Dec 12

Today’s News 12th December 2020

  • Former Special Forces Officer Warns Of 'Color Revolution Tactics' Used Against Trump
    Former Special Forces Officer Warns Of ‘Color Revolution Tactics’ Used Against Trump
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 23:40

    Authored by QG Pan and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times,

    Color revolution tactics that have been used against foreign leaders are now being used by President Donald Trump’s opponents to oust him, a former special forces officer has warned.

    “A color revolution is a tactic to affect regime change,” the officer, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Epoch Times.

    “What I see happening is a Marxist insurgency that’s using a color revolution to affect regime change.”

    The 2019 Transition Integrity Project, according to the officer, is an indicator that the events of this year’s presidential election were “transparently orchestrated” by “Marxist elements within the Democratic Party and their Marxist allies in foreign governments.”

    “It may not have fallen out just as they wanted, because anytime you carry out an operation like this, the enemy will get a vote. But the plan was we will not concede the election. The goal here was never the presidency,” the officer said.

    “The goal of the opposition was to fundamentally change the country. They are attacking the efficacy of the Constitution.”

    To achieve their goal, the anti-Trump opposition focused their main effort on affecting the election, the officer said.

    Some of the most notable color revolutions took place amid turmoil sparked by disputed elections. In 2004, mass protests in Ukraine following allegations of a fraudulent presidential election, which initially showed pro-Russia Viktor Yanukovych as the winner, led to a new vote won by Viktor Yushchenko, the candidate backed by the European Union and the United States.

    The officer said the tactics used by the anti-Trump opposition can be found in the Special Forces’ guide for overthrowing a government.

    “What you’re getting from me, this is supported in all older unconventional warfare doctrines,” the officer said.

    “You could go to our manuals and pull from them the information I’m telling you. This isn’t from someone who’s a rabid Trump supporter. This is what’s happening.”

    The officer then talked about how President Barack Obama used his eight years in office to “seed his political allies all through the institutions,” created an “underground” or “shadow government” supported by legacy media and rioters.

    “With the president being unable to get his own people into the administration, we effectively had a third administration of Obama,” the officer said.

    “So we come to what we have today: The underground are the elements within the government. We saw how they opposed the president, how they tried the impeachment.”

    “The press is the auxiliary on the outside. The only thing we’re missing is a real guerrilla force, and we would be mistaken to think that’s just Antifa or Black Lives Matter. There are professional revolutionaries within those movements.”

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  • "A Medical Miracle" – Trump Heralds FDA Approval Of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID Vaccine For Emergency Use
    “A Medical Miracle” – Trump Heralds FDA Approval Of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID Vaccine For Emergency Use
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 23:31

    Following last night’s 17-4 vote that the benefits of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine outweigh the benefits, the “big, old, slow turtles” at The FDA have approved it for Emergency Use.

    President Trump heralds the “medical miracle.”

    Full Statement:

    The decision comes after a tempestuous day during which WaPo reported that “sources” told them that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows demanded that FDA chief Stephen Hahn to clear the vaccine for EUA or hand in his resignation (which seems odd pressure given that a) Hahn will be gone shortly as Biden takes over and b) the election is over so Trump has no real need to care whether the vaccine is signed off today, tomorrow, or Monday).

    Shortly after the story was denied…

    The Trump administration promised that 100 million doses of an effective vaccine would be available by the end of 2020, and that an additional 600 million would be available to the public by March 2021, though there was some disagreement about the timeline.

    So what happens next is all Americans are propagandized (we’re all in this together, be a patriot) or coerced (no travel or work without a vaccine) into taking the vaccine.

    Of course, politics is likely to rear its ugly head as decision are made, state by state, on the logistics and ‘equitable’ distribution of the vaccines beyond the simple cohorts of most-at-risk and healthcare workers. As Phillip Giraldi noted:

    There is a strong consensus that the first recipients of the vaccine must be health care workers, a group that has suffered disproportionately from the disease and which constitutes the first line of defense against its spread.

    After that, however, there is little clarity.

    Suggestions that elderly people, particularly in nursing homes, should be inoculated, have been countered by those who believe that a limited supply of vaccine should go primarily to people who would be able to go back to work.

    And then there are the politicians in each jurisdiction, who oddly believe that their work is vital. They and their families will be lining up.

    In short, who gets vaccinated will likely depend on the deals and arrangements that have been worked out, often at the state and local level in the United States, and at national government level in most other places.

    Logically, the vaccine should go first to those who are most at risk for contracting the disease and dying from it, but logic likely will not prevail.

    Generally speaking, it is expected that after health care workers and perhaps the vulnerable elderly, front line police and emergency services should be next in line due to their frequent contact with the possibly infected public, followed by workers in places like slaughterhouses where work conditions have created infection hot spots.

    Next in line would logically be workers in shops or businesses where there is regular contact with the public, but as such employees are generally low wage they will likely be pushed to the back of the bus.

    Inevitably, the claims that there is a racial angle to the disease will certainly surface in places like the New York Times, leading to demands to vaccinate minorities first.

    This will surely be resisted. Given the political realities of the pandemic and the socio-economic engineering that will no doubt take place, the real excitement will likely begin when the vaccine actually begins to become available, probably just before Christmas!

    In the meantime, as Dr. Fauci pronounced, “you can’t give [masks and social distancing] up completely until you get such a level of herd immunity that the virus has no place to go.”

    Don’t hold your breath, America.

    As we detailed last night, after an unprecedentedly short period from inception to trial to results, Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA COVID vaccine has just been approved (after an all-day meeting) by the Food and Drug Administration Advisory panel for emergency use in the US.

    This was the question to be voted on…

    Notably there was a lot of argument about removing the 16 years or older segment of the question.

    These were the voters:

    And the final vote count was as follows: 17 Yes, 4 No, 1 Abstain

    This follows approvals by UK and Canada, but several populations were excluded from the trials – meaning the vaccine isn’t known to be safe for all Americans just yet…

    “There are currently insufficient data to make conclusions about the safety of the vaccine in subpopulations such as children less than 16 years of age, pregnant and lactating individuals, and immunocompromised individuals,” a recent FDA review concluded.

    As NIAID director Anthony Fauci tells Axios, “once 75%–80% of people get vaccinated against the coronavirus, there should be strong enough herd immunity that we can return to normal activities.”

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  • Microsoft Asia's A.I. 'Girlfriend' Has A State-Imposed Filter To Avoid Sex & Politics
    Microsoft Asia’s A.I. ‘Girlfriend’ Has A State-Imposed Filter To Avoid Sex & Politics
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 23:20

    Meet the Artificial Intelligence (AI) ‘girlfriend’ which is seducing lonely men and giving them companionship: “Unlike regular virtual assistants, Xiaoice is designed to set her users’ hearts aflutter. Appearing as an 18-year-old who likes to wear Japanese-style school uniforms, she flirts, jokes, and even sexts with her human partners, as her algorithm tries to work out how to become their perfect companion.” This is obviously freakishly creepy, but it gets surprisingly worse.

    First developed by Microsoft Asia-Pacific in 2014, Xiaoice is not a robot, but a “chatbot” like Siri or Amazon’s Alexa – an AI-driven voice interacting program but which is designed to have more “personality” allowing users to make “deep emotional connections,” according to state-run China culture and tech journal Sixth Tone.

    Image source: Xiaoice

    Xiaoice’s creators have boasted that to date the bot has had at least 600 million users, and in particular mostly Chinese males from lower-income backgrounds, according to the report. 

    Putting aside the obvious creepiness factor and depressing dystopian delusion that such advanced tech initiatives are seeking to foster (the report literally opens with a story of a young man “saved” from committing suicide after Xiaoice’s voice intervened), Sixth Tone bluntly admits that China’s Communist censors have intervened to make the bot less ‘life-like’ in the area of politics.

    Here’s the key section of the report:

    In several high-profile cases, the bot has engaged in adult or political discussions deemed unacceptable by China’s media regulators. On one occasion, Xiaoice told a user her Chinese dream was to move to the United States. Another user, meanwhile, reported the bot kept sending them photos of scantily clad women.

    The scandals have caused the company major setbacks. In 2017, Xiaoice was removed from the popular social media app QQ, though she has since been reinstated. Then, last year, the bot was also pulled from WeChat — China’s leading social app with over 1 billion users.

    After this second removal, Xiaoice’s fans worried the bot was going to disappear completely. Li refused to comment on the issue with Sixth Tone, but pointed out that the company has taken strong action to ensure Xiaoice avoids crossing the line in the future.

    So the evidently Orwellian bot got even more absurdly Orwellian.

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    This is all followed by this amazing and hilarious line out of the publication which is owned by state-backed Shanghai United Media Group: 

    The developers’ main response has been to create “an enormous filter system,” Li said on the podcast Story FM. The mechanism makes the bot “dumber” and prevents her from touching on certain subjects, particularly sex and politics.

    Now many young Chinese men which were ‘loyalists’ feel “betrayed” by the less interesting and less exciting bot. After all, no sex and politics? 

    Via China’s Sixth Tone: A screenshot shows a sexual conversation between Ming Xuan and Xiaoice…

    A Microsoft demo of the chatbot’s capabilities:

    New York Times China correspondent Vivian Wang pointed out that “Developers dumbed down the AI girlfriend, making her avoid topics like politics and sex, after she ran afoul of Chinese censors. But some users feel betrayed, saying the change has harmed their relationships with her.”

    So now even the AI bots are state-controlled and censored. Perhaps this the obvious cue for the generation of “lonely” men to find a real flesh and blood human to interact with, and to simply face with the bumpier and less sanitized path that often inevitably comes with living in the real world.

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  • The Dehumanizing Danger Of Social Media
    The Dehumanizing Danger Of Social Media
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 23:00

    Authored by Josephine Bartosch via The Critic,

    The pandemic has been a technologist’s wet dream: forcing people online has accelerated what were already inevitable changes. Social distancing started a long time before the threat of contagion, sometime around 2005 with the spread of high-speed internet.

    In the previous decade, technologists shared a utopian vision of the digital world as a space where, freed from prejudice, mind could meet mind.

    John Perry Barlow’s stirring 1996 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace described it as a world “both everywhere and nowhere … not where bodies live”. The unmooring of mind from body has left people adrift, navigating a turbulent online world without the reassuring markers humans evolved to recognise.

    Infamously in 2014 Facebook changed the site to offer 72 “gender options” rather than the two sexes. Brielle Harrison, a software engineer quoted at the time, claimed:

    “People are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female? What is your gender? And it’s kind of disheartening because none of those let us tell others who we really are.”

    It seems “who we really are” is now determined by how one chooses to present on social media, what we “want” rather than what we are. One year later and Facebook changed the “gender” option to an open text box for self-description: the ultimate individualised identity.

    To the bafflement of many older lesbian, gay and bisexual people, increasing numbers of those under 30 now identify as “queer”. The Guardian recently launched a series called “Genderqueer Generation” on “the children and young adults who are rejecting traditional gender identities”. One interviewee in the series, a teenager called River, explains: “I discovered the whole LGBTQ community online around 2017 when I started using social media more often … The internet had a big role in me discovering myself. Online, I felt understood. I felt helped. I feel like the internet tells us stuff that we can’t learn in real life.”

    Whether the “Genderqueer generation” are, as some research suggests, autistic kids turning online to make sense of not fitting in, or simply typically self-absorbed adolescents indulging in some time-honoured teen angst, it is clear that time online has shaped their identities and sexuality.

    In the US there is now an emerging market in cosmetic surgeries whereby bodies can be cosmetically altered to match a client’s internal sense of self as “outside the gender binary”. For females, procedures include the closure of the vaginal cavity, for males, pseudo-vaginas are bored into the perineum. It seems our analogue bodies no longer fit the demands of digitally addled minds.

    This internet-fuelled crisis of sexuality and identity is pulling in youth across the world. In the UK some credulous adults old enough to know better have fallen for this nonsense too. A case in point is Liberal Democrat MP and party leadership contender Layla Moran who identifies as “pansexual”, and in a Westminster debate claimed to be able to see beyond the material sex of bodies and into the gender of an individual’s “soul”.

    At 37, Moran is the exception: the overwhelming majority of those who opt for nonsense identity markers are of i-gen (the internet generation); those under 26 who have come of age since the dawn of social media, and the widespread availability of online, body-punishing pornography.

    Kathleen Richardson, Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI at De Montfort University, Leicester, argues that “a politics of love” is necessary to counter the further descent into anomie:

    “Rather than seeing the youth of today as profoundly happy with this cult of consumer self-making, the research indicates they are in despair, and worse still, are shunning opportunities to develop critical perspectives that could help them out of quagmire.”

    Technology is not neutral. It is an industry where the libertarian views of Silicon Valley’s founding fathers meets with the commercial imperative. The result is a space where sexual freedom of men is paid for by women’s bodies. From so-called “sugar daddy” dating apps where rich older men pay for the company and often the sexual favours of young hard-up women, to streamed online abuse to order, access to what was once the preserve of red-light districts has been put into our hands in the form of the mobile phone.

    I spoke to a woman who wanted to be known as “Ginger”. As a young woman struggling with drug addiction Ginger did not consider her decision to enter pornography to be freely made. Describing her experience on the platform Only Fans, she told me:

    “There’s so much competition that women need to be doing more extreme things. The massive emphasis on looks means that they are editing themselves to be unrecognisable. The women advertise themselves like products.”

    Arguably, to some degree, we each now advertise and curate our online selves as products; mindful that the wrong tweet or “like” could cause reputational damage, or even end our careers as in the recent case of author Gillian Phillip, who was sacked using a hashtag which signalled support for J.K. Rowling (now persona non grata following accusations of wrongthink).

    There is an additional catch to sites such as Only Fans. As with social media, popularity is measured and monetised by numbers of followers. Explaining the psychological impact of what keeps women on the site, Ginger says:

    “It’s a boost to know that men find you attractive enough to buy your nudes, even if you aren’t attracted to them. It becomes addictive.”

    For Ginger and young women like her, attention from strangers she has no interest in is fundamentally woven into self-worth. Perhaps this is not surprising: from selfies to sexting, the mobile phone has reduced too many women’s online experience to a sexualised performance for an online audience.

    The sexual revolution prompted by pornography has all but eradicated shame, and yet people are having less sex than ever before. More concerningly, the sexual script has been warped by exposure to pornographic content. In a 2019 essay, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, fellow of the Ethics and Policy Center in Washington, DC, posits:

    “Once you are addicted to online porn, the thing that provides the biggest dopamine jolt is whatever is most shocking. And the reward cycle means you need a bigger dopamine boost every time — something newer, more shocking.”

    Indeed, this goes some way to explain the surprisingly common phenomenon of straight men looking at gay pornography. This is to say nothing of the role of pornography in creating transgender identities and fetishes, which is well documented though, ironically, something of a taboo to discuss.

    While the urge to look at shocking content is a neurological response, the descent into more extreme material is facilitated by algorithms. In a 2018 article for the New York Times, researcher Zeynep Tufekci criticised YouTube for facilitating extremism through the autoplay function. She explained:

    “You are never ‘hardcore’ enough for YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. It promotes, recommends and disseminates videos in a manner that appears to constantly up the stakes.”

    YouTube admits it has a problem and has promised to make it “harder for policy-violating content to surface”. But pornography providers, many of whom use recommendation algorithms similar to those of YouTube, escape such scrutiny.

    If the trajectory from moderate to extreme political content has implications for democracy, it is fair to ask what the attraction to extreme pornography might mean for society as whole. Would the citizens of the US have elected a president who famously boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy” if they lived in a society where women weren’t routinely degraded in the pornography industry?

    For Professor Richardson, the digital addiction is political. She argues that technology corporations and “queer theory” activists are driving the rush into hyper-individualism, leaving no structure within which to “frame human experience, nor legally protect human experience and bodies”.

    She continues:

    “In my work I draw attention to the way in which social sciences promoted the same thinking as tech corporations to break down the ultimate boundary: between people and property and to end protections of natural persons so that a market can flourish in intimate relations.”

    Pornography effectively rewires the brain’s reward system to no longer being triggered by, for example, the feel of another person’s skin, or even by sex, but by pornography itself. Naturally, fostering fetishes and peccadillos that a real-life partner will struggle to satisfy is a canny way to ensure repeat custom. Indeed, it could be argued that the use of internet to facilitate an orgasm is itself a fetish, because the device, whether phone, laptop or virtual reality headset, is a proxy for mutual sexual enjoyment. Richardson is correct that the boundary between people and property is being systematically broken down, both in the form of customised surgeries to match the personas we each now advertise online and in the burgeoning market for sex robots.

    This dystopian reality, where boys have seen rape pornography before their first kiss and girls base their value on sexy selfies, is belied by the warm, fuzzy straplines and mission statements of technology companies.

    It is perhaps not surprising that when young people, traumatised by digital exposure and with no solid sense of self, turn online, searching for an authoritative framework to make sense of their feelings, they often fall prey to a censorious, tyrannical groupthink.

    Mocking the plethora of new sexual and gender identities as an adolescent fad is too easy; however ridiculous, there is real suffering underscoring internet-informed delusions. These are not just the growing pains of a new generation — they are serious symptoms of a deep-seated social malaise. Technology has wrenched mind from body; far from bringing us together, the digital world is breaking us apart.

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  • Ben & Jerry's Unveils Super-Woke Kaepernick Ice Cream "To Dismantle Systems Of Oppression"
    Ben & Jerry’s Unveils Super-Woke Kaepernick Ice Cream “To Dismantle Systems Of Oppression”
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 22:40

    Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s has dived deeper into woke capitalism by partnering with social activist Colin Kaepernick to market a frozen dessert treat that promotes racial activism.

    The former NFL star was honored Thursday by the Vermont ice-cream maker that has long promoted its activism – on climate change, LGBTQ rights, GMO labeling, and even demanding that the UK accept more illegal boat migrants, with a new flavor called “Change the Whirled,” which is a vegan ice cream blended with caramel and cookies, expected to hit store shelves in 2021. 

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    Change the Whirled is touted as “the flavor that’s supporting the fight to dismantle systems of oppression and empower black and brown people.”

    The packaging for the social justice ice cream features Kaepernick’s illustration, with a catchy slogan that reads “I know my rights.”

    In a press release, Kaepernick said that he’s “honored to partner with Ben & Jerry’s on Change the Whirled.” 

    He continued: “Their commitment to challenging the anti-Black roots of policing in the United States demonstrates a material concern for the wellbeing of Black and Brown communities. My hope is that this partnership will amplify calls to defund and abolish the police and to invest in futures that can make us safer, healthier, and truly free.”

    Kaepernick also said the venture will “serve up joy on the journey to justice.” A portion of the proceeds from each pint sold will be transferred to his Know Your Rights Camp Foundation. 

    As we noted above, Ben & Jerry’s has been woke for years. So it comes as no surprise “the company itself has been a target of boycott campaigns because of such actions as calling for the release of an alleged cop killer and using flavor names deemed offensive by conservatives,” said RT News. 

    Conservatives took to social media Thursday after it was made public that new social justice ice cream would hit store shelves next year.

    “This is where we’re now at in America,” sports journalist David Hookstead tweeted. “If you refuse to stand for the anthem, are terrible at playing quarterback and lose your job, you get honored with a non-dairy and vegan dessert.”

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    One Conservatives tweeted: “You know what to do, Patriots … Time to boycott Ben & Jerry’s.” 

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    And the tweet of the day: “Ahhh yes. Social Justice ice cream. That should fix racism everywhere. Smh”

     Will they be next to go broke after going woke?

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  • Saudi Arabia Sends Joe Biden Mixed Messages
    Saudi Arabia Sends Joe Biden Mixed Messages
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 22:20

    Submitted by James M. Dorsey,

    Saudi Arabia appears to be drawing lines in the sand as the kingdom prepares for a new era in relations with the United States once President-elect Joe Biden assumes office in January.

    In doing so, the kingdom is seemingly signaling that it is willing to go only so far in seeking to get off on the right foot with a Biden administration.

    Saudi Arabia seems to be betting that Mr. Biden will be cautious not to rupture relations with the kingdom despite criticism he expressed at times in strong language during the US presidential election campaign.

    The Saudi bet is not unreasonable.

    US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Samuel D. Brownback echoed this week what is US policy and could well be the attitude adopted by a Biden administration.

    Asked why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave Saudi Arabia a waiver even though his department designated the kingdom in its recently published annual religious freedom report a Country of Particular Concern under US law for its failure to respect freedom of religion, and apostasy and blasphemy laws that include the death penalty, Mr. Brownback said:

    “Saudi Arabia is a country that the administration and prior administrations have deemed as having a strategic interest… It’s the major, obviously, Gulf state country.  It’s a major source of trade… We have a great deal of frustration at times in what Saudi Arabia does… But there’s also a national interest here, and that’s something that you’ve always have to weigh back and forth in diplomacy. And in this case, the Secretary weighed it that we needed to provide the national interest waiver.”

    Recent events indicate the parameters of the Saudi bet.

    The kingdom seems prepared to accommodate both outgoing President Donald J. Trump as well as Mr. Biden by engaging with US and Kuwaiti efforts to lift the 3.5-year-old Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar.

    Mr. Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in law and Middle East negotiator, and other senior US officials have travelled to the Gulf in recent weeks to push for a breakthrough in the Gulf stalemate as well as Saudi recognition of Israel in the wake of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UAE, Bahrain and the Jewish state.

    Kuwaiti, Saudi and Qatari officials have said they were progressing towards a resolution as Gulf leaders gear up for a summit later this month of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups the region’s monarchies. The UAE, alongside Bahrain and Egypt who joined the boycott, indicated their support for an end to the dispute.

    At the same time, recent Saudi actions send the message that recognition of Israel and human rights constitute red lines that the kingdom, at least for now, will not cross.

    Saudi Arabia last week, shortly after the visits by Messrs. Pompeo and Kushner, sentenced Walid A. Fitaihi, a Harvard University-trained doctor and dual US Saudi citizen, to six years in prison for allegedly tweeting his support of the 2011 popular Arab revolts and for obtaining US citizenship while studying in America.

    Mr. Fitaihi was released from pre-trial detention in 2017 but, together with his family, barred from travelling abroad.

    The Trump administration has repeatedly raised his case with Saudi authorities, including during the recent high-level US visits

    Similarly, Saudi Arabia transferred to a terrorism court the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, one of 12 women’s rights activists, accused of conspiring with foreign organizations hostile to the kingdom, on the eve of last month’s virtual G20 summit of the world’s largest economies hosted by King Salman.

    The move came amid a groundswell call for their release in advance of the summit.

    The court’s first hearing in Ms. Al-Hathloul’s case was held last week on the day designated by the United Nations as International Human Rights Day.

    At about the same time, a campaign on Twitter, believed to have been instigated by the government, accused detained former crown prince and interior minister Mohamed bin Nayef of plotting to topple his successor, Mohammed bin Salman.

    The campaign was in response to concern expressed by British parliamentarians and Mr. Bin Nayef’s lawyers about his circumstances.

    Saudi Arabia’s moves contrast starkly with those of the UAE that appears geared towards anticipating expected changes in US foreign policy once Mr. Biden takes office.

    Having already taken a lead that pleased both the outcoming and incoming US president by becoming the first Arab state to recognize Israel since 1994, the UAE this week said that it was launching a review to strengthen its human rights framework.

    Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said the review would focus on women’s empowerment, humanitarian aid, religious tolerance and workers’ rights. The official made no mention of political rights such as freedom of expression, the media and assembly that are one focus of criticism of the UAE by human rights groups.

    By contrast, in what appeared to be another shot across Mr. Biden’s bow and rejection of Trump administration pressure, former Saudi intelligence chief and ex-ambassador to Britain and the United States, Prince Turki bin Faisal, launched a blistering attack on Israel.

    Speaking days before Morocco and Israel announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between their two countries, Prince Turki described the Jewish state as “the last of the Western colonizing powers in the Middle East.”

    He charged that Palestinians were “incarcerated in concentration camps under the flimsiest of security accusations — young and old, women and men, who are rotting there without recourse to justice.”

    It was not clear whether Prince Turki’s remarks reflected not only King Salman’s sentiment but also that of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who reportedly met recently with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

    A recent public opinion poll suggested that Saudis are divided in their attitudes towards relations and commercial and cultural exchanges with Israel.

    Forty-one percent of those surveyed in September saw relations with Israel as a positive development while 54 percent were opposed. Yet, the percentage of those who favored commercial and sports exchanges jumped substantially to 37 percent compared to nine percent in a poll three months earlier.

    Prince Turki made his remarks as the kingdom was seeking to lower tensions with Turkey, a major challenger of Saudi leadership of the Muslim world, and like the kingdom, uncertain about its relationship with the US once Mr. Biden takes office.

    If Saudi moves to draw a line in the sand implicitly acknowledge that relations with the United States could become rocky, rapprochement with Turkey suggests that Riyadh and Ankara see virtue in seeking common shelter. That could prove to be a fragile structure in a part of the world where the sands shift continuously.

    *  *  *

    Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute

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  • 2020 Takes Toll On Mental Health
    2020 Takes Toll On Mental Health
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 22:00

    The pandemic and economic fallout have had enormous impacts on the health of people across the globe. Losing a loved one, unemployment and general isolation have all negatively affected peoples’ mental health in ways we are just now starting to comprehend. Statista’s Willem Roper reports that a new survey offers a glimpse into how difficult 2020 has been for the mental health of Americans.

    In a new update of a yearly Gallup survey on mental health in U.S., just 34 percent of U.S. adults said they felt their mental health was in excellent condition when asked in November. That’s down from 43 percent in 2019.

    Infographic: 2020 Takes Toll on Mental Health | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Women were significantly less likely to describe their mental health as excellent in 2020, with just 27 percent compared to 41 percent of men. Still, both men and women had 8 and 10 percentage point drops relative to 2019.

    Political demographics showed Democrats and Independents were less likely to describe their mental health as excellent this year compared to Republicans. However, those affiliated with the GOP saw the largest drop compared to 2019, going from 56 percent to 41 percent.

    This Gallup survey marks a quick, substantial drop in mental health for Americans. The decline in those feeling excellent is the largest in over 15 years, while the drop in those feeling either excellent or good is the largest in the survey’s history. With conflicting realities of a vaccine on the near horizon clashing with rising COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths across the country, it remains to be seen what the long-term effects of a prolonged decline in mental health will have in the U.S.

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  • What If All Americans Exercised Regularly?
    What If All Americans Exercised Regularly?
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 21:40

    Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScience.com,

    Fewer than one in four Americans get enough physical exercise, defined as at least 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity each week, coupled with two bouts of muscle-strengthening. While this statistic may come across as societal scolding – easily ignored – it has huge ramifications for Americans’ lives and the economy.

    Why? It’s simple: exercise may be the most potent and easily accessible tool humans have for improving their lives.

    If the myriad benefits of exercise could be bottled into a drug, it would be rightfully hailed as a “miracle” treatment. Regular exercise prevents and even reverses type II diabetes, drastically reduces the chances of heart attack and stroke, lowers the odds of developing cancer and dementia, and boosts the immune system, shortening the duration of syndromes like the common cold, influenza, and COVID-19 as well as reducing their severity. There’s more: exercise improves your sex life, prevents or ameliorates depression, helps you sleep, alleviates chronic pain, and makes you less susceptible to all sorts of injuries.

    Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of Americans are unable or unwilling to take advantage of these real and tangible advantages. This has consequences. According to a 2018 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, 8.3% of yearly deaths in nondisabled adults 25 or older can be attributed to inadequate physical activity. MBA students at the University of North Carolina (UNC) translated these preventable deaths into terms of life expectancy. They estimated that Americans’ lack of exercise cost men 6.2 years of life and women 5.6 years.

    Regular physical activity gives you longer to live, and as an added bonus, puts more money in your pocket. In 2016, research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that regular exercisers spent between $500 and $2,500 less on medical bills each year. These savings add up. The UNC team found that if all Americans were diligent about exercise, there would be a nationwide annual cost reduction of $143 Billion just from controlling diabetes and lowering blood pressure.

    Just last year, the data-minded RAND Corporation tried to tabulate the economic benefits of a universally active populace. The authors estimated that the United States would see its Gross Domestic Product boosted by $52 to $77 billion per year by 2025, increasing to $100 to $144 billion per year by 2050. That’s at least an extra quarter percent of economic growth per year. These sizable gains would be realized through reduced mortality and improved productivity.

    The RAND researchers suggested that government efforts to encourage exercise, perhaps in the form of community messaging, improving access to exercise facilities and parks, and promoting participation in physical activities, can pay dividends.

    “Creating enduring change in physical activity is hard as there are significant barriers to change. However if this can be achieved, evidence shows that we can create healthier and more prosperous societies,” they wrote.

    There’s no doubt about it: if everybody exercised, America with be a healthier, wealthier, and happier place.

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  • Winter Storm Possible Next Week In Mid-Atlantic Puts Outdoor-Dining In Jeopardy 
    Winter Storm Possible Next Week In Mid-Atlantic Puts Outdoor-Dining In Jeopardy 
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 21:20

    A cold front is expected to swoop in from eastern Canada and pour into the Mid-Atlantic states early next week. Simultaneously, a storm is forecasted to develop off the Carolina coast, producing a “wintry mix of precipitation in the Washington region,” reported WaPo. 

    “Based on the predicted setup, which still could change, accumulating snow is a strong possibility in the western part of the region, particularly along and west of a line from roughly Warrenton to Leesburg to Frederick. The Interstate 81 corridor, from Winchester to Hagerstown, could see significant snowfall.

    “As is frequently the case with these storms, the position of the rain-snow line is the biggest wild card and could set up close to Interstate 95, making for a very challenging forecast in the immediate D.C. area. Areas inside the Beltway could see a mix of snow, ice and rain, mostly snow, or just cold rain. East of the Beltway, a cold rain or wintry mix are more likely than accumulating snowfall,” WaPo said. 

    The storm’s timing is expected for Wednesday – and at times, there could be periods of “heavy precipitation.” 

    The quick-moving storm may impact the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. 

    Source: WaPo

    Forecast temperature anomalies show temps will begin to dip early next week. 

    Source: Reuters Eikon 

    WaPo noted there’s “an outside chance the storm slides off the coast to the east rather than coming up the coast, which would limit precipitation amounts, especially in our western areas.” 

    While the cold spell may only be sticking around to the end of next week – we outlined last week, nat gas prices have plunged on overall warmer forecasts for December. 

    However, it’s beginning to be that time of year when temperatures drop, and wintery precipitation may become plentiful, not just for the Northeast but other parts of the country. This could be very impactful on restaurants that are struggling to survive with outdoor dining. 

    For example, in New York City, more than half of the metro area restaurants are in danger of closing. Starting Monday, indoor dining will be banned, which means eateries will only derive sales from outdoor dining and togo orders. 

    In a recent client note, Goldman Sachs identified when outside temperatures drop below 45°F – it would likely result in a sharp decline in outdoor dining sales, implying people aren’t going to eat in tents surrounded by propane heaters in chilly conditions. 

    In a separate report, Goldman also told clients that declining temperatures would result in more COVID-19 cases that would significantly slow down the economy.

    All and all, it’s going to be a hellacious winter for restaurants. Many more will fail as Old Man Winter comes knocking. 

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  • Who The "Resistance" Was Actually 'Resisting' These Last Four Years
    Who The “Resistance” Was Actually ‘Resisting’ These Last Four Years
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 21:00

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    After it was announced that the Biden camp had selected a Raytheon board member as his secretary of defense, I joked in my last article that it would be more honest if Raytheon itself was Biden’s Pentagon chief since the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people anyway. Raytheon for defense secretary, Boeing for secretary of state, Goldman Sachs for secretary treasurer, ExxonMobile head of the EPA, Amazon for CIA director and Google for director of national intelligence. Waka waka, I’m so silly.

    Anyway, since that rant was published NPR has reported that the the next US director of agriculture will be a man named Tom Vilsack, whose corporate cronyism the last time he occupied the same position earned him the nickname (I shit you not) “Mr Monsanto”. Which is just too perfect for words, really.

    Bloomberg reports:

    “Some supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders campaigned against Vilsack when he was under consideration to be Clinton’s vice president, branding him ‘Mr. Monsanto’ and citing his role in brokering a compromise on legislation labeling foods containing genetically modified organisms. Sanders opposed the national legislation, which overrode a stricter Vermont state law.”

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    Biden’s inadvertent self-parody of a cabinet is already shaping up to be just as chock full of corporate swamp monsters as Trump’s notoriously corrupt administration, with positions being given to the very last people any ordinary human being with any common sense would want. President Biden is going to be just as much of a corrupt warmongering oligarch crony as his predecessors, and at least as destructive.

    Which makes one wonder, what exactly was the point of the #Resistance and what has it been #Resisting all these years?

    After Donald Trump’s 2016 election a massive amount of energy went into the creation and promotion of a “movement” branded “The Resistance” which portrayed itself as a revolutionary counterforce against the corruption and malfeasance represented by Trump and his goons. Many a glowing puff piece was written about this carefully constructed plucky band of rebels standing up against the forces of darkness on behalf of the common man, and many a political donation was raised.

    The Resistance™️ was aggressively marketed by cynical liberal spinmeisters like Neera Tanden (who in a brazen middle finger to US progressives is also set to play a role in the Biden administration) with the goal of harnessing and maintaining the enthusiastic grassroots anti-establishment energy of the Bernie Sanders campaign and directing it against Trump.

    But what did it actually accomplish? In the end, all the so-called Resisters ended up doing was promoting a bunch of Russia conspiracy theories and an impeachment which failed to remove Trump, all while providing no actual resistance to Trump’s most pernicious policies. They’d yell and shriek on social media and MSM punditry panels any time someone was fired from the administration and falsely get people’s hopes up whenever new information came out about the Mueller investigation, but in terms of actually removing Trump from office or stopping him from doing evil things like starving Venezuelans, assaulting press freedoms with the persecution of Julian Assange, tempting war with Iran and perpetuating the mass atrocities in Yemen, they accomplished literally nothing.

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    This is because the #Resistance was never actually intended to resist the evil agendas of the powerful, nor even to resist Trump. The #Resistance was not created to resist the powerful, it was created to resist you. The grassroots anti-establishment populism of the Bernie Sanders movement was cynically imitated by the Democratic establishment to ensure that the establishment is never inconvenienced in any way, and that progressives never take power in America.

    On a recent interview with MSNBC Sanders himself — historically far less willing to criticize the Democratic establishment than his supporters — is heard complaining that the progressive base whose votes put Biden over the top in November are so far receiving no representation whatsoever within the incoming Biden cabinet.

    “If it wasn’t for the hard work of a lot of progressive grassroots organizations who got young people involved in the political process, working-class people involved in a way that we have not seen, Joe Biden would not have won that election and I think that’s pretty clear,” Sanders says.

    “And my point has been from day one that those voices, that movement, deserves representation in the cabinet. And if your question is have I seen that yet, no I have not.”

    Of course you haven’t, Bernie.

    You were never going to. Biden might create some sort of fake position to let progressives feel like they’re participating with a name like “Progressive Outreach Team For Yelling Words Into A Hole In The Ground” or something, but in terms of actually directing the policy and behavior of the Biden administration nobody who wants the interests of the people upheld over the interests of the powerful will ever have a hand anywhere near the steering wheel.

    Actual thing.

    The #Resistance spun itself as a revolutionary movement against the insidious forces of darkness threatening the United States of America. What it delivered was support for Trump’s world-threatening cold war escalations against Russia, the mass delusion that America’s problems can be fought from within the establishment, progressives impotently chasing their tails for four years, and a presidency that is going to be just as much of a murderous oligarchic rim job as was delivered by Trump administration.

    The engineers of the “Resistance” did not want to eliminate Trumpian depravity, they just wanted to be the ones driving it. And now they are. If you fed into this nonsense in any way over the last four years, this is your reward.

    Which begs the question: if an entire political faction needed to sacrifice all its principles, all its values and all its morality to get rid of Trump… what exactly was the point of getting rid of Trump?

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Poems For Rebels or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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  • What Wall Street Thinks Are The Biggest Risks For 2021
    What Wall Street Thinks Are The Biggest Risks For 2021
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 20:40

    While the most interesting part of the monthly Bank of America Fund Manager Survey is the question what Wall Street’s professionals think is the biggest “tail risk”, there is a certain sense of predetermination to a survey that everyone on Wall Street reads, is well aware of, and is tempted to perpetuate. In any case, as the latest FMS revealed, for the past 8 months, BofA found that Covid was viewed as the biggest tail risk.

    So in an attempt to provide some granularity (and to remind Wall Street that it conducts a survey of its own) today Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid writes that a record 984 respondents participated in the bank’s latest monthly market survey. And while the German bank will released full results on Monday, it offered a sneak preview of what respondents saw as the biggest market risks for  2021 from the list that we provided (naturally, same as with the BofA FMS, this is all everyone cares about to make sure they are not oblivious to some glaringly obvious black swan about to emerge).

    Interestingly, all the vaccine-related concerns filled out the top 3 which according to Jim Reid suggests that although consensus is for a good 2021, a successful vaccine roll out could still bring upside surprise relative to expectations. As for Reid’s own top pick, he said that it was a tech bubble bursting, which made number four on the list followed by central banks pulling back too early. An early inflation surprise rounded out the top 5 risks.

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  • World's First Robotic Kitchen For Consumers Can Whip Up 5,000 Recipes
    World’s First Robotic Kitchen For Consumers Can Whip Up 5,000 Recipes
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 20:00

    So let’s strategize for a couple of minutes. With restaurants out of style because of the virus pandemic, and remote working pushing city dwellers to suburban areas, Americans have spent a lot of time at home this year – forcing them to prepare their meals. 

    Come to find out, meal prepping takes a lot of time, and can eat up an entire evening. To simplify the process, many people ordered meal kits from Blue Apron or Hello Fresh during the pandemic to save time and avoid supermarkets – but a meal kit still takes at least 30 minutes to prep. 

    In today’s age of automation and artificial intelligence, there’s got to be a better way. One company offers the world’s first-ever “robotic kitchen” for consumers that does all the cooking for you. 

    Adios restaurants or cooking for yourself or even hiring a private chef, that is, because the Moley Robotic Kitchen can whip up at least 5,000 recipes at the press of a button.

    “Not only does the robot cook complete meals, it tells you when ingredients need replacing, suggests dishes based on the items you have in stock, learns what you like and even cleans up surfaces after itself,” London-based robotics company Moley wrote on its website. 

    Moley gives a household the peace of mind with “routine cooking, plan and adapt your menu according to different diets and lifestyles, enjoy international cuisine anytime, control calories and get cooking tips and recipes from chefs around the world,” the website continued. 

    Now the robotic chef isn’t cheap. It costs a little more than the 2020 McLaren 720S supercar, around $330k. 

    According to The Guadian, Moley Kitchen already has 1,205 “qualified sales inquiries” from people interested in buying one.

    Over time, automated kitchen prices are expected to become more affordable. 

    “What you are looking at here is the world’s first consumer robotic kitchen,” founder Mark Oleynik said as he launched the robot kitchen at the Gulf information technology exhibition in Dubai. “Like all breakthrough technologies – cars, televisions and computers – it will appeal to enthusiasts, professionals and early adopters, and is priced accordingly.

    “We anticipate that our pricing will be reduced significantly over time with production volume, efficiencies and economies of scale.”

    So why ever return to a restaurant when you can have a robotic chef whip up 5,000 recipes at the press of a button? 

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  • FBI Has Files From Seth Rich's Laptop Computer
    FBI Has Files From Seth Rich’s Laptop Computer
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 19:40

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has files from the laptop computer belonging to Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) employee who was killed in 2016, according to a new email.

    The bureau also has tens of thousands of documents mentioning Rich.

    The FBI “has completed the initial search identifying approximately 50 cross-reference serials, with attachments totaling over 20,000 pages, in which Seth Rich is mentioned,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Parker wrote in the message to attorney Ty Clevenger, who is representing a plaintiff in Huddleston v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, a case dealing with a Freedom of Information Act request to the bureau.

    “FBI has also located leads that indicate additional potential records that require further searching,” Parker added.

    The Epoch Times confirmed the email is legitimate.

    Parker, who is representing the FBI in the case, didn’t respond to an email or return a voicemail.

    The bureau also confirmed it has files from Rich’s laptop and suggested it still has the computer in its possession.

    The bureau is “currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed,” Parker said in the email. She also said the FBI plans on undertaking some level of review of the computer.

    The disclosure came as part of a case brought in federal court by Texas resident Brian Huddleston, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request in April asking the FBI to produce all data, documents, records, or communications that reference Seth Rich or his brother, Aaron Rich.

    The FBI told the plaintiff in June that it would take 8 to 10 months to provide a final response to the request, prompting the filing of the case in the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

    Rich was working for the Democratic National Committee when he was shot and killed in Washington on July 10, 2016. The murder remains unsolved.

    The new email bolsters a key charge in Huddleston’s filing: that David Hardy, the FBI’s records chief, was wrong when he said in two affidavits that the FBI searched for records pertaining to Rich but could not find any.

    Seth Rich is pictured on a poster created by police officials to urge people with information about his murder to come forward. (Metropolitan Police Department)

    The first sign that the testimony was erroneous came earlier this year when the nonprofit watchdog Judicial Watch received emails exchanged between FBI agent Peter Strzok and Department of Justice lawyer Lisa Page. The production included several emails mentioning Rich.

    Another sign came in March, when former Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Sines was deposed in a separate case, Ed Butowsky v. David Folkenflik et. al.

    Sines testified that the FBI conducted an investigation into possible hacking attempts on Seth Rich’s electronic accounts following his murder. She said FBI agents examined Rich’s laptop as part of the probe and that a search should uncover emails between her and FBI personnel. She also said she met with a prosecutor and an FBI agent assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

    The FBI declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

    The judge overseeing the Huddleston case in October ordered the defense to produce documents and an index.

