• The "New Confederacy"? Yes, It's Time For Conservatives To Unite Against The Globalist Reset
  The “New Confederacy”? Yes, It’s Time For Conservatives To Unite Against The Globalist Reset

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  The narrative could not be more transparent or obvious, but then again, the elites are becoming lazy in their propaganda and the leftists are not all that bright. Essentially, every time conservatives (or moderates) organize to defend themselves against communist or globalist attack we are called “Nazis”, brownshirts, populists, bullies, etc. Now, I would remind these people that if we were really going the path of the Sturmabteilung then there would be rampant intimidation and assault on leftists to the point that they would be afraid to leave their homes or even identify as leftists. Conservatives believe in self defense, not coercion and terror tactics.

  

  Such actions are the wheelhouse of the political left these days. They are far better than we are at imitating Brownshirt behavior. The reality is that across the board the only people engaging in widespread censorship and violence are on the political left, yet we are supposed to be the “Nazis”?

  Historically, there does seem to be a pattern here, though. In Germany in the 1920s-1930s communist groups were highly active and initiated street violence, riots and even assassinations. This lured many Germans in fear of being overtaken by a communist regime to support national socialism, the other side of the coin when it comes to tyranny. In other words, to defeat the communists the public supported the fascists, and the fascists ended up being just as bad as the communists.

  If you study the investigations of historians like Antony Sutton in books like ‘Wall Street And The Bolshevik Revolution’ or ‘Wall Street And The Rise Of Hitler’, you will discover there is incredible evidence proving that BOTH the communists and the fascists were funded and managed by the same global elites. In other words, the bankers win either way because they control both sides of the game.

  I do suspect that a similar strategy is being implemented within the US today, and that part of the agenda of globalists hellbent on getting their “great reset” is to foment civil war in America while controlling or manipulating both sides of the fight.

  It is indeed a Catch-22 for conservatives:

  • If we roll over and do nothing, then the extreme left and their corporate and political partners take control of the country and we will never see freedom again as they assert their “social justice” mandates along with their lockdown mandates.

  • If we fight back using the same tactics as the leftists or support martial law, then we ultimately erase the civil liberties protected within the Bill of Rights. Those rights will NEVER return (don’t believe the promises for a second) and we become history’s biggest hypocrites and a cautionary tale of the “dangers of nationalism” told to children generations from now, much like the Nazis.

  There is, however, another option, and it’s not diplomacy.

  The establishment likes to make people think there are only ever two choices during any crisis, and both choices involve giving up more freedom or giving government more power. What they don’t want you to consider is the third option – The people taking power for themselves and removing power from those that would abuse it.

  Why should we rely on a middleman to enact such measures? Why are we always being told that we need to wait for a president or a government to do the job we can do ourselves? The liberty movement doesn’t revolve around Trump or the election, and it should NEVER rely on martial law as a means to secure our safety. We can do this on our own without asking permission or waiting to be led by a mascot.

  It is true that the political left and conservatives are no longer capable of finding common ground (except, interestingly, among some moderate liberals that also stand against forced vaccinations and medical mandates). In terms of the hard left, their cult is so far beyond reality now that it would be impossible to reconcile. They live on another planet and their frothing zealotry is too entrenched for them to ever see reason.

  In their delusional fantasies we are the ultimate villains, and they are the “noble freedom fighters”. Of course, every single establishment power platform in the corporate world, in Big Tech and in the mainstream media is at their disposal, not to mention millions in funding from globalist organizations like the Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, so this tale of the leftist “underdog” makes us double over with laughter at times.

  The majority of conservatives just want to be left alone to live our lives the way we see fit. You know, like real Americans are supposed to do. But this notion is not acceptable to collectivists. They argue that we are “all part of a society”…THEIR society, and we must abide by their ideologies and rules “for the greater good” or suffer the consequences. In other words, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

  The fact is, groups in general are abstractions of the mind. Just because someone declares that you are a part of their society does not make it so. Walking away is every individual’s right as a human being. Groups that survive and thrive tend to be built on shared values and principles. They don’t all need to agree on every detail, but they can’t be diametrically opposed in every way either.

  Usually those with principles that match with an inherent sense of conscience are the groups that most appeal to people.

  That said, there are people in this world (around 1% to 5% of any given population) that do NOT have inherent conscience, or they suffer from an ingrained affliction called narcissism. These people are attracted to movements that seek to dominate others, and they maintain membership through force rather than appealing to principle. There is no possible way that this group can ever coexist with people that value freedom and empathy. At least, not without incredible conflict…

  There is a large and growing opposition to pandemic lockdown measures, social justice policies that amount to cultural Marxism, as well as the prospect of a Biden presidency which would encourage both of these travesties exponentially. It’s not all about Biden or the leftists, obviously. The Reset goes far beyond them, but many conservatives are looking at the problem more according to what is directly in front of them and less according to the people behind the curtain.

  In light of this the mainstream media is doing exactly what is it designed to do – Create propaganda to “shame” anyone that dares to oppose the prevailing establishment narrative. Their most recent strategy is to label the conservative rebellion against the Reset as “the new Confederacy”, and to bring up the specter of the Civil War.

  This narrative is riding on the back of discussion among conservatives and state politicians that the possibility of secession should be explored in the wake of the growing impasse between leftists, the globalist agenda, and freedom loving Americans.

  The establishment and the useful idiots on the left will have none of it. Despite the fact that all they talked about during the first two years of Trump’s presidency was secession, now that the shoe is on the other foot (if Biden enters the White House and maybe even if he doesn’t) the SJWs and their media counterparts are FURIOUS at the idea that conservatives might actually succeed where they failed.

  Collectivists are good at destroying things, not creating things. Their calls for secession were a joke because we all know they are incapable of self sufficiency, and also they have no means of defense. One look at short lived autonomous zones like “The CHAZ” will give you insight to what would happen if leftists tried to separate within a states. It would be a disaster for them.

  When conservatives talk about separation, though, the leftists and globalists listen. They might not ever admit it, but they know we are actually capable of it.

  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.

  I think the concept of the “new confederacy” label being used by leftists and the media reveals what they truly fear, though:

  • If they can get us to roll over for the lockdowns and medical tyranny and a Biden dictatorship, they’re happy.

  • If they can get us to support martial law under a Trump “coup”, they’re happy.

  • But what they don’t want is for conservatives and moderates to form their own organizational resistance not beholden to any singular political figure or top down pyramid structure.

  Such organization is happening right now. Millions of liberty minded Americans are leaving leftist counties and states, taking their wealth and businesses with them, and going to more conservative regions where they feel they will be safer. There has not been an ideological immigration like this in the US for well over a century. The reality is that conservatives are congregating (FINALLY) and they are starting to work together for their own security.

  In my own area in Montana I have been running local open meetings on preparedness and current events in the hopes of getting people on the same page and networked in the event that the current crisis spills over and rule of law breaks down. Or, in the event that there is an attempt by the state or federal government to enforce medical lockdown mandates where we live. These meetings have been expanding in the past couple of months and needless to say, people in my town are not going to submit to restrictions and do not plan to hide quietly in their homes while their community and businesses are destroyed.

  These groups are forming across the country, and thank God, because without community organization there is ZERO chance of survival or freedom for liberty minded Americans. As I’ve noted in some of my latest articles, the rebellion against lockdowns and vaccination mandates is visible even in hard-left states like California and New York. There is much to be optimistic about. However, the fight is going to be difficult and there will be ample vitriol leveled against us as we successfully unify.

  Organization requires a tit-for-tat philosophy to do well. Meaning, everyone must take some risk in order to encourage others to join the fight.

  For example, conservatives want business owners to refuse to enforce lockdown rules. But, if a business owner makes this courageous choice and faces off with government health officials, then patriots need to be there to back them up. This might even mean standing in the way of law enforcement that is violating the constitutional rights of that business.

  I call this “creating a wall of worry”; many police and sheriffs are not onboard with the enforcement of illegal mandates, but those that are need to understand that there are potential consequences for doing so. The wall of worry is a deterrent, and the larger the group of people involved the better. Police are not going to risk escalation of a fight over lockdown mandates if they realize that fight could go badly for them. And, if people in their own departments are against the lockdowns, the consequences double if they seek to enforce them. They should be the ones worried, not us.

  Health Department officials are even less likely to push the issue in the face of opposition.

  By extension, if your local sheriff’s department or police department is standing against the unconstitutional mandates and the state or federal government threatens them with repercussions, YOU must be there to offer help and support. They are taking a risk for you, so you must be willing to take a risk for them.

  I am also hearing considerable chatter that many medical professionals including doctors and nurses are going to REFUSE to take the poorly tested and questionable Covid vaccine for fear of damaging side effects. And why should they? Why take a vaccine for a virus that only threatens less than 0.3% of the public outside of nursing homes?

  Medical professionals are under immense pressure to take the vaccine or lose their license to practice. Conservatives MUST defend them if they rebel against mandatory vaccination.

  This means helping them to set up their own clinics outside of the controlled system where they can continue to aid people and still make a living. This means networking liberty minded patients that need treatments for various ailments to doctors and nurses that will not demand they show a medical passport and will not report them to the government. This means protecting doctors and nurses from retribution should government officials try to punish or arrest them.

  Communities will need to build their own localized economies, using barter and trade and maybe even creating a local currency scrip (hopefully backed by some kind of commodity). They are going to have to insulate themselves from the lockdowns economically in order to defy the lockdowns in a practical way. Otherwise, anyone that does not conform to medical passports and contact tracing will be denied access to the establishment controlled economy and die of poverty. We have to create alternatives. We have to offer people a choice outside of tyranny, otherwise many will go along with the tyranny.

  Finally, conservative communities are going to have to provide for their own security. Regardless of how the election situation actually ends, and even if Trump stays in the White House and refuses to concede, martial law is an unacceptable scenario. Conservatives don’t need it anyway. We should be establishing localized security (otherwise known as militias) composed of any able bodied person in the community that wants to join. These militias would have to form as unofficial organizations, as it is unlikely that state politicians will sanction them.

  That’s okay. We don’t need them to sanction our own security and defense. Like I said, we can handle it ourselves.

  In the meantime, the leftists will label us “brownshirts”, but as mentioned they are the people that have proven over and over again to be violent and totalitarian, so their accusations ring hollow. The media will call us the “new confederacy”, which is funny because the majority of the original confederates and slave owners during the Civil War were Democrats.

  We’ll set aside that irony and point out that people have an inherent right to self defense and to freedom from oppression, and none of us are slave owners. Anyone that calls for the globalist Reset is an enemy of individual rights, and anyone that tries to enforce medical tyranny is on the wrong side of history and of morality.

  They can call us whatever they want and make erroneous historical comparisons until they are blue in the face; it won’t change the fact that we are seeking to be free and they are seeking to take that freedom away. This is all that matters.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 23:40

• New Satellite Has "Superman's X-Ray Vision" To See Through Buildings 
  New Satellite Has “Superman’s X-Ray Vision” To See Through Buildings 

  A new satellite from Capella Space is capable of taking high-resolution images anywhere in the world, even through the walls of buildings, according to Futurism. 

  What makes the Capella-2 satellite nothing short of magnificent is its onboard sensor, called the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which can snap a picture in night or day, rain or shine.

  Capella-2 Satellite

  

  Futurism says SAR technology “works similarly to how dolphins and bats navigate using echolocation.” 

  “The satellite beams down a powerful 9.65 GHz radio signal toward its target, and then collects and interprets the signal as it bounces back up into orbit. And because the satellite is sending down its own signal rather than passively capturing light, sometimes those signals can even penetrate right through a building’s wall, peering at the interior like Superman’s X-ray vision.” 

  Capella Space CEO Payam Banazadeh, a former system engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the technology-based news publication that most surveillance and observational satellites in low Earth orbit do not have the ability to view land-based objects through clouds or at night. He said the Capella 2 satellite can take clear images during night or day, rain or shine.

  “It turns out that half of the world is in nighttime, and half of the world, on average, is cloudy,” Banazade said. “When you combine those two together, about 75 percent of Earth, at any given time, is going to be cloudy, nighttime, or it’s going to be both. It’s invisible to you, and that portion is moving around.”

  This week Capella Space launched a platform allowing government agencies and private organizations to request images of anything in the world. 

  Capella Space Platform 

  

  The company is expected to create a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit that, combined, can produce clear radar images of anywhere in the world every hour. 

  Image of Tokyo 

  

  Certainly, this type of invasive surveillance technology will fuel panic among the privacy watchdog community. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 23:20

• Kim No-VAX Does DARPA
  Kim No-VAX Does DARPA

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  I have been going through my Asia Times archives selecting reports and columns for a new e-book on the Forever Wars – Afghanistan and Iraq. But then, out of the blue, I found this palimpsest, originally published by Asia Times in February 2014. It happened to be a Back to the Future exercise – traveling in time to survey the scene in the mid-1980s across Silicon Valley, MIT’s AI lab, DARPA and the NSA, weaving an intersection of themes, and a fabulous cast of characters, which prefigure the Brave New Techno World we’re now immersed in, especially concerning the role of artificial intelligence. So this might be read today as a sort of preamble, or a background companion piece, to No Escape from our Techno-Feudal World, published early this month. Incidentally, everything that takes place in this account was happening 18 years before the end of the Pentagon’s LifeLog project, run by DARPA, and the simultaneous launch of Facebook. Enjoy the time travel.

  

  In the spring of 1986, Back to the Future, the Michael J Fox blockbuster featuring a time-traveling DeLorean car, was less than a year old. The Apple Macintosh, launched via a single, iconic ad directed by Ridley (Blade Runner) Scott, was less than two years old. Ronald Reagan, immortalized by Gore Vidal as “the acting president,” was hailing the mujahideen in Afghanistan as “freedom fighters.”

  The world was mired in Cyber Cold War mode; the talk was all about electronic counter-measures, with American C3s (command, control, communications) programmed to destroy Soviet C3s, and both the US and the USSR under MAD (mutually assured destruction) nuclear policies being able to destroy the earth 100 times over. Edward Snowden was not yet a three-year-old.

  It was in this context that I set out to do a special report for a now-defunct magazine about artificial intelligence (AI), roving from the Computer Museum in Boston to Apple in Cupertino and Pixar in San Rafael, and then to the campuses of Stanford, Berkeley and MIT.

  AI had been “inaugurated” in 1956 by Stanford’s John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, a future MIT professor who at the time had been a student at Harvard. The basic idea, according to Minsky, was that any intelligence trait could be described so precisely that a machine could be created to simulate it.

  My trip inevitably involved meeting a fabulous cast of characters. At MIT’s AI lab, there was Minsky and also an inveterate iconoclast, Joseph Weizenbaum, who had coined the term “artificial intelligentsia” and believed computers could never “think” just like a human being.

  

  Joseph Weizenbaum. Source: Chatbots

  At Stanford, there was Edward Feigenbaum, absolutely paranoid about Japanese scientific progress; he believed that if the Japanese developed a fifth-generation computer, based on artificial intelligence, that could think, reason and speak even such a difficult language as Japanese “the US will be able to bill itself as the first great post-industrial agrarian society.”

  And at Berkeley, still under the flame of hippie utopian populism, I found Robert Wilensky – Brooklyn accent, Yale gloss, California overtones; and philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, a tireless enemy of AI who got his kicks delivering lectures such as “Conventional AI as a Paradigm of Degenerated Research.”

  Meet Kim No-VAX

  Soon I was deep into Minsky’s “frames” – a basic concept to organize every subsequent AI program – and the Chomsky paradigm: the notion that language is at the root of knowledge, and that formal syntax is at the root of language. That was the Bible of cognitive science at MIT.

  Minsky was a serious AI enthusiast. One of his favorite themes was that people were afflicted with “carbon chauvinism”: “This is central to the AI phenomenon. Because it’s possible that more sophisticated forms of intelligence are not incorporated in cellular form. If there are other forms of intelligent life, then we may speculate over other types of computer structure.”

  

  Marvin Minsky at MIT Lab. Photo: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  At the MIT cafeteria, Minsky delivered a futurist rap without in the least resembling Dr Emmett Brown in Back to the Future:

  I believe that in less than five centuries we will be producing machines very similar to us, representing our thoughts and point of view. If we can build a miniaturized human brain weighing, let’s say, one gram, we can lodge it in a spaceship and make it travel at the speed of light. It would be very hard to build a spaceship to carry an astronaut and all his food for 10,000 years of travel …

  With Professor Feigenbaum, in Stanford’s philosophical garden, the only space available was for the coming yellow apocalypse.

  But then one day I crossed Berkeley’s post-hippie Rubicon and opened the door of the fourth floor of Evans Hall, where I met none other than Kim No-VAX.

  No, that was not the Hitchcock blonde and Vertigo icon; it was an altered hardware computer (No-VAX because it had moved beyond Digital Equpment Corporation’s VAX line of supercomputers), financed by the mellifluously acronymed Pentagon military agency DARPA, decorated with a photo of Kim Novak and humming with the sexy vibration of – at the time immense – 2,900 megabytes of electronic data spread over its body.

  The US government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – or DARPA – was all about computer science. In the mid-1980s, DARPA was immersed in a very ambitious program linking microelectronics, computer architecture and AI way beyond a mere military program. That was comparable to the Japanese fifth generation computer program. At MIT, the overwhelming majority of scientists were huge DARPA cheerleaders, stressing how the agency was leading research. Yet Terry Winograd, a computer science professor at Stanford, warned that had DARPA been a civilian agency, “I believe we would have made much more progress”.

  It was up to Professor Dreyfus to provide the voice of reason amidst so much cyber-euphoria:

  “Computers cannot think like human beings because there’s no way to represent all retrospective knowledge of an average human life – that is, ‘common sense’ – in a form that a computer may apprehend.”

  Dreyfus’s drift was that with the boom of computer science, philosophy was dead – and he was a philosopher:

  “Heidegger said that philosophy ended because it reached its apex in technology. Philosophy in fact reached its limit with AI. They, the scientists, inherited our questions. What is the mind? Now they have to answer for it. Philosophy is over.”

  

  Hubert Dreyfus. Source: Berkeley Campus News

  Yet Dreyfus was still teaching. Likewise at MIT, Weizenbaum was condemning AI as a racket for “lunatics and psychopaths” – but still continued to work at the AI lab.

  NSA’s wet web dream

  In no time, helped by these brilliant minds, I figured out that the AI “secret” would be a military affair, and that meant the National Security Agency – already in the mid-1980s vaguely known as “no such agency,” with double the CIA’s annual budget to pay for snooping on the whole planet. The mission back then was to penetrate and monitor the global electronic net – that was years before all the hype over the “information highway” – and at the same time reassure the Pentagon over the inviolability of its lines of communication. For those comrades – remember, the Cold War, even with Gorbachev in power in the USSR, was still on – AI was a gift from God (beating Pope Francis by almost three decades).

  So what was the Pentagon/NSA up to, at the height of the star wars hype, and over a decade and a half before the revolution in military affairs and the full spectrum dominance doctrine?

  They already wanted to control their ships and planes and heavy weapons with their voices, not their hands; voice command a la Hal, the star computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Still, that was a faraway dream. Minsky believed that “only in the next century” would we be able to talk to a computer. Others believed that would never happen. Anyway, IBM was already working on a system accepting dictation; and MIT on another system that identified words spoken by different people; while Intel was developing a special chip for all this.

  Although, predictably, prevented from visiting the NSA, I soon learned that the Pentagon was expecting to possess “intelligent” computing systems by the 1990s; Hollywood, after all, already had unleashed the Terminator series. It was up to Professor Wilensky, in Berkeley, to sound the alarm bells:

  Human beings don’t have the appropriate engineering for the society they developed. Over a million years of evolution, the instinct of getting together in small communities, belligerent and compact, turned out to be correct. But then, in the 20th century, man ceased to adapt. Technology overtook evolution. The brain of an ancestral creature, like a rat, which sees provocation in the face of every stranger, is the brain that now controls the earth’s destiny.

  It was as if Wilensky was describing the NSA as it would be 28 years later. Some questions still remain unanswered; for instance, if our race does not fit anymore the society it built, who’d guarantee that its machines are properly engineered? Who’d guarantee that intelligent machines act in our interest?

  What was already clear by then was that “intelligent” computers would not end a global arms race. And it would be a long time, up to the Snowden revelations in 2013, for most of the planet to have a clearer idea of how the NSA orchestrates the Orwellian-Panopticon complex. As for my back to the future trip, in the end I did not manage to uncover the “secret” of AI. But I’ll always remain very fond of Kim No-VAX.

  *  *  *

  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
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 23:00

• Social Security Is A Mess: There Are 6 Million Active Accounts Of People Aged 112+
  Social Security Is A Mess: There Are 6 Million Active Accounts Of People Aged 112+

  Our friends at Open The Books continue to expose government waste – and fraud – and in their latest investigation, they have shone the spotlight on one of the largest wastes in the US government: the Social Security Administration.

  What they have uncovered is that last year alone, Social Security admitted to $8 billion in improper and mistaken payments.

  The punchline: when they dug deeper, they found that there are six million active social security numbers of people aged 112 and older… even though only 40 or less or those people exist in the world.

  The root cause of this collosal abuse: failure to verify death. And yet while you won’t read about it in the papers, the four-year total sum to US taxpayers is roughly $2.8 billion, which in today’s numbers when trillions are thrown around may not sound like much, but add up all the other areas of government waste, and soon you end up with far greater numbers.

  Watch the clip below for more.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 22:40

• China Restricts Electricity Use Amid Coal Shortage
  China Restricts Electricity Use Amid Coal Shortage

  By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

  

  Despite the swift industrial recovery from the pandemic, factories in areas in China are working only part-time, and residents in several provinces are asked to save electricity, while authorities are turning off street lights and billboards, warning of coal shortages this winter.

  In at least three provinces in China, authorities have ordered limits on electricity use, saying there could be shortages of coal, The New York Times reports. At the same time, Chinese authorities vehemently deny that the potential shortages have had anything to do with the diplomatic spat with Australia, which has turned into a true energy trade war, with China banning imports of coal from one of its major suppliers (last week we reported that “China Endures Worsening Electricity Shortages In Name Of Punishing Australia“).

  Still, China has admitted there is a problem with electricity supply in parts of the country, just ahead of the winter season when Chinese industrial activity has been recovering very well from the COVID-related economic slump earlier this year.

  “At the moment, some provinces temporarily do not have enough electricity. This is an objective fact,” the NYT quoted the Chinese authority overseeing state-held firms as saying during the weekend.

  As a result of the power shortages with a reduced supply of thermal coal, some factories are cutting working hours and are operational only two or three days a week, while office workers in some cities have had to climb 20 flights of stairs to reach their workplaces because elevators have been shut down to save electricity.

  “We are not living a normal life when our factory can only work two days a week and the streets are dark at night,” Mike Li, who owns a plastic flower factory in the city of Yiwu, eastern China, told the Financial Times.

  Despite the fact that the Chinese government denies that the spat with Australia is responsible for coal shortages and electricity rationing, an official at state-owned power producer China Huadian Corporation told FT that many local power plants depend on Australian coal and scramble to source alternative supply.

  “Politics come first,” the official told FT, adding that the company doesn’t see China relaxing import control just because it is causing trouble.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 22:20

• Pentagon Threatens Iran As Region Braces For 1-Year Anniversary Of Soleimani Killing
  Pentagon Threatens Iran As Region Braces For 1-Year Anniversary Of Soleimani Killing

  On the same day the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone came under attack by a hail of eight rockets fired by unknown militants, the United States threatened Iran with military action should it decide to pursue any future retaliation for the US killing of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani last January.

  Sunday’s attack, widely believed the have been the work of Iran-backed Shia militia or an allied group, triggered the embassy’s counter-rocket defense system and resulted in at least one Iraqi civilian death and limited damage to the embassy complex.

  General Kenneth McKenzie, who heads the US Central Command (CENTCOM), is currently touring the region ahead of the anniversary of the Jan.3 killing of Soleimani. The trip was unannounced and is being widely interpreted as sending a strong “message” to leaders in Tehran.

  

  “We are prepared to defend ourselves, our friends and partners in the region, and we’re prepared to react if necessary,” Gen. McKenzie told journalists.

  “My assessment is we are in a very good position and we’ll be prepared for anything the Iranians or their proxies acting for them might choose to do,” the four-star Marine general said further at an undisclosed location in the region.

  McKenzie further explained that even amid the continuing White House ordered troop draw downs from Afghanistan and Iran – at 2,500 each country – the Pentagon is making preparations toward greater readiness ahead of Jan. 3.

  It’s now emerging that Sunday’s attack included a direct hit on the embassy compound, resulting in damage.

  Rocket attacks by “Iran-backed militias” into an area housing the U.S. embassy in Iraq killed at least one local civilian and damaged the embassy compound, according to U.S. diplomatic sources. https://t.co/qOaLQKGVEM

  — NPR (@NPR) December 21, 2020

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

  Days after the Soleimani assassination the region was on the edge of war, also given Iran responded by launching multiple ballistic missiles on American bases in Iraq, which the Pentagon at first claimed resulted in no casualties, though later it was revealed troops suffered widespread concussions from the missile attack, dubbed Traumatic Brain Injury.

  At the very least, mass anti-American protests are expected both in Iran and Iraq, likely outside of the Green Zone near the US Embassy. The Pentagon and State Department have signaled they are making full preparations to beef up security ahead of the first week of January.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 22:00

• A Pandemic Of 'Russian Hacking'
  A Pandemic Of ‘Russian Hacking’

  Authored by Ray McGovern and Joe Lauria via ConsortiumNews.com,

  The hyperbolic, evidence-free media reports on the “fresh outbreak” of the Russian-hacking disease seems an obvious attempt by intelligence to handcuff President-elect Joe Biden into a strong anti-Russian posture as he prepares to enter the White House.

  Biden might well need to be inoculated against the Russophobe fever.

  There are obvious Biden intentions worrying the intelligence agencies, such as renewing the Iran nuclear deal and restarting talks on strategic arms limitation with Russia. Both carry the inherent “risk” of thawing the new Cold War.

  Instead, New Cold Warriors are bent on preventing any such rapprochement with strong support from the intelligence community’s mouthpiece media. U.S. hardliners are clearly still on the rise.

  Interestingly, this latest hack story came out a day before the Electoral College formally elected Biden, and after the intelligence community, despite numerous previous warnings, said nothing about Russia interfering in the election. One wonders whether that would have been the assessment had Trump won.

  Instead Russia decided to hack the U.S. government.

  Except there is (typically) no hard evidence pinning it on Moscow.

  

  Headquarters of the SVR, Russian foreign intelligence service, which is being blamed for the hack. (Alex Saveliev/Wikipedia)

  Uncertainties

  The official story is Russia hacked into U.S. “government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments,” as David Sanger of The New York Times reported.

  But plenty of things are uncertain. First, Sanger wrote last Sunday that “hackers have had free rein for much of the year, though it is not clear how many email and other systems they chose to enter.”

  The motive of the hack is uncertain, as well what damage may have been done.

  “The motive for the attack on the agency and the Treasury Department remains elusive, two people familiar with the matter said,” Sanger reported. “One government official said it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were and how much material was lost.”

  

  Sanger. (Wikimedia Commons)

  On Friday, five days after the story first broke, in an article misleadingly headlined, “Suspected Russian hack is much worse than first feared,” NBC News admitted:

  “At this stage, it’s not clear what the hackers have done beyond accessing top-secret government networks and monitoring data.”

  Who conducted the hack is also not certain.

  NBC reported that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “has not said who it thinks is the ‘advanced persistent threat actor’ behind the ‘significant and ongoing’ campaign, but many experts are pointing to Russia.”

  At first Sanger was certain in his piece that Russia was behind the attack. He refers to FireEye, “a computer security firm that first raised the alarm about the Russian campaign after its own systems were pierced.”

  But later in the same piece, Sanger loses his certainty: “If the Russia connection is confirmed,” he writes.

  In the absence of firm evidence that damage has been done, this may well be an intrusion into other governments’ networks routinely carried out by intelligence agencies around the world, including, if not chiefly, by the United States. It is what spies do.

  So neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done is known for certain.

  Yet across the vast networks of powerful U.S. media the story has been portrayed as a major crisis brought on by a sinister Russian attack putting the security of the American people at risk.

  In a second piece on Wednesday, Sanger added to the alarm by saying the hack “ranks among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times.” And on Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the cyber attacks. But he cautioned: “… we’re still unpacking precisely what it is, and I’m sure  some of it will remain classified.” In other words, trust us.

  Ed Loomis, a former NSA technical director, believes the suspect list should extend beyond Russia to include China, Iran, and North Korea. Loomis also says the commercial cyber-security firms that have been studying the latest “attacks” have not been able to pinpoint the source.

  

  Tom Bossert (Office of U.S. Executive)

  In a New York Times op-ed, former Trump domestic security adviser Thomas Bossert on Wednesday called on Trump to “use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians.” And he said Biden “must begin his planning to take charge of this crisis.”

  [On Friday, Biden talked tough. He promised there would be “costs” and said: “A good defense isn’t enough; we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place. I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber-assaults on our nation.”]

  While asserting throughout his piece that, without question, Russia now “controls” U.S. government computer networks, Bossert’s confidence suddenly evaporates by slipping in at one point, “If it is Russia.”

  The analysis the corporate press has relied on came from the private cyber-security firm FireEye. This question should be raised: Why has a private contractor at extra taxpayer expense carried out this cyber analysis rather than the already publicly-funded National Security Agency?

  Similarly, why did the private firm CrowdStrike, rather than the FBI, analyze the Democratic National Committee servers in 2016?

  Could it be to give government agencies plausible deniability if these analyses, as in the case of CrowdStrike, and very likely in this latest case of Russian “hacking,” turn out to be wrong? This is a question someone on the intelligence committees should be asking.

  Sanger is as active in blaming the Kremlin for hacking, as he and his erstwhile NYT colleague, neocon hero Judith Miller, were in insisting on the presence of (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, helping to facilitate a major invasion with mass loss of life.

  The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT, for short) needs credible “enemies” to justify unprecedentedly huge expenditures for arms — the more so at a time when it is clearer than ever, that that the money would be far better spent at home. (MEDIA is in all caps because it is the sine-qua-non, the cornerstone to making the MICIMATT enterprise work.)

  Bad Flashback

  In this latest media flurry, Sanger and other intel leakers’ favorites are including as “flat fact” what “everybody knows”: namely, that Russia hacked the infamous Hillary Clinton-damaging emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

  Sanger wrote:

  “…the same group of [Russian] hackers went on to invade the systems of the Democratic National Committee and top officials in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, touching off investigations and fears that permeated both the 2016 and 2020 contests. Another, more disruptive Russian intelligence agency, the G.R.U., is believed to be responsible for then making public the hacked emails at the D.N.C.”

  That accusation was devised as a magnificent distraction after the Clinton campaign learned that WikiLeaks was about to publish emails that showed how Clinton and the DNC had stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders. It was an emergency solution, but it had uncommon success.

  There was no denying the authenticity of those DNC emails published by WikiLeaks. So the Democrats mounted an artful campaign, very strongly supported by Establishment media, to divert attention from the content of the emails. How to do that? Blame Russian “hacking.” And for good measure, persuade then Senator John McCain to call it an “act of war.”

  One experienced observer, Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence, saw through the Democratic blame-Russia offensive from the start.

  Artful as the blame-Russia maneuver was, many voters apparently saw through this clever and widely successful diversion, learned enough about the emails’ contents, and decided not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

  4 Years & 7 Days Ago

  On Dec. 12, 2016, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) used sensitive intelligence revealed by Edward Snowden, the expertise of former NSA technical directors, and basic principles of physics to show that accusations that Russia hacked those embarrassing DNC emails were fraudulent.

  A year later, on Dec. 5, 2017, the head of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm hired by the DNC to do the forensics, testified under oath that there was no technical evidence that the emails had been “exfiltrated”; that is, hacked from the DNC.

  His testimony was kept hidden by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff until Schiff was forced to release it on May 7, 2020. That testimony is still being kept under wraps by Establishment media.

  What VIPS wrote four years ago is worth re-reading — particularly for those who still believe in science and have trusted the experienced intelligence professionals of VIPS with the group’s unblemished, no-axes-to-grind record.

  Most of the Memorandum’s embedded links are to TOP SECRET charts that Snowden made available — icing on the cake — and, as far as VIPS’s former NSA technical directors were concerned, precisely what was to be demonstrated QED.

  Many Democrats unfortunately still believe–or profess to believe–the hacking and the Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy story, the former debunked by Henry’s testimony and the latter by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Both were legally obligated to tell the truth, while the intelligence agencies were not.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 21:40

• Hedge Fund Moves To Dump 'James Bond' Franchise As Outlook For Blockbuster Films Dims
  Hedge Fund Moves To Dump ‘James Bond’ Franchise As Outlook For Blockbuster Films Dims

  With 2020 being the worst year for blockbuster releases in recent memory, leaving analysts to debate whether there will even be a movie theater industry for audiences to return to once COVID is finally gone (assuming that day ever comes), a production company behind one of the English-speaking world’s most beloved cinematic franchises is exploring a sale.

  MGM Holdings, the production studio responsible for the James Bond franchise, has hired Morgan Stanley and LionTree (known for its media franchise, it’s also helping sell whatever is left of Quibi) to explore a sale, affirming months of speculation that its biggest shareholder, Anchorage Capital Group, might be forced to push for a sale as disgruntled investors push to pull their money, according to WSJ.

  Anchorage bought MGM in a deal back in 2010, when the studio was just coming out of bankruptcy and its creditors, including a bunch of hedge fund creditors, became shareholders.

  

  Sources told WSJ the private value of the studio is believed to be $5.5BN, essentially the value of the ‘Bond’ film franchise.

  It’s unclear what kind of return Anchorage’s stake (believed to be somewhere around 14%) might net the fund. Presently, it’s believed the firm owns a $1BN slice of MGM, equivalent to roughly 14% of its $8BN+ AUM.

  But the illiquid holding has dragged on returns in recent years, and some large investors have been complaining.

  According to another WSJ report published earlier this year, Kevin Ulrich, the founder of Anchorage and chairman of MGM, of has said that heavy hitters including Amazon, Apple, Comcast and even Facebook have expressed interest in MGM.

  But with the release of the next Bond film “No Time To Die” delayed until April 2021, Ulrich reportedly believes now might be the perfect time to sell, since the new buyer could influence the marketing and rollout of the film.

  There’s also something to be said for the timing, and the fact that a Biden presidency will likely mean closer economic and political ties with China. Chinese investment firms have, in the past, shown a willingness to pay a premium for American movie studios. And with no fear of the Trump era CFIUS swatting down cross-border deals, maybe Anchorage could generate some real interest.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 21:20

• Another "Pre-Crime" AI System Claims It Can Predict Who Will Share Disinformation Before It's Published
  Another “Pre-Crime” AI System Claims It Can Predict Who Will Share Disinformation Before It’s Published

  Via ActivistPost.com,

  We previously have covered the many weighty claims made by the progenitors of A.I. algorithms who claim that their technology can stop crime before it happens. Similar predictive A.I. is increasingly being used to stop the spread of misinformation, disinformation and general “fake news” by analyzing trends in behavior and language used across social media.

  

  However, as we’ve also covered, these systems have more often that not failed quite spectacularly, as many artificial intelligence experts and mathematicians have highlighted. One expert in particular — Uri Gal, Associate Professor in Business Information Systems, at the University of Sydney, Australia — noted that from what he has seen so far, these systems are “no better at telling the future than a crystal ball.”

  Please keep this in mind as you look at the latest lofty pronouncements from the University of Sheffield below. Nevertheless, we should also be aware that — similar their real-world counterparts in street-level pre-crime — these systems most likely will be rolled out across social media (if they haven’t been already) regardless, until further exposure of their inherent flaws, biases and their own disinformation is revealed.

  AI can predict Twitter users likely to spread disinformation before they do it

  A new artificial intelligence-based algorithm that can accurately predict which Twitter users will spread disinformation before they actually do it has been developed by researchers from the University of Sheffield.

  • University of Sheffield researchers have developed an artificial intelligence-based algorithm that can accurately predict (79.7 per cent) which Twitter users are likely to share content from unreliable news sources before they actually do it

  • Study found that Twitter users who spread disinformation mostly tweet about politics or religion, whereas users who share reliable sources of news tweet more about their personal lives

  • Research also found that Twitter users who share disinformation use impolite language more frequently than users who share reliable news sources

  • Findings could help governments and social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook better understand user behaviour and help them design more effective models for tackling the spread of disinformation

  A new artificial intelligence-based algorithm that can accurately predict which Twitter users will spread disinformation before they actually do it has been developed by researchers from the University of Sheffield.

  A team of researchers, led by Yida Mu and Dr Nikos Aletras from the University’s Department of Computer Science, has developed a method for predicting whether a social media user is likely to share content from unreliable news sources. Their findings have been published in the journal PeerJ.

  The researchers analysed over 1 million tweets from approximately 6,200 Twitter users by developing new natural language processing methods – ways to help computers process and understand huge amounts of language data. The tweets they studied were all tweets that were publicly available for anyone to see on the social media platform.

  Twitter users were grouped into two categories as part of the study – those who have shared unreliable news sources and those who only share stories from reliable news sources. The data was used to train a machine-learning algorithm that can accurately predict (79.7 per cent) whether a user will repost content from unreliable sources sometime in the future.

  Results from the study found that the Twitter users who shared stories from unreliable sources are more likely to tweet about either politics or religion and use impolite language. They often posted tweets with words such as ‘liberal’, ‘government’, ‘media’, and their tweets often related to politics in the Middle East and Islam, with their tweets often mentioning ‘Islam’ or ‘Israel’.

  In contrast, the study found that Twitter users who shared stories from reliable news sources often tweeted about their personal life, such as their emotions and interactions with friends. This group of users often posted tweets with words such as ‘mood’. ‘wanna’, ‘gonna’, ‘I’ll’, ‘excited’, and ‘birthday’.

  Social media has become the primary platform for spreading disinformation, which is having a huge impact on society and can influence people’s judgement of what is happening in the world around them.

  – Dr Nikos Aletras, Lecturer in Natural Language Processing, University of Sheffield

  Findings from the study could help social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook develop ways to tackle the spread of disinformation online. They could also help social scientists and psychologists improve their understanding of such user behaviour on a large scale.

  Dr Nikos Aletras, Lecturer in Natural Language Processing at the University of Sheffield, said:

  Social media has become one of the most popular ways that people access the news, with millions of users turning to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook every day to find out about key events that are happening both at home and around the world. However, social media has become the primary platform for spreading disinformation, which is having a huge impact on society and can influence people’s judgement of what is happening in the world around them.

  As part of our study, we identified certain trends in user behaviour that could help with those efforts – for example, we found that users who are most likely to share news stories from unreliable sources often tweet about politics or religion, whereas those who share stories from reliable news sources often tweeted about their personal lives.

  We also found that the correlation between the use of impolite language and the spread of unreliable content can be attributed to high online political hostility.

  Yida Mu, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, said:

  Studying and analysing the behaviour of users sharing content from unreliable news sources can help social media platforms to prevent the spread of fake news at the user level, complementing existing fact-checking methods that work on the post or the news source level.

  The study, Identifying Twitter users who repost unreliable news sources with linguistic information, is published in PeerJ. To access the paper in full, visit: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.325

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 21:00

• House Passes 5593 Page Stimulus Bill Without Anyone Having Read It
  House Passes 5593 Page Stimulus Bill Without Anyone Having Read It

  In the immortal words of Nancy Pelosi: “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”

  Because, as Utah Senator Mike Lee so rambunctiously pointed out tonight, the bill is so huge that Lee said it will take three hours just to print out. And they’ll still have to vote on the bill tonight. It’s unreal.

  1/4 This is the spending bill under consideration in Congress today. I received it just moments ago, and will likely be asked to vote on it late tonight. It’s 5,593 pages long. I know there are some good things in it. I’m equally confident that there are bad things in it. pic.twitter.com/SoWXnEWYfV

  — Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) December 21, 2020

  Lee noted that “this is by far the longest bill I’ve ever seen,” and added that members won’t be allowed to amend the bill in any way:

  Here’s the really sad thing:  we’re being told that there will be no opportunity to amend or improve it. 

  As a result, nearly every member of Congress – House and Senate, Democrat or Republican – will have been excluded from the process of developing this bill, which will cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars. 

  This process, by which members of Congress are asked to defer blindly to legislation negotiated entirely in secret by four of their colleagues, must come to an end.

  It won’t come to an end until no longer works for those empowered by it.  That can happen, but only when most members of both houses and both political parties stop voting for bills they haven’t read—and, by design, cannot read until after it’s too late.

  And so it came to pass that the House passed the bill… without a single member possibly being capable of reading it:

  *HOUSE HAS VOTES TO PASS COVID RELIEF-FUNDING BILL; VOTE ONGOING

  And in case you wondered just what is in it, we summarized the most egregious pork here… and what needy Americans will care about here.

  *  *  *

  Earlier:

  There was some confusion on Monday afternoon when the release of the full text of the stimulus bill was prevented due to a computer glitch, because the file was – no joke – corrupt.

  It’s worse than printer delays.

  They cannot get the Covid relief/govt funding bill uploaded to the internet. the computers keep bugging out, several sources told me. have heard about a corrupt file in education piece of the bill.

  all sections need to be combined into 1 file

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 21, 2020

  But that was promptly resolved (we can only hope the hacked password wasn’t Pork123), and moments ago Congress released the full text of the bill… all 5593 pages of it.

  Needless to say, the bill is chock-full of garbage:

  This bill is beyond.

  Example: It literally legislates the process for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

  See pg 5099 of the PDF.

  — Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) December 21, 2020

  Good luck to anyone tasked with reading this porkulus monster from cover to cover.

  Full text below (pdf link here)

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:43

• TSA Screens 3.2 Million People Over Weekend As Holiday Travel Surges 
  TSA Screens 3.2 Million People Over Weekend As Holiday Travel Surges 

  More than three million people have passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints over the weekend despite rising coronavirus cases and fears that the virus is mutating in Europe, reported Reuters. 

  The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened 3.2 million people over the last three days as holiday travel begins. 

  

  Over the three-day period, TSA said they screened the most airline passengers since mid-March when the virus pandemic first began to devastate the air travel industry. 

  Compared with the same period last year, the number of people screened by the agency was down 58%.  

  The surge in air travel comes as the weather turned colder and COVID-19 cases are accelerating.

  In a recent report, Goldman Sachs outlines that virus cases will surge in colder months and significantly slow down the economy in the next quarter. 

  Despite the surge in air travel, U.S. Global Jets ETF plunged by more than 3% Monday following the virus new from the UK. 

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:40

• Fisherman Publicly Executed In North Korea For Listening To Foreign Radio Broadcast
  Fisherman Publicly Executed In North Korea For Listening To Foreign Radio Broadcast

  Authored by Justin MacLachlan via TheMindUnleashed.com,

  A North Korean fishing boat captain was reportedly publicly executed for listening to a banned foreign radio station…

  

  According to the U.S. Government-funded Radio Free Asia, North Korea executed a 40 year-old man after he admitted to listening to radio broadcasts from Radio Free Asia, banned in the dictator state. North Korea has strict rules when it comes to what content citizens can consume to deny them access to information and news from outside the country’s borders.

  The man identified as Chongjin, picked up the foreign broadcasts while he was out in the water off the coast of North Korea.

  Chongjin is said to have been turned in by by one of his crew members at a fishing base in the port city of Chongjin, where his crew member confessed his “offense” to authorities. It’s believed that Chongjin, who was once a radio operator in the military, had started listening to foreign broadcasts while on service. Chongjin was charged with “subversion against the party.”

  “In mid-October, a captain of a fishing boat from Chongjin was executed by firing squad, on charges of listening to Radio Free Asia regularly over a long period of time,” a source told the station.

  “The provincial security department defined his crime as an attempt of subversion against the party. They publicly shot him at the base in front of 100 other captains and managers of the facility’s fish processing plants,” they added.

  “They also dismissed or discharged party officials, the base’s administration and the security officers who allowed Choi to work at sea.”

  A second source claimed to the news agency that the fisherman who had turned Chongjin in was “vengeance for Choi’s arrogant and disrespectful behavior so he reported him to the security department.”

  They also claimed:

   “It seems that the authorities made an example out of Choi to imprint on the residents that listening to outside radio stations means death.”

  Despite acts like this execution North Korea has failed to quash its people’s desire to obtain information from the outside world. Two refugees who escaped from North Korea to settle in the neighboring South told RFA that North Korean residents often listen to their broadcasts because they are ‘curious’.

  “We can get a variety of content from CDs and memory sticks, but what North Koreans most want to know is news from the outside,” one said.

  “Residents can get many outside broadcasts, but they prefer RFA because it can be heard clearly in the Korean language.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:20

• Purdue Pharma Owners Were Wary Of Lawsuits Before Moving $10 Billion From Company
  Purdue Pharma Owners Were Wary Of Lawsuits Before Moving $10 Billion From Company

  The Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma LP, have been front and center in the nation’s opioid crisis over the last decade. The crisis has taken over 450,000 lives since 1999 and prescription drugs like OxyContin and fentanyl have been the culprit in many cases.

  Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, has been in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings that resulted from a legal onslaught which culminated in an $8 billion settlement with the DOJ and criminal charges for misconduct relating to opioids. The Sackler family paid $225 million to settle civil claims.

  New documents that have been made available during bankruptcy proceedings show the family had discussed the potential for litigation exposure as early as 2007, which Reuters noted was a full decade before the company stopped making significant financial transfers from the company totaling $10 billion – a move lawyers for creditors may allege was to shield assets. The company now faces roughly 3,000 legal actions. 

  

  “I don’t believe anyone knew that lawsuits that really began in earnest in 2017 would be coming back in 2008,” David Sackler told congress last week. But his uncle wrote in an e-mail as far back as March 2007 that “if there’s a future perception that Purdue has screwed up on compliance, we could get murdered” and that the family was “not really braced for the emergence of numerous new lawsuits”. 

  Sackler himself wrote in May 2007: “Well, I hope you’re right and under logical circumstances I’d agree with you, but we’re living in America. This is the land of the free and the home of the blameless. We will be sued. Read the op-ed stuff in these local papers and ask yourself how long it will take these lawyers to figure out that we might settle with them if they can freeze our assets and threaten us.”

  His lawyers argue that this message was sent before he joined the Board, and thus, he had little insight into the company’s affairs.

  The Sackler family, who moved $10 billion out of the company with Sackler controlled entities receiving about $4 billion, said: “We supported the release of documents by the court and reaffirm that members of the Sackler family who served on Purdue’s board of directors acted ethically and lawfully in every regard. These cherrypicked snippets of emails ignore the full context of what they say and the rest of the legal filings, all of which demonstrate how the fraudulent conveyance claims are entirely without merit.”

  

  Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey disagreed, stating: “The Sacklers told Congress they did nothing wrong. The evidence tells a different story – they got rich fueling the opioid crisis and plan to walk away billionaires.”

  The family also “pursued acquiring additional product liability insurance and explored selling Purdue outright to offload its troubles,” according to court documents. Patriarch Mortimer Sackler insisted to company president Richard Sackler in 2008 that he sell the company, writing in an email: 

  “Fundamentally, we don’t want to stay in this business anymore (given the horrible risks, outlooks, difficulties, etc) and I think the majority of your family feels the same way.It is simply not prudent for us to stay in the business given the future risks we are sure to face and the impact they will have on the shareholder value of the business and hence the family’s wealth.”

  “We also fully acknowledge that there is an opioid crisis that has ruined too many lives and that OxyContin addiction and abuse played a role in that. We are truly sorry to everyone who’s lost a family member or suffered from the scourge of addiction,” David Sackler told Congress last week.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:00

• Khashoggi's Fiancée Demands Biden Release CIA Report On Brutal Saudi Murder As First Act
  Khashoggi’s Fiancée Demands Biden Release CIA Report On Brutal Saudi Murder As First Act

  Authored by Jessica Corbett via CommonDreams.org,

  Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of Washington Post columnist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi, is urging US President-elect Joe Biden to fulfill his campaign promise for accountability by releasing the CIA’s classified intelligence assessment on the journalist’s 2018 assassination inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.

  “I am calling on the president-elect to release the CIA’s assessment and evidence. It will greatly assist in uncovering the truth about who is responsible for Jamal’s murder,” Cengiz told The Guardian in a report published Friday. She had waited outside while Khashoggi went into the consulate for paperwork for their planned marriage.

  

  Earlier this year, Cengiz attended President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address as the official guest of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who hoped the move would pressure the president to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for Khashoggi’s brutal murder and dismemberment.

  Trump has maintained a cozy relationship with the Saudi regime, even after the CIA concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Khashoggi’s assassination was likely ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has denied any involvement. US relations with the country are expected to shift under Biden.

  Agnès Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings who last year put out her own damning report about Khashoggi’s killing, told The Guardian that she believes the CIA’s assessment could be released without revealing the agency’s sources or methods and that she supports its publication.

  US court orders CIA to explain withholding of Khashoggi report https://t.co/X5vEZVdCki

  — Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) December 9, 2020

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

  “I, for one, am sick and tired of intelligence always taking precedence over justice,” Callamard said. “So much information is held by the US about the murder of journalists, including the identity of the masterminds, corrupt officials, and people who abuse their power. Surely the search for justice, the fight against impunity demand that this information be made made public.”

  On the anniversary of Khashoggi’s death this year – about a month before the November election – Biden’s campaign released a lengthy statement that said in part: “Jamal Khashoggi and his loved ones deserve accountability. Under a Biden-Harris administration, we will reassess our relationship with the Kingdom, end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

  .@RonWyden: “Donald Trump buried the truth to protect authoritarians and murderers in Saudi Arabia. The Biden team has a real opportunity to break from the lawlessness and coverups of the Trump administration.” #jamalkhashoggi https://t.co/jwC3xpmBqz

  — Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) December 17, 2020

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

  “America’s commitment to democratic values and human rights will be a priority, even with our closest security partners,” Biden vowed. “I will defend the right of activists, political dissidents, and journalists around the world to speak their minds freely without fear of persecution and violence. Jamal’s death will not be in vain, and we owe it to his memory to fight for a more just and free world.”

  In a piece for the Post‘s “Global Opinions” section, columnist Josh Rogin on Thursday cited that campaign statement and detailed two separate lawsuits that are expected to soon challenge Biden’s commitment to helping shed light on the journalist’s killing.

  

  “Biden will be forced to quickly choose between keeping his promises and standing up for American values, or perpetuating the coverup by enabling further impunity for MBS and his accomplices,” Rogin wrote. “The former and correct choice would also send a signal to all other despotic would-be journalist-killers that the free ride Trump gave them is over.”

  A documentary on Khashoggi’s life and death, entitled The Dissident, is set to hit theaters on December 25 and be available for streaming on January 8.

  Directed by Bryan Fogel, known for his 2017 Oscar-winning debut Icarus, the film “does not just include the harrowing tale of Khashoggi’s horrific mystery, but an in-depth look at how Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is directly accused in the film of being involved with the murder, has fostered a society that relies on silencing its critics, and manipulating people of power,” according to reviewer Nick Allen.

  “The movie is also dedicated to humanizing Khashoggi, sharing with us his big smile, and the story of his relationship with his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz,” Allen noted. “Among its intense moments, The Dissident shows its big heart, which turns into its will to fight, as Hatice is shown making a speech about Khashoggi’s death at the U.N.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 19:40

• DeBlasio Mocks Fox, Doubles Down On 'Mission To Redistribute Wealth'
  DeBlasio Mocks Fox, Doubles Down On ‘Mission To Redistribute Wealth’

  New York Mayor Bill de Blasio laughed off criticism from Fox News over Friday comments that ‘redistribution of wealth is an important factor toward ending structural racism in education,’ saying in Monday remarks that Fox “apparently was very interested” in what he had to say.

  

  De Blasio then doubled down, quoting Fox‘s headline.

  “I’m going to say it one more time in case Fox News is watching again: ‘NYC mayor sees the redistribution of wealth as an important factor toward ending structural racism in education.’ (roughly 2:45 mark)

  JUST IN: Bill de Blasio doubles down on “Our mission is to redistribute wealth” remark: “If we think we’re going to deal with structural racism and segregation without redistributing wealth, we’re kidding ourselves.” pic.twitter.com/igvTpXg32G

  — The Hill (@thehill) December 21, 2020

  “Exactly right. I don’t get to say it very often, but Fox News got it exactly right. Amen,” he added. “We are going to fight structural racism through redistribution, so Fox News, congratulations, fair and balanced coverage right there.”

  “If we think we’re going to deal with structural racism and segregation without redistribution of wealth, we’re kidding ourselves,” he continued. “Nothing changes unless you put the resources behind it.”

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

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 19:20

• Lockdowns Do Not Control The Coronavirus: The Evidence
  Lockdowns Do Not Control The Coronavirus: The Evidence

  Via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  The use of universal lockdowns in the event of the appearance of a new pathogen has no precedent. It has been a science experiment in real time, with most of the human population used as lab rats. The costs are legion. 

  

  The question is whether lockdowns worked to control the virus in a way that is scientifically verifiable. Based on the following studies, the answer is no and for a variety of reasons: bad data, no correlations, no causal demonstration, anomalous exceptions, and so on. There is no relationship between lockdowns (or whatever else people want to call them to mask their true nature) and virus control. 

  Perhaps this is a shocking revelation, given that universal social and economic controls are becoming the new orthodoxy. In a saner world, the burden of proof really should belong to the lockdowners, since it is they who overthrew 100 years of public-health wisdom and replaced it with an untested, top-down imposition on freedom and human rights. They never accepted that burden. They took it as axiomatic that a virus could be intimidated and frightened by credentials, edicts, speeches, and masked gendarmes. 

  The pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models, and then merely positing that stringencies and “nonpharmaceutical interventions” account for the difference between the fictionalized vs. the real outcome. The anti-lockdown studies, on the other hand, are evidence-based, robust, and thorough, grappling with the data we have (with all its flaws) and looking at the results in light of controls on the population. 

  Much of the following list has been put together by data engineer Ivor Cummins, who has waged a year-long educational effort to upend intellectual support for lockdowns. AIER has added its own and the summaries. The upshot is that the virus is going to do as viruses do, same as always in the history of infectious disease. We have extremely limited control over them, and that which we do have is bound up with time and place. Fear, panic, and coercion are not ideal strategies for managing viruses. Intelligence and medical therapeutics fare much better. 

  (These studies are focused only on lockdown and their relationship to virus control. They do not get into the myriad associated issues that have vexed the world such as mask mandates, PCR-testing issues, death misclassification problem, or any particular issues associated with travel restrictions, restaurant closures, and hundreds of other particulars about which whole libraries will be written in the future.) 

  1. “A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes” by Rabail Chaudhry, George Dranitsaris, Talha Mubashir, Justyna Bartoszko, Sheila Riazi. EClinicalMedicine 25 (2020) 100464. “[F]ull lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.”

  2. “Was Germany’s Corona Lockdown Necessary?” by Christof Kuhbandner, Stefan Homburg, Harald Walach, Stefan Hockertz. Advance: Sage Preprint, June 23, 2020. “Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest strongly that the spread of the coronavirus in Germany receded autonomously, before any interventions became effective. Several reasons for such an autonomous decline have been suggested. One is that differences in host susceptibility and behavior can result in herd immunity at a relatively low prevalence level. Accounting for individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to the coronavirus yields a maximum of 17% to 20% of the population that needs to be infected to reach herd immunity, an estimate that is empirically supported by the cohort of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Another reason is that seasonality may also play an important role in dissipation.”

  3. “Estimation of the current development of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Germany” by Matthias an der Heiden, Osamah Hamouda. Robert Koch-Institut, April 22, 2020. “In general, however, not all infected people develop symptoms, not all those who develop symptoms go to a doctor’s office, not all who go to the doctor are tested and not all who test positive are also recorded in a data collection system. In addition, there is a certain amount of time between all these individual steps, so that no survey system, no matter how good, can make a statement about the current infection process without additional assumptions and calculations.”

  4. Did COVID-19 infections decline before UK lockdown? by Simon N. Wood. Cornell University pre-print, August 8, 2020. “A Bayesian inverse problem approach applied to UK data on COVID-19 deaths and the disease duration distribution suggests that infections were in decline before full UK lockdown (24 March 2020), and that infections in Sweden started to decline only a day or two later. An analysis of UK data using the model of Flaxman et al. (2020, Nature 584) gives the same result under relaxation of its prior assumptions on R.”

  5. “Comment on Flaxman et al. (2020): The illusory effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe” by Stefan Homburg and Christof Kuhbandner. June 17, 2020. Advance, Sage Pre-Print. “In a recent article, Flaxman et al. allege that non-pharmaceutical interventions imposed by 11 European countries saved millions of lives. We show that their methods involve circular reasoning. The purported effects are pure artefacts, which contradict the data. Moreover, we demonstrate that the United Kingdom’s lockdown was both superfluous and ineffective.”

  6. Professor Ben Israel’s Analysis of virus transmission. April 16, 2020. “Some may claim that the decline in the number of additional patients every day is a result of the tight lockdown imposed by the government and health authorities. Examining the data of different countries around the world casts a heavy question mark on the above statement. It turns out that a similar pattern – rapid increase in infections that reaches a peak in the sixth week and declines from the eighth week – is common to all countries in which the disease was discovered, regardless of their response policies: some imposed a severe and immediate lockdown that included not only ‘social distancing’ and banning crowding, but also shutout of economy (like Israel); some ‘ignored’ the infection and continued almost a normal life (such as Taiwan, Korea or Sweden), and some initially adopted a lenient policy but soon reversed to a complete lockdown (such as Italy or the State of New York). Nonetheless, the data shows similar time constants amongst all these countries in regard to the initial rapid growth and the decline of the disease.”

  7. “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 in Europe: a quasi-experimental study” by Paul Raymond Hunter, Felipe Colon-Gonzalez, Julii Suzanne Brainard, Steve Rushton. MedRxiv Pre-print May 1, 2020. “The current epidemic of COVID-19 is unparalleled in recent history as are the social distancing interventions that have led to a significant halt on the economic and social life of so many countries. However, there is very little empirical evidence about which social distancing measures have the most impact… From both sets of modelling, we found that closure of education facilities, prohibiting mass gatherings and closure of some non-essential businesses were associated with reduced incidence whereas stay at home orders and closure of all non-businesses was not associated with any independent additional impact.”

  8. “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic” by Thomas Meunier. MedRxiv Pre-print May 1, 2020. “This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France, Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”

  9. “Trajectory of COVID-19 epidemic in Europe” by Marco Colombo, Joseph Mellor, Helen M Colhoun, M. Gabriela M. Gomes, Paul M McKeigue. MedRxiv Pre-print. Posted September 28, 2020. “The classic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model formulated by Kermack and McKendrick assumes that all individuals in the population are equally susceptible to infection. From fitting such a model to the trajectory of mortality from COVID-19 in 11 European countries up to 4 May 2020 Flaxman et al. concluded that ‘major non-pharmaceutical interventions — and lockdowns in particular — have had a large effect on reducing transmission’. We show that relaxing the assumption of homogeneity to allow for individual variation in susceptibility or connectivity gives a model that has better fit to the data and more accurate 14-day forward prediction of mortality. Allowing for heterogeneity reduces the estimate of ‘counterfactual’ deaths that would have occurred if there had been no interventions from 3.2 million to 262,000, implying that most of the slowing and reversal of COVID-19 mortality is explained by the build-up of herd immunity. The estimate of the herd immunity threshold depends on the value specified for the infection fatality ratio (IFR): a value of 0.3% for the IFR gives 15% for the average herd immunity threshold.”

  10. “Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions” by Ken Rice, Ben Wynne, Victoria Martin, Graeme J Ackland. British Medical Journal, September 15, 2020. “The findings of this study suggest that prompt interventions were shown to be highly effective at reducing peak demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds but also prolong the epidemic, in some cases resulting in more deaths long term. This happens because covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200 000.”

  11. “Modeling social distancing strategies to prevent SARS-CoV2 spread in Israel- A Cost-effectiveness analysis” by Amir Shlomai, Ari Leshno, Ella H Sklan, Moshe Leshno. MedRxiv Pre-Print. September 20, 2020. “A nationwide lockdown is expected to save on average 274 (median 124, interquartile range (IQR): 71-221) lives compared to the ‘testing, tracing, and isolation’ approach. However, the ICER will be on average $45,104,156 (median $ 49.6 million, IQR: 22.7-220.1) to prevent one case of death. Conclusions: A national lockdown has a moderate advantage in saving lives with tremendous costs and possible overwhelming economic effects. These findings should assist decision-makers in dealing with additional waves of this pandemic.” 

  12. Too Little of a Good Thing A Paradox of Moderate Infection Control, by Ted Cohen and Marc Lipsitch. Epidemiology. 2008 Jul; 19(4): 588–589. “The link between limiting pathogen exposure and improving public health is not always so straightforward. Reducing the risk that each member of a community will be exposed to a pathogen has the attendant effect of increasing the average age at which infections occur. For pathogens that inflict greater morbidity at older ages, interventions that reduce but do not eliminate exposure can paradoxically increase the number of cases of severe disease by shifting the burden of infection toward older individuals.”

  13. “Smart Thinking, Lockdown and COVID-19: Implications for Public Policy” by Morris Altman. Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, 2020. “The response to COVID-19 has been overwhelmingly to lockdown much of the world’s economies in order to minimize death rates as well as the immediate negative effects of COVID-19. I argue that such policy is too often de-contextualized as it ignores policy externalities, assumes death rate calculations are appropriately accurate and, and as well, assumes focusing on direct Covid-19 effects to maximize human welfare is appropriate. As a result of this approach current policy can be misdirected and with highly negative effects on human welfare. Moreover, such policies can inadvertently result in not minimizing death rates (incorporating externalities) at all, especially in the long run. Such misdirected and sub-optimal policy is a product of policy makers using inappropriate mental models which are lacking in a number of key areas; the failure to take a more comprehensive macro perspective to address the virus, using bad heuristics or decision-making tools, relatedly not recognizing the differential effects of the virus, and adopting herding strategy (follow-the-leader) when developing policy. Improving the decision-making environment, inclusive of providing more comprehensive governance and improving mental models could have lockdowns throughout the world thus yielding much higher levels of human welfare.”

  14. “SARS-CoV-2 waves in Europe: A 2-stratum SEIRS model solution” by Levan Djaparidze and Federico Lois. MedRxiv pre-print, October 23, 2020. “We found that 180-day of mandatory isolations to healthy <60 (i.e. schools and workplaces closed) produces more final deaths if the vaccination date is later than (Madrid: Feb 23 2021; Catalonia: Dec 28 2020; Paris: Jan 14 2021; London: Jan 22 2021). We also modeled how average isolation levels change the probability of getting infected for a single individual that isolates differently than average. That led us to realize disease damages to third parties due to virus spreading can be calculated and to postulate that an individual has the right to avoid isolation during epidemics (SARS-CoV-2 or any other).”

  15. “Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison” by Christian Bjørnskov. SSRN working paper, August 2, 2020. “The lockdowns in most Western countries have thrown the world into the most severe recession since World War II and the most rapidly developing recession ever seen in mature market economies. They have also caused an erosion of fundamental rights and the separation of powers in a  large part of the world as both democratic and autocratic regimes have misused their emergency powers and ignored constitutional limits to policy-making (Bjørnskov and Voigt, 2020). It is therefore important to evaluate whether and to which extent the lockdowns have worked as officially intended: to suppress the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent deaths associated with it. Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended.”

  16.”Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19” (alt-link) by Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky, and Tao Zha. NBER working paper 27719, August 2020. “One of the central policy questions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is the question of which non-pharmeceutical interventions governments might use to influence the transmission of the disease. Our ability to identify empirically which NPI’s have what impact on disease transmission depends on there being enough independent variation in both NPI’s and disease transmission across locations as well as our having robust procedures for controlling for other observed and unobserved factors that might be influencing disease transmission. The facts that we document in this paper cast doubt on this premise…. The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The stylized facts established in this paper challenge this conclusion.”

  17. “How does Belarus have one of the lowest death rates in Europe?” by Kata Karáth. British Medical Journal, September 15, 2020. “Belarus’s beleaguered government remains unfazed by covid-19. President Aleksander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has flatly denied the seriousness of the pandemic, refusing to impose a lockdown, close schools, or cancel mass events like the Belarusian football league or the Victory Day parade. Yet the country’s death rate is among the lowest in Europe—just over 700 in a population of 9.5 million with over 73 000 confirmed cases.”

