects a conflict to break out soon.

    “We are likely in the next three to five years or in the next five to ten years to be involved in a war between China and the United States,” Molan said. The senator made the comments while discussing the budget and capabilities of Australia’s military. “The ADF (Australian Defense Forces) has never been better than it is now,” he said.

    Major General Jim Molan (ret.) former commander of forces in Iraq, now a federal parliamentarian. Source: Australian Dept. of Defence.

    Molan voiced his concern over Washington’s current military capabilities, particularly the size of the US Navy. “In 1991, the US Navy was 600 warships strong. Now it’s less than 300,” he said. The politician who is a prominent voice in national political commentary is also a former major general in the Australian Army.

    He said further:

    “It is not inevitable and if we prepare, there is a chance it will not happen,” Mr Molan told Sunrise. The former Australian Army Major-General said China has been primed for war for a “long time” as well as the US.

    “They [China] are picking fights with their neighbors around the world and they have extraordinary military capability, not just in rockets and aircraft but in overall capability to do things,” he said.

    Like Washington, Canberra has taken an increasingly hostile stance against Beijing in recent years, and China-Australia relations have been rapidly deteriorating. Both the US and Australia have taken steps to boost military partnerships in the Indo-Pacific with the aim of countering Beijing.

    The US, Australia, Japan, and India make up the informal alliance known as the Quad. In November, Australia joined the other quad countries in the annual Indian-led military exercises known as the Malabar.

    It was the first time since in over a decade that the Quad countries held military drills together.

    Australia and Japan recently reached an agreement on a new military pact that will allow their militaries to operate on each other’s soil. Once the pact is implemented, it will mark the first time in 60 years that Japan allows another foreign military besides the US on its soil. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 23:25

  • Russia Unveils Orion Attack Drone With Missiles For First Time
    Russia Unveils Orion Attack Drone With Missiles For First Time

    Russia’s Defense Ministry has published two calendars for the year 2021, showing the Orion long-range drone, in two forms: strike and reconnaissance versions, according to Russian state news agency TASS. 

    “The Defense Ministry of Russia shows the ‘Inokhodets’ reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicle,” the ministry said in a statement.

    The Orion drone (the ‘Inokhodets’ experimental design work) is a medium-altitude, long-range unmanned aerial system. 

    TASS noted that the calendar release is the world’s first view of the drone with beam holders under the wings for attaching missiles. 

    With a maximum take-off weight of 2,000 pounds, the drone has a maximum payload weight of 440 pounds. 

    The calendar also shows the Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter, the BMPT-72 Terminator tank, the T-14 Armata main battle tank, and other military hardware. 

    SU-57

    BMPT Terminator

    Russia’s new weapons are part of Moscow’s rapid modernization effort to improve armed forces’ combat readiness. 

    Besides new drones, fifth-generation fighter jets, and new tanks, Bank of America’s aerospace and defense analyst Ronald J. Epstein outlined in a new report on Monday that a great power competition is underway between the US, Russia, and China. 

    On the subject of hypersonic weapon development, Epstein wrote the US is following behind the technological curve. 

    “The US typically exerts weapons superiority over its adversaries. There is a perception in the defense community that the US has lost some advantage over its near-peers (China and Russia) in hypersonic weapon development,” he said. 

    Despite the trillions of dollars in taxpayers’ monies, President Trump has plowed into the military, Russia and China, at a fraction of the US military budget, are advancing their respective militaries at a much quicker pace. 

    The question we ask: Is American exceptionalism in decline? 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 23:05

  • Mysterious Disappearance Of Flu In San Diego Prompted Call For Audit Of COVID Records
    Mysterious Disappearance Of Flu In San Diego Prompted Call For Audit Of COVID Records

    Via 21stCenturyWire.com,

    One of the most bizarre features of the alleged COVID-19 ‘global pandemic’ has been the mysterious disappearance of the seasonal flu in medical and public health record keeping. It’s as if the Flu just vanished into thin air after being the most common perennial seasonal respiratory virus.

    As it turns out, recorded seasonal influenza cases have literally nosedived by 98% across the globe.

    This improbable phenomenon has led a number of experts to ask, “Has Covid killed off the flu?”

    “The disappearing act began as Covid-19 rolled in towards the end of our flu season in March. And just how swiftly rates have plummeted can be observed in ‘surveillance’ data collected by the World Health Organisation (WHO),” reported the UK’s Daily Mail.

    WHO spokesperson, Dr Sylvie Briand, recently claimed during a press briefing that “literally there was nearly no flu in the Southern hemisphere” of the planet Earth in 2020, but gave no real explanation as to why. She then went on to extend this magical thinking saying that, “We hope that the situation will be the same in the Northern Hemisphere.”

    Truly extraordinary science by the health experts at the WHO.

    Earlier in December, Southern California news outlet KUSI raised the alarm which prompted an audit of COVID statistics in their region…

    SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – COVID-19 cases continue to increase across California, and here in San Diego County, but flu cases remain extremely low in comparison to this time in previous years.

    We are well into flu season, but San Diego County’s data for flu infections only shows 36 reported cases so far this year. Carl DeMaio tweeted out this shocking revelation, comparing it to this time in other years saying, “In a typical year we get over 17,073 on average!”

    DeMaio explained, “if you are going to use a set of numbers like COVID stats to shut down the economy, to take people’s livelihoods away, then we have to really look closely at what those numbers really mean, and whether those numbers are giving us the right picture.”

    Continuing, “my concern has been from the get go, that we are relying on numbers from government agencies, that may have a different agenda at stake. We would benefit from having a different set of eyes looking at them, such as an auditor or a citizens review committee. Because again, the decisions being made on these data sets are sweeping, the lockdowns are far reaching in terms of their impact.”

    DeMaio then said San Diego County has refused to have any look over or vet our local COVID-19 numbers.

    Chairman of Reform California, Carl DeMaio, joined KUSI’s Jason Austell on Good Morning San Diego to explain why he is calling for a “full audit of the COVID-19 data we are seeing reported from our public health system.”

    As different pressure groups and journalists begin to demand answers from the various health authorities, it’s becoming clear now that there has likely been some degree of widespread, systemic administrative fraud designed to over-inflate COVID-19 numbers to the detriment of every other normal seasonal illness or disease.

    Paul Craig Roberts from the IPE expanded on all of this in a recent piece:

    Is there no flu this year or is flu “the second wave of Covid?” Don’t expect any honest answer from health authorities. They have the fear running strong, so strong that people are submitting to needless lockdowns that are causing economic havoc to their lives and to mask mandates that do more harm than good.

    What is it all about?

    Is it simply about vaccine profits for Big Pharma?

    Or is it about getting people accustomed to arbitrary orders unsupported by legislation? Isn’t what we are experiencing a takeover of our lives by the executive part of government?

    So much for those warnings of a “twindemic”…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 22:45

  • A Map Of US Military Presence Near China
    A Map Of US Military Presence Near China

    According to recent media reports, the Republic of Palau has invited the US to build joint use facilities (ie. bases, ports, and airfields) on its island located strategically in close proximity to the Philppines, Indonesia, Malaysia and, of course, China. This, as Bank of America rhetorically points out, “would improve US access in the Pacific.”

    The offer was reportedly made during Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s trip to the island nation in early September. The Republic of Palau is made up of 340 islands (180 sq mi) and located in the western Pacific Ocean.

    Whether the US takes up Palau on its offer remains to be seen, but in the meantime, here courtesy of BofA is a map of US military bases and presence in the Pacific Ocean and, specifically, in proximity to China. One wonders how US citizens would feel if China had over a dozen military touch points in close proximity to the continental US.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 22:25

  • 2020, The "Worst Year Ever"?… You're Joking, Right?!
    2020, The “Worst Year Ever”?… You’re Joking, Right?!

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    So party on, because “the worst year ever” is ending and the rebound of financial markets, already the greatest in recorded history, will only become more fabulous.

     

    Of the lavish banquet of absurdities laid out in 2020, one of the most delectable is Time magazine’s December 14 cover declaring that 2020 was the “worst year ever.” You’re joking, right? In history’s immense tapestry of human misery, it’s not even in the top 100 worst years.

    Consider 1177 B.C., when many of the great civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea and Mideast collapsed, and the survivors struggled through a pre-modern Dark Ages. This book assembles what is known about this catastrophic era: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

    Then there’s 1644 A.D., when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Manchu invasion, a series of self-reinforcing misfortunes stemming from extremes of climate (a.k.a. The Little Ice Age) that left millions hungry and vulnerable to disease and the predation of roving bandit armies.

    The Little Ice Age and the famine, conflicts, civil wars, coups, revolts and rebellions it launched killed between a quarter and a third of Eurasia’s population. Entire villages melted away as starvation drove the survivors to desperation. The misery stretched from western Europe to China, and lasted for decades.

    This fascinating history lays it all out: Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century.

    Though it is now relegated to a footnote in history, the Antonine Plague of 165 – 180 A.D. decimated the Mediterranean, Mideast, North African and Eurasian regions, toppling regimes that had endured for ages and very nearly brought the Roman Empire to an inglorious end. Roughly one-fourth of the population died as the novel disease was distributed along Rome’s numerous trade routes, which stretched from Northern Europe to Africa and India.

    Western Rome’s eventual decline and fall was also the result of pandemics and climate change as well as the usual suspects of war, political in-fighting, overtaxation and the stranglehold of self-serving elites: The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire.

    Europe’s inhabitants circa 1350 A.D. would have chosen the years 1347 – 1351 as “the worst ever” as the Black Plague took the lives of a third of the population: The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe.

    The inhabitants of North and South America would have selected the years following 1492 and the arrival of Europeans carrying novel diseases as the worst years ever as the diseases carried away between 50% and 90% of the people who were alive in 1491: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

    Declaring 2020 “the worst year ever” reveals much about the psychology of our delusional state of affairs. It reflects an absolutely abysmal grasp of human history and a self-absorbed desire to exaggerate the calamity so the rebound will be gloriously triumphant.

    It also embodies our delusional addiction to measuring the well-being of the human populace with financial markets: as long as stocks are hitting new highs, we’re all doing wonderfully.

    So party on, because “the worst year ever” is ending and the rebound of financial markets, already the greatest in recorded history, will only become more fabulous.

    *  *  *

    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
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 22:05

  • Japan Gave Key Intel On China's Uighur Crackdown To U.S. And Britain
    Japan Gave Key Intel On China’s Uighur Crackdown To U.S. And Britain

    Are relations between China and Japan about to enter another deep freeze?

    According to Japan Times, which quoted “a person close to Japan-U.S. relations” Japan provided intelligence to the United States and Britain last year showing evidence of China’s forceful detainment of the Muslim Uighur minority on condition of keeping the source confidential. Using on that information, the United States stepped up criticism against China’s alleged crackdown on Uighurs in the Xinjiang autonomous region, the source said.

    The move shows Japan has already been sharing key intelligence with partners behind the scenes amid calls within the government to join the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance to better respond to increasing threats by North Korea and China. The intelligence-sharing network involves Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

    Britain joined the United States in pressing Beijing over its crackdown on Uighurs, but Japan has only said it “is closely watching the situation with concern.”

    Japan seeks to maintain friendly ties with China – its largest trading partner – without hurting relations with its top security ally, the United States. In retrospect, that may prove extremely impossible now that Japan’s backroom backstabbing of Beijing has leaked.

    Given that Tokyo’s relations with Beijing had been improving, it was preparing for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit as a state guest in spring 2020, although the planned visit was later postponed after the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic.

    US President Donald Trump’s administration has put in place a series of sanctions on Beijing for alleged human rights abuses against Uighurs, such as visa restrictions on Chinese officials, increasing bilateral tensions.

    Vice President Mike Pence severely criticized China in a July 2019 speech in Washington, claiming that the “Communist Party imprisoned more than a million Chinese Muslims, including Uighurs, in internment camps where they endure around-the-clock brainwashing.”

    China has, naturally, responded with anger and urged Western counties to mind their own problems, slamming  criticisms as interference in its internal affairs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 21:45

  • Great Reset: Tiny Houses Pushed As Solution To Climate Change
    Great Reset: Tiny Houses Pushed As Solution To Climate Change

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Social engineers are pushing tiny 200-sq-ft Ikea houses as the solution to climate change in another example of how our living standards are set to be lowered.

    In an article entitled ‘Ikea tiny homes can help fight climate change by giving small footprints a big toehold’, Carl Pope, former head of the Sierra Club, gushes over the micro-homes (basically trailers) that sell for $47,550.

    “Housing is an important source of climate pollution — directly responsible for about 5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States plus their electricity. Given Ikea’s emphasis on recycled and reusable materials, the company seems likely to accelerate some important shifts in the housing market. Ikea will also almost certainly take advantage of what it learns in the “tiny” segment of the building market to establish a foothold in the broader, potentially highly green, manufactured building space,” writes Pope.

    While solar panels would struggle to heat larger homes, this isn’t an issue for the tiny homes, so long as you’re content living in a box.

    “The use of rooftop solar panels to generate power and the replacement of propane heating with a heat pump run by those solar panels is likely to become the standard in many states for manufactured homes,” he adds. “They will gravitate toward all-electric mobile homes because propane is a significant factor in the threat of fires to mobile home parks.”

    “When utopia is achieved, we will be forced to live in tiny playhouses — for our own good, because living in a rabbit hutch will improve the weather,” writes Dave Blount.

    “Winter could mean praying for sunny weather so that the heat comes on. That way we will be cozy and snug when we are placed under house arrest the next time a virus comes around.”

    As we previously highlighted, last year CNN promoted the idea of young people living in ‘pods’ in the center of huge cities where they have no privacy.

    Houses are now becoming so unaffordable for debt-stricken millennials that young people are also now literally living in decorated sewer pipes.

    They’re called OPod Tube Houses and literally consist of reclaimed bits of industrial piping renovated inside with other left over pieces from building sites to make them into micro apartments.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here. In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 21:25

  • UAE Identified As "Hub" For Companies Helping Venezuela Evade US Oil Sanctions
    UAE Identified As “Hub” For Companies Helping Venezuela Evade US Oil Sanctions

    A detailed investigative report by Reuters has found Washington-ally United Arab Emirates has been helping Maduro’s Venezuela skirt sanctions which the Trump administration has used as pressure for regime change. 

    The UAE is alleged to have stepped up its sanctions-busting activities as a major “hub” allowing Venezuela to export its oil, especially after a half dozen tankers under well-known firms were hit by Washington sanctions in June. 

    Here’s what happened quickly in the wake of those targeted sanctions: “Within weeks, a little-known company based in the United Arab Emirates took over management of several tankers that had been shipping Venezuelan oil. The vessels got new names. And then they resumed transporting Venezuelan crude,” according to Reuters.

    While Russia has remained a major buyer of Venezuela’s crude, this is the first time it’s been revealed that a crucial Gulf ally has been quietly assisting in defying US sanctions meant to choke off Caracas’ revenue from the trade. This is nothing too surprising for those familiar with the Turkey-Iran gas for gold scandal revealed in 2013.

    Here’s what Reuters found as part of its investigation:

    The company, Muhit Maritime FZE, is one of three UAE-based entities identified by Reuters that have shipped Venezuelan crude and fuel during the second half of this year. Their role emerges from an examination of internal shipping documents from Venezuela’s state oil company as well as third-party shipping and vessel tracking data. Tankers managed by the firms have transported millions of barrels of oil produced by state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, since June, according to the internal documents and a publicly available shipping database.

    It demonstrates the trend that the moment a particular tanker or company is targeted by US punintive action, there are others immediately ready to fill the void. Three companies in total are named as part of the UAE-based scheme in the report: Muhit Maritime, Issa Shipping FZE and Asia Charm Ltd.

    In many cases when a new unknown buyer of Venezuelan crude emerges it’s often assumed to be a Russian-based firm. But the report’s findings suggest other international buyers are fast emerging who are taking risky steps to conceal ownership, as Reuters underscores, “Now, a similar pattern is emerging with companies involved in transporting the oil.”

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    A UAE government statement appeared to confirm the contents of the new report:

    The UAE government said in a statement that “a thorough and comprehensive investigation is fully underway into” Muhit Maritime, Issa Shipping and Asia Charm. That includes using recent legislative changes “designed to improve corporate transparency through a framework for reporting and registering beneficial ownership,” it said.

    “The UAE takes its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system extremely seriously. This means actively administering and enforcing economic and trade sanctions,” the government added.

    As for the US, the State Department said in response: “We are closely tracking these kinds of creative efforts by companies to evade sanctions.”

    And responding specifically to UAE-registered firms engaged in the transport of Venezuelan oil, the US said further that it’s fully aware of the many shell companies being used by various entities. “Those behind shell companies would not be wise to consider themselves shielded from sanctions,” the statement said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 21:05

  • The Top 10 Most-Suppressed News Stories Of 2020
    The Top 10 Most-Suppressed News Stories Of 2020

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Back in the day, when I was managing editor at the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., I enjoyed the end-of-year ritual of voting in the Associated Press’s poll of the Top 10 news stories.

    When I started participating in the year 2000, my list would include many of the same stories that made the final AP list, although often with differences in ranking. But by the time I retired in 2018, my view of the news had sharply diverged from the AP’s consensus view. I’d become something of a gadfly by then, questioning what seemed to be an ever more transparent left-leaning bias in mainstream reporting.

    That divergence was probably magnified by the 2016 candidacy of Donald Trump and the bright light he had shined on Fake News, but my disenchantment with my profession had been growing for years, as chronicled in my book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?”

    Still, there is no way that even as recently as four years ago I would have predicted just how abysmally irresponsible the media would become by 2020. Major newspapers are winning Pulitzer Prizes for blatantly false reporting on topics such as “Russian collusion.” Meanwhile, Silicon Valley oligarchs have appointed themselves censors — warning the American people not to read or watch anything that hasn’t been “fact-checked” by their hand-picked thought police.

    The situation has gotten so bad that it’s no longer worth ranking the top news stories of the year because so little that is covered is news and so much that is news is written off as a “conspiracy theory.” That’s why I’m introducing Heartland Diary USA’s first annual presentation of “Last Chance to Wake Up and Smell the News They Tried to Kill.”

    So here are five of the biggest suppressed stories of 2020. Pardon me if I don’t go into great detail on them, but the closer I get to the truth, the more likely that Google, Twitter and Facebook will bury my story, too.

    5) Mysterious mutating lockdown:

    Has anyone ever figured out why it is OK for grocery store workers to remain on the job during an international pandemic while serving the needs of the entire population with no restrictions other than wearing a mask, but it is considered dangerous for gyms to open or, most ludicrously, for anyone other than spouses of governors to take their boat for a quick spin around the lake? It seems like the lockdown can turn into whatever is convenient for politicians. The uneven effects of the lockdown on different states and different sectors have resulted in the shift of trillions of dollars of capital in ways that will reshape the economy for generations to come, yet we are not supposed to talk about it.

    4) Hydroxychloroquine:

    If you know anything about this drug, it is probably just that some guy in Arizona died after drinking it, and that maybe President Trump was somehow responsible. Well, as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The guy in Arizona didn’t take hydroxychloroquine; he took a fish tank cleaner called chloroquine phosphate. And Trump never told anyone to take either the drug or the fish-tank cleaner. He just said hydroxychloroquine was a promising treatment against COVID-19. Of course, as soon as he said it, the radical academic leftists who control medical journals and associations warned that hydroxychloroquine had no benefit as a treatment and was potentially dangerous even though it had been safely used against malaria and various immune deficiency syndromes for decades. Fortunately, many doctors who were familiar with the drug continued to use it as a therapy in the early stages of COVID infections, and many patients around the world have been spared the most dire effects of the virus as a result. Just don’t expect to read about it in the New York Times.

    3) Trump’s vaccine victory:

    While the president has been painted as anti-science, it was his administration’s support that led to the fastest turnaround ever from viral discovery to viral vaccine — essentially less than a year. Even as House Democrats are poised to launch investigations into Trump’s supposed crimes against humanity for being president during the COVID crisis, lives are being saved as a result of his policies. Just don’t expect to read about it in the mainstream media, which spent much of 2020 ridiculing Trump for his prescient predictions that a vaccine would be developed by the end of the year.

    2) Hunter Biden’s laptop:

    The ability to bury the Hunter Biden story throughout the 2020 presidential campaign ranks as one of the greatest victories in the history of propaganda. Hunter is the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and his acknowledged history as a drug addict is now considered his strong suit. The Senate Homeland Security Committee found extensive evidence that Hunter has made hundreds of millions of dollars for the Biden family by selling access to his father, so when Hunter’s laptop turned up with first-person incriminating evidence, it was pretty obvious that Joe Biden had a lot of answer for. Except that the media never made him answer for anything. It preferred to rest on the bizarre assertion from 50 former U.S. intelligence officials that clear evidence of foreign collusion on Hunter’s laptop had all the earmarks of a “Russian disinformation” campaign. This was errant nonsense. Reporters, read the emails!

    1) Election fraud:

    It turned out that everything that happened in 2020 before Nov. 3 was just prologue for the greatest deception in American history — namely the hijacking of a presidential election through means both legal and illegal. Most importantly, every state that changed its election procedures without the consent of its legislature violated the U.S. Constitution. That’s why Republicans plan to challenge the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6. Whether you like Donald Trump or not should be irrelevant. You either follow the Constitution or you don’t. The fact that Trump increased his support in almost every demographic since 2016 and yet lost the election will apparently remain a mystery because the Democratic Party, with an assist from weak Republicans, is intent on continuing the charade that Joe Biden is a beloved elder statesman even more popular than Barack Obama.

    I should add a disclaimer here. My list will not be your list. This is 2020, and there is plenty of suppression to go around.

    You are hereby invited to submit your own contributions in the comments section below. In the meantime, rounding out my Top 10, here are some of the other major stories suppressed in 2020:

    • The communist links to antifa and Black Lives Matter;

    • how the Russian hoax was exposed but left unpunished;

    • how the policies of a certain governor in New York state led to thousands of COVID deaths in nursing homes;

    • the successful campaign of billionaire George Soros to subvert American jurisprudence by electing pro-criminal district attorneys;

    • and of course the suppression of news itself.

    Big Tech, take a bow!

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 20:45

  • Palestinians Hold First Ever 'Joint Military Drills' In Gaza; Israel Says Iran Behind It
    Palestinians Hold First Ever ‘Joint Military Drills’ In Gaza; Israel Says Iran Behind It

    After days ago a brief flare-up in fighting saw rockets exchanged between Gaza and the Israeli army, the Palestinian hardline Islamist group Hamas conducted what it called joint military exercises as a show of strength with competing militant factions.

    Israeli media for its part said these unprecedented exercises ultimately had Iran’s hand behind them, as Reuters reported, “An array of Palestinian militant groups launched rockets into the Mediterranean Sea off the Gaza Strip on Tuesday at the start of what they called their first-ever joint exercise, which Israeli media described as a show of force organized by Iran.”

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    Multiple live-fire drills were conducted throughout Tuesday, including infantry simulations, small drone flights, and provocatively the launching of rockets into the Mediterranean, which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) monitored closely.

    The Palestinian factions further produced videos of the exercises, described as follows:

    Eight rockets streaked through a cloudless sky in Gaza towards the Mediterranean after Abu Hamza, spokesman for Islamic Jihad, delivered a speech launching the drill. It will include land and coastal exercises described by the groups as a test of their preparedness for any future confrontation with Israel.

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    Israel is highlighting the presence of a large portrait of slain Iranian IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani on a main coastal road in Gaza ahead of the exercises.

    Israel says this and other displays are proof enough that Tehran is also exhibiting its long reach with the drills, some of which included sophisticated weaponry. 

    One exercise was even staged using old non-functioning Israeli tanks left on the battlefield.

    Elaborate military drills were also conducted along Gaza’s beachfront, for which Hamas had banned all fishing for the day.

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    The rare exercise included Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and what’s called Popular Resistance Committees, as well as smaller factions. 

    “The exercise comes as part of efforts to boost the joint action and cooperation between the military wings of the Palestinian factions,” Abu Hamza, an Islamic Jihad spokesman had announced. “This exercise aims to simulate expected threats by the Israeli enemy,” the armed group said in Gaza City.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 20:25

  • McMaken: The American Revolution Was A Culture War
    McMaken: The American Revolution Was A Culture War

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    Two hundred and forty-seven years ago this month, a group of American opponents of the Crown’s tax policy donned disguises and set about methodically destroying a shipment of tea imported into Boston by the East India Company. The vandals trespassed on privately owned ships in Boston Harbor and threw the tea into the ocean. These protesters were thorough. Not content with having destroyed most of the company’s imported tea that night, the activists later discovered another tea shipment which had been unloaded at a warehouse in Boston. The activists then broke into the warehouse and destroyed that tea, too. Total damages amounted to more than $1.5 million in today’s dollars. 

    This was the work of the Sons of Liberty, a group led in part by Samuel Adams and which would become known for acts of resistance, arson, and violence committed against tax collectors and other agents of the Crown. Notably, however, as time went on, acts of resistance in America escalated, at first into widespread mob violence, and then into military action and guerrilla warfare. 

    Why did many Americans either engage in this behavior or support it? The simplistic answer has long been that the colonists were angry that they were subjected to “taxation without representation.” This is the simplistic version of history often taught in grade school. The reality, of course, is that the conflict between the “patriots” and their former countrymen eventually became a deeply seated (and violent) culture war.

    It Wasn’t Just about Taxes

    The taxation-without-representation argument endures, of course, because it is useful for the regime and its backers. Advocates for the political status quo insist there is no need for anything like the Boston Tea Party today because modern Americans enjoy representation in Congress. We are told that taxation and the regulatory state are all necessarily moral and legitimate because the voters are “represented.” Even conservatives, who often claim to be for “small government,” often oppose radical opposition to the regime—such as secession—on the grounds that political resistance movements are only acceptable when there is no political “representation.” The implication is that since the United States holds elections every now and then, no political action outside of voting—and maybe a little sign waving—is allowed. 

    It’s unlikely the Sons of Liberty would have bought this argument. The small number of millionaires who meet in Washington, DC, nowadays are hardly “representative” of the American public back home. The 1770s equivalent would have consisted of throwing the Americans a few bones in the form of a handful of votes in Parliament, with seats to be reliably held by a few wealthy colonists, far beyond the reach or influence of the average member of the Sons of Liberty.

    But attempts to frame the revolution as a conflict over taxes largely misses the point. Political representation was not the real issue. We know this because when the 1778 Carlyle Peace Commission offered representation in Parliament to the Continental Congress as part of a negotiated conclusion to the war, the offer was rejected. 

    The Revolution Was Partly a Culture War 

    By the late 1770s, the fervor behind the revolution had already gone far beyond mere complaints about taxation. This was just one issue among many.

    Rather, the revolution quickly became a culture war in which self-styled “Americans” were taking up arms against a foreign, immoral, and corrupt oppressor. Mere offers of “representation” were hardly sufficient at this point, and it’s unlikely any such offers were going to be enough after the events of 1775, when the British finally marched into Massachusetts and opened fire on American militiamen.

    After that, the war had become, to use Rothbard’s term, a “war of national liberation.” 

    This ideological and psychological divide perhaps explains the ferocity with which the American revolutionaries resisted British rule. 

    The “Patriots” Initiated Real Violence—against Innocents

    For example, when we consider the many other protest actions by the Sons of Liberty in the lead-up to the revolution, many of them could easily be described as acts of nondefensive violence, intimidation, and destruction. Many tax collectors resigned from their offices in fear. Others, including citizens merely suspected of supporting the British, were tarred and feathered (i.e., tortured) by the protestors.

    Known loyalists were routinely threatened with physical harm to themselves, their families, and their property. Many loyalists fled the colonies in fear for their lives, and after the closure of Boston Harbor, many fled to inner Boston seeking protection from the mobs. Loyalist homes were burned, and theft committed by members of the Sons of Liberty was routine (hundreds of pounds were stolen from Governor Hutchinson’s private home after it was ransacked by a mob of poor and working-class Bostonians). Caught up in all of this, it should be remembered, were children and spouses of the guilty parties, who in many cases were just low-level bureaucrats.

    In the southern theater of the war, for example, the British Army armed loyalist militias who engaged in a scorched earth campaign against the rebels. They burned private homes to the ground, cut up and murdered pregnant women, displayed the severed heads of their victims, and employed other tactics of terrorism.

    The rebels responded in kind, attacking many who had no role in the attacks on patriot homes, including women, and torturing suspected Tories with beloved torture methods such as “spigoting” in which the victims are spun around and around on upward-pointing nails until they are well impaled.

    This sort of thing cannot be explained by mere disagreement over taxation. Acts of violence like these represent a meaningful cultural and national divide.

    How Big Is the Cultural Divide in America? 

    For now, the cultural divide in the United States today has yet to reach the proportions experienced during the revolution—or, for that matter, during the 1850s in the lead-up to the American Civil War.

    But if hostilities reach this point, there will be little use in discussions over the size of the tax burden, mask mandates, or the nuances of abortion policy. The disdain felt by each side for the other side will be far beyond mere compromises over arcane matters of policy. 

    And just as discussions over “taxation without representation” miss the real currents underlying the American rebellion, any view of the current crisis that ignores the ongoing culture war will fail to identify the causes. 

    Yet, the culture war has also likely progressed to the point where national unity is unlikely to be salvaged even by charismatic leaders and efforts at compromise. When it comes to culture, there is little room for compromise. It is increasingly apparent that the only peaceful solution lies in some form of radical decentralization, amounting to either secession or self-rule at the local level with only foreign policy as “national” policy. Had the British offered these terms in 1770, bloodshed would have likely been avoided. Americans must pursue similar solutions now before it is too late. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 20:05

  • Portland Homicides Reach Highest Level In 3 Decades After Gun Violence Task Force Disbanded
    Portland Homicides Reach Highest Level In 3 Decades After Gun Violence Task Force Disbanded

    As Antifa and other far-left activists have mounted a national campaign to “abolish the police” – going so far in places like Portland and Seattle as to literally fight the police while declaring so-called autonomous zones – the city that’s become ground zero for the anti-police movement has seen murder rates soar.

    Fox News reports based on local crime statistics that murders are surging in Portland, Oregon. “As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019.”

    2020 numbers dwarf the prior year’s, having reached over 850 shootings. Among these are more single-year homicides than in any year over the prior nearly three decades. 

    The city is so desperate that police chief Chuck Lovell is urging the public’s help in doing “everything we can together” to “break the cycle of violence.”

    “Gun violence has plagued our city at twice the rate of last year,” he underscored in a public statement. “On average, someone is shot in Portland roughly every two days.”

    And almost unbelievably (or actually perhaps very believable given it’s Portland), a frontline special police task force was earlier disbanded because activists claimed it was inherently racist. As homicides and shootings soared, here’s the “action” that far-left activists and woke city officials took, according to local media:

    PPB’s [Portland Police Bureau] gun violence reduction team was disbanded in the summer following the criticism of advocates who said that the gun violence reduction team was stopping people of color disproportionately to others.

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    The dissolution of the 34-person police unit happened in July, and since then shootings across the city have skyrocketed. It was done also in the name of Portland’s “police reform efforts” in the wake of widespread George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests and unrest earlier in the summer.

    A recent headline covering Sunday night violence, for example, has become typical of most weekends in Portland, which is beginning to resemble Chicago levels of violence. Police described “The number of bullets that must have been flying around our neighborhoods, city streets, sidewalks – it’s awful.” The recent headline reads, “Portland police respond to 4 overnight shootings, 2 injured” in which—

    The Portland Police Bureau is investigating four different shootings after two victims walked into local hospitals with gunshot wounds overnight and two more reports were made about gunfire.

    The shootings happened in different parts of the city on the east side… the third shooting of the night was reported just after 11 p.m. on SE 72nd Ave where officers found “at least nine bullet strikes to a residence and multiple casings.” According to police, bullets went through the living room of an occupied home and into multiple bedrooms. Luckily, no one inside the home was injured in the shooting.

    Minutes after the third shooting was reported in Southeast Portland, a fourth was reported in Northeast Portland in the Cully neighborhood.

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    Chief Lovell this week noted that though the city has taken appropriate extreme measures to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, “Violence is also a disease that kills and our community is suffering the consequences.”

    The clearly corelated trend of disbanding police anti-crime units in various cities across the nation leading to spikes in violent crime should be obvious to most Americans, but it is apparently being lost on those city officials allowing themselves to be willing pawns of the woke mob.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 19:45

  • 10 Climate Alarmist Predictions For 2020 That Went Horribly Wrong
    10 Climate Alarmist Predictions For 2020 That Went Horribly Wrong

    Authored by Tyler O’Neil via PJMedia.com,

    Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize. It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical.

    Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020. Those predictions also failed, some rather spectacularly.

    Steve Milloy, a former Trump/Pence EPA transition team member and founder of JunkScience.com, compiled ten climate predictions for 2020 that fell far off the mark.

    1. Average global temperature up 3 degrees Celsius

    Screenshot of the Oct 2, 1987 edition of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

    In 1987, the Star-Phoenix in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, quoted James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. His model predicted an average temperature increase of “between one-half and one degree Celsius by the end of the ’90s.”

    “And within 15 to 20 years of this, the earth will be warmer than it has been in the past 100,000 years,” Hansen said. According to the Star-Phoenix, his model predicted that “by the year 2020 we will experience an average temperature increase of around three degrees [Celsius], with even greater extremes.”

    Milloy cited former NASA climatologist Roy Spencer, whose data suggest global temperatures have risen 0.64 degrees Celsius since 1987. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) shows an increase of about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 1987.

    2. Global emissions

    In 1978, The Vancouver Sun cited a paper in the journal Science. University of Washington researcher Minze Stuiver predicted that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will have doubled by 2020. “We learn that if present trends continue, with economics the only limit on the exploitation of fossil fuels, the CO2 concentration will have doubled by 2020. Forty to 80 years after fuel burning peaks — that will come mid-century — the CO2 concentration will be five to 10 times its present level.”

    Yet the CO2 in the atmosphere hasn’t come close to doubling since 1978. According to NOAA, in March 1978 when the Sun published this article, there were 335 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. In February 2020, NOAA reported 413 parts per million in the atmosphere. That represents an increase of 23 percent, a far cry from doubling the concentration (which would be 670 parts per million).

    3. Emissions from India and China

    In December 2009, The Springfield News-Leader reported that India and China had pledged to cut emissions by 2020. “The developing world, for the first time, is offering its own actions — not straight reductions, but clean-energy projects and other steps to slow the growth of their emissions.”

    “China says it will, by 2020, reduce gases by 40 to 45 percent below ‘business as usual,’ that is, judged against 2005 figures, for energy used versus economic input. India offers a 20 to 25 percent slowdown in emissions growth.”

    While these projections were more promises than predictions, they fell wide of the mark. India and China increased their carbon emissions since 2005. According to the World Bank, India emitted 1.2 million kilotons of CO2 in 2005 and 2.4 million kilotons of CO2 in 2018, the last year data is available, a 200 percent increase. China, meanwhile, emitted 5.9 million kilotons in 2005 and 9.9 million kilotons in 2016, a 168 percent increase.

    4. No snow on Mount Kilimanjaro

    Screenshot of The Vancouver Sun reporting on a scientist’s prediction that the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro will disappear by 2020.

    In 2001, The Vancouver Sun reported, “Snows of Kilimanjaro to vanish by 2020.”

    “‘At this rate, all of the ice will be gone between 2010 and 2020,’ said Lonnie Thompson, a geologist at Ohio State University. ‘And that is probably a conservative estimate.”

    Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth also predicted that there would be no snow on Kilimanjaro in 2020.

    Yet in February 2020, The Times of London reported that the “Staying power of Kilimanjaro snow defies Al Gore’s gloomy forecast.”

    “The snow has certainly got my clients talking,” Methley Swai, owner of the Just-Kilimanjaro trekking company, told The Times. “Many people have made Kilimanjaro a bucket list priority because of the Al Gore deadline but when they get here they are pleasantly surprised to find lots of snow.”

    The Times screenshot

    5. Rising sea levels in the Sunshine State

    Miami Herald report predicting sea-level rise of 2 feet in Florida by 2020.

    In 1986, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Jim Titus predicted that the sea level around Florida would rise two feet by 2020, The Miami Herald reported.

    According to NOAA, the sea level at Virginia Key has risen by about 9 centimeters, which works out to 3.54 inches.

    NOAA chart for sea level in Virginia Key, Florida.

    6. People will become unfamiliar with snow

    In March 2000, David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia in England, predicted that winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event,” The Independent reported.

    “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Viner said.

    Heavy snow will return occasionally, Viner predicted, but the Brits would not be prepared for it when it does. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.

    About that. Snow is still very much a thing in the United Kingdom, and Scotland’s snowplows — called “gritters” — have been very much up to the task. Scotland had gotten about 10 centimeters of snow in some places by early December 2020, the Daily Record reported. “Traffic Scotland says that its current winter fleet consists of 213 vehicles that are available for ploughing and spreading salt.”

    7. Pacific islands economies devastated

    In October 2000, a Greenpeace report predicted that global warming “could cause a massive economic decline across at least 13 tiny Pacific nations in the next 20 years,” the Australian newspaper The Age reported. Global warming would devastate most of the Pacific’s coral reefs, devastating the tourism and fishing industries of tiny Pacific nations.

    “Under the worst-case scenario examined, by 2020 some Melanesian nations would lose from 15 to 20 per cent of their gross domestic product, valued at about $1.9 billion [in American dollars] to $2.3 billion, while other mainly Polynesian nations are even more vulnerable and could lose between $4 billion and $5 billion due to climate change,” the report warned.

    “The study shows that the most vulnerable Pacific nations are Tuvalu and Kiribati, the host of this year’s Pacific Islands Forum, followed by Cook Islands, Palau, Tonga and French Polynesia,” The Age reported.

    Yet according to the government of Tuvalu’s Ministry of Finance, “Revenues collected from fisheries access increased from approximately $10 million [Australian dollars] in 2012 to $13.6 million in 2014 to the current situation in which annual revenue is more than $30 million.”

    “The 2019 budget reports that Tuvalu has enjoyed an unprecedented six consecutive years of economic growth ‘on the back of increasing revenues from fishing licenses and back-to-back infrastructure projects that were-funded and administered by development partners,’” the ministry reported.

    Kiribati has also enjoyed healthy GDP growth in the past five years. As with so many predictions of climate armageddon, the great demise of Pacific economies has failed to materialize.

    8. Global conflict and nuclear war

    In 2004, The Guardian reported on a Department of Defense report predicting that climate change could be America’s greatest national security threat. Among other things, the report predicted nuclear war, endemic conflict over resources, and European cities underwater by 2020.

    The Pentagon report claimed that peace occurs when resources increase or when populations die off. “But such peaceful periods are short-lived because population quickly rises to once again push against carrying capacity, and warfare resumes.” In modern times, the casualties have decreased, but “all of that progressive behavior could collapse if carrying capacities everywhere were suddenly lowered drastically by abrupt climate change.”

    As endemic warfare resumes, it will escalate to nuclear war, the report predicted. “In this world of warring states, nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable.”

    Not only has nuclear war failed to materialize, but the world has become more peaceful in the past 30 years. Mathematicians at the University of York created an algorithm to measure battlefield deaths and discovered an “abrupt shift towards a greater level of peace in the early 1990s.”

    9. The end of Arctic ice

    In April 2013, the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette reported that NOAA scientists predicted “ranges for an ice-free Arctic from 2020 to after 2040.”

    “It is reasonable to conclude Arctic ice loss is very likely to occur in the first rather than the second half of the 21st century, with a possibility of loss within a decade or two,” the paper claimed.

    According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado-Boulder, there were 3.9 million square kilometers of sea ice in the Arctic Sea at its annual minimum in September 2020.

    10. Glaciers gone at Glacier National Park

    In March 2009, U.S. Geological Survey ecologist Daniel Fagre predicted that the glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020.

    “Fagre’s current research reveals that temperatures in Glacier National Park have risen higher than was predicted in 1992. The Montana glaciers are now expected to be gone by 2020,” The Los Angeles Times reported.

    By 2010, Glacier National Park erected signs warning that its signature glaciers would be gone by 2020. This year, the park rushed to change the signs as the glaciers still existed. In truth, the U.S. Geological Survey warned the park back in 2017 that the forecast model no longer predicted a glacier-less 2020, but a park spokeswoman told CNN that the park didn’t have enough money to change the signs.

    The park altered the most prominent placards in 2019, but it was still waiting for budget authorization to update signs at two other locations.

    The new signs will say, “When they will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

    *  *  *

    Climate alarmists have been forecasting doom for more than 50 years, and their predictions fail again and again. In 2018, the tiny Maldives Islands were scheduled to sink beneath the waves due to climate change — yet the islands have actually grown in recent years!

    The truth of the matter is, climate is an extremely complicated science that remains far less than fully understood. While it stands to reason that carbon emissions may have an impact on the global climate, there is little concrete evidence to prove it — and nearly every prediction made on this hypothesis has proven false.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 19:25

  • Pompeo Demands "Lying" China Release Wuhan Citizen Journalist Locked Up For Virus Reporting
    Pompeo Demands “Lying” China Release Wuhan Citizen Journalist Locked Up For Virus Reporting

    US Secretary of State Mike is demanding that China immediately release a citizen journalist jailed for her earlier social media reporting from Wuhan, the global coronavirus epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. The case has sent shockwaves across the globe given it’s such a blatant crackdown on mere speech and reporting in the Communist-run country.

    Zhang Zhan, the 37-year old former lawyer who essentially live-blogged widely shared posts describing the chaotic and mismanaged efforts of Chinese authorities to get a handle of the virus during its early spread in Wuhan was on Monday sentenced to four years in prison by a Shanghai court for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

    Pompeo said in his Tuesday statement: “We call on the PRC government to release her immediately and unconditionally.” He also charged Beijing with “lying” which he called a “feature” of China’s “authoritarian regime”. 

    “The Chinese Communist Party has shown once again it will do whatever it takes to silence those who question the party’s official line, even regarding crucial public health information,” he said in the statement.

    Zhan had initially been arrested in May, with her Monday court proceedings only taking three hours before the stiff sentence was handed down.

    International reports noted the intentional timing of it by authorities who feared it would create an avalanche of international condemnation, which it has. CBS reported the following:

    “The pronouncement of sentence in court was quite rare and unexpected,” said defense lawyer Zhang Keke. “It has something to do with the holiday timing in the West.”

    China’s communist authorities have a history of putting dissidents on trial in opaque courts between Christmas and New Year’s to minimize Western scrutiny. 

    The trial comes just weeks before an international team of World Health Organization experts is expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of COVID-19. 

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    In his statement Pompeo further underscored Zhan’s trial was “hasty” and not in accord with international standards of justice.

    “Her hasty trial, to which foreign observers were denied access, shows how fearful the CCP is of Chinese citizens who speak the truth,” Pompeo said.

    An EU statement also condemned the proceedings, her sentence, and treatment while in custody. “Ms Zhang has been subject to torture and ill-treatment during her detention and her health condition has seriously deteriorated,” an EU external affairs spokesman said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 19:05

  • The Best Of Humanity, And The Worst Of Humanity…
    The Best Of Humanity, And The Worst Of Humanity…

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    There are moments that restore our faith in humanity, and there are also moments that destroy it.  We were created to love and to be loved, and in this article I will share a couple examples of incredible acts of love.  But there are many others that have become so twisted that they will engage in unspeakable acts of evil without even thinking twice about it.  Of course on Christmas Day we witnessed an unspeakable act of evil when Anthony Quinn Warner blew himself up in front of the AT&T building in downtown Nashville.  But even in the midst of such a great tragedy, incredible things happened that are making headlines all over the globe.  Light and darkness often coexist side by side, but sometimes things get so dark that we forget that the light is still there.

    One story that encouraged me lately was the story of a 7-year-old boy named Eli that rushed into a burning home to save his 22-month-old sister…

    It was a typical night at the Davidson household in New Tazewell, Tennessee, on December 8. Chris and Nicole Davidson fed their three children dinner, tucked them into bed and were asleep by 8:30 p.m.

    Hours later, Nicole Davidson woke up to the smell of smoke. Within minutes, the family’s home was up in flames — and 22-month-old Erin Davidson was trapped in her room.

    Sometimes being really small is a huge advantage, and Eli was able to use his small size to squeeze through a window and grab little Erin from her crib before it was too late…

    “The smoke and fire was so thick there was no way I could get to her,” Chris Davidson told CNN. “We went outside to get to her from the window, but there was nothing for me to stand on to reach up there. So I picked up Eli, who went through the window and was able to grab her from her crib.”

    Acts of great self-sacrifice are representative of the best of humanity, but we are also reminded of the worst of humanity on a daily basis.

    For example, yesterday I came across a story about three men in Florida that I wish I could get out of my mind…

    Three men, including the rapper Splash Zanotti, allegedly demanded $20,000 and sexually assaulted a woman after breaking into a South Florida home, police said.

    Splash Zanotti, whose real name is Kejuan Campbell, along with Dionte Alexander-Wilcox and Antonio James allegedly broke into the Miramar, Florida home in October by pointing a gun at one of the homeowners, according to a federal affidavit. The men, all armed with firearms, proceeded to force both homeowners on the ground and assaulted them.

    The specific details of what they did to the woman are too sickening for this article.

    Men like this have no place in our society, and it is actually a tremendous indictment of our society that we keep producing incredibly sick and twisted people like this.

    But not everyone turns out this way.  In New Jersey, a couple named Rebecca and Robert Kolas have brought six orphaned siblings into their home so that they would not be separated.

    Needless to say, this has not been easy on their finances, and Rebecca says that they have mortgaged their home “as much as possible” in order to pay for it…

    Rebecca, who is managing attorney of the Community Health Law Project which advocates for those with disabilities, and Robert, who works for the Tom River Public Works Department, have asked New Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency for help in making more space for the kids.

    “My home is mortgaged as much as possible to pay for it,” Rebecca explained.

    Why can’t our society produce more good hearts like that?

    And why can’t we send people like Rebecca and Robert to Washington to represent us?

    Instead, our system of government seems to greatly attract power-hungry control freaks that love to make life miserable for all the rest of us.

    Things have gotten particularly oppressive during this pandemic.  The rules that our politicians have imposed upon all of us have resulted in some very crazy outcomes, and we are seeing things that I never thought we would see in this country.

    For instance, just recently the manager of an AMC Theater in Jacksonville, North Carolina banned a disabled child from entering because she wasn’t wearing a mask…

    Family members were masked up. However, the child, who was in a baby stroller and is non-verbal, was not wearing a mask.

    She reportedly has a condition that precludes her from wearing either a mask or a face shield.

    How cold-hearted do you have to be in order to do something like that?

    When the family indicated that they didn’t want to leave, the manager of the movie theater actually summoned the police…

    Police were summoned to the theater and escorted the outraged family outside.

    Yes, this is actually happening in America in 2020.

    Sadly, the people with the most money and the most power are often the most psychotic of them all.

    By now, you have probably heard that in the name of “science” Bill Gates would actually like to partially block sunlight from reaching our planet…

    A bizarre-sounding plan to save Earth funded by tech guru Bill Gates is “quietly” moving forward.

    The plan — to dim the sun’s rays and their impact on the earth — is reportedly all in the name of helping to revitalize the environment and thus save the human race.

    This is one of the most foolish plans that I have ever heard, but Bill Gates is very serious about this.

    Without the light of the sun, life on Earth could not exist.  We can barely feed everyone on the planet right now during the best of years, and partially cutting off sunlight would make it much more difficult to grow food.

    Why in the world would anyone want to do such a thing?

    We live at a time when evil is out of control all over the planet, and it is only going to get worse in the years to come.

    But whenever the wickedness seems too overwhelming, it will be important for us to remember that love is still changing hearts all over the globe.

    All throughout human history we have witnessed a battle of good vs. evil, and that will definitely be true during this chapter of human history as well.

    And even though hatred is rising all around us, we want to make sure that our hearts are always filled with love, because love will win in the end.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 18:45

  • China Snubs Rockets And 76ers As NBA Coverage Restarts
    China Snubs Rockets And 76ers As NBA Coverage Restarts

    Chinese streaming giant Tencent halted live broadcasts of NBA games featuring Philadelphia 76ers and Houston Rockets because Daryl Morey, voiced his opinion on Twitter in 2019 about support for the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, according to The Japan Times.

    At the time, Morey was the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted (now deleted) “Fight For Freedom Stand With Hong Kong.” 

    That didn’t sit well with the communist government, and it was revealed late last year that the Chinese government insisted the league fire Morey, from the Houston Rockets. 

    Morey has since become the president of the 76ers, as it seems the communist have not forgotten Morey’s political activism in his support of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement. 

    In an apparent protest to Morey, Tencent has stopped live broadcasts of games involving the 76ers and Rockets for the 2020-2021 season, only offering text updates on a play by play basis. 

    AFP noted that “state broadcaster CCTV, which holds China’s exclusive TV rights for the NBA, has not aired any games since the season opened on December 22.” 

    Tencent’s refusal to air 76ers and Rocket games and CCTV’s blackout of NBA games has cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars. NBA’s revenues could drop by 40% in the 2020-2021 season. 

    The Times also noted that text updates via Tencent were available for the 76ers season opener against Washington Wizards on December 23. 

    The 76ers played New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers over the weekend, as Tencent only provided text updates. 

    Morey recently told ESPN that his now-deleted tweet supporting Hong Kong activists almost ended his career with the league. 

    He added that he has no regrets about what was tweeted though he didn’t expect immediate outrage from the communist. 

    The essential lesson that should be taken from Morey’s tweet and China’s communist government’s action is that government involvement and regulatory oversight in private business is toxic.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 18:25

  • "A Direct And Severe Violation": Court Strikes Down Cuomo's COVID-19 Orders On Churches, Synagogues
    “A Direct And Severe Violation”: Court Strikes Down Cuomo’s COVID-19 Orders On Churches, Synagogues

    Authored by Tyler O’Neil  via PJMedia.com,

    On Monday, a panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) COVID-19 orders placing strict limits on houses of worship in hot spots.

    The 2nd Circuit panel agreed with the Supreme Court that Cuomo’s order likely does not satisfy the high standard of strict scrutiny and therefore violates the First Amendment.

    “No public interest is served by maintaining an unconstitutional policy when constitutional alternatives are available to achieve the same goal,” Judge Michael Park wrote in the opinion.

    “The restrictions challenged here specially and disproportionately burden religious exercise, and thus ’strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.’ Such a direct and severe constitutional violation weighs heavily in favor of granting injunctive relief.”

    In the 3-0 decision, the panel upheld the claims of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, the Orthodox Jewish group Agudath Israel of America, and two synagogues. The ruling enjoined Cuomo’s October 6 order capping attendance at “houses of worship.”

    Cuomo capped attendance at either 10 people or 25 percent capacity, whichever is lesser, in “red” zones, and 25 people or 33 percent capacity in “orange” zones, even in buildings that seat hundreds.

    While previous rulings had supported Cuomo’s order, the Supreme Court granted an injunction against the order by a 5-4 majority.

    “In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, we hold that the Order’s regulation of ‘houses of worship’ is subject to strict scrutiny and that its fixed capacity limits are not narrowly tailored to stem the spread of COVID-19. Appellants have established irreparable harm caused by the fixed capacity limits, and the public interest favors granting injunctive relief,” the 2nd Circuit panel ruled.

    In the opinion, Park noted that Cuomo “has not asserted that his categorization of businesses as ‘essential’ or ’non-essential’ was based on any assessment of COVID-19 transmission risk.”

    He also argued that Cuomo did not use data or compare religious worship with “essential” activities.

    Cuomo has claimed that the Supreme Court’s ruling had no practical effect because some restrictions were lifted as COVID-19 outbreaks eased.

    Avi Schick, a lawyer for Agudath Israel, said Monday’s decision “will be felt way beyond the COVID context. It is a clear statement … that government can’t disfavor religious conduct merely because it sees no value in religious practice.”

    Randy Mastro, the diocese’s lawyer, said the diocese was “gratified,” and will welcome parishioners to mass “under strict protocols” that keep them safe.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 18:05

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 29

Today’s News 29th December 2020

  • 2020: The Year We Lost Our Common Sense, Courage, & Civil Liberties
    2020: The Year We Lost Our Common Sense, Courage, & Civil Liberties

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Once it became clear to the Western elite that their subjects would readily accept draconian anti-Covid measures, it encouraged them to usher in a code-red lifestyle where there will be no ‘return to normal’ in the foreseeable future and, possibly, never.

    If nothing else, nobody can say we were not warned about the madness that would descend upon leap year 2020, making it one of the worst 366 days ever recorded on the Gregorian calendar.

    On October 18, 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, together with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted the incredibly visionary Event 201, an exercise that simulated the outbreak of a pandemic “transmitted from bats to people that eventually becomes…transmissible from person to person.”

    The simulation proved to be so uncannily similar to the real thing that started just three months later – from imagining a dramatic drop in air travel and business, to breaks in the global supply chain – that Johns Hopkins eventually felt compelled to release a statement saying their exercise was not intended to be a prophecy of future events.

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    “To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise,” the statement read, in what just might be the creepiest caveat ever.

    “For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction… We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people.”

    Shortly after the global elite played Nostradamus, on January 15th to be exact (the very same day, incidentally, that the Democrats presented articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the Senate), the first Covid-positive person arrived in Seattle from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease is said to have sprung to life. From there it has been a non-stop roller-coaster ride of government-sponsored insanity.

    Before continuing, it is important to remember the context with which the pandemic has been happening, that is, in the most consequential U.S. presidential election in recent memory. It should thus come as no surprise that the Democrats and Republicans would use the scourge to achieve some sort of advantage, demonstrating Machiavellian opportunism at its very best. Indeed, such is the nature of the political beast.

    For example, although Trump shut down the U.S. border on January 31 to Chinese nationals, the Democrats and leftist media pounced, saying the U.S. leader responded too late to make a difference. Even Trump’s use of the term ‘Chinese virus’ was slammed by his opponents as ‘racist.’ Meanwhile, it was the Democrats themselves who were the pioneers in taking the first draconian steps of locking down society to stop the contagion.

    On March 16, 2020, six counties in northern California and the city of Berkley ordered an unprecedented stay-at-home order for some 7 million Bay Area residents. This was all part of “flattening the curve” logic that would “buy time for hospitals to gear up for the onslaught…” Well, 233 days later political leaders are not only still flattening the curve, but flattening their economies as well. Today, although the survival rate for those infected with Covid-19 is reported to be in the neighborhood of 99.85 percent, harsh lockdowns continue to wreak havoc, not least of all for small businesses.

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    Consider the situation in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom has mandated yet another ‘shelter-in-place’ order, which has shuttered, among other businesses, hair salons, barbershops, personal care services, movie theaters, wineries, bars, breweries, family entertainment centers and amusement parks. What is hard to fathom, however, is how the corporate big-box stores are considered “essential businesses,” apparently immune to the scourge, while the small business owner is trashed as expendable.

    By way of example, consider the tragic plight of Angela Marsden, the owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Los Angeles. In an effort to comply with the ever-changing anti-Covid rules, Marsden spent over $80,000 to build an outdoor patio so she could stay in business during the pandemic. With Newsom’s latest lockdown restrictions, however, city officials denied her permission to serve clients on location, even in the parking lot.

    To add insult to injury, the authorities granted permission for a film company to set up a large outdoor eating area for its staff just across the road from where Marsden had built her patio.

    “I’m losing everything,” she exclaimed in a video posted to Twitter that has been watched almost 10 million times. “Everything I own is being taken away from me. They have not given us money and they have shut us down. We cannot survive; my staff cannot survive…”

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    For the Fortune 500 companies, however, the pandemic has translated into a windfall. Between April and September, at a time when thousands of small business were quietly getting crushed underfoot, 45 of the 50 most valuable publicly traded American companies turned a profit, according to the Washington Post.

    At the same time, at least 27 of the 50 largest firms slashed their workforce this year, collectively cutting more than 100,000 workers, while at the same time distributing billions of dollars to shareholders. As just one example, Walmart distributed more than $10 billion to its investors during the pandemic while terminating 1,200 office staff.

    To put these figures another way, since mid-March – when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency – America’s 614 billionaires saw their net worth explode by $931 billion in total. Jeff Bezos, for example, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, saw his private wealth go from $73.2bn since the start of the crisis to a record $186.2bn.

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    It would probably come as no surprise that the very individuals who helped pave the way for astronomic wealth generation among the 1 percent, are the same ones breaking their own rules. Governor Newsom and his wife, for example, attended a birthday party with a dozen friends at the French Laundry restaurant in San Francisco. Equally maddening is that Dustin Corcoran, the CEO of the California Medical Association, was also in attendance. And who could forget the photo of Nancy Pelosi walking through a California hair salon when such businesses were deemed ‘super spreaders’?

    Such incidences only served to reinforce the idea that the draconian lockdowns, the worst of which are centered on Democratic-controlled states, were specifically designed not to contain a contagion, but to foster as much anger and frustration among the general population in the most consequential presidential election in many decades. After all, unhappy people have a tendency to vote out their leaders whom they believe are responsible for such dire circumstances. And with the mainstream media almost totally in the Democratic anti-Trump camp, placing the blame on the president has proven no difficult task.

    So where do we go from here? Now that we have reached the end of 2020, will the situation begin to improve? Will political leaders begin to loosen the screws and let some semblance of normality return once again? Or will people be forced to rise up and demand the return of their freedom and liberty?

    At this great loggerhead in human history, there has been much talk about creating ‘freedom passes’ that will be demanded from people before they are allowed to travel or visit any sort of entertainment again.

    “People who test negative for coronavirus could get a five-day freedom pass to attend big events or access public buildings, under plans being considered by public health experts running a trial program in England,” reported Bloomberg in November.

    Already, five global airlines – United Airlines, Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic, Swiss International Air Lines and JetBlue – have announced they will observe the so-called CommonPass to passengers on some flights from December.

    “The project, developed by non-profit group The Commons Project and backed by the World Economic Forum, uses a digital certificate downloaded to a mobile phone to show a passenger has tested negative for Covid-19,” according to the Financial Times. Here is the kicker:

    “The airlines are not making the CommonPass mandatory, but in time it will also be used to provide proof of vaccination.”

    It seems rather obvious where all of this is heading: mandatory vaccination for anyone who ever wishes to board an aircraft or visit another entertainment venue again. Over time, it is not difficult to imagine a vaccine regimen extending to all human activities, including shopping and even getting a job. Yet what about the millions of people who have expressed extreme skepticism in being administered a vaccine that has been developed so quickly?

    Whatever the case may be, should such a plan of action become mandatory, peoples’ lives will be entirely dominated by fears over a virus, together with an endless bureaucratic process of being tested and approved to move about. Vaccines will become a regular requirement since viruses are in a state of constant mutation, which makes them the authoritarians dream instrument of domination.

    Such a system of totalitarian control, should it ever come into fruition, will have achieved in mere months what fascism could not in years: the pacification and unification of a great swath of the world’s population not by bayonet, but by syringe. In fact, today the people of London are fleeing their fair city not out of fear of the virus per se, but out of fear of the lockdown restrictions put in place by the authorities. To put it otherwise, the world gave an inch and the globalists took a mile, and a person would have to be a fool to believe it could have turned out any other way.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 23:40

  • Bass Blasts "Deeply Corrupt" EU Over Imminent Landmark China Investment Deal
    Bass Blasts “Deeply Corrupt” EU Over Imminent Landmark China Investment Deal

    In contrast to the EU, the US Congress passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in June 2019, and on September 22, 2020, the US House of Representatives passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

    As The Gatestone Institute’s Judith Bergman notes, the US has sanctioned at least 28 Chinese officials over their actions in Xinjiang. The list includes senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, such as current Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who executes Chinese government policy in the region. He is also the current First Political Commissar of the XPCC, a role in which he has exercised control over the entity. According to the US Department of the Treasury:

    “The XPCC is a paramilitary organization in the XUAR that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The XPCC enhances internal control over the region by advancing China’s vision of economic development in XUAR that emphasizes subordination to central planning and resource extraction. The XPCC’s structure reflects a military organization, with 14 divisions made up of dozens of regiments… [Chen Quanguo]… has a notorious history of intensifying security operations in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, where he was deployed before arriving in Xinjiang…”

    Meanwhile, the European Council, consisting of the heads of state of the EU member states and that is currently presided over by Germany, is unlikely to demand anything from China, let alone sanction it or do anything that might jeopardize its trade with Europe. This year, for the first time, China became the EU’s largest trading partner, surpassing the US.

    Crucially, the EU does not want to jeopardize the finalization of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which the EU and China have sought to realize for seven years now.

    And, as The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports, China and the EU could complete the deal this week, with the 27 countries in the trade bloc unanimously approving the agreement despite earlier reservations.

    An EU diplomat with knowledge of the discussions said that on Monday representatives of the EU member states were briefed by EU negotiators who had “reported on recent positive developments in the negotiations with China including on labour standards”.

    The representatives “broadly welcomed the latest progress in the EU-China talks”, the diplomat said.

    “After four years of Donald Trump, the EU is sending a very clear message that it will go its own way on China,” said Noah Barkin, an EU-China specialist with Rhodium Group, a research firm.

    “This doesn’t doom transatlantic cooperation with Biden, but it shows just how difficult it will be. The big winner if this deal does come together is Beijing.”

    Erik Brattberg, director of the Europe programme at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the EU’s “last-minute push” to complete the deal with China “has already raised eyebrows in Washington”, adding:

    “It risks undermining the credibility of the EU’s call for a joint transatlantic China strategy with the US even before the new Biden administration settles in.”

    The unanimous support from the EU member states came despite France and Poland previously raising reservations about the deal.

    Franck Riester, the minister delegate in charge of trade in the French foreign ministry, said last week that if the EU failed to commit to abolishing forced labour “we cannot facilitate investment in China”.

    Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau also warned that Europe would need more consultations and transparency to win over its transatlantic allies.

    By moving forward with the deal, Brussels also turned a blind eye to a thinly veiled warning from Jake Sullivan, Biden’s designated national security adviser, who said the Biden administration “would welcome early consultations with our European partners” on the concerns about China’s economic practices.

    Outspoken China hawk, and hedge fund billionaire, Kyle Bass summed it up succinctly:

    “Europe is so deeply corrupted by Chinese money that this deal was a fait accompli.”

    Simply put, the EU is willing to turn a blind eye to any and every action by China against the world in the interests of money flowing into the failing super-state.

    If reached, the deal would come hard on the heels of China’s success in creating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with 14 other Asia-Pacific nations, and the EU’s post-Brexit agreement with Britain.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 23:20

  • Biden Meddles With Donald Trump's Middle East Legacy At His Peril
    Biden Meddles With Donald Trump’s Middle East Legacy At His Peril

    Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

    The incoming Biden administration has indicated that one of its top priorities will be to adopt a new approach in Washington’s dealings with the Middle East. In particular it wants to revive the flawed nuclear deal with Iran as well as re-establish a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership, which imposed a three-year boycott on the Trump administration.

    Yet, while the new Biden team, the majority of whom are relics from the Obama administration, are keen to assert a new policy agenda for the region, they also need to take care that, in so doing, they do not squander the impressive legacy US President Donald Trump has built up in the region.

    It is worth remembering that, when Mr Trump took office, the region was still reeling from the dire consequences of former US President Barack Obama’s inept and naive handling of the region.

    By early January 2017, when Mr Trump took office, Iran was squandering the tens of billions of dollars it received for signing the nuclear deal, which Mr Obama had helped broker in 2015, on expanding its malign influence across the landscape of the Middle East.

    This malign influence included supporting the Assad regime in Syria, the Hizbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanon, pro-Iranian Shia militias in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which regularly employed Iranian-made drones and missiles to attack Saudi Arabia, a key US ally.

    Attempts to revive the Israeli-Arab peace process, meanwhile, were going nowhere because of the Obama administration’s antagonistic attitude towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as maintaining its hopeless quest for a more constructive relationship with the Palestinian leadership.

    In addition, Mr Obama’s ambivalence about becoming involved in Syria’s brutal war meant that US forces were hampered in their attempts to destroy the Islamist fanatics of ISIS, which had succeeded in capturing large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria.

    Mr Trump therefore deserves enormous credit for achieving a complete turnaround in America’s standing in the region during his tenure at the White House.

    Thanks to Mr Trump’s robust approach to Iran, where he withdrew from the nuclear deal and re-imposed crippling sanctions against Tehran, the Iranian economy has been seriously diminished, thus limiting the ayatollahs’ ability to peddle their pernicious creed throughout the region.

    ISIS, and its dream of establishing a self-governing “caliphate”, has been completely destroyed, mainly because, soon after taking office, Mr Trump gave US commanders the authority and freedom to intensify the military campaign against the Islamist fanatics.

    Arguably, Mr Trump’s greatest achievement in the Middle East, though, has been the success he has enjoyed in breaking the impasse in the Israeli-Arab peace process, with a clutch of Arab regimes – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — establishing diplomatic relations with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords, with many other Arab governments — including Saudi Arabia — said to be giving serious consideration to following suit.

    Mr Trump’s Middle East legacy is not only impressive — it has completely redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving towards peace, not conflict, as was so often the case during Mr Obama’s presidency.

    So the challenge for the incoming Biden administration now will be to see how it can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without jeopardising the very significant achievements that have been accomplished during Mr Trump’s tenure.

    Certainly, if the incoming Biden administration makes any serious attempt to undermine Mr Trump’s legacy in the Middle East, it will do so at its peril.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 23:00

  • "People Are Fed Up": California Out Of Excuses As Coronavirus Defies Militant Lockdowns
    “People Are Fed Up”: California Out Of Excuses As Coronavirus Defies Militant Lockdowns

    California’s response to COVID-19 ranks slightly below China welding people inside apartment buildings in terms of militancy, yet the for all the measures taken by the Golden State, it’s become one of the nation’s worst epicenters for the pandemic, according to Politico.

    Registered Nurse Allison Shiftar puts on protective glasses as she gets ready to go into one of the triage rooms to care for a Covid-19 positive patient in the emergency department at Sutter Roseville Medical Center in Roseville, Calif. | Renee C. Byer/The Sacramento Bee via AP, Pool)

    And if Politico is calling out California, whose Democratic governor deems himself above his own rules, you know it’s bad.

    America’s most populous state has become one of the nation’s worst epicenters for the disease, setting new records for cases, hospitalizations and deaths almost every day. Things are so bad in Southern California that some patients are being treated in hospital tents, while doctors have begun discussing whether they need to ration care.

    The turnabout has confounded leaders and health experts. They can point to any number of reasons that contributed to California’s surge over the past several weeks. But it is hard to pinpoint one single factor — and equally hard to find a silver bullet. –Politico

    The state of nearly 40 million residents has seen almost 2 million cases and 22,000 deaths despite strict mask mandates, school and playground closures, and restrictions on dining that are destroying small businesses across the state.

    “Nationally, there has been a kaleidoscopic application of every imaginable type of lockdown order with California being the most restrictive and inflicting the most devastation on small businesses and the most economically vulnerable service workers. And still, we are none the better as far as COVID is concerned,” said California Restaurant Association President and CEO Jot Condie, adding “In fact in L.A. where indoor and outdoor dining are completely shut down, with indoor dining [closed] since July, the virus rages on.”

    Meanwhile, the state – like many others, is suffering from spikes in crime, mental illness and suicide.

    At more than 100 new daily cases per 100,000 residents, California’s case rate is second only to that in Tennessee, according to the nonprofit tracking site Covid Act Now — though it’s a state that does not mandate mask wearing and allows indoor gatherings of up to 10 people. The website Covid Exit Strategy shows a 97 percent rise in Covid throughout California, which has gone in the opposite direction from its West Coast counterparts, Oregon and Washington. -Politico

    “We are facing a very, very difficult and very dangerous time in our county, in our region and in our state. All of our numbers are going in the wrong direction, and our reality is rather grim at the moment,” said Santa Clara County public health officer Sara Cody last Wednesday. “If we have a surge on top of a surge… we will definitely break.”

    Officials have few answers for what’s going on – blaming gatherings such as postseason viewing parties when the Dodgers and Lakers won championships this fall. Others have blamed the strict rules themselves – arguing that frustrated Californians couldn’t take it any longer and decided to live their lives – fueled in part by narrative-busting findings such as a Colorado study concluding that there is ‘no statistically significant‘ link between gyms and COVID cases.

    Politico notes that the state – while imposing strict lockdowns – has very little capability to enforce, instead relying on its regulatory agencies to make examples out of the worst-offending establishments. Meanwhile, several Sheriffs have publicly announced that they will not enforce the state’s stay-at-home restrictions and other pandemic measures,

    “It’s a big state. We get big numbers when things go wrong,” says UC San Francisco professor of epidemiology and statistics, George Rutherford.

    Shame?

    According to Gov. Gavin Newsom, residents need to rely on ‘social pressure’ to keep people apart. The state has spent tens of millions of dollars on billboards and advertisements promoting ‘responsible’ behavior. Newsom himself, however, made headlines when he broke his own guidelines to attend an upscale dinner party with lobbyists.

    And perhaps thanks to Newsom’s hypocrisy, people are now ignoring his edicts.

    In the biggest shopping month of the year, parking lots at malls and retail centers are packed. Such stores are among the few indoor operations allowed to stay open with stated capacity limits. Mobility data from Google suggests that Newsom’s December stay-home orders have barely made a dent in keeping people home compared to previous months, though the baseline doesn’t say whether it may have tamped down traffic compared to last December.

    …

    Critics have questioned the science behind the regional lockdown orders. Public and industry pressure has already convinced state health officials to reopen playgrounds and relax limits on grocery store capacity. A Los Angeles trial court judge also said the county’s prohibition on outdoor dining was “arbitrary” and that there was insufficient evidence showing it was a source of virus spread. -Politico

    According to state Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R-Templeton), the state’s attempt to “shut down types of human interaction without seeing if that’s effective” created a backlash, which is “driving people to higher-risk activity” such as holding large gatherings at homes instead of restaurants.

    “The public health officials have lost credibility with a huge section of the populace. They’re just tuning them out now,” says Cunningham. “The goalposts are moving all the time. … People are fed up with it and they don’t think it makes any sense, and they’re not wrong.“

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 22:40

  • "The Elements Of The China Challenge": A Reply To Critics
    “The Elements Of The China Challenge”: A Reply To Critics

    Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClearPolitics.com,

    In mid-November, the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff — I serve as the director — published “The Elements of the China Challenge.”

    The paper argues that the core of the challenge consists of the concerted efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to reconfigure world order to serve the CCP’s authoritarian interests and aims. It explains the errors that nourished the hope on both the right and the left that economic liberalization in China, coupled with Western engagement and incorporation of Beijing into international organizations, would bring about China’s political liberalization. It describes the characteristic practices of the communist dictatorship, traces China’s brazen programs of economic co-optation and coercion in every region of the world, examines the Marxist-Leninist dogma and hyper-nationalist beliefs that provide the intellectual sources of the CCP’s quest for global supremacy, and surveys China’s vulnerabilities — both those endemic to authoritarian regimes and those specific to the People’s Republic of China. In conclusion, the paper lays out a framework for securing freedom.

    Reaction to the paper has been instructive. The Chinese Communist Party responded with ritual denunciation. In contrast, public intellectuals, scholars, and public officials from around the world have expressed appreciation for the Policy Planning Staff’s efforts to gather in one place the evidence of the CCP’s  predatory policies, to distill the party’s governing ambitions, and to sketch a way forward for the United States and all nations dedicated to preserving the free, open, and rules-based international order. The best of the American responses to the paper have coupled praise, in some cases grudging, with strictures, sometimes angry, about the paper’s limitations. The domestic criticisms are especially revealing, both for the serious issues they raise and for the misconceptions that they promulgate.

    “The Elements of the China Challenge” has its origins in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s reorientation of the State Department — consistent with the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy and a number of other administration documents — around the new round of great-power competition launched by the CCP. The administration’s attention to the China challenge does not entail — as many mistakenly suppose — that the United States must turn its back to the rest of the world.

    To the contrary, the Policy Planning Staff paper stresses that to counter China’s quest for global supremacy, the United States must renew its alliance system and must reform international organizations so that they serve America’s vital interest in preserving an international order that is composed of free and sovereign nation-states and that is grounded in respect for human rights and the rule of law.

    Trump administration policy reflects this reorientation. For starters, the administration has led in exposing the CCP’s initial cover up of the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent disinformation campaign. The administration intensified efforts to combat China’s massive intellectual property theft. It placed the United States at the forefront of efforts to hold China accountable for gross human rights violations, especially the brutal imprisonment of more than a million Uyghurs in re-education camps in Xinjiang — the United States is the only nation to impose sanctions on CCP officials for these unconscionable abuses. It terminated Hong Kong’s special trading status in the spring, when the CCP crushed freedom in the city. It increased weapons sales to Taiwan, embarked on an inaugural U.S.-Taiwan economic dialogue, and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Taiwan on health, science, and technology. It invigorated the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) and, with its strategy for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, affirmed the region’s critical importance. It revamped the Development Finance Corporation and reformed the Export-Import Bank to improve the ability of United States and its allies and partners to invest in other nations’ physical and digital infrastructure. And, the Trump administration has convinced more than 50 countries and counting to join the Clean Network, which promises secure telecommunications — unlike the technology offered by Chinese “national champions” Huawei and ZTE, which are CCP extensions whose hardware and software threaten individual privacy and national security.

    By stepping back, taking a broader view, and documenting the pattern and purpose of China’s actions, “The Elements of the China Challenge” explains why these policies are urgently needed, and why much more must be done. And by identifying 10 tasks that the United States must undertake — from restoring civic concord at home to, where possible, cooperating with Beijing based on norms of fairness and reciprocity, and to championing freedom abroad — the Policy Planning Staff paper lays the foundations for refashioning U.S. foreign policy to meet the China challenge.

    A common theme of the critics, reputable as well as disreputable, is that the paper falls short of the work of George Kennan, a career foreign service officer who in 1947 founded the Policy Planning Staff and became its first director. At the dawn of the Cold War, Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram” from Moscow and his 1947 Foreign Affairs article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” illuminated the threat to freedom posed by the Soviet Union. The most influential documents produced by a State Department official, they served as sources of inspiration for the Policy Planning Staff, but we did not seek to replicate them since, as Kennan well understood, different challenges and moments demand different undertakings and emphases. Above all, today’s Policy Planning Staff learned from Kennan’s insistence on the combination of “ideology and circumstances” that determines great-power conduct, and took to heart his counsel that “to avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.”

    As for the disreputable critics, they give no evidence of having read the paper.

    The Global Times, a daily tabloid and wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party, was first out of the gate. The CCP newspaper dismissed “The Elements of the China Challenge” the day after it appeared as an “insult to Kennan” amounting to little more than “a collection of malicious remarks from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other anti-China U.S. politicians and senators.” At his regular press conference the following day, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian denounced the Policy Planning Staff paper as “just another collection of lies piled up by the those ‘living fossils of the Cold War’ from the U.S. State Department.”

    It would have been more accurate to refer to “the living victors of the Cold War,” but more telling still is the CCP’s failure to notice that the Policy Planning Staff distinguishes the China challenge from the Soviet challenge. While underscoring that, like the former Soviet Union after World War II, China today presents the foremost threat to freedom, the paper also stresses the distinct forms of power at work. “The Soviet Union,” the paper argues, “primarily enlarged its dominions and sought to impose its will through military coercion.” In contrast, and notwithstanding its development of a world-class military, China “primarily pursues the reconfiguration of world affairs through a kind and quantity of economic power of which the Soviets could only have dreamed.”