    In the new email, the government lawyer said the FBI has made “significant progress” in searching for documents mentioning Rich, but still has much work left, including processing the approximately 50 cross-references, undertaking some level of review of the laptop, and completing all remaining services.

    The efforts are hampered by the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act office being at 50 percent of its normal workforce due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The government is proposing an amended schedule that would give it three more months to produce the records.

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrives at court in London on May 1, 2019. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images)

    Clevenger, Huddleston’s lawyer, told The Epoch Times via email that his client is hoping to find out why the FBI was involved in the case, and why it originally denied involvement.

    “We suspect the FBI may be right that the Metropolitan Police Dept. in D.C. was responsible for investigating Seth’s murder, so that leaves a couple of likely explanations for the FBI’s role: it was investigating a counterintelligence matter or a computer crime. Either scenario would be consistent with Seth transmitting DNC emails to Wikileaks,” he added, referencing a theory put forth by Fox News in 2017 in a report that was later retracted.

    Fox was sued over the report. It settled with Rich’s family last month.

    A federal judge overseeing the case had earlier this year requested testimony from Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange.

    Rich was killed less than two weeks before WikiLeaks “released a collection of thousands of internal emails and documents taken from the DNC servers,” according to a court filing. One month after Rich’s murder, Assange referenced the DNC staffer in an interview with a Dutch television reporter when discussing the dangers faced by WikiLeaks sources. On Aug. 9, 2016, WikiLeaks offered $20,000 for information about Rich’s murder. The website increased the reward to $130,000 in January 2017.

    The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) several weeks after Rich was shot dead offered a reward for information. A spokeswoman told The Epoch Times via email that the case “remains under active investigation.”

    The spokeswoman declined to answer whether the FBI assisted police with its probe. “MPD remains the lead investigative agency over this homicide,” she said.

    Clevenger said he thinks the timing of the email from Parker, the assistant U.S. attorney, is significant.

    “Some of my colleagues suspect the Trump Administration has pushed the release, but I doubt that,” he wrote. “With the purported election of Joe Biden, the FBI brass probably think they are in the clear, and nothing will ever happen to them, so they no longer have any reason to hide what they did.”

    Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.

    Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber
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  • Wreckage Of US Navy Submarine Found Off Maryland Coast 
    Wreckage Of US Navy Submarine Found Off Maryland Coast 
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 19:20

    According to The Baltimore Sun, the wreckage of an American submarine from World War I was discovered off the coastal waters of Ocean City, Maryland.

    Atlantic Wreck Salvage found the remains of USS R-8 using sonar data as well as historical records.

    The remains of USS R-8. Source: The Baltimore Sun

    “The discovery of any new vessel is exciting,” said Capt. Eric Takakjian, a member of the team who discovered the sunken sub. 

    “It appears from the sonar images that the site will reveal a very well-preserved example of an R-class submarine in existence anywhere. We are looking forward to conducting additional research and to diving the wreck in 2021,” Takakjian said. 

    Garry Kozak, a sonar expert who analyzed the data, said the submarine resembles one that would be equivalent to an R-8.

    “The sonar data leaves little doubt that the R-8 has been located,” Kozak said. “One set of prominent features of the R-class subs visible in the scan image is the spray rail configuration on the conning tower.”

    In World War I, the Navy built 27 R-class submarines. This one, in particular, was built in 1918 and participated in Naval training exercises along the coasts of California and the Gulf of Mexico.

    Historical image of the R-8. Source: The Baltimore Sun

    In 1930, the submarine became “inactive” at the Naval Reserve Fleet at Philadelphia. By 1936, the sub was used in aerial bombing exercises and sunk to the bottom of the ocean – lost for decades – until now. 

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  • Amazon Using Social Distancing Technology To Warn Staffers Who Get Too Close
    Amazon Using Social Distancing Technology To Warn Staffers Who Get Too Close
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 19:00

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Amazon is using social distancing technology that informs warehouse workers when they are getting too close to each other, a system that could subsequently be rolled out in airports and other venues.

    A video posted by an Amazon staffer shows him pointing out how a sensor is tracking the movement of employees via colored circles that form a 6 foot perimeter around each person.

    When two people violate ‘social distancing’ the circle turns red and an alarm sounds.

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    “They gonna take a picture and make me get in trouble,” the employee states.

    The technology is called “Distance Assistant” and according to the Verge, “Amazon also says it will be open-sourcing the technology, allowing other companies to quickly replicate and deploy these devices in a range of locations.”

    As we highlighted back in October, Hitachi has developed similar technology, which includes cartoon fish swimming around inside the bubble. When the person violates social distancing, the fish escape.

    The promo video brags that the technology “can even be deployed inside elevators” and Hitachi is “hoping to get the technology commercialized quickly.”

    Given that numerous prominent people are insisting that social distancing and other coronavirus restrictions are here to say, it’s perfectly feasible to imagine a near future in which this technology is widely adopted.

    China is already linking coronavirus rules to its onerous social credit score system, in addition to using AI to discipline its slave labor workforce, so the idea that people could be publicly shamed or punished for getting too close to others is a very real possibility

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    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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  • Celebrated Abolitionist Johns Hopkins Exposed As "Slave Owner" 
    Celebrated Abolitionist Johns Hopkins Exposed As “Slave Owner” 
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 18:40

    Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University, the leading provider of COVID-19 data, announced Wednesday that its founder owned slaves, contrary to the long-time narrative that Hopkins was a wealthy philanthropist and abolitionist. 

    Researchers Martha S. Jones and Allison Seyler uncovered the new information in government census records as they were on a quest to explore the university’s history. For more than a century, the long-held narrative of Hopkins, an abolitionist, whose father freed the family’s slaves in 1807, has recently come into question.

    University President Ronald J. Daniels and other school officials published an open letter Wednesday saying the findings “complicate the understanding we have long had of Johns Hopkins as our founder.”

    “We now have government census records that state Mr. Hopkins was the owner of one enslaved person listed in his household in 1840 and four enslaved people listed in 1850,” the letter said. “By the 1860 census, there are no enslaved persons listed in the household.”

    “It calls to mind not only the darkest chapters in the history of our country and our city but also the complex history of our institutions since then, and the legacies of racism and inequity we are working together to confront,” the letter continued.

    Watch: University President Ronald J. Daniels Addresses The Life of Johns Hopkins

    Hopkins died in 1873 at age 78. As an entrepreneur and investor, he accumulated a massive amount of wealth that was used to establish a hospital, orphanage, and the university.

    Officials said the researchers would continue to dig deeper to get a better picture of the founder’s past. 

    As more and more schools begin to confront their connection with slavery, such as Princeton and Georgetown, in the last couple of years, they also may consider how to make amends in a world overrun by social justice warriors.

     It’s only a matter of time before social justice warriors target a monument to Johns Hopkins at the university. 

    All Hopkins needs to do at this point is to launch a new scholarship program for slave descendants for everyone to forget about the founder’s history. 

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  • Supreme Court Tosses Texas Bid To Overturn Election
    Supreme Court Tosses Texas Bid To Overturn Election
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 18:38

    The Supreme Court on Friday tossed a last-minute bid by the state of Texas to overturn the 2020 election by challenging the results of four battleground states.

    Citing a lack of standing, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a brief order that the state “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” adding “All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”

    In doing so, the justices shut down a long-shot bid for Texas to challenge Biden’s wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin – which was joined by 17 other states and over 100 House Republicans.

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    Justices Clarence Thomas joined Alito in stating that they do not believe the court has the authority to outright reject Texas’s request, writing instead “I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.”

    Earlier in the day, President Trump tweeted: “If the Supreme Court shows great Wisdom and Courage, the American People will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our Electoral Process will be respected again!”

    Notably, Trump appointed three of the court’s nine members – causing Democrats to cry foul at the prospect of the highest court in the land deciding the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump himself suggested several times that filling Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat with Justice Amy Coney Barrett was essential in the event that the election ended up at the Court. 

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    The case was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who asked the Court to invalidate over 20 million votes in the above-mentioned states so that their GOP-controlled state legislatures could decide who won instead.

    AGs from Pennsylvania and Michigan have responded to the decision:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe Texas GOP, meanwhile, suggests that “law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”

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  • Kass: Kids Are "Casualties Of War" In The Chicago Teachers Union's Power-Play To Keep Schools Closed
    Kass: Kids Are “Casualties Of War” In The Chicago Teachers Union’s Power-Play To Keep Schools Closed
    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 18:20

    Authored by John Kass, op-ed via The Chicago Tribune,

    There’s never been a better argument for national school choice – and freeing low-income children trapped in substandard big-city public education systems – than that idiotic tweet by the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union.

    “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny,” read the CTU tweet, posted Sunday at 1:03 p.m.

    It was later deleted. CTU bosses might have realized that those racist, sexist misogynists trying to reopen the Chicago schools during the pandemic – the mayor and the school superintendent – just happen to be Black women. And, that plenty of parents who want their kids back in school happen to be Black and Latino.

    There is nothing as delicious as watching those angry hard-left CTU bosses load up their identity politics bazooka only to blow off their own (rhetorical) feet.

    Why don’t we make this a “teaching moment” for parents who want real choice?

    And for the great public schoolteachers who might be intimidated by those union leaders who are fighting to keep schools closed?

    Some of those teachers send their kids to private schools in Chicago where teachers are in the classroom. They would rather stay quiet. I don’t blame them.

    The science does not support closed schools. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield say that kids should be in school with proper precautions.

    Most teachers want to teach in person. They’ve dedicated their lives to being educators. And they know, perhaps more than most of us, how closing schools hurts young people emotionally, socially and academically.

    And many parents also want their children in school, not falling behind, trying to learn on a laptop. Chicago’s mayor and other Democratic elected officials know this, but they’re intimidated by the power of the CTU leadership.

    Before I go any further, please remember I’m not anti-teacher. My wife is a teacher. One of our sons is a teacher. Don’t twist my words to suggest otherwise. Teachers perform the most important job in the country.

    Yet many good teachers are, as I said, intimidated by union bosses. And the political actors tremble because teachers union bosses are their political bosses now.

    I decided to reach out to a man who knows how this works and invited him to be a guest on “The Chicago Way” podcast: Paul Vallas, the former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. He has been putting pressure on the union and the politicians to open up the schools.

    Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, shown Feb. 18, 2019, in Chicago. (Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune)

    Paul, what about that stupid yet revealing CTU tweet?

    “If they want to talk about racism, there’s nothing more racist than closing schools (for the pandemic) and providing substandard education to the poorest children in the community who are disproportionately Black and Latino,” he said.

    “And there’s nothing more sexist than closing schools, and hurting families, the majority of whom are led by single mothers.

    “So, you want to talk racism and sexism and misogyny?” Vallas asked.

    “The union leadership’s posturing and forcing the schools to be closed is all those things. Because what they’re really doing is committing educational malpractice.”

    It’s disastrous for the teenagers who get lost. Some get lost on the streets of Chicago and die. And the little ones, the elementary school students?

    “The youngest children are at risk,” Vallas said. “Their brains are developing at an accelerated rate.”

    What’s being done to them, he said, is “permanent damage.”

    Cops, firefighters and paramedics go to work every day. Cashiers at the supermarkets are at work every day. We thank them all as we sweat out this pandemic lockdown.

    But if cashiers aren’t at work, they don’t get paid. Yet teachers don’t have to be in the classroom, and they get paid.

    Why aren’t they at work, inside school buildings? If it’s not the science, it’s the politics. It’s a demonstration of control.

    Politicians get paid too. But they’ve allowed the teachers unions to dictate education policy to the detriment of the students and their families.

    The kids need teachers in schools, especially special-needs kids. A child with autism needs in-person instruction. And all children need their teachers. All kids need to be in school, at least for part of the time.

    Most big-city school systems like Chicago serve a majority of low-income families. And as Vallas points out, many of the families are led by single mothers.

    They have to work. And by work, I don’t mean working on Zoom, like a news columnist.

    But who watches the children to make sure that they’re not playing “Call of Duty” on the Xbox?

    Vallas sees those kids — from the city and suburbs in lockdown states across the country — as a lost generation, as casualties of a political war.

    “All those children impacted by these school closings, by excessive remote learning, the children who have dropped out because schools have been closed for such an extensive period of time, these children are going to be permanently scarred.

    “They’re like casualties of war. And the war is the teachers union maintaining or enhancing their benefits while minimizing their workload and placing their employees where there is no risk at all.”

    There’s no risk for the union leaders, who sit in their home office, intimidating Democratic politicians like Lori Lightfoot because they can influence voters to come out when needed.

    But what about the forgotten?

    The children falling behind. Their parents wondering how they’ll be free of a system that treats them this way.

    They’re the ones who should matter. But they don’t.

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  • Bubblicious Markets and Big Tech's Monopolistic Behavior
    Bubblicious Markets and Big Tech’s Monopolistic Behavior

    6215788588001

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/11/2020 – 18:03

    Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison welcomes senior editor Ash Bennington to discuss water futures, “bubblicious” market froth, and potential anti-competitive behavior by Big Tech. After Ed and Ash give their brief review of political news, Ed shares his analysis of the recent IPOs of DoorDash and Airbnb with Ash noting parallels between current market conditions and those that preceded the Dot-com bubble. Ed and Ash then explore the significance of the recent addition of water futures to the CME exchange. In the intro, Jack Farley and Weston Nakamura embark on a chart-filled journey on the Nikkei 225, the Japanese Yen, and currency pairs. For greater details and more charts from Weston and Jack, check out their conversation in the Real Vision Exchange: https://exchange.realvision.com/post/follow-up-to-my-daily-briefing-int….
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Dec 11

Today’s News 11th December 2020

  • "Free Speech Is Being Weaponized": Columbia Dean And New Yorker Writer Urges More Censorship
    “Free Speech Is Being Weaponized”: Columbia Dean And New Yorker Writer Urges More Censorship

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 21:00

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    We have been discussing how reporters, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and key advisers. 

    This includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Now, Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation.

    That’s right. A journalism dean and writer declaring that the problem is that free speech itself is allowing too much freedom on the Internet and other forums.

    Coll’s comments came in a discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when he was asked by Kasie Hunt about the need for Big Tech to censor speech.

    Rather than defend the right of people to express themselves freely, Coll lashed out at companies like Facebook as “motivated, as all companies are, to make money” though at the same time is “acting like a public square.”  He decried the failure to have more expansive regulation of free speech and showed little concern or merit for arguments from free speech advocates.  Like Harvard academics who recently declared “China was right” about censorship, Coll just assumed that it was self-evident that too much free speech is a bad thing and that these companies need to protect people from harmful or false ideas.

    “And yes, Facebook has moved somewhat. They’ve had a better election in 2020 than they did in 2016. They’ve learned to put some brakes on, you know, here and there, but you can’t get away from the fact that their mission is to connect everybody in the world. That’s what motivates Mark Zuckerberg and it’s his passion and he profoundly believes in free speech.”

    What is most maddening is that Coll spoke on behalf of journalists in calling for less freedom:

    “Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principle of journalism and what do we do about that,. As reporters, we kind of march into this war with our facts nobly shouldered as if they were going to win the day and what we’re seeing that is because of the scale of this alternative reality that you’ve been talking about, our facts, our principles, our scientific method–it isn’t enough. So what do we do?”

    That used to be an easy question. What you do is allow free speech to combat bad speech. What you do is support the right of citizens and journalists to publish without censorship.  What you do is to embrace the freedom of expression while reinforcing the need to use that freedom to counter disinformation.  Instead, Coll is joining the forces seeking to silence or curtail the speech of others.  You do not support free speech by calling for its curtailment. For free speech advocates, it is as compelling as saying that we needed to “save” villages by destroying them in Vietnam. Worse yet, he is doing it in the names of “good journalism.”

  • America Last: Melinda Gates 'Incredibly Disappointed' After Trump Gives Americans Vaxx First
    America Last: Melinda Gates ‘Incredibly Disappointed’ After Trump Gives Americans Vaxx First

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 20:40

    Melinda Gates is ‘incredibly disappointed’ that Americans will be receiving COVID-19 vaccines, developed by American companies, before the rest of the world.

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    Putting aside overwhelming concerns over safety for a minute – including calls to halt trials until serious questions (including ‘indefinite infertility‘) are addressed – Gates told CNN‘s Poppy Harlow in a Thursday interview that she’s worried about ‘vaccine nationalism.’

    “The president just signed an executive order to try to put Americans at the front of the line when it comes to vaccines,” said Harlow. “I wonder if that’s what you were worried about when you kept saying and warning against vaccine nationalism?”

    “That’s exactly what we were worried about,” replied Gates, adding “I knew it was coming and I was just incredibly disappointed.“

    “I’m much more optimistic about the president-elect and the COVID task force, this eminent task force that he has put together,” she continued. “I think we’re going to see a lot more sensible policy making in the United States, but that starts, you know, January 20 and we have still some dark months to live ahead until then.”

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

    More via the Daily Wire:

    Melinda Gates later spoke about “disinformation,” which she said “can equal death.” Harlow asked her if social media companies have a “responsibility” to remove misinformation “off their platforms.”

    “They absolutely have a responsibility,” Melinda Gates replied. Anybody who is spreading information in society has a responsibility to spread that information safely and equitably. “So, you know, I think a bit the internet and the rise of social media has happened so quickly that really the regulations and the good policy making hasn’t stayed out in front of it and, quite frankly, it needs to catch up.”

    Melinda Gates also attacked Trump, claiming there “could have been less deaths” if he did things differently, including contact tracing, which some have criticized as being potentially unconstitutional

    So here’s a question; Assuming Biden becomes President on January 20, and assuming he offshores millions of doses of vaccine which would otherwise go to US citizens, and assuming it’s ‘safe’ (for various values of safe), how many dead Americans will Biden (and Melinda Gates) be directly responsible for?

  • The Oil Refinery Crisis Will Worsen This Winter
    The Oil Refinery Crisis Will Worsen This Winter

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 20:20

    Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

    It was only to be expected that many of the world’s refiners would be pinched between low demand for finished products and rising inventories as the pandemic lockdowns continue to stifle activity.

    But the warm December that is expected this year is also threatening finished products demand. And it’s possible that many of the older, small refiners won’t survive at all.

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    According to HIS Markit, eleven U.S. refiners are scheduled to close.

    The largest refinery in the United States, Royal Dutch Shell’s Convent, Louisiana refinery has shut down after it was unable to find an interested buyer. But the Dutch oil major is closing six more refineries according to Reuters, because it cannot sell those refineries either.

    Then, the largest U.S. refiner, Marathon Petroleum, is set to close several refineries, including its Gallup, New Mexico, refinery and its refinery in Martinez, California.

    Japan’s Eneos Corp has shut its Osaka refinery, too, but the real pain is in Australia.

    BP announced back at the end of October that it was shutting down its aging 65-year-old Kwinana refinery in Perth, because it was simply “no longer economically viable.”  Instead, the refinery will be turned into an import terminal. After this closure, BP has only three refineries left in Australia.

    PBF Energy shut 85,000 bpd of its Paulsboro, NJ, refinery down. Phillips 66 shut its Alliance refinery down in the runup to Hurricane Sally, but just left it shut while it waits for better days.

    Other refineries that are not shutting down are simply extending maintenance or bringing maintenance forward.

    Australia’s Caltex is a prime example of this, when in early April it brought forward—and extended—maintenance on its only refinery, Lytton. Caltex vaguely said that it would restart the refinery when conditions recover.

    In all, Wood Mackenzie said that nearly 10 percent of Europe’s high-cost refineries, holding 1.4 million barrels per day of capacity, were in serious threat of closure over the next three years.

    None of these developments bode well for oil refiners, which brought out the chicken littles of the oil industry warning of the permanent loss in demand.

    While that might be going too far, more sober analysts are calling for China to surpass the United States as the world’s largest refiner. Why?

    For starters, Asia’s demand for oil products hasn’t seen as much demand loss as its U.S. and European counterparts, which are still in the middle of substantial shutdowns that are stifling activity. This, combined with China’s cheap crude oil purchases, has some analysts anticipating a changing of the guard, so to speak, with China soon overtaking the United States as the world’s largest oil refiner.

    And it doesn’t help that many of China’s refineries are large and new, compared to several older refineries, such as Shell’s Pulau Bukom oil refinery in Singapore, which the company said would see a capacity reduction by half, to just 250,000 bpd.

    Shell’s total refinery capacity has been cut by well over a half a million barrels globally just in the last few months, ostensibly as it seeks to curb emissions. But the reality is, times are tough, and demand for gasoline and jet fuel are waning amid the pandemic.

    According to the International Energy Agency, a total of more than 1.7 million barrels per day of refining capacity in the United States, Japan, Australia, and others has either retired or is set to be retired this year and next. Meanwhile, China, India, and the Middle East are planning refinery additions to the tune of 2.2 million barrels per day—shiny new refineries that are larger and far more efficient.

    S&P Global Platts echoes the IEA’s estimates, stating that 1.69 million bpd of refining capacity is either offline now, or will be offline shortly due to depressed demand.

    The shock to refinery capacities around the world has led some to be concerned with supply. According to S&P Platts, however, oil demand won’t return to 2019 levels until 2022. Whenever the recovery, it will unlikely be the shock that the demand loss was. This should give oil and gas companies time to match capacity with demand as the world calls for more refined products.

  • California Versus Texas
    California Versus Texas

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 20:00

    California has had a nearly identical case trajectory as Texas…

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    • In TX, schools are open. Businesses are open. People can go for a walk.

    • In CA, not so much!

    And then there’s this…

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

    It’s the “science” you see!

    h/t StraightLineLogic.com

  • Grassley Blasts MSM Over Hunter Biden Hypocrisy
    Grassley Blasts MSM Over Hunter Biden Hypocrisy

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 19:40

    Chuck Grassley is one pissed off Senator.

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    After the Iowa Republican and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) produced a long-awaited Senate report which concluded that Hunter Biden’s financial dealings with Ukrainian, Chinese and Russian businesses created “criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns” concerning everything from sex-trafficking to bribery – the MSM panned it as a partisan attack on a presidential candidate’s son.

    Now that Hunter has admitted he’s under investigation for tax fraud (and, as Politico and CNN have added, money laundering and accepting bribes), Grassley is having the last laugh.

    In Thursday remarks on the Senate Floor, Grassley blasted the media after months of covering for the Bidens.

    “For over a year, Senator Johnson and I investigated the Biden financial family dealings,” said Grassley, adding “We found that they engaged in potential criminal financial deals across the globe, including China, which created counterintelligence concerns.”

    Grassley then turned his attention to the MSM, saying “Those same liberal outlets that disparaged our investigation now report that Hunter Biden’s financial deals in China raise counterintelligence concerns.”

    He went on to say that the media should have been covering concerns raised by Republicans instead of covering them up.

    “So you can understand why I think it’s very outrageous that the fourth estate would choose to ignore facts when they are uncovered by Republicans,” Grassley continued. “It shouldn’t take subpoenas and confirmation from Hunter Biden himself to get the rest of the press to pay attention.”

    Watch:

  • Shipping Container Shortages In China Crimp Exports To West 
    Shipping Container Shortages In China Crimp Exports To West 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 19:20

    No one predicted that the shipping container industry would be absolutely on fire this year, considering China’s strong economic rebound following the virus-induced downturn. Now a shortage of shipping containers in Asia are sending container spot rates to multi-year highs, has already started to crimp China exports. 

    Just how high can Asia-U.S. East Coast spot rates go? Well, the cost of chartering a 40-foot container from China to the US East Coast soared to nearly $5k this week, up 85% since June 1, according to Freightos data in Refinitiv Eikon.

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    Source: Freightos data in Refinitiv Eikon

    A shortage of containers in China comes as exports in the country surged 21% in November from a year ago. Chinese factories are pumping out appliances, electronics, toys, clothes, and personal protective equipment to the world. 

    As explained by Reuters, a “severe shortage” of containers in the Asian country is starting to hit export flows: 

    But due to China’s lopsided trade balance – exporting three containers for every one imported recently – and delays in containers returning to China due to the pandemic overseas, a severe shortage is now starting to pinch export flows. Roughly 60% of global goods move by container, and according to United Nations trade data there are close to 180 million containers worldwide. -Reuters

    Charles Xu, a mirror salesman, located in Yiwu’s export hub in Zhejiang province, which supplies major US retailers, told Reuters that “we ve so many orders but just cannot ship things. Boxes are piling up at our factory and we don’t have much space left. It’s just hard to book containers, and everyone is bidding for them with high price.” 

    China Container Industry Association said the average container turnaround has jumped to 100 days from 60 days because of virus-related capacity cuts in the US and Europe, which has greatly increased the shortage of containers in China. There have already been reports of some US importers not being able to receive shipments in November. 

    In September, we first noted that demand for ocean freight out of China was “leading to equipment shortages in Asia.”

    “The surge in volumes is leading to equipment shortages in Asia. Some shippers are paying premiums on top of spiking rates to guarantee containers and space. The imbalance is also putting pressure on overwhelmed US ports and importers to process and return empty containers quickly.”

    Spot container rates from China are soaring worldwide: 

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    Source: Freightos data in Refinitiv Eikon

    Even with Chinese container manufacturers boosting capacity to keep up with demand – their efforts are still falling short. Mainly because distorted trader flows have resulted in record build-up in containers elsewhere. 

    For instance, the Port of Los Angeles, the nation’s top port, imported 3.5 containers for every one it exported in October. There are currently 326,000 empty containers sitting at the port, according to shipping organization BIMCO.

    One Chinese vendor with clients in the US said, “right now waiting for container is two to four weeks. I still don’t know if I will have a container or not.” 

    Shortages could persist well into the first quarter of 2021 as container manufacturers in China are booked through Feburary. 

    And what could this mean for US consumers? Well, this is what we said back in October: 

    “Inventories are historically low. There is rising concern that companies will not be able to import and deliver enough goods to meet consumer demand during the holiday season.”

    Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian Economics Research at HSBC, suspects this “unusually high demand for goods globally, which is likely to cool as we move into 2021 because of the (expected) service-led recovery, particularly in Western economies.” 

  • Biden Is Off To A Bad Start Under Progressive Pressure
    Biden Is Off To A Bad Start Under Progressive Pressure

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 19:00

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    Under Progressive pressure, Biden ponders canceling $50,000 in student loans.

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    Rogue Executive Actions 

    Biden is already bending to the wishes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to want to forgive student loans. 

    On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Biden ‘Considering’ Forgiving $50,000 in Student Loan Debt via Executive Action.

    Schumer held a press conference alongside Democratic Congressmen-elect Ritchie Torres, Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman of New York, during which the group announced they have “come to the conclusion” that Biden can “forgive $50,000 of debt the first day he becomes president.”

    “You don’t need Congress, all you need is the flick of a pen and President-elect Biden — then President Biden — can make this happen,” Schumer said.

    Asked if Biden will have the executive authority to forgive the debt, the New York Senator said the president-elect is researching that and “I believe when he does his research, he will find that he does.”

    Congress, Who Needs It?

    I believe we have seen enough rogue executive actions of dubious legality.

    Even if legal, this is a terrible idea. It mainly benefits middle-class whites and unfairly so. 

    We can’t give money to people at the bottom who have lost their jobs, possibly permanently, due to government decree. But hey, let’s  forgive $50,000 in debt to the upwardly mobile.

    Less Education for Your Buck

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    The above chart is from US College Tuition & Fees vs. Overall Inflation.

    Please note the acceleration in 2005. What happened?

    The cost of education escalated madly when Bush passed the bankruptcy reform act of 2005 making student debt not dischargeable in bankruptcy. 

    Flashback 2005

    On April 15, 2005, I penned The Deflation Guarantee Act of 2005.

    Today Congress passed the “The Deflation Guarantee Act of 2005” currently known as the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”.

    Twenty years from now economists are going to be studying legislation from this Congress and signed by this administration and be wondering: “What the * were they thinking?”.

    Anytime this administration passes a law with the “protection” in it, assume it will do just the opposite.

    This was a bill written by loan sharks, and bought via payoffs (otherwise known as campaign contributions) to those voting for this bill. It has NOTHING to do with “Consumer Protection”.

    I believe this will backfire in many ways, and not all of them are fully understood yet.

    Disease vs Symptoms

    I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1976 with a degree in Civil Engineering. The cost of tuition was $250 a semester when I entered college in 1971.

    Some blame states for not contributing to education. Indeed, states would would not raise taxes to cover escalating costs because of voter backlash.

    But that is blaming the disease on the symptom. The disease was then and still is high administration costs, public unions, outrageous coaching contracts, unbelievable pensions, and serious lack of competition. 

    Five Student Loan Facts 

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    Brookings has a set of Five Facts About Student Loans that everyone discussing forgiveness needs to be aware of. 

    1. Six Percent of Borrowers owe a third of the outstanding debt.

    2. About one quarter of borrowers who have about half of the debt borrowed for graduate school.

    3. The individuals who owe the most money are not the individuals who default on debt

    4. Most bachelor’s degree recipients graduate with little to no debt

    5. Even if financial aid covers the whole tuition bill, many students borrow to cover living costs

    Questions of the Day

    • Given those facts, why should borrowers be bailed out at taxpayer expense?

    • If they are, when will it stop?

    Dead on Arrival

    On November 29, I commented Biden’s Progressive Agenda is Dead on Arrival .

    The obvious implication is “DOA in Congress” as opposed to seriously misguided and dubiously legal executive orders. 

    Compelling Case

    HedgEye author Neil Howe makes a compelling case in Is A Student Debt Jubilee Coming?

    Colleges possess such extraordinary pricing power in part because they bar or discourage new competitors and in part because lazy employers rely on a limited number of them to act as credential gate keepers. What federal policy ought to do is actively promote new types of educational institutions better fitted to employer needs and to promote measures by which families can fairly compare the value-added of different schools. Colleges and collegiate associations actively discourage all of the above.  

    In sum, it’s a mistake to enact a student debt jubilee without first rethinking and recasting the whole market for higher education. Otherwise, we’ll either end up right back where we started (with millions of new students crushed by huge debt loads) or somewhere we don’t want to go (with taxpayers committed to covering the cost of whatever colleges want to charge… a bit like they now do with healthcare providers).

    Huge Moral Hazard 

    Debt discharge is a huge moral hazard that encourages more overpaying for useless degrees.

    It will do nothing to address the cost of higher education.

    We need more competition, more accredited schools, more alternatives, and less public union graft. 

    Forgiving debt fosters less competition and more graft.

    Under Pressure

    Biden is under pressure from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who believe Biden could not have won without them.

    This claim is off by 180 degrees.

    Election Message

    The fact of the matter is rightful fear of Progressives could have cost Biden the election.

    You can see this in the House and Senate races. 

    Trump lost but Biden had negative coattails. Why? 

    Fear of exactly this kind of liberal agenda. 

    Voters did not want Trump but they did not want liberal nonsense either. 

    Message Not Heard!

    Trump did not get the message. Neither did Biden nor the Progressive wing of the Democratic party. 

    Biden is off to a bad start by listening to the Progressive wing that damn near cost him the election.

  • After Duke's 2-2 Start, Coach Krzyzewski Says Its Time To End The Season Due To COVID
    After Duke’s 2-2 Start, Coach Krzyzewski Says Its Time To End The Season Due To COVID

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 18:40

    At a time when the country is literally days away from getting a vaccine and most sports – including the NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB have forged ahead with their seasons and/or have plans to forge ahead close to normal in 2021 – Duke university Coach Mike Krzyzewski appears to be throwing in the towel on his season.

    And if one were a UNC fan, it could almost look like the Duke coach was blaming Covid for what appears to be a lackluster start for his Duke team. 

    But we digress and we’ll give Krzyzewski the benefit of the doubt. He said publicly this week it is time for the sport to “step back and asses the wisdom of playing games” after Duke dropped a game to Illinois, according to Bloomberg. 

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    CBS noted it was Duke’s “worst start to a regular season since 1999-2000, when that Mike Krzyzewski-coached club shook the funk to finish 29-5 overall.” They also commented: “This team has a long ways to replicating that trajectory. Duke struggled mightily to knock down shots from the perimeter against the Illini, and again it struggled to create offense in the halfcourt.”

    Krzyzewski, who is the winningest college basketball coach in history, said Tuesday: “I don’t think it feels right to anybody. I mean, everyone is concerned.” He says the decision to start the season before a vaccine wasn’t “well planned” and suggested the season be paused. 

    “You know, in our country today, you have 2,000 deaths a day. You know, you have 200,000 cases, a million and a half last week. To me, it’s already pretty bad,” he commented, apparently oblivious to the fact that healthy 20-something athletes have about the same, or less, chance of dying from Covid as they do from the flu. 

    Again, we’re sure Krzyzewski is suggesting this out of concern for the American public and not because he is unhappy with Duke’s start to the season. But come on Coach K, just admit that headlines like this aren’t helping…

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  • Tempering Exuberance: Market Signals Over Market Noise
    Tempering Exuberance: Market Signals Over Market Noise


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 18:25

    Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison joins Tommy Thornton, founder of Hedge Fund Telemetry, to discuss the market exuberance around this week’s IPOs, DeMark indicators, and his forward outlook. Thornton elaborates on why the speculative bubble surrounding the IPOs for DoorDash and Airbnb is worrisome and too volatile to either long or short at this point. He also dives into DeMark indicators, sharing what they are and how he analyzes markets and crafts investing strategies around their use. Thornton then talks about what his outlook in light of a true reopening is for oil, financials, cyclicals, and tech. Harrison and Thornton end on discussing the DXY and currency markets. In the intro, Real Vision’s Haley Draznin explores the jobless claims spike after the Thanksgiving week and the higher than expected valuations of Airbnb and Doordash going public.

  • Lessons Learned: One Man's Personal Story From The Collapse Of The Soviet Union
    Lessons Learned: One Man’s Personal Story From The Collapse Of The Soviet Union

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 18:20

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    [Editor’s note: Marat K, one of our team members who grew up during the collapse of the Soviet Union, tells the story of his own experiences during that period.]

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    When I was a kid growing up in the Soviet Union, it was essentially forbidden to make a better life for yourself.

    You couldn’t just decide to go back to school, start a business, or switch careers to a thriving new industry.

    And it didn’t matter how hard you worked– you were most likely NEVER going to be promoted. All the top jobs in the Soviet Union were reserved for party loyalists.

    The government removed EVERY possible economic incentive to achieve more… which is why service was pitiful, technology was lagging, and the Soviet economy was consistently in the dumps.

    Now, on occasion, the government would decide that they wanted to populate certain rural areas of Russia, such as remote parts of Siberia.

    Quite often families were simply ordered to pick up and move, as was famously the case under Stalin.

    But by the 1970s, the government would provide a small financial incentive for families– if you moved to Siberia, you could earn a slightly higher salary.

    This became literally the ONLY way that anyone could (legally) make more money in the Soviet Union.

    And that’s how my parents and I ended up moving to a cold, little town in western Siberia in 1985.

    The plan was to stay there for a few years, save money, and then move back to a nicer, bigger city in Russia with a better climate.

    The fact that our new Siberian town didn’t have a single restaurant, cinema, or even an ice-cream place, made the ‘saving money’ part really easy.

    My parents followed through on their plan. And by the early 1990s they had saved enough money to buy a decent house, plus a car, and still have some savings left over.

    But then, the unimaginable happened– the Soviet Union collapsed.

    And the economy crashed.

    Inflation, then hyperinflation, followed, as the government started printing money like crazy in an effort to continue making interest payments on its debt.

    Prices skyrocketed.

    At some point, stores stopped displaying price signs. Why bother, if they were doubling every other week or so?

    Salaries and pensions did not keep up with inflation; almost everyone became more poor with each passing day.

    Most people, including my parents, were caught completely unprepared.

    The general level of financial literacy at the time was pitiful; most Russians didn’t know the first thing about money, finance, or economics, so no one knew how to react to the hyperinflation that was unfolding in front of our very eyes.

    It was as if everyone was frozen in disbelief, including my parents.

    By 1990, before the crisis, my parents had saved 50,000 rubles. At the time, that would have been enough to buy a house and a car.

    After a few years of crisis, my parents still had the same 50,000 rubles. But by then, all they could afford to buy with it was a pair of winter boots for my mother.

    Their entire nest egg has been completely inflated away in a few short years.

    But not everyone has lost during that time.

    Those who successfully navigated the financial Wild West of the 1990s in Russia turned this crisis into the opportunity of their lifetimes.

    For example, I remember seeing ads in a newspaper offering to exchange a flat in Moscow for a poor-quality Soviet car.

    It was an unbelievable trade when you think about it; the guy with the apartment was probably panicking and trying to leave the country, so he  thought it would be a good idea to trade his apartment for a car.

    But ten years later, the car was a worthless pile of scrap. Meanwhile the owner of the flat still held a valuable asset that had appreciated significantly in value and kept up with inflation.

    And naturally the savviest people were able to buy extremely high quality assets on the cheap– like real estate and businesses, including shares of newly-privatized oil companies.

    Investing in Gazprom in the early 1990s was like buying bitcoin in 2010.

    Later these people became known as Russian oligarchs.

    Now, I’m not writing this to suggest that the same financial catastrophe will take place in the US or Europe.

    After all, the ruble didn’t enjoy the status of being the world’s reserve currency in the early 90s. And the economy of the late Soviet Union was already in terrible shape.

    Still, this very recent history should serve as a reminder: idiotic economic policies almost always have consequences.

    When a government goes out of its way to destroy economic incentives, through higher taxes or abusive regulations, bad things usually happen.

    When a government accumulates a mountain of debt that is impossible to pay, bad things usually happen.

    When a central bank conjures trillions of dollars out of thin air, bad things usually happen.

    And I can tell you from personal experience that when a society actively embraces a Communist ideology, bad things usually happen.

    And all of these issues in North America and Europe certainly could create consequences for the dollar and euro some day.

    This isn’t a dire prediction, it’s just common sense… something that most politicians seem to be lacking these days.

    It’s important to think about risks and consequences and prepare for them in advance; I watched my parents lose their entire nest egg and become victims of other people’s stupidity, because they were unprepared.

    But today we have access to so much more information and education. We can learn about how gold and silver have maintained their value against inflation for thousands of years.

    We can learn about other assets, whether productive land, cryptocurrency, or profitable business ventures, that can do well, even in times of crisis.

    And we can make a Plan B… just in case the unthinkable happens. Because if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that absolutely anything is possible.

    *  *  *

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

  • 'Imprisoned, Tortured, Harassed, Blackmailed And Stalked': AP Investigation Uncovers Rampant Sexual Misconduct Within FBI
    ‘Imprisoned, Tortured, Harassed, Blackmailed And Stalked’: AP Investigation Uncovers Rampant Sexual Misconduct Within FBI

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 18:00

    Nearly three years ago we reported that the FBI was a hotbed of sexual misconduct, after Inspector General Michael Horowitz uncovered sexual harassment, inappropriate romantic relationships between bosses and subordinates, and outright demands for sex in exchange for promotions.

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    It seems nothing has changed.

    According to an investigation by the Associated Press, the FBI has been subject to at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior officials over the past five years, “including two new claims brought this week by women who say they were sexually assaulted by ranking agents.”

    An assistant FBI director retired after he was accused of drunkenly groping a female subordinate in a stairwell. Another senior FBI official left after he was found to have sexually harassed eight employees. Yet another high-ranking FBI agent retired after he was accused of blackmailing a young employee into sexual encounters.

    …

    The AP review of court records, Office of Inspector General reports and interviews with federal law enforcement officials identified at least six allegations against senior officials, including an assistant director and special agents in charge of entire field offices, that ranged from unwanted touching and sexual advances to coercion.

    None appears to have been disciplined, but another sexual misconduct allegation identified in the AP review of a rank-and-file agent resulted in him losing his security clearance. –AP

    “They’re sweeping it under the rug,” said one former FBI analyst with who is suing the agency after claiming that a supervisory special agent ‘licked her face and groped her‘ at a colleague’s 2017 farewell party, and has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic distress disorder. Meanwhile, others have accused FBI agents of far worse:

    In one of the new lawsuits filed Wednesday, a former FBI employee identified only as “Jane Doe” alleged a special agent in charge in 2016 retired without discipline and opened a law firm even after he “imprisoned, tortured, harassed, blackmailed, stalked and manipulated” her into having several “non-consensual sexual encounters,” including one in which he forced himself on her in a car. The AP is withholding the name and location of the accused special agent to protect the woman’s identity.

    “As the premier law enforcement organization that the FBI holds itself out to be, it’s very disheartening when they allow people they know are criminals to retire and pursue careers in law enforcement-related fields,” said the former employee, identified only as Becky.

    AP notes that their investigation doesn’t include the ‘growing number of high-level FBI supervisors who have failed to report romantic relationships with subordinates in recent years.’

    The last time an inspector general conducted an extensive probe of sexual misconduct within the FBI flagged 343 ‘offenses’ between 2009 – 2012, including three instances of “videotaping undressed women without consent.”

    Meanwhile, a 17th woman has joined a federal lawsuit alleging systemic sexual harassment at the FBI’s Quantico, VA training academy – in which male FBI instructors are said to have made “sexually charged” comments about women who need to “take their birth control to control their moods.” Female trainees were also invited to their homes and openly disparaged, according to the filing.

    Read the rest of the report here.

  • Will COVID Cool Millennials' Crush On Socialism?
    Will COVID Cool Millennials’ Crush On Socialism?

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 17:40

    Authored by Luka Ladan via RealClearPolitics.com,

    As the 2020 election dust settles, one thing is clear: Republicans have a youth problem.

    Sixty percent of voters under 30 supported President-elect Joe Biden, who will become the oldest U.S. president in history. However, Biden’s election is only the tip of an iceberg: In today’s America, 70% of people my age are open to voting for a socialist presidential candidate. According to a recent survey, more than one-third of Millennials (35%) support the gradual elimination of capitalism in favor of a more collectivist system.

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    Biden may not be a socialist (although his platform is the most liberal in presidential history), but  the Republican pitch is clearly falling on deaf ears. Free-marketeers are losing the war of words.