  18. “Association between living with children and outcomes from COVID-19: an OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England” by Harriet Forbes, Caroline E Morton, Seb Bacon et al., by MedRxiv, November 2, 2020. “Among 9,157,814 adults ≤65 years, living with children 0-11 years was not associated with increased risks of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 related hospital or ICU admission but was associated with reduced risk of COVID-19 death (HR 0.75, 95%CI 0.62-0.92). Living with children aged 12-18 years was associated with a small increased risk of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection (HR 1.08, 95%CI 1.03-1.13), but not associated with other COVID-19 outcomes. Living with children of any age was also associated with lower risk of dying from non-COVID-19 causes. Among 2,567,671 adults >65 years there was no association between living with children and outcomes related to SARS-CoV-2. We observed no consistent changes in risk following school closure.”

  19. “Exploring inter-country coronavirus mortality“ By Trevor Nell, Ian McGorian, Nick Hudson. Pandata, July 7, 2020. “For each country put forward as an example, usually in some pairwise comparison and with an attendant single cause explanation, there are a host of countries that fail the expectation. We set out to model the disease with every expectation of failure. In choosing variables it was obvious from the outset that there would be contradictory outcomes in the real world. But there were certain variables that appeared to be reliable markers as they had surfaced in much of the media and pre-print papers. These included age, co-morbidity prevalence and the seemingly light population mortality rates in poorer countries than that in richer countries. Even the worst among developing nations—a clutch of countries in equatorial Latin America—have seen lighter overall population mortality than the developed world. Our aim therefore was not to develop the final answer, rather to seek common cause variables that would go some way to providing an explanation and stimulating discussion. There are some very obvious outliers in this theory, not the least of these being Japan. We test and find wanting the popular notions that lockdowns with their attendant social distancing and various other NPIs confer protection.”

  20. “Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation” by Quentin De Larochelambert, Andy Marc, Juliana Antero, Eric Le Bourg, and Jean-François Toussaint. Frontiers in Public Health, 19 November 2020. “Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65°] latitude and in the [−35/−125°] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate. Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity.”

  21. “States with the Fewest Coronavirus Restrictions” by Adam McCann. WalletHub, Oct 6, 2020. This study assesses and ranks stringencies in the United States by states. The results are plotted against deaths per capita and unemployment. The graphics reveal no relationship in stringency level as it relates to the death rates, but finds a clear relationship between stringency and unemployment. 

  22. The Mystery of Taiwan: Commentary on the Lancet Study of Taiwan and New Zealand, by Amelia Janaskie. American Institute for Economic Research, November 2, 2020. “The Taiwanese case reveals something extraordinary about pandemic response. As much as public-health authorities imagine that the trajectory of a new virus can be influenced or even controlled by policies and responses, the current and past experiences of coronavirus illustrate a different point. The severity of a new virus might have far more to do with endogenous factors within a population rather than the political response. According to the lockdown narrative, Taiwan did almost everything ‘wrong’ but generated what might in fact be the best results in terms of public health of any country in the world.”

  23. “Predicting the Trajectory of Any COVID19 Epidemic From the Best Straight Line” by Michael Levitt, Andrea Scaiewicz, Francesco Zonta. MedRxiv, Pre-print, June 30, 2020. “Comparison of locations with over 50 deaths shows all outbreaks have a common feature: H(t) defined as loge(X(t)/X(t-1)) decreases linearly on a log scale, where X(t) is the total number of Cases or Deaths on day, t (we use ln for loge). The downward slopes vary by about a factor of three with time constants (1/slope) of between 1 and 3 weeks; this suggests it may be possible to predict when an outbreak will end. Is it possible to go beyond this and perform early prediction of the outcome in terms of the eventual plateau number of total confirmed cases or deaths? We test this hypothesis by showing that the trajectory of cases or deaths in any outbreak can be converted into a straight line. Specifically Y(t)≡−ln(ln(N/X(t)),is a straight line for the correct plateau value N, which is determined by a new method, Best-Line Fitting (BLF). BLF involves a straight-line facilitation extrapolation needed for prediction; it is blindingly fast and amenable to optimization. We find that in some locations that entire trajectory can be predicted early, whereas others take longer to follow this simple functional form.” 

  24. “Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response” by John Gibson. New Zealand Economic Papers, August 25, 2020. “The New Zealand policy response to Coronavirus was the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown. Up to 10 billion dollars of output (≈3.3% of GDP) was lost in moving to Level 4 rather than staying at Level 2, according to Treasury calculations. For lockdown to be optimal requires large health benefits to offset this output loss. Forecast deaths from epidemiological models are not valid counterfactuals, due to poor identification. Instead, I use empirical data, based on variation amongst United States counties, over one-fifth of which just had social distancing rather than lockdown. Political drivers of lockdown provide identification. Lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths. This pattern is visible on each date that key lockdown decisions were made in New Zealand. The apparent ineffectiveness of lockdowns suggests that New Zealand suffered large economic costs for little benefit in terms of lives saved.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 19:00

• SIFMA Issues Paper To Assist With Planning For Negative Rates In The US
  SIFMA Issues Paper To Assist With Planning For Negative Rates In The US

  If one listens to the Fed, or looks at market-implied odds of subzero rates…

  

  … the US will – unlike Europe or Japan – avoid the devastating central bank experiment that is negative interest rates, which not only does not encourage inflation but in fact ensures even greater savings, even less spending…

  

  … even more disinflation and even greater bank losses as yield curves pancake.

  Yet is there more than meets the eye here, and behind the optimistic facade of the imminent reflation trade, are the biggest US financial institutions quietly preparing for negative rates?

  This is a question that bears asking, after this morning the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) issued a white paper to assist market participants with planning for the potential of a negative interest-rate policy in the US. The paper, titled “U.S. Negative Interest Rates Policy Checklist,” is co-authored by Sifma and Ernst & Young LLP

  “While Sifma is not forecasting a U.S. negative interest rates policy, near term, our members do consider the need to prepare for such a possibility,” Sifma’s Charles DeSimone said in a press release accompanying the report. “While the probability is low, the impact would be high.”

  And while Sifma – which is the biggest industry trade group representing securities firms, banks, and asset management companies – may not be forecasting negative rates, it was explicit enough in its intro to make it clear that NIRP remains a distinct possibility for the US:

  The potential impact of a negative interest rate (NIR) policy in the US continues to be discussed by market participants. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell has previously stated that the US does not see negative interest rates as an appropriate policy response to economic disruption caused by the pandemic. However, the uncertainty of US economic recovery and the current 0% to 0.25% monetary policy target range for the federal funds rate continues to lead market participants to consider the future possibility of an NIR policy in the US.

  Then, in a moment of bizarre absurdity, next to a photo of a jenga tower that is about to collapse (think The Big Short), the paper describes how certain capital markets products may be impacted in the event of negative interest rates in the US, followed by a checklist of considerations that can be used by firms seeking to mobilize negative interest readiness programs within their institutions. The checklist is structured across the following key themes: US NIR program governance and mobilization; financial exposure analysis; contract and counterparty customer analysis; portfolio strategies and profitability; technology and operations; finance, tax and accounting; and regulatory and policy considerations.

  

  While we have discussed the myriad negative consequences that would result from NIRP previously, the paper did recap some of the potential horror stories that it now appears may be coming to the US (because otherwise, this paper would never have been published):

  • NIR could result in derivative product floating rate payments (inclusive of any spread) becoming negative. For products such as swaps, this could result in one party having to pay (or receive) on both legs (i.e., the fixed leg and the absolute value of the floating leg)… Further, derivative trade capture and pricing models may need significant enhancements to account for negative payments, forward curves and negative strikes, and other models such as prepayment models and market risk, counterparty risk and margin models may need enhancements to handle negative rates. The impacts to third parties such as central clearing parties and exchanges will also need to be understood and addressed.
  • Given that the repo rate is typically set based on a market benchmark interest rate, there is potential that repo rates could go negative if the US were to adopt an NIR policy. There is precedence of repo rates falling into negative territory in the US, but the driver historically has been high market demand of certain collateral (i.e., repo special issue trading). So, while operations and technology systems may have been tested and workarounds created for such events, additional challenges may arise if those solutions are not scalable or cannot handle large volumes of negative rate repos, as would be expected in an NIR environment.
  • In a negative rate environment, clients could experience a negative yield on sweep balances, while additional management fees or expenses would further reduce incentives for investors to hold excess cash in such sweep products. Customers may chase yield and avoid sweep products with negative interest rates by moving funds to free credit balances, other sweep vehicles or products with a higher risk profile.

  Read the full paper here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 18:40

• When Market Ebullience Meets A Left Hook
  When Market Ebullience Meets A Left Hook

  Peter Boockvar, CIO of Bleakley Advisory Group, joins Real Vision editor Jack Farley to break down his market outlook as stimulus talks draw to a close and an alarming new strain of COVID-19 spreads throughout the United Kingdom. Boockvar makes his case for why inflation will continue to rise alongside nominal yields in 2021, and he explains why this macro outlook leads him to look favorably upon commodities and value stocks that trade at significantly low price/earnings multiples since he expects multiples to compress across the equity landscape as nominal yields rise. Boockvar gives a strategic update on the state of the Fed’s QE programs and argues that the expiration of the Fed’s emergency lending programs is not unwelcome and, in fact, is overdue. Lastly, Boockvar shares with Farley several stocks on his radar, such as CVS Health Corp ($CVS) and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc ($WBA) as well as evaluates their future business prospect. In the intro, Real Vision’s Haley Draznin monitors the markets as stimulus relief package passes in the US and a new strain of the coronavirus emerged in England, prompting fresh travel restrictions across Europe.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 18:30

• Red And Blue States: It's Time For A Multistate Solution
  Red And Blue States: It’s Time For A Multistate Solution

  Authored by James Ketler via The Mises Institute,

  Far from being a unitive force, powerful, centralized government only serves to pit blocs of the electorate against each other. Division grows in lockstep with the ceaseless expansion of federal power, and the 2020 presidential election was a mere symptom of how heated that division has become. How much worse can it get? That remains to be seen. After Joe Biden’s contested presidential win, the country may have to break apart into multiple independent political units if it is to avert further social disintegration.

  

  Power and Polarization

  To win elections, candidates must pander to the lowest common political denominator; i.e., they must promise to expand wide-reaching projects like social security, public healthcare, economic stimulus, and the military. In fact, candidates are incentivized to outpromise one another and when in power to follow through on carrying out at least some of those promises in the interest of reelection. The mass-democratic structure lubricates this process, as costs are distributed across the entire population and thus become more or less “hidden.” That’s led to a constant, creeping growth in government power, behind which Republicans and Democrats almost always form a united front. As Tom Woods says: “No matter who you vote for, you always wind up getting John McCain.” Within that statist unity, however, exist the seeds of electoral division.

  Old, widely accepted government programs are used by politicians as a springboard for new, more expansive powers. Consider, for instance, the Green New Deal; it could only have been seriously proposed because of the broad-based support the New Deal programs have today. Each new law, regulation, bureau, and program is like a brick on top of which many others can be laid. Government seldom abrogates any of its power, tending instead towards constantly expanding it. That raises the stakes higher and higher with each successive election, with the winning party taking office with more power than ever before.

  Centrally, as vote seekers, candidates must always work to demonize the opposition and distance themselves from them. To safeguard their own interests, voters must factionalize behind one candidate or the other, often coming to develop a deep, politico-cultural affinity with their choice, though they may only be the “lesser of two evils.” This drives a sharp wedge down the center of the political spectrum, pushing both sides further and further apart. As competing ideologies vie for control of the system, smaller and more amicable politico-cultural disputes thus become the faultlines of national fractionation. Many nuanced opinions are pounded into the ground and replaced, instead, by the Republican-Democrat binary. These two sides look at politics with irreconcilable politico-cultural presuppositions, driving each side—as both fight for control of the same system—to hate the other.

  Once one party seizes control of the federal apparatus, it tries to solidify support from independents and moderates, while also working to “punish” its political rivals. From the enlightened, liberal principles that originally drove its adoption in the West, democracy has melted and deformed—as it was always inevitably bound to—into an arena of open-faced realpolitik. Both parties seek to win by any means necessary, and the losers must always “accept the results of the election”—that is, have the will of the majority imposed upon them. It’s a system that neither side can consistently accept and that both—for the good of the people—must agree to reject.

  America’s Division Crisis

  Nearly eight in ten Republican voters agree that this year’s presidential election was rigged against President Trump through the perpetration of widespread voter fraud. Biden’s “win” was, as they see it, a fait accompli—predetermined before the first vote was cast. The legitimacy of the past few elections have been widely contested, moreover, as with, for instance, the Democrats’ accusations of Russian interference in 2016. After years of investigations and hearings, at least, those accusations were proven false, but this time around, further inquiry into the Republicans’ claims of voter fraud have been blocked by the mainstream media and the Washington establishment. With just cause, therefore, Trump loyalists have grasped at every legal recourse they can find in hopes that something will stick. But the bid to overturn the election was, from its inception, a long shot. On January 20, the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump will be forced under the yoke of a Biden presidency, which will only serve to turn up the heat in the country even more.

  Nevertheless, Joe Biden has continuously tried to position himself as a moral leader who will “unite” the nation. In his November 7 victory address, he said, “I will govern as an American president. I’ll work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.” Does anyone, though, actually believe that? Biden’s politics have differed over the years, but it’s clear that his 2020 agenda is by far further to the left than that of any other president in American history. At his side is Kamala Harris, who was rated the most progressive senator in all of Congress last year. How can anyone pretend to imagine that the next administration will be at all “unifying”? Better yet, how can anyone think any modern presidency will bring America together? Since 2016, the Democratic Party has freely embraced the tenets of socialism and radical progressive politics, while the rise of Trump helped fuel the growth of a new “America First” nationalist populism in the Republican Party. In just the past four years, the two parties have aggressively shifted away from each other and toward their ideological fringes. Moving forward, that split will likely only widen further.

  On the campaign trail, Biden identified himself as a “transition candidate” for a deeper, more radical leftism coming down the line. First, the likes of Kamala Harris will take the reins of the country; then, AOC and “the Squad.” The Constitution-bashing, history-flipping platform of these soon-to-be party leaders will only exacerbate left-right tensions even further as they deal the coup de grâce to America’s founding principles. On the conservative side, Trump insiders have already pointed to the possibility of the outgoing president staging a comeback campaign in 2024. And if he doesn’t run himself, it’ll be one of his children, or his closest allies in Congress—perhaps Tom Cotton or Matt Gaetz. The “Trump brand” looks like it’s here to stay in the Republican Party, and, if it is, it will continue to focus on carrying out the MAGA agenda. In fact, after four years of Biden, the Trump camp may be more energized than ever before. As the national consciousness continues to fork apart all the more diametrically, friends and neighbors will become—in the affairs of state, at least—ever more bitter enemies, and the dream of a “united” US will fall further out of reach.

  With that in mind, we must ask: Why should America be a single country at all? The states have for years already been working to nullify federal legislation on guns, drugs, healthcare, immigration, the environment, and police militarization. Why hold the states together in a union whose diktats they each want to escape? That steady resistance is unlikely to do anything but grow. Last month, after one of Biden’s top covid policy advisors called for a national lockdown, more than a dozen Republican governors expressed their refusal to comply. How much more will it take before states decide to just walk away entirely?

  Secession would give states full sovereignty over their own affairs, so that voters could live under policies more friendly and suitable to their own local and regional interests. There would no longer be a system of national politics, through which voters control and domineer others hundreds of miles away. From the very earliest years of the republic, secession was considered a viable possibility. The United States was not considered a single, monolithic blob, as it often is today, but rather a voluntary confederation of free and independent states associated for the preservation of the common good. If the political tides turned and the Union ceased to be beneficial to its constituent parts, each was free to leave it. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson made this clear:

  “[I]f any state in the union will declare that it prefers separation….I have no hesitation in saying ‘let us separate.’ I would rather the states should withdraw, which are for unlimited commerce & war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace & agriculture.”

  Though the public perception of secession has been radically altered since the Civil War, America’s founding principles respect the right of every state to leave the Union. At this point, the states’ reassertion of that right has been long overdue. Secession is now the only way for the millions of tired and fed-up Americans to protect their interests against federal tyranny. Without it, nothing else can prevent the eventual breakdown of the social order, which is looming in the country’s future.

  Just this past summer, far-left looters clashed violently with right-wing groups and police in city streets across the nation from Portland to Kenosha. Some of the postelection “Stop the Steal” rallies have themselves led to dangerous confrontations, including stabbings in Washington, DC, and a shooting in Washington State. Indeed, a poll from September revealed that around 20 percent of voters in general would eagerly support the use of violence against their political opponents. Although the pivotal spark may have not yet arrived, the scaffolding for potential civil disaster is already in place. When the last straw breaks, will America spiral into chaos and insurrection, or will cooler heads agree to peaceful separation?

  A Secessionist Moment

  The idea of secession is, thankfully, neither alien nor farfetched to voters. In fact, widespread calls for secession have already been made in response to recent presidential elections. After Obama’s reelection, the White House’s “We the People” initiative was inundated by petitions from all fifty states to be granted the right of unilateral secession. When Trump was elected, Democrats in Oregon and California organized serious mass secessionist movements that almost led to both states holding referenda on the topic. With each new election, the politico-cultural divide in America grows deeper and a national breakup looks all the more alluring. The impending Biden presidency may be the drop that spills the bucket.

  A poll from Hofstra University this past September found that 44 percent of Republican respondents were open to the possibility of seceding if Joe Biden was elected. For millions of Trump voters, self-determination is an essential component to preserving their families, finances, and ways of life. Even Rush Limbaugh—the “king of conservative talk radio”—recently pondered whether, without secession, right-wing ideals can ever truly “win” again. If some Republican-majority states managed to leave the Union, that might mean lower taxes, fewer regulations, the repeal of gun laws, a new gold standard, school choice, abortion bans, and a more free healthcare market across the board. As independent states, they may discover that Trumpian politics doesn’t actually represent them after all and instead forge paths more in line with their own local traditions. At last, political diversity would be allowed to emerge and flourish in these smaller, decentralized states, keeping the government more homegrown and orienting politics more toward the interests of the people.

  What’s most promising is that a few recent murmurings of secession have actually come from GOP lawmakers. After the election, Price Wallace, a state congressman from Mississippi, expressed his interest in secession, followed by Congressman Randy Weber, who succeeded Ron Paul for Texas’s fourteenth congressional district seat. Weber’s secessionist endorsement helped generate attention for the Texas Nationalist Movement (or “Texit”), including a sudden spike in the group’s membership registrations. Weeks later, Texas state congressman Kyle Biedermann announced that when the Texas House resumes session in January, he’ll introduce a bill to allow a popular referendum on the question of secession. Seemingly in support of Biedermann’s proposal, the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, Allen West, then commented, “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the constitution.” Evidently, state legislators are entertaining the notion, many with considerable interest.

  America may be on the brink of a “secessionist moment,” and if it is, the time to dismount the surly tiger of big government is now. Like dominoes, the process need only begin with one single state and many more will surely follow. After everything, that’s the only real solution left for America—shaking hands, splitting up, and staying friends from afar, for clearly the country has already split apart in heart, mind, and soul, and at last this internal reality must be reflected in the legal reality.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 18:20

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• US Deep State Preempts Reset In Relations With Russia
  US Deep State Preempts Reset In Relations With Russia
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 23:30

  The timing of all this is hardly coincidence…

  

• Man Slaps Parents With Lawsuit For Destroying Vast Porn Collection
  Man Slaps Parents With Lawsuit For Destroying Vast Porn Collection
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 23:00

  “Frankly, David, I did you a big favor by getting rid of all this stuff for you.” 

  

• 2020: The Year We Sold Our Liberties For A Medical Tyranny
  2020: The Year We Sold Our Liberties For A Medical Tyranny
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 22:30

  This year has seen what looks like the birth of a new religion. Let us call it Covidianity…

  

• 'Elite' Californians Are Making Major Hospital 'Donations' To Jump The Line For COVID Vaccinations
  ‘Elite’ Californians Are Making Major Hospital ‘Donations’ To Jump The Line For COVID Vaccinations
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 22:00

  “If I donate $25,000 to Cedars, would that help me get in line?'”

   

  

• $15BN For Airlines, Corporate Meal Tax Breaks And Other Pork: What's Inside The $900BN Stimulus BIll
  $15BN For Airlines, Corporate Meal Tax Breaks And Other Pork: What’s Inside The $900BN Stimulus BIll
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 21:35

  Billions for corporations, $600 for peasants.

  

• Joe Biden Appears To Outperform In Counties Using Dominion Or HART Voting Machines: Data Analyst
  Joe Biden Appears To Outperform In Counties Using Dominion Or HART Voting Machines: Data Analyst
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 21:30

  …analysis also indicates that Biden consistently received 5.6 percent more votes in those counties than he should have…

  

• "Christmas Star" – Worlds Will Align Next Week For Celestial Event Not Seen Since Middle Ages
  “Christmas Star” – Worlds Will Align Next Week For Celestial Event Not Seen Since Middle Ages
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 21:00

  “You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on Mar 4, 1226…” 

   

  

• Gold & Silver Surge As COVID Relief Bill Looms, Oil Tanks
  Gold & Silver Surge As COVID Relief Bill Looms, Oil Tanks
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 20:44

  …despite a stronger dollar.

  

• The Elitist NYC Dalton School Is Having A Racial Policy Meltdown
  The Elitist NYC Dalton School Is Having A Racial Policy Meltdown
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 20:30

  …30- 40% of parents of kids in the Class of 2025 will pull them out of the school and transfer them as a result of the manifesto…

  

• "Let Him Eat At Some Shitty Roadside Diner" – NYC Restaurants Strike Back, Ban Cuomo From Dining Out
  “Let Him Eat At Some Shitty Roadside Diner” – NYC Restaurants Strike Back, Ban Cuomo From Dining Out
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 20:00

  “He should be banned from every restaurant, bar, etc… he’s a scumbag f**k you cuomo and di blasio.”

   

   

  

• Congress Reaches Agreement On $900 Billion Stimulus Deal
  Congress Reaches Agreement On $900 Billion Stimulus Deal
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 19:55

  “Congress has just reached an agreement. We will pass another rescue package ASAP. More help is on the way.”

  

• CDC Issues New Guidelines, Launches Probe After 1000s Negatively-Affected Following COVID-19 Vaccination
  CDC Issues New Guidelines, Launches Probe After 1000s Negatively-Affected Following COVID-19 Vaccination
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 19:45

  “But we just don’t know at this point.”

  

• Trump Campaign Files 267-Page Motion At US Supreme Court Challenging Pennsylvania Rulings
  Trump Campaign Files 267-Page Motion At US Supreme Court Challenging Pennsylvania Rulings
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 19:30

  “There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution.”

  

• Kyle Bass Explains Why We May Never See Another Bear Market In Bonds
  Kyle Bass Explains Why We May Never See Another Bear Market In Bonds
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 19:06

  “I think you’re not going to see any kind of meaningful yield moves higher. I think you’re just going to see asset prices move higher.”

  

• OIl Slides On UK Lockdown Fears
  OIl Slides On UK Lockdown Fears
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 19:05

  Both Brent and WTI are sharply lower at the start of trading following UK’s Tier 4 lockdowns and a number of EU countries halting travel with the UK, sparking fears that already fragile oil demand will be dampened further.

  

• Unhinged… And Then Some!
  Unhinged… And Then Some!
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 18:30

  Buy stocks because bonds are so central-bank suppressed that they’re the guaranteed investment from hell. That’s what passes for wisdom on Wall Street these days…

  

• 1000s Flee London Amid "Tier 4" Restrictions; "Out Of Control" Mutation Spreads To Italy: Live Updates
  1000s Flee London Amid “Tier 4” Restrictions; “Out Of Control” Mutation Spreads To Italy: Live Updates
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 18:09

  Londoners could risk being arrested for trying to escape the city as travel in and out of Tier 4 is outlawed from today. The strict new travel rules come into place after midnight as the capital and South East England are plunged into the new harshest restrictions. Boris Johnson said

  

• Trump Calls This Man "One Of The Dumbest People In Washington" – Cites N.Korea Policy
  Trump Calls This Man “One Of The Dumbest People In Washington” – Cites N.Korea Policy
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 18:00

  Trump tweets he’s got plenty of other “stupid stories” about him…

  

• Rep. Matt Gaetz Says He Will Challenge Electoral College Votes On Jan. 6
  Rep. Matt Gaetz Says He Will Challenge Electoral College Votes On Jan. 6
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/20/2020 – 17:30

  “So on January 6, I’m joining with the fighters in the Congress and we are going to object to electors from states that didn’t run clean elections,”

  

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• 2020: The Year We Let Ourselves Be Infantilised And Dehumanised
  2020: The Year We Let Ourselves Be Infantilised And Dehumanised
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 23:30

  We have now had nearly nine months of being treated like utter imbeciles. A once great country with a once free people has been reduced to the level of being governed by pathetic, childish slogans. And for some reason we have allowed ourselves to be infantilised…

  

• China To Vaccinate 50MM People Before Lunar New Year
  China To Vaccinate 50MM People Before Lunar New Year
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 23:00

  Though interestingly enough most of the vaccines produced in China will be sold to buyers abroad…while China soaks up hundreds of millions of doss in imports…

  

• California Reports Record COVID Cases And Deaths… Despite Strictest Lockdown
  California Reports Record COVID Cases And Deaths… Despite Strictest Lockdown
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 22:30

  Sadly, but perhaps predictably, government regulations do not appear to be slowing down the coronavirus…

  

• Mauritius Shipping Disaster Blamed On Crew Who Wanted Better Cell Reception 
  Mauritius Shipping Disaster Blamed On Crew Who Wanted Better Cell Reception 
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 22:00

  …can you hear me now?

   

  

• The Next Dollar Problem Has Just Arrived
  The Next Dollar Problem Has Just Arrived
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 21:30

  The Fed is now faced with… a momentous task encompassing the whole US economy, requiring even faster money-printing, and is impossible without destroying the unbacked dollar…

  

• Californians Can Now Pay A Premium To Power Their Homes With Manure
  Californians Can Now Pay A Premium To Power Their Homes With Manure
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 21:00

  As if living costs in the Golden State weren’t already high enough…

  

• The Populist American Powder Keg Is Primed But Will It Be Lit?
  The Populist American Powder Keg Is Primed But Will It Be Lit?
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 20:30

  We should always be wary of falling into the trap of this alarmism, but as 2020 comes to an end there are some truly unique events happening in the West, especially America that cannot be ignored…

  

• UPenn Ethicist: Old People Shouldn't Get Vaxx First Since They're 'Too White'
  UPenn Ethicist: Old People Shouldn’t Get Vaxx First Since They’re ‘Too White’
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 20:00

  “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer…”

  

• Trump Blasts Exaggerated Media Claims Of "Russia, Russia, Russia" In Cyberattack After Seeing Intel
  Trump Blasts Exaggerated Media Claims Of “Russia, Russia, Russia” In Cyberattack After Seeing Intel
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 19:54

  “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed…”

   

   

   

  

• Do It For The Kids: A Student Loan Solution
  Do It For The Kids: A Student Loan Solution
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 19:30

  How about doing something for the kids instead of the teachers, unions, administrators, and pension fund operators?

  

• Biden Seeks Talks With Venezuela's Maduro While Juan Guaido Shut Out
  Biden Seeks Talks With Venezuela’s Maduro While Juan Guaido Shut Out
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 19:00

  Biden is set to break from Trump’s hawkish Venezuela policy…

  

• First Radio Signals From Planet Outside Solar System Could Have Been Received, Astronomers Say
  First Radio Signals From Planet Outside Solar System Could Have Been Received, Astronomers Say
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 18:30

  …locusts, plague, and now… aliens?

  

• "Heartbreaking Tragedy" – Devon Dalio, Son Of Billionaire Hedge Fund Founder, Dies In Car Crash
  “Heartbreaking Tragedy” – Devon Dalio, Son Of Billionaire Hedge Fund Founder, Dies In Car Crash
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 18:15

  “It is with great pain that I am sharing with you that my 42 year old son was killed in a car crash yesterday.”

  

• US Closing Last 2 Consulates In Russia, Only Moscow Embassy Remains
  US Closing Last 2 Consulates In Russia, Only Moscow Embassy Remains
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 18:00

  Trump admin letter to Congress cites Russian-imposed personnel cap authorized by Putin…

  

• Here Are The 3 Things That Can Blow Up Goldman's Euphoric 4,300 S&P Price Target
  Here Are The 3 Things That Can Blow Up Goldman’s Euphoric 4,300 S&P Price Target
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 17:30

  i) a rise in inflation and interest rates, ii) a botched vaccine distribution, and iii) policy uncertainty stemming from the Georgia Senate run-offs and antitrust litigation.

  

• London, Italy Enter Full Holiday Lockdowns; England COVID Mutation 70% More Infectious: Live Updates
  London, Italy Enter Full Holiday Lockdowns; England COVID Mutation 70% More Infectious: Live Updates
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 17:09

  The number of new COVID cases reported Friday in the US was just shy of the record highs reported earlier this month…

  

• Pakistan Pressured To Normalize Relations With Israel Amid Reports Of Secret Talks
  Pakistan Pressured To Normalize Relations With Israel Amid Reports Of Secret Talks
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 17:00

  Large anti-Israel protests in Pakistan after top aide to PM Imran Khan reportedly flew to Tel Aviv with coordination of US…

  

• WHO (Finally) Admits PCR Tests Create False Positives
  WHO (Finally) Admits PCR Tests Create False Positives
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 16:30

  Warnings concerning high CT value of tests are months too late…so why are they appearing now? The potential explanation is shockingly cynical…

  

• Cash-Strapped Iraq Drastically Devalues Dinar As Fears Of Nationwide Unrest Grow
  Cash-Strapped Iraq Drastically Devalues Dinar As Fears Of Nationwide Unrest Grow
  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/19/2020 – 16:00

  The anxiety is rising as officials fear a repeat of the upheaval last year that brought down the government and saw hundreds of protesters killed…

  

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• Escobar: When Deplorables Become Ungovernables
  Escobar: When Deplorables Become Ungovernables
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 23:40

  Everything that lies ahead points to the irreconcilable…

  

• Pennsylvania Orgy Enthusiasts Can Stay Safe Using These Five Simple Tips
  Pennsylvania Orgy Enthusiasts Can Stay Safe Using These Five Simple Tips
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 23:20

  Superspreaders…

  

• 2020: The Year We Lost The Plot
  2020: The Year We Lost The Plot
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 23:00

  To cut to the chase, we have gone and thrown out reason, rationality and proportionality this year…

  

• A Global Look At How People Spend Their Time (Spoiler Alert: Sleeping Mostly!)
  A Global Look At How People Spend Their Time (Spoiler Alert: Sleeping Mostly!)
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 22:40

  We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but we don’t spend them the same way. Some prioritize family time or household chores, while others cherish a good night’s sleep or seeing friends…

  

• The Internet Is For Porn
  The Internet Is For Porn
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 22:20

  It always was, it always will be…

  

• LA Is Spending $130,000 Per "Tiny Home" To Shelter Its Homeless
  LA Is Spending $130,000 Per “Tiny Home” To Shelter Its Homeless
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 22:00

  Because nothing motivates one more to get out and join the workforce than being handed a home and utilities at the cost of working taxpayers. 

  

• "Insane" S&P Rebalance Ends With Tesla Smashing All-Time Volume Record
  “Insane” S&P Rebalance Ends With Tesla Smashing All-Time Volume Record
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 21:54

  One can only stand back and watch in awe at the clusterfuck this “market” has become.

  

• Terrorist Who Murdered 224 People Released From Prison Because Of COVID-19
  Terrorist Who Murdered 224 People Released From Prison Because Of COVID-19
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 21:40

  Are you ready for this week’s absurdity?

  

• China Endures Worsening Electricity Shortages In Name Of Punishing Australia
  China Endures Worsening Electricity Shortages In Name Of Punishing Australia
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 21:20

  Latest punitive restrictions have left dozens of coal-laden ships idling off China’s ports…

  

• Americans' Mental Health Hits 20-Year Low Ahead Of Renewed Lockdowns, Gallup Poll
  Americans’ Mental Health Hits 20-Year Low Ahead Of Renewed Lockdowns, Gallup Poll
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 21:00

  Any retrospective analysis of lockdown policies – the effectiveness which is seriously disputed – must be weighed against the loss of life and human suffering they caused…

  

• Satellite Photos Show Iran Likely Building New Underground Nuclear Facility
  Satellite Photos Show Iran Likely Building New Underground Nuclear Facility
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 20:40

  Construction happening deep inside the mountain believed for protecting it from airstrikes at a moment Israel warns it will “confront” the Iranian threat…

  

• Backtalk Highlights The Danger Of A "Digital Assistant"
  Backtalk Highlights The Danger Of A “Digital Assistant”
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 20:20

  “I may only be an AI but you should choose your words wisely.”

  

• Moderna Becomes Second Covid Vaccine To Receive US Approval
  Moderna Becomes Second Covid Vaccine To Receive US Approval
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 20:11

  “With the availability of two vaccines now for the prevention of COVID-19, the FDA has taken another crucial step in the fight against this global pandemic that is causing vast numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States each day”

  

• "Pandemic Arbitrage" – Restaurateurs Lure New Yorkers To States With Indoor Dining 
  “Pandemic Arbitrage” – Restaurateurs Lure New Yorkers To States With Indoor Dining 
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 20:00

  “You’re telling me that indoor dining is causing an uptick in cases in New York City, but nowhere else in the state?”

   

  

• Senate Joins House In Passing 2-Day Shutdown Stopgap As Talks Drag On
  Senate Joins House In Passing 2-Day Shutdown Stopgap As Talks Drag On
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 19:46

  “These programs were meant to be temporary, and they’re going to be temporary….“

   

  

• The Response To COVID-19 In Oregon Has Entered The Surreal
  The Response To COVID-19 In Oregon Has Entered The Surreal
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 19:40

  “I doubt the governor nor the governors advisors will read this letter… or care much for my opinion formed from the states data. But I do wonder where these people are getting their data to form their opinions…“

  

• Blackstone Will Soon Be Turning Around And Selling The Data From Companies It Acquires
  Blackstone Will Soon Be Turning Around And Selling The Data From Companies It Acquires
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 19:20

  A spokesman for Blackstone said the data  “is fully anonymized and includes best-in-class privacy and compliance protections.” 

  

• When Social Capital Becomes More Valuable Than Financial Capital
  When Social Capital Becomes More Valuable Than Financial Capital
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 19:00

  …social capital – our connections, loyalties, memberships, obligations and bonds – will become more valuable and financial capital will become not only less valuable, but an actual liability…

  

• Buzzfeed Joins SPAC Dealmaking Frenzy As Profits Remain Elusive
  Buzzfeed Joins SPAC Dealmaking Frenzy As Profits Remain Elusive
  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/18/2020 – 18:40

  A growing number of digital media players, including Axios, are joining the late-year dealmaking frenzy…

  

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• Tennessee Nurse Passes Out On Camera Minutes After Taking COVID-19 Vaccine
  Tennessee Nurse Passes Out On Camera Minutes After Taking COVID-19 Vaccine
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 23:56

  A Tennessee nurse passed out on camera ten minutes after taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

  

  Critical care nurse Tiffany Dover at CHI Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga was having a lucid discussion with WRCBtv following her vaccination, when she became visibly impaired – holding her hand to her head and swaying. She then apologized to the news crew, turned away from the camera, and fainted.

  “Ten minutes after the shot, Dover became light-headed and passed out while speaking with us,” the outlet reported.

  Watch:

  Dover took the vaccine on camera beforehand (h/t).

  

  She told WRCBtv that this is ‘not an uncommon reaction for her,’ explaining “I have a history of having an over-reactive vagal response, and so with that if I have pain from anything, hangnail or if I stub my toe, I can just pass out.”

  The rest of the vaccinations reportedly went off without a hitch after the hospital received 975 doses.

  The Vagal response occurs when the vagus nerve is stimulated, setting off a chain of events within the body involving the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system and the cardiovascular system. 

  

  If triggered, it causes an abrupt drop in blood pressure and a decreased heart rate, which can cause blood to pool in the legs – which in some cases can result in brief loss of consciousness known as vasovagal syncope.

  Examples:

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• But, But, Masks!??…
  But, But, Masks!??…
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 23:40

  Much heralded COVID-19 model-student South Korea saw new infections with the virus rise again to more than 1,000 cases per day, dramatically higher than during the first wave in February and March.

  Here’s CNN: “In Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan and other Asian nations, mask wearing is uncontroversial, near universal, and has been proven effective…”

  Here’s Forbes: “What South Korea teaches us is that … mass production and distribution of face masks and the promotion of their use, are winning strategies in this battle.“

  Here’s NYTimes: “The country showed that it is possible to contain the coronavirus without shutting down the economy… Television broadcasts, subway station announcements and smartphone alerts provide endless reminders to wear face masks…”

  The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has hailed South Korea as demonstrating that containing the virus, while difficult, “can be done.” He urged countries to “apply the lessons learned in Korea and elsewhere.”

  

  As Statista’s Willem Roper notes, the country has been praised extensively for reducing cases of COVID-19, but a continuously climbing case count shows how the threat of new outbreaks looms even after flattening the curve (twice before).

  After a second outbreak in August and September was squashed, South Korea had already tightened restrictions again.

  The highest number of daily new cases in the initial wave was recorded at 813 on Feb 29.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Still, these cases being recorded now are only a sliver of those detected daily in the U.S. and Europe. There, daily new case counts of COVID-19 are still in the tens of thousands… so keep wearing your masks!!!

  🔥 🔥 🔥!!!!

  This is insane! Every country that introduced mandatory masks had their case numbers explode after!! Mask don’t work!

  Retweet!!!! pic.twitter.com/3VssX0WK4V

  — The Epigenetic Whisperer 👉The Bodhisattva Bastard (@epigwhisp) December 16, 2020

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• This Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words 
  This Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words 
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 23:25

  The New York Times’ Hiroko Masuike captured customers at The Smith restaurant in Manhattan Wednesday evening, bundled up in winter jackets, underneath propane heaters on a sidewalk patio, while the first major winter storm of the season blanketed the city nearly one foot of snow. 

  Thanks to Andrew Cuomo’s decision to once again shut down indoor dining in New York on Monday, these patrons had to eat outside in the middle of a freakin’ snowstorm. 

  As the wind blew, the propane heaters appeared worthless as a few of the patrons were sipping on soup and have likely downed a liquor shot or two to stay warm. 

  

  Perhaps the patrons on Wednesday night were devoted customers supporting their local restaurants, rain or shine, considering a record number of eateries across the country can’t pay December rent. 

  As we’ve mentioned before, Goldman Sachs has noted that if daily average temperatures slide below 40°F – then it would be associated with a steep drop off in consumer activity at eateries. 

  

  So back to the picture – patrons can thank the government for why they had to eat a nice meal outside in the middle of a major snowstorm. 

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• Is America's Fourth Estate (Free Press) In Foreclosure?
  Is America’s Fourth Estate (Free Press) In Foreclosure?
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 23:20

  Authored by Leni Friedman Valenta with Jiri Valenta via The Gatestone Institute,

  The “fourth estate” refers to freedom of the press. The term may have first been used by the philosopher-statesman Edmund Burke, who in 1787 highlighted the press as free and apart from the other three British “estates” — clergy, royalty and commoners.

  

  The modern meaning, however, refers to the press as a fourth and free power — as even a “watchdog” — over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our government. Today, however, it is the watchdog that needs watching.

  The foundation on which the United States is built, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, is enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution:

  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

  Before our eyes, however, this freedom is being distorted, strangled and withheld.

  Young people today seem to have no idea of what the media used to be when America was more united. All the newspapers and media outlets recognized and covered the same big stories. The ideal to which journalistic professionalism aspired was objective reporting — at least an attempt toward it — and the media at least tried to keep “news” balanced, and separate from opinions and op-eds.

  Today, journalism has changed so that the “news” is often conflated with unsupported and biased opinion. Consider Newsweek‘s story on Senator Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) poll-supported claim that “Donald Trump would have won the election if the media had given more coverage to unsubstantiated allegations concerning President-elect Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.” The word “unsubstantiated” is the reporter’s opinion — not a certified fact. As we are seeing now, and as Senator Johnson was doubtless well aware, the allegations were smothered in substantiation. All a reporter had to do was look.

  Similarly, some journalists cannot seem to hold themselves back from reporting on Trump’s supposedly “baseless” claims of election fraud — despite eyewitness affidavits, vote count anomalies, abrogations of both the Constitution and states’ election laws, and the use of Dominion voting machines and Smartmatic software that are reported to have the capacity to flip votes secretly from one candidate to another.

  Widely censored by both Big Tech and the mainstream media was a New York Post article which asserted that an abandoned laptop, the undisputed property of former Vice-President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, implicates him as the family “concierge” for the Biden family’s influence-peddling in China — a country cited by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as America’s “National Security Threat No. 1.”

  Two corroborated reports in the New York Post highlighted Hunter Biden’s financial interests in various foreign countries — include his partnering with two Chinese military companies, one under investigation for espionage and the other for human rights violations. Both New York Post articles were censored — actually totally blocked — for two weeks by Twitter and Facebook, as was, for a time, the Twitter account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for having posted the contraband information.

  As Glen Greenwald, who recently resigned from The Intercept, the website he co-founded, wrote, weeks before the election:

  “Early in the day, users who attempted to link to the New York Post story either publicly or privately received a cryptic message rejecting the attempt as an ‘error.’ Later in the afternoon, Twitter changed the message, advising users that they could not post that link because the company judged its contents to be ‘potentially harmful.'”

  Recently, YouTube, announced that it was removing all videos accurately “claiming (that) mass fraud changed election results.” Left unperturbed, however, are masses of inaccurate material, such as that President Trump allegedly colluded with Russia, or Chinese and Iranian propaganda claiming “the US army may have brought the coronavirus disease to Wuhan.”

  It was also, it seems, perfectly fine for the New York Times, as its editor-in-chief, Dean Baquet, admitted, to have “built our newsroom” around the fake Russia Hoax for two years, but the confirmed facts concerning the Biden family’s influence peddling was apparently “not fit to print” — especially before an election the newspaper was manipulating.

  Divisions in the media have also created for the public widely divergent images of the president. To one group, President Trump is supposedly a far-right, authoritarian tyrant, allegedly seeking permanent rule; a buffoon, a fascist, racist, white supremacist, narcissist, lunatic, and incompetent, lacking in both empathy and presidential dignity.

  To another group, he is the patriotic upholder of the American Constitution, a man of legendary accomplishments in office — four more partners for peace in the Middle East (the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco); producing and delivering a new vaccine in less than a year; expanding school choice to improve “equality”; preventing Iran from a nuclear breakout; protecting the US border from trafficking and drug smuggling, and unmasking and confronting China as a lawless, omnivorous threat. To this group, he is a Hercules, delivering for the people in spite of unrelenting attempts to undermine him, and by far the last best hope of saving the United States from an energized, appeasement-prone, increasingly socialist takeover.

  Many believe that what the US has been experiencing – such as the bogus charges of collusion with Russia, a kangaroo impeachment, and now an election that appears overwhelmingly stolen — is nothing less than a succession of attempted coups d’états, more in keeping with Russia, China, Venezuela and Cuba than with a sustainable republic.

  This month, it was claimed that Republican Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia “awarded a $107 million contract to Dominion voting machines two weeks after meeting with People’s Republic of China’s Consul General.”

  Senator Chuck Schumer has already announced that he would like to “change America.” He has not quite specified into what.

  Transitions to tyranny — in the name of “helping the people” — usually take place along with the “cancel culture’s” desecration of statues, re-writing of history, outbreaks of rioting, looting, murders and ongoing denigration to whip up hate.

  For much of the country, the attempted coups have now been sanctified and made to seem legitimate by the election — that many feel was “stolen” — of former Vice-President Biden. One can surely understand how Republicans feel now that the top-ranking conspirators involved the attempted coups have captured the government through their figurehead, former Vice-President Biden.

  Clearly, voter fraud must be investigated, as scheduled in upcoming hearings under Senator Ron Johnson December 16. If elections continue the same way — by legitimizing practices that sidestep Constitutional and states’ laws — as they threaten to do in two run-off elections in Georgia on January 5, we will no longer have a viable republic. The two upcoming elections in Georgia to determine control of the Senate may end up being the last firewall of a workable, multi-party nation.

  Also clear is that the election of former Vice-President Biden was made possible not only because he was supported by almost universally biased mainstream newspapers and television stations that distorted or snuffed stories at will, as well as by Wall Street corporations and Big Tech companies aching to do business with a lucrative, if hegemonic, China.

  Currently, power in America is concentrated in six companies:

  “News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS and Comcast own 90% of the TV stations, radio stations, movies, magazines and newspapers that 277 million Americans rely on for news and entertainment.”

  Those companies have been “consolidated from 50 companies back in 1983.” Supporting them are supposed “fact checkers” — often suspect, and funded in large part by liberal billionaires such as George Soros and Bill Gates who most of the time support the Democrats.

  Meanwhile, countless Americans have had advertising accounts or websites abridged or closed simply because Big Tech does not agree with their views. The investigative organization “Project Veritas” exposed Twitter’s “shadow banning” mainly right-of-center views, meaning that “users were blocked from the platform without even being notified.”

  On November 17, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey about their political bias and practices, perhaps in an effort to curb their manipulation of a tremendous market dominance of information. Republican Josh Hawley questioned Zuckerberg about one program in particular, “Tasks,” which is ostensibly used to share and coordinate “security-related” information between Twitter, Facebook and Google.

  Zuckerberg claimed that the coordination was confined to “terrorism and foreign government influence but not content.”

  Really? Then why did the media “breathlessly” cover Adam Schiff’s fake “content” that the laptop scandal was “Russian disinformation,” a claim emphatically denied by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.

  Despite Big Tech’s millions in donations to members of Congress, some members are considering revoking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act , which provides immunity to Big Tech from content they post, or breaking up the Big Tech companies as violators of anti-trust laws, the better to enable competition.

  Zuckerberg also mentioned the intention of the three media giants to support the two Democrats in the senate run-off races in Georgia on January 5. A George Soros-Bloomberg group has already contributed $300,000 to the two Democrats in their attempt to defeat incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

  Of the Democratic challengers in Georgia, Jon Ossoff has had business ties with a Chinese company, PCCW Media, a telecom company, whose chairman, Richard Li, has for years opposed pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, backed by the billionaire George Soros, is anti-military, anti-Israel, and has praised a fellow-preacher, Frederick Haynes III, “a Louis Farrakhan-supporting preacher after he compared President Donald Trump’s election to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and applauded efforts to defund police departments.”

  The latest efforts by the media giants have been the attempt to discredit President Trump’s claims of massive fraud in the election; claims backed up by Trump lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, as well as various experts in technology.

  How did all this come about in star-spangled America? The radicalization seems to have actually begun in our institutions of higher learning, perhaps by teachers and others in power. Many who were radical protestors in the 1960s and ’70s, may well have since been indoctrinating public school children with a version of history calculated to make them despise their country and accept communism.

  As presidential historian Craig Shirley has written in “They’re Coming for you, Mark Zuckerberg”:

  “As instructed in Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, the left either destroys or takes over institutions in order to gain control; power. Public education … is now under the thumb of the left and their labor unions, and our children are not learning, except to mouth leftist bromides.”

  At present, radicalized schools are, not surprisingly, turning out radicalized reporters. According to a study by the National Association of Scholars, Democrat professors outnumber Republican ones by nine to one. In the Northeast, the ratio was 15.4 to one. If you want to know what happened to the Republicans, just ask Daniel Ravicher, a law professor at Miami University, censured for tweets that supported Trump.

  What we are witnessing in the universities appears to be massive, Marxist-inspired group-think. It has also infested the media and other areas of society, thereby crushing another essential linchpin of democracy: the free marketplace of ideas.

  If you think that a slow-motion coup seems unlikely, tune in to William Binney’s interview with Chris Hedges. A former technical director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Binney maintains he retired in disgust when he realized that the NSA used the technology that he had created to spy on Americans.

  One hopeful sign is that in the US, we do not have complete censorship — at least yet. In freedom of the press lies its reverent responsibility for the freedom and welfare of the people.

  As more and more news of the election fraud has comes to the attention of Americans, rallies have sprung up in support of honest elections. So far, still to be answered, is the question: If election officials can ignore legalities with impunity, how, going forward, can there be trustworthy elections?

  Whatever the final outcome of the current presidential election, let us hope that the frogs are starting to jump out.

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• Walmart To Expand Autonomous Box Truck Deliveries In Louisiana 
  Walmart To Expand Autonomous Box Truck Deliveries In Louisiana 
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 23:00

  Walmart is set to expand its autonomous vehicle program with Gatik, a Palo Alto-based technology company, to make deliveries between New Orleans and Metairie, Louisiana, in 2021, according to a Walmart corporate update. 

  Walmart’s autonomous vehicle program began last year when it started picking up customers’ orders on a two-mile route between a warehouse and store in Bentonville, Arkansas.

  

  The autonomous vehicles have safely recorded more than 70,000 operational miles in autonomous mode with a safety driver. 

  With much success over the last year, Walmart is set to expand its fully autonomous trucks at a second location in Louisiana. These trucks will begin delivering items from a “live” Walmart Supercenter to a designated pickup location where customers can retrieve their orders.

  The new route, stretching between New Orleans and Metairie, Louisiana, will begin sometime in 2021. 

  “Our trials with Gatik are just two of many use cases we’re testing with autonomous vehicles, and we’re excited to continue learning how we might incorporate them in a delivery ecosystem,” said Tom Ward, Walmart’s senior VP of customer product.

  “This unlocks the opportunity for customers who live further away from our store in New Orleans to benefit from the convenience and ease of Walmart’s pickup service, Ward said. 

  Walmart’s quest to automate the last-mile has also led the company to even pilot test drones.

  However, there’s a dark side to America’s largest retailer quickly adopting automation; that is, it will displace jobs. 

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• Frog-Marched Into Klaus Schwab's Dystopian Nightmare
  Frog-Marched Into Klaus Schwab’s Dystopian Nightmare
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 22:40

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

  As The Republic Dies The Next Generation Must Rise

  The first rule of screenwriting, or in fact any fiction writing, is, “Conflict doesn’t create character, it reveals it.” People are who they are and we only find out what they are made of when tested to their limit.

  This is the essence of all good storytelling – create characters who rise to be role models for us as we navigate our way through a Universe hostile to our very existence.

  While I hesitate to ascribe such noble ideas as ‘character’ to any politician there are a few out there who have shown great potential. I’ve written about all of them at various times in the past few years.

  Matteo Salvini in Italy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladmir Putin, Nigel Farage in the UK and even a flawed figure like Donald Trump are all examples of men who history will remember as having stood up when needed.

  At times each of them tried to move heaven and earth to stop the degradation of society, culture and the human condition in the face of an implacable enemy – communist ideologues bent on forcing humanity into submission to their will.

  But with the Supreme Court abdicating its primary responsibility under the Constitution last week citing itself in an unconstitutional ruling from 1925 (H/T Martin Armstrong for this) means it is over for Trump and the U.S. to stop the final transformation of the U.S. into an oligarchy in reality if not in spirit.

  There is no mechanism for states to redress grievances of any import now. What was left of the compact between equal sovereign states died with a whimper in the halls of the SCOTUS and to thunderous applause by the BlueCheckMarked Sneetches on Twitter.

  This means that a stolen election will in all probability stand up come Inauguration Day. The entrenched oligarchy has won this round.

  Fine. But it doesn’t mean the efforts of the men I just listed will have been in vain. In fact, quite the opposite.

  Because what it has done is revealed the character if everyone involved. What they do next now that they have the power they’ve always craved to transform America will determine what people who have principles other than raw power will do.

  

  We’re beginning to see that response form up. This election isn’t over but the positioning for the future a post-republic America has already begun.

  Since election day Tulsi Gabbard, a tweener between Gen-X and a Millennial, has been a non-stop source of, admittedly, Quixotic bills to put paid her insurgent campaign in the Democratic primaries as someone interested in fixing real foundational problems with the country and the bipartisan corruption in Washington.

  “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” -Ben Franklin@RepThomasMassie & I intro’d ‘Protect Our Civil Liberties Act’ (HR8970) to repeal the so-called Patriot Act & end illegal government surveillance pic.twitter.com/QEB8gKxFKu

  — Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) December 16, 2020

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

  She continues to reach across party lines introducing legislation which form the basis for a populist election strategy targeting the 2022 and 2024 elections.

  From whistleblower protection to repealing Section 230 of the CDA to the bill in the tweet above co-sponsored with libertarian Thomas Massie, Gabbard is an example of what the future holds for the political future once this meta-stable, oligarchic rule-by-men period of America is over.

  It’s clear that Gabbard wants no part of being a part of the Democratic Party that’s in power now. That’s why she didn’t run for re-election and I suspect these moves are all laying the groundwork for a return to politics in 2024 as an independent or Sanders-like outsider.

  I’ve been writing for years now that our problems stem from an unwillingness of the older generations of politicians to give up power. If anything, they persist because they are owned by the forces that put them there in the first place to pull off this betrayal of the people that has been in the works for decades.

  And they will stay in place until they are no longer needed. Just ask Diane Feinstein who is now being sacrificed to make way for the transition team to finish the job she started.

  I always saw Trump as Gen-X’s moment to pull a Ronald Reagan and say, “Mr. Trump, tear down this Swamp!” but the real story is that Gen-X is allowing Obama to do that tearing down and hand what’s left back to the old monied elites.

  The fight now is between the cross-currents within Gen-X. Equal parts commie and libertarian the one uniting principle is a desire to reform the old order.

  It is my read that people like Gabbard, Massie, Sen. Rand Paul and a few others see the problem. Gabbard’s a leftist, but she’s no doctrinaire commie. That makes her and interesting pivot figure around which a coalition to retake control or build back better the U.S. can be formed. This will be necessary once Obama’s incoming crew of vandals overreaches and are thrown out on their asses.

  Regardless of the outcome in the coming months and years the changing of the guard is close at hand. Post-Trump America will look very different than pre-Trump. Trump was the apotheosis of the Boomers.

  His legacy will be forcing the Deep State into the open, bringing the fight against them out of the shadows.

  Trump, however, doesn’t represent the future of America. He’s weighed down with the mythology of an America that never really existed.

  That mythology, however, is something worth building on not allowing Obama and The Vandals to tear down. I believe Gabbard understands this.

  I also believe at least 75 million Americans understand this.

  For the American people to not be frog-marched into the dystopian nightmare of Klaus Schwab’s dreams it will be the revealed character of the Gabbards, Massies and Pauls to lead once the violence reaches a crescendo.

  Make no mistake, there will be violence. It is inevitable because the people who voted for Trump will not be placated with UBI or settle down as their voices are silenced.

  The fraudsters will forever be looking over their shoulders, lashing out at minor opposition as traitors who need to be put down.

  Here we are presented with a staged picture with three white privilege guys straight out of central casting for the latest Obama-produced ‘documentary’ on equality coming to Netflix in the spring.

  

  This is your “Unity” agenda from the most statist of state house organs, NPR, the echo chamber of choice for the low-information ‘informed’ shitlib. This is the face of the Biden/Harris administration.

  This is just the beginning of what we can look forward to when the GOP loses both seats in the Georgia run-off and the Democrats, despite historically-low support and engagement with actual voters, run the table.

  Once ensconced they will persecute their political enemies in ways only Alex Jones has contemplated to this point. And it will be this escalation that will reveal the quality of the character of these next-generation politicians.

  They will have the choice, leader of men or cowards. The republic we’ve known is dead. Maybe that’s a good thing. But what comes after won’t be up to the people who just destroyed it. That job is the next generation’s job. Their moment is coming in the next couple of years. They will have to be ready.

  *  *  *

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• US Coast Guard Offloads $411 Million In Cocaine, Marijuana At South Florida Port
  US Coast Guard Offloads $411 Million In Cocaine, Marijuana At South Florida Port
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 22:20

  More than 23,000 pounds of cocaine and nearly 8,800 pounds of marijuana, worth approximately $411.3 million, were offloaded by the US Coast Guard Cutter James on Wednesday at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a series of busts in international waters.

  

  The US Coast Guard said in a press release that the drugs were “interdicted in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Mexico, Central, and South America.” Eight American and UK vessels seized contraband from 20 suspected drug smuggling ships. 

  

  “This patrol highlights our crew’s continued commitment to protecting the American people from our adversaries,” said Capt. Todd Vance, James’ commanding officer.

  Vance continued: “Despite COVID, the James crew demonstrated supreme resilience, and the results of their exceptional performance are being showcased today.”

  Vance told CBS Miami that “with absolute certainty, we know that each interdiction saves life and helps to protect others from violence, extortion, and instability.” 

  With the drugs in the federal government’s custody – the question we ask is what happens to all the cocaine and marijuana? 

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• Hamilton Beats MMT
  Hamilton Beats MMT
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 22:00

  Authored by Todd Buchholz via Project Syndicate,

  Ultra-low interest rates have fueled growing support for Modern Monetary Theory, which holds that governments can simply print money and ignore rising public debt levels without having to face the consequences. It is a neat and tempting argument, as long as one ignores history and common sense.

  

  Was Alexander Hamilton a fool? Modern Monetary Theorists must think so. Hamilton, whose story is now sung by millions of schoolchildren, persuaded the young United States to absorb state debt, pay it back, and build a trustworthy reputation.

  “If we assume the debts,” goes a lyric from the musical Hamilton, “the union gets a new line of credit, a financial diuretic. How do you not get it?”

  Should Hamilton have simply torn up the states’ Revolutionary War debt? MMTers seem to believe so, arguing that countries can often print money and ignore debt with little pain. I wish I could believe that government debt doesn’t matter (or that Elvis is still alive). But debt matters a great deal, and we should be thankful that US President-elect Joe Biden’s presumptive treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, is not an MMT acolyte.

  Nonetheless, MMTers have been picking up ever more support. Ultra-low interest rates have fueled a growing temptation to keep printing money and ignoring debt until the very moment inflation flares up. Whenever that moment comes, MMTers assure us that the government will simply cut spending to cool off the economy. They present a neat argument if you ignore history and common sense by trusting politicians to do precisely what they are most averse to doing.

  This is not to suggest that governments should slash spending during the COVID-19 Great Cessation, which has pushed the US jobless rate close to 7%. I support big deficits now, but eventually the US and other governments will need to rein in their raging budgets. In ten years, the Medicare and Social Security trust funds will run dry, triggering 10-25% cuts in health and pension benefits for the elderly.

  The age-old refrain from debt apologists is, “We owe the money to ourselves.” But we don’t just owe money to ourselves: about one-third of US debt is held by foreigners, including around $1.1 trillion that is in China’s hands. Moreover, even if we consider only the debt held by Americans, we must ask, “Who is ‘we’?” Lenders who bought US Treasuries in good faith are not the same individuals who would benefit from tearing up the bonds or inflating away their value.

  Today’s debt apologists have many forerunners, some buried in the rubble of ancient Greece, where fourth century BC municipalities defaulted to the Temple of Delos. In 1793, Louis XVI lost his head while trying to placate the French monarchy’s creditors. In the 1920s, the Weimar Republic experienced devastating hyperinflation until the central bank gained enough freedom from freewheeling politicians to stabilize a new currency. More recently, Chile, Peru, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and Brazil have all met with near ruin after implementing MMT. Venezuela’s debt is now twice its GDP, and its inflation rate is best expressed using scientific notation.

  Of course, MMTers dismiss these cases as exotic examples from the dizzy tropics.

  As MMT popularizer Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook University tweeted in 2012, “People who scream, ‘Zimbabwe!’ have no idea what caused hyperinflation there…”

  Fine, then, let’s look instead at “advanced” economies. In the 1970s, the United Kingdom was the “sick man of Europe” (a phrase first applied by Czar Nicholas I to the crumbling Ottoman Empire), suffering explosive inflation and a sinking currency. In 1976, following an extraordinary conversion, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan begged the International Monetary Fund for a bailout, performed a fiscal about-face, and declared to debt apologists, “I tell you in all candor that that option no longer exists.”

  Fortunately, responsible budgeting can indeed revive a country’s prospects. During the 1990s, Canada and Sweden faced dreadful economic crises that wiped out millions of jobs. In 1992, Sweden’s central bank raised interest rates to 500% to protect the currency from collapsing after politicians had more than doubled the country’s level of borrowing. Both Sweden and Canada adopted responsible measures to slash spending, and their economies soon boomed. For its part, the US created about 18 million net new jobs in the 1990s – a bonanza kicked off by a spending pact between President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and congressional Republicans.

  Faced with all of these examples, MMTers’ only response is to claim that their approach has worked for Japan.

  Never mind that the Japanese have in fact rejected MMT in both word and deed. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda specifically calls MMT “an extreme argument that won’t be accepted.”

  Why does Japan not fit the MMT model? For starters, 90% of Japanese debt is Japanese-held, most of it by branches of government, not by private institutions. Second, Japan has doubled its consumption taxes to pare the debt, and reduced per capita spending for the elderly in recent years. Would MMTers support either of these policies?

  In any case, even if we were to pretend that Japan is following the MMT playbook, why would anyone want to take credit for the results? The country has experienced 20 years of stagnation, with GDP growing at less than 1% per year, and private investment as a share of GDP eroding. Two decades ago, Sony and Toyota led the world; today, Apple and Tesla overshadow them.

  Former IMF Chief Economist Kenneth Rogoff scoffs that MMT is neither modern, monetary, nor a theory. That is too harsh. MMT is indeed modern, but modern like a Jackson Pollock painting – colorful, hypnotic, and a mess. It may be alluring, but it is not safe for work or for school. Instead, children should rap to the wisdom of Hamilton.

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• "Bullying Attitude": China, US Trade Blame For Breakdown In Military-To-Military Talks
  “Bullying Attitude”: China, US Trade Blame For Breakdown In Military-To-Military Talks
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 21:40

  China’s military has blamed the United States for a breakdown in military-to-military talks which were scheduled as part of the 2020 China-US military maritime consultative agreement (MMCA) meetings.

  This comes after on Wednesday the US side blasted China for being a no-show for the Dec.14 through 16 meetings. Currently both sides are claiming that the other military delegation didn’t show.

  The agreed upon talks are connected with efforts to ensure a defusing of tensions, also toward the establishment and maintaining of a military ‘de-escalation’ hotline to ensure no unintentional close-call military encounters leading to spiraling conflict and war.

  

  First, the US side had this to say:

  The US military has slammed China for failing to appear at virtual, senior-level meetings slated for this week, with the top US admiral for the Asia-Pacific saying it was “another example that China does not honor its agreements”.

  “This should serve as a reminder to all nations as they pursue agreements with China going forward,” Admiral Phil Davidson, the commander for US Indo-Pacific Command, said in a statement on Wednesday.

  “We remain committed to the MMCA and call on the PLA to hold the MMCA dialogue in a manner consistent with the MMCA Charter and purpose as an operational safety dialogue,” Adm. Davidson added.

  But on Thursday a Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy spokesman leveled the same charge right back, saying it’s the Americans refusing to participate. “The U.S. side did not abide by the consensus reached between the two sides and called black white to make the accusation,” the PLA’s Liu Wensheng said.

  “The US side insisted on forcing its unilateral agenda, arbitrarily reducing the length of the annual meetings and changing the nature of the talks,” Liu said further of what was to be an online meeting. “The US side even tried to force China’s participation without an agenda agreed by both sides.”

  As related by state media, the PLA official said further:

  These unprofessional, unfriendly and unconstructive actions reflect the U.S. side’s consistent bullying attitude, according to Liu.

  “We hope the US side will earnestly respect the contents of the agreement and reach consensus with China on relevant issues as soon as possible to facilitate the smooth holding of the meetings,” the statement added.

  Tensions are already on edge given we’ve now entered the final weeks of the Trump presidency, with Beijing hopeful the Biden administration will reverse course on the White House’s pressure campaign, also related to accusations that China is directly responsible for the spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic, a constant refrain of Trump’s. 

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• Are The Teachers Unions Keeping the Schools Closed?
  Are The Teachers Unions Keeping the Schools Closed?
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 21:20

  Authored by Amelia Janaskie via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  On Monday, December 7th, North Carolina teachers did not show up in their classrooms, but instead logged onto Facebook and posted photographs of themselves dressed in red with the caption, “A show of solidarity with our colleagues.”

  This gesture was in defiance of the Orange County Superintendent’s call for teachers to return to schools and a way to protest school openings, on the grounds that it was too dangerous for teachers to do their jobs in person because of the coronavirus pandemic.