    Of the reputable critics, Odd Arne Westad, a Yale history professor and China scholar, is among the most distinguished. In a Foreign Affairs essay titled “The U.S. Can’t Check China Alone,” he asserts that the “report correctly sees China as the greatest challenge to the United States since the end of the Cold War, showing how Beijing has grown more authoritarian at home and more aggressive abroad.” The paper also, according to Westad, “rightly recognizes how China has tried to gain an advantage by applying economic pressure and conducting espionage — as well as by exploiting the naiveté that causes many foreigners to miss the oppressive nature of the Chinese Communist Party.”

    Nevertheless, Westad charges, “the report is limited by ideological and political constraints; given that it is a Trump administration document, it must echo President Donald Trump’s distaste for international organizations, even though they are key to dealing with China.” The professor also takes the paper to task on the grounds that it “almost completely ignores the most basic fact about the current situation, which is that the United States can compete effectively with China only through fundamental reform at home.”

    A meticulous scholar of Chinese history, Westad imputes to the Policy Planning Staff paper opinions not found there and overlooks arguments it prominently features. It is not true that our paper, as Westad writes, “suggests that it is now in the United States’ interests to destroy and then selectively rebuild existing international institutions.” Rather, the Policy Planning Staff calls for a reassessment of international organizations to determine where they serve freedom and where they no longer advance the objective for which they were created, arguing for reform where possible and the establishment of new institutions where necessary.

    Contrary to Westad, moreover, the Policy Planning Staff highlights the domestic foundations of effective foreign policy. Five of the 10 tasks we identify as crucial to securing freedom involve reform at home — from the renewal of American constitutional government and the promotion of prosperity and civic concord to restoring the U.S. educational system at all levels.

    Hal Brands, another reputable critic and leading scholar, finds “valuable insights” in “The Elements of the China Challenge.” Despite the juvenile taunt in the title of his Bloomberg op-ed, “There’s No George Kennan in the Trump Administration,” Brands — a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies as well as a Bloomberg columnist — writes that the paper “explains, more completely than any prior U.S. policy document, the sources of Chinese conduct — namely the mix of Marxist-Leninist ideology, extreme nationalism and quasi-imperialism that drives the Chinese Communist Party.” In addition, according to Brands, the paper “shows that China’s objectives are not limited to its immediate periphery, but include fundamental changes in the international system”; it “details the troubling aspects of Chinese behavior, from economic predation to Beijing’s menacing military buildup, as well as the deep vulnerabilities — endemic corruption, inescapable demographic problems, economic instability — that threaten its continued ascent”; and it “outlines reasonable steps America should take to strengthen its position.”

    Yet Brands faults “The Elements of the China Challenge” for failing to rise to the ranks of Kennan, whose “brilliance lay in his ability to define an ambitious but ultimately achievable end-state.” Whereas Kennan envisaged a containment policy that would cause the Soviet Union to disintegrate from within, today’s Policy Planning Staff, Brands maintains, “provides no plausible theory of victory” and fails to “clarify what the U.S. seeks to achieve vis-à-vis Beijing.”

    It’s true that in a case in which so many have been so wrong for so long and so consequentially about China’s conduct and intentions, the Policy Planning Staff did not pretend to have a knowledge of the future that it does not possess. Indeed, one cannot safely rule out the several possibilities that Brands contemplates: U.S. firmness impelling the CCP to abandon its expansionist aims or triggering internal collapse, or, notwithstanding American firmness, the CCP holding power for generations to come.

    Brands, however, misses that the Policy Planning Staff lays out a framework for developing concrete policies consistent with all three possibilities. The paper repeatedly states that the goal of U.S. foreign policy must be to advance American interests by preserving an international order composed of free and sovereign nation-states and grounded in human rights and the rule of law while identifying essential tasks — beginning with adhering to our founding principles and preserving the best in our constitutional tradition — on which the achievement of that goal depends.

    Understanding the elements of the China challenge, which encompasses not only knowledge of China but of ourselves, is an indispensable condition for fashioning policies that secure freedom.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 22:20

  • Russia Issues Alexei Navalny An Ultimatum: Return Now Or Face Prison
    Russia Issues Alexei Navalny An Ultimatum: Return Now Or Face Prison

    The Kremlin just upped the ante amid soaring tensions with Germany and the EU over the Alexei Navalny affair, on Monday giving the allegedly poisoned Russian dissident an ultimatum: return to Russia right away for face prison.

    Reuters details that “Russia’s prison service on Monday gave Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny a last minute ultimatum: Fly back from Germany at once and report at a Moscow office early on Tuesday morning, or be jailed if you return after that deadline.”

    Russian officials have repeatedly condemned Berlin’s refusal to allow Russian investigators access to either any of the evidence or Navalny himself, following Germany’s prior conclusion that Russian intelligence tried to assassinate him using Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent in August. 

    Alexei Navalny in court in Moscow in 2017, via TASS/Getty Images

    Russian officials have also been adamant that Navalny was relatively unknown and obscure even among the domestic population, much less on a global stage, but is now basking in the international limelight simply by accusing Russia and Putin directly, as the now recovered Kremlin critic has done in multiple interviews.

    Russia has adamantly denied this narrative of events, instead claiming Navalny is serving as a stooge of Western intelligence in choreographed efforts to gain more political leverage over Moscow, and as justification for further sanctions. The EU recently imposed sanctions on top Russian intelligence officials over the Navalny case, to which Russia responded this month by announcing its own travel ban on select EU officials.

    This new Russian ultimatum apparently stems from a prior criminal case and Navalny’s allegedly violating a suspended prison sentence agreement previously brokered with authorities.

    Reuters explains, “The Federal Prison Service (FSIN) on Monday accused Navalny of violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence he is still serving out over a conviction dating from 2014, and of evading the supervision of Russia’s criminal inspection authority.”

    That initial case centered on theft allegations, something Navalny has long claimed was cooked up by his political enemies in order to damage his reputation as an opposition figure. Certainly at this point, he’s not going to return to Russian soil any time soon and will likely be offered a path to citizenship by Germany.

    The Charité hospital in Berlin where he had been emergency airlifted from Russia in September had announced that after 32 days in care, Navalny’s condition had “improved sufficiently for him to be discharged from acute inpatient care.” He was said to be completely recovered with no symptoms of the prior alleged August poisoning by early October, something the Kremlin has said is deeply suspicious and makes no sense given how deadly or at the very least permanently damaging Novichok is.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 22:00

  • Will Students Return To Public Schools After The Pandemic?
    Will Students Return To Public Schools After The Pandemic?

    By Will Flanders and Cori Petersen of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty; submitted by RealClearEducation.

    “She’s a happy kid, a good student, and the virtual learning was a disaster for us,” said Erin Haroldson of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, whose eight-year-old daughter was receiving virtual education from her local public school last spring. When it looked like schools would go virtual again this fall, Haroldson asked her daughter if she would rather continue at Mount Horeb or start in person at a new school, where she would need to make new friends.

    When her daughter responded “Mom, I want to go to a new school,” the Haroldsons enrolled her in High Point Christian School in Madison.

    The Haroldsons are not alone. According to a new Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) study, the state’s public schools saw an unprecedented enrollment decline this fall, and the school districts that started virtual learning at the outset of the school year lost the most students. Across the Badger State, the average district saw an enrollment decline of 2.67%. Districts that went fully virtual drove this decline, seeing an average 3% decline in enrollment.  

    These numbers may seem small, but they represent a meaningful number of kids. In Madison, enrollment declined by 995 students; in Milwaukee, by 2,335 students. These drop-offs were driven in part by smaller pre-kindergarten and kindergarten enrollment. 

    Wisconsin’s experience is consistent with national trends. New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, is enrolling about 19,000 fewer students. According to Chalkbeat, the city’s most affluent public schools have seen a decline of 12%, while enrollment at the city’s lowest-income schools has dropped 4%. Enrollment in the Los Angeles Unified District, the nation’s second-largest district, has been dropping since its peak in 2003, when it reached 750,000 students. As of April, EdSource reported that enrollment had dropped to below 600,000. According to NPR, Los Angeles Unified is down about 11,000 students this fall. 

    If students are going to receive a virtual education, some parents prefer that they be taught by the remote-learning experts – virtual charter schools. Enrollment in K12, the largest virtual charter school in the U.S., grew from 123,000 last year to 170,000 as of August. In Wisconsin, some parents are using the state’s open-enrollment program to send their children to one of the 44 districts with a virtual charter school; these districts have seen an average 4.5% increase in enrollment relative to others. In Oklahoma, virtual charter schools went from educating 19,000 students to 33,000 this year, and, according to ChalkBeat, virtual charters in states such as Michigan, Oregon, Utah and Pennsylvania have experienced similar growth. 

    Other parents, however, like the Haroldsons, still want their children to be educated in person, despite the pandemic. They believe that the benefits of in-person education outweigh the potential consequences, since children are low risk. This belief is consistent with guidance released in August by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other scientific research. A research effort led by economist Emily Oster from Brown University looked at data from 200,000 students across 47 states and found that students seem less susceptible to COVID-19 and don’t spread the virus like adults do. 

    But if the science says it is low risk for students to be in person – and many parents agree, to the extent that they’re willing to arrange alternative in-person schooling for their children – then why are these districts going virtual? A study that WILL released last month suggests that teachers’ unions played a big role in these decisions. In fact, in Wisconsin, the presence of a teachers’ union in a district played a larger role in whether schools went virtual than the presence of COVID-19 in the community. Of the 36 Wisconsin school districts that began the year virtually, 81% had a teachers’ union. A national study, put out in September by Cory DeAngeles and Christopher Makridis, suggests that strong teachers’ unions played a leading role in shuttering districts across the U.S. They found that in states with right-to-work laws, schools were 14 percentage points more likely to open than in states without those laws.  

    The Haroldsons plan to keep their daughter at High Point Christian even after the pandemic is over. Wisconsin’s choice programs are growing fast, enrolling more than 2,700 new students throughout this last year. Whether it’s through such choice programs outside of public schools, or through public school programs such as open enrollment between districts, enabling parents to make the educational choices that they feel are best for their children is more important than ever. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 21:40

  • China To Overtake US By 2028; Ushering In Dollar's Demise? 
    China To Overtake US By 2028; Ushering In Dollar’s Demise? 

    Americans must wake up to the ugly reality that China will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy in 2028, five years earlier than previously anticipated, after weathering the virus pandemic much better than Western countries, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), a UK-based consultancy group.

    In 2017, CEBR initially reported that China would surpass the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy by 2032. However, the pandemic and corresponding economic fallout have rapidly brought forward the economic power shift from West to East. 

    “The Chinese authorities reacted vigorously and as a result, the Chinese economy has sustained less economic damage than any other major economy,” CEBR wrote in the report. 

    “Thanks to a strict early response, China has managed to avoid re-introducing the harshest pandemic-fighting measures after the first wave,” the consultancy group continued, adding that Beijing’s “skillful management of the pandemic” may have tipped the Sino-U.S. competition in China’s favor.

    “The big news in this forecast is the speed of growth of the Chinese economy,” said Douglas McWilliams, the CEBR’s deputy chairman. “We expect it to overtake the U.S. a full five years earlier than we did a year ago,” he added.

    CEBR’s annual league table of the growth prospects of 193 countries shows a major power shift and potential economic demise of the West. 

    It was noted China might expect average economic growth of 5.7% between 2021-2025 before slowing to 4.5% from 2026 to 2030. 

    The U.S. could experience a strong debt-fuelled rebound in 2021, with growth slowing to 1.9% between 2022-2024 and then falling to 1.6% towards the end of the decade. 

    Japan, the world’s third-biggest economy, is expected to be overtaken by India by 2030. Germany will be pushed down to fifth.

    “Other Asian economies are also shooting up the league table. One lesson for western policymakers, who have performed relatively badly during the pandemic, is that they need to pay much more attention to what is happening in Asia rather than simply looking at each other,” McWilliams said. 

    While the economic shift from West to East will happen much quicker than anticipated, American exceptionalism won’t fade overnight but will take a number of years; with that, the dollar is likely to enter a period of downward pressure. 

    JPMorgan’s latest “Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions” report highlights an extended period of U.S. “exceptionalism” – in growth, interest rates and equity market performance – may be coming to an end. As a result, we expect the dollar to weaken in most crosses over this cycle, with notable falls coming against EUR, JPY, and CNY.”

    Americans must wake up to the ugly fact that China is ahead of schedule at displacing the U.S. as the world’s greatest economic superpower. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 21:20

  • Trump's Parting Shot: China Rips Pro-Taiwan & Tibet Measures In Spending Package
    Trump’s Parting Shot: China Rips Pro-Taiwan & Tibet Measures In Spending Package

    China has reacted fiercely to what it says is anti-China language and policies contained in the huge $2.3 trillion spending package President Trump signed Sunday night, namely centered on Tibet Policy and Support Act and the Taiwan Assurance Act.

    China’s foreign affairs minister Zhao Lijian expressed the Chinese Communist Party’s anger, saying the country is “resolutely opposed” to the two measures as they unfairly “target China” and constitute blatant interference in its own foreign affairs and relations.

    Urging Washington to not enforce those parts of the two bills within the spending package, Lijian said further that “The determination of the Chinese government to safeguard its national sovereignty, security, and development interests is unwavering,” according to Reuters.

    The sections are part of a controversial series of foreign aid related massive spending stipulations contained within the nearly 6,000 pages which have now become law.

    The Tibet Policy and Support Act further bans China from establishing new consulates in the US until the US is able to do so freely in Tibet.

    Moreover, the bill specifically directs the secretary of state to establish an American consulate in Tibet, which has long been claimed by China in a situation parallel to the historic standoff over the Republic of Taiwan..

    The bill also targets Chinese officials for travel bans if they are deemed “complicit in identifying or installing a government-approved candidate” to succeed the Dalai Lama.

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    As for the Taiwan Assurance Act, it aims to solidify a 1979 US law that affirms “substantive ties” between the US and Taiwan, including more weapons sales and increased moves toward normalization.

    This after over the past months the US and Taiwan have inked deals for a record breaking series of advanced weapons transfers, which Beijing sees as a blatant violation of the previously agreed upon longtime ‘One China Policy’ status quo.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 21:00

  • Iran Vows "Massive Response" If Israel Crosses 'Red Lines' With Sub Presence In Gulf
    Iran Vows “Massive Response” If Israel Crosses ‘Red Lines’ With Sub Presence In Gulf

    Just a little over three weeks to go until President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan.20 and tensions in the Persian Gulf are at boiling point given not only the presence of a US nuclear submarine but allegedly a major Israeli presence as well. A week ago Israeli sources confirmed that an Israeli submarine had crossed the Suez Canal visibly above water en route to the Persian Gulf as a clear “message” to the Islamic Republic.

    On Monday Iran’s foreign ministry warned that Israel now risks crossing “red lines” should it enter deeply into the Gulf and thus Iran’s own backyard, with ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh warning that Israel should be “aware of the risks of crossing Iran’s red lines.”

    “Everybody knows what the Persian Gulf means to Iran, and what policy Iran pursues about its national interests and security,” Khatibzadeh said according to Tasnim news agency. The build-up in Persian Gulf waters comes after the November assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran in a sophisticated operation widely blamed on Israeli intelligence.

    Khatibzadeh added that Iran has sent “messages to the US government and our friends in the region warning the current US regime not to embark on a new adventure in its final days at the White House.”

    Separately on Monday a top level Iranian parliament member issued a more directly threatening response to the Israeli sub presence. According to new statements by the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Abolfazl Amouei:

    Iran will not hesitate to give a “strong and massive” response to any Israeli submarine in the Persian Gulf, a lawmaker says, after the Washington Post  claimed that Tel Aviv was sending one to the strategic waters. 

    “Israel must know that our response to aggression against our national security will be strong and massive,” Amouei added, speaking on behalf of Iranian lawmakers.

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    Echoing prior statements of both Iran’s president and the foreign ministry, Amouei alleged that Israel and the outgoing Trump administration were busy looking to provoke a conflict, given the door is closing for such an opportunity as Biden has vowed to immediately restore US participation in the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA).

    “Israel is looking for excuses to drag the region into a tension that creates chaos in the last days of the Trump presidency,” Amouei said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

    However, whether the Israeli sub is currently actually in Gulf waters or even as far as in the Strait of Hormuz remains a different question. Iran’s foreign ministry downplayed this at the same time, calling both recent Israeli and a Washington Post report a “media assumption.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 20:40

  • Police Release Dramatic Bodycam Footage Of Nashville RV Bombing 
    Police Release Dramatic Bodycam Footage Of Nashville RV Bombing 

    Metro Nashville Police have released body camera footage from one of the officers who responded to 2nd Ave N, in Downtown Nashville, on Friday morning, just minutes before the explosion. 

    Officer Michael Sipos’ body camera footage was published on the Nashville Police’s YouTube channel on Monday. There are about twelve minutes of footage. 

    The video starts with a handful of officers around 6:14 am on Christmas morning, requesting residents living on the street where 63-year-old Anthony Q. Warner, the bombing suspect confirmed by local police and federal agents, had parked his recreational vehicle packed with explosives, to vacate the area because “there is something very serious happening down the road,” one officer told a resident. 

    A couple of minutes into the video, Sipos walked in the direction of Warner’s recreational vehicle parked outside the AT&T building. As he approaches the vehicle on the opposite side of the street, a loudspeaker can be heard playing from the vehicle, declaring: “all buildings in this area must be evacuated now.”

    While Sipos and another officer walk to the end of the street, he said, “that building right next to you is the building that houses all the hardlines for phones throughout the Southeast.” 

    As Sipos headed to his police car, around the 3:51 mark of the video, a loud explosion can be heard, illuminating the morning sky as glass and debris could be heard raining down on the officer. 

    Sipos can be seen suiting up with body armor and running back to the scene to find an absolute warzone. 

    Authorities confirmed that human remains at the scene were a match to Warner’s DNA. They are also analyzing if his paranoia over 5G technology was the motive to detonate his recreational vehicle outside the AT&T facility. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 20:18

  • New Jersey Women Arrested For Hosting COVID Speakeasy Where Hundreds Showed Up
    New Jersey Women Arrested For Hosting COVID Speakeasy Where Hundreds Showed Up

    Two New Jersey women were arrested for hosting an illegal “makeshift bar” over the weekend, according to NBC News.

    Officers responded to calls at a Newark warehouse at around 12 a.m. on Sunday where hundreds of patrons were seen eating, drinking and illegally gambling, according to police.

    Anthony Ambrose, Newark Public Safety Director, said 26-year-old Denisse Tinizaray and 28-year-old Katherine Tinizaray, both of Newark, were arrested after the two failed to provide a liquor license.

    Both women were charged with maintaining an illegal alcohol establishment and illegal possession and sales of alcohol. –NBC News

    Meanwhile, three people were arrested in a Newark suburb for allegedly selling alcohol without a permit outside a hookah lounge which hosted over 50 people, according to NBC New York.

    The owner and operators of La Café Hookah hosted over 50 inside the establishment, above Gov. Phil Murphy’s limit of 10 people for indoor gatherings and after 10 p.m. curfew, according to Paterson police.

    None of the employees or customers were wearing any PPE and they were not properly distanced.

    Jamahl Carter, Jamahl Carter Jr. and Erica Bush face several charges including selling alcohol without a license, no entertainment license, smoking indoors and recklessly creating and maintaining a condition endangering public safety.

    When has prohibition ever worked?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 20:00

  • House Votes To Override Trump Veto On Defense Bill
    House Votes To Override Trump Veto On Defense Bill

    As expected, the House on Monday overwhelmingly voted to override Trump’s veto of the sweeping defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act. The final vote was 322-87, receiving the two-thirds majority it required with 109 Republicans voting to override Trump’s veto while 20 Democrats voted to sustain it.

    Some Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, voted to sustain Trump’s veto despite supporting the bill earlier this month.

    The Senate is expected to hold its own veto override vote later this week. If the Senate also overrides the president’s veto, it will be the first time Congress has successfully rejected a presidential veto during Trump’s presidency.

    As ABC reports, the $740 billion bill includes pay raises for America’s soldiers, improvements in body armor for women, coronavirus relief, military housing improvements and boosted sexual harassment prevention and response measures, among other items. It has passed both chambers of Congress for 59 years straight with strong bipartisan support.

    Shortly before the vote, GOP Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, urged his colleagues to vote for “the exact same bill” they did before, emphasizing that “not a comma has changed.”

    “I would only ask that as members vote, they put the best interests of the country first,” Thornberry said. “There is no other consideration that should matter.”

    the bill initially cleared both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities earlier this month. Trump then vetoed the bill last week because it didn’t include a repeal of Section 230, a law that shields internet companies from being liable for what is posted on their websites by them or third parties. The bill also included a provision that would rename military bases named after Confederates, which Trump opposed.

    The defense bill must become law before noon Jan. 3, when the new session of Congress begins, or it will expire.

    While the veto was expected, in a curious twist, Sen Bernie Sanders said he will hold up vote on overriding the defense bill veto unless Senate votes on $2k checks: “Let me be clear: If Senator McConnell doesn’t agree to an up or down vote to provide the working people of our country a $2,000 direct payment, Congress will not be going home for New Year’s Eve. Let’s do our job”, Sanders said.

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    The move, according to Politico, is meant to further “undermine Republican senators competing in the Georgia run-offs”… as if a few thousand fake mailed ballots won’t be sufficient.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:42

  • High School Student Sues Over Leftist "Indoctrination" In Nevada
    High School Student Sues Over Leftist “Indoctrination” In Nevada

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

    A high school senior of mixed race is suing a taxpayer-funded charter school in Nevada over the “coercive, ideological indoctrination” that is central to its Critical Race Theory-based curriculum that forces students to associate aspects of their identity with oppression.

    In the lawsuit, Clark v. State Public Charter School Authority, filed Dec. 22 in federal court in Nevada, the young plaintiff William Clark and his mother Gabrielle Clark claim their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were being violated. Students were allegedly told that by refusing to identify with an oppressive group, they were exercising their privilege or underscoring their role as an oppressor.

    The lawsuit was filed by the Illinois-based group Schoolhouse Rights, whose website describes its mission as supporting “civil rights litigation in defense of students’ freedom of conscience in public education and the rights of parents to guide and direct the upbringing of their children.”

    The student at Democracy Prep in Las Vegas whose mother is black and deceased father was white, claims there was a hostile classroom environment, and that he felt discriminated against in the mandatory, year-long “Sociology of Change” course required for graduation. There is another required class, “Change the World,” in which students carry out a political or social work project.

    Because the so-called civics curriculum implemented by new management carried the same name as the previous curriculum, parents like Mrs. Clark “were not aware of the turn towards coercive, ideological indoctrination until they began seeing the detrimental effects it worked upon their children,” the legal complaint states.

    The new curriculum “inserted consciousness raising and conditioning exercises under the banner of ‘Intersectionality’ and ‘Critical Race Theory.’ These sessions … are not descriptive or informational in nature, but normative and prescriptive: they require pupils to ‘unlearn’ and ‘fight back’ against ‘oppressive’ structures allegedly implicit in their family arrangements, religious beliefs and practices, racial, sexual, and gender identities, all of which they are required to divulge and subject to non-private interrogation.”

    William was directed “in class to ‘unlearn’ the basic Judeo-Christian principles [his mother] imparted to him, and then [the school] retaliated against [him].”

    “Some racial, sexual, gender and religious identities, once revealed,” the complaint states, “are officially singled out in the programming as inherently problematic, and assigned pejorative moral attributes by Defendants.”

    The school principal told Mrs. Clark “that the theoretical basis of the revamped ‘Sociology of Change’ course is known as ‘intersectionality,’ and is inspired by political activist, academic and ‘Critical Race Theory’ proponent Kimberlé Crenshaw,” the complaint states. Crenshaw is a law professor at UCLA and Columbia Law School who is regarded as a leading authority on black feminist legal theory and is said to have coined the term “intersectionality.”

    William Clark was required for assignments the legal complaint says “to reveal his racial, sexual, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities and religious identities,” by his teacher who greeted the students by saying, “Hello my wonderful social justice warriors!” Clark was told the next step would be to determine if parts of his identity “have privilege or oppression attached to it.” Privilege was defined as “the inherent belief in the inferiority of the oppressed group.”

    The legal argument the Clarks make is that William is being compelled “to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments which were subject to the scrutiny, interrogation and derogatory labeling of students, teachers and school administrators.”

    The defendants “are coercing him to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm.”

    The school repeatedly threatened William “with material harm including a failing grade and non-graduation if he failed to comply with their requirements,” the complaint states, and refused to accommodate his requests for reasonable accommodation.

    Resistance

    Steven Hayward lauded the lawsuit at Power Line Blog, saying it heralds the beginning of an “active resistance” and a “counterrevolution” against the far-left takeover of American institutions.

    “While misguided Millennials lean heavily progressive at the moment, the next generation of young people is going to swing sharply to the right out of rebellion against the stifling conformity of the progressive left that went into hyperdrive this year,” Hayward writes.

    The lawsuit comes after President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13950 on Sept. 22 prohibiting the military, federal agencies, and federal contractors from promoting the “divisive concepts” that are part of Critical Race Theory in workplace trainings.

    The theory is the basis for an intellectual movement whose adherents retired federal Judge Richard Posner, dubbed “the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century,” has described as the “lunatic core” of “radical legal egalitarianism.” The late Derrick Bell, who was one of former President Barack Obama’s professors at Harvard Law School, was the most prominent scholar to promote the theory.

    While Trump has referred to Critical Race Theory by name, the executive order does not, instead describing it as a “malign ideology [that] is now migrating from the fringes of American society and threatens to infect core institutions of our country,” including in “workplace diversity trainings across the country, even in components of the Federal Government and among Federal contractors.”

    It is an ideology “rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.”

    U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman, an Obama appointee based in San Jose, California, issued a preliminary nationwide injunction against EO 13950 on Dec. 22, USA Today reported.

    She agreed with an LGBT diversity training organization that argued the order violated its free speech rights. “Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success in proving violations of their constitutional rights … the work Plaintiffs perform is extremely important to historically underserved communities,” Freeman wrote in an order.

    The Epoch Times reached out to Rebecca Feiden, executive director of the State Public Charter School Authority, for a comment over the holiday weekend but had not received a reply as of press time.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:40

  • China's Antitrust Crackdown On Tech's Giants Leads To Massive Losses
    China’s Antitrust Crackdown On Tech’s Giants Leads To Massive Losses

    China’s continued crusade against Jack Ma – which may or may not culminate with Beijing tearing apart his fintech giant, Ant Financial on anti-trust grounds – led to a second day of frenetic selling among China’s largest tech firms, driven by an investor panic Beijing’s crackdown on financial intermediaries and antitrust scrutiny would spread beyond Jack Ma’s internet empire and engulf the country’s most powerful corporations.

    As Bloomberg reports, Alibaba and its three biggest rivals – Tencent, food delivery giant Meituan and JD.com – were hammered in the past 48 hours, losing nearly $200 billion in the two sessions since Thursday when regulators revealed a probe into alleged monopolistic practices at Ma’s company, which was followed on Sunday by comments from PBOC deputy governor Pan Gongsheng who slammed the world’s biggest fintech company, Ant Financial, which is also owned by Ma saying it “must return to its origins in online payments and prohibit irregular competition, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit rating business, establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses, rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth management and credit businesses, and run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations.”

    Traders were stunned by what appears to be the formal start of the Communist Party’s crackdown on not just Alibaba but also, potentially, the wider and increasingly influential tech sphere; as a result they quickly puked the Chinese tech megacaps, with Alibaba falling 8% Monday in Hong Kong, losing $270 billion of value since its October peak. Tencent and Meituan also tumbled more than 6%. Alibaba rival JD.com slid roughly 2%.

    “The Chinese government is putting more pressure or wants to have more control on the tech firms,” Jackson Wong, asset management director at Amber Hill Capital, told Bloomberg. “There is still very big selling pressure on firms like Alibaba, Tencent or Meituan. These companies have been growing at a pace deemed by Beijing as too fast and have scales that are too big.”

    So far Beijing’s ultimate intentions vis-a-vis Jack Ma and his online tech empire remain unclear, but as we noted yesterday, “the worst case scenario would be for Ant to forgo its money management, credit and insurance businesses, halting its operations in the units that service half a billion people. Its wealth management business which includes the Yu’ebao platform that sells mutual funds and money market funds, accounted for 15% of revenue.”

    Today Bloomberg picks up on this, writing that “investors remain divided over the extent to which Beijing will go after Alibaba and its compatriots as Beijing prepares to roll out the new anti-monopoly regulations. The country’s leaders have said little about how harshly they plan to clamp down or why they decided to act now.”

    As Bloomberg adds, it’s unclear what concessions regulators may try to wring from Alibaba. Under the existing Antitrust Law, which is undergoing revisions to include the internet industry for the first time, Beijing can fine violators up to 10% of their revenue. In Alibaba’s case, that could mean a levy of as much as $7.8 billion.

    Of course, the heavily sold tech names aren’t just sitting their: on Monday Alibaba raised its stock repurchase program by $4 billion to $10 billion, effective for two years through the end of 2022. But the buyback program was overwhelmed by fears that the steps taken against Ant are just the tip of the iceberg. While the central bank stopped short of calling for a breakup, the financial services giant now needs to present specific measures and a timetable for overhauling its business.

    The State Administration for Market Regulation dispatched officials to Alibaba’s Hangzhou headquarters last Thursday and the on-site investigation was completed on the day, according to local news reports. The People’s Daily — the Communist Party mouthpiece — ran a commentary over the weekend warning Alibaba’s peers to take the antitrust investigation into Alibaba as a chance to lift their own awareness of fair competition.

    Meanwhile, as we noted over the weekend, the formerly outspoken Ma has vanished from public view since Ant’s IPO got crushed by Beijing in the last moment in November. As of early December, Ma was advised by the government to stay in the country, a Bloomberg source said.

    What happens next?

    According to Bloomberg, “some analysts predict there’s a crackdown coming, but a targeted one.” They point to language in the regulations that suggests a heavy focus on online commerce, from forced exclusive arrangements with merchants known as “Pick One of Two” to algorithm-based prices favoring new users. The regulations specifically warn against predatory pricing – selling below cost – to weed out rivals.

    “As this latest investigation occurs at a time when China is ready to take action against monopolistic practices, we think SAMR might want to use BABA’s case as a precedent to send a message to the rest of the industry that the authority is determined this time to address the” pricing issue, Nomura analysts wrote in a note Monday.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:20

  • Anti-America, Anti-Trump, 'Anti-Racist': The 5 Most Politically-Biased Courses Of 2020
    Anti-America, Anti-Trump, ‘Anti-Racist’: The 5 Most Politically-Biased Courses Of 2020

    Authored by Benjamin Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

    Campus Reform reported on multiple courses in 2020 that pushed left-wing political bias.

    Here are the five most biased courses of 2020.

    1. Vanderbilt University

    More than 800 Vanderbilt students were asked on a class assignment if the U.S. Constitution was “designed to perpetuate white supremacy.” 

    The “correct” answer to the question was “true.”

    The course, entitled “US Elections,” discussed “the presidential and congressional elections, the recruitment of candidates, nomination processes, financing campaigns, media coverage, polling, predictive models, and implications of results.”

    2. Tulane University

    Tulane University in New Orleans is offering course in spring 2021, entitled “Feminism after Trumplandia,” will look at President Donald Trump’s actions while in office, including the “defunding of Planned Parenthood,” the “Muslim ban,” “assault on pro-choice legislation,” rescinding “protections for transgender students,” and Trump’s “history of sexual assault” as “unprecedented dystopia for women.” 

    Despite the description, the professor teaching the course vows it will not be partisan. 

    “It is more about the movement of feminism from 1950 onward and trying to chart how it has changed under the Trump administration,” she said.

    3. CUNY (Queens College)

    An urban studies class at Queens College made students write about three alleged “thefts” that made President Donald Trump wealthy.

    According to the Jacobin article upon which the project was based, Trump’s thefts included “wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses.”

    4. University of Pittsburgh

    The University of Pittsburgh released materials for its first-year, mandatory anti-black racism course. The inaugural semester of “Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance” was required for all freshmen, who were automatically enrolled in the course.

    The first week of the course introduced students to “critical theories on race and anti-blackness in everyday life.” Multiple weeks of the course discuss Black Lives Matter and its influence as a “contemporary black liberation” movement.

    “I’m glad to say I now have a Ph.D. in racism,” one student told Campus Reform.

    5. CUNY (Brooklyn College)

    A Brooklyn College professor threatened to remove any student from “Fundamental Concepts in LGBTQ Studies” if he or she misgenders another individual; after Campus Reform contacted the university for comment, the professor was instructed to remove the threat.

    “My name is B. Call me B,” wrote the professor in the course’s syllabus. “I am nonbinary, transfeminine…I adhere to a strict policy of respect for the gender, sexual, and racial identities of my students. Intentional misgendering, as with any attempt to slur another student’s personal integrity on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion, will result in immediate dismissal from class for that session. Continued abuses will result in disciplinary action with the appropriate administrators.”

    The syllabus listed several LGBTQ-related reading assignments, including “Is the Rectum a Grave?” and “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:00

  • UK Journalist Hounded After Pointing Out That Only Old And Sick Die From COVID
    UK Journalist Hounded After Pointing Out That Only Old And Sick Die From COVID

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    A British journalist has been targeted by an angry online mob after pointing out that only a relatively small amount of healthy people have died from COVID, and suggesting that the complete destruction of our way of life is not an adequate response.

    Talkradio host Julia Hartley-Brewer used the National Health Service’s own statistics to point out that “Just 377 healthy people under 60 have died of Covid.”

    “That’s not a typo. There are no zeros missing,” Hartley-Brewer noted urging that while it is sad, it shouldn’t justify the shutdown of the economy and the house arrest of the entire country.

    She further noted that pointing this out doesn’t mean she is saying “to hell with the old and sick”.

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    Some people just will not hear it, however, raging that Hartley-Brewer is a despicable human being:

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    The radio host refused to back down, noting that she had become a target of the “lockdown fanatic rainbow crowd”:

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    Others noted that some people are refusing to accept the horrible reality unfolding infront of their eyes:

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 18:55

  • BMW Will Produce An Additional 250,000 EVs Over Next 3 Years, CEO Says
    BMW Will Produce An Additional 250,000 EVs Over Next 3 Years, CEO Says

    As if Tesla’s inclusion in to the S&P 500 and ARK Invest’s batshit insane impressive fund inflows over the last couple weeks haven’t been enough to make you consider a top in Tesla, the rest of the automotive world continues to close in on the automaker.

    We have now officially seen electric vehicles from manufacturers like Hyundai, Volkswagen and Ford offering up “real world” competition to Tesla, who continues to struggle with quality control defects while focusing on getting their car horns to make fart noises. 

    Now, BMW is throwing their hat in the ring – in a big way. The German manufacturer said this weekend that it plans to produce an additional 250,000 electric vehicles over the next three years.

    The company’s CEO Oliver Zipse said on Sunday: “We already had ambitions growth plans and want to further expand our market position.”

    The CEO says he has remaining concerns about Germany’s transition to electric vehicles will be slowed down by lack of charging infrastructure. He predicted that 15,000 private and 1,300 public chargers would have to be put into operation in the country, every week, starting now. 

    “Unfortunately we are far from that. Therefore, the next big joint project in Europe must be to expand charging infrastructure,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

    Recall, in the U.S., President Elect Joe Biden has already promised 500,000 new EV charging stations in the U.S. 

    This will be part of Biden’s plan to help create “over 1 million jobs by investing in clean energy”, TechStartups wrote last week. 

    The plan will mark a rapid expansion of EV infrastructure across the U.S., which had about 78,500 charging outlets and about 25,000 charging stations as of March 2020. It also means that Biden is going to have to convince Congress to continue to approve subsidies and tax credits, which have led to such wonderful wastes of money as Tesla’s Buffalo plant. 

    The initiative appears to be part of a plan to stop China from “dramatically outpacing” the U.S. in its adoption of EVs, Reuters noted last week. As part of his plan, Biden expects to nominate former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary. Granholm has experience in taxpayer-funded subsidies, Reuters notes; she helped secure $1.35 billion in the past to incentivize companies to make EVs and batteries in her state when she was governor. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 18:40

  • Neoliberal Champion Larry Summers Opens Mouth, Inserts Both Feet: Taibbi
    Neoliberal Champion Larry Summers Opens Mouth, Inserts Both Feet: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News

    Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, president of Harvard, and Chief Economist at the World Bank, wrote a post-Christmas editorial for Bloomberg entitled, “Trump’s $2000 Stimulus Checks are a Big Mistake.” It’s a classic:

    Some argue that while $2,000 checks may not be optimal support for the post-Covid economy, taking stimulus from $600 to $2,000 is better than nothing. They need to ask themselves whether they would favor $5,000, or $10,000 — or more. There must be a limiting principle.

    The genesis of this Summers article is a perfect tale in microcosm about how America’s intellectual elite manages to lose elections to people like Donald Trump. It’s a two-step error. First, they put people like Summers in charge of economic policies. Then, they let them talk in public.

    Summers the day before Christmas appeared on Bloomberg to offer his initial thoughts on why $2000 checks must be bad: he looked at which politicians were supporting the plan, and worked backward. “When I see a coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind an idea, I think that’s time to run for cover,” he said, adding: “When you see the two extremes agreeing, you can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air.”

     After delivering that cheery message, Summers got feces-pelted on the Internet:

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

    Seeing that his comments “lit up the Twittersphere,” Summers then sat down to compose an article doubling down on his reasoning. Essentially, he argued that from an econometric point of view, we’re already overdoing it on the help front. If you were under the impression that huge numbers of people are living off meals from food banks and/or are at risk in an eviction crisis, you were wrong.

    Noting that “total employee compensation” is “only running about $30 billion per month behind the Covid baseline,” he insisted that $200 billion more in tax rebates per month over the next quarter would “equal an additional seven times the loss of household wage and salary income over the next quarter.”

    He then showed a graph explaining that “because of the legislation passed in 2020, total household income… has exceeded normal levels relative to the economy’s potential more or less since the pandemic began.” The good news, as a result, is that “the existing stimulus bill is sufficient to elevate household income relative to the economy’s potential to abnormally high levels — unheard of during an economic downturn.”

    The whole piece reads like an extended New Yorker cartoon, in which an evictee with empty pockets is about to dive after a rotten apple core in a dumpster, only to be blocked by a cauldron-bellied Harvard economist in a $3000 Zegna suit. Caption: “Actually, total household income relative to the economy’s potential sits at abnormally high levels.”

    There are of course different positions one could take on the question of stimulus checks, but the issue with people like Summers is the utter predictability of their stances. Summers belongs to a club of neoliberal thinkers who’ve dominated American policy for decades. From Bob Rubin to Tim Geithner to Jason Furman to Michael Froman and beyond, the people one friend jokingly refers to as the “Rubino Crime Family” are all basically the same person, affectless technocrats who play up reputations as giant-brained intellectuals — I always imagine them with bulbous Alien Nation heads — while reveling in cold, hard truths about the limits of government assistance.

    Read the rest here.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 28

Today’s News 28th December 2020

  • Twelve Times The 'Lockdowners' Were Wrong
    Twelve Times The ‘Lockdowners’ Were Wrong

    Authored by Phillip Magness via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    This has been a year of astonishing policy failure. We are surrounded by devastation conceived and cheered by intellectuals and their political handmaidens…

    The errors number in the thousands, so please consider the following little more than a first draft, a mere guide to what will surely be unearthed in the coming months and years. We trusted these people with our lives and liberties and here is what they did with that trust. 

    1. Anthony Fauci says lockdowns are not possible in the United States (January 24):

    When asked about the mass quarantine containment efforts underway in Wuhan, China back in January, Fauci dismissed the prospect of lockdowns ever coming to the United States:

    “That’s something that I don’t think we could possibly do in the United States, I can’t imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles, but the judgement on the part of the Chinese health authorities is that given the fact that it’s spreading throughout the provinces… it’s their judgement that this is something that in fact is going to help in containing it. Whether or not it does or does not is really open to question because historically when you shut things down it doesn’t have a major effect.”

    Less than two months later, 43 of 50 US states were under lockdown – a policy advocated by Fauci himself.

    1. US government and WHO officials advise against mask use (February and March)

    When mask sales spiked due to widespread individual adoption in the early weeks of the pandemic, numerous US government and WHO officials took to the airwaves to describe masks as ineffective and discourage their use. 

    Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted against masks on February 29. Anthony Fauci publicly discouraged mask use in a nationally broadcast 60 Minutes interview on March 7. At a March 30 World Health Organization briefing its Director-General supported mask use in medical settings but dissuaded the same in the general public. 

    By mid-summer, all had reversed course and encouraged mask-wearing in the general public as an essential tool for halting the pandemic. Fauci essentially conceded that he lied to the public in order to prevent a shortage on masks, whereas other health officials did an about-face on the scientific claims around masking. 

    While mainstream epidemiology literature stressed the ambiguous nature of evidence surrounding masks as recently as 2019, these scientists were suddenly certain that masks were something of a magic bullet for Covid. It turns out that both positions are likely wrong. Masks appear to have marginal effects at diminishing spread, especially in highly infectious settings and around the vulnerable. But their effectiveness at combating Covid has also been grossly exaggerated, as illustrated by the fact that mask adoption reached near-universal levels in the US by the summer with little discernible effect on the course of the pandemic.

    1. Anthony Fauci’s decimal error in estimating Covid’s fatality rates (March 11)

    Fauci testified before Congress in early March where he was asked to estimate the severity of the disease in comparison to influenza. His testimony that Covid was “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu” stoked widespread alarm and provided a major impetus for the decision to go into lockdown. 

    The problem, as Ronald Brown documented in an epidemiology journal article, is that Fauci based his estimates on a conflation of the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) and Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for influenza, leading him to exaggerate the comparative danger of Covid by an order of magnitude. Fauci’s error – which he further compounded in a late February article for the New England Journal of Medicine – helped to convince Congress of the need for drastic lockdown measures, while also spreading panic in the media and general public. As of this writing Fauci has not acknowledged the magnitude of his error, nor has the journal corrected his article.

    1. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” (March 16)

    The lockdowners settled on a catchy slogan in mid-March to justify their unprecedented shuttering of economic and social life around the globe: two weeks to flatten the curve. The White House Covid task force aggressively promoted this line, as did the news media and much of the epidemiology profession. The logic behind the slogan came from the ubiquitous graph showing (1) a steep caseload that would overwhelm our hospital system, or (2) a mitigated alternative that would spread the caseload out over several weeks, making it manageable. 

    To get to graph #2, society would need to buckle up for two weeks of shelter-in-place orders until the capacity issue could be managed. Indeed, we were told that if we did not accept this solution the hospital system would enter into catastrophic failure in only 10 days, as former DHS pandemic adviser Tom Bossert claimed in a widely-circulated interview and Washington Post column on March 11. 

    Two weeks came and went, then the rationale on which they were sold to the public shifted. Hospitals were no longer on the verge of being overwhelmed – indeed most hospitals nationwide remained well under capacity, with only a tiny number of exceptions in the worst-hit neighborhoods of New York City. 

    A US Navy hospital ship sent to relieve New York departed a month later after serving only 182 patients, and a pop-up hospital in the city’s Javits Convention Center sat mostly empty. But the lockdowns remained in place, as did the emergency orders justifying them. Two weeks became a month, which became two months, which became almost a year. We were no longer “flattening the curve” – a strategy premised on saving the hospital system from a threat than never manifested – but instead refocused on using lockdowns as a general suppression strategy against the disease itself. In short, the epidemiology profession sold us a bill of goods.

    1. Neil Ferguson predicts a “best case” US scenario of 1.1 million deaths (March 20)

    The name Neil Ferguson, the lead modeler and chief spokesman for Imperial College London’s pandemic response team, has become synonymous with lockdown alarmism for good reason. Ferguson has a long track record of making grossly exaggerated predictions of catastrophic death tolls for almost every single disease that comes along, and urging aggressive policy responses to the same including lockdowns. 

    Covid was no different, and Ferguson assumed center stage when he released a highly influential model of the virus’s death forecasts for the US and UK. Ferguson appeared with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on March 16 to announce the shift toward lockdowns (with no small irony, he was coming down with Covid himself at the time and may have been the patient zero of a super-spreader event that ran through Downing Street and infected Johnson himself). 

    Across the Atlantic, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx cited Ferguson’s model as a direct justification for locking down the US. There was a problem though: Ferguson had a bad habit of dramatically hyping his own predictions to political leaders and the press. The Imperial College paper modeled a broad range of scenarios including death tolls that ranged from tens of thousands to over 2 million, but Ferguson’s public statements only stressed the latter – even though the paper itself conceded that such an extreme “worst case” scenario was highly unrealistic. A telling example came on March 20th when the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof contacted the Imperial College modeler to ask about the most likely scenario for the United States. As Kristof related to his readers, “I asked Ferguson for his best case. “About 1.1 million deaths,” he said.”

    1. Researchers in Sweden use the Imperial College model to predict 95,000 deaths (April 10)

    After Neil Ferguson’s shocking death toll predictions for the US and UK captivated policymaker attention and drove both governments into lockdown, researchers in other countries began adapting the Imperial College model to their own circumstances. Usually, these models sought to reaffirm the decisions of each country to lock down. The government of Sweden, however, had decided to buck the trend, setting the stage for a natural experiment to test the Imperial model’s performance. 

    In early April a team of researchers at Uppsala University adapted the Imperial model to Sweden’s population and demographics and ran its projections. Their result? If Sweden stayed the course and did not lock down, it could expect a catastrophic 96,000 deaths by early summer. The authors of the study recommended going into immediate lockdown, but since Sweden lagged behind Europe in adopting such measures they also predicted that this “best case” option would reduce deaths to “only” 30,000. 

    By early June when the 96,000 prediction was supposed to come true, Sweden had recorded 4,600 deaths. Six months later, Sweden has about 8,000 deaths – a severe pandemic to be sure, but an order of magnitude smaller than what the modelers predicted. Facing embarrassment from these results, Ferguson and Imperial College attempted to distance themselves from the Swedish adaptation of their model in early May. Yet the Uppsala team’s projections closely matched Imperial’s own UK and US predictions when scaled to reflect their population sizes. In short, the Imperial model catastrophically failed one of the few clear natural experiment tests of its predictive ability.

    1. Scientists suggest that ocean spray spreads Covid (April 2)

    In the second week of the lockdowns several newspapers in California promoted a bizarre theory: Covid could spread by ocean spray (although the paper later walked back the headline-grabbing claim, it is outlined here in the Los Angeles Times). According to this theory – initially promoted by a group of biologists who study bacterial infection connected to storm runoff – the Covid virus washed down storm gutters and into the ocean, where the ocean breeze would kick it up into the air and infect people on the nearby beaches. As silly as this theory now sounds, it helped to inform California’s initially draconian enforcement of lockdowns on its public beaches. 

    The same week that this modern-day miasmic drift theory appeared, police in Malibu even arrested a lone paddleboarder for going into the ocean during the lockdown – all while citing the possibility that the ocean breeze carried Covid with it.

    1. Neil Ferguson predicts catastrophic death tolls in US states that reopen (May 24)

    Fresh off of their exaggerated predictions from March, the Imperial College team led by Neil Ferguson doubled down on alarmist modeling. As several US states started to reopen in late April and May, Ferguson and his colleagues published a new model predicting another catastrophic wave of deaths by the mid-summer. Their model focused on 5 states with both moderate and severe outbreaks during the first wave. If they reopened, according to the Imperial team’s model, New York could face up to 3,000 deaths per day by July. 

    Florida could hit as high as 4,000, and California could hit 5,000 daily deaths. Keeping in mind that these projections were for each state alone, they exceed the daily death toll peaks for the entire country in both the fall and spring. Showing just how bad the Imperial model was, the actual death toll by mid-July in several of the examined states even fell below the lower confidence boundary of its projected count. While Covid remains a threat in all 5 states, the post-reopening explosion of deaths predicted by Imperial College and used to argue for keeping the lockdowns in place never happened.

    1. Anthony Fauci credits lockdowns for beating the virus in Europe (July 31)

    In late July Anthony Fauci offered additional testimony to Congress. His message credited Europe’s heavy lockdowns with defeating the virus, whereas he blamed the United States for reopening too early and for insufficient aggressiveness in the initial lockdowns. As Fauci stated at the time, “If you look at what happened in Europe, when they shut down or locked down or went to shelter in place — however you want to describe it — they really did it to the tune of about 95% plus of the country did that.” 

    The message was clear: the United States should have followed Europe, but failed to do so and got a summer wave of Covid instead. Fauci’s entire argument however was based on a string of falsehoods and errors. 

    Mobility data from the US clearly showed that most Americans were staying home during the spring outbreak, with a recorded decline that matched Germany, the Netherlands, and several other European countries. Contrary to Fauci’s claim, the US was actually slower than most of Europe to reopen. Furthermore, his praise of Europe collapsed in the early fall when almost all of the lockdown countries in Europe experienced severe second waves – just like the locked down regions of the United States.

    1. New Zealand and Australia declare themselves Covid-free (August-present)

    New Zealand and Australia have thus far weathered the pandemic with extremely low case counts, leading many epidemiologists and journalists to conflate these results with evidence of their successful and replicable mitigation policies. In reality, New Zealand and Australia opted for the medieval ‘Prince Prospero’ strategy of attempting to wall themselves from the world until the pandemic passes – an approach that is highly dependent on their unique geographies. 

    As island nations with comparatively lower international travel than North America and Europe, both countries shut down their borders before the as-of-yet undetected virus became widespread and have remained closed ever since. It’s a costly strategy in terms of its economic impact and personal displacement, but it kept the virus out – mostly. 

    The problem with New Zealand and Australia’s Prince Prospero strategy is that it’s inherently fragile. All it takes to throw it into chaos is for the virus to slip past the border – including by accident or human error. Then heavy-handed lockdowns ensue, imposed with maximum disruption at the spur of the moment in a frantic attempt to contain the breach. 

    The most famous example happened on August 9 when New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared that New Zealand had reached 100 days of being Covid-free. Then just two days later a breach happened, sending Auckland into heavy lockdown. It’s a pattern that has repeated itself every few weeks in both countries. 

    In early December, we saw a similar flurry of stories from Australia announcing that the country had beaten Covid. Two weeks later, another breach occurred in the suburbs around Sydney, prompting a regional lockdown. There have been embarrassing missteps as well. In November the entire state of South Australia went into heavy lockdown over a single misreported case of Covid that was mistakenly attributed to a pizza purchase that did not exist. While both countries continue to celebrate their low fatality rates, they’ve also incurred some of the harshest and most disruptive restrictions in the world – all the result of premature declarations of being “Covid-free” followed by an unexpected breach and another frantic lockdown.

    1. “Renewed lockdowns are just a strawman” (October)

    In early October a group of scientists met at AIER where they drafted and signed the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement calling attention to the severe social and economic harms of lockdowns and urging the world to adopt alternative strategies for ensuring the protection of the most vulnerable. Although the statement quickly gathered tens of thousands of co-signers from health science and medical professionals, it also left the lockdown supporters incensed. They responded not by scientific debate over the merits of their policies, but with a vilification campaign. 

    They answered by flooding the petition with hoax signatures and juvenile name-calling, and by peddling wildly false conspiracy theories about AIER’s funding (the primary instigator of both tactics, ironically, was a UK blogger known for promoting 9/11 Truther conspiracies). But the lockdowners also adopted another narrative: they began to deny that lockdowns were even on the table. 

    Nobody was considering bringing back the lockdowns from the spring, they insisted. Arguing against the politically unpopular shelter-in-place orders in the fall only served the purpose of undermining public support for narrower and more temperate restrictions. The Great Barrington authors, we were told, were arguing with a “strawman” from the past. 

    Over the next several weeks in October a dozen or more prominent epidemiologists, public health experts, and journalists peddled the “lockdowns are a strawman” line. The “strawman” claim saw promotion in top outlets including the New York Times, and in an op-ed by two principle co-signers of the John Snow Memorandum, a competing petition that lockdown supporters drafted as a response to the Great Barrington Declaration. 

    The message was clear: the GBD was sounding a false alarm against policies from the past that the lockdowners “reluctantly” supported in the spring as an emergency measure but had no intention of reviving. By early November, the “strawman” of renewed lockdowns became a reality in dozens of countries across the globe – often cheered on by the very same people who used the “strawman” canard in October. 

    Several US states followed suit including California, which imposed severe restrictions on private gatherings up to and including meeting your own family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And a few weeks after that, some of the very same epidemiologists who used the “strawman” line in October revised their own positions after the fact. They started claiming they had supported a second lockdown all along, and began blaming the GBD for impeding their efforts to impose them at an earlier date. In short, the entire “lockdowns are a strawman” narrative was false. And it now appears that more than a few of the scientists who used it were actively lying about their own intentions in October.

    1. Anthony Fauci touts New York as a model for Covid containment (June-December)

    By all indicators, New York state has suffered one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world. Its year-end mortality rate of almost 1,900 deaths per million residents exceeds every single country in the world. The state famously bungled its nursing home response when Governor Andrew Cuomo forced these facilities to readmit Covid-positive patients as a way to relieve strains on hospitals. The policy backfired as most hospitals never reached capacity, but the readmissions introduced the virus into vulnerable nursing home populations resulting in widespread fatalities (to this day New York intentionally undercounts nursing home fatalities by excluding residents who are moved to a hospital from its reported numbers, further obscuring the true toll of Cuomo’s order). 

    New York has also fared poorly during the fall “second wave” despite reimposing harsh restrictions and regional lockdown measures. By mid-December, its death rate shot far above the mostly-open state of Florida, which has the closest comparable population size to New York. All things considered, New York’s weathering of the pandemic is an exemplar of what not to do. 

    Cuomo’s policies not only failed to contain the virus – they likely made it far more deadly to vulnerable populations. Enter Anthony Fauci, who has been asked multiple times in the press what a model Covid response policy would look like. He gave his first answer on July 20th: “We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York.” 

    Fauci was operating under the assumption that New York, despite its bad run in the spring, had successfully brought the pandemic under control through its aggressive lockdowns and slow reopening. One might think that the fall rebound in New York, despite locking down again, would call this conclusion into question. Not so much for Dr. Fauci, who told the Wall Street Journal on December 8: “New York got hit really badly in the beginning” but they did “a really good job of keeping things down, and still, their level is low compared to the rest of the country.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 23:35

  • High Wage Vs. Low Wage: Visualizing America's K-Shaped Economic 'Recovery'
    High Wage Vs. Low Wage: Visualizing America’s K-Shaped Economic ‘Recovery’

    While it’s not uncommon for low wage workers to bear the brunt of an economic recession, this year’s economic collapse has been exceptionally brutal for America’s lower income employees.

    Employment rates for high wage workers have bounced back from their spring slump, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang points out, unfortunately, the recovery hasn’t been as pronounced for low income workers.

    Less than half the jobs lost earlier this year have returned for those making under $20 per hour. To give you a broader perspective, here’s a look at the percent change of employment rates from February through to November 2020:

    As the table above shows, this recession has been tough for low wage workers. But why?

    It’s Not You, It’s Your Industry

    There are various elements at play, but one key factor driving this unequal recession is the type of work that’s been impacted by the global pandemic.

    The sectors that have been most affected, such as accommodation and food services, are the industries that typically employ low wage workers. On the flip side, many high income workers are employed in industries that allow them to work from home.

    Although several COVID-19 vaccines are now in sight, a return to “normal” can’t come soon enough for workers in hard-hit industries such as travel, tourism, and food services.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 23:00

  • Can The US Reduce Its Dependency On Chinese Rare Earths?
    Can The US Reduce Its Dependency On Chinese Rare Earths?

    Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

    Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the 1970s oil crisis, the United States has relentlessly pursued the utopia of energy independence. But persistent oil crises, severe oil price shocks, and the global shift to clean energy have made it glaringly obvious that Washington will never achieve true energy independence by relying solely on fossil fuels. Indeed, most Americans believe that the government should “…focus on developing alternative sources of energy over expansion of fossil fuel sources” in a bid to alleviate climate change.

    But as the shift to clean and renewable energy gains serious momentum, the United States is now facing another conundrum: It’s almost completely dependent on China for the minerals it uses to build clean energy systems.

    China is a rare earth monopoly, supplying 80% of the rare earths elements (REE) used by the United States in the manufacture of solar panels, windmills, electric car batteries, cellphones, computers, national defense systems, medical equipment, and even in oil and gas technologies.

    That leaves the country in a particularly precarious position, especially with the never-ending trade tensions between the two nations. Indeed, all it took was a simple visit to an obscure factory by Chinese President Xi at the height of the trade war last year to raise the specter of Beijing cutting off supplies of critical materials to the U.S. and potentially crippling large swathes of industries. 

    Further, the U.S. is about to start keenly feeling China’s stranglehold on the industry now that Biden is about to ascend into the Oval Office and possibly implement his ambitious Green Deal.

    Depending on China

    Rare earth minerals, also known as the “vitamins of chemistry”, are a group of elements used in the manufacture of a wide range of equipment in small doses to produce powerful salutary effects. These minerals are extensively used in smartphones, batteries, turbines, lasers, electromagnetic guns, missiles, advanced weapon sensors, stealth technology, and jamming technology. For instance, lanthanum is used in lighting equipment and camera lenses; neodymium in hybrid vehicles; praseodymium in aircraft engines; europium in nuclear reactors and gadolinium in MRIs and X-rays. Oil refiners also use rare earth catalysts to process crude oil into gasoline and jet fuel.

    China produced more than 90 percent of the world’s supply of these critical elements over the past decade, though its share fell to 71.4 percent last year. 

    In 2018, the U.S. Geological Survey identified 35 minerals critical to the country’s economy and national security. America is heavily dependent on imports of these minerals, producing less than a tenth of the world’s supplies and importing half what it consumes. It clearly highlights the U.S.’ soft underbelly.

    And China’s dominance might only increase going forward.

    The global REE industry is expected to nearly double from $8.1 billion in 2018 to $14.4 billion in 2025, as demand for EVs, cell phones, and microchips skyrockets. Biden anticipates this wild growth and has pledged to install 500,000 new EV charging stations by 2030 from the current U.S. tally of 26,000.

    Beating China at its own game

    But China’s control of REE might not necessarily be ‘‘an ace in Beijing’s hand’’ as the Global Times once claimed. On the contrary, the U.S. is actually in a strong position to dent China’s control of the industry and move towards rare earth independence.

    Biden clearly recognizes this challenge and opportunity and has pledged to support the increased exploration of lithium, copper, nickel, and rare earths, among other minerals, to ensure domestic sourcing of minerals critical to solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles.

    Indeed, the government of the United States has been ramping up efforts to expand domestic mineral research and development.

    For example, the bipartisan Reclaiming American Rare Earths (RARE) Act that was introduced in the House in September offers a comprehensive framework of tax incentives to encourage more investment into the U.S.-based REE mining and production. Meanwhile, dozens of companies and startups from Alaska to Texas are advancing mining development, with a site in Colorado about to become the first non-China facility for refining rare earth ores.

    The U.S. is not exactly lacking in REE resources, either. For instance, a mountain in Wyoming called Bear Lodge holds about 18 million tons of REE, enough to supply the country for years.

    And if push comes to shove and Beijing suddenly bans REE exports to the United States, America might counter by building a new supply chain outside of China just like Japan did when a similar fate befell the country a decade ago.

    Or we can simply start recycling more.

    Currently, only around 1% of REE are recycled from end-products at the end of their life-cycles.

    Yet, the potential for recycling rare earths is huge. 

    A 2013 paper says that simply boosting the collection rate of batteries, bulbs, and magnets could improve the recycling rate of REE from one percent up to 20-40%. That would amount to up to 5% of global REE mine production, or nearly half of the U.S. annual mine supply. But we could do even better. As Simon Jowitt, assistant professor at UNLV’s Department of Geoscience, has told ArsTechnica, much more than 40% of REE could be recycled depending on adoption rates of technologies like EVs.

    To be fair, recycling that amount of rare earths would not be a walk in the park

    The diverse types of electronics being recycled would not necessarily contain enough rare earths and in the right proportions to make recycling those elements profitable. In many cases, the manufacturers usually are not responsible for running recycling operations, meaning they might not even be privy to which components contain what materials. 

    Here, the United States’ REE industry needs to borrow a leaf from Europe.

    The EU’s Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment WEEE requires manufacturers of electronic devices to not only finance or perform the recycling of those devices but also requires sellers to offer free e-waste collection.

    But ultimately, it might all boil down to political will–or lack thereof.

    The permitting process in the U.S. is ridiculously long, and can take up to three decades compared to just two years in countries like Australia and Canada. Navigating a regulatory minefield of labyrinthine local, state, and federal rules stifle U.S. mining companies compared to their Chinese competitors. 

    But given recent bipartisan moves in the industry, legislators can hopefully look beyond party lines and affiliations and fashion a workaround.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 22:25

  • Major Covid Vaccine Glitch Emerges: Most Europeans, Including Hospital Staff, Refuse To Take It
    Major Covid Vaccine Glitch Emerges: Most Europeans, Including Hospital Staff, Refuse To Take It

    All is not going according to plan in the biggest global rollout of what is arguably the most important vaccine in a century, and it is not just growing US mistrust in the covid injection effort that was rolled out in record time: an unexpected spike in allergic reactions to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (and now, Moderna too) may prove catastrophic to widespread acceptance unless scientists can figure out what is causing it after the FDA’s rushed approval, and is also why as we reported yesterday, scientists are scrambling to identify the potential culprit causing the allergic reactions.

    Making matters worse, Europe rolled out a huge COVID-19 vaccination drive on Sunday to try to rein in the coronavirus pandemic but even more Europeans than American are sceptical about the speed at which the vaccines have been tested and approved and reluctant to have the shot.

    While the European Union has secured contracts drugmakers including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses and has set a goal for all adults to be inoculated next year, this is looking increasingly like a pipe dream: according to recent surveys, the local population has expressed “high levels of hesitancy” towards inoculation in countries from France to Poland, with many used to vaccines taking decades to develop, not just months.

    “I don’t think there’s a vaccine in history that has been tested so quickly,” Ireneusz Sikorski, 41, said as he stepped out of a church in central Warsaw with his two children.

    “I am not saying vaccination shouldn’t be taking place. But I am not going to test an unverified vaccine on my children, or on myself.”

    Smart: why take the risk of getting vaccinated when others will do it, resulting in the same outcome.

    Surveys in Poland, where distrust in public institutions runs deep, show that fewer than 40% of people planning to get vaccinated. Worse, according to Reuters on Sunday, only half the medical staff in a Warsaw hospital where the country’s first shot was administered had signed up. And if the doctors don’t trust the vaccine, one can be certain that the broader population will refuse to take it.

    The situation is similar in Spain, one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries, where 28-year-old singer and music composer German summarizes the skepticism of a broad range of the population, and plans to wait for now.

    “No one close to me has had it (COVID-19). I’m obviously not saying it doesn’t exist because lots of people have died of it, but for now I wouldn’t have it (the vaccine).”

    A Christian Orthodox bishop in Bulgaria, where 45% of people have said they would not get a shot and 40% plan to wait to see if any negative side effects appear – meaning only 15% of the population will actually volunteer for a vaccine in the near future –   is in the tiny minority when it comes to taking the vaccine.

    “Myself, I am vaccinated against everything I can be,” Bishop Tihon told reporters after getting his shot, standing alongside the health minister in Sofia. He spoke about anxiety over polio before vaccination became available in the 1950s and 1960s.

    To be sure, the establishment is pounding the table on why the vaccines are safe despite the record short time in development (even though not even the “scientists” can explain what is behind the spike in vaccine allergic reactions), and claiming that the new technology behind the mRNA vaccine is all one needs to know… when it is precisely this new technology that is sparking the skepticism.

    “We’ll look back on the advances made in 2020 and say: ‘That was a moment when science really did make a leap forward’,” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, which is backed by the Wellcome Trust. Oxford also received $750MM from Bill Gates in June in the billionaire’s quest to vaccinate the world against Covid.

    Only problem: nobody in Europe seems to care about these “scientific” justifications. Independent pollster Alpha Research said its recent survey suggested that fewer than one in five Bulgarians from the first groups to be offered the vaccine – frontline medics, pharmacists, teachers and nursing home staff – planned to volunteer to get a shot.

    An IPSOS survey of 15 countries published on Nov. 5 showed then that 54% of French would have a COVID vaccine if one were available. The figure was 64% in Italy and Spain, 79% in Britain and 87% in China.

    Since then things have gone far worse, and a more recent IFOP poll  showed that only 41% people in France would take the shot. This means that a vast majority will not.

    French Healthcare workers applaud Mauricette, a 78-year-old woman, after she received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease vaccine in the country.

    Not even in Sweden, where public trust in authorities is absurdly and inexplicably high, is there a universal trust in the vaccine, with at least one in three saying they won’t get the shot: “If someone gave me 10 million euro, I wouldn’t take it,” Lisa Renberg, 32, told Reuters on Wednesday.

    Meanwhile, in a paradoxical attempt to force more to sign up – not realizing that it will only have the precisely opposite effect – Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki urged Poles on Sunday to sign up for vaccination, saying the herd immunity effect depended on them. Critics have accused Warsaw’s “nationalist leaders” of being too accepting of anti-vaccination attitudes in the past in an effort to garner conservative support. Well… let’s check back on said attitude in 10 years and see if perhaps it was the right one.

    For now, however, the more European governments pressure their populations to get immunized, the fewer the people who will actually sign up and the worse the vaccine rollout will be, that much we can be 100% sure of.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 21:50

  • On Riding Freight Trains…
    On Riding Freight Trains…

    Via AdventuresInCapitalism.com,

    I have a friend who’s a reasonably competent trader. He’s the type that draws his voodoo lines everywhere on the charts. He caught the same trendline break on Bitcoin that I did around $9,200. He expected some resistance around $10,000 and sold out for a quick score just below the figure. He then got the breakout at $12,000 and rode it a few thousand. He also bought the big breakout at $20,000 and I’m sure he made another ten percent. Nothing wrong with that; he’s stacking up quick wins using low-risk setups. The odd thing is that he’s wildly bullish on Bitcoin. During a time when I’m up roughly $18,000 on my $9,200 basis, he’s up less than $5,000 and, unlike him, I think Bitcoin is a total worthless joke of an asset.

    Why am I making more? Let’s talk about how to be a pig at the trough.

    Every time I put a position on, I always stop to think about what I’m trying to accomplish and where my exit would be. Is this just an Event-Driven trade with a few-week duration? Is this a value position where I’m hoping that some of the gap to NAV closes or do I see this as something that could go much further? Micro-trend inflections can multi-bagger in a spectacular way, but they tend to be volatile and many of them flame out before hitting escape velocity—as a result, I usually sell some on the way up. Meanwhile, true compounders build value rapidly—I don’t need to fear the downside in the same way there.

    So many amazing places in Costa Rica. Hard to choose through them…

    What about Bitcoin?

    Who knows what the right price is—in some ways that’s the beauty of the product—it’s so worthless that any price is justifiable—it’s just completely ephemeral; a quote on the screen. I invested on the thesis that Bitcoin would become the first truly global Ponzi Scheme; why would I sell after only a few thousand of upside? That’s the average daily range. I personally expect something monumentally stupid to occur to the upside and don’t intend to sell until then.

    Let’s return to my friend. He actually thinks Bitcoin is real—he’s drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid. As a result, I keep asking my friend why he’s settling for a thousand here and two-thousand there? He’s missing the true meat of the move and he doesn’t even have another “safe” entry-point until there’s a consolidation in the charts. If he believes in it, why not put it on and let it happen? I mean, I have a much weaker thesis and have let it trend once I built up a decent cushion. Oddly, my friend doesn’t have a response. This is simply how he plays bull markets, which seems odd to me. If you’re going to be taking risk on something that has theoretical multi-bagger upside, why not play it big and be an absolute pig about it once you have a decent cushion?

    Despite what many market commentators want you to believe, the vast majority of financial products are not offering you multi-bagger upside from currently inflated prices. If anything, they mostly offer downside. When I come across something that has real upside, I prefer to size it up big and let it happen. There are so few of these chances that I cannot afford to miss them. Yes, I’ll have some relapses where I give up spectacular gains (happened to me with tankers this year). I’ll have a few that fail to ignite and eventually hit my time stop, while tying up my capital. Plenty more will stop me out for small losses. That’s all part of the game when I look for multi-baggers. What’s the alternative? Buying and selling every little wiggle on the chart? That’s ludicrous. The money isn’t made guessing the next 5% anyway. It’s in finding multi-baggers and then enjoying life. I’m writing to you from a cliff-side villa above a deserted beach in Costa Rica. I can do that because I know what I own—therefore, I can step away and let it happen.

    This is my office and trading floor for the week. Can get some real thinking done…

    That doesn’t mean that I’m ignoring risk. I put real time into pondering what could kill my thesis. I also protect my downside. As soon as Bitcoin broke out over $10,000, I put in a mental stop at $9,200 or roughly break-even. Over time, I have increased the level for this stop so that I can lock in a good-sized gain while letting it trend higher. Of course, I’m also going to give Bitcoin plenty of room. I know it’s a wild beast and I want to let it do its thing. Fortunately, that’s mostly been to the upside.

    Should you be pyramiding into Bitcoin here at $27,200? Who knows? The chart looks horribly extended short-term—that means it can have a nasty shakeout any day. Part of why I’m on vacation is that if I was watching the 10% intraday swings, I know I’d start having opinions. I’d try to sell a few and buy them back lower. I’d find some instrument to hedge off some risk somehow. I know myself. When I’m up this much, this fast, the emotions take over and I end up doing something awful dumb. Besides, the real money isn’t made guessing which way the next thousand-dollar move is. It’s by swinging hard at a fat pitch and then doing a whole lot of nothing.

    Spent yesterday swimming in the Nauyaca Waterfall in Costa Rica…

    Let me give you another example. I’m long a position limit in St. Joe (JOE – USA).

    It’s my favorite portfolio position as it captures most of the macro trends I’m focused on. It doesn’t hurt that it trades for a fraction of liquidation value or that I think it’s trading at a single digit FFO multiple looking out a few years. It’s more than doubled from my cost basis, but that’s what’s supposed to happen when you’re right about a position that is rapidly inflecting.

    Oddly, every day, someone reaches out to ask if I’m taking any JOE off. Why would I do that? I think it’s worth over a hundred today and it’s headed to a few hundred over the next few years. Is the chart extended? Absolutely. Could it pull back by $10 or even $20? Of course. In fact, I almost expect it to have a nasty, soul-destroying pullback that shakes out a lot of recent longs. So why am I ignoring that potential? Because I think it’s going much higher and I don’t want to step off a world-class freight train going at maximum speed. If I sold my JOE, I’d need to spend my rapidly devaluing dollars on some other hard asset and there’s nothing cheaper with as strong of a tailwind, that I know of.

    Lake Arenal, Costa Rica

    Besides, I’m not a fan of paying taxes. Let’s use some quick math here. My cost basis on JOE is around $19. Say I sell some at $48. That’s a $29 gain that is taxable at short-term rates. I live in Florida, but still pay my share of federal taxes. For the ease of math, let’s say my rate is precisely 40%. I’d have to pay $11.60 of my $29 gain. For me to come out ahead by selling here and buying a pullback, I’d need the stock to drop by more than $11.60. If the stock only pulled back by $10, after paying taxes, I’d actually have LESS shares when I repurchase them (let’s ignore the step-up in cost basis). Why would I want to risk missing upside and pay short-term taxes along the way? This is the very definition of fuktarded—as only a complete fukwit would do something this retarded.

    The trade-off, like I noted above, is that I genuinely expect that JOE will have some nasty pullbacks. Given how overbought it is, I’d say that a pullback is more than overdue. If it dropped by a third, it would be a pretty awful month for my fund. At the same time, I’d sort of shrug my shoulders as this should be expected from time to time. If Bitcoin dropped in the same month, my performance number would be something that would leave people wondering what I did “wrong.” In reality, that’s just how it goes when you run a concentrated book. You can smooth volatility and you can trade around positions or you can let it happen and ensure you don’t miss the big ones. I know which strategy I prefer. Besides, taxes disgust me.

    Can’t have a Costa Rica travelogue without the rain forest…

    Why is my friend fixated on doing it his way? I don’t know. Maybe it’s to smooth out his returns. Maybe he just wants to grab those low-risk chart patterns. Maybe his conviction isn’t as strong as he makes it out to be. All I know is that I’m typing to you from a beach in Costa Rica and he’s at his office drawing voodoo lines worried about the next 5% move. I used to do it his way because I couldn’t help but grab the quick gains—I believe I’ve matured since then. I’ve learned when and how to be a gluttonous pig about something I strongly believe in. At the same time, I never stop questioning that I could be wrong—don’t confuse inaction with dereliction. What I do know is that I’ve approached position management quite differently from my friend and thus far, it’s working out in my favor. In the rare situations where I can achieve escape velocity, the last thing I want to do is micro-manage it.

    It’s worth pointing out that despite me believing these are both multi-baggers, I’m treating the risk component quite differently. I have no stop loss for JOE. JOE has real assets and cash flow. On a down day, it simply gets cheaper and less risky while the value of the business increases every day through the beauty of retained earnings and asset inflation. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is a number on the screen driven purely by sentiment. You need to get out if the sentiment turns on you, as it’s a long way down to zero. JOE needs no stop. I feel that this needs to be pointed out. I am strapped into two freight trains, but they have very different risk profiles. I’m not trading around either, but I know that one will eventually have a jumping off point. I need to be highly attuned to when that is.

    The big money is made from the multi-baggers. In our bizarre, always connected world, the endorphins fire away and make you want to do something. Much like there’s often nothing to do in the markets on most days, there’s often nothing to do in my existing positions. I’m going to just let it happen.

    Pura Vida…

    *  *  *

    Disclosure: Funds that I control are long GBTC and JOE

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 21:15

  • Trump Signs COVID-19 Relief Bill With $600 Checks, Asks Congress To Approve Increase Later
    Trump Signs COVID-19 Relief Bill With $600 Checks, Asks Congress To Approve Increase Later

    President Trump on Sunday signed a $900 billion pandemic relief package which will include $600 direct checks checks, abandoning his immediate demand that Congress go back to the drawing board and provide $2,000 checks, and instead encouraged them to vote on a separate bill to “increase payments to individuals from $600 to $2,000.”

    “I am signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP, return our airline workers back to work, add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more,” Trump said in a Sunday night statement.

    The pandemic relief package is coupled with $1.4 trillion in funds to run the government through September and includes other end-of-session priorities such as increases in food stamp benefits and funding for the transit system. Plus, tons of pork, which we noted last week.

    According to the New York Post:

    The bill authorizes direct checks of $600 for people earning up to $75,000 per year. The amount decreases for higher earners and people who make over $95,000 get nothing.

    There’s an additional $600 per child stimulus payment.

    In a statement, Trump said that Congress on Monday would vote on a separate bill to “increase payments to individuals from $600 to $2,000.”