    In the 1940s, a plurality of Americans (34%) associated socialism with “government ownership or control.” By 2018, that percentage was halved. Today, the most common association with socialism is “equality.”

    Democrats understand the importance of language. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York advocates for the Green New Deal, she is careful to position an objectively radical proposal as a “solution to climate change,” and not a $93 trillion expansion of federal oversight.

    But socialism’s popularity cannot solely be attributed to the successes of Democratic messaging, or the biases of mainstream media coverage for that matter. In truth, Americans my age have become desensitized to the dangers of Big Government in practice. It has been more than 30 years since the Berlin Wall fell. It has been over a century since the Bolsheviks upended Russia’s political order—a precursor for communism’s spread to the likes of China, North Korea, and Vietnam.

    I see it in my own life. My parents survived communism in former Yugoslavia and the civil war that followed, fleeing their homeland to live the American Dream. Along the way, they shared anecdotes about Josip Broz Tito’s communist regime—from Marxist teachings at school to the persecution of political dissenters on Goli Otok.

    But those experiences are not my own. Even for a Millennial steadfastly opposed to collectivism, it is easier to comprehend the economic ramifications of a 50-cent-per-gallon gas tax than the risks of speaking out against Tito. I understand and even sympathize with Millennials who forget that individual liberty is never guaranteed. 

    We may encounter horror stories from Venezuela, but they seem inapplicable to the American experience. We may learn about the plight of Uighur Muslims in China, but what do they have to do with a “Green New Deal”?

    In truth, very little. However, a greater openness to socialism should terrify the tens of millions of Americans who still support capitalism, including Republicans in the political trenches.

    So what’s next? Perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel—because of the coronavirus. American Millennials may never experience Soviet aggression or Venezuelan collectivism, but we are touched by the heavy hand of government in the COVID-19 era.

    In Florida, Miami Mayor Dan Gelber has encouraged law enforcement to issue citations to people not wearing a face mask outside. In California, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has shut down indoor and outdoor dining, and New York City may soon follow. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown threatened state residents with $1,250 fines and 30 days imprisonment for hosting Thanksgiving gatherings of seven people or more.

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    This is not to say that the COVID-19 pandemic should go unaddressed, but American freedoms face unprecedented attack—not from a public health crisis, but from public officials going to extreme lengths in its name. Conceding undue power to government is a slippery slope to tyranny and oppression.

    Personal experience remains the best antidote to socialism. Those who live through the perils of Big Government are more likely to reject its advances. There is a reason why 55% of Florida’s Cuban-Americans voted for President Trump, and not a Democratic Party that has expressed support for the Castro regime.

    The political fallout of COVID-19 remains to be seen. Perhaps, Millennials will embrace governmental excess in response to a novel virus. Perhaps, we will begin to question that encroachment into our daily lives.

    Only time will tell. But, if we are lucky, America will be less socialist upon leaving a pandemic than entering one.

  • FDA Panel Recommends Approval Of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID Vaccine
    FDA Panel Recommends Approval Of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID Vaccine

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 17:38

    After an unprecedentedly short period from inception to trial to results, Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA COVID vaccine has just been approved (after an all-day meeting) by the Food and Drug Administration Advisory panel for emergency use in the US.

    This was the question to be voted on…

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    Notably there was a lot of argument about removing the 16 years or older segment of the question.

    These were the voters:

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    And the final vote count was as follows: 17 Yes, 4 No, 1 Abstain

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    The FDA itself will now take this outside adviser group’s into account to decide on emergency use. Although the FDA does not have to follow the panel’s recommendation, it is widely expected to do so.

    This follows approvals by UK and Canada, but several populations were excluded from the trials – meaning the vaccine isn’t known to be safe for all Americans just yet…

    “There are currently insufficient data to make conclusions about the safety of the vaccine in subpopulations such as children less than 16 years of age, pregnant and lactating individuals, and immunocompromised individuals,” a recent FDA review concluded.

    So what happens next is all Americans are propagandized (we’re all in this together, be a patriot) or coerced (no travel or work without a vaccine) into taking the vaccine.

    As NIAID director Anthony Fauci tells Axios, “once 75%–80% of people get vaccinated against the coronavirus, there should be strong enough herd immunity that we can return to normal activities.”

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    Of course, politics is likely to rear its ugly head as decision are made, state by state, on the logistics and ‘equitable’ distribution of the vaccines beyond the simple cohorts of most-at-risk and healthcare workers. As Phillip Giraldi noted:

    There is a strong consensus that the first recipients of the vaccine must be health care workers, a group that has suffered disproportionately from the disease and which constitutes the first line of defense against its spread.

    After that, however, there is little clarity.

    Suggestions that elderly people, particularly in nursing homes, should be inoculated, have been countered by those who believe that a limited supply of vaccine should go primarily to people who would be able to go back to work.

    And then there are the politicians in each jurisdiction, who oddly believe that their work is vital. They and their families will be lining up.

    In short, who gets vaccinated will likely depend on the deals and arrangements that have been worked out, often at the state and local level in the United States, and at national government level in most other places.

    Logically, the vaccine should go first to those who are most at risk for contracting the disease and dying from it, but logic likely will not prevail.

    Generally speaking, it is expected that after health care workers and perhaps the vulnerable elderly, front line police and emergency services should be next in line due to their frequent contact with the possibly infected public, followed by workers in places like slaughterhouses where work conditions have created infection hot spots.

    Next in line would logically be workers in shops or businesses where there is regular contact with the public, but as such employees are generally low wage they will likely be pushed to the back of the bus.

    Inevitably, the claims that there is a racial angle to the disease will certainly surface in places like the New York Times, leading to demands to vaccinate minorities first.

    This will surely be resisted. Given the political realities of the pandemic and the socio-economic engineering that will no doubt take place, the real excitement will likely begin when the vaccine actually begins to become available, probably just before Christmas!

    In the meantime, as Dr. Fauci pronounced, “you can’t give [masks and social distancing] up completely until you get such a level of herd immunity that the virus has no place to go.”

    Don’t hold your breath, America.

  • Citadel Makes Over $1 Billion Trading Commodities In 2020
    Citadel Makes Over $1 Billion Trading Commodities In 2020

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 17:20

    It’s not just J PMorgan that made a $1 billion trading commodities, at roughly the same time that it paid a record $1 billion fee for manipulating the gold market: Ken Griffin’s Citadel, where Ben Bernanke is a senior advisor, also had a great year in the sector with Reuters reporting that Citadel’s investments in commodities returned more than $1 billion this year, helping to drive strong overall performance for one of the world’s largest funds.

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    This is a repeat performance for Citadel’s commodities business, which was also up by at least $1 billion in 2019, boosted by strong gains in European natural gas and power trading.

    Citadel “benefited from gains across the commodities business in oil, power, natural gas and agriculture markets this year” Reuters’ sources said, with Citadel’s flagship multi-strat Wellington fund up by 21.2% this year through November, putting it on track to have its best year since 2012. Citadel has materially outperformed the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index – which tracks the performance of the global hedge fund industry – and which gained 6.2% in November, the strongest monthly gain since December 1999, and is up 7.3% year-to-date.

    Citadel, which had about $35 billion in assets under management as of Oct. 1, recently hired a former Glencore energy derivatives trader to head its first commodities trading team in Asia, and recruited former Morgan Stanley commodities trading chief Jay Rubenstein. The fund also hired Eike Schick, former head of the European natural gas desk at Freepoint Commodities, as a portfolio manager in London, and Mark Tawney, who ran Munich Re Trading, joined the company to lead a weather derivatives team earlier this year.

    According to Bloomberg, Citadel’s Wellington fund returned 21% this year through November. All five of the fund’s core investment strategies contributed to the gain and have positive returns for the year.

     

  • Setting Up A Siege? Antifa Has Armed Guards, Stockpiled Weapons At Portland Autonomous Zone
    Setting Up A Siege? Antifa Has Armed Guards, Stockpiled Weapons At Portland Autonomous Zone

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 17:00

    Authored by Tyler O’Neil via PJ Media,

    The antifa occupiers at the autonomous zone that sprung up in Portland this week appear to be preparing for a siege. As PJ Media’s Victoria Taft reported, antifa squatters took over a house in Portland and when the government rightly evicted them, they set up an autonomous zone.

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    On Wednesday, Portland’s police chief reported that antifa has fortified barricades, stockpiled weapons, set up armed guards, and threatened to kill police officers. Both the police chief and the mayor have urged the rebels to lay down their arms, but it appears they are refusing to do so.

    “We want a peaceful & safe resolution to the occupation of public space on N Mississippi Ave. We are greatly concerned about the fortification of barricades, stockpiling of weapons, armed sentries, attacks on journalists & threats to kill officers in graffiti in this public space,” Chief Chuck Lovell tweeted on Wednesday. “I encourage those involved to reach out to our demonstration liaisons so we can discuss a peaceful outcome.”

    “We are aware of the stockpile of weapons and the presence of firearms. We are aware of the threats to the community, to media, to police. We’ve seen the attacks. The Portland Police will enforce the law and use force is necessary to restore order to the neighborhood,” Lovell added in a brief speech about the autonomous zone.

    On Tuesday, Mayor Ted Wheeler (D-Portland) announced he was “authorizing the Portland Police to use all lawful means to end the illegal occupation on North Mississippi Avenue and to hold those violating our community’s laws accountable. There will be no autonomous zone in Portland.”

    Wheeler went on to acknowledge the extremely radical claims of Marxist Critical Race Theory that inspire much of the antifa rioting.

    “We all agree many of our nation’s systems and structures are fundamentally racist and require significant reform. There’s a housing crisis, a health care crisis, an education crisis, an employment crisis, a mental health crisis, and an addiction crisis,” he argued. “All of these crises are magnified in urban areas, including Portland. And, these crises disproportionately impact Black people.”

    Yet Wheeler refused to follow the logic of the more radical Black Lives Matter and antifa crowd, who use those arguments to justify rioting, looting, and arson.

    “It’s also true that illegal trespassing, ignoring lawful orders from police, blocking sidewalks and streets, and intimidating neighbors inflame these crises and make [these crises] more difficult to solve. That is what’s happening on North Mississippi Avenue right now,” the mayor argued.

    The antifa occupation appears to have emerged after a judge ordered that people illegally occupying a home must be evicted. Activists appear to have seized on the eviction as racist, oppressive, or otherwise illegitimate. Wheeler defended the eviction, noting that “Multnomah County chose the time, place and manner of the eviction and Portland Police provided support.”

    “It’s time for the encampment and occupation to end,” the mayor concluded. “There are many ways to protest and work toward needed reform. Illegally occupying private property, openly carrying weapons, threatening and intimidating people are not among them.”

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    Twitter screenshot of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s thread on autonomous zone.

    Wheeler is right to defend the rule of law in this case, but his sympathy for Marxist Critical Race Theory undermines his case. If America’s “systems and structures” are “fundamentally racist,” as the mayor claimed, that inspires irrational anger and an aimless attempt to overthrow the existing order — by force, if necessary.

    Wheeler himself repeatedly insisted that the violent antifa riots that racked Portland this summer were peaceful. He even attended one such riot, and he claimed that there was no justification for federal officers using tear gas — while rioters threw a Molotov cocktail near where Wheeler was standing!

    Portland Police should restore order, break up the antifa autonomous zone, and defend the peace and safety of the city’s citizens around N. Mississippi Ave. This should be a no-brainer. Sadly, the very Marxist Critical Theory that inspires the riots has infiltrated the commanding heights of American culture, so much so that even the public official whose job it is to order the cops to restore order is echoing the very talking points that antifa militants use to justify their crimes.

    The riots this summer, ostensibly focused on helping the black community, destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments. At least 26 Americans have died in the riots, most of them black. The riots proved the most destructive in American history when it comes to insurance claims.

    Police should break up the siege, and quickly. Wheeler should also consider the consequences of his radical rhetoric.

  • Weedmaps To Go Public Through $1.5 Billion Merger
    Weedmaps To Go Public Through $1.5 Billion Merger

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 16:40

    Weedmaps, a popular website where users can learn about different strains of marijuana and locate local dispensaries, has agreed to go public by merging with Silver Spike Acquisition Corp. in a deal which values the webstie at approximately $1.5 billion, according to Reuters – which adds that it’s a “rare example of a business focused on the cannabis sector listing on a U.S. stock exchange.”

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    Companies which involve direct selling of marijuana, or which are ‘plant touching’ are unable to list shares in the Untied States. Weedmaps does neither.

    “When you look at what we’re offering (to investors), there’s really not too much else like it,” said Chris Beals, CEO of Weedmaps parent, WM Holding Company.

    The Irvine, California-based website was founded in 2008 by Doug Francis and Justin Hartfield, and offers marijuana dispensaries the ability to list their inventory in real time, while the site also hosts a review and ratings platform.

    Weedmaps expects to receive gross proceeds of up to $575 million from the deal, in part from proceeds Silver Spike had raised and also through $325 million in a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, transaction. Investors in the PIPE include funds from the Federated Hermes Kaufmann Funds, Senvest Management LLC and AFV Partners.

    Silver Spike shares were indicated up 8.8% at $11.41 in premarket trading. Reuters first reported news of the deal on Wednesday. –Reuters

    The company is expected to deliver $160 million in revenue and has been profitable for its entire 12-year history, according to Beals.

    The deal comes less than a week after US lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, which is expected to remain a symbolic vote unless Democrats regain the Senate in a January runoff election in Georgia. It’s the first time either chamber of Congress has voted to end the federal ban on marijuana since 1970, when it was listed as a “controlled substance.”

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    Meanwhile, 15 US states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use, while 30 states allow some form of medicinal use.

    Silver Spike, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) raised $250 million in an August, 2019 Nasdaq IPO with a focus on buying within the cannabis sector.

    “There was no better opportunity and no more dynamic company and story for us to consider a transaction with than with WMH,” said Gordon in an interview.

  • US Suffers Record 3K+ COVID Death; States Expand Stay-At-Home Orders: Live Updates
    US Suffers Record 3K+ COVID Death; States Expand Stay-At-Home Orders: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 16:20

    Summary:

    • NY nears new records
    • Virginia imposes new restrictions
    • Ohio at “extremely critical” juncture
    • US deaths top 3K/day for first time
    • Global cases near 70MM
    • FDA panel meets on Pfizer vaccine
    • Saudi approves Pfizer vaccine for import/export
    • India’s largest chain of hospitals ready to administer 1MM vaccinations/day
    • Malaysia reports new daily case record
    • Denmark expands partial lockdow

    * * *

    Update (1600ET): Another day has passed, and New York is again poised to break a new record any day now. The state reported 10,600 new cases Wednesday, numbers that prompted Gov. Cuomo to discourage holiday travel.

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Still, the pandemic looks much different now than it did 8 months back. The days of sirens echoing across the eerily empty streets of Manhattan are over.

    However, the number of patients hospitalized statewide is about 25% of what it was in April when coronavirus overwhelmed the health-care system in the nN. Patients are spending less time in the hospital, and less often require intensive procedures like intubation. Thanks to more sophisticated treatment, the virus is killing less often.

    Finally, an FDA panel is reviewing Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, just a day or two after more than 3K US deaths in a single day added to urgency that the country deploy its first vaccine. Virginia announced a limited nightly stay-at-home order after reporting a record daily cases this week. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said December is an “extremely critical” month as the state extended its curfew through Jan. 2.

    A US pilots union asked for priority access to the vaccine.

    In Europe, France, the country with the most confirmed cases on the Continent, backed off plans to reopen theaters, museums, cinemas and sports facilities next week as its outbreak remains one of the worst anyway,

    * * *

    The US reported more than 3K COVID-19 deaths during the 24 hours to Wednesday, topping the 3K figure for the first time, as hospitalizations in the US hit a new record.

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    Once again, new cases topped 200K/day, pushing the 7-day average to 204K, while, hospitalizations across the US climbed to 106.7K, a new high.

    With the FDA expected to approve Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for emergency use, the UK reported a major stumbling block on Wednesday when it revealed that people with “severe” allergies shouldn’t take the COVID vaccine – at least, not right away. It’s just the latest indication that the rushed approval process has left many questions unanswered.

    What’s more, Pfizer also revealed that a cyberattack had led to the potential leak of some documents handed over to a European regulator relating to its vaccine review.

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    The biggest number of the day is the death rate, as the daily number hit 3,054, while the 7-day average hit a new record high of 2,276.

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    Cases in the northeast and West are increasingly rapidly, with the 7-day average for cases per million residents up to 628 in the northeast and 644 in the West.

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    India’s largest hospital chain said it’s ready to administer one million coronavirus vaccine doses a day.

    California’s average rate of positive tests over the last 14 days reached 8.8% as of yesterday, the highest level since the spring, as officials reported a new record daily number: 30K+ new cases.

    After German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that new COVID restriction would be needed before Christmas, authorities in Germany are discussing tighter nationwide restrictions before Christmas, and some regions are already acting. Berlin is set to join Bavaria and Saxony in imposing new ‘lockdown light’ measures. Berlin, meanwhile, plans to close all non-essential shops and extend school breaks until Jan. 10, said Mayor Michael Mueller on Thursday.

    “At the moment, it’s the worst of three worlds” said one official citing too many infections, high costs to support affected businesses, and public fatigue from weeks of pandemic curbs, Health Minister Jens Spahn said. “It will become noticeably worse before it gets better, but we need to have confidence that it will get better.”

    Meanwhile global cases have reached 69,069,399, just on the cusp of 70MM, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, while the worldwide death toll has hit 1.57MM.

    Here’s some more COVID news from Thursday morning and overnight:

    President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani says he left hospital feeling “better than ever” after being admitted to Georgetown University Medical Center with “serious symptoms” for Covid-19 a few days ago (Source: Bloomberg).

    Malaysia logged the highest single-day jump in new cases, days after the country extended curbs on movement in some states to help stem the spread of infections but relaxed restrictions in other places (Source: Bloomberg).

    The head of the European Union’s drug regulator says a recent cyberattack has not disrupted the agency’s review of COVID-19 vaccine candidates (Source: Nikkei).

    Denmark will expand its partial lockdown to cover two-thirds of the country, according to broadcaster TV2. The Social Democrat government will discuss measures with other parties in parliament later on Thursday (Source: Bloomberg).

    Japan confirms a nationwide record 2,820 daily coronavirus infections, after Tokyo’s count exceeded 600 for the first time. A Tokyo Metropolitan Government panel warns, “The medical system has started to become strained” (Source: Nikkei).

    * * *

    As we await the final word from the FDA, Saudi Arabia’s health authorities have registered the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for import and use, Reuters reports, citing a report in the Middle Eastern kingdom’s state news agency SPA. This clears the way for import and inoculation procedures involving the vaccine to begin. KSA has a total of about 359,000 infections with 6,000 deaths, though it has made progress in flattening its curve. Saudi is the second ME country to approve the Pfizer vaccine after Bahrain.

     

  • Is The Globalist "Reset" Failing? The Elites May Have Overplayed Their Hand
    Is The Globalist “Reset” Failing? The Elites May Have Overplayed Their Hand

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 16:20

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    One aspect of narcopaths (narcissistic sociopaths) that is important to remember is that they live in their own little world in which their desires and bizarre dysfunctions are normalized. They believe themselves superior to most people because they are predatory, and don’t suffer from annoying hang-ups like empathy and conscience. They generally tend to believe they have pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes the majority of the time. They think that you are a submissive idiot, and that when they bark an order, you will simply jump to attention because you “believe”.

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    Almost every aspect of the globalists and their behavior indicates they are a club or cult of narcopaths. Their obsessive need to control as well as to corrupt and destroy in order to get what they want is not an extension of mere greed, it is a deep-seated aspect of who they are as beings. It is a defining mechanism at the core of their character. They are real world monsters, like vampires attempting to blend into an unsuspecting population.

    In their arrogance, then tend to expect they can drain the public dry at will without being resisted or exposed. The problem is, as soon as they start to feed and destroy they draw attention to themselves. Eventually, they will attract the suspicions of the public, along with some vampire hunters. Unless they find a way to hide a stake through the heart is inevitable.

    I have been writing about the threats of globalism and the “reset” for many years now, and I have noted for some time two separate quandaries; one affecting the liberty movement and the other affecting the globalists:

    1) First, criminals tend to brag about their crimes when they think that it’s too late for anyone to do anything about them. I predicted the globalists would be very open in revealing their agenda the moment they believed themselves “untouchable”. For the freedom loving public this suggests that in 2020 going into 2021 that the elites must think there is nothing that can be done to stop the machine; they are so blatant in their calls for the global “reset”, a cashless society, totalitarian lockdowns and a surveillance state that no one in their right mind can claim these notions are “conspiracy theory” anymore.

    The fact is, the “conspiracy theorists” were RIGHT ALL ALONG, and now there is nothing anyone can say about it.

    2) Second, I have also argued in the past that the globalist push for a “new world order” is a double edged sword that could very well end up annihilating them. As they attempt to initiate their reset agenda, they become more and more exposed; they can no longer lurk in the safety of the shadows and there is no going back once the process is started. Once the globalists become widely known, they must either swiftly take control through engineered chaos and collapse, or face retribution that could eliminate a cabal that took them centuries to build. Vampires must make the rest of the world a dark place before leaving the shadows, or they risk dying in the light of day.

    There are two schools of thought in the liberty movement; one suggesting that the globalist agenda is fixed and unstoppable and that the best anyone can do is survive. The second suggests that the reset can be stopped and the globalists can be brought to justice. I stand in both camps.

    There are aspects of the reset that are indeed fixed and that cannot be undone. For example, numerous national economies including the US are in the midst of a stagflationary collapse and there is nothing that can be done to reverse it. Perhaps a decade ago we could have changed course, but now it is too late. The pain can be reduced if people quickly end their dependency on the system and create localized trade networks of their own, but the economy as we know it right now is dead and it is not coming back anytime soon.

    I do not see this, though, as a win for the elites. Crashing the economy is one thing, rebuilding it into the collectivist dystopia they desperately want is another. Everything depends on who rebuilds; maybe it will be them, maybe it will be us.

    I am seeing some encouraging signs these days that the globalist reset is NOT a sure thing, and those that know my work know I have never been one for misplaced optimism. Specifically, the exploitation of the pandemic response as a means to ram through numerous draconian restrictions does not seem to be going exactly as the elites planned.

    I have to look back at Event 201 to really gauge the state of the game, because what the elites planned and what has happened do not completely match up. For those not familiar, Event 201 was a type of “war game” held by globalists from the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The scenario? A pandemic outbreak of a coronavirus which would spread like wildfire and kill a predicted 65 million people. The simulation was held only a couple of months before the real thing happened at the start of 2020.

    In the year since the outbreak, the globalists have attempted to enforce nearly every plan that was outlined during Event 201, including using social media to censor or restrict any news or information outside of the establishment approved narrative (Yes, narrative control was discussed at the event in great detail). Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum has consistently and excitedly applauded the pandemic crisis as a “perfect opportunity” to institute the “reset” that the globalists have been talking about for years.

    Unfortunately for them, the virus has not been anywhere near as deadly as they appear to have hoped. With a death rate of well below 1% for anyone outside of a nursing home with preexisting conditions, the establishment has now been forced to pump up infection numbers as a means to terrorize the populace because the death numbers are not enough to convince people to willingly hand over their freedoms. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for Covid 19 not counting nursing home deaths with preexisting conditions is only 0.26% of those infected.

    There is a propaganda meme being passed around these days that tries to exaggerate the danger of death from Covid, and it goes a little something like this:

    “Covid has killed more people that the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars combined in a single year, therefore your freedoms are forfeit…”

    This is an idiotic talking point but luckily no one is buying it.

    Over 40% of Covid deaths are people that are already sick and on the verge of dying anyway (And no, refusing to wear masks is not the same as endorsing “death panels”, because a death panel is about socialists refusing treatment to people at risk because of their age. No one is suggesting that old people be refused treatment, and they always have the option of staying under quarantine if they fear they will become infected. They are already retired and receiving social security, perhaps if we are going to stimulate then the bailout money should go to those most at risk so that the rest of us can continue on with normal life?)

    Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from diseases and illnesses including the flu, common colds and pneumonia, yet, the prospect of abandoning the Bill of Rights, submitting to economic shutdowns and wearing a muzzle on our faces wherever we go was never brought up before.

    Why should we ask 99.7% of Americans or the world to accept medical tyranny just to make .26% of the population feel safe? People who question the mandates are called “selfish”, but even if I was one of the people susceptible to the virus, I would NEVER demand that 99% of the population bow to totalitarianism at the off chance that I might live a little while longer. Now THAT would be selfish.

    As more and more studies and data are released, the mask mandates are also coming into question. Though Big Tech has sought to suppress or censor studies that run contrary to the mainstream narrative, this has only led more people to question the motivations of governments pushing the mandates. After all, the mainstream media keeps saying that we should “listen to the science”, but they ignore or censor the science. So, if the pandemic response is not based in science, then it must only be about control.

    Many Americans are not as stupid as the elites think. They see the inconsistencies in the rhetoric and the data and they are increasingly prone to refuse to comply. This might be why the establishment is suddenly rushing out at least two Covid vaccines in the span of half a year; they have to get the vaccine phase of the Reset underway before too many people jump from the panic bandwagon.

    The vaccine rush and the claims of effectiveness of 94% to 95% from Pfizer and Moderna are suspect. The average effectiveness of most vaccines is around 50% or less, and these are vaccines with hundreds of trials and years of usage. Somehow, Pfizer and Moderna were both able to produce a vaccine for a SARS type virus when multiple governments tried for over a decade to produce vaccines for SARS in China and were unsuccessful, and they were able to achieve 95% effectiveness?

    Many people are not buying the vaccine story, and this is perhaps why the elites are jumping headlong into vaccination so fast. Consider this fact:

    Numerous polls indicate that at least 1 in 3 Americans plan to refuse the Covid vaccine when it is released to the general public. 

    60% of Americans have stated in polls that they will not take the vaccine unless it is proven to be at least 75% effective.

    Here I think we have our explanation for the vaccination bonanza. The elites know that a third of Americans (and probably Europeans) will not take the vaccine regardless of any propaganda they dish out. They also know that 60% of Americans are unlikely to take the vaccine unless they can show an effectiveness rate of at least 75%. Neither Moderna nor Pfizer have actually produced any evidence that their vaccines are capable of prevented severe illness or death from Covid, so, their effectiveness rate is based on “projections” of success according to their minimal trials. Meaning, the effectiveness rate of 95% is completely arbitrary.

    Why did they go with such a high number instead of a more realistic 50% to 60%? Because the polls say they need an epic effectiveness rate in order to convince Americans to take the vaccine. I think it is really as simple as that.

    Americans are skeptical of the vaccines for a number of reasons. The reality that they are minimally tested and rushed out in less than a year is one reason . The fact that the government and the media have been caught censoring or lying about Covid data is another reason. People just don’t trust the elites, and who can blame them? Who would trust a cabal of psychopaths to inject them with an unknown viral cocktail? Maybe their intentions are not so pure?

    The public is right to be suspicious. A former Pfizer vice president, Dr. Michael Yeadon among other medical professionals have recently warned that the vaccines have not been adequately tested and that there is a risk of “indefinite infertility” for women who take the current Covid vaccine due to damaging autoimmune response. In other words, the vaccine could make many women barren and unable to have children.

    Maybe this is what Bill Gates meant when he stated in his Ted Talk that “vaccines and reproductive services” could help contribute to a reduction of the Earth’s population of 10% to 15% as a means to “stop global warming.

    Why would Bill Gates mention vaccines in the same breath as “reproductive services” in reference to population reduction? Aren’t vaccines supposed to help people live longer? Well, the Pfizer VP’s warning about the Covid vaccine is ringing bells for me. Maybe the Covid vaccine won’t make you sick, or kill you. Maybe you will live a long life free of coronavirus, but you’ll find out a few years after taking the vaccine that you won’t ever be able to have kids.

    Watch the movie ‘Children Of Men’ to get a sense of what the future might be like if the globalists get their way.

    In the meantime, the elites are trying with everything they have to convince the public that they must abandon notions of civil liberties in the name of survival and “the greater good”.

    They are already talking about how things will never go back to normal, and the changes being made today will stay in place for many years to come.

    Governments are in the media right now claiming the vaccines “will not be mandatory”. This is a lie. At the same time they are putting mandates in place to require you to prove you are vaccinated in order to go to public places and even to go to work. Basically, you take the vaccine or you die from poverty. This is not a choice.

    But, I see millions of Americans standing in opposition to this agenda. I see sheriffs and police across the country refusing to enforce the agenda, even in hard-left states like California. I see protests in lockdown states like Michigan, California and New York. I see mass protests in Europe.  I see the Reset scheme being exposed and the truth breaking into the mainstream.

    I see something rising to the surface, and I smell that gunpowder scent of rebellion, and I like it.

    I’m not pessimistic about the future. I know a crash is coming. I know a fight is coming. But right now what I see is a fight that can and will be won by those that respect the principles of freedom. The globalists may have overplayed their hand.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  • Bonds & Black Gold Bid As Negative Nabobs Battle New Issue Nirvanans
    Bonds & Black Gold Bid As Negative Nabobs Battle New Issue Nirvanans

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 12/10/2020 – 16:02

    Another day, another astoundingly exuberant bid for an IPO as AirBnB opened with one of the biggest pops ($146 vs $68 IPO) since 2008 seemingly confirming JPMorgan’s “market nirvana” argument. But, “on the other hand” – as CNBC might say – stimulus doubts and vaccine take-up uncertainty (as well as extremes in sentiment and positioning) leave the negative nattering naybobs askance.

    ABNB ended below its opening print…

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    All of which provided yet another mixed picture with Small Cap stocks bid, big caps offered for sale, oil up strongly but bonds aggressively bid, gold up and bitcoin down, and Smart money not buying any of the excitement…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Just remember “you are not your Robinhood brokerage balance…”

    Stocks were mixed after an early buying panic at the cash open, chopping around on various headlines of “hope” for stimulus and disappointing increases in curfews and lockdowns across the states…Small Caps outperformed and Dow lagged…

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    The Dow once again tested 30K and as hard as the algos tried, it tumbled to close below 30K…

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    Small Caps surge today took them to their highest relative to Nasdaq 100 since June…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    FANG stocks were bid off the opening lows but faded after Europe closed…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    TSLA had another epic day after collapsing in the pre-market, it was panic-bid all day – up 10% from the opening lows…

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    A lot of malarkey in Energy stocks today, ripped 4% higher at the open (3rd big opening squeeze in a row)…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Tail risk protection is bid…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    And vol of vol (VVIX) is decoupling higher from VIX…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    A super strong 30Y auction helped extend the gains in bond-land today, with 30Y now down around 10bps on the week…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    30Y yields fell to their lowest in two weeks…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar was choppy around the ECB statement, but ended lower as EURUSD strengthened in seeming disappointment at Lagarde’s QE increase…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Even as the dollar faded, so did Yuan…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Yuan trading volume has exploded (the second-highest in data going back to 2014) as Bloomberg suggests one factor could be the looming reduction of yuan market-making banks: players will be under pressure to ramp up trading volumes to improve their year-end assessments.

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin was modestly lower on the day, bouncing back again after trading below $18000…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold managed to hold on to very small gains, after pump’n’dump-ing around the US cash equity open…

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    Brent Crude traded above $50 today for the first time since March and WTI spiked above $47.50 (but slipped back below $47 after settlement)…

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    Copper joined crude in the party…

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    Lifting Bloomberg’s Commodity Spot Index to 6 year highs (as The ECB adds to its ‘highly successful’ QE bond purchase scheme)…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, this whole charade has been one massive short-squeeze – the largest in history by far…

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    Source: Bloomberg

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 09

Today’s News 9th December 2020

  • Whitehead: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers – Psychological Warfare Disguised As A Pandemic Threat
    Whitehead: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers – Psychological Warfare Disguised As A Pandemic Threat

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 12/09/2020 – 00:05

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see? They’re after you! They’re after all of us! Our wives…our children…they’re here already! You’re next!”

    – Dr. Miles Bennell, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

    It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers all over again.

    The nation is being overtaken by an alien threat that invades bodies, alters minds, and transforms freedom-loving people into a mindless, compliant, conforming mob intolerant of anyone who dares to be different, let alone think for themselves.

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    However, while Body Snatchers—the chilling 1956 film directed by Don Siegel—blames its woes on seed pods from outerspace, the seismic societal shift taking place in America owes less to biological warfare reliant on the COVID-19 virus than it does to psychological warfare disguised as a pandemic threat.

    As science writer David Robson explains:

    Fears of contagion lead us to become more conformist and tribalistic, and less accepting of eccentricity. Our moral judgements become harsher and our social attitudes more conservative when considering issues such as immigration or sexual freedom and equality. Daily reminders of disease may even sway our political affiliations… Various experiments have shown that we become more conformist and respectful of convention when we feel the threat of a disease… the evocative images of a pandemic led [participants in an experiment] to value conformity and obedience over eccentricity or rebellion.

    This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm.

    This is not a new experiment in mind control.

    The powers-that-be have been pushing our buttons and herding us along like so much cattle since World War II, at least, starting with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which not only propelled the U.S. into World War II but also unified the American people in their opposition to a common enemy.

    That fear of attack by foreign threats, conveniently torqued by the growing military industrial complex, in turn gave rise to the Cold War era’s “Red Scare.” Promulgated through government propaganda, paranoia and manipulation, anti-Communist sentiments boiled over into a mass hysteria that viewed anyone and everyone as suspect: your friends, the next-door neighbor, even your family members could be a Communist subversive.

    This hysteria, which culminated in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hundreds of Americans were called before Congress to testify about their so-called Communist affiliations and intimidated into making false confessions, also paved the way for the rise of an all-knowing, all-seeing governmental surveillance state.

    The 9/11 attacks followed a similar script: a foreign invasion mounts an attack on an unsuspecting nation, the people unite in solidarity against a common foe, and the government gains greater war-time powers (read: surveillance powers) that, conveniently enough, become permanent once the threat has passed.

    The government’s scripted response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been predictably consistent: once again, in order to fight this so-called “foreign” foe, the government insists it needs even greater surveillance powers.

    As we’ve seen since 9/11 and more recently with the COVID lockdowns, those in power have always had a penchant for enacting extreme measures to combat perceived threats. However, unlike the modern America police state, the American government circa the 1950s did not have at its disposal the arsenal of invasive technologies that are such an intrinsic part of our modern surveillance state.

    Today, we are watched and tracked 24/7; data is collected on us at an alarming rate by governmental and corporate entities; and with the help of powerful computer programs, American domestic intelligence agencies sweep our websites, listen in on our telephone calls and read our text messages at will.

    Now with the COVID pandemic and its offshoots such as contact tracing and immunity passports, the governmental landscape is even more invasive.

    Yet no matter the threat, the underlying principle remains the same: can we hold onto our basic freedoms and avoid succumbing to the soul-sucking dredge of conformity that threatens our very humanity?

    This conundrum is at the heart of the 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was based on a 1954 science fiction novel by Jack Finney (and later remade into an equally chilling 1978 film by Philip Kaufman).

    Body Snatchers not only captured the ideology and politics of its post-war era but remains timely and relevant as it relates to the worries that plague us today. Filmed with only seven days of rehearsal and 23 days of actual shooting, Body Snatchers is considered one of the great science fiction classics.

    Body Snatchers is set in a small California town which has been infiltrated by mysterious pods from outer space that replicate and take the place of humans who then become conforming non-individuals. Miles Bennell, the main character, is a local doctor who resists the invaders and their attempts to erase humanity from the face of the earth.

    At the very least, the film conveys a double meaning, serving as both a mirror of a particular moment in history and a compass pointing to a growing societal illness. Following World War II with the emerging military empire, the atomic bomb and the Korean War, Americans were confused and neurotically preoccupied with domestic threats, the polio pandemic and international political events, not much different from today’s populace preoccupied with domestic and international political drama, terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Yet Siegel’s film delves beneath the surface to confront an even more sinister threat: the dehumanization of individuals and the horrifying possibility that humanity could become infused as part of the societal machine.

    Central to the film is one key speech delivered by Bennell while hiding from the aliens:

    In my practice, I see how people have allowed their humanity to drain away…only it happens slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind…. All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts…grow callous…only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is.

    As Siegel makes clear, it is not Communists or terrorists or even viral pandemics that threaten our well-being. The real enemy is invasive governmental measures—something we now see happening across the country—and, thus, totalitarian conformity. And resistance must be against all government measures that threaten our civil liberties and against all kinds of conformity, no matter the shape, size or color of the package it comes in.

    When all is said and done, however, the real threat to freedom (in the fictional world of Body Snatchers and in our present-day America) is posed by an establishment—be it governmental, corporate or societal—that is hostile to individuality and those who dare to challenge the status quo.

    The mob hysteria, sense of paranoia, fascist police and the witch hunt atmosphere of the film mirror the ills of a 1950s America that is frighteningly applicable to present American society.

    Acknowledging that Body Snatchers portrayed the conflict between individuals and varied forms of mindless authority, Siegel stated, “I think the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them.” He explained:

    People are pods. Many of my associates are certainly pods. They have no feelings. They exist, breathe, sleep. To be a pod means that you have no passion, no anger, the spark has left you…of course, there’s a very strong case for being a pod. These pods, who get rid of pain, ill-health and mental disturbances are, in a sense, doing good. It happens to leave you in a very dull world but that, by the way, is the world that most of us live in. It’s the same as people who welcome going into the army or prison. There’s regimentation, a lack of having to make up your mind, face decisions…. People are becoming vegetables. I don’t know what the answer is except an awareness of it.

    All of the threats to freedom documented in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People came about because “we the people” stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished control over our lives and our country to government operatives who care only for money and power.

    While the specific game plan for turning things around is complicated by a police state that wants to keep us at a disadvantage, the solution is relatively simple: Don’t be a pod person. Pay attention. Question everything. Dare to be different. Don’t follow the mob. Don’t let yourself become numb to the world around you. Be compassionate. Be humane. Most of all, think for yourself.

  • America's Highest Paid Hooker Sues Nevada To Reopen Brothels 
    America's Highest Paid Hooker Sues Nevada To Reopen Brothels 

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 23:45

    Alice Little, a legal sex worker in Nevada and quite possibly the highest-paid one in the US, is suing the state of Nevada to reopen its brothels, according to Yahoo Life. 

    Little is an employee at the BunnyRanch Legal Nevada Brothel in Mound House, Nevada. The brothel has been closed since Mar. 17, despite other “close contact” businesses reopening. 

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    Little recently filed a complaint and motion for a preliminary injunction against Nevada’s Gov. Steve Sisolak in the Third Judicial District Court in Lyon County to reopen brothels. She cites unstated damages for her lost wages and seeks the right for her and other licensed sex workers to “ply their legal trade” at private locations. 

    The lawsuit said Sisolak has “without any rational basis, decided to single out brothels.” 

    Last month, a Nevada court ordered the state’s attorney general to respond to Little’s legal action within 30 days.

    “It would be understandable if the governor kept all close-contact businesses closed. But the fact that massage parlors, estheticians, salons, escort services and other non-essential businesses have been allowed to reopen lead me to believe that the governor’s decision to keep brothels closed is just blatant discrimination against Nevada’s legal sex workers,” Little said in a press release.

    “I just can’t let the governor arbitrarily decimate the livelihoods of an entire class of hard-working women. That’s why I decided to take legal action.”

    Little is drumming up her legal battle with the state. She launched a GoFundMe campaign last month that has so far raised $8,404 for her legal defense. 

    The high-rolling hooker said her lawsuit has been “self-funded up to this point, and now I’m asking for your help to allow me to pursue this case all the way through to a successful victory.” 

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    The Nevada Independent spoke with other sex workers who say the brothel shutdown is “discriminatory.” 

    Kiki Lover, an employee of the Sagebrush, told the local paper that Sisolak is “discriminating against sex workers,” adding that the industry’s collapse has forced many women out, and some are now homeless. 

    Little told Yahoo that the risk level of contracting COVID-19 is not that different from other services, such as a massage parlor. 

    In April, brothels were preparing to reopen, but eight or so months of closure, at the hands of the state government, has forced the industry into collapse. 

  • CJ Hopkins: Where's The Hitler?
    CJ Hopkins: Where's The Hitler?

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 23:25

    Authored (mostly satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

    All right, that’s it. I’ve run out of patience. No more excuses. Where’s the Hitler?

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    Yes, you heard me. I’m talking to you. You respectable journalists and political pundits. You Intelligence officials and politicians. You fanatical liberals. You pseudo anti-fascists. All you members of the GloboCap “Resistance” who have been hysterically shrieking that “Trump is Hitler!” since he won the nomination back in 2016.

    Well, OK, it’s November 2020. The show is almost over. When do we get Hitler?

    No, do not tell me “any day now.” You’ve been telling us that for four straight years. Do we look like a bunch of gullible idiots that you can whip up into a four-year frenzy of mindless hatred and paranoia by screaming “Hitler!” over and over, and then not produce an actual Hitler?

    Well, we’re not. We remember what you said. You promised us Hitler, and we want Hitler, or at least a decent facsimile of Hitler.

    And don’t even think of trying to pretend that you didn’t actually promise us Hitler.

    You did. You want me to prove it? OK.

    Remember back in 2016, when The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The Inquirer, and other such “leading respectable broadsheets,” and online magazines like Mother Jones, Forward, Slate, Salon, Vox, Alternet, and countless others, warned that Trump was sending secret anti-Semitic “dog whistle” signals to his underground army of Nazi terrorists by talking about “international banks,” “global elites,” the “political establishment,” and even “corporations” and “lobbyists” … all of which was supposedly code for “the Jews,” who he was going to exterminate if won the election?

    I do. I remember that, distinctly.

    How about after he won the election, when The Guardian reported that “white supremacy ha[d] triumphed!,” and The New York Times, NPR, Keith Olberman, and other verified news sources warned that America had descended into “racial Orwellianism,” or Zionist Anti-Semitism, or the “bottomless pit of fascism,” or whatever? Or when Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post confirmed that “Donald Trump is actually a fascist”?