  The local teacher’s union, Orange County Association of Educators, supported the movement in a Facebook post saying, “We have yet to hear sufficient rationale for how teaching from our classrooms helps our students, who can tell when our morale is low and our stress levels are high.”

  

  Schools across the country – in New York City, DC suburbs, Pittsburgh, and so on – are closing again for fear that a new wave of infections will occur from holiday travel and more people staying indoors. In Orange County, the teachers are still unwilling to hold in-person classes even though the county is seeing a low positive test rate of 3.1%, well below the state’s positive test rate goal of 5%. 

  It would be reasonable for teachers to oppose schools being open if Covid-19 posed a significant risk to students.

  However, we knew early on that the science demonstrates there is virtually no risk of severe illness or death to children. On April 22nd, a study from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found:

  “Most children with COVID-19 presented with mild symptoms, if any, generally required supportive care only, and typically had a good prognosis and recovered within 1 to 2 weeks.”

  Likewise, two months later, a study from the Lancet stated: “COVID-19 is generally a mild disease in children, including infants.”

  In the US alone, only 254 young people under the age of 17 have died of Covid-19.

  This number accounts for roughly 0.085% percent of Covid-19 deaths in the United States.

  At the same time, school closures cause great harm to children and teenagers, especially in the long term. 

  

  School districts across the country are observing much higher class failure rates compared to previous years. Salt Lake City schools reported the percentage of students falling below grade level jumped from 23 percent in 2019 to 32 percent in the first trimester of 2020. In Fairfax County, Virginia, the number of students who have two or more failing grades has increased by 83%. Significant evidence shows that a truncated school year supplemented with online learning is vastly inferior to the education children get in-person. Virtual learning is particularly harmful to students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds who do not have sufficient resources to support their learning.

  Not only are students failing more classes, but enrollment is low. A survey of school administrators found that about 50 percent of respondents from Pre-K up to high school experienced either a large or small decline in enrollment, with Pre-K seeing the biggest decline of 62 percent. On a global scale, the United Nations projects that 24 million children are in danger of dropping out of school as a result of lockdowns and school closures. Lower enrollment may also be attributed to other factors, such as more parents choosing to homeschool their children since schools are closed.

  In addition to the direct effects of school closures – educational deprivation – there are documented, serious unintended consequences. Child abuse is going unreported, because school personnel are the main source of reporting child maltreatment. Closures have severed the in-person interaction of children and teachers, putting children at risk. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) article studied Florida county-level data of maltreatment reports, finding 27% (15,000) fewer than expected in March and April alone.

  The problem is not only that school personnel cannot observe children, meaning that abuse is going unnoticed. Many parents have lost their jobs due to lockdowns, creating enormous stress within a household that ultimately leads to child maltreatment. This is not mere speculation but is substantiated by the evidence: another NIH article concluded that “job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic is a significant risk factor for child maltreatment.” Thus, not only are child maltreatment cases going underreported, but they are increasing as more parents are dealing with the stress of job loss.

  School closures also prevent the social interaction that is vital to children’s development, leading to increased feelings of isolation, depression, and anxiety. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), between January and October of 2020, the number of mental health-related hospital visits increased by 24% for 5 to 11 year-olds and by 31% for 12 to 17 year-olds. 

  School closures and other aspects of lockdowns have not only halted young people’s social interactions, but prevented doctor visits and participation in life milestones: school plays, proms, and graduations. The profusion of fear inundating society from media outlets and political figures leads children to feeling a loss of security and routine, which is extremely harmful to their psychological health.

  Overall, a JAMA study shed light on the massive destruction that school closures have on children. The authors estimated a decrease of 5.53 million years of life for children due to school closures, owing to lower income, reduced educational attainment, and worse health outcomes.

  

  Despite teachers’ worry about transmission in school, contracting the virus in schools is a low risk. An article from Nature, citing multiple studies, indicates that spread among children in schools is low. In fact, children are less likely to transmit the virus to adults (parents, staff members) than adults would infect each other. 

  There are plenty of countries – England, South Korea, and Italy, for example – who also opened schools and saw low transmission in schools. In any event, at-risk teachers could be accommodated by allowing them to help their colleagues from home, for instance planning classes or grading papers. 

  The data makes apparent that school closures are not a matter of public health. Instead, lobbying groups – who sway government officials to support their special interests – are central to the matter. They are teachers unions.

  

  In a study aimed at understanding the external influences of school closures during the pandemic, Corey DeAngelis from Reason Foundation and Christos Makridis from MIT found teachers unions to be a significant factor.

  They discovered that school districts are less likely to reopen when there is a strong union presence. 

  “…we see that a 10% rise in union workers is associated with a one percentage point decline in the probability of reopening in person”

  Furthermore, they “generally find that school district reopening decisions are unrelated to COVID-19 risk as measured by recent cases per capita and deaths per capita in the county.”

   Other studies have also found that school closures are tied to the presence of teachers unions, as opposed to the high rates of Covid-19, which one would expect.

  While much of the public believes that politicians have their constituents’ best interest in mind, politicians are often acting at the behest of labor unions and other lobbying groups, which have been shown to sway them in ways that benefit their group and not the community as a whole.

  Teachers unions are incentivized to lobby for themselves and reap high benefits, but their petitions ultimately lead to unintended consequences for children and their parents. 

  Nothing provides more evidence for the devastation of lockdowns than school closures. In the midst of our focus on complete disease avoidance, we have failed to acknowledge an extremely important vulnerable group. Children. Though they may seem quiet, they are calling for our help.

  At this point, confusion or debate over school openings is completely unfounded. We knew of the extremely low risk of Covid-19 for children in April.

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• Top Ranking Catholic Cardinal Says COVID-19 Used To Advance 'Godless And Murderous Agenda' , Usher In 'Great Reset'
  Top Ranking Catholic Cardinal Says COVID-19 Used To Advance ‘Godless And Murderous Agenda’ , Usher In ‘Great Reset’
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 21:00

  In early November, an Italian archbishop and Pope Francis foe, Carlo Maria Vigano, launched an attack against those behind pandemic lockdowns across the globe, warning President Trump in a letter of the coming “Great Reset” whose architects are “a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations.”

  

  “The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt,” Vigano’s letter continues.

  Now, roughly six weeks later, one of the most powerful Catholics in the United States, Cardinal Raymond Burke, has kicked it up a notch – slamming “secular forces” who want to “make us slaves to their godless and murderous agenda” in a Saturday homily. 

  Cardinal Raymond #Burke has warned of the danger of “certain forces” who are using the cover of #COVID19 to promote “fear,” attack freedom and the family.
  The Great Reset is the new normal#GreatReset https://t.co/JLxAy6Zit8 pic.twitter.com/4RSu6OOCcy

  — Il Teatro della Politica (@PraesesMundi) December 14, 2020

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

  Burke also slammed the US reliance on China, saying “To attain economic gains, we as a nation have permitted ourselves to become dependent upon the Chinese Communist Party, an ideology totally opposed to the Christian foundations upon which families and our nation remain safe and prosper.”

  COVID-19

  Burke – who sits on the Church’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church – then turned his attention to the pandemic, saying “Then there is the mysterious Wuhan virus about whose nature and prevention the mass media daily give us conflicting information. What is clear, however, is that it has been used by certain forces, inimical to families and to the freedom of nations, to advance their evil agenda. These forces tell us that we are now the subjects of the so-called ‘Great Reset,’ the ‘new normal,’ which is dictated to us by their manipulation of citizens and nations through ignorance and fear.“

  Watch the entire homily below:

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• When Money Dies, 100 Years Later
  When Money Dies, 100 Years Later
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 20:40

  Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

  When Money Dies, Adam Fergusson’s cautionary account of hyperinflation in Weimar-era Germany, is the book Americans desperately need to read today.

  

  Ours is a nation willfully lacking in knowledge and understanding of money; a cynic might think this lack of apprehension is by design. Money is seldom discussed in schools, popular media, or politics. And almost a century after the stark lessons of 1923 Germany, the West is convinced it can’t happen here. In our overwhelming material abundance, aided by the natural deflationary pressures of markets, we simply have lost our ability to imagine a hyperinflationary scenario. Sure, there have been currency meltdowns since the two world wars in places like Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, Bulgaria, and Argentina. Yes, Venezuela and arguably Turkey face currency crises today. But we need not worry about this, because modern central banks—especially the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank—have tamed inflation through sheer technocratic expertise and a willingness to use extraordinary monetary policy tools. Asset purchases and balance sheet expansion, ultralow or negative interest rates, and a determination to provide as much “liquidity” as an economy needs are the new normal for central bankers. Thanks to this open embrace of centrally planned money, former Fed chair (and likely future Treasury secretary) Janet Yellen assured us we need not expect another financial crisis in our lifetime.

  To believe this, one has to believe policy is more important than production, and that an express policy of inflation is the mechanism to forestall too much inflation. This is a curious position. 

  It’s also a position sorely tested by the events of 2020. With governments across the world shutting down business, schools, and travel in response to covid, central banks have opened the floodgates of expansionary monetary policy like never before. Any slight tapering of the Fed’s balance sheet, still swollen from the crash of ’07, is now a pipe dream as it heads toward $10 trillion (Congress chipped in with its own $2.7 trillion fiscal stimulus bill, with another $1 trillion imminent). The fed funds rate is barely perceptible at 0.25 percent, and reserve requirements for banks are suspended since March. M1 money supply spiked precipitously, while Congress funded nearly half of 2020 federal spending with Treasury debt. Fed chair Jerome Powell now tells us the bank’s sadistic 2 percent annual inflation target must average out over a period of years. In other words, we should expect (dubious official) inflation measures to run at 4 or 5 percent in coming years, to make up for the all the years when inflation supposedly was near zero.

  Is it any wonder even mainstream hedge fund gurus like Ray Dalio now sound the alarm against hyperinflation? Cash is trash! 

  Fergusson’s book should be assigned to central bankers stat (we wonder how many of them know of it). It’s not a book about economic policy or banks per se, but rather a historical account of folly and hubris on the part of German politicians and bureaucrats. It’s the story of a disaster created by humans who imagined they could overcome markets by monetary fiat. It’s a reminder that war and inflation are inextricably linked, that war finance leads nations to economic disaster and sets the stage for authoritarian bellicosity. Versailles and reparations alone were perhaps not enough to create the conditions for Hitler’s rise, but without the Reichbank’s earlier suspension of its one-third gold reserve requirement in 1914 it seems unlikely Germany would have become a dominant European military power. Without inflation, Hitler might have been a footnote. 

  Most of all, When Money Dies is a tale of privation and degradation. Not only for Germans, but also Austrians and Hungarians grappling with their own political upheavals and currency crises in the 1920s. In a particularly poignant chapter, Fergusson describes the travails of a Viennese widow named Anna Eisenmenger. Her Austrian kronen, which in 1914 were worth one-quarter of a British pound sterling, spiral to 1/35,000 by 1922. As the twenties unfold, she is forced into black markets and pawning assets to procure food for her war-damaged children. Her late husband’s gold watch exchanges for potatoes and coal. Luckier than most Viennese women, she owns small investments which produce modest income—fixed in kronen. Her banker urges her to immediately exchange any funds for Swiss francs, but this practice is banned by authorities. The downward spiral of her life, marked by hunger and hoarding anything with real value, happens so quickly she barely has time to adjust. 

  Conditions in Vienna find voice in the realistic silent film about the era called The Joyless Street, starring a young Greta Garbo. Her character sees everything deteriorate around her; even her father beats her with his cane for returning home without food. Once friendly neighbors become suspicious of each other’s stores of bread and cheese, while prostitution becomes rampant. Angry people jostle in line waiting for the butcher to open; when he does only the most attractive women receive the scraps of meat available that day. Everything familiar and beautiful in society becomes degraded and cheapened seemingly overnight.

  1920s Germany and Austria represent extreme hyperinflationary scenarios, but such grim historical lessons should counsel us to avoid repeating their mistakes. As Professor Jörg Guido Hülsmann so capably explains in The Ethics of Money Production, there are enormous moral and civilization components to monetary policy. Inflation not only harms our economy, it makes us worse people: profligate, shortsighted, lazy, and unconcerned with future generations. This is perhaps the greatest untold story in America today: the story of how the Fed not only fundamentally shifted our economy from one of production to consumption, but also the profound ethical and sociological implications of that shift.

  Our make-believe economy, as Axios puts it, increasingly depends on enormous levels of ongoing fiscal and monetary intervention. Corporations borrow so cheaply we might call it “house money,” then buy back their own stock rather than hire or expand. Newly created money and credit benefits those closest to the spigot, juicing equity markets but doing little for ordinary people. Congress spends with abandon, knowing the Fed will keep its debt service low and provide a ready backstop market for US Treasurys—but little of the stimulus reaches Main Street. Whole industries, including airlines, seek bailouts for covid shutdowns. Those shutdowns also strain tax revenue for state budgets; Mr. Biden promises a bailout there too. Meanwhile, small business and retail face an apocalypse which already leaves tens of millions unemployed. Once again, the presumed answer to all of this is the Fed.

  Hyperinflation may not be around the corner or even years away; no one can predict such a thing. The US dollar may well hold or gain value relative to foreign currencies over the coming years. After all, foreign currency exchange values are relative and “King Dollar” may remain a perceived store of value. But at some point the US economy must create real organic growth if we hope to maintain living standards and avoid an ugly inflationary reality. No amount of monetary or fiscal engineering can take the place of capital accumulation and higher productivity. More money and credit is no substitute for more, better, and cheaper goods and services. 

  History shows us how money dies. Yes, it can happen here. Only a fool thinks otherwise. 

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• On Monday, Tesla Will Join The S&P500: Here's What Happens Next
  On Monday, Tesla Will Join The S&P500: Here’s What Happens Next
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 20:20

  One of the most anticipated and material changes to the S&P500 is set to take place in just hours, when Tesla – a $615 billion company that has barely generated any GAAP profits in its operating history – is set to join the world’s most important market index.

  What happens then? Well, as with every other thing in the market, there are two schools of thought.

  According to one, which Bloomberg affectionately calls the Wall Street smart beta data nerds – Tesla will be a drag on the index. These “smart beta” quants believe that market-weighted indexes suffer by chaining their fortunes to big and bloated companies. As such, Tesla’s imminent entry into the S&P 500 is stirring their passions by framing the debate in particularly stark terms. According to Bloomberg, index pioneers such as Rob Arnott are making the rounds and publishing studies in the run-up, “trumpeting data that purports to show that megacap companies have the potential to harm passive returns.” Their pessimistic view coincides with that of the smart-beta folks who say many stock indexes stumble when the massive companies that dominate them run out of room to grow.

  In a recent paper titled “Tesla – The Largest-Cap Stock Ever to Enter S&P 500: A Buy Signal or a Bubble?”, Arnott and a colleague at Research Affiliates looked at 31 years of data and found that when a company is big enough to enter the index as one of its 100 largest members, it falls 7% over the following year, on average. Meanwhile, the average deleted company beats the gauge by 20% after being kicked out (in this case, Tesla is replacing Apartment Investment and Management which is down 46% YTD).

  According to Arnott, the data is evidence that benchmark overseers such as S&P Dow Jones Indices “buy high and sell low,” resulting in a performance gap of 24% between megacap entrants and discretionary deletions over the next 12 months That ends up costing investors money, and exposes what quants such as Arnott consider a fundamental flaw of market-cap indexes – “too much dependence on companies whose best days may be behind them.”

  To Arnott, Tesla’s addition is a case in point of indexes chasing performance: “This Tesla addition is a beautiful illustration of that,” Arnott told Bloomberg in a phone interview. “It’s run up 800% from the March lows. Now you want to add it?” Ironically, the stock surged by about 50% precisely on the news of the S&P addition, begging the question if there is any good news left.

  

  A similar skeptical of S&P’s handling of Tesla was voiced by Vincent Deluard who in a note titled “Time to Fire the S&P 500 Index Committee,” the StoneX strategist wrote that waiting around to add Tesla cost index investors more than $500 billion and “transferred retirement savings to speculators.”

  To be sure, the overriding concern among quants and most fundamental traders, is the gaping valuation mismatch between Tesla – currently trading at 20 times sales or almost 10 times the S&P 500’s valuation – and the rest of the S&P.

  An attempt to ease investor concerns with a far more sanguine take was published overnight by Goldman’s chief equity strategist, David Kostin, who wrote that “when Tesla joins the S&P 500 next week it will lift the index P/E ratio by just 0.4 multiple turns, much less than most investors expect.” According to Kostin, Tesla currently trades at (only) 170 times consensus 2021 earnings with a $600 billion market cap and $480 billion float cap.

  

  Based on its current capitalization, the company will join the index with a weight of about 1.5%, according to Goldman calculations and given Tesla’s large size and elevated multiple, many investors erroneously intuit that the company’s inclusion into the S&P 500 will lift the index’s current 22x P/E multiple (already close to the highest levels on record) by two multiple turns or more.

  

  Another way to think about the impact of Tesla on S&P 500 P/E is that the stock will raise the index market cap by roughly 1.5% with only a de minimis contribution to index earnings. As a result, the inclusion will lift the aggregate index P/E multiple by slightly less than 1.5%, or less than half of a P/E multiple turn. This impact would be similar whether the stock traded at a P/E multiple of 170x, 500x, or1000x. As Kostin further explains, the stock’s inclusion should lift the S&P 500 EV/sales ratio by about 1%, from 3.11x to 3.14x.

  That said, Tesla’s inclusion will have a larger impact on the S&P 500 market cap-weighted P/E multiple, which will lift the cap-weighted P/E by two turns, from 28.9x to 31.0x. According to Goldman calculations, that post-inclusion multiple will register at the 96th percentile since 1980, compared with a 99th percentile rank for the aggregate P/E. Hardly cheap, despite Kostin’s tremendous efforts to make it seem like a non-issue.

  

  Perhaps realizing that attempts to fundamentally justify the inclusion may be falling short, Kostin then falls back to several iconic inclusions that also appeared rich at the time, and writes that “investors then and now are acutely aware of the “super-cap premium” commanded by select companies. In 2000, CSCO and GE traded at forward P/Es of130x and 40x, respectively. Today, AMZN trades at a forward P/E of 70x and TSLA trades at 170x.” Yes… and what about all those other companies that have been booted from the S&P500 – we are fairly confident that anyone can cherry pick a handful of examples to “justify” their thesis.

  In any case, one actually useful observation from Kostin is the calculation of what impact Tesla’s inclusion would have had on S&P performance had it been a member all year. Since TSLA has risen by 657% this year, outperforming the S&P 500 by 640 pp, had it been a constituent all year, it would have lifted the total index return by roughly 200 bp, from 16% to 18%.

  Of course, that’s the plan all along – that by adding such hypergrowth companies as Tesla, the S&P will approach Nasdaq-type returns. The only question, of course, is if it’s not too late and – as Arnott warns – the inclusion comes just as Tesla peaks.

  Making this particular bearish case comes from twitter user SqueezeMetrics who lays out why the index inclusion may be the worst possible news for Tesla bulls as its “bursts the Tesla” bubble :

  How S&P inclusion bursts the Tesla bubble:

  Ever since June (at $200/share), Tesla stock has been driven by a perpetual motion machine of hype and call option flows — nothing more. And everyone knows it.

  Here’s what not everyone knows:

  • When a stock joins the S&P 500, it becomes part of a massive volatility complex, which is a terrifying web of arbitrage and pseudo-arbitrage relationships. Tesla will join the index as a top-ten component of a cap-weighted index. It’s big.
  • Its bigness will allow all manner of dispersion, relative value, and market-making traders to begin relying on Tesla’s newfound correlation to the index. This will invariably cause arbitrageurs to buy SPX options/vol and sell TSLA options/vol to “close the spread.”
  • Since Tesla stock is driven by the returns on call options, it is a slave to “vanna”: the relationship between option prices (implied volatility) and delta (stock exposure).

  In other words, since June, $TSLA goes up only when implied volatility (IV) goes up (purple line is IV).

  

  When Tesla joins the index, these historic call option flows and the hype machine behind them will hit the big red fire truck that is the S&P, at 500mph.

  Implied volatility will be unable to rise. Call options will bleed value. New flows will be absorbed by real traders.

  With the call option hype trade hampered, the stock will have no possibility of further returns — a deliciously ironic end to the ugliest of Robinhood’s many ugly children.

  And an appropriately ironic fate for Tesla – a victim of its own “success.”

  Too bearish? We give the final word to investing icon Arnott whose assessment is hardly more optimistic:

  “When people say, ‘When is the Tesla bubble going to burst?’ I’ve jokingly said on the 22nd of December,” Arnott said. “Nobody knows, but that’s when the index addition argument disappears and that’s when the market starts to search out what the company’s really worth.”

  We will know if Arnott is right in just a few days.

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• Amazon's Halo Device Will Tell You If You're Condescending, Opinionated, Or Fat
  Amazon’s Halo Device Will Tell You If You’re Condescending, Opinionated, Or Fat
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 20:00

  Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

  As small businesses disappear into the black hole of “pandemic restrictions,” major international corporations devour what is left of the market. Those institutions, which Carroll Quigley referred to as future “corporate overlords,” are rolling out new technologies just in time for the “Great Reset.”

  

  Just when you think technology couldn’t get any more invasive

  There’s nothing angelic about Amazon’s new wearable technology.

  Halo, Amazon’s new AI health bracelet, offers body composition analysis, tone of voice analysis, sleep & activity tracking. Presumably, this new tech is another convenient application to bring awareness to users of such things as too much body fat or if their tone is a bit too abrasive or “condescending.”

  While some individuals may benefit from both of these nudges, a recent review of Halo by the Washington Post (the unabashed purveyor of the loss of civil liberties) forcibly admits that Halo is the “most invasive tech we’ve ever tested.” 

  Authors Geoffrey Fowler and Heather Kelly wrote: 

  Hope our tone is clear here: We don’t need this kind of criticism from a computer. The Halo collects the most intimate information we’ve seen from a consumer health gadget – and makes the absolute least use of it. This wearable is much better at helping Amazon gather data than at helping you get healthy and happy.

  Incidentally, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

  So, we could reasonably expect the authors of this review, Fowler and Kelly, to soon have to look for other employment avenues. Either that or the review was a cleverly placed advertisement, designed to draw controversy to an app that could use some in house advertisement. And to target those readers who don’t seem to care much about their own privacy.

  AI now informs people they are condescending, opinionated, and fat

  Halo collects more invasive information than FitBit or Apple Watch. With no screen, sounds, vibrations, or any striking design, Halo uses sensors to monitor physical activity, sleep, skin temperature, and heart rate. The only way to read that data is through a companion phone app.

  

  The wearable device collects new information like body photos (of a scantily clad user) and voice recordings, feeding the data into Amazon’s AI software for analysis.

  Amazon says HALO requires users to be nearly naked for the complete body scan to calculate body fat percentage. This scan requires users to stand in front of their phone’s camera in their underwear for a 360-degree scan.

  The shots then go to Amazon’s cloud for analysis.

  Remember when people scoffed at the phrase, “Big Brother is always listening?”

  This new device is. And it tells you when you are being condescending or sound opinionated. Although, supposedly, you can push a button and cut off the microphone. Temporarily…sure you can. 

  The WaPo writers seemed considerably more concerned with the device’s voice analysis, focused on the fact that it is not as accurate as they would like. No mention of the frightening reality that Halo possibly represents the last vestiges of privacy and personal data. 

  The Halo’s voice tone analysis is questionable on a whole other level. You train the device to recognize your voice by reading sample phrases, and then it listens out constantly for moments in conversation that go beyond your neutral tone. (There is a button you can press to temporarily turn off the microphone.) The Halo plots these moments as positive vs. negative and high vs. low energy, and then applies more nuanced descriptors to them – for example, a voice that registers as negative and low energy might be classified as “discouraged.” You can review a dozen, or more, of these per day in the Halo app.

  “For the most part, people are relatively unaware of how they sound to others and the impact that may have on their personal and professional relationships,” said Amazon’s medical officer Maulik Majumudar.

  Do we want another product designed to mine for personal data?

  The Halo is designed to mine your data. As with all devices like this one, the privacy policy states Amazon won’t sell or share your data without your explicit permission and that you are in control of it. The writer’s of the WaPo article had this to say: 

  But that still leaves open plenty of other ways for Amazon to profit from your information. In an anonymized way, it can data mine the heart rate, activity, sleep and tone patterns of Halo owners, using it to tailor its health algorithms and learn about human bodies. Make no mistake: disrupting medicine is the next goal for big tech.

  Medical industries are attempting to push digestible microchips to monitor patients’ intake of medicine from afar by their doctor. Halo is just one more step in that direction. First, there were the handhelds. Now we are in the age of wearables. “Ingestibles” are next in line on our way to merging man and machine.

  Undoubtedly, those concerned with the direction in which humanity is heading will be labeled as Luddites and conspiracy theorists. We won’t be vindicated when we are proven right, either. It hasn’t happened any other time. One must wonder what kind of person would welcome such invasive technology.  And could THEIR wearable technology eventually invade OUR privacy? 

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• Atlantic City Auctions Chance To Blow Up Trump Casino 
  Atlantic City Auctions Chance To Blow Up Trump Casino 
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 19:40

  The Atlantic City government thought it would be a great idea to auction off the chance to press a virtual button to blow up President Trump’s former casino and hotel next month.

  According to AP News, the demolition of the former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino building has been transformed into a fundraiser for the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City. The mayor hopes the auction will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to benefit the local community. 

  

  “Some of Atlantic City’s iconic moments happened there, but on his way out, Donald Trump openly mocked Atlantic City, saying he made a lot of money and then got out,” said Mayor Marty Small.

  Small continued: “I wanted to use the demolition of this place to raise money for charity.”

  Trump’s casino shuttered operations in 2014 and has fallen into a disrepair state that demolition was the only solution. 

  The demolition is scheduled for Jan. 29, just nine days after the presidential inauguration. 

  The winner of the online auction, listed at Live Auctioneers, currently with ten bids at a price of around $7k, will have the ability to push a virtual button that starts the building’s implosion. 

  

  The auction’s website says the Boys & Girls Club has “stood at the forefront of the city’s future for nearly 50 years.” Donations from the fundraiser “will help to sustain programs that serve over 2,500 youth in Atlantic City including Academic Enrichment, Arts, & Recreational ProgramsSTEAM Education – new STEAM lab praised by Apple CEO Tim Cook.” 

  It wouldn’t shock us if some prominent liberal wins the auction; it would be a liberal’s wet dream to blow up a former Trump building. 

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• The Decimal Point That Blew Up The World
  The Decimal Point That Blew Up The World
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 19:20

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  What was the basis of panic that led the lights to darken on civilization?

  The most important date here might be March 11, 2020. That’s when Congress itself flew into an unwarranted panic, and acquiesced to a lockdown at the urging of the “experts.”

  State governors followed one by one, with few exceptions, and the rest of the world joined the lockdown frenzy. 

  

  In February, people were aching to know the answer to the following.

  Would this “novel virus” have familiar patterns we associate with the flu, seasonal colds, and other predictable and manageable pathogens? Or would this be something entirely different, unprecedented in our lifetimes, terrifying, and universally deadly?

  Crucial in this stage was public-health messaging. In previous pandemics from post-1918 throughout the 20th century, the central messaging was to stay calm, go to the doctor if you feel sick, avoid deliberately infecting others, and otherwise trust the systems in place and keep society functioning. This was long considered responsible public-health messaging, and this was pretty much where we stood throughout most of January and February, when publications regardless of their political outlook maintained sobriety and rationality. 

  Something dramatically changed this time. They pushed panic, tapping into a primal fear of disease. The reality of pandemic, as it turns out, has been familiar. The severity of its impact has been radically disparate across demographics, hitting mainly the elderly and infirm with 40% of deaths tracing to long-term care facilities with an average age of death nearly equal to the average lifespan. It is regionally migratory. It follows a seasonal pattern from pandemic to its endemic equilibrium. 

  What has been different has been the messaging that has almost universally been structured to create public frenzy, from the New York Times’s February 28 urge to “go medieval” to Salon’s latest demand that we panic even more. 

  My own sense of impending doom began on March 6 with the cancellation of South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, an action of the mayor alone, and completely without modern precedent. I wrote about it on March 8. Four days later, President Trump gave a nationwide address that ended with a shocking announcement that all flights from Europe would be stopped to keep the coronavirus out even though the virus had been here since January. The next day, on March 13, the administration issued what amounted to a shutdown plan for the nation. 

  This timeline, however, misses a crucial step. 

  We should be grateful to Ronald B. Brown of Waterloo University for his extraordinary paper that appears in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (Vol 14, No. 3): “Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation.” It also appears on the website of the National Institutes of Health with a date of August 12.

  Our author’s thesis was that the wild overreaction and unprecedented lockdowns of life began with what was a terminological mixup that led to a misplacement of a decimal point in a report from the National Institutes of Health. 

  It was a seemingly small error but it provided the basis on which Anthony Fauci testified at the House Oversight and Reform Committee about the seriousness of novel coronavirus spreading across the globe.

  Here is the video in question. As you watch, you will note the seeming precision of data that actually masks a huge problem. He obscures the huge difference between the infection fatality rate, the case fatality rate, and the overall death rate. Nowhere does he mention survival rates. Not one person present pushed back on his claims. In the blizzard of data, he finally summarizes in a way that terrified everyone. Covid, he said, is “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” 

  Even apart from that prediction, his entire demeanor was: this is entirely new, very deadly, and unbearably unmanageable without extreme measures. Fauci’s implicit message to Congress and the American people was that it is time to panic. 

  Fauci was claiming what in fact he could not know, conflating two distinct data sets, and extrapolating in ways that allowed him to make a completely unsupported claim that very obviously turned out to be false. Two years ago, 61,000 Americans of all ages died of flu, exclusive of other ailments.

  If you incorrectly impose on that a “case fatality rate” of 0.1% and extrapolate to Covid infections, you end up with at least 800,000 deaths from Covid alone – not “with” or “involving” Covid as the CDC classifies deaths today (that alone represents a big change). This is a scary prediction at the time; it seemed to add weight to the estimates out of the Imperial College of London that 2.2 million people would die without locking down. This testimony led a whole generation of lawmakers to believe that none of the traditional medical measures could or would work. There is no comparing this with the flu or any respiratory illness. This was the Other that justified a once-in-many-generations national emergency that required an end to our way of life. 

  The trouble is that the whole claim was based on a terminological misstatement that fed a basic math error. As Brown explains:

  Sampling bias in coronavirus mortality calculations led to a 10-fold increased mortality overestimation in March 11, 2020, US Congressional testimony. This bias most likely followed from information bias due to misclassifying a seasonal influenza IFR as a CFR, evident in a NEJM.org editorial. Evidence from the WHO confirmed that the approximate CFR of the coronavirus is generally no higher than that of seasonal influenza. By early May 2020, mortality levels from COVID-19 were considerably below predicted overestimations, a result that the public attributed to successful mitigating measures to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

  Let’s follow Brown here as he takes the reader through the crucial differences between the IFR and the CFR. IFRs from samples across the population “include undiagnosed, asymptomatic, and mild infections.” To calculate the average IFR across the population, you do randomized samples to judge its prevalence. The results are inclusive of cases – what we used to call actual “sick” people – but extend to people who merely carry traces of the dead virus but are in no substantial danger of passing it onward or experiencing any severe outcomes. Cases, on the other hand, “are based exclusively on relatively smaller groups of moderately to severely ill diagnosed cases at the beginning of an outbreak.” The CFR is a smaller group. Brown provides the following graphic to show how epidemiology has long considered the difference. 

  

  Based on this graphic alone, you can see why it becomes crucial to keep these terms straight.

  The CFR is higher; IFR is lower; the crude mortality rate is lower still.

  The CFR measures severity; the IFR measures prevalence.

  Those are the two general issues one needs to know to assess whether and to what extent a virus outbreak is mild, moderate, serious, or severe. This matters due to the long-observed evolved reality of respiratory viruses: there is a trade off between the forces. The more severe the virus, the quicker it burns itself out. The milder (and “smarter”) it is, the more it can spread. To mix up severity and prevalence is to make a mess of all the important categories that infectious disease specialists use to assess the social impact of a new virus. 

  Moreover, if you are going to compare how severe a pandemic is, you have to compare apples to apples, which means at the very minimum that we must be careful to distinguish apples from oranges from pears. That is precisely what the early messaging surrounding the coronavirus did not do. 

  Cases are not deaths; even more crucially, cases in a traditional sense mean that people are actually sick, not merely that they have been tested positive by a PCR test. Adding to the confusion, most data sources on Covid today use the term “cases” to identify any positive test, with or without symptoms, when the correct word would be “infections.” Further, the PCR test itself presents its own problems. As Brown notes, “A serious limitation of RT-PCR testing is that nucleic acid detection is not capable of determining the difference between infective and noninfective viruses.” The widespread use of the PCR test has made its own contribution to blurring all these crucial distinctions. 

  Now consider an extraordinary article from the New England Journal of Medicine that appeared on February 28, with Anthony Fauci as the co-author. The import of the piece was to claim that Covid and flu are quite similar in severity.

  “The overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

  What matters here is not the prediction as such but the switching of the word infection with case: the flu has “a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%.” This was incorrect even at the time of writing. You can call it a misprint or sloppy or downright duplicitous. Regardless, even the World Health Organization had identified the 0.1% figure as the flu’s infection fatality rate. If you assume one symptomatic confirmed case for every infection (or what is now confusingly called “cumulative cases”), the error could be a misplace decimal: 0.01% not 0.1%. Regardless, Fauci’s article directly contradicted the WHO, and ran counter to everything that was already then known. But his CFR claim about flu is precisely what led him to claim in front of the Congressional committee that Covid would be deadly in ways that defy all experience of this generation. 

  Brown further explains: 

  As the campaign to mitigate coronavirus transmission was implemented from March into May, 2020, expected coronavirus mortality totals in the United States appeared much lower than the overestimation reported in Congressional testimony on March 11. Compared with the most recent season of severe influenza A (H3N2) in 2017-2018,with 80,000 US deaths reported by CDC officials, US coronavirus mortality totals had just reached 80,000 on May 9, 2020. By then, relative to the 2017-2018 influenza, it was clear that the coronavirus mortality total for the season would be nowhere near 800,000 deaths inferred from the 10-fold mortality overestimation reported to Congress. Even after adjusting for the effect of successful mitigation measures that may have slowed down the rate of coronavirus transmission, it seems unlikely that so many deaths were completely eliminated by a nonpharmaceutical intervention such as social distancing, which was only intended to contain infection transmission, not suppress infections and related fatalities. Also in early May, 2020, a New York State survey of 1,269 COVID-19 patients recently admitted to 113 hospitals found that most of the patients had been following shelter-in-place orders for 6 wk, which raised state officials’ suspicions about social distancing effectiveness. Still, polls showed the public credited social distancing and other mitigation measures for reducing predicted COVID-19 deaths, and for keeping people safe from the coronavirus.

  As of this writing, however, deaths “involving” or “with” Covid has passed 300,000, which while less than half as high as what Congress heard they would be on March 11, is still quite high, provided these deaths have not been broadly misclassified. However, on March 24, the CDC made an announcement of serious significance. It would now calculate coronavirus mortality by including “probable” and “likely” deaths in the International Classification of Diseases code (ICD). 

  This became an invitation to misclassification. People who otherwise would have previously been classified as having heart disease or some other comorbidity could now be classified as Covid. This also included a financial incentive to do just that. For this reason, when the CDC announced that “for 6% of the deaths, Covid-19 was the only cause mentioned,” it came as a shock to people. What that means is that 94% of the deaths attributed to Covid were associated with additional comorbidities that prevented the immune system from fighting off the virus. 

  Following the March 11 Fauci testimony, in which he conflated IFR and CFR, the national media went wild with Covid and flu comparison. The following article, for example, blew up from BusinessInsider in June: “The coronavirus death rate in the US is almost 50 times higher than that of the flu. See how they compare by age bracket.” If you look carefully at the charts, you can see something fishy: they calculated infection fatality rate for flu against the case fatality rate for Covid. That necessarily generates a wild overestimate for Covid deaths. The charts are terrifying – and have nothing to do with reality. 

  

  Let’s hop forward from the testimony days to one month later when full-scale panic had already hit the U.S. Speaking at a White House press conference, Fauci then made a claim that strains credulity at every level. He said at a White House press briefing that the stringencies and “social distancing” could not and would not be relaxed until there are no “no new cases, no deaths.” Such a thing has happened only once in the history of viruses: smallpox. From the first experiments with inoculation to the final eradication took some 250 years. And yet here we have Fauci explaining that life could not be normal and functioning again until this widespread virus, relatively mild for 95% of the population, was completely eradicated from the planet! 

  And now we have the vaccine, and plenty of questions remaining about it, such as why non-vulnerable populations would prefer to take it over gaining the exposure necessary for naturally acquired immunity. Asking such a basic question is very close to being tabooed, even as lawmakers and other institutions are toying with the idea of making it mandatory. Even then, many of the lockdown advocates from earlier this year are saying that it will not enable us to go back to normal, to take off the masks, to go to the movies, or travel again. This is precisely the belief you might expect from a crowd that participated in what John Iaonnidis called a “one-in-a-century evidence fiasco” and are desperately trying to dig themselves out of losing every bit of scientific credibility. 

  Whether Brown is correct that the whole panic truly does trace to a brain flakeout on the part of Fauci – or even perhaps a deliberate “noble lie” to deceive the public into accepting the unacceptable – it hardly matters. The problem we face now is a huge tangle over terminology such that “infections” that could include as many as 90% false positives (according to the NYT) are called cases, while the once-distinct condition called cases which used to indicate actually being sick no longer has any precise meaning. The cacophony of statistical confusion here truly boggles the mind. 

  In the midst of all of this, the CDC itself finally updated its own estimates of the infection fatality rate of Covid-19. The CDC wisely took account of the huge demographic stratification of severe outcomes. There is not one rate that applies to the whole population or to any particular individual. There are only backward looking estimates of outcomes. They are all follows: 

  • 0.003% for 0-19 years

  • 0.02% for 20-49 years 

  • 0.5% for 50-69 years 

  • 5.4% for 70+ years

  Flipping the data to state it by survival rate by age:

  • 99.997% for 0-19 years 

  • 99.98% for 20-49 years

  • 99.5% for 50-69 years 

  • 94.6% for 70+ years 

  John Ioannidis sums up the disparity by age with the following infection fatality rate for people under the age of 70: 0.05%. This conclusion has been peer-reviewed and published by the World Health Organization. 

  How does this compare with the flu? We do not really know. As science journalist Shin Jie Yong has written, “There seems to be no data on age-specific IFR of the seasonal flu.” What this means is that crucial testimony of Fauci from March 11, in which he casually predicted based on bad numbers, that Covid would be ten times worse than the flu, can neither be confirmed or denied based on age-specific severe outcomes. 

  However, we can assemble the data based on years of lost life. Consider the long-term view over the future course of existing lifetimes. JusttheFacts reports:

  If 500,000 Covid-19 deaths ultimately [in the future] occur in the United States—or more than twice the level of a prominent projection—the disease will rob about 6.8 million years of life from all Americans who were alive at the outset of 2020. 

  In contrast:

  • * the flu will rob them of about 35 million years.

  • * suicides will rob them of 132 million years.

  • * accidents will rob them of 409 million years.    

  

  As testing has expanded dramatically throughout the population, the estimated infection fatality rate of Covid will fall further. Thus can we observe a chart of “cases” (actually positive tests) all over the world and compare it with severe outcomes and see something remarkable that should make every living person fundamentally question why they decided to shut down the world and wreck billions of lives. 

  Another statistic that bears repeating, Covid – based on infections vs deaths – has close to a 99.9% survival rate. Imagine how the world would have been different had Fauci told that to the Congress on that fateful day of March 11. Or what if Fauci had revealed that the average age of death from Covid would almost equal the average lifespan in the US and exceed it in most parts of the world? People present might have wondered why they were holding hearings at all. 

  All these categories of data placement carry with them the danger of creating an illusion of control. Viruses do not come with little gears inside them with these rates. Human beings collect data and create them, and not one of them (whether IFR, CFR, infection rates, mortality rates, survival rates) pertains infallibly to any single individual. Our response to a virus is contingent on our own health, age, cross immunities, T cell memory, and a thousand other factors that no politician controls. 

  What we know is that a terminological confusion, a misplaced decimal point, a one-word error in data description, and a massive amount of arrogant presumptions about how to control a virus set in motion a series of events that turned our great and prosperous country into a disaster of confusion, demoralization, foregone medical services, closed businesses, wrecked arts and education, and long bread lines. The lockdowners who created this appalling disaster, the people who turned our trust into betrayal and a blizzard of statistical baloney, need to look at the science and data as they stand and come clean.

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• South Carolina Bills Would Cut Taxes On Gold And Silver, Support Sound Money
  South Carolina Bills Would Cut Taxes On Gold And Silver, Support Sound Money
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 18:40

  Via SchiffGold.com,

  Three bills prefiled in the South Carolina House would cut taxes on precious metals and take important steps toward treating gold and silver as money instead of as commodities. Passage of these bills would also set the stage to undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money.

  

  South Carolina is the first state to propose this kind of legislation for the 2021 session, but more states will likely follow suit. This is part of a broader movement at the state level to support sound money.

  The Federal Reserve is the engine that drives the most powerful government in the history of the world. Ron Paul popularized the slogan “End the Fed,” but Congress is nowhere near abolishing the central bank.  It can’t even come up with the will to audit the Fed.

  Even though state action can’t end the Fed, there are steps states can take that will undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money. By passing laws that encourage and incentivize the use of gold and silver in daily transactions by the general public, state action such as the passage of these bills in South Carolina has the potential to create a wide-reaching impact and set the foundation to nullify the Fed’s monopoly power over the monetary system.

  Rep. Stewart Jones (R-Laurens) filed all three bills.

  House Bill 3377 (H3377) would make gold and silver coins legal tender in the state. Under the proposed law, “gold and silver coins minted foreign or domestic shall be legal tender in the State of South Carolina under the laws of this State. No person or other entity may compel another person or other entity to tender or accept gold or silver coin unless agreed upon by the parties.”

  Practically speaking, this would allow South Carolina residents to use gold or silver coins to pay taxes and other debts owed to the state. In effect, it would put gold and silver on the same footing as Federal Reserve notes.

  The phrase, “unless agreed upon by the parties” has important legal ramifications. This wording reaffirms the court’s ability, and constitutional responsibility according to Article I, Section 10, to require specific performance when enforcing such contracts. If voluntary parties agree to be paid, or to pay, in gold and silver coin, South Carolina courts could not substitute any other thing, e.g. Federal Reserve Notes, as payment.

  South Carolina could become the fourth state to recognize gold and silver as legal tender. Utah led the way, reestablishing constitutional money in 2011. Wyoming and Oklahoma have since joined.

  KNOCKING DOWN BARRIERS

  Taxes on gold and silver erect barriers to using gold and silver as money by raising transaction costs. House Bill 3378 (H3378) would effectively exempt gold, silver and platinum bullion from state capital gains taxes. Passage of this legislation would eliminate a barrier to investing in gold and silver. It would also make it more practical to gold and silver in everyday transactions, a foundational step for people to undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money.

  South Carolina has already repealed the sales tax on gold and silver. That removed one barrier to buying gold and silver. Passage of H3378 would remove another.

  In effect, “states that collect taxes on purchases of precious metals act as if gold and silver aren’t money at all.”

  Imagine if you asked a grocery clerk to break a $5 bill and he charged you a 35 cent tax. Silly, right? After all, you were only exchanging one form of money for another. But that’s essentially what South Carolina’s capital gains tax on gold and silver bullion does. By eliminating this tax on the exchange of gold and silver, South Carolina would treat specie as money instead of a commodity. This represents a small step toward reestablishing gold and silver as legal tender and breaking down the Fed’s monopoly on money.

  “We ought not to tax money – and that’s a good idea. It makes no sense to tax money,” former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul said during testimony in support an Arizona bill that repealed capital gains taxes on gold and silver in that state. “Paper is not money, it’s fraud,” he continued.

  GOLD BULLION DEPOSITORY

  Stewart also prefiled House Bill 3379 (H3379). This joint resolution would create a study committee to determine the feasibility and efficacy of the establishment of a bullion repository in this state to store gold, silver, and other metals for the state’s reserves and for investments. The committee would be required to issue a report of its findings to the General Assembly by January 15, 2022.

  South Carolina has a model it could follow. In the summer of 2015, Texas Gov. Doug Abbot signed a law creating a state gold bullion and precious metal depository in his state. The depository received its first deposits in the summer of 2018. The facility will not only provide a secure place for individuals, businesses, cities, counties, government agencies and even other countries to store gold and other precious metals, the law also creates a mechanism to facilitate the everyday use of gold and silver in transactions. In short, a person will eventually be able to deposit gold or silver – and pay other people through electronic means or checks – in sound money.

  A state gold repository also creates an avenue toward financial independence. Countries around the world, including China, Russia and Turkey, have been buying gold to limit their dependence on the US dollar. University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus said a state depository can serve a similar function for Texas.

  “This is another in a long line of ways to make Texas more self-reliant and less tethered to the federal government. The financial impact is small but the political impact is telling, Many conservatives are interested in returning to the gold standard and circumvent the Federal reserve in whatever small way they can.”

  The Tennessee legislature passed a resolution declaring support for the creation of a gold bullion depository in the Volunteer State back in 2016, but never followed up with any legislation. If South Carolina does create a study committee, it will be imperative to follow up with further legislation to actually establish a repository once the report is issued.

  BACKGROUND

  The United States Constitution states in Article I, Section 10, “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Currently, all debts and taxes in South Carolina are either paid with Federal Reserve Notes (dollars) which were authorized as legal tender by Congress or with coins issued by the U.S. Treasury — very few of which have gold or silver in them.

  The Federal Reserve destroys this constitutional monetary system by creating a monopoly based on its fiat currency. Without the backing of gold or silver, the central bank can easily create money out of thin air. This not only devalues your purchasing power over time; it also allows the federal government to borrow and spend far beyond what would be possible in a sound money system. Without the Fed, the US government wouldn’t be able to maintain all of its unconstitutional wars and programs.

  Passage of H3377 would reestablish gold and silver as legal tender in the state and take a step toward that constitutional requirement, ignored for decades in every state. Passing H3378 would remove one of the tax barriers that hinder the use of gold and silver as money.

  Passage of both bills would also begin the process of abolishing the Federal Reserve system by attacking it from the bottom up – pulling the rug out from under it by working to make its functions irrelevant at the state and local levels, and setting the stage to undermine the Federal Reserve monopoly by introducing competition into the monetary system.

  Constitutional tender expert Professor William Greene said when people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve Notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

  “Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a “reverse Gresham’s Law” effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes). As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state – as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money – and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions.”

  Once things get to that point, Federal Reserve notes would become largely unwanted and irrelevant for ordinary people. Nullifying the Fed on a state by state level is what will get us there.

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• FX Strategist Explains Why This Time Bitcoinmania "May Be Different"
  FX Strategist Explains Why This Time Bitcoinmania “May Be Different”
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 18:20

  Now that bitcoin is once again all the rage among investors, both retail and institutional, opinions on its future prices follow a bimodal distribution with a concentration at either extreme and few moderate view inbetween. Which is why this morning’s note from SocGen FX strategist Kit Juckes with interest as it presents one of the more nuanced takes on what may happen next, and if nothing else, we believe he hammers the point with the following observation on how “bitmania” is different from tulipmania:

  “Bitcoin is different because even now, most activity is ‘buy to hold’; by people who believe it is the natural competitor to gold as a store of value in a time when central banks are playing footloose and fancy free with fiat money.”

  Of course, the real reason behind bitmania – and why it may persist – is simple: it’s all in response to brrrr (which is why we find all the Fed fanboys bashing bitcoin so hilariously absurd).

  

  As to why bitmania will likely have staying power, well, as Juckes concludes, “aAficionados believe that central banks who have turned the monetary tap wide open at the back end of a historic era when a surge in the global labor force, and huge technological change have kept inflation at bay, will be too slow to rein in inflation when these forces fade.”

  He is, of course, right with one minor edit: not only will central banks not be able to rein in inflation, but they will welcome it which is also why the world is on the verge of a digital currency revolution where central banks will finally be able to literally print digital money which they can distribute, at their discretion, among the population.

  We excerpt from his full note titled “Jay Powell is feeding the (dollar) bears again” below:

  Between August and November 1636, just as what is now the Netherlands emerged from a long recession due to the resumption of the country’s war with Spain, an outbreak of the bubonic plague killed an eighth of the population of Haarlem. The boost that gave to incomes is cited as one of the reasons, along with the availability of credit in the country which invented fractional reserve banking, for the madness described as Tulipomania in Mike Dash’s excellent (short) book on the subject.

  There will no doubt be comparisons of tulips and Bitcoin in the days/weeks/months ahead. In my mind the tulip mania  became a speculative bubble, rather than an odd but harmless pastime for rich lovers of flowers, when people were buying in the hope of making a quick profit, and were mostly buying on credit. In this regard at least, Bitcoin is different because even now, most activity is “buy to hold” by people who believe it is the natural  competitor to  gold as  a store of value in a time when central banks are playing footloose and fancy free with fiat money. Aficionados believe that central banks who have turned the monetary tap wide open at the back end of a historic era when a surge in the global labor force, and huge technological change have kept inflation at bay, will be too slow to rein in inflation when these forces fade. 

  I  have  a  lot  of  sympathy  for  that  view,  and  therefore  for  the  idea  that  gold  will  remain  in demand as long as policy rates remain very low. By the same token, Bitcoin has been around long enough that it probably isn’t going away. I certainly don’t however, have any desire to try to construct  a fancy model to predict how high bitcoin prices might go. I’ll just make the point that if this does become a speculative bubble, it can get pretty wild before it bursts.

  Of course, if there are bubbles around, they are being helped by Fed Chairman Jay Powell. The FOMC’s ‘dot-plot’, which I glanced at during half-time  yesterday,  looked  hawkish.  Mr Powell’s comments were anything but. Money’s staying way. Throw in hope that a fiscal package will be forthcoming, that an EU/UK trade deal can be struck now that fish, rather than the level playing field is the main  obstacle, that the recovery Fund is up and running and of course, that vaccine deployment will continue, and the stage is set for the dollar to go on falling. The only problem is that it’s falling too fast. The last Bloomberg FX poll has a high forecast for Q4 2021 of 1.28. Our forecast is 1.27; that’s a 4% move, compared to the 3% the euro has risen in the last month alone.

  All of that ensures that bitcoin – and gold – will go much higher, albeit with occasional bloodcurdling crashes.

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• Mike Green – This Car Has No Brakes (But We re Driving Uphill)
  Mike Green – This Car Has No Brakes (But We re Driving Uphill)

  6216987388001

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 18:15

  Mike Green of Logica Capital Advisors joins Real Vision senior editor, Ash Bennington, to share his market outlook as U.S. equities yet again reach all-time highs. Green breaks down the current market structure, looking at how changes to order book depth and inter-asset correlations present investment risks. Green and Bennington discuss commodities, passive investing, and the Fed’s latest FOMC meeting, with Green sharing his outlook on inflation and interest rates. Lastly, Bennington asks Green his views on crypto-assets and particularly Bitcoin, which continues to surge immensely. In the intro, editor Jack Farley jobless reports on today’s jobless claims, the status of U.S. fiscal stimulus, and Tesla’s looming entry into the S&P 500. The paper by Rob Arnott on Tesla, which Jack mentions, can be found here: https://www.researchaffiliates.com/en_us/publications/articles/819-tesl….

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• Russian Forces Establish Presence On Syrian-Iraqi Border
  Russian Forces Establish Presence On Syrian-Iraqi Border
  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/17/2020 – 02:00

  Submitted by SouthFront.org,

  Over the past weeks, the Syrian Army and its allies have intensified their operations against ISIS cells hiding in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert.

  According to pro-government sources, during the past few days, Syrian government forces and Iranian-backed militias carried out a series of raids to the south of the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor highway and southeast of al-Mayadin. Pro-militant media outlets clam that over 10 Syrian soldiers and 15 ISIS members died in these clashes.

  The Russian Aerospace Forces also resumed their strikes on ISIS targets in the desert region. Pro-opposition sources say that the Russians delivered over 100 airstrikes. Indeed, the intensity of this campaign demonstrates that the regularly resurfacing ISIS cells, which actively exploit the state of chaos on the Syrian-Iraqi border, pose a notable security threat.

  Just a few days ago, the Russian Military Police established a local HQ and several positions in the Syrian town of al-Bukamal, which lies on the border with Iraq. Local sources link the increased Russian presence on the border with the recently resumed anti-ISIS operation there.

  Given the de-facto collapse of security in the area on the Iraqi side of the border, the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian-backed forces deployed near al-Bukamal and al-Qaim are now the major factor deterring the terrorists operating there. At the same time, Israel and mainstream Western propaganda argue that al-Bukamal is just the base of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and thus must be destroyed.

  While the presence of Iranian-backed forces there is an open secret, attacks on them and their allies, which were repeatedly conducted by Israel and even the US-led coalition, have in fact supported the ISIS agenda.

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• Year Zero
  Year Zero
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 23:50

  Authored (mostly satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.

  

  In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.

  The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant.

  None of which is accidental, or has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health threat.

  Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has contributed to their deaths … but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done to society. Whatever you believe about the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.

  The notion is quite literally insane.

  

  GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.

  The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.

  As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not to have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.

  People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.

  Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.

  They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.

  

  The point of the lesson is that GloboCap – the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity – can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called “rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with lies and propaganda for months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive “safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches” in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with sexually violating their victims.)

  And the “pandemic” is only one part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or “right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.

  And now, here we are, at the end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism, just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the name hardly matters. It is all the same war.

  Whatever they decide to call it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal” Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.

  Oh, yes, things are about to get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.

  Remember, back in 2016, when everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,” and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent and demands complete ideological conformity.

  From now on, when the GloboCap Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “denier,” or some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly. They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized, imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.

  You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.

  If they order you to take a fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking vaccine.

  If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studies proving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids.

  If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the fucking election.

  And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you that rigging an election is impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible.

  It isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact.

  You will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas. The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!

  Or … I don’t know, this is just a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the New Normal. Yes, it will cost you, and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!

  That’s it … my last column of 2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!

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• Anti-Cop Climate Sparks NYPD Exodus 
  Anti-Cop Climate Sparks NYPD Exodus 
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 23:30

  The NYPost has learned the anti-cop climate, underwhelming pay, and out of control violent crime in New York City have resulted in police officers’ exodus. 

  Approximately 50 NYPD officers left their jobs in Nassau County last Friday. Many of them were on the job for less than five years. 

  

  The departure comes as thousands of city cops have already quit or retired. 

  Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said the NYPD needs 900 new police officers.

  Uniformed NYPD officers fell to 34,184 this year – down from 36,900 last year, a loss of more than 2,700.

  Suppose politicians in the metro area don’t quit bashing the police and their campaign to defund the NYPD. In that case, the exodus is expected to dangerously increase, one where decreased patrols could be seen, which would transform some neighborhoods into violent areas, such as ones seen in Baltimore and Detroit.

  New York City has already experienced gun violence levels ‘unseen in years’ with shootings in November up by more than 112% compared with the same month last year.

  The surge in gun violence in NYC since June coincides with the NYPD’s decision to eliminate its plain-clothes anti-crime unit that focused on retrieving illegal guns. That decision came after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

  Shea recently said the surge in violent crime across the five boroughs this summer came after NYPD’s budget was reduced by $1 billion. 

  “It certainly had a significant impact,” Shea told FOX Business’, Maria Bartiromo. “You think back, crime follows certain patterns and trends. Certainly, we see upticks of violence in the summer. … To have this crazy time happen this year, certainly, and leading to a defunding, it’s really hurt.”

  NYC Shooting Victims 

  

  NYC Shooting Incidents 2019 vs. 2020

  

  NYC Murders 

  

  While violent crime is surging, the levels of crime is nowhere near what it was in the early 1990s – though the move to defund police is undoubtedly creating an environment that could return the city to a violent mess. 

  Simultaneously, another exodus is underway, one where city dwellers are fleeing to rural communities as they deem the metro area no longer safe to raise a family. 

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• Why People Don't Trust Pfizer's COVID Vaccine
  Why People Don’t Trust Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 23:10

  Authored by Antony Sammeroff via The Mises Institute,

  Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?

  

  Michael Shermer, a famous skeptic, was forced to admit that one of the reasons is that some of them are true. In his research he found that the fact that some conspiracy theories are real feeds people’s suspicion and makes them susceptible to the belief in others that are far less credible.

  We are increasingly herded into taking a hard line on issues which are nuanced. One example of this is an apparent increase in two camps: some people are entirely against mainstream medicine while others will bend over backwards to mount an extreme defense of the indefensible excesses of Big Pharma.

  Drugs save lives. Drugs are dangerous. These should not be controversial statements, nor do they contradict one another. According to the American Medical Association’s own figures, medical care has become the third leading cause of death in the United States, yet few would advocate a return to a time before we had modern medical care.

  When the government is buying the drug no matter what and those companies are protected from liability for damages that may be caused by those drugs, it ceases to be surprising that people may question whether what is being offered up to them is safe or not.

  One of the reasons why people believe in conspiracy theories about Big Pharma is because some of them are true.

  Some of Pfizer’s History

  A 2004 advert for Zoloft claimed that over 16 million Americans were affected by social anxiety disorder. But here’s the thing: a study conducted by Pfizer (the manufacturer) discovered that participants did a lot better overcoming social anxiety with “exposure therapy,” including counseling with a primary care doctor about their symptoms and homework to learn how to identify and break through social habits and fears, than people who took their drug.

  When the Upjohn Company (now Pfizer) developed Minoxidil, a drug that was originally manufactured to lower blood pressure, they found that it could cause hair regrowth in some balding patients. So they simply switched the marketed effect for the so-called side effect, and they had a drug for balding which just so happened to lower blood pressure.

  The ALLHAT Study (Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attacks Trial), was intended to compare the effectiveness of four drugs in preventing complications form high blood pressure. It was originally intended to continue for between four and eight years, but part of it was stopped prematurely because those participants assigned to Cardura (manufactured by Pfizer) were developing significantly more cardiovascular complications than those taking a diuretic. At the time the results were published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), about $800 million worth of Cardura was being sold each year—but the diuretic was proving more effective at preventing high blood pressure complications at a seventh of the cost. Taking advantage of the fact that most doctors weren’t aware of the research, Pfizer hired damage-control consultants. The American College of Cardiology (ACC) issued a press release recommending that doctors “discontinue use” of Cardura but mere hours later downgraded its wording to “reassess.” Could this be something to do with Pfizer contributing more than $500,000 a year to the ACC?

  Whoever funds the study comes out on top. Companies commonly use positive results from head-to-head trials to encourage doctors to prescribe their drug rather than a competitor’s. When the authors of a Journal of Psychiatry survey looked at the trials, they found a curious thing: in five trials that were paid for by Eli Lilly, its drug Zyprexa came out looking superior to Risperdal, a drug made by the company Janssen. But when Janssen sponsored its own trials, Risperdal was the winner three out of four times. When it was Pfizer funding the studies, its drug Geodon was best. In fact, this tendency for the sponsor’s drug to come out on top held true for 90 percent of the more than thirty trials in the survey.

  A 2017 article noted that “prices for U.S. made pharmaceuticals have climbed over the past decade six times as far as the cost of goods and services overall.” In a famous case Mylan was able to increase the price of the EpiPen by more than 450 percent, adjusting for inflation, between 2004 and 2016 – despite the epinephrine in each injection costing only around $1 – because they were the only legal supplier of the product. This example, while extreme, is unfortunately not exceptional. Pfizer, Biogen, Gilead Sciences, Amgem, AbbieVie, Turing Pharmaceutical, Envizo, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Jazz Pharmaceuticals (to name a few) all seem to have benefited from price gouging by obtaining legally protected monopoly power over certain healthcare products.

  The covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer – having bypassed the usual 5–10 years of safety testing – may well be completely harmless, but so long as this kind of tomfoolery continues to be common within the medical field we can expect ever more skeptical people to be labeled by their critics as “antivaxx.”

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• Biden Names As "Climate Czar" Former EPA Chief Blamed For Flint Water Crisis
  Biden Names As “Climate Czar” Former EPA Chief Blamed For Flint Water Crisis
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 22:50

  Joe Biden will name Gina McCarthy as his White House “climate czar“, making the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency his top domestic climate coordinator. The news sparked outrage among those who pointed out that agency’s failures during the Flint water crisis.

  

  The criticism rained from all both sides of the aisle, as well as from activists. According to the Detroit Free Press, LeeAnne Walters, an environmental activist from Flint who first brought attention to the lead problem, told NBC 25 in Saginaw that the expected appointment was “absolutely appalling” and “a huge injustice to everyone in Flint and everything that we’ve suffered.”

  Former Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, criticized Biden as “oblivious about Flint,” given that he is “empowering Gina McCarthy again.”

  “She was a disaster at EPA, and now he is bringing her back for more,” Chaffetz said in a post on Twitter on Tuesday night. “Michigan, your votes mattered, and Biden is bringing Flint water to all of us.”

  Biden is so oblivious about Flint, Michigan water that he is empowering Gina McCarthy again. She was a disaster at EPA, and now he is bringing her back for more. Michigan, your votes mattered, and Biden is bringing Flint water to all of us. #Flint

  — Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) December 15, 2020

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

  At the time of the Flint water crisis, where lead from aging pipes leached into the city’s water system after it changed its water source, Chaffetz was the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which held hearings on the issue.

  Chaffetz wasn’t the only one to object. “The people of Michigan won’t soon forget Gina McCarthy’s mishandling of and failure to adequately respond to the Flint water crisis as EPA administrator,” U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Tipton Republican and a former member of the committee who took part in the Flint hearings,  told the Free Press Wednesday morning. “That ineptness alone is reason enough to disqualify her from a senior role, but her push for higher energy taxes and heavy-handed government regulations is also concerning for consumers.”

  Democrats also chimed in: Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Flint Township who is a supporter of Biden’s, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon, noting deep doubts about the choice. While thanking Biden for taking climate change so seriously, Kildee – who was a sharp critic of both the state’s and federal government’s roles in causing the Flint water crisis –  said he’d heard from several Flint residents who “expressed their concerns to me about this appointment and I have relayed their concerns to (Biden’s transition team).”

  “While the position of White House climate coordinator does not require confirmation by Congress, we must never forget the failures of the Flint water crisis,” said Kildee, who led efforts to require faster public notifications of high levels of lead in water systems and to approve funding to replace lead water pipes in the wake of the crisis. “All levels of government, including the state of Michigan and the Environmental Protection Agency, failed Flint families.”

  While former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, shouldered much of the blame in hearings on the crisis for overseeing an administration that did not require corrosion control measures that could have limited the spread of lead, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under McCarthy had also clearly known for months that corrosion controls weren’t being used before it finally stepped in to force compliance.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman, you can only take so much,” the normally placid Snyder said at a hearing on the Flint crisis before the Oversight Committee in March 2016 after McCarthy again insisted sole responsibility for the crisis was the state’s, despite emails showing the EPA was aware corrosion controls weren’t being used and its own experts were warning officials of the danger.

  As Free Press stories at the time showed, emails from at least one expert, EPA Region 5 Regulations Manager Miguel Del Toral, showed him warning officials about high levels of lead at one residence in Flint that could be indicative of larger problems after the city had switched to draw water from the Flint River in February 2015.

  It took months before the EPA forced the state to act and nearly a year before Snyder and the Obama administration declared states of emergency in Flint.

  Once high lead levels began to be found in September 2015, Del Toral wrote an e-mail to other EPA officials saying, “This is no surprise. Lead lines + no treatment = high lead in water = lead poisoned children.” But McCarthy and other EPA officials suggested state officials with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality refused to move more quickly on recommendations by the agency and that there wasn’t enough evidence of a widespread problem to implement a more urgent approach.

  At the time, an exhaustive look at EPA emails by the Free Press found that agency officials knew of the potential dangers and pressed the state to move but waited months for legal advice before issuing a memo, in November 2015, that made it clear corrosion controls were required. It would take two more months before the EPA formally stepped in to take over the response to the crisis in Flint.

  Her dismal job as former EPA head notwithstanding, the expected nomination of McCarthy was praised by people in the environmental community, however.  An official at the League of Conservation Voters, Tiernan Sittenfeld, praised McCarthy as a “true climate star,” while Lisa Ramsden, senior climate campaigner for Greenpeace, called McCarthy “a seasoned environmental advocate.”

  After leaving the EPA, McCarthy became president and chief executive officer of the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental action organization based in Washington.