    The bill creates a new $300 weekly unemployment supplement and replenishes a forgivable loan program for small businesses. It also creates new criminal penalties including prison time for violating copyright laws with online streaming. –NYP

    Futures and gold are happy for the moment:

    Full Trump statement (emphasis ours):

    “As President of the United States it is my responsibility to protect the people of our country from the economic devastation and hardship that was caused by the China Virus.

    I understand that many small businesses have been forced to close as a result of harsh actions by Democrat-run states. Many people are back to work, but my job is not done until everyone is back to work.

    Fortunately, as a result of my work with Congress in passing the CARES Act earlier this year, we avoided another Great Depression. Under my leadership, Project Warp Speed has been a tremendous success, my Administration and I developed a vaccine many years ahead of wildest expectations, and we are distributing these vaccines, and others soon coming, to millions of people.

    As President, I have told Congress that I want far less wasteful spending and more money going to the American people in the form of $2,000 checks per adult and $600 per child.

    As President I am demanding many rescissions under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Act provides that, “whenever the President determines that all or part of any budget authority will not be required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which it is provided, or that such budget authority should be rescinded for fiscal policy or other reasons (including termination of authorized projects or activities for which budget authority has been provided), the President shall transmit to both Houses of Congress a special message” describing the amount to be reserved, the relevant accounts, the reasons for the rescission, and the economic effects of the rescission. 2 U.S.C. § 683.

    I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.

    I am signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP, return our airline workers back to work, add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more.
     
    On Monday the House will vote to increase payments to individuals from $600 to $2,000. Therefore, a family of four would receive $5,200. Additionally, Congress has promised that Section 230, which so unfairly benefits Big Tech at the expense of the American people, will be reviewed and either be terminated or substantially reformed.
     
    Likewise, the House and Senate have agreed to focus strongly on the very substantial voter fraud which took place in the November 3 Presidential election.

    The Senate will start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230, and starts an investigation into voter fraud.

    Big Tech must not get protections of Section 230!

    Voter Fraud must be fixed!

    Much more money is coming. I will never give up my fight for the American people!

    *  *  *

    Many Trump supporters are not impressed, while others defended the president:

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

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 20:48

  • Which States Saw The Biggest Population Inflows And Outflows In 2020
    Which States Saw The Biggest Population Inflows And Outflows In 2020

    When it comes to migratory patterns among US states and cities, there were some notable winners and losers in 2020.

    Among the former, Indiana gained nearly 24,000 new residents during 2020, a slight increase that continued the state’s ongoing trend of slow population growth, the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual estimate shows.  The Hoosier state’s population grew to 6.75 million, up from 6.73 million in 2019 – a 23,943-person increase, according to the federal agency’s estimates.

    Other states, however, saw a continued exodus as people couldn’t wait to bail: take adjacent Illinois – its population fell by 79,487 residents to 12.6 million, the second biggest loss nationwide after only New York state, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported.

    The official results of the 2020 Census have not been released yet, and the new numbers reflect the Census Bureau’s annual estimate and not the official count.

    The annual estimates show that northwest Indiana has been gaining population for the first time in years, adding an estimated 2,102 more residents last year. That increase reverses a long-running trend that followed deindustrialization and a loss of jobs at the region’s steel mills, Micah Pollak, an Indiana University Northwest assistant professor of economics, in a recent article for the Indiana Business Research Center.

    He wrote that better public transportation from the expansion of the South Shore Line commuter rail line, “a wider range of high-end retail, restaurants and breweries” and expanded bicycle trails and green spaces now “allow the Region to better meet the needs and expectations of the next generation.”

    “While Northwest Indiana was once a region many residents hoped to one day leave, we are now seeing more people return, choose to remain here, or be attracted into the region,” Pollack wrote.

    In any case, what is quite clear is that such “progressive” bastions of Democratic power such as New York, Illinois, California and Michigan saw the biggest population outflows in 2020, while the biggest winners were the sunbelt states Texas, Florida and Arizona. Expect this trend to only accelerate.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 20:40

  • China Will Be The First Country To Launch A Digital Currency: What Happens Then
    China Will Be The First Country To Launch A Digital Currency: What Happens Then

    By Wim Boonstra of Rabobank

    Summary

    • China may be the first major country to launch a central bank digital currency or CBDC
    • The Chinese CBDC, named DCEP, will strengthen the position of the central bank and help to further modernize the Chinese economy
    • The DCEP will probably also be available for China’s trade partners, to begin with Africa
    • The DCEP may strengthen the international position of the renminbi to the detriment of the euro
    • The arrival of the DCEP should be a strong wake-up call for Western, especially European, policymakers

    Introduction

    Most central banks are busy preparing for the potential introduction of central bank digital currency (CBDC). CBDC is a digital currency issued by the central bank. It is sometimes referred to as a digital version of a bank note, but in many cases this is not correct. There are indeed many different potential variants.

    So far, virtually all the central banks are keeping their options open as to whether a CBDC will ultimately appear.

    China, where a far-reaching trial is under way, is the major exception. If this trial is successful, one can expect the Chinese CBDC to be introduced widely in the near future. China is therefore comfortably leading the way because the country has big ambitions for its digital currency. First, it should provide a sizable boost to the Chinese economy; second, it will concurrently further increase the Chinese government’s control of Chinese society; finally, the new currency is part of an ambitious plan to strengthen the international position of the renminbi, the Chinese currency, and potentially at the expense of the euro in particular. This Chinese decisiveness should spur European policymakers into action by further strengthening the euro.

    China: from cash-based to almost completely cashless money in 10 years’ time

    Not so long ago, retail payments in China were still almost entirely made in cash. There has been a revolution in payments traffic since that time, and China is now one of the leading countries in cashless payments. Unlike in other countries, such as the Netherlands and Sweden, in China this development did not originate from the banking system, but it was induced by a few key apps from relatively young Fintech companies such as WeChat (Tencent) and Alipay (Ant Financial). These parties, that form a kind of extra layer between the banks and their customers, now have a collective market share of more than 90% in Chinese payments cashless retail payments. The Chinese cashless payments system is already able to settle approximately 100,000 transactions per second.

    The Chinese CBDC: DCEP

    Against this background, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the Chinese central bank, has taken the initiative of developing its own digital currency known as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP). Above all, the DCEP is a digital alternative to bank notes, although it has features that differ from cash in certain respects (see below). The DCEP does however have the same value as a renminbi.

    The technology that can be used by the public for payments is based on traditional payment technology and not on blockchain technology. This is the only way to achieve the necessary scale. The aim is to reach a capacity of 300,000 transactions per second. The central bank might itself use blockchain, for example for wholesale transactions or settlements in DCEP between private banks. Although the DCEP is a cashless currency that will be held in an account with a private entity, there is also the possibility of using a token-based functionality on for example a chip to effect peer-to-peer payments, even where there is no Internet. This is especially needed for successful adoption in the rural areas of China. This token-based functionality will be widely used, as a result of which the DCEP will compete with cash. A sizable trial has been running for several months in which tens of thousands of people have been participating.

    What does the PBoC want to achieve with the DCEP?

    The PBoC has several objectives with the introduction of the DCEP.

    Prevention of a monopoly in the payment system

    The PBoC wants to prevent a situation in which WeChat and AliPay take over the Chinese payment system. It is concerned that the entire payment system will soon fall into the hands of these private parties. The DCEP therefore has to restrict the involvement of these parties and increase the role of the central bank in the payment system. It is even more likely that any key private firm will be prevented to become a dominant player, as ultimately China is not a ‘normal’ market economy (which explains Beijing’s current crackdown on Ant Financial far better than just a feud between Xi Jinping and Jack Ma).

    Promotion of financial inclusion and further reduction of the role played by cash

    Highly efficient cashless payments dominate in large parts of China. But in the poorer regions, especially the rural areas, people have less access to banking services such as regular credit. In these areas, cash still plays an important role. Payments in the criminal underworld, including the illegal gambling industry, are also still largely made in cash. The DCEP will offer people in these regions full access to financial services, but it can also reduce the importance of cash payments. The main aim of the DCEP is therefore to replace cash. In terms of features, it will also closely resemble cash.

    Better information on payment flows and prevention of illegal transactions

    Unlike payment transactions using a bank account, which by definition leave traces in a bank’s records, cash payments are highly anonymous. As we have said, the DCEP will closely resemble cash, with the possibility of making payments directly from one person to another. Some degree of anonymity would thus appear to be safeguarded. But on further consideration, it becomes clear that the PBoC, and therefore the Chinese government, will have full insight.

    To be precise, in a transaction between two people effected with DCEP, anonymity between these two people will be assured, as is the case with a cash payment. But the PBoC can always establish at a later date who were involved in the transaction. This will enable more effective tracing of illegal transactions than if these were effected in cash. But there will also be detailed insight into the payment behavior of individuals.

    Restricting capital flight

    Although China does not have free cross-border capital movements, capital flight is a common and substantial phenomenon. Capital flight can occur in various ways, and is often difficult to trace. For example, internationally trading Chinese companies can for instance manipulate invoices, as a result of which money can be transferred abroad. People can also use the Bitcoin system to hide money from the authorities and/or transfer it abroad.

    The Chinese government, like its counterparts in Europe and the US, is concerned that stablecoins could assume an important role as an alternative to the regular money in circulation, but also may develop into a vehicle for capital flight (read “How The Chinese Use Illegal Online Gambling And Tether To Launder Over $1 Trillion Yuan“). Stablecoins are cryptos like Bitcoin, but unlike Bitcoin they are, at least in theory, secured by financial assets. When Facebook announced in April 2020 that it intends to add national stablecoins to its Libra, a digital currency basket that it announced in 2019, central banks reacted immediately by devoting more urgent attention to CBDC.23 Such stablecoins could for example create the possibility that people could use a Libra-stablecoin to transfer money abroad. With the DCEP, the PBoC intends to slow the momentum of private stablecoins. This is also an important consideration for the Western central banks.

    Retention of monetary sovereignty

    This is connected with the previous point. If people have easy access to a private stablecoin, it could actually in a sense reduce the role of the national currency. Something similar actually happened in Zimbabwe, where confidence in the national currency completely vanished as a result of hyperinflation and people turned en masse to foreign currencies such as US dollars and South African rand. In such a situation, the national central bank loses control of monetary conditions in its own country. Importantly, however, the DCEP could also be used by China to interfere with monetary sovereignty in other countries.

    What about privacy?

    The PBoC says it will respect the privacy of people and therefore the anonymity of the transactions but at the same time it says that DCEP will help it to detect illegal transactions. What this probably comes down to in practice is that people will be able to effect payments and retain anonymity between each other, but that the central bank will on the other hand be able to view the transactions. Anonymity will therefore not be guaranteed and the central bank will have much greater insight into people’s payment behaviour than it has at the moment. The DCEP will also have the status of legal tender. This means that Chinese residents will be obliged to accept the DCEP, as confirmed by various statements from the central bank on the issue (South China Morning Post, 10 November 2020). The DCEP is thus not really coming into being as a result of strong demand from the Chinese public, but it is being imposed on the population by the government. Moreover, the way the DCEP is designed, it may develop into a perfect vehicle for a quasi-command economy: it allows all transactions to be monitored, and opens the door for a retreat to a more Soviet model of banking, viz. banking under full state control.

    Internationalization of the renminbi

    The use of the renminbi in international transactions is still relatively limited, certainly in comparison with the dollar and the euro. But China is working steadily on increasing its usage, and even hopes that one day the renminbi can succeed the dollar as the global reserve currency. China sees the DCEP as an important vehicle for strengthening the renminbi’s international position, as foreigners will also be able to use the DCEP in transactions with China.

    The benefit of this for China is that it can settle more of its international trade in (digital) renminbi. China has initially targeted Africa in this respect. Many African countries do not have fully convertible currencies and mutual trade is frequently settled in US dollars, which is expensive. China is aiming to achieve a situation in which African countries can use the DCEP not only in their trade with China, but will also use it for their domestic transactions. This is a good example of how China is aiming to position itself internationally and how various projects and institutions will cooperate under the direction of the government. The newest model of the Huawei smartphone indeed includes an app enabling payment in DCEP without the need for Internet (Eurasia). Huawei is currently already a leading telecoms provider in Africa, which gives China a head start. In other parts of the world, where Huawei is less dominant or even banned, it will off course be less simple for China to push the DCEP ahead.

    Note that while China intends to strengthen its own monetary sovereignty with the DCEP, it clearly has no qualms regarding its use to undermine the monetary sovereignty of other countries. If not only a larger proportion of the trade between China and African countries but also part of intra-African trade could soon be settled in DCEP, therefore renminbi, international use of the Chinese currency will significantly increase. Note, that if a larger share of China’s international trade will be conducted in DCEP, it will also become more difficult for Chinese im- and exporters to use trade as a way to channel funds abroad. So it will held the Chinese government to reduce capital flight, although complete elimination of this phenomenon will not be possible.

    Decision time: is the DCEP a wake-up call?

    China is leading internationally with the introduction of CBDC, and is clearly moving in a different direction than many other countries considering a similar move. The debate in Europe is still mainly about the form the digital euro, its CBDC, should take, the question of whether there is consumer demand for it, and who should pay for it. The Chinese authorities are taking a more strategic approach, and most of all from the perspective of whether a digital currency can contribute to strengthening/entrenching China’s international position.

    Assuming that the current Chinese trials are successful, we could very well see the DCEP appear as early as next year. This could be a significant step in the further movement of the Chinese economy towards cashless money. The payments system would be further strengthened by the DCEP, as this will prevent large private parties gaining a duopoly with the market power that this would entail. Financial inclusion would be improved in the underdeveloped areas, and everyone would have access to cashless money and the associated financial services that this would make possible. The black economy would be further reduced, and the Chinese government will have better insight (and control) of the payment behaviour of its citizens to an extent that we in the West would probably see as unacceptable. Lastly, the introduction of the DCEP can discourage capital flight and probably strengthen the renminbi’s international position.

    All in all, the DCEP will certainly make a positive contribution to the further development of the Chinese economy. Although the DCEP looks to be less innovative than the CBDCs under consideration by the Western central banks in certain respects, the determination shown by China is undoubtedly impressive.

    This Chinese resoluteness also shows that China is working very actively on strengthening the renminbi’s international position, with the central bank and companies such as Huawei working closely together to achieve this. While still a long way off, a scenario in which first parts of the African, but later maybe Asian, Latin American of even some European economies will use the renminbi for cross-border and in due course also domestic transactions is gradually becoming more plausible.

    One may also expect China to try to get all countries involved in its Belt and Road Initiative to use the DCEP and therefore the renminbi. Today, the renminbi is still a small currency in comparison to the euro and most of all the dollar. But this situation could change if the DCEP becomes widely accepted. In the context of a situation in which the euro’s international position has more or less stagnated over the last decades, this is at the very least somewhat disconcerting.

    Of course we may expect that, once the digital renminbi takes off and gains traction, other central banks will react strongly. Especially the US will be determined to hold on to the dollar’s international dominance. The US authorities will soon understand that a successful digital renminbi may in the long run turn out to be a larger threat to the position of the dollar than the euro ever was. The most important difference is that the euro is institutionally weak and European politicians have so far failed to use their currency as a geopolitical instrument. The Chinese government, in contrast, understand very well the power of money as a ‘peaceful’ instrument to increase international political clout.

    But after all the good news may be, that the DCEP also turns out to be the important wake-up call that prompts European policymakers to finally devote serious attention to strengthening the international role of the euro. Having the second currency after the US dollar is maybe not optimal, but is not disastrous. Being third after the Chinese renminbi is a different story. In the end, money talks.

    * * *

    Appendix: what will the DCEP look like?

    The exact design of the DCEP is still not clear. According to the BIS, the DCEP will be what is known as a hybrid CBDC. People will hold balances in their names at the central bank, but transactions will be approved using an intermediate layer of private parties (possibly including commercial banks). There will then be no direct interaction between the central bank and the account holders, but people will have an account in their names at the central bank. This would be similar to the ideas being mooted at other central banks such as the ECB and the Bank of England. Bloomberg, Blockchain News and the China Daily on the other hand describe the DCEP as a two-tier system, in which people will not directly hold accounts with the PBoC. According to these reports, in the Chinese system people will hold only a DCEP account with a bank or, more likely, with a payment service provider. These parties will in turn hold a balance with the PBoC as a liquidity reserve that exactly covers the amount of DCEP. They will also settle interbank payments in DCEP. This kind of system is also known as a synthetic CBDC (sCBDC), as people will not have their own CBDC accounts with the central bank. The PBoC will however receive regular statements of effected transactions.

    If this last model is adopted, the Chinese CBDC model would be more like a full (liquidity) reserve bank than a real CBDC. A full liquidity reserve bank is a bank that would hold a 100% cash reserve with the central bank against the CBDC payment accounts held with it. But in the Chinese model, there would be no additional institution created, the existing financial institutions would offer additional accounts that would then be 100% backed by central bank reserves. Statements from the PBoC also suggest the direction is more towards a synthetic model. Technically speaking, this would represent a less innovative move than a true CBDC.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 20:05

  • New Year's Week Storm Could Cause Havoc Across US 
    New Year’s Week Storm Could Cause Havoc Across US 

    A new storm will sweep across the country next week, just like the last one, from Southwest to the Plains to Midwest to East, spreading rain and snow along the way. 

    As 2020 concludes and 2021 is just days away, it appears more wicked weather is on the way. The storm will unfold in two phases, according to The Weather Channel.

    The first phase will begin on Sunday night. 

    San Francisco and Los Angeles will be hit with heavy rain, strong winds, and mountain snow.

    By Tuesday into Wednesday, the storm will traverse the country’s central part with heavy snow for Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Rain is expected along the Mississippi River Valley with severe thunderstorms in Texas. 

    The second phase of the storm will begin mid to late week. 

    By New Year’s Eve, heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected in the Gulf Coast and Tennessee River Valley regions. Rain and wind are also expected in all major Mid-Atlantic and Northeast cities. 
    More snow could develop in the Midwest and Great Lakes. A wintery mix could be seen in northern Texas and parts of Oklahoma. Portions of the Northeast near the Canadian border could see accumulating snowfall. 

    Meteorologists at BAMWX have analyzed “103 of the ensemble models” for the New Year’s Eve/Day storm potential. 

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    The accuracy of the weather models will greatly improve in the next couple of days, nevertheless, if you’re planning on traveling and mixing with other households around New Years, be careful, a potentially powerful storm could be headed for the Eastern US.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 19:30

  • Forced Liquidations? Bitcoin Futures Open With Massive Gap After Xmas Spike
    Forced Liquidations? Bitcoin Futures Open With Massive Gap After Xmas Spike

    Update (1900ET): Bitcoin futures have opened dramatically higher than spot as the massive gap open appears to have triggered forced short liquidations (which makes sense as margin calls must be massive on a $4000-plus gap)…

    Bitcoin Futures are up 19%, the biggest jump since June 2019…

    And after spot gapped as much as $5000 from futures closing price, futures opened with a $1365 gap higher over spot prices…

    That is the biggest spread since the contract’s inception…

    Will this drag spot higher?

    *  *  *

    Bitcoin  has been stealing the spotlight in recent weeks as it has soared to record-er and record-er heights, but overnight saw a ‘regime-shift’ as Bitcoin topped $28,500…

    Source: Bloomberg

    …before crashing over $2,000 lower, only to be bought back…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin’s surge had pushed it above its stock-to-flow model estimate…

    Source

    Some still have even bigger plans…

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    While Ethereum surge to a fresh cycle high…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Its highest since May 2018…

    Source: Bloomberg

    This was a very notable reversal in the recent trend of Bitcoin outperformance…

    Source: Bloomberg

    As Ethereum seemed to find support again at 0.025 Bitcoins…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin’s surge in price pushed it above the $500 billion market cap level for the first time…

    Source: CoinMarketCap

    With institutional investors taking a break, talk turned to retail buyers fuelling the latest phase of the Bitcoin bull run.

    “The bull cycle of bull cycles has started, as more and more players are starting to adopt towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies,” Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe summarized to Twitter followers.

    But, judging by the GoogleTrends data, this remains an institutional story, very different from 2017…

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    Finally, this looks set to be the biggest gap open in Bitcoin futures markets ever as spot prices have surged an incredible $4000 since Bitcoin Futures closed on Thursday…

    Source: Bloomberg

     $2.3 billion worth of Bitcoin futures expired on Christmas day, which historically has led to choppy markets, but we suspect some serious margin calls are still on their way.

    With the end of the year looming, some fund managers may also be buying BTC so they can brag next year about being smart enough to get in in 2020 while neglecting to say at which price they had done so.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 19:03

  • "Their Careers Are Over": Cornell Student Reps Targeted For Opposing Efforts To Defund/Disarm Campus Cops
    “Their Careers Are Over”: Cornell Student Reps Targeted For Opposing Efforts To Defund/Disarm Campus Cops

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    We have been discussing student editors and student government leaders using their positions to retaliate against the exercise of free speech by other students with the support of faculty. This trend is hardly surprising as journalism deans call for censorship and journalism professors call for the rejection of neutrality in the media. Universities have generally remained passive as students and faculty harass and punish those with opposing views.  The latest such example was detailed in a column on the site College Fix on how students at Cornell University moved to oust student representatives who voted against disarming and defunding campus police.

    According to the report, students failed to pass a resolution calling for the defunding and disarming of the Cornell Police Department. After the measure failed, student leaders called for the removal of opposing leaders from committees or the student government as a whole.

    Uchenna Chukwukere, the Student Assembly vice president of finance declared

    “These 15 student assembly members watched us pour out our traumas and fears on the floor practically begging them to vote no, and finally send a message to the university that we can no longer allow these oppressive institutions to keep us down. Many of these assembly members are white-cis-het men and women who quite literally laughed and danced in our faces when the resolution failed…Their faces are all over social media…We will never forget… their campus careers are over… We must disarm, defund, and disband the Cornell University Police Department.”

    Eventually, after a series of failed votes, the student organizers were able to pass Resolution 30, calling to disarm campus police by two votes.

    Student Dakota Johnson, a Marine veteran, recounted a confrontation with a government leader where he was allegedly told that:

    “As a white man, you cannot be the arbiter of what is and isn’t racist and who is a good or bad person. … You will never be the arbiter because you are a white man.”

    The question is the responsibility of universities when students use their positions to deny the free speech of other students or punish those who hold opposing views. There has been a conspicuous silence from faculty ad administrators as both free speech and academic freedom has been attacked in recent years. It is a disgraceful failure to protect the foundational values for academia. Many are afraid of being the next to be targeted by campaigns like those directed against the students at Cornell.  This silence has continued even as faculty are hounded for their views or writings.  We have been discussing these cases across the country including a similar effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as an effort at Harvard targeting a leading academic.  It is part of a wave of intolerance sweeping over our colleges and our newsrooms — a campaign that will devour its own in the loss of academic freedoms and free speech.

    Even if we will not protect our colleagues, we have a duty to protect the students who come to our campuses to learn and develop their own views and values. That includes protecting them from being formally punished or ousted for their viewpoints. If we do not fight for them and their rights, we have become entirely untethered from any principle other than our personal advancement and safety.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 18:55

  • Equity Futures Surge Off Weak Open After Trump Tweet, Gold Gains
    Equity Futures Surge Off Weak Open After Trump Tweet, Gold Gains

    After opening down around 150 points, Dow futures went panic-bid after President Trump tweeted “Good news on Covid Relief Bill. Information to follow! “

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    We also note this headline printed about 30 mins before the futures open…

    • *ASTRAZENECA CEO: COVID VACCINE EFFECTIVE AGAINST NEW STRAIN

    But futures opened down hard before Trump’s tweet lifted them 250 points amid negligible liquidity to take out Thursday’s highs…

    We suspect now those stops are run, we retest the lows as the algos exhausted themselves on the nothingburger tweet since there is nothing coming aside from the $2,000 bill amendment vote that Republicans have (in enough numbers) been negative about.

    We do note that gold ran higher on the tweet…

    …and the dollar is down a smidge…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 18:44

  • Illegal Street Vendors "Overtaking" NYC And The Entire City is Blaming Bill De Blasio
    Illegal Street Vendors “Overtaking” NYC And The Entire City is Blaming Bill De Blasio

    Another day, yet another way in which Comrade De Blasio is turning New York City into a third world country.

    In addition to murders rising, restaurants closing, shops being boarded up and a litany of taxation and “redistribution of wealth” tactics that De Blasio has brought to the table during his tenure as Mayor, he is now also being blamed for a inconspicuous rise in illegal street vendors that the New York Post says is “overtaking” the city. 

    Pushing items like live crabs, knock-off Louis Vuitton caps and disposable face masks, illegal vendors are making an already miserable 2020 for shop owners even worse. The Post says it counted 27 street vendors on just one side of the street between Sanford and 41st Avenue on Main Street in Flushing. And it doesn’t stop there: vendors are scattered everywhere from Manhattan to the Bronx to Brooklyn. 

    The number of illegal street vendor complaints for 2020 have almost eclipsed 2019’s number, despite New York City being in lockdown for 78 days. 

    DianSong Yu of the Flushing Business Improvement District told the paper that 90% of vendors aren’t licensed. Of the 20,000 vendors across the city, only a “few thousand” are licensed, Yu said. “It’s a very tough time for everybody, we get it. But we need to be fair to the local merchant who are paying very high rent and taxes. And they’re hurting.”

    One vendor who did have a license, and was a military veteran, told the Post: “They’re robbing the city of taxes. They’re taking money from the veterans. They’re taking jobs.”

    Another former illegal vendor, now in his 70s, said: “I can understand if you can go out and sell. Why not? But the situation is out of hand – outrageously out of hand.”

    Ira Dananberg, who has worked in Flushing for 19 years, said: “I’ve never seen anything like it. People literally have no choice but to walk on top of each other.” He blames the issue on De Blasio for ordering the NYPD to stop cracking down on vendors in June. 

    Councilman Peter Koo, who introduced a bill 2 years ago to ban vending on Main Street, called it a “circus” and said the issue “falls squarely on the mayor”. 

    The Department of Consumer Affairs is in charge of handing out licenses and limits non-Veteran licenses citywide to 853. Veterans that are honorably discharged can get one for free, while others pay between $100 and $200.

    And for items like the live crabs that are being sold during a pandemic that supposedly started in a Chinese wet market? The wife of a licensed vendor bought a dozen crabs several weeks ago from another vendor and “started to feel sick” after eating them. After her husband cracked one of the crabs open, he found “white worms in the bellies”. The Health Department says it is investigating. 

    “Whether the crabs are legal or safe to eat is anybody’s guess. No agency could tell The Post with certainty and none took responsibility for oversight,” the article concluded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 18:20

  • "Immediate Gratification"-Bias Is Real!
    “Immediate Gratification”-Bias Is Real!

    Authored by Richard Rosso via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

    January is the time to make your fiscal fitness resolutions for 2021.

    Most promises we make to ourselves will be a memory by February. Want a fiscal fitness head start and get 2021 going STRONG on the right foot? Here are 9-steps:

    #1: A thorough portfolio review with an objective financial partner is timely.

    Have you ignored your long-term asset allocation or the mix of stocks, bonds, and cash? With the major stock indices close to new highs, your allocation specifically to stocks may have grown disconnected from your risk tolerance.

    Complacency is the emotional foible du jour. After all, every market dip appears to be a buying opportunity. With volatility subdued, investors head blindly overconfident into equity markets.

    A financial professional, preferably a fiduciary, can help make sense of how your portfolio’s risk has changed and provide input on rebalancing or selling back to targets for what could shape up to be a very different 2021.

    #2: Sell your weak links (losers), trim winners.

    Consider tax harvesting where stock losses are realized (you may always purchase the position back in 31 days) and shed profits from winners. Going against the grain when the herd is chasing performance takes intestinal fortitude and investment acumen counterintuitive to the masses.

    Candidly, tax-harvesting isn’t such a benefit to overall portfolio performance. However, the action of disposing of dead weight is emotionally empowering, and if gains from trimming winners can offset them, then even better.

    Per financial planning thought-leader Michael Kitces, the economic benefit of tax-loss harvesting is best through tax-bracket arbitrage. The most favorable harvesting scenario is a short-term loss offset by a short-term gain (usually taxed at ordinary income rates).

    #3: Fire your stodgy brick & mortar bank.

    Let’s face it: Brick & mortar banks are financial fossils. How many times did you enter a bank branch over the last five years? Banks won’t be in a hurry to increase rates on conservative vehicles like certificates of deposit, savings accounts, and money market funds even when (if) the Fed raises rates again.

    Virtual banks like www.synchronybank.com provide FDIC insurance, don’t charge service fees, and still offer savings rates above the national average.

    Accounts are easy to establish online and electronically link to your existing saving or checking accounts to transfer funds.

    #4: Get an insurance checkup.

    Unwelcome consequences for financial health can arise due to holes in your insurance coverage.

    Risk mitigation through insurance is crucial to reduce “financial fragility,” when a life-changing event not adequately prepared for creates an overall collapse of a household’s fiscal state.

    Risk mitigation, analysis, and insurance consideration are more crucial than ever before, especially in light of the pandemic.

    How are insurance pitfalls revealed?

    Common insurance pitfalls surface through comprehensive financial planning. Insufficient life insurance coverage, especially for stay-at-home parents who provide invaluable service, underinsurance of income in the event of long-term disability, overpaying for home and auto coverage are recurring pitfalls.

    Common is how high-net-worth individuals lack inexpensive umbrella liability coverage to help protect against major claims and lawsuits. Renter’s insurance appears to be a second thought if it all.

    Look to download an insurance checkup document from www.consumer-action.org. It’s a valuable overview and comprehensive education of types of insurance coverage.

    Set a meeting with your insurance professional or a Certified Financial Planner who has extensive knowledge of how insurance fits your holistic financial situation.

    #5: Maximize your Health Savings Account.

    The number of employers moving to high-deductible health care plans for their employees increases every year. Overall, individuals and families are shouldering a more significant portion of health care costs, including premiums every year.

    According to a survey of 600 U.S. companies by Willis Towers Watsons, a major benefits consultant, nearly half of employers will implement high-deductible health plans coupled with Health Savings Accounts.

    HSA Limits for 2020.

    Health Savings Accounts allow individuals and families to make (and employers to match) tax-deductible contributions up to $3,550 and $7,100, respectively, for 2020. Those 55 and older are allowed an additional $1,000 in “catch-up” contributions.

    Money invested in an HSA appreciates tax-free and is free of taxation if withdrawn and used for qualified medical expenses. Like a company retirement account, an HSA should have several investment options in the form of mutual funds.

    Although Health Savings Accounts provide tax advantages, as an employee, you’re now responsible for a larger portion of out-of-pocket costs, including meeting much higher insurance deductibles. Comprehensive healthcare benefit has morphed into catastrophic coverage.

    Employees can no longer afford to visit the doctor for any ailment because the hefty deductible will take a bite out of a household’s cash flow.

    At RIA, we recommend participants to refrain from tapping the funds in these accounts. After all, they are “retirement savings accounts,” not “retirement spending accounts.”

    Try to refrain from treating an HSA as a current healthcare expense account and look to pay for healthcare co-pays, deductibles, and other costs, if possible, from sources such as brokerage, savings, and checking accounts.

    Health Savings Accounts are more versatile than you think. Distributions can pay for Medicare Part A, B, C, and D premiums in addition to the Part B deductible.

    For laid-off workers who must consider COBRA health insurance coverage, HSA funds can be used to pay the hefty premiums. What a welcomed relief for cash-strapped families that don’t want to tap retirement accounts drain emergency cash reserves!

    #6: Check beneficiary designations on all retirement accounts and insurance policies.

    It’s a common mishap to forget to add or change primary and contingent beneficiaries. It’s an easily avoidable mistake. Several states like Texas have formal Family Codes that prevent former spouses from receiving life insurance policies post-divorce with few exceptions.

    Proper beneficiary designations allow non-probate assets to transfer to intended parties quickly. Not naming a beneficiary or lack of updating may derail an estate plan as wishes outlined in wills and trusts may be superseded by designations.

    #7: Shop for a credit card that better suits your needs.

    Listen, it’s perfectly acceptable to utilize credit cards to gain travel points or cash back as long as balances are paid in full every month, so why not find the card that best suits your spending habits and lifestyle?

    For example, at www.nerdwallet.com, you can check out the best cash-back credit cards.

    For those who carry credit card balances, and unfortunately, it’s all too common, consider contacting your credit card issuer to negotiate a lower rate or threaten to take your business (and your balance) elsewhere.

    Keep in mind, on average, an American family maintains more than $5,700 in credit card debt, and the national average annual percentage rate is a whopping 17.98%, according to WalletHub.

    8#: Prepare to increase your contribution rate to retirement accounts and emergency cash reserves.

    Start 2021 on the right financial foot by increasing payroll deferrals to your company retirement accounts (PREFERABLY ROTH) and bolstering emergency cash reserves. Consider an overall 5% boost and prepare your 2021 household budget now to handle the increase.

    #9 Prepare to do a better job and handle your ‘fiscal emotional state’ in 2021.

    The chase for return with little regard for risk must come to a halt in 2021. Novice investors feverishly trade on platforms such as Robinhood and consider themselves geniuses when the real hero is easy-money Federal Reserve policies.

    It Begs a Question: Are Investors Rational? Yes. And No.

    A human’s rationality is bounded. Cognitive abilities are limited and emotional biases, plentiful. As a result, few recognize their deficiencies and depend on mental shortcuts to rise above information overload.

    In a market that only goes higher, investment decisions have become full-on ‘System 1.’ As illustrated in Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton, Daniel Kahneman’s bestseller – Thinking Fast, And Slow, human brains operate on two systems.

    Consider System 1 the brain on auto-pilot. Fast, emotional, incredibly efficient, but fraught with error. System 2 is the slow, logical, deliberate operator. The one that seeks homework disdains immediate gratification and relishes the long term.

    The Federal Reserve’s easy cash’ machine has short-circuited our System 2. RIA’s advisors work diligently to temper investors’ euphoric, irrational states every day. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle.

    I’m increasingly worried about how the Federal Government, armed with fiscal stimulus (which I believe continue as an extension and bolster of current social safety nets like unemployment benefits), ignites further blind greed and blistering overconfidence. Do not be one of these investors, especially if you’re five years or closer to retirement.

    Immediate gratification bias is real!

    Increasingly, we seek a quick reward; we are blind to future outcomes. We focus on today’s satisfaction instead of rewarding discipline, which leads to wealthier tomorrows. Heck, we witness this behavior daily in Congress as ‘debt be damned!’ And while I’m supportive of stimulus, I also understand the ramifications of what we’ve done to long-term GDP growth.

    Where should self-fulfillment come from in 2021 and beyond?

    In our households, we don’t have money machines. We can’t print our own. We all must find ways to temper spending, live smaller, spend less, and seek fulfillment in things we cannot buy. Based on recent polls, many Americans are finally getting the message: “We must gain control over household spending and exhibit financial discipline in 2021!”

    As the years roll by and change, so can habits.

    When it comes to money, we can all learn from the power, beauty, and resiliency of accepting what is.

    Use 2021 to gain a fresh perspective and improve your financial health.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 17:45

  • Anthony Warner Died In Nashville RV Bombing, Police Chief Said
    Anthony Warner Died In Nashville RV Bombing, Police Chief Said

    Update (1944 ET): CBS News has obtained a picture of the Nashville bomber, Anthony Q. Warner. 

     * * *

    Update (1908 ET): ABC News’ Josh Margolin cited multiple law enforcement sources that say 63-year-old Anthony Q. Warner was paranoid over 5G cellular technology and believed in aliens. 

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     * * *

    Update (1748ET): On Sunday evening, AT&T released a statement that said its building on 2nd Avenue in Downtown Nashville sustained “significant damage” in the early hours of Christmas morning. As a result, tens of thousands of customers across the Nashville metro area, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama experienced a loss of communication service(s). 

    The AT&T building on 2nd Avenue suffered significant damage in the blast. That facility includes connection points for regional internet services as well as local wireless, internet and video. In the hours that followed the explosion, our local service remained intact through temporary battery power. Unfortunately, a combination of the explosion and resulting water and fire damage took out a number of backup power generators intended to provide power to the batteries. That led to service disruptions across parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. More than 48 hours later, some customers are still experiencing outages. We know it is frustrating and we apologize for the inconvenience. We also thank you for your understanding. -AT&T statement 

    Aerial View Of Downtown Nashville Bombing Site

    As of Sunday evening, Downdetector shows the AT&T outage still persists across multiple states. 

     * * *

    Update (1720ET): This evening, at the Metro Nashville Police press conference, authorities have confirmed Tennessee man Anthony Quinn Warner, the suspect who was confirmed today by police as the bomber, perished in the explosion on Christmas morning. 

    Authorities said preliminary tests of human remains found at the scene of the bombing in Downtown Nashville were a match to Warner.

    The results suggest Warner blew himself up – though a motive has yet to be revealed. 

    * * *

    Update (1700 ET): Metro Nashville Police is set to hold a press conference at 1700 ET. Law enforcement officials will provide an update on the Christmas Day bombing in Downtown Nashville.

    Watch Live:

    * * *

    Update (1609 ET): Hitting the wires Sunday afternoon is a report that Rutherford and Wilson Counties’ deputies are investigating a white box truck, parked on Highway 231 South near Cedars of Lebanon State Park, Tennessee, which reportedly played a similar audio recording to the recreational vehicle that exploded in Nashville, according to News Channel 5.

    Deputies have closed down the highway and have sent a bomb squad robot to investigate. 

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    Watch Live: 

    * * *

    Metro Nashville Police have confirmed 63-year-old Anthony Q. Warner is a suspect in connection with the Downtown Nashville bombing on Christmas Day. 

    Federal agents raided Warner’s home on Saturday afternoon. Several neighbors told WaPo that a recreational vehicle, similar to the one that exploded Friday morning, was parked in his backyard for months. 

    On Saturday, we quoted CBS’ David Begnaud as saying, “one theory investigators are looking at, regarding the Nashville Christmas Day explosion, is the possibility that AT&T may have been the target or some other building or infrastructure in the area of the explosion.” 

    By late Saturday, local news WSMV News4 reported that “FBI agents spent the days at another location today besides searching the home of Anthony Warner, pursuing tips that he was paranoid about 5g spying on Americans.”

    During an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning, Nashville Mayor John Cooper said the bombing location suggests Warner intended to attack the AT&T building. He said the city is rushing to protect critical infrastructure in the wake of the attack.

    “Those of us in Nashville realize that on Second Avenue, there is a big AT&T facility and the truck was parked adjacent to this large, historic AT&T facility, which happens to be in downtown Nashville,” Cooper told CBS. “And to all of us locally, it feels like there has to be some connection with the AT&T facility and the site of the bombing.”

    He also said that it’s “a bit of just local insight in because it’s got to have something to do with the infrastructure.”

    Besides Warner’s home, federal agents visited a real estate agency office where he worked on computers. 

    According to The Tennessean, Steve Fridrich, owner of Fridrich & Clark Realty in Nashville, said Warner provided his firm with computer consulting services for the last four or five years.

    Last month, Warner wrote an email to the realty company that he would no longer be working for them. Fridrich said Warner gave no reason. 

    “He seemed very personable to us – this is quite out of character I think,” Fridrich told the newspaper.

    Nashville Police are expected to hold a press conference around 1700 ET. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 17:20

  • 2020 Gun Sales Shatter Records As Americans Lock N' Load
    2020 Gun Sales Shatter Records As Americans Lock N’ Load

    Amid 2020’s ‘perfect storm’ of racial tensions, lockdowns, and a record spike in unemployment which coincided with a national crime wave, people have been stocking up on firearms like never before.

    According to monthly FBI data, November was the busiest month on record for background checks with over 3.6 million applications – a figure which is up 40% from the prior November, putting the country at an all-time high of 35,758,249 checks so far this year – and 26% higher than 2019’s 28,400,000 checks.

    Typical gun owner

    The increase over 2019 marks the highest percentage increase in the 21-year history of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) (when one excludes data from the year 2,000 when the system was fully implemented and produced a synthetic 1,000% increase).

    Still, November’s 3.6 million checks only places it fourth in 2020, as June saw a record 3,931,607 checks amid widespread rioting and violence amid BLM anti-police protests which began in late May following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while in custody of Minneapolic police.

    As Just The News notes:

    That number is certain to grow even larger: The present total of checks in 2020 does not include December’s numbers. Historical data indicate that December’s checks tend to be elevated relative to the rest of the year. 

    Though each individual background check does not necessarily represent an individual buyer (many gun-buyers will purchase several guns in a year, while many others will fail their background check), the gun industry has reported significant first-time customer activity this year.

    The National Shooting Sports Foundation reported in June that gun retailers estimated 40% of their sales during the first four months of the year went to first-time gun owners, and that nearly half of those first-time buyers were women, both notable upticks.

    “Gun sales have been high and steady this entire year, even during the [COVID-19] shutdown,” said Peyton Galanti, spokeswoman for the Colonial Shooting Academy in Richmond, VA, who added that the market had been driven by “first-time gun buyers” and “people who never thought they’d own a gun” (also known as Democrats).

    “Our classes have been sold out months ahead and, until about this week, range time has also been way up all year,” Galanti added.

    Meanwhile, the record gun sales coincided with a massive ammunition shortage.

    “Getting guns, getting optics, getting ammo is tough right now,” said Tim Grover, firearms instructor with Jackson, Nebraska-based Rev-Tac.

    Jake Schira, owner of Gunsmith Jake LLC in Rothschild,WI says “I get like 20 to 40 calls a day pertaining to people looking to buy ammunition or searching for it.” Another nearby gun store owner, Mitch Mode, told WAOW: “We are into gun deer season, where we should have ammo for everybody, but we have ammo for nobody.“

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 17:10

  • Are 'Never Trumpers' The Future Of The GOP?
    Are ‘Never Trumpers’ The Future Of The GOP?

    Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    Denouncing the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill as a parsimonious “disgrace” and hinting at an Alamo-style finish on Jan. 6, when Congress votes to declare Joe Biden the next president, Donald Trump is not going to go quietly.

    The anti-Trumpers and “Never Trumpers” celebrating at Christmas 2020, in this “dark winter” of Joe Biden’s depiction, are assuring each other that Trumpism and Trump are dead and gone for good in four weeks.

    The future of the GOP, they suggest, belongs to the Republicans who resisted and renounced Trump through the last five years of his candidacy and presidency.

    As for those cowards and collaborators who stood by Trump and refused to repudiate him, they will, in turn, be repudiated by history and the American electorate alike.

    The wish, here, is very much the father to the thought.

    For if the past is any guide, not only are the reports of the death of Trumpism premature, the probability is that Trumpism has put down roots in our national politics that are not soon, if ever, going to be pulled up.

    For those of us of a certain age, a comparable situation arose at Christmas 1964. Barry Goldwater had just been crushed in a 44-state landslide, winning the votes of only 27 million Americans. The senator had carried only five states of the Deep South and his home state of Arizona.

    The establishment saw in the crushing of Goldwater the defeat and rout of the “extremist” movement that had produced him. “The Party That Lost Its Head” was the title of a widely hailed post-election book by two Ripon Society Republicans.

    The establishment consensus was that Govs. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, William Scranton of Pennsylvania and George Romney of Michigan were the future of the party, if it was to have a future.

    What followed?

    Richard Nixon, who had stood by Goldwater when the party’s liberal elite abandoned him, would lead the GOP to recapture 47 House seats in 1966, take the presidency in 1968, and run up a 49 state landslide in 1972.

    Thus began a period of GOP presidential ascendancy, with Nixon, Reagan and Bush I winning five of six elections from 1968 to 1988, until the first baby boomer president, Bill Clinton, arrived on the scene.

    And while there are differences between now and then, there are many similarities.

    Do the anti-Trumpers or “Never Trumpers” represent the future of the GOP? If so, where is the postwar precedent for this? No Republican who turned his back on Goldwater was ever nominated for president or vice president following Goldwater’s defeat.

    When President Gerald Ford put Rockefeller on his ticket after taking over from President Nixon, the Kansas City convention of 1976 demanded Rockefeller’s removal as the price of party unity.

    Rockefeller was sacrificed, as the right had demanded.

    Four years after Ford’s defeat, Mr. Conservative himself, Ronald Reagan, Goldwater’s most effective surrogate in 1964, was nominated and won successive landslides in 1980 and 1984.

    Other factors and forces point to the probability that Trumpism has a major role in the party’s future.

    Where Presidents Truman, Nixon, and George W. Bush left office with approval ratings in the 20s, Trump’s approval rating is still in the 40s, where it has been for the duration of his presidency.

    Second, the issues that propelled Trump to the nomination and the Oval Office still resonate with the American people.

    Among them are mass migration, insecure borders and dependency upon foreign imports for the necessities of our national life.

    Moreover, there is shrinking support for a foreign policy that has us tied down militarily in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East, to fight if need be, in the defense of scores of nations, few of which have a direct bearing on the national security of the United States.

    Another issue Trump elevated and exploited that is more acute now than in 2016, is a distrust of the media, the “deep state” and the political, cultural and academic establishments that have alienated the 74 million who voted for Trump.

    And if the past is prologue, the Republican Party will make a major comeback in 2022.

    Consider. Two years after his smashing victory over Goldwater, LBJ and his party lost 47 House seats. Ronald Reagan, after his landslide in 1980, lost 26 House seats in 1982. After routing Bush I in 1992, Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats and the Senate. Two years after winning the presidency, Barack Obama lost both the House and Senate in 2014.

    Is it likely Joe Biden will be celebrating his 80th birthday after making history by leading his party to control of Congress in 2022?

    For Republicans, the nomination of 2024 is a prize to be sought.

    However, if one has spent the last four years trashing Trump, it may be as out of reach as it was for Rocky.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 16:35

  • The 2020 Year-End Financial Quiz
    The 2020 Year-End Financial Quiz

    In a world where central banks have thrown out all the rules, where bond markets (and soon stocks) have been nationalized, and where retail investors outperform hedge funds 14 to 1…

    … professional traders understandably feel more obsolete, and bored, than ever.

    So to bring them some cheer and break the monotony of a dreary existence where the only thing that matters is how many billions Powell and crew will inject over the next hour (the correct answer is below), here is Bank of America’s financial market year-end quiz.

    1.On Jan 30th the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a globalhealth emergency on Mar 10th declared a global pandemic; as of Dec 17th 2020 howmany COVID-19 vaccines are in development around the world?

    • a.3
    • b.10
    • c.15
    • d.32

    2.How many people in the world will be vaccinated for COVID-19 every single minute in 2021 based on current forecasts?

    • a.2
    • b.20
    • c.200
    • d.2000

    3.The pandemic plunged the UK economy into one of the deepest recessions in history (GDP is forecast to decline 11.3% in 2020); when did the UK economy last contract by more?

    • a.1709 (in The Great Frost, coldest European winter of past 500 years)
    • b.1815 (end of the Napoleonic wars)
    • c.1918 (end of World War I)
    • d.1931 (Great Depression & British pound comes off gold standard)

    4.How many times did global central banks cut interest rates in 2020?

    • a.60
    • b.125
    • c.175
    • d.190

    5.And how much did the big 4 central banks (Fed, ECB, BoE, BoJ) spend every 60minutes buying financial assets (QE) between March & November this year?

    • a.$500mn
    • b.$800mn
    • c.$1.4bn
    • d.$2.2bn

    6.Who in 2017 said “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis?Probably that would be going too far. But I do think we’re much safer, and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes, and I don’t believe it will be”?

    • a.Jerome Powell
    • b.Christine Lagarde
    • c.Janet Yellen
    • d.Steve Mnuchin

    7.During the vicious financial market crash of Mar’20 only one of the following acted as a “safe haven” and actually rose in value; which one was it?

    • a.Gold
    • b.The US dollar
    • c.The 30-year Treasury bond
    • d.Bitcoin

    8.Which of the following asset classes enjoyed the largest fund inflows as a % ofAUM in 2020?

    • a.Gold
    • b.Cash
    • c.Bonds
    • d.Equities

    9.According to aggregated BAC credit and debit card data, which category is currently seeing the largest YoY increase in consumer spending?

    • a.Furniture
    • b.Home improvement
    • c.Online electronics
    • d.Grocery

    10.The consensus forecast for US GDP growth in 2021 is 4.5%; this will be the strongest US economic growth since which year?

    • a.1999
    • b.2000
    • c.2007
    • d.2010

    11.The US federal government is on course to spend $7tn in 2020; what is the current level of U.S. national debt per citizen?

    • a.$23,000
    • b.$43,000
    • c.$63,000
    • d.$83,000

    12.Excluding the US stock market the current level of global equities (MSCI ACWI) is currently how far away from their multi-year peak in Oct 2007?

    • a.25% higher
    • b.10% higher
    • c.The same level
    • d.10% lower

    13.What was the best performing stock in the MSCI ACWI in 2020?

    • a.U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla
    • b.Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio
    • c.Malaysian latex glove producer Top Glove
    • d.U.S. mobile payments company Square

    14.Which of the 5 FAANG stocks was the top performer in 2020?

    • a.Facebook
    • b.Apple
    • c.Amazon
    • d.Netflix
    • e.Google

    15.Which of the following themes had the best return in 2020?

    • a.Crypto
    • b.Solar
    • c.CRISPR
    • d.Carbon

    16.And finally, who was the last President to govern following a “blue wave” election?

    • a.John F. Kennedy 1960
    • b.Jimmy Carter 1976
    • c.Bill Clinton 1992
    • d.Barack Obama 2008

    Answers: click here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 15:30

  • Railroads Slashed Jobs In Nov To Lowest In Decades… As Stocks Soared To Record Highs
    Railroads Slashed Jobs In Nov To Lowest In Decades… As Stocks Soared To Record Highs

    Authored by Wolf Richter via WOLF STREET,

    Railroads responded to structural challenges by slashing jobs. Did nothing for volume but did everything for their stocks.

    The North American Class 1 freight railroads – BNSF, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CSX, Canadian National, Kansas City Southern, and Canadian Pacific – have been shedding employees since 2015, and in November they shed another 1.6% of their employees, from October, bringing the total down to 114,960 employees, according to data released by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), an independent federal agency. It was the lowest headcount in many, many decades.

    November headcount was down by 13.7% from a year ago, down by 22% from the Great Recession low at the end of 2009 (147,000), and down by 33.5% from the recent high in April 2015 (174,000):

    Railroads submit employment data – along with a slew of other operating data – to the STB on a monthly basis. I have excluded Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) because it is not a freight railroad (it too cut headcount).

    Back in 1997, which is as far back as the publicly released data by the STB goes, railroads employed 178,000 people. In 1998, railroads employed 180,000. Employment in November was down by 36% from 1998. The chart below shows Class 1 railroad employment in each year in December, except for 2020, when I used November (in recent years, headcounts dropped further from November to December):

    Compared to November last year, each of the Class 1 railroads shed employees, in order of the number of remaining employees:

    1. BNSF: -15.6% (35,081)

    2. Union Pacific: -13.4% (32,046)

    3. Norfolk Southern: -15.9% (19,199)

    4. CSX: -9.0% (17,093)

    5. Canadian National: -13.2% (6,183)

    6. Kansas City Southern: -10.1% (2,718)

    7. Canadian Pacific: -9.4% (2,640)

    Since September 2016, which is as far as the STB’s monthly data by individual railroad goes back, some railroads have been busier than others shedding employees. All combined have shed 24.6% of their people. Each railroad, in order of the biggest shedders in percentage terms:

    1. CSX: -30.5%

    2. Norfolk Southern: -30.2%

    3. Union Pacific: -29.5%

    4. BNSF: -17.7%

    5. Kansas City Southern: -9.3%

    6. Canadian Pacific: -5.1%

    7. Canadian National: -4.8%

    The chart below shows the relentless progress in shedding employees by each of the railroads over the past four years:

    There are some structural challenges railroads have faced over the past two decades, including the decline of coal as the primary fuel for power generation (coal went from a share of 55% in the 1980s to a share of 23% these days). Coal – like other bulk commodities such as corn or petroleum products, and in addition to goods such as motor vehicles and industrial equipment – falls under the railroad metric of “carloads.” And the decline of coal is largely the cause of the long-term decline of carloads, from around 1.45 million car loads per month in 2005 and 2006, to just over 900,000 carloads currently.

    The intermodal business (hauling containers and trailers) has been the growth sector for railroads. But this is precisely where competition from truckers has been ferocious, much of it based on service, such as speed, convenience, and reliability. And a deterioration in service sends container traffic to the highway.

    The chart shows the originations of carloads (red) and intermodal (green) by all Class 1 railroads combined, monthly and their 6-month moving average:

    Total traffic volume over the long term, with all types of loads combined, puts the railroads in a highly volatile, cyclical, and horribly stagnant business. The good thing for railroads is that intermodal is a relatively high-margin business that brings in the dollars.

    This chart of carloads and intermodal combined, as 6-month moving average, shows just how tough this business is, and rampant cost cutting, if it entails lowering service quality, will send more of the booming intermodal business to the highway. Total originations have dropped 16% since the peak in 2006:

    Railroads have responded to the long-term challenges by cutting costs. The hottest cost-cutting system is Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), under which railroads attempt to operate their carload and intermodal business more efficiently, such as more point-to-point routing. Other folks have called it slash-and-burn because it ends up slashing headcount and capital expenses.

    Some folks have come to believe that PSR actually stands for Positive Shareholder Reaction, because it has done precisely that; these days, everything boils down to pumping up share prices no matter what, even if it sends business to the highway.

    So this is the WOLF STREET Railroad Index, based on market cap in billions of dollars of Union Pacific [UNP], Norfolk Southern [NSC], CSX [CSX], Canadian National [CNI], Kansas City Southern [KSU], and Canadian Pacific [CP]. Union Pacific, given its market cap of $137 billion, currently weighs 33.5% in the index. BNSF is owned by Berkshire Hathaway and is not included.

    The index is up 18.3% year-to-date, despite the plunge in March. Since the bottom in March, it’s up 80%. It has nearly tripled from the high before the Great Recession in August 2008, even as total carload and intermodal originations have dropped 17% from the peak in 2006. Shedding massive numbers of employees has a marvelous effect on stock prices (market cap data via YCharts):

    *  *  *

    Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? Using ad blockers – I totally get why – but want to support the site? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/27/2020 – 15:00

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Dec 27

Today’s News 27th December 2020

  • Unipolar Vs Multipolar: The Death Of McKinley & The Loss Of America's Soul
    Unipolar Vs Multipolar: The Death Of McKinley & The Loss Of America’s Soul

    Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Saker blog,

    On December 17, 2020, a new US Maritime strategy was unveiled putting into practice the regressive concepts first outlined in the early National Defense Strategy 2020 doctrine which target China and Russia as the primary enemies of the USA and demanding that the USA be capable to “defeat our adversaries while we accelerate development of a modernized integrated all-domain naval force of the future”.

    The Pentagon’s Advantages at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power continued by saying “China’s and Russia’s revisionist approaches in the maritime environment threaten US interests, undermine alliances and partnerships and degrade the free and open international order… moreover, China’s and Russia’s aggressive naval growth and modernization are eroding US institutional advantages.”

    The document continued to describe that “we must operate more assertively to prevail in day-to-day competition as we uphold the rules-based order and deter our competitors from pursuing armed aggression… ready, forward-deployed naval forces will adopt a more assertive posture in day to day operations”

    For anyone who has been paying attention to the vast growth of the Pentagon’s Full Spectrum containment policy around China’s perimeter begun with Obama’s Asia Pivot, it may appear as though these words are not new, but just a continuation of American unipolar agenda, Pacific war games, and psychological projection onto perceived enemies, that have been underway for years. While this is certainly true, it must be noted that they are occurring at a time that NATO 2030 has enshrined an anti-China military posture into the Trans Atlantic security doctrine which had formerly channeled most of its hate purely onto Russia.

    The fact is those unipolar zombies programmed to think in no other terms but global post-nation state dominance are deathly afraid of the Russia-China bond of survival which has created a uniquely viable foundation for an alternative economic/security architecture for the world. This model is based on a system of finance that defines money not in speculative but rather long-term development of the real economic foundations of life. It also features a strong emphasis on win-win cooperation as opposed to Hobbesian zero-sum logic dominant among western powers, and it also finds itself driven by OPEN system economic practices shaped by unbounded scientific and technological progress that once upon a time guided America’s better traditions.

    With the obvious threat of nuclear war breaking out between a collapsing unipolar order in the west and an emergent Multipolar alliance, it is important to review what possible latent policy traditions may yet be revived within America’s history which certain forces have worked very hard to scrub out of the historical record and memory. This study will take us to the incredible fights that arose over America’s identity at the turn of the 20th century during the period of President William McKinley and the treasonous anglophile President of vice, Theodore Roosevelt.

    Munroe Doctrine or Empire?

    As Martin Sieff eloquently laid out in his recent article, President McKinley himself was an peacemaker, anti-imperialist of a higher order than most people realize. McKinley was also a strong supporter of two complementary policies: 1) Internally, he was a defender of Lincoln’s “American system” of protectionism, internal improvements and black suffrage and 2) Externally, he was a defender of the Munroe Doctrine that defined America’s anti-imperial foreign policy since 1823.

    The Munroe Doctrine’s architect John Quincy Adams laid out this principle eloquently on July 4, 1821:

    “After fifty years the United States has, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own.

    That the United States does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

    That by involving itself in the internal affairs of other nations, the United States would destroy its own reason of existence; the fundamental maxims of her policy would become, then, no different than the empire America’s revolution defeated. It would be, then, no longer the ruler of itself, but the dictator of the world.”

    America’s march is the march of mind, not of conquest.

    Colonial establishments are engines of wrong, and that in the progress of social improvement it will be the duty of the human family to abolish them”.

    It was an aging John Quincy Adams whom a young Abraham Lincoln collaborated with in ending the imperial Mexican-American war under Wall Street stooge James Polk in 1846. When Adams died in 1848, Lincoln picked up the torch he left behind as the London-directed “proto deep state” of the 19th century worked to dissolve the republic from within. The foreign policy conception laid out by Adams ensured that America’s only concern was “staying out of foreign imperial entanglements” as Washington had earlier warned and keeping foreign imperial interests out of the Americas. The idea of projecting power onto the weak or subduing other cultures was anathema to this genuinely American principle.

    A major battle which has been intentionally obscured from history books took place in the wake of Lincoln’s murder and the re-ascension of the City of London-backed slave power during the decades after the Union victory of 1865. On the one hand America’s role in the emerging global family of nations was being shaped by followers of Lincoln who wished to usher in an age of win-win cooperation. Such an anti-Darwinian system which Adams called “a community of principle” asserted that each nation had the right to sovereign banking controls over private finance, productive credit emissions tied to internal improvements with a focus on continental (rail/road) development, industrial progress and full spectrum economies. Adherents of this program included Russia’s Sergei Witte and Alexander II, Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, France’s Sadi Carnot, and leading figures within Japan’s Meiji Restoration.

    On the other hand, “eastern establishment families” of the USA more loyal to the gods of money, hereditary institutions and the vast international empire of Britain saw America’s destiny tied to an imperial global partnership with the Mother country. These two opposing paradigms within America have defined two opposing views of “progress”, “value”, “self-interest” and “law” which have continued to shape the world over 150 years later.

    William Gilpin vs Alfred Mahan: Two Paradigms Clash

    A champion of the former traditionally American outlook who rose to the international scene was William Gilpin (1813-1894). Gilpin hailed from a patriotic family of nation builders whose patriarch Thomas Gilpin was a close ally of Benjamin Franklin and leading member of Franklin’s Philosophical Society. William Gilpin was famous for his advocacy of America’s trans continental railway whose construction he proselytized as early as 1845 (it was finally begun by Lincoln during the Civil War and completed in 1869 as I outlined in my previous paper How to Save a Dying Republic).

    In his thousands of speeches and writings, Gilpin made it known that he understood America’s destiny to be inextricably tied to the ancient civilization of China- not to impose opium as the British and their American lackies were want to do, but to learn from and even emulate!

    In 1852, Gilpin stated:

    “Salvation must come to America from China, and this consists in the introduction of the “Chinese constitution” viz. the “patriarchal democracy of the Celestial Empire”. The political life of the United States is through European influences, in a state of complete demoralization, and the Chinese Constitution alone contains elements of regeneration. For this reason, a railroad to the Pacific is of such vast importance, since by its means the Chinese trade will be conducted straight across the North American continent. This trade must bring in its train Chinese civilization. All that is usually alleged against China is mere calumny spread purposefully, just like those calumnies which are circulated in Europe about the United States”.

    With Lincoln’s 1861 presidential victory, Gilpin became Lincoln’s bodyguard and ensured the president survived his first assassination attempt en route to Washington from Illinois. During the Civil War, Gilpin was made Colorado’s first Governor where he successfully stopped the southern power from opening up a western front during the war of secession (applying Lincoln’s greenback system to finance his army on a state level) and winning the “Battle of Glorieta Pass”, thus saving the union.

    After the war Gilpin became a leading advocate of the internationalization of the “American system of political economy” which Lincoln applied vigorously during his short-lived presidency. Citing the success of Lincoln’s system, Gilpin said: 

    “No amount of argument will make America adopt old world theories… To rely upon herself, to develop her own resources, to manufacture everything that can possibly be manufactured within her territory- this is and has been the policy of the USA from the time of Alexander Hamilton to that of Henry Clay and thence to our own days”.

    Throughout his speeches Gilpin emphasizes the role of a U.S.-Russia alliance: 

    “It is a simple and plain proposition that Russia and the United States, each having broad, uninhabited areas and limitless undeveloped resources, would by the expenditure of 2 or 3 hundred millions apiece for a highway of the nations threw their now waste places, add a hundredfold to their wealth and power and influence”

    And seeing in China’s potential the means to re-enliven the world- including the decadent and corrupt culture of Europe:

     “In Asia a civilization resting on a basis of remote antiquity has had, indeed, a long pause, but a certain civilization- although hitherto hermetically sealed up has continued to exist. The ancient Asiatic colossus, in a certain sense, needed only to be awakened to new life and European culture finds a basis there on which it can build future reforms.”

    In opposition to the outdated British controls of “chock points” on the seas which kept the world under the clutches of the might of London, Gilpin advocated loudly for a system of internal improvements, rail development, and growth of the innate goodness of all cultures and people through scientific and technological progress. Once a global system of mutual development of rail were established, Gilpin stated “in the shipment of many kinds of raw and manufactured goods, it will largely supersede the ocean traffic of Great Britain, in whose hands is now carrying the trade of the world.”

    Gilpin’s vision was most clearly laid out in his 1890 magnum opus “The Cosmopolitan Railway” which featured designs for development corridors across all continents united by a “community of principle”.

    Echoing the win-win philosophy of Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road today, Gilpin stated:

    “The cosmopolitan railway will make the whole world one community. It will reduce the separate nations to families of our great nation… From extended intercommunication will arise a wider intercourse of human ideas and as the result, logical and philosophical reciprocities, which will become the germs for innumerable new developments; for in the track of intercommunication, enterprise and invention invariably follow and whatever facilitates one stimulates every other agency of progress.”

    Mahan Derails America’s Anti-Imperial Identity

    Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) represented an opposing paradigm which true American statesmen like Lincoln, Secretary of State James Blaine, William Seward, President Grant, William Garfield, and McKinley detested. Sadly, with McKinley’s murder (run by an anarchist ring with ties to British Intelligence) and the rise of Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, it was not Gilpin’s but rather Mahan’s worldview which became the dominant foreign policy doctrine for the next 120 years (despite a few brief respites under FDR and JFK).

    Mahan is commonly credited for being a co-founder of modern geopolitics and an inspiration for Halford Mackinder. Having graduated from West Point’s naval academy in 1859, Mahan soon became renowned as a total failure in actual combat having crashed warships repeatedly into moving and stationary objects during the Civil War. Since reality was not his forte, Mahan focused his post-war career on Ivory tower theorizing gushing over maps of the world and fawning over Britain’s power as a force of world history.

    His “Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 published in the same year that Gilpin published his Cosmopolitan Railway (1890) was a total break from the spirit of win-win cooperation that defined America’s foreign policy. According to the Diplomat, this book soon “became the bible for many navies around the world” with the Kaiser of Germany (now released from the influence of the great rail-loving statesman Otto von Bismarck whom he fired in 1890) demanding all of his offers read. Later Teddy Roosevelt ordered copies for every member of Congress. In Mahan’s book, the geopolitician continuously asserts his belief that it is America’s destiny to succeed the British Empire.

    Taking the British imperial definition of “commerce” which uses free trade as a cover for the military dominance of weak nations (open borders and turning off protectionism simply makes a people easier to rob), Mahan attempts to argue that America need not continue to adhere to “outdated” habits like the Munroe doctrine since the new order of world empires demands America stay relevant in a world of sea power and empire. Mahan writes: “The advance of Russia in Asia, in the division of Africa, in the colonial ambitions of France and in the British idea of Imperial Federation, now fast assuming concrete shape in practical combined action in South Africa” demands that the USA act accordingly.

    Attempting to refute the “outdated habits” of rail development which consume so many foolish statesmen around the globe, Mahan states: “a railway competes in vain with a river… because more facile and copious, water traffic is for equal distances much cheaper and because cheaper, more useful”. Like those attacking today’s Belt and Road Initiative, the power of railways is that their returns are not measurable by simple monetary terms, but are rather QUALITATIVE. The long-term construction of rail systems not only unite divided people, increase manufacturing and industrial corridors but also induce closer powers of association and interchange between agriculture and urban producers. These processes uplift national productive powers building full spectrum economies and also a culture’s capacity for creative thought.

    The attempt made to justify sea traffic merely because “larger amounts of goods can be shipped” is purely quantitative and monetaristic sophistry devoid of any science of real value.

    While Gilpin celebrates the successful awakening of China and other great nations of the world, in the Problem of Asia (1901) Mahan says:

     “It is scarcely desirable that so vast a proportion of mankind as the Chinese constitute should be animated by but one spirit”. Should China “burst her barriers eastward, it would be impossible to exaggerate the momentous issues dependant upon a firm hold of the Hawaiian islands by a great civilized maritime power.”

    Mahan’s adherence to social Darwinism is present throughout his works as he defines the political differences of the 3 primary branches of humanity (Teutonic, Slavic and Asiatic) as purely rooted in the intrinsic inferiority or superiority of their race saying: “There are well recognized racial divergencies which find concrete expression in differences equally marked of political institution, of social progress and of individual development. These differences are… deep seated in the racial constitution and partly the result of the environment”. Mahan goes onto restate his belief that unlike the superior Teutonics “the Oriental, whether national or individual does not change” and “the East does not progress”.

    Calling China a carcass to be devoured by an American eagle, Mahan writes: “If life departs, a carcass can be utilized only by dissection or for food; the gathering to it of the eagles is a natural law, of which it is bootless to complain… the onward movement of the world has to be accepted as a fact.”

    Championing an Anglo American alliance needed to subdue and “civilize” China as part of the post-Boxer Rebellion, Mahan says “of all the nations we shall meet in the East, Great Britain is the one with which we have by far the most in common in the nature of our interests there and in our standards of law and justice”.

    In case there was any doubt in the minds of Mahan’s readers as to the MEANS which America should assert its dominance onto China, Mahan makes clear his belief that progress is caused by 1) force and 2) war: 

    “That such a process should be underlain by force… on the part of outside influences, force of opposition among the latter themselves [speaking of the colonial European monarchies racing to carve up China in 1901 -ed] may be regrettable, but it is only a repetition of all history… Every step forward in the march that has opened in China to trade has been gained by pressure; the most important have been the result of actual war.”

    A Last Anti-Imperial Push

    The chaos induced by the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion of 1899 which spread quickly across China resulted a heated battle between imperial and anti-imperial forces in both Russia and the USA. Where Transport Minister Sergei Witte who spearheaded the development of the Trans Siberian rail line (1890-1905) tried to avoid military entanglement, McKinley was busy doing the same.

    The boxers soon attacked the Manchurian rail connecting Russia to China by land and Witte succumbed to pressure to finally send in troops. The reformers of China who attempted to modernize with American and Russian assistance under Emperor Kuang Hsu and Li Hung Chang fell from power as total anarchy reigned. The outcome of the Boxer chaos involved the imperial powers of France, Germany and England demanding immense financial reparations, ownership of Chinese territory and mass executions of the Boxers.

    While McKinley is often blamed for America’s imperial turn, the reality is just the opposite.

    The Spanish-American war begun in 1898 was actually launched unilaterally by Anglophilic racist Theodore Roosevelt who used the 4 hour window he had while Undersecretary of the Navy (while the actual Secretary was out of Washington) to send orders to Captain Dewey of the Pacific fleet to engage in a fight with the Spanish over their Philippine territories. McKinley had resisted the war hawks until that point but found himself finally bending to the momentum. In China, McKinley, like Witte worked desperately to reject taking territory resulting in great fears from the British oligarchy that a U.S.-Russia alliance led by McKinley and Witte was immanent.

    The assassination of McKinley on September 18, 1901 catapulted Mahan-loving Vice President Teddy Roosevelt into high office, who enmeshed America into a new epoch of Anglo-American imperialism abroad, a growth of eugenics and segregation at home and the creation of an independent police state agency called the FBI.

    As Sieff writes: 

    “Roosevelt devoted his next eight years in the presidency and the rest of his life to integrating the United States and the British Empire into a seamless web of racial imperialist oppression that dominated Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and that destroyed the cultural history and heritage of the Native North American nations.”

    In Russia, the 1902 Anglo-Japan Treaty led to the disastrous Japan-Russo war of 1905 which devastated the Russian navy, ended the political career of Sergei Witte and threw Russia into chaos leading to the fall of the Romanovs (Czar Nicholas II was the last statesman occupying high office that this author is aware of to have actively promoted the Bering Strait Tunnel rail connection in 1906. It wasn’t until FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace met with Foreign Minister Molotov in 1942 that the idea resurfaced once more).

    In his Two Peoples One Friendship, Wallace described his discussions with Foreign Minister Molotov in 1942 saying:

    “Of all nations, Russia has the most powerful combination of a rapidly increasing population, great natural resources and immediate expansion in technological skills. Siberia and China will furnish the greatest frontier of tomorrow… When Molotov [Russia’s Foreign Minister] was in Washington in the spring of 1942 I spoke to him about the combined highway and airway which I hope someday will link Chicago and Moscow via Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Molotov, after observing that no one nation could do this job by itself, said that he and I would live to see the day of its accomplishment. It would mean much to the peace of the future if there could be some tangible link of this sort between the pioneer spirit of our own West and the frontier spirit of the Russian East.”

    While the “open door” rape of the China was attempted by the Anglo-Americans, a fortunate rear guard maneuver orchestrated by another follower of Abraham Lincoln named Sun Yat-sen resulted in a surprise overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 and the institution of the Republic of China with Sun Yat-sen as the acting President. While Sun Yat-sen sided with Gilpin and Lincoln in opposition to the Mahanists on the issue of rail and industrial development (illustrated in his extraordinary 1920 International Development of China program which called for 160 000 km of rail, water diversion projects, ports and 1.5 million km of paved roads- illustrated below), the intrigues that sank the world into World War I made any hopes of this early development of China impossible in Sun Yat-sen’s lifetime.

    Expressing his own deep understanding of these top down tactics of world history (and the recognition that the same British imperial forces that orchestrated the US Civil War were planning to do the same to China), Sun Yat-sen wrote in 1912:

    “We understand too well that there are certain men of power—not to include for the present, certain nations—who would view with a greater or lesser satisfaction an internal rupture in the new Republic [of China]. They would welcome, as a move toward the accomplishment of their own ends and designs, a civil war between the provinces of the North and the South; just as, 50 years ago, there was applause in secret (in certain quarters) over the terrible civil strife in the United States.

    Americans of today who were alive in those dark days of the great republic will remember the feelings in the hearts of the people—the bitter and painful thoughts that arose from the knowledge that foreigners were hoping and praying for the destruction of the American Union.

    Had the war been successful from the South’s standpoint, and had two separate republics been established, is it not likely that perhaps half a dozen or more weak nations would have eventually been established? I believe that such would have been the result; and I further believe that with the one great nation divided politically and commercially, outsiders would have stepped in sooner or later and made of America their own. I do not believe that I am stating this too forcibly. If so, I have not read history nor studied men and nations intelligently.

    And I feel that we have such enemies abroad as the American republic had; and that at certain capitals the most welcome announcement that would be made would be that of a rebellion in China against the constituted authorities.

    This is a hard statement to make; but I believe in speaking the truth so that all the world may know and recognize it.”

    Today’s Belt and Road Initiative, and strategic friendship established between Russia and China has re-awoken the forgotten vision of William Gilpin for a world of cooperating sovereign nation states. Does the USA have the moral ability to avoid disintegration by accepting a Russia-U.S.-China alliance needed to revive McKinley’s American System or will we slip into a new Great Reset and World War?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 23:30

  • How The Chinese Use Illegal Online Gambling And Tether To Launder Over $1 Trillion Yuan
    How The Chinese Use Illegal Online Gambling And Tether To Launder Over $1 Trillion Yuan

    It has long been known that over the past decade Chinese oligarchs who wanted to bypass Beijing’s capital controls and anti-money laundering firewall, would smuggle billions of dollars outside of China by using the Macau casino money-laundering infrastructure, prompting Beijing to crack down aggressively on this popular firewall loophole, with mixed success.

    What is less known is that as the capital controls game of cat and mouse escalated in recent years, so have Chinese money laundering tactics and now according to Caixin, Chinese citizens launder as much as $153 billion per year with the help of online gambling and such cryptocurrency as tether, which has long been rumored to be a key driver of upside into bitcoin (the same bitcoin we said in 2015 when it was $250 would soar thanks to Chinese attempts to circumvent the capital firewall… we were right).

    Here is the story of how Beijing made this starting discovery, courtesy of Caixin:

    A migrant worker from the northern Chinese city Baoding “loaned” three credit cards under his name to friends to offset 2,500 yuan ($380) of debt he owed. He never imagined he would later be arrested for illegal sale of credit cards that were used by criminal groups to launder money for online gambling.

    This arrest was part of Chinese authorities’ nationwide “Card Breaking Campaign,” an operation to crack down on illicit bank card transactions and bank card sales to combat telecommunications fraud and cross-border online gambling. The campaign aims to cut off links between mobile phone sim cards and bank cards, and users who are not the registered card holders. Also included are online payment accounts such as Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s Alipay.

    This new type of crime has created an illegitimate industry employing 5 million to 6 million people involving information technology (IT), payment settlements and operations, according to an IT department official at the Ministry of Public Security. The complex payments and money laundering system ropes in small individual players in some of China’s remotest places like the migrant worker in Baoding who loan or lease financial credentials to offshore criminal groups, which then help illegal gamblers hide money from authorities, often using Tether.’s USDT cryptocurrency.

    In the first nine months of 2020, police cracked down on 1,700 online gambling platforms and 1,400 underground banks involving more than 1 trillion yuan ($153 billion) of illegal transactions, data from the Ministry of Public Security showed. That compared with 7,200 online gambling cases in 2019 totaling 18 billion yuan.

    In the cross-border online gambling chain, mobile payments play an increasingly important role. As the front-runner in mobile payments, China has been aggressively promoting payments via mobile phone scans of QR codes, a type of barcode. In China, even a street food vendor owns a unique QR code for receiving mobile payments. The convenience associated with mobile payments has also attracted criminal gambling groups.