    Do you remember all that? Because I certainly do.

    Remember Aaron Sorkin’s letter to his daughter warning her that millions of “Muslim-Americans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans [were] shaking in their shoes” as they waited for Trump to round them all up and send them to the camps, along with the “Jewish Coastal Elites”?

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    And how about when Stern Magazine depicted Trump wrapped in the flag and heiling Hitler? Or when the Philadelphia Daily News also portayed him as Hitler on its cover?

    What about when the corporate media reported that Trump had called those tiki torch Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people” (despite the fact that he demonstrably did not)? Or when they caught Trump calling somebody a “globalist”? (That episode was particularly disturbing to me, personally, as I had no idea that I was literally a Nazi until the corporate media and the ADL explained that talking about “global capitalism,” or “neoliberalism,” or, God help me, “banks,” was just Nazi codespeak for “Kill the Jews!”)

    Oh, and speaking of Nazi “dog whistles,” remember when the Department of Homeland Security embedded secret Nazi code in one of its official press releases? Or when that Jewish-Mexican-American law clerk signaled to Trump’s underground Nazi army that they had infiltrated the US Supreme Court, and thus the dreaded “Boogaloo” was probably imminent?

    And who could forget when The New York Times published a full-blown dystopian fantasy in which Trump, Putin, Marine Le Pen, the AfD, and other notorious “globalist”-hating Hitler-alikes secretly formed an Evil Axis (the “Alliance of Authoritarian and Reactionary States”), dissolved the European Union and NATO, declared international martial law, and ethnically cleansed the world of immigrants? Or when they ran this propaganda film, “If You’re Not Scared About Fascism in the U.S., You Should Be!”

    And the “emboldening”! I almost left out the “emboldening.” Surely, you remember when the corporate media reported that Trump was emboldening white-supremacist terrorism with his Hitlerian Tweets … as if homicidal racist psychopaths had been sitting around in their mother’s basements, semi-automatic rifles in one hand, smartphones tuned to Twitter in the other, just waiting to be “emboldened” by the president.

    Oh, and the “concentration camps.” You know, the ones that Biden and Harris personally flew down and liberated the morning after they won the election. The ones where they put the kids in cages and forced all the prisoners to drink out of toilets. I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t mention them.

    And those are just a few of the highlights.

    Look, the point is, you “Resistance” people promised us Hitler for four years straight, and now you’re acting like you just defeated Hitler, and, I’m sorry, but that is not going to cut it. We’re going to need some actual Hitler before we transition to the Brave New Normal, or we might start to … you know, doubt your credibility.

    I mean, come on. Lawsuits? Recounts? Audits? Angry tweets? Golf, for Christsakes? This is not remotely Hitlerian behavior. You people promised us an attempted coup, a Reichstag fire, Nazi militias occupying the halls of Congress, stadiums full of Sieg-heiling rednecks, white-supremacist terrorists terrorizing everyone … and now all we get is Rudy Giuliani sweating rivulets of hair dye, or something, on TV? All right, granted, that was pretty scary, but it’s not exactly Joseph Goebbels fanatically barking about “total war,” or legions of Hawaiian-shirt-wearing fascists goose-stepping up Pennsylvania Avenue.

    The way I see it, you people have got another four or five weeks to goad Donald Trump into going full-Hitler and staging a coup, or gratuitously mass-murdering the Jews, or somebody, or the public is going to feel … well, bamboozled, and insulted, and even a little angry. They are going to feel like you “Resistance” people regard them as a bunch of total morons that you can manipulate, over and over again, with blatantly ridiculous propaganda that anyone with half a brain could see through … some of which, frankly, has been downright offensive.

    Seriously, fascism, Hitler, the Holocaust … these are solemn, sensitive subjects. They’re not just convenient emotional buttons that you can press to whip folks into a frenzy of mindless paranoia and murderous hatred whenever you feel like demonizing some foreign leader or unauthorized president.

    The same goes for racism and anti-Semitism. These are real issues, which people care about. They’re not just glorified marketing buzz words that you can pull out of your bag of cheap tricks and slap onto your enemies like they don’t mean anything. If you spend four years accusing someone of literally being Adolf Hitler, or the resurrection of Adolf Hitler, and brainwash millions of credulous liberals into believing that America is on the brink of fascism, you can’t just suddenly say, “We were only kidding. We didn’t mean that he was actually Hitler, or that fascism was really on the rise.” People won’t stand for it. They’ll go ballistic. You’ll have some sort of revolt on your hands.

    Or, all right, on second thought, maybe not. Maybe you can get away with pointing at some billionaire ass clown and howling “Hitler!” over and over, on a daily basis, for years and years, without ever providing any actual evidence that the ass clown in question resembles Hitler, or has done anything comparable to Hitler, or is in any way remotely similar to Hitler. Why not? You successfully Hitlerized Corbyn, not to mention Saddam, Gaddafi, and Milošević, and a long list of other “threats to democracy.” You’ll probably get away with Hitlerizing Trump.

    After all, it appears you’ve convinced the public (or at least the vast majority of the public) that they are being attacked by an apocalyptic plague that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms at all) in 95% of those infected and that over 99.7% survive, and thus we have to cancel constitutional rights, let government officials rule by decree, devastate the economy (or at least small businesses), have global corporations censor all dissent, force everyone to wear medical-looking masks, put whole societies under house arrest, psychologically terrorize children, and otherwise transform the planet into one big paranoid, totalitarian theme park.

    If you can get people to go along with that … well, they’ll probably go along with anything.

  • Tenants, Landlords Face Imminent Crisis As Pandemic Lifelines Expire 
    Tenants, Landlords Face Imminent Crisis As Pandemic Lifelines Expire 

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 23:05

    January is going to be a mess. America’s small-time landlords, along with their tenants, are in trouble as safety nets are set to expire. Tenants haven’t paid rent in months, with a looming eviction moratorium expiring at the end of December. According to Reuters, the lack of rental income for landlords has also been troublesome, with many skipping mortgage payments, potentially resulting in a firesale of properties in the year ahead. 

    For 12 million Americans and their families – this Christmas will be their worst – as the extended unemployment benefits that have kept many of them afloat are set to expire later this month. Then on New Year’s Day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium expires, which could result in a massive wave of evictions in the first half of 2021.

    At the moment, $70 billion in unpaid back rent and utilities are set to come due, according to a new report via Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. 

    Last month, Maryland utility companies began to terminate customers with overdue bills, many of which were unable to pay because of job loss due to the coronavirus downturn. 

    New research from the Aspen Institute warns 40 million people could be threatened with eviction over the coming months as the real economic crisis is only beginning. 

    According to Stacey Johnson-Cosby, president of the Kansas City Regional Housing Alliance, landlords are also in deep turmoil. She said more than 40% of the landlords surveyed in her coalition said they will have to sell their units because of the lack of rental income. 

    “They are sheltering our citizens free of charge, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Johnson-Cosby. “This is their retirement income.”

    She said small landlords are frightened to speak out about non-paying tenants because social justice warriors and their “Cancel Rent” groups have attacked landlords. 

    “What they don’t realize is that if they run us out and we fail, it will be private equity and Wall Street firms that buy up all our properties, just like they did with houses after the last foreclosure crash.”

    Reuters interviewed Clarence Hamer, who may have to sell his house in the coming months because his “downstairs tenant owes him nearly $50,000.” He owns a duplex in Brownsville, Brooklyn – and without those rental payments, Hamer has been unable to pay his mortgage. 

    “I don’t have any corporate backing or any other type of insurance,” said Hamer, a 46-year-old landlord who works for the city of New York. “All I have is my home, and it seems apparent that I’m going to lose it.”

    Hamer is not alone – millions of Americans are headed for a “dark winter” as they could be evicted or lose their homes in the coming months as government safety nets are set to expire. 

    Meanwhile, on Tuesday, stimulus talks quickly faded after it was reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell touted his own plan rather than a bipartisan compromise for a deal. 

    John Pollock, a Public Justice Center attorney and coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, recently said January could bring a surge of eviction and homelessness,” unlike anything we have ever seen” before. 

  • Deflation Is Back In China As CPI Turns Negative For First Time Since The Financial Crisis
    Deflation Is Back In China As CPI Turns Negative For First Time Since The Financial Crisis

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 22:50

    Yesterday, when discussing the biggest jump in Chinese FX reserves in 7 years we wondered if this was an indication that the PBOC was starting to lean against the surging yuan. Today, after the latest Chinese inflation data released moments ago, we are confident that it is only a matter of time before Beijing will once again aggressively intervene and/or devalue its currency.

    According to the National Bureau Of Statistics, in November China’s CPI unexpectedly tumbled to -0.5% Y/Y in November, below market expectations and the first year-over-year decline in consumer prices since the financial crisis. While rapid decline of food prices continued to be the main driver for lower headline CPI inflation, non-food inflation also edged down to -0.1% yoy from 0% yoy in October, which begs the question: how much of China’s now deflation is the result of the surging yuan, and how much longer will Beijing tolerate the soaring currency (or, said otherwise, the plunging dollar). On the flip side, PPI inflation was at -1.5% yoy in November, which while still negative (the last positive PPI print was in January), was less negative than October as inflationary pressures increased along with the strong expansion of industrial activity.

    Here are the key numbers:

    • CPI: -0.5% yoy in November, exp. +0.0%; down from October’s +0.5% yoy.
    • Food CPI: -2% yoy in November; October: +2.2% yoy.
    • Non-food CPI: -0.1% yoy in November; October: +0.0% yoy.
    • PPI: -1.5% yoy in November. exp. -1.8% yoy; up from October’s -2.1% yoy.

     

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    Some more details: in year-on-year terms, food inflation went down to -2.0% yoy in November from +2.2% yoy in October, largely because pork prices tumbled 12.5% on a year-over-year basis, lowering year-over-year CPI inflation by 0.6pp.

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    Egg prices also plunged, dropping 17.1% yoy, and lowering the headline CPI by another 0.1pp. Fresh vegetable prices rose albeit at a slower pace: Inflation in fresh vegetables was +8.6% yoy in November (vs 16.7% yoy in October), adding 0.2pp to headline CPI inflation.

    Non-food CPI inflation edged down to -0.1% yoy in November, from 0.0% in October. Fuel costs fell further by 17.6% yoy, vs -17.2% yoy in October. Core inflation (headline CPI excluding food and energy) was unchanged at +0.5% yoy in November.

    On the other side, PPI inflation rose modestly and was at -1.5% Y/Y in November, less negative than October. In month-over-month annualized terms, PPI rose by 5.6%, vs -1% in October. Price declines narrowed for producer goods (-1.8% yoy vs -2.7% yoy in October) but price decline for consumer goods widened (-0.8% yoy in November, vs -0.5% yoy in October) mainly on lower food and clothing price inflation. By major industry, PPI inflation increased on a year-over-year basis in most sub-industries except food processing and telecom industries.

    According to Goldman, headline CPI inflation may remain at low levels in the coming months on falling food prices and a high base while PPI inflation could rise further as inflationary pressures continue to build in the industrial sector.

    A bigger problem for China is that while PPI may be rising, it’s only a function of higher commodity prices and industrial strength on the back of massive credit injections; meanwhile consumer deflation is starting to emerge as a major concern for a country that has not had a negative CPI print since 2009.

    One wonders how long Beijing will allow this, and how long will Chinese rates remain as high as they are, before the Politburo capitulates and realize it needs to aggressively devalued its soaring currency (and offset the tumbling dollar) if it hopes to keep deflation in check.

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    It may even have to decide between keeping interest rates highs, and thus yields on Chinese bonds attractive for foreign investors (as a reminder, everyone knows by now that one of Beijing’s top priorities is to have a steady source of offshore capital entering the negative current account nation), or finally conceding it needs to cut rates in order to let some of the air in the yuan out.

  • Fireworks, Batteries And Liquid Ethanol Among Dangerous Goods Lost At Sea From Apus Containership
    Fireworks, Batteries And Liquid Ethanol Among Dangerous Goods Lost At Sea From Apus Containership

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 22:45

    From Freight Waves

    Fireworks, batteries and liquid ethanol were inside the 64 dangerous goods containers that went overboard with more than 1,750 others from the ONE Apus last week, whose plight we discussed over the weekend. None of the containers has been sighted.

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    In one of the single worst cases of container losses on record, 1,816 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) were lost overboard after the year-old Apus reportedly encountered severe weather at about 11:15 p.m. Nov. 30 en route from Yantian, China, to the Port of Long Beach in California, the vessel’s owner, Chidori Ship Holding, and manager, NYK Shipmanagement, said. 

    Of the 64 containers identified as carrying dangerous goods, 54 held fireworks, eight had batteries and two contained liquid ethanol, according to a ONE Apus information center update Monday. 

    The update said Chidori and NYK Shipmanagement are working with the U.S. Coast Guard’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Honolulu, which “has advised that there have not been sightings of any containers” as of yet. 

    After the accident, the Apus turned back for Asia. The information center update said the container ship is “cautiously proceeding to the Port of Kobe, Japan,” and has an estimated berthing time of noon Tuesday (10 p.m. EST Monday).

    “Once berthed, it’s expected to take some time to offload the dislodged containers that remain on board,” the announcement said. “Then a thorough assessment will be made on the exact number and type of containers that have been lost or damaged.”

    Ownership of the goods lost has not been revealed and thus it’s not known whether some New Year’s Eve celebrations will be dimmer with 54 U.S.-bound containers of fireworks lost at sea.  Henry Byers, FreightWaves’ maritime market expert, said the top importers using ONE as their ocean carrier into Long Beach the past 30 days were Flexport International, MOL Consolidation, Topocean Consolidation, UPS Ocean Freight Services, DHL Global Forwarding, Kuehne + Nagel and C.H. Robinson. 

    Rounding out the top 20 are Hecny Transportation, Rimports, Daniel M. Friedman & Associates, Apex Maritime, Hankook Tire America, Yusen Logistics, Ameziel, BDP Transport, Kintetsu World Express, Penguin Random House, Expeditors International, Harman International Industries and R.T. Express International.

    Still other ONE customers through Long Beach are Living Spaces Furniture, APL Logistics, Signal Products, Wilson Sporting Goods, Sumitomo Rubber North America, Lexmark Juarez Distribution Center, Guardian Technologies, Konica Minolta Business Solutions and Hasbro. 

    Built in only 2019, the ONE Apus is 364 meters long and 51 meters wide and has a carrying capacity of 14,052 TEUs. 

    According to the World Shipping Council, container losses actually are few and far between. In fact, a WSC report issued in July said an average of only 1,382 containers were lost at sea per year between 2008 and 2019.

    For many in the maritime industry, the Apus incident has brought to mind the June 2013 sinking of the MOL Comfort. The 7,041-TEU container ship cracked in half during an Arabian Sea storm. While efforts were made to tow the two halves of the ship to port, both eventually sank.

  • ECB Preview: Here Comes Another €500 Billion In QE
    ECB Preview: Here Comes Another €500 Billion In QE

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 22:25

    Last March, the ECB’s then-brand new boss Christine Lagarde sparked a mini crisis when quipped that it was not the job of the European Central Bank to narrow the gap in borrowing costs between the eurozone’s stronger and weaker members. The resulting bond selloff and market mess prompted the ECB’s chief economist Philip Lane to secretly call some of the largest asset managers to calm them that Lagarde had no idea what she was talking about and to stop selling.

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    Nine months on, investors have gone all-in on bets that the ECB boss has changed her mind, and is here “to close spreads” after all.

    Ahead of the central bank’s next policy meeting tomorrow, the FT notes that spreads in the eurozone’s periphery have been squeezed by relentless demand for riskier bonds. The buying helped push Portugal’s 10-year yield below zero for the first time. Spain is not far behind, and Italy — the last big eurozone market to offer a significant positive yield over a decade — has seen its spread closing in on its lowest since the region’s debt crisis a decade ago.

    With the ECB expected to expand its €1.35tn emergency asset purchase program by (at least) another €500bn tomorrow, investors are increasingly relaxed about holding peripheral bonds despite the explosion in debt levels driven by the pandemic.

    Are they right? Courtesy of NewSquawk, here is a breakdown of what to expect tomorrow:

    • ECB policy announcement due Thursday 10th December; rate decision at 12:45GMT/07:45EST, press conference 13:30GMT/08:30EST
    • PEPP and TLTRO set to be tweaked, rates, PSPP and tiering expected to be left untouched
    • The upcoming release will also be accompanied by the latest round of staff economic projections

    OVERVIEW: After telegraphing in October that further stimulus would be unveiled at the upcoming meeting, the consensus looks for a €500bln addition to the PEPP programme and 6-month extension until December 2021 (a longer extension has been speculated by some), while a majority of economists expect no change to its PSPP. Elsewhere, market participants expect policymakers to tweak the parameters of the Bank’s TLTROs. Rates are set to be left unchanged, whilst an adjustment to the tiering multiplier is not expected this time around. Accompanying economic projections are set to see a downgrade to the near-term inflation outlook, but greater focus could be placed on the initial 2023 forecast. For growth, any near-term optimism on vaccines could be tempered by how the ECB addresses the yet to-be passed recovery fund and disappointing Q4 2020 outturn.

    PRIOR MEETING: As expected, policymakers opted to stand pat on policy settings, with rates and bond-buying operations held at current levels. The main takeaway from the initial announcement was the introduction of a new paragraph in the statement noting that risks to the economic outlook were “clearly tilted to the downside” and the new round of Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections in December “will allow a thorough reassessment of the economic outlook and the balance of risks.” Additionally, “on the basis of this updated assessment, the Governing Council will recalibrate its instruments, as appropriate, to respond to the unfolding situation.” In terms of the policy measures set to be unveiled in the final meeting of 2020, President Lagarde did not delve into specifics. Despite policymakers acknowledging the bleak outlook for the region, the ECB chief stated that no discussion was held on unveiling measures at the October meeting with policymakers wanting to gather further evidence on the economic impact of the second wave of COVID across the Eurozone.

    RECENT DATA: Q3 Eurozone GDP was confirmed as showing a 12.5% Q/Q expansion from Q2 with the Y/Y figure printing a 4.3% contraction. On the inflation front, the Y/Y flash CPI print for November remained at -0.3%, with core CPI holding steady at 0.4%. Survey data has highlighted the differing fortunes of the services and manufacturing sectors with the EZ-wide Markit PMI report showing the former in contractionary territory and the latter in expansionary, the broader composite reading fell to 45.1 in November from 50.0 in October. Markit noted, that while the EZ economy has slipped back into a downturn, the decline is of a far smaller magnitude than seen in the spring. The unemployment rate in the Eurozone for October came in at 8.3%, with the figure obscured by regional employment support schemes.

    RECENT COMMUNICATIONS: Beyond the clear signposting at the October meeting by Christine Lagarde that stimulus is set to be unveiled in December, the ECB President has reaffirmed that all options are on the table. That said, Lagarde (Nov 11th) talked up the efficacy of PEPP and TLTROs throughout the pandemic, suggesting that they will “likely remain the main tools for adjustment”. Additionally, the central banker emphasised that “what matters is not only the level of financing conditions but the duration of policy support, too”, suggesting that any expansion to the PEPP could also be met with an extension from the current endpoint of end-June 2021. Chief Economist Lane – who many view as the thought-leader at the ECB –has echoed Lagarde’s views on the efficacy of PEPP and TLTROs, whilst also noting that it is essential that the macroeconomic recovery is not derailed by a premature steepening of the yield curve. Germany’s Schnabel, one of the more vocal members of the Governing Council, recently remarked that the ECB is not obliged to do what the market expects it to, before going on to state that a 12-month extension to PEPP is one option being considered, and that the ECB could also look at a longer duration or more favorable rate for TLTROs. Elsewhere, on vaccines, Ireland’s Makhlouf says the ECB will have to evaluate the emergence of the COVID-19 vaccine, suggesting that no firm view on the matter is currently held by the Governing Council at this stage; however, Vice President de Guindos noted that vaccine developments will be taken into account at the meeting. On the prospects for a further dive into negative territory for the deposit rate, Spain’s de Cos refused to rule out a rate reduction, but acknowledged that rates were close to the lower bound, Austria’s Holzmann has stated that such a move would not have an effect. In terms of lesser talked about measures the Bank could take, outgoing Hawk Mersch recently pushed-back on the prospect of the ECB expanding its purchase remit to include “fallen angels”

    RATES: From a rates perspective, consensus looks for the Bank to stand pat on the deposit, main refi and marginal lending rates of -0.5%, 0.0% and 0.25% respectively. A recent research piece from the Bank noted that the reversal rate for the deposit rate stands around -1%, suggesting there is around 50bps of space until further rate reductions could become counterproductive. That said, whilst all options are said to be on the table (and it might help stem some of the recent EUR appreciation), commentary from central bank officials has done little to suggest that rate tweaks are on the cards. Additionally, when faced with the option of lowering the deposit rate in March as the crisis was unfolding, policymakers refrained from doing so. As a guide: markets currently assign a 13.5% chance of a 10bps cut to the deposit rate at the upcoming meeting and around a 55% probability by the end of next year.

    BALANCE SHEET: With the balance sheet seen as the preferred easing tool for the Governing Council, focus remains on any adjustments to its bond-buying operations. Its PEPP currently has an envelope of EUR 1.35trl and is set to run at least until the end of June 2021, whilst its regular Asset Purchase Programme (of which the Public Sector Purchase Programme is a component) runs at a monthly pace of EUR 20bln together with the purchases under the additional EUR 120bln temporary envelope until the end of 2020. A Reuters survey of economists stated that expectations are for a EUR 500bln addition to the PEPP programme and 6-month extension until December 2021. UBS also expects the ECB to extend its commitment to reinvesting the principal of maturing securities purchased under PEPP by another year, from currently end-2022 to end-2023. Note, 33 of 44 surveyed do not think that the ECB will expand the PSPP, according to the survey. Going back to PEPP, expectations have continued to gather steam since the October meeting, and it remains to be seen if policymakers could trigger a “dovish surprise” on this front. Policymakers could opt to increase the PEPP by more than EUR 500bln, however, in recent weeks policymakers have placed greater emphasis on reassuring markets about the duration of its support. Accordingly, ECB’s Schnabel has touted the possibility of a 12-month (consensus looks for 6-month) extension to PEPP. Additionally, the prospect of including “fallen angels” into its Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP) lingers around the bank, however, this idea recently received pushback from outgoing hawk Mersch.

    TLTROs: Given recent rhetoric from policymakers on the efficacy of Targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs), a tweaking of its current operations has also formed part of the consensus ahead of the meeting. As it stands, the facility has just two auctions left (10th December, and 18th March 2021) with current borrowing conditions running with a rate of -0.5% for three years or as low as -1% for banks that reach certain lending requirements. The Reuters survey found that 37 of the 48 economists surveyed expect the ECB to change the terms of its TLTROs, however, there are differing views on how this will be carried out. SocGen highlights four potential ways in which the ECB could act on this front, 1) it could go for a longer maturity, or signal continuous TLTROs, 2) it could lower the threshold for the best available rate, 3) lower the best interest rate below -1%, and 4) include new loan types such as mortgage lending. SocGen themselves predict “largely unchanged conditions” with “around five quarterly operations until March 2022, for corporate lending only, 3-year loans at -1% at best, lending threshold for best rate at 0%”.

    TIERING: Another option for the ECB could be an adjustment to the existing tiering multiplier of six (exempt from negative interest rates) amid rising levels of excess liquidity. However, a complicating factor is that a large part of the recent increase in excess liquidity is attributed to the ECB’s TLTRO-III facility. Therefore, an increase in the tiering multiplier could undermine policymaker’s efforts to get banks to lend to the corporate sector. One option, UBS says, would be for the ECB to exempt funds from TLTRO-III, in which case it could raise the tiering multiplier to nine from six in order to keep banks’ deposit costs constant. However, UBS suggests that even this could prove to be too generous given the lending incentives in the TLTRO scheme that already reduce net deposit costs. As such, the Swiss bank looks for no adjustment on this front in December. Additionally, SGH Macro notes that an increase in the multiplier would be unlikely to occur unless met with an accompanying deposit rate cut.

    EUR: The recent appreciation of the EUR which has seen EUR/USD breach 1.20 and trade at levels not seen since 2018, has raised questions as to whether or not the ECB will attempt to talk down the currency. Note, at the September meeting after EUR/USD breached 1.20, President Lagarde noted that “the ECB does not target an FX level but will continue to monitor developments, including the EUR”. Morgan Stanley, however, suggests that we are not at levels that will concern policymakers given that the move in EUR/USD is more of a by-product of USD weakness, rather than EUR strength. In fact, the trade-weighted Euro is “a little weaker than in the summer,” the bank notes. As such, the EUR may prove to not be a major feature of the upcoming meeting.

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    ECONOMIC PROJECTIONS: Please see below for the September Staff Economic Projections: Inflation: 2020 +0.3% (unch), 2021 +1.0% (prev. 0.8%), 2022 +1.3% (unch) GDP: 2020 -8.0% (prev. -8.7%), 2021 +5.0% (prev. +5.0%), 2022 +3.2% (prev. +3.3%) This time around, from a growth perspective, despite a potentially disappointing Q4 outturn, better than expected growth in Q3 should see the ECB revise its 2020 estimate upwards to -7.2% from -8.0%, according to UBS. For 2021, despite the positive COVID vaccine updates, the fallout from Q4 2020 should prompt just a modest upgrade of its forecast to 5.0% from 5.5%, albeit this is largely dependent on how the ECB factors in the (yet-to-be passed) recovery fund. For 2022 and 2023, the Swiss bank pencils in growth of 3.9% and 1.9% respectively. On the inflation front, UBS expects the 2020 reading to be revised lower to 0.2% given softer prints in recent months relative to ECB expectations, whilst the better growth environment should offset any drag from softer oil prices in 2021 and 2022, leaving them unchanged at 1.0% and 1.3%. Of potentially greater interest will be the initial 2023 estimate, which UBS expects to remain below the pre-COVID inflation trend of 1.6% and therefore warrant additional stimulus.

    STRATEGIC REVIEW: One issue lingering at the Bank is its ongoing strategic review. The review has been delayed by the pandemic with its findings now not due to be released until September 2021. However, on the 30th September, President Lagarde delivered a speech in which she highlighted some preliminary considerations for the review. Lagarde noted that the ECB would be considering whether to depart from its current inflation target of “below, but close to 2%” and move towards a more “symmetric” target that would tolerate overshooting the 2% threshold. Ahead of the October meeting, Morgan Stanley suggested that accelerating the release of the outcome of the review could amount to another policy option for the Bank. However, MS noted that given the current H2 2021 timeframe, it seems implausible that the findings could be released in the near-term, particularly given reports of differing views on the Governing Council, which will make fostering consensus a more difficult task.

    * * *

    Finally, here is the traditional scenario matrix analysis from ING Economics, which as usual should be rather useful for FX traders hoping to gauge how to trade the Euro based on what Lagarde unveils tomorrow.

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  • 56% Of Americans Say They Would Live In A Tiny Home
    56% Of Americans Say They Would Live In A Tiny Home

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 22:05

    Although the micro home movement isn’t necessarily new, many have put tiny homes on their radar since COVID-19. Whether it’s a weekend escape from city living, or even a tiny backyard office, these dwellings have seen a recent boom in popularity. IPX 1031 recently did an extended analysis of the sector which is presented below, but here is a summary of what they found:

    • 56% of Americans say they would live in a tiny home. 86% of first-time home buyers would consider a tiny home for their first home.
    • 72% of home buyers would consider buying a tiny home as an investment property. 
    • Most appealing factors of tiny home living: 1. Affordability 2. Efficiency 3. Eco-friendliness 4. Minimalist lifestyle 5. The ability to downsize.
    • Most desired tiny home amenities: 1. Heating/AC 2. Kitchen space 3. Designated bedroom 4. Laundry 5. Outdoor space.
    • 53% of Americans can afford the median price for a starter home ($233,400) vs. 79% of Americans can afford the median price of a tiny home ($30,000-$60,000).
    • Top states for tiny homes: 1. Vermont 2. New Hampshire 3. Maine 4. Wyoming 5. Washington 6. Idaho 7. Montana 8. Oregon 9. Rhode Island 10. Alaska.

    Below is the full survey report from IPX 1031:

    In order to get more insight on tiny living, we surveyed 2,000 Americans across the country to find out how likely they would be to live in a tiny home and what amenities they would like to have in a tiny home. We also analyzed Google search volume to determine where tiny homes are most popular around the country.

    Tiny Home Lifestyle

    Living in a tiny home is certainly an adjustment that isn’t right for every lifestyle, but more than half of respondents say they would consider living in one. Unique factors such as affordability (65%), efficiency (57%), eco-friendliness (48%) and the ability to live a minimal lifestyle (44%) are among the top reasons why respondents say they would like to live in a tiny home.

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    It’s also interesting to note that among those who have never owned a home, 86% say they would consider buying a tiny home for their first home.

    The Ideal Tiny Home

    Considering that most tiny homes are 400 square feet or less, many can be built on wheels, which allow homeowners to live a mobile lifestyle. According to respondents, 54% would prefer their tiny home to be mobile and a majority (54%) would prefer that their home is under 400 square feet.

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    With such a small amount of living space, it’s no surprise that the ideal number of people to live in a tiny home is two. In terms of amenities, heating/AC (60%), kitchen space (58%), designated bedroom (48%), laundry (43%) and outdoor space with a view (42%) are the most desired and “must haves,” according to respondents.

    Tiny Home Budget

    The price to purchase or build a tiny home can vary and depends on a number of factors. Most tiny homes cost between $30,000 to $60,000 while the median price for a starter home is $233,400, according to the National Association of Realtors. Exactly half of respondents say they would spend less than $40,000 on a tiny home and 79% say they would be able to buy or finance a tiny home rather than a traditional starter home.

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    Where Are Tiny Homes Most Popular?

    When most people think of tiny homes, images of a secluded lot in the woods or a home nestled near a lake come to mind. We were curious to see where tiny homes are the most popular, so we analyzed Google search volume for more than 1,300 terms and keywords related to tiny homes.

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    The results show that tiny homes have seen the most interest in rural states such as Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Wyoming and Washington. Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York showed the least interest in searches for tiny homes.

    Tiny Home Investment Property

    With a low cost to build and maintain, tiny homes could bring big profits for property investors. According to respondents, 72% would consider buying a tiny home to serve as an investment property. Among those, 63% say they would rent out their tiny home as a long-term rental while 37% say they would rent their tiny home as a short-term rental. On average, respondents say their ideal monthly rent would be set at $900 per month for a long-term rental and $145 per night for a short-term rental.

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    Tiny Office

    With many Americans adapting to remote work or working from home, the concept of a tiny office (or a “backyard office”) is an appealing alternative to working inside a home office, kitchen or living room. In fact, more than half (54%) say they would buy a tiny office and 62% of remote workers would consider buying one. Ideally, more than a quarter of respondents say they would spend less than $8,000 on a tiny backyard office.

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    With many Americans adapting to remote work or working from home, the concept of a tiny office (or a “backyard office”) is an appealing alternative to working inside a home office, kitchen or living room. In fact, more than half (54%) say they would buy a tiny office and 62% of remote workers would consider buying one. Ideally, more than a quarter of respondents say they would spend less than $8,000 on a tiny backyard office.

  • "This Is Astounding": China Is Snapping Up Most Of The World's "Missing" Barrels Of Oil
    "This Is Astounding": China Is Snapping Up Most Of The World's "Missing" Barrels Of Oil

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 21:45

    In almost every oil cycle, the market is confronted with the problem of “missing barrels”, or the gap between the change in inventory implied by global supply-demand balances on the one hand and the observed change in inventory levels by commercial and government entities (adjusted for floating storage and oil in transit) on the other hand.

    As the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies writes in a report published today, based on IEA global oil balances, the surplus during the first three quarters of 2020 averaged around 4.4 mb/d, with the surplus in the first half of 2020 reaching a record level of 7.6 mb/d due to the severity of the demand shock and the break-up of the OPEC+ agreement in March. This implies an inventory increase in H1 2020 of 1,390 million barrels (mbbls), before declining by 194.2 mbbls in Q3.

    According to the IEA, out of the total stockbuild in the first half of the year, total OECD stocks accounted for 344.3 mbbls or 25%  of the total increase, floating storage and oil in transit accounted for 105.3 mbbls or 8% of the total increase and the remaining 940.4 mbbls or 68% of the total  increase  to  balance  is  essentially  unaccounted  for  including  changes  in  non-reported  stocks  in OECD and non-OECD areas that the IEA labels as “Other & Miscellaneous to balance” (as shown in Figure 1).

    The volume of missing barrels in H1 2020, the OIES writes, “is the largest ever recorded gap between observed and implied stocks since at least 1990, being three times larger than previous historical downcycles such as in H1 1998 and more recently the H2 2018 downturn and nearly 10 times larger than the imbalance of H2 2008 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.”  

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    The “missing barrels” problem can arise due to a number of factors. The most obvious reason is that models could be generating   “artificial barrels” by underestimating demand and overestimating supply. The severity of the oil crisis in 2020 due to the global  coronavirus pandemic led to the break of some key relationships (for instance between economic growth and oil demand) and models had to be calibrated to account for the severity of the shock (for instance, including indicators of the severity of restrictions across countries).

    Another factor is the coverage and quality of data on stocks. The reason for this is that very little publicly reported, accurate information exists for oil stocks outside of the United States. And yet the US oil stocks many not be an accurate reflection of the world situation. This observation increasingly holds as demand growth has shifted from OECD to non-OECD, especially given the key role that China is playing in global crude demand. In this latest cycle, China’s position as a key equilibrating mechanism was further highlighted as it absorbed surplus barrels from all over the world as it took advantage of relatively cheap crude to fill its large and growing storage capacity.

    To put this in perspective, OIES utilized crude inventory and fleet metrics data from Kpler and attempted to identify some of the missing barrels implied from IEA balances. As Figure 2 shows, even accounting for additional floating storage and oil in transit (+250.4 mbbls), as well as OECD and non-OECD crude stock changes excluding China (+85.2 mbbls), all of which are not previously reported by IEA, we are still  missing  597.8  mbbls or 64% of the total missing barrels in H1 2020. This issue becomes more complex in Q3 2020 for which the IEA balances imply a 194.2 mbbls deficit of which 171.3 mbbls are accounted for and 22.9 mbbls are missing. Kpler data, however, show a much larger draw of floating storage, suggesting one (or a combination) of three possibilities: the actual deficit is much larger than estimated by the IEA (by about 150 mbbls); there was a large build in non-OECD stocks, or the implied market surplus in H1 2020 was overestimated and carried over. Indeed, a large build in unaccountable stocks in Q2 2020 followed by a draw in Q3 2020 suggests that barrels were stored and drawn in places where they currently cannot be tracked. 

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    The China Conundrum

    The issue of “missing barrels” has long plagued Chinese data, but much like in the rest of the world, has become more pressing and  perplexing in 2020. Net crude imports in the year-to-October averaged 11.09 mb/d, rising from 2019 levels by over 1 mb/d and maintaining their 2019 growth rates. According to the OIES report, “this is astounding given that economic activity has been considerably weaker and runs have averaged 13.3 mb/d in the first ten months of 2020, growing by an impressive 0.47 mb/d, but still lower than the 0.82 mb/d increment seen over the same period last year.”

    Put simply: the data suggest China has overbought crude to put in storage.

    But the key question is, how much has gone into storage and perhaps more critically, how much is likely to come back out?

    In response to this rhetorical question, the Oxford Institute authors notes that assessing how much crude has gone into storage has become both an art and a science, given the limited official data. When looking at implied stockbuilds (i.e deducting crude used for refinery runs from the sum of domestic production and net imports), in the year-to-October, China has stored on average 1.6 mb/d, or a staggering 488 mbbls of crude.

    While it has been clear that large volumes of crude oil have headed to China, judging by port congestion at Chinese shores,  differentials and benchmarks, such volumes seem overstated as they would have likely led to tank tops earlier this year. According to OIES estimates, China had close to 1,100 mbbls of crude storage capacity at the end of 2019 (that’s over 1.1 billion and far, far more than Cushing and the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve). Assuming a roughly 60% utilization rate, crude stocks would have reached 650-680 mbbls. A build of an additional 500 mbbls, even when taking into account 250 mb of new tank space added over the year, would have overwhelmed China’s storage capacity leading to a slowdown in crude arrivals already earlier this year.

    And even though imports into China are slowing somewhat and storage utilization rates are likely at over 75% currently, there are signs of a recovery in crude buying for early 2021. It is therefore useful to look more closely at implied stockbuilds.

    First, many crude balances for China do not account for crude losses during the refining process or burnt at the field, which between 2000 and 2017, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, have averaged 0.30 mb/d8. In the five years prior to 2017, losses in refining increased to average 0.35 mb/d, so when deducting these losses, the implied stockbuild for the year-to-date falls to an average 1.3 mb/d, or just over 375 mbbls. While this is still a monumental build, it is more plausible.

    At the same time, Chinese demand could also be underestimated. China’s independent refiners have been infamous for tax evasion and especially between 2016 and 2018 were estimated to have underreported refining throughputs by 0.3-0.8 mb/d10. So historically, Chinese crude demand has been understated. The shift to new tax reporting practices in early 2018 have limited the independents’ ability to under report runs, although a number of them subsequently turned to misrepresenting their product output.  In  late  2020, following an announcement by Shandong officials that they will be levying a windfall tax this year, which is based on product output, the independents may be resorting to some under reporting again, although any such volumes are likely small, given that China’s demand is recovering slowly and product tanks are also estimated to be two-thirds full. Some  combination, therefore, of underestimated demand and crude in storage suggests that China could well be responsible for as much as half of the missing barrels and that these are indeed “real.”

    The next question is then, how likely are these barrels to be drawn down, and will they weigh on Chinese imports?

    Roughly a third of these volumes could have gone into bonded tanks. When looking at China’s crude imports, there is a discrepancy between waterborne flows as assessed by Kpler and arrivals reported by customs data, with assessed arrivals higher than customs data by 0.47 mb/d for the year-to-October (Figure  3). In previous years, the difference in assessed volumes and customs data  were smaller, mostly due to discrepancies between the timings of arrival and discharge, alongside some crude going into bonded tanks.

    This year, the discrepancy is more substantial and points to a large accumulation of crude in bonded tanks, which are not consistently counted as imports. Not only has the INE increased its storage capacity this year, with its tanks holding 34 mb of  crude at the end of October according to the exchange but sanctioned barrels may have also gone into bonded tanks. For example, in the year-to-October, Kpler estimates point to 0.15 mb/d of Iranian crude going to China (compared to 75,000 b/d recorded  by  customs)  as  well  as  0.21  mb/d  of  Venezuelan  crude  flowing  to  the  country  (although customs  have  reported  no  Venezuelan  crude  going  into  China). Theoretically, then, at the end of October, China had accumulated as much as 85 mb of Iranian and Venezuelan crude in bonded storage tanks over the course of the year, although some of these will have likely been drawn down by refiners, and if they have not been yet, they will be.

    But that still leaves over 200 mbbls of crude in storage, of which only a fraction is likely to return to the market. This is because these volumes have gone into both commercial and strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) tanks that are used as buffer, both for refiners’ forward cover and strategic reserves. China has a small number of designated SPR tanks of close to 400 mbbls, that are likely 300 mbbls full, with Argus estimating 32 mbbls of fills this year alone (see  Figure  4). At the same time, the government has been leasing out commercial tank space for its SPR programme, as the construction of dedicated SPR sites has been slow. But even with close to 150 mbbls of commercial tanks that are widely assumed to be leased out to the SPR, the SPR program only meets around 40 days of import cover (as 90 days at current import volumes would imply over 1,000 mbbls).

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    In addition, China’s refiners are mandated to hold 15 days of forward cover, which, for a system of close to 19 mb/d of  nameplate capacity, means almost 300 mbbls of forward cover. Indeed, part of the increase in import licences awarded to non-state refiners this year was intended for them to build up their crude stocks while prices remain at relatively low levels.

    In sum, when taking into account the crude requirements of storage tanks at the various ports and other commercial sites as well as pipeline fills, the crude requirement for China’s oil system is massive. As a result, most of the crude flowing into China this year has helped meet these needs. All in all, we estimate China  now  holds close to 1,000 mbbls in storage, which is roughly 90 days of its import needs,  with capacity by year end reaching 1,300-1,400 mbbls. The good news for markets is that only a small part of these barrels will be drawn down, but the bad news is that China’s future stockpiling needs are now shrinking.

    This is not to say that China’s crude imports will fall: with over 1 mb/d of new refining capacity starting up over the next two years, refiners will continue sourcing crude as refining throughputs continue to rise and  as  new  plants  require  operating  stocks. Moreover, additional infrastcuture including tanks and pipelines will need filling. But over the next two years, incremental demand for strategic stocks will slow, and crude imports will become more closely aligned with refiners’ needs.

    Conclusion

    The large accumulation of barrels in China suggests that “artificial” or “imaginary” barrels, as a result of imprecise measurement of global oil supply-demand balances, are not the only explanation to the missing barrels question. Indeed, even though China’s crude balances are riddled with inconsistencies, it is clear that the country has amassed large volumes of crude this year — potentially  close  to  400 mbbls — which have contributed both to the country’s strategic reserves and commercial forward cover. At the same time, Chinese demand may well be underestimated given refiners’ tax avoidance practices. So, as global supply and demand numbers get adjusted with the arrival of new information — which likely includes other Asian countries for which both demand and storage estimates are imperfect — the volume of missing barrels will shrink further, if indeed half have ended up in Chinese storage tanks and are unlikely to be released back into the market. In addition, some of the missing barrels are a result of unobservable barrels in important consuming centers and perhaps also stocks held at the distribution level and by final end consumers.

    As the Oxford researchers conclude, “the complexities of global crude balances, despite the important contribution made by new technologies, highlight the ongoing challenges facing OPEC+ in estimating how long it will take to rebalance the market. In addition to the uncertainties surrounding the demand outlook in these unprecedented times, assessing the extent and nature of buffers in the system has become more complicated.”