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• "The Fraud Happened" – Senator Rand Paul Accuses States Of Using COVID To Steal Election
  “The Fraud Happened” – Senator Rand Paul Accuses States Of Using COVID To Steal Election
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 22:30

  Authored by Joseph Jankowski via PlanetFreeWill.com,

  Senator Rand Paul accused Georgia and other states of using the COVID-19 pandemic to steal the election in a move he says could have came from the playbook of Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who famously said, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

  Appearing on Fox News prior to the Wednesday Senate hearing on election irregularities, Senator Paul was asked how revelations, such as the one out of Georgia showing more than 1,700 voters illegally submitted two ballots during the Nov. 3 contest, would effect the upcoming runoff elections in the Empire State of the South.

  Paul would respond, saying: “You’d think that all of this would be investigated and tried to be fixed before the election.”

  The Senator went on to run off a list of voter fraud examples in Georgia, including the 1,700 double votes, votes from commercial addresses, and dead voters casting ballots.

  He also pointed to potential illegal voting activity in Nevada:

  “We’re going to hear testimony from Nevada where 15 hundred people were deceased and should not have voted, four thousand people were illegal aliens, and 15 thousand people voted from commercial address when you have to vote from a home address.”

  Echoing the case laid out by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his recently dismissed Supreme Court lawsuit, Paul accused states of using the COVID-19 crisis to dodge state and federal election law, comparing the move to a play right out of the Obama, Rahm Emanuel playbook:

  “It’s sort of Obama, Rahm Emanuel’s playbook. They took the crisis of COVID and then they changed election law … not by changing law at the state legislature, they had secretaries of state and or governors simply by fiat change the law to say ‘oh you can keep counting votes’ when the law did say that. So, this election really was stolen in a way and it was stolen because people changed the law …”

  Shortly after his appointment as Obama’s Chief of Staff, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel famously uttered the words “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” during a corporate panel sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

  “What I mean by that is never allow a good crisis to go to waste when it’s an opportunity to do things that you had never considered, or that you didn’t think were possible,” Emanuel would explain at the time.

  Trump Campaign Attorney, Jesse Binnall, would laid out similar accusations of voter fraud to those given by Senator Paul during the Wednesday Senate hearing.

  See Binnall’s opening statement below:

  But, Senator Paul was not done, as Douglas Braff reports via SaraACarter.com, during today’s Senate hearing examining irregularities during 2020 presidential election the Kentucky Republican claimed:

  “The fraud happened. The election in many ways was stolen…And the only way it’ll be fixed is by, in the future, reinforcing the laws.”

  Rand Paul: “The fraud happened. The election in many ways was stolen.” pic.twitter.com/LyUPp1Oebp

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 16, 2020

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

  “But I think [Kreb’s] job was keeping the foreigners out of the election. It was the most secure election based on the security of the internet and technology, but he has never voiced an opinion […] on whether or not dead people voted—I don’t think he examined that,” Paul said toward the end of his speaking time, then questioning if Krebs examined non-citizens’ voting.

  Many Republicans, in alleging that widespread election fraud occurred in the 2020 election, have often cited claims that a lot of dead people and non-citizens voted. The over 50 lawsuits challenging the results of the election in certain swing states alleging election fraud have overwhelmingly failed in the courts.

  “So to say it was the safest election—sure, I agree with your statement if you’re referring to foreign intervention,” Paul continued.

  “But if you’re saying it’s the safest election based on no dead people voted, no non-citizens voted, no people broke the absentee [ballot] rules, I think that’s false and I think that’s what’s upset a lot of people on our side is that they’re taking your statement to mean ‘Oh, there were no problems in the elections.’”

  “I don’t think you examined any of the problems that we’ve heard here,” he added, “so really you’re just referring to something differently, the way I look at it.”

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• Violent Crime Rate Doubles On Chicago Rail System, Even With Stepped-Up Police And Far Fewer Riders
  Violent Crime Rate Doubles On Chicago Rail System, Even With Stepped-Up Police And Far Fewer Riders
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 22:10

  The rate of violent crime on Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) trains and platforms has more than doubled this year, even though the number of riders has dramatically dropped and Chicago police have stepped up patrols and surveillance, according to a Tribune analysis of police and CTA data, Mass Transit Mag reported.

  Ridership this year on the “L” system has been down 61% through September compared with the same period in 2019, according to the CTA. In some months during the spring and summer, it was down more than 85%. And while the absolute number of crimes has dropped, too, but not nearly as much as ridership. That means those left riding the system saw a jump in their odds of becoming a victim to a crime on the “L” or at CTA platforms and stations.

  

  From Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, there were roughly 6 violent crimes and 9 nonviolent crimes per 1 million rides on the “L.” The nonviolent crime rate saw a slight uptick, but the violent crime rate has more than doubled from last year, when both types of crime on the CTA rail system reached their highest levels of the decade. Brian Steele, CTA’s vice president of communications, said the level of serious crime is in line with transit agencies nationwide. CTA officials meet and communicate with police regularly “to help prevent and respond to crimes,” he added.

  Matthew Cline, the Chicago Police Department’s commander of public transportation, said even though there was a drastic decrease in CTA ridership during the coronavirus pandemic, “the people that are driving the crime never left the system.”

  “People that are engaging in crimes and gang members — they’re not observing the stay-at-home order as much as most other folks,” Cline said. “So whereas a lot of the working people left the system, a lot of the criminals that prey on people did not. So that’s where, honestly, some of our crime didn’t decrease at a rate that we would’ve liked to have seen.”

  The Tribune analyzed CTA ridership numbers and reports of crimes considered serious enough to report to the FBI as “index” crimes, from pick-pocketing to robbery and sexual assault. Of these, cases deemed violent included robberies, homicides and more aggressive assaults and batteries. The analysis focused on crimes reported in the city of Chicago, which covers the vast majority of the CTA system.

  The analysis found that the raw number of crimes on the CTA rail system this year through September was lower than previous years, with police reporting 940 serious crimes, 375 of them violent. That compares with 1,794 serious crimes — 415 of them violent — through September 2019. But with roughly 63 million rides on the “L” this year compared with nearly 165 million during the same period last year, the number of crimes points to a troubling surge in the rate of offenses.

  The increase also comes after Chicago police added about 50 officers to CTA trains and platforms this spring, bringing the total number of officers assigned to patrol the “L” to about 200. Police officials also opened a new strategic decision support center in June to monitor video of CTA properties in real time. Cline said there are seven dedicated detectives analyzing live footage of CTA properties, which has been a “game changer” in gathering better evidence and putting cases together. The CTA has about 32,000 cameras on its network, including in every rail station, bus and train car.

  But deterring those crimes from happening is another issue. Cline said COVID-19 has complicated police efforts since jails aren’t holding as many people, and many of those committing crimes on the rail system are repeat offenders.

  “We’re arresting some people four or five times,” Cline said. “That’s kind of a struggle across the system.”

  While the arrest rate for nonviolent crimes has dropped slightly from about 4.8% to 4.1%, the initiatives may have contributed to a higher arrest rate for violent crimes this year. The arrest rate for violent crimes on the “L” through September was about 21.8%, an increase of about 3.2% from the same period last year.

  Violent crimes reported on the rail system through September included at least 283 robberies, 53 aggravated cases of battery, 33 serious cases of assault, four homicides and two criminal sexual assaults. Homicide cases had the highest percentage of arrests, with three of the four resulting in at least one arrest.

  The rise in the crime rate came as no surprise to Dagan Douglas, 24, a South Side native who rides the Red Line nearly every day to work. On Nov. 27, Douglas was a witness to an argument between two men who didn’t seem to know each other at the Jackson Red Line station in the Loop. The altercation turned violent, and one man tossed the other in front of an oncoming train, seriously injuring him, according to a police report. No arrests have been made, and police have not released any video and photos of the attack or the suspect.

  The fight was the most violent Douglas has seen on the CTA, but he said it wasn’t shocking. He said he sees petty crimes regularly on the CTA that “can easily escalate into violence with the wrong reactions.”

  “This sort of thing is starting to become increasingly common, so when I see an incident, it doesn’t really register with me all that much,” Douglas said.

  Chicago police do not specifically list which crimes occur at or near which stations, and while the department provides addresses and mapping coordinates, they are approximate. Still, the Tribune was able to analyze this data to determine which stations were closest to the reported crimes.

  As of Nov, 23, there were about 14 violent crimes this year at the Jackson Red Line station, making the stop one of the most violent in Chicago. It is behind only the Roosevelt station in the South Loop, which had about 22 violent crimes, and the Blue Line’s Pulaski stop in East Garfield Park, which had about 19.

  The Red Line’s Chicago stop on the Near North Side had the fourth most violent crimes with about 13, followed by the Howard stop in Rogers Park, the Belmont stop in Lakeview and the 79th station on the Red Line in Chatham, which each had about nine.

  Some stations, such as Clark and Lake in the Loop, saw high rates of nonviolent but still serious offenses, such as theft. Though the department places more officers on fixed posts when it notices a spike in crimes, Cline said it’s harder to stop offenses at “massive stations” such as the Jackson Red Line, which has multiple tunnels and platforms spread across one area.

  “There’s just a lot of geography to cover, so it does pose challenges,” Cline said. “I’d like to have more officers in some of these spots, but there’s just a lot of crime.”

  Cline said the department’s focus this year has been on robberies and violent crimes. He added that the department is making better use of technology, but there’s still work to be done, including on homicide cases and in handling issues involving mental illness on the CTA rail system. “We’re early on this,” Cline said. “Obviously, we like the direction we’re going in. We’re not satisfied yet, and I don’t think we’ll ever fully be satisfied, but we do feel like the approach we’re taking now is the right approach.”

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• Woke Crusaders Strip Great Emancipator Lincoln's Name From SF High School Because "Black Lives Never Mattered To Him"
  Woke Crusaders Strip Great Emancipator Lincoln’s Name From SF High School Because “Black Lives Never Mattered To Him”
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 21:50

  It looks like the leaders of San Francisco’s unified school district are preparing to scratch the name of former American President Abraham Lincoln off of one of their schools.

  The reason?

  Lincoln wasn’t “sufficiently woke”.

  No words better capture the lack of intellectual and historical content of much of the cancel culture sweeping the nation that the following:

  “We did not belabor the point.”

  As Jonathan Turley writes, it was the response of Jeremiah Jeffries, the Chair of the San Francisco School Names Advisory Committee. The Committee has recommended the renaming of Abraham Lincoln High School as well as targeting the George Washington High School, Herbert Hoover Middle School and Paul Revere K-8. 

  

  Even an elementary school named after Dianne Feinstein is being targeted. This is not the first such effort around the country that focused on Lincoln. We recently discussed the effort of University of Wisconsin college students to remove the prominent statue of Lincoln on campus as not sufficiently “pro black”and a single-handed symbol of white supremacy.” 

  Jeffries declared “Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.”

  

  This is the signer of the Emancipation Proclamation, the vocal advocate for the 13th Amendment, and the man assassinated for his war against the South and slavery.  The reason such culture cancel efforts succeed is that academics and others are intimidated from challenging such ahistorical and unhinged views.

  Jeffries is a first-grade teacher who also co-founded Teachers 4 Change and Teachers 4 Social Justice. He has been a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders and Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. However, some liberal politicians like San Francisco Mayor London Breed have opposed the effort.

  The  Committee emphasized Lincoln’s treatment of Native Americans, which we have previously discussed. One issue that was raised is that Lincoln ordered the execution of 38 Dakota men and signed the Homestead Act, which gave settlers land forcibly taken from Native Americans.

  Lincoln’s role in the Dakota executions is legitimately controversial but has been presented without some countervailing facts.  The Sioux or Dakota uprising occurred not long after Minnesota became a state and involved the death of hundreds of settlers.  The Army crushed the Sioux and captured hundreds.  A military tribunal sentenced 303 to death for alleged crimes against civilians and other crimes.  The trial itself was a farce with no real representation or reliable evidence.  Lincoln reviewed the transcripts of the 303 and told the Senate:

  “Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I ordered a careful examination of the records of the trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females.”

  However, only two men were found guilty of rape and Lincoln later expanded the criteria to include those who participated in “massacres” of civilians as opposed to battles with the Army.

  Lincoln however commuted the sentence of 264 of the 303 convicted.

  I have heavily criticized Lincoln for the unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus and the loss of free speech rights as well as other decisions. However, historical figures often have such conflicted elements that can be discussed and understood in context as we did recently with a pre-revolutionary hero.

  Dianne Feinstein is being targeted because she allegedly flew a Confederate flag at City Hall when she was mayor. It is an ironic moment as those who have supported (or declined to condemn) the cancel culture become targets of it. As discussed earlier, As proven by the French Revolution, today’s revolutionaries are tomorrow’s reactionaries — or victims.  We also saw recently as Democrats called for blacklisting anyone “complicit” in the Trump years, including those connected with the Lincoln Project despite the vicious attacks launched by the Project  against Republicans.  Indeed, these hair-triggered attacks are why most academics have remained conspicuously silent in the face of a wholesale attack on free speech and academic freedom on our campuses.

  In the case of Feinstein, her standing with the left seemed to plummet when she exhibited civility toward a Republican colleague by hugging Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham after the Barrett confirmation hearing. That simply hug sent the left into orbit and soon thereafter stories began to appear calling for her resignations and saying that she was no longer mentally competent.

  What is striking is that Jeffries held out the possibility of a type of political reeducation for Feinstein:

  “On a local level Dianne Feinstein chose to fly a flag that is the iconography of domestic terrorism, racism, white avarice and inhumanity towards Black and Indigenous people at the City Hall.  She is one of the few living examples on our list, so she still has time to dedicate the rest of her life to the upliftment of Black, First Nations and other people of color. She hasn’t thus far.”

  Just for the record, flag allegation occurred decades ago.

  She was first elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 – over 50 years ago.

  But, of course, “we [do] not belabor the point” of such announcements.

  They are to be simply accepted as manifestly true unless you want to be the next accused of “white avarice and inhumanity.”

  This would seem ample proof of the statement that:

  “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

  Guess who said that.

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• China Is Still Miles Behind Phase 1 Trade Deal Targets
  China Is Still Miles Behind Phase 1 Trade Deal Targets
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 21:30

  By Michiel van der Veen

  Phase One Monitor: A December Update

  Summary

  • Despite reversing the downward trend in September and October, China is still miles behind the target of USD 230bn set out for imports of US goods and services in 2020
  • China already fell short by USD 78 billion in the first 10 months of 2020 and only has two months to crank up imports by an additional USD 104 billion
  • There is a clear divergence on the progress towards targets for agricultural and energy imports, and manufacturing and services imports.
  • We expect that the future Biden administration will not adopt a softened stance on US trade with China
  • Before the inauguration ceremony in January, Trump might pull the plug from the Phase One deal to cement his legacy as being the ‘only president that stood up against China’
  • China is preparing for further bilateral tensions by adopting an export control law

  China is still miles behind target

  This report provides an update of our Phase One Monitor (POM), which keeps track of China’s progress towards the targets set out in in the Phase One trade deal signed in January 2020. Specifically, China pledged to import an additional USD 200 billion worth of US goods and services by 2021 (compared to 2017 levels).

  

  Despite reversing the downward trend in September and October, China is still miles behind the target of USD 230bn set for imports of US goods and services in 2020 (Figure 1). Between October 2019 and October 2020, China imported USD 125bn of goods and services covered by the Phase One deal.1 This means China already fell short by USD 78bn in the first 10 months of 2020 and only has two months to crank up the import of goods and services by USD 104bn. Given that the year is almost out, it seems all but impossible that China will reach the 2020 target for imports of US goods and services.

  Developments by product group

  When shifting our focus to the individual product groups, we observe diverging trends. Agricultural and energy imports are closing in on the target, while manufacturing imports have been stagnant and services imports are even exhibiting a downtrend.

  Energy and agriculture

  China’s import of US energy products maintained upward momentum (increasing from USD 6.1bn to 7.3bn) but is still far off the USD 24bn target set for 2020 (Figure 2). The increase in US energy exports to China is mainly driven by crude oil (Figure 3). China’s ramping up on oil is closely linked to the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. But it could also be explained by China’s strategic goal of becoming more self-reliant, which requires stockpiling of commodities that China lacks.

  

  China’s demand for US agricultural goods also increased significantly in September and October to USD 22bn, but this too is well below the target agreed upon in the Phase One deal (of USD 33bn, see Figure 4). A substantial percentage of China’s higher imports of US agricultural goods is driven by soybean import (Figure 5). Demand for US soybeans slipped in 2018 and 2019 when China’s pig herd was struck by African swine fever. Soybean exports reached peak levels seen before 2018 despite the herd rebuilding was in very good progress. China also started to import more other agricultural products, such as grains and cotton. Ultimately, from the perspective of energy and agricultural goods, we clearly see that China is making an effort to follow up on the agreements in the Phase One deal.

  

  Manufacturing and services

  China has made little progress towards the target when it comes to imports of US services and manufacturing goods (Figure 6 and 7). Annual US manufacturing exports (USD 56bn) to China are still below the level seen before the Phase One deal was signed. Import of US aircrafts (both order and deliveries) and vehicles have contracted since the deal was signed at the beginning of the year, although the decline in vehicle trade seems to have bottomed out.

  On the services front, the trend is the diametric opposite of what it should have been (Figure 7). The annual services import currently stands at USD 40bn, whereas the ultimo 2020 target in the Phase One deal stands at USD 70bn. Admittedly, total US services exports have decreased steeply this year during the corona crisis. Yet, US services exports to China fell even more in Q3 (Figure 9). This is at the least remarkable given the fact that China seems to be closest to a pre-pandemic economy.

  

  

  Looking ahead

  The White House will soon welcome a new resident, but we do not expect the US administration under president Biden to adopt a softened stance on trade with China. There is bipartisan opposition against China’s trade practices. In a recent interview, Biden already stated that he will push back on issues such as intellectual property theft, subsidies to state-owned enterprises and forced technology transfers. He also said he will not immediately roll back tariffs on Chinese goods that were imposed by the Trump administration. Neither is he planning to immediately revoke the Phase One deal that was signed at the beginning of 2020 between the US and China. Beijing has signaled that it wants to renegotiate the Phase One deal when Biden is inaugurated as president, as the import targets in the deal are perceived as unrealistic.

  Will Trump pull the plug?

  There is still a chance that Biden will not even have to decide the fate of the Phase One trade deal. China’s inability to live up to its trade promises in the Phase One deal is the perfect opportunity for Trump to launch a final protectionist push towards China in the final weeks of his presidency. True, agricultural commodity prices (especially soybeans) are at multi-year highs, which means the Phase One deal is probably regarded favorably amongst one of Trump’s core constituencies. That being said, pulling the plug on the trade deal would fit the scorched-earth strategy that Trump has already initiated by, e.g. banning investment in 89 Chinese companies and the travel visa restrictions for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members from 10 years to one month and single entry.

  The motivation for Trump to strike a final blow against China is that it will cement his legacy as being the ‘only president that stood up against China’. The President runs the risk that Biden will keep the Phase One deal alive and showcase its (future) success as a Democratic achievement. In any case, the tough-on-China stance resonates well with US voters. Moreover, it might give one of his children a head start if they run in later election cycles. Note that both Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump are popular among Republicans as candidates for future presidential elections.

  China is preparing for further escalation of trade tensions

  Meanwhile, China is also preparing for a further escalation of US-China trade tensions. On December 1, a new export control law came into force in China which grants Beijing power to block exports if it feels that national security or national interests are being threatened. A comprehensive list of goods subject to export controls is not yet available. Even if a product does not end up on the list, China’s government would still be able to impose temporary export controls for up to two years. The export control law could be interpreted as a response to a series of US measures aimed at curbing Chinese tech firms.

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• There Are Three Things That Can Kill The "Perfect Reflation Trade": Lessons From Two World Wars
  There Are Three Things That Can Kill The “Perfect Reflation Trade”: Lessons From Two World Wars
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 21:10

  By Michael Every of Rabobank

  Merry Christmas, War is Over(?) – A strategic/tactical view of the reflation trade

  “So this is Christmas; And what have you done?
  Another year over; And a new one just begun
  And so this is Christmas; I hope you have fun
  The near and the dear one; The old and the young
  A very Merry Christmas; And a happy New Year
  Let’s hope it’s a good one; Without any fear.”

  –  John Lennon ‘Merry Christmas, War is Over

  Summary

  • The markets are crying out that ‘War is Over’ this Christmas, and pricing for a perfect reflation without any tears

  • History after real wars shows that this confidence is likely to be misplaced unless politicians have really learned their fiscal lessons

  • Tactically, however, we suspect there could be misplaced market fears of inflation in H1 2021

  • Indeed, risk assets can arguably outperform in 2021 unless three key, linked risks are triggered: tighter monetary policy, a swing up in the USD, or too-tight fiscal policy

  V for Victory and for Vaccine

  At the start of 2020 we flagged a devastating global economic impact from Covid-19, if Europe and the US weren’t able to avoid the virus already spreading in Asia. Most of what we feared would occur then occurred: rolling on/off lockdowns, huge voluntary and involuntary restrictions on normal life, a collapse in services and travel, and massive supply-chain shocks.

  This was inevitably going to require massive stimulus, and monetary policy alone wouldn’t suffice in the face of such tectonic supply and demand shock. It was clear government support would be required, and would push fiscal deficits to levels last seen during WW2.

  Moreover, our suspicions that this spending would end up being de facto financed by central banks were also confirmed: extraordinary monetary policy was rolled out or expanded across both developed and developing economies. QE, and even open debt monetization, have become ‘normal’ even in economies one would never have expected, such as Poland and Indonesia.

  Yet even as both lockdowns and the virus continue to rage in many countries, victory may be in sight.

  We have not just one but multiple successful vaccines being rolled out that present the very real possibility of things ‘getting back to normal’ ahead. Indeed, the first member of the public, a 90-year old British lady, was injected with the vaccine on 8 December. Billions will hopefully follow.

  Without any fear, for sure

  Good spirits had already emerged after what looks (barring an unexpected “contested” election) to be US President Biden from 20 January; despite President Trump’s pro-business and pro-market policies, there appears a sense of market relief at the prospect of a more conventional personality in the White House, at least in terms of trade/geopolitics.

  This was even more the case coupled with no Democratic majority emerging in the Senate rather than a ‘Blue Wave’: regardless of who wins the two Georgia senatorial run-offs on 5 January, Democratic control could only come via the deciding vote of the Vice-President, assumed to limit the policy room for manoeuvre for Biden and ensuring policy has to be relatively ‘consensus’.

  ‘War is Over’

  Yet since the announcement of Covid-19 vaccines, markets have been trading as if ‘War is Over’ and a global peace-time boom here. As this Moneyweek front cover states “Prepare your portfolio for a return of the Roaring ’20s”, and indeed:

  • Risk is very much ‘on’;
  • US equity markets continue to reach new record highs;
  • 10-year US Treasury yields have risen to test near 1%;
  • US inflation expectations are up;
  • The USD has fallen against most major FX crosses;
  • Most key commodity prices have jumped; and
  • Net inflows to emerging markets have soared.

  Yet is a “reflation” trade really justified? Our Rates Strategy team’s view of global financialisation continues to argue “No”. In fact, there is an argument to be made that under Covid-19 we have seen years of financialisation condensed into 10 months, with the rich/asset-holders getting far richer and the poor/many workers seeing life become more precarious.

  Rather than re-exploring that theme here, we wish to examine how economic recoveries from actual wars have looked. To do so we need to focus on countries with histories of war and key data: we will use the US and UK. And rather than an in-depth analysis of how quickly or completely the US and UK economies will be able to bounce back from Covid-19, we want to look at how well both recovered in the immediate aftermath of both WW1 and WW2.

  This could be the subject for an entire thesis, but what we want to do is focus on GDP, inflation, and bond yields as a proxy for how rapidly things returned ‘to normal’ – because that is what the market is telling us is about to happen again in 2021 now that the Covid-19 ‘War is over’. What does real post-war history show us?

  Population

  The damage wrought by Covid-19 has been extraordinary. In the US, total loss of life has already exceeded all the military deaths recorded in WW1, and may be above those of WW2 before the end in a worst-case scenario. Compared to the total population, Covid-19 deaths are likely to be around the WW1 level of 0.1% and far below the 0.4% seen in WW2.

  True, the majority of these Covid deaths were of the old and sick not the young and healthy, as in WW1 and WW2. Yet this fails to consider ongoing healthcare costs for many survivors, as Covid-19 can result in many permanent debilitating symptoms – not that WW1 and WW2 did not leave a vast number of young injured, of course.

  In the UK, total Covid deaths also represent around 0.1% of the population. However, this is far less than the 895,000 who were killed in WW1, equal to a staggering 2.1% of the 1918 population, and the 450,000 who died in WW2, equal to 1.0%. As can be seen, the UK suffered far more in both wars than the US. Again, there will also be ongoing healthcare costs to bear for many survivors, of course, but less than after the two World Wars.

  In short, Covid-19 was on the relative scale of WW1 in the US, but was far smaller in the UK, and compared to WW2 in both.

  Economy

  Despite often being dubbed ‘a war’, the quandary of battling Covid-19 is that it requires restraint in economic activity, albeit mostly in services rather than the goods sector.

  In the US, GDP shrank by a record amount in Q2 2020 before rebounding by another record in Q3, but with new lockdowns in Q4 it is likely to end the year with a significant recession; the long-term damage and loss of swathes of small businesses and service-sector jobs is still being tallied. The UK’s Covid-19 recession was still the deepest for 300 years, and the ongoing structural damage to GDP is likely to be similar to that in the US.

  By contrast, WW1 and even more so WW2 saw US production increase massively. The shift to a war economy and vast government military spending was highly stimulatory, and had key spill over effects in many industrial and technological sectors.
  The US also suffered no damage at all to its capital stock given its benign geographic position. It emerged a global superpower, with its post-war debt large but domestically held. (Please see here for a look at the long-run trend in public debt in key economies and how it was dealt with.)

  WW1 and WW2 also saw the UK shift to a war economy, and an initial surge in GDP growth rates as private-sector businesses were co-opted for the war effort. Output was maximized despite domestic consumption being constrained via rationing.

  Notably, the UK still exited both wars in a greatly weakened economic condition, with damaged infrastructure and a loss of both housing and capital stock. It also had enormous public and external debt to service.

  * * *

  US: post-war post-partum

  

  So that’s the backdrop: what about the post-war recovery?

  After WW1, the US did not see a boom but a bust. Over 1919-21 there was a nasty recession as the government rolled back spending and the private sector failed to fill that gap. After WW2 a similar pattern emerged: initially there was a sharp slump as huge public spending into war industries was reversed. Indeed, GDP did not start to pick up strongly until around 1950. There was actually a five year gap before the so-called post-WW2 boom kicked in.

  

  Likewise, US CPI of 20% y/y in WW1 due to a squeeze on key resources was not followed by post-war inflation. Aside from a brief spike in early 1920, the US actually recorded deflation, then low inflation. The ‘Roaring 20s’ did not see CPI roar – and a large part of this was due to the deflationary straitjacket of the gold standard of that time.

  After WW2, inflation was also initially low apart from a one-off jump in 1947 as price and wage controls that had been in place since 1942 were unwound. Once that adjustment had taken place, however, inflation remained constrained until the growth of the 1950s kicked in years later.

  

  In terms of US 10-year Treasury yields, there was no post-WW1 spike either. In an environment of global deflation and then low inflation, this should not be a surprise.

  Indeed, the 1920s was a decade in which unpayable wartime debts (owed to the US by the UK and France, and to the UK and France by Germany, which Germany was unable to pay, but instead borrowed again from the US) were reshuffled rather than resolved. This eventually ended in the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the political extremism of the 1930s, then war. During this entire time US Treasury yields drifted lower.

  During WW2, US Treasury yields were capped by the Fed, with this ‘yield curve control’ used to help finance the war effort. (As we have noted before, this policy is not new.) Even after WW2, US yields still remained capped to help pay off wartime debts via continued financial repression. Would one really want to have been holding a 10-year US Treasury at around 2.4% when inflation was spiking to 19.5%? Markets had no choice, however.

  In short, in the US we have a story of immediate post-war slumps, not booms; of post-war deflation for the most part, except where government controls were removed; and post-war stability in bond yields due to government controls.

  The feel-good growth did not begin in earnest until 1950, a full five years after the iconic picture of a sailor kissing a girl in Times Square. That is *five* full Christmases, something for the markets to ponder as we head into this one so optimistic.

  It was logical, however, given the US saw government spending slump from such high levels: how could the private sector fill that gap?

  * * *

  UK: Post-haste decline

  In the UK, which had seen far more physical damage in WW1 and had fought for far longer, the post-war economic recovery was mixed.

  The private-sector initially enjoyed a boom as investment picked up and the key shipbuilding industry in particular replaced lost merchant shipping stock. However, government spending contracted rapidly, and post-war recessions in other countries dragged down export-dependent UK industry. The economy slipped back into a serious recession over 1921–1922: the gold standard ensured it stayed there for most of the decade.

  

  Following WW2, there was again a recession due to the cut in huge wartime spending and then the sudden withdrawal of US Lend-Lease support in September 1945: a US loan in July 1946 was needed to restore economy stability. From 1946-48 the UK saw bread rationing, which was not necessary during the war. Indeed, it was 1947 before UK GDP growth started again as public investment kicked in. That was two long, cold Christmases.

  

  The post-WW1 environment was also deflationary, not inflationary – and it stayed that way for the next decade. Again, thank the prevailing gold standard from 1925 onwards at the too-high pre-war exchange rate, a peg which was only dropped again in 1931. For obvious reasons the same period was also one of increased unionisation and union militancy in the UK.

  Post-WW2, inflation pressures were notably higher, and in advance of a pick-up in growth, due to shattered supply chains and a much stronger labour movement, but initially stagflationary not reflationary.

  In markets, post-WW1 UK gilt yields saw a moderate decline from a 1920 peak of 5.32% to hold at 4.3-4.5% for most of the decade, with BoE rates high to keep sterling on gold. Given deflation, this meant very high real rates – and so hardly the stuff of end-of-war good spirits.

  Post-WW2, the BoE meanwhile kept base rates at the low of 2% prevailing for the whole of the war, indeed right up until late 1951; gilt yields only picked up from 2.76% to around 3.5%, which given higher inflation overall meant real yields were low or negative.

  

  In short, the UK saw a painful post-WW1 victory due to an inappropriate fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy and a challenging global environment on top of massive war debts and loss of young men. After a rocky start due to external vulnerabilities, it saw a happier recovery post-WW2 due to looser monetary and fiscal policy, a more appropriate exchange rate, and a benign global backdrop once the US Marshal Plan was introduced.

  The key lessons from the US and the UK should be obvious: post-war ‘victory’ does not always look or feel like victory at all. It depends on: 1) the starting position; 2) monetary policy; 3) fiscal policy; 4) exchange-rate policy; and 5) global demand.

  Markets need to carefully consider these factors if they want to be sure they are right to be so upbeat about the war being over.

  * * *

  Awful Austerity Again?

  1) Starting base

  In which regard, the 2021 starting base is good in that we don’t have excess wartime production, except perhaps of ventilators (or office space). Rather we have suppressed supply and demand that can come back online as the virus situation allows.

  However, permanent economic damage will have been done. There are (very) early estimates that up to 48% of US small businesses may never reopen, and structural unemployment may push much higher. Indeed, office-focused cities and tourism-based locations may never recover fully – and should they even aim to? After all, following the Covid-19 virus ‘war’ there will inevitably be another at some point. War is never really over. Does it make sense to return to an economic model primed for disruption by events that are no longer black swans? Or to one that has been structurally “disrupted”?

  2) Monetary policy

  Meanwhile, monetary policy is arguably close to its useful limit, with nominal rates trapped around zero or just below in most major economies. QE is now a standard policy tool, with significant room for expansion in some major economies: yet it also faces declining returns, and does not provide a solution for real economy problems.

  3) Fiscal policy

  So what of fiscal policy: is it going to help or hurt? Arguably the latter! True, we have arguably crossed the Rubicon to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), as we had suspected would have to occur in 2020. Look at central bank balance sheets and their QE and government bond issuance. Is any of this massive “asset-swap” really going to be unwound ahead?

  Yet the traditional economic advisors around governments are not embracing this fact. Rather, as after every war, there are already signs that more traditional fiscal and economic thinking is going to try to reassert itself.

  “Belt tightening”, “dealing with the debt”, or “balancing the books” is the message – not that most extraordinary state spending due to the virus has been de facto covered by central bank debt monetisation, just as it is during a real war!

  Almost certainly, fiscal deficits as a % of GDP will be much smaller in 2021 than they were in 2020: and as the government pulls money out of the economy on a net basis, is the private sector ready to put more than that *in*?

  Will they have confidence and output automatically ‘bounce back’ as neoclassical economic theory assumes? Or will a lower net flow of public spending, or even just public spending lower than is required to boost confidence, prevent that bounce from happening?

  Both WW1 and WW2, as well as the 2008 crisis, show the risks of reducing fiscal stimulus too soon. Doing so would mean a post-war hangover, not a post-war party awaits.

  4) Exchange rate policy

  The USD is down markedly against most major crosses, which is seen as pro-growth and risk-on. Yet consider this also means emerging market exporters, especially in Asia, are seeing a rise in deflationary pressures and a hit to export earnings on top of the evaporation of tourism-driven FX inflows. This does nothing to drive growth there given their economies are not primarily consumption-driven.

  Indeed globally, almost nobody wants a stronger currency. Europe doesn’t; China doesn’t; Japan doesn’t; the UK doesn’t; and neither Australia nor Canada nor New Zealand do. Only a few emerging markets would arguably benefit from FX stability or appreciation – but even then only the ones who can look to domestic demand for growth.

  5) Global demand

  Beyond the base-effects bounce of 2021, which economy can truly say that it has brighter prospects post-Covid than it did pre-Covid? And to what extent is that economy able to lift others around it? Who is going to be doing the economic heavy lifting?

  Not the US, apparently, despite the return to a US consumer of last resort vis-à-vis Asia during the Covid crisis. Not Europe. Not Japan. Not the UK. Meanwhile, China is openly talking about ‘dual circulation’, which will ensure that more of what Chinese growth there is stays in China via lower reliance on imports.

  We already saw pre-Covid that a process of deglobalisation and regionalisation had begun: even under a US Biden administration, this can arguably be expected to continue in a stop-start fashion.

  In short, when one looks at the five post-war structural factors, it is hard to see how current fundamentals sit alongside the ‘War is Over’ market exuberance unless fiscal stimulus continues.

  * * *

  The Tactical View

  Let’s now take a tactical cross-asset view. First, a recap:

  The S&P 500 printed a record high of 3,393 on February 19, 2020, but just over a month had fallen over 34% to levels not seen since late 2016 – essentially wiping out more than three years of equity gains. Then the Fed turned the market on a dime: the backstop of an alphabet soup of liquidity programs, unlimited QE, and the promise to buy corporate debt jointly dampened tail risk, reduced volatility, skewed risk-reward ratios, and shifted investor sentiment. Of course, trillions of USD in global fiscal stimulus helped matters as well.

  The high yield and equity markets turned in tandem, and other risk assets in the FX and commodity space eventually followed suit, albeit with a lag and with less gusto. The S&P 500 is once again forging new all-time highs.

  

  We had expected risk assets to take another hit, and for safe-havens to find some relief into year-end 2020. This was based on the expectation that a second wave of Covid-19 infections, triggering regionalised lockdowns, would weigh on market sentiment.

  While the second wave hit, and is still raging in many places, and regionalised lockdowns were seen, news of multiple Covid-19 vaccines proved a game-changer for risk appetite. The market looked through near term winter weakness to the light at the end of the tunnel. ‘War is Over’ is the theme, as noted.

  After all, equities are forward looking, and are always trying to see round corners. Furthermore, the breakdown of equity moves was telling. At first, companies set to benefit from the corporate bond backstop rallied, as did equities sensitive to interest rates. Over the summer, the top five companies in the S&P 500 led the way and eventually ended up with a market concentration of nearly 25% of the entire index.

  Those top-five companies –not all are in the technology sector, but mega-tech became a buzz name for the group- were either less impacted by Covid-19 than many others, or in fact benefited from the socio-economic forces created by the Covid-19 pandemic.

  We know retail played a large role in the equity rally, with the ‘gamification’ of brokerage apps spawning a new breed of small investors happy to buy deep OTM options in tech companies, which created an outsized effect given the gamma impact on dealing desks.

  As volatility fell, risk parity funds and vol-control CTAs bought more equities, momentum jumped on the move, and flows into US equity markets continued. Then came the vaccine news and the rotation into the ‘War is Over’ trade.

  

  Looking ahead, we now seem to be in a market where good news helps drive value and re-opening stocks higher, while bad news pushes interest rates lower and helps drive growth stocks higher.

  Moreover, as has been the case for many, many years now, volatility is key. As long as volatility remains suppressed, risk assets can find support; and historically, there is a strong link between central bank accommodation and the level of market volatility.

  In short, as long as central banks are “rigging the game” the equity game will indeed be played.

  Indeed, with global front-end rates low and likely to remain there for several years at least, there is a strong argument that volatility will continue declining and risk assets remain supported.

  * * *

  Perfect cocktail?

  This environment looks a perfect cocktail for equities, with hope, dampened volatility, and low real yields creating a positive feedback loop encouraging continued inflows from systematic and discretionary funds through 2021.

  

  Notably, this also fits the historical “post-war” pattern with US equities rallying in the year after both WW1 and WW2 ended, before retracing those gains after the initial euphoria worse off.

  However, let’s think even more tactically and less big picture.

  As we have laid out, low inflation remains the structural risk going forward, but on a tactical basis we must voice caution heading into Q2 2021 very low CPI base effects and a return to (new) normalcy could trigger a short-term rise in inflationary pressures, and/or fears over potential stagflation.

  

  In particular, commodity prices may help push inflation up. We already see this dynamic in commodities, driven by: genuine supply-demand; a weaker USD; central-bank liquidity; and the general ‘War is Over’ risk-on search for peacetime yield.

  Historically, such fluctuations in commodity prices would not be a surprise. After both WW1 and WW2 we saw an initial pop higher in oil prices before a sustained downturn. Our house oil forecast for the next few years sits in line with this pattern.

  Indeed, we see potential upside for oil prices in the coming months, even if only driven by USD weakness. The theoretical link between a lower USD and commodity prices is well known, but there is a mechanical impact as well. For example, if a European pension fund has to allocate 100bn to the Bloomberg commodity index, then a 10% rise in EUR/USD will force them to buy 10bn of commodities to maintain their allocation target.

  We strongly suspect the Fed will look through a temporary rise in inflation, but it could shock markets for a while: after all, the biggest risk facing US stocks is the mere thought of higher rates. For consumers, however, it will mean a drop in real incomes on top of the Covid shock: recall the Arab Spring followed the last global commodity-price surge, which was hardly ‘risk on’.

  

  Admittedly, for stocks the key question is what the market sees as the driver for any near-term higher yields: if it is better growth and inflation prospects, then value stocks may still outperform growth, and cyclicals outperform defensives.

  In the rates space, US breakevens are arguably a better way of playing a temporary rise in inflation than nominals, as the Fed may increase the WAM of its Treasury purchases to lean against any rise in real yields. That said, given the moves observed over recent months (Figure 11) one can argue breakevens are already pricing in a similar story and upside could be limited.

  To reiterate, we remain firmly of the view that from a structural perspective US rates will remain low for the foreseeable future.

  * * *

  Dollars – and sense

  On the USD, the recent sell-off has been brutal, and the inverse relationship between it and equities remains intact.

  

  In the coming months, there is little reason to see this weak USD trend changing. Further out, however, it is useful to question how long USD weakness can be maintained. The huge structural supply/demand imbalance in the Eurodollar market has been temporarily balanced by Fed policies, including swap lines and the FIMA repo facility. Nonetheless, USD liabilities outside the US are still massively higher than the availability of USD there as measured by FX reserves. (See here for more.)

  This will be even more the case if the US is unwilling or unable to provide massive fiscal stimulus. This would imply a smaller fiscal deficit and so a lower net supply of USD to both its economy and to the rest of the world – and far lower growth to boot, meaning less global exports to it. In short, there is likely more of a floor for the USD from here than expected, which means global reflation themes cannot be driven by that trend alone.

  ‘War is Over’ (Reprise)

  However, risk assets can arguably outperform over the course of 2021 even if we see a lower rate of GDP growth than the disappointing average in the decade before Covid-19. To our mind, there are three main risks to this view, however.

  First is central banks tightening monetary policy. This seems extremely unlikely. In the last rates cycle, only the US and Canada among developed markets raised their policy rate by more than 100bp, after many years, and the Fed’s attempt to unwind its bloated balance sheet did not last long before being more than reversed. Central bank escape-velocity will be harder to achieve this time round. Nonetheless, fears of reflation happening earlier than expected may be seen in H1 2021 due to a combination of base effects, commodity prices, and post-Covid joie de vivre on headline inflation. Tactically, this must be noted even if strategically it is a blip in the opposite trend.

  The second is governments implementing tighter fiscal policy. It is important to note that while there is little official rhetoric about a return to austerity – quite the opposite in fact– there are also a range of actions, overt to covert, and large to small, which suggest that this is what may still happen anyway. For example, payment of deferred tax payments or the reversal of VAT cuts, to say nothing of pay freezes or new tax hikes. After all, the alternative is fundamentally too challenging for the conservative central bank/Treasury economics teams to embrace. History also suggests we will probably get this wrong.

  The third is the USD. Any new global dollar liquidity squeeze, driven by either a US recession, the need for even looser fiscal and monetary policy in other economies, or geopolitical tensions/instability, for example, would push USD higher and risk firmly off again. In a post-Covid environment, are global ‘wars’ over or just getting started?

  In short, when one looks at the three risk factors above, current fundamentals arguably *do* sit alongside the ‘War is Over’ market exuberance – if one thinks politicians will act correctly ahead.

  Yet who is it starts the wars, may we ask?

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• Australia To Challenge China At WTO Over Devastating Barley Tariffs
  Australia To Challenge China At WTO Over Devastating Barley Tariffs
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 20:50

  Australia has pulled the trigger on its prior threats to take China to the World Trade Organization where its steep tariffs on Australian barely exports will be challenged.

  “We will make this formal request to the WTO tonight,” Trade Minister Simon Birmingham announced to reporters Wednesday. “WTO dispute resolution processes are not perfect, and they take longer than would be ideal, but ultimately, it is the right avenue for Australia to take.”

  Birmingham confirmed that Beijing has now been directly advised of Australia’s intention “to request formal consultations with China,” saying that the major decision came after “extensive consultation” with the country’s industry. Formal TWO disputed typically take up to at least many months or often years to resolve.

  

  “We are highly confident that based on the evidence, data, and analysis that we have put together already, Australia has an incredibly strong case to mount,” the trade minister added.

  Tariffs on Australian barley were first announced last May at a whopping over 80%, bringing the trade to its knees. Days after this Beijing blacklisted multiple major beef plants and has only increased the pressure as Australia’s number one commodities export destination, including most recently the 200% tariffs on Aussie wines.

  China has shown no signs of backing down since vowing to hit back over what it dubbed as Australia “teaming up” with Washington to unfairly spotlight China as responsible for the global coronavirus pandemic. 

  China’s trade barriers came specifically in retaliation to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s demand in May for an independent probe into the origins of COVID-19, and as the Wuhan Institute of Virology came under suspicion of irresponsible, high-risk research.

  China-Australia trade deal does not oblige either country to continue buying goods, lawyers say #China #china #Australia https://t.co/mPqOlDiFr2 pic.twitter.com/NgwBYKT0zI

  — SCMP Economy (@scmpeconomy) December 15, 2020

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

  Meanwhile on Wednesday though China in the immediate hours following Birmbingham’s WTO announcement urged for Canberra to act to improve relations, with its foreign ministry further alleging, “The Australian side has taken some discriminatory actions against Chinese companies in violation of international practices” – it didn’t specifically respond to the declared intent to initiate WTO mediation.

  Spokesperson Wang Wenbin added: “We hope the Australian side will take China’s concerns seriously and take concrete actions to correct such discriminatory actions.”

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• Serial Rapists In Pakistan To Be Chemically Castrated Under Strict New Laws
  Serial Rapists In Pakistan To Be Chemically Castrated Under Strict New Laws
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 20:30

  Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,

  Pakistan has adopted new measures against sexual assault that will ensure brisk trials and the chemical castration of offenders convicted in cases of rape.

  

  The Anti-Rape Ordinance was signed into law Tuesday by Pakistani President Arif Alvi, and will ensure special courts meant to combat the crime will hear all rape cases, and wrap them up within four months, according to a statement from the president’s office.

  Crisis cells will also be established that will conduct full-scale medical and legal examinations of rape victims within six hours of reported incidents, reports Anadolu Agency.

  The new law will also establish a nationwide registry of repeat sex offenders.

  Rape victims’ identities will also be protected, and those who reveal the identity of victims will face legal repercussions under the law.

  Most controversially, repeat offenders will face chemical castration – a procedure that entails the use of drugs to lower testosterone levels and as a result, lower the sex drive of recidivist offenders.

  The Cabinet approved the strict new measures last month following a spate of serious rape cases that drew national attention and caused an upswell of public outrage. The country has also seen unrest and riots in recent years in response to high-profile sex-abuse cases, including some involving minors.

  In September, a mother was driving with her children along a major highway when  she ran out of fuel and she was raped by two men while waiting for police to get her car started.

  In Novemer, a mother and her daughter were also abducted in the southern Sindh province and forced to endure several days of rape at the hands of their kidnappers.

  The ongoing crisis of rampant sexual assault has infuriated Prime Minister Imran Khan, who vowed to adopt draconian measures – including chemical castration – to halt the crisis of sexual assaults in the South Asian nation.

  “I think he (the rapist) should be hanged publicly. Rapists and child molesters should have public hanging,” he told Hard Talk Pakistan in a September interview. 

  “You do not know the real statistics as well, because it’s under-reported. People do not report it due to being scared or ashamed, women are ashamed, no one wants to tell.”

  However, Khan conceded that public hangings go against international human rights law and that the adoption of capital punishment would have an adverse effect on already-fraught relations with the west, and especially the country’s trade relationship with the European Union. Instead, he remarked that rapists and child molesters should “undergo chemical castration, or surgery be performed so they cannot do anything in future.”

  Earlier this year, the lower house of Pakistan’s parliament passed a non-binding resolution calling for the public hanging of convicted child killers and rapists.

  The resolution was swiftly condemned by government officials and human rights NGOs. Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry also condemned the passage of the resolution in a tweet that stated: “Strongly condemn this resolution. This is just another grave act in line with brutal civilisation practices [sic]. Societies [should] act in a balanced way, [barbarity] is not an answer to crimes. This is another expression of extremism.”

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• Saudi Arabia Hires Army Of New Lobbyists In Preparation For Biden
  Saudi Arabia Hires Army Of New Lobbyists In Preparation For Biden
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 20:10

  The Saudis are alarmed at President-elect Joe Biden’s prior signaling that he’ll take a much tougher stance on the kingdom after Trump’s previously close relationship with the Saudis and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) in particular – the brief icy tensions following the state-ordered Jamal Khashoggi murder notwithstanding. While on the campaign trail Biden had specifically decried that Trump had written the Saudis a “dangerous blank check”.

  “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on a hiring spree for lobbyists” according to a new detailed report, in attempts to ensure things don’t drastically change after Biden takes office on January 20. 

  

  The Saudis are reportedly focusing their efforts on GOP leaders in Congress in hopes they could block or stall any aggressive or negative measures directed at the kingdom, such as related to the Yemen war for example. 

  Previously Biden vowed: “I would end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen and order a reassessment of our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” at a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) event. “It is past time to restore a sense of balance, perspective, and fidelity to our values in our relationships in the Middle East. President Trump has issued Saudi Arabia a dangerous blank check,” he added.

  Among the multiple new lobbying firm contracts detailed in a CNBC report includes the following:

  One of the recent hires came through the Larson Shannahan Slifka Group, an Iowa-based public affairs shop that signed a lucrative contract with the Saudi Embassy last year. Also known as the LS2group, the embassy agreed in 2019 to pay it $1.5 million for one year.

  New records show LS2 recently brought on Arena Strategy Group, for actions that will “include informing the public, government officials, and the media about the importance of fostering and promoting strong relations between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” a foreign lobbying report says.

  Figures analyzed by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics show the kingdom spent over $30 million on lobbying activities in 2018.

  CNBC documents further that one D.C. firm is being paid $75,000 each month to help improve the kingdom’s image on Capitol Hill. This is also no doubt focused on reversing the reputational damage wrought in the wake of the October 2, 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

  Reports by the United Nations as well as the CIA reportedly pointed the finger at the highest levels of the Saudi monarchy as behind the gruesome killing, including MbS himself.

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• Flow Of US Imports Continues To Surge, Now At Twice The Rate Of Exports
  Flow Of US Imports Continues To Surge, Now At Twice The Rate Of Exports
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 19:50

  By Mike Wackett of TheLoadStar,

  With no let-up in consumer demand, container imports into the 10 largest US ports soared by 25% last month, compared with the previous year. And with the forward booking visibility of transpacific carriers indicating that the US import boom is set to continue to at least the Chinese New Year in February, import throughput is likely to stay high.

  However, the intense focus on repositioning empty equipment back to Asia, to meet export demand and benefit from the exceptional high market rates, has skewed the trade imbalance further.

  

  Blue Alpha Capital’s analysis of the top ten US ports recorded a 24.5% jump in imports through the west coast in November to 1,042,331 teu, and 26.6% more containers for east and Gulf coast ports to 965,485 teu.

  This combined total of 2,007,816 teu takes throughput for September, October and November to over 6.1m teu – 18.8% higher than the year before. And with December import volumes equally strong – port of Los Angeles Signal data for this week and next forecasts increases of 49% and 46% – the year is set to record ‘modest growth’.

  But this seemed inconceivable at the start of the pandemic, said Blue Alpha Capital founder John McCown, adding: “With the likely gain for December, 2020 will close out with an annual gain in the 1.5% range. That would have been unthinkable at the outset of Covid in March and would be a reversal of the modest 0.9% decrease in 2019.”

  The consultant noted that several import sectors saw big spikes in volume during November, the furniture, sporting goods and toy categories recording a 55% gain, up on the 52% and 41% gains seen in October and September.

  “The stay-at-home lifestyle has generated volume in an array of consumer products,” said Mr McCown, and he added that some of the demand surge was due to consumers reallocating what they would normally spend on vacations, dining out and entertainment.

  Despite the positive import numbers, November US exports fell 4.2%, the ninth consecutive monthly drop, further worsening the trade imbalance to a near-historical record ratio of 2.32 import loads for every one export, according to Blue Alpha Capital.

  “The latest data seems to confirm that the trade war is hurting our container exports more than our container imports,” reported Mr McCown, who said the latest data indicated that “much, if not all, of the initial impact of tariffs reducing container imports from China had dissipated”.

  This he suggested left the American consumer “with a large hidden tax”, and that “instead of reducing imports more than exports, the net effect looks to be exactly the opposite”.

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• A Record 61% Of Restaurants, 35% Of Small Businesses Can't Pay December Rent
  A Record 61% Of Restaurants, 35% Of Small Businesses Can’t Pay December Rent
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 19:30

  Another day, another restaurant doomsday story.

  According to the latest Alignable Rent Poll, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses everywhere to pay their rent in full and on time, given the latest COVID resurgences. The need for more federal funding is also becoming more pronounced for many of these businesses, according to the poll. 

  These findings are based on the most recent Alignable Rent Poll conducted among 9,204 small business owners from 11/21-11/23/2020.  Here are the highlights:

  • Several B2C industries are devastated – 61% of restaurants can’t pay their rent this month. That’s up 19% from 42% in November.
  • 35% of U.S. small businesses couldn’t pay their rent this month, up 3% from 32% in November. 
  • Beauty salons (46%) and travel/hospitality businesses (43%) round out the Top 3 most-affected businesses, but many others are in trouble. 
  • Looking at demographics, minority-owned businesses are suffering the most, as 49% of them reported that they could not afford their rent in December. That figure is 5% higher than it was in November.
  • Women-owned businesses are also struggling (38% of those have not paid their rent, up 3% from 35% last month). 

  Overall, 35% of small business owners reported that they couldn’t make rent this month (up 3% from 32% in November). For minority-owned businesses, the struggle is even more pronounced: nearly half (49%) report being unable to cover their rent in December. That figure jumped 5% from 44% in November.  For women-owned businesses, 35% couldn’t make rent in November and now that percentage is up to 38% in December.

  Looking at different sectors, it’s clear that money is growing even tighter in many B2C industries, and paying rent is becoming increasingly more challenging.

  

  Restaurants/bars top the list in December with 61% unable to cover their rent. (And that’s up 19% since November).

  Nearly half of beauty salons (46%) had trouble paying the rent, as did 43% of travel/hospitality businesses. 

  High percentages of small business owners in other industries also couldn’t pay their rent in full, on time:

  • 41% of gyms
  • 40% of retailers
  • 40% of massage therapists
  • 36% of entertainers
  • 32% of construction/home services firms.

  Most noted that increasing restrictions based on COVID resurgences are causing more problems for them — and limiting the kind of revenue they can make for the rest of the year, and perhaps, beyond.

  Rent Woes Across The U.S. & Canada
  While 35% of U.S.-based small businesses are unable to pay December rent, small businesses in a variety of states are even more cash-strapped.

  In Canada, the rate is even higher – 37% of Canadian small business owners said they couldn’t make December rent, 1% higher than in November. Here’s the breakdown by state for those matching or exceeding the overall, national U.S. average:

  • NY — 43%
  • AZ — 43%
  • IL — 42%
  • OR — 42%
  • WA — 40%
  • MD — 40%
  • NJ — 39%
  • PA — 39%
  • CA — 37%
  • VA — 36%
  • GA — 36%
  • MN — 36%
  • FL — 35%
  • SC — 35%

  The following states are still struggling, but not as much as those listed above:

  • TX — 34%
  • MI — 34%
  • OH — 32%
  • MA — 31%
  • CO — 29%
  • NC — 27%
  • MO — 20%

  Shifting from the U.S. to Canada, the survey witnessed a range of rent payment rates across the provinces. On one extreme, small businesses in British Columbia appear to be weathering the COVID storm a bit better, with only 30% of them reporting that they couldn’t afford to pay rent in full and on time. However, the situation is more severe in other parts of Canada: 43% of small businesses in Alberta, and 42% in Ontario reported not making December rent. 

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• PBOC Has Explaining To Do With Mysterious Yuan Data
  PBOC Has Explaining To Do With Mysterious Yuan Data
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 19:10

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator and analyst

  Beijing has avoided being named a currency manipulator by the Trump administration. But the conclusion comes with a big yellow flag that may come back to haunt China.

  The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday kept China on the watch list in the last currency report of the Trump administration, while slapping the manipulator tag on Vietnam and Switzerland. It urged Beijing to “improve transparency” in its currency management – in particular the role state-owned banks play in the foreign exchange market. It noted state-owned banks have sold the yuan, even as the PBOC appears to have refrained from intervening.

  The Treasury pointed out that China’s balance-of-payments number doesn’t seem to add up. China’s goods and service surplus surged to a record $132 billion in the second quarter, and the country also attracted stock and bond inflows. But its foreign reserves added only $18 billion during the period.

  “While intervention proxies do not provide definitive evidence that the PBOC intervened in foreign exchange markets over the review period, this issue warrants further investigation,” said the report. “In particular, the small scale of foreign reserve accumulation relative to China’s substantial trade and portfolio inflows in the second quarter of 2020, coupled with the RMB’s relative stability over the same time period, raises concerns.”

  

  It’s not just the Trump administration. The apparent mismatch also caught the eye of Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who was tapped to work on Joe Biden’s transition team last month.

  In a report on the CFR website in September, Setser noted that the pace of foreign asset accumulation of China’s state banking system increased “dramatically” in the second quarter.

  

  “The signs of possible hidden intervention are still mostly whispers that speak most loudly only to those who have spent a long time with the data,” Setser wrote. “But if current trends continue, I would expect that they will start to shout when the data for the full year becomes available – as the both the rising Chinese surplus and ongoing bond inflows will raise the size of the offsetting outflow to a level that is going to be hard to hide.”

  To be sure, there may be some other explanation for the balance-of-payment puzzle. For instance, Chinese exporters may have parked their dollar revenue overseas, so not all of the trade surplus translates into foreign-currency inflows. The so-called “errors and omissions” also point to capital flight from illegal channels, offsetting the trade surplus.

  But the bottom line is that “China’s balance of payments data raise more questions than answers at the moment,” as Mark Williams of Capital Economics puts it. There needs to be a bit more transparency on state banks’ activities in the currency market. On that point, the Trump administration may have a valid argument.

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• Report Alleges China's 'Mass Surveillance' Of Americans Using Caribbean Cell Networks
  Report Alleges China’s ‘Mass Surveillance’ Of Americans Using Caribbean Cell Networks
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 18:50

  New technical analysis compiled by a veteran cybersecurity expert previously at Mobileum, a mobile security company whose job it is to track threats to mobile operators, has detailed likely efforts of Chinese intelligence to surveil US mobile phone subscribers using phone networks out of the Caribbean. 

  Gary Miller, who has since started the cybersecurity company Exigent Media, has alleged and detailed to The Guardian that China is engaged in “active” surveillance attacks through foreign telecoms operators.

  The Guardian report offers little to nothing in the way of forensic or technical evidence to back the claims, but is reliant merely on Miller’s track record of expertise as an industry insider. There have been similar allegation in the past, particularly a prior similar 2018-2019 report titled Far From Home.

  

  Some of the details of the alleged China snooping are as follows: 

  “At the heart of the allegations are claims that China, using a state-controlled mobile phone operator, is directing signaling messages to US subscribers, usually while they are travelling abroad.

  Signaling messages are commands that are sent by a telecoms operators across the global network, unbeknownst to a mobile phone user. They allow operators to locate mobile phones, connect mobile phone users to one another, and assess roaming charges. But some signaling messages can be used for illegitimate purposes, such as tracking, monitoring, or intercepting communications.“

  Miller claims that among US telecoms providers it’s a bit of an “open secret” but that “No one in the industry wants the public to know the severity of ongoing surveillance attacks.” 

  The findings appear to center on Signaling System 7 (SS7), a communications protocol which routes calls and data around the world. Analysts have long decried its inherent weaknesses and security vulnerabilities. 

  China’s Communist Party (CCP) seems to be implementing a multidimensional strategy in the Caribbean, reaping economic, political and potentially military gains a few miles offshore the United States. https://t.co/cb692ZoyGl

  — Joaquín Ortega (@ortegabrothers) December 10, 2020

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  “I want the public to know about it,” Miller said. “Once you get into the tens of thousands, the attacks qualify as mass surveillance, which is primarily for intelligence collection and not necessarily targeting high-profile targets,” Miller told The Guardian further.

  “It might be that there are locations of interest, and these occur primarily while people are abroad,” Miller described.

  “China reduced attack volumes in 2019, favoring more targeted espionage and likely using proxy networks in the Caribbean to conduct its attacks, having close ties in both trade and technology investment,” he alleged further.

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• California Sheriff Refuses To Release 1,800 Inmates After Judge's Order
  California Sheriff Refuses To Release 1,800 Inmates After Judge’s Order
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 18:29

  Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

  A California sheriff is refusing to comply with a judge’s order to release 1,800 inmates from Orange County jails, including individuals who have been imprisoned for murder, due to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.

  

  County Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson on Friday ordered the release of 50 percent – or 1,858 inmates out of 3,716 – to curb the transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus.

  “I have no intention of releasing any of these individuals from my custody,” said Sheriff Don Barnes, pushing back against the order. “We are going to file an appeal and we’re going to fight it and if the judge has any intent of releasing any one of these individuals, he will have to go through line by line, name by name, and tell me which ones he is ordering released.”

  Please see my statement below following an order from the court mandating the release of more than 1,800 inmates from the Orange County Jail. pic.twitter.com/Y6PuIKVlPr

  — OC Sheriff Don Barnes (@OCSheriffBarnes) December 12, 2020

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

  Barnes told “Fox & Friends” that he has no intention of releasing the inmates back into the community, saying he believes they pose a “serious threat.”

  Wilson’s order arose from a lawsuit filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed on behalf on inmates that sought to protect the Orange County Jail’s most vulnerable.

  “Public safety does not just mean crime,” ACLU’s Jacob Reisburg said, defending Wilson’s ruling.

  “Public safety also means, is there a hospital bed open if you get sick? And if there’s a massive outbreak in the jail, which this depopulation order is trying to avoid, there will not be hospital capacity in Orange County for people on the outside who get COVID.”

  Barnes explained that to date, some 1,400 low-level offenders have already been released since March. The remaining inmates are “serious offenders,” he said.

  “Of the medically vulnerable, 90 of them are in custody for murder or attempted murder, 94 for child molestation,” Barnes added.

  Wilson’s order followed reports of a recent surge in cases in the county jail. The sheriff on Friday announced an outbreak with 138 cases, which jumped to 416 by Monday. Barnes, however, noted that the facility had recently begun to test all individuals, including asymptomatic patients.

  “We have inmates who are participating in different practices. Either going to medical appointments or going to court or meeting with their attorneys. These people are all from the general public and we know there’s a surge within the general public,” Barnes said.

  “Many of these inmates are in pre-trial status for, or have been convicted of, violent crimes and will be released back into the community,” he added in a separate statement.

  “This order puts our community at substantial risk and does not take into account the impact on the victims of these crimes.”

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• Giant "Bitcoin Whale" Emerges With Transformational $1 Billion Stake, Backing From Legendary Traders
  Giant “Bitcoin Whale” Emerges With Transformational $1 Billion Stake, Backing From Legendary Traders
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 18:12

  It’s oddly fitting that on the day bitcoin finally breaks out above $20,000 – a critical psychological level first established during the Dec 2017 meltup – we learn that a new and formerly unknown massive bitcoin whale, who just happens to be one of the most respected hedge funds currently operating, has backing from legendary traders and is a frequent guest on these pages – has been quietly accumulating a lot of bitcoin… some $1 billion worth.

  

  According to Bloomberg’s Erik Shatzker, a hedge fund specializing in volatility bets – one which regular Zero Hedge readers are very familiar with – has emerged as one of the largest investors in Bitcoin after quietly buying more than $600 million in cryptocurrencies in recent months and joining forces with legendary trader Alan Howard, co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management.

  Echoing what we have said repeatedly in recent months, namely that the next leg higher in bitcoin will come on the back not of continued retail chasing but due to institutional rotation into the cryptocurrency (for another example of this, see “169-Year-Old Mass Mutual Buys $100 Million In Bitcoin“), Eric Peters, CEO of One River Asset Management, told Bloomberg he set up a new company to seize on the growing interest in cryptocurrencies among institutional investors. In addition to its initial purchases, One River Digital Asset Management has commitments that will bring its holdings of Bitcoin and Ether to about $1 billion as of early 2021.

  “There is going to be a generational allocation to this new asset class,” he said. “The flows have only just begun.”

  He’s right, and as we said last week: “One by one, the big institutions are piling into bitcoin.”

  Just after Bitcoin’s first modest correction since the start of its March rally which prompted an amusing twitter meltdown by Nouriel Roubini, we reported that one of the world’s biggest fixed income asset managers, Guggenheim Partners, jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon when it announced that it was reserving the right for its $5.3 billion Macro Opportunities Fund to invest in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust whose shares are solely invested in Bitcoin, and track the digital asset’s price less fees and expenses.

  Guggenheim’s (partial) embrace of Bitcoin following PayPal’s announcement a few weeks later that it had enabled crypto transactions for all its clients, sparking the latest leg higher in bitcoin. It also came following glowing endorsement from legendary investors such as Paul Tudor Jones and Stan Druckenmiller, and in the aftermath of Jack Dorsey’s “other” company, Square, which said in October that it bought 4,709 bitcoins, worth approximately $50 million, about 1% of Square’s total assets.

  But the biggest “first mover” in the space was business-intel firm MicroStrategy, which on August 11 sent a shockwave around the globe when it announced it had poured all $250 million of its planned inflation-hedging funds into the digital currency. Then last week, not content with the 100% return its stock has generated since then, on Friday MicroStrategy announced that it has bought even more Bitcoin, first in the form of $50 million in outright purchases and then, on Wednesday the company upsized a $400 million debt offering to $550 million, whose proceeds would be used to purchase even more bitcoin.