    Running points platforms

    As all forms of gambling are illegal under Chinese law, if a Chinese citizen wants to bet using offshore online gambling sites, the first obstacle is depositing money at gambling platforms. These operations often use leading e-commerce platforms and delivery companies to facilitate massive fund transactions disguised as legitimate online shopping deals.

    For example, a Caixin reporter tried to deposit 100 yuan via online banking to a gambling site called “DreamGaming.” The transaction showed the money went to an Alipay account linked to a grocery store. That gambling site can no longer be accessed as a notice says “it contains illegal content.”

    Online gambling sites usually use so-called “running points platforms” to launder gamblers’ funds to look like legitimate payments. To deposit funds, a gambler follows a payment link on a site that connects to a running points platform. This platform is like a car hailing system. A registered member of the platform will “grab orders” and upload the funds using someone else’s purchased or borrowed bank account. Then the money’s transferred to the offshore gambling site. The platforms make a commission of 2.5% to 4% on the transactions, and the members get a cut of 1% to 2%, according to police.

    Chinese social media such as WeChat and Weibo often carry advertisements recruiting part-time workers. Many of these advertisements are posted by running points platforms, which would pay 500–1,000 yuan to each recruited member for their ID numbers, bank cards, mobile phone numbers and bank USB-shield, which is a security tool that looks similar to a flash disk and acts as a shield to protect user’s money in internet banking. If more information can be provided, such as a business license, business seal, business bank account and USB-shield, the price can go up to 1,500–2,000 yuan for the whole set.

    To some young jobless people from smaller cities and rural areas, the chance to generate 1,000 yuan from leasing their bank accounts or QR codes is a big temptation, said an insider at a payment process company. And the more transactions go through their accounts, the more they can make in commissions. Of course, they run the risk of arrest for participating in illegal activities. In June, police in southwestern Guangxi province destroyed a cross-border online gambling operation involving 30 billion yuan of fund transfers through running points platforms.

    Another channel for depositing money into online gambling sites is through mobile phone credit refills. These transactions are disguised as normal credit additions for mobile phone accounts but actually funnel money into gambling sites.

    Bank cards confiscated by Guangdong police in authorities’ “Card Breaking Campaign.”

    Cryptocurrency money laundering

    After the running points platforms collect money from gamblers, how does the money get to the gambling operators? The traditional path is through underground banks, which facilitate illegal foreign exchange and cross-border trading. These illegal underground banks have long existed in China to help citizens transfer money out of the country to buy property abroad.

    A new practice involves Tether (SDT), a cryptocurrency linked to the value of the U.S. dollar. The original goal of the cryptocurrency was to solve the problem of excessive value volatility. In 2019, USDT surpassed Bitcoin as the most-traded cryptocurrency on the market by volume.

    USDT is widely used in money laundering, gambling and other illegal activities, an executive at a blockchain platform told Caixin. In October, a local branch of the People’s Bank of China in the southern Chinese city Huizhou conducted mass arrests related to cross-border online gambling, the first crackdown on activities involving USDT. In a blog post, the central bank said 77 suspects were arrested for using USDT in cross-border transactions to launder gambling proceeds worth nearly 120 million yuan.

    Most USDT transactions in the Huizhou case were made on Huobi, a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange founded by Tsinghua University graduate and former Oracle engineer Leon Li. Online gambling sites use gamblers’ funds to buy USDT on Huobi and then sell the cryptocurrency, thus “washing” the funds into legitimate cash flow, Huizhou police told Caixin.

    China’s public security authorities ordered Huobi and other USDT exchange platforms to strengthen their anti-money laundering efforts by adding video identification verification during transactions to make sure bank cards linked to a trader’s account actually belong to the trader. But the exchanges haven’t done so. An executive at Huobi told Caixin the company completed its biggest upgrade in anti-money laundering risk control in August, without specifying the measures taken.

    Huobi’s Li and Bitcoin exchange OKEx founder Xu Mingxing were reportedly cooperating with police on investigations of money laundering for online gambling.

    The running points platforms and cryptocurrency exchanges place their servers offshore, increasing the investigative challenge facing police, Huizhou police said.

    Difficulty to identify

    For online payment platforms such as WeChat Pay and Alipay, the great challenge is to identify which users’ accounts are actually running points platforms. Looking at data of accounts that might be used by running points platforms, the amount of transactions is usually small, and many of them seem to be normal payments for consumption, said Guo Qianting, general manager of Ant Group’s anti-money laundering center. Finding running points platforms among regular users is like looking for a needle in a haystack, she said.

    Another money laundering channel is gig job platforms, which provide contractors and payroll services to employers in the food delivery, ride-hailing and e-commerce sectors. More than 10,000 such platforms have emerged in China since 2018. Some of them are service providers for legitimate companies including Meituan Dianping and Didi Chuxing. But many others are used to launder money for online gambling.

    In May, a local branch of Agricultural Bank of China in Xiangtan, Hunan province, detected suspicious transactions at a gig job human resources provider. The company had more than 200 million yuan of cash transactions in just a dozen days, and most of the transactions took place during abnormal business hours. Police found that the company laundered money for telecommunications fraud groups.

    Last month, another gig job platform backed by Ant Group, China’s dominant online payment service provider, was investigated for suspected money laundering activities. Beijing Bujiao Technology Co. Ltd. was suspected of having falsely issued more than 1.3 billion yuan of value-added tax invoices. Some of the company’s money laundering activities involved cross-border gambling, Caixin learned.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 23:00

  • The Gray Curtain Descends, Part 1
    The Gray Curtain Descends, Part 1

    Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic,

    Let’s dispense with the obscenity that expressed intentions excuse all crimes and consequences.

    It’s a close contest between which officially approved story is more implausible: Coronavirus as the Scourge of Humanity or America’s Free and Fair Election. The former enabled the latter, and they were propagated by the same people pursuant to an all-in power grab. Both are riddled with glaring inconsistencies and fraud, none of which are mentioned in polite society.

    It was strange, she thought, to obtain news by means of nothing but denials, as if existence had ceased, facts had vanished and only the frantic negatives uttered by officials and columnists gave any clue to the reality they were denying.

    Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1957

    The stories’ propagators don’t address the inconsistencies and fraud because they can’t; they simply deny their existence. They suppress questions, inquiry, and exploration of actual evidence and facts, and promote mindless slogans. The legacy media censorship has been overt, but not as effective as hoped, thanks in large part to the alternative media. The censorship itself is a red flag. If the approved stories are Shining Truth, why can’t they bear challenge?

    The propagandists are suppressing free inquiry and debate, and they’re about to eliminate it entirely. With next month’s ascension of Biden and Harris and the predatory and parasitic ruling cabal to which they answer, the prize is in site. They see no need to continue feigning fealty to anything other than subjugation and control.

    For the most part they’ve even dropped their shopworn rhetoric of concern for their subjects. In the good old days there was “for the people” codswallop with the goodies, which you got as long as you did what you were told. The new diktat will be to do as you’re told or else, but there will be no goodies; governments are bankrupt and the ruling cabal has no ability to produce. They will not be bothered by destitution and deaths among the ruled, that’s a feature, not a bug. Indeed, any detectable concern would be grounds for immediate expulsion from the cabal.

    Let’s dispense with the obscenity that expressed intentions excuse all crimes and consequences. Totalitarianism has never produced anything but destruction, destitution, and death and never will, regardless of the totalitarians’ lofty rhetoric. Totalitarians are vultures, not eagles, and the current kettle of vultures intend to dine on the corpse of history’s most advanced civilization.

    Draft animals work harder for a morsel or kind words than for the whip or switch, but somehow humans are different. Whips, switches, prisons, and subjugation pave the road to utopia. When they instead lead to a charnel house, that’s not the fault of the whippers, switchers, wardens, or subjugators. Except it is. Orwell said it best: “The object of power is power.” Power’s trite slogans and rationalizations don’t excuse its murderous depredations, they only increase its inescapable guilt.

    Compromise between good and evil spells death for the good. If I ask you to drink a cup of cyanide and you refuse, but we compromise on half a cup, who wins?

    It’s these sort of compromises, exacted bit by bit over decades, that have destroyed a once great nation. It’s understandable how it happened. There’s a problem and more power for the rulers is always the solution: a Civil War, central bank fiat debt, an income tax, make the world safe for democracy, a New Deal, Frontier, or Covenant, Hope and Change, leader of the Free World, wars on poverty, drugs, terror, and now, germs, and so on.

    The compromises serve as precedents that launch the next compromises and consequent government accretions of power. (The Civil War was precedent for both the income tax and fiat currency 48 years later.) Solutions are always presented in a blinding blaze of propaganda. There are always the unblinded few who question and dissent. They are always ostracized or worse.

    The rest learn the lesson. Herd behavior is hard-wired. Like a pack of wildebeests after one spots a lion, there are times when reflexive flight is the right response. However, nothing government does is quick enough to be considered reflexive; there’s been time enough to question, analyze, and protest virtually everything the US government has done since its inception. Unfortunately, at the individual level, sticking with the pack often makes perfect sense. To be the one who refuses to obey, or to even question the dictates of a powerful government that is both stoking and benefiting from herd frenzy, is to risk ruin, imprisonment, and sometimes, death.

    The crowd does what the crowd does. Regardless of the arguments, and perhaps the insults and deprecations from the few outside the crowd, it rationalizes its own behavior. Who are we to question? It’s still a great nation, it could be worse. Why risk our comfortable lifestyle for intangible principles? Better safe than sorry. And there’s the secret thought: yes, there may be unfortunate consequences, but I’ll be dead by then.

    Except the unfortunate consequences have arrived. We’re confronted by a dystopian totalitarianism the design of which the totalitarians are no longer trying to hide. Virtually everything has already been compromised and the meager remnant of freedom is on the table. As the crowd is prodded into the cattle cars (not social distancing, their well-being no longer even a faux concern) uneasy whispers circulate: is the final destination the abattoir?

    However flimsy the excuses offered by the ruled have been, they’ve at least had the usual rationalizations of cowardice. There’s no excuses or rationalizations for our rulers. They want to impoverish, subjugate, or kill us. Don’t give them too much credit believing the latter isn’t the preferred option. Such deeds never spring from motives other than all-encompassing, unremitting malice and hate. The honest and honorable are left to wonder what, if anything, has replaced those forfeited souls. We may never know the answer.

    What do they get from their brave new world? Adding to their already substantial fortunes? Still more power over an impoverished, cowed population, more transhuman robots than people, dutifully following orders but unable to produce anything beyond what is programmed into their quantum microchips, bereft of the sparks of inquiry, innovation and joy that propels humanity and make life worth living? Do they not know that a gray curtain will descend over the dazzling world of wealth and privilege they now inhabit? That turning people into appliances plugged into an all-seeing internet will leave everyone in a electric panopticon that’s as sterile and joyless for the watchers as the watched?

    The gray curtain descends. What further demonstration is necessary of impoverish, subjugate, and kill than Coronavirus totalitarianism, which has done all three? It’s the preview of coming attractions. The last flimsy excuse for the ruled is the one that would presumably be offered by roadkill if it wasn’t dead: it was too stunned by the headlights to think or act. The moment is nigh: you’ll be totalitarian roadkill if you’re too stunned by the brazen evil unfolding to think and act, now.

    Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are no more the rightful president and vice president than I would be the rightful owner of your house if I forced my way in, held a gun to your head, and made you sign over the deed. Unlike the solipsistic plaints after President Trump won a semi-legitimate election in 2016 (“Not my president!”), Joe Biden will not be my or anyone else’s rightful president in 2021. (The 2016 election probably was rigged—for Hillary—the riggers just didn’t do an adequate job, unlike 2020.) Biden and his partner in crime are usurpers and SLL will not refer to either one by their stolen titles. Until the inauguration SLL will refer to Biden as Not Our President-Elect, or NOPE. They’re small gestures, but revolutions start with small gestures.

    NOPE and Vice-NOPE will be nominal capos of the largest organized crime syndicate in history. Unchallenged crime and evil are not static; they get worse. Investing any hope in “things will get better” has been a loser for more than a century. Governments generally do nothing but get worse—more taxes, more laws and regulations, more debt, more fiat fraud, more wars, more corruption, and more power—as the freedom of individuals who must live under them vanishes.

    Hope without action is not a strategy, but there is cause for hope if it’s coupled with action.

    Part Two will be posted next week.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 22:30

  • Wheels Come Off For Bus Companies, Closing Down Travel Options For Poor Americans
    Wheels Come Off For Bus Companies, Closing Down Travel Options For Poor Americans

    The wheels on the nation’s buses aren’t going round and round very much these days according to MPRnews, which notes that demand for bus travel has fallen by more than 80 percent during the pandemic, as public health authorities urge people to avoid travel where possible. That is raising concerns about the potential long-term damage to an essential transport method for millions of lower-income Americans even as air travel has shown signs of picking up since the Thanksgiving holiday period.

    And those who have to take the bus, for whatever reason, are finding fewer options, and often higher prices as a result.

    Feeling the pinch most are people like Andrew Sarkis. He paid $97 for a one-way bus ticket from Hampton, Va., to New York City, a 12-hour journey that required two transfers.

    “It’s expensive, man,” said Sarkis, while stretching his legs after his bus took a brief stop at Union Station in Washington, D.C. “I used to go on another bus for $45 a trip, that goes straight to New York,” he added.

    A Greyhound bus driver wears a protective mask and gloves as he prepares to depart a station in San Antonio, Texas.

    Sarkis was on his way to visit family for Christmas, but was forced into taking a half-day travel on a Greyhound bus after finding his usual options in competing services pared down: “The service is not bad,” he said. “It’s just long hours of traveling.”

    Greyhound said it’s operating less than half its normal bus routes during the pandemic, while revenues have fallen nearly 60%.

    “Greyhound has been immensely impacted by the effects of COVID-19,” the company said in a statement. “From temporary and permanent closures of routes to sudden workforce reductions, our ability to provide critical service to communities—especially those that are underserved and/or rural—has been reduced.”

    Industrywide, the service cuts are even deeper: “We see the industry operating at about 10 percent capacity,” said Peter Pantuso, president of the American Bus Association.

    And it’s hard to estimate how soon demand can pick up. Not many people are interested in riding the bus these days, spending hours with strangers in an enclosed space. Unlike airlines, which saw an uptick in travel over Thanksgiving, demand for bus tickets remains severely depressed, according to Wanderu, a travel website.

    That raises concerns about the long-term health of a sector that generally operates on thinner margins and has less financial cushion.

    Pantuso estimates that 85% of the 100,000 people who work in the bus industry have been laid off or furloughed — in most cases since March.

    It’s not just long-haul services like Greyhound that are limping. Traffic on commuter lines that ordinarily ferry workers to and from the suburbs has also dried up, since many people are working from home. Charter buses and specialty services are struggling as well.

    The Nitetrain Coach in Nashville offers tricked-out buses with bars and bunk beds for touring musicians. Since March, the company’s 120-bus fleet has gone silent. “It’s been a hard time with concerts not happening,” said Nitetrain’s Angela Eicher. “No job. No income.”

    The company has idled more than 200 drivers as well as mechanics and office staff: “We’re at the mercy of the venues,” Eicher said. “When the venues allow the concerts to start happening, that’s when our buses will start rolling again.”

    Nitetrain did send a few of its buses to the Gulf Coast this fall, to house utility crews cleaning up after hurricanes. Elsewhere, buses have been used to evacuate people from the path of wildfires.

    With less competition among bus companies, the few people who are buying tickets are often paying more. The Labor Department reported an 18 percent jump in intercity bus fares last month, even as overall inflation was tame.

    And while bus travel is still cheaper than other options, the extra cost can be a hardship for many riders.

    “This is a mode of travel that caters to people often who can’t afford cars — that need to go at the least possible cost from point A to point B,” said Joe Schwieterman, a transportation expert who directs the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University. “If prices jump, it might be out of reach.”

    But while Congress has offered billions of dollars in financial aid to airlines and Amtrak, bus companies have been overlooked. Pantuso, the bus trade group president, said the lack of attention from Congress was a concern, calling his sector a critical piece of the nation’s transportation network.

    “If more members of Congress took the bus on a more regular basis,” he said, “We’d probably be at the top of the list for funding.”

    Of course, the whole point of being in Congress is to never take a bus again…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 22:00

  • Give Yourself A Gift Next Year: Agency
    Give Yourself A Gift Next Year: Agency

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    We think we’re powerless because we don’t have wealth and power over others, but nothing could be further from the truth.

    To have agency is to have power over your own life and control of your assets, options and resources. There are a great many things that influence our lives that we do not control, but there are also many things we could influence in our lives but do not.

    The conventional view puts great weight on the agency created by money, as an abundance of money enables people to do a number of things that people with little money cannot do: live comfortably in costly locales, buy a larger home, buy a second home, buy a boat, pay for college with cash, pay for expensive medications not covered by insurance, take extended vacations and start enterprises without ceding power to outside investors, to name a few.

    Our culture only has eyes for the agency of money, as this narrow band of agency is ceaselessly glorified. Yet what’s striking is how little of importance money can buy. Not only can it not buy love, it cannot buy true friendship, trust, affection, community, emotional intelligence, wisdom, skills, purpose, meaning, health, confidence, creativity, conviction, self-discipline, resilience, self-expression, integrity, authenticity, faith or inner security.

    What gift would you want for yourself in 2021? Whatever you identify as the gift you’d want to give yourself, the odds of obtaining it improve if you give yourself the gift of agency first. While money is a resource that can leverage certain kinds of agency, it isn’t the foundation of agency; the foundations of taking control of one’s life are internal.

    I wrote an entire book about this process of taking control of one’s life: Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change.

    My basic credo of liberation:

    “I no longer care if the power centers of our society–the distant, fortified castles of our financial feudal system–are changed by my actions, for I am liberated by the act of resistance. I am no longer complicit in perpetuating fraudulent feudalism and the pathology of concentrated power. I no longer covet signifiers of membership in the Upper Caste that serves the plutocracy. I am liberated from self-destructive consumerist-State financialization and the delusion that debt servitude and obedience to sociopathological Elites serve my self-interests.”

    We think we’re powerless because we don’t have wealth and power over others, but nothing could be further from the truth. What we all seek are autonomy, mastery and purpose, and the source of all these are within us.

    Money can’t buy personal integrity or authenticity, and in that sense it cannot buy what matters most. To borrow Kierkegaard’s phrase, we cannot use money to acquire ourself. That process cannot be bought at any price, for it is internal, intangible and hidden to all but ourselves.

    *  *  *

    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
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 21:30

  • Passive Funds To Surpass Active By 2022
    Passive Funds To Surpass Active By 2022

    With December’s numbers are still pending, November was a blow out month for passive fund inflows in stocks, and as Bloomberg recently reported, after a blistering start to the year for fixed income funds (thanks to the March crash which spooked retail from stocks and into bonds, if only briefly) equity ETFs overtook their fixed-income peers for inflows this year thanks to November’s epic stock rally.

    After lagging bond funds for most of 2020, ETFs tracking equities saw a record $81 billion in inflows last month – nearly half of 2020’s total in just month – and bringing their total haul for the year to $196 billion, according to Bloomberg data. That catapulted them ahead of fixed-income funds, which attracted $17 billion and have a tally of $192 billion.

    The recent surge in ETF inflows is thanks to another unprecedented burst of retail investor euphoria, which is best captured by the mindblowing inflows into Cathie Wood’s ARKK momentum/growth/”story”-chasing ETF, the ARKK Innovation ETF (profiled here), which just passed JP Morgan “for the largest actively managed exchange-traded fund” with $18 billion in assets and which owns more than 10% of 15 different stocks.

    Taking a look at the big picture, BofA writes that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are on pace to add $466BN, the biggest year of inflows ever (chart below, left), and at the current pace of inflows, a historic inversion is set to take place by 2022, when for the first time ever there will be more assets in passive equity funds than active, meaning humans will officially be a minority when it comes to managing money (thanks Federal Reserve).

    And as the world waves goodbye to fundamental-based investing, and cheers on the arrival of flow and thematic capital allocation (which only an idiot would call “investing”), BofA Research reminds us that it has has the first and only ETF research offering (yes, BofA now rates ETFs not the actual stocks that make them up), with 241 funds rated – some of its top-rated funds are shown in the table below, and notes that it has also recently initiated coverage of the following categories, all of which piggyback either on the unprecedented growth in, well, growth names and the current virtue-signaling crazy for anything ESG/”clean energy”:

    • Clean energy: BofA initiated coverage of the clean energy theme, with ratings on four ETFs in “In (Clean) Fuel for growth“
    • Communication services: BofA now covers all GICS Level 1 sectors (link);
    • Growth factor: In Growth for contrarians the bank made the case for rethinking growth benchmarks and rated 6 top ETFs;
    • ESG: ESG investing is having its best year ever with parabolic inflows of $66bn; BofA expected as much in its report “Buying like you mean it” where it rated the ESG space with a favorable outlook.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 21:00

  • Welcome To RussiaGate 2.0, Right On Schedule
    Welcome To RussiaGate 2.0, Right On Schedule

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    Now that a majority of the country believes the election was fraudulent and the Supreme Court has completely abdicated its authority the next obstacle in front of President Trump is here.

    And, as always, it comes from his complicit Secretary of State who undermines Trump with his every move to turn the State, Defense and Intelligence apparatuses of the U.S. against Russia.

    Pompeo goes on Mark Levin’s show, whose ratings are through the roof right now, to tell all the slavering normie-conservatives that it was definitely the Russians who hacked our government.

    From Zerohedge:

    Without offering any evidence or specifics, Pompeo said Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the cyberattack during an appearance on the conservative talk radio Mark Levin Show.

    “I can’t say much more, as we’re still unpacking precisely what it is, and I’m sure some of it will remain classified. But suffice it to say there was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems and it now appears systems of private companies and companies and governments across the world as well,” Pompeo explained.

    Notice how there is no evidence given, just the typical intelligence agency, “believe me” line, which is your first clue that whoever it was behind this attack the one group who was definitely NOT behind it was the Russians.

    This week’s cyber attack on the U.S. government was perfectly timed with the Electoral College submitting its votes to the Congress and Joe Biden claiming he’s president-elect.

    The reason why the release of this ‘attack’ on our government was perfectly timed is because it is a distraction from the growing unrest over the Democrats’ having stolen the election and cowering the courts into irrelevance.

    This is classic CIA-level misdirection from what was more likely a Chinese or, dare I say it, homegrown operation for the very purpose of blaming the Russians to tamp down the anger and confuse the MAGA crowd.

    And it resurrects the ghost of RussiaGate for the libs by putting Trump in a Catch-22.

    • If he doesn’t respond to this it keeps alive the smoldering embers of the TDS crowd watching Rachel Maddow that Trump really does have deep, covert ties to Russia.

    • If he does react, what possible reaction could he take to escalate the tensions with Russia that are already one step below open warfare?

    Oh, and he has to respond to this while also fighting an uphill battle against the courts and his own bureaucracy to invoke his executive order involving outside interference into the election. And in classic Trump fashion he did:

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

    Provoking the exact reaction you’d expect from the BlueChecked Sneetches among the Twitterati. RussiaGate was an embarrassment that should have died years ago but it persists precisely because Trump refuses to formally concede and continues to give his people the opportunity to fight the Swamp.

    The only way Putin and the Russians were behind this attack on the U.S. government was as a 5-d chess move where Trump invited them to do it on his behalf to ‘prove’ external interference in the election and allow Trump to cross the Rubicon, invoke the Insurrection Act and his 2018 EO on election interference.

    Yeah, by the way, John Le Carre died this week, life ain’t a movie and Trump isn’t that savvy a player. Ye gods, I wish he was. That we are in this mess proves he isn’t.

    This pronouncement by Pompeo was just good ol’ fashioned swamp double talk who continues his job of maintaining continuity of U.S. foreign policy on behalf of the Neoconservatives whose raison d’etre is the destruction of Russia to the exclusion of nearly every other consideration of any other human on the planet.

    Don’t be confused by this nonsense. Whoever was behind this attack wasn’t the Russians. The motive for this operation lies squarely with China, The Davos Crowd, the Democrats and our own intelligence agencies trying to move the Overton Window away from the real problem, a stolen election.

    Outing Solarwinds and tying it directly to Dominion Voting Systems is your smoking gun.

    But the courts, as I said at the open, have left the building. Martin Armstrong pointed out the Supreme Court denied the ‘shouting behind closed doors’ because they met via Zoom call.

    But they didn’t deny the substance of the charge against them, that they bowed to political pressure thanks to the Democrats’ open blackmail campaign of terror this past summer.

    So, at this point there really is little hope of overturning the election. From what I’ve heard on the ground in Georgia the same Dominion Voting machines are in place there for the Senate runoffs. Those who voted didn’t even get a receipt this time.

    So the fix is in there too, folks.

    There will be no victories in this fight. Every possible avenue of hope must be crushed if the Great Reset of The Davos Crowd is to occur.  Pompeo plays his part just like everyone else in this pantomime, one day giving Trump supporters hope by saying he’s preparing for a 2nd term, the next using that cache to undermine him with a far bigger betrayal.

    This is how the Deep State works to protect itself and we have to be smart enough to see it for what it is: preparing the ground for the next phase of the greatest intelligence show on earth.

    Same spook time, same spook channel.

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you think Russia isn’t the world’s ultimate evil

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 20:30

  • L.A. County Is Running "Dangerously" Low On Oxygen To Treat COVID-19
    L.A. County Is Running “Dangerously” Low On Oxygen To Treat COVID-19

    Hospitals in L.A. Country are starting to run “dangerously low on oxygen” and other supplies used for treating those with Covid, despite a seven day trend of new cases looking like it may have finally peaked. 

    In addition to running out of supplies, patients are waiting as long as 8 hours in ambulances before being placed into ERs due to limited capacity, the LA Times writes. The situation has gotten so dire that “one L.A. County health official has asked providers to reach out to patients who have serious illnesses or are medically frail to review their advanced-care directives and ensure forms are on file detailing their end-of-life care.”

    There are also fears that gatherings during the holidays will exacerbate conditions in the area, as Thanksgiving gatherings are already receiving some of the blame for hospitals’ current capacity. 

    But while the L.A. Times notes that the county saw its highest Covid-19 deaths per day last week, on Thursday with 140, the county’s seven day rolling total (shown below) potentially indicates some reprieve. 

    People familiar with the hospital system in the county have revealed it is “dangerously low” on oxygen, which is used to treat people with virus-inflamed lungs. Oxygen is now being used in favor of ventilators, which were used at the beginning of the pandemic.

    Instead, patients now get “a high-flow oxygen treatment, where oxygen is sent through plastic tubes placed in the nose”. Covid-19 patients often need more than 10 times more oxygen than regular patients, requiring up to 60 to 80 liters of oxygen per minute. This means hospitals need about 10 times more oxygen than they did before. 

    Hospitals are also running low on the tubes used to transport oxygen, the report says.

    The county asked healthcare providers this week to take additional measures to try and offset the flood of patients that require hospital-level treatment. There’s about 6,700 coronavirus patients hospitalized throughout the county as of Wednesday last week – with 1,329 of them in an ICU. Those numbers are up 85% and 62% over the past 2 weeks.

    The county wrote in a memo: “Hospitals have implemented their surge plans and are adjusting staffing and space to try to meet the needs of their community. It is critical that as a healthcare community we look at all available opportunities to help decrease the surge on hospitals and our 911 system, where possible.”

    Dr. Sharon Balter, the county’s chief of communicable disease control and prevention told healthcare providers to inform patients only to call 911 or go to the ER “when it is a true emergency”. She also pushed for quicker discharges. 

    “There are very limited hospital and ICU beds available and emergency departments are strained to capacity,” she said. 

    Santa Monica neurosurgeon Dr. Brian Gantwerker says he “dreads” what the next several weeks will hold. He says that the number of Covid patients increasing can delay neurosurgery patients in need of immediate care.

    He said: “Then it becomes a question of: ‘Where is the breaking point? When do we have to start sending patients out to other places?’ And the nightmare scenario is: ‘What happens if there are no beds available in the county? Everything we’ve worried about and talked about and warned people about since February is coming to fruition — we’re at that point now.”

    Finally, Dr. Christina Ghaly, L.A. County’s health services director, says that nearly 7,000 more people could die from Covid by the end of January if current trends continue. 

    L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti concluded: “We know that this emergency is our darkest day, maybe the darkest day in our city’s history. But we must find the fortitude, we must summon the strength to make sure that we save lives.”

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 20:00

  • US Is Helping India Spy On China's Military Near Disputed Border
    US Is Helping India Spy On China’s Military Near Disputed Border

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    With an increase in tensions between India and China along the disputed border in the Himalayas, the US is helping India keep an eye on China’s military. In October, the US and India signed a new defense pact that allows the US to share more satellite data with New Delhi.

    At an event in November, the head of US Pacific Air Forces spoke of the increased military cooperation. “From the real-world standpoint, we’ve gotten closer this year with India, especially on the intelligence sharing, particularly related to the situation that’s occurring on their northeast border with China,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said, according to Business Insider.

    Via AFP/Getty

    “We’ve been doing quite a bit of intelligence sharing, as much as we can, with them to help out our great friend, India,” he added. Over the summer, a clash broke out between Chinese and Indian troops along the border, the first deadly incident between the two militaries in decades.

    The deal signed in October, known as the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), allows gives India access to topographical, nautical, and aeronautical data. The intelligence could also be used for Indian missile strikes.

    When BECA was first inked, India’s Economic Times said the deal will give Indian missiles a “killer edge.”

    With the Trump administration’s focus on China, building stronger security partnerships in the region has become a priority. The incoming Biden administration is expected to continue building alliances to counter Beijing, and even NATO is looking to get in on the action. NATO recently released a report that recommended the alliance form a partnership with India to counter Beijing.

    India, the US, Japan, and Australia form the informal alliance known as the Quad. In November, the four countries participated in military drills together for the first time in over a decade. The Indian-led Malabar exercises were held off India’s coast.

    In previous years, India has been hesitant to allow Australia to participate in the exercises for fear of sending the wrong message to Beijing. But with tensions high over the disputed border and more military support from the US, India decided to allow all of the Quad countries to participate in a show of force aimed at China.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 19:30

  • Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary Warns: 100 Million Americans Have No Retirement
    Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Warns: 100 Million Americans Have No Retirement

    Even before the virus-induced downturn wiped out the savings of tens of millions of Americans, more than one hundred million folks throughout the country had nothing saved for retirement. 

    Called the “retirement crisis,” the assumption today is that Americans are in deeper financial turmoil than ever. 

    It was 2018 when we informed readers that more than 100 million Americans of working age did not have any retirement account assets in an employer-sponsored 401(k) type plan, individual account, or pension.

    This means that the American dream of a modest retirement after decades of work is now a middle-class nightmare. In a world where the virus-pandemic is resulting in a “great reset,” small and medium-sized enterprises are being wiped out in droves as permanent job loss soars into the millions. 

    Making sense of this all and how we got here is Kevin O’Leary, star of Shark Tank and chairman of O’Shares ETFs. He spoke with Kitco News’ David Lin about the retirement crisis where the average working person has no wealth due to “the lack the financial literacy.” 

    “I think you’ve hit on a huge issue in America today there are a hundred million people that have nothing set aside for retirement – they have no investment account that is a failure of financial literacy that started as far back as the 1970s. We never taught kids in high school – we teach them reading, math, jobs, and sex education – nothing about investing – nothing about debt – nothing about credit cards – a huge mistake,”  O’Leary said. 

    O’Leary continued by saying education reform is a must if you want societal change. 

    “We really need to change the curriculum in high school, at the ages of 13 and 14, to start to explain how a credit card works, how the market works, that needs to be mandatory, not supplemental,” he said. “The state of Florida has brought it into their curriculum, it’s mandatory. We need to see that in New York, Texas, and California, they’re the majority of where the schools are and then the rest of the states will follow.”

    Without further adieu, O’Leary speaks about the retirement crisis.

    Expanding more on why educational systems nationwide at the high school level need to include financial classes, we noted a couple of months ago that “financial education decreases the likelihood of holding credit card balances.” 

    Maybe financial elites keeping the population in a perpetual financial daze while they rack up credit card bills is just part of the American way. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 19:00

  • The End Game
    The End Game

    Authored by Kevin Smith and Tavi Costa via Crescat Capital,

    Dear Investors:

    Markets are cyclical. Today, stocks trade at record high valuations while commodities are historically undervalued in relation. The setup is in place for a macro pivot in the relative performance of these two asset classes. Comparable conditions were present with the 1972 Nifty Fifty and 2000 Dotcom bubbles as we show in the chart below.

    As capital seeks to redeploy towards the highest growth and lowest valuation opportunities, we expect analytically minded investors will soon be rotating, if not stampeding, out of expensive deflation-era growth equities and fixed income securities and into cheap hard assets, creating a reversal in the 30-year declining trend of money velocity.

    Today’s Modern Monetary Theory world with its double barreled fiscal and monetary stimulus is crashing head on with an accumulation of years of declining investment in the basic industries such as materials, energy, and agriculture. In our analysis, the “end game” for the Fed’s twin asset bubbles in stocks and bonds is inflation. We can already see it developing on the commodity front.

    The scarcity of jobs and abundance of debt were factors preventing the economy from reaching its full growth potential even before Covid-19. Such have been the concepts underlying the output gap, the theoretical paradox that is thought to have held inflation in check over the course of the last business cycle. But based on comparable historic periods, the macro setup for inflation is more likely to be kicked off by an input gap, i.e., shortages in the primary resources needed for both a strong reserve currency and economic growth at the same time as policy makers pull out their biggest bazookas yet to boost aggregate demand. We expect a new wave of rising commodity prices, set up by past underinvestment in basic resources, to soon ripple through the global supply chain creating a headwind for real living standards. Welcome to the Great Reset.

    The global economy is at risk of commodity supply shock inflation, something we have not experienced since the 1970s. Both the Bloomberg Commodities Index and the US 30-year inflation expectations are now re-testing a 12-year resistance line. A significant breakout from here would be a big shift in the macro investing landscape. Yes, the aging demographics problem and significant technological advancements are deflationary tailwinds. But in our view, the key reason why consumer prices have not gone higher is due to a long-standing period of depressed commodity prices, a trend which we think is about to change.

    The Constrained Supply for Gold

    When it comes to scarce commodities, at Crescat, we have an affinity first and foremost for gold and silver, the monetary metals that are among the most supply constrained resources on the planet. Coincidentally, they are facing a new surge of investor demand.

    On the supply side, in the disinflationary environment since the precious metals mining industry’s prior peak in 2011, gold and silver miners have been criticized by investors as being capital destroyers. As a result, the industry’s spending discipline in the last decade has swung completely the other way. The majors have underinvested in replacing their reserves creating a supply cliff for the industry while also substantially boosting free cash flow.

    Contributing to the supply shortage, the number of major new gold discoveries by year, i.e., greater than 2 million Troy ounces, has been in a declining secular trend for 30 years including the cyclical boost between 2000 and 2007. At Crescat, we have been building an activist portfolio of gold and silver mining exploration companies that we believe will kick off a new cyclical surge in discoveries over the next several years from today’s depressed levels.

    Gold mining exploration expense industrywide, down sharply since 2012, has been one of the issues adding to the supply problems today. Crescat is providing capital to the industry to help reverse this trend.

    Since 2012, there has also been a declining trend of capital expenditures toward developing new mines. From a macro standpoint, gold prices are likely to be supported by this lack of past investment until these trends are dramatically reversed over the next several years. Credit availability for gold and silver mining companies completely dried up over the last decade. Companies were forced to buckle up and apply strict capital controls to financially survive during that period. Investors demanded significant reductions in debt and equity issuances while miners had to effectively tighten up operational costs, cut back investment, and prioritize the quality of their balance sheet assets.

    It is important to consider that the last times this industry had been acting in a similarly conservative fashion, metal prices were at historically low-price levels. This time, however, we are seeing corporate discipline with gold prices remaining near all-time highs. As a result, the major producers today have surprisingly swung into being cash flow machines. They are enjoying more free cash flow than they had in the past 25 years, an incredibly bullish setup for the entire industry, especially the smaller exploration focused players that Crescat is overweight in today. The majors are in a great position to harvest cash for the next few years. But they are also facing a supply cliff because they have not replaced their reserves. Over the next several years, they will need to make acquisitions in the exploration segment to rebuild them. 

    The Demand Side for Gold

    On the demand side, the first key macro driver for the price of gold is central bank debt monetization, which drives increasing inflation expectations and investor demand for inflation protection for accumulated savings. Today, money printing through central bank balance sheet expansion is widely accepted and embraced. It is the only viable policy as a way out of the otherwise deflationary global debt burden, at a historic high of 365% of worldwide GDP. With deficits at World War II levels in the US, we expect money printing to be the path of least resistance among policy makers towards easing debt burdens and reconciling many of today’s economic imbalances, though it will likely come at a cost to savers who are invested in overvalued traditional financial assets.

    As we show in the chart below, gold underperformed the pace of global money printing from 2011 to 2018. But since the Repo Crisis in 2019 and the coronavirus led recession that followed, global QE has been accelerating to the upside once again. Gold is being pulled up with it. Our near-term target price for gold is north of $3,000 per Troy oz. based on our macro model shown below that plots the price of gold vs. the aggregation of the top eight central bank balance sheets. This target will almost certainly be rising in the near-term with $5.8 trillion just in US Treasuries alone maturing in 2021 and much of that needing to be rolled over and funded by the lender of last resort.

    The Fed, the printer of the world reserve currency, has given itself, and by extension its central bank counterparts around the world, the green light to err on the side of inflation. The US central bank has declared that it can exceed its 2% inflation target temporarily abandoning one side of its dual mandate to favor the other side of it which is full employment. So, err on the side of inflation, the Fed almost certainly will.

    Inflation is a toothpaste that sovereign Treasuries and their central banks throughout history have struggled putting back in the tube once they have let it out. In practice, inflation is driven as much by the expectations and actions of consumers and investors, which occur with lags and at unknown multiplier effects in relation to interest rate and quantity of base money policies. When consumer and investor psychology shift toward recognizing and acting upon rising inflation, however, inflation becomes highly reflexive, i.e., circular and self-reinforcing. 

    The second key macro driver for upward trending gold prices on the demand side today is declining real interest rates, which are a combined reflection of central bank interest rate suppression tactics and investors’ rising inflation expectations. The recent plunge lower in real yields (shown inverted in the chart below) has diverged from the price of gold signaling a strong impending move upward again in the metal.

    The outlook for gold all ties back to the bigger macro imbalances we see in the US economy today. The Federal Reserve is crippled in its ability to prevent inflation and instead has become the funding mechanism through its massive purchases of US Treasuries that enables the US government to run a large fiscal deficit. The Fed essentially has no independence in the matter. It must fund the government’s fiscal stimulus programs as the lender of last resort. And as the repo crisis showed, the liquidity is also necessary in the short run to prevent the equity and corporate bond markets from collapsing, but this is very shortsighted because rising commodity prices and real-world inflation, that is the byproduct of the newly printed money, is the killer of record overvalued financial assets.

    Three Comparable Macro Setups in History

    We expect inflation expectations to continue to rise at a faster rate than nominal interest rates. This is ultimately a self-reinforcing catalyst to drive investors out of overvalued stocks and credit and into scarce commodities including precious metals and oil, which is exactly what happened in three similar macro setups to today:

    1. During the dotcom bust at the turn of the century, the NASDAQ Composite declined 78% over two and a  half years, a period during which gold stocks diverged to the upside to begin a five-fold march upward over the next seven years, while energy and industrial commodities also caught fire.

    2. In the 1974-74 bear market, the S&P 500 declined 50% in two years while gold mining stocks increased five-fold at the same time as oil prices skyrocketed during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and a decade of stagflation was born.

    We showed the supply cliff setup for gold earlier, but it important to note that there is a supply shortage in oil setting up as well today that could give the Middle East the upper hand not unlike the 1970s.

    3. The third comparable period, also highly apt for today, was coming out of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919. At that time, the health crisis had severely limited the industrial capacity of the economy, leading to major supply shortages of raw materials and causing commodity inflation at the same time as the world began to heal from the flu pandemic. The rise in wholesale prices became a global phenomenon. Grocery stores began hoarding inventories to sell at higher prices, forcing governments to intervene and criminalize these actions to avoid an even larger hit to the consumer. The cost of living surged and prompted major labor union protests on the streets demanding higher wages and salaries only exacerbating the problem. Inflation surged above 20% in 1920 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average began a decline of 47% from peak to trough from 1920 to 1921 while the world emerged from the pandemic. We will not go there in depth now, but this was the same time that a whole different kind of inflation was arising in Germany from newly printed money to pay off accumulated war debts.

    The Opportunity for Activist Gold Exploration

    As we showed above, the underinvestment in most of the last decade in the gold mining industry will soon send the majors scrambling to invest their near term soaring free cash flow in the most prospective new gold and silver deposits being explored today. These properties are in the hands of the extremely undervalued and ultra-depressed small cap segment of the mining industry, the junior explorers, a group that has been through a brutal, capital starved bear market that effectively lasted ten years. The whole industry completed a double-bottom retest by successfully holding above its 2015 lows and rebounding sharply to lead all industries in stock price performance coming off the March 2020 correction. We think there is much more performance ahead for this industry as it is still in the early stages of a new secular bull market.

    We are confident that within the precious metals mining industry, the most value for shareholders will be created from the small cap exploration segment of the industry over the next several years. We think Crescat’s Precious Metals Fund and SMA strategy have already started to demonstrate that potential in 2020.

    By working with world-renowned exploration geologist, Quinton Hennigh as Crescat’s geologic and technical advisor, Crescat has already created an activist portfolio of over 50 companies where we are among the largest shareholders of a targeted 200 million ounces new high-grade gold equivalent discoveries. We plan to continue to grow these targeted ounces while getting the needed investment capital to our companies to prove out these economic ounces through drilling and discovery.

    Crescat’s activist fund is a large and significant capital deployment opportunity. We are currently seeking a select group of right-minded institutional partners who can understand and appreciate the focus, scale, and timeliness of what we have set out to accomplish in this fund. 

    Our activist portfolio is positioned ahead of a likely major new wave of M&A by the large and mid-tier producers which is still to come as they necessarily must replace their reserves through acquisition. We also have a handful of holdings that we call keepers, the cream of the crop companies that control the unquestionably new world class, high grade gold and silver deposits that will catapult them into the next great mid and large cap gold producers in the industry over the course of the new secular bull market.

    To be frank, buying gold or silver is not a contrarian investment position today. There are enough people in agreement with the idea that all government backed fiat currencies are doomed to some level of devaluation through inflation due to the level of fiscal and monetary imprudence and unsustainable debt imbalances in the financial system. Naturally, with a constructive view on precious metals, the next step for most investors is to start dipping their toes into well-known and established mining companies. Despite their past reputation of being capital destroyers, investors today are warming up to the idea of buying the “Newmonts and Barricks” of the world or even ETFs such as GDX and GDXJ. What we see as contrarian, however, is a much bigger opportunity to unlock value through a well targeted activist strategy in the exploration segment of the industry. No doubt, many are skeptical of the gold exploration business, given its poor performance during the last downturn in the industry at large, but the biggest gains today in the industry are likely to come from what are the smaller cap names. Between Crescat and its 21 years of money management experience and Quinton Hennigh with his 30+ years of gold mining exploration experience to serve as Crescat’s geologic and technical advisor, we believe we have the expertise and preparedness to navigate this incredible opportunity before us. We hope you will join us as we seek to exploit the mispriced opportunities on the exploration and discovery side of the Lassonde Curve that is still in the early stages of what is likely to be a new rip-roaring secular bull market for precious metals.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 18:30

  • New Single-Family Homes Sold Not As Large As They Used To Be
    New Single-Family Homes Sold Not As Large As They Used To Be

    The average square footage of new homes sold in the United States increased from 2,457 in 2010 to 2,724 in 2015 but then dropped again in 2019 to 2,518, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Characteristics of New Housing. The report is based on data collected in the Survey of Construction (SOC) and provides national and regional details on new privately owned single-family and multifamily residential structures. Characteristics include square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, types of wall material, parking, sales prices and more.

    No Downsizing

    Despite the decline in average square footage, the share of homes with four bedrooms or more that were sold increased from 41% in 2010 to 49% in 2019.

    In 2010, 27% of the 323,000 new single-family homes sold in the United States had three or more bathrooms. In 2019, 36% of the 683,000 U.S. homes sold had three or more bathrooms.

    Rising Prices

    The average sales price of new single-family homes sold in 2019 was $383,900, up from $272,900 in 2010. Prices are not adjusted for inflation.

    In 2019, 69% of new single-family houses sold were purchased using conventional financing (and other types of financing excluding Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Veteran’s Administration (VA) or cash purchases), up from 58% in 2010.

    Conventional financing, the primary way new home buyers paid for their purchases, is a mortgage loan not guaranteed by any government agency, such as the VA or FHA.

    Features of New Homes

    Of all the 903,000 new single-family homes completed in 2019:

    • 849,000 (or 94%) had air-conditioning.
    • 102,000 (11%) had two or fewer bedrooms and 386,000 (43%) had four or more bedrooms.
    • 32,000 (3%) had one and one-half or fewer bathrooms and 296,000 (33%) had three or more bathrooms.
    • 366,000 (41%) had a heat pump. Of these, 352,000 were air-source and 14,000 were ground-source.
    • 814,000 (90%) were framed in wood and 86,000 (10%) were framed using concrete.
    • 296,000 (33%) had a patio and a porch, while 71,000 (8%) had no outdoor features.
    • 549,000 (61%) had no fireplace.

     In 2019, 683,000 new single-family homes were sold, up 111% from 2010.

    A Virtual Tour of America’s New Homes

    One way to get more details on new single-family homes is through this infographic. Simply hover for a quick fact on completed or sold homes and click on the legend to go to the tables with the information.

    Multifamily Housing

    Multifamily housing is defined as residential buildings containing units built one on top of another and those built side-by-side without a ground-to-roof wall and/or common facilities, such as attic, basement, heating system and plumbing. There were 352,000 new multifamily units completed in the United States in 2019, compared to 155,000 in 2010. The numbers include units for sale as condominiums or cooperatives.

    What new multifamily units look like:

    • 149,000 (42%) had one bedroom and 40,000 (11%) had three or more bedrooms.
    • 349,000 (99%) were conventional apartments and 3,000 (1%) were townhouses.
    • 203,000 (58%) were in buildings with four or more floors.
    • 304,000 (86%) had individual laundry facilities and 29,000 (8%) had shared laundry facilities.
    • 251,000 (71%) were in buildings framed in wood and 33,000 (9%) were in steel-framed buildings.

    There were 321,000 multifamily units built for rent, a 157% jump from 2010.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 18:00

  • What To Do When The Planets Diverge
    What To Do When The Planets Diverge

    Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

    Planets Jupiter and Saturn came into closer alignment than any time since 1226 this week.  Yet the planets in Washington did not align.  The federal government was unable to ‘Christmas tree’ its stimulus bill.

    At the 11th hour, President Trump called bull pucky on the contents of Congresses hideous creation.  Too much pork.  Not enough relief.

    Congress will return next week and attempt to salvage a deal.  Likewise, we’ll save fiscal stimulus and its consequential economic distortions for reckoning with another day.

    It’s Christmas, after all.  We’d prefer to delve into the esoteric.  Thus, today, for fun and for free, we seek meaning through numerology and astrology.  Where to begin…

    Not long ago, if you recall, a Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) above 30,000 was impossible.  Nothing could touch it.  But here it is, in the flesh, a DJIA that’s a peppermint stick above this “sacred” number.

    A DJIA above 30,000 is, indeed, quite impressive.  But equally impressive is a distinct, yet somehow related milestone that’s rapidly approaching.  The U.S. National Debt is over $27.5 trillion.  At the current spending rate, the national debt will surpass a round and rotund $30 trillion within nine months.

    The reality, however, is that the national debt exceeded $30 trillion a long time ago.  In fact, it’s really 568 percent higher.  Remember, current unfunded liabilities, including Social Security and Medicare, now total over $156.2 trillion.

    Added together, the national debt and current unfunded liabilities total $183.7 trillion.  Truly, this number is so large it’s near impossible to comprehend.  Thus, for simplicity and for the sake of numerological harmony, today’s ruminations are limited in breadth and scope to DJIA 30,000 and U.S. National Debt $30 trillion.

    Arbitrary Data Points

    Quite frankly, we don’t really know what the DJIA and the national debt have to do with each other.  We can’t quite put a finger on it.  But we have a hunch both milestones are in some way emblematic of a great transformation that has taken place.

    Is DOW 30,000 and U.S. National Debt $30 trillion merely a coincidence?  Or is there a correlation?  And if there is a correlation, does it imply causation?

    There are a variety of ways, no doubt, to explore these questions.  Here we opt for the path of least resistance.  Hence, what follows is not a detailed desktop evaluation of the numbers; but, rather, one very simply deduced conclusion based on inference, guess work, and conjecture.

    To begin, we peer back to the past in search of arbitrary data points that look as if they’re interrelated.  For example, in the autumn of 1982 the DOW surpassed 1,000.  This wasn’t the first time this happened.  But 1982 is the last time the DOW rose above 1,000 without then dipping back below.  Similarly, 1982 is when the U.S. National Debt first topped the $1 trillion mark.

    From $1 trillion to $30 trillion, the U.S. National Debt generally followed an exponential growth curve.  There was a slight pause in the late 1990s.  But otherwise it has progressively concaved upward approaching a parabolic trajectory; particularly since 2009.

    The DOW’s march from 1,000 toward 30,000, on the other hand, has been less direct.  There have even been several brief, yet significant, selloffs along the way.  What to make of it?

    A statistician may run the numbers for the DOW and the U.S. National Debt and conclude that there’s a weak correlation, and certainly no causation.  They may even graph a scatter plot to make their case.

    A numerologist, however, may look at the divinely round numbers and infer something much different.  Maybe even that there’s a connection that can be projected into the future.  Who’s right?  Who’s wrong?

    What To Do When The Planets Diverge

    Along the road from DOW 1,000 to DOW 30,000 and from U.S. National Debt $1 trillion to U.S. National Debt $30 trillion one thing is quite clear.  There have been episodes of alignment and episodes of significant divergence.

    For instance, in March of 2009 the DOW touched down at about 6,700 while the U.S. National Debt was over $10 trillion.  Perhaps we’re approaching another such divergence.

    Namely, using a subjective combination of supposition, numerology, astrology, and crude statistics, it seems likely that we are entering a time where the U.S. National Debt continues its exponential trajectory while the DOW dives 15,000 points – or more – to below 15,000.

    You can take this shrewd little nugget of insight for what it’s worth and set it aside for another day.  Remember, today’s Christmas.  Now’s the time for joy, good cheer, and merriment.  Not gloom, boom, and doom.

    Thus, like the stock market over the last decade, now’s the time to seize the day and make something of it.  For the planets may not be so amicably aligned come this time next year.

    So wreck the halls, if you’re so inclined.  Have another eggnog or peppermint bark.  Give the bell ringing Salvation Army lady a wink and a crisp Andrew Jackson or Benjamin Franklin…before the Fed outlaws cash.

    Of course, whatever you do, always do it in a ‘safe and sane’ manner.  In short, sell the DOW – and sell bonds too.

    On that cheery note, we’ll conclude our ruminations.

    Merry Christmas!

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 17:30

  • Bitcoin Surges Towards $27k As Short Squeeze Accelerates
    Bitcoin Surges Towards $27k As Short Squeeze Accelerates

    Update (1715ET): It seems like only yesterday, Bitcoin was trading at $24,000… And now, as short liquidations accelerate, the leading cryptocurrency is rapidly approaching $27,000…

    As CoinTelegraph notes, according to data from Bybt.com, more than $131 million worth of Bitcoin futures contracts were liquidated in the last 24 hours…

    As long as the derivatives market continues to see an increase in sellers, the probability of more short squeezes in the near future remains high.

    Additionally, popular trader Philip Swift, for example, noted that the number of big sellers has actually subsided during the current rally.

    “Large players, >1000btc wallets, have calmed down for 1st time in this huge run-up,” explained Swift.

    “We can see the number of >1000btc wallets decrease rapidly over the past week or so. Whereas we can see the 1-10 BTC wallets (mass retail) have continued to steadily climb in recent weeks.”

    He added: So quick topline analysis suggests a lot of retail buyers are now coming in over the Christmas break. Potentially due to:

    a) hearing about BTC from fam/friends during the holidays now it is making new ATH’s.

    b) plus some potential switching out of XRP/other alts.

    2020 will go down as a landmark year for Bitcoin. While many institutions have been clamoring for years that the ‘institutions are coming,’ this year finally delivered on those revelations. 

    *  *  *

    Bitcoin continues to surge higher…

    Source: Bloomberg

    …topping $25,000 for the first time this morning, as the holidays do nothing to dampen demand for the leading cryptocurrency…

    Source: Bloomberg

    However, the love is not being shared across the rest of the crypto space with Ethereum now at its lowest relative to Bitcoin June…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And as Bitcoin’s price rises, so does its total capitalization, which, as CoinTelegraph’s Joseph Young points out,  now exceeds the market cap of Visa at $460 billion…

    image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

    Visa, the financial services giant, is valued at $460.06 billion according to Yahoo Finance. As of Dec. 26, Bitcoin is comfortably hovering above $462 billion.

    But is Visa and Bitcoin an apt comparison?

    Bitcoin is essentially a peer-to-peer software protocol while Visa is a for-profit corporation. Some may argue that a direct comparison between the two is not apt as they are fundamentally different.

    But Bitcoin surpassing the valuation of Visa is symbolic above all else and the current market cap of Bitcoin would theoretically make it the thirteenth-largest company in the world.

    Meanwhile, throughout 2020, the institutional interest in Bitcoin has been surging. At a point where the institutional demand for Bitcoin continues to increase exponentially, the surpassing of Visa’s market cap could further boost the confidence around Bitcoin among institutions.

    More institutions and accredited investors have been gaining exposure to Bitcoin through Grayscale and the CME Bitcoin futures market. The assets under management of Grayscale is nearing $17 billion, as the open interest of the CME Bitcoin futures market consistently remains above $1 billion.

    Visa has also shown more enthusiasm toward crypto in recent months, following Square and PayPal’s support for Bitcoin.

    For instance, Wirex, the crypto Visa debit card issuer, became a principal member of Visa in Europe. Cuy Sheffield, the senior director and head of cryptocurrency at Visa, said:

    “Digital currencies have the potential to extend the value of digital payments to a greater number of people and places. We’re excited to work with innovative Fintechs like Wirex and enable their customers to use digital currencies at more than 61 million merchants on the Visa network.”

    On-chain data hints at where BTC is heading next

    In the near term, traders and on-chain analysts say that Bitcoin’s trajectory remains optimistic.

    Analysts at Intotheblock identified $23,069 and $23,377 as the key support levels for BTC in the near future. They wrote:

    “Bitcoin has been able to sustain above $23,000. The IOMAP indicator supports that premise as is showing a strong level of support at the range between $23,069 and $23,377.1, where almost 900 thousand addresses previously acquired 796 thousand $BTC.”

    Bitcoin support levels based on on-chain data. Source: IntoTheBlock

    As long as Bitcoin stays above the critical support areas, traders anticipate the cryptocurrency market to see a broader rally.

    Michael van de Poppe, a full-time trader at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, expects the total cryptocurrency market capitalization to soon break its all-time high of around $780 billion. He said:

    “The total #crypto market capitalization is looking extremely bullish as it has been testing the all-time high region. Levels to watch are $550 and $450 billion. Any of these regions are buy dip opportunities. If these holds, next run will bring the market above ATH.”

    Finally, we note that while Bitcoin’s surge is surprising to many, it is in fact merely catching up to the stock-to-flow model’s estimate of fair-value…

    Source

    As Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said on Thursday, the Bitcoin bull market has proven resilient to the recent wave of anti-crypto rhetoric coming from Capitol Hill: “It tells you about how powerful this bull market is […] They are throwing lots at the system, and it’s not actually impacting it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 17:22

  • "It Doesn't Look Pretty": COVID's Harsh Financial Reality Continues Across The U.S.
    “It Doesn’t Look Pretty”: COVID’s Harsh Financial Reality Continues Across The U.S.

    While government officials think people should be sitting around worshipping them for throwing the peons $600 in stimulus (which hasn’t even arrived yet), the reality on the ground in the United States is that the government’s decision making, as it relates to Covid, has simply crippled many people’s finances.

    Never was this more evident than in a recent WSJ piece that profiled several people the paper had checked in with during the year to see if their finances had recovered. 

    A couple named Robert Rodriguez and Migdalia Wharton, who were previously out of work and couldn’t pay their bills, “finally started getting unemployment benefits” over the summer before they “both found new jobs”. At both new jobs, they are making less than their pre-Covid jobs. “We don’t want to fall behind. The way things are, it doesn’t look pretty,” they told the WSJ.

    Tow-truck driver and Repo Man Eddie Whiteman said during the spring “banks stopped calling him to repossess cars after their owners fell behind on payments” because lenders were “fearful of the optics”. He says his business is running 15% slower than it was last year. “Nobody wants to look like the bad guy, and I get that. But it makes it hard for folks like me,” he said.

    Jemison/ WSJ

    Single mother Malaysia Jemison was forced to leave her job this summer to care for her daughter. It was as late as September when her unemployment benefits finally kicked in, with back pay. She says that in November, her food stamps stopped coming and that she would like to return to her job – but cannot do so until reliable child care is open again. “It makes me feel like I jump over one hurdle to be met with another hurdle,” she said.

    Andy Posner, who runs a non-profit lender, says he has been busy doling out loans between $300 and $1000 since the pandemic hit. Now, he says, those loans are his “main growth driver”. Total loans have quadrupled since the spring, he says, and he has added several dozen employees. He has also expanded into Texas, from Florida, where most of its loan book is located. “A lot of our clients are nervous as hell, but they are at work at least,” he said. “People are scraping by but they are terrified and stressed and at their wit’s end.”

    Cassandra Brooks, who runs Little Believer’s Academy Day Car in Raleigh, NC, says that enrollment and revenue have “plunged” and that she has been operating at a loss for most of the year. She says the families of her children have “been in and out of homeless shelters”. She is getting by because a private donor helped some families pay their tuition fees for the year.  “I know that was a sign for God telling me to keep taking care of these children,” she said. “It’s hard, but I’m thankful I’ve survived this long.”

    Novak / WSJ

    Steve Novak, owner of Beaver’s Cafe in Minto, N.D., said that business boomed this summer thanks to a PPP loan that helped it stay open. But when customers were ordered to stay home later in the year, he had to “discontinue breakfast service and lay off the full-time employees”. He said he has enough savings to give his staff Christmas gifts and can stay open until the end of January. He concluded: “The little guy is getting crushed right now; the big corporations aren’t. It’s the middle-class people that are having their asses handed to them.” 

    Community banker Mike Estes says this year was the “most intense” in his 45 years in the industry. He was supposed to retire this year but instead has stayed on at regional Fisher National Bank in Fisher, Il. to help serve the community. He says that businesses are surviving in the area, thanks to the PPP, and the bank remains liquid. “We’re almost embarrassed to say we’re having a record year,” he concluded.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 17:00

  • Credit Applications Are Down and Rejection Rates Are Up
    Credit Applications Are Down and Rejection Rates Are Up

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    Need Credit? You may be out of luck, especially on credit card requests.

    Credit Access Largely Down during the Pandemic

    The New York Fed Credit Survey shows credit applications are mostly lower with rejections higher. 

    • The October 2020 survey shows most credit application and acceptance rates falling sharply with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. 

    • Application and acceptance rates for credit cards and credit limit increases showed the largest declines since February 2020, followed by auto loans.

    • However, the application rate for mortgage refinancing continued to climb through 2020, driven by demand from borrowers with high credit scores (above 760). 

    Credit Card Application and Rejection Rates 

    Credit Card Limit Increase Requests and Rejection Rates

    Auto Loan Requests and Rejection Rates 

    Home Loan Requests and Rejection Rates 

    Mortgage Refi Requests and Rejection Rates

    Standout Records

    • The credit card application rejection rate is a record 21%.

    • The credit card limit increase rejection rate is 37%. The record high level is 38% hit in June and also in 2014.

    • The mortgage refinance rejection rates is a record low 6%.

    If you want to pad your credit card to pay the bills, there is a very good chance you cannot do so.

    But if you own a house and are current on your mortgage, hooray.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 16:30

  • Stunning Video Appears To Capture Mysterious LA 'Jetpack Man' 
    Stunning Video Appears To Capture Mysterious LA ‘Jetpack Man’ 

    After multiple sightings from commercial airline pilots, the mystery of the flying jetpack man soaring through the skies near Los Angeles International Airport may have finally been caught on camera. 

    New footage, uploaded onto Instagram this week by an instructional flight school called Sling Pilot Academy, wrote in the video’s description that a flight instructor and student filmed what “appears” to be a jetpack soaring through the skies at an altitude of 3,000 feet near Palos Verdes south of Los Angeles. 

    “The video appears to show a jet pack, but it could also be a drone or some other object. If it is a ‘guy in a jet pack’ then it remains to be seen whether it is a legal test flight (jet packs are real – there is a manufacturer near Los Angeles) or related to the jet pack sightings near LAX recently that caused disruptions to air traffic,” the video’s description said. 

    An investigation into the jetpack man first started in early September after commercial airline pilots in August spotted someone flying a jetpack near LAX. Since then, the FBI and FAA have been investigating the incident. 

    With the investigation ongoing, the FBI and FAA were notified about another sighting, this time in October, when commercial airline pilots spotted a man flying a jetpack at 6,000 feet altitude, near LAX. 

    The latest incident was recorded on Monday, and the encounter was reported to the FAA. Still, the jetpack man remains a mystery. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 16:00

  • 2021's Deficit Spending Is Already Out Of Control. Here's Why That's A Problem
    2021’s Deficit Spending Is Already Out Of Control. Here’s Why That’s A Problem

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    This morning, President Trump apparently threatened to veto the so-called stimulus legislation recently approved by Congress. The legislation features approximately $908 billion worth of spending including $600 stimulus checks for many millions of Americans who qualify. The stimulus spending is part of a much larger spending package which totals $2.3 trillion and is a general supplemental appropriations bill.

    But these numbers by no means reflect what will surely be a much, much larger amount of spending that will take place before this fiscal year ends on September 30.

    Indeed, even as we were entering just the third month of the fiscal year in early December, it was already clear that spending in 2021 was likely to be another year of both runaway spending and runaway deficits.

    The sheer size and scope of the new spending package, which includes every type of pork imaginable—from propping up foreign dictators to subsidizing huge American corporations—is simply a reflection of the fact that all bets are off nowadays when it comes to federal spending.

    Within months of his swearing in, it was already abundantly clear that Trump had no interest at all in cutting spending or scaling back the mountains of debt the US was quickly amassing. And now the Covid Panic has accelerated the process all the more.

    Just How Much Has Spending Accelerated?

    During the 2020 fiscal year, the total budget deficit reached more than $3.1 trillion. Even if we adjust for inflation, 2020’s total deficit was essentially off-the-charts as far as deficits go:

    In 2009, in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis, the deficit reached 1.6 trillion in 2019 dollars. But the deficit nearly doubled that previous high in 2020.

    And now, 2021, isn’t looking to be much more frugal than 2020. Even before any new stimulus bill have been signed, 2021’s year-to-date deficit already tops 2010’s previous high for the period. Combining October and November (the first two months of this fiscal year) the deficit is at $429 billion. At the very least, 2021 is likely to top $2 trillion.

    But, those who take a sanguine view of deficits and the national debt are likely to ask: so what?

    Do Deficits Matter?

    Well, there several problems that come with these deficits, that are occurring right now.  The danger of enormous deficits doesn’t just come in the form of an economic collapse, possibly in the far distant future.

    First of all, it is important to point out that it is very unlikely this level of deficit spending could be maintained without a lot of monetization from the central bank. As the federal government engages in deficit spending and floods the market with new debt, it needs the central bank to mop a lot of it up so that interest rates don’t rise.

    After all, the US government is already on its way to spending half a trillion dollars per year on interest alone. And that’s all while paying interest rates of well under two percent. Were these interest rates to rise to more historically normal levels, the federal government would have to slash federal programs to cover the rise in debt payments. Clearly, political considerations mean politicians want to avoid this outcome as much as a possible. 

    Fortunately for politicians, the Fed can defer this interest-payment problem buying up more debt. But where does the Fed get those trillions of dollars to buy up US debt? The Fed prints it.

    This could lead to rapidly rising consumer prices, but experience over the past 20 years has instead pointed to the bigger problem being asset price inflation (especially in real estate and stocks).

    Asset price inflation is a problem in part because it favors the already-wealthy at the expense of newcomers. Asset price inflation in housing, for example, favors those who already own these assets while putting first-time homebuyers (typically younger and less-wealthy people) at a disadvantage.

    This results in part in growing wealth inequality, and a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy. As Fed-watcher and veteran financial analyst Karen Petrou recently noted, a mounting pile of quantitative evidence shows:

    continuing emphasis on price stability [i.e., anti-deflation measures], ultra-low rates, and huge central-bank portfolios does not promote sustained growth, does not meaningfully increase low-income wages, and accelerates market price hikes that both increase wealth inequality and stoke financial crises exactly like the one in March, 2020.

     Where does this lead beyond the short term? One likely outcome is the “Japanization” of the US economy, “a long-lasting economic stagnation accompanied by expansionary monetary and fiscal policies.” Contrary to what central bankers repeatedly insist, it is not the case that loose monetary policy can drive up wages or increase general prosperity. The case of Japan shows the opposite, even after decades of highly accommodative monetary policy.

    This occurs because expansive monetary policy creates bubbles that pull wealth away from the most productive economic activities, and instead redirects wealth to those industries that fare best in an environment of artificial wealth creation. Thanks to Cantillon effects, this often means that wealth flows into the financial sectors at the expense of the “productive” sectors that employ more people and provide important non-financial goods and services.

    While hyperinflation is always a possible result of printing up trillions of new dollars, it’s not necessarily what results. Instead, as Brendan Brown has noted, the effects might instead be a long slow process of impoverishment, similar to what we have seen in Japan, and marked by the growing trend of wealth inequality now being driven by current Fed policy.

    The origins of this process of impoverishment process go back largely to deficit spending. So long as the federal government continues to add hundreds of billions—or even trillions—of dollars per year to the national debt, central banks will continue to be called upon to turn debt into dollars. Long-term economic destruction follows.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 15:30

  • Two Pandemic Assistance Programs Expire Today, Leaving 12 Million Without Benefits
    Two Pandemic Assistance Programs Expire Today, Leaving 12 Million Without Benefits

    With Congressional leaders feigning productivity for two months on a renewed stimulus – only for President Trump to veto their 11th hour porkfest and demand they increase direct stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000 per person – a series of assistance programs are set to lapse into the new year.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with President Trump in July

    Two of them, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, will expire Saturday night, leaving around 12 million Americans without the assistance. As we noted in November, this would roughly translate into an income shortfall of $39BN in 1Q if these workers are unable to find work or alternative income support. BofA calculates that based on its work on fiscal multipliers, income loss of $39BN would translate into a 1.2% hit to growth on an annualized basis in 1Q 2021.

    One of the two programs expiring Saturday, the PUA, provided unemployment benefits to around 7.3 million gig workers and others not eligible for traditional unemployment, according to the Century Foundation.

    The expiring programs come after lawmakers cobbled a $900 billion pandemic stimulus package to a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill, which President Trump vetoed over the sheer amount of pork and $600 direct checks, which he deemed to small.

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

    House Democrats will vote on a standalone bill Monday for $2,000 checks, while Congressional Republicans are expected to flatly reject it. Meanwhile, several additional programs are set to expire on December 31. Additionally, the concurrent expiration of eviction moratorium, mortgage forbearance programs, and suspension of student loan payments could all be headwinds early next year, creating further obstacles.

    Unless Trump reverses course and signs the package on Tuesday, the government will shut down – sans another short-term bill to keep it limp things along into 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 15:00

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Dec 26

Today’s News 26th December 2020

  • H.G. Wells' Dystopic Vision Comes Alive With The Great Reset Agenda
    H.G. Wells’ Dystopic Vision Comes Alive With The Great Reset Agenda

    Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    In the Time Machine, society one million years in the future has evolved into two separate species called Morlocks and Eloi. The Morlocks represent the ugly dirty producers who by this future age, all live under ground and run the world’s manufacturing. The Eloi are the effect of the inbreeding of the elite, who by this time are simple-minded, Aryan, above-ground dwellers living in idleness and consuming only what the Morlocks produce. What was the trade off?

    The Morlocks periodically rise above ground in hunting parties to kidnap and eat unsuspecting Eloi in this symbiotically vicious circle of life.

    This famous story was written by a young British writer in 1893 whose ideas and pioneering work in shaping new techniques of cultural warfare which profoundly affected the next 130 years of human history. These ideas led to the innovation of novel techniques of “predictive programming”, and to mass psychological warfare. In contrast to the optimistic views of mankind and the future potential envisioned by the great science fiction writer Jules Verne earlier, Wells’ misanthropic tales had the intended effect of reducing the creative potential and love of humanity that Verne’s work awoke.

    To restate the technique more clearly: By shaping society’s imagination of the future, and embedding existential/nihilistic outcomes within his plotlines, Wells realized that the entire zeitgeist of humanity could be affected on a profound level than simple conscious reason would permit. Since he robed his poison in the cloth of “fiction” the minds of those receiving his stories would find their critical thinking faculties disengaged and would simply take in all trojan horses embedded in the stories into their unconsciousness. This has been an insight used for over a century by social engineers and intelligence agencies whose aim has always been the willing enslavement of all people of the earth.

    While he is best known for such fiction works as The War of the Worlds, The World Set Free, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Morrow, and The Time Machine, Wells’ lesser-known non-fiction writings like The Open Conspiracy, The New World Order, The Outline of History, The Science of Life and The World Brain served as guiding strategic blueprints for the entire 20th century war against sovereign nation states and the very idea of a society built on the premise of mankind made in the image of God.

    Thomas Huxley’s Revolution

    The members of the London-centered oligarchy to which Wells had devoted himself at an early age had found themselves stuck in a rut by the turn of the 19th century. These inbred families and retainers who managed the dying British Empire had long been encrusted by the vices of decadence by the time a young man of low breeding and high talent arose amidst the London-ghettos treating syphilis patients as a surgeon’s assistant. This young surgeon’s name was Thomas Huxley.

    Huxley possessed a sardonic wit, a deep misanthropy, and an intelligence that were soon discovered by powerful patrons, and by his mid-20’s, this young man found himself a rising star in Britain’s Royal Academy of Science. Here he quickly became a leading creative force, shaping Britain’s powerful X Club, serving as Darwin’s bulldog promoting popular debates featuring himself against literalist members of the clergy. In these debates he argued for Darwin’s chaos-bound interpretation of evolution. He also founded Nature magazine as a propaganda instrument which has been used to enforce scientific consensus favorable to a world empire to this very day.

    Huxley chose his opponents carefully, ensuring that he could easily and publicly obliterate the arguments of simple-minded Anglican clergy, and thus convince all onlookers that the only choice they had to account for the evolution of new species was either literal Biblical creationism or his brand of Darwinian evolution. The many alternative scientific theories of the 19th century (such as those found in the works of Karl Ernst von Baer, Georges Cuvier, Lamarck and James D. Dana) which accounted for both the evolution of species, and the harmonics of all parts to a whole, as well as creative leaps were forgotten amidst this false dichotomy which this author unpacked in a recent interview.

    Wells Picks up Huxley’s Torch

    During his later years, Huxley mentored a young H.G. Wells, together with a whole generation of new imperial practitioners of the arts of social engineering (and social Darwinism). This social engineering soon took the form of Galton’s eugenics quickly becoming an accepted science practiced across the western world.

    Wells was himself the son of a lowly gardener, but, like Huxley, exhibited a strong misanthropic wit, passion and creativity lacking in the high nobility, and he was thus raised from the lower ranks of society into the order of oligarchical management by the 1890s. During this moment of vast potential- and – it cannot be restated enough- the oligarchical order that had grown overconfident during the 200+ years of hegemony were petrified to see the nations of the earth rapidly breaking free from this hegemony thanks to the under the international spread of Lincoln’s American System across Germany, Russia, Japan, South America, France, Canada and even China with Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 republican revolution.

    As outlined in Cynthia Chung’s ‘Why Russia Saved the USA’, the oligarchy just no longer seemed to have the creative vitality and sophistication required to snuff out these revolutionary flames.

    Wells described this problem in the following terms:

    “The undeniable contraction of the British outlook in the opening decade of the new century is one that has exercised my mind very greatly… Gradually, the belief in the possible world leadership of England had been deflated by the economic development of America and the militant boldness of Germany. The long reign of Queen Victoria, so prosperous, progressive and effortless, had produced habits of political indolence and cheap assurance. As a people we had got out of training, and when the challenge of these new rivals became open, it took our breath away at once. We did not know how to meet it…”

    The science of population control advanced by Huxley, Galton, Wells, Mackinder, Milner and Bertrand Russell was the basis for a new scientific priesthood and “world government” that would put a stop to the startling disequilibrium unleashed by the electric spread of sovereign nation states, protectionism and commitment to scientific and technological progress.

    Fabians, Round Tablers and Coefficients: New Think Tanks Emerge

    H.G Wells, Russell and other early social engineers of this new priesthood organized themselves in several interconnected think tanks known as 1) the Fabian Society of Sidney and Beatrice Webb which operated through the London School of Economics, 2) the Round Table Movement begun by the fortunes left to posterity by the racist diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes which also gave rise to the Rhodes Trust, and Rhodes Scholarship programs established to indoctrinate young talent in the halls of Oxford, and finally 3) the Co-Efficients Club of London. As noted by Georgetown Professor Carol Quigley, in his 1981 The Anglo-American Establishment, membership in all three organizations was virtually interchangeable.

    Wells described the rise of these original think tanks and documented the inner elite’s inability to meet the challenge of the times saying:

    “Our ruling class, protected in its advantages by a universal snobbery was broad-minded, easy going and profoundly lazy… Our liberalism was no longer a larger enterprise, it had become a generous indolence. But minds were waking up to this. Over our table at St Ermin’s Hotel wrangle Maxse, Bellairs, Hewins, Amery and Mackinder, all stung by the small but humiliating tale of disasters in the South African war, all sensitive to the threat of business recession, and all profoundly alarmed by the naval and military aggressiveness of Germany.”

    Fearful of the prospect of a US-Russia-China alliance outlined in depth by Fabian/Roundtable members Halford Mackinder and Lord Alfred Milner, the solution was simple: kick over the chess board and get everyone to just slaughter each other. Accounts of the British imperial efforts to orchestrate this war have been told in many locations, but none as efficiently as the 2008 documentary 1932: Speak Not of Parties.

    In the wake of the destruction which left 9 million dead on all sides and ruined countless lives, Wells, Russell and the Milner Roundtable became leading voices for world government under the League of Nations (c. 1919) advocating “enlightened cosmopolitanism” to replace the era of “selfish nation states”.