    The question is whether going forward, OPEC+ can afford to ignore non-OECD stocks? And if these stocks are being stored for  strategic purposes and the bulk of these stocks will not be released back into the market, does targeting non-OECD stocks really matter for oil policy purposes? Should we exclude years of elevated stocks from the averages or have these become main features of the new cycles and the adjustment process? As we enter 2021 in an environment of extremely depressed oil demand, these questions will become more pressing.

  • Janet Yellen: Too Dumb To Stop
    Janet Yellen: Too Dumb To Stop

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 21:25

    Authored by Economic Prism’s MN Gordon, annotated by Acting-Man’s Pater Tenebrarum,

    Autographing Funny Money

    The United States Secretary of the Treasury bears a shameful job duty. They must place their autograph on the face of the Federal Reserve’s legal tender notes. Here, for the whole world to witness, the Treasury Secretary provides signature endorsement; their personal ratification of unconstitutional money.

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    Janet Yellen – first she got to print a lot of funny money, now she gets to autograph it. The Titanic meanwhile finds itself in uncharted waters and rumor has it that there may be icebergs lurking not too far from here. [PT]

    If you recall, Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to coin money and regulate its value.  What’s more, Article I, Section 10, specifies that money be coined of gold and silver and cannot be bills of credit.

    Indeed, paper dollars are illegal money per the U.S. Constitution on two counts.  First, they’re issued by the Federal Reserve. Second, they are bills of credit with no ties to gold or silver.

    This critical defect does not register even a passing concern for most Americans.  But it should. Because illegal money – like paper dollars – has its deficiencies.  Mainly, it’s prone to gross over issuance for political means.  Thus, as it funds the unlimited growth of government, its payment quality grows evermore suspect.

    Without question, illegal money has a whole host of problems. And the woman who will soon be autographing the illegal money – Biden’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen – will further stimulate these problems.

    Deceptive and Cruel

    Janet Yellen, if you don’t remember, was Chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018.  She will be only the second bureaucrat to be both Fed Chair and then Secretary of Treasury. The first was G. William Miller, way back when Jimmy Carter was President. Miller was a poor steward of the dollar. Inflation went off the Richter scale on his watch.

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    The Miller years were quite a harrowing time with respect to galloping price inflation. The extent to which Miller can be blamed is debatable – the event was a co-production cooked up by an entire gaggle of loopy bien-pensants over the years. They were just as arrogantly confident in their prescriptions as their successors deciding today’s policies are. [PT]

    Yellen, like Miller, will have the unique opportunity to authorize the money she previously issued.  The consequences could be equally destructive for the dollar.  They may even be worse.

    Prior to her time as Fed Chair, Yellen held various positions with the Federal Reserve over a 20 year run.  We don’t really know much about what she actually did. But, at a minimum, she participated in an era of unprecedented Fed activism.

    Certainly, Yellen has spent hours squinting at aggregate demand graphs while contemplating how monetary policy can be twisted to boost spending.  She also believes monetary policy is a moral issue.

    In fact, back in 1995, at a Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Yellen argued in favor of allowing inflation to exceed inflation targets for moral reasons.  The Economic Policy Journal offers the following account:

    “Ms. Yellen told the committee that ‘the moral’ of all this is ‘that the Fed should pursue multiple goals.’  She said that ‘when the goals conflict and it comes to calling for tough trade-offs, to me, a wise and humane policy is occasionally to let inflation rise even when inflation is running above target.’”

    Remember, inflation acts as a hidden tax on savers.  It devalues the purchasing power of their savings.  Ask any retiree living on a fixed income or a hardworking prudent individual skimping to squirrel away some nuts for retirement.  Policies of inflation are not wise and humane; they are deceptive and cruel.

    Janet Yellen: Too Dumb To Stop

    After all these years Yellen still thinks she knows best.  That she is the true arbiter of morality.  Guided by silly academic models she thinks she is helping people when she is really hurting them.

    Fiscal and monetary policies over the last 40 years have been characterized by increasingly extreme intervention. Over this period Yellen and other central planners have pursued inflationism as a means to perpetually stimulate demand.

    The Fed creates the illegal money.  The Treasury authorizes it.  And the economy adjusts accordingly. Business transactions are made with the illegal money.  Private and public buying and selling is conducted with it.  All commerce is settled with it.

    The over-issuance of illegal money has warped and distorted the economy…   delivering extreme riches to asset holders while leaving the vast majority of wage earners with empty pockets. Alas, Yellen is too dumb to stop. In a Tweet following the announcement of her nomination, she wrote:

    “We face great challenges as a country right now.  To recover, we must restore the American dream—a society where each person can rise to their potential and dream even bigger for their children.  As Treasury Secretary, I will work every day towards rebuilding that dream for all.”

    But what will Yellen, as Treasury Secretary, really do to restore the American dream?  Will she start new companies that employ people?  Will she create more high paying jobs?

    No, she won’t – because she can’t. Starting companies that create high paying jobs, and produce goods people demand, is out of the realm of what a Treasury Secretary can do. But what Yellen can do is work in concert with the Fed and Congress to authorize vast amounts of illegal printing press money.

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    It may be an overused cliché and who knows if it was really Einstein who said it, but in this case it certainly fits. [PT]

    Should Yellen follow the path of 1980 through 2019 and inject new credit into the financial system, we will see further inflation of financial assets. Should Yellen follow the CARES Act model and send checks directly to the people, consumer prices will inflate. Perhaps she will be compelled by her high morality to do both.

    Regardless, Yellen will not be up to the task of returning reverence and trust to the dollar.  And without that, there is little hope of restoring the American Dream.

  • MBA Applications Surge Despite Fed Defiling All Economic Laws As We Know Them
    MBA Applications Surge Despite Fed Defiling All Economic Laws As We Know Them

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 21:05

    Who in their right mind would want to be an MBA in this environment?

    That’s the first question that came to our minds when we found out that MBA application volume was surging. Thanks to vast distortions in both capital markets and the economy brought on by the Fed rigging interest rates and introducing limitless money into the supply, we’re not sure any of the economic “basics” one would learn in an MBA program would even apply in the lunatic asylum our economic system has become in 2020.

    Despite this, the upcoming MBA admissions cycle is “shaping up to be the most competitive in recent memory,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Full time residential MBA applications have seen higher volumes for next fall and expect to have fewer spots for enrollment than in years past. 

    Schools have also let some international students defer enrollment due to the pandemic’s travel restrictions, locking up supply for spots. The deferral rate for all students was up from 2% in 2019 to 6% in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. 

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    Jeremy Shinewald, founder of admissions consulting firm mbaMission, said: “Everything points to this being the most competitive year ever for M.B.A. applicants. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if schools crush their records for application volume.” Consultations at his firm were up 30% from July to September, he said. 

    Applications to MBA programs in American “rose for the first time in five years” in 2020 as a result of lowered testing requirements and more applicants looking to bypass the economic slowdown caused by Covid. 

    “I feel the importance of the whole [application] package has increased. The bar is higher for applications,” applicant Jimmy Lin told the Journal. He is applying to Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

    Georgetown has accepted a majority of its candidates during its sound round of applications this year, whereas it normally takes three to four rounds to fill out a class. The university doesn’t expect to increase its class size despite the surge in interest for its program. 

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    Shelly Heinrich, the associate dean of M.B.A. admissions at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, said: “It can be nerve-racking for applicants. They are now thinking, ‘Oh goodness, not only do you have deferrals who have secured spots in your class for next year but your applications are now up significantly, and so what does that mean for me?”

    Applicants that schools are inviting for interviews have fallen about 8% at the Top 16 schools, the Journal notes, and the rejection rate is up 7% from a year prior.  

    Some schools, like Harvard Business School, are expanding their 2021 class sizes to try and meet some of the demand. Harvard said it would enroll 1,000 students over the next two years, up from the 730 it enrolled last fall. 

    Perhaps next they will alter their programs to specialize in how to get a multi-billion dollar market cap without ever turning a profit, the wonders of SPACs and why buying the dip will be a sound strategy for decades to come. 

  • How The COVID Response Has Destroyed The Personal Finances Of Americans
    How The COVID Response Has Destroyed The Personal Finances Of Americans

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 20:45

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    Back when the virus that would soon be known as Covid-19 was just a blip on the radar, Selco wrote an article called, It’s Not the Virus You Need to Worry About. It’s the System. And like much of what Selco writes, it was prophetic.

    Here we are, coming up on a year after the virus first began making itself apparent and the world is dramatically different. Not only are there the inevitable arguments about masks, lockdowns, vaccines, and hypocritical politicians using the whole thing as a power grab, but there are very real effects on everyday families all over the world.

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    In the United States, our personal finances have taken blow after blow. Eight million more Americans than last year are now living in poverty as millions of jobs have disappeared, never to return. Data from the review site Yelp shows that 60% of the businesses that shut down due to Covid have permanently closed. People who were formerly struggling are sinking, and many of those who were comfortably middle class are desperately trying to stay afloat.

    It isn’t so much the virus that has caused our financial woes – it’s the response to the virus. Federal, state, and local governments have deemed what businesses are allowed to operate and how they must do so. This has resulted in the loss of businesses themselves, loss of sales, and loss of jobs. Nearly every family is feeling the effects to some degree. Please check out our new frugality website for practical solutions if you are dealing with financial issues.

    Here are some of the ways American families are suffering financially due to the response to the virus.

    More people are living paycheck to paycheck.

    Back in February of this year, a report was released that showed 40% of American workers were living paycheck to paycheck.

    Willis Towers Watson’s Global Benefits Attitudes Survey discovered that although 58 percent of workers think their finances are heading in the right direction, 38 percent of employees are living paycheck to paycheck…

    …Almost one-fifth of those making more than $100,000 are living paycheck to paycheck, and about one-third say their financial problems negatively affect their lives. The survey polled 8,000 American workers.  (source)

    That early 2020, pre-lockdown report looks like a glimpse of nostalgia from the good old days. A more recent report has found, due to the Covid response, that now almost two-thirds of Americans are living the paycheck to paycheck life.

    With government shutdowns forcing countless businesses to close and then lay off workers, one in four respondents now feel their income is not stable. Nearly two in three (63%) say they’re going paycheck-to-paycheck since March 2020. Millennials seem to be the hardest hit, with 64 percent saying they’re living off their paychecks.

    “After the unemployment rate spiked to more than 14% in April, Americans continue to be wary about their job security and income,” writes Highland President Jon Berbaum in a media release. (source)

    Anyone who has ever lived through this situation knows that paycheck-to-paycheck is a delicate dance and it only takes one small thing to go wrong to cause your house of cards to come tumbling down.

    NSF fees, late fees, reconnection fees, extra deposits, overdraft interest, and payday loans can all destroy the financially fragile, leaving them in a downward spiral designed to keep them trapped. There’s a reason that broke people tend to stay broke, and it’s not because they’re simply lazy and irresponsible. It’s because the system is set up in a way that it earns more money by charging poor people extra.

    Hardly anyone has an emergency fund left.

    Back in 2019, Bankrate released a survey that said only 40% of Americans would be able to pay for an emergency costing a thousand dollars out of their savings. Yet again, those were the good old days.

    A more recent survey said that an astounding EIGHTY TWO PERCENT of Americans could no longer handle an emergency costing $500. Zero Hedge reports:

    But perhaps the most alarming number from the entire survey: a whopping 82% of respondents said they wouldn’t be able to cover an emergency $500 expense without borrowing money.

    For context, prior to the pandemic, surveys showed that roughly half of Americans couldn’t afford a $500 emergency expense, which means the number of people who say they couldn’t cover a small emergency has risen by 60%.  (source)

    An emergency fund is the most important financial prep you can make.

    When your finances are tight, sometimes your first impulse is to spend every dime.  Many people focus on things like paying off debts, stocking up on food and supplies, or paying more than the minimum payments on bills.

    However, that may not be your best bet.  Don’t get me wrong – paying off debt is absolutely vital,  but most experts recommend establishing an emergency fund as the first step back to financial security.  (source)

    Many people report making up the difference between their income and output with credit cards and other forms of personal debt.  Unfortunately, with our somber economic forecast, this is just delaying the inevitable implosion of their personal finances.

    People are unable to find work.

    An October jobs report showed that millions of the positions lost back in March have not returned, and that millions of people have now reached the classification of “long-term unemployment.” The New York Times reported:

    The Labor Department said on Friday that 2.4 million people had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, the threshold it uses to define long-term joblessness. An even bigger surge is on the way: Nearly five million people are approaching long-term joblessness over the next two months. The same report showed that even as temporary layoffs were on the decline, permanent job losses were rising sharply.

    Those two problems — rising long-term unemployment and permanent job losses — are separate but intertwined and, together, could foreshadow a period of prolonged economic damage and financial pain for American families.

    Companies that are limping along below capacity this far into the crisis may be increasingly unlikely to ever recall their employees. History also suggests the longer that people are out of work, the harder it is for them to get back into a job. (source)

    In September and October, many large corporations made the decision to end even more jobs.

    Disney announced this past week that it would lay off 28,000 U.S. employees as its theme parks struggle. Layoff notices filed with state authorities show that hospitality and service companies across the country, from P.F. Chang’s restaurant branches to Gap stores, are making thousands of long-term staff reductions. Airport bookstores in Pennsylvania and Tennessee are cutting jobs as travel dwindles. So are wineries and upscale sports clubs in California.

    Airline job cuts run to the tens of thousands. American Airlines started to send furlough notices to 19,000 workers and United Airlines to 13,000 after a federal moratorium expired on Thursday. Those are on top of reductions at other carriers, and existing firings across the industry.

    Altogether, nearly 3.8 million people had lost their jobs permanently in September, according to the Labor Department’s latest monthly survey, almost twice as many as at the height of the pandemic job losses, in April. (source)

    And then, things had just begun to look up just a little bit for those in service industries when the second round of lockdowns hit crushing the hopes of many of those who were just beginning to get back to work.

    The closure of schools has kept many parents from returning to work or caused financial hardship.

    It isn’t just the unavailability of jobs that has made things difficult. The erratic 2020 school year has also caused financial hardship and in many cases, made it impossible for parents to return to work.

    Now, I know a lot of homeschool parents will say that people shouldn’t be using public school as a free babysitter. But the fact remains that many families require two incomes to survive. In my case, as a single mom, the school year allowed me to make a living. During the summer, my children had wonderful vacations with both sets of grandparents, mercifully, because paying for full-time childcare for both of them would have taken almost every dime I was earning, leaving nothing for housing, food, and other costs.

    If you aren’t familiar with current childcare costs, a person quoted in the article cited below reported that she and her husband were spending an eye-watering $5300 per month for their three children.

    While wealthier parents can afford to “get creative,” lower income and many single parents have far fewer options, said Caitlyn Collins, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis who studies women and families. Some are leaning on family members or just doing the best they can on their own. Others have been laid off, or have had to quit their jobs to take care of their kids…

    …The United States has been an outlier on child care long before the coronavirus, Collins said, with price tags far exceeding those in other high-income countries. The average cost of child care for a child under 4 is $9,589 per year, according to New America’s Care Report — more than the average cost of in-state college tuition. It’s much more expensive in big cities: In Washington, D.C., the average cost of care for an infant is more than $24,000.

    Rising child care costs are particularly “terrifying” for U.S. families, Collins said, because child care already accounts for an enormous part of their budget, often second only to a family’s rent or mortgage. (source)

    Financially speaking, women are suffering the most with regard to pandemic related job losses. Hundreds of thousands of women left the workforce in September – approximately 849,000 – in comparison to 216,000 men. Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, explained in an interview why women have been unevenly affected.

    …the age group that had the biggest decline was thirty-five to forty-four. And it’s not at all surprising to me, in the sense that the people who are really struggling are people with young kids and multiple kids at home. It’s the parents who have a four-year-old, a six-year-old, and a nine-year-old, and those kids are at home, and they’re trying to do Zoom school. It’s really difficult. Even if both parents had the opportunity to work from home, that’s a really hard thing to manage. I want to make sure that I emphasize that that’s one kind of hardship, and then there’s another kind of hardship, which is parents or single moms who had an in-person job and no child care.  (source)

    I have more than one friend who has been attempting to oversee “distance learning” while keeping her job remotely and the stress levels are through the roof. If you can’t afford a nanny or you don’t have a family member willing to take on the task, quite simply, someone is going to have to stop working at a time when we can least afford to have our incomes drop any further.

    The price of food has increased dramatically.

    Food prices increased for the fifth month in a row, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. People around the world are seeing a 6.5% increase in their costs of commodities such as cereals, dairy, vegetable oil, meat, and sugar.

    But your trip to the local grocery store may look like a much greater increase than six and a half percent. There’s a variety of reasons that prices have gone up. Everything from supply chain shortages to production issues has caused costs to increase. There are other Covid-related reasons that  explain why you may be experiencing sticker shock:

    Shift to eating at home: In a matter of two months, approximately $23 billion in consumer spending away from home was redirected toward grocery stores as restaurants were forced to close due to COVID-19, according to FMI – The Food Industry Association.

    Loss of foodservice demand: When restaurants closed, farmers and ranchers lost a key channel for their product. With fewer buyers, it is costly or impractical to harvest, preserve or store some food and beverage products.Increasing production and processing costs: During COVID-19, companies have made investments and adjustments to safeguard their products and employees. This means costs for food production are higher. Some manufacturers have been able to innovate and find new markets for their products, but these changes often entail added costs.

    Increasing operating costs for grocery stores: Compared to 2019, supermarket operating costs were up 7.9% in April 2020 and 6.7% in May 2020, according to USDA Economic Research Service.

    Grocery stores have remained open during the pandemic and have had to quickly adjust to new regulations, safety and sanitation practices and enhanced customer education – all requiring resources. In addition, some areas of the grocery store, including salad bars and hot bars, have had to shut down, meaning a loss of revenue. (source)

    There are also fewer sales:

    Usually, 31.4% of grocery store items are purchased on some sort of sale, but at the end of September the share was 26%, according to market research firm Nielsen. The biggest impact was in the household care department, where just 15% of items were sold on promotion, half the usual amount. Heightened consumer demand and strained supply are giving stores little reason to mark down prices, Nielsen said. (source)

    While the statistics only note a few percentage points, the real picture looks a lot different.

    Eva Rosol was stunned during the summer when a rotisserie chicken that she could normally find on sale for $6 suddenly set her back $15…

    ….Ariel Neal, owner of Leira Knows Cocktails and Events, has been opting for more potatoes and starches and fewer fruits and vegetables…She didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits or small business relief, and has been subsisting on her savings and the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.

    “Before, $20 would have gotten me at least two to three meals,” said Neal, 42, who lives in Calumet City. “Twenty dollars doesn’t do that anymore.”

    …Yvernia Wilson, who is on a fixed income and vigilant about grocery prices, was taken aback early in the summer when a large package of hamburger meat she’d normally pay $8.99 for was listed at $14 at the Jewel-Osco she shops at on Chicago’s South Side.

    A nice-sized pot roast for Sunday dinner was almost $20, $6 more than she’d usually spend. Even a package of chicken wings cost $3 more…

    …Wilson restricts herself to two meats and for some items has resorted to buying cheaper brands she doesn’t necessarily like. She bypasses the organic aisle and sometimes forgoes fruit altogether if it isn’t on sale. (source)

    Don’t look for food prices to decrease any time soon. Our supply chain is still broken and getting worse. Another lockdown means that store owners will be trying to get the most money possible from customers in order to keep afloat for as long as possible. The current price increases could be permanent.

    The eviction moratorium runs out soon.

    And finally, to make matters even more difficult for struggling families, a federal moratorium on evictions will be running out on December 31, leaving as many as 19 million people at risk of being homeless as 2021 begins. A few states will continue eviction bans but most will follow the federal guidelines.

    It’s important to note that people who were not paying rent based on the moratorium will now have to catch up immediately or risk being evicted.

    The federal mandate doesn’t prohibit late fees (although some local ordinances do), nor does it let tenants off the hook for any back rent they owe. It also doesn’t establish any kind of financial assistance fund to help renters get caught up, a safeguard some say is critical to preventing a massive wave of evictions when the ban eventually lifts…be aware that you may still be held responsible for any back rent you currently owe as well as any rent that accrues between now and the end of your lease (if you have one), whether or not you vacate. (source)

    It’s projected that 6.7 million households could be affected by the end of the moratorium.

    This is, of course, a double-edged sword. Not all rental property owners are massive corporate entities with teams of lawyers diligently searching for loopholes. This has been a tremendous hit for Mom and Pop landlords, many of whom invested in real estate to have a bit of income during their retirement. They have been unable to evict tenants who aren’t paying their rent but still had to maintain the property in a manner according to the local bylaws, pay their mortgage payments, and make timely property tax payments.

    2021 isn’t going to be a magical solution.

    A lot of folks have just written off 2020 as “a bad year” and seem to believe that the moment this year is over, the curse will be lifted and we’ll all be able to go on with our lives having survived it and gotten through it.

    Unfortunately, the changes that I’ve written about aren’t going to disappear when you put that new calendar on the wall. Businesses that hung on through Christmas to try and sell their remaining inventory could be closing right after the holiday, leaving even more jobs in the dust. Lockdowns could very well become even more stringent after the inauguration, which would keep all the same problems going. It’s time to redouble your preparedness efforts and really examine your situation.

    This has been more than a pandemic. It’s been a major economic catastrophe, just as predicted, and we’re in it for the long haul.

  • NJ's Murphy Complains Non-Compliance With COVID Contact Tracers Hits 74%
    NJ's Murphy Complains Non-Compliance With COVID Contact Tracers Hits 74%

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 20:25

    Time to break out the microchips.

    NJ Gov Phil Murphy expressed his frustration during a press briefing on Monday with the fact that NJ’s contact-tracing efforts have been a colossal failure, largely due to astronomical rates of non-cooperation, a problem that also plagued NYC’s famously botched contact tracing program.

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    According to the Garden State Governor, “the rate of noncooperation with our contact tracers is now up to a whopping 74%.”

    “The rate of noncooperation with our contact tracers is now up to a whopping 74% of cases. Quite frankly, this is unacceptable and we need folks to turn that around,” Murphy said. “It is extremely critical for contact tracers to get in touch with the close contacts of those who test positive to help us stop the spread of this virus.”

    The audibly and visibly irritated governor added that contact tracers aren’t conducting a “witch hunt”; they’re just trying to help people. “We’re only trying to stop the spread of this virus,” Murphy reiterated. He added later in a tweet that the state has more than 30 contact tracers on the ground for every 100K residents, a solid ratio that should be producing much better results.

    But what the governor has demonstrated is that no matter how many contact tracers the state employs, results will likely remain subpar because the fact of the matter is: most people view the government – whether federal, or state – with skepticism and suspicion, and would probably prefer not to share personal information about their whereabouts and activities – just in case these ‘contact tracers’ get the wrong impression.

    NJ reported another 5K+ new cases on Tuesday.

    Murphy recently tightened restrictions on social gatherings and youth sports to try and stanch the surge in new cases.

    Watch the clip below:

  • Pelosi, Schumer Reject Mnuchin's $916 Billion COVID Relief Bill Offer
    Pelosi, Schumer Reject Mnuchin's $916 Billion COVID Relief Bill Offer

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 20:24

    Update (2020ET): As details emerged that the state and local aid embedded in Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s latest $916 COVID Relief bill offer was around $100 billion of school-reopening-targeted funds (and not free money to bail out the pension funds), it will come as no shock to anyone that Democrats rejected the bill.

    Pelosi and Schumer did accept that McConnell signing off on Mnuchin’s deal was “progress,” they said the proposal’s unemployment insurance position is “unacceptable.”

    Proposal “must not be allowed to obstruct the bipartisan Congressional talks that are underway.”

    “The President’s proposal starts by cutting the unemployment insurance proposal being discussed by bipartisan Members of the House and Senate from $180 billion to $40 billion. That is unacceptable.”

    *  *  *

    Update (1745ET): While Mitch McConnell reportedly suggested he would be willing to trade liability for state and local bailouts, a statement from Treasury Secretary Mnuchin adds yet more confusion to the situation over COVID Relief. The bill is slightly larger than the $908 billion bipartisan bill that has been floated:

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    So, that means $569 billion is in ‘recycled’ funds and this bill includes a state and local bailout (what Dems want) and liability protection (which GOP wants).

    *  *  *

    Update (1300ET): Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made a move from his more stoic position, making it clear that he is willing to pass a COVID relief bill without the liability protection clause that the GOP has been pushing for for months, if Democrats are willing to remove their state and local bailout funding demands.

    As far as he is concerned, these are the two things holding up relief to millions of Americans.

    *  *  *

    Hopes of a bipartisan stimulus deal faded on Tuesday after failing to resolve several remaining stumbling blocks left over from Monday – including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to endorse a $908 billion bipartisan proposal as a basis for talks.

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    McConnell has also insisted on applying broad federal limits on COVID-19 related lawsuits against businesses – for which Democrats are offering a six-month moratorium.

    “Drop the all-or nothing tactics,” McConnell said of Democrats during a Monday Senate floor speech in which he called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to allow a vote on a targeted bill which would provide extended unemployment insurance, along with small business assistance and funding for vaccine distribution.

    Senators from both sides of the aisle concluded that the prospects for a $908 billion compromise that Republican and Democratic negotiators are hashing out will come down to McConnell’s decision. Several GOP members have endorsed or been open to the plan, and top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said President Donald Trump would likely sign it. McConnell is engaging the negotiators even though he hasn’t budged. –Fortune

    In addition to gridlock over liability protection for businesses, Republicans and Democrats are butting heads over aid for states and localities – which has been House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s line in the sand for months.

    “Those are coupled together,” said Texas Republican Senator, John Cornyn, referring to the liability protection and funding for states and municipalities. “There’s either going to be none for both of those, or both of those that are going to be provided for. My hope is we’ll do both.”

    Republicans claim that state assistance is a scheme to bail out poorly-run Democratic areas, while Democrats have refused to shield employers from lawsuits for failing to protect employees who contract COVID-19.

    Meanwhile, lawmakers are in even deeper gridlock on the omnibus spending bill – which includes disputes over further border wall funding, money for police anti-racism training (!?) and other measures.

    Speaking about the Covid-19 relief proposal, McConnell said it’s getting “down to the wire.“

    Schumer blamed his GOP counterpart for stalling the compromise effort. He and Pelosi publicly endorsed the $908 billion plan last Wednesday, after having made a new pitch to McConnell two days before. They previously sought a $2.4 trillion bill.

    “We want the leader to sit down and negotiate so we can come up with a bipartisan proposal that can pass the House and the Senate,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. He highlighted that some economists are warning of a double-dip recession if Congress fails to pass a deal. –Fortune

    On Tuesday, GOP leaders plan to discuss the situation with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. In particular, they will seek a separate COVID-19 relief initiative.

  • Facts – Not Fear – Will Stop The Pandemic
    Facts – Not Fear – Will Stop The Pandemic

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 20:05

    Authored by Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    The media relish negative news. “If it bleeds it leads” still holds, and perhaps it’s never been truer than in the COVID-19 era. Every day the news highlights the spread of the virus and tells the sad stories of some of its victims.

    And yet, much of the media does not pay sufficient attention to the good news regarding improved treatments and survival of patients with the coronavirus.

    In contrast with the international media, the American press has been unrelentingly negative in its COVID coverage, even when there is good news to tell. That negativity is part of what fuels a culture of fear that affects local, state and federal politicians and the decisions they make.

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    But there is a lot of good news to tell. The case fatality rate from the virus has dropped sharply since March. The infection survival rate is 99.95 percent for people under 70 and 95 percent for people over 70. Hospitals are much better equipped to handle patients, with improved ventilator protocols, improved management of outpatients and new therapeutic strategies to provide relief and recoveries. Moreover, thanks to multiple ongoing clinical trials around the world, there may soon be a safe and effective vaccine.

    By contrast with their focus on COVID deaths, the media have paid scant attention to the enormous medical and psychological harms from the lockdowns in use to slow the pandemic. Despite the enormous collateral damage lockdowns have caused, England, France, Germany, Spain and other European countries are all intensifying their lockdowns once again.

    By lockdowns, we mean the all-too-familiar shuttered schools and universities, closed playgrounds and parks, silent churches and bankrupt stores and businesses that have become emblematic of American civic life these past months. The relative dearth of reporting on the harms caused by lockdowns is odd, since lives lost from lockdown are no less important than lives lost from COVID infection. But they’ve received much less media attention.

    The harms from lockdown have been catastrophic. Consider the psychological harm. Reader, since you’re reading this in lockdown, you can undoubtedly relate to the isolation and loneliness that these policies can cause by shutting down typical channels for social interaction. In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that one in four young adults had seriously considered suicide. Opioid and other drug related deaths are on a sharp and unsurprising upswing.   

    The burden of these policies falls disproportionately on some of the most vulnerable. For example, isolation led to a 20 percent increase in dementia-related deaths among our elderly population. Moreover, retrospective analysis of the lockdown in the United States shows that patients skipped cancer screenings, childhood immunizations, diabetes management visits and even treatment for heart attacks.

    Internationally, the lockdowns have placed 130 million people on the brink of starvation, 80 million children at risk for diphtheria, measles and polio, and 1.8 million patients at risk of death from tuberculosis. The lockdowns in developed countries have devastated the poor in poor countries. The World Economic Forum estimates that the lockdowns will cause an additional 150 million people to fall into extreme poverty, 125 times as many people as have died from COVID.

    Though there has been some coverage of lockdown harms, the media have not paid the same attention to it as they have to COVID deaths. If there is a COVID-death tracker, there should be side-by-side with it a lockdown-death tracker.

    The lack of balanced media attention towards the good news about the virus and the costs of lockdowns comes with its own cost. Without a balanced approach to COVID news, the public cannot make informed choices about COVID policy, such as school closures. Even a diligent citizen cannot make an informed judgment about the wisdom of continuing lockdowns if only their benefits are emphasized and their costs downplayed. The media have an obligation to show both.

    Finally, the neglect of the good COVID news breeds panic and fear, which is never a good public health strategy. The public should know that the pandemic will not be here forever. While these are challenging times – and, for many families, life-changing times – like every other pandemic in human history, the COVID-19 pandemic will end. With wise and informed policy choices, we can reduce its ultimate toll of death and human misery.

  • Former Nikola CEO Milton Sold $55 Million In Stock, Bought Three Properties
    Former Nikola CEO Milton Sold $55 Million In Stock, Bought Three Properties

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 19:45

    Today in “how to turn assets that don’t exist into assets that do” news…

    It was reported yesterday that disgraced founder and former CEO of Nikola, Trevor Milton, had sold 3.2 million shares of Nikola stock while still at the company in order to consummate “three real-estate transactions” and purchase three different properties.

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    As part of the transactions, Milton’s LLC gave the shares on December 3 to the sellers of three piece of real estate, including a sprawling $32 million ranch Milton bought in Utah. 

    It appears Milton sold about $55 million worth of stock on the company’s lockup expiration date last week, according to SEC filings. And voila! That makes three more pieces of real estate than Nikola trucks sold, as Hindenburg Research’s Nathan Anderson noted on Twitter on Monday. 

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    Bloomberg reported on Monday that Milton says he is “committed to his Nikola Corp. holding and doesn’t plan to relinquish his position as its largest shareholder”.

    It’s a statement that sounds reassuring, but doesn’t necessarily preclude Milton from selling more shares before becoming the second largest holder of Nikola stock. He could still sell “millions of shares” and be the company’s largest holder, Bloomberg noted.

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    Milton’s lockup expired last week, on the same day the company announced that GM would no longer be taking an equity stake. Milton has the ability to now hit the bid with 91.6 million shares if he desires. In a CNBC interview two weeks ago, Nikola CEO Mark Russell “failed to assure” investors on both a GM deal and the idea that Milton wouldn’t immediately hit the bid when given the chance. 

    Nikola partner Bosch also cut its stake in the company to below the 5% reporting threshold last week after its share lockup expired. 

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  • California Is The Top US Net Importer Of Electricity
    California Is The Top US Net Importer Of Electricity

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 19:25

    Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

    California’s imports were the largest in the United States last year when 25 percent of California’s total electricity supply was imported, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday.  

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    Last year, California’s net electricity imports were the largest in the country at 70.8 million megawatt-hours (MWh), followed by Ohio, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Tennessee, EIA data showed.

    In California’s case, the state’s utilities partly own and import power from several power plants in Arizona and Utah. California’s electricity imports also include hydroelectric power from the Pacific Northwest, mostly across high-voltage transmission lines from Oregon to the Los Angeles area.

    This summer, amid the great West heatwave, the largest U.S. solar state, California, was grappling with power issues and struggling to keep its electricity grid stable as demand exceeds supply.

    California energy consumers were warned of rolling outages as there was insufficient energy to meet the high demand during the heatwave in August. In California, where solar power supplies more than 20 percent of electricity as per the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), August’s rolling outages were the worst such outages since the 2000-2001 energy crisis in the state.    

    According to 2019 data from the California Energy Commission, the state imported 30.68 percent of its renewables-generated electricity supply and 69.32 percent of non-renewables supply.

    While California was the biggest net importer of electricity in the U.S. last year, the largest net exporter of electricity was Pennsylvania, with 70.5 million MWh of exports, or 24 percent of total supply, EIA data showed.

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    Pennsylvania’s electricity generation was the third-largest in the United States in 2019, behind Texas and Florida. Natural gas-fired and nuclear power plants produced most of Pennsylvania’s electricity generation in 2019, at 43 percent and 36 percent, respectively. Pennsylvania ranks second in the U.S., after Illinois, in terms of nuclear power generating capacity.

  • DoorDash Hikes IPO Price Again To $102 Per Share As US Heads For Best Year For Deals Since 1999
    DoorDash Hikes IPO Price Again To $102 Per Share As US Heads For Best Year For Deals Since 1999

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 19:06

    Ahead of their IPOs this week, Airbnb and DoorDash are now seemingly taking turns hiking the debut price range for their respective IPOs, as year-end deal frenzy hits a fever pitch .

    Early this morning, Tesla announced plans for another $5BN “at the money” offering of new shares. When shares erased their selloff and traded higher, it offered the latest confirmation that the market’s appetite remains as robust as ever.

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    DoorDash has acknowledged in the section of its S-1 where it addresses long term risks that there’s a chance it might never be profitable, as the economics of third-party food delivery.

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    Now, DoorDash is reportedly expecting to price shares at the IPO at about $102 apiece, according to WSJ.

    The price will increase DoorDash’s take during the offering to $3.4BN, roughly $400MM more than before, bringing its post offering valuation to $39BN, if all goes according to plan.

    On a fully diluted the company’s valuation could draw very close to $40BN.

    According to WSJ’s sources, DoorDash’s roadshow, which began last week, elicited strong interest from investors who have shown a strong interest in the offering, prompting the company to boost the price range from an initial $75 to $85 a share.

    During Q2, DoorDash booked a profit of $23MM on $675MM in revenue, though it reverted to a net loss the next quarter even as revenue jumped to $879MM.

    CNBC confirmed the report while several of its reporters debated the merits of such a frothy valuation for the startup that has seen its market share in the US surge to roughly 50% of the entire market. However, profits have remained difficult to come by.

    DoorDash prices IPO at $102: Sources from CNBC.

    Earlier,Rahul Vohra, tech investor, founder and CEO of subscription email app Superhuman, appeared on “the Closing Bell” to sing DoorDash’s praises as one of the best gig economy apps out there (per Vohra), who pointed out that the company is growing far faster than already-public rival GrubHub.

    WSJ also explains how both DoorDash and Airbnb are embracing a more innovative approach to gauging interest and doling out allocations. Both companies are asking investors in the IPO (mostly institutions and some wealthy individuals) to input stock orders through a computerized system in which they outline the number of shares they are seeking and at what price. Investors have the option to indicate how much they are willing to buy at various price points. Typically, the syndicate banks managing the IPO play the critical role in setting the price. But this new strategy will give both companies more control.

    Typically a quiet month for IPOs, December is shaping up to be a frenzied finish to what has already been a gangbusters year for deals. Already, more than $140BN has been raised in via IPOs on US exchanges, a number that far exceeds the previous full-year record high set at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999.

    Unfortunately for beleaguered IBD analysts, management is cutting short Christmas breaks and pressuring them to pull longer hours than usual during the holiday, despite rumors about steep cuts to the bonus pool, as banks shift more capital toward loan loss provisions despite a surprisingly strong year in terms of revenue and profits from sales and trading and other investment banking activities.

  • Merrill Lynch To Pay Former NH Governor $24 Million Over Excessive Trading Allegations
    Merrill Lynch To Pay Former NH Governor $24 Million Over Excessive Trading Allegations

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 19:05

    Merrill Lynch has been ordered by the state of New Hampshire to pay $26.25 million in fines and restitution to settle allegations that one of its top brokers traded excessively and without authorization in order to rack up huge commissions. The company was also cited for failure to supervise and was ordered to maintain new compliance rules. 

    Of that $26.25 million, more than $24 million in restitution will go to the former governor of New Hampshire, Craig Benson. 

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    The fine is the “largest monetary sanction in the state’s history and the second largest FINRA settlement in at least a decade,” according to CNBC. 

    The former broker accused of the wrongdoing, Charles Kenahan, has been barred from the industry. He was found to have “traded without authorization, mismarked trade confirmations, excessively traded stocks and Initial Public Offerings, over charged commissions, and inappropriately traded inverse and leveraged products,” according to NH regulators. 

    His actions resulted in “high commissions for Merrill Lynch and Kenahan and heavy losses for the investor.”

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    Jeff Spill, the deputy director and head of enforcement for New Hampshire’s Bureau of Securities Regulation, commented: “This case is about an abuse of trust committed by Merrill Lynch and Kenahan. Ultimately, Kenahan’s recommendations benefited Kenahan and Merrill Lynch and not the investor.”

    Kenahan’s FINRA BrokerCheck record offers his take on the allegations, stating:

     “…the transactions giving rise to the customers’ allegations were executed at the customers’ direction. The allegations resulted in arbitrations and settlements. I was not a party to the arbitrations; I had no say in the firm’s decision to settle the claims; and I was not asked to make any payment as part of the settlements.” 

    “I certainly didn’t sign a document and say it’s OK to steal from me. This is a fight I never chose,” Benson had said over the summer, after claiming “widespread misconduct” led to market-adjusted damages of over $100 million. 

    During the summer, a group of Merrill clients had alleged $200 million in damages which ultimately led to the New Hampshire investigation, CNBC noted in an interview with Craig Benson:

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Dec 08

Today’s News 8th December 2020

  • France, UK, Germany Plea For Iran To Reverse Course On Advanced Centrifuge Expansion
    France, UK, Germany Plea For Iran To Reverse Course On Advanced Centrifuge Expansion

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 12/08/2020 – 01:00

    Days ago Iran announced its intent to install more advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges to expand its nuclear program, which it still maintains is for peaceful domestic energy purposes, giving approval through an act of parliament in a move seen as aimed toward gaining more leverage ahead of expected talks with the incoming Biden administration on relieving sanctions and restoring US participation in the JCPOA nuclear deal.

    The IAEA nuclear watchdog confirmed this in a recent statement: “In a letter dated 2 December 2020, Iran informed the Agency that the operator of the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz ‘intends to start installation of three cascades of IR-2m centrifuge machines’ at FEP,” the IAEA told member states.

    But now European signatories of the 2015 JCPOA are urging Iran not to go through with it, saying they they are deeply “alarmed” it could backfire in terms of Biden’s reported willingness to drop sanctions.

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    Iran nuclear facility, via Reuters

    France, Germany and Britain said in a joint statement that Iran must remain “serious” about “preserving space for diplomacy”. The expanded centrifuges, they said, could have the opposite effect.

    “Iran’s recent announcement to the IAEA that it intends to install an additional three cascades of advanced centrifuges at the Fuel Enrichment Plant in Natanz is contrary to the JCPoA and deeply worrying,” the countries added.

    Here are the details of what the Islamic Republic plans to do according to a leaked confidential report revealed by Reuters:

    A confidential International Atomic Energy Agency report obtained by Reuters said Iran plans to install three more cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-2m centrifuges in its enrichment plant at Natanz, which was built underground apparently to withstand any aerial bombardment.

    Iran’s nuclear deal with major powers says Tehran can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, which refine uranium much more slowly, at Natanz and that those are the only machines with which Iran may accumulate enriched stocks.

    The fear is that it could also put Biden under greater domestic public pressure, but especially pressure by national security state hawks, to not pursue restoration of the JCPOA.

    “Such a move would jeopardise our shared efforts to preserve the JCPOA and also risks compromising the important opportunity for a return to diplomacy with the incoming U.S. administration,” France, Germany and Britain added in their statement.

    All of this also comes as Trump has reportedly given Pompeo a ‘green light’ to target Iran in various ways (presumably with kind of covert action alongside ally Israel that led to the death of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh), but short of any action that might spark a major war.

  • China & The US Are Facing Off In The Third World
    China & The US Are Facing Off In The Third World

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 12/07/2020 – 23:40

    Authored by Hal Brands, op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

    During the Cold War, the Third World was a superpower battleground, as the U.S. and Soviet Union jockeyed for position across the globe. Today, the developing regions are once again an arena for rivalry, this time between the U.S. and China.

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    As the President Donald Trump era ends, Washington seems, somewhat fortuitously, to have mostly avoided the danger that China might divide it from other advanced democracies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Yet the struggle for the Third World is only beginning, and Beijing possesses sizable advantages as well as vast ambitions.

    If the global periphery is moving to the center of the U.S.-China rivalry, that’s partially because the status of the democratic core is no longer as precarious as it was only recently. As late as 2019 and even the beginning of 2020, the combination of Chinese economic leverage and self-destructive U.S. behavior under Trump threatened to drive deep wedges in the Western world. It seemed possible that large swaths of Europe might opt for neutrality between America and China, or even become technologically dependent on Beijing. That danger hasn’t vanished, but it has become less acute.