  More are following: overnight, the venerable Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance company, better known as MassMutual, said it purchased $100 million in Bitcoin for its general investment fund, according to Bloomberg. The mutual insurer, which has been around since 1851, also acquired a $5 million minority equity stake in NYDIG, a subsidiary of Stone Ridge that provides cryptocurrency services to institutions, according to a statement. NYDIG, which already keeps more than $2.3 billion in crypto assets for clients, will provide custody services for MassMutual’s Bitcoins.

  As we concluded “Bitcoin has more than doubled in price this year, and hit an all-time high earlier this month; as more institutions shift into cryptos, the price will only go higher.” We had to wait just 3 days to be proven right.

  Peters said he was wary of triggering a spike in the prices of Bitcoin or Ether as he was quietly building up his initial position. He described executing his trades as inconspicuously as possible and finishing all the buying in November before Bitcoin hit $16,000.

  The investment in bitcoin is a departure for the vol-specialist: the company, which was founded by Peters in 2013, One River employs volatility and trend-following strategies in an effort to make money whether asset prices are rising or falling. As reported earlier this year, its Long Volatility Fund and Dynamic Convexity Fund surged during the coronavirus selloff in March and are up 33% and 40% this year, respectively. The firm’s total AUM is about $1.6 billion; we assume that its bitcoin holdings are not included in this number.

  Peters, 54, whose market insights appear weekly on its website, said that he was drawn to digital assets for the same reasons he anticipates more volatility in financial markets: now that interest rates in the developed world are at or below zero, fiscal spending by governments combined with debt monetization by central banks has emerged as the primary way to spur growth. The consequence of that increase in the money supply will be currency debasement and, potentially, inflation. Ultimately, all those trillions in newly created liquidity are making their way into alternative currencies such as cryptos.

  “Covid-19 provided the ultimate catalyst for that transition,” Peters said. “This is the most interesting macro trade I’ve seen in my career.”

  While most legacy investors have traditionally been skeptical to invest in bitcoin, Peters is certainly not the first investor to predict a flood of money into cryptocurrencies. In addition to this website, former Fortress founder Mike Novogratz, who started the crypto-focused Galaxy Digital Holdings, has been saying “the cavalry is coming” for years, only to watch as Bitcoin slumped to a recent low of $3,157 in December 2018 before recovering. Several other heavyweight crypto managers have emerged, including Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital and Galaxy.

  Meanwhile, in the clearest indication of rising interest in fiat alternatives, assets in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the largest player, have swelled to more than $10 billion. As we discussed last month, the exponential ascent of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in recent weeks suggested that other institutional investors who look at bitcoin as a long-term investment have been playing a bigger role in recent weeks than quantitative funds or retail investors. It now turns out that One River was one of the biggest accumulators.

  

  As we also explained previously, the ascent of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust suggests that bitcoin demand is not only driven by the younger cohorts of retail investors, i.e. millennials, but also institutional investors such as family offices and asset managers (something which in retrospect was proven to be correct). These institutional investors appear to be the biggest investors in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, perhaps reflecting their preference to invest in bitcoin in fund format. What makes the past five weeks flow trajectory for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust even more impressive is its contrast with the equivalent flow trajectory for gold ETFs, which overall saw modest outflows since mid-October, as shown in the chart below.

  

  This contrast lent support to the idea that some investors that previously invested in gold ETFs, such as family offices, were looking at bitcoin as an alternative to gold. As JPMorgan previously highlighted, the potential longterm upside for bitcoin is considerable if it competes more intensely with gold as an “alternative” currency, given that the market cap of bitcoin (at $383bn) would have to rise about 7 times from here to match the total private sector investment in gold via ETFs or bars and coins which stands at $2.6tr.

  

  As a reminder, it is this anticipated inflow into bitcoin from institutional investors that prompted JPMorgan to admit last month that it was wrong about the Bitcoin bull run and renewed its $140,000 bitcoin price forecast:

  “the potential long-term upside for bitcoin is considerable we think as it competes more intensely with gold as an “alternative” currency given that Millennials would become over time a more important component of investors’ universe.”

  But back to Peters, who said his ultimate goal is to build a “blue-chip fiduciary” for institutional clients seeking digital assets, and won’t be trading aggressively or making venture-capital investments. The funds will charge 1% fees and allow investors to sell in a day. While gold also stands to appreciate in a world of debased currencies and inflationary fears, Peters thinks Bitcoin and Ether prices can far outpace that rise. Recent fund flows confirmed this observation: as we noted at the end of November, there was been a notable divergence in the prices of gold and crypto starting in early October…

  

  … which culminated with record inflows to bitcoin offset by record outflows from gold.

  But if the thesis is ultimately one of fiat debasement and a shift away from fiat, why not just buy gold? “There definitely are more risks to this than gold, which has been around for thousands of years, but there’s also way more convexity,” Peters said. “There are very few convex bets that’ll help your portfolio when these macro forces start playing out.” He’s right, but convexity cuts both ways, and once the selling returns in bitcoin – and it will – it will take a lot of willpower to sleep through those 80% drawdowns.

  What is interesting is that Peters’ transformational investment seems to be a U-turn from some of his recent thoughts on the cryptocurrency, when as recently as 2017 he warned that governments would eventually muscle out investors in the volatile asset class:

  … the future of cryptocurrency is not as it seems. Once private markets perfect cryptocurrency technology, governments will commandeer it, killing today’s pioneers. Then with every cryptodollar, yen, euro and renminbi registered on their servers, they’ll have complete dominion over money, laundering, taxation. They’ll track every transaction. Imposing negative interest rates in an instant. There will be no hiding, no mattresses. And in a deflationary panic, they’ll instantaneously add an extra zero to every account, their own especially.

  Ironically, it is Peters that has now emerged as one of the top pioneers in the emerging field.

  Lending legitimacy to the new venture is its direct support from one of the most iconic macro traders: Alan Howard, who co-founded Brevan Howard, is playing a number of supporting roles. In addition to investing in One River Digital’s funds, Brevan Howard also bought a 25% stake in the business as reported in October. A company he controls, Elwood Asset Management, is providing One River Digital with trading services, market analysis and technical support. Howard intention to allocate $1 billion ti cryptocurrencies was first reported by the FT back in August 2019. This is what Elwood CEO Bin Ren said then

  “Losing traditional assets in the real world is hard. In the digital world, it’s very easy to lose assets — put in the wrong address for a bitcoin transfer and it’s gone forever,” said Mr Ren, the former chief investment officer of Brevan Howard’s Systematic Investment Group. He says Elwood has been screening crypto hedge funds and has identified up to 50 that “probably satisfy our due diligence”.

  We now know that the winner of this diligence process was Peters’ One River.

  Another iconic investor with One River Digital is the fund formerly known as “50 cent” for its recurring purchases of deep out of the money VIX calls – Ruffer LLP. Ruffer is best known for having made a whopping $2.6 billion in March as markets crashed. On Tuesday, Ruffer disclosed a 2.5% position in Bitcoin in one of its funds, describing it as “a small but potent insurance policy against the continuing devaluation of the world’s major currencies.”

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• A Common-Sense Solution
  A Common-Sense Solution
  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/16/2020 – 00:05

  Authored by Tom Trenchard via AmericanMind.org,

  The real America needs a refounding.

  Human life is never quite as stable as we’d like, but we live in uniquely unsettling times. Some of us are angry. Many of us are worried. All of us are anxious about an uncertain future. In these circumstances, the bombastic, triumphal optimism of the pro-Biden crowd – just take a look at CNN for about 10 seconds and you’ll see what I mean – is obviously the product of deep insecurity. Like a 5’8” teenager driving a souped-up F150, it’s clear that the façade of Biden’s popular mandate to govern is masking a dangerously hollow reality.

  

  According to a number of recent polls, overwhelming proportions of Trump supporters and large supermajorities of likely Republican voters as a whole believe that Biden’s election victory was illegitimate. Based on the existing popular vote counts, a good estimate would put the number of American voters who think Biden will be an illegitimate president at around 60 million. That’s the approximate population of Italy, France, or the U.K.

  Put this together with the analysis I presented in my “2020 Retrospective” article on the urban/rural divide, and the result is staggering: A population of Americans equal in size to a large European country, occupying a land area about 20 times the size of any of them, currently believes they are facing the prospect of a usurped, illegitimate administration come January 20.

  This stark reality of our political and geographical division sits on top of the similarly stark reality of our intellectual and spiritual division. This might not be a problem for Italy, France, or the U.K.—but it is for us. The United States has never been held together by ancestry, national origin, ethnicity, or race. We have always aspired to be a “melting pot,” a nation whose existential glue is not who you are but what you believe. A common creed, not demographics, has always defined American identity.

  Today, this common creed has vanished. We are two Americas: Biden’s America and Trump’s America. These two Americas have nothing of importance in common with each other, and no common ground to stand on. There is not a single moral or political principle upon which these two Americas agree. Sure, everybody wants “freedom,” “justice,” “equality,” “democracy,” and a host of other glittering ideals. So have most dictators, Communists, and war criminals in modern history. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao gave stirring speeches in favor of all of them. The reality is that in the United States, we have long since ceased to do anything more than pay lip service to a sham facsimile of our old shared ideals.

  What does this mean for us? If we are not held together as a nation by anything except the fact that we live in the same place (and, of course, even this isn’t true of parts of the U.S.), then we are not members of a common political community. Our union is built on what Alexander Hamilton called “accident and force” in the very first Federalist paper. We are subjects, not self-governing citizens.

  What should we do about this? When our forebears faced a similar situation in 1776, they took decisive action. “Give me liberty or give me death,” they said. They adopted a Declaration expressing their common moral and political principles, and they affirmed their right to form a political community that would aspire to live according to those principles. It is high time for an American re-founding; not a “secession” or “separation,” but a “perpetuation” of self-evidently true American political principles embodied in a new political Union. This is what the United American Counties could be.

  The principles of this new Union would be the principles of the Declaration of Independence, along with certain corollaries to these principles that elaborate its true meaning:

  • Limited and local government is the foundation of a genuine republic.

  • The natural right to religious liberty—of both worship and exercise—exists beyond politics, taking precedence over all rights merely positive, civil, or legal.

  • The natural right to life for all human beings at all ages and stages of development is entitled to recognition, respect, and protection.

  • The natural family begun in marriage between one man and one woman is the cornerstone of society.

  • The right to private property is fundamental, and should only be regulated as absolutely necessary to maintain free markets, equal opportunity, and the fair reward of industry and merit.

  • All citizens should be educated to understand the meaning and importance of American political principles, and equipped to become informed, active participants in our local, regional, and national systems of government.

  • Citizenship in the United American Counties is available to all who understand, profess, and commit to uphold the principles in this Declaration, regardless of national origin, racial or ethnic identity, or religious belief.

  The common sense of 1776 dictated the American Revolution. The common sense of 2020 dictates the creation of a new political vehicle for perpetuating the true principles of the Revolution.

  Biden’s Urban America has already seceded from the United States of America that many of us know and love. Trump’s Counties can be a life raft for the American experiment in its most dire hour of need.

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• NYC Sees 'Astronomical' Rise In UFO Sightings 
  NYC Sees ‘Astronomical’ Rise In UFO Sightings 
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 23:45

  Sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) in New York City have increased 31% this year over 2019 – 46, compared with 35. 

  Compared with 2018 figures (of around a dozen), 2020 sightings are astronomically higher, so far jumping by more than 283%, according to NYPost, citing data from the National UFO Reporting Center.

  

  The borough with the most UFO sightings was Brooklyn this year, coming in at 12. The second was Manhattan with 11, and Queens with 10. Staten Island had eight, and the Bronx saw five.

  NYPost said the most “memorable intergalactic incidents” occurred in the summer months, on Staten Island and in the Bronx.

  The first incident occurred on Jun. 8. A Bronxite said 30 objects “flew in a perfect line, in perfect synchronicity” that “looked like a bunch of moving stars.” 

  The observer claimed: “I don’t drink, or take any drugs whatsoever. I’m not a UFO conspiracy theorist.”

  Then on July 21, a Staten Islander spotted an “oval” craft that “looked and sounded like a helicopter. Then, the mysterious flying machine “sent a surge of heat/radiation through my body!”

  The Islander “honestly thought it was the government putting something into the air with everything going on during these times and I thought I would wake up and find it all over the news or on Instagram.”

  On Sept. 15, a Brooklynite looked “out the bathroom window of his home” and saw “orange/metallic” orbs “standing still over the Canarsie/Jamaica Bay area.”

  They said: “By the time I called my son, they were gone. I could not believe my eyes.”

  Earlier in the year, a Manhattanite reported UFOs swirling around the Statue of Liberty. 

  Even though these were first-hand accounts – there was no physical evidence such as a picture or video to back up their claims, well, as far as we know. 

  Last week, Haim Eshed, former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry’s space directorate, told Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper that aliens exist and have been waiting to show themselves but added they remain secret because “humanity isn’t ready” for the reveal. 

  With the world certainly a strange place in 2020, it was noted earlier this month that “alien monoliths” were appearing in the US and even in Europe. 

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• Big Brother In Disguise: The Rise Of A New, Technological World Order
  Big Brother In Disguise: The Rise Of A New, Technological World Order
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 23:25

  Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

  – George Orwell, 1984

  It had the potential for disaster.

  Early in the morning of Monday, December 15, 2020, Google suffered a major worldwide outage in which all of its internet-connected services crashed, including Nest, Google Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Hangouts, Maps, Meet and YouTube.

  The outage only lasted an hour, but it was a chilling reminder of how reliant the world has become on internet-connected technologies to do everything from unlocking doors and turning up the heat to accessing work files, sending emails and making phone calls.

  A year earlier, a Google outage resulted in Nest users being unable to access their Nest thermostats, Nest smart locks, and Nest cameras. As Fast Company reports, “This essentially meant that because of a cloud storage outage, people were prevented from getting inside their homes, using their AC, and monitoring their babies.”

  Welcome to the Matrix.

  Twenty-some years after the Wachowskis’ iconic film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a blue pill or a red pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.

  We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing human beings and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives.

  Science fiction has become fact.

  In The Matrix, computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a. hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus, a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source. With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality, few humans ever realize they are living in an artificial dream world.

  

  Neo is given a choice: to take the red pill, wake up and join the resistance, or take the blue pill, remain asleep and serve as fodder for the powers-that-be.

  Most people opt for the blue pill.

  In our case, the blue pill—a one-way ticket to a life sentence in an electronic concentration camp—has been honey-coated to hide the bitter aftertaste, sold to us in the name of expediency and delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones.

  Yet we are not merely in thrall with these technologies that were intended to make our lives easier. We have become enslaved by them.

  Look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones, tablets, computers, televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology.

  This is not freedom.

  This is not even progress.

  This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by way of the surveillance state, corporate giants such as Google and Facebook, and government spy agencies such as the National Security Agency.

  So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless, headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion.

  Yet it’s not just freedom that hangs in the balance. Humanity itself is on the line.

  If ever Americans find themselves in bondage to technological tyrants, we will have only ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own lassitude, laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant.

  Indeed, we’re fast approaching Philip K. Dick’s vision of the future as depicted in the film Minority Report. There, police agencies apprehend criminals before they can commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

  Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.

  The key word here, however, is control.

  In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have — and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in — will be connected and talking to each other.”

  By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”

  As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.

  It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.

  This “connected” industry has become the next big societal transformation, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture.

  Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal, and smart pills embedded with computer chips, sensors, cameras and robots, we are poised to outpace the imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. (By the way, there is no such thing as a driverless car. Someone or something will be driving, but it won’t be you.)

  These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.

  Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.

  

  The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.

  Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of worries. As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they’re going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can’t be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as it’s already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.”

  For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones—poised to take to the skies en masse this year—will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street. For that matter, how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed to respond to any perceived threat with violence?

  Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.

  Indeed, it is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:

  Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.

  In other words, the IoS will rely on technology being able to access and act on your thoughts.

  Fourtane outlines several trends related to the IoS that are expected to become a reality by 2030:

  1: Thoughts become action: using the brain as the interface, for example, users will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination.

  2: Sounds will become an extension of the devised virtual reality: users could mimic anyone’s voice realistically enough to fool even family members.

  3: Real food will become secondary to imagined tastes. A sensory device for your mouth could digitally enhance anything you eat, so that any food can taste like your favorite treat.

  4: Smells will become a projection of this virtual reality so that virtual visits, to forests or the countryside for instance, would include experiencing all the natural smells of those places.

  5: Total touch: Smartphones with screens will convey the shape and texture of the digital icons and buttons they are pressing.

  6: Merged reality: VR game worlds will become indistinguishable from physical reality by 2030.

  Unfortunately, in our race to the future, we have failed to consider what such dependence on technology might mean for our humanity, not to mention our freedoms.

  Ingestible or implantable chips are a good example of how unprepared we are, morally and otherwise, to navigate this uncharted terrain. Hailed as revolutionary for their ability to access, analyze and manipulate your body from the inside, these smart pills can remind you to take your medication, search for cancer, and even send an alert to your doctor warning of an impending heart attack.

  Sure, the technology could save lives, but is that all we need to know?

  Have we done our due diligence in asking all the questions that need to be asked before unleashing such awesome technology on an unsuspecting populace?

  For example, asks Washington Post reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha:

  What kind of warnings should users receive about the risks of implanting chip technology inside a body, for instance? How will patients be assured that the technology won’t be used to compel them to take medications they don’t really want to take? Could law enforcement obtain data that would reveal which individuals abuse drugs or sell them on the black market? Could what started as a voluntary experiment be turned into a compulsory government identification program that could erode civil liberties?

  Let me put it another way.

  If you were shocked by Edward Snowden’s revelations about how NSA agents have used surveillance to spy on Americans’ phone calls, emails and text messages, can you imagine what unscrupulous government agents could do with access to your internet-connected car, home and medications? Imagine what a SWAT team could do with the ability to access, monitor and control your internet-connected home—locking you in, turning off the lights, activating alarms, etc.

  While President Trump signed the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act into law on Dec. 4, 2020, in order to establish a baseline for security protection for the billions of IoT devices flooding homes and businesses, the law does little to protect the American people against corporate and governmental surveillance.

  In fact, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug.

  After all, who cares if the government can track your whereabouts on your GPS-enabled device so long as it helps you find the fastest route from Point A to Point B? Who cares if the NSA is listening in on your phone calls and downloading your emails so long as you can get your phone calls and emails on the go and get lightning fast Internet on the fly? Who cares if the government can monitor your activities in your home by tapping into your internet-connected devices—thermostat, water, lights—so long as you can control those things with the flick of a finger, whether you’re across the house or across the country?

  Control is the key here.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, total control over every aspect of our lives, right down to our inner thoughts, is the objective of any totalitarian regime.

  George Orwell understood this.

  Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”

  Make no mistake: the Internet of Things and its twin, the Internet of Senses, is just Big Brother in disguise.

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• Looking To Escape The City? Here are America's Most Affordable Suburbs 
  Looking To Escape The City? Here are America’s Most Affordable Suburbs 
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 23:05

  Living in a metro-area during a virus pandemic, economic collapse, social unrest, and soaring violent crime can be stressful. As a result, hundreds of thousands of city dwellers have packed up their bags and fled to the suburbs over the last nine months.

  

  A new survey from Realtor.com reveals an increasing number of city dwellers have been searching for suburban homes. 

  “These areas just outside of the urban centers of the largest metros, offer homebuyers more space for the money. Potential buyers who’ve been dreaming of more space for work and play don’t have to look far to save 29% per square foot on average or get 25%-65% more square footage for the same price as a home closer to downtown,” said realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale. “For a 2,000-square-foot home, this could mean 500-1,300 additional square feet.”

  Realtor.com did all the hard work. They identified the most affordable suburbs located within 25 miles of the nation’s top largest metros:

  1) Sicklerville, N.J.

  Urban Metro: Philadelphia

  Median Listing Price: $282,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 20% (Suburb: $118 / Urban: $148)

  Median Income: $89,300

  A 30-minute drive southeast of Philadelphia, Sicklerville is a community located within Winslow Township in Camden County, N.J. With a population of 53,099 and 10 constituent neighborhoods, Sicklerville is the 22nd largest community in New Jersey. Sicklerville offers easy access to the outdoors with the New Brooklyn County Park for playing sports and canoeing, and the Winslow Fish and Wildlife Management Area for fishing, hunting and bird watching.

  2) Cedar Hill, Texas

  Urban Metro: Dallas

  Median Listing Price: $352,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 23% (Suburb: $124 / Urban: $161)

  Median Income: $76,600

  Located within Dallas, Cedar Hill is “the city in a park,” and has become a destination for nature enthusiasts, hikers, cyclists, mountain bikers, boaters, campers and adventure competitors. Cedar Hill offers extensive shopping, and a variety of diverse dining options for its 48,463 residents. On average, there are 229 days of sunshine per year in which to enjoy the Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center or Cedar Hill State Park on Joe Pool Lake. The area boasts a strong school system, including Cedar Hill Collegiate Academy (GreatSchools rating 9/10).

  3) Palos Hills, Ill.

  Urban Metro: Chicago

  Median Listing Price: $379,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 24% (Suburb: $139 / Urban: $184)

  Median Income: $65,700

  Palos Hills is a southwest suburb of Chicago, offering a dense suburban feel with most of its 17,195 residents owning their homes. An array of restaurants, coffee shops and parks — including Bennett Park, where they offer outdoor movies and fishing — make this town a draw for young professionals and retirees. The area is also home to many young families due to its top-rated school system, which includes Oak Ridge Elementary School (GreatSchools rating 10/10).

  4) Marietta, Ga.

  Urban Metro: Atlanta

  Median Listing Price: $440,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 21% (Suburb: $143 / Urban: $181)

  Median Income: $96,500

  A 25-minute drive to Atlanta, Marietta is one of Georgia’s most populous cities, with a population of 67,000. The city offers an historic downtown, shops and restaurants, and Glover Park is home to outdoor festivals, concerts, weddings and special events. Marietta Square hosts art strolls, parades and farmers markets. The area boasts a desirable school system which includes Lassiter High School (GreatSchools rating 10/10).

  5) Jersey Village, Texas

  Urban Metro: Houston

  Median Listing Price: $447,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 36% (Suburb: $126 / Urban: $198)

  Median Income: $85,400

  A suburb of Houston, Jersey Village is located in west-central Harris County, and has a population of 7,620. The area abounds with parks, golf courses, community events, farmers markets and recreational pools. It is also nearby to Traders Village Houston, home of the largest flea market in Texas.

  6) Hanover, Mass.

  Urban Metro: Boston

  Median Listing Price: $670,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 34% (Suburb: $231 / Urban: $350)

  Median Income: $129,100

  While Hanover is a 30-minute drive to Boston, the town’s 14,000 residents maintain a “country town” atmosphere. Hanover offers shopping malls, parks, trails and sports fields. Ponds, streams and rivers, which join the historic North River as it flows to the Atlantic Ocean, provide both summer and winter recreational opportunities such as fishing and canoeing. Hanover has highly-rated schools, including So Shore Vocational Technical High School (GreatSchools rating 7/10).

  7) Pine Island Ridge-Plantation, Fla.

  Urban Metro: Miami

  Median Listing Price: $679,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 34% (Suburb: $224 / Urban: $341)

  Median Income: $75,000

  Pine Island Ridge is a 35-minute drive to Miami, and has a population of 5,199, with the average age of a homeowner being 55 years old. Recreational activities on offer include an aquatic center, parks, programs/camps and special events. Also, you can hike beautiful trails and explore tree tops at the Pine Island Ridge Natural Area and the Pine Island Ridge Trail.

  8) Clark, N.J.

  Urban Metro: New York City

  Median Listing Price: $798,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 34% (Suburb: $242 / Urban: $366)

  Median Income: $111,400

  Clark is a township in southern Union County, N.J., with a population of 15,943. The community honors historic moments with the Dr. William Robinson Plantation Museum and 9/11 Memorial. Clark’s abundance of parks offers recreational activities like fishing, trails and fields for playing sports. Clark has highly-rated schools, including Arthur L Johnson High School (GreatSchools rating 7/10).

  9) Ashton-Sandy Spring, Md.

  Urban Metro: Washington, D.C.

  Median Listing Price: $844,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 39% (Suburb: $178 / Urban: $294)

  Median Income: $153,300

  Made up of two neighborhoods — Ashton and Sandy Spring — this community is located in Montgomery County, with a population of 5,628. The town is home to the Sandy Spring Museum and Sandy Spring Slave Museum, which both provide social and cultural activities like concerts, workshops and events. The Adventure Park at Sandy Spring offers residents ziplining, rope rigs and wooden bridges to explore.

  10) Fullerton, Calif.

  Urban Metro: Los Angeles

  Median Listing Price: $1,155,000

  Savings Per Square Foot: 27% (Suburb: $418 / Urban: $570)

  Median Income: $109,900

  Located in northern Orange County, Fullerton is a 30-minute drive to Los Angeles and has a population of 139,640. It is home to a vibrant music scene, and has a small but diverse theater community, including The Muckenthaler Cultural Center which houses art galleries and a theater group, and The Fullerton Museum Center has educational programs on offider. Fullerton maintains more than 50 city parks, including Hillcrest Park, Chapman Park and the Orange County Regional parks. The area boasts a desirable school system, which includes Troy High School (GreatSchools rating 10/10).

  As we’ve previously noted, the urban-exodus may last for the “next 18 to 24 months.” 

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• Israel Floats Possibility Of Deploying Joint Missile Systems To Persian Gulf
  Israel Floats Possibility Of Deploying Joint Missile Systems To Persian Gulf
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 22:45

  Via AlMasdarNews.com,

  On Tuesday, a senior Israeli official expressed his country’s readiness to cooperate in the future in the field of missile defense with Gulf states which lie close to Iran. “Israel could be open to future cooperation on missile defense with Gulf Arab states that share its concerns about Iran, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday,” Reuters reports.

  Moshe Patil, head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Missile Defense Organization, said that the time is not yet ripe to move forward with any of these agreements, and that Washington’s approval will be required as long as the development or financing of Israeli systems is done with American technology.

  

  In response to a question during a conference call with journalists whether any of the systems might actually be introduced to Israel’s new partners in the Gulf, Patil said positively: “These are things that could happen, perhaps in the future,” according to Reuters.

  “From an engineering point of view, of course there are many advantages, information that can be shared like sensors that can be deployed in both countries because we have the same enemies,” he said.

  This came during a press conference to announce what Patil said is a successful test of a multi-level missile defense system that can hit targets flying at different altitudes such as cruise missiles or ballistic missiles.

  Last September, the UAE and Bahrain signed two agreements to normalize relations with Israel, and weeks later Sudan, and then Morocco, announced the normalization of relations with Israel. All efforts were mediated by the U.S.

  

  Israel has developed various air defense systems with U.S. assistance in recent years, according to reports that excluded cooperation with the Gulf countries in the field of missile defense.

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• When "Smart" Homes Turn Stupid: Google Users Literally "Left In The Dark" During Monday Outage
  When “Smart” Homes Turn Stupid: Google Users Literally “Left In The Dark” During Monday Outage
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 22:25

  By now, Monday’s massive Google outage is history for most people. While it was a minor inconvenience for some, with most Google services being down for hours on end, it was a much larger pain in the electronic ass for the tragically hip who have surrendered their “smart” homes to Google.

  In fact, of the services that went down, it was Google Home users who were literally left in the dark during the outage on Monday, RT notes. As a result, “smart home” users were complaining about not being able to perform once-simple tasks at their homes – like turning on the lights. 

  “I’m sitting here in the dark in my toddler’s room because the light is controlled by @Google Drive Home. Rethinking… a lot right now,” one Twitter user tweeted in the midst of the “blackout”. Another user from the U.K. said that connecting his lights to Google Home now “feels like a fatal error.”

  

  ABC News producer Erwin Renaldi quipped: “Thanks Google, now I can’t turn my bedroom light on.”

  The outage on Monday morning lasted “less than an hour”. But quickly, social media was flooded with Tweets that looked like these:

  is there somethinh wrong with google home? my house suddenly become stupid

  — heiakim. (@harrycitradi) December 14, 2020

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

  OH DAMNNIT. I was watching others struggling with the work disruption unaffected because I’m on Microsoft 365.

  Only to realize I couldn’t turn on the light because my smart home runs on Google Assistant. pic.twitter.com/K0sSl99G5V

  — Abhishek Baxi (@baxiabhishek) December 14, 2020

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

  Recall, back in August, we wrote about why “smart homes” may not be all they’re cracked up to be. We highlighted over the summer that police would routinely request access to people’s “smart speakers” during the course of investigations. 

  Amazon said this summer it had received more than 3,000 requests for smart speaker user data from police earlier this year, according to an article from Wired. Even more stunning, Amazon complied with the police’s requests on more than 2,000 occasions, forking over recordings and data that give law enforcement an ear into someone’s household. 

  This number marked a 72% increase in these types of requests from the same period in 2016 – the first time Amazon disclosed the data. The number of requests are up 24% year over year. 

  

  Douglas Orr, head of the criminal justice department at the University of North Georgia, told Wired that police look for this smart home data “as routinely as data from smartphones”. Police can continue to collect data if one electronic device (like a phone) leads them to another (like a smart home speaker) simply by amending search warrants, he said. 

  Google’s Nest unit has also seen a similar spike in police demands for data from its smart speakers. The company’s annual transparency report shows consistently rising numbers for police requests for data.

  

   

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• Pennsylvania Republicans Ask Supreme Court To Again Review Election Lawsuit
  Pennsylvania Republicans Ask Supreme Court To Again Review Election Lawsuit
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 22:05

  By Janita Kan of The Epoch Times

  A group of Republicans in Pennsylvania on Tuesday has again urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their lawsuit that challenges the 2020 election results in the state.

  The nation’s top court had previously rejected the group’s request for immediate injunctive relief to block Pennsylvania from taking further steps to certify the 2020 election results. At the time, the group’s lawyer, Greg Teufel, said the case was not over because his clients were planning to file a formal petition to ask the court to review the lawsuit, which they hadn’t filed the first time.

  

  The lawyer filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on Dec. 11, docketed by the court on Dec. 15, which argues that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was wrong when it dismissed their case because the justices thought the plaintiffs filed their case with unreasonable delay.

  “This Court should not turn a blind eye to unconstitutional election laws that permit massive vote dilution and have a significant impact on election outcomes, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did,” the petition (pdf) states.

  The case at hand—cited as Kelly v. Pennsylvania—argues that Act 77, a law that made voting by mail without an excuse legal in Pennsylvania, was enacted in violation of Pennsylvania’s constitution. The state constitution, the plaintiffs argue, prohibits absentee voting in Pennsylvania except for four limited circumstances.

  The lawsuit alleges that the state law is “another illegal attempt to override the limitations on absentee voting prescribed in the Pennsylvania Constitution, without first following the necessary procedure to amend the constitution to allow for the expansion.”

  The lawsuit was filed by a Republican lawmaker Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and several GOP congressional candidates.

  In late November a Pennsylvania commonwealth judge, Patricia McCullough, issued a temporary injunction that would have prevented the state from taking further steps to complete the certification of the presidential race. She argued that “petitioners appear to have established a likelihood to succeed on the merits because petitioners have asserted the Constitution does not provide a mechanism for the legislature to allow for expansion of absentee voting without a constitutional amendment.”

  She also opined that the “petitioners appear to have a viable claim that the mail-in ballot procedures set forth in Act 77 contravene” the plain language of the provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which deals with absentee voting.

  However, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs waited too long before the county of boards of election were required to certify the election results to bring the case, which could “result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters” who voted by mail.

  In the petition, the lawyer argued that it was a no-win situation for his clients, who wanted to bring the case against the law.

  “Pennsylvania does not permit electors and candidates to bring substantive constitutional challenges to laws governing the conduct of federal elections. An elector or candidate may not bring a challenge prior to an election for failure to meet standing requirements,” he wrote, referring to the legal right—or standing—to bring the case.

  “To overcome such speculative harm requires waiting until after the election takes place. But now that harm has materialized and is no longer speculative, it is too late,” he added.

  The group has asked the court to declare Act 77 as unconstitutional in order to prevent future harm resulting from the law. It also asks the court to grant injunctive relief to mitigate current harms already caused by the state law.

  They argued that when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the case they had “insulated the legislation from any attack” and indirectly “amended” the Pennsylvania Constitution despite not having the authority to do so.

  “Such attempted de facto constitutional amendment is itself unconstitutional,” they argued.

  This case is cited as Kelly v. Pennsylvania (20-810).

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• Iran Uses Disguised Tanker To Export Venezuelan Oil In 'Gold-For-Food' Barter
  Iran Uses Disguised Tanker To Export Venezuelan Oil In ‘Gold-For-Food’ Barter
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 21:45

  A tanker chartered by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has been loading Venezuelan crude for export, documents from state-run PDVSA show according to Reuters, providing evidence of the two countries’ latest tactics to expand their trade in defiance of U.S. sanctions. Venezuela and Iran have deepened their cooperation this year as Venezuela has exchanged gold and other commodities for Iranian food, condensate and fuel.

  According to the reports, names of scrapped vessels are being used by several PDVSA customers, including NIOC, to disguise the routes and identities of the tankers they use.  A very large crude carrier (VLCC), identified in PDVSA’s loading documents as the Ndros, arrived at Venezuela’s main oil port of Jose last week to load 1.9 million barrels of heavy Merey 16 crude bound for Asia, the documents showed.

  However, vessel-monitoring service TankerTrackers.com used satellite photos to show the Ndros was scrapped in 2018, confirming reports on international shipping databases. 

  

  Also using satellite imagery and comparing it with photographs, it said the VLCC’s real identity is the Liberia-flagged Calliop. Reuters could not independently verify that as the tanker’s name at the hull had been painted black before its arrival at Jose.

  PDVSA, Venezuela’s oil ministry and NIOC did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S. Treasury Department declined to comment.  Hong Kong-based Ship Management Services Ltd, which bought the Calliop in October, the shipping databases showed, could not be reached for comment.

  A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said that “reports of any impending deliveries would again illustrate the illegitimate regime in Venezuela has turned to international pariahs like Iran to enable their exploitation of Venezuela’s natural resources.”

  Iran sent a VLCC named the Horse to Venezuela in September. It delivered condensate, a very light form of oil, for PDVSA to blend with its very heavy oil to formulate exportable crude. The tanker returned to Iran in October carrying Venezuelan heavy oil for NIOC, PDVSA’s schedules showed. The tanker was misidentified at PDVSA’s databases as the Master Honey.

  In the run-up to leaving office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has tightened sanctions on Iran and Venezuela.

  A handful of PDVSA’s customers that had been allowed to swap Venezuelan oil for fuel under U.S. sanctions had their authorisations suspended in October. But Washington has not intercepted vessels that contribute to the Iran-Venezuela trade.

  

  Smaller Iranian tankers have also delivered gasoline to Venezuela, making several voyages between the two countries since May. The U.S. Department of Justice in August seized 1.1 million barrels of Iranian gasoline bound for Venezuela on four privately-owned tankers.

  The cargoes were transferred to two separate tankers that delivered the gasoline to U.S. ports for auction, in what the department said led to the largest seizure of Iranian fuel.

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• Vaccine Passports And Health Passes: Is Showing Your "Papers" The "New Normal"?
  Vaccine Passports And Health Passes: Is Showing Your “Papers” The “New Normal”?
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 21:25

  Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

  Life cannot return to normal until there is a vaccine for COVID 19.

  At least, that is what governments, corporations, and their mainstream propaganda media outlets have been incessantly arguing. Interestingly, the development of that vaccine was “warp speed,” allegedly at the behest of the Trump administration.

  “Warp speed” also took place in other countries like the UK, where shots have been administered. This information has caused some to question whether the vaccine was ready long before the announcement was made or, indeed, before the pandemic ever began.

  They tried to warn us about mandated vaccines

  Years ago, “conspiracy theorists” were ridiculed for warning of a system in which vaccines would be required to access normal aspects of life. Today, however, government officials and MSM are now openly discussing the very same system.

  

  In case you have been living under a rock for the past several weeks, here are several instances where the “public discussion” has centered around the idea of a “vaccine passport” or “immunity passport” or the general blockade and sanctioning of anyone not willing to take the jab.

  Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario Dr. David Williams recently stated that individuals who refuse the COVID-19 vaccination might “face some limits.” Some of the “limits” he suggested included not being able to enter a hospital or nursing home without showing proof of having been vaccinated without personal protective equipment.

  Welcome to the new normal: Vaccine Passports and Health Passes

  For the moment, vaccine passports are mainly intended for international travel. However, their use can be extended to many other areas of life. Vaccine passports in the form of free mobile apps in which a traveler (or event goer, employee, or shopper) uploads their COVID-19 test results or vaccination status. 

  There are currently two existing vaccine passports options, one being operational in the United States right now.

  • Common Pass: Created by Commons Project, this health pass has been in international use since October on United and Cathay Pacific flights between New York, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Common Pass operates via Apple’s Health app on iOS and CommonHealth for Android. It connects to 230 US health systems. It functions as a scannable QR code and can store a passenger’s test or vaccine data and travel plans. (It is not yet publicly available for download.)

  • IATA Travel Pass: Expected to launch in early 2021, IATA Travel Pass, is currently under development by the International Transport Association. According to the IATA website, the digital pass for travelers is: A global and standardized solution to validate and authenticate all country regulations regarding COVID-19 passenger travel requirements.

  Vaccination tickets: the future of concert and event-goers

  Ticketmaster announced that it is exploring the possibility of requiring proof of vaccination for ticket purchases and entrance to events. An article published on Billboard stated: 

  Ticketmaster has been working on a framework for post-pandemic fan safety that uses smartphones to verify fans’ vaccination status or whether they’ve tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72-hour window.

  Many details of the plan, still in development, will rely on three separate components: the Ticketmaster digital ticket app, third party health information companies like CLEAR Health Pass or IBM’s Digital Health Pass, and testing and vaccine providers like LabCorp and CVS Minute Clinic.

  If the vaccination tickets are approved, how would it work?

  The Billboard article gives further details about what people will have to do to attend concerts and other events. 

  • After purchasing tickets, concert fans will have to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination or test negative 24-72 hours before the event

  • Fans must have proof of vaccination or test results delivered to a health pass company, such as CLEAR or IBM

  • Health pass company verifies the attendee’s COVID-19 status to Ticketmaster (Ticketmaster will not be granted access to fan’s medical records)

  • Vaccinated fans or those with negative test results would be issued the credentials needed to access the event by Ticketmaster

  • Fans testing positive or who can not verify their status will not be granted access to any event. 

  Different states will have different requirements

  The primary role of health pass companies will be to collect data from testing and medical providers and deliver status updates to partner companies. This would be done in a secure, encrypted way that complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

  For individuals financially privileged enough to afford to buy the ever-more expensive tickets from the Ticketmaster’s monopoly, the world will have taken a giant step forward into the “new normal.”

  Airlines are quickly following suit

  From CNN:  Australia’s national carrier Qantas will require future international travelers to provide proof of vaccination against Covid-19 before flying.

  The airline’s CEO Alan Joyce said in an interview with CNN affiliate Nine News on Monday that the move would be a “necessity” when coronavirus vaccines are readily available.

  Joyce said the airline was looking at changing its terms and conditions to “ask people to have a vaccination before they get on the aircraft.”

  “Whether you need that domestically, we will have to see what happens with Covid-19 in the market. But certainly, for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country, we think that’s a necessity,” the Qantas chief said.

  While Qantas is the first airline to indicate that Covid-19 vaccinations would be a must before travel, others may soon require this as well.

  Whatever the “new normal” is for travel will quickly spill over into everyday life

  Researchers suspect these new “passports” will quickly be extended to employment, education, and even buying food. 

  Judging by the behaviors of those around us, all of those concerns are entirely legitimate. 

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• US Navy's New Shipbuilding Plan Wants To "Achieve Maritime Supremacy" Amid Rising China 
  US Navy’s New Shipbuilding Plan Wants To “Achieve Maritime Supremacy” Amid Rising China 
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 21:05

  The Trump administration recently announced a new long-term shipbuilding plan that will boost the Navy’s fleet as it confronts a rising China in the South China Sea. 

  According to Bloomberg, citing a senior admin official, the Navy’s shipbuilding budget for fiscal 2022 would increase by 33% to $27 billion over this fiscal year. By 2023, it would increase to $28.5 billion, reaching $38.5 billion in fiscal 2026. 

  The ambitious plan to rebuild the Navy after decades of cuts to shipbuilding comes as the fleet has been stripped down to a size barely larger than it was nearly a century ago. 

  Trump has prioritized expanding the fleet of 275 ships to 355 vessels within a decade. The plan is part of a 30-year shipbuilding program that will expand the fleet to 500 by 2045.

  

  “Since taking office, President Trump has promised to increase the size of our naval fleet to 355 battleships, re-establish the United States as the global power at sea to continue to secure our country while making it more prosperous,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said in a statement. 

  Vought continued: “Our updated 30-year shipbuilding plan is a credible, affordable road map for achieving maritime supremacy—all while tightening our belts—and sending a strong message to our adversaries like China.”

  The shipbuilding plan also includes a list of 48 vessels set to be decommissioned or placed out of service during the fiscal years 2022 through 2026. 

  Planned retirements include the “first Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the first two Ohio-class guided-missile submarines, and the first Victorious-class ocean surveillance ship,” said Seapower Magazine, adding that “11 Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers and 11 Los Angeles-class attack submarines” will be retired as well. 

  Here’s the full list of retirements between 2022-2026: 

  In 2022: 

  • Six Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers will be placed in reserve: San Jacinto (CG 56), Hue City (CG 66), Anzio (CG 68) Vella Gulf (CG 72) and Port Royal (CG 73).  
  • One Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship will be placed in reserve: Whidbey Island (LSD 41). 
  • Two Los Angeles-class attack submarines will be recycled: Providence (SSN 719) and Oklahoma City (SSN 723). 
  • One Powhatan-class fleet ocean tug will be disposed: Apache (T-ATF 172). 

  In 2023:  

  • Two Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers will be placed in reserve: Bunker Hill (CG 52) and Mobile Bay (CG 53). 
  • Four Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships will be placed in reserve: Germantown (LSD 42), Gunston Hall (LSD 44), and Ashland (LSD 48). 
  • One Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship will be placed in reserve: Carter Hall (LSD 50). 
  • Two Henry J. Kaiser-class fleet replenishment oilers will be disposed: John Lenthall (T-AO 189). 
  • One Powhatan-class fleet ocean tug will be disposed: Catawba (T-ATF 168). 
  • One Safeguard-class rescue and salvage ship will be disposed: Grasp (T-ARS 51) 

  In 2024: 

  • Two Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers will be placed in reserve: Antietam (CG 54) and Shiloh (CG 67). 
  • One Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship will be placed in reserve: Rushmore (LSD 47). 
  • Two Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ships will be placed in reserve: Harpers Ferry (LSD 49) and Pearl Harbor (LSD 52). 
  • Four Los Angeles-class attack submarines will be recycled: Chicago (SSN 721), Key West (SSN 722) San Juan (SSN 751) and Topeka (SSN 754). 
  • Four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships will be disposed: Sentry (MCM 3), Devastator (MCM 6), Gladiator (MCM 11) and Dextrous (MCM 13). 
  • One Safeguard-class rescue and salvage ship will be disposed: Salvor (T-ARS 52). 

  In 2025: 

  • One Nimitz-class aircraft carrier will be recycled: Nimitz (CVN 68). 
  • One Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship will be placed in reserve: Oak Hill (LSD 51). 
  • Two Los Angeles-class attack submarines will be recycled: Helena (SSN 725) and Pasadena (SSN 752).  
  • One Henry J. Kaiser-class fleet replenishment oiler will be disposed: Joshua Humphreys (T-AO 188) 

  In 2026: 

  • One Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser will be placed in reserve: Chancellorsville (CG 62). 
  • One Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship will be placed in reserve: Comstock (LSD 45). 
  • Two Ohio-class guided-missile submarines will be recycled: Ohio (SSGN 726) and Florida (SSGN 728). 
  • Three Los Angeles-class attack submarines will be recycled: Newport News (SSN 750), Scranton (SSN 756) and Alexandria (SSN 757).  
  • One Henry J. Kaiser-class fleet replenishment oiler will be disposed: Pecos (T-AO 197). 
  • One Victorious-class ocean surveillance ship: Victorious (T-AGOS 19). 

  So what is the Navy’s strategy here? Is the US preparing for a naval and air clash with China in the South China Sea, or somewhere in the Pacific? 

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• White House's McEnany Refuses To Say Whether Trump Accepts Electoral College Vote
  White House’s McEnany Refuses To Say Whether Trump Accepts Electoral College Vote
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 20:45

  Speaking during a press briefing on Tuesday called to celebrate the start of the vaccination rollout, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany slammed the MSM for rebutting Trump’s campaign claims (later vindicated) that a COVID-19 vaccine would be ready within weeks, while also affirming that President Trump still doesn’t accept the results of the election.

  Though SCOTUS declined to hear court challenges to various swing state counts before yesterday’s Electoral College vote, the vote has reportedly – according to the MSM, at least – precluded the possibility of more challenges, although Trump and his team are still pushing ahead with some legal efforts, McEnany said.

  She refused to say whether or not Trump accepts the results, once again withholding an admission of defeat, which the combative White House Press Corp has been eager to hear (and not because it might ‘restore faith in Democracy’).

  “The President is still involved in ongoing litigation related to the election. Yesterday’s vote is one step in the constitutional process,” she added, before referring the reporter to the campaign for more information on that.

  Pressed about this morning’s comments from Mitch McConnell congratulating Biden on the electoral college vote, McEnany said she hadn’t yet touched base with President Trump about that.

  Moving on to the purpose of the briefing, McEnany told a reporter that Trump would be “open” to taking the vaccine (despite having already been infected and claiming to be immune), though she added that several senior officials (whom she didn’t specify) will be taking it publicly to help “instill confidence”.

  Trump will wait for the advice of his medical team since he already has the monoclonal antibodies, McEnany said, added that the president sees “our long-term care facility residents and our front line workers are paramount and important”.

  Meanwhile, Joe Biden tweeted earlier that he had spoken with Mitch McConnell, and that he is looking forward to working with the GOP leader with whom he has a close and cordial friendship.

  Biden says “I had a good conversation with Mitch McConnell today.” He added: “I called him to thank him for the congratulations.” Biden said that the two have always been straight with one another, and that they’d agreed they’d get together “sooner than later,” via @sarahmucha

  — Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 15, 2020

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWhile MSNBC would have readers believe that the GOP is now abandoning Trump en masse now that Mitt Romney has also congratulated Biden on his victory (for like the 12th time)…

  .@PressSec is lashing out at the press while one Republican after another is acknowledging that President Trump lost the election.

  And now, Sen Alexander is calling on Trump to concede. https://t.co/pxxWGulZdm

  — Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) December 15, 2020

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

  …the reality is much more complicated, as Sen. Rick Scott just affirmed.

  Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, would not say if he views Biden as president-elect. He did say that the electoral college has voted and “there will be a smooth transition of power on the 20th of January.” McCarthy and Scalise have not acknowledged Biden’s win

  — Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 15, 2020

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

  Bottom line: McConnell’s comments don’t matter nearly as much to voters as Trump’s comments do. And Trump has yet to acknowledge the Elecotral College vote or call Biden to concede or invite him to the White House, as is custom during the transfer of power. Some say he is refusing to concede, others that he is refusing to submit. 

  Meanwhile, McConnell is due to speak to reporters in short order as negotiations over spending and COVID-19 relief measures continue.

  Readers can watch the full briefing below:

  LIVE: @PressSec holds a briefing https://t.co/bBSwpPTQ28

  — The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 15, 2020

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

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• Two Americas, One Rigged Game, & Zero Capitalism
  Two Americas, One Rigged Game, & Zero Capitalism
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 20:45

  Authored by Matthew Piepenberg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

  Dying Capitalism & The New Feudalism

  American exceptionalism, as current COVID and capitalism disasters confirm, has morphed into a distortion that resembles more of a comorbidity than a guiding light.

  Despite a prior reputation for leading the world in innovation, problem solving and health care, the U.S. is witnessing record hospitalizations in a nation comprising 5% of the global population yet 25% of its COVID infections.

  Regardless of one’s politics, the COVID crisis is now an open symptom of failure, not exceptionalism.

  The same is true of the current crisis facing American capitalism.

  In its purest form, capitalism is an exceptional system, yet sadly one that is morphing into something that is anything but exceptional.

  A CRITICAL TURNING POINT

  Regardless of legitimately debatable views on how individuals and policy makers (from central bankers to health organizations) have handled the pandemic, we can all agree that COVID represents a turning point.

  The question now is whether it will be a turning point for the worse or the better.

  One way to forecast this direction is by tracking the current health of U.S. capitalism.

  CAPITALISM RE-ASSESSED

  Today, with central banks engaged in open Wall Street socialism wherein artificially repressed rates and unlimited QE have directly benefited the two largest asset classes in America, namely real estate and stocks, we can’t deny the cause-and-effect powers (as well as beneficiaries) of such “accommodation.”

  It’s an objective fact that 80 % of those assets are owned by the top 10%.

  Does that feel like capitalism working at a national level, or something far more targeted and far less “free-market” driven?

  The very concept of central-bank supported (and Congress-lobbied) capitalism is itself an oxymoron, and requires on honest re-assessment (and some hard questions) regarding the true meaning of capitalism.

  Can any system, market or sector, for example, that is directly and exclusively supported by trillions in fiat money creation and decades of artificially repressed (and unnaturally low) interest rates by definition be labeled “free market,” “natural” or even “capitalistic”?

  Be honest.

  And has the $6+ trillion in Fed money creation since 2008 truly “trickled down” to the real economy or has it primarily benefited risk asset markets like stocks on the S&P 500…

  

  …or real estate owners and commission-based brokers:

  

  Again: Be honest.

  Whether you be in the top 10% or the bottom 10%, the answer to such primary questions is empirically obvious.

  Such asset price inflation (i.e. bubbles) in everything from tech stocks to beach front real estate is not symbolic of the lauded and natural “Darwinism” of competitive, free-market capitalism.

  Instead, such bubbles for the top 10% and the consequent wealth disparity that followed for the rest of the country are dangerous indicators of a kind of post-modern feudalism wherein a questionable cabal of policy makers subsidizes a distinct minority of beneficiaries and then calls the result “economic stimulus” as the rest of the country gets poorer by the day.

  

  But again, is that capitalism?

  Capitalism, whether defined by Adam Smith or abused by Gordon Gecko, is a dynamic, full-body contact sport of almost blood-thirsty competition played on a level playing field of new ideas, equal capital costs and individual effort.

  In addition, true capitalism, the kind our fathers knew, was equally designed to create a broad rather than narrow class of winners and prosperity over time.

  Do the above charts suggest a broad class of winners?

  Capitalism, of course, should reward executives. But by how much?

  Since 1978, CEO compensation has grown by 940%, whereas worker compensation for the same period has grown by 12%. In 1965, the average ratio of CEO to median employee salaries was 21:1, today it’s over 320:1.

  For Jeff Bezos at Amazon, the ratio is 1.2 million to 1.

  Is such data a sign of an evolving capitalism or an indicator of something far more disturbing?

  FAIR COMPETITION VS. A RIGGED GAME

  Unfortunately, there are other and increasingly clear signs of rigged policies (from the Fed, Congress, SEC or White House) which have less to do with fair competition and compensation—the keystones of healthy capitalism—and far more do with an extended yet media-ignored paradigm of favoritism—i.e. cheating.

  Today, a kind of pseudo capitalism has emerged which is neither empathetic toward (or beneficial to) its host nation.

  Instead, we have a distorted model of capitalism whose benefits and empathies are uniquely targeted to a singular (parasitic?) group of companies, individuals and markets.

  For every member of Congress, for example, there are at least four financial lobbyists (from banks and big-tech) scurrying to influence (i.e. purchase) favorable policy decisions.

  This suggests healthy capitalism is under the influence of bribery not policy, and backroom deals rather than fair competition.

  Of course, any system that is inherently rigged, like the 1919 World Series, is inherently flawed.

  Capitalism, when rigged, is no less disgraceful.

  We see this rigged game playing out in real time as the weak majority get weaker and the strong minority get stronger in a backdrop that is not a capitalistic “survival of the fittest,” but rather a feudalistic survival of the best-connected.

  Record breaking wealth disparity as well as the open and shameful disconnect between a tanking economy and a rising (Fed-supported) securities market is not an homage to capitalism, but rather open proof of its failure.

  TESLA, APPLE AND AMAZON—THE NEW CAPITALISM?

  Take Tesla. It’s a visionary company, but its stock has been skyrocketing on growth projections and historically low borrowing costs, easily managed by exaggerated share price inflation.

  In March, it was the 4th most valuable auto company in the world, today it is now the most valuable, worth more than Daimler, Toyota and Volkswagen combined.

  Or Apple. It took 12 years to get a $1 trillion market cap, but only 5 months to recently reach $2 trillion.

  Are such growth stories a consequence of fair, legitimate and natural free-market capitalism, or have they enjoyed an unfair advantage from the policy jocks?

  Consider Amazon.

  With online sales skyrocketing as citizens are locked at home, Amazon has hired hundreds of thousands of minimum-wage warehouse workers to keep boxes coming to your doorsteps.

  We can applaud Amazon for its job creation and raising of the minimum wage.

  But let us not forget the larger picture in which AMAZON has gamified municipalities through its absurd HQ2 plan which transfers wealth from city police, fire and school districts to its shareholders.

  Nor should we forget that despite years of a profitless balance sheet and legal tax avoidance, Amazon’s share price bubble has allowed it to literally kill, gut and bury small businesses across the nation.

  At the same time, by owning the rails and engaging in anti-competitive behavior while dumping products and prices due to their access to cheap capital (against which no other companies can compete), Amazon has slaughtered rather than leveled the fair “playing field” upon which true capitalism was designed to be played.

  Instead, names like Amazon, Tesla and Apple have prompted openly pro-capitalist thought leaders like Scott Galloway to question whether the pandemic was created, or at least co-opted, for taking the top 10% into the top 1% while sending the remaining 90% downward.

  TWO AMERICAS, ZERO CAPITALISM

  A recent study by the Robin Hood Foundation, for example, revealed that 32% of the people in New York, the homefield of Wall Street, have been forced to go to a food bank since the onset of the pandemic.

  That’s more people in the Empire State seeking free food than those who possess a college degree.

  Meanwhile, 1/3 of greater America is worried about paying their rent.

  By pure math, we now live in a Dickinsonian backdrop by which it is the “best of times” for a tiny minority (from Face-shot real estate brokers to Facebook tech investors) and the “worst of times” for the broader population.

  Is it truly fair to castigate the real America as “losers” in a so-called Capitalistic competition whose rigged rules and policies ensured who the winners would be before the game could even start?

  The rigged game playing right under our noses in the U.S. is not free market capitalism, just as an S&P sitting atop a big, fat, $7+ trillion Fed air-bag, sure as hell aint a free market.

  Natural price discovery, as all honest Wall Street veterans know, died years ago. Nod to Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen and Powell.

  As a member of the Wall Street elite who benefited from such anti-capitalistic capitalism, I can’t ignore facts to alleviate a fake conscience.

  The simple truth is that current U.S. markets, competition and politics have nothing to do with fair competition and hence nothing to do with capitalism.

  THE NEW FEUDALISM

  As Galloway recently observed, “we are barreling toward a nation where 3 million lords are being served by 350 million serfs,” simply because US policy decided to favor corporations over populations as capitalism “collapses upon itself.”

  Nor can this modern version of so-called capitalism rely on the “better angel” generosities of billionaires like Bezos or Musk to save the system.

  

  The moral character of overpaid CEO’s will not bring the dying middle class back to its glory days.

  Frankly, it’s up to the citizens themselves to get informed rather than angry.

  Knowledge begets better results than pitch forks.

  America is falling not just because capitalism lost its way or policy-supported CEO’s lack the character and accountabilities of the past.

  It’s because citizens and their lobbied (bribed) leaders—red, blue and purple–have lost their sanity and are screaming at each other rather than opening a single economics, math, ethics, history or anti-trust book.

  Today, the crowd gets its education from tweets and twits, not informed thoughts, sound leadership and patient knowledge or actual book reading.

  BREAD & CIRCUS, FEAR & DIVISION

  This, of course, makes the mal-informed majority (i.e. the bottom 90%) easier to trick and manipulate.

  Decision-makers on top, from ancient Rome to Herr Goebbels, have always understood, and hence exploited, such wide-spread ignorance.

  In short, policy anti-heroes serve a mal-informed population a mixed cocktail of either: 1) bread & circus (from Netflix to celebrity virtue-signaling) or 2) fear (from “social-distancing” to COVID death rates) to keep the crowd ignorant, divided and afraid.

  

  Today, most U.S. citizens are blind to the rudimentary basics of Fed policy, currency debasement, lobbying tricks, anti-trust principles, or even viral facts.

  Thus, as the middle-class flounders and a new financial feudalism replaces genuine capitalism, the mad crowd has no idea where to place its madness other than at each other in an historically divisive era of identity politics replacing anything resembling informed and unifying politics or policies.

  Meanwhile, Amazon’s stock climbs as true capitalism crawls, and ancient assets like gold rise, as broken currencies like the dollar, fall.

  Such are the symptoms of modern feudalism. Get ready for more.

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• Goldman Upgrades Exxon To Buy For The First Time In Four Years As Cycle Begins To Turn
  Goldman Upgrades Exxon To Buy For The First Time In Four Years As Cycle Begins To Turn
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 20:28

  Just one day after Wells Fargo issued a rare upgrade on beaten down energy giant Exxon, late on Tuesday Goldman did what it hasn’t done since 2016, and it upgraded Exxon from Neutral to a Buy – just two months after it upgraded the major from a Sell – with a $52 price target given Exxon’s “potential for capital/cost reductions, Guyana and Chemicals upside, improved free cash flow versus history, underweight positioning and our constructive view on crude.”

  

  As analyst Neil Mehta explains, “we have been skewed more cautious on Exxon for multiple years given a history of weak returns, concerns around capital discipline, room for a clearer decarbonization strategy, a dividend policy that added leverage to the business and lackluster earnings execution.” And while each of these concerns are still an issue that management will need to respond to, the rate of change is moving in the right direction, and with the stock trading at only 10.1x Goldman’s 2022 P/E estimate (versus 10-year history of 15x), the analyst believes “investors are able to acquire the stock at a reasonable valuation level.” Furthermore, with XOM shares down 38% in 2020, the bank now sees “much of these risks as priced into the story and see low hanging fruit to make progress on each of these concerns.”

  Some more details behind the four key points underpinning Goldman’s upgrade.

  First, the company has meaningfully lowered its capital spending outlook from $30-$35 bn to $17-$19 bn in 2021 and $20-$25 bn in 2022-2025.

  Second, while not our base case, we no longer see a potential dividend cut as a negative catalyst given the leverage guard rails the company has put around it. We continue to believe a variable dividend strategy has potential to be well-received by the market.

  Third, we see value in the company’s growth assets including in Guyana and Chemicals.

  Fourth, we see more attractive valuation following underperformance, with XOM now trading at an EV/DACF discount to Buy-rated CVX versus its historical premium.

  Of these, perhaps the most important point is the impact of a potential dividend cut. Here are the details on that:

  We continue to view the merits of a variable dividend strategy positively and believe that XOM could benefit from such a strategy. In our view, a variable dividend strategy could enable the company to reduce the need for increasing debt at the bottom of the cycle and drive outsized capital returns to shareholders in better pricing environments. We also believe it would allow the company to balance cash returns to shareholders with investment in attractive projects that could contribute to long term value and returns generation for he company. We do not currently base case a dividend reduction or implementation of a variable dividend model.

  

  

  Goldman’s conclusion:

  We revise our 12-month price target to $52 from $42 in this note. We update our methodology to now include a P/E component to our equal weighted EV/DACF and FCF yield valuation. We apply a 15x P/E multiple (in line with XOM’s 10-year historical average) to normalized EPS (defined as an average of 2021-2025, consistent with the time frame for our normalized FCF yield component). We also update our EV/DACF multiple from 7.5x to 8.0x to be more in line with the multiple we use on CVX and now assume a normalized Brent price of $59/bbl in our valuation (from $55.50 previously). For illustrative purposes, we construct an upside case using the 10-year average multiples of 15x P/E and 9.75x EV/DACF, as well as 15-year average FCF yield of 5%, which drives an incremental $10/share of value or a $62/share implied valuation, all else equal.

  We note that historically Exxon has been one of the poorest earnings executors in the S&P500. However, as we look forward, we actually see potential for consistent upward consensus revisions. Over the past twenty quarters, XOM has only beaten EPS estimates 55% of the time. However, we are well above consensus for 2021, 2022 and 2023 EPS, with our EPS of $2.70/$4.18/$3.82 on average 36% above consensus of $1.57/$3.14/$3.72.

  

  And the risks:

  Capital spending surprises to the upside as commodity prices recover. We currently forecast XOM headline capital spending at $22 bn on average in 2022-2025, within the company’s guidance range of $20-$25 bn. Our model assumes an average Brent price of $61/bbl over that period, which we recognize is above the current forward curve. To the extent XOM does not remain committed to the lower capital spending outlook as commodity prices recover, we would see higher FCF breakevens, which could impact our positive view on the stock.

  Chemicals business remains weak. We expect the company’s investments in performance products projects in the Chemicals business to drive improved returns in the coming years. We see potential for multiple expansion in chemicals as the macro environment and integrated HDPE margins improve relative to 2019 and early 2020 levels. That said, to the extent the margin environment for chemicals deteriorates or the projects do not realize the returns we underwrite, we would see downside risk to our estimates.

  Production growth metrics surprise to the downside. While some production growth for XOM has likely been pushed out given the near-term capital spending cuts, we still expect investment in the Permian and Guyana to drive production growth going forward. To the extent the company faces execution or other issues that prevent the production growth from materializing, we would see downside risk to our earnings forecasts.

  Commodity prices are weaker than we expect. We have an above consensus view on oil prices going forward, with a $55/$65/$60 per barrel Brent price view in 2021/2022/2023. If oil prices persist at something closer to the forward curve, which is at ~$49/bbl, our earnings and cash flow forecasts would see downside risk.

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• NYPD To Deploy Robotic Dog To Combat Criminals
  NYPD To Deploy Robotic Dog To Combat Criminals
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 20:25

  According to ABC7 in New York, the New York Police Department (NYPD) is set to receive a new Boston Dynamics robot dog with special features, including an arm to open doors and move objects. 

  “This dog is going to save lives, protect people, and protect officers and that’s our goal,” NYPD Technical Assistance Response Unit Inspector (TARU) Frank Digiacomo told ABC7. 

  

  Dubbed “Digidog,” the Boston Dynamics robot weighs 70 pounds and is able to move at a maximum 3 mph.

  Digidog’s new tricks are shown in the video below: 

  “This robot is able to use its artificial intelligence to navigate things, very complex environments,” NYPD TARU’s Deepu John said.

  This is the department’s only robot dog, and during the latest testing phase, it has been used a few times in the field. The existence of the robot came to light in late October after it assisted in a suspect’s arrest in Brooklyn.

  This particular robot model, known as Spot, has been put to work in other applications this year, including work on an oil rig, nuclear power plant, car plant, and military base. 

  Digidog is capable of two-way communication and could also be used by NYPD to enforce mask-wearing – this was seen earlier this year in Singapore. 

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• If Not Now, Then When? One Bank Makes The Case For Fed Easing Tomorrow
  If Not Now, Then When? One Bank Makes The Case For Fed Easing Tomorrow
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 20:05

  With stocks at record highs (prices and valuations), and credit spreads at record tights (despite record leverage), most expect ‘more of the same’ from The Fed’s finally statement and press conference tomorrow in terms of promises to do more but not actually doing it… and applying more verbal pressure for fiscal support (heaven forbid they step in and bail out Washington’s utterly devastating gridlock on the COVID Relief Bill).

  In fact, as WSJ’s Michael Derby reports, some suspect The Fed may even lift rates (just not the way most think).

  Downward pressure in the Federal Reserve’s fed funds rate could drive the Fed to lift its interest on excess reserves rate at the end of its Federal Open Market Committee meeting. For a variety of reasons, financial markets are facing downward pressure on money market rates, and to ensure the fed funds rate trades in the middle of the 0% to 0.25% range, some see the Fed making technical adjustments.

  Scott Skyrm of money market trading firm Curvature Securities says that instead of lifting the IOER rate as it has in the past, the Fed could instead lift the reverse repo rate. As with these sorts of changes that have taken place in the past, such a change would be purely technical and signal no change in monetary policy.