    The Battle For World Government

    A decade after its founding, the League was less successful than Wells and his co-thinkers would have liked, with nationalists from around the world recognizing the evil hand of empire lurking behind the apparent language of “liberal values and world peace”. Sun Yat-sen, among many others was among the anti-Wellsian voices and warned his fellow Chinese in 1924 not to fall into this trap saying:

    “The nations which are employing imperialism to conquer others and which are trying to maintain their own favored positions as sovereign lords of the whole world are advocating cosmopolitanism [aka: global governance/globalization -ed] and want the world to join them… Nationalism is that precious possession by which humanity maintains its existence. If nationalism decays, then when cosmopolitanism flourishes we will be unable to survive and will be eliminated”.

    In response to this patriotic resistance across the world, a new strategy had to be concocted. This took the form of H.G. Welles’ 1928 The Open Conspiracy: Blueprint for a World Revolution. This little-known book served as a guiding blueprint for the next century of imperial grand strategy calling for a new world religion and social order. According to Wells:

    “The old faiths have become unconvincing, unsubstantial and insincere, and though there are clear intimations of a new faith in the world, it still awaits embodiment in formulae and organizations that will bring it into effective reaction upon human affairs as a whole.”

    In his book, Welles outlines the need for a new scientific gospel to supersede the Judeo-Christian faiths of the western world. This new gospel consisted of a series of tomes which he and his colleague Julian Huxley composed, entitled: 1) The Outline of History (1920) where Wells re-wrote all of history wishing this analysis to replace the book of Genesis, 2)The Science of Life (1930), co-written with Sir Julian Huxley (Thomas Huxley’s Grandson who continued the family tradition along with Aldous), and 3) The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932).

    Part of this immense project to create a new coherent synthetic religion to re-organize humanity involved a re-packaging of a Darwinism that was falling out of favor with many scientists of the 1920’s. They recognized its failure to account for obvious features of nature such as directionality in evolution, spirit, intention, ideas and design.

    This re-packaging took the form of the “New Evolutionary Synthesis” which attempted to save Darwin’s theory and its eugenic corollaries using Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s doctrine of the “Omega Man”. De Chardin’s system synthesized the foundation of Darwinian assumptions with an acknowledgment of evolutionary directionality, the possibility of spirit, and the existence of mind as a force of nature. The destructive slight of hand used by Chardin was that all of these “transcendent” features of design- spirit, mind, reason, etc.- were: 1) bound to a finite future point of no change which dominated and guided all apparent change in living space time, and 2) binding the world of mind and spirit to the forces of the material world. The Chardin-Huxley-Wells remix kept Darwin’s laws relevant and kept science compatible with imperial modes of social organization.

    Outlining the aims of The Open Conspiracy, Wells writes: “Firstly, the entirely provisional nature of all existing governments, and the entirely provisional nature therefore, of all loyalties associated therewith; Secondly, the supreme importance of population control in human biology and the possibility it affords us of a release from the pressure of the struggle for existence on ourselves; and Thirdly, the urgent necessity of protective resistance against the present traditional drift towards war.”

    By 1933, the planned Bankers’ Dictatorship, meant to solve the four years’ long great depression and organized during the months-long London Conference, was on the verge of being sabotaged by the recently-elected American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was then that Wells published a new manifesto in the form of a fiction book called ‘Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution’. This book (soon made into a Hollywood movie), served as an early tool of mass predictive programming showcasing a world destroyed by decades of global war, pandemic, and anarchy- all caused by… sovereign nation states.

    The “solution” to these dark ages took the form of a masonic society of social engineers who descended from planes (Wells’ ‘Benevolent Dictatorship of the Air’) to restore order under a world government. Wells had his main character (a social psychologist) state “while the World Council was fighting for and directing and carrying on the unified World State, the Educational Control was remoulding mankind”. The social psychologists managing the World Government were “becoming the whole literature, philosophy and general thought of the world… the reasoning soul in the body of the race.”

    The greatest problem to overcome, stated Wells, was “the variability of mental resistance to direction and limits set by nature to the ideal of an acquiescent cooperative world.”

    Wells’ hero, Gustav de Windt, was “pre-occupied by his gigantic schemes for world organization, had treated the ‘spirit of opposition’ as purely evil, as a vice to be guarded against, as a trouble in the machinery which was to be minimized as completely as possible.”

    In 1932, Wells gave an Oxford speech championing a global order run by liberal fascists saying: “I am asking for liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis”. This was not paradoxical when one realizes that the rise of fascism was never a “nationalist” phenomenon as popular history books have asserted for decades but rather was the artificial consequence of a supranational financier-oligarchy from above who wished to use “enforcers” to bend their societies to a higher will.

    The World Brain

    By the time World War II began, Wells’ ideas had evolved new insidious components that later gave rise to such mechanisms as Wikipedia and Twitter in the form of “The World Brain” (19937) where Wells calls for reducing the English language to a “basic English” of 850 accepted words which would make up a world language. In this book, Wells states that “thinkers of the forward-looking type whose ideas we are now considering, are beginning to realize that the most hopeful line for the development of our racial intelligence lies rather in the direction of creating a new world organ for the collection, indexing, summarizing and release of knowledge, than in any further tinkering with the highly conservative and resistant university system, local, national and traditional in texture, which already exits. These innovators, who may be dreamers today, but who hope to become very active organizers tomorrow, project a unified, if not centralized, world organ to pull the mind of the world together.”

    By 1940, Wells wrote the The New World Order which again amplified his message. In writing this,  he coordinated his efforts with the many Fabians and Rhodes Scholars who had infiltrated western foreign policy establishments in order to shape the the war, but more importantly, the post-war global structure. These were the networks that hated Franklin Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Harry Hopkins and other genuine “New Dealers” who wanted nothing more than to destroy colonialism once and for all in the wake of the war.

    Wells insists that the “new age of brotherhood” that must guide the new United Nations must not tolerate sovereign nation states as FDR dreamed (and as was formally enshrined in the UN Charter) but must rather be guided by his caste of social engineers pulling the levers of production and consumption within a system of mass “collectivization” saying:

    “Collectivisation means the handling of the common affairs of mankind by a common control responsible to the whole community. It means the suppression of go-as-you-please in social and economic affairs just as much as in international affairs. It means the frank abolition of profit-seeking and of every device by which human beings contrive to be parasitic on their fellow man. It is the practical realisation of the brotherhood of man through a common control”.

    If Wells’ outlines look similar to those ideas recently made public by the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, then don’t be surprised.

    Wells’ Death and the Continuity of a Bad Idea

    With Wells’ 1946 death, other Fabians and social engineers continued his work during the Cold War. One of the leading figures here being Wells’ associate, Lord Bertrand Russell, who wrote in his 1952 The Impact of Science on Society:

    “I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology…. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called ‘education’. Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema and the radio play an increasing part… it may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the state with money and equipment.”

    “The subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First that the influence of home is obstructive. Second that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Thirdly verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

    Although the bodies of Wells, Russell and Huxley have long since rotted away, their rotten ideas continue to animate their disciples like Sir Henry Kissinger, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Lord Malloch-Brown (whose disturbing celebration of the Coronavirus as a golden opportunity to finally restructure civilization) should concern any thinking citizen. The idea of a “Great Reset” expounded by these modern mouthpieces of history’s bad ideas signals nothing more than a new Dark Age which should turn the stomach of any moral being.

    It is here useful to hold the words of Kissinger in mind who had channeled the spectre of Wells telling a group of technocrats in Evian, France in 1992:

    “Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/26/2020 – 00:00

  • Indian Call Center Scams $14 Million From Americans In Elaborate Scheme
    Indian Call Center Scams $14 Million From Americans In Elaborate Scheme

    Sometimes we have to question the intelligence of Americans. It’s no secret that unhealthy lifestyles and eating mounds of junk food can impair brain function. With that being said, intelligence is lacking for some Americans as thousands were recently swindled out of millions of dollars by a scammy Indian call center.

    According to the NYTimes, an Indian call center in Peera Garhi, west of Delhi, tricked victims into believing their bank accounts were frozen as part of an elaborate drug investigation. As many as 4,500 victims were told, they had to transfer money to the scammers or risk serious jail time. 

    On Dec. 17, as many as 50 people from the call center were arrested. Authorities alleged the employees learned American accents and pretended to be officials of various American law enforcement agencies. 

    Delhi Police Cybercrime Unit shows police arresting a group suspected of conducting an international scam at a call center in Delhi. Source: NYT

    Investigators said the victims were given an ultimatum: Face jail time or take an “alternative dispute resolution” to avoid criminal charges. 

    Over two years, the call center bilked more than $14 million from gullible Americans who “were asked to buy Bitcoins or Google gift cards worth all the money in their accounts,” said Anyesh Roy, a police officer in New Delhi. The monies were then transferred to what the victims thought was a “safe government wallet” but were actually accounts tied to the call center. 

    The South China Morning Post said the “call center even had a human resources policy offering graded salary scales, bonuses for Christmas and for those who could get people to capitulate fast, as well as paid holidays.” 

    The stupidity of some Americans makes you wonder if IQ rates in the country are dropping?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 23:20

  • 8 Ways Magic Mushrooms Explain Santa Claus & The Christmas Tradition
    8 Ways Magic Mushrooms Explain Santa Claus & The Christmas Tradition

    Via EvolveAndAscend.com,

    As we pass the winter solstice, so begins our end of year rituals. Ritual celebrations convoluted over time, only to fit in with the society today. The traditions of our popular culture (Christmas, New Years, etc.) actually find their roots in early Pagan ceremonies that guide us to the closing of a chapter, to be reborn in a new year. The cultural Zeitgeist tells a story that during Christmas time we celebrate the birth of Jesus, however we are actually following astrological patterns, celebrating the balance with seasonal cycles and the precession of the equinox. This is the finite choreography of the stars, and the winter solstice is special occurrence that allows dreams to manifest in the year ahead.

    While studying the origins of Christmas, specifically in relation to the Santa mythos – there has been a lot that seems to be lost in the ground that the “root” of the story takes place in. Many people have studied this, and it’s been revealed that the origin of Santa is actually the spirit of the Kamchadales and the Koryak Shaman from Siberia. These Shaman wore red clothing, with white accents in homage to the Fly Agaric mushroom. This hallucinogenic mushroom can be found beneath only specific trees, like the fir or pine, which they understood as the Tree of Life. The Mushrooms are the literal “fruit” of those trees, and grow from the roots.  The Shaman would collect these fruits, and bring them to the homes of the tribe. They would dry them over the fire, or hang them on the pine tree inside their homes. This specific mushroom played an important role in their end of the year rituals, because astrologically there is something consistent and special happening. The energetic vortex of the winter solstice provided a gift that allowed humanity to connect with a higher power to gain insight.

    These traditions were passed down, and found their way into the rituals of civilized societies like Denmark and Great Britain. With that, they lost an integral piece of the puzzle that was the soul of these rituals.

    Mankind tends to seek a better definition, even if the root of the story is lost beneath the soil. So, eventually we find an opportunity to anthropomorphize the spirit of the shaman, which is where St. Nicholas comes into play. Jolly old St. Nick is the patron saint of the weary traveler, and the poor. This is one of the most important parts of the story, because with St. Nick, there is the importance of “making a list”, which is actually a Pagan ritual that will allow the manifestation of intention. This tradition was brought to Great Britain by the druids. Children are powerful, and using their energy to perpetuate something negative like capitalist gains, only further degrades our current society. The secret is not to make a list of material things that we desire – which is absolutely perpetuated by consumerism – but make a list of needs met with good intention. Whether for the self, of the better of humanity or the environment, it is important to understand what it is you truly need.

    St. Nicholas also embodied the ethos of “giving to others in need”. This is the most significant part of the interpretation of this mythology. As the Shaman gave the psychedelic experience to those stuck in their homes during Siberian winters…this awoke their spirit, and gave them an understanding that could never be explained. It’s a sacred experience, and it was ritualized. St. Nicholas on the other hand, took what he could, and gave it to the poor. That is the tradition we need to perpetuate. It’s not about family gifting. It’s truly about spreading joy, and bringing joy.

    While this time of year can be daunting due to the cold, it is a time for reflection, hibernation, empathy and gratitude. The darkness of winter, only brings forth the light of the spring…your intentions during the dark of winter should lay in positive actions, that will bring forth a positive future. In keeping to the concept of Karma – you reap what you sow. It’s a time of year, where we plant the seed of our intentions, into the soil of the universe. Life is beautiful, and it’s the season to reflect and embrace it. Give what you can, and the universe will respond positively in the year that follows.

    1. Arctic shamans gave out mushrooms on the winter solstice.

    According to the theory, the legend of Santa derives from shamans in the Siberian and Arctic regions who dropped into locals’ teepeelike homes with a bag full of hallucinogenic mushrooms as presents in late December, Rush said.

    “As the story goes, up until a few hundred years ago, these practicing shamans or priests connected to the older traditions would collectAmanita muscaria (the Holy Mushroom), dry them and then give them as gifts on the winter solstice,” Rush told LiveScience in an email. “Because snow is usually blocking doors, there was an opening in the roof through which people entered and exited, thus the chimney story.”

    2. Mushrooms, like gifts, are found beneath pine trees.

    The Amanita muscaria mushroom, which is deep red with white flecks

    That’s just one of the symbolic connections between the Amanita muscaria mushroom and the iconography of Christmas, according to several historians and ethnomycologists, or people who study fungi’s influence on human societies. Of course, not all scientists agree that the Santa story is tied to a hallucinogen. [Trippy Tales: History of Magic Mushrooms & Other Hallucinogens]

    In his book “Mushrooms and Mankind” (The Book Tree, 2003) the late author James Arthur points out that Amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric, lives throughout the Northern Hemisphere under conifers and birch trees, with which the fungi — which are deep red with white flecks — have a symbiotic relationship. This partially explains the practice of the Christmas tree, and the placement of bright red-and-white presents underneath it, which look like Amanita mushrooms, he wrote.

    “Why do people bring pine trees into their houses at the winter solstice, placing brightly colored (red-and-white) packages under their boughs, as gifts to show their love for each other …?” he wrote. “It is because, underneath the pine bough is the exact location where one would find this ‘Most Sacred’ substance, the Amanita muscaria, in the wild.” (Note: Do not eat these mushrooms, as they can be poisonous.)

    3. Reindeer were shaman “spirit animals.”

    Reindeer are common in Siberia and northern Europe, and seek out these hallucinogenic fungi, as the area’s human inhabitants have also been known to do. Donald Pfister, a Harvard University biologist who studies fungi, suggests that Siberian tribesmen who ingested fly agaric may have hallucinated that the grazing reindeer were flying.

    “At first glance, one thinks it’s ridiculous, but it’s not,” said Carl Ruck, a professor of classics at Boston University. “Whoever heard of reindeer flying? I think it’s becoming general knowledge that Santa is taking a ‘trip’ with his reindeer.”

    Were Santa and his reindeer on a magic mushroom-induced trip?

    “Amongst the Siberian shamans, you have an animal spirit you can journey with in your vision quest,” Ruck continued. “And reindeer are common and familiar to people in eastern Siberia.”

    4. Shamans dressed like … Santa Claus.

    These shamans “also have a tradition of dressing up like the [mushroom] … they dress up in red suits with white spots,” Ruck said.

    5. Mushrooms abound in Christmas iconography.

    Tree ornaments shaped like Amanita mushrooms and other depictions of the fungi are also prevalent in Christmas decorations throughout the world, particularly in Scandinavia and northern Europe, Pfister pointed out. That said, Pfister made it clear that the connection between modern-day Christmas and the ancestral practice of eating mushrooms is a coincidence, and he doesn’t know about any direct link.

    6. Rudolph’s nose resembles a bright-red mushroom.

    Ruck points to Rudolph as another example of the mushroom imagery resurfacing: His nose looks exactly like a red mushroom. “It’s amazing that a reindeer with a red-mushroom nose is at the head, leading the others,” he said.

    Many of these traditions were merged or projected upon St. Nicholas, a fourth-century saint known for his generosity, as the story goes.

    There is little debate about the consumption of mushrooms by Arctic and Siberian tribespeople and shamans, but the connection to Christmas traditions is more tenuous, or “mysterious,” as Ruck put it.

    7. “A Visit from St. Nicholas” may have borrowed from shaman rituals.

    Many of the modern details of the modern-day American Santa Claus come from the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which later became famous as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”). The poem is credited to Clement Clarke Moore, an aristocratic academic who lived in New York City.

    The origins of Moore’s vision are unclear, although Arthur, Rush and Ruck all think the poet probably drew from northern European motifs that derive from Siberian or Arctic shamanic traditions. At the very least, Arthur wrote, Santa’s sleigh and reindeer are probably references to various related northern European mythology. For example, the Norse god Thor (known in German as Donner) flew in a chariot drawn by two goats, which have been replaced in the modern retelling by Santa’s reindeer, Arthur wrote.

    Reindeer, which aren’t usually known to fly.

    Other historians were unaware of a connection between Santa and shamans or magic mushrooms, including Stephen Nissenbaum, who wrote a book about the origins of Christmas traditions, and Penne Restad, of the University of Texas at Austin, both of whom were contacted by LiveScience.

    8. Santa is from the Arctic.

    One historian, Ronald Hutton, told NPR that the theory of a mushroom-Santa connection is flawed. “If you look at the evidence of Siberian shamanism, which I’ve done,” Hutton said, “you find that shamans didn’t travel by sleigh, didn’t usually deal with reindeer spirits, very rarely took the mushrooms to get trances, didn’t have red-and-white clothes.”

    But Rush and Ruck disagree, saying shamans did deal with reindeer spirits and the ingestion of mushrooms is well documented. Siberian shamans did wear red deer pelts, but the coloring of Santa’s garb is mainly meant to mirror the coloring of Amanita mushrooms, Rush added. As for sleighs, the point isn’t the exact mode of travel, but that the “trip” involves transportation to a different, celestial realm, Rush said. Sometimes people would also drink the urine of the shaman or the reindeer, as the hallucinogenic compounds are excreted this way, without some of the harmful chemicals present in the fungi (which are broken down by the shaman or the reindeer), Rush said.

    “People who know about shamanism accept this story,” Ruck said. “Is there any other reason that Santa lives in the North Pole? It is a tradition that can be traced back to Siberia.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 22:40

  • Southern Border Migration Slumps In COVID Year
    Southern Border Migration Slumps In COVID Year

    2019 was a year that changed the face of migration on the U.S. Southwestern border, but so was 2020.

    While in the previous year, the number of border apprehensions skyrocketed and record numbers of families arrived mainly from Central America, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz points out that the COVID-19 pandemic cut border crossings back down to 2018 levels with the number of families reaching a low.

    Infographic: Southern Border Migration Drops in COVID Year | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While in 2019, Non-Mexicans outnumbered Mexicans 4:1 at the Southern border, this trend was reversed in 2020 with more Mexicans apprehended once again, as records from Customs and Border Protection show.

    Because many of the new arrivals from Central America had been applying for asylum, the Trump administration in 2019 overhauled its application process, making many asylum seekers wait in camps on the Mexican side without assistance. These changes were implemented after another system overhaul – the separation of families in U.S. custody and the tendency to release fewer immigration detainees on bail – had caused chaotic scenes at detention centers and an international outcry.

    Historically, Mexicans made up the largest share of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. but have been more successful at finding work in Mexico, where the economy is improving and workers are more sought after while the country’s population ages. As more asylum seekers and less work migrants arrived, the U.S. also slashed the number of refugees it accepts annually to the historic low of 18,000 and in the COVID year of 2020 admitted a record-low number of just around 3,000 asylum seekers.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 22:00

  • Is Your New TCL HDTV (Made In China) A Security Risk?
    Is Your New TCL HDTV (Made In China) A Security Risk?

    Authored by Stephen Silver via 19fortyfive.com,

    There’s been a huge amount of concern this year about the security implications of technology that originates in China or is owned by Chinese companies. That was, after all, at the heart of the fight by the Trump Administration to ban the popular social networking app TikTok, or at least to force a sale of it. The U.S. government has also cracked down on the manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, and the omnibus/coronavirus rescue package recently passed by Congress even included $1.9 billion to help companies remove equipment from those two companies.

    Recently, a pair of security researchers raised the alarm about another Chinese tech company, the TV manufacturer TCL, which makes some of the most popular televisions available in the U.S.

    The website of the researcher and hacker known as Sick Codes, in a blog post in November, pointed out “extraordinary vulnerabilities” in TCL’s Android TVs.

    “Near the end of September, while conducting research into low-end Android boxes, I came across a number of serious flaws in the way in which these devices were being designed,” the post said.

    “Without delving into the nuances of each device, all of the Smart TV products are Android-based.”

    The researcher discovered that they could easily access the entire file system of the devices.

    “Why would an Android device need a web server running on a non-standard port?” he asked.

    “What kind of manufacturer publishes the whole file system of a device?”

    Sick Codes was later joined in his work by another researcher named John Jackson, and in October the two of them both notified TCL which, after a delay in response, said they would patch the issue.

    In an interview with Tom’s Guide, Sick Codes sent a URL that provided “full access to the file system of a TCL smart TV in Zambia,” and the writer was able to browse the directories of that person’s TV.

    And in another interview with Security Ledger, Sick Codes said that “anybody on an adjacent network can browse the TV’s file system and download any file they want.”

    TCL issued a statement to the media, as reported by Tom’s Guide:

    “TCL was recently notified by an independent security researcher of two vulnerabilities in Android TV models,” the statement said.

    “Once TCL received notification, the company quickly took steps to investigate, thoroughly test, develop patches, and implement a plan to send updates to resolve the matter. Updating devices and applications to enhance security is a regular occurrence in the technology industry, and these updates should be distributed to all affected Android TV models in the coming days.”

    “Going forward, we are putting processes in place to better react to discoveries by 3rd parties [and] performing additional training for our customer service agents on escalation procedures on these issues as well as establishing a direct reporting system online,” TCL said further, in a statement to PC Mag.

    It’s worth pointing out, as stated by Sick Codes in the comments to the original post, that the issue they pinpointed only applies to TCL’s Android TVs, and not to its Roku TVs, which are the majority of what TCL sells in North America. In fact, TCL only brought Android TVs to the North American market for the first time in July.

    On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security released a new report called “Data Security Business Advisory: Risks and Considerations for Businesses Using Data Services and Equipment from Firms Linked to the People’s Republic of China.”

    TCL is not mentioned in the report, nor are televisions.

    “The PRC’s data collection actions result in numerous risks to U.S. businesses and customers, including: the theft of trade secrets, of intellectual property, and of other confidential business information; violations of U.S. export control laws; violations of U.S. privacy laws; breaches of contractual provisions and terms of service; security and privacy risks to customers and employees; risk of PRC surveillance and tracking of regime critics; and reputational harm to U.S. businesses,” the report said

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 21:20

  • Here We Go Again: Boeing 737 Max Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Failure
    Here We Go Again: Boeing 737 Max Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Failure

    Last month, commercial flights with Boeing 737 Max jetliners resumed after a 20-month worldwide grounding, following two deadly accidents.

    Now we’re finding out, weeks later, after the Max was cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to return to the skies safely, an Air Canada Boeing 737-8 Max suffered engine issues during flight.

    According to Aviation24.be, an Air Canada Boeing 737-8 MAX (registered C-FSNQ) was on a test flight after storage from Marana Pinal, Arizona, to Montreal, Canada, when the incident occurred. Luckily, the aircraft had no passengers and only three crew members. 

    Engine issues shortly developed after the plane took off. The crew noticed the “left engine had low hydraulic pressure,” said Aviation24.be.  Then more complications developed with the aircraft: 

    “The crew and airline dispatch/engineering controllers initially decided to continue to Montreal but the crew received an indication of a fuel imbalance from the left-hand wing and shut the left hand engine down,” said the aviation website. 

    The crew was forced to declare a “PAN-PAN” emergency, meaning the plane was in severe jeopardy and had to divert from its pre-planned flight route and land in Tucson. 

    The incident took place on Dec. 22, according to Aviation24.be. 

    Flightradar24 provides a flight playback of the incident.

    Even with the FAA ordered updates to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, an automated flight system that controls the plane and was responsible for the two deadly crashes, these planes have been sitting for nearly two years, and inactivity could lead to other issues. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 20:40

  • Our Upside-Down Post-Election World
    Our Upside-Down Post-Election World

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via RealClearPolitics.com,

    After Nov. 3, the meaning of some words and concepts abruptly changed. Have you noticed how new realities have replaced old ones?

    Media cross-examination of the president is now an out-of-date idea. The time for gotcha questions has come and gone.

    Why ask a president whether he is a traitor or a crook when you can focus on his favorite flavor of milkshake or compliment him on his socks?

    The old pre-election truth was that new vaccines take years to develop. The new postelection truth is that it’s no big deal to bring out new vaccines in nine months.

    Impeaching a first-term president after his first midterm election — on a strictly partisan vote, for political reasons other than the Constitution’s “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” — is now a terrible idea.

    Worse would be to appoint a special counsel to harass a president on unfounded charges of collusion with China. An even scarier notion would be a conservative dream team of partisan lawyers hounding President Joe Biden — using a 22-month, $40 million blank check.

    It would be unprofessional for university psychologists and physicians from a distance to diagnose, in pop fashion, the mental faculties of a President Biden.

    Certainly, there would never be talk about Department of Justice officials contemplating wearing a wire as part of an entrapment scheme to remove a President Biden through the 25th Amendment. That would almost constitute a coup attempt.

    Almost as bad would be for the holdover FBI director to start “memorializing” his private conversations with Joe Biden on FBI devices. He might then leak such memos to the press — just in case he were to be fired for secretly investigating Biden for “Chinese collusion” and then lying about such a probe.

    What happened to the Logan Act? Not long ago it was assumed to be a critically needed guardrail. Wouldn’t it now ensure that presidential transition team members were not calling foreign leaders while Donald Trump is still president? How has it suddenly become a defunct, ossified relic?

    Leaking classified material would be about the worst thing government officials could do. Imagine if a Trump holdover, burrowed into the new Biden administration, released a transcript of Biden’s private conversations with the Mexican president or the Australian prime minister.

    Such a breach of trust would be almost as bad as a turncoat anti-Biden mole seeking to resist presidential directives. Imagine if this anonymous staffer were given an op-ed in the New York Tines to claim that a cadre of old-time Democrats were shocked by Biden’s cognitive decline and resisting his directives.

    Is extending security clearances to former high-level officials turned cable-TV pundits still a bad idea? Who would wish to see, for instance, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe issuing warnings each night on Fox News? With a wink-and-nod hat tip to his “confidential sources,” Ratcliffe could spin conspiracy theories that Biden is facing bombshell disclosures about his family misadventures with the Chinese.

    Is it still important that we keep the tradition of retired high-ranking military officers — all subject to the requirements of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — not disparaging the president? Who would want former Pentagon officials, some of them serving on the boards of military contractors, warning us that Biden should be removed because of cognitive challenges? Certainly, generals and admirals should not compare a President Biden’s policies to those of Mussolini or the Nazis.

    At least “dark money” no longer exists. The old idea of right-wing billionaires pouring money into candidates’ political campaigns was supposedly a dangerous practice. It would be far more civic-minded for left-wing billionaires to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of nonpartisan state bureaucracies entrusted with guaranteeing the sanctity of national elections.

    And apparently after, not before, an election is the proper time to announce critically important news.

    Like the rollout of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine?

    Like a $900 billion stimulus package?

    Like a revised upward Fannie Mae report on the economy?

    Like the ties between a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee and a suspected Chinese spy?

    Like a federal investigation of Joe Biden’s son and his possible profiteering with rich Chinese elites affiliated with China’s government?

    To keep track of our brave new American world is easy.

    Just consider everything said to be bad by the “Animal Farm” media before Nov. 3 as now good. And remember that everything said to be good two months ago is now actually bad.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 20:00

  • "Breakthrough" – IBM And Fujifilm Develop New Magnetic Tape With 580TB Capacity
    “Breakthrough” – IBM And Fujifilm Develop New Magnetic Tape With 580TB Capacity

    The world currently produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily due to the internet of things, the emergence of 4K/8K videos, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence and automation. By 2025, worldwide data could soar to 175 zettabytes, representing 61% annual growth. 

    Thanks to the virus pandemic, the rapid digitization of the economy sparking a massive push in remote working among corporations have also resulted in a massive increase in data storage. 

    So, where is all this data being stored?

    More than 500 hyperscale data centers are scattered across the world, storing an estimated 547 exabytes with an estimated 151 facilities currently under development. 

    According to IBM, there is only “one technology can handle that the massive growth of digital data, keep it protected from cybercrime attacks and is archiving data for some of the largest hyperscale data centers in the world is a technology more than 60 years old – magnetic tape.” 

    Magnetic Tape’s Layer Structure 

    More than a decade ago, IBM partnered with Fujifilm to advance the technology in magnetic tape. What they developed is a new tape that can store huge amounts of critical data. 

    The new tape can achieve a storage capacity of 317 gigabytes per square inch, which means a single tape is capable of storing 580 terabytes of data.

    Putting 580 terabytes into perspective for readers, it’s “equivalent to 786,977 CDs stacked 944 meters high, which is taller than Burj Kalifa, the world’s tallest building. That’s a colossal amount of data! All fitting on a tape cartridge on the palm of your hand,” said IBM. 

    The “breakthrough,” aimed at advancing decades-old technology, came when researchers from both companies develop a brand new tape with Strontium Ferrite instead of using Barium Ferrite, which has been used to create the tape for years. Strontium Ferrite offers the potential for higher density storage in the same amount of tape.

    The Evolution Of The Magnetic Tape  

    IBM concludes that this new milestone will allow tape drives to handle the massive growth of digital data which is just in time for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 19:20

  • May This Year Bring Less Gifts And Far More Christmas
    May This Year Bring Less Gifts And Far More Christmas

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

    May this year bring to all more Christmas and less of the junk we have all come to know as gift giving. This time of year I find the mind-numbing barrage from stuff that peddlers are rushing to fill any need I can imagine overwhelming. These needs appear to be both real and imagined, I’m even asked to reach out and consider, and speculate, on the needs and desires that others might have. Over the years our lives have become so crammed with material goods, our drawers and closets are now chucked full of the trendy apparel of last season, exercise equipment, knick-knacks, and electronic equipment. For some people, the place where they live is about to explode unless they move to a larger house or rent a storage unit.

    Even The Grinch Knows This

    Many garages across America are so full of this stuff cars can no-longer be parked inside. Neurotic people with overactive pack-rat syndrome literally destroy their quality of life with clutter and junk. This stuff will often sit in one place for years while they can’t find a chair to sit in or a clean tabletop on which to eat. Ads like – “get it all” or “have it all,” live on the cutting edge, buy all of these high-powered models, and “put your life in the zone.” fill our lives. This new-fangled electronic gizmo does it all and more, look at the artwork, let it wash over you, surround you, and cover you up. Check out that car, is it not perfect? Wouldn’t driving it make life a zen-like experience – got to have it, no payment for 90 days.

    This has resulted in consumers getting caught up in the game of finding the perfect patio furniture and buying it to use it twice. It then sits on our deck only to fade in the sun over the next three years. Never before has man had so much, but it’s far from enough. The idea things will be “swell” and life downright peachy only after you fill it with the right kind of stuff is a slippery slope. The fact is for some people they will never be able to get enough. The one thing we can count on is that tomorrow the new models arrive, better and sleeker with even more options!

    Great are the efforts we make to fill our needs with material objects in an effort to achieve happiness. We rush around creating video and digital images in a desire to preserve those precious moments. We capture so many images that we forget to download, view, and print them. We now have the ability to collect and store vast quantities of information and data, much of which is never processed or utilized. Poor quality or obsolete data entered into our system downgrades the output to one of, “garbage in – garbage out.”   

    It seems the ads filling our Sunday paper and mailboxes weighs ten pounds, the ads, the ads, the ads. What store is that? Never heard of it? They are all the same, junk, junk, junk, buy me some happiness!! It is only natural to be drawn to nice things but new is merely a point in time and not a reflection on quality or utility value. We have so much junk we can’t find the item we need or want, so we are forced to buy a replacement until we find where it was placed. You know it’s true – yes, you are guilty, so are we all.

    The fact there is a lot more to life than stuffing your face with too much food and running around trying to find things to buy. This is made clear by the picture appearing to the right. Life is about more than buying and spending. So many people are not as fortunate as we that have been born in America and we should count our blessings and good fortune. When all is said and done it is more likely the most precious moments in our lives will center around people rather than things. We should never forget that trying to do the right thing for our fellow man is an important part of being alive.

    We have even been convinced that we should not leave our house or office without a bottle of water, if it were not for bottled water, we would all be dead. Bottled water was a three hundred billion dollar industry last year. Oh, how our needs have grown. Well, all I really need is a lamp, an ashtray and well maybe a yogurt maker. That’ all I need! Using a line by the songwriter-singer Jimmy Buffet, I want to go where the women and water are free. All this means that for many of us it is time to take a deep breath and forget about material things. This might make a lot more room for us to remember what is really important, people and family.

    Merry Christmas to All!!

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 18:40

  • GoDaddy Phished Its Own Employees Under The Guise Of Giving Them A $650 Holiday Bonus
    GoDaddy Phished Its Own Employees Under The Guise Of Giving Them A $650 Holiday Bonus

    Roughly 500 GoDaddy employees failed a company-wide phishing test this month that was disguised as a message that they would be receiving a $650 holiday bonus.

    Yes, you’re reading that right: GoDaddy purposely emailed its employees during a year in which the U.S. economy went into recession, promising them $650 for the holidays, as a test to see if they would click certain links embedded in emails.

    The e-mail came from an address called “happyholiday@godaddy.com“, the e-mail read: “Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus! To ensure that you receive your one-time bonus in time for the Holidays, please select your location and fill in the details by Friday, December 18th.”

    But instead of a bonus, those who thought they were getting extra cash instead got the following message two days later: “You’re getting this email because you failed our recent phishing test. You will need to retake the Security Awareness Social Engineering training.”

    The e-mail came from a GoDaddy domain name and bore the GoDaddy logo. The company says that “roughly 500” people clicked on the link and “failed the test”,  according to The Copper Courier. 

    While the test is similar to ones that other companies use to gauge how susceptible their employees are to phishing attacks, the holiday theme and promise of money during a tough year makes these tests, in particular, a little – well…uncool. 

    While the company refused requests from media about the incident, the Courier says that “three GoDaddy employees” forwarded the e-mails to the press. We’re guessing the company is going to have to make a statement – or least make these people whole after completing their new training – before the “woke” mob decides to “cancel” their GoDaddy services this holiday season. 

    GoDaddy is likely on its guard after suffering a data breach either this year where 28,000 customers saw their accounts compromised. The company had “record customer growth” for the year, but still wound up laying off or reassigning “hundreds of employees” due to the pandemic. 

    All told, sounds like a great place to work. Happy Holidays, GoDaddy team!

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 18:00

  • Mises Explains The Santa Claus Principle
    Mises Explains The Santa Claus Principle

    Authored by Ludwig von Mises via The Mises Institute,

    [From “The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund” in Human Action, chap. 36.]

    The idea underlying all interventionist policies is that the higher income and wealth of the more affluent part of the population is a fund which can be freely used for the improvement of the conditions of the less prosperous. The essence of the interventionist policy is to take from one group to give to another. It is confiscation and distribution. Every measure is ultimately justified by declaring that it is fair to curb the rich for the benefit of the poor.

    In the field of public finance progressive taxation of incomes and estates is the most characteristic manifestation of this doctrine. Tax the rich and spend the revenue for the improvement of the condition of the poor, is the principle of contemporary budgets. In the field of industrial relations shortening the hours of work, raising wages, and a thousand other measures are recommended under the assumption that they favor the employee and burden the employer. Every issue of government and community affairs is dealt with exclusively from the point of view of this principle.

    An illustrative example is provided by the methods applied in the operation of nationalized and municipalized enterprises. These enterprises very often result in financial failure; their accounts regularly show losses burdening the state or the city treasury. It is of no use to investigate whether the deficits are due to the notorious inefficiency of the public conduct of business enterprises or, at least partly, to the inadequacy of the prices at which the commodities or services are sold to the customers. What matters more is the fact that the taxpayers must cover these deficits. The interventionists fully approve of this arrangement. They passionately reject the two other possible solutions: selling the enterprises to private entrepreneurs or raising the prices charged to the customers to such a height that no further deficit remains. The first of these proposals is in their eyes manifestly reactionary because the inevitable trend of history is toward more and more socialization. The second is deemed “antisocial” because it places a heavier load upon the consuming masses. It is fairer to make the taxpayers, i.e., the wealthy citizens, bear the burden. Their ability to pay is greater than that of the average people riding the nationalized railroads and the municipalized subways, trolleys, and busses. To ask that such public utilities should be self-supporting, is, say the interventionists, a relic of the old-fashioned ideas of orthodox finance. One might as well aim at making the roads and the public schools self-supporting.

    It is not necessary to argue with the advocates of this deficit policy. It is obvious that recourse to this ability-to-pay principle depends on the existence of such incomes and fortunes as can still be taxed away. It can no longer be resorted to once these extra funds have been exhausted by taxes and other interventionist measures.

    This is precisely the present state of affairs in most of the European countries. The United States has not yet gone so far; but if the actual trend of its economic policies is not radically altered very soon, it will be in the same condition in a few years.

    For the sake of argument we may disregard all the other consequences which the full triumph of the ability-to-pay principle must bring about and concentrate upon its financial aspects.

    The interventionist in advocating additional public expenditure is not aware of the fact that the funds available are limited. He does not realize that increasing expenditure in one department enjoins restricting it in other departments. In his opinion there is plenty of money available. The income and wealth of the rich can be freely tapped. In recommending a greater allowance for the schools he simply stresses the point that it would be a good thing to spend more for education. He does not venture to prove that to raise the budgetary allowance for schools is more expedient than to raise that of another department, e.g., that of health. It never occurs to him that grave arguments could be advanced in favor of restricting public spending and lowering the burden of taxation. The champions of cuts in the budget are in his eyes merely the defenders of the manifestly unfair class interests of the rich.

    With the present height of income and inheritance tax rates, this reserve fund out of which the interventionists seek to cover all public expenditure is rapidly shrinking. It has practically disappeared altogether in most European countries. In the United States the recent advances in tax rates produced only negligible revenue results beyond what would be produced by a progression which stopped at much lower rates. High surtax rates for the rich are very popular with interventionist dilettantes and demagogues, but they secure only modest additions to the revenue.1 From day to day it becomes more obvious that large-scale additions to the amount of public expenditure cannot be financed by “soaking the rich,” but that the burden must be carried by the masses. The traditional tax policy of the age of interventionism, its glorified devices of progressive taxation and lavish spending, have been carried to a point at which their absurdity can no longer be concealed. The notorious principle that, whereas private expenditures depend on the size of income available, public revenues must be regulated according to expenditures, refutes itself. Henceforth, governments will have to realize that one dollar cannot be spent twice, and that the various items of government expenditure are in conflict with one another. Every penny of additional government spending will have to be collected from precisely those people who hitherto have been intent upon shifting the main burden to other groups. Those anxious to get subsidies will have to foot the bill themselves for the subsidies. The deficits of publicly owned and operated enterprises will be charged to the bulk of the population.

    The situation in the employer-employee nexus will be analogous. The popular doctrine contends that wage earners are reaping “social gains” at the expense of the unearned income of the exploiting classes. The strikers, it is said, do not strike against the consumers but against “management.” There is no reason to raise the prices of products when labor costs are increased; the difference must be borne by employers. But when more and more of the share of the entrepreneurs and capitalists is absorbed by taxes, higher wage rates, and other “social gains” of employees, and by price ceilings, nothing remains for such a buffer function. Then it becomes evident that every wage raise, with its whole momentum, must affect the prices of the products and that the social gains of each group fully correspond to the social losses of the other groups. Every strike becomes, even in the short run and not only in the long run, a strike against the rest of the people.

    An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole doctrine of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off. The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 17:20

  • Musk Ponders Starlink IPO After Admitting It's "Impossible" For Tesla To Go Private
    Musk Ponders Starlink IPO After Admitting It’s “Impossible” For Tesla To Go Private

    My, how the tables have turned…

    The very same Tesla bulls that were perpetually looking for a buyout or take-private offer for the company years ago can now officially check that “bull case” off their list. In addition to CEO Elon Musk revealing that Apple had snubbed Tesla last week – and in addition to analysts starting to consider Apple’s entrance into self-driving cars as a legitimate bear case – it appears that Musk has given up on “going private”. 

    Musk said on Twitter late this week that it would be “impossible” to take the company private. “Tesla public company duties are a much bigger factor, but going private is impossible now (sigh),” he wrote in response to a hilarious Tweet that referred to Musk as the best capital allocator of our generation. “Engineering, design & general company operations absorb vast majority of my mind & are the fundamental limitation on doing more.”

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

    As Tesla continues to move further onto Wall Street’s “Main Stage”, the company could wind up seeing headwinds it didn’t experience during its totally unbelievable run over the last year. 

    We already noted that its inclusion in the S&P 500 could wind up putting pressure on the stock as a result of heightened liquidity. Now, the company’s absurd valuation seems to be helping stack up more negative catalysts than positive ones.

    So, how can Musk keep the ponzi scheme going take the next step in building value? By IPOing yet another one of his unprofitable businesses! Musk has already started to allude to taking Starlink public “once the revenue growth is reasonably predictable”, he wrote on Twitter on Thursday. 

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

    Of course, it’s no mistake that Musk mentions revenue and not net income. After all, if Tesla proved one thing over the last 18 months, it’s that fundamentals of any sort don’t matter anymore. And if the Central Banks have helped prove one thing over the last several years it’s that revenue apparently means worlds more than net income or cash generation ever will.

    Paging Benjamin Graham…

    Regardless, we also pointed out that the law of large numbers isn’t just zapping Tesla, it could also wind up backfiring on Tesla-uber bull Cathie Wood over at ARK Funds, as we noted last week. 

    And make no mistake – once all the logical fallacies that were once considered to be Tesla bull cases peel back, one by one, soon Tesla will only have its fundamentals to cling to. And we’re not sure that’s going to provide the “gamma squeeze”-style returns that such “visionaries” as Cathie Wood and Ross Gerber have gotten used to.

    The saga continues…

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 16:40

  • California Doctor Fired After Writing Letter Criticizing Lockdown Orders
    California Doctor Fired After Writing Letter Criticizing Lockdown Orders

    Authored by Kipp Jones via The Western Journal,

    A doctor in Northern California has been fired from his job after he co-authored a letter that questioned the science behind his county’s lockdown order.

    Dr. Michael deBoisblanc was working as the trauma medical director for John Muir Health in Contra Costa County, California, until last Friday, after he questioned the scientific basis for again locking down citizens of the area.

    KNTV reported that deBoisblanc wrote a letter to the county health director and board of supervisors voicing his concern regarding the continued lockdown policies prior to his dismissal.

    The former medical director spoke from his own experience as a parent, expressing his apprehension that Bay Area students were not being allowed to attend in-person classes, according to KTVU-TV.

    Along with doctors Pete Mazolewski and Brian Hopkins, deBoisblanc wrote that there were “deep concerns regarding more lockdown measures.”

    “The science is clear,” the letter continued, “that more lockdowns lead to much more non COVID morbidity and mortality.”

    “Public policy is being based on erroneous assumptions,” it added.

    The trauma physician said “we’re worried some of the actions the county and government is taking can definitely have negative impacts on the public health,” according to KTVU.

    DeBoisblanc’s letter seemed to ruffle the feathers of those at the county health department and other San Francisco Bay area officials.

    John Gioia, the District 1 Supervisor for Contra Costa County, defended the California lockdown, which is based largely on a reported shortage of hospital beds.

    “All of these orders have been based on strong science and good data,” Gioia said.

    “They are citing data that our health department believes is not reflective of accurate current thinking [in the letter].”

    But another area leader said that more transparency is needed from health officials during the pandemic.

    “That only engenders trust and leads people to understand why we’re making these decisions and why we need them to behave in certain ways,” San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney said.

    DeBoisblanc seemingly had merely sought for clear answers regarding those affected by lockdowns, including embattled small business owners.

    “We felt these were important questions that the people who are affected by these measures deserved answers to,” he said.

    But deBoisblanc has now been moved to the back of California’s large unemployment line.

    His employment at the hospital in Walnut Creek was terminated last week with little explanation from superiors.

    “The Medical Director of Trauma and Regional Transfer Services is a contracted position and, after careful consideration, John Muir Health is not continuing with Dr. deBoisblanc in that position,” a statement issued by John Muir Health read.

    Dr. deBoisblanc spoke to Fox News on Wednesday regarding his termination of employment, as well as the lockdown’s effects on school children who are being kept out of classrooms.

    “All the data that I am aware of, looking at children and the virus, shows that it’s safe,” he told the network.

    “There are many other states now that have months of track records showing that it’s safe for their kids to go back to school.

    “And the state of California and the county is just not making that possible.”

    The doctor also defended restaurants and small businesses, which have been intensely struggling during the pandemic.

    “These are restaurants that are just trying to survive, and keep their doors open,” he said.

    “It’s been very difficult for them.”

    DeBoisblanc later revealed that he was not fired from his job solely because of the letter, but he said it was “clearly related to the letter.”

    The California Department of Public Health announced a regional stay-at-home order on Dec. 3, which urged most residents of the state to stay home during the Christmas month, citing the shortage of hospital beds and rising number of cases. Contra Costa Health Services echoed this request in a media release on Dec. 16.

    “Due to the dwindling supply of hospital beds for patients who need intensive care in the Bay Area, the state will apply a regional stay-at-home order across the nine-county region to slow the spread of COVID-19 and prevent the region’s hospitals from becoming overwhelmed,” the release stated.

    “Now more than ever, Contra Costa Health Services (CCHS) urges everyone who lives or works in the county to follow the health advice within the law to keep themselves and their loved ones safe during the holiday season.”

    The order, among other recommendations, urged people to avoid “in-person gatherings with people who do not live in your household, especially indoors.”

    Despite his termination, deBoisblanc had only kind words for health care workers at his former hospital attempting to navigate the difficulties of the pandemic.

    “That’s a great hospital, they are doing amazing things,” he told Fox.

    “The doctors and nurses there taking care of COVID patients are risking their health every day. They just got the first round of the vaccine. And let me tell you, it’s a big relief for them.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 16:00

  • Roger Stone Announces $25M Lawsuit Against DOJ, Mueller, Comey, Barr And Brennan
    Roger Stone Announces $25M Lawsuit Against DOJ, Mueller, Comey, Barr And Brennan

    Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone announced on Friday that he will be filing a $25 million lawsuit against the department of Justice, along with former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and several other individuals, according to the Washington Examiner.

    Stone was arrested in a 2019 pre-dawn raid (which CNN was alerted to in advance) and sentenced to 40 months in prison before President Trump commuted it in July, leaving stone with a fine and supervised release. Trump granted Stone a full presidential pardon on Wednesday.

    “The terms of my pardon allow me to sue the Department of Justice, Robert Mueller, James Comey, John Brennan, Rod Rosenstein, Josnathan [sic] Kravis, Aaron ‘Fat Ass’ Zelinsky Jeannie Rhee and Michael Morando,” stone wrote on Parler. “My lawyers will be filing formal complaints for prosecutorial misconduct’s with DOJ office of professional responsibility at the same time I file a 25 million dollar lawsuit against the DOJ and each of these individuals personally.”

    Stone was found guilty of five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee during its own Russia investigation regarding his outreach to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign, one count that he “corruptly influenced, obstructed, and impeded” the congressional investigation, and one count for attempting to “corruptly persuade” the congressional testimony of radio show host Randy Credico.

    …

    Also pardoned Wednesday were Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner’s father. On Tuesday, George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, also charged in connection with Mueller’s Russia investigation, were granted full pardons. –Washington Examiner

    “I have an enormous debt of gratitude to God almighty for giving the president the strength and the courage to recognize that my prosecution was a completely, politically motivated witch hunt and my trial was a Soviet-style show trial,” Stone said Wednesday evening, adding on Parler that he will add former Attorney General Bill Barr to the lawsuit – and that he would “handle his cross-examination personally.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 15:20

  • Dreaming Of A Christmas Without Stuff Nobody Wants Or Needs
    Dreaming Of A Christmas Without Stuff Nobody Wants Or Needs

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Freeing ourselves of unwanted/unneeded gift-giving is not just heresy in a debt-funded consumerist economy… it is tantamount to treason.

    Did you see the new “gotta-have” coffee-pod flavors this Christmas? Crayfish, Spanish Moss, Pumpkin Spicy Radish and Jungle Rot. Yowza, it doesn’t get any better than this…

    Future archeologists will marvel not just at the enormous quantity of stuff left by our late-oil-boom frenzy of consumption but by the peculiar concentrations of never-used stuff in closets, basements and strange (possibly religious in nature) immense structures comprised of endless rows of small rooms crammed to the ceiling with stuff without any apparent utility or value.

    When can we finally admit that Christmas gift-giving no longer serves any purpose other than the purchase of vast quantities of stuff nobody wants or needs? Generations ago, before everyone could buy whatever they wanted on credit, Christmas was the one time when some portion of the savings that had been painfully accumulated by sacrifice would be doled out for small gifts, typically a consumable treat, modest toys for children or a necessity.

    Compare that tradition with today’s frantic frenzy to find something new that recipients don’t need or want and retailers’ equally frantic search for new markets: your gerbil doesn’t have a plush new bed? Shame on you! Imagine its anguish when everyone else is surrounded by piles of shredded wrapping paper and your poor pet didn’t get a single present… where’s your Christmas spirit (and credit card)?.

    The most appreciated gift you can give is a suggestion to end the obligation to exchange gifts. To state the honest truth–we don’t want or need anything else, and don’t have space for anything else, thank you–is a gift few are willing to risk saying, but everyone heaves a sigh of relief when one brave person asks to be relieved of the burden of buying another mountain of stuff nobody wants or needs.

    There is a long tradition of consumable homemade gifts–Christmas cookies, fruitcake, etc.–that awaits rediscovery.

    Freeing ourselves of unwanted/unneeded gift-giving is not just heresy in a debt-funded consumerist economy–it is tantamount to treason. (The lines from an old Errol Flynn movie come to mind: “You speak treason!” “Fluently.”) But why should an honest appraisal qualify as both heresy and treason?

    The honest truth is hearts don’t leap with joy at receiving another unwanted, unneeded thing; hearts sink at the task of moving the gift into some corner of the already-stuffed closet or donating it. What was the point of all this costly frenzy again? To keep a debt-dependent consumer economy from imploding? Is that what Christmas has become?

    What’s scarce isn’t more stuff. What’s scarce is time, reflection and the generosity of spirit. We’re so busy loading the conveyor belt of unwanted, unneeded stuff in and out of our homes that we have no time to actually spend on what is valuable.

    But here, try this new coffee-pod flavor, miso-kumquat-kimchee, I got you the bulk quantity at Costco, you’re gonna love it.

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    *  *  *

    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
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 14:40

  • Where Analysts Are Most Optimistic And Pessimistic On Company Ratings For 2021
    Where Analysts Are Most Optimistic And Pessimistic On Company Ratings For 2021

    With the end of the year just days away, Factset looked at where sellside analysts are most optimistic and pessimistic in their ratings for S&P 500 stocks for 2021, and also how have their views changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?

    As Factset’s John Butters summarizes, there are a total of 10,361 ratings on stocks in the S&P 500. Of these 10,361 ratings, 53.6% are Buy ratings, 39.6% are Hold ratings, and 6.8% are Sell ratings.

    Curiously, at the sector level, analysts are most optimistic on the one sector that has been most beaten down in 2020 – Energy (62%) – followed by Health Care (60%), and Information Technology (59%) as these three sectors have highest percentages of Buy ratings. On the other hand, analysts are most pessimistic about the Real Estate (46%), Consumer Staples (47%), and Financials (48%) sectors, as these three sectors have the lowest percentages of Buy ratings. The Real Estate (46%) and Financials (46%) sectors also have the highest percentages of Hold ratings, while the Consumer Staples (10%) sector also have the highest percentage of Sell ratings.

    At the company level, the 10 stocks in the S&P 500 with the highest percentages of Buy ratings and the highest percentages of Sell ratings are listed in the tables below.

    Based on the percentage of Buy ratings on S&P 500 stocks, it is interesting to note that analysts are more optimistic on S&P 500 stocks today compared to the start of the 2020 (before the impact of COVID-19), and with the S&P500 trading above 3,700 – an all time high. On December 31, 50.6% of ratings on S&P 500 stocks were Buy ratings, compared to 53.6% today. Nine sectors have a higher percentage of Buy ratings today compared to the start of the year, led by the Utilities (to 51% from 42%) and Consumer Staples (to 47% from 39%) sectors. On the other hand, just two sectors have a lower percentage of Buy ratings today compared to the start of the year: Communication Services (to 55% from 60%) and Energy (to 62% from 66%).

    However, there has been little change at the sector level in terms of ranking by Buy ratings. The same four sectors (Energy, Communication Services, Health Care, and Information Technology) that had the highest percentages of Buy ratings at the start of the year (before COVID-19) also have the highest percentages of Buy ratings today. Three of the four sectors (Consumer Staples, Financials, and Real Estate) that had the lowest percentages of Buy ratings at the start of the year also have the lowest percentages of Buy ratings today.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 14:00

  • Leaked Docs Reveal How China's 'Army Of Paid Internet Trolls' Helped Censor COVID-19
    Leaked Docs Reveal How China’s ‘Army Of Paid Internet Trolls’ Helped Censor COVID-19

    Authored by Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik, The New York Times, and Jeff Kao via ProPublica (emphasis ours)

    In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.

    The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of COVID-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information.

    Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.

    They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.”

    Special instructions were issued to manage anger over Dr. Li’s death.

    The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.

    At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.

    Though China makes no secret of its belief in rigid internet controls, the documents convey just how much behind-the-scenes effort is involved in maintaining a tight grip. It takes an enormous bureaucracy, armies of people, specialized technology made by private contractors, the constant monitoring of digital news outlets and social media platforms — and, presumably, lots of money.

    It is much more than simply flipping a switch to block certain unwelcome ideas, images or pieces of news.

    China’s curbs on information about the outbreak started in early January, before the novel coronavirus had even been identified definitively, the documents show. When infections started spreading rapidly a few weeks later, the authorities clamped down on anything that cast China’s response in too “negative” a light.

    The United States and other countries have for months accused China of trying to hide the extent of the outbreak in its early stages. It may never be clear whether a freer flow of information from China would have prevented the outbreak from morphing into a raging global health calamity. But the documents indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe — and the authorities more capable — as the rest of the world was watching.

    The documents include more than 3,200 directives and 1,800 memos and other files from the offices of the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. They also include internal files and computer code from a Chinese company, Urun Big Data Services, that makes software used by local governments to monitor internet discussion and manage armies of online commenters.

    The documents were shared with The Times and ProPublica by a hacker group that calls itself CCP Unmasked, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. The Times and ProPublica independently verified the authenticity of many of the documents, some of which had been obtained separately by China Digital Times, a website that tracks Chinese internet controls.

    The CAC and Urun did not respond to requests for comment.

    “China has a politically weaponized system of censorship; it is refined, organized, coordinated and supported by the state’s resources,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times. “It’s not just for deleting something. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale.”

    “This is a huge thing,” he added. “No other country has that.”

    Controlling a Narrative

    China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, created the Cyberspace Administration of China in 2014 to centralize the management of internet censorship and propaganda as well as other aspects of digital policy. Today, the agency reports to the Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee, a sign of its importance to the leadership.

    The CAC’s coronavirus controls began in the first week of January. An agency directive ordered news websites to use only government-published material and not to draw any parallels with the deadly SARS outbreak in China and elsewhere that began in 2002, even as the World Health Organization was noting the similarities.

    At the start of February, a high-level meeting led by Xi called for tighter management of digital media, and the CAC’s offices across the country swung into action. A directive in Zhejiang Province, whose capital is Hangzhou, said the agency should not only control the message within China, but also seek to “actively influence international opinion.”

    Agency workers began receiving links to virus-related articles that they were to promote on local news aggregators and social media. Directives specified which links should be featured on news sites’ home screens, how many hours they should remain online and even which headlines should appear in boldface.

    Online reports should play up the heroic efforts by local medical workers dispatched to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first reported, as well as the vital contributions of Communist Party members, the agency’s orders said.

    Headlines should steer clear of the words “incurable” and “fatal,” one directive said, “to avoid causing societal panic.” When covering restrictions on movement and travel, the word “lockdown” should not be used, said another. Multiple directives emphasized that “negative” news about the virus was not to be promoted.

    When a prison officer in Zhejiang who lied about his travels caused an outbreak among the inmates, the CAC asked local offices to monitor the case closely because it “could easily attract attention from overseas.”

    Officials ordered the news media to downplay the crisis.

    News outlets were told not to play up reports on donations and purchases of medical supplies from abroad. The concern, according to agency directives, was that such reports could cause a backlash overseas and disrupt China’s procurement efforts, which were pulling in vast amounts of personal protective equipment as the virus spread abroad.

    “Avoid giving the false impression that our fight against the epidemic relies on foreign donations,” one directive said.

    CAC workers flagged some on-the-ground videos for purging, including several that appear to show bodies exposed in public places. Other clips that were flagged appear to show people yelling angrily inside a hospital, workers hauling a corpse out of an apartment and a quarantined child crying for her mother. The videos’ authenticity could not be confirmed.

    The agency asked local branches to craft ideas for “fun at home” content to “ease the anxieties of web users.” In one Hangzhou district, workers described a “witty and humorous” guitar ditty they had promoted. It went, “I never thought it would be true to say: To support your country, just sleep all day.”

    Then came a bigger test.

    “Severe Crackdown“

    The death of Li, the doctor in Wuhan, loosed a geyser of emotion that threatened to tear Chinese social media out from under the CAC’s control.

    It did not help when the agency’s gag order leaked onto Weibo, a popular Twitter-like platform, fueling further anger. Thousands of people flooded Li’s Weibo account with comments.

    The agency had little choice but to permit expressions of grief, though only to a point. If anyone was sensationalizing the story to generate online traffic, their account should be dealt with “severely,” one directive said.

    The day after Li’s death, a directive included a sample of material that was deemed to be “taking advantage of this incident to stir up public opinion”: a video interview in which Li’s mother reminisces tearfully about her son.

    The scrutiny did not let up in the days that followed. “Pay particular attention to posts with pictures of candles, people wearing masks, an entirely black image or other efforts to escalate or hype the incident,” read an agency directive to local offices.

    Larger numbers of online memorials began to disappear. The police detained several people who formed groups to archive deleted posts.

    In Hangzhou, propaganda workers on round-the-clock shifts wrote up reports describing how they were ensuring people saw nothing that contradicted the soothing message from the Communist Party: that it had the virus firmly under control.

    Officials in one district reported that workers in their employ had posted online comments that were read more than 40,000 times, “effectively eliminating city residents’ panic.” Workers in another county boasted of their “severe crackdown” on what they called rumors: 16 people had been investigated by the police, 14 given warnings and two detained. One district said it had 1,500 “cybersoldiers” monitoring closed chat groups on WeChat, the popular social app.

    Researchers have estimated that hundreds of thousands of people in China work part-time to post comments and share content that reinforces state ideology. Many of them are low-level employees at government departments and party organizations. Universities have recruited students and teachers for the task. Local governments have held training sessions for them.

    Local officials turned to informants and trolls to control opinion.

    Engineers of the Troll

    Government departments in China have a variety of specialized software at their disposal to shape what the public sees online.

    One maker of such software, Urun, has won at least two dozen contracts with local agencies and state-owned enterprises since 2016, government procurement records show. According to an analysis of computer code and documents from Urun, the company’s products can track online trends, coordinate censorship activity and manage fake social media accounts for posting comments.

    One Urun software system gives government workers a slick, easy-to-use interface for quickly adding likes to posts. Managers can use the system to assign specific tasks to commenters. The software can also track how many tasks a commenter has completed and how much that person should be paid.

    According to one document describing the software, commenters in the southern city of Guangzhou are paid $25 for an original post of longer than 400 characters. Flagging a negative comment for deletion earns them 40 cents. Reposts are worth one cent apiece.

    Urun makes a smartphone app that streamlines their work. They receive tasks within the app, post the requisite comments from their personal social media accounts, then upload a screenshot, ostensibly to certify that the task was completed.

    The company also makes video game-like software that helps train commenters, documents show. The software splits a group of users into two teams, one red and one blue, and pits them against each other to see which can produce more popular posts.

    Other Urun code is designed to monitor Chinese social media for “harmful information.” Workers can use keywords to find posts that mention sensitive topics, such as “incidents involving leadership” or “national political affairs.” They can also manually tag posts for further review.

    In Hangzhou, officials appear to have used Urun software to scan the Chinese internet for keywords like “virus” and “pneumonia” in conjunction with place names, according to company data.

    A Great Sea of Placidity

    By the end of February, the emotional wallop of Li’s death seemed to be fading. CAC workers around Hangzhou continued to scan the internet for anything that might perturb the great sea of placidity.

    One city district noted that web users were worried about how their neighborhoods were handling the trash left by people who were returning from out of town and potentially carrying the virus. Another district observed concerns about whether schools were taking adequate safety measures as students returned.

    On March 12, the agency’s Hangzhou office issued a memo to all branches about new national rules for internet platforms. Local offices should set up special teams for conducting daily inspections of local websites, the memo said. Those found to have violations should be “promptly supervised and rectified.”

    The Hangzhou CAC had already been keeping a quarterly scorecard for evaluating how well local platforms were managing their content. Each site started the quarter with 100 points. Points were deducted for failing to adequately police posts or comments. Points might also be added for standout performances.

    In the first quarter of 2020, two local websites lost 10 points each for “publishing illegal information related to the epidemic,” that quarter’s score report said. A government portal received an extra two points for “participating actively in opinion guidance” during the outbreak.

    Over time, the CAC offices’ reports returned to monitoring topics unrelated to the virus: noisy construction projects keeping people awake at night, heavy rains causing flooding in a train station.

    Then, in late May, the offices received startling news: Confidential public-opinion analysis reports had somehow been published online. The agency ordered offices to purge internal reports — particularly, it said, those analyzing sentiment surrounding the epidemic.

    The offices wrote back in their usual dry bureaucratese, vowing to “prevent such data from leaking out on the internet and causing a serious adverse impact to society.”

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 13:20

  • UK's Largest Testing Lab Suffers COVID-19 Outbreak According To Whistleblower
    UK’s Largest Testing Lab Suffers COVID-19 Outbreak According To Whistleblower

    The UK’s largest COVID-19 testing lab has suffered outbreaks in three out of its four scientific testing teams, after what one worker claims were repeated breaches of safety protocols.

    Photo via Sky News

    While the total number of infected are unknown, approximately 20 out of 70 people in one of the teams at the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Laboratory are currently isolating according to the whistleblower.

    Sky News reports that the outbreak has put considerable strain on the lab, which has been tasked with processing 70,000 tests per day from across the country – yet hasn’t been able to achieve that number despite 12-hour shifts and “cramped working conditions.“

    Staff working in the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab. Credit: CEO Tony Cox @The_Soup_Dragon

    “The whole thing’s a joke,” said the worker.

    The lab worker also raised concerns about the safety of the lab, saying that rules put in place to keep staff safe were being broken in order to meet targets – a claim the Department of Health and Social Care denied.

    …

    The lab worker said that new recruits had been sitting in the canteen while they waited for their test results.

    According to the lab worker, one new warehouse staff member received a positive test result after they had sat in the canteen during a period when a whole lab team had been in there for a break. –Sky News

    According to the whistleblower, a ‘bubble system’ was implemented to keep staff separate, following a recommendation from the Health and Safety Executive – yet, it’s not being respected as workers move between groups and risk further cross-contamination. There has also been mixing in the building’s lobbies and at the canteen.

    This may be the inevitable outcome when an unprecedented effort to process thousands of tests per day collides with reality. We wonder if testing accuracy has also suffered?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 12:40

  • BBC Publishes Cringe Guide For "Talking To Conspiracy Theorist Relatives" At Christmas
    BBC Publishes Cringe Guide For “Talking To Conspiracy Theorist Relatives” At Christmas

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    The British Broadcasting Corporation, the bastion of all that is proper and right, has published a handy Christmas guide for how to talk down to relatives who believe in nasty ‘conspiracy theories’, and it’s a huge sack full of cringe.

    Prime Minister Boris Johnson effectively cancelled Christmas for a third of the UK, and is now threatening to lockdown the entire country on Boxing Day.

    That is not enough for the woke state broadcaster, however, which clearly feels it needs to instruct Brit NPCs on how to debunk the dangerous disinformation being spread by their unmutual uncles and disharmonious descendants.

    “How should you talk to friends and relatives who believe conspiracy theories?” The BBC headline reads.

    “You’re dreading the moment. As your uncle passes the roast potatoes, he casually mentions that a coronavirus vaccine will be used to inject microchips into our bodies to track us,” the ‘five point guide’ outlines, adding “Or maybe it’s that point when a friend, after a couple of pints, starts talking about how Covid-19 ‘doesn’t exist’.”

    “Or when pudding is ruined as a long-lost cousin starts spinning lurid tales about QAnon and elite Satanists eating babies.”

    Cringe.

    Ok, so what does one do in this horrible situation, oh mighty and wise Big BBC Brother?

    “Keep calm; don’t be dismissive; encourage critical thinking; ask questions; don’t expect immediate results.”

    Eh? So don’t immediately shut them down as a dangerous conspiracy theorist who spreads fake news? Just retain that thought in your head while you deeply patronise them with your received BBC approved spoon-fed opinion.

    OK then.

    Perhaps chase them down the street screeching questions about why they are not wearing a face mask? Probably a good tactic.

    Next tip?

    “People who believe conspiracy theories often say: “I do my own research.”

    Well, how dare they believe something not published by the BBC. How bloody awful.

    “The problem is that their research tends to consist of watching fringe YouTube videos, following random people on Facebook, and cherry-picking evidence from biased Twitter account.”

    So we take away their social media accounts then, right?

    “Your aim is not to make them less curious or sceptical, but to change what they are curious about, or sceptical of.”

    Ah, OK. Direct them to the BBC website then?

    Any more tips, oh corporate board of directors earning millions per year from scalping old ladies by pretending they have to pay you to own a TV?

    “Focus on those who are pushing these ideas, and what they might be getting,” says Claire Wardle. “For instance, financial gain by selling health supplements, or reputational gain in building a following.” 

    Yeah, those evil conspiracy theorists, making a living AND selling vitamins that are good for your health.

    What’s next Gandalf BBC?

    “Conspiracy theories tend to be simple, powerful stories that explain the world. Reality is complex and messy, which is harder for our brains to process.”

    Ouch, thinking hurts too much. Got it.

    Wait, so pedos don’t run the world then?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/25/2020 – 12:05

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 25

Today’s News 25th December 2020

  • Is "It's A Wonderful Life" The Perfect Christmas Film?
    Is “It’s A Wonderful Life” The Perfect Christmas Film?

    Authored by Alexander Larman via The Critic,

    This Christmas, more than any other, people will be slumped in front of their televisions, glass of something strong and dark in hand, looking in vain through the schedules to see if anything worthwhile is on. While some may be disappointed at the absence of festive ghost stories, entertainment will usually come down to a few old warhorses that viewers are trying to derive their annual distraction from, with the light and frothy likes of The Holiday and Love Actually vying for attention with Miracle on 34th Street or one of the innumerable versions of A Christmas Carol.

    Yet the more discerning will look elsewhere, and then the choice comes down to one of a couple of classics set around Christmas, namely The Apartment or It’s A Wonderful Life. Billy Wilder’s wonderfully cynical, morose and wise film grows in stature and relevance every year, fully attuned to the essential murkiness of a premise revolving around an office underling lending his apartment to his superiors for their adulterous affairs. It is (hopefully) not a picture that will have the woke brigade up in arms, as it comprehensively takes the side of the individual, flawed and pathetic though he might be, against the faceless corporate structure that has trapped him.

    As, in an entirely different way, does It’s A Wonderful Life. Yet while Wilder’s film has always been hailed as a classic, there has been a marked shift in attitudes towards Frank Capra’s picture. When it was released on 20 December 1946, it was not particularly popular, being a financial disappointment and regarded as inferior to earlier Capra films as Mr Smith Goes To Washington and the screwball comedy It Happened One Night.

    Although one might have imagined that its release coincided with a grateful nation being delighted to be free of the shackles of a lengthy, expensive and all-consuming war, something about it failed to chime with audiences or critics. Bosley Crowther, the influential critic of The New York Times, wrote:

    The weakness of this picture, from this reviewer’s point of view, is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra’s nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow, they all resemble theatrical attitudes, rather than average realities.

    Thanks to a cleverly orchestrated marketing campaign, it was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for its star James Stewart. It was beaten by the more obviously patriotic The Best Years of Our Lives, about American servicemen adjusting to civilian life after WWII, although Capra did win a Golden Globe for Best Director. And then it fell out of favour for three decades. It unexpectedly became a festive perennial in 1976, when it passed into the public domain and could be freely shown without expensive licensing fees. Subsequently, it has become one of the most popular films of the 20th century, and probably the best-known and most loved picture starring Stewart and directed by Capra. It is eulogised as a hymn to optimism, to family and Christmas. Why, then, does it begin with a depressed man about to kill himself?

    It is received wisdom that It’s A Wonderful Life is a sentimental exercise in all-American wish-fulfilment. As so often, received wisdom is incorrect. It is instead a more complex and nuanced film than that. It was based on a short story by the author Philip van Doren Stern, “The Greatest Gift”, which was both inspired by A Christmas Carol and, more tenuously, by the work of Edgar Allan Poe, which Stern was an expert in. The story was published at Christmas 1944, found its way to a film studio, who paid a substantial $10,000 for the rights, and, after Cary Grant turned down the leading role, ended up being made by Capra.

    In its initial, potentially Grant-starring conception, with scripts by Dalton Trumbo and the playwright Clifford Odets, the film was to revolve around a politician who had become increasingly jaded and world-weary, as he sees how compromised and unhappy he has become. After losing a vital election, he attempts to kill himself, before he is shown exactly how worthwhile and useful all of his initiatives have been by being presented with a parallel existence in which he had been a businessman rather than having followed a career in politics.

    It would have been an intriguing film, no doubt with something worthwhile to say, but Cary Grant in a picture about the necessary compromises of politics does not entirely shout out “festive cheer”. So the script was rewritten by Capra and other collaborators (who loathed him, calling him “that horrid man” and “a very arrogant son of a bitch”), Stewart was cast in the central role of George Bailey, “a Good Sam who doesn’t know that he’s a Good Sam”, with Donna Reed as his wife, and it was filmed with great character actors including Thomas Mitchell as the amiable drunk Uncle Billy, Lionel Barrymore as the villainous banker Potter and Gloria Grahame as the good-time girl Violet. The all-powerful Hays Code ensured that the film stopped short of anything other than suggestion when it came to how flirtatious Violet’s activities with Bailey, and others, were.

    The reason why It’s A Wonderful Life succeeds so admirably – but also why it may have surprised viewers on first release – is that, for a piece of heart-warming Christmas entertainment, it breaks several central rules. Not only does it begin with a scene of attempted suicide, but its storyline does not revolve around the expected narrative progression of an ordinary man being raised to greatness through hard work, luck and brilliance, but rather an ordinary man remaining ordinary, if decent, through self-sacrifice, bad luck and an unwillingness to push himself forward to the front of the queue.

    Capra contrasts George’s mundane, often difficult existence with the glamorous and successful life of his war hero brother Harry, who George saved from drowning as a child but at the cost of the hearing in his left ear. This contrast finds its grimmest apogee halfway through the film. Harry is returning to his hometown of Bedford Falls a fêted veteran, and George, who has accidentally given Potter $8000 in cash from his bank, leading to certain ruin and arrest, has decided that he must kill himself so that his family will be spared the shame that will come from his downfall.

    As iterations of the Christmas spirit go, this one is decidedly unorthodox. As a journalist acquaintance of mine wrote the other day, after watching the film for the first time, “I was expecting something warmly uplifting and what I got was ‘make peace with your shit life and your endless list of crushing disappointments, for you may have saved someone from drowning once’… the angel only appears in the last half hour anyway, the rest of it might as well be called “It’s a life of missed opportunities and regret”.

    Scene from Frank Capra’s, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, with Jimmy Stewart and “Clarence” the Angel, played by Henry Travers. Movie still. (Photo by John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

    Ah yes, the angel. Where the film moves into the realms of the metaphysical is in the character of the bumbling guardian angel Clarence, who appears to George when he is on the brink of suicide, and convinces him not to kill himself by showing what would have happened had he never lived: the idyllic town of Bedford Falls is thus transformed into a sleazy, vice-ridden hell-hole called Pottersville, and George sees how his own, quiet influence has made his home town a respectable, decent place. (It would not be the modern world without at least one critic praising Pottersville as “a place of sex, women, fun … it jumps.”.)

    Yet the most affecting part of It’s A Wonderful Life comes at the conclusion, in which George finds his friends rallying round him in his distress, rescuing him from his nightmare, as his now sidelined brother toasts him as “the richest man in town”. It is a moving and heart-warming tribute to solidarity in adversity, and, at a time when most people will be stuck without friends or extended family at home this Christmas, a timely reminder that affection and loyalty can surface in the most difficult of circumstances.

    And the film’s central device, of a parallel life unfolding as its protagonist looks on before he realises that everything has, in fact, been for the best, has subsequently appeared in everything from Last Temptation of Christ to La La Land. I have my own, heretical view that Martin Scorsese intended Taxi Driver as a kind of twisted counterpoint to It’s A Wonderful Life, in which Travis Bickle, well and truly stuck in Pottersville, comes to see Jodie Foster’s teen prostitute as his very own equivalent of a friendly guardian angel, although the bloody and ironic resolution to Scorsese’s film is a million miles away from the good cheer of Capra’s.

    We are told (or threatened) that Paul McCartney is writing a musical based on the film, although given the odd tension that has existed between bland sentiment and experimental grittiness in McCartney’s post-Beatles career it is impossible to know whether it will be genuinely fascinating or deeply embarrassing. But certainly, it is unlikely to outstrip the original, itself one of the most accomplished and misunderstood films ever made. So raise a glass to life not having been quite what you wanted, because this year, of all years, that is something that everyone can fully get behind.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 23:30

  • A Very COVID Christmas: Visualizing The Pandemic's Impact On Festive Spending
    A Very COVID Christmas: Visualizing The Pandemic’s Impact On Festive Spending

    From mass job losses to not seeing family and friends for months on end, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed people to their limits in 2020.

    As an incredibly difficult year draws to a close, Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones notes that people are starting to accept that this festive season will be anything but typical. But while a portion of consumers have reined in their spending due to financial uncertainty, others are spreading Christmas cheer by indulging in gifts for their loved ones.

    The graphic above from Raconteur explores how consumers’ festive spending in the U.S. and UK has changed as a result of the ongoing pandemic.

    Will the shift trigger permanent changes in the retail industry?

    Festive Budget Breakdown

    According creative agency Kinetic, half of all UK adults surveyed believe this Christmas is more important than ever before, with that figure rising to three quarters for 18-34 year olds.