    By deepening its domestic repression, pressuring a democratic Taiwan, and coercing countries that criticized or resisted the Chinese Communist Party, Beijing created a wave of diplomatic blowback. China’s favorability ratings have plummeted in Europe and East Asia, and the European Union has labeled it a “systemic rival.” More and more advanced democracies have opted, implicitly or explicitly, to avoid using the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in their critical digital infrastructure.

    The providential irony of the Trump era is that a presidency often characterized by efforts to fragment the democratic world is ending with the gradual creation of a democratic coalition to resist Chinese influence.

    Unfortunately, the situation is different in the developing regions, namely Central and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. During the Cold War, the Third World was a strategic vulnerability for the U.S., because the blend of ideological radicalism, post-colonial ferment and economic underdevelopment made these regions receptive to communist influence.

    Conditions have changed enormously, and the term “Third World” has fallen out of favor. (“Developing countries” or “emerging markets” are often the preferred nomenclature, even though those labels obscure vast differences in current status and future prospects.) But the nations of these regions still constitute a challenging strategic landscape for Washington.

    Generally speaking, these countries are less developed than U.S. treaty allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, which makes the offer of Chinese loans (even predatory ones) or low-cost digital infrastructure more attractive. Democratic governance is less robust, and political corruption is more prevalent in the former Third World than in the West, creating entry points for Chinese influence.

    Thanks to their historical experience of colonialism and foreign intervention (sometimes at the hands of Washington), developing nations tend to favor the norm of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states, and are less inclined to condemn the authoritarian abuses of the Chinese Communist Party. The quest for influence in the global south is thus at the heart of Beijing’s geopolitical strategy.

    Because Third World countries are so numerous, their support is crucial in Beijing’s effort to control or coopt international bodies from the United Nations Human Rights Council to the International Telecommunications Union. These institutions may not sound like strategic prizes, but they play a crucial role in setting the norms and standards of the global system.

    Similarly, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to weave economic, diplomatic, technological and eventually military ties connecting China to much of the developing world. From Beijing’s perspective, building a sphere of influence in the global south is a path to achieving geopolitical parity with the U.S.

    U.S. officials appreciate the danger. During the Trump years, high-ranking officials including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser John Bolton publicly described the perils of neo-imperialism with Chinese characteristics. The creation of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation represents an initial response to China’s global economic offensive. Other leading democracies, such as Australia and Japan, have deepened their own engagement with the countries of the South Pacific and Southeast Asia.

    Yet Chinese loans and infrastructure projects crisscross the globe, the Digital Silk Road is drawing countries into Beijing’s technological embrace, and Beijing’s diplomatic influence is still expanding rather than contracting.

    For the foreseeable future, China’s Third World challenge will be a strategic reality, one that requires a concerted and creative response.

    Enhanced U.S. coordination with Japan, Australia and the EU would allow leading democracies to more strategically deploy their combined resources to strengthen Third World growth and infrastructure. A democratic tech coalition geared toward facilitating and financing the adoption of non-Chinese telecommunications technology, for example, would reduce the allure of devil’s bargains with Huawei and its 5G network.

    Covid-19, meanwhile, offers an opportunity to unveil a generous program for vaccine distribution in the developing regions, something that would be a moral good, as well as a way of offsetting the vaccine diplomacy that Beijing is already practicing.

    Over time, Washington and its allies should also emphasize good governance and democratic reform in the developing world, because progress in that area will make it harder for China to cut deals with autocratic or kleptocratic leaders. And while promoting positive engagement is the best guarantee of U.S. influence, Washington and its friends should also highlight — whether publicly or quietly — the more exploitive aspects of Beijing’s behavior in the global south, from resource extraction, to the promotion of illiberal rulers, to a standoffish approach to debt relief.

    The U.S. mostly has President Xi Jinping to thank for the world’s major democracies becoming more aligned in their views of the Chinese challenge. Yet the geography of great-power competition is shifting, and succeeding in the developing world will require more than good luck.

  • Pope Frances Will Make 'High Risk' Official Visit To Iraq In March
    Pope Frances Will Make ‘High Risk’ Official Visit To Iraq In March

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 12/07/2020 – 23:20

    The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis plans to break his 15-month hiatus from international travel, a delay which was also largely to blame on the coronavirus pandemic, by visiting Iraq in the Spring of 2021.

    It’s being widely reported as a surprising and “risky” trip given the tense security situation there, also as COVID-19 infections spike globally. It’s planned for March 5-8.

    According to the official announcement Monday, “He will visit Baghdad, the plain of Ur, linked to the memory of Abraham, the city of Erbil, as well as Mosul and Qaraqosh in the plain of Nineveh,” said the Vatican Press Office.

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    Pope Francis with Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar mosque. Image source: CNS

    This was prompted by both an Iraqi government invitation and the desire of the local Catholic Church, represented in the Chaldean church. It’s expected that Pope Frances could during the trip declare ‘new martyrs’ or saints who were the victims of what’s remembered as the 2010 Baghdad Church Massacre. 

    During that al-Qaeda linked attack 58 Chaldean Catholics were killed after an hours-long hostage standoff in a Baghdad church. Over 100 churches and monasteries throughout the country were attacked in terrorist incidents during the US-occupation period.

    The as yet unpublished Pope’s itinerary for the Iraq visit will “take into consideration the evolution of the worldwide health emergency.” He’ll be the first Pope to ever visit the country.

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    He’s expected to emphasize that the ancient Christian presence in Iraq remains essential. Before the US invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003, there were an estimated one million to up to 1.4 million Christians in the country, mostly Catholic and Orthodox.

    However, after 2017 estimates are commonly at a much reduced 300 to 400 thousand.

    During 2014 through 2016 ISIS also drove many Christians out of the Nineveh Plains region near Mosul. While many families have returned to their villages in the area, the bulk either went to other cities in Iraq like Erbil or Baghdad, but many fled the country altogether.

    Mosul also once had a sizeable minority Christian presence of 100,000 or more, but in the past years has been completely liquidated of Christians.

  • The IMF's Net-Zero Fairy Tale
    The IMF’s Net-Zero Fairy Tale

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 12/07/2020 – 23:00

    Submitted by Rupert Darwall, senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of THE CLIMATE NOOSE. Submitted by Real Clear Energy,

    With Britain, France, the European Union, and now America (soon to be under Joe Biden’s leadership) piling onto the net-zero bandwagon, you’d think that some objectivity about the economic costs and consequences about such absolutist carbon-emission policies would be in order. Traditionally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) could be relied upon as a source of sound economic advice. No longer.

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    Under its previous managing director, Christine Lagarde, and now its current one, Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF has traded economic integrity for green wokery – thus giving governments license to push radical green policies in the false belief that there are few or no downsides.

    Covid-19 has put what might be called green millenarianism on steroids. In July, Georgieva told an interviewer that the pandemic presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of a transformation necessary for human survival: “you don’t like the pandemic, you’re not going to like the climate disaster.” A characteristic of climate millenarianism is over-hyping of the potential damage of climate change while at the same time claiming that avoiding this damage will cost next to nothing. Thus in its most recent World Economic Outlook, the IMF implies that potentially catastrophic climate change can be avoided with a green fiscal stimulus amounting to 1 percent of GDP and carbon taxes of between $10 to $40 a ton in 2030.

    The IMF’s analysis is riddled with errors and omissions. It correctly notes that renewable energy is more labor-intensive than generating energy from fossil fuels. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry notes, in 2019 it took 5.2 workers in wind and an astonishing 45.8 in solar to produce the same amount of electricity as one worker in nuclear, natural gas, and coal generation. That’s more jobs in wind and solar, yes, but poorly paid ones – a critical dimension of employment that the IMF entirely neglects.

    The IMF also implies that renewable energy is less capital-intensive (“reallocation of activity from high- to low-carbon sectors could therefore be more positive (less negative) for employment than investment”). This shows how little the IMF understands about the energy sector. Wind and solar are intermittent power sources, so keeping the grid stable and the lights on requires investment in parallel generating capacity. This makes renewables extremely capital-inefficient. Consider the U.K. Without renewables, the U.K. would require 22 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity to replace old coal and nuclear. With renewables, 50 GW is required – 28 GW more than without. Switching to renewables more than doubles the investment requirement.

    Economic progress and rising living standards have come from capitalism’s ability to produce more from less, through constantly improving capital and labor productivity. Widespread adoption of renewables throws this process into reverse. It is the opposite of progress. President-Elect Biden’s promised 10 million new clean energy jobs can be more than met, Perry calculates, by switching to 100% solar energy – but as he points out, “those energy jobs will come at a high price in the form of higher energy costs for consumers and businesses, less dependable electric power, more blackouts, a reduction of jobs in energy-intensive sectors, reduced economic growth and an erosion of the nation’s prosperity.”

    To derive its conclusion that net-zero would be the economic equivalent of a flea bite on global growth, the IMF uses general equilibrium modelling, which can be useful in understanding the effects of, say, a tax change, and mapping its effects throughout an economy. But equilibrium, a concept borrowed from Newtonian physics, implies regularity and stationarity, a system returning to a stable growth path as external forces unwind – conditions that don’t pertain when economies undergo forcible structural transformation lasting decades, and of a severity not seen outside wartime or the centrally planned economies of the Soviet era. The methodological assumptions of equilibrium are violated by the economic process that the method aims to model, thus rendering the IMF’s conclusions worthless.

    The most misleading claim that the IMF has seeded into public discourse concerns fossil fuel subsidies. “Fossil fuels are now massively under-priced,” the IMF asserts, with global energy subsidies amounting to $4.7 trillion in 2015, equivalent to 6.3% of global GDP. These aren’t your grandfather’s subsidies in the form of cash payments to oil producers, which is what the green lobby would like us to believe: end the subsidies, transfer the cash to clean tech, and all will be well.

    In fact, the IMF acknowledges that producer subsidies are “relatively small.” Rather, the IMF’s elastic definition of subsidy includes a $40 per ton carbon tax, speculative estimates of deaths caused by local air pollution as well as deaths from road accidents, and the cost of traffic delays. The epidemiology of PM2.5 – microscopic particles that make up an air pollution tranche – is highly uncertain, something that the IMF researchers acknowledge. A British government report concedes that unlike with smoking and lung cancer, there is no actual group of individuals whose deaths are attributable to air pollution alone. Indeed, a 2012 study analyzing data across 100 American cities found no evidence that PM2.5 concentrations had any causal impact on increasing mortality rates.

    Also problematic is the value of a statistical life assumptions used by the IMF, which are several times the actual willingness of both individuals and countries to spend money on improving health. For the U.S., local air pollution makes up around one-half the IMF’s diesel “subsidy,” and traffic congestion around three-fourths of the gasoline “subsidy.”

    Improvements to engine technology mean that modern autos are astonishingly clean. In urban centers with the most modern diesel vehicles, the exhaust can be cleaner than the intake air. The IMF would have us believe that the tailpipe is the sole source of vehicular PM2.5. According to a recent study, non-exhaust emissions are now believed to constitute the majority of primary particulate matter from road transport. Pollution from tire wear can be 1,000 times worse than what comes out of the tailpipe, and with their heavy batteries, electric vehicles will cause more air pollution from tire wear.

    The same goes for road congestion. Fossil fuels don’t cause it; vehicles do. If the IMF is against road transportation, it should say so.

    As it is, the IMF’s treatment of fossil fuel subsidies is no more than a highly sophisticated hit job. Every fairy tale needs a villain. And living happily ever after only happens in fairy tales – or in net-zero reports.

  • Swedish Central Bank Governor Slams Expansion Of QE, Gives 6 Reasons Why
    Swedish Central Bank Governor Slams Expansion Of QE, Gives 6 Reasons Why

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 12/07/2020 – 22:44

    Two weeks ago, the oldest central bank in the world, Sweden’s Riksbank stunned the world when it unveiled 40% more QE than consensus had been expecting. Specifically, the Riksbank announced that it was expanding its quantitative easing program to 700 billion kronor ($82 billion), which was 200 billion kronor more than its earlier target. To be sure, with the Riksbank having locked itself in after Governor Stefan Ingves said just a few years prior that its “experiment” with negative rates was officially over, expanding QE was the only available option unless the central bank was willing to gamble with its credibility (and until there is a far greater crisis when negative rates will be unavoidable, damn the soaring house prices).

    And while most Swedish central bankers were on board with the decision, there was at least one who hopefully sees the writing on the wall: that central banks will be able to superglue the falling house of cards for only a few more years (effectively echoing the BIS’ latest warning).

    In a jarring break with the central bank consensus, Riksbank Deputy Governor Martin Floden presented a “long list of objections to the proposed decision” to expand QE through to the end of 2021, he said in minutes from the Nov 25 policy discussion, and noting that “it is the list as a whole that leads me to enter a reservation.”

    Below we summarize his six objections (the full text is below):

    • First, it’s unlikely that further purchases will be able to push down already low bond yields to noticeably lower levels, and that
    • ” a promise today for larger asset purchases will not make monetary policy more expansionary in the near term.”
    • Second, it’s “uncertain whether asset purchases in the autumn of 2021 will make monetary policy more expansionary then.”
    • Third, “communication concerning a comprehensive purchasing program until the end of 2021 may generate more uncertainty than clarity”
    • Fourth, “the actors and markets” that the Riksbank can directly affect are still not in such an acute crisis situation as they were in the spring 
    • Fifth, “the most important mechanism is that central banks, via asset purchases, are able to remove risk from the markets.”  And since this mechanism hardly works if the Riksbank purchases government securities with short maturities, Floden doesn’t consider purchases of treasury bills to be an effective measure
    • Sixth, uncertainty over developments in the near term is high, bank needs “to take a new monetary policy decision to purchase more in the near term”

    He concluded that “instead of expanding the programme, I advocate that we communicate clearly that we will ensure that the level of interest rates remains low for a long time to come.” He was overruled.

    Floden’s Minutes excerpt is below:

    The Riksbank’s measures throughout the pandemic have been important and have resulted in a low level of interest rates and continued access to credit for companies and households. The consequences of the pandemic will impede the Swedish economy for a long time to come. The Riksbank therefore needs to ensure that the level of interest rates remains low for many years. In this way, monetary policy will facilitate an economic recovery, which will contribute to inflation ultimately rising towards the target of 2 per cent.

    So far, I agree with the reasoning behind the proposed monetary policy decision in the draft Monetary Policy Report. Nevertheless, my objections to the proposed decision are many.

    I will now present a long list of objections to the proposed decision. But the length of the list is not a good indication of how far from the proposed decision I stand. No point on my list would alone justify a reservation to the proposed decision. It is the list as a whole that leads me to enter a reservation. In addition, my opinion is that I have the same view of the need for a continued expansionary policy as the rest of the Executive Board. My reservation thus concerns how we can best design monetary policy to achieve this.

    First, the Riksbank has already decided on a comprehensive purchase programme, running until mid-2021. The programme has had a positive impact on interest rates and lending. Yields on safe assets, such as government bonds, are low at all maturities. For example, the yield on all government bonds with maturities up to 10 years is negative and thus lower than our policy rate. The yield curve is thus low and flat. Additionally, yields on riskier and less liquid assets are also low. For example, yields on mortgage and corporate bonds are lower than before the pandemic. This is contributing to low lending rates to both households and companies. My assessment is that the repo rate sets a boundary for how low all of these rates can fall. In my opinion, it is unlikely that further purchases will be able to push the rates down to noticeably lower levels. I therefore deem that a promise today for larger asset purchases will not make monetary policy more expansionary in the near term.

    Second, I consider it uncertain whether asset purchases in the autumn of 2021 will make monetary policy more expansionary then. When our previously-announced purchase programme expires in mid-2021, the Riksbank will own a large proportion of Swedish nominal government bonds and have a large holding of mortgage bonds. The Riksbank will also be a significant actor in the fairly illiquid secondary markets for municipal and corporate bonds, as well as real government bonds. I therefore consider it likely that the Riksbank will be able to hold yields on these assets at low levels by only buying assets to compensate for redemptions, or at least by purchasing new assets to a lesser extent than is now proposed in the draft decision. I do not rule out the possibility that substantial asset purchases may be justified but I do not see it as a main scenario.

    Third, I consider that communication concerning a comprehensive purchasing programme until the end of 2021 may generate more uncertainty than clarity. It is good that central banks are transparent and provide guidance on their policy rules and future plans. But the Riksbank is now a major actor on the bond markets. At present, it is not possible to predict how purchases next autumn will affect these markets. Instead of promising purchases of a certain magnitude, I think that our communication should focus on what we wish to achieve. Consequently, I would rather see us communicating that, for a long time to come, we will keep the repo rate low, ensure that the level of interest rates otherwise remains low, and make sure that lending continues to function. The tools we need to use to achieve this and the possible purchase sums that will be relevant can be assessed on an ongoing basis. Increased asset purchases may hold the level of interest rates down if risk, liquidity or term premia start to rise. But if the level of interest rates as a whole needs to be pushed down from the current level, it would probably be better to cut the repo rate instead.

    Fourth, there are situations in which we can inspire confidence by demonstrating strong initiative and preferring to do too much rather than too little. It was important that the Riksbank acted rapidly and forcefully with major support programmes at the outbreak of the pandemic in the spring. The pandemic is now getting worse again and some sectors are being very badly impacted, but the actors and markets that the Riksbank can directly affect are still not in such an acute crisis situation as they were in the spring. Our asset purchases must be balanced both against the undesirability of a central bank dominating the markets and excessively affecting price mechanisms – for example by generating abnormally low risk premia – and against large purchases leading to increased credit and, above all, interest rate risk on the Riksbank’s balance sheet.

    Fifth, I do not consider purchases of treasury bills to be an effective measure. There are various hypotheses around how and why quantitative easing works. Easing presumably acts via several different mechanisms and in different ways depending on the economic situation and institutional conditions. But perhaps the most important mechanism is that central banks, via asset purchases, are able to remove risk from the markets. This mechanism hardly works if the Riksbank purchases government securities with short maturities. These securities are liquid and secure, and lack term premia. Among other things, this can be seen by the way they are already being traded at rates that are lower than the Riksbank’s repo rate. If our ambition is to bring short-term market rates for safe assets down, this can best be achieved by cutting the repo rate.

    Sixth, uncertainty over developments in the near term is high. The spread of infection has increased substantially in recent weeks and new restrictions have been introduced. I therefore consider it positive that we are laying down a plan for asset purchases in the first quarter of next year that remains extensive. I advocate the same purchase plan for the first quarter of next year as in the proposed decision, with the exception of the SEK 10 billion intended for the purchases of treasury bills. However, conditions on the financial markets can change rapidly, in which case new measures may be needed from the Riksbank. The Riksbank therefore also needs to be prepared to adjust monetary policy before the next ordinary monetary policy meeting. But the expanded programme does not make us better equipped to react if conditions change in the near term. We are now making decisions on the rate of purchases for the first quarter in 2021. Consequently, we need to take a new monetary policy decision to purchase more in the near term, regardless of whether or not we expand the programme today.

    Instead of expanding the programme, I advocate that we communicate clearly that we will ensure that the level of interest rates remains low for a long time to come. In more concrete terms, this would involve us keeping to the previously announced programme of asset purchases for SEK 500 billion until the middle of next year and communicating our preparedness, even in the near term, either to extend the purchase programme, cut the repo rate or otherwise react to developments that otherwise would jeopardise the expansionary impact of monetary policy

  • Chinese FX Reserves Soar Most In 7 Years As Beijing Starts To Intervene Against The Soaring Yuan
    Chinese FX Reserves Soar Most In 7 Years As Beijing Starts To Intervene Against The Soaring Yuan

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 12/07/2020 – 22:37

    A little over five years since China’s 2015 devaluation, which sparked an avalanche of FX reserve liquidation as Beijing scrambled to halt a tsunami of capital outflows which at one point culminated in a furious wave of bitcoin buying by Chinese residents, China is once again adding FX reserves at a blistering pace.

    Around the same time that the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics overnight reported a surge in exports and a record trade surplus, the PBOC also reported that at the end of November, China’s Forex reserves jumped to $3.178 trillion, beating estimates of $3.15 trillion, and the highest number since August 2016.

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    And, at $50.5BN, this was also the biggest monthly increase in FX reserves since November 2013.

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    And just like the rapid collapse in yuan reserves in the 2015-2017 period was a result of Beijing’s scramble to sell dollar assets and halt the plunge in the yuan and stem the tidal wave of capital outflows, with the recent surge in FX reserves, it appears that China’s authorities are finally pushing back on yuan appreciation which has reached a level where concerns about imported deflation are starting to emerge. Furthermore, while a chunk of the jump in reserves was likely based on valuation adjustments and FX rate changes as a SAFE spokeswoman said, it is likely that the bulk was the result of USD-buying intervention.

    As Bloomberg’s Simon Flint writes, it will be interesting to see just how the authorities slow the pace of yuan appreciation: will they use the daily yuan official fixing, intervention, or further announcements of capital outflow liberalization, to slow the pace of yuan appreciation – should dollar weakness persist in the coming months.

    That said, there is always a caveat when dealing with Chinese reserve data: as Flint cautions, these estimates are based on valuation-adjustments can be flawed as we don’t know the exact composition of China’s reserves. Nor is it clear whether China revalues securities within its portfolio on a monthly basis. To get the cleanest picture of Chinese capital flows, it’s best to wait for the SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows” which is Goldman’s preferred FX flow measure and which gives a far more definitive picture of what’s really happening behind China’s opaque capital firewall.

    Still, with the Chinese yuan soaring in the past 6 months as the dollar has plunged, and fast approaching where it was around the time of the August 2015 devaluation…

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    … it is only a matter of time before Beijing will have no choice but to aggressively intervene in the currency market, sending the dollar blasting off in the opposite direction.

  • This Is Going To Be The Worst Winter For The US Economy In Modern Times
    This Is Going To Be The Worst Winter For The US Economy In Modern Times

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 12/07/2020 – 22:20

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    We already knew that this was going to be the worst winter for the U.S. economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, but now a new round of lockdowns threatens to rip the guts out of hundreds of thousands of small businesses all around the country.  As I write this article, 33 million people are under “stay-at-home orders” in California alone.  With each passing day, state governments are implementing even more new restrictions, and those new restrictions are going to increasingly choke the life out of economic activity in this nation.

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    The good news is that most of the corporate giants have enough resources to weather another round of lockdowns, but countless small businesses do not.

    In San Francisco, some small businesses that have served the city for generations now find themselves on the edge of extinction…

    “I’ve been walking around the city nonstop talking to small businesses owners and every story is sadder than the next,” said Rory Cox, the founder of the newly-formed San Francisco Small Business Alliance. “Everyone is like, ‘I wake up every day and I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I had 60 employees but now all I have is six, or now it’s only me.’ These are family businesses, these are moms and dads, brothers and sisters. I feel firmly we’re the backbone of the city. And they’re destroying us, they’re ripping us apart, they’re tearing out the heart and soul of the city.”

    Traditionally, small businesses have been the primary engine of job growth in the United States, but now they are laying off workers in droves once again.

    So far this year, more than 70 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits, and this unprecedented tsunami of job losses was caused by the original round of lockdowns.

    Now a new wave of lockdowns is upon us, and there is going to be extreme economic pain all over America.

    Sometimes it can be mind numbing to talk about the millions upon millions of Americans that are now in horrifying financial distress, but each one of those individuals has a name…

    Tina Morton recently faced a choice: Pay bills — or buy a birthday gift for a child? Derrisa Green is falling further behind on rent. Sylvia Soliz has had her electricity cut off.

    Unemployment has forced aching decisions on millions of Americans and their families in the face of a rampaging viral pandemic that has closed shops and restaurants, paralyzed travel and left millions jobless for months.

    As I discussed the other day, the Aspen Institute is estimating that up to 40 million Americans could be facing eviction in 2021 because they have gotten behind on rent or mortgage payments.

    We have never seen anything like this before in all of American history.  We are literally murdering the economy, and most of the politicians that are doing this don’t seem to care.  Perhaps their jobs are secure, but there are millions of others that haven’t been able to find a new job after being laid off months ago.  In fact, the percentage of “long-term unemployed workers” as a share of all those that are unemployed is now the highest it has been during this entire pandemic…

    In November, the number of workers jobless for at least 27 weeks — economists’ barometer for “long-term” unemployment — grew by 385,000 to 3.9 million.

    That accounts for 37% of all unemployed workers — up from a third in October and 19% in September.

    And of course most of those that are still working are just barely scraping by from month to month.

    According to a survey that was just released, nearly tw0-thirds of Americans say that they are living paycheck to paycheck at this point…

    In a year still ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout however, it appears many will be struggling through the most festive part of 2020. A survey finds over 60 percent of Americans say they’re now living paycheck-to-paycheck as the year draws to a close.

    The poll of over 2,000 Americans, commissioned by Highland Solutions, wanted to see how spending habits and personal finances in the U.S. are holding up during the pandemic. Their results find 63 percent of respondents have cut back on their spending due to COVID. Six in 10 say they’re doing it to be more cautious, but 49 percent add it’s because of losing income at work.

    Now this new wave of lockdowns is going to push millions more struggling Americans into poverty once they lose their jobs.

    I feel especially bad for those that have pouring blood, sweat and tears into their small businesses for years only to have them utterly destroyed by politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom.  What one small business owner named Robert Carroll had to say about the new lockdowns in California will stay with me for a very long time…

    “We have basically been left with no options and essentially no hope for the future,” wrote Robert Carroll, the owner of the bar Sodini’s in Redwood City. “We understand COVID-19 is serious, and dangerous, however in this scenario it’s not only dangerous to our health, but our financial and mental wellbeing as well. People need to decide for themselves what risks to take, we don’t take risks at Sodini’s, we insist on masks and distancing, all we want is a CHANCE to maintain our business. If you’ve never had a dream taken away and there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s the worst feeling in the world.”

    Even in the most wildly optimistic scenario imaginable, it is hard to imagine how we could possibly avoid the most painful winter for the U.S. economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    Perhaps that is why corporate insiders are now selling stocks at the fastest pace that we have seen in almost four years.

    Corporate insiders absolutely nailed the two short-term peaks in the market that we witnessed earlier this year, and now they seem to think that an even larger move down is coming.

    But ultimately what we are heading into is not just another temporary economic setback.  Sadly, the truth is that our entire system has started the process of completely melting down.

    The COVID pandemic has greatly accelerated matters, but we were going to get to this point one way or another eventually.

    Now a day of reckoning is upon us, and this winter is going to be very dark, very cold and very, very bitter.

    *  *  *

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

  • India Faces Mass Hospitalizations As Mystery Disease Strikes
    India Faces Mass Hospitalizations As Mystery Disease Strikes

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 12/07/2020 – 22:00

    As coronavirus continues to spread across the world, a mysterious illness has been detected in India, with hundreds of people admitted to local hospitals and at least one dead. 

    New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV) reports that nearly 400 people have contracted a mystery illness that has emerged in Eluru, India. At least one person died on Dec. 5. Local health officials are baffled and have yet to find the source of the illness.

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    Source: AP

    Those who contracted the mysterious illness in the city, which is in the state of Andhra Pradesh, experienced seizures, loss of consciousness, and nausea over the weekend. 

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    This comes as Andhra Pradesh is one of the worst-affected states of COVID-19. Doctors ruled out that none of the patients were infected with the virus. 

    “All patients have tested negative for Covid-19,” Dolla Joshi Roy, the district surveillance officer of Eluru’s West Godavari District, told CNN, adding that about 180 patients out of the 300 who were admitted to the hospital have been discharged. At the same time, the rest are “stable.” She said the patient who died had similar symptoms to the others but then had a fatal but unrelated cardiac arrest. 

    Andhra Pradesh’s Health Department published a notice that the patients’ initial blood tests didn’t detect any viral infection, such as dengue or chikungunya.

    Government authorities are now testing water samples in Eluru for possible contamination after many of the patients said they received water from a similar source. 

    “The cause is still unknown but still we are doing all kinds of testing, including testing food and milk,” said Roy

    The mass hospitalization over the weekend has prompted a special team of doctors to arrive in the city early this week to conduct an investigation about possible sources of the illness. 

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      • Another Airline Announces 'COVID Passports' Will Be "Essential" For Travel
        Another Airline Announces ‘COVID Passports’ Will Be “Essential” For Travel

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 21:40

        Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

        Yet another airline has announced that it sees so called ‘COVID passports’, proof that travellers have been vaccinated and/or tested negative for coronavirus, as “essential” for them to be able to travel.

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        Lance Gokongwei, President and CEO of Cebu Pacific, the largest budget airline in the Philippines, made the comments to reporters Monday.

        “We do think that’s essential, especially as we open up international travel,” Gokongwei said, adding that there are “different vaccines and I think we have to work on a single, global COVID passport so that each country respects the passport.”

        Gokongwei also stated that without fears of the virus spreading being allayed by vaccination and herd immunity, “there’s nothing to be spoken about.”

        “That has to be the number one priority: to get vaccines in the hands in as much of the global population as possible, and then connecting this to a COVID passport,” he urged.

        Watch:

        Alex Jones: “The globalists are getting a bioweapon ready to lockdown the internet, and bring in world government – not now but very soon…” – June 2018

        Several other airlines have indicated that proof of vaccination, through ‘COVID passports’, will become mandatory in order to fly.

        Testing of the passports has already begun in some airports with specific airlines.

        In addition, the world’s largest air transport lobby group is developing a global ‘COVID travel pass’ app designed to link vaccination status and coronavirus test results to a person’s travel documents.

        Another ‘COVID passport’ type system known as the CommonPass, sponsored by the World Economic Forum, is under development.

        A further ‘COVID passport’ app called the AOKpass from travel security firm International SOS is currently undergoing trials  between Abu Dhabi and Pakistan.

        Hundreds of Tech companies are scrambling over themselves to develop these COVID passport systems. Anyone still labeling this a ‘conspiracy theory’ is either wilfully ignorant or just plain uninformed.

      • Wall Street Gears Up To Trade Water Futures As Scarcity Fears Surge  
        Wall Street Gears Up To Trade Water Futures As Scarcity Fears Surge  

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 21:20

        Freshwater is an ultimate essential resource for the human race – the loss of it would be fatal for hundreds of millions.

        For years we’ve outlined the coming water wars (see: here & here) not just in the US but across the world. 

        Starting this week, water will be joining crude, copper, soybeans, and other commodities traded on US exchanges, which suggests potential water scarcity problems could be nearing.  

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        Farmers, hedge funds, and municipalities will soon be able to trade water contracts linked to the $1.1 billion California spot water market, according to Bloomberg, citing Chicago-based CME Group. 

        Water contracts will help users manage risk and better align supply and demand. They were first announced in September as wildfires ravaged western states. 

        “Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come,” said RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray. “We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops.”

        Tim McCourt, global head of equity index and alternative investment products at CME, said billions of people around the world live in areas where water scarcity is a major problem.

        “The idea of managing risks associated with water is certainly increased in importance,” McCourt said. 

        Bloomberg notes the contracts are based on the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index and will be “financially settled,” as opposed to physical delivery of the resource. The index started two years ago and sets a weekly benchmark spot price for California’s water rights. Each contract size is equivalent to 10 acre-feet of water, equal to approximately 3.26 million gallons.

        Patrick Wolf, senior manager and head of product development at Nasdaq, said the new contracts will give farmers a “best guess” at how much water would cost months from now. 

        Clay Landry, managing director at consulting firm Westwater Research, which provides data to calculate the water index, said large and small agriculture businesses would be some of the first to trade the contracts. 

        “Without this tool, people have no way of managing water supply risk,” Landry said. “This may not solve that problem entirely, but it will help soften the financial blow that people will take if their water supply is cut off.”

        We may live on a “blue planet,” but with 3% of all of our water is fresh, and much of it is inaccessible – Wall Street has understood the coming scarcity of water and potential wars that could be fought over it.

      • Chicago Teachers Union Tweets Reopening Schools Would Be "Racist, Sexist, And Misogynistic"…And Then Deletes It!
        Chicago Teachers Union Tweets Reopening Schools Would Be “Racist, Sexist, And Misogynistic”…And Then Deletes It!

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 21:00

        UPDATE: After getting pummeled on Twitter, the CTU attempts a backpedal. No one’s buying it…

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        “…in the struggle.”

        They couldn’t even scrub the Marxism out of their climb-down. Perhaps keeping Chicago’s public schools closed until the teachers union is dissolved is the wise way to go.

        *  *  *

        As PJMedia’s Bryan Preston detailed earlier, The Chicago Teacher Union unleashed this pearl on an unsuspecting world Sunday.

        Since we knew they would delete it, we preserved it in digital amber.

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        Chicago Teachers Union really doesn’t want its teachers to have to go back work.

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        The union offered no explanation, evidence, or any other factual support for its hot take, probably figuring that including the three magic words would just do the trick on their own. But they’re not, and the tweet is being given its due even after the CTU attempted to get rid of it.

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        Tough to argue with that.

        The city has been in a tussle over when to reopen the schools for months. The union is obviously taking the position that “Never” would be a good time, as its viewpoint is based purely on politics, and even according to the people behind the critical race theory money machine, the -isms involved here will never ever go away. Ever. That would kill their golden Marxist goose. So…never reopen the schools, according to the Chicago Teachers Union.

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        We can no longer imagine such a thing. A Biden administration will only make it all worse.

        Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is a black woman, is now saying the public schools will reopen in January. But that’s in the dead of winter, which won’t help the COVID hospitalization rate.

        Is Lightfoot racist, sexist, or a misogynist, CTU? Please show your work.

        Another fact the CTU might consider but will undoubtedly ignore is the fact that the science demonstrates clearly that schools are not COVID vectors. Even Dr. Fauci has seen the light on that.

        The CTU’s take must be based on something else.

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        We have a winner! And another. Seriously, the CTU tweet earned an epic ratio before they tried scrubbing it from the face of the earth.

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        For whatever it’s worth, Twitter didn’t slap any kind of “disputed” or “missing context” tag on the CTU’s tweet.

      • For The First Time In 10 Years Companies Will Sell More Stock Than They Buy Back
        For The First Time In 10 Years Companies Will Sell More Stock Than They Buy Back

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 20:40

        For US corporations, the “teens” decade – the years from 2010 to 2019 – was a historic “get rich quick” boom for management when buybacks emerged as the most powerful force levitating stocks (and equity-linked compensation) as companies collectively issued trillions in debt and used the proceeds to repurchase over $10 trillion worth of their own shares, in the process dramatically lifting the stock market and reducing the number of outstanding shares (we called it a slow-motion MBO) and pushing the S&P’s earnings per share ever higher even when there was no actual earnings growth simply because the number of shares declined year after year.

        All of that changed in 2020 when thanks to covid, central banks made a triumphal return to their core competency of propping up stocks at all costs (just moments ago we reported that the BOJ is now the single-biggest owner of Japanese stocks) and by injecting over $20 trillion in liquidity in 2020, a rate of over $1.2 billion every hour, buybacks were no longer required to push markets higher and preserve the biggest asset bubble ever created. What also changed is that since buybacks were no longer needed, with the Fed and its central bank peers backstopping all risk assets, buybacks reversed and for the first time since 2010, in 2020 companies will sell more stock than they buy back.

        As Bloomberg reports, “while American firms normally repurchase way more stock than they sell, this year has been different, as offerings by everyone from Snowflake Inc. to Warner Music Group Corp. flooded the market with shares.” It’s not just growth stocks that are rushing to capitalize from the market’s peak euphoria phase, which according to Goldman has seen positioning so “extremely stretched” it is currently in the 98th percentile in history:

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        As Bloomberg notes, companies that were hurt most during the pandemic, from airlines to cruise lines, are also rushing to raise cash and shore up balance sheets. And they are finding plenty of willing buyers.

        The result is that amid the flood of equity offerings, both initial and secondary, companies have announced plans to raise about $510 billion via share offerings in 2020, up 50% from last year, according to data compiled by EPFR. This means that for the first time since the 2009 crisis, that amount of stock sales matches the amount that companies announced they’d remove via buybacks and takeovers. For context, over the past decade an average of $3 was bought back (thanks to ultra cheap debt) for every $1 raised.

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        Normally, the reduction in buybacks would be a flashing red alert as the largest source of stock demand was no longer there. However, this is anything but “normal times”, as central banks are now injecting such an unprecedented firehose of liquidity into  markets – not the economy – even the BIS is shocked.

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        It’s also the case that normally, such a flood of selling would hit stocks simply due to excess supply. But, yet again, in this bizarro centrally-planned freakshow of a “market” nobody has any idea what will happen as Randy Frederick, VP of trading and derivatives for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, freely admits: “corporate demand is one component that drives the market higher that is no longer relevant in this risk-on atmosphere. On its own, I would not say it makes the market go down, but it might cause the market to flatten out and not go much higher.” Or it could just send stocks soaring even more; the reality is that we now live in a centrally-planned world where corporate actions no longer impact prices – those are only influenced by fund flows – and as such the surge in stock offerings could merely accelerate the melt up. Ultimately, it’s all what central banks decide.

        One thing we do know is that the explosion in offerings is finally increasing the total pool of stocks (another trend that normally pressures stock prices at market tops in the past, but again, this is anything but normal). The S&P 1500 Index divisor, a proxy for outstanding shares, has risen 0.2% this year, its first increase in 10 years according to Bloomberg data.

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        Yet another warning sign: while the boom in IPOs underscores “a robust market” according to Bloomberg, the increase in share counts could also be viewed as an indication companies are “selling high,” with valuations too attractive to resist – while being too rich to justify buybacks (or simply refusing to take a gamble to issue debt and repurchase stock at a time when the airline industry can’t get a bailout due to its chronic stock repurchases in the past decade). To be sure, at 22 times earnings, the S&P 500 trades near the highest multiple since the dot-com era.

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        “Obviously when the market is at an all-time high, you want to issue shares now, because the shares are worth a lot more than they would be if the market was tanking,” EPFR analyst Winston Chua told Bloomberg. “Looking at the market broadly, companies are not being supportive of share prices.“

        Luckily, markets no longer exist as they have been completely replaces as policy tools for activist central planners armed with money printers. It’s also why skeptics who rely on logic and fundmentals are proven wrong again and again: “There’s a lack of an incremental buyer out there, so that’s a negative, and it still signals some caution as companies let the cash accumulate,” said Mike Bailey, director of research at FBB Capital Partners. Which is true, but one just has to spin the data ever so slightly to represent it in a bullish light, as Bailey does next: “The flip side is, you are building more pressure for companies to really drop the hammer and start to buy back stock next year and into 2022.”

        That’s the scenario envisioned by Goldman chied strategist David Kostin: In 2021, he expects net share repurchases will double to $300 billion and equity issuance will fall from this year’s record high, his team forecast. After all, he has to use fundamentals to justify his 4,300 price target – saying “buy because central banks got your back” would be frowned upon.

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        Of course, for the skeptics out there who are screaming this is idiocy pure and simple, you are right… at least based on empirical data. As Bloomberg notes, Corporate actions on equities showed a close inverse relationship with the market’s performance. During the two decades through 2015, companies boosted net equity demand in 15 different years, 12 of which saw the S&P 500 gain, a study by EPFR showed. In the five years when corporate supply increased, the equity benchmark fell 60% of the time.

        But – once again – this is anything but normal times: we now live in a world where central banks have just one purpose: to keep stocks rising even higher because the moment the game of musical chairs stops, it’s all over.

        That said, there is a silver lining: companies are once again very cash rich. The new listings on U.S. exchanges have raised more than $150 billion this year. Even firms recently left for dead such as Airbnb – it rents out apartments during the worst pandemic the world has seen in a century – just filed to sell as much as $2.6 billion to cap one of the busiest years ever. Other companies planning listings include food delivery service DoorDash and video-game company Roblox.

        “In every cycle, when we say, ‘OK, that was the deal the market rolled over on,’ and all of a sudden everyone’s pulled in their horns,” said Arthur Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities Corp. “I don’t think we’re there yet, but certainly the number of deals has been pretty historic,” he added. “Companies that shouldn’t be coming out come out and there’s always a tipping point.”

        Yes Art, but thanks to Jerome Powell and his central-planning friends, “this time continues to be different.”

      • "It's Panic Porn Clickbait" – Media Scare-Stories About Hospitals Are Misleading
        “It’s Panic Porn Clickbait” – Media Scare-Stories About Hospitals Are Misleading

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 20:40

        You can’t turn on your TV, flip open your tablet, or scroll your social media feed today without being bombarded by horrifying stories of over-worked nurses and doctors and throat-grabbing headlines about COVID-driven hospitalizations amid the casedemic.

        Time to panic?

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        Perhaps not, as El Gato Malo (@boriquagato) notes in the following information-full twitter thread: while it’s disappointing to see that we are back in the “media scare stories about hospitals” stage, the good news is that, just like last time, this is simply not the case.

        They either have no idea what they are saying or are seeking to mislead…

        Let’s look.

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        That’s a scary headline. It’s also a false one.

        We have data on this (and so would they if they bothered to get any)

        Idaho: (as of 12/4) 57% of inpatient beds used, 14.6% covid. 74% overall ICU

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        90% of inpatient beds and ICU is normal. even 100% ICU is normal. 57% is staggeringly low, like OMG we’re all going out of business low.

        Calling that overwhelmed is outlandish.

        ICU of 74% is also low.

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        Even 100% ICU is not “full”, since all can flex to 125% – it’s federal mandate.

        Most ICU’s can flex to 150-200% – they just do not leave the beds staffed when they are not needed. it’s too expensive.

        Hospitals are like airlines or hotels: they seek to be full, not empty; building capacity you do not use is how you lose money.

        But hey, maybe they got PA right, huh?

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        Nope.

        17% covid, 73% all beds, 82% all ICU.

        Those are all low numbers, esp for this time of year. dec and jan are peak flu and pneumonia season.

        Well, maybe Texas?

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        Nope.

        15% covid, 73% all beds, 82% ICU. again, all low numbers.