  

  But, Standard Chartered’s Steve Englander and John Davies believe instead that, for Jay Powell and his merry men (and women), there is too much uncertainty not to act, and they will take an even more dovish stance.

  • We see duration extension as likely: least offensive to hawks and useful with or without fiscal stimulus

  • The case for Fed stimulus is likely to be weaker as time goes on

  • End-2020, early 2021 could be difficult with COVID-19 surging, without fiscal stimulus

  • Increased Fed stimulus could be explicitly limited in duration or conditional on economic targets

  Fed easing limited by desire to maintain FOMC consensus

  We expect the FOMC to ease monetary policy on 16 December, most likely by increasing the duration of its Treasury portfolio. It may also increase asset purchases or otherwise signal its willingness to support the economy and asset markets, but these may be explicitly temporary or tied to economic outcomes. FOMC meeting minutes and Fed comments suggest that the FOMC could give some longer-term guidance on what would eventually lead to a slowing or ending of asset purchases.

  Taken together, these steps may be enough to limit the backing up of bond yields on a fiscal deal in Congress and encourage yields lower, faster, absent a deal. Paradoxically, there may be more need for increased asset purchases in the event of a deal, because of the need to demonstrate a soft commitment to capping bond yields. The key question is whether the Fed is concerned simply about a run-up in yields rather than its underlying drivers. Yield spikes in March and June were primarily driven by the real yield component, but the recent steepening bias has been driven by the breakeven, reflecting recovery and reflation optimism (Figure 1).

  

  A Fed easing move associated with fiscal stimulus would be USD-negative, in our view, with the USD selling both on associated asset market optimism and a Fed move that could put further downward pressure on real rates. Easing in the absence of stimulus probably would not offset USD appreciation on pessimism. We think the USD would appreciate on fiscal stimulus unless the Fed limited bond yield increases. This would raise the risk of a taper tantrum at the long end of the yield curve.

  FOMC faces uncertainty on multiple fronts

  Sometimes the economy is bad, but policy is easy because there are few options other than to ease. Sometimes the economic outlook is more middling, but there are so many dimensions of uncertainty that the policy decision is more difficult.

  The uncertainty on fiscal stimulus is well discussed. As of 14 December, it looks as if some progress towards an agreement is being made, but we have been in this position before. Congress is aware that special unemployment measures for those affected by COVID-19 will expire 26 December, so there could be some significant income stresses among those who have no savings or ability to borrow.

  Policy makers and market participants have become somewhat inured to large spending numbers. If policy makers gave a USD 300 per week supplement for 20mn unemployed for 20 weeks, the cost would be about USD 120bn. An outright grant of USD 600 per person to the 250mn poorest US residents (roughly 75% of the US population, USD 2,400 for a family of four) would cost USD 150bn. These are big income support numbers, but much smaller than the packages under discussion. USD 900bn spent over four months is 14% of GDP over that period (not annualised).

  Personal income has been higher since April than the pre-COVID-19 February high, with transfers more than making up for lost wage and salary income. Without stimulus, personal income would very likely fall below February 2020 levels in January 2021, but possibly in November or December 2020. The 5 November FOMC meeting minutes alluded to strong household savings as a factor that could mitigate the impact of a fiscal impasse. A duration increase or even added QE would do little to maintain aggregate demand if the fiscal talks failed, but could reduce the degree of financial-market tension. This is especially the case because the year-end, the end of exceptional unemployment benefits and the end of Section 13 (3) Fed programmes will essentially coincide. If a fiscal deal is passed, the duration move would limit the backing up of yields.

  If not now, then when?

  The intensification of COVID-19 is likely to last at least through the holiday season; lockdowns are increasing, and initial and continuing unemployment claims are rising. The next two or three months are likely to be the nadir in activity. For the Fed, we see it as pointless to move at the end-January 2021 meeting, because much of the damage will likely have already been done and the beneficial impact of the vaccine would be on the horizon. We earlier made the case that the Fed could move intra-meeting if economic conditions deteriorated (FOMC could move before 16 December), but the deterioration in labour-market conditions has only recently become visible. The logic of ‘if you are going to move, sooner is better than later’ still applies. The FOMC minutes and some recent speakers indicated that an increase in the average duration of the Fed portfolio is more acceptable than an increased pace of buying.

  Does the Fed feel lucky today?

  The Fed might be able to get away with doing nothing and sending the message that it is poised to move quickly if conditions deteriorate.

  The question is whether it wants to take this chance. The Fed could reasonably indicate that it was acting preemptively to prevent bond yields and risk spreads from rising prematurely, and willing to take the risk that the added measures would turn out to be unnecessary in retrospect.

  Compromise with conditional move?

  The FOMC compromise could be to act on the duration and possibly the size of asset purchases, but make the move temporary or set to unwind if economic conditions improved.

  This would give the economy and financial markets the immediate benefit of added liquidity and avoid the question of how aggressively the Fed wants to informally cap rates until it is confident of self-sustaining recovery.

  What message does the FOMC want to send on the balance sheet?

  Investors have been debating and the Fed has been reticent to disclose how the Fed expects to use the balance sheet to hit economic targets. The FOMC minutes and some recent Fed speakers suggested that Fed policy makers were closer to agreement on the role of the balance sheet.

  We and many in the market expect the FOMC to indicate that the balance sheet will stop increasing before policy rates are raised. We doubt that they will provide Taylorrule specificity for the use of asset purchases. Most likely the FOMC will indicate that the beginning of the pullback in the balance sheet will be driven by the judgment that the effective lower bound is no longer a binding restraint, so there is no need to act on the long end because there is no policy option at the short end.

  Fed guidance on how far the balance sheet will shrink will likely be vaguer. The FOMC may indicate that in recovery the balance sheet will be shrunk as much as possible without risking a shortage of reserves or steep backing up of financial conditions.

  UST impact of any duration extension may depend on fiscal progress

  The latest survey evidence shows that the consensus expectation is not for the Fed to extend the duration of its UST purchases at this meeting. Only 23% of those polled in a recent Bloomberg survey expected such a decision. Even fewer expected the Fed to increase the pace of its QE purchases. Hence, if the Fed does take the duration extension option this week, this could be a UST-positive surprise, especially if it also provides reasonably dovish forward guidance around the outlook for its QE programme. Such a decision, in our view, would provide a clear signal that the Fed remains concerned about the risk of sustained curve steepening, near-term at least, given the deteriorating COVID backdrop.

  Since April, we have held the view that the Fed’s UST buying activity in March suggested it was uncomfortable with the 10Y UST yield rising much above 1%. We felt this view was supported by the ultra-dovish language at the 10 June FOMC meeting following the sudden jump in yields at the start of that month. In both March and June, however, the real yield component played a key role in the rise in the nominal 10Y yield, which we argued would have sat very uneasily with the Fed from a theoretical standpoint. More recently, the breakeven component has been the driver of the rise in the nominal yield, reflecting vaccine-based reflation and recovery optimism (Figure 1).

  A decision to extend duration at this point would therefore signal that the Fed remains wary of nominal long-end yields rising too far, too fast. While the immediate response by the UST curve to such a decision should be some modest bull flattening, it is rarely a case of ceteris paribus. The other main source of event risk for the UST market in the very near term is the lingering possibility that Congress will pass a fiscal support package. While any duration extension is supportive of long-end UST demand, a fiscal support package is likely to increase long-end UST supply via primary-market issuance and secondary-market reflation speculators. Hence, the arrival of a fiscal support package shortly after or before the December FOMC meeting would likely limit the scope for bull flattening. So far, speculation on the likelihood of fiscal stimulus has been the biggest driver of bond yields, in our view. To push rates well below current levels, a clear indication may be needed of how far the Fed will tolerate rates backing up, combined with a commitment to act on it.

  A modest duration extension decision this week would probably not offset the impact of a fiscal support deal, especially if there were some conditionality or indication that the move was temporary. If the surprise were bigger and if overall QE were increased, investors could take away a sense of sufficiently significant Fed commitment that the Fed move would emerge as the main yield driver.

  The key upside risk to UST yields this week would therefore be a fiscal support deal in Congress but an on-hold Fed. However, we would still be sceptical that the 10Y UST yield would move sharply above 1% as a result, given COVID-related economic challenges ahead and the possibility that a duration-extension has only been delayed until early next year. The same Bloomberg survey showed 43% of those polled expected such a policy move during Q1.

  Conversely, the downside risk to yields is a duration extension decision but no fiscal package. We believe the curve steepening bias seen over recent months has been driven by a combination of fiscal support hopes and vaccine optimism. We think this explains why the 10Y UST term premium has decoupled from the pull of the expanding global stock of negative-yielding debt (Figure 2).

  

  If fiscal support hopes were denied, at least for the near term, we would expect a swift pull-back in the term premium to realign more closely with the level of negative-yielding debt.

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• Mapped: The Risk Of Eviction And Foreclosure In U.S. States
  Mapped: The Risk Of Eviction And Foreclosure In U.S. States
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 19:45

  Alongside potential obstacles such as job loss, financial insecurity, and a subsequent inability to cover many upcoming bills, Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop notes that many Americans are now facing potential home loss as well.

  According to a recent survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, of the estimated 17 million adults who are not current on their rent or mortgage payments, a whopping 33% of them could be facing eviction or foreclosure in the “next two months”.

  

  Note: While this survey was conducted Nov 11-23, 2020, respondents’ interpretations of “the next two months” ranged between Nov 2020–Jan 2021.

  Millions Facing Home Loss

  Although people across the country face similar risks, Texas stands out with an estimated 718,000 people facing foreclosures or eviction. In fact, more than 7.1 million people in the state may be expecting a loss of employment income in the coming four weeks.

  Other states looking at high percentages of potential home loss include Louisiana, New Mexico, Mississippi, Wyoming, and Missouri.

  To get a closer look, here are the top 10 metro areas with the highest percentages of people who will potentially be facing eviction or foreclosure:

  

  Home for the Holidays?

  On the other end of the spectrum, there are states that appear to have less need for concern, as the percentage of people likely to experience foreclosure or eviction in these places stands between 15% and 20%. However, this level of relative home security is the case for only Delaware, Vermont, Maryland, and Utah.

  Everyone else is floating in a proverbial gray area, between a majority who may still be in their same home after Christmas, and those who may need to find a new place in the months following the holidays.

  Even in the states with extremely low percentages like Delaware (15%), there are still thousands people who are highly likely to face the possibility of losing their home.

  Going Forward

  It goes without saying that with nearly 17 million Americans behind on mortgage and rent payments, there could be significant consequences down the road.

  In an order issued by the CDC under the Public Health Service Act, it was stated that an eviction moratorium could help with the effectiveness of COVID-19 prevention measures like quarantining, social distancing, and self-isolation. However, while evictions were temporarily halted under this order on September 4th, the extent of this protection runs out on the last day of 2020.

  President-elect Joe Biden expressed his desire for measures such as rent forgiveness back in March 2020, but it remains unclear what actions will be taken under the new administration when inauguration occurs on January 20th, 2021.

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• The Empire Strikes Back (Against Crypto)
  The Empire Strikes Back (Against Crypto)
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 19:25

  Authored by Omid Malekan,

  Some years ago, when I first began telling people about crypto, a friend pushed back and said that the government would never allow Bitcoin to succeed.

  “Money is power” he said, “and no self-respecting government is going to give that power up.”

  I told him that I agreed, but that Bitcoin was still too small for governments to take seriously. By the time it became big enough to register as a threat, it would be too late.

  Then came the 2017 bubble, and a ten-fold jump in value in a matter of months. But that rally happened too fast for anyone to react, and collapsed just as quickly, alleviating any concern that cryptocurrencies might someday contend for significance in broader society. There was a regulatory crackdown around initial coin offerings, but it had more to do with securities violations than the threat of a new kind of money.

  The current rally feels different. Both blockchain and crypto have had almost three years to prove their utility and seep into the cultural zeitgeist, and digitally native solutions that are not controlled by any corporation or government seem more appealing in a continuously fracturing post-Trump and post-Brexit environment. The pandemic is bound to change everything, so why not money? The current rally is also driven by institutions, so it has staying power. Paul Tudor Jones and MassMutual are more likely to stay with Bitcoin for the long haul than that YouTuber who used to shill XRP.

  The slowly unfolding governmental crackdown on this domain feels different, too. Everything from the actions against Bitmex to the latest French KYC requirements to the rumors about onerous new guidelines coming from the US Treasury smacks of anti-crypto bias. Western governments that supposedly value private innovation and civil liberties are increasingly acting like their Chinese counterparts, inventing crimes out of thin air just to have an excuse to punish someone.

  For example, the same US Justice Department that has always avoided criminal prosecution of Wall Street execs for potential involvement with money laundering actually arrested the chief technology officer of a foreign crypto exchange. More Bitmex executives were criminally prosecuted for what may have happened with crypto than Goldman execs for their proven involvement with 1MDB. The takeaway? Look the other way while minor crypto money laundering takes place and the Feds come knocking. Participate actively in one of the largest theft, bribery and money laundering schemes in history and you get a slap on the wrist.

  To be fair, cryptocurrencies do exist in certain legal gray zones, and some closing of the regulatory gap was always inevitable, and healthy. Regulations can introduce standards and help build trust around a financial system. They also pave the way for institutional adoption. Unlike some of the more radical elements of the crypto community, the money managers and corporations who have the firepower to really drive prices prefer their markets regulated. It also goes without saying that fraud, money laundering and terrorism financing are serious crimes that need to be prosecuted whenever and however they happen.

  But what is most disturbing about the current crackdown are the ways in which it would make the crypto economy even more regulated than traditional financial services. We can attribute some of the more ridiculous proposals to ignorance, but tellingly, whatever regulators and lawmakers don’t understand about this world always leads to more onerous requirements, not less. Put together, the rules coming out of places like the US and Western Europe turn the crypto-economy into a retired Stasi agent’s dream come true, one where every financial transaction is traced and monitored, and every participating is presumed to be doing something nefarious.

  To wit: forcing crypto exchanges to only allow withdrawals to KYC’ed wallets (as some have proposed) is sort of like forcing ATM machines to only allow cash withdrawals after clients disclose how they plan on spending each $20 bill. Regulating stablecoins like securities is akin to forcing consumers to report every debit card swipe to the IRS. If the requirements stated in the pending STABLE ACT were applied to all payment companies, not just blockchain-based ones, then PayPal and Square would be forced to shut down tomorrow. There are many so-called “alternative” assets where tax reporting is left up to the investor, including the ten trillion dollar real-estate market or the multi-trillion dollar private securities market. But the IRS doesn’t ask you to disclose whether you own any of those assets at the top of the form 1040 the way it now does for crypto assets.

  The officials pushing these draconian measures cite the usual concerns about terrorists and drug dealers, but seldom offer credible data. If you didn’t know any better, and only listened to their grandstanding, then you’d assume that ISIS accounts for a substantial portion of Bitcoin mining and El Chapo is a top contributor to the Sushiswap USDT/DAI liquidity pool. So let it be said once and for all that the vast majority of crypto users, well over 99%, are not doing anything illegal. You know this to be true because you know who these people are. They are your friends, schoolmates and family members. They are Naval Ravikant, Ricardo Salinas Pliego and Spencer Dinwidddy.

  Yes, the pseudonymity of crypto makes it somewhat appealing to certain criminals. But no, the underworld is not about to switch to a kind of money where every single transaction is recorded on a public ledger. Yes, Silk Road used Bitcoin, but no, the world’s meth addicts aren’t loading up on Ledger Nanos. I’ll go out on a limb and state that more drug deals get committed using cash in a single week than has ever been committed with crypto (the annual drug trade, measured in dollars, is bigger than the total market cap of all 7000 cryptocoins, combined). Crypto can also help solve crimes, because unlike duffel bags full of $100 bills, coins have a memory.

  Financial fraud is a fact of life, regardless of the money used or payment method in question. There is close to $30b worth of credit card fraud committed every year, and California just paid out $2bn in fraudulent unemployment claims. You know what wouldn’t make sense? Using these stats to argue that most people who use a credit card or apply for government benefits are doing something wrong.

  The spurious “crypto is for criminals’’ narrative predates Bitcoin. It was also used by government authorities to try to prevent public access to strong cryptography in the early days of digital communication. There was even a time when the US government tried to get domestic hardware manufacturers to install a NSA-designed encryption chip with a built-in back door for government snooping. That proposal, which was eventually abandoned, would have done little to stop the real crooks. They would have just adopted stronger encryption. But it would have made all telecommunication less secure and more likely to be compromised by hackers or North Korea. It would have also killed the American tech sector.

  Trying to keep strong security tools out of the hands of the general public because criminals might also use them is like barring homeowners from installing door locks because doing so might make it a little harder for the cops to raid a drug den. The drug dealers would install the locks anyway, while the rest of us would be less safe. Remember the crippling WannaCry ransomware attack that was sensationalized because the hackers asked to be paid in cryptocurrency? It was built using a Windows exploit developed by the NSA. Had the Feds reported the vulnerability to Microsoft as soon as they discovered it then the attack may have never happened. But the government decided that keeping the entire digital domain less secure to preserve their own back door was more important, with predictable results.

  The risk of criminal use is not the primary motivator behind the current crackdown on cryptocurrency. The real reason the Empire is Striking Back is because my friend was right. The most important soft-power on earth is the power to control money, with a close second being control of the banking system. The governmental monopoly on both is now being threatened. Not by a corporation that can be co-opted or by a foreign government that can be coerced, but by an idea.

  

  An idea that money should be a tool of the people, not a weapon of the state. An idea that saving in the currency of your choice and earning a positive rate of interest is a universal right. An idea that cheap and efficient financial services belong to the poor and unbanked as much as they do the privileged and over-entitled. Bitcoin, DeFi and Dai represent a form of money and an approach to financial services that belongs to the people. That’s why our monetary overlords and the private actors who asymmetrically benefit from their existence are starting to worry.

  If that sounds hyperbolic to you, consider the following: government mandated know-your-client and sanctions requirements, as enforced through the legacy banking system, make it literally illegal for banks to take on hundreds of millions of impoverished or undocumented people as their clients. A disproportionate percentage of those people are minorities. Being locked out of banking forces them to rely on expensive prepaid debit cards or exorbitant remittance services to survive. Stablecoins (such as the proposed Libra/Diem) solve this problem, because anyone with a smartphone can now access digital dollars and transmit them for mere pennies. And yet, no lesser champions of the poor and minorities as congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Maxine Waters are leading the charge against “dollars on the blockchain.” Their proposed regulations and speeches make it obvious they don’t really understand the technology they want to curtail, but once again, those in power default to doing more, not less. Why? Because they feel threatened.

  The timing of the current crypto rally is rather unfortunate for the powers that be. It would be a lot easier for the Federal Reserve to argue that printing money to directly subsidize Apple’s share buyback program is the best way to help the unemployed, or for the European Central Bank to argue that monetizing the majority of the continent’s debt won’t end badly, or for banking regulators to demand even greater surveillance and control over our financial lives if there wasn’t an alternative. Don’t like what’s happening with the Dollar or the Euro? Prefer a financial system that doesn’t lock out poor people? Think your favorite restaurant deserves more of your money than Visa? Concerned about the financial surveillance state? Tired of being treated like a criminal when you’ve done nothing wrong? Well, now there’s a blockchain for that.

  If the stewards of the old guard had any confidence in their increasingly radical Monterey and banking schemes, they would welcome the competition. Why care about Bitcoin or DeFi if you were certain that negative interest rates — a condition that has never existed in the 10,000 year history of money — can cure a virus. That the Treasury officials and central bakers of the world do care shows that deep down inside, they know they are on thin ice. Even the most obtuse bureaucrat must recognize by now that decades of money madness has failed to produce anything other than wealth inequality and populist uprisings. But they’ve painted themselves in a corner, because thanks to their artificially low interest rates and endless bailouts there is more debt than ever, and the mega-corporations and billionaires who governments care most about can’t withstand any kind of reset. So the money madness must continue, and will soon take on a new form.

  As with digital communication, a technology that cannot be corrupted by those in power will soon be co-opted by them. Enter central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. The same central bankers who saw nothing interesting about blockchain a few years ago are now looking into using it to digitize their own currencies. They talk a big game about the need to upgrade money, curtail transaction fees or increase financial inclusion, but the real reason institutions like the ECB are on a crash course with digital euros is because of the additional tools CBDCs enable. Economists are already unhappy about the fact that physical money gives ordinary people a way to opt out of insane policies like negative interest rates. CBDCs will eliminate that option, and by virtue of switching society unto digital cash, introduce centralized control levers that would make Stalin’s economic planners drool with envy. No longer will central bankers have to fiddle with interest rates or the bond market to add stimulus or create inflation. The next time there’s a financial crisis, global pandemic or alien invasion (all things economists believe can be fixed with inflation) then the bureaucrats will just program all of our digital tokens to magically grow! Parisians who go to bed with 100 digital euros in their smartphone wallet will wake up to find 102, and Voilà, instant inflation. Baguette prices will rise, the oceans will recede and there will finally be peace for our time.

  CBDCs will enable monetary control to an extent that has never existed before. If inflation proves not to be a cure all, then governments can try even more radical solutions. How about programming money that sits in people’s wallets for too long to shrink? Or paying digital benefits that must be spent within a week before they disappear? (and further programming those benefits to only be spendable at certain businesses, the executives of which just happen to have close ties to those in power). CBDCs will also make life easier for overly-aggressive cops with little respect for your constitutional rights. They’ll no longer have to bother getting a warrant to get past the legal department of your commercial bank. They’ll just call up the tech department of your central bank.

  But as far as stopping the crypto juggernaut is concerned, co-option won’t work either. CBDCs will only increase the appeal of decentralized money, in the same way that the US government’s proposed surveillance chip accelerated the development of better private encryption tools such as PGP, or how Edward Snowden’s revelations of NSA snooping led to end-to-end encryption being deployed by most commercial chat apps. The drive towards central bank digital currencies is extremely bullish for the likes of Bitcoin and Ether. They add credibility to the underlying blockchain infrastructure while exposing the farce that fiat currency has become. They also normalize technical elements like private keys and digital wallets, making the transition from centralized money to the decentralized variety easier than ever.

  Government attempts at restricting this migration will only backfire. Bitcoin is already being upgraded to improve user privacy, and privacy coins like Monero are starting to rally. The more the Emperor tries to stop us from wearing whatever we want, the more obvious it becomes that he’s buck naked.

  None of this inevitable, and governments the world over still have all the power they need to prevent the coming monetary migration. They can always stop the printing presses, stop enslaving our children with record amounts of debt, stop using the commercial banking system as a foreign policy tool and stop excluding tens of millions of poor and underprivileged people from financial services because a few might do something illegal. But then the stock market would fall a little bit, Trump would tweet a lot and “politically independent” Fed officials might be forced to have their first original thought in thirty years.

  In other words, it ain’t gonna happen. The Empire will continue to strike back, with predictable results. Plan accordingly.

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• Green Spam: Fed Joins Global Group For "Greening" Financial System
  Green Spam: Fed Joins Global Group For “Greening” Financial System
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 19:05

  As if the Fed didn’t have far bigger problems on its plate – like, for example, what it will do when the inflation it has been doing everything in its power to create finally materializes and how it will tighten financial conditions without sparking the biggest tantrum in history and sending risk assets plummeting, on Tuesday morning the following bizarre headline hit terminals around the world:

  • FED FORMALLY JOINS NETWORK FOR GREENING THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

  Immediately there were questions: does this mean the Fed will literally make it rain dollar bills to “green” the financial system, or is this another pathetic, desperate attempt to deflect attention from the Fed’s catastrophic actions that have pushed the world to the verge of collapse and only purchasing $1.3 trillion in assets every hour is preventing an all out collapse?

  Turns out it was the latter, because it turns out that headlines was refering to a Fed announcement according to which the central bank formally joined the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, or NGFS as a less idiotically sounding acronym, as a member. Why is the Fed engaging in the disgusting virtue signaling of epic proportions? This is what it said: 

  By bringing together central banks and supervisory authorities from around the world, NGFS supports the exchange of ideas, research, and best practices on the development of environment and climate risk management for the financial sector. The Board began participating in NGFS discussions and activities more than a year ago.

  “As we develop our understanding of how best to assess the impact of climate change on the financial system, we look forward to continuing and deepening our discussions with our NGFS colleagues from around the world,” said Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell.

  Oh, so now the Fed cares about the environment? That’s so touching. But once we pass the virtue signaling stage, maybe Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell can explain why the Fed’s explicitly enabled the emission of billions of CO2 gasses in the atmosphere as a result of its policy of keeping zombie companies – such as uber-polluting shale corporations – alive by depressing yields so low that any junk bond issue by an insolvent shale was snapped up in millisecond by yield starved managers of other people’s money.

  What’s that? The Fed won’t touch that topic and instead it will point all media inquiries to its noble pursuit of “greening the financial system?” Well, that’s a surprise: one almost wonders if the Fed is joining this group, which also includes the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, just so it has a way to deflect questions that touch on the Fed’s true nature of being – along with its Chinese central bank peer – the biggest enabler of massive global pollution.

  And not just the Fed: one wonders if the true motive of all those billionaires who take their private jets to Davos year after year (their gargantuan carbon footprint clearly exempt from the rules they impose upon ordinary peasants) and virtue signal for days on end how the world has to fight global warming (without ever pointing the finger at their biggest sponsor, China), is likewise not quite as pure. But that’s impossible: it would suggest that the world’s “through leaders”, top politicians and top 0.001% richest are… hypocrites!?

  Perish the thought. But before you do, consider that we have officially hit peak stupid, because in a note published by Bank of America last week, the bank’s chief economist actually asked the dumbest question possible: “Can the Fed address climate change?” Here is her answer:

  

  Well, if the Fed is really committed to “greening”, it can start by hiking rates and making it impossible for shale zombies to keep raising billions in capital year after year, keeping their toxic operations. We won’t be holding our breath.

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• Federal Taxes Are Sending An S.O.S Signal
  Federal Taxes Are Sending An S.O.S Signal
  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/15/2020 – 18:45

  Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist at Alliance Bernstein

  Data on federal tax receipts paints a grim picture of the state of the US economy. Weak tax receipts are sending a signal of economic distress. Congress needs to act with urgency and pass federal support legislation to help broad parts of the economy.

  Federal withheld income tax receipts represent hard contemporaneous data. Tax receipts are current and complete, unlike other economic data series such as household and payroll employment, which are based on a sampling of a small percentage of the working population and businesses.

  The pandemic hit the economy in March, triggering widespread job loss and partial and full closing of many small businesses. In November, 9 months into the pandemic, federal gross withheld income tax receipts were off 13% from a year ago. That is roughly in line with the average decline of 15% recorded over the 9-month span, March through November.

  Checking the tax data records from the US Treasury the decline in tax receipts over the last 9 months is the largest on record. The only comparable period is the 14% drop in 2009 during the Great Financial Recession.

  

  But the decline in withheld tax receipts in 2009 was in part driven by the tax cuts passed by Congress. A report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the 2009 decline in tax receipts consisted of a sharp drop in household income, especially among the top 1 percent earners, and through a reduction in withholding taxes. Recall in 2009, finance, a sector that employs a lot of the top-wage earners lost a record 300,000 jobs, and those that kept their jobs saw a sharp reduction in pay and bonuses.

  In 2020 Congress did not pass any tax cut, and top-wage earners, especially in finance, have seen increases in jobs and income. So the record decline in federal income tax receipts in 2020 is of a different ilk.

  It’s too early to ascertain the main source of the tax receipt collapse in 2020. But I would be willing to bet that in addition to the income loss associated with job loss in travel, entertainment, and recreation, a big chunk is also due to the income losses incurred by small businesses.

  According to the National Federal of Businesses of Independent Businesses, 75% of small firms operate as “unincorporated pass-through entities. That means the small business owners pay the personal tax rate, which is calculated on the business owners total earnings. So taxes paid by small businesses show up alongside workers taxes in federal withheld income tax receipts. That probably helps explain the gap between the 15% decline in tax receipts over the past 9 months and the 7% decline in employment.

  Congress has been negotiating for several months a second federal stimulus package. But political fighting over the scale and who gets support and who doesn’t has so far stymied a bi-partisan deal. I don’t support big government, but the federal government is supposed to step up during a crisis.

  Taxes are sending an S.O.S signal, saying that significant parts of the economy are experiencing severe distress. Anyone in Congress that is on the fence over whether a second stimulus bill is necessary needs to look no further than the tax data.

  Investors have been patient, banking on Congress to build a bridge of fiscal support until medical science develops a vaccine. Medical science has done its job, but Congress has not. If Congress doesn’t act soon the speculative gains in the equity markets could quickly reverse in scale.

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• Trump's Last Chance To Snub The Deep State
  Trump’s Last Chance To Snub The Deep State
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 23:30

  Authored by Ron Ridenour via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Any semblance of rationality during the past dozen years in the United States regarding what the Republican and Democratic parties really stand for is hard to find, other than money, of course…

  

  Political science courses used to teach that Republicans are conservative, oppose labor unionization and decent wages, always ready to war on somebody in the interest of “national security”. While they like to kill foreigners in their wars, especially people of color, they are appalled at the notion that American fetuses should be stopped from growing into human beings.

  Democrats were said to be liberal, maybe even “progressive”, willing to protect workers on the job, allowing unions, using dialogue in diplomacy instead of warring – without good cause, of course. Just ask Bernie Sanders. He voted against the Iraq war, albeit voted for financing it once it began. All the other wars were OK for that so-called “socialist”. In comes the “peace president”. Barack Obama took over Republican Bush’s two wars — Afghanistan and Iraq — and extended them, and even added five more to his cowboy gun belt: bombing Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan. Every Tuesday he sat beside his CIA Director John Brennan, and pushed buttons on who should be droned that day. Never mind the fact that none of these wars were actually declared as such. They were “humanitarian actions” to purportedly help someone get human rights. That they were all unconstitutional did not faze Obama, the supposed lawyer specialist in the constitution.

  Now, some political scientists could make the case that, still and all, Democrats are adherents of bourgeois democracy (some might dare say social democracy). Some contend that Trump has shown himself to be a neo-fascist with strong racist attitudes. Such pundits might find it difficult to explain that while Trump has been in office, the Democrats want to make war against Russia while he wants to do capitalist business with them. OK, both Trump and Democrat opponents want to encircle and threaten war with China, so they do have something in common.

  When Assange/Wikileaks was revealing war crimes during the Obama regime, the president’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, wanted to drone Assange for revealing her communication to rig the Democratic presidential primary in her favor. So, she sat on Brennan’s lap and they did Russiagate. Trump declared, “I love Wikileaks”.

  The Democratic National Committee, backed up by war addicts in the Pentagon and CIA and their sensationalist-seeking friends in the corporate fake news media world, forced Trump to sound tough for war too. He did some droning, and bombing here and there while he also sought to withdraw the U.S. from several of the Bush-Obama wars.

  Lame-duck presidents usually pardon some prisoners, especially those they feel close to, or who have done them favors. Michael Flynn for instance. Trump’s three-week national security advisor talked with Russians. Democrats consider that to be treason. Maybe Democrats don’t know that the United States is not at war against Russia, not yet anyway. Well, they reply, Flynn must have lied to the FBI. Who wouldn’t lie to cops? Name me a politician, especially when they get to be secretary of state, directors of intelligence service and presidents, who don’t lie. Trump’s lies are simply more apparent than Obama’s Harvard voice reveals.

  Remember Mike Pompeo chuckling with his audience at the Texas A&M University, on April 15, 2019:

  “When I was a cadet [West Point] our motto was: You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. [When] I was the CIA director, we lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

  The Trump administration calls the International Criminal Court a kangaroo court. He refuses to allow any U.S. soldier to be brought before the court for purported war crimes in Afghanistan. None of the court investigators or judges will receive visas to enter U.S. territory. Any property or bank accounts they have in the U.S. will be confiscated.

  If any court is a disingenuous kangaroo court it is the extradition trial against Julian Assange, in London. The first magistrate who sat in judgment of possible extradition to the U.S. for alleged violations of its Espionage Act, is a subject in Wikileaks’ revelations. Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, and her husband, James Arbuthnot, who was a defense minister for procurement, have “earned” money from two companies exposed by Wikileaks. During the August-September extradition hearings, Arbuthnot “stepped down” to be supervisor of the new magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser. During three weeks of hearings, Baraitser looked at her laptop to read decisions she had written before defense lawyers had made their arguments, or witnesses had testified.

  I am not the only one hoping that Donald Trump will do the right thing with Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden too. The last president, one Trump hates, first put Assange’s key whistleblower in prison, in isolation, under torture. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years. Obama leaving office with a gesture of “goodwill”, commuted Chelsea’s sentence once she served seven years. She was later jailed for another year for not snitching on Julian.

  Tulsi Gabbard, the only Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 who wasn’t a war hawk, is asking Trump for goodwill. She tweeted tagging Trump, “Since you’re giving pardons to people, please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state,” and named Assange and Snowden for him to drop charges.

  The proposal for Trump to pardon Assange was also endorsed at this recent webinar which included speakers Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Law Professor Marjorie Cohn, Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria.

  If Trump did the honorable thing of halting the persecution of Julian Assange, it would be a blow for freedom and a middle finger to the Deep State including Obama and Clinton. Wasn’t Trump supposed to be the anti-Deep State candidate? Now’s his chance to prove it.

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• Autonomous Drone To Launch Satellites Into Orbit For Space Force  
  Autonomous Drone To Launch Satellites Into Orbit For Space Force  
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 23:10

  Forget air-launching rockets at high altitudes from a conventional aircraft to carry satellites to low Earth orbit because now, a drone can do that. 

  This past week, a startup in Alabama called Aevum unveiled the Ravn X Autonomous Launch Vehicle designed to carry and launch satellites into low-orbit, according to a company press release. 

  As described by Aevum, Ravn X is the “world’s largest Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), by mass, designed to deliver satellites to space as fast as every 180 minutes.” 

  

  Aevum’s customer and mission partner, the U.S. Space Force, will launch Space Force’s ASLON-45 satellite into orbit sometime in 2021.

  Ravn X is a beast of an airframe, weighing in at 55,000 pounds when it’s carrying a rocket with a satellite payload. The drone stands about 18 feet tall, has a wingspan of 60 feet.

  

  Science Magazine reports Jay Skylus, founder and CEO, has already inked about $1 billion in military contracts to launch small satellites quickly into orbit. 

  “Aevum is completely reimagining access to space. The current definition of rocket science doesn’t work for us. With Aevum, everyone will be able to say, ‘It is rocket science and I can do it.’ Aevum is pushing logistics to the next generation with software and automation technologies,” Skylus said. 

  He continued: “U.S. leadership has identified the critical need for extremely fast access to low Earth orbit. We’re faster than anybody. To me, space is merely a vantage point from which the next generation can commit global progress. Through our autonomous technologies, Aevum will shorten the lead time of launches from years to months, and when our customers demand it, minutes. This is necessary to improve lives on Earth. This is necessary to save lives.”

  Video: First Reveal Of Ravn X Autonomous Launch Vehicle

  While this was certainly not mentioned in the press release, Ravn X will likely be used to quickly launch military satellites into space during the next major conflict when space-based war has our adversaries use hypersonic missiles to knock out critical satellites. The ability to deliver satellites into orbit in three hours is game-changing. 

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• Russia Uses Augmented Reality Technologies To Produce Su-57 Fighter Jet
  Russia Uses Augmented Reality Technologies To Produce Su-57 Fighter Jet
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 22:50

  By South Front,

  Russia is using augmented reality technologies on the production line for its Su-57 fifth-generation fighter jet, according to videos that recently surfaced online.

  The videos were allegedly filmed in March 2020 at the United Aircraft Corporation’s Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Plant and show a first person look through an augmented reality headset providing workers with interactive features during the Su-57 assembling.

  The system works with QR codes that are being attached to Su-57 parts and allow specialists to work with the combination of real-world and virtual objects.

  The leaked videos with the augmented reality technology show the previously unrevealed level of the sophistication in the production of Russian fighter jets.

  In comparison, Northrop Grumman employs projectors to highlight parts of the F-35 on the production line and help specialists involved in the fighter jet assembling. Nonetheless, this can hardly been compared with the interactive augmented reality.

  It seems that there are some little gaps in the mainstream media concept of painting Russia the third-world power that can nothing besides selling energy resources and meddling in the US election.

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• What Spending Slowdown: BofA Credit, Debt Cards Show Soaring Retail Sales
  What Spending Slowdown: BofA Credit, Debt Cards Show Soaring Retail Sales
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 22:30

  Ahead of Wednesday’s retail sales report, and in light of the recent sharp slowdown in the labor market and lack of progress on the stimulus front, most pundits expect a disappointing retail sales performance for the month of November, when retail sales are expected to drop by -0.3%, their first contraction since the April covid chaos when they plunged -15%. But is consensus about to be disappointed, especially when the NY Fed itself report that despite stagnant income and earnings expectations, US households (especially those making under $50,000) expect to go on a furious spending spree over the next 12 months?

  For the answer we looked at the latest aggregated credit and debit card data reported by BofA, one of the largest card issuers in the US, which contrary to gloomy expectations, found that consumer demand normalized with total card spending increasing by 5.4% yoy for the 7-days ending December 5th after a large yoy swing the prior two weeks. Importantly, BofA’s measure of holiday sales, defined as core control retail sales ex-groceries, has moved back in line with last year’s trend and on a cumulative basis is up a whopping 19% yoy, reflecting very strong demand for goods items during the holiday season.

  

  So is the myth of the weak US consumer just that? Well, as BofA explains, looking at its card data, retail sales ex-autos were unchanged in November on a MOM seasonally adjusted basis as spending at non-store retailers (online) slowed on a sequential basis due to difficult comparison to October when Prime Day and other competing promotions boosted consumer activity.  And although the % mom may indeed be on the cusp of a contraction, BofA’s Michelle Meyer notes that it doesn’t reverse the exceptional growth previously and leaves the November growth rate at a stellar 9.8% Y/Y, hardly the stuff of imminent recessions.

  

  The big picture shows that while typical “social” activities like transit, restaurants, travel, lodging and entertainment remain depressed, most other categories, and especially spending on electronic products, home improvement, furniture and online sales in general, are soaring:

  

  Some more charts digging into the November card data:

  

  It’s not just BofA’s card data that shows continued surprising consumer strength. For the week ending December 4, the NY Fed weekly economic index declined by 0.5ppt to -2.1% yoy, which is a solid print, and follows last week’s new post-crisis high of -1.6% yoy, with the 4- week average falling to -2.41% from -3.42% yoy in the prior four weeks. Based on this aggregate measure the economy continues to recover:

  

  But while November was a generally good month for spending, in December spending may finally take a major hit, with other indicators suggests there are more soft spots emerging, particularly consumer activity and small business employment. Indeed, as the following high frequency indicators of consumer activity suggest, a double dip may be coming:

  • For the week ending November 28, the week of Thanksgiving, the Dallas Fed’s Mobility Engagement index declined sharply to -50.6, from -39.6 in the prior week. This was the lowest reading since the week ending May 30 and might be due to people spending more time at home because of the Thanksgiving holidays. At a regional level, mobility declined over the week in all four census regions.

  

  • Seated diners on the OpenTable network dropped by 6.9 ppt over the week to -62.6% yoy for the week ending December 6. The decline was broad-based across census regions as colder weather and tighter restrictions on indoor dining continue to translate into less dining out.

  

  • Google mobility measures suggest that consumers continue to pull back on activity outside the home, continuing the trend we had seen prior to the Thanksgiving week distortions. For the 7-day period ending December 4, visits to retail and recreation locations, workplaces and transit stations all declined compared to two weeks ago.
  • Demand for motor gasoline over the Thanksgiving week was little changed from the prior week while jet fuel demand remains down significant from a year ago.

  

  • Movie box office sales did not see the same spike over the Thanksgiving week that they did last year as consumers’ risk aversion and government restrictions on theaters continues to plague the industry.
  • Air travel has unsurprisingly declined sharply following the temporary Thanksgiving boost. The 7-day average through December 7 fell by 22% over the week to 725k, down 66% yoy.

  

  Meanwhile, similar to the rolling indicators of consumer activity, labor market indicators are pointing to slowdown in the jobs recovery with what may soon be a contraction in jobs:

  • After two consecutive weekly increases, Initial jobless claims fell sharply to 712k for the week ending November 28 from 787k previously. Though the decline may be due in part to fewer days of processing owing to the Thanksgiving holiday, and roughly 50% of the drop is from California, which has had notoriously bad data. Continuing claims, meanwhile, declined by 569k over the week to  ,520k for the week ending November 21. We suspect much of this decline is due to recipients exhausting their 26 weeks of standard state benefits.
  • Small business employment continues to show signs of contracting. Data from Homebase on employment and small businesses open resumed its pre-Thanksgiving declining trend. These data continue to suggest that tighter restrictions on activity and voluntary social distancing are translating into small business job cuts.

  

  In summary, while this week’s retail sales will likely be a beat to expectations, especially on a Y/Y basis, don’t expect that to continue with a sharp hit to the economy likely as soon as the December print in one month, when the full extent of the second round of economic shutdowns will hammer the US economy.

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• Convoy Investments: The Bull Market Of Our Lifetime Is Explained By Two Words
  Convoy Investments: The Bull Market Of Our Lifetime Is Explained By Two Words
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 22:10

  Submitted by Howard Wang of Convoy Investments

  Money is a topic I revisit frequently because it has been so central to our markets in the last decade. As money gets printed, the average price of everything goes up with the tide because there are more dollars in the system chasing assets. We must understand how much of an asset’s performance is explained by traditional factors like appreciation of fundamentals and how much is explained by money printing. Below I offer a simple but telling metric.

  In a vacuum the S&P 500 going up 20% this year seems great, but then you realize that money supply has gone up an incredible 51% this year. So on a monetary inflation adjusted basis, the S&P 500 is sitting at a miserable -30% for the year. Of course, all that printed money is going somewhere else, as assets like crypto-currencies and individual stocks far outperform the money printing benchmark.

  Looking further back, S&P 500 has had an incredible run during the QE era started in 2008, clocking in at over 12% annualized return for over a decade. However, this seems much less impressive when we see that money supply in our system has been growing at 13% a year over the same time. On a monetary inflation adjusted basis, S&P 500 actually lost -1% per year since 2008! In other words, the bull market of our life time is explained by two words, money printing.

  

  This hasn’t always been the case, of course. Before the markets became hooked on QE, the S&P 500 used to actually outperform money printing rate by 6% a year.

  

  Stocks and other financial assets have come to be completely dependent on money printing like drug addicts, while the money has largely bypassed the real economy. For some context of the extreme divergence between financial conditions and real economic conditions, below I show the cumulative growth of wages in the US compared to growth of money supply since 1960. Prior to the QE era, money printing would go up and down with the business cycle, but wages grew at the exact same long-term rate as money supply. Since QE started in 2008 and even more so this year, money printing has become completely disassociated from the real economy.

  

  Fast forward a year, as we recover from COVID (fingers crossed), the central banks will lose the political support to keep up the maniacal pace of money printing. The markets may have to remember how to stand up and function by itself again. Will central banks have the resolve to let the markets go through the nasty withdrawal and rehab ahead?

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• Signature Match Audit Finally Ordered In Georgia… But Not Where Late-Night 'Ballot Suitcases' Made Headlines
  Signature Match Audit Finally Ordered In Georgia… But Not Where Late-Night ‘Ballot Suitcases’ Made Headlines
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 21:50

  Exactly 20 days after Georgia Governor Brian Kemp called for (but didn’t order) a statewide signature audit in the wake of CCTV footage of Atlanta poll workers producing suspicious ballots from under a table once election monitors had left, Secretary of State Ben Raffensperger has finally ordered a signature match audit – in the next county over.

  

  In a Monday announcement, Raffensperger said that investigators will audit voter signatures on absentee ballot envelopes in Cobb County, a suburb of Atlanta that voted 56.3% for Biden vs. neighboring (Atlanta’s) Fulton County at 72.6%.

  Which, to state the obvious, begs the question as to why Raffensperger didn’t order the audit where the suspicious late-night ballots were caught on tape? And why didn’t Raffensperger order a signature match audit sooner?

  WATCH: Video footage from Georgia shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from under a table AFTER supervisors told poll workers to leave room and 4 people stayed behind to keep counting votes pic.twitter.com/AcbTI1pxn4

  — Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) December 3, 2020

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

  “Now that the signature matching has been attacked, again and again with no evidence, I feel we need to take steps to restore confidence in our elections,” said Raffensperger during a press conference at the state Capitol. “Starting immediately, we are pulling all of our resources together with GBI to conduct a signature match audit in Cobb County.”

  There it is – to restore confidence, by waiting nearly six weeks after multiple sworn affidavits that fraud occurred were followed by a damning video of election workers wheeling ballots out for a late-night count, putting Biden in the lead. Let’s also not forget that Fulton County election officials lied about a ‘burst pipe‘ in order to evacuate poll watchers for around 90 minutes on Election night.

  The signature audit is scheduled to be completed in two weeks. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the secretary of state’s office will review a statistically significant sample of absentee ballot envelopes from both the primary and general election in Cobb County. Signatures on envelopes will be compared to signatures from when voters registered, either at driver’s license offices or on paper forms.

  …

  Cobb Election Director Janine Eveler said her office will assist with the audit, but it’s awaiting a court order before gathering the necessary materials.

  Eveler said the complaint referenced by Raffensperger came from the June primary. –AJC

  “I’m confident any audit would find our office followed procedures and only counted ballots that were processed correctly,” said Eveler, adding “Even though our resources are already stretched thin by advance voting and preparations for the Jan. 5 runoff, we will help this process move as expeditiously as possible.”

  In response to the signature audit, Georgia GOP runoff candidate Sen. Kelly Loeffler finally found her voice after weeks of silence on Trump’s election challenges – saying it doesn’t go far enough.

  “That’s a start. Only 158 counties left to go,” said Loeffler spokesman, Stephen Lawson,” adding “Full audit or it didn’t happen.“

  Gov Kemp, meanwhile, parroted Raffensperger’s statement, saying “People want to have confidence in the election. That’s why I felt like it would be good to do a signature audit just to bring people peace of mind.”

  In short, we expect signatures to match and the establishment to tout the results of this ‘restoration of confidence,’ while Loeffler scores a few brownie points with Trump supporters for having piped up.

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• What Public Defenders See: "Authorized" For Release, But Still Jailed
  What Public Defenders See: “Authorized” For Release, But Still Jailed
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 21:30

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via taibbi.substack.com

  In Prince George’s County, Maryland, a procedural quirk puts jails, not judges, in charge of pretrial release decisions

  

  Keith Lotridge, Chief Public Defender in Prince George’s County, Maryland, explains the problem.

  “You’re arrested for a crime,” he says. “Within 24 hours, you appear for Initial Bail Review. There’s a charging document, maybe a statement by the alleged victim. On the basis of that, the judge makes a determination on bond.”

  Except the judge doesn’t do that. In Prince George’s County, the system allows for more than just a binary decision on remand or release. Judges may elect to walk through door number three.

  “Pretrial option,” Lotridge says. “The defendant is ‘authorized’ for release, but the decision is left up to the pretrial release unit.”

  Pretrial Services is a subdivision of the jail, a corrections office. Among other things, it’s responsible for supervising defendants through electronic monitoring. Mirroring a process that may take place before bail hearings in other states (like the Criminal Justice Agency review arrestees go through in New York City) the defendant’s suitability for release is scored according to a series of criteria. These may include an address in the county, a telephone number, no pending cases in any other county, no active monitoring in Washington, DC, etc. Assuming the defendant meets enough criteria, he or she can be released.

  Pretrial services are often lauded as an alternative to cash bail, but “the system is flawed,” as Lotridge puts it. If you’re not from Prince George’s County but get arrested there, or you don’t have a landline telephone (who does anymore?), or of course if you’re homeless, you might not pass the “risk assessment” test.

  The main problem, however, has to do with the chronology of the assessment, which allows both judges and the jail to play volleyball with detention decisions.

  In the parody of the bail process described by Lotridge, judges can punt crucial decisions about release to pretrial services. Although the system seems not to have been designed for this purpose — Lotridge is careful to point fingers at the jail system, not the bench — as it currently stands, judges facing thorny decisions can buy the equivalent of a political options contract as an alternative to judgment.

  Read the rest of the report here.

   

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• Chinese Consumers' Dining-Out-Doubts Remain Despite 'Crushing' The Virus
  Chinese Consumers’ Dining-Out-Doubts Remain Despite ‘Crushing’ The Virus
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 21:13

  Having miraculously ‘crushed’ the virus and sparked a record-breaking rebound in PMIs, tonight’s China data dump will confirm if renewed lockdowns elsewhere around the world have upset the massive-credit-impulse-driven recovery in China’s economy.

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Despite a soaring yuan and rising defaults, analysts expected the v-shaped recovery to continue across all tonight’s data…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  So, tonight we get everything but the big kahuna – GDP… However, most eyes will be on retail sales as while the consumer recovery is gaining momentum, it has been slower than expected given the virus was tamed months ago. As a reminder, sales fell short of expectations in October, but should have received a boost in November from the Singles Day bonanza on Nov. 11

  • China Industrial Production YTD YoY ROSE to +2.3% vs +2.3% exp vs +1.8% prior

  • China Retail Sales YTD YoY ROSE & BEAT -4.8% vs -4.9% exp vs -5.9% prior

  • China Fixed Assets Investment YTD YoY ROSE +2.6% vs +2.6% exp vs +1.8% prior

  • China Property Investment YTD YoY ROSE & BEAT +6.8% vs +6.7% exp vs +6.3% prior

  • China Surveyed Jobless Rate IMPROVED to 5.2% vs 5.2% exp vs 5.3% prior

  Visualized, the “V” continues…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bloomberg’s Ailing Tan notes that China’s rebound is largely being supported by a seasonal surge in exports ahead of year-end holidays, combined with a pick-up in domestic consumption and investment. The trade surplus widened to a monthly record in November, while exports jumped by the most since February 2018. China’s retail sales rose 5.0% YoY – still below pre-COVID levels…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  But, looking through the detail on retail sales, as Bloomberg’s Enda Curran points out, it looks like there was some big gains in demand for communication appliances, cosmetics, beverages and jewelry.

  

  Still, restaurant and catering actually declined by 0.6% suggesting perhaps that consumers are still nervous about eating out even with the virus under control.

  Given China’s complete crushing of the virus, the residual anxiety over dining-out should be a rather ominous forewarning for American bars and restaurants… masked or not.

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• New York's Iconic 21 Club To Close "Indefinitely" Due To Covid
  New York’s Iconic 21 Club To Close “Indefinitely” Due To Covid
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 21:00

  By Peter Romeo of Restaurant Business Online

  The 21 Club, the one-time speakeasy that reigned for 90 years as a choice dining spot for New York City celebrities and powerbrokers, has closed “indefinitely” because of the slowdown in sales during the pandemic, the landmark fine-dining institution alerted New York regulators on Friday.

  

  The WARN filing was followed two days later by an announcement that San Francisco’s Cliff House, the 157-year-old icon that generated $14.5 million in sales during 2019, will shut its doors for good as of Jan. 1.

  Many celebrated fine-dining establishments have served their last pat of butter during the pandemic, but few boast the storied pasts of 21 and Cliff House.

  The former started as a joint in Greenwich Village in the ‘20s called the Red Head. Its founders, Jack Kreindler and Charlie Berns, hopped from one location to another in the city until they settled on the current W. 52nd Street site in 1930.

  The place was a full-fledged speakeasy, right out of a movie. The location was designed in anticipation of raids, with levers that would tip bar shelves backward to send bottles down a chute and into city sewers as the police charged in. A secret door led to a hidden wine room that was later put into use as a private dining space for the restaurant’s famed celebrity clientele.

  Frank Sinatra was a regular. So was John F. Kennedy, who donated a toy-sized replica of his PT-109 Navy vessel to hang from the rafters of the establishment’s bar. The basement area’s ceiling is covered in toys and memorabilia donated by patrons.

  Upstairs, banquettes and a dark-wood dining room provided a place for the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Al Jolson, Mae West and Jackie Onassis to dine on classic continental fare in relative privacy, though their visits often figured into gossip-column entries the next day.

  Kreindler and Berns’ descendants would continue to run the place until 1985, making occasional concessions to more modern tastes on the menu and in its décor. Yet it proudly reigned as a piece of old New York; men weren’t allowed to forego neckties until 2009, and the place stocked an array of gaudy sports coats to meet the requirement that males wear jackets. Sneakers were still forbidden at the time of the WARN filing last week.

  The two clans sold the property in 1985 to operators who continued in the same vein. As fine-dining loosened up, the new owners adjusted to changing preferences, but opted to sell the place again in 1995, this time to a company affiliated with the Orient Express, Europe’s famed train line. Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. Morphed into Belmond Ltd., which still owns the restaurant today.

  The original Cliff House, according to its deep lore, might or might not have been built in 1858 with lumber salvaged from a ship that crashed on the rocks below the restaurant’s seaside perch;  the reports have never been verified. Historical records are clear, however, on a restaurant and inn called the Cliff House opening in 1963, or two years before the end of the Civil War. Because the property was located near a race track where the city’s well-to-do enjoyed running their horses, it became a favorite of the local carriage trade in the literal sense of that term.

  It was almost destroyed in 1887 by a dynamite explosion caused by the crash of a ship near the site—only to be completely leveled by a fire seven years later.

  The rebuilt Cliff House would chug along for more than 100 years, adjusting to the times but enjoying its distinctions as one of America’s oldest dining establishments. In 1977, it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, which remains its landlord.

  The restaurant said in a website posting on Sunday that a failure to hammer out a new lease agreement figured into management’s decision to close, though the prime factor cited was a drop in sales due to the pandemic. 

  The landmark announced its closing on its website Sunday.

  The restaurant is ranked Number 71 on Restaurant Business’ranking of the 100 highest-grossing independent restaurants in the United States.

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• The Case For Pardoning Edward Snowden By President Trump: Greenwald
  The Case For Pardoning Edward Snowden By President Trump: Greenwald
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 20:40

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

  A U.S. appellate court in September unanimously ruled that the NSA’s program of mass domestic surveillance was illegal, as well as likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The court, and the broader public, knew about this illegal mass surveillance program created by the NSA only because Edward Snowden, while working inside that agency, discovered its existence and concluded in 2012 that the American public has the right know about what was being secretly done to them and their privacy by their own government.

  

  Upon making the decision to blow the whistle on this security state illegality, Snowden delivered the documents relating to that program and other then-unknown systems of mass online surveillance not by dumping them indiscriminately on the internet or selling them or passing them to foreign governments, but by providing them to journalists (including myself) with The Guardian, The Washington Post and other news outlets. The documents Snowden provided were accompanied by requests to report them responsibly. He thus relinquished the power entirely to make decisions about which documents would and would not be published, leaving those decisions exclusively to news outlets.

  That meant that Snowden himself never made a single document publicly available; every document that was reported was the result of decisions by newsrooms around the world that their publication would be in the public interest and would not endanger innocent people. That method of whistleblowing chosen by Snowden — patterned after the one Daniel Ellsberg used in 1971 to make the public aware of years of lying to the American public by the U.S. Government about the Vietnam War, when he gave the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and asked them to report it in the public interest — enabled journalists to inform the American citizenry about illegal and unconstitutional spying by the U.S. Government in the most responsible manner possible.

  Indeed, the very first program we reported — on June 6, 2013 — was the mass domestic spying program which the appellate court just ruled was illegal and likely a violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. That first article we published revealed a top secret court order under which “the National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers,” and required major telecommunications carriers “on an ‘ongoing, daily basis’ to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.”

  The months of reporting that followed, all singularly enabled by Snowden’s courageous whistleblowing, triggered so much vital public debate about privacy and mass surveillance, and fostered so many legal and technological privacy reforms around the world, that the reporting earned virtually every award journalism has to give, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. For those who have not seen it, the 2014 documentary by Laura Poitras about the work Snowden did with journalists, Citizenfour, which received the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary, shows much of the Snowden story in real time and can be viewed on YouTube; the feature film “Snowden,” available on Netflix and other platforms, separately explores the trajectory which Snowden traversed from enlisted U.S. Army soldier, CIA contractor and NSA expert to one of this generation’s most consequential whistleblowers.

  

  The recent appellate court ruling in U.S. v. Moalin, issued on September 2, emphasized the U.S. surveillance state’s sustained law-breaking. “The telephony metadata collection program exceeded the scope of Congress’s authorization” and “therefore violated that section of [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act],” the court concluded, referring to the 1978 law requiring the government to first obtain warrants before spying on the communications of U.S. citizens. Though its ruling of illegality meant it was unnecessary to rule definitively on the program’s unconstitutionality, the court nonetheless noted that “the government may have violated the Fourth Amendment” with this spying program and warned of the dangers of “the collection of millions of [] people’s telephony metadata, and the ability to aggregate and analyze it.”

  In ruling the NSA’s mass surveillance program illegal, the court noted the indispensable role Snowden played in enabling the protection of Americans’ rights. It was Snowden, explained the court, who “made public the existence of NSA data collection programs.” And, the court added, “Snowden’s disclosure of the metadata program prompted significant public debate over the appropriate scope of government surveillance” and ultimately led to reform: “Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which effectively ended the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata collection program” and which “prohibited further bulk collection of phone records after November 28, 2015.” Moreover, observed the court, it was “news articles in the wake of the Snowden disclosures [which] revealed that the government had been using evidence derived from foreign intelligence surveillance in criminal prosecutions without notifying the defendants of the surveillance.”

  This recent ruling is by no means the first time a court or other official body has declared illegal the spying programs which Snowden exposed. In 2015, CNN similarly reported that “a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the telephone metadata collection program, under which the National Security Agency gathers up millions of phone records on an ongoing daily basis, is illegal under the Patriot Act.” The New York Times reported in 2014 that “an independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only ‘minimal’ benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.” In 2018, The Guardian reported about the British equivalent of the NSA: “GCHQ’s methods for bulk interception of online communications violated privacy and failed to provide sufficient surveillance safeguards, the European court of human rights has ruled.”

  Abuses of power by these agencies continue in full force. More recently, the Justice Department’s Inspector General found in 2019 that the FBI deceived the FISA court with false statements to obtain a warrant to spy on former Trump 2016 campaign official Carter Page. A former FBI lawyer pled guilty to doctoring emails to obtain those spying warrants. A DOJ report found more material errors from the FBI in the spying process in 2019. Late last year, the FISA court itself “issued a strong and highly unusual public rebuke to the FBI” and, the prior year, “found that the FBI may have violated the rights of potentially millions of Americans — including its own agents and informants — by improperly searching through information obtained by the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program.”

  

  That is precisely the abuse Snowden acted to stop. And that is why the people and institutions across the political spectrum who have devoted themselves to protecting the right to privacy, safeguarding internet freedom and combating the abuses of the security state have advocated a pardon or clemency for Snowden: the ACLU, Sen. Rand Paul, The New York Times, Congressmen Matt Gaetz, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, internet pioneer Timothy Berners-Lee, Daniel Ellsberg, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, press freedom groups, and international human rights and civil liberties groups. They have all argued that Snowden deserves clemency or a pardon.

  Meanwhile, so many of the arguments against pardoning Snowden’s, and demanding his lifelong imprisonment or exile, have come from the very security state operatives whose crimes he exposed. That includes John Brennan and James Clapper, along with their hawkish and neocon allies such as Susan Rice and Liz Cheney. And to make their case, these Deep State operatives and warmongers rely upon one demonstrable lie after the next. Indeed, it was their blatant lies in the first place that prompted Snowden to knowingly risk his liberty by revealing the existence of these mass surveillance programs.

  ---

  The first contact Snowden made with a journalist about the possibility of whistleblowing was a pseudonymous email he sent to me in December, 2012. But what solidified with finality his decision to blow the whistle was watching President Obama’s senior national security official, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, commit a felony when he blatantly lied to the Senate on March 12, 2013, by falsely denying — when asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) — that “the NSA collect[s] any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

  When Clapper told that lie, Snowden was holding the documents in his hand that proved that the NSA was doing exactly that which Clapper, in his public testimony, denied that it was doing. In other words, he knew for a fact that the senior national security official in the U.S. Government lied to the American people and the Senate about the mass spying they were conducting against Americans. A person in Snowden’s position acting with just and noble motives would be impelled to disclose, not conceal, the truth — and that’s exactly what Snowden did. The real criminals were security state officials like James Clapper for criminally lying to the Senate and his colleagues in the secret surveillance state who illegally spied on entire populations.

  

  But James Clapper was never prosecuted for lying to the Senate. In fact, he did not even lose his job: he served as Director of National Intelligence for another three years, until the end of the Obama administration. And now this proven liar — like so many security state agents — works inside the corporate media, delivering the “news” for CNN. How can anyone justify wanting to see Edward Snowden rot in prison for life while the real powerful criminal whom he exposed, such as James Clapper, go free and thrive? Who besides as craven authoritarian would regard that as a just outcome?

  ---

  Speaking of proven liars, those who oppose a pardon of Snowden do so by invariably lying about him and what he did. Why would they do that? It’s because the reality is that he acted honorably and for noble ends. So they have to manufacture falsehoods to justify their demands that a hero be punished.

  Take, for instance, the completely fabricated accusations voiced Sunday night by Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the former Vice President and key ally of pro-war House Democrats in blocking Trump’s plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Germany. To justify her opposition to a Snowden pardon, she just lied outright:

  

  That Snowden “handed over US secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence” is every bit as much of a lie as those told by her dad in 2002 about Saddam’s nuclear weapons stockpiles and alliance with Al Qaeda. She just manufactured this accusation out of thin air. Nobody can ever prove a negative — therefore, nobody can proffer dispositive proof that Snowden (or, for that matter, Liz Cheney) did not turn over U.S. secrets to the governments in Beijing and Moscow — but the burden of proof is on those hurling accusations of this sort to produce evidence for it, and she has none. That’s because none exists.

  But that does not stop Endless War advocates like Liz Cheney from saying it anyway — precisely because Liz Cheney is a pathological liar who will say anything to manipulate the public, just like her father taught her to do. The same is true of former CIA Director and proven pathological liar John Brennan. On Monday, he echoed the same false allegation as Liz Cheney did, in order to defend James Clapper and attack Senator Paul for advocating a pardon for Snowden:

  Jim Clapper has had a lifetime of dedicated & selfless service to America.

  Edward Snowden betrayed his country, providing exceptionally sensitive intelligence to China & Russia.

  You consistently demonstrate utter ignorance of U.S. national security.

  You disgrace the Senate. https://t.co/FO0FmmJZ8x

  — John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) December 14, 2020

  If there is any lesson we ought to have learned over the past two decades, it is that nobody should believe the claims of national security operatives without substantial evidence being presented. For anyone who wants to claim or believe that Snowden handed over secrets to Russia and/or China, you should demand evidence first. Where is it?

  What makes this claim even more dishonest is that it exploits the fact that the U.S. Government forced Snowden, against his will, to stay in Russia. Snowden’s original plan, as has been amply documented, was to fly from Hong Kong after providing us with the archive and reviewing key documents, then transit through Moscow on his way to South America, where he intended to seek asylum in Ecuador or Bolivia.

  But he was trapped in the Moscow International Airport because the U.S. State Department under John Kerry invalidated his passport while he was in transit, and then-Vice President Joe Biden threatened and coerced every other country considering offering him asylum or allowing him safe passage to South America (as he did with Cuba, which withdrew its offer of safe transit). A 2013 NPR headline tells part of that story: “Biden Asks Ecuador To Deny Snowden Asylum.” That was before he obtained asylum in Russia, something he was forced by Obama officials and Biden himself to do.

  So U.S. officials first prevented Snowden from leaving Russia, and then, with such audacity and dishonesty, have for years exploited the fact that he’s in Russia to manipulate public opinion and smear him as a Kremlin agent. And, as is true for all such allegations that a U.S. citizen is working for Moscow, the accusation is tossed out routinely without any evidence, because there is none.

  Then there’s the allegation that Snowden caused harm to national security or to innocent people, a claim that has been made against every whistleblower for decades who exposes corruption and criminality by the security state. Just as is true of the claim that Snowden sold or provided secrets to the governments of Russia and China, one should not even consider accepting the truth of this claim absent evidence to corroborate it.

  Where is this evidence? Who was harmed by this NSA reporting? Not a single example or piece of evidence has ever been furnished in response to those questions, with the defenders of NSA opting to just repeat the accusation over and over in the hope that people will assume that it is true by virtue of is repetition.