    However, given consumers’ concerns over the future of the economy, they are expected to reduce spending during the festive season. In the U.S. for example, spending will decline by 7% to $1,387 per household.

    When it comes to how consumers plan to spend their hard-earned cash, some interesting insights emerge. As many have saved significantly on socializing and travel—which is down 34% year-on-year—they plan to put this money towards items for themselves instead of gifts and gift cards for others. These items include clothes, at-home entertainment, and home furnishings.

    It therefore comes as little surprise that the global online home decor market is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 13% between 2020-2024 with revenue of over $80 billion.

    Dampening the Christmas Spirit?

    Unsurprisingly, over half of all U.S. consumers are anxious about shopping in-store this holiday season. The vast majority have health and safety concerns, with 71% being the most worried about dealing with others who aren’t taking the virus seriously. This is closely followed by being around, or too close to others in stores.

    Therefore, when it comes to physical shopping, people feel more comfortable in local stores or at outdoor markets and much less so in shopping malls.

    Safety in Online Shopping

    Considering this change in mindset, almost 60% of UK consumers said that they will be shopping online more this Christmas.

    Here’s a closer look at how they plan to shop differently during the 2020 holiday season:

    But while ecommerce sales are expected to spike over Christmas, delivery speeds and shipping delays are also major concerns for consumers. As a result, many of them started their shopping much earlier this year to avoid disappointment. In fact, over half of all UK shoppers had started their Christmas shopping before November had even arrived.

    Bidding Adieu to 2020

    The end to a painful year for many can’t come soon enough. But boarded-up storefronts, and “for sale” signs serve as a harsh reminder of the fragility of the retail sector and its reliance on consumer sentiment.

    Even as we march forward guided by the hope of an effective vaccine, the future of retail remains uncertain. For consumers, their confidence will build once more, but how they choose to spend their money following the festive season will be more important for businesses and the economy than ever before.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 23:00

  • What If Jesus Had Been Born In The American Police State?
    What If Jesus Had Been Born In The American Police State?

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”

    – Howard Thurman

    The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

    The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

    Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

    What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

    A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

    Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

    The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

    What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age?

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

    Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

    Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

    Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

    After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

    When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

    Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

    Consider the following if you will.

    Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

    Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

    Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

    Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

    From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

    Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

    Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

    From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

    Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

    While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

    Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

    Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

    Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

    Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

    Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

    Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

    Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

    Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

    Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

    Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

    Indeed, as I show in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

    Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebrations and gift-giving, we would do well to remember that what happened on that starry night in Bethlehem is only part of the story. That baby in the manger grew up to be a man who did not turn away from evil but instead spoke out against it, and we must do no less.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 22:30

  • Crappy Holidays & Other Economic Carols For 2020
    Crappy Holidays & Other Economic Carols For 2020

    While singing of all sorts is officially off the table in Newsom’s Californiastan, the kind gentle folk at BMO Capital Markets offer the following ‘Economic Carols’ for your entertainment…

    It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Stimulus

    (sung to the tune of It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas)

    It’s beginning to look a lot like stimulus
    Everywhere you go;
    Tossing out fives and tens, in billions once again
    With CRB and EI still to flow

    It’s beginning to look a lot like stimulus,
    Nobody in the store,
    But the prettiest sight to see is the CEWS cheque that will be
    On your own front door.

    More federal transfers and stabilization money
    Is the wish of Kenney and Ford;
    Wealth taxes and basic income
    With the NDP strikes a chord;
    And Bay Street can hardly wait
    for a fiscal anchor thrown overboard.

    It’s beginning to look a lot like stimulus,
    Everywhere you go;
    There’s vacancy in the hotel, and in the condo as well,
    But credit continues to flow.

    It’s beginning to look a lot like stimulus,
    Soon the expansion will start,
    And the question it will bring to investors with a ring:
    Will our credit rating fall apart?

    – Robert Kavcic

    Here Comes Tesla Stock

    (sung to the tune of Here Comes Santa Claus)

    Here comes Tesla Stock, here comes Tesla Stock,
    right down S&P Lane
    Apple and Amazon and all the tech names
    pulling on the reins
    Bells are ringing, traders singing, all is merry and bright
    So load your orders and say your prayers,
    ’cause Tesla Stock joins tonight

    Here comes Tesla Stock, here comes Tesla Stock,
    right down S&P Lane
    It’s got a bag that’s filled with cars for boys and girls again
    See those EVs pullin’ past you, oh what a beautiful sight
    So jump in bed and cover your head,
    ’cause Tesla Stock joins tonight

    Here comes Tesla Stock, here comes Tesla Stock,
    right down S&P Lane
    It doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, it loves you just the same
    Tesla Stock knows we’re all good indexers,
    that makes everything right
    So close your eyes and buy it dear,
    ’cause Tesla Stock joins tonight

    Here comes Tesla Stock, here comes Tesla Stock,
    right down S&P Lane
    It’ll come around when chimes ring out
    that its P/E is soarin’ again
    Tracking Error will come to none if we just follow it tight
    So let’s give thanks to the lithium car,
    ’cause Tesla Stock joins tonight

    – Douglas Porter

    I’ll Be Home For Christmas

    I’ll be home for Christmas
    You can count on me
    Please have food and firewood
    And all else by delivery

    Christmas eve will find me
    Where the TV light gleams
    I’ll be (most definitely) home for Christmas
    Not only in my dreams

    I’ll be (no real options) home for Christmas
    That is the reality
    Those in T-O, and all Ontario
    Will stack pizza boxes by the tree

    Christmas eve will find me
    Gazing blankly at the screens
    I’ll be (where else?) home for Christmas
    Not only in my dreams

    – Douglas Porter

    Housing Wonderland

    (sung to the tune of Winter Wonderland)

    Door bells ring
    Are you listening
    In the main
    Prices are glistening
    A startling sight
    Owners are happy tonight
    Walking in a housing wonderland

    Gone away is the commuter
    Here to stay is a new bird
    It sings a new song
    As we telework along
    Walking in a housing wonderland

    In the city we can build a condo
    Then pretend that folks will stick around
    They’ll say: Are you crazy?
    We’ll say: Yes man
    As you can do the job from out of town

    Later on
    We’ll aspire
    As we lift prices higher
    To face unafraid
    The debts that we’ve made
    Walking in a housing wonderland

    In the suburbs we can build a mansion
    And pretend the market won’t slow down
    We’ll have lots of fun with mister mansion
    Until the bill collectors come around

    When Covid goes
    Ain’t it thrilling
    Though your rate gets a climbing
    We’ll panic and pay
    Bid prices up and away
    Walking in a housing wonderland

    – Sal Guatieri

    Blue Brexit

    (sung to the tune of Blue Christmas)

    I’ll have a blue Brexit without EU
    I’ll be so blue just leaving without EU
    Governance, subsidies; can’t forget those fisheries
    Won’t be the same, if Brussels is not here with me

    And when those blue tariffs start risin’
    That’s when those blue growth rates start fallin’
    We’ll be doin’ all right, in Tier 3 lockdown Christmas night
    But I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Brexit

    – Jennifer Lee

    Crappy Holidays

    (sung to the tune of Happy Holidays)

    Crappy Holiday
    Crappy Holiday
    While the lockdown bells keep ringing
    May your larders be well stocked

    Crappy Holiday
    Crappy Holiday
    May the calendar stop bringing
    Crappy Holidays to you

    It’s the holiday season
    And Ursula is coming ’round
    The Recovery Fund is off of the ground
    When Pres. Lagarde gets into town
    She’ll be coming down the chimney, down
    Coming down the chimney, down

    It’s the holiday season
    And Rishi Sunak has got a scheme
    For furloughed workers who need more esteem
    But borrowing soared the Labour Party did scream
    He’ll be coming down the chimney, down
    Coming down the chimney, down

    BoJo wants some big trade deals, and some for steel
    And lots of goodies for you and for me
    So leave the talks, no deal… we walk
    With our financial industry

    It’s the holiday season
    With the whoop-de-do and hickory dock
    And don’t forget to hang up your sock
    ’Cause just exactly at 12 o’clock
    We’ll be leaving the customs union
    Leaving the customs union
    Leaving the customs union, down!

    – Jennifer Lee

    Bitcoin the Crypto Currency: Redux

    (sung to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

    You know Zcash and SwiftCoin
    And Ethereum and IOTA
    Monero and Lite Coin
    And Dash and Ripple
    But do you recall
    The most famous Crypto of all?

    Bitcoin the crypto currency
    Had a very rapid rise
    And if you ever saw it
    You couldn’t wear all the gold it now buys
    All of the other currencies
    Used to laugh and call it names
    They never let poor Bitcoin
    Play in any currency games

    Then one rocky COVID year
    CME came to say
    Bitcoin with your blockchain air tight
    Won’t you join our trading platform tonight?

    Then all the traders loved it
    Even as some shouted out “Ponzi”
    “Bitcoin the crypto currency
    You’ll come back one day, just see!”

    – Douglas Porter

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 22:00

  • Global Outrage Follows Trump Pardons Of Blackwater Mercenaries Who Killed 17 Iraqis
    Global Outrage Follows Trump Pardons Of Blackwater Mercenaries Who Killed 17 Iraqis

    Authored by Brett Wilkins via via CommonDreams.org,

    A senior United Nations human rights official on Wednesday added her voice to the chorus of condemnation of President Donald Trump’s pardons for four U.S. mercenaries convicted of massacring 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007. 

    Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said in statement that the agency is “deeply concerned” by Trump’s December 22 pardon of former Blackwater guards Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, and Nicholas Slatten. The four men were sentenced to 12 years to life in prison for crimes including for first-degree murder for their roles in the September 16, 2007 Nisour Square massacre in central Baghdad.  “Pardoning them contributes to impunity and has the effect of emboldening others to commit such crimes in the future,” Hurtado said of the Blackwater guards. 

    On September 16, 2007, Blackwater mercenaries massacred 17 Iraqi men, women, and children in Nisour Square, Baghdad. AFP/Getty Images

    “By investigating these crimes and completing legal proceedings, the U.S. complied with its obligations under international law,” she added. “The U.N. Human Rights Office calls on the U.S. to renew its commitment to fighting impunity for gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law, as well as to uphold its obligations to ensure accountability for such crimes.”

    In one of the most publicized crimes of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Blackwater mercenaries were escorting a diplomatic convoy when, apparently unprovoked, they opened fire in the crowded square with machine guns, grenade launchers, and other weapons in broad daylight. 

    “The shooting started like rain,” recalled survivor Fareed Walid Hassan, who said he witnessed a woman dragging her dead young son as she fled for her life. Another victim, Mohassin Kadhim, was shot dead as she shielded her son in her arms.

    Survivor Mohammed Kinani’s son Ali, age 9, was shot in the head as they sat in their car.

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    “I was standing in shock looking at him as the door opened, and his brain fell on the ground between my feet,” Kinani said.

    When the shooting finally stopped after 15 horrific minutes, 17 Iraqis—men, women, and children; people fleeing in cars and on foot; a man with his arms raised in surrender—lay dead. Twenty others were injured, some severely, including one victim wounded by a grenade launched into a nearby girls’ school.

    As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, Trump’s pardon of the convicted war criminals was roundly condemned by peace activists, journalists, progressive politicians, prosecutors, and others.

    Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, tweeted Tuesday that “Trump could have pardoned whistleblowers Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. Instead he chose to pardon four Blackwater mercenaries who murdered 17 Iraqi civilians, including two boys [aged] 8 and 11, in an unprovoked attack on a crowd of unarmed people.”

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    Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner lamented in an MSNBC interview that “it seems like there’s no line Donald Trump won’t cross.”

    “To this old prosecutor, it feels like what he just did was like an indiscriminate drive-by on the rule of law,” Kirschner continued. “I mean, he pardons people who are lying to the FBI as part of the Russia probe. He pardons Republicans who were either stealing from their donors, committing campaign finance violations, or engaged in insider training.” 

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    “What galls me the most and hits home for me personally is [that]… these four Blackwater contractors… slaughtered innocent, unarmed, Iraqi men, women, and children,” he added.

    “That was prosecuted… three times by my former office, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. The lead prosecutor, a gentleman named Pat Martin, is somebody I tried murder cases with. He poured his heart and soul into fighting for justice for those Iraqi victims.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 21:30

  • Ex-Apple Engineer Unveils "Glitterbomb 3.0" Device To Combat Porch Pirates 
    Ex-Apple Engineer Unveils “Glitterbomb 3.0” Device To Combat Porch Pirates 

    This year has been awfully stressful for retailers and package delivery companies, strained by the virus pandemic surge in e-commerce. About three billion packages will traverse the country’s shipping infrastructure this year – about 800 million more than last year, leaving many packages, once delivered to consumers, susceptible to porch pirates. 

    Former NASA and Apple engineer Mark Rober spent the last three years developing the “Glitterbomb” device to combat porch pirates or anyone who steals packages from doorsteps. 

    Evolution Of The Glitterbomb Device 

    Days ago, Rober released the “Glitterbomb 3.0” in a YouTube video, which he explains holds more glitter, has four canisters of fart sprays, added LED strobes, wireless charging on a doormat, and handles laced with glue. 

    The goal of the Glitterbomb 3.0 is to bait and track porch pirates with the device’s GPS and record the moment when thieves open the box, disguised as Bose headphones. 

    Rober said he sent the Glitterbomb 3.0 to “houses all across America” to capture porch pirates. 

    The fun begins around the seven-minute mark of the video, where scenes of people stealing the box from porches transitions to them opening it at home. 

    When the porch pirates open the box, a glitter bomb explodes, putting them in a daze. Then the device sprays them with skunk spray and blinds them with ultra-bright LEDs, while cameras embedded within capture and log the video onto the cloud as GPS logs their location. 

    So how do you buy one of these things? 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 21:00

  • Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch Sells For Paltry $22 Million After $100M Listing
    Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch Sells For Paltry $22 Million After $100M Listing

    The late ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson’s iconic (but more recently notorious and infamous) 2,700 acre Neverland Ranch has sold for $22 million after it initially listed in 2015 for $100 million. 

    According to the Wall Street Journal this week, public records reveal it’s been bought by former Jackson business associate and billionaire Ron Burkle. Jackson died in 2009 at the age of 50 officially of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication, the dangerous hospital-grade drug cocktail he would use to be put to sleep by his doctor, who was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter over the death.

    Neverland Ranch for years induced awe and curiosity among the public as it not only had its own amusement park complete with Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and railroad, but a small zoo as well. It also had its own staff. Modeled as a fantasyland and replete with children’s toys, all based on “Peter Pan”, Jackson purchased it in 1987 for an estimated $19.5 million.

    The WSJ noted that the ranch has gone through a series of price drops over the past years. No doubt this is likely due its being associated with multiple child molestation allegations and scandals centered on Jackson during the last decade of his life: 

    “The property, located about 40 miles from Santa Barbara, had been on and off the market for years, first listing for $100 million in 2015 and undergoing several price cuts. It was listed for $31 million last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.

    Mr. Jackson’s estate co-owned the ranch with a fund managed by Colony Capital , a real-estate investment trust. Amid financial struggles, Mr. Jackson had defaulted on a loan backed by the ranch and Colony bought the note in 2008, putting the property’s title into a joint venture it formed with the pop star.”

    Neverland Ranch was first raided and searched extensively by police related to the 2005 People vs. Jackson trial, in which he’d been accused of molesting a 13-year old boy in 2003. Though he was acquitted in that case he later settled for a massive sum in another case, and possibly when other accusers came forward as well.

    The 2003 documentary Living with Michael Jackson is what triggered authorities to take a closer look at the multiple allegations then surfacing, which included scandalous footage of Jackson holding a teenage boy close while they clasped hands.

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    After this and subsequent allegations he had molested children at the ranch, and with widespread attention paid to the scenario of him using the enticing fantasy world environment to lure unsuspecting families and their children there by personal invitation, he stopped living there altogether by the mid-2000s.

    This was further driven home by the 2019 Netflix true crime documentary series Leaving Neverland in which Wade Robson and James Safechuck described years of sexual abuse in horrifying detail. Much of it took place on the ranch. Upon Jackson’s death there were reports that his will bestowed the ranch to a family trust.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 20:30

  • Russia Reopens Soviet-Era Lab To Develop Weapons For Arctic Sub-Zero Conditions
    Russia Reopens Soviet-Era Lab To Develop Weapons For Arctic Sub-Zero Conditions

    Russia is believed to be greatly expanding and beefing up its ability to wage warfare in extreme cold and icy conditions after it was announced Thursday that a Soviet-era laboratory has been reconstituted and newly opened in order to test weapons in Arctic weather.

    “The Central Scientific-Research Institute for Precision Machine Engineering, that makes weapons for Russia’s military, said it had restored testing chambers to simulate extreme conditions,” Reuters reports of the facility which was shut down since the the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

    Via AP

    The Institute issued a press release saying “the certification is the final step towards restoring this unique technological capability that had been lost after the fall of the USSR.” The complex’s test chambers will actually be able to simulate a variety of conditions to also include extreme heat as well as wet weather.

    Russian media cited a senior technician, Sergei Karasev, as detailing further:

    He said the test site will begin work on a number of weapons, including rifles, specially-made grenade launchers and small caliber cannons in “extreme temperatures” as low as minus 60 degrees.

    The conditions are designed to mimic environments like the Arctic, but the facility will also recreate a number of other potential battlefields. Tests to see whether weapons can withstand tropical climes will be carried out in a combined heat and rain chamber, while a dust chamber mimics the pressures that deserts exert on firing mechanisms.

    Typically when temperatures reach such extremes as minus 60 degrees Celsius, cars and machinery break down unless they are specially outfitted to operate in the extreme cold. 

    Without extensive protections even a person’s face can become frostbitten in just minutes after being exposed to such temperatures. 

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    In remote locations like Russia’s Sakha Republic (Yakutia) for example, schools, colleges and public places will only stay open until temperatures as low as -52°C, but upon reaching that limit will shut down for safety reasons.

    Much standard military equipment would also not work properly in these conditions, hence Russia’s focus on developing and testing weapons that are optimal in Arctic conditions. The plan is to also simulate how battlefield tactics would change in extreme and varied conditions.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 20:00

  • Luongo: End The Great American Myth – Secession, Not Revolution
    Luongo: End The Great American Myth – Secession, Not Revolution

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    I remember the 1970’s driving around New York City with my family during the holidays like they were yesterday.

    Back then the talk in the front seat of the car between my parents was New York City’s bankruptcy. My dad, NYPD at the time, was as much a part of this as anyone since the Police pension fund helped bail out the city government back then.

    The West Side Highway fell down and because of that I grew up with a fear of heights and, especially bridges. I really hated taking the back way (New Jersey) into Staten Island. The mere mention of the Outer Bridge crossing would nearly put me into a panic attack.

    I remember thinking then, “If these people can’t pay the bills now, what’s it going to be in ten or twenty years?” Sure, I was a naive ten or eleven at the time and had no idea about capital flight, but the sentiment was sound.

    Even then the Emperor was naked to this child’s eyes. This was Rome near the end and the Sword of Damocles hung over the heads of my generation in ways we could barely articulate.

    So, for me, the idea of the U.S. breaking up into its component parts has been a constant companion most of my adult life. And, as a libertarian, I always think in terms of secession first, rather than revolution. It sits on my shoulder whispering in my ear the truth of what’s in front of us.

    We’ve reached a very important moment in world history. It is that moment where the promises of classical liberalism are failing in the face of a creeping totalitarian nightmare.

    America as mythology has always stood as the ‘shining house on the hill’ for this enlightened idea that the wishes of the individual pursuing his bliss creates the community and culture which lifts the world out of a Hobbesian State of Nature.

    The war of all against all, (bellum omnium contra omnes).

    But America as Mythology and America as Reality are two vastly different rough beasts. And it is that difference between them that is being exploited today by The Davos Crowd to set the process in motion for their next victory.

    Brandon Smith at Alt-Market brought up the trap conservatives are being led into today in his recent article. He argues, quite persuasively, that the ‘right’ is being radicalized into thinking about an armed civil war to fight the corporatist left-wing useful idiots in an orgy of violence.

    To be clear, what I believe is happening is that conservatives are being prodded and provoked, not to separate and organize but to centralize. I think they want us to support actions like martial law which would be considered totalitarian. Conservatives, the only stalwart defenders of civil liberties, using military suppression and abandoning the Bill of Rights to maintain political power? That is a dream come true for the globalists in the long term. And despite people’s faith in Trump, there are far too many banking elites and globalists within his cabinet to ensure that such power will not be abused or used against us later.

    Nothing would give Klaus Schwab and The Davos Crowd more pleasure than turning us into them — willing to use indiscriminate violence to push otherwise humble and decent people into crazed killers and repudiate their inherent meekness, their inherent desire to pursue their bliss, allowing everyone else that same courtesy.

    But, leftism as practiced today, is aggressive. It is rapacious and rests on the idea that no one can exist outside their preferred outcome lest anyone see their world for the nightmare it truly is.

    Secession is not only not an option, it is expressly verboten.

    I’ve made the argument that violence, not secession, is one very possible outcome of where the current political divide is taking us. Brandon uses the situation in Germany in the 1920s/30s as his historical guide. In short, Fascism rose to meet the violence of the Communists with the old monied elite providing the means for the conflict.

    The parallels to today are striking. In November’s issue of Gold Goats ‘n Guns I likened the rising frustration of the American right to that of the Fremen Jihad of Frank Herbert’s classic Dune.

    When you marginalize the tens of millions of people who produce the goods which sustain their false reality, when you remove their ability to speak their mind and make their voices heard, when you insult them, berate them, hector them and beat them then you will bear the consequences when the sleeper awakens, in Herbert’s words.

    This isn’t a threat or an open letter of defiance. This is an observation of what always comes next. These people know that they have been lied to, their children spiritually separated from them. The election was a cruel joke meant to rub our noses in their complete power over us. You can
    see it every day on Twitter.

    What comes next will benothing short of a Fremenesque jihad by the 70+ million people who voted for Donald Trump. If his allies prove the systematic thievery of the election it will fuel a simmering anger to boiling over into a near-religious frenzy.

    Because these are people who still believe in the Mythology of America, they are very susceptible to this programming. That mythology is worth fighting for in their minds.

    Brandon Smith, however, is making a finer point which I tend to agree with. And that is that secession, not revolution, is always the better option rather than the pre-packaged violent one which the oligarchs always seem to prepare for us.

    To broaden Brandon’s point, I want to challenge the precepts of that American mythology in the hope we can avoid the kind of religious war that is brewing.

    There are two wars which bear most of the weight of that mythology — The American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War.

    The first one is the good war. It is the foundation of the mythology. We know the narrative: brave colonials fought a war of independence, a war of secession, from the evil English. It brought forth the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and all the symbology of our shared American identity.

    That mythology, while simplistic, held a core truth, that there are some things worth fighting for, when pushed to an extreme.

    However, was 1770’s America that extreme a place? Was war the only practical outcome? Or was it the dream of those men whose tolerance for tyranny shallower than the norm. In other words, could America have seceded more peacefully in ten or twenty years’ time?

    Viewed that way, this was a war of secession that the English and the Colonies didn’t have to fight. There may have been an equitable way out of conflict. But the colonies chose war just as much as the Crown did if we’re being honest with ourselves.

    The Civil War, on the other hand, is supposed to be the shameful one. And from the Mythology side it truly is. Lincoln’s war can only be characterized as a war to prevent secession in the same way that Crown fought to prevent the colonies from seceding.

    The mythology states this was the war we had to fight to prevent slavery’s survival into the 20th century. But, was it that? Slavery may have been a dividing line to stoke the passions but it wasn’t the big factor driving the states apart, the Tariff of Abomination was.

    Again, if we’re being honest with ourselves wasn’t Lincoln’s war where the ideals of the American Revolution – a compact between the sovereign states – were finally betrayed?

    Aren’t we reaping the whirlwind of that war today with a Supreme Court who believes it has the power to ignore interstate grievances because none of the justices, even Thomas and Alito, believe in the compact of equals today?

    Remember, the South was more than willing to leave in peace. And any reasons Lincoln had for fighting the war over the seizure of Federal property, i.e. the proximate cause for the events at Fort Sumter, could have been worked out, again, equitably as gentlemen, rather than through the butchering of 600,000 Americans over four years.

    From the Mythology Lincoln is the Great Uniter and Buchanan, his predecessor, the Worst President in History simply because he refused to either bail out the railroad banks in 1857 or prevent the South’s secession in 1860.

    What if the mythology of America today has these two wars backwards? What if all the conservatives mourning the Constitution today thanks to a feckless Supreme Court and treasonous Congress have it all wrong? What if the America they mourn the death of today died in 1865 not 2020?

    Would that America still be worth finally fighting a bloody civil war for? Because that’s what The Davos Crowd is daring Donald Trump to do.

    What if the better response is to do what the South tried to do and failed.

    Simply walk away and say, “No more.”

    Because fighting the bloody war of all against all, becoming raving fascists rising up to stop the rapacious (and economically backwards) communists in the process is always the wrong option.

    Secession is always an option. Opting out of the hyper-collectivizing impulses of in-group/out-group bias is always the right choice. They want us to throw the first punch, to lash out, fire first out of fear, c.f. Fort Sumter, to justify their brutality afterwards.

    But, as I said in the quote above, the states with the grievances today are the ones that produce the wealth of this fiction known as the U.S. It’s where the food is grown, the electricity generated, the goods produced and people aren’t shitting in the streets.

    The food lines may be long in Texas but there’s still food to distribute.

    The balance of power in the U.S. today in real terms is reverse of what existed in 1860. Post-Trump America looks a lot different than pre-Lincoln.

    Because of that and the reality that the people pulling off this great coup against sanity are some of the most unimpressive leaders in history, the potential for a successful secession is far higher than it was for the Confederacy.

    Brandon Smith is right that they invoke the Confederacy to shame conservatives as racists, conflating issues separated by more than 150 years of history. This is why the all-out assault on the history of the war, whitewashing it of any nuance.

    Theirs is a mind-virus that grows beyond the ability of the oligarchy to control. And it is truly best to not just walk but run away from such people. Better to let them sink into their own cesspit of ideological rabbit holes while keeping the lines of trade open, if they have anything worth selling, of course.

    They will turn on themselves soon enough.

    Having grown up a Yankee and matured as a Southerner I’ve seen this descent of the American mythology from both perspectives. The eleven year-old me knew this day would come.

    The Mythology of America is just that, mythology, worth using as the basis for the new story rather than a shackle keeping us chained down, staring at the Abyss and despairing at what was lost.

    New York was a dream not a fixture in the night sky. God didn’t put his finger on the Empire State Building and spin the world.

    Because Texas was too big for it to ever stay in balance, even if he did. And California is one bad day away from Big One which washes it from our memory.

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you are ready to stop mourning America and start rebuilding something better.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 19:30

  • US Refugee Admissions At All-Time Low In 2020
    US Refugee Admissions At All-Time Low In 2020

    In the 2020 fiscal year, only around 3,000 people were granted asylum in the United States – an all-time-low, according to numbers by the U.S. Department of State. 

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the number is lower than in the years 2002 and 2003, shortly after the passing of the Patriot Act, when the U.S. still received 27,000 and 28,000 refugees, respectively.

    The maximum number of refugees the U.S. is accepting has been further slashed to 18,000 for FY 2020, which is the lowest cap on record with the Department of State. In FY 2019, the then cap of 30,000 asylum seekers were admitted

    Infographic: U.S. Refugee Admissions at All-Time Low in 2020 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Refugees from Asia have historically been the largest group of people being granted asylum in the U.S. 

    Almost 45 percent of grantees since 1975 came from that continent (excluding South Asia), with the biggest influxes from Vietnam around 1980, Hmong and Laotians up to around 1992 and from Myanmar and Bhutan around 2008.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 19:00

  • Goldman's Four Lessons From 2020
    Goldman’s Four Lessons From 2020

    In what is likely his last note of the year, Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius takes a look at what 2020 has taught him about the economy and the practice of economic forecasting, and writes that “at this early stage, we see four lessons with potentially more general implications. First, incorporating real-time data into a standard GDP and employment framework can yield large benefits, especially in a crisis. Second, forecasters need to be flexible and eclectic in order to add value, especially in a crisis. Third, Keynesian policy prescriptions have now triumphed in two successive crises [ZH translation: one can always “fix” debt with more debt, until one day everything comes crashing down]. Fourth, people and market economies have a remarkable capacity to adapt.

    Amusingly, Hatzius starts off rather humble – for a change – admitting that pretty much everything he predicted a year ago would happen… was dead wrong:

    We recently reviewed our ten questions for the US economy in 2020, the answers we gave a year ago, and what actually happened. Most of our answers were wrong because the pandemic pushed the economy into its deepest (though probably also shortest) recession on record.

    Of course, to those managing money based on the bank’s recos and forecasts, this admission will hardly help offset the losses, but just so the introspective Goldman chief economist can demonstrate his true contrition for having been wrong again, he has published a note in which he promises that he has learned his lesson. Or rather four:

    … while holding ourselves accountable for last year’s predictions is always important, a more interesting question might be what we can learn from the way 2020 unfolded after the pandemic had appeared on the radar screen—from the earliest reported Chinese cases in January to the start of the global vaccination campaign in December.

    At this early stage—and we emphasize that our conclusions might change once the pandemic is truly behind us—we see four lessons with broader implications for economic forecasting.

    Said lessons are listed below, as follows:

    1. The benefits of real-time data, which of course is actually useful compared to seasonally adjusted, goal-seeked and manipulated “government data” whose only purpose is political validation and propaganda.

    When the pandemic hit China in January, we were slow to recognize its global scale. Well into February, we focused on the “spillover” effects from economic weakness in China on US growth, working through trade links, tourism, and supply chain disruptions. Only at the end of February—after the lockdowns in northern Italy—did we start to treat the virus like the global shock it was.

    But that downgrade set the stage for a series of dramatic further cuts over the following month, as shown in Exhibit 1. At the same time, we held on to a relatively optimistic view of the shape of the rebound after the initial plunge, lifting our 2021 GDP growth forecast to far above-trend rates.

    One key reason why we felt confident in slashing our Q2 GDP numbers so aggressively was the timely and granular information about the real-time performance of the economy from cellphone locations, credit and charge card transactions, worker panels, and other real-time data sets. This information was available publicly, but we invested a substantial amount of resources in making it compatible with standard economic measures such as GDP and payroll employment. Once the economy hit bottom in April, the framework confirmed that the recovery was proceeding swiftly in the short term, which also raised our confidence in the optimistic longer-term view, with a sharp rebound in Q3 and ongoing strength in 2021. The broader lesson is incorporating real-time data into a standard economic accounting framework can yield large benefits, especially in a crisis.

    2. It’s better to be a fox than a hedgehog, or the “we get our best lessons from books” excuse.

    Professor Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania is best known as the co-author of Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction and the founder of the Good Judgment Project. In an earlier book on forecasting, he introduced his distinction between two forecaster archetypes, “hedgehogs” and “foxes”. Hedgehogs use a single model to explain the world across a large range of different states in a deductive manner. By contrast, foxes are inductive decisionmakers who don’t believe in an all-encompassing model, use several different approaches to analyze the situation, and then triangulate between them to come up with a view. Tetlock focuses on political predictions such as the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Apartheid, and documents that foxes generally outperform hedgehogs.

    We certainly have our share of strongly held views about how the economy works. We think that a financial deficit—an excess of total spending over total income—exposes the private sector to a greater risk of retrenchment in response to negative shocks. We think many financial market moves are driven by sentiment rather than economic fundamentals, which means that shocks to financial conditions are often exogenous drivers of growth and it makes sense to look at measures such as our FCI impulse. We adhere to the broadly Keynesian view that the ups and downs of the labor market often amplify business cycle impulses, reinforcing growth in a boom and constraining it in early recovery. And we think that fiscal tightening—especially in a zero-rate environment where it is harder for the Fed to react—often weighs heavily on growth in the short to medium term.

    But 2020 was not a time to dig into these views like a hedgehog. In March, we took little comfort from the private sector surplus or the initially solid labor market momentum, as these positive forces paled in importance relative to the dramatic escalation of the pandemic. In April and May, we didn’t build a negative FCI impulse or self-feeding labor market weakness into our forecasts, as this would have made them too extrapolative at a time when the progress in containing the pandemic clearly dominated any driver of growth. And in August, we kept our concern about the growth effects of the fiscal tightening in check, reasoning that the exceptionally high personal saving rate would cushion the impact on spending. These decisions all proved correct (although more recently we seem to have overestimated the short-term impact of the renewed rise in infections on the economy).

    3. Perhaps the funniest “lesson” according to Goldman is that what happened in 2020 was “another Keynesian triumph”; here Hatzius is either trolling his readers (again) or he is truly oblivious to the fact that the global economy is now constantly on the verge of collapse and needs constant central bank interventions precisely because of such “Keynesian triumphs” that will push global debt to surpass a third of a quadrillion dollars in the next few years, leaving central banks with hyperinflation as the only recourse to restore some normalcy to a world where money printing is now the norm.

    Some forecasters who view themselves as Keynesian overemphasized the multiplier effects from the labor market collapse in April, as well as the growth hit from the fiscal tightening in the fall. But these misses should not obscure the fact that the 2020 crisis was another triumph for Keynesian economic policy—a framework that prescribes aggressive monetary and fiscal support in response to negative shocks, especially those that look clearly temporary. The extent to which policymakers turned to Keynesian solutions is probably best illustrated by Exhibit 2. In Q2, the combination of expanded unemployment insurance, tax rebates, and small business support delivered the biggest increase in real disposable income on record, in a quarter that also saw the biggest decline in real GDP on record.

    Fears in some quarters that stimulus on such a scale would lead to a destabilizing increase in inflation expectations or a run on the currency proved unfounded; on the contrary, most commentators now think that these aggressive policies were essential for stabilizing both the financial markets and the real economy in a moment of extreme peril, and they prevented what otherwise would probably have been dramatically negative second-round effects. The 2020 crisis thus adds to the evidence from the 2008 crisis that monetary and fiscal policymakers should be very aggressive in delivering demand-side stimulus when faced with a major downturn.

    Right, and just in case central banks should also inject a few trillion for good measure, not allowing a crisis to go to waste, and making the 0.1% the richest they have ever been.

    Which brings us to Goldman’s fourth and final lesson, one which we actually agree with:

    4. People and market economies have a remarkable capacity to adapt.

    The other economic lesson of 2020 has a more classical flavor: market economies are highly adaptable. The abrupt shift from office-based work to at-home work proved much less disruptive than anticipated, at least from the employer’s perspective (though many employees might beg to differ). The move from in-store shopping to online shopping was similarly seamless; indeed, US retail sales had returned to the pre-pandemic level as early as June, when in-store shopping was still down 35% relative to normal. The supply side of the economy has proven remarkably resilient so far, with fewer bankruptcies than feared, greater new business formations than before the crisis, and a rapid decline in joblessness so far (though labor market slack remains sizable). And each successive virus wave (scaled by the increase in new infections) has had a smaller—and smaller than expected—impact on economic activity. This is partly because improved treatments have gradually made the virus itself less lethal and partly because both governments and private individuals have gradually learned to restrict those activities that pose the highest risk of infection relative to their economic value and adjust others in ways that reduce risk, e.g., through mask mandates and better ventilation.

    Such adaptation measures remain very important in the near term in view of the continued high level of infections. However, they will probably become less necessary next year as the population is successively vaccinated. If this process unfolds reasonably smoothly—obviously still a big if—the story of how the scientific and pharmaceutical community developed and distributed safe and effective vaccines so soon after the discovery of the virus will look like the biggest triumph of human adaptation and ingenuity in the entire story of the 2020 pandemic.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 18:30

  • Man Behind Pfizer Vaxx Warns COVID-19 'Will Be With Us For The Next 10 Years'
    Man Behind Pfizer Vaxx Warns COVID-19 ‘Will Be With Us For The Next 10 Years’

    Ugur Sahin, CEO of Germany’s BioNTech – which partnered with Pfizer to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year – says the virus could still be causing outbreaks 10 years from now, according to Yahoo News.

    “The virus will stay with us for the next 10 years,” Sahin said during a Tuesday press conference, adding “We need to get used to the fact that there’ll be more outbreaks.”

    “We need a new definition of normal,” he continued, suggesting that this doesn’t necessarily mean countries will have to go into perpetual lockdown – something which could stop “by the end of the summer.” 

    “This winter, we will not have an impact on the infection numbers,” he said, “But we must have an impact so that next winter can be the new normal.”

    Sahin also urged caution on whether 60-70% of the world’s population being vaccinated would be enough to prevent further outbreaks.

    “If the virus becomes more efficient…we might need a higher uptake of the vaccine for life to return to normal.” –Yahoo News

    Sahin’s comments come as BioNTech and Moderna scramble to see if their vaccines work against the new “mutant” COVID-19 strain spreading throughout the UK. He added that it will take another two weeks to know if his vaccine works on it, but is hopeful that it will.

    “Scientifically it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine can also deal with this virus variant,” he continued. “The vaccine contains more than 1,270 amino acids, and only nine of them are changed (in the mutant virus). That means that 99% of the protein is still the same.”

    On Saturday, UK chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said that vaccines appear ‘adequate’ in generating an immune response to the new strain.

    The ‘new normal’ for Sahin, meanwhile, is being filthy rich(er).

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 18:00

  • CNN: Amend Constitution To Prevent Trump Or Anyone Like Him Having Power Again
    CNN: Amend Constitution To Prevent Trump Or Anyone Like Him Having Power Again

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    CNN’s Chris ‘Fredo’ Cuomo and guest Anthony Scaramucci suggested Wednesday that the US Constitution should be amended to ensure Donald Trump (or anyone else like him) can never become President and wield the power of the executive again.

    Assuming that Biden will be sworn in as the next President, Cuomo shit-chatted his way through an interview with former Trump insider turned hater Scaramucci.

    “We’re gonna need something to check his power or to check a president like him, god forbid we get another disaster like this,” Scaramucci declared at one point in the conversation.

    “Sometimes you need people like you and me to get in there and tell the truth and rough people up like this,” Scaramucci added, labelling Trump a “disaster” for not only the GOP, but the nation as a whole on the world stage.

    Cuomo also suggested that Joe Biden should point at Trump and publicly shame him throughout the inauguration In January.

    “If he goes to the inauguration, Biden should point at him and speak to Republicans and say, ‘You deserved better than this,’” Cuomo proclaimed.

    “He has left your party in shambles,” he continued, adding “I know the GOP. I know Republicans. I know what they’re about at their best, and I will be there for you restoring those virtues. I would point at his ass the whole time.”

    “I don’t think Biden will do that because he’s better than I am,” Cuomo continued, claiming “He’s going to try to move past that and the best way to do that is to ignore Trump.”

    Scaramucci claimed that Trump is “making a decision to go to the inaugural or not,” claiming he still has sources close to the President.

    “I predict he goes, Chris. I don’t see how he misses that. He’s an attention hog. He will try to make it about himself. And so my guess is he’ll end up at the inaugural and he’ll leave a lot of wreckage,” Scaramucci claimed.

    Referring to Trump’s decision to issue pardons to Roger Stone, Charles Kushner, and Paul Manafort, Cuomo declared that “He has proven himself in just the last 24 hours to be the worst.”

    Cuomo ranted for over ten minutes elsewhere during the broadcast about Trump being the worst President ever.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 17:30

  • Outrage After Pakistani Court Releases Convicted Murderer Of Journalist Daniel Pearl
    Outrage After Pakistani Court Releases Convicted Murderer Of Journalist Daniel Pearl

    Among the earliest and most shocking jihadist propaganda trends during the US ‘war on terror’ years was to put out execution and beheading videos of kidnapped journalists and Westerners in particular.

    In 2002 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter and California native Daniel Pearl was abducted and the US embassy in Pakistan was subsequently mailed a gruesome beheading video.

    The main suspect in Pearl’s Murder, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, has been ordered released from prison by a top Pakistani court on Thursday after he was acquitted of the murder earlier this year. He had been held in custody pending an appeal by the family.

    Dr. Judea Pearl, father of American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was killed by terrorists in 2002, via NBC.

    “The detention order is struck down,” Pearl family lawyer Faisal Siddiqi announced Thursday. At this point the only way Sheikh will go back to prison is if the the family is able to overturn the acquittal.

    This despite what appears to be significant and damning evidence, as the AP noted:

    “In Sheikh’s original trial, emails between Sheikh and Pearl presented in court showed Sheikh gained Pearl’s confidence sharing their experiences as both waited for the birth of their first child. Pearl’s wife Marianne Pearl gave birth to a son, Adam, in May 2002.”

    Sheikh along with three alleged accomplices was acquitted last April in a ruling that shocked and angered US officials and Pearl’s family. The main suspect had initially been handed a death sentence while to others were given life in prison.

    The family along with multiple international press freedom monitoring groups believe the initial guilty verdict was just.

    Omar Sheikh during a 2002 court appearance in Karachi, Getty Images

    Sheikh and his accomplices had earlier been found guilty of luring the journalist to a meeting in Karachi while he was investigating possible links between Richard C. Reid, known as the “Shoe Bomber”, and Pakistani jihadists.

    It was an early example of the gruesome lengths that al-Qaeda and later ISIS would go to in order to send a “message” to the West, with multiple such grisly murder videos coming out of Iraq and Syria.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 17:00

  • Eight 'Screaming Red Flags' From The 2020 Election That Deserved Criminal Inquiry
    Eight ‘Screaming Red Flags’ From The 2020 Election That Deserved Criminal Inquiry

    Authored by Sharyl Attkisson, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    The presidential election is no casual, unimportant event. Polling shows that, today, the public’s confidence in the 2020 elections, polling, law enforcement, media, and government are largely shaken.

    For that reason, the widespread claims of election irregularities and fraud should have been taken more seriously by government officials and law enforcement, and promptly and aggressively investigated. Today, there are hundreds of witnesses, declarations, sworn statements, and videos that continue to raise questions about the integrity of the results.

    It’s untrue that most of the claims have been dispelled by courts. By and large, there’s been no opportunity for witnesses to testify or present evidence to a judge or jury. More importantly, perhaps, there’s been no way to collect evidence of alleged fraud without the tools of a criminal inquiry, such as subpoenas, depositions, and the ability to compel forensic exams.

    If legitimate and transparent investigations were to find the witnesses who claim fraud or irregularities are mistaken or not telling the truth, the inquiries would serve the crucial purpose of assuring the public that the claims were thoroughly investigated but found to be unsupportable or false.

    The following are eight examples of screaming red flags that begged for a prompt, thorough criminal inquiry.

    1. Ballots Allegedly Trucked Across State Lines

    The FBI has a role in determining whether an interstate crime occurred, and who is responsible, if hundreds of thousands of ballots were trucked from New York to Pennsylvania, as a firsthand witness states.

    It should be simple for law enforcement to get to the bottom of it by finding out who hired the truck and moved the cargo, or showing that the story is made up or a misunderstanding.

    2. Subtracted Votes

    There are several reported accounts of vote switching in real time, as shown on television, supposedly an example of how mischief can occur.

    It would not be difficult for an investigative team to track down what happened in the specific instances and, if verified, it implicates more switching could have happened undetected.

    3. Vote Count Pauses

    Vote counting was oddly paused in several states. If, as some claim, it was done so that Joe Biden’s ballot deficit could be figured and erased, it would point to a coordinated effort.

    It would not be difficult for criminal investigators to question decision makers at each location and find out who they communicated with. This could prove or dispel the notion of a coordinated scheme.

    4. Fulton County, Georgia’s Mysterious Water Pipe Break

    Fulton County is a special case since the reason given for a major vote pause, and the reason uncritically accepted and reported by many in the press, was that a water pipe burst and interrupted the count. However, the story morphed over weeks, and a state investigator ultimately concluded there was no pipe burst that would have interrupted any counting. No good public explanation for this discrepancy has been provided by a credible authority.

    It would not be difficult for criminal investigators to identify and question whoever called the vote count suspension, and then moved forward with counting after some observers were dismissed.

    5. Blocked Observation

    There are widespread accounts from Republican election observers, and some Democrats, about being allegedly blocked from seeing what was going on. It would make sense for a law enforcement authority to question who was at the top of the organizational chain at each location where this is credibly claimed by a witness in a declaration or sworn statement, and find out how the official decided to determine and deploy the rules for observation.

    It would not be difficult to learn whether there was a coordinated effort or, in the alternative, to hold accountable anyone at the local level who improperly shielded ballot counting from observers.

    6. Voting Machines

    In recent testimony to the Michigan state legislature, Dominion Voting Systems’ CEO stated he saw no credible claims of fraud. But when asked how it can be proved that bad actors didn’t impact and infiltrate voting systems, he advocated the idea of audits and even machine examinations to answer those outstanding questions. He even said this is the common way such questions are answered.

    For the sake of public confidence, it would be prudent to have a credible law enforcement body conduct forensic exams and audits of the machines and software to rule out interference by third parties, or any other illegalities or mischief.

    7. Mail-in Ballots

    Numerous witnesses from the postal service as well as at polling precincts have provided specific information about allegedly being instructed to falsely date, add birth dates, or otherwise improperly alter mail-in ballots, or have testified about hearing plans to do so. This is an important and easy issue for criminal investigative authorities to nail down one way or the other.

    8. Backdoor Ballots

    The midnight dumps of tens of thousands of ballots in key swing states overturning the Trump lead could be perfectly legitimate. However, it’s unusual to say the least. And so, in this environment, it’s important that a criminal investigative body conduct at least a preliminary inquiry in places where witnesses observed what they considered to be suspicious behavior or ballots.

    It should not be difficult to track the chain of custody and show they’re legitimate or, if not, find out who transported them.

    Finding evidence that dispels mischief is as equally important as an investigation that finds wrongdoing. The simple declaration that there’s nothing to investigate, or having people who have no way to know the truth call the claims “conspiracy theories,” is unlikely to dismiss widespread concerns and may, in fact, heighten mistrust.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 16:30

  • New York Closing 3 Upstate Prisons Due To Budget Constraints, 1,000 Jobs Affected
    New York Closing 3 Upstate Prisons Due To Budget Constraints, 1,000 Jobs Affected

    In this day and age of printing “infinite” cash, as Neel Kashkari so wonderfully put it on national television, it’s a wonder any state is actually making cuts to save money instead of just lobbying the Federal Government for a bailout. 

    But that is the case in New York, where the state has decided it is going to close 3 upstate prisons in early 2021 due to budget constraints. The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision confirmed that “the Gowanda and Watertown correctional facilities, both medium-security prisons, and the Clinton Annex, which is part of the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora” will all close down in early 2021, according to Syracuse.com.

    1,000 jobs are expected to be affected due to the shutdowns. 

    The move is expected to save the state about $89 million per year, but will reduce its statewide prison capacity by about 2,750 beds.

    A spokesman for the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said: “While conducting the review, DOCCS based the decision on a variety of factors, including but not limited to physical infrastructure, program offerings, facility security level, specialized medical and mental health services.”

    The Clinton Correction Facility / Syracuse.com

    While no layoffs are expected, there will be about 975 jobs that need to be relocated. The state says it will work with unions on transfers. 

    Members of both political parties lashed out at the closures. 

    Democrat Assemblyman Billy Jones commented: “Couldn’t come at a worse time. What a way to end the year and go into the Christmas season. I’m just very disgusted by this and extremely upset.”

    Republican State Sen. Patty Ritchie added: “I find it unacceptable & utterly despicable the Gov. would announce 4 days before Christmas that Watertown Correctional will close. Simply put, this is a slap in the face to the people who work in this facility, as well as their families.”

    Dannemora Town Supervisor Bill Chase commented: “The Lyon Mountain Correctional Facility was closed in 2011 and it still sits there empty. There has been no reuse put to it.”

    The state has closed more than 17 state prisons over the last decade. Prisoners in New York have decreased by 39% since Gov. Andrew Cuomo took office.  

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 16:05

  • Israel Using Gen. Milley To Pass Messages To Biden On Iran
    Israel Using Gen. Milley To Pass Messages To Biden On Iran

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    According to a report from Axios, Israel used a recent visit from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to pass messages about Iran to the incoming Biden administration.

    Israel opposes Joe Biden’s plan to work with Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal but has yet to open formal contacts with Biden’s team. Milley could stay in his position beyond the transition period, so the Israelis see him as a potential conduit.

    An unnamed Israeli official told Axios that Israel expressed its opposition to Biden rejoining the nuclear deal to Milley while the general visited the country last week. “We stressed that the starting point of any talks with Iran is much better for the US today than it was in 2013. What is needed now is to be tough in order to get a better deal,” the Israeli official said.

    “We wanted to make our case to the new administration on Iran through someone who is still going to be in the room when Biden assumes office and is going to play a substantive role in any policy review that will take place,” the official added.

    Israel’s stance on the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, is a non-starter for negotiations with Iran. Tehran has made it clear that they have no interest in talks before the US provides sanctions relief. Iranian officials have repeatedly said that Iran will quickly come into compliance with the JCPOA if the US lifts sanctions.

    The Israelis also told Milley that Biden should be more open to relationships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, despite human rights concerns. The Israelis hope Biden continues the normalization deals started by the Trump administration.

    Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf states are also opposed to Biden’s plan to revive the JCPOA. The Gulf states are hoping to be involved in future negotiations between Iran and the US. Iran is in favor of dialogue with its neighbors but believe the US should stay out of regional talks.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 15:40

  • Did Fauci Just Admit He Lied About Herd Immunity To Trick Americans Into Vaccine?
    Did Fauci Just Admit He Lied About Herd Immunity To Trick Americans Into Vaccine?

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Democrat-approved ‘science’ in ‘trust the science,’ appears to have just admitted to lying about COVID-19 herd immunity in order to goad more people into taking the vaccine, according to a new report in the New York Times.

    At issue is the percentage of the population which must require resistance to the coronavirus – through infection or vaccination – in order for the disease to disappear.

    Early into the pandemic, Fauci repeatedly claimed ‘60-70%‘ herd immunity was required to achieve herd immunity. Beginning around a month ago, however, Fauci’s estimate drifted higher – to “70, 75 percent,” and more recently telling CNBC “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”

    When asked about it, Fauci essentially said he lied for political purposes due to vaccine skeptics.

    In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

    Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90 percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak.

    Asked about Dr. Fauci’s conclusions, prominent epidemiologists said that he might be proven right. The early range of 60 to 70 percent was almost undoubtedly too low, they said, and the virus is becoming more transmissible, so it will take greater herd immunity to stop it.

    Dr. Fauci said that weeks ago, he had hesitated to publicly raise his estimate because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.

    And with polls now suggesting more Americans are willing to take the vaccines, Fauci (who said in November COVID-19 ‘won’t be a pandemic for much longer‘) says he’s ready to come clean.

    “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” he said, adding “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

    “We need to have some humility here,” Fauci then said. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent,” because doing so might discourage Americans.

    The Times’ Ross Douthat called Fauci out for shifting the goalposts.

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

    Will Democrats give Fauci equal treatment to Trump, who was viciously attacked by the left for downplaying the virus during its early days in order to prevent a panic?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 15:15

  • Peter Schiff: Government Sedating The Economy With Stimulus
    Peter Schiff: Government Sedating The Economy With Stimulus

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    President Trump threw a wrench into coronavirus stimulus relief, calling the massive spending bill “a disgrace” and threatening to veto the legislation if Congress doesn’t go back and up the individual checks from $600 to $2,000.

    It remains unclear how the politics will play out. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted “Let’s do it!” putting pressure on Sen. President Mitch McConnel to go along with the increased stimulus. What is pretty certain is stimulus is coming down the pike – whether sooner or later. Before Trump made his surprise remarks, Peter Schiff talked about the stimulus bill on his podcast.

    Peter put the size of this bill into perspective, noting that it would fill up a set of encyclopedias through volume “I.”

    How long would it take you to read every single word on every page in the encyclopedia all the way through the volume ‘I?’ Clearly, nobody in Congress made any effort to read this bill.”

    And yet it passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress.

    Peter noted that the national debt has already increased by $4.8 trillion in this calendar year.

    Obviously, if this bill is signed and those stimulus checks … get mailed out before the end of the year – of course, they want to hurry up and get those checks out there for Christmas presents – the national debt will explode and more than $5 trillion of debt will have been added in this one year, in 2020 all by itself.”

    The entire national debt didn’t reach $5 trillion until about 1999. In other words, the US government added as much debt in a single year as it did in more than the first 200 years of its existence.

    Rick Santelli was on CNBC saying 2020 wasn’t really such a bad year. Although GDP collapsed in the second quarter, there was a big rebound in Q3 and it looks like it will only be down slightly on the year. But Peter said people like Santelli are only looking at one side of the equation.

    The problem with focusing on just one side of the national balance sheet is that you get a distorted picture of reality. Because if we had to add $5 trillion to the national debt to prevent the GDP from collapsing, are we really better off? We’re not. You have to look at all the debt that we incurred. This is a horrible year if you look at how much more indebted we are at the end of the year than we were when the year began.”

    Peter reminded us that every American is on the hook for their share of all of the money that was borrowed in their name.

    As far as the stimulus/spending bill, Peter said he has no idea what all is in it. Nobody does. But it is certainly loaded up with pork.

    Everything but the kitchen sink must be in there, because Congress knew that nobody would vote against it, at least not enough people to stop it, so, this was your chance – anything you wanted, shove it in here and it’s going to get passed.

    As far as the coronavirus stimulus goes, the headline items were the $600 checks (maybe $2,000) for individuals, enhanced unemployment benefits of $300 per week and the expansion of PPP loans for small businesses.

    Peter noted that the enhanced unemployment will continue to incentivize people not to work.

    Clearly, there are still going to be people who are going to be getting more money to not work than they earn if they go back to their jobs. So, you’re still going to have this incentive.”

    Peter said the real fraud is going to come with the payment protection loans for small businesses. In reality, they are more like grants because as long as the business doesn’t fire its workers, the loans will be forgiven. The program was intended to help businesses that were shut down by state and local government due to COVID-19, but the program wasn’t limited to those businesses. Even businesses that were making more money due to the pandemic could get these “loans.” Congress tried to fix that in this bill by limiting the loans to businesses that had a 25% year-on-year revenue drop during any quarter in 2020. And that creates a perfect opportunity for fraud. Businesses simply have to work some accounting magic and defer revenue in Q4 2020 to Q1 2021 and viola, they qualify for a “loan.”

    Remember, there are a lot of businesses that are COVID winners – businesses that actually did better in this environment than they did pre-COVID. There is nothing in this bill that limits those businesses from getting the free money.  And in fact, all you have to do is certify that your revenue in one of the quarters was down by 25%, which is easy to do anyway with creative accounting.”

    And of course, all of this will be paid for by the Federal Reserve.

    All of it is paid for by the printing press, by inflation, and that means the dollar is going to collapse.”

    The dollar hasn’t collapsed yet, but it has weakened significantly over the last few months. Gold has gone up, but it hasn’t gone through the roof. But it is coming.

    People really need to recognize what is going on, what the government is doing, how the stimulus is being financed, and do what you can to avoid being on the hook for paying for it. And the way you’re on the hook for paying for it is by holding US dollars or any debt instruments denominated in US dollars.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/24/2020 – 14:50

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Dec 24

Today’s News 24th December 2020

  • A Nation Divided Shall Surely Fall
    A Nation Divided Shall Surely Fall

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    It is often said that a house divided will surely fall, and the same thing can now be said for the United States as a whole. 

    If there is anything that this election has made clear, it is the fact that there is little hope of healing the very deep divisions that exist in our country.  Most of those on the political left absolutely hate those on the political right, and most of those on the political right absolutely hate those on the political left. 

    But it isn’t as if the two opposing sides are even united. 

    The radical left is absolutely disgusted with “moderate Democrats” such as Joe Biden and is very much looking forward to the day when their “progressive revolution” finally triumphs in America.  Meanwhile, the right is hopelessly divided into countless political, religious and economic factions, and there is endless conflict between “conservatives” that are pro-Trump and those that are anti-Trump.  Over the past 30 years, not much has actually gotten done in D.C., but what little has been accomplished has almost always involved more spending, more debt and more socialism.

    One of the reasons why the United States became such a great nation is because originally we were united by a core set of values and principles.  In the beginning, everything was about faith, family and freedom.  Our notions of right and wrong were defined by the Christian faith, the family was the most important institution in our society, and early Americans were desperate for freedom after experiencing deep oppression over in Europe.

    But now we have completely abandoned all of that.  The Christian faith has been relentlessly pushed to the fringes of public life, the traditional family unit is mocked while rampant sexual immorality is celebrated all over America, and with each passing day our freedoms are being eroded even more.

    At this point, our Constitution has essentially been relegated to being “just a piece of paper” that sits in the National Archives.  It has been trampled on over and over again in recent years, and the courts do not seem to care.

    In fact, much of the time it is the courts that are doing the trampling.

    We have now gotten to a point where our nation is almost ungovernable.  When Barack Obama first entered the White House, millions upon millions of Americans did not consider him to be a legitimate president.  Then when Donald Trump won the election in 2016, even more Americans did not recognize the legitimacy of his presidency.  Of course that trend is only going to intensify now that Biden is being installed as president.  According to one brand new survey, a whopping 82 percent of all Trump supporters do not believe that Biden is the “legitimate winner of the 2020 election”…

    A strong majority of Donald Trump supporters reject the legitimacy of Joe Biden as President-elect, with many citing election irregularities and the most pervasive censorship campaign in American history in support of Biden on the part of Big Tech companies.

    A poll released Sunday by CBS News reveals that 82% of self-identifying Trump supporters do not recognize Biden as the “legitimate winner of the 2020 election.”

    Of course if the election results were reversed and Donald Trump was given another four years, a similar percentage of Democrats would almost certainly not be willing to recognize the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.

    No matter who is in the White House from now on, tens of millions of Americans are not going to accept that individual as being legitimate.

    And thanks to the events of the past several weeks, the election fraud that has been going on for decades in this country has now been exposed for everyone to see.  From this point forward, a very high percentage of Americans will not have any faith that our elections are fair.

    If people don’t believe in the system, it is just a matter of time before it completely fails.

    John Adams once made the following statement…

    Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

    Today, the American people are neither moral nor religious.  Instead, we have evolved into an “idiocracy” that is dominated by power-hungry control freaks.

    If you go back and read the extremely eloquent things that our founders had to say in their time, you will quickly realize that the way that we speak and write today is completely different.  If they could have traveled to our time and interacted with us, we would have seemed like cavemen to them.  Most of us can barely hold conversations with others, and when we do it is mostly just a bunch of unintelligible gibberish.

    But even though we have been dramatically “dumbed down” over the decades, if we could at least try to get along with one another we could still have a functional society.

    Sadly, I have never seen more hatred in our country than I am seeing now, and it just keeps on growing.

    You would think that Democrats would have an interest in at least trying to pull the country together, but instead they just keep rubbing their “victory” in the faces of their enemies.  For example, just consider something that Debra Messing just said…

    The “Will & Grace” star — one of Hollywood’s most vocal Trump critics — expressed a desire for the president to “live a long life in prison” in a tweet to her more than 677,000 followers last week.

    She called Trump “a weak, scared, stupid, inept, negligent, vindictive, narcissistic, criminal” before writing she hoped he became “the most popular boyfriend to the all inmates.”

    Can you feel the love in those words?

    Yes, let the healing begin.

    More blood was spilled on the streets of D.C. over the weekend, and the left and the right will continue to go after one another in the weeks and months ahead.  We have now entered a period of semi-permanent civil unrest in this country, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

    If we would return to the values and principles that our nation was founded upon, our future could be very different.

    But that is not what the American people seem to want.

    So we will continue to steamroll toward oblivion, and there is no future for our nation if we stay on the road that we are currently on.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 23:40

  • US Army Hits Target 43 Miles Away With Long-Range Cannon 
    US Army Hits Target 43 Miles Away With Long-Range Cannon 

    The Army’s Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system hit a target 43 miles away last week, military officials told Defense News, which marks yet another successful demonstration of a powerful cannon that can fire smart projectiles at long-ranges across the modern battlefield. 

    ERCA’s latest demonstration took place at Arizona’s Yuma Proving Ground. The Army fired a Raytheon-made Excalibur extended-range smart artillery shell from a 30-foot gun tube gun that hit its intended target 43 miles away. 

    “I don’t think our adversaries have the ability to hit a target on the nose at 43 miles,” Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, director of the Army’s Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team, told Defense News.

    Even though it took ERCA three shots to hit the target successfully, the cannon still has to be tweaked before operational use is slated for 2023.  

    In March, ERCA fired two shots in a demonstration at Yuma Proving Ground, hitting a target 40 miles away. 

    A long-range artillery system will give the Army an advantage on the modern battlefield, especially in a hot contest with China and Russia. 

    “If you look at doctrinally how the U.S. military uses long-range fires to shoot and then maneuver … it’s one of the most important capabilities that we have as an entire Department of Defense,” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told The Washington Times last year. “If you also look at long-range precision fire capability, it will create the reverse effect for anti-access area denial capabilities that near-peer competitors have heavily invested against. It can reverse the paradigm.”

    Earlier this year, we revealed that the Army “accidentally” shared the first images of a new super cannon on social media capable of firing an artillery shell more than 1,000 miles away. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 23:20

  • Drug Trafficking: The Dirtiest Little Secret
    Drug Trafficking: The Dirtiest Little Secret

    Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

    Here is the answer: Law enforcement corruption. The question? Why are we continuing to fight and lose the “War on Drugs,” proclaimed by President Nixon, almost fifty years ago, in June 1971?

    Think about the U.S. forces arrayed against Mexican drug cartels: DEA, FBI, Homeland Security, state police forces, county sheriffs, municipal police forces, even the postal service. We have established High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces with their own regional fusion centers.

    The United States is incapable of defeating Mexican cartels? We can transport armored and special operations forces halfway around the world to the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and defeat both conventional and irregular military forces — but we cannot secure our southern border and stop the poisoning of our own population?

    How can this be? Are we not smart enough? … Not strong enough? … Not enough money, or resources, or people? … Not enough technology? Are you prepared to believe any of those excuses?

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Over 81,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in the 12 months ending in May 2020, the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period…” That is equal to one-third of the total number of deaths supposedly attributed to the COVID pandemic.

    Deaths equal to one-third of the pandemic? From another cause? Where is the wall-to-wall news reporting on that public health crisis? Why aren’t people marching in the streets demanding action and justice for that threat to human life? Since Joe Biden was elected president, we have not heard a peep from Antifa and BLM — maybe they can take up the drug overdose cause?

    In October, federal law enforcement officials arrested Mexican General Salvador Cienfuegos as he arrived in Los Angeles for a family vacation. Cienfuegos was accused of taking bribes and protecting cartel leaders when he served as defense minister from 2012 to 2018. A month later, the U.S. dropped charges and returned Cienfuegos to Mexico. “Foreign policy considerations” was the official lie covering for the reversal of what might have been an incremental step forward towards legitimate justice in America’s decades-long, losing “War on Drugs.” Every thinking person who has contemplated the drug corruption crisis confronting America knows that absolutely nothing will happen to Cienfuegos now that he is back in Mexico. He gets off Scot-free, other than having to vacation in places other than the United States.

    The Wall Street Journal, reporting on the Cienfuegos debacle, noted:

    “Gen. Cienfuegos’s return puts an uncomfortable spotlight on Mexico’s judicial system. More than nine in 10 crimes are never reported or punished, according to the country’s statistics agency.”

    Let us look more deeply at the drug crisis we face at the level of families and communities. We can get lost looking at national overdose numbers and corrupt foreign generals. Dirty cops are killing Americans, directly and indirectly. In a border community like El Paso, the Mexican cartels have an insidious, silent and powerful control that few people wish to acknowledge or accept — that includes a largely compliant news media who usually report what happens, but rarely, if ever, ask “Why?” or “How can this go on, decade after decade, without accountability or resolution?”

    More than seven years of ongoing investigation by Judicial Watch in that region has revealed law enforcement corruption that ranges on a scale from merely turning a blind eye; to marked law enforcement vehicles being used to move burlap bales of marijuana; all the way up to senior officials communicating with and tipping-off cartel members about planned operations. That is what some of the supposedly “good guys” are doing.

    This is a dark, dangerous and threatening side of life in American communities across the country. The drugs do not just materialize out of thin air in Dayton, OH, or Rockville Centre, NY, or Whitefish, MT. If a population is dying from overdoses that is one-third as large as the COVID pandemic — and we don’t see, don’t hear about it, and apparently don’t really care about it — what does that say about us?

    Tens of thousands of law enforcement officers, billions of taxpayer dollars, nearly fifty years — and the highest overdose rate in history? It is terribly unpopular to blame law enforcement, especially when they are being unfairly attacked by the militant fringe elements like Antifa and various lunatic municipal officials seeking to defund them — but cleaning house within various agencies and increasing police pay would go a long way towards thwarting our greatest domestic threat.

    A year ago, President Donald J. Trump declared he would name Mexican Cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. He paused his decision, and then tabled it, based on assurances from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and a reported wave of resistance from his own cabinet.

    The incoming Biden administration has the cartels virtually “high-fiving” each other — they know a Biden administration will do nothing to stop cartel dominance and control of the US-Mexico border. What law enforcement officer is going to put his life on the line for a Biden administration policy? None. Unless there is an unforeseen and dramatic positive change in law enforcement at the federal, state and municipal levels, expect more of our dirtiest little secret for years to come and a continuation of the United States’ longest war.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 23:00

  • Visualizing The Biggest Tech Mergers And Acquisitions Of 2020
    Visualizing The Biggest Tech Mergers And Acquisitions Of 2020

    For most businesses around the world, 2020 was a year of difficulties, lost business, and economic hardship. However, as Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach notes, for Big Tech, it was a boon.

    After COVID-19 hit hard in March, tech companies started to see their customer bases and revenues grow at an increased rate as people were stuck at home and utilizing their services.

    Since down markets are the perfect time to consolidate, 2020 also saw big tech companies take the opportunity to grow their business with major mergers and acquisitions (M&A). After a quieter year in 2019 that saw tech investment activity dip, it was a resurgence to expected form.

    In this graphic, we visualize the year’s biggest tech deals above $1 billion using data from Computerworld, which tracked the year’s biggest acquisitions.

     

    Deal Activity from the Get-Go

    Though 2020 was all about COVID-19 and its impact on the market, the tech sector had major deal flow even before the pandemic began.

    By the end of February, six of the 19 biggest tech mergers and acquisitions of the year had already occurred—and the month of February alone saw the most major deals of any month with four.

    The first deals of the year were also some of the biggest. Morgan Stanley’s purchase of online brokerage E*TRADE for $13 billion and Koch Industries’ $11 billion completed takeover of software company Infor were the 4th and 5th biggest tech acquisitions of 2020.

    Other big moves included purchases from tech and payments firms Salesforce, Visa, and Intuit, as well as private equity firm Insight Partners.

    The Biggest 2020 Deals Were Saved for Last

    After a quiet March, only a few large deals occurred from April to the summer.

    Nvidia’s $6.9 billion purchase of network chip producer Mellanox Technologies in May was more than a year in the making, and Uber’s $2.65 billion acquisition of food delivery rival Postmates in July significantly consolidated the U.S. food delivery scene.

    As it turned out, the biggest deals of 2020 were back-loaded for the end of the year. Just under half of 2020’s billion-dollar tech M&As happened from September‒December, including the year’s three largest tech acquisitions:

    Of the 19 deals over $1 billion tracked above, Salesforce and Nvidia were the only companies to make multiple major acquisitions. And although tech saw gains across the sector, most of the major M&A activity was centered around semiconductors.

    As 2020 winds down, the market focus on tech is expected to last into 2021. However, the markets and the world at large continue to deal with COVID-19. The rollout of vaccines has put the world on a timeline to reach a post-COVID era. How will the tech landscape be affected?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 22:40

  • I Had COVID For 17 Days, Here's What It Was Like
    I Had COVID For 17 Days, Here’s What It Was Like

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    A lot of folks are out there saying that COVID is a myth, that viruses don’t exist (wth?), or that the whole pandemic has been a scam. While I strongly disagree with the lockdowns and restrictions on our ability to make a living, there truly is a pretty bad virus out there. And I know this from personal experience.

    I had Covid and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was brutal and I had what would be considered a “moderate” case. This article isn’t meant to be used as medical advice or political fodder. This isn’t a treatise about a magical cure being kept secret by Big Pharma nor is it about the Deep State, some villain who cooked up a bioweapon, or any other theory du jour. My medical and treatment choices may be different than yours. I’m simply relating my experiences.

    This virus hits people very differently. If you were fortunate enough to have a mild case, don’t disregard your next door neighbor who ends up with permanent organ damage. Some people are asymptomatic, some have minor symptoms, some are moderately ill, and some die. This is definitely not “just the flu” for many people. I never had a case of influenza that took me down like this, particularly not for this length of time.

    I don’t think that there is a “typical” case of Covid because there are so many variables.

    The only thing notable about the week before I began to have symptoms was an insatiable thirst. This hasn’t been mentioned in any of the literature that I’ve read but anecdotally, several other people I spoke with who had a case lasting a few weeks agreed that they’d never had a thirst quite like it.

    I generally drink 4 liters of water per day. I was up to 6 liters a day (that’s a gallon and a half of water!) as well as electrolyte beverages and still I felt parched. I was waking up in the middle of the night and guzzling a water bottle. It was a little weird but I didn’t think too much of the sudden dehydration.

    How it started

    First of all, to answer the inevitable question, I have no idea how I got Covid. I work from home. I have been following the local rules and staying on my property aside from trips to the grocery store. I haven’t been to any gatherings, I wear a mask as required by regulations in the city where I’m staying, and I wash my hands at the appropriate times.

    As far as risk factors go, I have mild asthma, the cough variant kind, where instead of wheezing I sound like I’m dying of bronchitis. I’m pretty fit and active and walk 3-5 hilly miles most days, rain or shine, so my lung capacity is good and I don’t get winded going up hills or stairs, generally speaking. I’m 51 and could probably stand to lose about 20 pounds but I have no health issues for which I require regular medication. I rarely eat processed food, get plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and limit caffeine to one (okay two) cups of coffee per day.

    Day 1: On Monday, the 7th, I started feeling kind of “off” for lack of a better word. I was tired – very, very tired – and I went to bed ridiculously early, at 7 o’clock because I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.

    Day 2: When I woke up on Tuesday, I realized that I was sick and brushed it off as the flu or a cold. I figured a day with chicken soup, peppermint tea, and a nip of Jack Daniels for a stubborn cough would have me right as rain in no time. At that point, my symptoms were a dry cough, body aches, a very mild sore throat, and an all-encompassing fatigue. Later in the day, I got so cold that no amount of blankets and heat could warm me up. I was running a high (for me) fever that kept going up during the night.

    What it was like to have Covid

    Days 3-5: Over the next three days, chills and fever were almost constant. My joints and muscles hurt. Getting up to go to the bathroom felt like an expedition up a mountain.  I was tired and winded. I had very little appetite and even less of an inclination to cook food so I existed mostly on peanut butter and crackers and leftover soup. I was absolutely exhausted and so cold that I shivered violently when I got out from under my bed piled high with blankets. I had super-weird dreams. My cough worsened, my head hurt, and my throat was still mildly sore.

    I drank lots of water and electrolyte beverages. My thirst remained unquenchable regardless of how much I drank. I took vitamins (C, D3) and took Zinc supplements. These are my regular supplements but I doubled that.

    Days 6-9: The line to get a test at the local clinic was long and filled with people who were coughing up a lung. There was no way I’d be able to stand in that line for an hour, as sick as I felt. Besides, I figured if I didn’t have Covid, I’d get it standing in the line so I opted not to be tested.

    This part made me think of the worst case of the flu I ever had, except intensified by about four times. It was terrible.

    I usually let a fever run its course but by Saturday I felt so awful that I gave in and began treating symptoms. My normal temp is in the 96s and my temperature throughout these days stayed between 101-103. I staggered ibuprofen and acetaminophen, and I also used a mild muscle relaxant and my Ventilyn inhaler. The meds didn’t get rid of my fever but reduced the chills to a tolerable level. I slept almost around the clock, waking up for a couple of hours here and there to check on website stuff. Fortunately, I have a wonderful team who kept things running for us. One day blurred into the next and I considered going to the doctor again, but couldn’t muster the energy. I felt like if I just got a little more sleep I’d be okay.

    My cough was getting far worse and now my ribs and abdominal muscles hurt. It was a deep painful cough that caused me to clutch my chest every single time inhaled deeply.

    Day 10: I woke up feeling slightly better. My fever had finally completely broken and I was no longer feeling chilled to the bone. My cough, however, was even worse than before and I recognized the wheezing sound that meant I was headed for a bout of pneumonia. I’ve got mild asthma and quite often upper respiratory issues end up with pneumonia for me so I know the signs. I upped the vitamin C and hoped for the best.

    Day 11: I hadn’t been drinking coffee, just peppermint tea and I was really looking forward to a delicious cup of coffee now that I was feeling better. Unfortunately, the Keurig at the rental where I’m staying seemed to be putting out tinted water. I was bummed that the coffee was bad but I just refilled my water bottle and went on with my morning.

    My cough was horrible. I decided that I’d put it off for as long as was safe and that I was going to need a steroid inhaler to heal my lungs. I planned to visit the doctor as soon as I finished my morning work on the website. I made myself some toast with peanut butter to eat before I left because there’s nothing worse than going to the doctor hungry and grouchy. I was texting with my friend while eating and thought, “This tastes awful. Why is my toast so bland and sweet? Ohhhhhhhhhh…….”

    I had lost my sense of taste. I could pick up slightly sweet or slightly salty flavors but that’s it. Eating only sweet or salty styrofoam is probably the most effective diet ever.

    My doctor’s appointments and treatment

    I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Covid and pneumonia, just as I had expected. My blood oxygen saturation level was 92. She prescribed an aggressive regimen and scheduled appointments for the next 4 days to give me injections and check my vitals. There are more details on the treatment below.

    Plot Twist: Did I mention I’m in Mexico right now?

    I went to the walk-in clinic recommended by local friends. Since it was midday, during the week, there was just one patient ahead of me. I basically had the waiting room all to myself. I typed out my saga in Google Translate and pasted the Spanish version into a document in case I got a doctor who didn’t speak English. I speak some Spanish but not nearly enough to convey all this stuff.

    The doctor spoke a little bit of English, which, when combined with my small amount of Spanish and our respective Google Translate apps, got us through the question and answer segment of the appointment. She was extremely thorough in her exam, and I was very satisfied with the care I received. She was concerned that my pulse oximeter reading was low and instructed me on what to look for with my oxygen levels.

    She confirmed that I did indeed have both Covid and pneumonia and wrote prescriptions for the treatment of both.

    The protocol was:

    • 5 days of Ceftriaxone (Brand Name: Rocephin) injections (antibiotic)

    • 3 days of Dexamethasone injections (corticosteroids)

    • 4-8 grams per day of Vitamin C

    • Salmeterol inhaler

    • Loratadine and ambroxol cough syrup (a combined antihistamine and expectorant)

    I received my first injection of antibiotics and steroids there at the clinic.

    Day 11 continued: On the night of Day 11, I started perspiring heavily after having begun treatment earlier in the day. Kind of gross but I’m all about the TMI: I was sweating so much it looked like I’d been caught in a rainstorm. At the same time, I was cold and shivering, so I had to stay bundled up. My temperature was up and down constantly. Sometime around 2 am I fell into an exhausted sleep.