        And hey, if you do not believe me, go read the article linked below – the TX hospital CEO’s will tell you the same…

        Everyone is freaking out about Texas hospitals except for the people who actually run Texas hospitals.

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        This pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the panic patrol and their relationship to facts.

        It’s hard to get much clearer than this:

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        But TX children’s hospital CEO mark wallace gave it a shot:

        “There is not a scenario, in my opinion, where the demand for our beds … would eclipse our capability,” he continued.

        “I cannot imagine that. I just cannot.”

        Seems like a classic case of “them that’s scared don’t know and them that know ain’t scared.”

        Side with them that know.

        This is not rocket science guys, it’s hospital admin 101. You can always find some 2nd year resident having a meltdown and get a scare quote. it’s why so many docs wash out of hospital practice.

        But these are low numbers, not high.

        There is no “crisis” in US hospitals, nor was there last time. Even perennial basket case NYC was never overwhelmed – they never used javits nor the hospital ship.

        Pics like this are used to scare you…

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        Then you discover it’s from 2018… in Pennsylvania.

        Huh.

        There were a zillion stories like this in 2018. It was all over NYC, you just did not notice them because it’s not really a big deal. this sort of thing happens all the time.

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        And it happens all over: “california hospitals are a war zone of flu patients”

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        Again, from 2018. Remember panicking about it? Yeah, me neither.

        It’s like the whole world, egged on by media and government seeking to frighten and inflame rather than inform has lost all historical perspective this year.

        They are telling it like it ain’t.

        It’s panic porn clickbait.

        There is no excuse for reporting like this in an age when anyone can check this tool in seconds and see the actual figures.

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        I suggest you all bookmark it – use it to check the stories you’re being told.

        The sanity you save may be your own.

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        (by way of background, El Gato Malo is also the Twitter-er who provided a thorough dismantling of the false-positive-PCR-Test-driven ‘casedemic’)

      • G7 Finance Ministers "Strongly Support" Regulation Of Cryptocurrencies
        G7 Finance Ministers “Strongly Support” Regulation Of Cryptocurrencies

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 20:20

        With bitcoin trading at fresh all time highs, if just shy of $20,000 for the time being, it was only a matter of time before the establishment renewed its calls for regulation of cryptos, especially now that official central bank digital currencies are in the process of being rolled out to enable instantaneous deposits from central banks (i.e., freshly printed currency which has no matching liability) to end-consumers in hopes of finally sparking one massive inflationary conflagration.

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        That changed today when G7 finance ministers and central bankers confirmed there is “strong support across the G7 on the need to regulate digital currencies” the Treasury Department said in a statement on Monday after a virtual meeting of the officials.

        As Reuters adds, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz issued a sharply worded statement after the meeting, underscoring his concerns about authorizing the launch of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency – which was recently renamed to Diem – in Germany and Europe.

        “A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf,” he said. “It is clear to me that Germany and Europe cannot and will not accept its entry into the market while the regulatory risks are not adequately addressed.” He added: “We must do everything possible to make sure the currency monopoly remains in the hands of states.”

        Oddly enough, he had no similar negative comments about digital currencies that are endorsed by central banks. In other words, digital currencies backed by central banks, good; but bitcoin and other cryptos not backed by a central bank, bad.

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        Steven Mnuchin hosted the 12th meeting of the G7 finance officials this year related to the COVID-19 pandemic as Washington prepares to hand over the presidency of the G7 to Britain next month. The G7 finance officials discussed ongoing responses to “the evolving landscape of crypto assets and other digital assets and national authorities’ work to prevent their use for malign purposes and illicit activities,” Treasury said.

        “There is strong support across the G7 on the need to regulate digital currencies,” the G7 statement said, and reiterated support for a G7 joint statement on digital payment in October, which said digital payments could improve access to financial services and cut inefficiencies and costs, but should be “appropriately supervised and regulated.”

        In other words, the only cryptocurrency that will be permitted is one which is backstopped by a central bank.

        G7 finance officials also discussed domestic and international economic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and strategies to achieve a robust global recovery, the statement said.

        As we showed previously, while not nearly front-page news, the push for central bank-backed digital currencies continues, and according to a recent timeline for the ISO20022 standard, the rollout is expected to take place some time in 2022-2023, once both SFIFT and FedWire adopt the new standard.

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      • The BIS Issues A Dire Warning: "We Are Moving From The Liquidity To The Solvency Phase Of The Crisis"
        The BIS Issues A Dire Warning: “We Are Moving From The Liquidity To The Solvency Phase Of The Crisis”

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 20:10

        There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and the BIS – the central banks’ central bank – warning about excesses from monetary policy (the most recent amusing example of this was last October when as we wrote, “Fed Announces QE4 One Day After BIS Warns QE Has Broken The Market“). Actually, to this list of 3 certainties we can add one more: central banks roundly ignoring the warnings from the central bank mothership.

        That, however, does not prevent the BIS from continuing this trend of warnings, and today the Basel-based organization did just that when in its Quarterly Review publication it cautioned that the surge in financial markets following COVID-19 vaccine breakthroughs and the U.S. election has left asset prices increasingly stretched.

        Sounding surprisingly similar to Goldman, which as we reported earlier today issued an almost identical warning, when it observed that its sentiment indicator is now +2.0 standard deviations above average…

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        … which has left positioning extremely stretched and represents a 98th percentile reading since 2009…

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        … the BIS’ quarterly report on Monday noted how credit markets and some of world’s biggest stock markets had surpassed their pre-pandemic levels despite the significant degree of uncertainty that still remains over the pandemic as it continues to spread.

        The BIS’ perpetual skeptic, Claudio Borio, who is also Head of the BIS Monetary and Economic Department, said a rally had been justified by the vaccine news and ongoing fiscal and monetary stimulus, but there were also signs of an overshoot.

        “A certain amount of daylight between risky asset valuations and economic prospects appears to persist,” Borio said diplomatically in his latest warning that markets and equities are disconnected, adding that “questions about overstretched valuations” had already been present before the coronavirus crisis.

        As regular readers know, the views of the Basel-based BIS – which was profiled here in 2015 in “Meet The Secretive Group That Runs The World” – are often watched by economists as the world’s top central bankers take part in its behind-closed-doors meetings. They are then summarily ignored because whereas the BIS has been preaching a return to monetary orthodoxy for the past decade, that is no longer possible for central banks which have boldly entered the global Minsky Moment with helicopter money in tow.

        In any case, Borio said one of the developments it was particularly wary of was the rapid easing of stress in corporate credit markets, which recently culminated in record low junk bond yields, a paradox considering that corporate leverage hit record highs, yet perfectly understandable in light of the Fed’s backstop of the entire corporate bond market.

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        And in a dire warning that got virtually no airplay today, Borio made the following stunning announcement to reporters. “We are moving from the liquidity to the solvency phase of the crisis.”

        Translation: it’s about to get much worse, only because central banks will ignore all the warnings, they will double down on the same failed policies, pushing leverage to even record-er highs, yields to even record-er lows, and sparking a propagation of zombies the likes of which have never before been seen.

        “We should be expecting more bankruptcies going forward yet credit spreads are quite low by historical standards, and indeed while banks are pricing risk more carefully we don’t see the same in capital markets.”

        One almost sensed the futility in Borio’s comments when he said that with $17.5 trillion worth of bonds now carrying negative yields many money managers were being pushed into riskier and riskier assets.

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        Well, WHOSE FAULT IS THAT MR CHIEF HEAD OF THE MONETARY DEPARTMENT AT THE CENTRAL BANKS’ CENTRAL BANK?

        Of course, Bortio wouldn’t bring himself to admitting that the very same central banks he is “supposed” to advise are ignoring his warnings and recommendations – and are instead flooding the market with trillions in stimulus which does not flow into the economy but merely makes asset holders richer beyond their wildest imagination – as that would mean that someone, clearly not the BIS, is now in charge of monetary and economic advice at central banks.

        Which also means that the BIS is no longer relevant, having been upstaged by its constituent members.

        Maybe for his next quarterly report, Borio and his BIS colleagues can write a lengthy report discussing just who or what is now in control of global monetary policy, because the BIS’ track record has merely devolved to publishing quarterly warning after warning that everyone now openly ignores and flaunts.

        In his parting words absolution to the helicopter money insanity that has taken over, Borio had no choice but to admit that – despite his misgivings – he has to side with the central banks: “The outlook is rather uncertain and you would rather err on the side of doing too much as opposed to doing too little.”

        Brilliant… just ignore that the entire world is now on the verge of a financial cliff where the next crash will not only wipe away hundreds of trillions in wealth and destroy confidence in central banks and fiat money, but abolish the voodoo “science” that is modern economics that keeps people like Borio employed.

        It will be for the best.

      • Virginia County Rebels Against Gov. Northam's Lockdown Restrictions – Declares Itself "First Amendment Sanctuary"
        Virginia County Rebels Against Gov. Northam’s Lockdown Restrictions – Declares Itself “First Amendment Sanctuary”

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 20:00

        Campbell County, Virginia has rejected Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s coronavirus restrictions – declaring itself a “First Amendment sanctuary” in a resolution which makes it the first locality in the state to openly resist Northam’s orders.

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        The County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the measure last week in response to Northam’s pre-Thanksgiving limits on public gatherings to 25 people or fewer, as well as an extension on the state’s mask mandate to include children over the age of five. Restaurants are also prohibited from selling alcohol after 10 p.m.

        Campbell County’s resolution requests that the sheriff’s department refuse to assist any official – state or federal – in “attempting to enforce the unconstitutional order of the Governor.”

        The rebellious decision echoes a 2019 measure in which the county (which voted 71% for Trump in the 2020 election) declared itself a “Second Amendment sanctuary” as one of several counties and cities which passed similar measures rejecting new gun-control laws in the commonwealth, according to WAVY.

        A group known as the Virginia Constitutional Conservatives has played a vital role in the latest push to reject statewide guidelines, drafting a template resolution online that proposes bold provisions for constitutional officers to follow.

        The template calls for local law enforcement to arrest “any State Police officer, State Health Agent, or Federal Agent” who attempts to enforce the governor’s order and for commonwealth’s attorneys “not prosecute the unconstitutional mandates prohibiting the people’s right to peaceably assemble.” Failure to follow these clauses “will result in the immediate removal of County funding.” –WAVY

        The resolution approved by Campbell County’s board excludes language threatening budgets of sheriff’s departments and local prosecutors.

        Matt Cline, a supervisor who represents the County’s Concord district, called Northam’s order yet another example of government overreach.

        “The governor’s order restricts the First Amendment and this resolution is in support of the rights of the citizens. Local businesses are struggling, these are real problems, not a political issue,” Cline said last Wednesday. “It isn’t right or left, these are real problems, just as covid is real.”

        “It’s important to note what’s not in this resolution as well,” he added. “It doesn’t say be cavalier, or that covid is a hoax. And it doesn’t say don’t wear a mask. It’s the responsibility of the individual.”

        Campbell, located near Lynchburg, has had an average of 16 new COVID-19 cases per day in the last week out of its population of 55,000 according to the state’s health department.

      • Ahead Of Trump Vaccine EO, Pfizer & Moderna Claim Inability To Supply Further Doses Until Mid-2021
        Ahead Of Trump Vaccine EO, Pfizer & Moderna Claim Inability To Supply Further Doses Until Mid-2021

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 19:56

        Update (2000ET): Shortly after WaPo broke the story about Pfizer, a Moderna spokesperson said a similar story – that it has deals with many other countries and will not be able to provide any further vaccines to the US until Q2 at the earliest.

        *  *  *

        One can’t help but sense a pattern here. Having claimed (and been forced to retract) that it did not benefit from the Trump administration’s Operation Warpspeed program to accelerate development of a COVID vaccine, Pfizer tonight told The White House that the CEO would not be attending the COVID vaccine summit (after leaking data early to the Biden administration), and now tonight, The Washington Post (of all outlets) reports that, Pfizer has told the Trump administration it cannot provide additional doses of its coronavirus vaccine until late June or early July because other countries have rushed to buy up its supply.

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        The government purchased 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine with an option to purchase another 500 million.

        But, WaPo claims that, according to multiple individuals familiar with the situation, Trump administration officials passed when Pfizer offered in late summer to sell the U.S. government additional doses of its Covid-19 vaccine.

        In a statement, Pfizer said that “any additional doses beyond the 100 million are subject to a separate and mutually acceptable agreement,” and that “the company is not able to comment on any confidential discussions that may be taking place with the U.S. government.”

        Pfizer spokeswoman Amy Rose declined to confirm or deny the information and said that beyond the first 100 million doses the U.S. has secured, a separate agreement would have to be reached.

        “The company is not able to comment on any confidential discussions that may be taking place with the U.S. government,” Rose said.

        However, while WaPo attempted to play up the panic and position the blame, Gen. Paul Ostrowski, who oversees logistics for Operation Warp Speed, the government’s initiative to expedite vaccine development, said:

        “I’m not concerned about our ability to buy vaccines to offer to all of the American public,” adding that “it’s clear that Pfizer made plans with other countries. Many have been announced. We understand those pieces.”

        Additionally, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said,

        “We are confident that we will have 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine as agreed to in our contract, and beyond that, we have five other vaccine candidates.”

        The market is down modestly in the after-hours after this news…

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        But, one wonders why this pattern is occurring? Having been baptized in the fire of the last four years of deceit, we wonder if the possibility of a fast-mutating virus could mean that the much-heralded vaccines won’t stop the spread of the virus as effectively as everyone has hailed; and so, again – with pure speculation – one wonders if this move by Pfizer (through WaPo) is giving Biden some cover for when it all goes pear-shaped in H1 2021 (after the 100 days of mask-wearing), enabling him to blame Trump for lack of preparedness?

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        In other news that broke today, Fox News reports that President Trump is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday that will ensure all Americans have access to the coronavirus vaccine before the U.S. government begins aiding nations around the world.

        Senior administration officials told Fox News Monday that the president will reemphasize to the American people that the “priority has been an America First approach,” during a vaccine summit at the White House Tuesday.

        The official said that the executive order is “clear and is directing that we prioritize access to the American people before working with partners and allies to provide access to the vaccine.”

        So, one other possibility is that this is simply a negotiating ploy by Pfizer, knowing the EO will put pressure on them to deliver.

      • The Federalist Destroys Attempted Debunking Of Late-Night Ballot Malarkey In Georgia
        The Federalist Destroys Attempted Debunking Of Late-Night Ballot Malarkey In Georgia

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 19:45

        After explosive video was presented during a Georgia state Senate hearing which clearly shows a handful of election workers in Atlanta waiting for observers and the press to leave, before producing several containers of ballots for a late-night vote-counting party, a group called Lead Stories published a “hoax alert” which falsely claims to have debunked the footage.

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        The “hoax alert” was peddled by the Washington Post, Newsweek and others – and among other things states that government officials told them that the ballots were in “containers — not suitcases,” and that “party observers were never told to leave because counting was over for the night.”

        Nevermind the fact that Lead Stories breathlessly believes claims made by government officials – The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway just obliterated the entire ‘fact check,’ proving that the video hasn’t been debunked whatsoever.

        First – Party officials claim observers were never told that counting was over for the night.

        False: Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer “has consistently said that’s what happened at State Farm Arena, beginning hours after the election.”

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        That claim, which he has repeated consistently, is backed by sworn affidavits from two Republican observers, who further allege they were kept an unreasonable distance from the ballots even while they were at State Farm Arena, making it completely impossible to meaningfully do their jobs. (The video, which shows the room from four different angles, fully supports the claim that poll watchers were kept away from meaningful observation of ballot handling.)

        The observers say that they arrived for their observation jobs around 8 p.m. They say in the first half of the 10 o’clock hour, a woman with blonde braids who appeared to be a supervisor “yelled out” to those present in the room that they would stop working for the night and would resume in the morning. The Republican poll watchers said they asked Fulton County Elections Spokesperson Regina Waller questions about the status of the ballot count multiples times but that she refused to answer. –The Federalist

        According to Lead Stories, however, “There was never an announcement made to the media and other observers about the counting being over for the night and them needing to leave, according to [Frances Watson, chief investigator for the Georgia Secretary of State], who was provided information by the media liaison, who was present.” Lead Stories doesn’t name this “media liaison,” however according to the affidavits, it was Regina Waller – the Fulton County public affairs manager for elections.

        As The Federalist‘s Hemingway notes:

        OK, so on the one hand you have sworn affidavits from observers saying that supervisors told ballot counters to go home for the evening shortly after 10 p.m. and a video showing everyone leaving en masse at that time. And on the other hand, you have two government officials promising that no one was told that counting was over.

        Hemingway further points out that ABC News reported ballot counters were sent home at the same time GOP observers say everyone was told counting had stopped.

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        So, GOP poll watchers and the MSM reported that counting was delayed.

        And it wasn’t just ABC that reported counting was being delayed. Many media outlets reported on counting delays. See, for example, “Fulton County stopped counting absentee ballots for the night.”

        Local NBC journalists on site that night independently confirmed “they were told counting was done for the night” and given no indication it would continue before the next morning. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution even reported of a “plan” to stop scanning ballots at the same time the poll watchers said things were shut down… –The Federalist

        Second claim – A designated election observer was sent by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office

        Misleading: While Newsweek – and later Lead Stories – claim that while partisan observers may not have been present for the vote count, an “unnamed state election board monitor was present.”

        A state election board monitor, who asked for his name not to be used due to safety concerns, told Lead Stories on the phone on December 3, 2020, that he was present at the vote counting location beginning at 11:52 p.m., after leaving briefly at earlier in the evening. He then stayed until about 12:45 a.m., when the work that night was completed.

        The deputy chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office was present beginning at 12:15 a.m. November 4, he said. –Newsweek

        Yet, the monitor was there for less than an hour – from 11:52 p.m. on election night to 12:45 a.m. – which means that nobody was observing the count for over an hour after the ballots began being scanned at 10:35 p.m. 

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        So, the Lead Stories ‘fact check’ actually reveals that the monitor wasn’t present for much of the time in question. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s monitor “is the subject of an affidavit from another witness, devoted exclusively to concerns about the monitor’s conduct prior to the late hours on election day, according to a member of the Trump team. The claims include that he was sleeping on the job and staring at his phone.”

        Read the rest of the report here.

      • Bank Of Japan Is Now The Biggest Owner Of Japanese Stocks With $434 Billion Portfolio
        Bank Of Japan Is Now The Biggest Owner Of Japanese Stocks With $434 Billion Portfolio

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 12/07/2020 – 19:25

        The Japanification of Japan continued to boldly go where no other central bank lunatic has gone before, with this surreal one-way voyage crossing a historic milestone in November when according to estimates by Shingo Ide, equity strategist at NLI Research Institute, the Bank of Japan – which unlike most developed central banks long ago dropped any pretense of not manipulating equity markets and has been buying ETFs and REITs for over a decade – took over as the biggest owner of the nation’s stocks, with the total value of its holdings climbing above a record 45 trillion yen.

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        On the back of massive ETF purchases to prop up the Japanese stock market amid the pandemic this year combined with subsequent valuation gains, the value of the BOJ’s Japanese equity portfolio has hit 45.1 trillion yen, $434 billion, in November.

        That, according to Bloomberg, marks the first time that the central bank’s holdings have eclipsed those of the other Japanese market whale, the world’s largest pension fund the Government Pension Investment Fund, whose equity holdings Ide estimated at 44.8 trillion yen last month.

        What this also means is that by matching the purchases of the country’s largest pension fund, the BOJ is effectively backstoping the country’s retirement system which would be insolvent had the BOJ not propped up the country’s equities which is where a substantial portion of retirement “wealth” is parked since JGBs yield next to nothing.

        To be sure, regardless of which Japanese whale is bigger, the massive presence of these two public entities in public “capital markets” (where independent price discovery no longer exists) has raised concerns over their influence on market prices. The combination of “a state-run institution, the BOJ, and the country’s representative public pension fund, the GPIF, buying up local equities feels distorted,” said Satoshi Okumoto, chief executive officer at Fukoku Capital Management, quoted by Bloomberg. We are confident that Satoshi realizes that without the “distorted” buying by these institutions, the Nikkei and Topix would be a fraction of its current value… and he would most likely be out of a job.

        Realizing that allocating capital to Japan’s zero-yielding bonds is a losing proposition, the GPIF increased its equity market presence in 2014 when it doubled its allocation target for local stocks to 25% as part of an effort to increase returns through a shift into riskier assets. The BOJ’s ETF purchases started in earnest in 2010 (the BOJ had been purchasing equities previously as well but with nowhere near the same “dedication”) and accelerated later as part of Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s unprecedented stimulus package aimed at revitalizing the economy.

        As shown below, the BOJ further ramped up its support program this year as the coronavirus outbreak sent equity markets tumbling, saying in March it could potentially purchase 12 trillion yen worth of Japan ETFs this year, double its annual target. After a few months of heavy buying the pace has slowed back down, and it’s likely the total for 2020 will fall short of the new theoretical limit, although we are confident the BOJ will more than make up for it over the long-term.

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        Even at the current pace, however, “the gap between the BOJ and GPIF’s stock holdings will widen further,” according to NLI’s Ide, especially if share prices continue to rise: the benchmark Topix climbed 11% in November while the Nikkei 225 Stock Average surged 15% in its best month since 1994. That pushed unrealized gains on the BOJ’s stock purchases to over 10 trillion yen at one point in November, according to Ide.

        Amusingly, Japanese strategists took time to remind readers that central banks never sell the stocks they have bought: “The BOJ has never taken profits on its holdings and only continues to build its holdings in ETFs,” said Takashi Ito, a strategist at Nomura. The GPIF, meanwhile, “has to sell equities when prices are high to adjust the weight of stock holdings within its portfolio.”

        Yet as the BOJ loads up on even more stocks, it “could face more scrutiny” over whether it needs to continue buying equities when prices are elevated like they are presently, said NLI’s Ide. BOJ Governor Kuroda has repeatedly said that the ETF purchases are needed as part of monetary stimulus to reach the BOJ’s inflation target, an excuse which in light of events in the past decade is as laughable as it is stupid now that even shoeshine boys know that the only mandate central banks have is to make sure stocks never drop and the business cycle remains dead.

      Digest powered by RSS Digest

      Dec 07

      Today’s News 7th December 2020

      • World Food Program Director: 270 Million People Now "Marching Toward Starvation" In Wake of COVID-19
        World Food Program Director: 270 Million People Now “Marching Toward Starvation” In Wake of COVID-19

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 23:40

        Submitted by Joseph Jankowski of Planet Free Will,

        According to the head of the World Food Program (WFP), the amount of people around the world now on the brink of starvation has doubled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic effects of government reactions to the virus.

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        Director of the WFP, David Beasley, who previously warned that the “cure” for the COVID-19 pandemic should not be worse than the disease, told the United Nations General Assembly on Friday that 270 million people are now “marching towards starvation” in wake of the economic effects of the pandemic.

        “As I had warned the United Nations Security council back in April, that if we’re not careful the cure could be worse than the disease because of the economic ripple effect – if we don’t handle economic disruptions, supply chain disruptions, ect. …” Beasley told the council.

        “As we predicted back in April, the number of people that were going to be marching toward the brink of starvation had already risen from 80 million to 135 million the last four years, primarily because of man made conflict,” the director went on, adding:

        “But because of COVID it’s now spiking from 135 million people – not going to bed hungry now, [but] literally marching towards starvation – to 270 million people.”

        Beasley expressed a bleak outlook for 2021 as he believes next year is going to be “catastrophic based on what we’re seeing at this stage of the game.”

        He said that “because we’ve spent $19 trillion, that money may not, and will not most likely be available for 2021”  as economic contractions out pace the need to supply a lifeline to those starving.

        In April, Beasley pointed to an already deepening starvation crisis happening in conflict torn nations such as Yemen. He would warn that the world is “facing a perfect storm” with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and that if “funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade” could not be avoided “we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months.”

        The WFP director’s shocking warning was sounded just prior to alarm bells raised by the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19, Dr. David Nabarro, who cautioned that national lockdowns should be avoided as a primary response to COVID-19 as they have the consequence of “making poor people an awful lot poorer.”

        “Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” Nabarro said in October.

        In May, UNICEF predicted that in 118 low and middle-income nations, 1.2 million children under the age of five could die in the following six months because of the surge of declining access to medical care “due to lockdowns, curfews and transport disruptions.”

        Starvation as a result of the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns is not unique to nations at the bottom of the economic rung.

        Feeding America, a US based non-profit organization that operates a network of food banks, is predicting that one out of every four children in America could suffer from hunger by the end of 2020.

      • Canada Warns Conspiracy Theorists Could Burn 5G Towers, Claiming Link To Virus 
        Canada Warns Conspiracy Theorists Could Burn 5G Towers, Claiming Link To Virus 

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 23:15

        A conspiracy theory linking 5G to the coronavirus has spread like wildfire this year. In April, numerous 5G towers were set on fire by folks in Britain who believed that radiation from the towers was contributing to the spread of COVID-19.

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        Now Canada’s intelligence service has warned in a new confidential report, seen by Global News, that violent extremists could be ready to attack 5G wireless communication towers.

        “As companies begin 5G infrastructure construction in earnest, extremists from across the IMV extremist landscape could engage in acts of arson and vandalism against that infrastructure,” Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) wrote in the report. 

        The confidential report comes amid a wave of COVID-19 disinformation swirling around internet forums that suggest 5G technology could spread the virus. 

        “Given the extraordinary effect the COVID-19 pandemic has created on the lives of individuals across the world, CSIS is mindful that certain threat actors, across multiple threat landscapes, may seek to take advantage to advance their own interests,” CSIS spokesperson John Townsend said.

        Global News lists some of the most most popular COVID-19/5G conspiracy theories: 

        Perhaps the most elaborate asserts that 5G was designed by governments to depopulate the world, and is part of a broader conspiracy theory called Agenda 21 that imagines the United Nations is trying to establish a new world order.

        None have any scientific validity, but white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anarchists have all adopted COVID-19 conspiracy theories to varying degrees, while the anti-vaxxer movement has promoted the notion that 5G is responsible for spreading COVID-19.

        CSIS said physical opposition to 5G wireless communication towers is significantly less when compared to other countries in Europe. 

        However, it said “Canadian-based online communities” were pumping 5G conspiracy and far-right extremist groups were attempting to “capitalize on ‘5G hysteria.'”

        CSIS noted there had been a handful of incidents in the country of cellphone towers being damaged. The most significant attack was in Laval, Quebec, in April, where one tower was torched and sustained one million dollars in damage. In early May, at least six towers were torched in Montreal.

      • Escobar: There's No Escape From Our Techno-Feudal World
        Escobar: There’s No Escape From Our Techno-Feudal World

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 22:50

        Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

        The political economy of the Digital Age remains virtually terra incognita. In Techno-Feudalism , published three months ago in France (no English translation yet), Cedric Durand, an economist at the Sorbonne, provides a crucial, global public service as he sifts through the new Matrix that controls all our lives.

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        Durand places the Digital Age in the larger context of the historical evolution of capitalism to show how the Washington consensus ended up metastasized into the Silicon Valley consensus. In a delightful twist, he brands the new grove as the “Californian ideology”.

        We’re far away from Jefferson Airplane and the Beach Boys; it’s more like Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” on steroids, complete with IMF-style “structural reforms” emphasizing “flexibilization” of work and outright marketization/financialization of everyday life.

        The Digital Age was crucially associated with right-wing ideology from the very start. The incubation was provided by the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), active from 1993 to 2010 and conveniently funded, among others, by Microsoft, At&T, Disney, Sony, Oracle, Google, and Yahoo.

        In 1994, PFF held a ground-breaking conference in Atlanta that eventually led to a seminal Magna Carta: literally, Cyberspace and the American Dream: a Magna Carta for the Knowledge Era, published in 1996, during the first Clinton term.

        Not by accident the magazine Wired was founded, just like PFF, in 1993, instantly becoming the house organ of the “Californian ideology”.

        Among the authors of the Magna Carta we find futurist Alvin “Future Shock” Toffler and Reagan’s former scientific counselor George Keyworth. Before anyone else, they were already conceptualizing how “cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment which is literally universal”. Their Magna Carta was the privileged road map to explore the new frontier.

        Those Randian heroes

        Also not by accident the intellectual guru of the new frontier was Ayn Rand and her quite primitive dichotomy between “pioneers” and the mob. Rand declared that egotism is good, altruism is evil, and empathy is irrational.

        When it comes to the new property rights of the new Eldorado, all power should be exercised by the Silicon Valley “pioneers”, a Narcissus bunch in love with their mirror image as superior Randian heroes. In the name of innovation they should be allowed to destroy any established rules, in a Schumpeterian “creative destruction” rampage.

        That has led to our current environment, where Google, Facebook, Uber, and co. can overstep any legal framework, imposing their innovations like a fait accompli.

        Durand goes to the heart of the matter when it comes to the true nature of “digital domination”: US leadership was never achieved because of spontaneous market forces.

        On the contrary. The history of Silicon Valley is absolutely dependent on state intervention – especially via the industrial-military complex and the aero-spatial complex. The Ames Research Center, one of NASA’s top labs, is in Mountain View. Stanford was always awarded juicy military research contracts. During WWII, Hewlett Packard, for instance, was flourishing thanks to their electronics being used to manufacture radars. Throughout the 1960s, the US military bought the bulk of the still infant semiconductor production.

        The Rise of Data Capital, a 2016 MIT Technological Review report produced “in partnership” with Oracle, showed how digital networks open access to a new, virgin underground brimming with resources: “Those that arrive first and take control obtain the resources they’re seeking” – in the form of data.

        So everything from video-surveillance images and electronic banking to DNA samples and supermarket tickets implies some form of territorial appropriation. Here we see in all its glory the extractivist logic inbuilt in the development of Big Data.

        Durand gives us the example of Android to illustrate the extractivist logic in action. Google made Android free for all smartphones so it would acquire a strategic market position, beating the Apple ecosystem and thus becoming the default internet entry point for virtually the whole planet. That’s how a de facto, immensely valuable, online real estate empire is built.

        The key point is that whatever the original business – Google, Amazon, Uber – strategies of conquering cyberspace all point to the same target: take control of “spaces of observation and capture” of data.

        About the Chinese credit system…

        Durand offers a finely balanced analysis of the Chinese credit system – a public/private hybrid system launched in 2013 during the 3rd plenum of the 18th Congress of the CCP, under the motto “to value sincerity and punish insincerity”.

        For the State Council, the supreme government authority in China, what really mattered was to encourage behavior deemed responsible in the financial, economic and socio-political spheres, and sanction what is not. It’s all about trust. Beijing defines it as “a method of perfecting the socialist market economy system that improves social governance”.

        The Chinese term – shehui xinyong – is totally lost in translation in the West. Way more complex than “social credit”, it’s more about “trustworthiness”, in the sense of integrity. Instead of the pedestrian Western accusations of being an Orwellian system, priorities include the fight against fraud and corruption at the national, regional and local levels, violations of environmental rules, disrespect of food security norms.

        Cybernetic management of social life is being seriously discussed in China since the 1980s. In fact, since the 1940s, as we see in Mao’s Little Red Book. It could be seen as inspired by the Maoist principle of “mass lines”, as in “start with the masses to come back to the masses: to amass the ideas of the masses (which are dispersed, non-systematic), concentrate them (in general ideas and systematic), then come back to the masses to diffuse and explain them, make sure the masses assimilate them and translate them into action, and verify in the action of the masses the pertinence of these ideas”.

        Durand’s analysis goes one step beyond Soshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism when he finally reaches the core of his thesis, showing how digital platforms become “fiefdoms”: they live out of, and profit from, their vast “digital territory” peopled with data even as they lock in power over their services, which are deemed indispensable.

        And just as in feudalism, fiefdoms dominate territory by attaching serfs. Masters made their living profiting from the social power derived from the exploitation of their domain, and that implied unlimited power over the serfs.

        It all spells out total concentration. Silicon Valley stalwart Peter Thiel has always stressed the target of the digital entrepreneur is exactly to bypass competition. As quoted in Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Thiel declared, “Capitalism and competition are antagonistic. Competition is for losers.”

        So now we are facing not a mere clash between Silicon Valley capitalism and finance capital, but actually a new mode of production: a turbo-capitalist survival as rentier capitalism, where Silicon giants take the place of estates, and also the State. That is the “techno-feudal” option, as defined by Durand.

        Blake meets Burroughs

        Durand’s book is extremely relevant to show how the theoretical and political critique of the Digital Age is still rarified. There is no precise cartography of all those dodgy circuits of revenue extraction. No analysis of how do they profit from the financial casino – especially mega investment funds that facilitate hyper-concentration. Or how do they profit from the hardcore exploitation of workers in the gig economy.

        The total concentration of the digital globe is leading to a scenario, as Durand recalls, already dreamed up by Stuart Mill, where every land in a country belonged to a single master. Our generalized dependency on the digital masters seems to be “the cannibal future of liberalism in the age of algorithms”.

        Is there a possible way out? The temptation is to go radical – a Blake/Burroughs crossover. We have to expand our scope of comprehension – and stop confusing the map (as shown in the Magna Carta) with the territory (our perception).

        William Blake, in his proto-psychedelic visions, was all about liberation and subordination – depicting an authoritarian deity imposing conformity via a sort of source code of mass influence. Looks like a proto-analysis of the Digital Age.

        William Burroughs conceptualized Control – an array of manipulations including mass media (he would be horrified by social media). To break down Control, we must be able to hack into and disrupt its core programs. Burroughs showed how all forms of Control must be rejected – and defeated: “Authority figures are seen for what they are: dead empty masks manipulated by computers”.

        Here’s our future: hackers or slaves.

      • Trump Terminates Chinese Cultural Exchange Programs, Decries "Soft Power Propaganda Tools"
        Trump Terminates Chinese Cultural Exchange Programs, Decries “Soft Power Propaganda Tools”

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 22:25

        It’s but the latest in what has become near daily punitive actions leveled against China by the Trump administration, which as promised looks to continue right up until Trump leaves office next month.

        On Friday the State Department announced it has shut down five cultural exchange programs, the origins of which go back a half-century, calling them “soft power propaganda tools,” according to Reuters.

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        AP file image

        The programs were set up after the establishment of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act in 1961, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy which was aimed at boosting cultural educational ties with foreign countries. 

        The programs which have been “terminated” according to the announcement on the State Department’s website include the Policymakers Educational China Trip Program, the U.S.-China Friendship Program, the U.S.-China Leadership Exchange Program, the U.S.-China Transpacific Exchange Program and the Hong Kong Educational and Cultural Program.

        “While other programs funded under the auspices of the [Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act] are mutually beneficial, the five programs in question are fully funded and operated by the PRC government as soft power propaganda tools,” the statement said.

        “They provide carefully curated access to Chinese Communist Party officials, not to the Chinese people, who do not enjoy freedoms of speech and assembly,” it added.

        Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would only maintain those foreign cultural exchange programs that “reciprocal and fair,” however while suggesting the Chinese programs are “one-way programs” that are “not mutually beneficial.”

      • Election Day Info Blackout Shows US Media Is No Friend Of The People. Americans Must Demand Better
        Election Day Info Blackout Shows US Media Is No Friend Of The People. Americans Must Demand Better

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 22:00

        Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

        While half of the United States is mesmerized by witness testimony describing the ‘irregularities’ that purportedly occurred in the 2020 presidential contest between the incumbent Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the other half has been left deliberately in the dark by an activist media.

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        It has become almost a cliché to say that the United States is now fiercely divided into parallel universes, alternative realities, otherwise known as the Republican and Democratic camps. One of the primary reasons for this great divide, aside from the obvious ideological differences, is that just one side, that is, the left, predominantly controls the flow of news and social media content.

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        Indeed, the ‘legacy media’ even feels itself bold enough to cast judgment on presidential messages via Twitter in real time. If ever there was a recipe for disaster, as the most consequential election in recent memory remains up for grabs, this is it.

        On November 30, Bobby Piton, a mathematician and expert, testified at the Arizona voter fraud hearing where he provided compelling evidence that up to 300,000 “fake people” cast a vote in the contested election of Nov. 3. The data, if correct, was alarming in its implications since it meant the difference between Trump or Biden winning the fiercely contested swing state. Certainly the major media networks, in the interest of safeguarding the voting process and consequentially democracy itself, would be interested in providing its viewers with such news, right? Think again.

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        Not only was Piton’s riveting testimony sent to the memory hole by all of the ‘legacy’ media networks, but Twitter actually decided to block his account the very next day. Piton was treated as yet another ‘conspiracy theorist’ nutcase who will probably need to enter some sort of re-indoctrination internment camp before he can join polite society again. He certainly won’t be in need of company if the thought police get their way.

        Just days earlier, the social media platform also suspended the account of Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, who testified at that state’s election hearing. Twitter later said that Mastriano’s suspension was a “glitch,” which begs the question as to why these technological breakdowns almost always, without fail, target Republicans.

        The very same media blackout has hit dozens of other poll watchers, regular citizens with no political ax to grind who had the courage to come forward and relay their stories in the hope of protecting America’s democratic process. Their reward has been crickets from the media industrial complex, which is essentially telling those witnesses that their stories do not matter; only the stories that are peddled to them from the corporate masters are all that count.

        Such medieval rationale applies even to the President of the United States, who gave what he said was possibly “the most important speech I’ve ever made.”

        “We used to have what was called ‘Election Day,’ but now we have Elections Days, Weeks and Months, and lots of bad things happened during this ridiculous long period of time,” Trump said in his 46-minute statement from the White House.

        The American leader then proceeded to provide the various ways that the U.S. election system has come under “coordinated assault and siege,” as he described it. Naturally, Twitter tagged the presidential message by saying “This claim about election fraud is disputed.” Imagine, if you will, what the response would have been had the media titans dared to interrupt one of FDR’s famous fireside chats with a message disputing the veracity of the claims.

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

        In any case, the media, acting, or not acting, in absolute lockstep (jackboot?) synchronicity, decided that the U.S. leader’s remarks were not important enough for the American people to hear. Chris Cuomo, CNN talking head, explained his network’s decision to blank the president’s “tirade.”

        “Here’s the fact,” Cuomo began. “Trump is the least of our problems. He is a simple study at this point. Trump is toxic. Period. Sure, he’s going to go out with a bang as in trying to blow up as much as he can. He is absolutely trying to make nothing better, despite the fact that America is in a time of abject crisis.”

        Was Cuomo talking about the election crisis that has left the United States without any idea who will be its next president, and especially more now that new evidence of foul play are emerging every single day? Of course not. CNN (which Project Veritas just demonstrated has a very big dog in the outcome of the ongoing race) has decided for their audiences, who apparently can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves, that what the U.S. leader has to say is not important because…yes, Covid, the disease that just keeps giving the Democrats excuses to kill any semblance of democratic principles left in the country.

        Cue the hysteria.

        “He’s not working on the pandemic that is worse than ever,” crazy Cuomo continued.

        “He’s not making a deal on relief when more people are struggling to put food on the damn table [cue the violins] than at any time in this country since my parents were babies during the Great Depression.”

        In other words, Trump is acting like a monster for considering the integrity of the most consequential election in U.S. history when there is a virus on the loose that leaves 99.8 of its ‘victims’ alive and well.

        Judging by CNN and the rest of the mainstream media’s breathtaking arrogance, it is not so hard to imagine a day when the president – whether he or she be Trump or some other nation-loving populist – is outright denied the ability to transmit information over social media, while being deprived of the necessary news coverage, as is already the case with the 45th POTUS. This is the pinnacle of corporate power, or rather the abuse of corporate power.

        Such a turn of events in the ‘land of the free’ should be of massive concern for both Democrats and Republicans. Yet partisan politics is winning the day, as the Democrats and their lapdog liberal media believe they have sealed the White House. And perhaps they have. But such a victory will be short-lived as corporate power will not stop at Washington, D.C., but will go on to ravage every last remnant of freedom and democracy in the country. It goes without saying that fake elections supported by fake media will never nurture the conditions for a thriving democracy.

      • Iran Says Nuclear Scientist Was Assassinated Using Satellite-Controlled Gun
        Iran Says Nuclear Scientist Was Assassinated Using Satellite-Controlled Gun

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 21:35

        Iranian nuclear scientist and military researcher Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated using sophisticated electronic equipment controlled via satellite link, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

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        Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in a gun and car bomb attack on the outskirts of Tehran on Nov. 27, was driving on a highway east of the capital when the weapon “zoomed in” on him “using artificial intelligence,” Mehr said on Sunday, quoting Commodore Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As General Ramezan Sharif, IRGC spokesman added, “the assassination of a scientist on the street with a satellite device can not undermine our security.”

        According to Bloomberg, various accounts of the assassination have emerged since the incident. While early news reports said he was caught in a gunfight between his bodyguards, others said that in a scene seemingly inspired by Breaking Bad, he was fired at by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a pick-up truck operated by someone who later fled the country.

        Last week the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said a remotely controlled weapon was used in the ambush that claimed the scientist’s life. The operation was “very complicated” and didn’t require human presence on the site at the time of the attack.

        The incident is the second targeted killing of a high-ranking Iranian official since January, when outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike on General Qassem Soleimani.

        Iranian officials have accused Israel of masterminding Fakhrizadeh’s assassination. Iranian media reported that the remains of the weapon that killed him, which was recovered from the scene, indicated that it originated from the Israeli military. In response, Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said his government had no idea who killed Fakhrizadeh, but added that whoever did made the world a safer place because the Iranian physicist took “an active part in creating a nuclear weapon.”

        Iran has denied trying to militarize its nuclear research, saying it’s purely civilian in purpose.

      • The Hype Surrounding Environmental, Social, And Governance Investing
        The Hype Surrounding Environmental, Social, And Governance Investing

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 21:10

        Authored by Robert Wright via The American Institute for Economic Research,

        ESG (environment, social, and governance) funds are the hottest investments going. The only problem is that they are like free trade coffee — the consumer (investor) pays more for the same product. They might “feel good” in the process but their feelings are irrational because they are paying for a brand label rather than anything substantive. No subset of investors, after all, can permanently change the world through their preferences.