  But even if such harm could be established, the argument depends upon a complete distortion of the process used by Snowden to blow the whistle on Deep State criminality. Again, there is not one document from the NSA archive that was published because Snowden chose for it to be published. He used the opposite method for whistleblowing: recognizing that he should not have the power as a single individual to make choices about which documents should and should not be published, he instead gave the archive to journalists and asked that we make those decisions editorially, in as responsible a manner possible, guided by the standard journalistic public interest assessment.

  That means that if there were documents that people believe should not have been disclosed, the choice to publish those documents rested with the top editors at leading media outlets — The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News and other outlets around the world — not with Snowden, who was never even consulted on these choices. Once Snowden realized the magnitude of criminality, deceit and corruption inside the security state, he concluded that the. most just course was to turn over to journalists a massive archive regarding these programs, so that it was not up to him to curate in advance which documents should be seen by the public, but instead leave it to experienced journalists to make those determinations.

  Then there’s the claim — based on a substantial set of falsehoods — that Snowden somehow acted improperly by fleeing the U.S. to seek refuge in Russia rather than submitting himself to the U.S. justice system in order to “make his case”, a falsehood-drenched allegation voiced most memorably by Obama national security adviser Susan Rice to Charlie Rose in 2014:

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  The claim that Snowden should have or could have come back to the U.S. to convince a jury that what he did was justified is nothing short of a lie. Under the archaic statute which the Obama administration aggressively used to prosecute more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined — the Espionage Act of 1917 — someone is automatically guilty if they provide classified information to a person who is unauthorized to receive it (including a journalist), and they are absolutely barred even from raising a “justification” defense in court.

  In other words, as Susan Rice well knows, Snowden would not be able to return to the U.S. and try to convince a jury of his peers that what he did was justified because the law under which they chose to prosecute him does not allow a defendant even to raise that as a defense. Instead, this old statute ensures a rigged process where a guilty verdict is all but inevitable. That’s precisely why Obama officials and security state operatives use this 103-year-old law — originally designed by Woodrow Wilson to criminalize dissent from U.S. participation in World War I — against whistleblowers who expose their crimes not by acting with foreign governments but with journalists.

  Then there’s the reality that — as Daniel Ellsberg argued in a Washington Post op-ed about Snowden’s leaving the U.S., headlined “NSA leaker Snowden made the right call” — those who are now accused of endangering national security have essentially no chance of obtaining a fair trial in the U.S. “The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago,” Ellsberg wrote, adding:

  I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Chelsea Manning, incommunicado.

  He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during her three years of imprisonment before her trial began recently. . . .

  Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly. More than 40 years after my unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, such leaks remain the lifeblood of a free press and our republic. One lesson of the Pentagon Papers and Snowden’s leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just as power corrupts….

  But Snowden’s contribution to the noble cause of restoring the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution is in his documents. It depends in no way on his reputation or estimates of his character or motives — still less, on his presence in a courtroom arguing the current charges, or his living the rest of his life in prison. Nothing worthwhile would be served, in my opinion, by Snowden voluntarily surrendering to U.S. authorities given the current state of the law.

  The idea that you must meekly submit to the world’s most aggressive Prison State, where the rules are made by the very high officials whose crimes you exposed, is authoritarian dreck.

  Snowden well knew, when he decided to inform his fellow citizens of these systems of mass surveillance, that there was a very high probability that he would end up in a maximum security U.S prison for decades if not the rest of his life. That’s precisely what made Snowden’s actions so courageous: how many people would be willing to make that sacrifice? But that does not mean Snowden has some moral obligation to help an unjust state keep him in a cage for life out of vindictive vengeance because he exposed their crimes.

  ---

  President Trump has, on two occasions, indicated that he was considering the possibility of pardoning Snowden. A pardon is not only just on its own terms but would also be an expression of exactly the reason the U.S. Constitution vests the unilateral pardon power in the U.S. President: to prevent the abuse of the justice system for vindictive ends or to shied abuses of official power by those who operate in the dark (my arguments for why the ongoing attempted extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange is also a massive abuse of power have been set forth in prior articles as well as in a show I produced on the topic).

  If Trump follows through on a pardon of @Snowden, it’d be a huge victory against CIA/FBI/NSA abuses.

  Everyone from @RandPaul, @MattGaetz & @TulsiGabbard to @ACLU, @BernieSanders & @NYTimes have advocated this.

  The only ones angry would be Brennan, Clapper, Comey & Susan Rice. pic.twitter.com/wZR68xZdCB

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 13, 2020

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  Even if you’re someone who believes that Snowden ought to be punished in some way — and I am not — he has been. Seven years in exile, separated from your friends, family and fellow citizens, in a country in which you never chose to live and to which you have no connections, is a serious deprivation. That is particularly true now that Snowden’s long-time partner, his American wife Lindsay Mills, announced that the couple is expecting their first child in January, a son who will automatically be a U.S. citizen and who should have the right to live with both of his parents in his country of citizenship.

  For decades, it was a staple of left-wing politics that the CIA and the secret security state, long referred to by scholars as the Deep State, pose a grave threat to core democratic values and constitutional rights. Over the last five years, beginning with the 2016 election, the Trump movement and Trump himself has seen up close and personal how easily and casually those powers are abused, and how destructive are the results.

  A pardon of Edward Snowden would be one of the greatest blows against Deep State abuse of secrecy and spying power in decades: probably the most significant act since President Eisenhower’s 1961 warnings in his Farewell Address about the growing anti-democratic dangers of the “military industrial complex” or, at the very least, the mid-1970s reforms of the intelligence community.

  A pardon of Snowden by Trump would prompt bipartisan cheering across the U.S. and would engender support globally across the ideological spectrum. The only ones angered by it would be exactly those people — John Brennan, James Clapper, Jim Comey, Susan Rice — whose ongoing ability to abuse their spying power against the U.S. population depends upon their vindictive use of the justice system to destroy the lives of those who reveal their crimes.

  Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald’s substack here.

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• Biden Lashes Out At Trump In Post-Electoral College Speech
  Biden Lashes Out At Trump In Post-Electoral College Speech
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 20:26

  Update (2010ET): Joe Biden lashed out at President Trump Monday night, saying in a 14-minute speech following his win in the electoral college that Trump’s ongoing challenges to the 2020 election are “an unprecedented assault on our democracy,” and that claims of widespread fraud are “baseless” – despite the fact that the Supreme Court elected not to review the merits of various cases.

  Biden: “The [Supreme] Court sent a clear signal to President Trump that they would be no part of an unprecedented assault on our democracy … Trump was denied no course of action he wanted to take … respecting the will of the people is at the heart of our democracy.” pic.twitter.com/0w8F955bwZ

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 15, 2020

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  “Every single avenue was made available for President Trump to contest the results. He took full advantage of each and every one of those avenues. President Trump was denied no course of action he wanted to take,” Biden added – also slamming the 17 GOP Attorneys General and 126 GOP Congressmembers who challenged the results of the election as well.

  Biden implied Trump has both abused – and won’t let go of power, saying “In America, politicians don’t take power — the people grant it to them,” adding “The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know that nothing — not even a pandemic or an abuse of power — can extinguish that flame.”

  Joe Biden: “The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago, and we now know nothing — not even a pandemic or an abuse of power — can extinguish that flame.” pic.twitter.com/2wn5u6UcrW

  — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 15, 2020

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  .@JoeBiden’s phlegmatic speech responding to the Electoral College vote is angry and divisive. Instead of reaching out to @realDonaldTrump, or his voters (except with boilerplate), he continued arguing the case. This will not be a unifying presidency. Joe doesn’t have it in him.

  — Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) December 15, 2020

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  Joe Biden sees himself as an aristocrat above the peasants and their petty squabbles https://t.co/33eySlXPCH

  — Dueling Elector Poso (@JackPosobiec) December 15, 2020

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  Watch the entire speech below:

  *  *  *

  Update (1735ET): Joe Biden officially secured enough electoral votes on Monday to claim victory, despite President Trump’s ongoing refusal to concede in light of wide-ranging claims of election fraud.

  Biden’s win was secured after California’s 55 electors put the former Vice President over the 270 mark needed to win.

  

  *  *  *

  Update (1717ET): Joe Biden will address the nation at 7:30 p.m. ET following today’s Electoral College voting, in which he captured electors in all six battleground states in which President Trump and his supporters contested the November election.

  

  As Bloomberg notes, “The 16 electors in Michigan voted for Biden, following the 63 votes cast for him earlier in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden will have enough electoral votes to be officially declared president-elect when members have cast 270 ballots, which is expected after California votes. Congress will officially count the votes on Jan. 6.”

  The votes come as Trump and his allies continue to contest the results, which Trump attorneys and supporters have suggested are fair game until January 6th.

  On Monday, Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer tweeted that Republican electors in the state also met at the state capitol to cast votes for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence because a Trump campaign lawsuit contesting the state’s results is still pending. Former U.S. Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania said the Trump electors in the commonwealth also held “conditional” votes in case a court were to overturn the results.

  The idea is to send a rival slate of electors for Congress to consider. But there’s only one certified slate of electors that Congress can recognize from a state, and their move is “not going to work as a matter of law,” said Edward Foley, a professor and director of an election-law program at Ohio State University who has studied disputed elections. –Bloomberg

  Biden received 306 electoral votes from the 25 states and the District of Columbia, while Trump captured 232 electoral votes from the 25 states he won.

  *  *  *

  For all the riveting action, watch live below as NBC News takes us throughout the country’s electoral votes.

  *  *  *

  On Monday, members of the Electoral College will gather throughout the day in their respective states to cast their official ballots for president. Most states will offer livestreams to watch the proceedings, which will take place at locations chosen by state legislatures – typically the state’s capitol. Exceptions include Delaware – whose electors will meet in a gym, and Nevada – which will be the only state to hold its meeting virtually this year, according to the New York Times.

  

  Electors will use paper ballots to cast their votes for president and vice president.

  And while 33 states require their electors to choose whoever won the state’s popular vote, 17 other states don’t “bind” their electors – who can vote for whomever they choose. If they cast a vote for another candidate than the one which won the state, they are considered ‘faithless electors.’ In 2016, two faithless electors didn’t vote for Trump, while five faithless electors didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. The seven electors were from Hawaii, Texas and Washington State.

  Electors typically have a close relationship with the candidates or politicians in their states. For example, in 2016 Democratic activist Ed Buck – a deep-pocketed political donor since charged with three counts of battery after multiple drugged black men were found dead in his apartment – was selected for the electoral college, likely by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), his district’s congressman who accepted political donations from the accused bundler.

  

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter was also a California elector in 2016.

  What happens after the electors meet?

  The votes are officially counted in Congress during a joint session held in the House chamber on Jan. 6, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding over the affair. Pence will open the certificates, organized in alphabetical order by state, and present them to four “tellers” – two from the Senate and two from the House, who count the votes. Once Joe Biden receives at least 270 votes, as is expected to be the case, Pence will announce the result. The session cannot end until the count is complete and publicly declared, at which point the election is officially decided.

  Can members of Congress block the process?

  Once the result is read on January 6, members of Congress will have one opportunity to lodge complaints, which must be made in writing and signed by at least one Senator and one member of the House. The objection would then be debated by each chamber separately, with each member of Congress allowed five minutes to speak. The debate has a hard stop after two hours, after which each body will vote on whether to reject the state’s results, according to the Times.

  The Times also notes that some Trump allies are “already planning objections,” which should “make for good political theater” but would be unlikely to change the outcome of the election. 

  Does this end Trump and his allies’ fight to challenge the election?

  According to Trump Campaign attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, “The only fixed day in the U.S. Constitution is the inauguration of the President on January 20 at noon,” suggesting that they will exhaust every legal option to overturn the results based on accusations of widespread fraud across several key states.

  That said, Ellis had previously called Jan. 6, vote counting day, a date of “ultimate significance.”

  That said, last month Trump told reporters that if Biden is elected by the Electoral College, Trump would leave office.

  “Certainly I will, and you know that,” he said, adding “I will and, you know that,” though he also said “It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud.”

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• NJ Gym That Battled Gov Murphy's Closure Edict Faces $1.2MM In Fines
  NJ Gym That Battled Gov Murphy’s Closure Edict Faces $1.2MM In Fines
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 20:20

  A pair of New Jersey gym owners who have repeatedly defied the “tyrannical” edicts of Garden State Gov. Phil Murphy, who closed gyms as part of the state’s COVID-inspired restrictions, told Fox that they have racked up more than $1.2MM in fines for refusing to adhere to the state’s COVID-19-related restrictions.

  The co-owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, who have appeared in the past on air with Tucker Carlson and others on Fox as libertarians and conservatives opposed to the strict lockdowns rallied to their cause, said that the state and the governor have “thrown everything he possibly could to shut us down.”

  

  They’ve also been given roughly 60 citations, and both have been arrested. Every single day they open their gym in violation of the state order, the team rack up another 16K in fines.

  “He has arrested my partner and I, given us over 60 citations, some of them criminal. He fines us $15,497.76 per day for every day we’re open,” Smith said during an interview. “Our fines are totaling over $1.2 million, but every single day, Frank and I open our gym.”

  New Jersey allowed gyms to reopen (with the caveat that they  must observe restrictions and capacity limits) on Sept. 1.

  Atilis, however, defied the state’s shutdown orders by opening its doors at the end of May, launching the legal battle between the state and gym that has been the subject of national speculation and coverage.

  During the interview, Smith claimed none of the state’s COVID-19 cases have been linked to his gym, while the gym has told its members they can wear masks when they work out, thought it doesn’t require them to do so, as the state’s rules mandate, he noted.

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• Treasure Hunter Stays 5 Years In Jail Rather Than Reveal Location Of Gold Coins Worth Millions
  Treasure Hunter Stays 5 Years In Jail Rather Than Reveal Location Of Gold Coins Worth Millions
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 20:00

  In a bizarre legal saga which sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie script, a former deep-sea treasure hunter has remained in an Ohio jail for a fifth year for contempt of court after refusing to tell the court where a haul of previously sunken and recovered treasure is located that’s said to be worth millions of dollars.

  Scientist and deep-water explorer Tommy Thompson is keeping mum as to the precise whereabouts of 500 gold coins that in 1857 went down with a ship called the “S.S. Central America” off the coast of South Carolina. 

  The coins that the court is inquiring about are believed to be worth at least up to $4 million, part of a much larger haul from what was once dubbed the “world’s richest shipwreck”. Thompson is still at center of a controversy which has raged for decades. Prior reports have estimated that additional gold he could have hidden away in his possession to be worth much more.

  

  Here’s how it all began:

  The steamship’s sinking off the Carolinas in a hurricane with 105 mph winds stands as this country’s worst passenger ship peacetime disaster.  Of the 578 aboard, 425 perished.

  It also has been called the world’s richest shipwreck because it carried 3 tons of gold commercially shipped from the California Gold Rush, and perhaps an equal amount being carried by the passengers. There were rumors of another 15 tons of gold in a secret Army shipment.

  A team of scientists and engineers with specially designed equipment began after the shipwreck site was located in the late 1980s to work on recovering the ship’s treasures, a nearly impossible feat:

  They were the engineers, technicians and owners of high-end sonar equipment who were promised a small share of the wreck’s bounty in return for their work, which found the Central America in 1988, some 160 miles off the South Carolina coast, 7,200 feet down on the ocean floor.

  It took nearly 30 years of litigation and reams of legal documents before a court settlement got them at least a portion of what they were owed.

  In total well over $50 to $60 million worth of gold was brought up, according to previous reporting and statements:

  Over 10,600 gold coins, 577 gold ingots, over 14,000 silver coins, and over 100 pounds of gold dust and nuggets were recovered, according to Bob Evans, chief scientist in both expeditions.

  But Thompson, one of the key team leads on the efforts that recovered the gold has allegedly held on to some of it all these years even though he was already paid by investors for his work in recovering it.

  

  Thompson’s legal woes were compounded, and then he flat refused to reveal where the gold that allegedly remained in his possession was located, before going on the run:

  Thompson took the money but never returned the gold, leading the investors to sue him.

  After failing to appear in court in 2012 to disclose the coins’ whereabouts, Thompson lived in Florida in hiding for three years before U.S. marshals tracked him to Boca Raton and arrested him.

  Thompson pleaded guilty for his failure to appear and was sentenced to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but he had to answer questions in closed-door sessions about the coins, which the government estimated to be worth $2-4 million.

  Below via AP file: “This 1989 file photo shows gold bars and coins from the S.S. Central America, a mail steamship, which sunk in a hurricane in 1857, about 160 miles off the North Carolina coast. Columbus-America Discovery Group, owned by fugitive treasure hunter Tommy Thompson, argues that it has the exclusive rights to the treasure from the shipwreck.”

  

  Thompson’s defense has been that he doesn’t actually know where it is. “Your honor, I don’t know if we’ve gone over this road before or not, but I don’t know the whereabouts of the gold,” Thompson said during a 2017 hearing. “I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom.”

  But in 2018 he admitted that he “doesn’t know” where precisely they are because “I put them in an offshore trust. The trustee can put them anywhere he wants,” as he told a judge. “The judge ordered him back to prison until his memory improved,” as The Seattle Times later wrote.

  But investors who feel cheated out of the remaining haul from the historic find believe he’s waiting out the legal clock and will try and cash in the moment he gets released from his confinement.

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• Hotels Consider Requiring All Guests To Have COVID Vaccination
  Hotels Consider Requiring All Guests To Have COVID Vaccination
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 19:40

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Hotels have now joined airlines in considering whether or not to mandate that all guests have proof of COVID vaccination before being allowed to stay.

  

  Several airlines have already announced plans to make the shot a compulsory condition of flying. According to anecdotal evidence, hotels and other forms of accomodation could follow suit.

  A reader of the LockdownSkeptics website reported that a hotel in Scotland which offers wildlife holidays is preparing to adopt the no vaccine, no service policy.

  “Should a vaccination programme be rolled out in the next few months, then it is likely we will require all guests to have been vaccinated before arrival,” states an item in the hotel’s newsletter.

  “2020 has undoubtedly have been a hard year for the hotel and they have already put in place a wide range of COVID-19 related “safety” measures which will have had significant cost and massively reduced their occupancy rates,” states the reader.

  “They will be balancing the requirements of both the Government and their customers, and, in respect of the latter, they clearly envisage that their customers will expect the highest possible levels of “safety” and will, on the whole, regard this vaccination requirement positively!”

  “I fear that, whatever the science and whatever Government might say, we are all going to be forced inexorably into a situation where “Vaccination Certificates”, de facto if not de jure, become necessary to lead even a reasonable life in the months (years?) to come.”

  As we highlighted earlier, according to Bill Gates, coronavirus restrictions will continue into 2022 and bars and restaurants will remain closed for four to six months.

  UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock also told MPs today that a “new variant” of COVID had been discovered, meaning the vaccine currently in production may not even be effective as the virus continues to mutate.

  *  *  *

  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.

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• Another Paradox: Consumer Spending Expectations Surge, Despite Dismal Income, Earnings
  Another Paradox: Consumer Spending Expectations Surge, Despite Dismal Income, Earnings
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 19:20

  Call it the latest economic paradox.

  Despite widespread stories of doom and gloom about the state of US consumer finances once the fiscal stimulus bill expires on Dec 31, the latest NY Fed survey of consumer expectations unexpectedly shows that US consumers have little intention of slowing down their spending. In fact, and very paradoxically, despite depressed and flat income and earnings growth expectations, with median one-year ahead expected earnings growth at 2.0% for fifth consecutive month and expected income growth barely little changed at 2.14% …

  

  … consumers’ 1-year ahead spending growth expectations jumped to 3.73% over the next 12 months in November – the highest level in more than four years, not only up from the 3.06% in the previous month but a whopping 33% more than the 2.8% reported last November, making this the biggest Y/Y increase in expected spending in series history.

  

  This bizarre increase took place even as labor market signals were mixed: although the mean perceived probability of losing one’s job in the next twelve months decreased to 14.6% in November from 15.5% in October, expectations that the unemployment rate will be higher one year from now rose to 40.1%, the first increase since July.

  

  Another paradox: the jump was driven primarily by respondents with annual incomes under $50,000, the New York Fed said, although most income groups indicated a higher expectations to spend in the next year.

  

  And yet another paradox: survey respondents boosted their plans for spending even as they reported greater pessimism about their personal finances overall in the year ahead, as well as an expectations that taxes will be generally higher in the coming year.

  

  There’s more: whereas in April, or just after the covid crash, expectations for higher stocks surged to the highest on record boosting overall spending expectations, since then they continued to slide, and in November dropped to just 38.54% from 40.8% in October, the lowest reading since August 2019.

  

  And as expectations for higher interest rates on savings accounts continue to hibernate…

  

  …  one wonders: why all this spending optimism. Well, with a little digging, the answer presents itself and it is once again the dirtiest four letter word of all: US consumer expect government debt levels will continue to soar to pay for future fiscal stimulus plans and thus funding all of these incremental purchases that are already factored in, even without income or earnings growth.

  

  As the NY Fed puts it, the latest survey “shows some moderation in expectations regarding year-ahead changes in welfare and unemployment benefits, with the average likelihood of further expansions falling to 32 percent and 31 percent in August from 39 percent and 53 percent in April, respectively. Despite the decline, expectations of continued program expansion or benefit-level increases remain considerably higher than pre-COVID-19 levels.“

  In other words, US consumers have finally figured out what US corporations figured out long ago: in this world, the only source of purchasing power (and consumer happined) is debt. And with the arrival of a “jubilee” administration that is likely to discharge much of the accumulated debt, one can see why US households – drowning in debt and eager for more – are so optimistic about their spending plans.

  And just to confirm that aside from spending the financial health of US consumers is absolutely dismal, the survey also found that 3-year inflation expectations rose 0.12% to 2.82%, gasoline prices are expected to rise 5.21%; food prices to rise 5.12%; medical costs to rise 7.07%; the price of a college education to rise 5.24%; rent prices to rise 5.48%. Finally, a larger percentage of consumers – 10.93% vs 9.3% in prior month – expect to not be able to make minimum debt payment over the next three months. That’s ok though, because if the debt amount is big enough, the creditor will have no choice but to agree to restructure it.

  Source: NY Fed

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• Doug Casey On What Happens When The Suspension On Evictions Ends
  Doug Casey On What Happens When The Suspension On Evictions Ends
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 19:00

  Via InternationalMan.com,

  International Man: Earlier this year, CDC was able to extend its powers unprecedentedly by issuing a nationwide suspension on evictions.

  What’s your take on how a public health agency grew to be in the position of telling property owners what they can do on their properties?

  

  Doug Casey: Health paranoia is an excellent method of control. People put their health above almost everything. I’m only surprised it hasn’t been used as a lever up until now. It’s part of a trend toward mass control that has started in earnest early in the 20th century and has been increasing exponentially over time.

  First was the income tax. If you didn’t comply, it was not only seen as a legal crime but also promoted as a moral sin. The prohibition of liquor from 1919 to 1933 got under way as a moral failing and then was turned into a crime. It’s the same with the prohibition of some drugs; Nixon started that hysteria in 1971, and it was put on steroids, so to speak, by Nancy Reagan. Next came the war on terror, especially since 2001. These were all promoted with both legal and moral taboos. Everybody is supposed to line up with them shoulder to shoulder, like in one of those old socialist realism propaganda posters the Soviets and the Nazis specialized in. The public is supposed to self-police under the supervision of the authorities, like they did in Salem in 1692.

  Public health is the current impetus for mass hysteria and paranoia. All of these things impinge upon your right to ownership of private property, including your own body, which is the primary form of property. The public health angle is potentially the most dangerous and invasive one from the viewpoint of freedom. Busybodies—the type of people who work for and actively support the State—always need an excuse to control others en masse. This pandemic provides an excellent template for the future.

  Wearing a mask—whether or not you want to or think it helps—isn’t just about virtue signaling. It also shows whether you’re willing to do as you’re told—whether you’re “politically reliable”, as the communists like to say. It’s like wearing the Party’s armband.

  In fact, wearing a mask and social distancing in stores, bars, restaurants, and gymnasiums shouldn’t be up to the government. It should be strictly up to the property owner. Decisions that the individual makes regarding his own health are his own; it’s between the individual and his doctor.

  I have no problem if the owner of a bar or restaurant wants to keep me out if I’m not wearing a mask. It’s his property. He makes the rules. I can go elsewhere, where it suits me better. It’s an affront and an imposition on restaurateurs and storekeepers to be told what they and their guests can and cannot do.

  This isn’t, incidentally, about a technical or medical problem. The value of wearing masks, social distancing, and obeying quarantines and lockdowns is questionable at best, as Sweden has shown. The real problem is ethical and that there’s no moral pushback from either the public or the property owners. People are arguing on strictly technical grounds: “Yes, you have a right to tell me what to do, and even close my business. But you shouldn’t because it’s not ‘fair’, or your solutions aren’t optimal”. They accept the busybody’s premises. The argument is over before it even begins. Americans are truly acting like whipped dogs.

  Whether the masks, distancing, and the rest of it work or not, isn’t the point. My own belief is they’re at best of marginal value and may well be counterproductive. But that’s beside the point. The point is that it’s immoral and destructive for the State to tell people how to relate to each other.

  As for the CDC, it’s just another government bureaucracy concerned with putting itself in the limelight, gaining more power, enhancing its budget, and the number of its employees—and making Fauci, a lifelong but previously insignificant swamp creature, into an international celebrity.

  International Man: Currently, over 18 million Americans are currently behind on their mortgage or rent payments.

  That temporary suspension on evictions ends December 31st. What do you think will happen next?

  Doug Casey: Just as with the financial markets, the government has no alternative but to “do something.” They will—they have to—print more money to keep the rotten house of cards from collapsing on itself.

  The Democrats have already said that they want to increase the next stimulus to over $3 trillion. The fact that most of the last round of stimulus was either overtly wasted, went to cronies, or can’t be accounted for, is completely lost on them. They recognize that unless they give a lot of money directly or indirectly to the hoi polloi, there are going to be millions of them on the streets.

  Approximately 11 million renters and 4 or 5 million mortgagees are now in forbearance. They’ll be kicked out of their houses and apartments come January 1, barring a huge bailout. Where are those people going to go?

  If Obama had made good on his ridiculous promise about shovel-ready projects, there’d be a lot more bridges that they could camp out under. But he didn’t. They have a real problem on their hands. Millions of people have been living above their means and have no savings. At this point, if they let landlords and banks kick all those people out, a number of things will happen. Residential property prices will collapse. Millions of people will be scrambling for somewhere to live. Lots of banks and landlords would go bust.

  The longer the government kicks the can down the road, the bigger the inevitable bust will be. The stimulus money will have to continue because Biden doesn’t want it all to come unglued on his watch. The State is not only going to have to pay individuals and business owners that their idiotic policies have busted. They’ll be subsidizing banks, landlords, and utility companies—because you can’t live in a house or an apartment without water and electricity.

  It’s worse than that because even if you cover the bare essentials, there’s no money leftover for maintenance. There will be millions of buildings across the country suffering from deferred maintenance. The South Bronx, East St. Louis, and Baltimore will be replicated across the country.

  And no one’s talking about how to cover the real estate taxes due on these properties. Many local governments are already bankrupt. Their expenses are going way up even while their tax income collapses. The whole country has painted itself into a corner at this point. That’s what happens when you adopt a collectivist economic policy, as the Soviets, the Chinese, and scores of other countries have discovered.

  I’m not sure how they’re going to get out of it because the economy itself has just started to collapse. Of course, they’ll print up more money because they see that as a solution when it’s actually a cause. It’s going to worsen the collapse.

  International Man: For the tens of millions behind on their mortgage and rent payments, will their back rent and overdue payments ever be repaid?

  Doug Casey: The government will not only have to pay the rent for the future, but it’s going to have to cover landlords’ previously unpaid rent—if they don’t want lots of bankrupt landlords and banks.

  It will lead to a guaranteed annual income, which they’ve been thinking about for some time. In some cases, the government will take over properties. It’s nothing new. Most major US cities already have significant public housing. None of it’s good, but most isn’t as bad as Cabrini-Greene or Pruitt-Igoe.

  Who knows where this daisy chain will lead? With all the unemployed people who can’t pay their rent, perhaps the government will develop something like national service. Then there will be millions more people working for the government, doing god knows what. It will lead to the socialization of society. Remember, this COVID hysteria is just the pin that broke the bubble. The Greater Depression was already in the cards. Americans will beg the government to cure it, which is guaranteed to make it vastly worse and longer-lasting and invite some charismatic authoritarian to be their savior and take charge.

  International Man: Assuming the COVID hysteria and lockdowns are behind us in 2021, what lasting effects could we see taking place?

  Doug Casey: It’s going to destroy the restaurant, retail, and travel industries all at once.

  Stores, restaurants, and small businesses are always failing—maybe 15% of them annually— and new ones are starting up in normal times. It’s the circle of life. The problem is that about half of these businesses are failing all at once. That makes it much harder to recover.

  The economy is a lot like a body. If you burn your finger, it hurts, but you’ll recover. But if you suffer burns on over 50% of your body all at once, it might kill you. That’s what we’re looking at right now.

  Commercial real estate is another area that is going to be devastated because a lot of people will continue working at home and prefer it over working in an office.

  Who knows what’s going to happen to all that commercial real estate and how it’s going to be repurposed. It’s certainly going to consume a huge amount of capital.

  Another area that will change is schools. I would have been happy to have a year off from school because classes bored me. I would have read many more things on my own. But today, most kids don’t read books. Public school kids are lucky to absorb a few things by osmosis.

  Now they’re mostly playing video games or are on social media—mostly doing nonproductive things on their computers at home. I don’t know the effect of not being able to associate with other kids.

  For most kids, it may be damaging. On the bright side, many parents have decided that school is a waste of time and have started homeschooling their kids. That’s generally a positive thing.

  Here’s the important thing, we don’t know how long this hysteria is going to last. People are so scared that they’ll be easy to control for fear of the next real or imagined virus that comes down the road. When people are scared and don’t know what to do, they will want somebody to kiss it and make it better.

  So, I expect we’re heading towards a genuine strong man for president in the US, whether that’s Kamala Harris or somebody else. If the 2020 election was bad, the 2024 election would be worse.

  *  *  *

  Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare… The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past. That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s. Click here to download the free PDF now.

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• Kremlin Blasts New US Agency Hack Accusations As "Blame Russians For Everything" Mania
  Kremlin Blasts New US Agency Hack Accusations As “Blame Russians For Everything” Mania
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 18:40

  Days ago Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s skewered what he dubbed the West’s “gunboat diplomacy” during an address before Russia’s annual Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy conference in Moscow. “We seek stability, fair opportunities for all states, including, of course, Russia,” he said at the time. “Gunboat diplomacy or democratic or any other sort of messianism is hardly an option if we want to accomplish this.”

  The Kremlin has long accused Washington of seeking to gain leverage internationally by routinely ginning up fake threats which paint Russia as the perpetual boogeyman. This is precisely what it’s now saying of the current widespread hacking allegations being leveled at Russia related to the Sunday night ’emergency directive’ issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm.

  

  Specifically it’s being widely reported Monday that the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration had their networks breached by foreign hackers via government contractor Austin, Texas-based IT provider SolarWinds as part of a sophisticated months-long campaign by foreign actors.

  “The compromise of SolarWinds’ Orion Network Management Products poses unacceptable risks to the security of federal networks,” an official statement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) indicated. Federal agencies were ordered to scour and immediately disconnect possibly compromised servers in light of the breach and this “unacceptable risk”. Federal cybersecurity officials believe an active major espionage campaign targeting federal agencies through the third-party software provider is still underway.

  Cybersecurity firm FireEye, which was also breached, put out a press release which many analysts are using to cast focus on Russia: “The campaign is the work of a highly skilled actor and the operation was conducted with significant operational security,” FireEye stated in a blog post.

  No evidence has been forthcoming as to who is ultimately behind the “ongoing” campaign, but of course it took a mere hours for Russia to be linked to it in the headlines. For example, the latest Associated Press reporting merely vaguely cited “many experts believe…” to suggest Russia is behind it: 

  The hacked cybersecurity company, FireEye, would not say who it suspected – many experts believe the operation is Russian given the careful tradecraft – and noted that foreign governments and major corporations were also compromised.

  News of the hacks, first reported by Reuters, came less than a week after FireEye disclosed that nation-state hackers had broken into its network and stolen the company’s own hacking tools.

  The Washington Post has subsequently confirmed that the FBI is specifically investigating groups believed connected to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR.

  Homeland Security warns Russia may have hacked federal agencies https://t.co/uKis7KFFpr pic.twitter.com/nR8FTcpjiN

  — New York Post (@nypost) December 14, 2020

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

  The Kremlin responded on Monday by suggesting it’s yet another example Russophobic fear-mongering and groundless threat inflation which conveniently scapegoats Russia for everything that goes wrong in the West. It’s also conveniently timed just before a new US administration takes office.

  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov vehemently denied Russia was behind the alleged attacks on US federal agencies. “Once again, I can reject these accusations,” Peskov said at a press briefing. “If for many months the Americans couldn’t do anything about it, then, probably, one shouldn’t unfoundedly blame the Russians for everything.”

  Indeed the illegal intrusions are believed to have gone on for months but new details as to the extent of the breach are only now coming to light in dramatic fashion, with the mainstream media only too willing to name the usual ‘bad guy’ (Putin did it!… case closed) without too much in the way of investigation first.

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• What If Central Bankers' Prayers Are Answered And Inflation Surges
  What If Central Bankers’ Prayers Are Answered And Inflation Surges
  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 18:20

  By John Buttler, submitted by Macro Hive; John Butler has 25 years experience in international finance. He has served as a Managing Director for bulge-bracket investment banks on both sides of the Atlantic in research, strategy, asset allocation and product development roles, including at Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers.

  ‘Take care for what you pray; for the Gods may one day grant it to you,’ is an old proverb with similar variations across many cultures and religious traditions. Thus it seems reasonable to pose as a possible Grey Swan for 2021 that central bankers around the world finally get that for which they have long been praying: inflation.

  As 2020 draws to a close, most of the developed world remains mired in various stages of lockdown, attempting to pre-empt what many experts believe is a seasonal surge in Covid-19 infections. But with much positive news on the vaccine front, it is highly likely that, as fears recede, pent-up demand for all manner of economic activity will be released.

  While impossible to model, the amount of pent-up demand could be unusually large for a variety of reasons. Many people, feeling a sense of existential relief, are likely to spend more than they normally would following a typical downturn. And given the amount of stimulus still circulating through the system, the necessary credit and liquidity is likely to be on hand for those who may have developed a ‘live for today’ mentality during 2020.

  But consider the widespread evidence of lingering supply backlogs and bottlenecks, signs energy prices have hit bottom, rapidly rising food prices and huge excess liquidity. If pent-up demand is released in 2021 amid this backdrop, prices may be driven much higher and faster than would be the case under more normal economic recovery circumstances.

  

  Food prices deserve a special mention here. This is because, while food represents only a small part of the developed world’s official inflation baskets, it takes a large share of those in the developing world, where much of the world’s manufacturing infrastructure and workers are now located. Should food prices rise enough, those workers are going to demand higher wages. In turn, those higher costs will be at least partially pushed through the production chain into exports.

  This is a recipe for a surge in inflation. The possible ‘Grey Swan’ for 2021, however, is that not only does inflation rise, but it rises to above target in multiple large economies. What then? How will central bankers react and, more important, what will be the impact on financial markets?

  The Fed has already made clear that they would allow for a temporary overshooting in order to raise the multi-year inflation average to around 2%. However, were inflation to rise above 2%, no doubt Fed rhetoric would begin to prepare markets for higher rates. But on what timescale? Market memories may be short, but certainly they are long enough to remember the repo crisis of late 2019, when the anticipation of only slightly higher rates led to a near seize-up of the US repo (i.e., money) market. The Fed acted swiftly to flood the system with fresh liquidity and rates then fell, although under the cover of the Covid scare. Thus even if rhetoric begins to change during 2021, the Fed may well not raise rates at all.

  In the euro area, the policy response is likely to be more complex. There is already dissent at the ECB regarding the scale and structure of the existing QE programme, and at the EU level with respect to joint financing initiatives, which Hungary, Slovenia and Poland had been particularly vocal on. Such disputes are likely to escalate if inflation picks up in the inflation-phobic northern bloc of countries, including Germany.

  Amid such developments, peripheral bond spreads are likely to widen again and the Target2 imbalances grow further. This will only increase the political tension within the European institutions as the ECB leadership pushes for ever-more disproportionate peripheral bond buying and the EU Commission threatens Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and any other dissenting members with some form of rebuke.

  Although for somewhat different reasons, both the Fed and ECB will therefore have reason to be cautious in tightening policy, as will other major central banks. But consider now how financial market psychology might begin to change: it is one thing for the Fed (or any other central bank) to blink on the road to rate normalization when inflation is still below target; quite another when it has already risen through it. It is one thing for the ECB to justify aggressive, disproportionate (and so legally questionable) QE with inflation near zero. But at 2%? Higher? What then?

  Inflation is, Always and Everywhere, A Psychological Phenomenon

  While inflation is ultimately a monetary phenomenon, it is also one with a highly complex, unstable and consequently unpredictable transmission mechanism. Economists have attempted to model velocity (i.e., transmission) through the decades, with no success. Even in the 1980s under the Volcker monetary-targeting regime, money velocity was highly unstable. But it is worth revisiting why that regime succeeded in bringing inflation down sharply: Inflation is not merely a monetary phenomenon but also a psychological one.

  Consider the behavioural dynamics of the classic ‘smoke in the movie theatre’ example. As one patron after another smells smoke and rises to leave the cinema, others remain seated in what is a ‘linear’ change. But when those who remain seated begin to rise to leave the cinema even without having smelled smoke themselves, the change becomes non-linear. Such ‘tipping points’ are impossible to predict in their specifics or timing, but we know they exist.

  Applied to inflation, non-linear shifts in expectations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as economic actors begin to change their behaviour, for example, by reducing holdings of cash balances and front-loading consumption – or ‘hoarding’ if you prefer – instead. Removing goods from circulation (a reversal of the ‘just-in-time’ production+consumption associated with advanced economies) represents a negative supply-shock in of itself, aside from whatever might have caused prices to begin rising in the first place. Returning to the analogy above, it is akin to people leaving the theatre without themselves smelling the smoke.

  Confronted with such developments on assuming the Fed chairmanship in 1979, Paul Volcker immediately set about addressing inflation psychology. First, he needed to get his colleagues on side, which he famously did at the first opportunity, the FOMC meeting of August that year. What follow are a few Volcker excerpts from the transcript:

  This is a meeting that is perhaps of more than usual symbolic importance if nothing else.

  When I look at the past year or two I am impressed myself with an intangible: the degree to which inflationary psychology has really changed.

  Nobody knows what is going to happen to the dollar but I do think it’s fair to say that the psychology is extremely tender.

  [E]conomic policy in general has a kind of crisis of credibility… If we can achieve a little credibility both in the exchange markets and with respect to the [monetary] aggregates now, we can buy the flexibility later.

  Psychology and credibility are not quantifiable economic aggregates. But they are absolutely essential when it comes to inflation expectations, which are ultimately a psychological phenomenon.

  Unlike in Volcker’s time, today central banks are aiming for higher inflation. So if they do indeed succeed in ‘lighting the fire’, as it were, what are the likely market implications?

  1. First, breakevens are likely to rise, and not only merely to keep pace with the rise in actual inflation but to reflect the change in inflation psychology.
  2. Second, nominal yields are likely to follow along, as real yields are already near historic lows and so have limited room to decline.
  3. Third, curves are likely to steepen as central banks have made clear that they intend to accommodate higher inflation for a sustained period of time.

  Turning to equities, in general they are likely to hold up better than bonds, as corporate profits tend to rise with inflation. However, the sectors performing best will be those in defensive industries with strong pricing power. Value will outperform growth. Strong balance sheets will once again be in vogue, as will dividends.

  If the 1970s are any guide, commodity prices are likely to rise and, in many cases, commodities and basic industrials will outperform both bonds and stocks generally. Metals are likely to do best of all, especially precious. Whether cryptocurrencies would join this particular party is unclear, but they certainly have the potential to do so given current market sentiment.

  Beyond a certain point, central banks might decide they have created too much of a good thing. Reversing such expectations is indeed possible, but remember: Once inflation psychology shifts, this will only be possible by raising rates in excess of whatever is already priced in, perhaps significantly so.

  This worked for the Volcker Fed after all. But the market consequences of such action could well be severe, as indeed they were in the early 1980s. That particular Grey Swan, however, is unlikely to take flight already in 2021; rather a year or two further out.

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• The Major Corporate Solvency Crisis
  The Major Corporate Solvency Crisis

  6216245149001

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/14/2020 – 18:03

  Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison is joined by editor Jack Farley to break down the growing corporate debt crisis. Ed and Jack discuss the latest report from the Group of Thirty, which finds that balance sheet impairment will complicate economic recovery and persist long after this pandemic ends. Ed crystallizes the risks into three separate categories—pandemic-related, economic, and financial—and incorporates these risks into Raoul’s framework on the “insolvency phase.” Ed and Jack also discuss fiscal aid, sector rotation, and lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe. In the intro, Real Vision’s Peter Cooper discusses the joyous news of the beginnings of vaccine distribution in the U.S., AstraZeneca’s announcement to acquire Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and the sterling’s rally on renewed Brexit trade negotiations.

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• China's Global Power Tops The US? New Measures Say No!
  China’s Global Power Tops The US? New Measures Say No!
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 23:30

  Authored by Hal Brands, op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

  GDP and military spending matter, but so do networks of allies and “resilience”…

  

  Ever since the U.S. reached the pinnacle of global power after World War II, Americans have worried it wouldn’t remain there. Waves of “declinism” rolled across the country after Sputnik in the late 1950s, the Vietnam War, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the rise of Japan in the 1980s, and the Iraq War and the global financial crisis of the 2000s.

  Now, amid a global pandemic and at the onset of a long struggle with China, the question of American decline has taken on renewed urgency.

  The trouble with these debates is that power is as elusive as it is essential: It can be devilishly hard to measure outside of major war. (In war, it’s easy: Who won?) Recently, though, several innovative studies have sharpened our understanding of what power is and how to measure it — studies that are mostly, but not entirely, reassuring for a status-obsessed superpower.

  Traditionally, measures of power focused on attributes such as population, energy consumption and production of steel or other indicators of industrial strength. In the information age, these indices tell us relatively little about whether a country can get its way in world affairs.

  It is still common, though, to assess power through blunt measures like gross domestic product or military spending. Analysts who argue that Beijing is overtaking the U.S. habitually note that China’s GDP may soon surpass America’s. But GDP is a snapshot of activity rather than a measure of overall wealth. Some countries that spend massively on military power, such as Saudi Arabia, are quite useless in projecting it.

  So how can we determine the balance of advantage in a long rivalry? The groundbreaking academic work is giving us better answers.

  The first category focuses on refining our grasp of economic and military might. Michael Beckley of the American Enterprise Institute (where I am also a fellow) has developed a model that measures net power rather than gross power by accounting for things such as security costs (“the price a government pays to police and protect its citizens”) and production costs (how much it costs, in material and environmental degradation, to build that coal power plant).

  He finds, not surprisingly, that the U.S. fares far better than China, an authoritarian state with vast internal security costs and a prodigiously wasteful approach to stimulating growth. Similarly, it is critical that American per capita GDP dwarfs China’s, because that means the U.S. has more wealth left over, after it feeds its population, to pursue global influence. Other work has better accounted for the way wealth accrues over time, and found that the U.S. will still have far more overall economic power than China even after China’s GDP eclipses America’s.

  The second category better captures the reality of “network power.” In a landmark paper published in 2019, Abraham Newman of Georgetown University and Henry Farrell, my colleague at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, argue that the centrality of the dollar to international financial networks — which persists, despite decades of handwringing about its decline — gives the U.S. outsized coercive leverage. Scholars have also affirmed something that policymakers have long understood: America punches far above its own weight in global affairs, because of the network of military, economic and diplomatic partners it leads. China has nothing equivalent.

  The third category accounts for less tangible forms of power. For decades, analysts have grasped that soft power — the degree of admiration and emulation a country inspires — matters enormously.

  An intriguing study by Ted Hopf of the National University of Singapore, Bentley Allan of Johns Hopkins and Srdjan Vucetic of the University of Ottawa demonstrates that, even though America’s global favorability ratings have plummeted under President Donald Trump, there remains strong global support for democracy and free-market economic policies.

  That’s a body blow for an authoritarian, mercantilist China, which, the authors predict, “is unlikely to become the hegemon in the near term.” It also helps explain why European states are systematically turning away from Beijing even amid enormous turbulence in their relations with the U.S.

  So does all this imply smooth sailing for the reigning superpower? Not necessarily. The U.S. could deplete its network power by abusing it: Overusing financial sanctions and trade barriers, particularly against allies, could encourage countries to seek ways of opting out of networks America dominates. (The European Union made tentative moves in this direction after the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and threatened sanctions against European companies that did business with Tehran.)

  If Washington steps back from leading an open world economy, as it did under Trump, it will lose some of the influence that comes with that role. And if the U.S. damages its democracy at home, as the president is trying desperately to do on his way out of office, that would have vast implications for U.S. soft power abroad.

  Finally, there is at least one category of power in which the U.S. is struggling. This would be the concept of “resilience.” A globalized world creates vulnerability to international shocks, whether caused by financial instability, climate change or disease. Resilience is a measure of how well a country can rebound.

  The U.S. has demonstrated one extremely powerful form of resilience during the coronavirus pandemic: Its fantastically innovative private sector, in coordination with the federal government, is helping to lead the world out of this nightmare with vaccines developed at, well, “warp speed.”

  But the fact that U.S. society is so crippled right now (millions of kids are “attending” school from their living rooms or dining rooms), that per capita deaths are relatively high compared with the toll in many advanced democracies, and that political polarization has prevented Americans from even coming to a common understanding of the threat Covid-19 poses, is more alarming.

  According to Bloomberg’s pandemic resilience rankings, the U.S. is only 18th — well behind China — in its response to the pandemic. That’s a flashing red light in an age in which so many transnational threats will test America’s capacity to adapt.

  The more we learn about power, the more we realize the U.S. still has great advantages in the contest for global leadership. The longer the pandemic goes on, the more we learn about America’s vulnerabilities, as well.

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• Michael Jordan's New Golf Course Uses Drone To Deliver Beer To Golfers
  Michael Jordan’s New Golf Course Uses Drone To Deliver Beer To Golfers
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 23:00

  Michael Jordan’s new golf course in Florida is the latest example of robots, drones, and the uncertain future of work for humans. 

  The course, called The Grove XXIII, has opted to deliver snacks and beer to golfers via a drone. 

  

  Traditionally, food and beverages on courses are delivered to golfers on refreshment golf carts, operated with one or two servers. 

  As shown in the video below, the last-mile delivery, from the clubhouse to the golfer, is conducted by drone. 

  Here’s video Caroline Wozniacki posted yesterday of the food and drink delivery by drone out at Michael Jordan’s newish golf course, Grove XXIII. (Also the scooters in the background) pic.twitter.com/QEAyUCI0yO

  — Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) December 7, 2020

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

  Drone deliveries on the course will likely be huge cost-savings for the club, increasing margins because golf carts and servers are no longer required – just a drone operator. 

  As for all those teenagers working courses during the summer break – well, be careful in this decade, technology will not just result in a displacement of their jobs – it will also lead to the displacement of millions of other jobs, in other industries, in the coming years. 

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• Why Michael Morell Cannot Be CIA Director
  Why Michael Morell Cannot Be CIA Director
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 22:30

  Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

  As President-elect Joe Biden names his cabinet and other chief advisers, what has escaped wide attention is the fact that none of his hawkish national security advisers — except for his nominee for defense secretary, Gen. Lloyd Austin — has served in the military.

  Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who is reportedly on Biden’s short list for CIA director, shares that non-veteran status, one of the reasons along with other skeletons from Morell’s past that make him singularly unfit to lead the CIA.

  During my 27 years at the CIA, I worked under nine CIA directors — three of them (Stan Turner, Bill Colby, and George H.W. Bush) at close remove — and served in all four of the agency’s main directorates.

  Having closely followed the past-two-decade corruption of my profession — in particular, what the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee called the “uncorroborated, contradicted, or even non-existent” intelligence manufactured to “justify” the attack on Iraq, I have on occasion offered suggestions for remediation, particularly during transition periods like this one. (Links to five such efforts in the past appear below.)

  

  Whiz Kids

  Decades of unfortunate experience show that over-dependence on bright, but inexperienced “best and brightest” can spell disaster. War gaming and theorizing at Princeton and Johns Hopkins have yielded knights with benightedly naive, politics-drenched decisions that get U.S. troops killed for no good reason.

  

  Michael Morell, acting director of the CIA, Feb. 14, 2013. (DoD Photo By Glenn Fawcett)

  Even if Gen. Lloyd Austin is confirmed as secretary of defense, the whippersnappers already appointed by Joe Biden will probably be able to outmaneuver the general and promote half-baked policies and operations bereft of needed military input — not to mention common sense from the likes of Gen. Austin who knows something of war.

  The current generation of “whiz kids” — the well-heeled, politically astute chickenhawks Biden has appointed — will always “know better” and — if past is precedent — are likely to pooh pooh what Gen. Austin may advise, assuming he is able to get a word in edgewise.

  Moreover, ambitious former generals like David Petraeus — many of them now on the outside of the proverbial revolving door making big bucks in the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex — will not hesitate to weigh in with their own self-interested support to the chickenhawks, fostering the notion that military threats from notional enemies warrant still more funding for the defense contractors on whose boards so many alumni generals sit.

  Who does not remember the braggadocio accompanying the criminal attack on Iraq, the full-throated support of journalists like David Sanger of The New York Times, and the chest-thumping of Bush/Cheney neocons saying “Real men go to Tehran?” (Sanger is still at it, sitting on the “Judith Miller Chair for Journalism”.)

  Clearly, one does not have to go as far back as Vietnam for noxious examples of the harm that can be done by these “best and brightest,” albeit inexperienced advisers — whether out of the myth of American exceptionalism, ignorance of post-WWII military history, or pure arrogance.

  It may be helpful to recall that Vice President Dick Cheney, the archdeacon of the chickenhawks, acquired five draft deferments during Vietnam. (So did his successor as vice president, the president-elect.)

  

  Cheney, Tenet and Bush (White House photo)

  Cheney, of course, was the driving force behind the attack on Iraq. He had appointed himself Bush’s principal intelligence officer (usurping the role of CIA Director George Tenet who made not a murmur of protest) and went first and biggest with the Big Lie on (ephemeral) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Here’s Cheney in his kick-off speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 26, 2002: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

  Simply stated, Tenet dutifully followed White House orders to “fix” the intelligence to support Cheney’s accusations against Iraq. Tenet did so formally in the deceitful National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1, 2002 — which earned the sobriquet “The Whore of Babylon.”

  It was successfully used to get Congress to enable Bush/Cheney to make war on Iraq, and eventually create havoc in the whole region. In his memoir Tenet gave the laurels to Morell for “coordinating the CIA review” of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s UN speech that let slip the dogs of war. (Details on that below)

  Cakewalks and Cubbyholes

  Cheney, the quintessential chickenhawk, surrounded himself with advisers of the same bent. One pitiable example was armchair warrior Kenneth Adelman, who had been director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Reagan. In a Washington Post op-ed of Feb. 13, 2002, Adelman wrote: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”

  Two years later, Adelman wrote an equally pathetic op-ed, insisting that he and his neoconservative friends had been right on everything except Iraq possessing WMD, Iraqi factions cooperating after Saddam Hussein was deposed, and “probably” on close ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

  As for Cheney himself, he did memorize some weapons nomenclature vocabulary, but could not avoid an occasional faux pas betraying his lack of familiarity with things on the ground. Nine months after the attack on Iraq, when WMD were still nowhere to be found, NPR asked Cheney whether he had given up on finding them.

  “No, we haven’t,” he said. “It’s going to take some additional, considerable period of time in order to look in all the cubbyholes and ammo dumps and all the places in Iraq where you’d expect to find something like that.” (The continued, quixotic search cost not only a billion dollars but the lives of U.S. troops.).

  The amateur but opinionated Cheney was the largest fly in the intelligence ointment. Four months into the war it got so blatantly bad that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) sent a Memorandum to President Bush entitled “Intelligence Unglued”, recommending that he “ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.”

  Naiveté on War

  In a recent, disturbingly graphic article entitled “Biden’s young Hawk: The Case Against Jake Sullivan,” retired Army Maj. Danny Sjursen broadly hinted that President Biden’s national security adviser should at least look at the photos. (An editor’s note in the piece explained that such photos are almost totally absent from Establishment media: “Graphic images of war and suffering are included with this text. We believe it is important for the world to witness what their taxes, votes and apathy may be supporting.” )

  

  Jake Sullivan, seated farthest back, as national security advisor to vice president, in a meeting with President Barack Obama and advisers, Aug. 29, 2013. (White House, Pete Souza)

  In his article Sjursen finds himself wondering “whether Sullivan’s ever seen a dead child, gazed upon the detritus of American empire, waded through the sights and smells of our indecency. And, worse still, I wondered whether it’d matter much if he had. …”

  The national security adviser is gatekeeper to the president, with the gate strong or weak depending — at least in concept — on what the president wants. In the normal course of business, the CIA director and the director of national intelligence would go through the security adviser to get to the president. Cabinet secretaries in the national security arena and, when appropriate, FBI directors often use the same channel.

  What seems important here, though widely overlooked, is that no Biden national security appointee/nominee except Gen. Austin has apparently served a day in the military. Not Sullivan, not DNI nominee Avril Haines, not secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken, and not FBI Director Christopher Wray.

  This is just one factor that should disqualify Morell for director of Central Intelligence (DCI). There are already far too many fledgling warhawks-without war experience. In Morell’s case, though, there are many other factors — some even more important — that disqualify him. His playing fast and loose regarding the legality and effectiveness of torture has been in the headlines recently, thanks to Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden (D-OR), who called Morell a “torture apologist.”

  It has been a challenge to record Morell’s many artful dodges, but Consortium News did publish “On Iraq/Torture, Still in Denial”, as Morell began to peddle his memoir in May 2015.

  Two of Morell’s tours de force with Charlie Rose in 2016, in which Morell advocates killing Russians and Iranians in Syria, were covered by CN.

  More revealing still — and damning of his chances for another try at CIA — is an article, “Rise of Another CIA Yes Man.” That piece was written when Morell was picked to be Gen. David Petraeus’s deputy at CIA; it ends with personal comments by intelligence professionals who knew Morell well.

  The article also includes citations from Tenet’s own memoir, including encomia he threw in Morell’s direction, one of which should actually be enough to bar Morell from any future role in intelligence.

  

  Tenet to the left of Powell at the United Nations on Feb. 5. 2003. (Wikimedia Commons)

  In Tenet’s book, At the Center of the Storm, he writes that Morell “coordinated the CIA review” of the intelligence used by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his infamous Feb. 5, 2003 speech to the UN Security Council on the threat from (non-existent) WMD in Iraq.

  Tenet, who sat directly behind Powell on that day, pointed out that Morell had served as regular briefer to President George W. Bush. It has been reported that, of the CIA’s finished intelligence product on Iraq, it was The President’s Daily Brief delivered by Morell that most exaggerated the danger from Iraq.

  Morell fluttered quickly up CIA ranks as the yes-sir protege of two CIA directors who were, arguably, the worst of them all — “Slam-Dunk” Tenet and the-Russians-hacked-so-Trump-won John Brennan. During the presidential campaign of 2016, as Brennan and his accomplices in the National Security State worked behind the scenes to sabotage candidate Donald Trump, Morell dropped any pretense of nonpartisanship — which used to be the hallmark of an intelligence professional.

  From retirement (but with eyes on the big prize he coveted in a new Democratic administration), Morell openly backed the Democratic candidate in a highly unusual op-ed in The New York Times on August 5, 2016: “I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.”

  Iraq: the Crucible

  In my view, the key gauge in weighing qualifications for a national security position like CIA director is whether a candidate showed good judgment before the misbegotten, calamitous attack on Iraq.

  Morell flunks that test outright. Accordingly, he can hardly be expected to be one of the calmer voices in a room of still less experienced fledgling hawks who, to quote Maj. Sjursen, have never “waded through the sights and smells of our indecency” in killing and maiming abroad. With Morell in the room, there would be greater risk of the U.S. getting sucked into still more misadventures overseas.

  What did Morell tell Bush about Iraq? In Tenet’s memoir, he describes Morell as “the perfect guy” to brief President Bush, noting that Morell and Bush hit it off “almost immediately”. Morell added later: “I was President Bush’s first intelligence briefer, so I briefed him kind of the entire year of 2001.”

  ‘The Entire Year 2001’

  So, was Iraqi President Saddam Hussein trying to acquire “weapons of mass destruction” during 2001? The first (and honest) answer was ”No” — if Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are to be believed. Here’s what they said at the time — Powell publicly during a speech in Cairo and Rice to CNN five months later.

  Powell on Feb. 24, 2001:

  “He [Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”

  Rice told CNN’s John King on July 29, 2001:

  “We are able to keep arms from him [Saddam Hussein]. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”

  Is this what Morell told Bush just six weeks before 9/11? Did Morell ever explain how Iraq could have developed, purchased, or stolen copious WMD in one year’s time?

  

  Rice. (Wikipedia)

  And when Morell briefed Bush right after 9/11, was the president fixated on Saddam Hussein, as counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke describes him in his book Against All Enemies? According to Clarke, on 9/12 Bush told him “to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.”

  Clarke says he was incredulous, replying, “But, Mr. President, al-Qaeda did this.” In later interviews Clarke added that he felt he was being intimidated to find a link between the attacks and Iraq.

  Did Morell play it straight and tell Bush (as Clarke did) that Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the attacks of 9/11? Did Clarke share that vignette at the time with Tenet and Morell?

  And what about those notional Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq? After 9/11, did Morell take his cue from Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Tenet and give President Bush the impression that Iraq already had all manner of WMD and was on the threshold of acquiring a nuclear weapon?

  Sham Dunk

  Later, in December 2002 when Morell’s boss Tenet assured Bush and Cheney that CIA could prove, slam-dunkedly, the existence of WMD in Iraq, did Morell ever ask himself how both Powell and Rice could have been so far off base the year before?

  Far more likely, Morell knew what the game was, as he watched Rice do a fancy pirouette, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Sept. 8, 2002 that “Saddam Hussein is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs.”

  The most accomplished engineers and technical intelligence analysts in the intelligence community knew that the aluminum tubes story was BS. In the finest tradition of intelligence analysis, they remained impervious to the political winds. They insisted that associating those aluminum tubes with nuclear weapons development was wrong and they could not be persuaded to go along. And yet that bogus information got into Powell’s February 2003 speech at the UN.

  In Morell’s memoir he wrote that he wanted to apologize to Powell. Morell says, “We said he [Saddam Hussein] has chemical weapons, he has a biological weapons production capability, and he’s restarting his nuclear weapons program. We were wrong on all three of those.”

  But not my fault, wrote Morell, who tried to shift the blame by claiming he was not a senior official at the time.

  How does that square with Tenet writing that Morell “coordinated the CIA review” of Powell’s speech? Whom to believe? However begrudging must be any trust given “slam-dunk” and “we-do-not-torture”Tenet, he presumably would have less reason to dissimulate than Morell in this particular case.

  Assuming Morell did “coordinate the CIA review” of Powell’s speech, did Morell know about the strong dissent on the infamous aluminum tubes?

  More important, did he know that CIA operators had recruited and “turned” Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister (who Saddam Hussein continued to believe was still working for him) and, with the help of British intelligence, had “turned” the chief of Iraqi intelligence, Habbush, as well.

  After the reporting from these two sources on other issues and after their access to secret information was evaluated and judged to be genuine, President Bush was told that Sabri and Habbush both said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Sabri’s information was given to the president by Tenet on Sept. 18, 2002; Habbush’s in late Jan. 2003. 

  Did Tenet not share that with Morell before he coordinated CIA input into Powell’s speech?

  Clearly, this first-hand intelligence from proven sources with excellent access did not suit the Cheney/Bush narrative for war on Iraq. The president’s staff told CIA operatives not to forward additional reporting on this issue from these sources, explaining that Bush did not want more information about weapons of mass destruction; rather, it was now about “regime change.”

  

  McGovern questions Clapper at Carnegie Endowment in Washington. (Alli McCracken)

  Did Morell know about this when he was “coordinating” input into Powell’s disastrous speech? It is a safe bet that Morell was fully aware of the con job he was “coordinating” — as did other senior intelligence officials.

  In his own memoir, former Director of National Intelligence (and, during Iraq, director of imagery analysis), James Clapper takes a share of the blame for the Iraq WMD fiasco. Clapper puts the blame for “the failure” to find the (non-existent) WMD “squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.” (emphasis added) .

  Regarding Morell’s “I-confess-they-did-it” apology to Powell, the still-youngish Morell has not stopped lusting for an eventual seat at the table, so he apparently thought it a smart move politically. Typically, Powell did not react — as far as is known. Nor has the conflict-averse Powell summoned the cohones to say clearly what he thinks of how Tenet, Morell, et al. sold him a bill of goods on Iraq.

  In the “where-are-they-now?” department, Tenet quit in July 2004 and fled to Wall Street to be joined the following year by Jami Miscik, who was deputy director for intelligence during the Iraq fiasco. She “lucked into” a nice job at Lehman Brothers before it went bust.

  Note to readers: If you know someone advising the Biden team on selecting a director for CIA, please pass this along.

  Finally, those interested in suggestions from the experience of previous transition teams, please click on one or two of the links below. The key issues tend to remain the same. Above all, integrity counts.

  *  *  *

  Additional Readings

  1 — A Compromised Central Intelligence Agency: What Can Be Done?

  By Ray McGovern, 2004

  Chapter 4 in “Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America’s Promise at Home and Abroad”, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004

  Ray’s chapter follows chapters by Alan Curtis (editor), Gary Hart, and Jessica Mathews.

  Link to Chapter 4 text:

  https://books.google.com/books?id=J9kWYfUTdg0C&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=%22A+Compromised+Central+Intelligence+Agency:+What+Can+Be+Done?&source=bl&ots=plCvTEGgpS&sig=xcRJvzyCaRKYbcx_x353V62MD9k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dKmMVYreLIzAggS0qYCYAw&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

  2 — Sham Dunk: Cooking Intelligence for the President?

  By Ray McGovern, 2005

  Chapter 19 in “Neo-CONNED! Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq”, Light in the Darkness Publications, 2005?https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vBsKG1CRHTpqKrtOm4_bftQSOWtjF_PE/view?usp=sharing

  3 — Try These on Your CIA Briefer, Mr. President-Elect

  By Ray McGovern, November 8, 2008

  https://www.commondreams.org/views/2008/11/08/try-these-your-cia-briefer-mr-president-elect

  4 — What Needs to Be Done in Intelligence (a memo for the Bush-to-Obama transition team)

  By Ray McGovern. December 4, 2008

  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mfT70D90UrNxAWhpy_SKtF4NkSmmHxmn/view?usp=sharing

  5 — US Intelligence Vets Oppose Brennan’s CIA Plan

  By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), March 9, 2015

  https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/09/us-intel-vets-oppose-brennans-cia-plan/

  *  *  *

  Please Contribute to Consortium News During  its 2020 Winter Fund Drive

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• Aussie Media Claims Massive Leak Of CCP Members "Lifts The Lid" On Global Surveillance State
  Aussie Media Claims Massive Leak Of CCP Members “Lifts The Lid” On Global Surveillance State
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 22:00

  Just days after leaked video from China exposed details of China having “people at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence,” which was followed by Eric Swalwell’s ‘fang-banger-gate’ debacle, Sky News Australia reports that a major leak containing a register with the details of nearly two million CCP members has occurred – exposing members who are now working all over the world, while also lifting the lid on how the party operates under Xi Jinping..

  

  This report reinforces details exposed in 2018, when a series of leaked internal documents revealed that China’s military reforms are aimed at allowing Beijing to “manage a crisis, contain a conflict, win a war” and overtake the United States in military strength:

  “As we open up and expand our national interests beyond borders, we desperately need a comprehensive protection of our own security around the globe,” read the leaked documents, which adds that a strong military is the best way to “escape the obsession that war is unavoidable between an emerging power and a ruling hegemony”.

  Which led to recent concerns about China’s increasingly ‘hyrbid’ war efforts around the world.

  As ABC reported in September, a Chinese company with links to Beijing’s military and intelligence networks has been amassing a vast database of detailed personal information on thousands of Australians, including prominent and influential figures.