    Day 12: I woke up on Day 12 with a pounding headache and some intestinal upset. I was expecting this because corticosteroids always affect me this way. I took some ibuprofen and an Immodium to manage the side effects because they were well worthwhile. My deep, uncontrollable cough was far less frequent, and no longer as brutally painful. As I wrote before, I’m very prone to pneumonia because of my asthma, and I’ve probably had it more than 30 times in my life. I’ve never responded to treatment as quickly as this, ever. I think the difference is that I was receiving steroids and antibiotics by injection instead of orally.

    My ability to taste was beginning to return – I’d say I was about halfway back to normal. My internal thermostat was still wonky – one minute I was hot and the next I was cold, but at this point, I’d had no fever for 36 hours. I still had the heavy brain fog that makes tasks go a lot more slowly and the possibility of multitasking was completely out of the question. I hated the hazy, slow mental feeling I had been fighting through.

    I felt like I had much more energy but that was until I tried to do a few things. It didn’t take long before my legs were wobbling, my hands were shaking, and I was feeling tired but not as thoroughly exhausted as before. I took a little nap then got up to go to my doctor’s appointment feeling more clear-headed.

    The appointment went extremely well. My blood oxygen saturation level was up to 99% which thoroughly shocked the doctor given my condition the day before. I was deemed no longer contagious and given my second injection of antibiotics and steroids. The doctor asked me if I exercised a lot and I told him that I walked a few miles most days in the hilly area where I lived. I was told that my quick rebound in lung capacity was likely related to my good cardiovascular fitness.

    Day 13: I always have difficulty sleeping when taking steroid medications so I slept in a bit on day 13. I woke up with that lovely corticosteroid headache again and a bit less energy than the day before. Today’s doctor’s appointment also went well with another 99% reading. Today was the last steroid injection, thank goodness. I just had two more injections of antibiotics to go.

    My neighbor was beginning to show some symptoms so I stopped and picked up the vitamins that were recommended for me to give to him.

    When I got back from my appointment I took my dogs on their first walk in almost two weeks that wasn’t just a quick pop-out-to-pee excursion. I was maybe a bit overly ambitious even though the total walk was less than half a mile. We went to the dog park where they could run around and I could sit. Walking back to the condo is uphill and I got pretty winded.

    I got back and took a puff off my inhaler and sat down to rest for a bit but it didn’t help. It turned into a bit of an asthma attack that lasted for about an hour. I could still feel the heaviness in my chest three hours later and there was a wheeze to my cough.

    It appears that recovery from this is not linear and there’ll be some good days and bad days. While it’s something I’ve heard others report, it’s discouraging.

    I was able to finally get some dishes and a load of laundry done, and I called it an early evening.

    Day 14: My improvement had ground to a halt.

    The wheeze never left and got a whole lot worse. When I got to the doctor’s office for my checkup the next morning, they made me stay because my oxygen level was at 89%. I was given a medication to control bronchial spasms and a stronger inhaler. After a couple of hours, my levels were back up and I was allowed to leave.

    Nobody really thinks about the oxygen saturation in their blood until they don’t have enough of it. Day 14 was terrible. I was so tired that walking to the bathroom and back to the couch felt like a trip up Mt. Everest. My oxygen levels were up and down all day, at one point dropping as low as 83%.  My cognition was fuzzy and I felt terribly depressed.

    The depression or change in mental status isn’t something that I’ve seen a lot written about in the mainstream media. But think about how much oxygen your brain uses to function and then cut off some of the supply. Science Daily reports that coronavirus infections can cause delirium and Medscape suggests that depression and anxiety in Covid patients could be indicators of the virus attacking the patient’s central nervous system.

    Some of the causes of mood swings during Covid could be biological and related to the illness itself, but there’s also another factor.

    People treat you very differently when you have this illness. The media-propelled fear justifying the lockdowns are every bit as infectious as the virus. You’re like a pariah. A leper. People you know wouldn’t even consider coming near you. I have a kindly neighbor who has dropped off supplies at the door for me, but aside from that, people locally who have done work for me in the past are hesitant to pick up my groceries or handle small errands.

    Even some people who are long-distance friends who I talk to online on a daily basis completely disappeared. Some of them were so adamant that Covid is a “scamdemic” they didn’t want to hear about my experience. I didn’t expect emotional fallout from having Covid, but it was present, particularly as it seemed to go on and on. Two weeks feels like a really long time to be sick.

    I didn’t have the energy to make food so I just ate some fruit that was in the refrigerator, followed by saltines. I drank water, took my drugs, and went to bed early to sleep it off.

    Day 15: My oxygen levels were finally stabilizing a little bit. Today was to have been my last visit to the doctor but they asked me to return one more day because of the new medications for my lungs. The constant feeling of shortness of breath was still present, but the bronchial spasms had subsided.

    Johns Hopkins reports that Covid can seriously damage the lungs of survivors.

    COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, can cause lung complications such as pneumonia and, in the most severe cases, acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. Sepsis, another possible complication of COVID-19, can also cause lasting harm to the lungs and other organs. (source)

    This damage can be reversed with diligent effort and in severe cases, respiratory therapy may be required.

    After a serious case of COVID-19, a patient’s lungs can recover, but not overnight. “Recovery from lung damage takes time,” Galiatsatos says. “There’s the initial injury to the lungs, followed by scarring. Over time, the tissue heals, but it can take three months to a year or more for a person’s lung function to return to pre-COVID-19 levels.”

    He notes that doctors and patients alike should be prepared for continuing treatment and therapy.

    “Once the pandemic is over, there will be a group of patients with new health needs: the survivors. Doctors, respiratory therapists and other health care providers will need to help these patients recover their lung function as much as possible.” (source)

    I began to take my dogs on short walks today. Normally we move briskly, we run around at the park, we hike down to the water, and we climb back up. I am definitely not able to do that at this point, not unless I want another repeat of the recent asthma attack. So we began today taking short, slow walks. The dogs are overjoyed to be out of the condo, and frankly, so am I.

    We managed to walk 1.28 miles over a period of 3 walks today. It took forever because unless I want to be gasping for air, I had to move slowly, taking a moment to rest on the inclines.

    It felt so strange and so unlike me to walk at this snail’s pace. I felt like I was walking with someone’s elderly grandmother, but it was me – I was the “elderly” person. But it seems the important thing is the movement.

    Doctors don’t yet know how long it will take patients to regain their pre-Covid strength and endurance. In the case of acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS, which has been caused by other viruses and has similarities to Covid-19, full recovery can take over a year, but there are no such statistics for Covid yet.

    However, the earlier patients start their rehabilitation, the faster they begin to bounce back, which may be another reason for doctors to take them off ventilators sooner, Ms. Al Chikhanie said. That may be possible, especially as scientists understand how to manage the acute infection phase better. (source)

    Day 16: On Day 16 the line at the clinic was long again, and I opted not to wait for a recheck. I felt better able to catch my breath and less tired, although I still needed a nap in the middle of the day. Miles walked: 1.5. I walked slowly, trying not to get overly winded.

    My cough was far less frequent and not as deep when I did cough. I still didn’t really have my appetite back. I could taste food but it didn’t really taste good or flavorful.

    Day 17: I finally woke up feeling almost normal. I awoke at 6:30, my usual time, without an alarm clock. I took the dogs out, grabbed some coffee, and got a bit of work done before my appointment.

    I got into the doctor earlier and was the first patient in. He looked at me and said, “You are feeling much better, I can see it.”

    All my stats checked out normally and I was released from Covid and pneumonia care. I am not under any kind of quarantine because of how long it had been since my symptoms began and since I’d run a fever. I have no other follow-up visits scheduled unless I run into complications.

    While I no longer have Covid, the doctor said that it will take a while before my lung capacity is where it was before I became sick. He warned that post-Covid can be dangerous because I would be susceptible to other upper respiratory infections during this healing stage and to keep up with the high dose Vitamin C, D, and Zinc. I was to continue walking but not push myself to the point of getting winded for a couple of weeks to give my lungs more time to heal. My sense of taste has not fully returned.

    I still have to take a bronchodilator for another week, as well as an inhaler that compares to Symbicort in the US twice a day for the next 3 weeks.

    Opinions

    My treatment in Mexico – complete with 7 doctor’s visits, prescription medications, and supplements – cost well under $300. Because I happened to be here when I got sick, I don’t have to come up with thousands of dollars or become buried in debt to pay for my healthcare. I was fortunate. Despite all the talk about how Covid medical care and testing are covered by the government in the United States, many people are still facing enormous bills because it’s just not working out that way. People are getting bills they shouldn’t be getting and not being told the charges are covered. Others are discovering that not everything they were told would be covered, is.

    I think that as awful as this illness is, there are other concerns that are falling through the cracks while all attention is focused on this one ailment. As a nation, our economy is suffering, our mental health is suffering, and our physical health is deteriorating as we lock ourselves away from others at the behest of the government and as care for other conditions remains nearly impossible to access.

    There are a million opinions on this virus, the treatment thereof, the medical system, government restrictions, and other Covid-related minutae. I sincerely believe we as individuals should have choices about the medical treatment we do or do not receive and how we choose to protect ourselves. We should have both the right and responsibility to make these decisions.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 22:20

  • 18-Year-Old American Girl Jailed For "Selfish & Arrogant" Breach Of COVID Curfew In Cayman Islands
    18-Year-Old American Girl Jailed For “Selfish & Arrogant” Breach Of COVID Curfew In Cayman Islands

    An American college student has been jailed by the Royal Cayman Islands Police for blatantly violating COVID-19 restrictions, according to CBS News. 

    Skylar Mack, an 18-year-old college student at Mercer University in Georgia, was slapped with a two-month sentence for violating quarantine to attend her boyfriend’s jet ski competition. 

    Mack’s attorney Jonathan Hughes told CBS: 

    “Whilst it was our hope that Skylar would be able to return home to resume her studies in January, we accept the decision of the court and look forward to receiving its written reasons in due course,” Hughes said.

    Along with Mack, her boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet, was also sentenced to two months by the Cayman Islands Grand Court for breaking quarantine.

    After flying to Grand Cayman in late November, Mack was ordered by authorities to self-isolate for two weeks and given a wristband to track her movements. She signed a document to remain inside for the quarantine’s duration, but on day number two, she was spotted at a jet ski competition with Ramgeet, who lives on the island, without the wristband. 

    It was not clear by CBS who reported the couple for breaking quarantine. 

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

    At the hearing on Dec. 15, Judge Roger Chapple explained his decision for jailing Mack and Ramgeet: 

    “This was as flagrant a breach as could be imagined; it was borne of selfishness and arrogance,” Chapple said, according to local newspaper Cayman Compass. “This was entirely deliberate and planned, as evidenced by her desire to switch her wristband the day before to a looser one that she was then able to remove.” 

    The Grand Cayman has been a hot spot for Americans fleeing the country amid a “dark covid winter.” Remote work has allowed many to work internationally, in countries where the virus isn’t rapidly spreading. 

    Americans jailed during the pandemic for breaking quarantine rules has not been uncommon. Hawaii, back in May, arrested “rogue tourists” who ignored local virus rules. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 22:00

  • China And Iran Start Drilling In This Super Giant Gas Field
    China And Iran Start Drilling In This Super Giant Gas Field

    Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

    Drilling operations of the first well of the game-changing but highly-controversial Phase 11 of Iran’s super-giant South Pars non-associated natural gas field officially began last week.

    Significant gas recovery from the enormous resource will commence in the second half of the next Iranian calendar year that begins on 21 March 2021. The long-stalled Phase 11 development supposedly saw the withdrawal of all Chinese involvement in October 2019. In reality, though, China is still intimately involved in its development and is looking to further scale up its activities following the inauguration of Joe Biden as U.S. President on 20 January.  Along with completing the crucial Goreh-Jask pipeline oil export route by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (ending on 20 March 2021), building out its value-added petrochemicals production to at least 100 million metric tons per year by 2022, and ramping up production from its hugely oil-rich West Karoun cluster of oil fields to at least 1 million barrels per day (bpd) within the next two years, optimising the natural gas production from its South Pars gas field is a top priority for Iran. With an estimated 14.2 trillion cubic metres (Tcm) of gas reserves in place plus 18 billion barrels of gas condensate, South Pars already accounts for around 40 per cent of Iran’s total estimated 33.8 tcm of gas reserves – mostly located in the southern Fars, Bushehr, and Hormozgan regions – and about 80 per cent of its gas production.

    The 3,700-square kilometre (sq.km) South Pars sector of the 9,700-square km basin shared with Qatar (in the form of the 6,000-square km North Dome) is also critical to Iran’s overall strategy to sustain natural gas production across the country of at least 1 billion cubic metres per day (Bcm/d), with Phase 11’s target production capacity being 57 million cubic metres per day (mcm/d), and to its corollary plans to become a world-leader in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. 

    Given the size and scope of Phase 11, it became a focal point of U.S. attention in the aftermath of its unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018 and during the active re-imposition of sanctions toward the end of that year. “The pressure that the U.S. put on [French oil giant] Total [which at the time of its withdrawal in the middle of 2018 from Phase 11 held a 50.1 per cent stake in the US$4.8 billion project and had already invested around US$1 billion] was enormous,” a senior Iranian oil and gas industry source told OilPrice.com. “Its ruthless handling of Total was designed by the U.S. to show the E.U. [European Union] – which was trying to find a way to ignore the new U.S, sanctions – that, regardless of the E.U.’s efforts to avoid going along with the new U.S. restrictions on Iran, it had better do so, or else,” he added.

    “On the eve of the signing of the next wave of financing for SP11, the U.S. Treasury Department telephoned senior bankers at the bank that was organising the money and told them that if the financing went ahead then the U.S. would instigate a full historic investigation of all of the bank’s dealings since 1979 to every country that had been blacklisted by the U.S., and it told the French government the same thing,” he underlined.

    “The U.S. Treasury also said that all French companies would not win any major contracts with U.S. companies whilst Total stayed in Iran, but if Total withdrew then the U.S. would make a similar projects available to it to compensate,” he told OilPrice.com.

    At that point, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) automatically took over Total’s stake (of 50.1 per cent) in Phase 11 to add to its existing 30 per cent stake (with the remaining 19.9 per cent held by Iran’s Petropars) and was all set to continue with the development of the site, given the enormously beneficial terms that it was offered by China. Specifically, OilPrice.com understands, Iran’s Petroleum Ministry offered the Chinese a 15 per cent discount for nine years on the value of all gas it recovers, with this being the value of the gas as applied to CNPC’s cost/return formula against the open market valuation, with the net present value of the entire South Pars site at that time being US$116 billion (now it is US$135 billion, as exclusively revealed recently by OilPrice.com). Following this, CNPC said that, as a specific adjunct to SP11, it was prepared to use its ‘special’ banking unit – the Bank of Kunlun – as a funding and clearing vehicle if and when it took over the full operations of Phase 11 in line with its new 80 per cent+ stake. The Bank of Kunlun had – and still has – considerable operational experience in this regard, as it was used to settle tens of billions of dollars worth of oil imports during the United Nations’ sanctions against Tehran between 2012 and 2015. Most of the bank’s settlements during that time were in euros and Chinese renminbi and in 2012 it was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for conducting business with Iran.  As the U.S. ramped up pressure on China in the Trade War, however – especially looking to increase sanctions on its most important technology companies, including Huawei – and with China already locked into the new supercharged 25-year deal with Iran, Beijing made a policy decision to take a lower public profile on project work on Iran’s high-profile oil and gas fields wherever possible.

    Top of this list was Phase 11 of South Pars, so CNPC publically withdrew from the project in October 2019, having supposedly suspended further investment in it in December 2018. In reality, though, China’s activities on Phase 11 – and elsewhere in Iran and Iraq – did not cease but merely changed appearance into a less high-profile and therefore less U.S.-sanctionable form. “It was one thing for China to quietly ignore all sanctions that the U.S. had imposed on importing Iranian oil and gas, but it was quite another thing for it to blatantly put its major state companies on the ground in Iran at that point in the [President Donald] Trump administration when tensions were so high,” said the Iranian oil and gas industry source.

    ”At that time these included the U.S.’s sanctioning of China over its [alleged] human rights violations against Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, and the extension of U.S. sanctions against Huawei over cyber-espionage and technology theft concerns,” he added.

    Consequently, China switched to developing Iran’s oil and gas fields – including the South Azadegan, North Yaran, and South Yaran oil fields, and the South Pars gas site – by engaging in a series of ‘contract-only’ projects, such as drilling-only, field maintenance-only, parts replacement-only, storage-only, technology-only, and so on.

    “Most of these are being done through seemingly smaller firms that are less well-known than the big state players that attract little or no publicity but, as all companies in China are part of the state and are legally bound to work towards what they are told to do by the Communist Party, it doesn’t make any difference to the eventual outcome,” said the Iran source.

    Neatly closing the circle on continued China involvement – through technology and financing right now – in Phase 11 is that Petropars is also the partner for the various Chinese ‘contract-only’ projects going on in South Azadegan.

    As it now stands, then, according to comments last week from Reza Dehghan, the National Iranian Oil Company’s deputy chief executive officer for engineering, 40 such ‘contract-only’ work projects have been defined for the implementation of Phase 11’s drilling operations, following the installation recently of the first jacket near the zero-point of the border with Qatar.

    “In total, the development plan of Phase 11 has 24 wells, two platforms and a gas flow pipeline to the coast, and the second platform will be installed in another location,” he said.

    To this end, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-associated MAPNA Group has re-deployed an major offshore rig (MD-1) from the Soroush oil field to Phase 11 tasked with drilling 12 appraisal and later development wells in two stages. Stage one will comprise the drilling and completion of five appraisal-development wells, the installation of the SPD11B platform, and the initial production of 14 mcm/d of gas. Stage two will see another seven wells drilled and completed, in parallel with the initial production, which will increase the total rich gas recovery from the platform to 28 mcm/d before a further round of drilling in the third phase will enable full production of 57 mcm/d. According to Dehghan:

    “The project was originally supposed to be financed by a foreign investor [but given] the existing conditions, the National Iranian Oil Company will tap internal instruments and resources like sale of participation bonds.”

    As exclusively highlighted by OilPrice.com, these will include new sukuk offerings and, more importantly, new bond structures to be sold via China.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 21:40

  • US Navy Releases Rare Video Of Nuclear Sub Patrolling Near Iran
    US Navy Releases Rare Video Of Nuclear Sub Patrolling Near Iran

    We described earlier that the nuclear submarine USS Georgia and a fleet of accompanying warships is now patrolling the Strait of Hormuz since it reached the vital waterway days ago amid soaring tensions with Iran, also now less than two weeks away from the one year anniversary of the assassinaition of IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani.

    It’s clearly a major show of force to Iran, which previously vowed to retaliate both for Soleimani’s killing but also for the more recent death of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which leaders in Tehran have blamed on Israel and the US.

    The US Navy after earlier making the announcement of the deployed location of the USS Georgia – something rare in its own right – followed up by releasing the below video of its maneuvers, also to regional and foreign media:

    Here’s a brief review of its capabilities: 

    The Tomahawk cruise missiles contained by the USS Georgia – of which there can be up to 154 – can reach approximately 1,000 miles in any direction when launched, creating a wide target range for the submarine.  

    The ship can also hold up to 66 members of the Special Operations Forces. 

     The Georgia can be used to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance along the Iranian coastline as well as through the entire Persian Gulf while remaining shielded from adversaries. 

    Video footage released by the US Navy shows the submarine accompanied by two guided missile cruisers en route to the Persian Gulf after leaving the 5th Fleet base in Bahrain.

    With just weeks to go in the Trump presidency, fears still linger of a last-minute conflict with Iran. 

    Via The Daily Mail

    While arguably the nuclear sub presence is part of a strong deterrence strategy, it’s also possible the administration could be planning a provocation along with close US ally Israel. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 21:20

  • The Great Mutation – Behold The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius
    The Great Mutation – Behold The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Epoch Times,

    We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde

    Today all radio stations on Planet Earth should be playing this song. What the aptly named Fifth Dimension immortalized in their spring of 1969 psychedelic soul classic is now literally true: This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius – the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21st at 𝟬° in Aquarius.

    Aquarius starts just as some dodgy, self-important elites gear up to impose a Great Reset on most of the planet – following a very specific, reductionist and exclusionist political agenda. Yet the real deal is not the Reset; it’s the Mutation.

    So we’re all into something much bigger than any neo-Orwellian scenario. To shed much needed light into what seems our current, interminable darkness, I posed selected questions to Vanessa Guazzelli, a respected astrologer, writer and speaker in astrology conferences worldwide, as well as a practicing psychoanalyst and psychologist.

    Let astrology fertilize geopolitics. Let the sunshine in.

    The astro-cartographic map of the Great Mutation

    All that is solid mutates into air

    PE: Arguably not many people around the world are aware that a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction this December 21st seems to represent the ultimate game-changer – defined by serious astrology scholars as the Great Mutation.

    Could you please elaborate on what this Mutation really means, astrologically, as it seems to take place every 200 years? And bringing it back to everyday life and politics, are we permitted to infer geopolitical parallels from what the stars are telling us?

    VG: By Great Mutation we refer to when the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions change elements, which happens every 200 years as you mentioned. Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction, astrologically, by ecliptic longitude, every 20 years, not that long a period. However, they keep on intersecting in signs of the same element for 200 years, with the possibility of another 40 years of transition, indicating a greater cycle.

    Jupiter and Saturn are what we call social planets and are to be considered in regards to politics and geopolitics. When the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction starts to effectively happen in the next element, it marks the Great Mutation, denoting important socioeconomic and cultural changes. That’s what is happening now.

    Vanessa Guazzelli.

    We come from a two-century period of conjunctions in Earth signs. The emphasis has been on matter and the more tangible dimension of life – material boys and girls in a material world. As we now move on into the element of air, as they conjoin at 0º of Aquarius, a call for sublimation takes place.

    All that is solid mutates into air. Things and procedures can be less material and more digital and, to some extent, virtual. But not only that. Shared ideas and ideals gain yet more importance. More then what we materially have, with whom and what for is what matters most. Collaboration and cooperation are, now more than ever, the winds which make the world go around.

    This is indeed a highly significant astrological aspect and configuration happening on December 21, at 18h20 UTC. In parts of Asia and Oceania, it will be already past midnight, on December 22.

    This is not only the Great Mutation but a Great Conjunction, when the two farthest visible planets conjoin not merely by longitude but also by latitude (ecliptic coordinates), by both right ascension and declination (equatorial coordinates). That means they are not just aligned in the same direction but really, really close to each other in the sky as seen from Earth, almost as if they were one and the same star.

    Last time the two heavenly bodies have been that close was in 1623, but that was not a Great Mutation, just a regular conjunction in terms of ecliptic longitude. Astrologically, the fact that all these enhancements happen together at this time intensifies the significance of what this conjunction now indicates, how powerful a mutation it marks.

    In everyday life, it also speaks of an increase in technological development, digitalization of things and procedures, including crypto-currencies and digital money as a sort of “sublimed” money, from matter to a lighter, less material “substance” which can quickly circulate through air.

    At a more personal level, we tend to lose interest in social contexts which are not in tune with our ideas and ideals, and we’re pulled towards groups, associations and projects in the same wavelength as we are. It is not a time to merely rely on institutions to take care of people, but a time to discern for oneself and then connect with others with shared interests, ideals, purposes.

    The air element is where we open space and make room for the Other, be it in respect for differences or to collaborate and cooperate towards shared interests and projects. Co-op’s, where every participant gets a fair, proportional share, in a joint enterprise, is surely a way to go.

    Aquarius is opposite to the centralizing sign of Leo. Geopolitically, that is to say, it is not the time for a hegemonic single star to rule the world, but a time of many stars illuminating the entire sky. It is not a time for a single empire. There can be empires, if in plural. The strength of powerful nations now lies, more than ever, in the quality of their partnerships and alliances in mutual respect, as equals.

    Any power which loses sight of that crucial key will see it, in the short or long run, backfire. Some are more powerful than others and some will be more prominent than others. Nonetheless, they are not alone. It is time for a multipolar world – now that is the Mandate of Heaven.

    Regarding the Great Mutation’s astro-cartographic map, which shows the lines of planetary positions on the face of the Earth, it is interesting to notice that the IC lines of Jupiter and Saturn go through Beijing, indicating the relevance of China in the foundation of this 200-year cycle, for the IC is the root of an astrological chart.

    On the other side of the globe, we see the MC lines of the two planets going through South America (Venezuela, Brazilian Amazon, Bolivia, Argentina), showing the value of the continent’s resources in this new cycle.

    What the Davos crew is up to

    PE: Our current, turbulent juncture seems to be pointing towards increased bio-security and what some serious systemic analysis defines as techno-feudalism. All this implies hyper-concentration of power – and not only power exercised by the geopolitical hegemon, the United States. Should we now expect a serious mutation of the world-system – as studied by Immanuel Wallerstein, in the sense of serious changes to our capitalist system?

    Immanuel Wallerstein. Source: Wikimedia Commons

    VG: Yes, we should. We are at the very turning point of the world-system. Along with the Great Mutation, another immensely significant aspect in the 2020s is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, in February 2026, at 0º of Aries. This is precisely the first degree of the whole Zodiac, also called the Vernal Point – crucial in astrological interpretation.

    Saturn and Neptune conjoin every 36 years, which is a relatively short historical cycle. However, as with the Great Mutation, the way it occurs and where in occurs in the Zodiac can lead us to broader historical perspectives and indicate more expressive historical moments.

    If we go back up to 7,000 years ago, this conjunction has occurred at the Vernal Point only in 4361 B.C. and 1742 B.C. If we look up three thousand years ahead, the closest it gets to the Vernal Point is 3º of Aries in 3172. Quite rare. So this conjunction at the first degree of the Zodiac, 0º of Aries – the very beginning – is not that small a deal.

    Neptune impregnates and conceives; Saturn refers to the concrete structure of reality; and 0º of Aries means new, springing up. Saturn-Neptune on 0º Aries means a new conception of reality.

    Aspects between Saturn and Neptune, by historical observation, are associated with socialism and communism – these movements on Earth coincide with the transiting contacts between these two planets in the sky. It has already been proven in mundane astrology historically. Moreover, this does not just tell us about the past, for it is in fact just about to begin – upgrading and advancing, reconfiguring itself in yet new forms of socialism.

    According to Wallerstein, during the structural crisis which characterizes the final period of a world-system, a bifurcation of the system can tilt to one of either directions, or to multiple systems. Before passing away last year, he did consider us to be right in the middle of the structural crisis of capitalism, which lasts 60 to 80 years.

    I’d say at this moment we are past the mid-point. It could, initially, go towards multiple systems in two branches: on the one hand, the freshness of the Eastern winds inspiring socialism and multipolarity through the Belt and Road Initiative and the integration of Eurasia and its partners; on the other hand, the whirlwind of the collapsing empire and its Western allies as a terminator cyborg operated by the perverse 0.0001% who are so lifeless they cannot conceive other people’s right to exist.

    When I first heard about it in June 2020, it astonished me how they set the “Great Reset” for January 2021, so close to the Great Mutation at the end of December 2020. I doubt this is a mere coincidence or “synchronicity.” J P Morgan is known to have affirmed that millionaires don’t need astrologers, but billionaires do.

    Possibly aware of this great transition, the Davos crew seem to be actually trying to reset the system they already rule with their own settings and revive the dying system as a cyborg from hell.

    ‘Wall Street Bubbles – always the same,’ 1901 cartoon by Keppler, depicts J.P. Morgan as a bull blowing soap bubbles for eager investors. Source: Wikimedia Commons

    The nefarious potential of the Aquarian emphasis is the control of society through technology, be it techno-feudalism or, gods forbid, techno-slavery. On the brighter side of the Force, Aquarius is about a social project to sustain life and meet the needs of the people. Both dimensions or systems might co-exist on Earth for a while.

    Western powers – not to mention the Masters of the Universe, as you say, who pull their strings – seem to have a long way to go before reaching a state of real and respectful cooperation. Perhaps more ancient civilizations found in the East have a deeper, more consistent root from which to draw the wisdom and maturity necessary in such challenging times for humanity.

    Often remembered for the food and goods traded along the route, the Silk Roads involved in the past and involve nowadays the exchange of ideas. It is interesting to observe the strong Aquarian edge activated in China’s astrological progressions when the Belt and Road Initiative was first proposed by Xi Jinping in Astana, in 2013, and how it connected to the degree of the Great Mutation (progressed Venus and Jupiter conjunct AC at 1º Aquarius).

    When some years before that Vladimir Putin gave his historical speech in Munich, proposing the Eurasian Integration, in February 2007, there was a Saturn-Neptune aspect – an opposition. When at the 70th UN Assembly, both Putin and Xi delivered long, strong and synchronized speeches affirming the multipolarity of the world, in 2015, there was also a Saturn-Neptune aspect – a square.

    The next Saturn-Neptune aspect will be the conjunction, in February 2026, inaugurating a brand new cycle and we can expect it to be related to these previous movements, keeping in mind the cycle points towards multipolarity and new forms of socialism.

    The Black Moon spell

    PE: Could Covid-19, on a certain level, be interpreted as the – unpleasant – preamble towards a Great Mutation? After all the new social (un)reality represents a system upside down: near-total economic devastation, especially of small businesses; canceling of constitutional rights; governments practically ruling by decree, with no popular consultation; global corporations censoring any manner of informed dissent; whole societies practically under house arrest; most of the planet reduced to a sort of totalitarian theme park.

    VG: Oh, Covid-19 – we could have a whole conversation just on the implications of it at so many dimensions, and how it can be, to some extent, astrologically tracked. It definitely can be interpreted as the unpleasant preamble, perhaps aiming to the Great Reset, one could ponder.

    An unprecedented worldwide collective experience – and experiment. Nevertheless, serving to shake it all up, transforming our very perception of time, preparing for the conception of a new time. To all those paying attention, a call to be yet more alive, more vivid, against all odds.

    A nearly black moon. Image: Getty/AFP

    The very dichotomy which has been so emphasized between “either caring for life or caring for the economy” in and of itself shows how absurd a world it already was. How many people so easily got caught into separating one thing from the other, as if it was a means to resist the system and finally say no to the demands of capital accumulation. To eventually see, indeed, small businesses devastated, poverty increasing drastically, whilst billionaires concentrate wealth to yet more bizarre levels.

    Something fundamental to consider is how it has affected the human body. The pandemic was declared with Black Moon (the lunar apogee) in Aries and that indicates the importance of being sharply present and responsive as Michael Jackson danced, Bruce Lee moved and Maria Zakharova responds.

    In October, Black Moon, this astrological point representing the visceral and instinctive dimension of existence, moved into Taurus, highlighting the importance of being aware of how the life force in us is conditioned or channeled, shaping how we perceive our own existence. For instance, how the confinement of the body might – or might not – confine our psyche.

    What are the psychological effects of the lack of touch or the physical experience of constantly having our mouths covered? How those situations affect our psyche is not irrelevant. Both René Descartes and Wilhelm Reich had Black Moon in Taurus. How are mind and body related? Are they a cartesian dichotomy or are they intertwined as bio-energetic unity moved by libido?

    This is an important underlying issue in our collective until July 2021.

    The fate of the American empire

    PE: Astrology in History is full of fascinating stories about celestial interpretations opening the way to a crucial political or military move. For instance, right before the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, the Great Khan, Hulegu, asked the court astrologer about the prospects ahead. The astrologer, Husam al-Din, said that if he followed his generals and invaded Baghdad, the consequences would be ominous.

    But then Hulegu turned to a Shi’a astronomer, Tusi, a polymath. Tusi said the invasion would be a major success. That’s what happened – and Tusi was admitted into Hulegu’s inner circle. So the Mongols – who built the largest empire in history – were big fans of “celestial insurance.” Could “celestial insurance” in our times end up predicting the fate of another empire – the US?

    VG: That’s true, there are so many fascinating stories. The end of the Byzantine Empire and conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire was also marked by an astrological prediction of the Ottoman victory related to an eclipse.

    The US Pluto return happens in 2022. That’s massive. It’s a cycle of approximately 247 years. Pluto has a sense of fate to it. The return of the lord of the underworld also speaks of the return of that which was repressed, hidden or rejected. It will have three exact hits throughout 2022, and the final and definitive of the next Pluto cycle has the planet of death and regeneration facing Black Moon Lilith in Cancer, in opposition. Karma is a bitch and hits home.

    It is also a cycle related to power and power status. It won’t all be bad and some victorious moments will be there, but there is a change in the country’s position in the balance of powers in the world which is not so easy to digest. The power struggle will be intense, both externally and internally, with considerable risks of destructive manifestations. The best way to go through such a moment would be to purge – although it’s hard to believe “the swamp” can be so easily drained.

    It is a call for a deep transformation, when all things under the rug and corpses out of the basement are to be dealt with. For the nation’s people it is a call for maturity (Saturn conjoins Moon), compassion and a more humanly receptive disposition (Neptune opposition), letting illusions dissolve and realizing the empire is losing its hegemony and status, but the nation will continue. What nation should it be for its people – as opposed to against other peoples?

    This doesn’t mean the American Empire will fall by 2022, but it is collapsing and will undergo dramatic transformations in the coming decade.

    A Dystopian Renaissance

    PE: Amid so much gloom, looks like you are introducing a very hopeful concept: “Dystopian Renaissance”. That’s the exact opposite of what is being largely interpreted as our inevitable neo-Orwellian future. How would you characterize this Dystopian Renaissance – in terms of individual, collective, political and cultural struggle?

    VG: The concept emerges precisely to elucidate the extreme complexity of our times. Well, the renaissance part seems very hopeful, doesn’t it? But, there’s the dystopian part to it too. It is not a utopian renaissance, as we well know. Perhaps in 200 years, when we reach the Great Mutation into water, the same element as the magnificent Italian Renaissance, humanity might be able to feel and better comprehend deeper dimensions of life. Why not aim for Utopia next? But whatsoever may be possible by then passes through right now.

    It is now that, along with this special Great Mutation, a few significant astrological aspects point to a real change of the world-system. It takes this crucial moment in time and this period of air to elevate perspectives, to share ideas and ideals and understand how enriching it can be to build “a community with a shared future for mankind,” as Xi Jinping puts it.

    A highly enhanced turning point, opening new horizons, offering the possibility of enriching exchanges in a multipolar world, and with a call for socialism like we haven’t known before.

    Catalan Atlas, detail showing family Of Marco Polo 1254-1324 traveling by camel caravan, 1375, drawing by Spanish School. Source: Wikimedia

    Let’s not forget this moment in time also resonates with the 13th century, when Venetian Marco Polo, traveling through the Silk Roads to Asia, brought back to Europe the freshness of the Eastern winds, with news from Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty, including the “sublimation” of money into a lighter form, from coin to paper.

    At that time, there was a stellium (a concentration of planets) in Capricorn just as we had in 2020, with the following Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius (although not as a Great Mutation), and Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius as we will also have in 2023/2024. It is an absurdly dystopian context, but a turning point for a new conception of reality and the possibility for surprising new horizons.

    A new world system is in the air

    PE: Giorgio Agamben has referred to that famous Foucault intuition in Les Mots et les Choses, when Foucault writes that humankind may disappear like a figure drawn in the sand being erased by waves hitting the shore. The striking image may apply to our present, mutating condition, as we are about to enter a trans-human and even post-human era, dominated by artificial intelligence (AI) and genetic engineering.

    Agamben argues that Covid-19, global warming and, more radically, direct digital access to our psychic life – all these elements are destroying humanity. Would the Great Mutation install a different paradigm – and lead us away from post-humanity?

    FG: The rapid development in technology will be something seriously complex to deal with. It will be amazing in many ways, but not all pretty, presenting undeniable challenges, some of which are already here and about to intensify.

    What are the effects of technology and artificial intelligence in both our organic and our subjective bodies? Mind control with bidirectional devices, both collecting information and inducing commands is a work in progress.

    Perverse levels of technological control of society are a serious concern as Pluto, aka Hades, lord of the underworld, will also transit in technological and futuristic Aquarius from 2023/24 on, up until 2043/44 – times of intense social transformation, when technological advancements will blow our minds and the very conception of science will change considerably, but with serious risks of trans-human and post-human madness.

    We cannot disregard our organicity. We cannot disregard our subjectivity, either. Pluto is about transformation or domination – in other words, quoting a recent article of yours: “Here’s our future: hackers or slaves.”

    We’ve got to go hacking not only in the objective sense – which surely becomes more and more a desirable skill – but in the subjective sense as well, finding lines of flight and keeping Eros alive, the life force in us vivid.

    Considering we’re already here, living through dystopian times, we might as well make the best out of this undeniably epic adventure. Instead of succumbing to fear and isolation, overtaken by the doom and gloom, let’s not forget Wallerstein’s observation on destiny versus free will – a very cool take, by the way, which my experience as an astrologer observing collective and individual cycles very much confirms: Both exist.

    During the stable period of a world-system, its normal life when its structure is functioning well, even if there are some fluctuations in it, it is very hard to change things in the system, it tends to stabilization. It’s destiny: you gotta put a whole lot of effort to get perhaps very little change trying to escape destiny.

    But when the world-system has reached its final phase, it can no longer be rescued and there is a lot of instability. The crisis is not going away and the only possibility is change, in one way or another – it’s free will time. In the structural crisis, Wallerstein says we have more free will, our actions have a stronger impact and every little move counts to decide in which direction the change of the system will go.

    In our personal lives at this turning point in time, as Foucault questions, we may also ask ourselves: As humans, are we an obstacle or obstruction? Are we a way of imprisoning life – or are we an opening, a line of flight?

    In regard to Foucault’s words you and Agamben bring to light, please allow me to refer to the previous paragraph, just before that final one in Les Mots et les Choses, when he states that by “taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area – European culture since the sixteenth century – one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it.”

    The “man” he is referring to as the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge a couple of centuries ago, with the newer arrangements perhaps about to end, is within European references. That is neither the beginning nor the end of man, nor its only interesting expression. With huge, deep appreciation for so much of European culture, perhaps one of the things coming to a necessary end is Eurocentrism.

    Nonetheless, of course, it is deeply worrying how faces are being at the same time digitally traced by machines and hidden from other humans by masks – especially the effects of that in children. The current transition is not without epistemological effects and effects on how we conceive man, humans. But it’s not all said and done.

    To counter the objectification of humans, it may be timely to draw from the Tupis’ conception of human beings: tu + pi , seated sound. A human being is a sound which has taken a seat, has taken place and vibrates. We gotta keep our bodies, faces and words vibrant. For the native South American Tupis, each human being is a new music, a new word vibrating and co-creating life with others and nature.

    Albert Eckhout painting of a Tupi man. Source: Wikipedia

    It seems that the deeper roots of aboriginal-indigenous wisdom still need to be more fully acknowledged and reintegrated in the Americas before the reinvention of the world in the West can take place.

    Now winds blow from the East and from Eurasia, inspiring new forms of co-existence. But the controllers of capital, wealth and worldly power won’t give it up without a fight – or a few wars and a heavy load of social control via technology, capturing bodies and minds. What will it be – Great Reset or Great Mutation?

    Is there a way out? Yes. And it seems to go along the New Silk Roads and the Eurasia Integration – literally to some important extent, but symbolically as well. The West can gain a lot from opening up to the Eastern winds, the news and the ideas they bring, stories of a community of shared future for mankind. A new world-system is in the air.

    *  *  *

    Asia Times Financial is now live. Linking accurate news, insightful analysis and local knowledge with the ATF China Bond 50 Index, the world’s first benchmark cross sector Chinese Bond Indices. Read ATF now.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 21:00

  • Over A Third Of California Bar Exams Flagged For Possible Cheating
    Over A Third Of California Bar Exams Flagged For Possible Cheating

    More than 1/3 of California bar exams taken online in October were flagged for possible cheating, the state bar reported after the testing software program alerted authorities.

    California Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners is “currently reviewing 3,190 applicants” out of 9,301 who took the exam, according to a Dec. 4 statement by state bar official Tammy Campbell. According to Bloomberg Law, test takers were flagged based on several rules infractions, including having cell phones or other electronic equipment during the test, as well as gazing off-screen or having food.

    The inquiry, first reported by the ABA Journal, puts test takers flagged by the system at risk of being required to retake the exam, which is typically required before a law school graduate is allowed to work as an attorney in the state. Any review that substantiates widespread cheating also could give critics of bar exams in California and other states further ammunition to promote alternatives like diploma privilege, which allows law school grads to get licensed without taking an exam. –Bloomberg Law

    “We believe there were multiple factors that contributed to the number of flagged videos, including the unprecedented nature of this first-ever online remote bar exam and the large and diverse population who took it in California,” said state bar spokeswoman Teresa Ruano, adding “We will continue to refine and improve this process based on learnings from this first online exam.”

    Attorneys for several flagged test-takers say the allegations are preposterous and an overreaction. Georgia-based lawyer Megan Zavieh who has offices in California is representing over two-dozen of the applicants who were contacted by the CA Bar, and said that some of her clients received letters accusing people of moving their eyes out of camera range at the wrong moment.

    “It’s not only, ‘no, I didn’t do that.’ It’s, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

    California shifted to an online bar exam in October due to the pandemic. Most states which have done so are using Dallas-based ExamSoft to provide software. The company uses AI proctors who are logged into test takers’ computers, including web cams, to monitor behavior.

    So-called “Chapter 6 Notices” of potential violations were sent to numerous test takers after ExamSoft video-file software flagged the conduct to the Bar, according to ABA Journal.

    That spurred students to hire lawyers like Zavieh and Pasadena, Calif.-based ethics attorney Erin Joyce.

    Joyce said her clients are concerned because of the impact the notices they’ve received might have on their ability to gain permanent or even provisional law licenses—even if they’re ultimately exonerated. “They’re frightened and they’re angry,” she said. “They put a lot of effort and expense into the test.”

    Chapter 6 Notices contain allegations that are either “disputable” or “indisputable,” according to a list of frequently-asked questions the Bar posted on its website. A dozen types of alleged infractions are disputable and thus eligible for a hearing, according to a state bar Chapter 6 “Decisional Matrix.”

    Indisputable allegations include those in which the test taker possessed notes or other study aids, or electronic devices like cell phones or digital watches. Disputable allegations, which can be contested by a hearing, include having radios or stereos, or “food or beverages, including but not limited to coffee and water,” in exam rooms during a remote-proctored exam.-Bloomberg Law

    The allegations of cheating comes fresh on the heels of a similar online cheating scandal at West Point, where over 70 cadets were accused of cheating on a calculus exam last spring.

    Fifty-nine of the cadets admitted to cheating on the test, which was taken remotely rather than on academy grounds due to the pandemic, according to West Point officials. Two of the cases were dropped for lack of evidence, four cadets resigned, and eight cadets face honor code hearings which could result in their expulsion, according to public affairs director Lt. Col. Christopher Ophardt.

    “The honors process is working as expected, and there have been no exceptions to policy for any of these cases,” said Ophardt, adding “Cadets are being held accountable for breaking the code.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 20:40

  • Back To Square One: GOP To Block Pelosi Bid For $2,000 Checks, Will Offer CR Separating State From Foreign Aid
    Back To Square One: GOP To Block Pelosi Bid For $2,000 Checks, Will Offer CR Separating State From Foreign Aid

    Update (1920ET): Following Pelosi’s earlier plea to Republicans to agree to a bill calling for $2,000 stimulus checks which she will put to a vote in the House on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he would object to a bill boosting stimulus payments for individuals to $2,000, Bloomberg reports citing a person who participated in a private call with GOP House members. Furthermore, the Republican also plans to offer a new Continuing Resolution separating state and foreign aid from the omnibus. And since McCarthy’s position will see objection from Dems,  we are – as CNBC’s Kayla Tausche puts it – “Back at square one.”

    If the measure fails on Thursday, which it now appears certain to do, Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal will introduce a new bill, called the Cash Act, to be put on the floor Monday. That bill would codify the larger stimulus payments, Pelosi told Democrats in a private call on Wednesday, according to a person on the call.

    Trump’s demand for bigger checks came alongside various complaints about the tens of billions in pork, including hundreds of millions in foreign aid, contained in the $2.3 trillion ($900 billion in Covid-19 relief with $1.4 trillion in government funding) bill, which was passed with big bipartisan support on Monday despite virtually nobody reading the 5,500+ pages of the full legislation.

    If Trump does not sign the approved legislation by Dec. 28, the government may shut down after midnight due to lack of approved funding: “The entire country knows that it is urgent for the president to sign this bill, both to provide the coronavirus relief and to keep government open,” Pelosi said in her letter.

    Before McCarthy’s comment, Pelosi said she planned to convene the House at 9 a.m. Thursday, although that may now be moot. If her unanimous-consent request is blocked, Pelosi would then need to decide whether they want to the bring it before the entire House for a roll-call vote.

    As we explained earlier, stocks mostly shrugged off the news on the complications in Washington and on the economy because as Vital Knowledge founder Adam Crisafulli wrote, Trump’s criticism and veto threat, “won’t alter the macro narrative” and that “even if Trump actually vetoes (unlikely) and Congress fails to override it (also unlikely, given the stimulus/budget passed with veto-proof majorities), this will only delay the inevitable by 27 days (which would be unfortunate, but not material).”

    “The big debate isn’t whether the $900b stimulus gets passed into law but instead if it represents a ‘down payment’ or the last major fiscal response to the pandemic,” with the outcome of Georgia Senate races in early January playing a “big role in answering that question.”

    Raymond James analyst Ed Mills’ base case remains that the bill passed by Congress will become law, as the package passed both the House and the Senate with veto-proof margins, and $2,000 payments have no support among Republican lawmakers. He added that Trump’s “demand is arguably a net positive for Democrats’ chances in the Georgia Senate races, as Republicans will be forced on the defensive.”

    * * *

    Update (1056ET): Pelosi says she’s ‘waiting to hear from House GOP‘ over the $2,000 checks, after calling on GOP leadership to consent to a measure increasing direct stimulus payments to $2,000 during Thursday’s pro forma session at 9:00 a.m.

    Pelosi says she plans to proceed Thursday with a bill to replace the $600 stimulus checks in this week’s pandemic relief bill which was kicked back by President Trump – who Pelosi encouraged to pressure GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to get behind.

    “To do so requires the agreement of the Republican Leader.“

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

    *  *  *

    Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaled that they are open to increasing the amount for the stimulus checks after President Donald Trump threatened to veto the COVID relief bill unless the direct payment was increased to $2,000 per individual.

    “Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks. At last, the President has agreed to $2,000—Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it!” Pelosi wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

    “We spent months trying to secure $2,000 checks but Republicans blocked it. Trump needs to sign the bill to help people and keep the government open and we’re glad to pass more aid Americans need. Maybe Trump can finally make himself useful and get Republicans not to block it again,” Schumer wrote on Twitter shortly after Pelosi issued her message.

    In a video message issued earlier on Tuesday, the president threatened to veto the $2.3 trillion omnibus spending and pandemic relief bill.

    “Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists, and special interests,” the president said, “while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it.”

    “It wasn’t their fault. It was China’s fault.”

    Trump said that lawmakers need to send him a suitable piece of legislation by his standards—or else the next administration will have to sign off on the measure.

    “And maybe that administration will be me,” he added.

    The president pointed to hundreds of millions of dollars tagged for the Egyptian military, Cambodia, Burma, “gender programs” in Pakistan, and numerous other countries. These provisions were also singled out by progressives and conservatives alike as an example of pork-barrel spending.

    On Monday night, a number of lawmakers griped that they didn’t have enough time to look through the approximately 5,500-page bill (pdf).

    Trump also noted that tens of millions of dollars are going to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. “which is not even open for business,” as well as the National Gallery of Arts and the Smithsonian.

    Other non-pandemic measures were included, such as combatting the spread of Asian carp in the Great Lakes area, construction projects at the FBI, and others.

    The president said he would also veto the bill because stimulus payments are being doled out to “illegal aliens” and their families.

    “Despite all of this wasteful spending, the $900 billion package provides hardworking taxpayers only $600 [to Americans] in relief payments,” he said, arguing that not enough cash is being provided to small business owners who have suffered during the pandemic induced lockdowns.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 20:20

  • San Francisco: Drug Overdoses Have Killed Four Times More People Than COVID
    San Francisco: Drug Overdoses Have Killed Four Times More People Than COVID

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Official figures out of San Francisco show that drug overdoses have killed almost four times more people than COVID-19 this year, and yet the government continues to hand out free needles to addicts.

    “A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

    “Many people overdosed in low-income apartment buildings and in city-funded hotel rooms for the homeless. Others died on sidewalks, in alleyways and parks around the city.”

    Despite the deaths, the government continues to hand out some 5.8 million free syringes a year to drug users.

    It also appears as though lockdowns have exacerbated illegal drug use throughout the state of California.

    “Other areas of the state have seen a spike in drug use and overdoses amid lockdowns, including in Los Angeles County,” reports the Washington Examiner.

    “In 2013 in the county, fentanyl accounted for 3% of drug-related deaths. At the start of 2020, 42% of drug deaths were fentanyl-related in the area, and that number jumped to 51% when lockdowns were enacted in March.”

    San Francisco’s homeless drug user problem is so chronic that in 2019, residents began desperately installing boulders on the side of streets in an effort to prevent camping.

    A knock-on effect of the massive increase in the city’s homeless population has been the routine sight of feces on the street.

    A 2019 study discovered that each case of poop that has to be cleaned up on the streets of San Francisco costs the taxpayer $32 dollars, with 118,352 recorded reports of human feces since 2011.

    As we document in the video below, San Francisco is a shit-stained cesspool that is only getting worse, a situation increasingly being mirrored in other major Democrat-run cities across America.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here. In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 20:20

  • China Launches "Monopoly" Probe Into Alibaba, Summons Ma Over Ant Group Practices
    China Launches “Monopoly” Probe Into Alibaba, Summons Ma Over Ant Group Practices

    Update: The hits keep coming for Jack Ma as China has formally kicked off an investigation into alleged monopolistic practices at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., escalating a campaign of scrutiny over the country’s internet giants. According to a statement by the regulator:

    Recently, the State Administration of Market Supervision, based on reports, filed investigations into Alibaba Group Holdings Co., Ltd. for suspected monopolistic conduct such as “choosing one over the other”.

    BABA shares tumbled in after hours trading to its lowest since July…

    Regulators said separately they’ve summoned affiliate Ant Group Co. to a meeting intended to promote fair competition and consumer rights.

    *  *  *

    In addition to everything else that took place in the year 2020, and as we listed earlier, a lot has happened in the past 12 months including…

    • WW3 fears run rampant on social media as the US strikes Iranian army general Soleimani

    • San Francisco 49ers lose a heartbreaking Super Bowl (ok maybe that only affected me)

    • Black swan health event that leads to a historic equity market crash, and funding strains

    • Fed takes US policy rates to near 0% and institutes QE at a magnitude that puts the post GFC period to shame

    • Treasury institutes trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus

    • Unprecedented lockdowns lead to Tiger King craze

    • The world learns how to school and work remotely, changing the office space landscape forever

    • WTI front month contract trades with a negative price

    • Subsequent epic equity bull market recovery rally that pierces March highs

    • Australia burns

    • Kobe Bryant tragically dies

    • We begin to watch sports with no fans

    • Pentagon releases UFO footage

    • Quantas offers flight to nowhere

    • California wildfires burn uncontrollably and wipe out parts of Napa

    • US social unrest turns violent

    • Murder hornets

    • We lose Chadwick Boseman and Ruth Bader Ginsberg

    • Overhyped US election that leads to a volatility collapse, year-end rally

    … 2020 was also the year in which Chinese tech tycoons learned the hard way not to take on the dictator of a communist regime.

    As the FT reports, for years Alibaba founder and China’s (formerly?) richest man, Jack Ma had a safe spot at the top table of Chinese business. Members of the Chinese Entrepreneurs Association even recall an evening outing on West Lake in Hangzhou some years ago when he boasted about his close relations with the president, dating from when Xi Jinping was a provincial Communist Party secretary.

    But all that ended in the first week of November, which was supposed to end with the $37BN listing of Alibaba’s Ant Group financial business, instead saw China’s president Xi himself pulling the plug on what was meant to be the biggest IPO ever. Some time in September, China’s launched a coordinated regulatory crackdown, which in culminated with the scuttled Ant IPO and, together with tough new antitrust rules, triggered about a $140 billion, or 17%, decline in the market value of Ma’s Alibaba.

    This was meant to be a lesson to Ma – courtesy of Xi – who really pulls the strings in China. To be sure, while there was significant tension stemming from the titanic clash of the two gigantic egos of China’s most powerful man, Xi and China’s richest man, Ma, in the background regulators and banks were threatened by the rise of nimble new competitors have been lobbying hard to rein the sector in, particularly Ant and its ebullient founder.

    “He had become too arrogant,” said the head of Asian economics at one major international bank with close relations with regulators. “They needed to put a leash on the monster that Ant was becoming.”

    In the aftermath of the pulled Ant IPO, the flamboyant Ma all but vanished from public view. As of early December, with his empire under regulatory scrutiny, the man most closely identified with the meteoric rise of China Inc. was advised by the government to stay in the country, a Bloomberg source said.

    So what is Ma doing now?  As Bloomberg reports, while his wealth and influence have been curbed, Ma isn’t on the verge of a personal downfall. Instead, his public rebuke is a warning that Beijing has lost patience with the outsize power of its technology moguls, increasingly perceived as a threat to the political and financial stability President Xi Jinping prizes most.

    As Bloomberg adds, once praised as drivers of economic prosperity and symbols of the country’s technological prowess, the empires built by Jack Ma, Tencent Holdings’s chairman, “Pony” Ma Huateng, and other tycoons are now suspect after amassing hundreds of millions of users and gaining influence over almost every aspect of daily life in China. “The [Communist] Party is trying to make it clear that Ma is not bigger than the party,” says Rana Mitter, a professor specializing in Chinese politics at Oxford University. “But they also want to show that China is a good place to do business, and that means that the party needs to show that entrepreneurs can succeed.”

    So in an attempt to make amends, a beaten down Jack Ma is starting to make changes.

    As the WSJ reports, Ant Group – taking a page out of US credit card companies’ playbook – slashed borrowing limits for some users of its popular digital credit-card service, a sign the financial-technology giant is dialing back risk in its lending business following pressure from Chinese regulators. According to Ant, one of the fintech gian’ts consumer-lending platforms, Huabei, lowered credit limits for some younger borrowers “to promote more rational spending habits.” Ant didn’t provide the age range or other details about users who were affected by the changes.

    Huabei – which means “just spend” – lets users of Ant’s ubiquitous Alipay mobile app borrow money to make purchases online and in stores using their smartphones. Ant, which is controlled by billionaire Jack Ma, calls Huabei a digital unsecured revolving-credit product for daily expenditures. It functions very much like a credit card, letting people borrow interest free for up to 40 days, then charging interest on their outstanding balances. And since Ant is unregulated like traditional Chinese state-owned banks, the company’s direct provisioning of credit has sparked concerns within Beijing that this is a critical part of China’s credit infrastructure the state has little control over.

    Of course, it is this lack of regulation that makes Ant’s product that much more attractive: college students and working adults without established credit histories have been able to obtain loans from Huabei, which typically increases individuals’ borrowing limits after they repay their loans consistently.

    Ant is also a major driver behind the consumer credit explosion in China in recent years: as the WSJ notes, the ease and convenience of getting online loans has helped fuel spending among young Chinese consumers, and short-term household debt in China has soared in recent years. Many shoppers on e-commerce websites operated by Ant’s affiliate Alibaba Group Holding also use Huabei to fund their purchases.

    Ma’s Ant Financial has another popular service called Jiebei, which means “Just borrow,” and provides unsecured installment loans. Together the two digital-lending operations have been Ant’s biggest growth engine in recent years. They supplied credit to around half a billion Chinese consumers, who had a total outstanding loan balance equivalent to $263 billion at the end of June.

    As a result of the limitations on new borrowing, some users of Huabei recently took to social media to complain that their credit limits were reduced by half or more to as low as 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan, equivalent to $306 to $458. Others with much higher borrowing limits of 30,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan said their caps didn’t change.

    The self-imposed lending crackdown will send shockwaves across China’s economy, where an exponential increase in consumer lending has sparked an unprecedented consumption spree, one which had generally been welcomed by Beijing as part of China’s transformation away from a mercantilist economy, but as a result of the surge in new debt, even Beijing is starting to express concerns that there is simply too much debt sloshing around in the $46 trillion financial system, which is 125% bigger than the US banking system!

    Ant, in particular, has become China’s biggest facilitator of this explosion in digital consumer loans, many of which have been funded by small banks and trust companies that often lack sophisticated risk controls. The company supplied funds for just 2% of the outstanding loans it facilitated as of June. About 10% was funded by the issuance of asset-backed securities, and the rest came from banks and trust companies that bore the risk of the loans going bad. In essence loan creation in China is one giant securitization game, where Ant holds just a fraction of the risk.

    It’s also a big part for the feud between Ma and Beijing’s political oligarchy: when China’s government halted the Ant IPO in November, it released draft regulations that would force the company to cough up more of its own capital to support its lending operations, or scale them back.

    It’s now scaling them back.

    Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said in a speech earlier this month that China would focus on “the new too-big-to-fail risk.” He said a few tech groups dominated the micropayments business, and it was important to focus on the complexity and potential risks posed by tech giants that ventured into finance.

    The implicatios of this self-imposed slowdown inside China’s beating credit heart will be profound: just yesterday we explained that China’s credit impulse has peaked and would shrink aggressively in coming quarters before contracting, in the process jeopardizing the global reflation wave with potentially dramatic consequences for global asset prices.

    The fact that Ant has now also joined in this self-imposed credit slowdown only confirms that the reflationary wave is almost over…  ironically just as the reflation trade becomes consensus.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 19:58

  • Trump Pardons Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Charles Kushner
    Trump Pardons Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Charles Kushner

    Just 24 hours after Donald Trump issued some 15 pardons and commutations, including former campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former US congressmen Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, and the four Blackwater guards, on Wednesday the President issued a second batch of pardons in as many days, this time naming two former associates, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, as well as Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.

    Wednesday’s list also includes several people recommended by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was part of Trump’s impeachment defense team, and Ike Perlmutter, the former CEO of Marvel Entertainment and a member of the president’s private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a statement from the White House.

    Full statements below:

    Paul Manafort – Today, President Trump has issued a full and complete pardon to Paul Manafort, stemming from convictions prosecuted in the course of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, which was premised on the Russian collusion hoax. Mr. Manafort has already spent two years in prison, including a stretch of time in solitary confinement — treatment worse than what many of the most violent criminals receive. As a result of blatant prosecutorial overreach, Mr. Manafort has endured years of unfair treatment and is one of the most prominent victims of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American history. As Mr. Manafort’s trial judge observed, prior to the Special Counsel investigation, Mr. Manafort had led an “otherwise blameless life.” Since May, Mr. Manafort has been released to home confinement as a result of COVID-19 concerns.

    * * *

    Roger Stone – Today, President Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to Roger Stone, Jr. President Trump had previously commuted Mr. Stone’s sentence in July of this year. Mr. Stone is a 68-year-old man with numerous  medical conditions. Due to prosecutorial misconduct by Special Counsel Mueller’s team, Mr. Stone was treated very unfairly. He was subjected to a pre- dawn raid of his home, which the media conveniently captured on camera. Mr. Stone also faced potential political bias at his jury trial. Pardoning him will help to right the  injustices he faced at the hands of the Mueller investigation.

    * * *

    Charles Kushner – President Trump granted a full pardon to Charles Kushner. Former United States Attorney for the District of Utah Brett Tolman and the American Conservative Union’s Matt Schlapp and David Safavian support a pardon of Mr. Kushner. Since completing his sentence in 2006, Mr. Kushner has been devoted to important philanthropic organizations and causes, such as Saint Barnabas Medical Center and United Cerebral Palsy. This record of reform and charity overshadows Mr. Kushner’s conviction and 2 year sentence for preparing false tax returns, witness retaliation, and making false statements to the FEC.

    The latest list grants 26 full pardons and commutes all or part of the sentence of three additional individuals, after Trump on Tuesday issued 15 pardons and five commutations. Among those pardoned yesterday were two former Republican members of Congress, two targets of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and four military contractors convicted in the 2007 killing of more than a dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians. Last month, Trump pardoned Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser.

    Paul Manafort received the toughest sentence of any Trump associate entangled in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Manafort, who has a long roster of foreign clients and has worked for many Republican presidential candidates — including George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan — was charged and found guilty of multiple counts of false income tax returns, failure to file reports of foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud related to activity from before he joined the Trump campaign. He was sentenced by a federal judge to seven years but was released to home confinement in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 as the campaign’s convention manager. He served as Trump’s campaign chairman from May 2016 until he resigned in August 2016.

    “Mr. President, my family and I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon that you bestowed on me today. Words cannot adequately convey how grateful we are,” Manafort said in a statement following the pardon. “History will record that your Presidency accomplished more in 4 years than any of your modern-day predecessors. You truly did ‘Make America Great Again.'”

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    Roger Stone – a former campaign adviser to Donald Trump – had his 40-month prison sentence commuted in July by the president, days before he was scheduled to report to a federal penitentiary. The self-described political “dirty trickster” was charged and convicted on a seven-count indictment of obstructing justice, witness tampering and multiple counts of lying to Congress in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s full pardon nullifies Stone’s conviction entirely.

    “On behalf of my family and myself, I wish to praise God and give my deepest thanks to President Donald J. Trump for his extraordinary act of justice in issuing me a presidential pardon, ” Stone said in a statement following the announcement.

    Charles Kushner, the father of President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, pleaded guilty in 2005 to tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign contributions. He was sentenced to two years in prison but served only 14 months of that term. A nasty argument between Charles Kushner and his brother Murray led to charges of violations of campaign-finance rules as part of the same case. That led prosecutors to open an investigation into Charles’ conduct. Charles then tried to keep his sister from cooperating with prosecutors by setting up her husband with a prostitute, recording the encounter, and then threatening her with it. But that backfired when the sister handed over the tape. The elder Kushner had been one of the New York-New Jersey area’s leading Democratic donors and a key backroom political player in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 19:44

  • With Biden's New Threats, Russia Discourse More Reckless And Dangerous Than Ever: Greenwald
    With Biden’s New Threats, Russia Discourse More Reckless And Dangerous Than Ever: Greenwald

    Then-Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Brookings Institute May 27, 2015 in Washington, DC spoke about the Russia-Ukraine conflict (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

    To justify Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump, leading Democrats and their key media allies for years competed with one another to depict what they called “Russia’s interference in our elections” in the most apocalyptic terms possible. They fanatically rejected the view of the Russian Federation repeatedly expressed by President Obama — that it is a weak regional power with an economy smaller than Italy’s capable of only threatening its neighbors but not the U.S. — and instead cast Moscow as a grave, even existential, threat to U.S. democracy, with its actions tantamount to the worst security breaches in U.S. history.

    This post-2016 mania culminated with prominent liberal politicians and journalists (as well as John McCain) declaring Russia’s activities surrounding the 2016 to be an “act of war” which, many of them insisted, was comparable to Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack — the two most traumatic attacks in modern U.S. history which both spawned years of savage and destructive war, among other things.

    Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) repeatedly demanded that Russia’s 2016 “interference” be treated as “an act of war.” Hillary Clinton described Russian hacking as “a cyber 9/11.” And here is Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on MSNBC in early February, 2018, pronouncing Russia “a hostile foreign power” whose 2016 meddling was the “equivalent” of Pearl Harbor, “very much on par” with the “seriousness” of the 1941 attack in Hawaii that helped prompt four years of U.S. involvement in a world war.

    With the Democrats, under Joe Biden, just weeks away from assuming control of the White House and the U.S. military and foreign policy that goes along with it, the discourse from them and their media allies about Russia is becoming even more unhinged and dangerous. Moscow’s alleged responsibility for the recently revealed, multi-pronged hack of U.S. Government agencies and various corporate servers is asserted — despite not a shred of evidence, literally, having yet been presented — as not merely proven fact, but as so obviously true that it is off-limits from doubt or questioning.

    Any questioning of this claim will be instantly vilified by the Democrats’ extremely militaristic media spokespeople as virtual treason. “Now the president is not just silent on Russia and the hack. He is deliberately running defense for the Kremlin by contradicting his own Secretary of State on Russian responsibility,” pronounced CNN’s national security reporter Jim Sciutto, who last week depicted Trump’s attempted troop withdrawal from Syria and Germany as “ceding territory” and furnishing “gifts” to Putin. More alarmingly, both the rhetoric to describe the hack and the retaliation being threatened are rapidly spiraling out of control.

    Democrats (along with some Republicans long obsessed with The Russian Threat, such as Mitt Romney) are casting the latest alleged hack by Moscow in the most melodramatic terms possible, ensuring that Biden will enter the White House with tensions sky-high with Russia and facing heavy pressure to retaliate aggressively. Biden’s top national security advisers and now Biden himself have, with no evidence shown to the public, repeatedly threatened aggressive retaliation against the country with the world’s second-largest nuclear stockpile.

    Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO) — one of the pro-war Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee who earlier this year joined with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to block Trump’s plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan — announced: “this could be our modern day, cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor,” adding: “Our nation is under assault.” The second-ranking Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin (D-IL), pronounced: “This is virtually a declaration of war by Russia.”

    Meanwhile, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has for years been casting Russia as a grave threat to the U.S. while Democrats mocked him as a relic of the Cold War (before they copied and then surpassed him), described the latest hack as “the equivalent of Russian bombers flying undetected over the entire country.” The GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee also blasted Trump for his failure to be “aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action,” though — like virtually every prominent figure demanding tough “retaliation” — Romney failed to specify what he had in mind that would be sufficient retaliation for “the equivalent of Russian bombers flying undetected over the entire country.”

    For those keeping track at home: that’s two separate “Pearl Harbors” in less than four years from Moscow (or, if you prefer, one Pearl Harbor and one 9/11). If Democrats actually believe that, it stands to reason that they will be eager to embrace a policy of belligerence and aggression toward Russia. Many of them are demanding this outright, mocking Trump for failing to attack Russia — despite no evidence that they were responsible — while their well-trained liberal flock is suggesting that the non-response constitutes some form of “high treason.”

    Indeed, the Biden team has been signalling that they intend to quickly fulfill demands for aggressive retaliation. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Biden “accused President Trump [] of ‘irrational downplaying’” of the hack while “warning Russia that he would not allow the intrusion to ‘go unanswered’ after he takes office.” Biden emphasized that once the intelligence assessment is complete, “we will respond, and probably respond in kind.”

    Threats and retaliation between the U.S. and Russia are always dangerous, but particularly so now. One of the key nuclear arms agreements between the two nuclear-armed nations, the New START treaty, will expire in February unless Putin and Biden can successfully negotiate a renewal: sixteen days after Biden is scheduled to take office. “That will force Mr. Biden to strike a deal to prevent one threat — a nuclear arms race — while simultaneously threatening retaliation on another,” observed the Times.

    This escalating rhetoric from Washington about Russia, and the resulting climate of heightened tensions, are dangerous in the extreme. They are also based in numerous myths, deceits and falsehoods:

    First, absolutely no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest, let alone prove, that Russia is responsible for these hacks. It goes without saying that it is perfectly plausible that Russia could have done this: it’s the sort of thing that every large power from China and Iran to the U.S. and Russia have the capability to do and wield against virtually every other country including one another.

    But if we learned nothing else over the last several decades, we should know that accepting claims that emanate from the U.S. intelligence community about adversaries without a shred of evidence is madness of the highest order. We just had a glaring reminder of the importance of this rule: just weeks before the election, countless mainstream media outlets laundered and endorsed the utterly false claim that the documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop were “Russian disinformation,” only for officials to acknowledge once the harm was done that there was no evidence — zero — of Russian involvement.

    Yet that is exactly what the overwhelming bulk of media outlets are doing again: asserting that Russia is behind these hacks despite having no evidence of its truth. The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro, host of the paper’s popular The Daily podcast, asked his colleague, national security reporter David Sanger, what evidence exists to assert that Russia did this. As Barbaro put it, even Sanger is “allowing that early conclusions could all be wrong, but that it’s doubtful.” Indeed, Sanger acknowledged to Barbaro that they have no proof, asserting instead that the basis on which he is relying is that Russia possesses the sophistication to carry out such a hack (as do several other nation-states), along with claiming that the hack has what he calls the “markings” of Russian hackers.

    But this tactic was exactly the same one used by former intelligence officials, echoed by these same media outlets, to circulate the false pre-election claim that the documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop were “Russian disinformation”: namely, they pronounced in lockstep, the material from Hunter’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information.” This was also exactly the same tactic used by the U.S. intelligence community in 2001 to falsely blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks, claiming that their chemical analysis revealed a substance that was “a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program.”

    These media outlets will, if pressed, acknowledge their lack of proof that Russia did this. Despite this admitted lack of proof, media outlets are repeatedly stating Russian responsibility as proven fact.

    “Scope of Russian Hacking Becomes Clear: Multiple U.S. Agencies Were Hit,” one New York Times headline proclaimed, and the first line of that article, co-written by Sanger, stated definitively: “The scope of a hacking engineered by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies became clearer on Monday.” The Washington Post deluged the public with identically certain headlines:

    Nobody in the government has been as definitive in asserting Russian responsibility as corporate media outlets. Even Trump’s hawkish Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, crafted his accusation against Moscow with caveats and uncertainty: “I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”

    If actual evidence ultimately emerges demonstrating Russian responsibility, it would not alter how dangerous it is that — less than twenty years after the Iraq WMD debacle and less than a couple of years after media endorsement of endless Russiagate falsehoods — the most influential media outlets continue to mindlessly peddle as Truth whatever the intelligence community feeds them, without the need to see any evidence that what they’re claiming is actually true. Even more alarmingly, large sectors of the public that venerate these outlets continue to believe that what they hear from them must be true, no matter how many times they betray that trust. The ease with which the CIA can disseminate whatever messaging it wants through friendly media outlets is stunning.

    Second, the very idea that this hack could be compared to rogue and wildly aberrational events such as Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attack is utterly laughable on its face. One has to be drowning in endless amounts of jingoistic self-delusion to believe that this hack — or, for that matter, the 2016 “election interference” — is a radical departure from international norms as opposed to a perfect reflection of them.

    Just as was true of 2016 fake Facebook pages and Twitter bots, it is not an exaggeration to say that the U.S. Government engages in hacking attacks of this sort, and ones far more invasive, against virtually every country on the planet, including Russia, on a weekly basis. That does not mean that this kind of hacking is either justified or unjustified. It does mean, however, that depicting it as some particularly dastardly and incomparably immoral act that requires massive retaliation requires a degree of irrationality and gullibility that is bewildering to behold.

    The NSA reporting enabled by Edward Snowden by itself proved that the NSA spies on virtually anyone it can. Indeed, after reviewing the archive back in 2013, I made the decision that I would not report on U.S. hacks of large adversary countries such as China and Russia because it was so commonplace for all of these countries to hack one another as aggressively and intrusively as they could that it was hardly newsworthy to report on this (the only exception was when there was a substantial reason to view such spying as independently newsworthy, such as Sweden’s partnering with NSA to spy on Russia in direct violation of the denials Swedish officials voiced to their public).

    Other news outlets who had access to Snowden documents, particularly The New York Times, were not nearly as circumspect in exposing U.S. spying on large nation-state adversaries. As a result, there is ample proof published by those outlets (sometimes provoking Snowden’s strong objections) that the U.S. does exactly what Russia is alleged to have done here — and far worse.

    “Even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from [China’s] Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors — directly into Huawei’s networks,” reported The New York Times’ David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth in 2013, adding that “the agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart.”

    In 2013, the Guardian revealed “an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow,” and added: “foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts.” Meanwhile, “Sweden has been a key partner for the United States in spying on Russia and its leadership, Swedish television said on Thursday,” noted Reuters, citing what one NSA document described as “a unique collection on high-priority Russian targets, such as leadership, internal politics.”

    Other reports revealed that the U.S. had hacked into the Brazilian telecommunications system to collect data on the whole population, and was spying on Brazil’s key leaders (including then-President Dilma Rousseff) as well as its most important companies such as its oil giant Petrobras and its Ministry of Mines and Energy. The Washington Post reported: “The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.” And on and on.

    Read the rest of the report here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 19:40

  • Rich Millennials Plot The End Of Civilization
    Rich Millennials Plot The End Of Civilization

    Authored by Doug French via The Mises Institute,

    The New York Times managed to find some young people whose silver spoons provide a sour taste in their mouths. To hear them talk, their good fortune is making them sick. 

    “I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible,” Sam Jacobs, 25, told the Times.

    Jacobs went off to college a normal young man and came back a socialist. Suddenly his family’s “extreme, plutocratic wealth” became too much of a burden for him. 

    “He wants to put his inheritance toward ending capitalism,” Zoë Beery wrote for the NYT, “and by that he means using his money to undo systems that accumulate money for those at the top, and that have played a large role in widening economic and racial inequality.”

    Wow, that is some self-loathing. If only Ludwig von Mises were able to counsel young Jacobs, whose grandfather founded Qualcomm and who is set to inherit $100 million. In his book Epistemological Problems of Economics, Mises wrote, “Through all the changes in the prevailing system of social stratification, moral philosophers continued to hold fast to the fundamental idea of Cicero’s doctrine that making money is degrading.”

    Beery writes that wealth is concentrated in the upper brackets and “Millennials will be the recipients of the largest generational shift of assets in American history.” 

    That doesn’t seem like a worrying thought; however, it is for Rachel Gelman, a thirty-year-old in Oakland, California, who described her politics to Beery as “anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and abolitionist.”

    “My money is mostly stocks, which means it comes from underpaying and undervaluing working-class people, and that’s impossible to disconnect from the economic legacies of Indigenous genocide and slavery,” the guilty Gelman said.

    “Once I realized that, I couldn’t imagine doing anything with my wealth besides redistribute it to these communities.”

    Mises saw it differently.

    “The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody; the process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples’ want satisfaction. The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologists prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers,” he wrote in The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality.

    Elizabeth Baldwin is a thirty-four-year-old democratic socialist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was adopted from India by a white family when she was a baby. Now, thanks to her adoptive parents, she is wealthy, with a stock portfolio containing shares in Coca-Cola and Exxon-Mobil. 

    But, she hates the thought of having her wealth tied up in multinational corporation shares and instead “would rather put my money into a community that has been denied economic resources and disrupts the system.” 

    She’s directing her funds toward what she and other wealthy millennials describe as the “solidarity economy.” Fellow traveler and democratic socialist, Emma Thomas, a twenty-nine-year-old, described what she’s now investing in as “an economy that is about exchange and taking care of needs, that is cooperative and sustainable, and that doesn’t demand unfettered growth.”

    “At some point, these numbers on a screen are imaginary,” Thomas told the Times.

    “But what’s not imaginary is whether you have shelter, food and a community. Those are true returns.”

    Where do these ideas come from? University faculty, of course. Richard D. Wolff, a Marxist and an emeritus economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst said he has been professionally arguing against capitalism’s selling points since his teaching career began, in 1967, but that his millennial students “are more open to hearing that message than their parents ever were.”