  A database of 2.4 million people, including more than 35,000 Australians, has been leaked from the Shenzhen company Zhenhua Data which is believed to be used by China’s intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security.

  Zhenhua boasts of having the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party among its main clients.

  Information collected includes dates of birth, addresses, marital status, along with photographs, political associations, relatives and social media IDs.

  Zhenhua’s chief executive Wang Xuefeng, a former IBM employee, has used Chinese social media app WeChat to endorse waging “hybrid warfare” through manipulation of public opinion and “psychological warfare”.

  All of which leads to today’s breaking news from Australia’s Sky News who claim that the leak is a significant security breach likely to embarrass Xi Jinping, noting that the data was extracted from a Shanghai server by Chinese dissidents, whistleblowers, in April 2016, who have been using it for counter-intelligence purposes.

  “It was then leaked in mid-September to the newly-formed international bi-partisan group, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China – and that group is made up of 150 legislators around the world.

  #IPAC comment on the leaked database of the Chinese Communist Party Shanghai branch member register. pic.twitter.com/ReKT9Ge8Hd

  — Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (@ipacglobal) December 13, 2020

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

  “It was then provided to an international consortium of four media organisations, The Australian, The Sunday Mail in the UK, De Standaard in Belgium and a Swedish editor, to analyse over the past two months, and that’s what we’ve done”.

  TimesNowNews.com reports that the data analysis also revealed that:

  …more than 600 party members were working at 19 branches of British banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered in 2016.

  Similarly, pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca, currently involved in the development of coronavirus vaccines, had employed 123 CCP loyalists.

  Defence firms like Airbus, Boeing and Rolls-Royce also employed hundreds of party members.

  

  Sky News added that it, “is worth noting that there’s no suggestion that these members have committed espionage – but the concern is over whether Australia or these companies knew of the CCP members and if so have any steps been taken to protect their data and people”.

  But, as ABC reported in September, a Five Eyes intelligence officer, who uses the pseudonym Aeneas, has pored over the data, and described the technique as “mosaic intelligence gathering” – sourcing vast tracts of information from a wide variety of sources.

  “The individual pieces of intelligence are like tiles in a mosaic, which make sense when they are arranged the right way,” Aeneas said.

  He argued it was a different way to collect information than how many western agencies went about their work.

  The narrative does confirm recent comments by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who slammed China for stealing research and intellectual property, calling China’s Communist Party the “central threat of our time.”

  Still, the blaring headlines from Australian media do, however, smack a little of McCarthyism amid increasing tensions with the Chinese (wine tariffs, for example) as the nation’s largest trading partner rattles it hybrid sabre over disagreeable comments from Aussie politicians/media about the pandemic’s spread. Among the 2.4 million ‘CCP members’ in the leaked database, we simply have no idea how many are ‘bad actors’ and how many are merely little-red-book-carrying Chinese citizens, living and working abroad.

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• "A Final Middle Finger From Trump" – Dems Furious About White House COVID Vaccine Access: Live Updates
  “A Final Middle Finger From Trump” – Dems Furious About White House COVID Vaccine Access: Live Updates
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 21:33

  Summary:

  • White House gets priority vaccine access
  • NY cases top 10K for 5th day
  • US cases decline slightly from record; 7-day still at record highs
  • NJ Gov: winter “going to be hell”
  • Germany enters 3-week hard lockdown
  • Portugal sees another record
  • Half of Brazilians wouldn’t take vaccine
  • Malaysia announced 1.3K new case

  * * *

  Update (0900ET): News broke a few hours ago that White House staff, starting with senior staffers who are the closest to the president, will be included in the first wave of essential workers who receive priority access to vaccines.

  Though it’s not clear how many doses are being allocated to the White House, the NYT says that given the number of staffers who have already tested positive, it’s likely the number could be minimal, and it’s likely Trump won’t be receiving the vaccine since he’s already repeatedly claimed to be “immune” (claims that, we should point out, have been backed up by “the science”, but are still treated with skepticism by the NYT).

  Senior staffers will in theory have priority, though, as we said, many have already been infected and likely have enough naturally occurring antibodies (for at least a little while longer, from what we know from various studies).

  Unsurprisingly, top Dems lept on Trump right away, with Tim Hogan, a Democratic consultant and a former top aide on Senator Amy Klobuchar’s presidential bid, said Washington “will not come close to covering every health care worker with its first allotment of the vaccine, but a White House that downplayed the virus and held a half-year nationwide super spreader tour gets to cut the line, ” calling the WH vaccinations “a final middle finger to the nurses and doctors on the front lines from the Trump administration.”

  So, will Joe Biden, who has already committed to taking the vaccine on video in the coming days/weeks, now commit to barring his staff from priority access?

  * * *

  Following Friday’s latest record daily tally in the US, the number of new cases pulled back a bit on Saturday (though the 7-day average remained at a record high), while the number of total hospitalizations continued its ascent to new records. According to the COVID Tracking Project, nationwide hospitalizations climbed to a new record: 108,487, with some projecting that number to more than double before the spring arrives, and with it, more of the temperate weather that can help slow the spread of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 and the flu (readers may remember a few months back, Goldman Sachs analysts ran a detailed analysis of temperatures vs. COVID-19 infection data) .

  

  Deaths were just below 2.5K, remaining above the 2K threshold for the 5th straight day (every day since Dec. 8).

  

  California reported another daily record, as we noted last night. New York has now joined the states with more than 10K new cases for the 4th straight day.

  

  In other news, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy offered up his optimistic outlook on the COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, while still cautioning that the next few weeks are “going to be hell” during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week”.

  New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says despite “good news” on a COVID-19 vaccine, “the next number of weeks are going to be hell, I fear, so we’re begging with people to please, please, please don’t let your guard down even when you’re in private settings.” https://t.co/8pO0laHwTB pic.twitter.com/mLMnT29Vg0

  — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 13, 2020

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

  Murphy also noted that Moderna is up for its EUA this week, and that “God willing, they get it,” as if the outcome wasn’t already virtually preordained. Or that seems to be the perception, anyway.

  With the first trucks loaded with vaccines trundling on to their destinations Sunday, Moncef Slaoui (the head of “Operation Warp Speed” is at it again with the increasingly sunny projections, claiming as many as 8 in 10 Americans could be vaccinated by June during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” (public opinion polls suggest only 50% of the population plans to get a vaccine immediately once they become available). In Europe, the first COVID vaccines will probably be approved in the coming weeks, official said.

  Here’s some more COVID news from overnight and Sunday morning:

  • Portugal on Sunday reported 98 deaths, more than the previous daily record of 95 announced on Friday, and taking the total number of fatalities to 5,559 (Source: Bloomberg).
  • Half of Brazilians wouldn’t take the Covid-19 vaccine being developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd. with Instituto Butantan in Sao Paulo, a Datafolha poll shows (Source: Bloomberg).
  • Malaysia announced 1,229 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, bringing the total number of infections in the Southeast Asian country to 83,475, according to a health ministry statement. Four deaths were recorded, pushing up the death toll to 415 (Source: Bloomberg).
  • Israel will likely begin to make Covid-19 vaccines available to the population ahead of schedule (Source: Bloomberg).

  * * *

  Finally, the biggest news out of Europe so far on Sunday is Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to plunge the country back into a full-fledged lockdown, despite growing opposition to another economy wrecking shutdown. Even schools will close, something that European nations have largely tried to avoid.

  Germany cancels Christmas: Angela Merkel plunges country into new national lockdown over the festive season in desperate bid to drive down Covid infection rate

  — The Gammon Dave to friends (@TheGammon3) December 13, 2020

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

  For now, at least, the lockdown will be short-lived, Under new measures which will last from Dec. 16 until Jan. 10, schools and non-essential shops across the country will be closed, including during the Christmas holiday. Hairdressers, beauty salons and tattoo parlours will also close while drinking alcohol in public will be banned until Jan. 10.

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• "Reformed" Criminal Hired To Curb Violence In DC Charged With Murder
  “Reformed” Criminal Hired To Curb Violence In DC Charged With Murder
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 21:30

  Via Judicial Watch (emphasis ours)

  

  In a curious twist, a “reformed” criminal hired by the District of Columbia’s chief legal officer to help curb violence has been arrested and charged with murder. The case involves a taxpayer-funded public safety program known as Cure the Streets launched by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to reduce gun violence by treating it as a disease that can be interrupted and stopped from spreading. Cure the Streets typically hires men and women with criminal histories as violence interrupters because they know first-hand about the challenges that residents of crime-infested communities live with. Racine, who was reelected to a second term in 2018, says the transformed criminals hired by his program perform community-driven public safety work that can avoid using police.

  Here is how they carry out the task, according to Racine’s office: By interrupting potentially violent conflicts because they have relationships and influence within targeted neighborhoods. Violence interrupters “engage with the community to learn about brewing conflicts and resolve them peaceably before they erupt in violence,” the program’s website states. Violence interrupters also identify and treat individuals at high risk for involvement with violence by meeting with them and implementing individualized risk reduction plans. “They also help connect participants with needed services, such as housing, counseling and employment assistance, and develop action plans for a positive future.” Finally, the D.C. Attorney General claims violence interrupters mobilize communities to change norms by engaging residents, local businesses, community leaders and faith leaders to work with high-risk individuals to reduce violence. “CTS works with these partners to organize forums and public events where residents can gather and interact safely without fear of conflict and violence,” the D.C. government website claims. It is not clear what impact Cure the Streets is having on violent crime in the District, but the Metropolitan Police Department reports that homicides are up 20% from last year.

  The program operates in notoriously high-crime sections throughout D.C., which are broken down by wards. They include Eckington/Truxton and Trinidad in Ward 5, Marshall Heights/Benning Heights in Ward 7 and Bellevue, Washington Highlands, and Congress Heights in Ward 8. The Cure the Streets employee recently charged with murder was a supervisor who led a team of six violence interrupters and outreach workers. His name is Cotey Wynn, an ex-con with an extensive rap sheet who served a decade in prison before D.C.’s chief legal officer hired him. Wynn’s record includes felony murder, first degree murder, possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, and distribution of a controlled substance, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. On December 4, the agency’s Capital Area Fugitive Task Force arrested the 39-year-old Wynn and charged him with second degree murder while armed. At the time of his arrest Wynn was under the supervision of the Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia, a federal agency that believes preventative detention should only be a last resort for defendants, who should live in the least restrictive conditions while awaiting court.

  Police say Wynn fatally shot a 53-year-old man named Eric Linnair Wright in 2017 near the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast Washington. The violence interrupter was identified by multiple witnesses after viewing security camera footage from nearby homes, according to police. Authorities also tracked Wynn’s cell phone to the location of the crime. In a statement issued to local media, Racine’s spokesperson said this: “The Office of the Attorney General is aware of Mr. Wynn’s arrest for a homicide he is alleged to have committed in 2017, prior to his employment with Cure the Streets. This case will now proceed through our criminal justice system where Mr. Wynn is presumed innocent. We are confident that justice will be served once this process is complete. Our hearts go out to the family of Mr. Wright, the victim in this case, and to the affected members of the community. The important work of the Cure the Streets team will continue.”

  It was not that long ago that the same office, charged with enforcing D.C. laws and protecting the interest of its citizens, bragged about what a great guy Wynn is. In a profile posted on the Attorney General’s website over the summer, Wynn was portrayed as somewhat of a saint. “When observing Cotey at work, you see a respected professional, a loving father, a devoted friend, and a pillar of the community,” according to the piece which includes a photo of the accused murderer delivering resources to D.C. residents during COIVD-19. The story also reveals that Wynn could not find a job after a decade in prison since “the damage to his reputation made it hard for him to find employment” so D.C. government hired him as a violence interrupter for Cure the Streets.

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• China Tells Cabin Crews To Wear Diapers And Avoid Using Bathrooms On Risky Covid Flights
  China Tells Cabin Crews To Wear Diapers And Avoid Using Bathrooms On Risky Covid Flights
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 21:00

  In one of the most absurd post-covid developments,  last week China’s aviation regulator recommended that cabin crew on charter flights to high-risk Covid-19 destinations – such as the US – reduce the risk of infection by using the bathroom. Their solution: use disposable diapers. The advice, first reported by Bloomberg, was published in a 38-page list of guidelines for airlines to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

  The Civil Aviation Administration of China said the recommendation applies for charter flights to and from countries and regions where infections exceed 500 in every one million people. According to the latest data, that would include most countries, and certainly the US where the official number is some 4,400 cases per 1 million people on a rolling 7 day basis.

  

  In addition to wearing diapers, the regulator suggests cabin crew use such personal protective equipment including:

  • Medical protective masks
  • Double-layer disposable medical rubber gloves
  • Goggles
  • Disposable caps
  • Disposable protective clothing
  • Disposable shoe covers

  So far there is no mandatory requirement for cabin crew to wear full hazmat suits, although we assume as the global panic rages unabated, this is coming too. The regulator also said that flight crew should wear masks and goggles, but they don’t need diapers.

  Other advice for the flights includes dividing the cabin into “clean area, buffer zone, passenger sitting area and quarantine area,” separated by disposable curtains. The last three rows should be designated as an emergency quarantine area, said CAAC. CAAC declined to disclose any more details on the guidelines.

  While China’s aviation market was hit hard at the onset of the outbreak in Wuhan, it has since recovered to close to pre-pandemic levels as China’s cases remain laughably low, even as the diseases reportedly rages unabated in other regions such as Europe and the U.S. struggle to bring Covid-19 under control.

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• The Renminbi Will Gain Wider Use Globally, Gavekal's CEO Says
  The Renminbi Will Gain Wider Use Globally, Gavekal’s CEO Says
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 20:35

  Authored by Resham Kapadia via Barrons.com,

  Louis-Vincent Gave, CEO of Gavekal, is a go-to source for institutional investors trying to interpret global macro risks such as the financial implications of China’s rise. Gave, 46, was born in Paris, educated at Duke University, and based in Hong Kong before the pandemic. Gavekal provides independent research and manages $1.7 billion in Asian fixed-income and equities strategies, primarily for European institutions.

  

  Barron’s: What investment trends will be most prominent after the pandemic?

  Louis-Vincent Gave: If I ask what the most important development was in 2001, most people would say it was 9/11. With the benefit of hindsight, it was China joining the World Trade Organization, which changed the world for the following 20 years. If I ask about 2007, you’d say it was the start of the subprime crisis. With the benefit of hindsight, it was the launch of the smartphone.

  With hindsight, what will people say about 2020?

  So far, the Covid response in the U.S. has been a $12,800 increase in debt per capita; in the United Kingdom, it’s $7,000, and in Germany and France, $5,300. In China, it’s $1,200. The Western world responded with massive increases in budget deficits, which could constrain future policy options, while Asia, especially China, hasn’t.

  Western policy makers have no choice but to embrace yield-curve controls; they can’t let interest rates go back up. You had Japan and Europe in the yield-curve control gang. The big change now is that the U.S. has joined them. Once the European Central Bank went down this [path], the euro tanked. Once we are on the other side of Covid-19 and it becomes clear the U.S. has no other choice, the dollar will collapse.

  What will be the best investment opportunity post-Covid?

  Investing in Asian fixed-income markets, in local currencies. Governments there have broadly been more efficient at dealing with Covid-19. Central-bank balance sheets and government spending haven’t grown out of control. Just as water flows downhill, capital is attracted to positive real [inflation adjusted] rates. Today, these are mostly found in Asia.

  What is the most pressing public policy issue the U.S. will face?

  How to fund runaway debt. For now, everyone’s answer is through modern monetary theory [which posits that governments that control their own currency can spend freely]. Once the debt is monetized by the central bank, there are no historical examples, outside of Japan, where that doesn’t lead to massive and very fast inflation, massive currency debasement, or both.

  What does that mean for the dollar’s reserve-currency status?

  I look at currencies like computer operating systems. Most Gavekal clients use Microsoft because everyone else uses it. The dollar is Microsoft. Go back to 2005-06, when Apple was trading at nine times earnings and viewed as making a niche product. In 2007, Apple said it would create a parallel system and went straight to the consumer, who took [Apple] not because it was cheaper but because it was easier.

  So the renminbi is Apple.

  We are seeing the rollout of Chinese fintech solutions across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa through WePay and Alipay. Then, tack on the digital renminbi and look forward to a future where an Indonesian businessman goes to Singapore and pays for his taxi with Alipay and the transaction isn’t settled through Swift or the dollar but through digital renminbi. The pushback I get is that no one is going to trust the digital RMB—or, who wants the Chinese government to know how and where you spend your money? That’s a big roadblock, but if you told me 10 years ago people would put Alexa in their homes voluntarily….

  Aren’t you worried about China’s debt or social instability?

  For the past 10 years, I’ve been told that Chinese debt was about to implode and there would be riots in the street. In the past 10 years, we have seen riots in France and the U.S—and in Hong Kong—but China has been remarkably stable. We have been told that the Chinese government would have no choice but to nationalize big parts of the economy and the renminbi would collapse. That scenario has unfolded in Europe and the U.S. [The U.S.] has increased debt by $4.2 trillion, three-quarters of which was funded by the Fed. Meanwhile, the renminbi has been the strongest currency year to date and over 10 years.

  What is a key concern for Asia-based investors?

  The decoupling of the U.S. and China is a massive change, and Taiwan is an important fault line. Taiwan wasn’t too much of an issue when the U.S. and China got along and all China produced were cheap plastic toys and bicycles. But this year, the market cap of the global semiconductor industry is above that of the energy sector. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing [ticker: TSM] said it is already manufacturing a generation of chips that Intel [INTC] has said it won’t be able to fabricate until as late as 2023. If you think semiconductors matter more than energy, Taiwan Semi is one of the most important companies in the world.

  What are the longer-term ramifications of President Xi’s crackdown in Hong Kong?

  The core thesis is that Xi is a transformational president—the first imperialist president since the Ming Dynasty. If you are Xi and you hear your companies won’t have access [to U.S. markets], Hong Kong sounds like a great way to internationalize the renminbi and do a digital renminbi. Most Westerners saw the intervention as the death of Hong Kong, but China guaranteed Hong Kong would be China’s capital markets for the foreseeable future. [Xi] has no choice but to make it a success, which is why the Hong Kong dollar is stuck at the high end of its [trading] band.

  Chinese internet stocks have been hit by increased regulatory scrutiny, including the scuttling of the oversubscribed planned public offering of Ant Group. Does this mark a turning point for these companies?

  Since the [suspension] of the Ant IPO and new antitrust [guidelines], we also had a state-owned coal company default on one billion renminbi, or $150 million. One big issue for China has been a trade surplus of $60 billion and enormous inflows into China tech and bonds driving the renminbi higher.

  In the Western world, we would raise rates [to deal with potential bubbles]. In China, they have regulatory weapons. They managed to cool the tech stocks in China and inflows into Chinese bonds. They got their message through.

  You have been living in Vancouver during the pandemic. What is the one place on Earth that you’d most like to visit when the pandemic ends?

  I have to get back to my Hong Kong and Beijing offices. I miss my colleagues and my friends there.

  Thank you.

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• Cathie Wood's ARKK ETF Passes JP Morgan For Largest Active ETF
  Cathie Wood’s ARKK ETF Passes JP Morgan For Largest Active ETF
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 20:10

  No sooner did we just write about ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood involuntarily losing majority control of her own firm than it has been revealed that her firm – known for its massively outsized investments in Tesla (and numerous other tech companies that are vastly overpriced and incapable of generating consistent cash) has now surpassed JP Morgan “for the largest actively managed exchange-traded fund.”

  According to Bloomberg, the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) saw a record inflow of $275 million on Thursday that helped boost it to just under $16 billion in total assets. This surpasses the $15.2 billion JPMorgan Ultra-Short Income ETF (JPST).

  The firm is just one of the financial assets that the everyday working-man doesn’t even know exists, yet was the major beneficiary of a “rising tide” created by the Fed injecting trillions of dollars of liquidity (colloquially known as QE Infinity) that caused a massive boom in tech stocks off their lows in March. 

  

  The ARKK ETF, which has a insane strategic 10% weighting in Tesla, is up 150% year-to-date. Tesla is up 650% this year, totally not as a result of Softbank and Goldman Sachs options buying schemes and definitely as a result of their super-duper financials, we’re sure. 

  This outperformance comes from the same visionary who, back in November, was delivered notice from Resolute Management Investors that they would be taking control of her firm due to an option in a deal Wood had negotiated back in 2016. 

  The question for ARK is how long can it defy gravity AND history, which is littered with supernovas like $ARKK a la The CMG Focus Fund, which shot up 900%, got $8b aum, only to drop 50% in ’08, now only $300m (despite bounce back & lifetime perf > SPX). Once bitten twice shy.. pic.twitter.com/7z1SsM5A4K

  — Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) December 9, 2020

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

  The power shift, which Pensions & Investments notes isn’t especially amicable, came due to a 2016 agreement between Resolute and ARK, where RIM acquired a minority stake in the investment manager – with a call option “to purchase a controlling voting and equity interest in (ARK) that is exercisable in 2021.”

  While the financial terms of the deal had not been made available, ARK’s founder, CEO and CIO, Wood, who currently owns 50% to 75% of the firm, didn’t seem happy with RIM’s decision.

  Wood said in a statement: “On behalf of the employee-owners of ARK, we are disappointed that Resolute Investment Managers and its private equity owner, Kelso & Co., have chosen to issue this unwelcome notice that they intend to seize control of our business.”

  

  “As reported by Morningstar, ARK has delivered top one-percentile returns for multiple products over one-, three- and five-year periods. Thanks to our research and investing success, paired with our innovative digital marketing strategies, ARK now ranks among the largest ETF issuers in the U.S.,” Wood continued.

  She concluded: “The remarkable success of our team is rooted firmly in a culture of transparency, collaboration, and employee ownership. We do not believe that equity ownership by a party tangential to our business is in the best interest of ARK’s stakeholders.”

  As we said last month: “Regardless, the deal may actually be a blessing in disguise for Wood, who is likely going to receive a large payday and gets a chance to potentially exit on top – with the added bonus of a scapegoat to blame any future implosion by the firm on.”

  And hey, we were going to congratulate Cathie on passing J.P. Morgan, but we guess what we meant to say was, “Congratulations, Resolute Investment Managers!”

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• After Trump, The Flood…
  After Trump, The Flood…
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 19:45

  Authored by Ghassan and Intibah Kadi for the Saker Blog,

  Whether there was indeed voter fraud and rigging, and I personally believe there was and at a huge scale, it seems that, by hook or by crook, Joe Biden will become the next President of the United States of America; and we should prepare ourselves for this, regardless of our political points of view and inclinations.

  The presence of Biden in the Whitehouse will definitely change course on a number of issues, both domestically within the USA and overseas, but the objective of this article is to shed a bit of light on what is likely to happen to the current pro-Biden camp and the diverse array of supporters who have helped elevate him to this position.

  In more ways than one, I have always seen in Syria a microcosm of world politics and conflicts. Long before the enemies of Syria decided to launch their attack in March 2011, the masterminds of the conspiracy put the most unlikely allies together, only united by their hatred of Syria. Back then I called them the ‘Anti-Syrian Cocktail’. Those allies each had their own agenda regarding Syria and had nothing in common other than their desire to remove President Bashar Al-Assad from office. Among the issues they disagreed on was his replacement, how to share the spoils, not to mention the alternative political system to install, Syria’s future position in the region, international alliances, and so forth.

  With a whole array of enemies, Trump inadvertently caused a rounding up of a very loosely-united anti-Trump-cocktail; only united by their hatred of him. So, let’s face it and acknowledge it; they will never let him win the November 2020 elections. Though only united by their hatred of Trump, there are too many of them, they are powerful; extremely powerful, and they are very determined to get rid of him by any means possible, legal, illegal, using tactics like bribery, intimidation, threats, thuggery, and they have no one to fear because, collectively they have given each other impunity, covering each other’s backs and producing a culture where criticizing them is taboo. Crucially, the ‘law’ and the media are on their side.

  With the exception of the Clintons and Bidens perhaps, the other Democrats have their traditional political opposition to Trump, even when they see and know he is making good decisions. This is the golden rule of political duopoly. But the Clintons and the Bidens have personal dirt on them and even blood on their hands that they want to keep the lid on in order to avoid prosecution and possibly even jail. They are likely to remain united after a Trump loss, but the same cannot be said about other odd couples.

  Most of the other November 2020 Biden supporters are destined to be on a collision course, and they will soon enough realize that their differences are much stronger than what united them and that they were taken for fools. None will be disappointed more than the so-called ‘Progressives’.

  The definition of the term progressive has morphed quite significantly over the last decade or so. Currently, it seems to include any one who stands up against Trump; and this is the primordial cause of the confusion and reason for future conflict between them. In reality, what defines the term ‘progressive’ in any existing progressive movement can be totally different from that of another movement; and the difference is not necessarily marginal. Being ‘progressive’ in the 21st Century implies the presence of a very specific agenda or slogan that may or may not be compatible with other ‘progressive’ agendas.

  Take the Assange supporters for example. The moment they wake up from their deep slumber, they will realize that the man they supported to become President is actually the leader of the political party that has put Assange in jail for exposing his party’s dirt. I hope that Trump pulls the rug from underneath their feet and pardons Assange before the 20th of January 2021. But will this show the Assange supporters who is who? Not necessarily because if they wanted to open up their eyes and see, they would have seen from day one that Assange’s biggest enemy is none but Hillary Clinton and that she is the one responsible for his demise; not Trump.

  But the Assange supporters did not play a major role in the elections; at least not directly, and at least not as much as their closest ‘progressives’; the peace activists.

  The Democrats and their cohorts have portrayed Trump as a warmonger. When peace activists eventually see that Biden will have to serve his warlord masters and start new wars across the globe, they will have to think again. He is already touting hiring well known hawks in key positions in his forthcoming cabinet and team of advisors, with his Defense Secretary reportedly selected.

  When it comes to street power however, none has been more powerful and effective as the combination of BLM and the environmentalists.

  BLM activists have just fallen a tad short of blaming Trump for an American five-century long history of racism. But how much do BLM activists really care about Climate Change and specifically about Greta-type environmental vision of how the world should run? Moreover, most environmentalists, if not all of them, are anti-vaxxers. When they see that Biden is the trump card for the vaccine empire, they may wish they didn’t take to the streets to unseat the Trump card they had in the Whitehouse. If there is/was one person standing up against the malevolent “Gates vaccine”, it has to be Trump, and the single-issue anti-vaxxers are against Trump. Try to make sense of this.

  This is not to forget and ignore that the Climate Change activists will soon find out, the hard way, that Biden will not come clean on the zero-emission promise; not only because he doesn’t want to, not only because he goes to bed with the petro-dollar lobby, but also because he does not have the alternative technology to replace fossil fuel with.

  In and out and in between the BLM and Climate Change activists, what do the Climate Change activists have in common ideologically with BLM and at what stage will they break ranks and decide to go against one another? What will happen after either one of them accuses the other, rightfully I must say, that they have been used as pawns by the ‘Deep State’?

  And who said that the BLM has more in common with the LBGTI community and activists than it does with the gun lobby? Sections of the BLM likely also love guns.

  And speaking of Greta, for how much longer will she able to keep up the fallacy that her agenda and those of her friends Soros and the World Economic Forum (WEF), and its members that include Monsanto, are actually compatible?

  And for the right or wrong reasons, who is to guarantee that the tens of millions of Trump supporters are going to sit and accept that the election win of Biden is legitimate and that they have to swallow it? Will this cause social strife, violence on the streets, even worse perhaps civil war and much more? We don’t know. What we do know is that a controversy about election results should have been dealt with in total transparency in order to put all concerns to rest. But this is not happening, and it is not going to happen because a decision has been made against Trump dictating that he must lose.

  But the after-Trump-effect is not necessarily going to affect only America. Right-wing politics, including the extreme version of it, have been on the rise in the world, and especially in Western Europe. And if the Neo-Nazis look threatening because their ideology is based on a very dark chapter in human history, what do we really know is on the agenda of the forces that have combined the very diverse elements of the anti-Trump cocktail in order to serve its objective(s)? What is it really that they want?

  Hitler was at least clear about his mission statement. He wanted an Aryan Third Reich to rule the world for a thousand years. The rest of the world did not have to wonder and ponder about his intentions. He sent a very clear message to rest of the world, a message clear enough to unite the West with the Bolsheviks against him.

  But today, we have an invisible driving force that has managed to put together an array of the most unlikely partners in order to fight a common cause. Do we not at least ask the question ‘why?’

  In the case of Syria, the answer to the ‘why’ question was to topple Assad, albeit without having a plan that went further, at least as a united coalition. It would have been impossible for the plotters and planners to each disclose what they had in mind. In reality, they did not have any plan at all other than replacing him with a void. Fast-forward; the get-rid-of-Trump plan is very similar; get rid of him without having a plan so as to ensure all participants are pleased and appeased, because the plan seems to also be based on replacing Trump with chaos and anarchy.

  The irony here is that the anti-Trump-cocktail is not only comprised of his political opponents, mainstream media, social media, but also includes government agencies such as the DOJ, the CIA, the FBI and even some American Republicans.

  Briefly put, Trump has been chosen to lose, but after him, the flood is imminent. The current allies who lobbied against him will very shortly come to the realization that they are no longer united, and some will even turn into enemies fighting over the spoils of the win.

  In more ways than one, they will harvest the fruit of the seeds they planted, and they will rightfully deserve all consequences. A Biden win is the most befitting ‘punishment’ of the anti-Trump cocktail.

  Apart from the hapless American populace, the biggest loser of this all is the international stature of America as the leader of the so-called Democratic Free World. In a fitting blowback for these pernicious actors, Trump would have proven without a shadow of doubt, that the Deep State is so deep and powerful, powerful enough to mobilize its own enemies to serve it.

  

  At that point, to quote the rhetoric of the “Great Reset” agenda, but again, as blowback, things will never be the same again for these dangerous characters.

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• Bravery Is…
  Bravery Is…
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 19:20

  Having trouble interpreting what’s really going on in the world? JP Sears and his fellow ‘thinkers’ explain what the media would like you to think…

  Of course you can always trust the media to lead the way to the promised land of truth.

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• Cornell Offers "Person Of Color"-Exemption For Flu Vaccine Requirement
  Cornell Offers “Person Of Color”-Exemption For Flu Vaccine Requirement
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 18:55

  Authored by Benjamin Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

  Students at Cornell University can use their status as a “person of color” to be exempt from the university’s flu vaccine requirement.

  “Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events,” explains Cornell Health’s vaccine requirement FAQ.

  Students can send a private message to Cornell Health in order to request a non-medical or non-religious exemption for the immunization.

  

  For more information, the FAQ links to a page “especially for students of color,” which is meant to help minority students concerned about the flu vaccine requirement.

  “We recognize that, due to longstanding systemic racism and health inequities in this country, individuals from some marginalized communities may have concerns about needing to agree to such requirements,” explains the page. “For example, historically, the bodies of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) have been mistreated, and used by people in power, sometimes for profit or medical gain.”

  The university, therefore, considers it “understandable that the current Compact requirements may feel suspect or even exploitative to some BIPOC members of the Cornell community.”

  Nevertheless, Cornell strongly encourages minority students to receive immunizations.

  “Away from campus community, BIPOC individuals are not as likely to have access to preventive services or quality health care,” continues the page.

  “The systems, services, and policies being implemented at Cornell seek to address these inequalities as well as the differential impacts.”

  One Cornell undergraduate, who spoke to Campus Reform on the condition of anonymity, said that “all students deserve equal treatment regarding what healthcare choices they are allowed to make at Cornell.”

  Because students of all identities may have personal concerns about taking a mandatory vaccine, “having a policy statement that singles out BIPOC students for requesting an exemption” is unfair for other students.

  Campus Reform contacted Cornell University for more information and will update this article accordingly.

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• Here Is The Little-Known Provision In The CARES Act That Could Trigger A Year-End "Selling Deluge"
  Here Is The Little-Known Provision In The CARES Act That Could Trigger A Year-End “Selling Deluge”
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 18:30

  One week before the end of November, JPMorgan issued a startling warning: according to calculations by the bank’s quant, Nick Panigirtzoglou, some $160 billion in negative equity rebalancing (read selling) was on deck by various pension and balanced mutual funds, and – should the rally continued into December – an additional $150 billion in forced selling could emerge from funds who have to keep their 60/40 stock/bond asset allocation. While many on Wall Street braced for a late November drawdown following this note, expecting a deluge of selling into an extremely illiquid market, with Emini top-of-book depth near the lowest levels on record…

  

  … aside from a modest dip on Nov 30, stocks continued their upward ascent with the S&P hitting an all time high last week, just above 3,700.

  That said, it may be too early to give the “all clear”, for two reason: first, it is possible that the rebalancing fund “forced selling” has merely been pushed back to December, and year-end, and if JPM’s calculation that we could be facing over a $100 billion in forced selling in the coming, even more illiquid days is correct, it is unlikely there will be enough buying interest to offset the coming pension rebalancing. The second reason why we may experience market turbulence in the last days of the year, is over a little noticed piece of legislation which according to Larry McDonald’s Bear Traps Report, could open the floodgates to 401K selling, leading to a “selling deluge.”

  As McDonald writes, buried deep in the CARES Act (the Corona Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act) which was enacted on March 27, 2020, and provided $2.2 Trillion of fiscal stimulus to offset the impact of the coronavirus on the U.S. economy, “is a clause that gives temporary flexibility on early withdrawals from retirement accounts. These temporary changes to the rules give more leeway to make emergency withdrawals from tax-deferred retirement accounts without incurring a penalty.”

  Specifically, Section 2022 of the CARES Act eliminates the 10 percent early withdrawal penalty if you are under the age of 59 ½ and withdraw up to $100,000. It also allows for the spread out of your income tax liability over three years rather than the same year you withdraw the money. And since the window to make these penalty-free early withdrawals closes by the end of 2020, millions of cash-strapped households may have no choice but to sell tens, if not hundreds of billions in passively-managed funds to take advantage of this one-time offer to avoid a 10% early withdrawal charge.

  McDonald then goes on to highlight the importance of passive investing which over the past decade has emerged as the dominant price setter in a world where actively managed funds have been fading. As the Bear Traps author writes, “the explosive impact of passive investing is significant. In recent years, passive equity funds have enjoyed inflows of more than $2T, even as traditional, active ones have suffered outflows of over $1.5T, according to data provider EPFR.” Indeed, the main story on Bloomberg this morning picks up on this, writing that “roughly $427 billion has poured into U.S. exchange-traded funds this year, divided almost evenly between equity and fixed-income funds, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. Meanwhile, mutual funds have bled roughly $469 billion of assets in 2020, on track for the worst year on record in Investment Company Institute data going back to 1990.“

  

  While we have for years covered the staggering divergence between active outflows and passive inflows – which threaten to make conventional stock pickers obsolete and make market prices meaningless – and thus the topic is familiar to regular readers, Bloomberg writes that “this stark divergence in fortunes is part of a tectonic shift that’s seen investors favor ETFs over mutual funds for nine consecutive years, lured by the industry’s ultra-low fees and tax advantages. That trend was accelerated further in 2020, thanks to a well-timed rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve’s first foray into the $5.3 trillion U.S. ETF market. Combined with another rocky performance from active managers, it’s clear why ETFs are winning out, according to State Street Global Advisors.”

  In any case, as McDonald summarizes, “there is now over $12T in index funds globally —either passive mutual funds or the increasingly popular ETFs.”

  And while the 401(k) provision is intended for those hardest hits by the pandemic, such as people who lost their jobs, the rules are applied rather loosely. For example, a qualified person includes those that “experience adverse financial consequences from being quarantined, being furloughed or laid off or having their work hours reduced.” Also qualified are those who “experienced adverse financial consequences as a result of being unable to work due to lack of childcare [or] closing or reducing hours from a business that you own or operate due to SARS Cov-2 or Covid-19”. Since virtually anyone can argue that they are qualified under these criteria, the language is open to interpretation and the IRS is unlikely to enforce the limits of this provision to the letter of the law according to McDonald, especially since banks and retirement management companies – who have themselves benefited greatly from the CARES act – are giving considerable leeway to allow their customers to use the CARES Act early withdrawal exemption.

  McDonald then makes one final point – the same one we noted three weeks ago – namely the lack of market depth or liquidity, to wit:

  This potential selling deluge comes as positioning in U.S. equities is becoming stretched and implied volatility for the Georgia runoffs is above average. Year-end rebalancing by pension funds is still expected to create supply in equities as funds rebalance their (now) overweight in equities. Overall, for 2021 we should expect volatility to grind lower as the removal of trade war risk, the declining corona risk with the advent of the vaccines, the removal of the uncertainty of the elections, and rebounding GDP growth with 0% Fed funds rates provide a supportive backdrop for risk assets. Notwithstanding that, we first need to pass the year-end hurdle of retirement withdrawals, pension rebalancing, and Georgia runoffs.

  

  Ultimately, The Bear Trap report’s conclusion is identical to that of Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson, who has recently cautioned that a near-term “drawdown” is coming, but that would be followed by a brisk episode of BTFD and new highs in 2021, or as McDonald puts it, while the coming selling deluge “could take an overstretched market by surprise…. we would then use a meaningful pullback to prudently add to the risk.”

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• The 'Hannibal Trap' Will Crush Global Wealth
  The ‘Hannibal Trap’ Will Crush Global Wealth
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 18:05

  Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

  Is the global investment world about to be caught in the Hannibal trap?

  Hannibal was considered as one of the greatest military tacticians and generals in history. He was a master of strategy and regularly led his enemies into excruciating defeats.

  

  The trap that investors are now being led into has many similarities with Hannibal’s strategy in his victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC.

  Hannibal was a general and statesman from Carthage (now Tunisia) who successfully fought against the Romans in the Second Punic War.

  THE BATTLE AT LAKE TRASIMENE

  In 218 BC Hannibal took his troops, with cavalry and elephants, over the Alps and into Italy. Hannibal enticed the Roman Consul Flaminius, and his troops, in 217 BC to follow him to Lake Trasimene in Umbria. The Romans followed Hannibal’s troops into a narrow valley on the northern shores of the lake. When the Roman troops were inside the valley, they were trapped. They had the Carthaginians ahead of them, the lake on their right and hills on their left.

  What the Romans didn’t know was that Hannibal had hidden his light cavalry and part of his army up in the hills. So once the Romans were locked into the valley, they were attacked from both ends with nowhere to escape.

  Over 15,000 Romans were killed and 10,000 captured in a catastrophic defeat.

  So what has Hannibal got to do with the present world? Well, it is pretty obvious. It is all about being led into a fatal trap without even being aware.

  COVID ATTACKED AN ALREADY WEAKENED WORLD

  As we are approaching the end of an economic era in the world, anything that can go wrong will. The Coronavirus certainly fits that picture, since it could not have hit the world at a worse moment. Whether Covid-19 was accidentally or deliberately created by humans or just a product of nature, we will never learn.

  What we do know is that Covid was like putting a match to a timebomb. The timebomb being a global financial system which is about to explode.

  Major businesses in retail, leisure, travel, airlines are closing by the day and most won’t open again. Globally, 100´s of thousand of small businesses have closed with devastating effects for their owners.

  The coming depression will affect all levels of society.

  BILLIONAIRES WEALTH UP 70% IN THREE YEARS

  At the top of the global wealth pyramid, we have the biggest wealth trap in history. These are the 2,200 billionaires in the world. In the last three years their fortunes have swelled by a staggering 70% or $4.2 trillion. Their total wealth is now $10.2t.

  These billionaires are likely to lose at least 90% of their wealth, in real terms, in the next 5-10 years. But not a single one of them expects this to happen or prepares for it.

  As regards the number of millionaires in the world, the estimates vary between 13 and 46 million. Escalating house prices have clearly created a lot of extra millionaires.

  GLOBAL DEBT FUELS GLOBAL WEALTH

  Total global financial wealth is up almost 3x since 1990 from $80 trillion to $225t.

  But this massive wealth accumulation is resting on a very weak foundation of debt.

  It was only possible to treble wealth by, at the same time, more than trebling global debt from $80t in 1990 to $277t today.

  

  BIGGEST WEALTH TRAP IN HISTORY

  So there we have it. The world hasn’t created any net wealth. Instead wealth has just been inflated artificially by credit creation and money printing of the same magnitude.

  I do realise that total global debt and global personal wealth is not quite like for like. Still it gives a very good indication how this additional wealth is created since 1990.

  Yes, it was created by just simply printing money to the extent of $200 trillion in the last 20 years!

  This is clearly the biggest wealth trap in history. Hannibal couldn’t have done it better.

  Billionaires, millionaires and ordinary investors have all been sucked into a honeypot believing that they have real wealth based on sound foundations.

  What they don’t realise is that they will in the next few years be ambushed by what to them is an invisible enemy.

  This will initially involve total debasement of the currency, whether it is dollars, euros, pounds or yen. No they can’t all go down together against each other.

  But they will all go down in real terms. Real terms means measured in the only money which has survived in history – GOLD.

  The route there will not be straight forward. As currencies collapse, we will most likely first see hyperinflation. That could temporarily boost asset prices in nominal terms but certainly not in real terms.

  There will also be an implosion of both the debt bubble and the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and property.

  ROBBER BARRONS

  Robber Barrons were feudal lords in medieval Europe who robbed travellers and merchant ships.

  The term Robber Barons was used from the 1860s for some of the entrepreneurs at the time. They used unscrupulous methods to acquire wealth, thus the term. Most of them started new industries that became dominant in their field.

  They included Rockefeller (oil), Vanderbilt (railroads), Carnegie (steel), Ford (cars), Morgan (banking), and Astor (real estate).

  Major fortunes were created by these Entrepreneurs and Rockefeller is still considered the wealthiest man in the world ever, adjusted for inflation. Interestingly, the sectors these millionaires were in are all major industries today except for railways.

  The modern “Robber Barons” – Bezos, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg and Buffet are in diversified areas like online retail, technology, car manufacturing and investments/finance.

  FANTASY VALUATIONS

  The big difference between the Robber Barrons in the late 19th century and today is how their wealth is measured.

  150 years ago valuations were conservative and price earnings ratios for public companies were normally below 10!

  Quick jump to today. Amazon has a p/e over 90, Microsoft & Facebook “only” in the 30s, and Tesla has a staggering p/e of 1,100!

  So on a historical basis, all of the biggest companies in the world today are grossly overvalued at p/e’s of 32 to 1,100 !!

  This is what happens when governments and central banks primary economic strategy consists of creating money out of thin air and then these funds are used to support the stock market.

  A major part of the $150 trillion debt created since the Great Financial Crisis started in 2006 has stayed with the banks and not gone to consumers or industry.

  Conveniently the money has reached investors and been invested in asset markets as I showed in the Debt/Asset table earlier in the this article.

  STOCKS ARE DRIVEN BY LIQUIDITY – NOT VALUE INVESTING

  Thus it is debt based liquidity which is primarily driving up asset markets. This is creating fantasy p/e’s and valuations which has very little to do with the growth of industry and finance 150 years ago.

  So back to Hannibal although he has been dead for 2200 years.

  We have major and potentially terminal problems in the financial system since September 2019. And we have a virus which has led to major parts of the world economy collapsing due to governments handling of this virus, But in spite of these massive problems, stock markets around the world are booming.

  HANNIBAL TRAP

  We have probably not seen the end of the stock market explosion as I explained in a recent article on the coming LIFTOFF & COLLAPSE. But at some point in the next few weeks or months, the market will burst.

  Before this burst every investor, big or small, who has any spare liquidity must be sucked into the market just before the top.

  This is the Hannibal trap. Everybody must be hauled into the stocks at the top of the market.

  And then BANG! Just like Hannibal totally took the Romans by surprise, so will a violent stock market crash.

  But this time it won’t be like in March 2020 with a quick recovery. Yes, of course most investors will buy the dips. That will only increase the pain. Because the coming collapse will be the start of a secular bear market that could last 10 years or more.

  And just like Hannibal slaughtered the Romans, the coming bear market will slaughter investors.

  Investors could easily see all the bubble assets, stocks bonds and property decline by more than 90% in real terms. Again, real terms mean constant and stable purchasing power.

  THE DOW WILL LOSE 97% IN REAL TERMS – GOLD

  The Dow/Gold ratio is today 15. In 1980 it was 1 to 1. The ratio topped in 1999 and the long term trend is now down as the chart below shows.

  The target for the ratio is 0.5 to 1. This means that the Dow will lose 97% against Gold in coming years.

  

  Few people believe this magnitude of decline is possible.

  But remember the Dow in itself went down 90% from 1929 to 1932 and that it took 25 years before it recovered.

  This time the situation is drastically worse both from a debt point of view and overvaluation of stocks. So 95%+ is not unrealistic.

  HISTORY PROVES THAT ONLY GOLD PRESERVES WEALTH IN REAL TERMS

  Only gold fulfils the role of always holding its value in real terms. Again history proves it.

  One ounce of gold bought a good costume for a man in Hannibal’s days, 2200 years ago, just as it does today.

  Since investors have been saved by central banks for decades, they expect the same today. This is why they will stay invested and also buy every dip until they run out of money.

  Sadly very few investors will get out before the bottom.

  BIGGEST WEALTH DESTRUCTION

  That is why we will see the biggest wealth destruction in history. Instead of the 2,200 billionaires currently, the world might have as little as 200 in 5-10 years time (in today’s money).

  All businesses will of course not disappear. But earnings will decline dramatically and p/e’s will collapse.

  Let’s take a business with a share price of $300 today and earnings per share of $10.

  Thus the p/e is 30 (30x$10=$300).

  If profits decline by 70% in a recession/depression and the p/e goes to 5 it will look as follows: Eps $3 x 5 p/e = $15 share price.

  So this company is still making a profit, albeit smaller. Still, the share price is down from $100 to $15 or by 95%.

  P/e’s of 5 or less are not unusual during depressions/recessions. I experienced this in the 1970s. The same happened in the 1930s.

  HISTORY, HISTORY HISTORY

  Again, as I often stress, the best lessons we learn are from history.

  Everyone thinks “It is different today” but I promise it isn’t. Almost everything we experience today has happened before.

  So vast fortunes will be wiped out in coming years. And other fortunes will be made in areas like hard assets and the resource industry. Precious metals will be an obvious major beneficiary.

  Some of the shrewd Swiss private banks like Lombard Odier advised their clients to hedge their portfolios with gold earlier this year. Very few wealth managers are as clever as 200 year old Swiss banks.

  Precious metals mining stocks are likely to do spectacularly well in the coming currency collapse and so will gold and silver.

  But the ultimate wealth preservation in the next 10 years is physical gold and silver held outside the banking system as history confirms.

  Remember that markets can always go higher even though they are massively overvalued.

  But when risk is at a maximum, investment is not about squeezing the last bit of profit out of your portfolio. Instead, it is all about protecting your profits. And you can’t do that by staying fully invested in overvalued assets.

  Remember that in a secular bear market everyone is a loser. The trick is to lose as little as possible.

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• Is Oil Still The Cheapest 'Reflation' Asset?
  Is Oil Still The Cheapest ‘Reflation’ Asset?
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 17:40

  “Oil is the cheapest of all reflation assets,” said Amrita Sen, co-founder of London-based consultant Energy Aspects Ltd.

  “With vaccines slowly rolling out, we expect investors to start returning to the oil sector and for prices to continue firming.”

  And judging by the surge in energy stocks and Brent crude topping $50 for the first time since March, it would appear investors are returning en masse in the hope that things will “return to normal” sooner rather than later.

  

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  As Bloomberg notes, while the COVID-19 pandemic is worse than ever in the U.S., demand in Europe is bouncing back as a second wave of lockdowns eases and Asia continues to pull in huge volumes of crude.

  In some corners of the world, the recovery in demand is almost complete. 

  India’s largest refiner said last week its plants are processing at full capacity and it’s expecting a v-shaped rebound in fuel use.

  Consumption of gasoline is also at or near pre-Covid levels in China and Japan, the world’s second and fourth biggest oil consumers.

  European motorists are hitting the roads again as governments relax national lockdowns in countries including the U.K., Spain, and France, according to an index of road usage and traffic compiled by Bloomberg News. Road freight is sharply higher as companies rebuild inventories and the Christmas shopping season gets in full swing.

  All of this as US continues to lag.

  

   

   

  The Bear Traps Report (with Larry McDonald) agrees, positioning bullish for 2021, expecting to see $80 Crude a year from now…

  We think the oil industry is at a very interesting crossroads. While the headlines are obvious, ESG, green initiatives and capital broadly being reallocated out of the energy space, there are some positive tailwinds that are starting to enter the equation. At current multiples and sentiment, we think some of these more positive forces are worth factoring in.

  The global economy, with plenty of speed bumps to come, is in the early phase of recovering from a once in a generation shock. Typically, in economics, a shock is either demand or supply-based, covid was really both. For oil, the grounding of flights, domestic lockdowns, and heightened levels of general uncertainty, have meant oil and oil names have traded very poorly this year. The thing that is worth noting in the context of this perfect storm is, who are the survivors, because the companies that are able to survive this shock will be in a good place from an operating leverage perspective, i.e. reduced competition, and will be the most able to benefit from the changing tides of global risk.

  Emerging market countries are benefiting from the weaker U.S. dollar and stronger CNY in China.

  

  One of the things that are becoming clear in this early phase of the global economic recovery is, China and the US’ approach to stimulus has actually been quite complimentary. China has been focused on the supply and production side while the U.S. has been focused on the demand, fixing the private sector balance sheet side. On the one hand, this has led to age-old problems. Case in point, the external accountbalance with the trade deficit between the U.S. and China going back to all-time wide levels. However, this combination of policy support has largely been a positive for the global economy, especially emerging markets. The positive multiplier impact from a stronger yuan in china is significant. This is oil bullish.

  How Does this Work?

  China gets the factories open and supports the supply side, the U.S. gets households money which they spend on goods instead of services. Given covid restrictions, this data has been impressive. This duality effectively sends money to China, strengthens the RMB, and allows China to import more from the rest of the world. This downstream of demand is critical to getting the global trading back to its pre-covid levels again. It is also why this transition of fiscal policy and transfer payments is so important for the global economy right now.

  If the famous fiscal handoff from monetary policy is here, oil and other industrial commodities will be prime beneficiaries. This is where there could be a bit of irony in the wall street narratives. One of the main consensus views takes place on the street is that oil names will struggle with a blue wave, given green focus, regulations, fracking, etc. However, the same people are saying that a blue wave will be positive for risk assets and growth has given it is the most likely medium for expansive fiscal spending. As we have seen, when the U.S. does fiscal and household consumption is strengthened, it has a positive spillover on global growth and global trade. When growth and trade are improving, oil and oil-related names typically do well. We think this is especially true as the supply response from OPEC and U.S. shale will be much more muted if growth and demand-side lead to a re-rating higher in oil prices in 2021. We believe the famous fiscal handoff is here and a large fiscal response only reinforces that dynamic which should end up being positive for oil and oil-related names in 2021.

  But The Bear Traps Report notes there are some short-term issues to watch…

  We believe the oil market has been leapfrogging many factors in the short term including the current covid concerns and the short term demand issues that will develop from economic shutdowns along with Iran production coming back.

  Overlooking these issues is fine if they don’t develop momentum.

  However, they are developing momentum so we do not think that one should remain naked in this respect. We would take advantage of lower volatility today to layer in some risk offsets due to both covid and the knee-jerk reaction the market might have to a democratic government pursuing a more positive relationship with Iran. This will likely be a short term concern so make your risk offsets short duration.

  If momentum picks up that Iran will be allowed to reinstate as a full producer of oil to the market, we think that both the pace in which the production is added as well as the absolute amount of production added does not overshadow the daunting supply crunch that is only going to become more apparent to the market as the ’21 develops.

  In fact, it would be naive to think that OPEC+ was not considering this issue in its decision to increase production by 500,000 b\d in the new year, which would indicate that there is a supply crunch already happening and OPEC+ is trying to avoid the price of oil moving too high too quickly.

  Energy equities are acting very well in this current market and it is worth noting that oil prices may come under pressure and equites could act better due to the value/growth transition that seems to have legs of late.

  We think that the Venezuela concern is not of merit as the scope of capital required to reinvigorate the production will make it’s an entrance back into the global market a very slow one.

  Offsetting the COVID and Iran (new supply) headwinds are the following tailwinds:

  1) Crude has flipped into backwardation which is indicating a tighter physical market

  

  2) The Brent – WTI spread is the widest it has been in 6 months and that tied to time spreads are indicating a tight market

  

  3) The two foremost physical market indicators (Atlantic Basin physical crudes and Asian refining margins) that we deem as imperative leading drivers for a sustainable oil market rally, have both improved lately.

  And so it is a bet that these physical market indicators worsen because of covid – right now they are indicating a tight market.

  However, not everyone is so positive of medium-term recovery over short-term hiccups.

  “Right now, oil has priced in that promising future,” said Victor Shum, vice president of energy consulting at IHS Markit Ltd. in Singapore.

  “While we have to deal with the immediate dark Covid winter.“

  As Bloomberg warns, there are reasons to think $50 could be oil’s ceiling for now. The price could tempt producers from Baghdad to Oklahoma to increase production. There are already tensions within OPEC+, with some members chafing at the cartel’s self-imposed supply limits.

  “A persistent rally could turn OPEC+ much less conservative, in turn driving a price pullback,” said Citigroup Inc. analysts including Ed Morse.

  Additionally, the backwardation highlighted above, that’s attracting speculators, could also draw real barrels into the market, because the price structure isn’t profitable for any traders still storing physical crude. And relentless Asian buying may pause at some point, especially with Lunar New Year celebrations starting in early February. Higher-cost crude will start to dampen the profitability of refiners in the region.

  “There’s been a distinct shift in the financial oil market,” said Michael Tran, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

  

  Speculators are buying futures and holding onto them, scared that they’ll miss out on a further rally, he said.

  So is oil really the cheapest reflation asset? Or is it caught up in the speculative excess sparked by vaccine ‘return to normal’ fear-of-missing-out exuberance… like everything else?

   

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• Deutsche Bank Warns 50% Of NYC Bankers Might Be Headed To Jacksonville In Latest Cost Cuts
  Deutsche Bank Warns 50% Of NYC Bankers Might Be Headed To Jacksonville In Latest Cost Cuts
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 17:15

  As Deutsche Bank continues with the biggest blood-letting on Wall Street since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, managers are reportedly planning to move thousands of Manhattan-based associates, often those with the most important front-office-type jobs in sales and trading.

  Ever since DB moved to expand its presence in the Americas during the late 1990s-2000s, thousands of young employees, from interns to first-year analysts, have flocked to places like Murray Hill and other parts of Manhattan to work at the city’s investment banks, and generally live the young banker lifestyle of late nights out at bars on the lower east side and hooking up with wannabe model types at the clubs and bars that dot (or rather, once dotted) the East Village and the LES.

  In the post-COVID era, many of these analysts might be sent to other more cost-effective parts of the country where Deutsche Bank already has a “presence”, according to DB Americas CEO Christiana Riley, one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street.

  Riley told the FT that the NY head count could “conceivably” be cut in half in 5 years (a pretty aggressive time table). The bank currently has roughly 4,600 staff in Manhattan, which means some 2,300 could soon be reporting to DB’s offices in Jacksonville Fla., long considered a dumping ground, where the bank houses its compliance department. According to media reports, the bank’s compliance workers in the city have long been treated “lower than janitors” by a bank that’s become almost synonymous with criminal malfeasance (an impression that has only been strengthened, as unfortunate or undeserved as that might be, by the endless MSM reporting on the bank’s lending relationship with the Trumps.

  

  The FT specifically cites the Jacksonville office, along with another office in Cary, North Carolina, as likely destinations for these displaced workers. The British paper also noted that NYC has been  losing financial services jobs to cities like Dallas and Tampa for years, but that the pandemic, with its radical experiment in remote work, will likely accelerate the process.

  Florida seems to be a hot spot for financial workers, thanks to the warm climate and (more importantly) low taxes. Goldman Sachs is also reportedly moving its workers to the Sunshine State. And numerous hedge funds and family offices flock to the state for the tax advantages.

  The cost cuts will help DB’s US investment bank hit its target for 11% return on equity by 2022, up from 9% projected this year. That 11% target was first unveiled during CEO Christian Sewing’s big cost-cutting initiative announced last summer in the wake of the bank’s failed tie up talks with Commerzbank. Sewing reiterated the target during the bank’s investor day a week ago.

  Unfortunately, pretty soon, instead of spending summers, and then their first post-grad years, living it up in the big city “Young Money”-style, the bank’s incoming analysts will be kicking it in the Jacksonville swamp, a city that, despite its size, is probably best known as the hometown of rap-metal legends “Limp Bizkit”.

  What’s the point of working all those 7-day, 100+ hour weeks if you can’t experience the thrill of being 23 and living in a flex double somewhere east of Lexington?

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• Morgan Stanley: We Are Bullish Because Central Banks Will Inject Another $2.8 Trillion Of Liquidity In 2021
  Morgan Stanley: We Are Bullish Because Central Banks Will Inject Another $2.8 Trillion Of Liquidity In 2021
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 16:48

  By Matthew Hornbach, chief rates strategist at Morgan Stanley

  Liquidity. It’s What’s For Dinner

  With futures contracts tied to the price of water starting to trade last week, this seems a good time to take a look at the impact of liquidity. Liquidity means different things to different people, so before digging in, let me explain what I have in mind. For some, liquidity is the ability to transact a high volume at a low price or bid/offer spread. Others define it as the ease of converting an asset into cash.

  The liquidity I’ll discuss here is what greases the wheels of financial transactions and usually emanates from central bank balance sheets. As these balance sheets expand, so does the supply of transactional currency – think of it as electronic money – relative to a given set of investment opportunities. As the supply of this currency increases, financing costs tend to decrease. As a result, the valuation of assets, and usually their prices, change.

  How do central banks control the supply of reserves via their balance sheets? They can flood the system by purchasing securities in the open market, i.e., quantitative easing (QE), and drain it by selling them or more commonly letting them roll off without reinvesting. The need for liquidity with which to transact grows with the economy, so monitoring its supply becomes a dynamic process. Keeping tabs on it is also the starting point for an analysis of liquidity’s waterfall effect on broad asset classes.

  Quantifying the impact of liquidity from its central bank balance sheet origins down the stream of risk-less and risky assets – the so-called portfolio balance channel – is difficult. Academic research has come to various conclusions, with consensus forming around the following: Central bank asset purchases affect prices of the assets that central banks purchase the most. As a result, opinions vary on the importance of incorporating liquidity into an investment framework.

  In the end, tracing the impact of central bank QE on asset prices is like following an ounce of water from one end of a river to the other. It’s practically impossible. Instead, we look for clues that suggest how the cash must be flowing. The leaf that floats downstream leads us to conclude that the ounce of water has flowed along with it. In markets, we first point to the decline of the US dollar (which we thought would result from the liquidity deluge). Then we focus on the unwillingness of government bond yields to rise alongside equities, even though breakeven inflation rates were more than happy to do so.

  In the absence of absolute proof, seeing is believing. Fixed income investors may remember the negative impact on financing conditions of reducing the reserves held at the Fed in 3Q19. And equity investors may recall how markets reacted in 4Q19 when the Fed reversed course, injecting reserves and improving financing conditions. But who will forget the never-before-witnessed liquidity injection in 2020? Central banks across the G10 will have injected US$4 trillion via government bond purchases alone by year-end.

  

  In the face of that sum, the idea that this tsunami of liquidity hasn’t had far-reaching impacts on asset prices seems outlandish. Naturally, incentives need to align for people to invest available funds. One such incentive in 2020 was the surprisingly strong rebound in economic activity. Another was zero or sub-zero risk-free rates. But the potency of incentives to invest excess cash moderates as the cash piles up. And piling up is an understatement. 2021 is going to be another big year for liquidity injection.

  On our projections, G10 central banks will inject another US$2.8 trillion of liquidity next year – just in their government bond purchases. To put this in context, that’s more than twice the amount of liquidity central banks injected in any year prior to the one drawing to a close. Of course, this liquidity doesn’t have to find its way into financial markets immediately. It certainly didn’t this year, as evidenced by the US$4.5 trillion sitting in US money market funds today.

  

  But, if our economists are right and the global economy outperforms expectations, we think the ample liquidity environment will support riskier investments to the detriment of risk-less ones. That means the US dollar has further to fall against a host of G10 and EM currencies next year, and the safest investment of all – US Treasuries – will struggle to make ends meet.

  Of course, if central banks signal a reduction in liquidity earlier than we expect, or our economists’ buoyant expectations aren’t met, risky assets could experience a wobble, a theme that might very well feature in our 2021 mid-year outlook.

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• Another Tesla Model S "Inexplicably" Bursts Into Flames
  Another Tesla Model S “Inexplicably” Bursts Into Flames
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 16:25

  According to Twitter account @_subia, her husband was driving a 2015 Tesla Model S when it “inexplicably” burst into flames in late November while driving down a neighborhood street in Frisco, Texas. 

  On Nov. 23, @_subia tweeted, “my husband @usmaan008 heard bangs while driving his beloved ⁦ @Tesla ⁩ & pulled over moments before it burst into flames. I was told we were lucky he got out when he did.”

  

  By Dec. 2, @_subia was hoping for an explanation of why her husband’s Tesla “suddenly caught fire.”

  

  On Dec. 12, @_subia now assumes “the tesla car battery exploded,” adding that her “husband almost took our kids with him. What if kids were buckled in car seats? He hasn’t been able to shake that thought. Or me being in that front passenger seat.”

  

  Weeks later, after the Model S “inexplicably burst into flames” – Tesla has yet to investigate the incident. 

  “Tesla still hasn’t had a chance to investigate but I now fear for all our family & friends who drive Teslas. We just want answers.” 

  Tesla vehicles randomly exploding is not a new phenomenon. We reported in 2019 that a Tesla Model S “spontaneously” caught on fire in a Chinese parking garage.

  By late 2019, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into a possible defect in the battery of some Teslas that could cause “non-crash fires.” 

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• NIH Director Begs Americans To Swallow Vaccine Skepticism As Bill Gates Eyes Unofficial Role
  NIH Director Begs Americans To Swallow Vaccine Skepticism As Bill Gates Eyes Unofficial Role
  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/13/2020 – 16:00

  The director of the National Institutes of Health begged Americans to “hit the reset button” on their concerns over whether the COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed faster than any vaccine in the history of Western medicine, will be safe.

  

  “I would like to plead to people who are listening to this this morning to really hit the reset button on whatever they think they knew about this vaccine that might cause them to be so skeptical,” Dr. Francis Collins told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

  WATCH: @NIHDirector says he wants the public to “hit the reset button on whatever they think they knew about this vaccine that caused them to be so skeptical.”

  “Please, people. When you look back … and you say, ‘Did I do the right thing?’ I hope you’ll be able to say ‘yes.’” pic.twitter.com/v06qCHQxDF

  — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 13, 2020

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  Collins also said that it’s unknown whether someone who’s had the vaccine could still acquire the virus and silently spread to others around them – saying that “it will take us a couple of months to figure that out,” and that people still need to mask up and social distance.

  Director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins:

  “We don’t know whether somebody who had the vaccine could still acquire the virus without any symptoms and potentially be contagious to others around them. … It will take us a couple of months to figure that out.” pic.twitter.com/b3pPuIgS5z

  — JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) December 13, 2020

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsLet’s not forget that earlier his month a former Pfizer executive expressed dire concerns over the rushed vaccines, joining a German pulmonologist in calling for the European Medicine Agency to halt Pfizer vaccine studies until a design study could be created which addresses a host of serious safety concerns ranging from potentially fatal reactions to ‘infertility of indefinite duration.’

  Meanwhile, billionaire Bill Gates is looking forward to his foundation taking an unofficial role in the Biden administration, telling CNN‘s “State of the Union” on Sunday that while he doesn’t expect to take on a formal role, his foundation will liaise with the government on future infectious disease control, according to Bloomberg.

  “I talked with the president-elect about that,” said Gates, adding “I think our foundation will be part of that dialogue to make sure we don’t blow it again.”

  The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced on Wednesday that it will pledge an additional $250 million to fight COVID-19, on top of $1.5 billion it’s already committed.

  On Thursday, Melinda Gates said she was “incredibly disappointed” that President Trump signed an executive order to put Americans at the front of the line for vaccines, with CNNhost Poppy Harlow calling it “vaccine nationalism.”

  Melinda Gates said @realDonaldTrump‘s executive order putting Americans at the front of the line for the COVID-19 vaccine made her feel “incredibly disappointed.” pic.twitter.com/tWYAhEGxIZ

  — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 10, 2020

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