    We can only thank goodness the parents of these young people believed in serving customers and saving their wealth. This wealth was not created nefariously. As Murray Rothbard explained, “On the free market, it is a happy fact that the maximization of the wealth of one person or group redounds to the benefit of all.” 

    What these millennials are up to is not to be ignored. As Mises wrote in his book Liberalism, “Modern civilization will not perish unless it does so by its own act of self-destruction.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 19:35

  • China To "De-Risk" Both Monetary And Fiscal Policy In 2021: SocGen
    China To “De-Risk” Both Monetary And Fiscal Policy In 2021: SocGen

    While the U.S. continues to print money as though there will be zero consequences and while a China-borne virus (or, rather, the response to the virus) continues to ravage economies globally, China is planning on shoring up and “normalizing” both its fiscal and monetary policy heading into 2021.

    A new note from SocGen to clients on Monday of this week says that the Chinese government at the annual Economic Work Conference telegraphed that it is “poised to scale down both monetary and fiscal policy impulses from here, and that the focus have been shifted back toward controlling risks, including local governments’ implicit debt, banks’ capital adequacy, housing stability and too-big-to-fail companies.”

    Regarding fiscal policy, SocGen predicts that China will be “still proactive but less accommodative.”

    The stance was described as “proactive”, focusing on “effectiveness” and “sustainability”. The wording signals a less accommodative stance signalled up until 3Q, when it was stated that “proactive fiscal policy has to be even more proactive”. While the government should support important tasks such as promoting technological development, accelerating structural adjustment and improving income allocation, it also needs to further mitigate the risk of implicit local government debt.

    “This echoes comments from policymakers that expressed concerns over local government debt sustainability,” SocGen said. “We expect the government to announce a smaller fiscal deficit target of 3% of GDP (versus above 3.6% this year), the quota of special LGB issuance to decline considerably from RMB3.75tn this year to around RMB3tn next year, and no special CGB issuance.”

    But the bigger shock to the global financial system could be the result of “normalization” continuing for China’s monetary policy. At the CEWC, China said it would stick to “prudent” monetary
    policy that aims to be “flexible”, “targeted” and “reasonably appropriate”.     Which, naturally, contrasts with the rest of the world – especially the U.S. – whose monetary policy has become “print money and buy anything that isn’t bolted to the floor”. 

    SocGen said that China’s statements regarding “maintaining M2 and TSF growth” and “keeping the macro leverage ratio largely stable” is likely a “clear reconfirmation that monetary policy intends to continue to normalise back toward a status of stable leverage, after credit growth significantly outpacing economic growth throughout 2020.”

    The bank predicts that “TSF growth will slow from 13.5% currently to around 10% by end-2021.”

    Among other initiatives, take on housing problems in big cities and promote green development. The note also says China’s focus will turn to expanding domestic demand in 2021. SocGen wrote:

    The CEWC acknowledged that the key to expanding consumption is to increase employment, enhance the social security system and improve income allocation. It pledged to remove administrative measures that obstruct purchases in order to unleash the potential of rural consumption; to improve the occupational training and education system in order to support quality employment; and to increase public spending on education, healthcare and pensions in order to lower savings. Regarding investments, like this year, the government will focus on new infrastructure, manufacturing upgrades, old town renovation and logistics infrastructure upgrades. Mindful of debt sustainability concerns, it also stressed that over-investment in emerging industries needs to be avoided.

    Assuming China’s idea of monetary normalization is different from Jerome Powell’s (to hike interest rates once before capitulating horrifically and, only months later, implementing infinite QE while embarrassingly explaining on national television that “we print it digitally”), the country could wind up taking the lead on leading the global economy onto a drastically different path in 2021.

    What would be even more interesting would be if part of China’s “de-risking” includes the country deciding it no longer wants the “risk on” position of owning too many U.S. Treasuries. 

    Maybe there’s a reason China has been hoarding all that gold after all…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 19:20

  • Ed and Ash's Holiday Send-Off: Looking Ahead to 2021 (LIVE)
    Ed and Ash’s Holiday Send-Off: Looking Ahead to 2021 (LIVE)

    Tune in for this special edition of the Daily Briefing to hear from Ed and Ash live at 4:30 PM ET. They will answer audience questions, provide an update on what they’re seeing in markets this holiday season, and look ahead to the opportunities and macro risks for 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 19:12

  • Mandatory Vaccines & Woke Logic
    Mandatory Vaccines & Woke Logic

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    In response to COVID-19, Cornell University requires that students returning to campus must receive a flu shot.

    That’s not a typo: they want you to have a flu shot… to battle Covid.

    Obviously the flu shot doesn’t protect you from COVID-19. But hey, this isn’t the first COVID response that makes absolutely no sense.

    But it does indicate that Cornell, and other universities, might require students to receive a COVID vaccine when they become widely available.

    In fact, in its “Behavioral Compact” which Cornell forced students to agree to before returning to campus, the very first line states,

    “Until there is an effective vaccine for COVID-19, we live in a world of significantly enhanced community and personal health risks.”

    The compact goes on to explain how everyone has a responsibility to adhere to the safety requirements, not just for themselves, but to keep the entire community safe, especially those most at risk.

    And this, apparently, means requiring that everyone have a flu shot.

    Well, not quite everyone:

    The university will be happy to exempt Black, Ingenious, and People of Color (BIPOC) from the flu shot mandate.

    Cornell’s website states that “due to longstanding systemic racism and health inequities in this country,” the university understands that these “requirements may feel suspect or even exploitative” to BIPOC people.

    For example, “Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) have been mistreated, and used by people in power, sometimes for profit or medical gain.”

    And to be clear, Cornell’s claim is 100% true.

    The Tuskegee syphilis experiments come to mind, in which the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control pretended to treat black subjects for syphilis from 1932-1972.

    In reality the government was studying the progression of untreated syphilis, allowing the black subjects to be killed slowly and painfully, while spreading the disease.

    The whole experiment was a disgusting lie that turned its subjects into unwitting lab rats.

    The website continues:

    “At the same time, we know that long-standing social inequalities and health disparities have resulted in COVID-19 disproportionately affecting BIPOC individuals. Higher percentages of individuals from these communities become infected with COVID, and the health outcomes related to infection are often more serious.”

    So, to summarize:

    – Cornell mandated the flu shot to keep the most vulnerable people safe from COVID.

    – BIPOC people are among the most vulnerable.

    – Therefore Cornell exempted BIPOC people from the flu shot.

    MAKES PERFECT SENSE!

    You’d think that if the flu shot truly were necessary to keep people safe, then Cornell would demand that EVERYONE take the shot.

    You can’t have it both ways. Either the flu shot is critical and necessary to protect the most vulnerable, or it’s not.

    And if it is critical, then why would Cornell allow the most vulnerable to slip through the cracks?

    And if the university does not believe the flu shot is critical, then why subject anyone to the requirements?

    Also– why are BIPOC people the only ones who are allowed to not trust the medical establishment?

    I seem to remember a certain Dr. Fauci admitting that he lied at the beginning of the pandemic, when he told people that masks would not help slow the spread of COVID-19. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the lies and coverup from the World Health Organization.

    So haven’t we all been lied to, at least by certain key figures in the medical establishment, about COVID?

    But if you’re not BIPOC, you’re apparently not allowed to have a different opinion, express skepticism, or raise any concerns at all.

    The irony here is that Cornell is supposed to be a UNIVERSITY after all.

    So if they really feel that a flu shot is critical and necessary to protect vulnerable people in their community, perhaps they might try EDUCATING their students about why they believe this is an appropriate public health policy, as opposed to coercing certain ethnic groups, while exempting others.

    Don’t worry, Cornell addresses that too:

    “we understand that someone may know the science and still feel distrusting of health care and may have addition (sic) questions.” [note the grammatical error from one of the nation’s top universities.]

    You have to understand that the Social Justice Warrior is a walking contradiction.

    They care so much about inequality in health outcomes for people of color, that they will hand them an excuse on a silver platter to allow that inequality to continue.

    They recognize that BIPOC people have reasons not to trust the establishment, but everyone else is a science denier for simply asking questions, and wanting more information.

    They say that vaccines are not just to keep the individual safe, but the community as well. But it’s acceptable for BIPOC people to ignore this.

    Sort of like how opening your business causes COVID-19 to spread, but “peaceful protests” are so righteous that they can’t spread disease among their tightly packed crowds.

    *  *  *

    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, 12/23/2020 – 19:00

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Dec 23

Today’s News 23rd December 2020

  • Germany Outraged Over "Unjustified" Russian Tit-For-Tat Sanctions On Berlin Officials
    Germany Outraged Over “Unjustified” Russian Tit-For-Tat Sanctions On Berlin Officials

    Germany has expressed outrage over what it says are “unjustified” sanctions leveled by Russia on Tuesday in response to prior German punitive sanctions against Kremlin intelligence officials over the alleged state-sponsored poisoning of opposition activist and political figure Alexei Navalny.

    The AFP reports on the tit-for-tat measures:

    The charge d’affaires at the German embassy in Moscow, Beate Grzeski, was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry and informed that “countermeasures in the form of travel bans against German state institutions have been ordered”, the source said.

    Alexei Navalny, via AP

    The German government source added: “While this past pattern of Russian countermeasures is known, they remain in the view of the German government unjustified,” according to AFP.

    “We continue to call on Russia to clarify the use of a chemical weapon on Russian territory against a Russian citizen,” the official said. “Russia has shown no willingness to do so.”

    Russia’s foreign ministry earlier said it considers the initial German action to have been the unnecessary start of the “confrontational” tit-for-tat, which had been imposed in October. Here’s the latest Russian statement announcing the new travel ban aimed at German officials:

    “The countries that initiated this measure presented no evidence either to the Russian authorities, in defiance of repeated requests dispatched to them, or to their own partners in the EU.

    Under the veil of secrecy the EU Council adopted a hasty confrontational political decision running counter to the international legal prerogatives of the UN Security Council and the Helsinki principles of non-intervention in the internal affairs, cooperation among states and diligent compliance with obligations assumed under international law. The concrete names were selected arbitrarily to match the EU Council’s decision in question,” the Foreign Ministry said.

    The EU officials targeted by Russia have yet to be named by the Kremlin, but the Swedish and French embassies were notified that the expanded list includes members of their government as well.

    Meanwhile there are now bizarre claims that Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent, was actually stealthily placed in Navalny’s underwear before he fell ill on a Russian flight on August 20. 

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

    This is said to be based on an inadvertent phone “confession” made by one of the Russian intelligence agents said to have been involved in the plot.

    Navalny has been recovering in Germany after he was flown out of Russia by an emergency medical transport following his dramatic collapse and going unconscious on the Russian commercial flight.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 01:00

  • 2020: The Year The Church Was As Sharp As A Two-Edged Marshmallow
    2020: The Year The Church Was As Sharp As A Two-Edged Marshmallow

    Authored by Rob Slane via TheBlogMire.com,

    Read Part1: The Year We Lost The Plot here…

    Read Part 2: The Year We Let Ourselves Be Infantilised And Dehumanised here…

    Read Part 3: The Year We Sold Our Liberties For A Medical Tyranny here…

    It is a curious fact that the Bible contains the phrase “Fear not” many times, whereas the word “nice” is never used (except of course in some of the really marshmallowy modern translations). Some websites tell us that we are exhorted not to fear 365 times, which would be lovely for someone making a book titled, “Round the year with no fear” – but alas it is not so. There aren’t 365. Nevertheless, however many times the phrase or sentiment is used, it is precisely that number more than the number of times the exhortation to be nice is used.

    Yet, you’d hardly know it to look at the state of many churches at the moment. There seems to be an overwhelming emphasis on being “nice”, which generally means never saying anything provocative or dangerous or which could be seen as being judgemental. Yet when along came a virus, fear seemed to be in plenteous supply.

    I must admit to being more than a little stunned by the reaction of many churches this year. Whatever calamities befall us in life, Christians are exhorted to overcome by seeing them as a “light momentary affliction,” which is “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (2 Corinthians 4:17). This does not mean never fearing. Rather, it means that we are to overcome that fear through faith. So in Psalm 91, the Psalmist can say:

    “You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.”

    And he says this not because he’s a stoic, but because he’s just said this:

    “I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

    True belief in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ is supposed to equip the Christian to overcome fear. Yet it has seemed to me that the reaction of much of the church to a coronavirus with an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.2% – 0.26%, has really been no different to that of the non-Christian. What could have been a glorious time for the church to shine, with national leaders exhorting the nation to repent, exhorting people to overcome their fears by embracing the Gospel of the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, became a non-event.

    But this is not the half of it. Fear of the virus has shaped the way many have responded to the most astonishing powers over churches for eight centuries. You have to go back to 1208 to see such a closure of churches, which was done by a Papal Interdict (interestingly enough on 23rd March – the same day as Lockdown began) which lasted for six years.

    Not quite six years this time, but a third of a year no less! And no, the state did not close churches during the Spanish Flu, yet when a virus of less than a tenth the lethality of Spanish Flu came on the scene (and far, far less than this for under 60s), the church largely rolled over. What was most incredible, was the lack of crying out to God for deliverance. And here it matters not whether people thought the Plague had come to town, or that the reaction to the virus was massively disproportionate, the response should have been the same: much anguished and fervent prayer for deliverance, which is the pattern set out in Scripture, and is how our ancestors would have reacted.

    I understand there may have been nervousness back in March, when some feared we were about to see a sort of Plague coming our way. However, at the very least the churches could have said to the Government, “Okay, you’ve said three weeks and we’ll hold you to that. But if you cannot come up with an evidence-based justification as to how opening churches and letting healthy people gather together is detrimental, we’re going to defy you and do it anyway.”

    Defiance? Hardly! Not only do the majority of the churches in the country seem to think the state has absolute jurisdiction over the church (it doesn’t), but they have allowed it to reshape the way they worship, including singing, the covering of faces with bits of cloth, and the ceasing of physical gatherings and physical fellowship. The irony of course is that this is done ostensibly in obedience to God, yet the Bible commands us to worship God together physically (Hebrews 10:25); to cultivate fellowship together physically (Acts 2:42); and to sing loudly (eg. Psalm 47:1).

    Many churches have kidded themselves that this can all be done remotely, over Zoom. Well, no. If God says we are to gather physically together, sing together, and have close fellowship together, it’s very likely that if these things are not done for months on end, you are going to find churches emptying and fraying at the seams. Furthermore, many of the things which have been foisted on us by state diktat have amazingly been turned into expressions of how we are to love our neighbour. Take masks. Back in March the state told us repeatedly not to wear them. Then in July, when the epidemic was over, they told us to wear them. And many in the church not only went along with this unscientific drivel, but the likes of the Archbishop of Canterbury turned it into an expression of how we are to love one another. Before 2020, the idea that a state mandate could be connected with Christian love would have seemed faintly absurd. But it it seems that Government has now acquired the Power of Love, to add to its many other astonishing powers!

    2020 has exposed a feebleness and a hollowness at the heart of many churches, as well as a lack of proper theological framework with which to look at the whole Covid situation and frame a response to it. Instead, many churches have let the likes of Johnson, Hancock, Whitty and Vallance do their thinking for them, implementing whatever hairbrained schemes these people come up with to perpetuate the fear and hysteria which they have stoked up all year long. I suspect that many of those same churches will be wringing their hands next year, as the policies they failed to challenge throughout this year come to home to roost and we see untold misery coming upon millions, with the poorest suffering most.

    The result of all this is that the church is being decimated, and the watching world has not exactly been given a wonderful lesson about how faith in the King of Kings and Lord of Lords can help us become “more than conquerors”. If the church is to recover from this – which I have no doubt it will in time – a lot of very serious questions need to be asked, followed by repentance, followed by a massive work of reformation.

    The feebleness must go. The hollowness must go. The niceness must go. The paltry theology must go. The marshmallow must go.

    None of what I’ve said above is nice. Then again, it wasn’t meant to be. But it was necessary.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/23/2020 – 00:05

  • US Navy Patent Describes EM Drive For "Flying Triangle" Craft 
    US Navy Patent Describes EM Drive For “Flying Triangle” Craft 

    There is potential for conspiracy gold in a 2018 patent filed by aerospace engineer Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, who works for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, a research organization within the Navy that specializes in electromagnetic drives and superconductors. 

    The patent (US10144532B2) describes “a craft using an inertial mass reduction device comprises of an inner resonant cavity wall, an outer resonant cavity, and microwave emitters. The electrically charged outer resonant cavity wall and the electrically insulated inner resonant cavity wall form a resonant cavity. The microwave emitters create high-frequency electromagnetic waves throughout the resonant cavity causing the resonant cavity to vibrate in an accelerated mode and create a local polarized vacuum outside the outer resonant cavity wall.” 

    The shape of this plane is one that resembles a flying triangle. 

    In August of 2019, The Drive filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Navy to shed more light on the patent. While it’s still unknown if those requests have been answered, further investigation through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Public Patent Application Information Retrieval database revealed that superconductors and the electromagnetic field generator, may in fact, already be in operation in some manner.

    If the technologies described in the patent are already operational, does this mean the Navy is building UFOs?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 23:45

  • The Top 'Owners' Of America's President-Elect Joe Biden
    The Top ‘Owners’ Of America’s President-Elect Joe Biden

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Some of the top owners of America’s President-Elect Joe Biden are entirely secret because a corrupt U.S. Supreme Court, in the infamous 2010 Citizens United case, encouraged not only corruption but corruption that’s entirely secret or “dark money.” 

    However, most of the individuals who purchased Biden to become the U.S. President did so under the previously existing laws, which require public reporting of their donations.

    Here, then, are the top ten publicly known donors to the Biden campaign, but these are all via some sort of Political Action Committee or PAC, and therefore most are in conjunction with other billionaires and centi-millionaires, instead of entirely solo donations:

    Top Contributors, federal election data for Joe Biden, 2020 cycle

    totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

    1. Bloomberg LP [Michael Bloomberg] $56,796,137

    2. Future Forward USA [largely Dustin Moskowitz] $29,917,229

    3. Priorities USA/Priorities USA Action [Hillary backers] $25,841,199

    4. Asana  [Moskowitz & Rosenstein] $21,937,902

    5. Sixteen Thirty Fund [dark money] $19,874,655

    6. Democracy PAC [George Soros] $19,000,000

    7. Senate Majority PAC [Democratic billionaires] $12,371,874

    8. American Bridge 21st Century [largely Soros] $10,260,573

    9. Paloma Partners [Donald Sussman] $9,016,248

    10. Euclidean Capital [James Simons] $7,006,805

    Source: OpenSecrets

    The 11th-largest (which will now be shown) happens to be not Democratic billionaires but Republican billionaires. However, Michael Bloomberg, the former Republican Mayor of NYC, was Biden’s largest donor, and therefore could also be considered to be a Republican donor to Biden’s campaign.

    Defending Democracy Together [Republican billionaires] $6,776,862

    In other words: the distinction between Republican billionaires and Democratic billionaires is no longer quite clear. Although the manicured PR for each of the two major Parties accentuates the ideological differences between the two, those differences have greatly decreased, except that on the U.S. Supreme Court the Republican ‘Justices’ are far-right (extremist conservatives) whereas the Democratic ‘Justices’ are centrist (liberals). None are, at all, progressives. Progressives don’t exist on that Court. The numbers and natures of that Court’s unanimous decisions make clear that no leftist jurist (progressive or otherwise) sits there. Whereas some billionaires are centrist and others are far-right, none are any sort of leftist. Nor does any leftist candidate for national political office receive any donation from any billionaire but only from poor and middle-class donors. Both of America’s Parties represent mainly the interests of billionaires, and this has been documented in the only scientific studies that have been done of the subject. America is an aristocracy not a democracy.

    In addition to those and other donations that were made either entirely or mainly by particular billionaires, Biden’s campaign utilized “bundlers,” or well-connected wealthy individuals who invited other well-connected wealthy individuals to their private fund-raising parties for Biden’s campaign; and the list that the Biden campaign assembled of all its bundlers who raised at least $100,000 for the campaign will be presented here.

    However, first will be noted the hostile reader-comments reactions when the early version of this list – which then was of bundlers who had raised at least $25,000 for the campaign – was made public at the Democratic Party website which is written and run by Taegan Goddard, “Political Wire,” which headlined on 27 December 2019, prior even to the earliest of all the state primaries and caucuses, “Biden Discloses His Bundlers”, and the 36 reader-comments there were overwhelmingly hostile, such as “Gee Taegan, could you make it seem any more suspicious and improper?” 

    Those readers were angry that a Democratic Party news-site would publish an indication that their Party utilizes the same corrupt practices that the Republican billionaires’ Party does. They weren’t grateful for the non-partisan information they had just received, but wanted it not to have been made public. No other news-site did publish it — only Goddard’s site did.

    And, when, at the end of all of the campaigns the Biden organization issued its legally obligatory final financial reports, on 1 November 2020, neither Goddard nor any other news-site published it: “Once burned, twice shy,” and Goddard didn’t want to get “burned” again.

    *  *  *

    On 27 November 2007, C-Span showed a Joe Biden Town Hall. A brief clip from that was posted online as “User Clip: Joe Biden 2007, Money in Politics”, and here’s my transcription from what I consider to be the most revealing (about Biden’s values) part of it:

    Source: c-span.org

    27 November 2007, Iowa Town Hall

    (0:40-) “People who accept money [from lobbyists] aren’t bad people. But it’s human nature. You go out and bundle $250,000 for me, all legal, and then you call me after I am elected, and say “I would like to come and talk about something.” You didn’t buy me, but it’s human nature, you helped me. I’m going to say, “Sure, come on in.” … What it does mean, it means that the front of the line is always filled by people whose pockets are filled, people who are special interests. Most of you are no part of any special interest.”

    He went on there to promise that if elected President he will change that, by campaigning constantly (AFTER winning the Presidency — not BEFORE) against the corrupt system which had made him President. He thinks that his audience will believe in the tooth-fairy, if only he tells them that the tooth-fairy exists and that he’s it. The deceptive irrelevant line from all of the corrupt candidates is the same: “I’m the most electable one!” But corrupt people constantly lie, and nobody is actually certain whom the “most electable” one is; but that’s really not even the question here. What the Democratic primaries are actually about isn’t about beating Trump. He’s not even a candidate in the Democratic primaries. They’re not about ‘beating Donald Trump’, but instead about whom the person will be that’s going to be running against Trump in the general election. The primaries won’t be selecting the next President. They will only narrow the field of contenders, to two. Which two? That’s the question here.

    Of course, lots of Democrats think that any Democrat will be better than Trump. And lots of Republicans believe that Trump is better than any Democrat.

    Biden was talking there regarding not the billionaires but the merely wealthy and well-connected individuals who had raised in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for him — each one of them.

    The billionaires aren’t in “the front of the line,” nor even in any “line”; they are instead maybe visitors for private meetings with the President, or else on the phone with him, or else (if the matter is illegal) maybe sending one’s private agent to meet privately with that billionaire’s private agent. This is how the business of the U.S. Government — the business of America’s ‘democracy’ — is getting done, nowadays. My own guess is that the two biggest owners of Joe Biden now are Michael Bloomberg (representing mainly the financial industries or “Wall Street”) and Bernard Schwartz (representing mainly the military industries or “MIC”).

    As for any mere voter, that person gets his or her ‘news’ from corporations that are owned by and/or serve the billionaires (such as Bloomberg or Schwartz or Bezos or Musk or etc.), and gets his or her views from that ‘news’, so is less than being a pawn on the American chessboard, where that aristocracy are  the ‘king’. The country is jointly controlled by the Republican billionaires and the Democratic billionaires.

    A reasonable expectation would be that Biden will serve the billionaires, though his rhetoric will be phrased to be acceptable to the voters. So, that will be no basic change. America will remain an aristocracy, no democracy.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 23:25

  • First Evidence of Microplastics Found In Human Placentas
    First Evidence of Microplastics Found In Human Placentas

    For the first time ever, microplastic particles were detected in the placentas of unborn babies, according to researchers who warn these “potentially harmful (plastic) particles is a matter of great concern.”

    The study, published in the journal Environment International and titled “Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta,” found microplastics in four placentas of women who had pregnancies and births. 

    Researchers noted microplastics were found on both the fetal and maternal sides of the placenta and in the membrane within which the fetus develops.

    A dozen plastic particles were found in the four placentas, mostly 10 microns in size (0.01mm), meaning they were small enough to travel through the bloodstream and were analyzed to have come originally from packaging paints or polymers and personal care products.

    “In total, 12 microplastic fragments (ranging from 5 to 10 μm in size), with spheric or irregular shape were found in 4 placentas (5 in the fetal side, 4 in the maternal side and 3 in the chorioamniotic membranes); all microplastics particles were characterized in terms of morphology and chemical composition. All of them were pigmented; three were identified as stained polypropylene a thermoplastic polymer, while for the other nine it was possible to identify only the pigments, which were all used for man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers and cosmetics and personal care products.”

    Antonio Ragusa, director of obstetrics and gynecology at the San Giovanni Calibita Fatebenefratelli hospital in Rome who led the study, told The Guardian that “it’s like having a cyborg baby: no longer composed only of human cells, but a mixture of biological and inorganic entities.”

    Researchers concluded: 

    “Due to the crucial role of the placenta in supporting the fetus’ development and in acting as an interface with the external environment, the presence of potentially harmful plastic particles is a matter of great concern. Further studies need to be performed to assess if the presence of microplastics may trigger immune responses or may lead to the release of toxic contaminants, resulting in harm.”

    In August 2019, high levels of microplastics were found in the Alps to the Arctic. Another report has shown these harmful plastics were turning up in human stool. 

    What’s clear is that the world could have a plastic problem where babies are born pre-polluted. Still, more studies need to be conducted to prove nanoparticles of plastic are dangerous for humans. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 23:05

  • A Detailed List Of US Regime Change Policies Packed In With Pandemic Relief
    A Detailed List Of US Regime Change Policies Packed In With Pandemic Relief

    Authored by Alexander Rubinstein & Jeb Sprague via The GrayZone.com,

    The longest piece of legislation in United States history, containing both a coronavirus relief package and the annual omnibus spending package, quickly passed through Congress on December 22, with little opposition. While technically separate bills, the omnibus and stimulus were debated and passed together, at the same time.

    The massive piece of legislation – a staggering 5,593 pages in length – lays bare the priorities of the US government, prioritizing regime change in foreign nations and the imperatives of empire over the basic needs of Americans. In just a few hours, it passed through the House of Representatives by 359-53, and through the Senate by 92-6.

    While the US public was forced to grovel for months for a $600 direct payment, the same piece of legislation pumps billions of dollars into “democracy programs” – US government code for regime-change operations via civil society NGOs – and foreign military assistance. The measly $600 survival checks pale in comparison to the massive foreign spending on regime change and titanic allocations to prop up US-friendly authoritarian militaries.

    On so-called “Democracy Programs” alone, the legislation appropriates $2.417 billion, and $6.175 billion on the “Foreign Military Financing Program.” Another $112.9 million is appropriated for “International Military Education and Training.”

    $6 billion more is allocated toward the domestic procurement of US Air Force missiles and US Navy weapons of war. This is in addition to the $740 billion defense bill passed earlier in December.

    By contrast, the stimulus package comes at a value of $900 billion, with the largest portion devoted to business bailouts. The Federal News Network reports that the $1.4 trillion omnibus includes $671.5 billion allocated to “base defense spending,” with another $77 billion going to “overseas contingency operations.”

    Stimulating regime change and intervening in the Global South

    The legislation stipulates: “$300,000,000 shall be made available for a Countering Chinese Influence Fund to counter the malign influence of the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party and entities acting on their behalf globally.”

    In Hong Kong, where CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has given financial support to activist groups leading riots that rocked the city for months on end, the United States is now devoting $3 million for local destabilization efforts, including “internet freedom,” activists’ legal fees, and “democracy programs.”

    Similarly, the legislation devotes $8 million to NGOs for activities in Tibet or to support the Tibetan government-in-exile. It appears that, every fiscal year between 2021 and 2025, it allows for the additional appropriation of $8 million per year to support Tibetan communities in Tibet, as well as $6 million per year to support them in Nepal and India, and another $3 million per year for “Tibetan governance.”

    The bill also allocates $3.3 million for the US government-backed media outlet Voice of America, and $4 million to the similarly operated Radio Free Asia every year between fiscal years 2021 and 2025, in order “to provide uncensored news and information in the Tibetan language to Tibetans, including Tibetans in Tibet.”

    In perhaps the most bizarre appeal to a regime-change activist lobby, an entire section of the bill is devoted to defining US policy “regarding the succession or reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.”

    The bill also directs the secretary of state to establish a US consulate in Tibet.

    Meanwhile, aid to a number of countries is conditioned on their taking part in Washington’s economic aggression. For example, $85.5 million in assistance to Cambodia is contingent on it “taking effective steps” to enforce “international sanctions with respect to North Korea,” and “assert[ing] its sovereignty against interference by the People’s Republic of China.”

    As for Latin America, the legislation stipulates that “not less than $33,000,000 shall be made available for democracy programs for Venezuela.” By contrast, the legislation appropriates $461.3 million for Colombia, a country which has seen massacre after massacre and scores of political assassinations — with more than 290 human rights activists killed in 2020 alone.

    While 20 percent of the funds are not releasable until Colombia shows it is “taking effective steps to hold accountable perpetrators of gross violations of human rights in a manner consistent with international law,” given Washington’s record in the country, it will likely give the green light regardless of the facts on the ground.

    Globally, $70 million is made available to support “internet freedom,” with an additional $2.5 million potentially available “to surge Internet freedom programs in closed societies.”

    Meanwhile, a Ronald Reagan-inspired program aimed at expanding US influence and the “war on drugs” in the Caribbean, the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, is being given a $74.8 million injection.

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    In Zimbabwe, where former President Robert Mugabe passed away in 2017, the government is still not off the hook. The legislation states: “The Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive director of each international financial institution to vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan or grant to the Government of Zimbabwe.” This language is aimed at depriving the cash-strapped African nation of international relief.

    $15 million is going toward “democracy programs” in South Sudan, while $60m is being repurposed away from the “Global War on Terrorism” and “made available for assistance for Sudan”.

    In central Africa, $325 million is being earmarked for assistance to Congo, with some part of this appearing to be intermingled with “peacekeeping” operations.

    The phantom Russian menace

    With $453 million appropriated for assistance to Ukraine, $290 million for “countering Russia,” $173 million for NATO, and $132 million for NATO ally Georgia, the legislation comes close to appropriating a billion dollars toward new cold war policies against Moscow.

    The rationale for this spending may be the re-emergence of an old menace; a hint buried more than 5,000 pages into the document states that it is US policy “to not recognize any incorporation of Belarus into a ‘Union State’ with Russia, since this so-called ‘Union State’ would be both an attempt to absorb Belarus and a step to reconstituting the totalitarian Soviet Union.”

    In one striking example of how hell-bent the legislation’s authors are on regime change and confronting Russia, the following phrase appears verbatim nine times: “The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka.”

    The legislation also demands a report from the director of national intelligence, the secretary of state, and the secretary of treasury that identifies all of Lukashenka’s assets and those of his family, plus “identification of the most significant senior foreign political figures in Belarus, as determined by their closeness to Alyaksandr Lukashenka.”

    The insistence on such information seems aimed at fast-tracking a list of entities to impose sanctions, in an effort to destabilize the country and make it ripe for a takeover by the US- and EU-backed opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskay, whose name appears six times in the legislation.

    Along with detailed attention on cyber activities in Belarus, the bill explains how US officials will put together a comprehensive strategy and cost estimate for carrying out various operations aimed at the country, one of which includes: “Expand independent radio, television, live stream, and social network broadcasting and communications in Belarus to provide news and information, particularly in the Belarusian language, that is credible, comprehensive, and accurate.”

    Middle East madness

    As the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden has promised not to condition aid to Israel in any circumstance, including potential annexation of the West Bank, Congress has rushed to pump the apartheid regime full of fresh cash.

    Of the $6.1 billion appropriated for funding foreign militaries, a whopping $3.3 billion – more than half – “shall be available for grants only for Israel,” and must be “disbursed within 30 days of enactment of this Act.”

    Additionally, it appears that $500 million is appropriated for “Israeli Cooperative Programs,” which includes weapons procurements.

    While it is difficult to interpret different allocations and far-distanced portions of the legislation going to the same target, one thing is clear: loads of money has been appropriated to a far-away apartheid state, as Americans remain unprotected from rent-related water shutoffs under the legislation.

    Meanwhile, any aid to the Palestinian Authority will be held up if its officials initiate or support any kind of investigation at the International Criminal Court (ICC) that seeks the prosecution of Israeli nationals for crimes against humanity.

    In neighboring Syria, which has been constantly bombed by Israel since the outbreak of the foreign-backed proxy war against the country’s government, Congress has appropriated $40 million toward” non-lethal stabilization” – in other words, destabilization assistance.

    While the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has largely been defeated, $710 million to counter the group remains “available until September 30, 2022”.

    Iran, meanwhile, is mentioned 22 times in the legislation.

    The ‘”Afghanistan Security Forces Fund” of $3 billion will “remain available until September 30, 2022,” and is geared toward the “security forces of Afghanistan, including the provision of equipment, supplies, services, training, facility and infrastructure repair, renovation, construction, and funding…”

    The legislation also appropriates $250 million to reimburse the governments of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman on border security spending, with $150 million going to Jordan, a geostrategic lynchpin that shares a borders with Iraq, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian West Bank.

    Another $241.4 million of appropriations through the “Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs” will be made “available for assistance to Tunisia.”

    Egypt’s military, notorious for its repressive crackdowns on dissent, is due to receive a colossal $1.3 billion, according to the guidelines established in the Camp David Accords.

    While US citizens continue to suffer the economic fallout of haphazard government shutdowns that have been largely ineffective in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, Congress poised passed a greatly reduced stimulus packaged alongside a massive handout to corporate America and its foreign client states.

    Now it is up to the outgoing president – ironically notorious for his ‘America First’ rhetoric – to sign the legislation into law. Reports indicate he intends to do just that.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 22:45

  • One Bank Asked Its Clients Where Bitcoin Will End 2021: Here's What They Said
    One Bank Asked Its Clients Where Bitcoin Will End 2021: Here’s What They Said

    As Deutsche Bank’s chief credit strateigst, Jim Reid, writes, “central banks have driven us here and in turn have also driven Bitcoin to the spectacular year.”

    It’s also why in an addendum to his latest monthly survey, Reid explicitly asked Deutsche Bank’s clients around the globe where they thought bitcoin would end 2021.

    Here are the answers: a vast majority think it goes higher with only 27% thinking under $20,000 in 12 months. 41% think between $20-49,999 in various buckets with 12% thinking over $100,000.

    On an average basis, survey respondents think it will be over $40,000 by then, nearly double current levels.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 22:25

  • Orange County Cities Join Sheriff In Opposing Order To Release Inmates
    Orange County Cities Join Sheriff In Opposing Order To Release Inmates

    Authored by Alex Murashko via The Epoch Times,

    Cities throughout Orange County, California, are standing by Sheriff Don Barnes as he fights a court order demanding the release of 1,800 prisoners from county jails.

    In a Dec 11 court order, Barnes was told to pare down Orange County’s jail population as the centers grapple with rising COVID-19 infections. But the region’s top cop is challenging the order, and refusing to release the inmates.

    On Dec. 21, more cities joined a movement to support Barnes’ decision. During special city council meetings, the cities of Irvine, Mission Viejo, and Westminster voted unanimously to file legal briefs supporting Barnes’ challenge. The cities joined Newport Beach and Yorba Linda, which filed briefs on Dec. 18.

    “Public safety has always been our top priority,” said Mission Viejo Mayor Brian Goodell in a press release announcing the city’s decision.

    “Our City Council wholeheartedly supports Sheriff’s Barnes’ appeal to keep these criminals off our streets and his plan to appropriately respond to coronavirus issues in the jail system.”

    Other cities set to hold special meetings on Dec. 21 to discuss the issue included Dana Point, Los Alamitos, and San Clemente.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic is serious and presents a risk, but that risk does not outweigh the necessity of holding dangerous offenders in custody,” Barnes said recently. “We cannot start 2021 with a court-ordered crime spree.”

    Judge Peter Wilson’s 32-page ruling on Dec. 11 stated that Barnes’ “deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of serious harm from COVID-19 infection to … medically vulnerable people in [his] custody violates their rights under the California Constitution.”

    Wilson also stated in the ruling that Barnes’ action and inaction showed “conduct that may unnecessarily expose inmates in his custody to significant risks to their health and safety.”

    Opponents to Wilson’s order said the greater safety risk would be to release criminals in jail for crimes such as murder and pedophilia into the general public.

    “This is extremely alarming for all of us in any city that we live in,” said Westminster Police Chief Mark Lauderback, who spoke before the council’s vote.

    “When you’re being told to release a large number of inmates who should be doing time in serving their sentence, and they are going to be released early, it’s very alarming.”

    He called for an effective alternative that would help curb COVID-19 numbers in jail while keeping the public safe.

    “Yes, we have a pandemic going on; yes, it is very scary for everybody in the medical field and a society to be living with such a medical nightmare; but doing this without actually taking a look at the consequences of the actions of the judge, I think we need to find a better solution,” Lauderback said.

    The Garden Grove City Council also moved to support Barnes.

    “If forced to comply with the court order, we are aware you will need to release approximately 1,800 inmates, which both you and the Orange County District Attorney have stated unequivocally poses a significant risk to public safety,” Garden Grove Mayor Steve Jones said in a Dec. 18 letter.

    “Specifically, you identified that of the 700 inmates considered medically vulnerable under the Center of Disease Control and Prevention’s Guidelines, 59 inmates are incarcerated for murder, 39 inmates for attempted murder and 90 for child molestation.”

    The mayor’s letter said that there have already been significant impacts on public safety related to the release of prisoners by Orange County and the state related to COVID-19. More than 22,000 inmates have been released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since the pandemic began.

    “The release of so many prisoners in such a short time frame is straining state and local law enforcement who are not only addressing traditional law enforcement issues but responding to law enforcement issues associated with the pandemic,” Jones wrote.

    On Dec. 18, Orange County recorded its first COVID-19-related inmate death when Eddie Lee Anderson, 68, died about a week after testing positive for COVID-19. The Theo Lacy Facility inmate was transferred to a hospital on Dec. 13 for treatment.

    According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, 1,512 inmates have tested positive for the virus since the beginning of the pandemic. The sheriff’s website indicates that as of Dec. 21 there are currently 835 inmates with the disease.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 22:05

  • US Announces Sanctions On Assad's Wife & Even Her British Family Members
    US Announces Sanctions On Assad’s Wife & Even Her British Family Members

    With apparently little else left to sanction in Syria, the United States is now going after Bashar al-Assad’s wife and even extended family members which have long resided in London.

    A Tuesday statement from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated the US is imposing sanctions on Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad, blaming her in part for prolonging the war and blocking a peaceful political settlement through her charities and civil society organizations. 

    Of course, in Washington-speak “stalling efforts to reach a political resolution” means simply that Bashar Assad has refused to step down and flee the country, which would ultimately put the secular Baath state in the hands of the jihadi fanatics.

    Pompeo’s statement specifies that “The Department of State today is imposing sanctions on Asma al-Assad, the wife of Bashar al-Assad, for impeding efforts to promote a political resolution of the Syrian conflict pursuant to Section 2(a)(i)(D) of Executive Order 13894.” It adds that “Asma al-Assad has spearheaded efforts on behalf of the regime to consolidate economic and political power, including by using her so-called charities and civil society organizations.”

    Recall that just before the war in Syria got started Asma was widely praised in the West for her beauty and philanthropy, even being profiled in a glowing Vogue magazine piece headlined “A Rose in the Desert” (March 2011). More recently the Syrian first lady has survived breast cancer, and is said to have fully recovered.

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    But the US is now going so far as to sanction members of her family, some of which have lived in England for decades, foremost among them Bashar’s father-in-law, the respected Syrian-English cardiologist Fawaz Akhras: 

    “In addition, we are sanctioning several members of Asma al-Assad’s immediate family, including Fawaz Akhras, Sahar Otri Akhras, Firas al Akhras, and Eyad Akhras as per Section 2(a)(ii) of EO 13894. The Assad and Akhras families have accumulated their ill-gotten riches at the expense of the Syrian people through their control over an extensive, illicit network with links in Europe, the Gulf, and elsewhere,” the US statement reads.

    Asma’s father has long been a cardiologist at Cromwell Hospital in South Kensington, London along with running a private practice.

    The family has been in Britain so long that Asma was born and raised there by her Syrian parents before marrying Bashar.

    But now Washington is going after them, apparently blaming even relatives outside of Syria for fueling the war. The irony is tragic and thick, considering just who it is that Washington has been supporting throughout the conflict.

    * * *

    Meanwhile, in a recent address to Syrian lawmakers in Damascus, President Assad launched into a surprisingly blunt and cogent diatribe against Neoliberalism:

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 21:45

  • COVID Package Allows Feds To Increase Foreign Worker Hiring As Millions Of Americans Are Jobless
    COVID Package Allows Feds To Increase Foreign Worker Hiring As Millions Of Americans Are Jobless

    Submitted by PlanetFreeWill ,

    The COVID spending bill passed Monday allows federal bureaucrats to increase the amount of foreign labor they hired as millions of Americans are jobless due to the economic contractions caused by COVID-19 and government lockdowns.

    On top of all the handouts to foreign governments and other waste of taxpayer money, a provision in the 5,593 page bill allows the Department of Homeland Security and Labor Department to “increase the total number of aliens” hired under H-2B foreign visas.

    According to the bill, the foreign hiring can take place if the “needs of American businesses cannot be satisfied in fiscal year 2021 with United States workers who are willing, qualified, and able to perform temporary non-agricultural labor.”

    As Breitbart’s John Binder highlights, this is could exacerbate the trend of DHS allowing employers to over-hire foreign labor under the H-2B visa program that has been shown to drive down American wages:

    DHS Secretaries over the last four years have repeatedly allowed businesses to import more H-2B foreign visa workers above the annual cap of 66,000. Continuation of the policy would come as 24.5 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. About 17.8 million of those are jobless.

    The H-2B visa program has been widely used by businesses to drag down the wages of American workers in landscaping, conservation work, the meatpacking industry, the construction industry, and fishing jobs, a 2019 study from the Center for Immigration Studies finds.

    When comparing the wages of H-2B foreign workers to the national wage average for each blue-collar industry, about 21 out of 25 of the industries offered lower wages to foreign workers than Americans.

    As shown in the table below, the H-2B foreign labor disproportionately effects the construction, fishing, meatpacking, and plumbing industries:

    CIS report on the impact of H-2B Guestworkers

    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 10.7 million Americas unemployed in the month of November.

    Perhaps some of the hundreds of millions of dollars being sent to foreign governments to secure their borders could have been allocated to training Americans for the types of jobs that will undoubtedly be replaced by the cheap labor.

    But no, that actually would have made this bill a “stimulus package” and not the special interest smorgasbord the American people were handed from the blind signatures of their “representatives.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 21:25

  • Barstool's Dave Portnoy Raises $2 Million To Help Struggling Restaurants 
    Barstool’s Dave Portnoy Raises $2 Million To Help Struggling Restaurants 

    Famed Boston-based pizza reviewer and stock pumper Dave Portnoy has spent the last couple of years reviewing a slice of pizza from mom and pop restaurants. 

    Portnoy’s YouTube account called “One Bite Pizza Reviews” has hundreds of videos of him reviewing pizza slices from small shops up and down the East Coast, mainly in the Northeast. 

    Even during the pandemic, Portnoy continued the pizza reviews though being on the ground and seeing the first-hand devastation of government lockdowns and restrictions have had on small businesses, more specifically the restaurant industry, forced him to launch a fund to save dying eateries. 

    Called the Barstool Fund, more than 31,600 Barstool supporters have raised $2 million and supported three restaurants so far. 

    On the Barstool Fund’s website, Portnoy goes on a rant about how “no one in the government seems to care” about small businesses. 

    He said the government has “no plan, no relief, no bailout” for mom and pop shops. 

    Portnoy said Marcus Lemonis told him, “to put his money where his mouth is,” referring to supporting small business. He said he started the fund, and Barstools will donate $500k. 

    Portnoy said his Barstool Fund “isn’t the best plan” – indicating that the “best plan” is for the government to bail out these mom and pop shops before they lose their livelihoods. 

    Portnoy lays out a set of rules for restaurants that want to access his fund. One of the major requirements is that they must be paying their employees. From there, he said a deal can be worked out with the shop as to how much money they need every month. 

    We assume some of Portnoy’s newly minted stock market millionaire followers on Twitter can spread the wealth to help the cause. 

    Fox News’ Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Portnoy about the Barstool Fund. 

    As we must remind readers, it’s not the virus pandemic that is killing small businesses, it’s the government enforced lockdowns and restrictions. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 21:05

  • Either The US Leads On Crypto, Or China Will
    Either The US Leads On Crypto, Or China Will

    Authored by Bill Zeiser via RealClearPolicy.com,

    Even casual viewers of cable news are familiar with commercials featuring actor William Devane – usually golfing or horseback riding – exhorting them to invest in precious metals. Lately, Devane has been joined in this pursuit by financial educator Robert Kiyosaki, creator of the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series. The prevalence of these ads should not be surprising. In these volatile times, the Trump administration has spent big and printed money. (The United States is not alone in borrowing and printing its way out of this pandemic.) There is no reason to expect different behavior under Joe Biden.

    It’s no wonder that alternative stores of value are flourishing.

    Days ago, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin reached yet another all-time high, just as it became clear that a Biden-Harris administration was a fait accompli. But while Bitcoin is the best-known digital currency, it is only a small part of a technological shift that could satisfy our demand for safer, cheaper, and faster ways of doing business in times of crisis and disruption. Bitcoin’s underlying technology, blockchain – a sort of shared, secure ledger of transactions between networked computers – has applications ranging from supply-chain management to securing international payments. It could be “a game changer for the global economy,” according to JPMorgan Chase. In fact, the investment giant started using its own JPM Coin in October to move investor money across its global financial platforms. Consulting firm Gartner forecasts that the business value-add from blockchain will blow past $3 trillion by the end of this new decade.

    The industry powering all this change, however, is finding it harder to stay in the United States due to Washington’s dysfunction. Silicon Valley start-ups are investing billions in research and development, but there is still no clear set of rules to help them bring products to market. Congress has punted on writing a regulatory framework, and the country’s oversight agencies are – as usual – fighting over turf.

    Experts say that this “regulatory chaos” is suppressing American innovation while other market centers like Britain and Singapore have quickly updated their rules to lure American blockchain developers away, while Beijing scrambles to establish tech dominance.

    Roslyn Layton of the American Enterprise Institute sent the Senate a blunt message this month: regulators, lacking guidance, are killing innovation. China could soon overtake us, she warned, unless the Senate holds Biden to his promises of “technocratic competence” and firm economic competition with China.

    At least eight regulatory agencies are fighting over who gets to play U.S. crypto cop.

    Without any direction, regulators “copy-paste their bureaucracy on anything that moves,” Layton observed. The Securities and Exchange Commission is applying archaic 1930s rules that “never imagined blockchain solutions,” comparing all digital assets to securities no matter how they are designed or used.

    Critics like Layton point to China’s new “digital yuan” – the country’s sole legal cryptocurrency – as a disturbing signal that the Chinese are gaining on us. The People’s Bank of China formally issued it in October and has enticed 2 million Chinese to bid on U.S. $10 million worth of the official token, says Wayne Brough of the Innovation Defense Foundation. Big American companies including Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Subway have embraced China’s new currency. France, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan are developing central bank digital currencies of their own. Brough frets that through inaction, the U.S. will “blunder our way out of winning a race that we were born to win.” 

    George Nethercutt, former Republican congressman from Washington State, warned in The Hill that Washington’s neglect could create “a needless trainwreck.” China and Singapore are paving the way for their own blockchain industries, he wrote, “while the U.S. is struggling with a coin shortage, stimulus check complications, and an obvious dearth of understanding on Capitol Hill about what a cryptocurrency even is.” This is “embarrassing” for the most technologically developed country in the world, he lamented.

    Layton and Nethercutt point the finger at outgoing SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, who, Layton said, made “a deliberate lack of regulatory clarity” the “cornerstone of his crypto policy approach.” Clayton demonstrated “no understanding for the need for a regulatory framework” with his “notoriously guarded approach” to blockchain solutions, Nethercutt added, “significantly constraining American innovators.”

    Clayton empowered the SEC by treating any digital asset as a “security,” justifying enforcement actions with a 1946 Supreme Court ruling. Clayton’s SEC lowered the boom on “utility tokens” – a core feature of business software using blockchain – according to Layton, even if they “had no resemblance to investment contracts.” This treatment extended to utility token XRP, the third-highest-valued cryptocurrency in the world, used by American developers like Ripple and R3 to power the kind of payment systems that JPMorgan has already rolled out. Just by putting this token under “a bewilderingly persistent enforcement threat,” the SEC hurt every developer on the XRP ledger. Clayton preserved his own agency’s power “but steadily eroded U.S. leadership as the best place to do business.”

    It remains to be seen what Biden thinks of Clayton’s view of unlimited power over digital assets, or whether Biden’s promise of bipartisan cooperation will extend to ending the regulatory chaos.  Republicans have spent the last four years slashing regulations and reining in the administrative state and should understand that China can’t be allowed to win the crypto race. Senate Democrats on the Banking Committee like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown should remember that a president of their party, Bill Clinton, enacted the regulatory framework for e-commerce in 1997. It created millions of American businesses, reaching tens of millions of customers, and spawned a long list of occupations that had never existed before.

    Coming together to vet Biden’s SEC pick on crypto policy and move the country closer to a clear set of rules would be a win-win for both parties and for the U.S. economy. Our competitors abroad can never beat us on innovation – unless we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 20:45

  • Mobile Home Frenzy: RV Shipments Soar 43% In November
    Mobile Home Frenzy: RV Shipments Soar 43% In November

    America’s RV craze continues.

    According to the RV Industry Association’s survey of North American manufacturers, all-towable RV shipments soared 46.3% in November to 38,485 from 26,297 a year earlier,  All motorhome shipments rose 20.3% last month to 4,028 from 3,347, and total RV shipments grew 43.4% in November to 42,513 from 29,644.

    As Americans can no longer afford to buy “stationary” homes, they are increasingly moving to mobile variants (or perhaps they just want to be able to scatter at a moment’s notice), and so far this year through November, all-towable RV shipments totaled 353,109 compared to 334,792 from the previous period, a 5.5% Y/Y growth.

    All motorhome shipments totaled 36,921 compared to 43,762, for a 15.6% decline. Total RV shipments totaled 390,030 compared to 378,554, an increase of 3.0%.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 20:25

  • New "Squad"-Member Jamaal Bowman Says Capitalism Is "Slavery By Another Name"
    New “Squad”-Member Jamaal Bowman Says Capitalism Is “Slavery By Another Name”

    Authored by Annaliese Levy via SaraACarter.com,

    Democratic New York Congressman-elect and new member to the “Squad” Jamaal Bowman said he believes the U.S. system of capitalism is a form of slavery.

    In an interview Monday with The Root, Bowman said, “I believe our current system of capitalism is slavery by another name.”

    He continued:

    “We’ve moved from physical chattel enslavement and physical racial segregation to a plantation economic system. One that keeps the majority of Americans unemployed, or underemployed and struggling just to survive, while the power elite continues to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, and allow large corporations to pretty much run the world as multinational corporations.”

    “The pandemic has revealed it. With almost 300,000 dead from the pandemic, disproportionately Black and brown, and Jeff Bezos is the first $200 billionaire. In the next six years, he might become the first trillionaire. That’s slavery by another name. It’s a system that’s not working, so we need a new system.”

    Bowman, who is set to be sworn into Congress on Jan. 3, has been very vocal about the need for a new system and has criticized Obama for not being radical enough.

    “I don’t think Obama is the standard we should be striving towards,” Bowman said.

    “I think the Squad is more of a standard we should be striving towards because I think the Squad is more responsive to what’s happening today in our streets. I think Obama represents a certain demographic of the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party is a big and diverse tent. “

    “I think the Squad and myself represent more of what’s happening right now in the party, on the ground, in the streets—particularly with parts of the community that we haven’t always engaged very well.”

    The Squad is the informal name for a group of four progressive women elected in the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

    Bowman tweeted Dec. 16 that he was “so proud to be entering congress to fight with my sisters for the American people,” referring to The Squad.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 20:05

  • Trump Kicks COVID Bill Back To Congress; Demands $2,000 Stimulus, Shreds Lawmakers Over Mountain Of Pork
    Trump Kicks COVID Bill Back To Congress; Demands $2,000 Stimulus, Shreds Lawmakers Over Mountain Of Pork

    President Trump appeared to threaten to veto the COVID-19 stimulus package that Congress passed almost 24 hours earlier, telling lawmakers to boost checks for Americans to $2,000 as well as “get rid of wasteful and unnecessary items” in the spending bill

    Trump said “throughout the summer, Democrats cruelly blocked COVID relief legislation in an effort to advance their extreme left wing agenda and influence the election…”

    “it’s taken forever” to get a package and the bill passed “is much different than anticipated.”

    “It really is a disgrace,” he added.

    Then reeled off a list of disgusting ‘pork’ (read the details here) that has been piled into this record-breaking 5,593 page bill.

    As Axios notes, many of the items Trump listed, such as foreign aid, which were not related to COVID-19 are not part of the coronavirus relief package. These form part of the government funding bill, which was passed alongside the coronavirus relief package.

    Then he took a shot at Biden and the election

    “Send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package and maybe that administration will be me and we will get it done.”

    Watch the full statement here:

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    ..and the market is not happy…

     

    Get back to Mrs.Pelosi!

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 19:46

  • Israeli Submarine 'Openly' Crosses Suez Canal Toward Persian Gulf As Iran Tensions Soar
    Israeli Submarine ‘Openly’ Crosses Suez Canal Toward Persian Gulf As Iran Tensions Soar

    Israeli media is widely reporting early this week than an Israeli submarine in an unprecedented move has openly traversed the Suez Canal en route to the Persian Gulf as a show of force “message” to Iran.

    On Tuesday The Jerusalem Post detailed that “An IDF Navy submarine crossed the Suez Canal last week as a direct message to Iran, Kan News reported Monday evening.” The report said further, “Arab intelligence officials reportedly confirmed to Kan News that the Israeli submarine crossed the canal toward Iran visibly above water, in an act meant as a message to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.”

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    Egyptian authorities gave approval for the provocative Suez crossing, and the submarine also later passed through the Red Sea without incident.

    While the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it never comments on such military operational maneuvers, despite the traversing being done essentially out in the open, the submarine appears headed toward the Persian Gulf, which would constitute a huge threat and significant escalation from Tehran’s perspective.

    “According to Arab intelligence that confirmed the reports, the submarine passed the Red Sea and was making its way toward the Persian Gulf, in what they believe was meant as a direct threat to Iran,” The Jerusalem Post report continued.

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    Both Israel and the United States seem to be coordinating a message of deterrence to the Islamic Republic, given also on Monday the US Navy announced publicly that its nuclear submarine USS Georgia is currently transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the vital Gulf narrow waterway where Iran’s IRGC frequently patrols

    Israeli submarine route as presented in the initial Kan News report:

    Iran’s leaders have of late issued repeat threats saying they are poised to take revenge against those responsible for the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh outside Tehran on November 27.

    It was later revealed that a satellite-controlled machine-gun with “artificial intelligence” was used in the attack, which Iran has blamed on Israel, likely with US intelligence assistance.

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    The region is also on edge as it’s less than two weeks until the first anniversary of the US assassination by drone of IRGC Quds Force chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport on Jan. 3, 2020. For this reason US forces in the region, especially stationed on Iran, remain on high alert.

    The US Navy also late last week engaged in joint war drills with Gulf allies in the area (the Arabian Gulf is a reference to the Persian Gulf):

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    It remains unclear whether the Israeli submarine will actually enter (or perhaps has already) entered the Persian Gulf alongside the US allied submarine.

    If so, Israel certainly won’t advertise it at that point, or disclose the underwater vessel’s whereabouts. The IRGC would consider it a hostile enough act to respond, potentially setting off a chain of escalation leading to all out war.

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    Crucially all of this build-up in tension also comes as President-Elect Joe Biden has vowed to restore US participation in the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA).

    Iran has said if the US comes back with no additional conditions or any attempt to renegotiate, Tehran will return to the deal “within an hour”. President Trump has meanwhile strongly signaled he intends to derail any such future Biden efforts to restore the deal. Currently this is being done through ratcheted up sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 19:45

  • We're On A Highway To Hyperinflation
    We’re On A Highway To Hyperinflation

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    Well, here we go again.  The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a $900 billion stimulus package, and we are being promised that it will provide a real “boost” to the economy.  Of course we were told the exact same thing about all of the other “stimulus packages” that have been passed since the beginning of the pandemic.  Most importantly to many Americans, $600 stimulus payments will soon be sent out directly to the American people.  If you are married and have three kids, you will get a total of $3,000, because each member of your family is counted equally for this round of stimulus payments.

    But it won’t just be U.S. citizens that will be receiving free money.  According to Michelle Hackman of the Wall Street Journal, families of illegal immigrants will now be eligible as well…

    Family members of unauthorized immigrants are now eligible to get stimulus checks under the $900 billion deal reached last night. That eligibility is retroactive, so adults excluded last time could get up to $1800 now

    In addition, there is a tremendous amount of pork in the spending package that the House just authorized.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

    And now, on to the pork… which includes billions to foreign countries, US military weapons purchases which go above and beyond their budgets, $40 million for the Kennedy Center, and nearly $200 million so that federal HIV/AIDS workers overseas can buy cars and car insurance, among other things.

    Not surprisingly, the bill passed the House by a vote of 359 to 53.

    I would like to applaud the 53 members of the House that tried to stand up and do the right thing, because this bill should have never been passed.

    It is being reported that the bill was 5,593 pages long, and our representatives were only given a few hours to read it…

    Several members of Congress are taking to social media to complain about the handful of hours they have to read the 5,593-page spending bill.

    Early Monday afternoon, the behemoth piece of legislation was uploaded, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scheduled a vote for the evening.

    It is going to take weeks before we learn all of the insidious things that were snuck into this bill, because that is how long it is going to take for ordinary citizens to read it.

    As for members of Congress, I doubt that any of them will ever end up reading the entire thing.

    Our system of government is so broken, but most of the population doesn’t seem to care.

    And most Americans also don’t seem to care that all of this ridiculous spending is literally destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.

    You see, the truth is that we don’t have 900 billion dollars to spend on a stimulus package.

    Instead, the federal government will have to borrow 900 billion new dollars that the Federal Reserve creates out of thin air.

    Needless to say, injecting 900 billion more dollars into the economy is going to be yet another massive shock for the money supply.  Even without this new stimulus package, M2 has been rising at an exponential rate since the start of the pandemic due to all of the previous stimulus packages that Congress approved and all of the “quantitative easing” that the Federal Reserve has been doing.

    Prior to 2020, we had “inflation”, but now we have definitely entered a “hyperinflationary” phase.

    In the short-term, $600 payments will help ease the economic suffering of tens of millions of Americans.

    But in the long run, we are going down the exact same path that Venezuela, Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic went down.

    As I have explained to my regular readers repeatedly, just about everyone in Venezuela is a millionaire today, but just about everyone is also living in poverty because their money is almost absolutely worthless.

    Unfortunately, most Americans are not interested in discussing the inflationary impact that all of this reckless spending is having.  Instead, social media is full of angry comments about how these $600 stimulus payments are not nearly large enough.

    Just check out what some of the people on Twitter are saying…

    Eli Yudin: Members of Congress got paid $130,000 to spend 9 months arguing about whether we deserve $600

    Robert Reich: People are starving and the GOP has the nerve to hand over a one-time $600 check, as the Pentagon spends $2 billion a day. The cruelty is staggering.

    VeBee: You and I : $600 … No thank you! Sudan : $700,000,000…HELL NO !

    @BlessUSA45: Leader of both party’s celebrating while laughing their asses off at us because they actually believe we are delighted to get our 600 dollar check from them.

    @marie32318459: “i am very proud of this deal, because we came together, BI partisan” this is unacceptable. 9 MONTHS, getting paycheck after paycheck with American tax dollars and then come up with this “spit-in-the face” 600$ and they actually congratulating each other on this?
    #eattherich

    Allegedly Legendary: @SpeakerPelosi Americans need monthly cash assistance for all, #Med4All and a real plan to get people back to work. Not a $600 dollar one-time check. You’ve given tax cuts in the billions and bailouts but don’t help the American people. #StimulusChecksOrStrike

    This is one of the big problems that happens once you start cruising down the road to socialism.

    People always want more.

    And actually Joe Biden is promising much more “stimulus” once he gets into the White House.

    Giving people free money is a fast way to win votes, but it is also going to destroy the value of our currency.

    If M2 continues to rise at an exponential rate, what do you think that is going to do to the cost of living in this country?

    We all know the answer to that question, and if our paychecks do not keep pace that means that our standard of living will be going way down.

    I have been warning that our financial system is headed for an epic meltdown, and now it is starting to become a reality right in front of our eyes.

    Throughout human history, once currency devaluation reaches an exponential phase things always have ended badly.

    And now it is our turn.

    We’re on a highway to hyperinflation, and our maniacal free spending politicians are behind the wheel.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 19:25

  • Rich Americans Scramble To Move Money Ahead Of Biden Tax Hikes
    Rich Americans Scramble To Move Money Ahead Of Biden Tax Hikes

    One of the big reasons for the market’s post-election rally is that because Republicans actually did much better than many expected in congressional races, eliminating the threat of a major tax hike. The results – which saw Democrats lose seats in the House and fail to win a majority in the Senate – suggested Biden would be unable to fulfill campaign promises to raise trillions of dollars in new revenue from the wealthy. And yet, it is these same rich who are now scrambling to make large transactions before the end of the month according to Bloomberg, as they try to get ahead of moves next year by Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress to raise taxes or close loopholes.

    To be sure, looking at the latest PredictIt odds for a Democratic sweep in the GA runoffs should make the case for higher takes even more remote: after hitting a post-election high in the low-30s, the odds have dipped to a 2 week low.

    Yet rich people, perhaps having learned from previous polling fiascos, aren’t taking chances and as Bloomberg reports, some financial advisors say they’re busier than ever in the last weeks of 2020, especially with helping clients transfer wealth to the next generation tax-free while they still can.

    Meanwhile, appraisers who are crucial for valuing assets used in these estate planning strategies, “have been inundated.” According to the report, requests for property appraisals have quadrupled at New York firm Miller Samuel Inc., President Jonathan Miller said. By late November, he had to start turning away clients.

    “We physically can’t handle all the year-end deadlines at this point,” Miller said. “We started doing this after the Thanksgiving holiday and it’s been extremely frustrating.”

    To be sure, while a wholesale rollback of Trump tax cuts is unlikely , tax changes are still possible in 2021, and the Biden administration could also try to close the many loopholes that make the U.S. estate and gift tax easy to avoid. “I can see a situation where Treasury issues regulations that make it more difficult to do effective estate planning,” Berger said.

    The estate tax is especially sensitive: as part of Trump’s tax law, the amount the wealthy could pass to heirs without paying the estate and gift tax was doubled to $11.58 million for individuals and $23.16 million for couples this year. That and other provisions of the law expire in 2026, giving the rich another reason to make moves sooner rather than later.

    Before the election, “so many clients had already started looking at gifting strategies,” said Lisa Featherngill, head of legacy and wealth planning at Abbot Downing, a unit of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. “We’re telling them don’t take your foot off the gas.”

    The reason for the rush to get affairs in order before year end is the threat that tax changes under Biden could be retroactive to the beginning of 2021 even though many advisers are now telling clients that seems less likely, with tax hikes occurring in 2022 if they happen at all.

    Even so, Laura Zwicker, chair of the private client services group at Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker, told Bloomberg said she’s busier “than I have ever been” with a surprising number of new clients coming in the weeks after the election looking to finish transactions this year.

    “Estate planning is emotional,” Zwicker said. “Clients want to take advantage of the current law, which many have internalized as having been in place forever.”

    There is another reason for this scramble to frontrun a possible change in regulations: clients are acting out of “an abundance of caution,” said Susan Hartley-Moss, a partner at Cerity Partners, who heads the firm’s trust and estates planning division. “A really smart adviser would advise you, ‘Hey, let’s not take any chances. Let’s use up the remainder of your $11.58 million. You don’t want to risk it.”

    Advisers say the pace of work this month is similar to the rush at the end of 2012, when Americans raced to complete transactions before the estate tax exemption was scheduled to drop in 2013. That change was averted by a last-minute deal.

    Separately, as we reported previously, Biden has also called for much higher tax on capital gains, including those from sales of businesses. Advisers say that has prompted some clients to try to sell businesses or investments in 2020, locking in rates that are unlikely to fall but could rise in the years ahead. Many millionaires will also face higher state and local taxes in 2021, with states like New York facing severe budgetary shortfalls.

    That said, not every adviser agrees it’s necessary to pay extra in 2020 to avoid hypothetical tax hikes in the future, since deferring taxes still has financial advantages. But for some clients, “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know,” Berger said.

    For some, the year end rush is not driven by worries about tax changes in 2021, but merely the pursuit of usual end-of-year planning moves designed to lower their tax bills. The pandemic and Covid-19-related legislation like the CARES Act offer the chance to make these strategies more lucrative.

    For example, the charitably inclined have the unprecedented ability to offset 100% of their taxable income with donations in 2020. To take full advantage, donors need to make much of their gifts in cash — a sticking point for those who prefer the bigger tax breaks provided by gifts of appreciated stock.

    Some other ways Americans can lower their taxable income is by not taking required minimum distributions in 2020 from individual retirement accounts. Losses from businesses or this year’s volatile stock market can also offset other income, lowering tax bills or letting clients convert traditional individual retirement accounts to Roth IRAs without paying more than usual.

    Still, with 2020 almost over, “There is a race to the finish line,” Hartley-Moss said.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 19:05

  • "You Met Me At A Very Strange Time In My Life"
    “You Met Me At A Very Strange Time In My Life”

    Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

    As we near 2021, I offer a primer on where we stand demographically heading into the new year…

    To begin, I’ll divide the world into two roughly equal groups, consumers and non-consumers, using the World Bank gross national income per capita.

    “Consumers” are half the worlds population, have average income per capita above $4,045…enjoy 80%+ of the income, savings, access to credit and likewise consume 80%+ of the worlds exported commodities and 80%+ of the worlds energy. They have average income of $12,000’ish. Consumers include:

    • 83 High Income Nations ($12,536+) – EU, US/Canada, Japan, Australia/NZ, Saudi Arabia/UAE, S. Korea, Taiwan, Israel

    • 56 Upper Middle Income Nations ($4,046-$12,535) – China, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Iran/Iraq, Indonesia, Argentina, Thailand, Colombia/Venezuela

    “Low or Non-consumers”, the other half of the worlds population, have average income per capita of a few hundred dollars to $4044…earn less than 20% of world income, savings, access to credit and consume less than 20% of all exported commodities and burn less than 20% of global energy. They have average income of about $1,200 a year…10x less per person among non-consumers than the average “consumer”.

    • 50 Lower Middle Income Nations ($1,036 to $4045) – India/Pakistan, Philippines, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Vietnam, Ukraine, Honduras/Nicaragua/El Salvador, Bolivia

    • 29 Low Income Nations ($1,035 and below) – Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, N. Korea, Madagascar, Chad, Uganda

    Critically, as you read through this and see large scale present and future population declines among the consumer nations…you will note that while there is growth among non-consumer populations, it is more typically on a 1:1 basis…meaning the decline of one “consumer” is being met with the replacement of one “non-consumer”…each replacement resulting in something like a 90% decline in consumption capability.

    First, a look at the head waters of global demand…annual global births. The yellow shaded area in the chart below shows global births peaked at approx. 135 million annually in 1989…and have not likely ever returned to that high water mark. Although UN expected 2020 births to surpass the 1989 quantity…when the UN releases its next updated report, births will have been adjusted down by millions to reflect the reality demographers have been witnessing, putting births well below the 1989 peak. And in 2021, the dearth of global pregnancies in 2020 will turn into one of the largest birth dearth in history.

    Family formation and resultant births is the greatest force in creating growing demand (inflation). UN data shows that annual “consumer” births (blue line, below) have declined by 18 million from the 1989 peak back to the same number of births as were seen in 1950.  A full roundtrip, with 4 decades of rising births followed by 3 decades of declining births. These consumer nation numbers are generally inclusive of the births to immigrants within the consumer nations…absent that, the decline would have been much steeper. Low consumer nation births (yellow line) have risen by the same quantity as consumer nation declines. Both are expected to maintain their current trajectories…Low consumer births continuing to replace consumer births 1:1.

    For those paying attention, inflation (as represented by the Federal Reserve set Federal Funds Rate) has been declining nearly in tandem with the declining consumer nation births, and global debt has blasted off inversely…with the impact of pulling demand forward against a future with organically declining demand. The question here, how would an ever smaller future of consumers pay off or outgrow ever more debt???

    Narrowing in on high income nation births versus low income nation births…Not hard to see where this is going.

    Given 30 years of declining consumer nation births, no surprise the childbearing population among consumer nations is now in decline versus ongoing growth in the low consumer nations childbearing population.

    Below, checking the year over year change of the high versus low consumer populations. The acceleration and deceleration of the “consumer” childbearing population (essentially mirrored by the Federal Funds Rate), note the apex of growth among low consumer nations has come and gone. Declining consumer nation childbearing populations and decelerating childbearing growth among low consumer nations is all we can expect from here.

    And the demographic flow through means the apex of the 0-65 year old consumer nations population has just been reached, and continued declines are to be expected from here. Again, the consumer declines are anticipated to be offset by low consumer population growth (much of the anticipated growth to be significantly longer low consumer nation lifespans leading to larger elderly populations…while growth among low consumer younger populations decelerates).

    Again, checking the year over year change that is now turned to consumer nations secular depopulation and decelerating growth among low consumer nations.

    To round out the picture, 65+ consumers versus 65+ low consumers.

    Year over year change in consumer vs. low consumer 65+ year old populations.

    USA

    Births

    Despite all the US population growth and immigration, the US has only marginally exceeded the 1957 peak in annual births in a single year, 2007. And since that dual peak in 2007, births have again fallen by nearly 700,000 (-16%) fewer births annually. However, the imminent 2021 Covid-19 induced waterfall event in births will see 1+ million (-26%) fewer births than the ’57/’07 dual peaks. Among major influences on the birth rate is the Fed’s FFR% and asset purchasing resulting in large asset inflation essentially punishing young adults whom have few to no assets. Expenses rising  well ahead of incomes. Resultant lower marriage rates, births are an outflow of Federal Reserve policy.

    Below, a simple birth to debt ratio to gauge the creation of all that debt against the future responsible for outgrowing, repaying, and/or servicing that debt. The curve of falling births and exploding debt has gone parabolic.

    Working Age Population

    To wrap it up, check the 15 to 64 year old population (blue line) versus those employed among the same age group (green line). Shouldn’t be hard to see the decelerating population growth and the even faster decelerating employment growth.

    Same population/employment as above but adding in the Federal Reserve set FFR% and expansion of Federal Reserve balance sheet (QE)…and the impact of those policies to encourage greater federal debt.

    The Federal Reserve is tasked w/ stable prices (lol) and full employment.  Below, you can see the means to achieve full employment has been ever lower interest rates, more QE, to encourage ever higher debt fueled economic activity.

    But if you add in the Wilshire 5000 (representing all publicly traded US equities), you can see quite clearly the primary winner of each progressive “full employment” cycle are not the employees but a shrinking percentage who hold a fast growing percentage of assets.

    Housing

    I’d be a bit remiss not to take a peek at housing. Below, annual change in the working age population (white line), 30 year fixed mortgage rate (grey line), and housing permits (blue line). What is taking place now has never happened as the Federal Reserve’s interest rate setting and QE have pulled the 30 year fixed mortgage rates to record lows…while housing permits are being issued far in excess of the declining population of potential buyers.  All this while the elderly population, with the highest homeownership rates, turn to net sellers as they downsize or leave inherited properties to their heirs. In all cases, a surge of housing units is coming for a declining basis of buyers.

    Looking a little closer at the same data as above, from 2000 to present.

    Debt n Demographics

    Quick review of US marketable public debt (red line), vs. Intragovernmental debt (debt held by SS trust funds, etc.), and Federal Funds rate. Essentially all debt issued from here forward will be marketable as the demographically driven IG rolls over to net declines. The US will be more reliant on foreigners, the Federal Reserve, and institutional buyers than ever before. This while the US government can afford essentially no higher interest payments than the present ZIRP induced reality.

    Checking the annual change in marketable (red columns) vs IG (blue columns) debt, likewise change in 0-60 (green line) vs. 60+ (yellow line) year old US population, and again the Federal Funds rate.

    For those curious to see the relationship of lower rates and ZIRP (black line) to encourage soaring debt; below are total US debt/GDP (blue line), Federal Government debt/GDP (red line), and the resulting heavens bound Wilshire 5000.

    US Treasury Bonds

    Below, Federal Reserve held US Treasury debt (yellow line) versus foreign holdings (black line). With so much more demographically driven issuance to come and so few buyers willing to buy US debt anywhere near current rates…the only natural buyer is a buyer whose motivation isn’t profit but control. I’ll bet the Fed isn’t about to play the QT card again.

    Comparing the soaring Federal Reserve held Treasury’s to the largest holders of US debt; China, Japan, and the “BLUICS” compilation (Belgium, Luxembourg, UK, Ireland, Cayman Island, Switzerland). Despite running large dollar trade surplus’, foreigners no longer recycle their excess dollars into Treasury’s. But they must go somewhere…equities, precious metals, but perhaps particularly Bitcoin?

    Only ongoing net buyer of US Treasury bonds are shadow banking nations with access to central bank swap lines rather than dollar based trade surplus’.  

    Short and long of it…US is in a demographic driven decline, the federal government is committed to growth at all costs, the Federal Reserve is tasked with ensuring US Treasury bonds are not traded at “free market valuations”.  And perhapsmay Bitcoin is the best way to short America?!?

    Bitcoin

    Finally I mention Bitcoin and just show it versus the Federal Reserve’s combined holdings of Treasury’s and Mortgage Backed Securities, plus the operations undertaken leading to an ever larger balance sheet. The flood of $’s and removal of large scale quantities of assets are pushing asset prices higher but the combination of cheap interest rates (are boosting long term capacity) while only offering short term boosts to demand, are pushing commodity prices ever lower. Make of this what you will.

    Anyway, about now the nature of 2020, 2021 should be more clear…this is no typical business cycle or pandemic. Decades of demographic deceleration and now outright demographic declines are at the heart of central bank ZIRP/NIRP, QE, and soaring debt. Demographics are destiny and by now is should be clear there is no means to ever outgrow this debt. This appears to be the initiation of a global reset, de facto or otherwise.

    To wrap it, at the conclusion of Fight Club, after having killed his alter-ego & arranged for the destruction of all global credit records…Ed Norton says, “You met me at a very strange time in my life” as the credit records are all destroyed.  I believe the world is equally living a dissociated reality but will soon become painfully self aware of the truths we have so long disavowed.

    Enjoy the clip…Fight Club

    *Population data from UN World Population Prospects 2019.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/22/2020 – 18:45

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