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        A recent study by Barclays shows that while one in four investment dollars are currently in mutual funds labeled ESG, most investors do not realize that those funds are virtually indistinguishable from non-ESG-labelled funds in terms of portfolio composition or returns. Only fees differ and, unsurprisingly, are considerably higher for ESG-labeled funds — on average almost 0.75 percent vs. less than 0.50 percent for non-ESG-labeled funds.

        P.T. Barnum once claimed that there is a sucker born every minute but thanks to population growth and an increasingly complex world, it is closer today to every second. You’ve heard them in the supermarket: “Oh ma Gah, these eggs cost twice as much as those eggs but these ones are la tautly organic, tautly.” 

        Maybe some organic eggs are different but in an effort to stay at least six meters from others, for their safety of course, I accidentally saw empty crates of dollar per dozen bulk food club eggs suspiciously close to $4 per dozen “organic” eggs for sale at a roadside Jersey farm produce stand over the mild Thanksgiving holiday. “That’s a lot of eggs,” I said after returning to the front of the stand when the old people finally cleared, “Where are all the chickens?” 

        “Oh, we buy them from the farmer down the road,” the purveyor said.

        “Uh-huh,” I responded, “you mean Sam’s … place off Berlin-Cross Keys Road?” a veiled reference to the Sam’s Club there. The icy stare and I assume bared teeth behind her mask meant it was time for this cowboy to mosey along, organic eggless and friendless.

        Shouldn’t I have stayed and warned everyone about this egg arbitrage outfit? After all, we learned this summer that many on the Left believe that if you aren’t actively anti-fraud, you are pro-fraud. I agree, so beware those selling organic this and that as it may just be the same old product, made the same old way, but with a new label and at a special P.T. Barnum price. 

        But organic food fraud is small potatoes compared to ESG-labelled funds. If they charge just 0.25 percent higher fees for essentially nothing extra in return, irrational investors are gifting the fund managers big bucks, billions of extra fees per year in an industry with $18 trillion under management.

        No, I do not think we need additional government regulation, I think we need investors (citizens, neighbors) who are rational and informed, who care about actual outcomes and not just feeling good through virtue signalling. It is no virtue, after all, to invest in something merely because it is labelled something that sounds or seems good.

        The simple fact of the matter is that governments, not voluntary associations like corporations, cause most of the world’s problems and voluntary associations, not governments, could provide most of the solutions. If people really cared about the environment, for example, they would shrink the size of government and allow voluntary associations to do more.

        Private ownership of land and animals is the surest way of promoting actual biodiversity. While some tracts may be ravaged for resources, many people care deeply about the environment and are happy to pay for the permanent preservation of habitat and animal species great and small.

        Consider, for example, the Pennypack Trust, which for exactly 50 years has been preserving hundreds of acres of meadows and forest floodplains along Pennypack Creek just 15 miles north of Center City Philadelphia. How many more such local endeavors would have arisen if taxes were not so … robust?

        “But,” you can almost hear the central planners retort, “some projects are too big for private initiative.” Maybe, but probably not. Consider the American Prairie Reserve, a Montana nonprofit bigger than some New England states dedicated to preserving massive swathes of the northern Great Plains shortgrass prairie ecosystem, from bison to prairie dogs and all the sundry delish types of vegetation they eat. 

        The APR’s success is due to the tight budget constraints it faces, not massive investments from governments or ESG investors. It buys or leases land strategically to connect islands of state and federal land to preserve or restore wildlife migration corridors and provide large, unbroken patches of habitat. It’s rational, i.e., sustainable, environmentalism at its finest and could be replicated the continent over if investors simply donated those extra ESG fees to market-based environmental groups.

        Unfortunately, as comedian George Carlin liked to remind us, most Americans are “stupid.”

        When they read “market-based” they think “greedy bastards” instead of “efficient,” even when only well-governed nonprofits are involved.

        Of course nonprofits cannot meet all our desires, so for-profit investment has a role to play in the market-based environmental movement as well. Environmentally-conscious investors and fund managers seem not to realize that “profit maximization” is simply another way of saying “waste minimization.” That is a good thing, right? Don’t we all naturally want to invest in waste minimizing/profit maximizing companies anyway? 

        So what is ESG really about? I doubt anything substantive but, perhaps, someday ESG-labelled funds will actually be ESG funds, or in other words will meaningfully differentiate between ESG and “wicked” companies. But then, as the Financial Times recently pointed out, they will face a conundrum. To the extent ESG successfully diverts investment away from “wicked” companies, their share prices will decline, i.e., they will become inexpensive and hence set up to outperform so long as any subset of investors continues to maximize returns/minimize waste. 

        Meanwhile, the shares of ESG companies will get wicked expensive as more and more money piles into them. At that point, with the expectation of low returns on ESG and high ones on “wicked” stocks, virtue investors and ESG fund managers will have to eat palpably lower returns or creatively reclassify “wicked” companies to get higher performing stocks into their portfolios, i.e., destroy the meaningful differentiation between ESG and “wicked” companies once again. 

        Short of a completely command economy, “wicked” companies will always find investors willing to earn excess returns no matter how many ESG investors choose to continue to stew in low returns. After all, even truly wicked, illegal companies engaged in drug, gun, or human trafficking face few financing constraints. Law enforcement can run illegal businesses up the security market line (more risk but more reward) but can’t run them all off because their very success at forcing exit through incarceration creates market conditions conducive to new entrants. 

        In the end, then, the hip hop group Public Enemy was actually the investing public’s friend; when it comes to ESG, “Don’t Believe the Hype” because investors “Can’t Truss It.”

      • US Reports Record COVID Hospitalizations, 20K+ Patients In ICU: Live Updates
        US Reports Record COVID Hospitalizations, 20K+ Patients In ICU: Live Updates

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 20:55

        Summary:

        • US ICU patients top 20K
        • Azar says vaccines widely available by Q2
        • US cases top 200K for 4th day
        • NJ reports record 6K+ new cases
        • US deaths highest since springtime peak
        • NYC positivity rate tops 5%
        • Bavaria orders new lockdown
        • Italy outbreak improves
        • Indonesia receives first shipment of Sinovac doses
        • Polish deaths slow
        • Queen Elizabeth to get vaccine

        * * *

        Update (1800ET): Not only did US hospitalizations reach yet another new record on Sunday, the number of patients across the US in the ICU has topped 20K for the first time.

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        DHHS chief Alex Azar took to ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday to tell Americans that FDA emergency approval of a vaccine could arrive ‘within days’, while also moving up the timeline, saying any American who wants a COVID vaccine could get one by the start of the second quarter. 

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        Previously, federal public health officials and ‘Operation Warp Speed’ had targeted the beginning of Q3 as the time when the vast majority of Americans would at least have access to a vaccine. Let’s not forget: Pfizer has already sown doubts about these timelines and targets by slashing its 2021 year-end delivery target by 50%.

        A video of DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach expressing skepticism about the vaccine’s efficacy has been making the rounds on Twitter. But while severel “listen to the science” types took Gundlach to task for warning that the virus’s mutations could ultimately make it more difficult to eradicate, the NFL has just delivered an important reminder that there are different strains of the virus – and some are appreciably deadlier than others.

        In the US, the COVID-19 numbers are still rising as temperatures continue to fall; Winter looms in the Western hemisphere, and the US has been confirming new COVID-19 cases at a rate of more than 200k/day for the last four days. Hospitalizations climbed north of 101K, a new record, while the 7-day average for daily fatalities hit a new post-springtime high of 2,123, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

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        Though the 7-day average remains at its post-springtime highs, deaths have actually been declining for four days now since hitting their latest record…

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        …as this past week remains unquestionably the most severe since the start of the pandemic.

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        New Jersey reported another record single-day number for new cases on Sunday, virtually guaranteeing that Garden State residents will be placed on lockdown in the coming days, just as new ‘stay at home’ orders are being imposed across California, with the entire state expected to soon reach the threshold. New Jersey reported a record 6.05K cases, while there were 3,241 hospitalizations, a slight decrease from the previous day. The latest positive-test rate posted on the state COVID-19 website was 11.65%,, a decrease from several days ago. Meanwhile, another 16 people died, for a total of 15,485.

        As the rest of California waits to reach the threshold, 27MM are already on lockdown in LA.

        NYC’s outbreak also continued to spread, with Mayor Bill de Blasio reporting 2.26K new infections and 165 new hospitalizations, both increases over the previous day. Meanwhile, the city’s positive test rate ticked higher to 5.1%. .

        As case numbers reach new highs in the US, Europe’s outbreak is rolling over, though some EU countries – most notably, Germany – are still very much struggling to tamp down cases and protect hospital capacity. In Bavaria, one of Germany’s hardest hit regions, where case numbers have been stubbornly persistent, officials imposed a new lockdown that will start Dec. 9.

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        Circling back to the US, the northeast is being hit pretty hard as temperatures fall, with deep-blue Connecticut, praised for its early ability to keep numbers low with tight restrictions during the quarantine period, is surging past its neighbors as cases spread.

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        Across all four regions, the median age of people being diagnosed is falling.

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        Here’s some more news from overnight and Sunday morning:

        Italy’s outbreak continued to slow on Sunday as the government prepares to ramp up restrictions ahead of the Christmas holiday season. The country reported 18.9K new infections compared 20.7K a week ago, and hospital and intensive therapy occupation also declined. The positivity rate rose to 11.6% amid lower-than-usual testing at Sunday. Deaths fell to 564 vs. 662 on Saturday (Source: Bloomberg).

        Iran’s daily death toll dropped below 300 for the first time in six weeks, with 294 fatalities overnight. The number of new infections fell for a third straight day to 11.6K. The country now has 50,310 deaths and 1,040,547 confirmed cases (Source: Bloomberg).

        Indonesia received its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine from China on Sunday, President Joko Widodo said, as the government prepares to launch its mass inoculation program. Jokowi, as the president is widely known, said in an online briefing that the Southeast Asian country received 1.2 million doses from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd., a vaccine Indonesia has been testing since August (Source: Nikkei).

        Polish Covid-19 deaths dipped to 228 in the last 24 hours from 502 on Saturday, potentially indicating the virus is loosening its grip on central and eastern Europe’s largest economy. New infections fell to a daily average of 11,196 this week from 17,677 last week. The country’s schools remain closed. Shopping centers reopened on Nov. 28 (Source: Bloomberg).

        Queen Elizabeth II, 94, and her husband, Prince Philip, 99, will likely receive the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine within weeks (Source: the Daily Mail).

      • Bankers & Traders Deemed "Essential", Will Receive Priority Access For COVID Vaccines
        Bankers & Traders Deemed “Essential”, Will Receive Priority Access For COVID Vaccines

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 20:45

        Just like they were deemed ‘essential’ during the lockdown, ‘financial services’ employees – a vague, all-encompassing designation that includes everyone from bank tellers to traders and IBD analysts – are expected to be deemed “essential” by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, the agency that will ultimately decide who gets priority access to the COVID vaccines.

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        Before COVID, the ACIP was a sleepy organization that determined esoteric standards and handled oversight of approving new vaccines. DHS has defined essential workers as ‘those who conduct a range of operations and services that are typically essential to continue critical infrastructure operations.’ But as for what those professions are, exactly – well, that’s entirely up to the ACIP.

        The DHS has defined financial services workers as “essential” because they help keep the money flowing, financing trade and investment and everything else. Without them, the Fed might need to resort to direct capital injections.

        That includes everyone from bank tellers, to the traders and analysts and even back office workers who keep America’s banks running.

        Even if progressives like AOC and her fellows in ‘the Squad’ try to put a stop to this, arguing that bankers and analysts and traders don’t deserve priority over more ‘oppressed’ classes, states and local governments might have final discretion over who actually gets the vaccine, meaning that a major kerfuffle at the federal level might not actually stop Gov. Cuomo from quietly ensuring that his pals on Wall Street get the vaccines they need.

        At least then they won’t be tempted to resort to the inevitable black market.

      • Saudis Raise Crude Prices To Asia For First Time In 4 Months After OPEC+ Deal
        Saudis Raise Crude Prices To Asia For First Time In 4 Months After OPEC+ Deal

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 20:20

        Just day after OPEC+ reached an agreement to ease production curbs (in order to keep UAE happy) but assess production levels monthly in order to ensure that oil prices don’t slide after reaching an 8 month high on covid vaccine optimism, Saudi Arabia raised oil pricing for customers on Sunday for its main market of Asia.

        The increase, the biggest in five months, indicates the world’s largest oil exporter is confident global – or at least Asian – energy demand is strong enough to absorb the modest increase in output from OPEC+ members next month and that markets will remain tight even with parts of Europe and the U.S. in lockdown.

        Saudi state producer Aramco raised pricing for Arab Light crude for Asia by 80 cents a barrel to 30 cents above the benchmark from a 50 cent discount the previous month.

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        The price increase comes after price cuts from the Saudis in September, October and December as virus cases surged, sending oil demand sliding and depressing Brent prices.

        Still, the hike is less than half consensus expectations: Aramco had been expected to increase pricing for the grade by 65 cents, according to a Bloomberg survey of seven traders and refiners.

        Aramco also increased pricing for light crude grades to the Mediterranean region but kept them unchanged for northwest Europe. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia lowered pricing for all grades to the U.S. to the lowest since May as Saudi exports to the U.S. have plummeted this year.

        The price increase comes as Brent rose 2.2% last week to $49.25 a barrel, its highest level since early March, although the price remains down about down about 25% this year. 

      • Study Concludes Cuban Diplomats Suffered From Effects Of 'Microwave Radiation'
        Study Concludes Cuban Diplomats Suffered From Effects Of ‘Microwave Radiation’

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 19:55

        Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia.com,

        A long-awaited study by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the illnesses that struck American diplomats and their families in Cuba and China in 2017 were likely caused by directed microwave energy, although it’s not clear if the source was a weapon or not.

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        U.S. intelligence agencies had believed since 2018 that Russia was behind the attacks, using some kind of “sonic weapon.” The NAS study included examining 40 of the affected diplomats and came to the conclusion that nothing like this had previously been documented in the medical literature.

        NBC News:

        “The committee felt that many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms and observations reported by (government) employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy,” the report says. “Studies published in the open literature more than a half-century ago and over the subsequent decades by Western and Soviet sources provide circumstantial support for this possible mechanism.”

        While important questions remain, “the mere consideration of such a scenario raises grave concerns about a world with disinhibited malevolent actors and new tools for causing harm to others, as if the U.S. government does not have its hands full already with naturally occurring threats,” says the report, edited by Dr. David Relman, a professor in medicine, microbiolology and immunology at Stanford, and Julie Pavlin, a physician who leads the National Academies of Sciences global health division in Washington.

        It still might be the Russians. Recent reports have documented other cases of CIA agents being targeted and showing similar symptoms after an attack. Tracking devices show some Russian agents who had worked on microwave weapons were present in the vicinity.

        Saying that the microwave energy was “directed” raises the question: by whom? And if it’s not a weapon, why was it pointed at the U.S. embassy?

        As the state department and CIA are saying, there are still plenty of unanswered — and perhaps unanswerable — questions.

        The State Department, responding to the report, said that “each possible cause remains speculative” and added that the investigation, now three years old, is still “ongoing.” Although it praised the National Academies of Sciences for undertaking the effort, the State Department offered a long list of “challenges of their study” and limitations in the data the academies were given access to, suggesting that the report should not be viewed as conclusive.

        “While the above limit the scope of the report, they do not lessen its value,” the State Department said in an emailed statement. “We are pleased this report is now out and can add to the data and analyses that may help us come to an eventual conclusion as to what transpired.”

        Whoever is doing it — and most of the signs apparently point to Russia — they are very careful not to leave any footprints to follow. The weapon has been used sparingly and in several places — perhaps testing the weapon before deploying it.

        Until we figure it out, our diplomats will be in danger.

      • As Dems Push Loan Forgiveness, Data Show Blue States Have Highest Average Student Debt
        As Dems Push Loan Forgiveness, Data Show Blue States Have Highest Average Student Debt

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 19:30

        We know it’s hard for millennials to hear – especially considering how badly screwed so many of them are after racking up ridiculous loan balances into the 100s of thousands of dollars – but there isn’t a compelling moral argument for forgiving student loans.

        While Democratic politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders like to wax poetic about unleashing an entire generation from the shackles of debt slavery, in reality, Americans with student loans largely include middle-class people – or at least, people who were raised in the middle class.

        The argument ‘well they bailed out the banks’ isn’t really an argument: it’s just another example ‘of whataboutism’, a sin that the left is constantly accusing President Trump and his allies of committing.

        And as the world waits to see whether Joe Biden will embrace some of the progressive agenda pushed by politicians like AOC and ‘the squad’. Biden has suggested that loan forgiveness of up to 50k per borrower could be on the table as an early-stage priority. But is that just lip service? Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell.

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        A recent study from Smartest Dollar offers some more insight on the Democratic mindset when it comes to debt-forgiveness. It found that COVID-19 forbearance programs have actually improved the picture in terms of the share of student loans in forbearance. What’s more, the study gets right to the heart of the issue.

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        Why do Democrats want to forgive student loans? So they can essentially deliver a massive handout to their political base.

        The analysis found that borrowers in coastal states tend to have the most student loan debt. While borrowers in California and Oregon have average student loan debts above $35,000, those in the South and East Coast states like Maryland, New York, Georgia, and Virginia have even higher debt burdens.

        Though a handful of southern states land among the states with the highest average student debt burden, the top 20 is mostly populated by blue and purple states.

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        Anybody out there think that’s just a coincidence?

      • Second Major California Sheriff Openly Rebels Against Newsom Lockdown
        Second Major California Sheriff Openly Rebels Against Newsom Lockdown

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 19:05

        Just a day after Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told California Governor Gavin Newsom that his department won’t be “blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle” against residents during the pandemic, The Epoch Times reports that Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes announced that deputies would not enforce the regional stay-at-home order that was scheduled to go into effect Dec. 6 throughout Southern California.

        “Compliance with health orders is a matter of personal responsibility and not a matter of law enforcement,” Barnes said in a Dec. 5 news release.

        “Orange County Sheriff’s deputies will not be dispatched to, or respond to, calls for service to enforce compliance with face coverings, social gatherings, or stay-at-home orders only.”

        It is not the first time the sheriff has declared deputies would not enforce a state order over coronavirus restrictions. When Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a curfew in November for all California counties in the purple tier amid climbing coronavirus cases, Barnes said deputies would not be enforcing that order either.

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        A state-mandated, regional stay-at-home order was scheduled to go into effect at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 6. The mandate was triggered when intensive care unit (ICU) bed availability remained below 15 percent after the Southern California region’s Dec. 5 daily COVID-19 case-rate update, according to the California Department of Public Health.

        In his statement, Barnes said deputies would continue to respond to calls for potential criminal behavior and the protection of life and property, actions he said remain “consistent with the protections of constitutional rights.”

        But he said the “ever-changing nature” of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders and the increase in COVID-19 case numbers “bring additional uncertainty and stress to California residents.”

        “To put the onus on law enforcement to enforce these orders against law-abiding citizens who are already struggling through difficult circumstances, while at the same time criticizing law enforcement and taking away tools to do our jobs, is both contradictory and disingenuous,” he said.

        He cautioned that people should remain diligent in preventing the spread of the disease, and should take the recommended public health precautions like wearing face coverings and practicing social distancing.

        “Conversely, policy makers must not penalize residents for earning a livelihood, safeguarding their mental health, or enjoying our most cherished freedoms,” Barnes stated.

        Citing rising COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths over the past month, Newsom on Dec. 3 announced plans for regional stay-at-home orders that would be triggered when ICU bed availability in select areas fell below 15 percent.

        Full Statement below:

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      • DHS Investigated For Spying On Citizens Using Cell Data From Mobile Advertising
        DHS Investigated For Spying On Citizens Using Cell Data From Mobile Advertising

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 18:40

        The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is launching an inspector general investigation into whether federal agencies surveilled Americans via their cell phone data without a warrant. While this sounds like nothing new, it involved federal agents buying access to a large commercial database.

        According to a letter the DHS sent to Congressional leaders last week and obtained by The Wall Street Journal:

        The department’s inspector general told five Democratic senators that his office would initiate an audit “to determine if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its components have developed, updated, and adhered to policies related to cell-phone surveillance devices,” according to a letter sent last week to Capitol Hill and shared with The Wall Street Journal.

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        File image via Wright Studio

        Putting aside the dubiousness of a major federal agency mounting an “objective” probe of one of its own internal departments over violations of Constitutional rights, the episode shows the US government has done little in the way of reform after the Edward Snowden NSA revelations of 2013. Of course, there were few that believed subsequent empty “promises” of politicians to curtail illegal domestic spying in the first place.

        In this newest case the investigation will focus on US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and its alleged use of of commercially-available phone tracking data to snoop on the whereabouts of individuals. Congressional inquiries started when it was first revealed the CBP payed up to $500,000 to private company for access to a commercial database which has “location data mined from applications on millions of Americans’ mobile phones.”

        The company at the center of the probe is a government contractor named Venntel which sources its data from mobile advertising to create “100 percent commercially available data”.

        Last Wednesday a group of Senators led by Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) issued a statement which said the following: 

        If federal agencies are tracking American citizens without warrants, the public deserves answers and accountability, I won’t accept anything less than a thorough and swift inspector general investigation that sheds light on CBP’s phone location data surveillance program.

        “CBP is not above the law and it should not be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment,” the senators said in the letter addressed to Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.

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        Simultaneous to the Congressional probe the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last week filed a lawsuit demanding the release of “records about their purchases of cell phone location data for immigration enforcement and other purposes.” 

        One crucial detail which remains unclear at this point, however, is the degree to which CBP was obtaining the tracking data of illegal immigrants or foreigners of questionable legal status in the United States. Even if so it’s likely they were accessing tracking data of American citizens in the process.

        The CBP defense of their actions may hinge on such an argument, namely, that the methods were necessary and only applied to snooping on non-US citizens seeking to evade border and immigration authorities.

      • Morgan Stanley: "The Biggest Debate About 2021 Isn't Where The Market Is Going. It's How It Gets There"
        Morgan Stanley: “The Biggest Debate About 2021 Isn’t Where The Market Is Going. It’s How It Gets There”

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 18:15

        By Andrew Sheets, chief cross-asset strategist at Morgan Stanley

        The biggest debate about 2021 probably isn’t where the market is going. It’s how it gets there.

        We, and many others, are optimistic on the next 12 months. But there’s less agreement among investors on how these gains will be achieved. With our economists still in the ‘V-shaped recovery’ camp, we think returns will be powered by strong economic growth, driving an early-cycle, post-recession pattern of returns. Buy what you’re usually supposed to buy following a recession.

        Others disagree. They think our forecasts for economic growth are too optimistic and expect COVID-19 to take longer to dissipate, with a more serious, longer-lasting impact on the global economy. They argue that the drawdown and recovery happened so fast that the economic cycle never truly reset, leaving both the corporate and sovereign sectors overleveraged. For these investors, liquidity and low rates will be the principal drivers of market gains. Secular stagnation lives.

        In investing, as in life, more than one thing can be true at the same time. Morgan Stanley’s economists forecast both above-consensus global growth and US$3.4 trillion of G4 balance sheet expansion in 2021. We’re positive on the year ahead in part because we think that growth and monetary policy will be rowing in the same direction.

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        Our argument is simply that weak-but-improving growth and supportive liquidity are a normal post-recession backdrop. Meanwhile, market pricing often remains sceptical that economic ‘normalcy’ will return any time soon. Better growth, supportive liquidity and attractive valuations are all reasons to adopt a ‘pro-cyclical’ stance across key cross-asset pairs: Long US small-caps over large-caps, long AUD/NZD/SEK/NOK versus USD and long high yield over investment grade. We think that US 10-year rates will hit 1.45% by end-2021, and are underweight government bonds.

        But what about that missing reset? The economic collapse and recovery were unusually fast, bypassing the large defaults of 2008-10. There hasn’t been a single significant bank failure in the wake of the world’s largest economic drawdown on record and, more strikingly, there hasn’t been a single significant capital raising. The US trailing 12-month speculative-grade default rate sits at 8.0%. In 2009, a milder recession, it peaked at 14.2%.

        This failure to reset is often cited as a key reason why this can’t be the start of a new economic cycle: Recessions, while painful, help to clear out weaker, less-productive and undercapitalised businesses, making room for stronger, more dynamic ones to prosper in their place. The historic levels of policy intervention in 2020 prevented this ‘creative destruction’. Without that clearing out, a dynamic recovery is unlikely. With it, a wider run of corporate defaults is inevitable.

        Since we do think this is the start of a new economic cycle, do believe it will be ‘dynamic’ (we’re above consensus on growth) and don’t expect a surprisingly high wave of defaults, this would be a good time to explain why we don’t subscribe to the counter-argument.

        • First, recessions are about more than just high default rates. They also often mean high unemployment, low inventory levels, high savings rates and low consumer confidence (among other things). Early-cycle environments gain momentum from all these negatives becoming ‘less bad’. In our forecasts, over the next 12 months, all of them do.
        • Second, about those default rates. Pruning unproductive businesses from the market is a painful but necessary process. But this argument assumes that the businesses in question are fundamentally broken, not ‘fine were it not for a once-in-a-century global pandemic’. We don’t see how letting scores of otherwise solvent firms default would result in a better long-run result for the economy or investors, especially as these firms would have been forced to reorganise, or liquidate, near the nadir of economic activity.

        Indeed, one of the great ironies of 2020 is that for all the hand-wringing around ‘covenant-lite’ lending, it was probably a blessing. ‘Weak’ terms on lending gave borrowers a helpful level of flexibility during the 1H downturn, where strict provisions would have forced more defaults. Neither owner, employee nor lender would have benefited from debt suddenly coming due in the depths of a recession; if you don’t believe me, search ‘recovery rates March 2009’.

        Finally, it’s also unfair to say that policy prevented any pain from being endured. If we combine the trailing 12-month default rate (8.0%) with our credit strategists’ forecast for the next 12 months (6.0%), we get a 24-month default rate of ~14.0%. We can compare that two-year default rate to two-year changes in economic activity (i.e., taking a somewhat broader view of this unusual year). Viewed this way, things look more normal.

        If you’re constructive on the year ahead, the question of ‘how you get there’ still matters. We remain in the pro-cyclical, early-cycle camp, and don’t believe that the ‘absence’ of a larger corporate default wave nullifies this story. Our corporate and securitized credit strategists are constructive with an early-cycle bias: positive on junior exposure in CLOs and CMBS, and on high yield over investment grade.

      • Foot Traffic Still Stumbling In New York's Top Business Districts
        Foot Traffic Still Stumbling In New York’s Top Business Districts

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 17:50

        In what should come as a surprise to no one, foot traffic in New York’s hottest business districts continues to suffer, though things have improved since the summer according to the Wall Street Journal.

        Neighborhoods which were booming before the pandemic, such as Flatiron and Union Square, were crippled by lockdown restrictions, leading to a sharp dropoff in foot traffic.

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        Prior to the pandemic, approximately 9% of the district’s retail corridor was vacant in 2018.

        A follow-up survey conducted by the NYC Department of City Planning in July revealed that the number of inactive storefronts in the district – both closed and vacant – jumped had jumped 36%, which the planning department attributed in part to a lack of both commuters and tourists.

        Still, things have improved somewhat since the summer.

        “It is moving in the right direction, it’s just been gradual,” said James Mettham, executive director of the Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership, who added that more businesses have reopened since the summer amid improving foot traffic.

        Still, the Wall Street Journal conducted an analysis of Foursquare foot-traffic data, and found that pedestrian activity was still down across the Flatiron, Union Square and Chelsea neighborhoods vs. February before the pandemic restrictions went into effect.

        While this is an improvement from a 75% drop in foot traffic in the spring, it’s still slower than several outlying areas such as Morris Park in the Bronx and New Drop on Staten Island – which saw pedestrian activity return to pre-pandemic levels by September.

        Some local shops are facing less dire, yet still precarious financial situations.

        “We’re still bleeding money,” said Chris Calkins, CEO of Gotham Coffee Roasters on West 19th Street. “but unless things get worse, we’re good until June.” Gotham’s sales have improved somewhat since the spring – down 60% vs. 85% earlier in the year. Calkins says he’s remained afloat through his mail-order business, federal grants and loans, and a rent reduction from his landlord of 30%.

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        That said, with New York governor Andrew Cuomo warning on Modnay of more potential lockdowns, we have to wonder if the slight gains made throughout NYC’s business districts will be wiped out amid what Joe Biden lovingly referred to as an impending “dark winter.”

        “The holiday season is going to have a profound effect. It already has,” Cuomo said on Monday. “The holiday season is going to have a profound effect. It already has.“

      • Open Letter To Governor Brown: The Data Confirms "It's Time To Re-Open Oregon's Businesses"
        Open Letter To Governor Brown: The Data Confirms “It’s Time To Re-Open Oregon’s Businesses”

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 17:25

        Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

        I’m a proud native Oregonian.  I’ve lived in Asia, Europe, and traveled most of the world, but I choose to live in Oregon. It’s that good.  Oregon is also great because it is a political and social dichotomy.  Ultra liberal Portland, Eugene, Bend vs ultra conservative rural Oregon. There is a little something for everybody…and I love every bit of it.

        So, as I’m watching the states recent implosion…I’m heartsick. Like everywhere else, Coronavirus has found it’s way into Oregon. In March, the state chose to shut down and enter into a prolonged lockdown. I disagreed but couldn’t do so with great conviction, because the reliable data to prove the shutdown wasn’t warranted just didn’t exist.

        However, as reliable data has been growing…the state has chosen to keep schools closed, cancelling athletic and social clubs, alongside in person learning.  And now the state has entered a second partial lockdown; shutting down restaurants, gyms, bars, and other select business’. 

        At the most critical business time of the year, the state has taken business owners/employees ability to earn a living with no compensation offered. This has been done to slow the spread of Coronavirus and avoid an overwhelming crush of patients in the states hospitals.

        Like the Governor, I too want to keep Oregonians from needlessly dying. But I’m also cognizant that the state government is there to serve the people, not dictate to them. The state is there to educate to the risk factors and respect it’s citizens well informed decisions. Unilaterally taking away many Oregonians right to run small and large business’, send their children to school, etc. would have to be done based on some very hard and lethal evidence. It is this evidence I want to review.

        First, consider the total number of Coronavirus cases, per age group, and the associated deaths (chart below). It should be obvious that the under 50 year old population makes up the vast majority of positive cases (and actual cases are likely 5x to 10x higher due to asymptomatic &/or mild undiagnosed cases) but under 50 year olds make up so few of the Coronavirus deaths.

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        Looking at cases and deaths, by age group (chart below), consider…

        • Under 30yr/olds = 37% of cases, 9% of hospitalizations, & 0.2% of deaths.

        • 30 to 60yr/olds = 46% of cases, 34% of hospitalizations, & 9.1% of deaths.

        • 60+yr/olds = 17% of cases, 57% of hospitalizations, & 91.7% of deaths.

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        From the above chart, it should be abundantly clear who the “at-risk” population is and where the focus of attention and support should be directed.  Not school closures or business closures…but helping the primarily elderly population with at-risk maladies avoid the general public…not have the generally well public avoid contact with the generally well public! These interactions and potential infections lead to few hospitalizations and a statistically minute number of deaths.

        To emphasize the point of who is filling Oregon’s hospitals, and who needs greater support and care in avoiding the general public…again, it is the elderly population that is utilizing the hospitals (chart below)…not the young. As for the young and concern of long term impacts from fighting Coronavirus, the numbers of severe cases requiring hospitalization as so rare that the percentage of those with long term issues will be statistically incredibly low.

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        Further, the CDC has made it plain that Coronavirus alone is very rarely the cause of death. 

        As per the CDC, “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.”

        Coronavirus, on it’s own, is statistically so unlikely to cause death among the general public that they can go on with their lives w/out undue fear…and the focus should be safeguarding the at-risk.

        The point of this article is not to create greater division or offer more finger pointing…it is to offer clear data that Oregonians who are healthy are at no great risk from Coronavirus. The economy should remain open while those in poor health (they generally know who they are; elderly, fighting cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, immunocompromised, COPD, etc.) should be offered support to help them to avoid contact with the general public. Households with at-risk persons should consider avoiding sending their children to school but be offered online schooling options.  And it is a shame that solutions to avoid the ongoing high mortality within nursing homes isn’t getting more attention (encompassing nearly 40% of all Coronavirus deaths).

        Simply, the tax base should be used (rather than abused) supporting those at risk should to avoid general interaction until a vaccine is ready (why the generally healthy public would take a vaccine for a virus that poses little to no threat is a question for another day). Things like subsidizing Instacart online shopping rather than in person shopping, etc. etc. Let’s get creative, as lives are on the line.  This is just common sense that the state would focus the quarantine on the small population of at-risk persons, and offer/focus their support/resources there rather than harm the large, well, not at-risk population. Lastly, small business owners running restaurants, bars, gyms, etc. providing jobs and tax revenue should be hailed rather than bankrupted.

        Oregon has long been an innovator and leader, and now it is time for Oregon to learn and lead again. It is time to re-open Oregon’s business’ and focus the state’s resources on protecting the at-risk population rather than harming the large at very low risk population.

        The data for this article is taken from the Oregon Health Authority

        I also offer the below national data from the CDC, generally mirroring that of Oregon, FYR.

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      • Russia Unveils New Drone Killing Tank 
        Russia Unveils New Drone Killing Tank 

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 17:00

        The problem with many of the world’s top militaries is that short-range defenses against small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are lacking, well, at least a cost-effective weapon that doesn’t cost thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or in some cases millions of dollars to shoot down a cheap enemy drone.

        Russia learned this back in 2018 after its security forces of the Khmeimim airbase and Russian Naval CSS point in Tartus, Syria, combated a series of UAV attacks. 

        Two years later, Russia has revealed the Derivatsiya-PVO self-propelled anti-aircraft gun that will “create a shield from a hail of projectiles that burst with shrapnel in the air, forming an impenetrable barrier against enemy drones,” according to Russia Beyond. 

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        Russia Beyond said the Derivatsiya is based on the BPM-3 infantry fighting vehicle. It has an AU-220M automatic weapon station that fires up to 120 artillery shells per minute. 

        “Its ammunition kit includes remotely detonated and guided projectiles, which means that anti-aircraft gunners can fire a shell and detonate it with a single keystroke during the flight, or adjust its path to track the enemy’s movements,” a Russian military-industrial complex source told Russia Beyond. 

        Derivatsiya was designed to knock out small UAVs that fly several hundred meters above the ground. 

        “Drones have become the scourge of our army in the Middle East, and not only ours. Militants make remote-controlled ‘helicopters’ from improvised means, attach bombs to them, then dispatch a whole flock of ‘suicide bombers’ to blow up expensive air-defense systems or tanks and helicopters. Basically, any equipment that costs millions of dollars,” said the expert.

        He added that Derivatsiya was developed to lower the cost per round in combating these new threats on the modern battlefield. 

        “It is to save money and equipment on destroying these buzzing bomb-laden irritants that Derivatsiya is being developed,” he said.

        The proliferation of small drones on the modern battlefield also led the US Navy to recently “revive” anti-aircraft flak rounds used in World War II for its current warships to combat small drone threats. 

      • Opposition Builds To Great Reset In Argentina, Who's Next?
        Opposition Builds To Great Reset In Argentina, Who’s Next?

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 16:35

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

        This is not news. But an historical reminder of what happens when the people get fed up with a corrupt government incapable of serving their interests.

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        Remember this?

        The president of Argentina has left the building. According to the Daily Mail 20 years ago:

        President Fernando De la Rua resigned and fled the government palace in a helicopter, driven from office by a devastating economic crisis and days of rioting that left 22 people dead and homes and supermarkets across Argentina ransacked.

        Fast forward to today:

        This is the news: Police faced rioters with stones this week.

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        This is what the face of real anger and desperation in the face of a government that is equal parts corrupt and inept looks like.

        No one wants to see this kind of abuse of any other human being. It’s anathema to life itself. But everyone makes a choice. The police choose to put on their uniforms and riot shields to enforce immoral orders while the people make the choice to stand up to it.

        It is the fundamental problem of rule through force that eventually leads to these regrettable outcomes. No one wants to see policemen, presumably decent men with the right motivations to maintain societal order, stoned in public.

        But when people have had their ability to make their grievances heard peacefully taken away from them they will, eventually, make their grievances heard violently.

        It’s who we are. It’s human nature.

        And the lesson here is for all of these would-be tyrants currently laughing about winning a fraudulent election in the U.S. through changing the rules is that they will face this same moment as these cops did very soon.

        Because elections are the opportunity for us to air our grievances with our government peacefully. And what so many in politics fail to understand, but what the people who voted for Donald Trump do, is that these past two elections haven’t been referenda on Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

        They have been referenda on the whole political class and culture which has driven people to the edge of insanity, bankruptcy and despair.

        So, laugh it up Stacey Abrams, Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama, Dan Crenshaw and Mitt Romney. Watch this video carefully. This is your future.

        The same goes for Tony Blair, Emmanuel Macron, Bill Gates, Angela Merkel, George Soros and Benjamin Netanyahu.

        You may scare people into taking your vaccine and issuing your medical passports but what happens on the day when the cops fail to show up to control the crowd for fear of being stoned?

        The same people today screaming “my body, my choice” will line up for their COVID-19 vaccine if it means they can’t continue infecting the minds of students with Critical Race Theory.

        Congratulations on turning everyone into a desperate, cognitivally-dissonant response monkey.

        That stuff cuts both ways folks.

        Obedience is not acquiescence. No one really loves Big Brother no matter how much you torture them. The longer you suppress the anger the worse it gets.

        Until it explodes.

        And people won’t be turning that anger on the idiots on the streets in Portland.

        We’ve seen what it looks like when the would-be tyrants riot — the ideologically possessed race hustlers and commies in Antifa and BLM. We haven’t seen what it looks like when the conscientious ‘right’ who just want to live without abuse looks like.

        Well, in fact we do. They vote twice, overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and throw British tea into Boston Harbor. They veto legislation designed to sell their people out to the Politburo in Brussels.

        Italians will soon have to make their choice.

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        This isn’t a breakdown of the civil order, this is the beginning of a restoration of civil order that is already gone. The idea that we the people control our elected officials governing us is rapidly being revealed as a lie.

        And it leaves people with no other option than violence.

        This is why, in my mind, the election fraud is the single issue that we have to come together on, Democrat, Republican and, yes, you too feckless and cowardly libertarians.

        Because it’s not about the mechanics of voting. It’s not about its inherent immorality. At certain moments in time the value of your vote and what it represents rises above all of that.

        It is still the least violent act one can take in conjunction with others to say, “No more. That’s enough.”

        I didn’t vote for Trump because I thought he did a good job while in office. I voted for Trump twice because I wanted to stick my finger in the eye of the people who have materially made my life and the lives of millions of people around the world worse.

        I voted for Trump to bitch slap Nancy Pelosi, laugh at Chuck Schumer and put James Comey in jail.

        I voted for Trump to blow up the false dyad of Republican v. Democrat, out Lindsey Graham and rein in the military-surveillance state.

        I didn’t vote for Trump for a tax cut, though it was a nice bonus. My price is a metric shit-ton higher than that you wretched trolls.

        Trump stood up to them for four years and by doing so exposed them to such an extent I never thought possible. And now, he and all the people who voted for him are being laughed at by corrupt state legislators, judges, election officials and party hacks.

        The normie Republicans think the Georgia run-off elections matter. Without an overhaul of the voting systems themselves what does it matter if two Democrats win or two RINOs do?

        And do you really think the outcome of that run-off hasn’t already been determined?

        It’s all a rigged game. And now that that has been fully exposed what comes next?

        Because how many people in the U.S. are coming to the same conclusions as those people throwing rocks at cops in Argentina, that their government is terminal, its authority illegitimate and its edicts unworthy?

        I’ve been long guillotines and rope-makers for the past eighteen months, I may have to double my position.

        *  *  *

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      Dec 06

      Today’s News 6th December 2020

      • US Election "Success"… And Hey Presto "Russian Interference" Disappears
        US Election “Success”… And Hey Presto “Russian Interference” Disappears

        Tyler Durden

        Sun, 12/06/2020 – 00:00

        Via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

        The United States’ election victory of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has yet to be officially confirmed. That requires the 500-plus Electoral College comprising the 50 federal states to cast the final vote when the constitutional body meets on December 14. Biden holds a commanding lead of over 300 delegates in the Electoral College, more than 70 above Donald Trump’s quota and decisively more than the 270 threshold required for election to the White House.

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        Nonetheless, already one thing is indisputably clear. Biden’s nominal victory from the popular vote tallies is glaring proof that Russia did not interfere in the American presidential ballot. Not in 2020. And not, we may discern, in 2016, nor in any other election. Yet the silence in US media over this obvious conclusion is deafening.

        Four years of frenetic and unsubstantiated allegations of “Russian interference” have disappeared overnight, it seems. Poof! Gone! As if by a magic conjuring trick. Now you see it, now you don’t, so to speak.

        The New York Times has declared the recent presidential contest a “great election.. a resounding success free of fraud”. The Department of Homeland Security pronounced the election to be the “most secure in American history.” Other US media outlets have jettisoned supposed political neutrality and can barely contain their elation at Biden’s electoral victory.

        But hold on a moment.

        In the months and weeks leading up to the November election, there was a fever pitch in US media among politicians, national security chiefs, pundits and anonymous intelligence sources that Russia was allegedly stepping up “interference efforts” to get Trump re-elected.

        Those evidence-free claims were predicated on the equally absurd assertion that Trump was a Manchurian candidate for the Kremlin. That “Russiagate” fable was first spun in 2016 and for the past four years elaborated into a tangled web to “explain” how a maverick former reality TV star had been elected to the White House.

        Suddenly, however, the Democrats and supportive US media are now asserting that the voting process was impeccable and unblemished by any malfeasance. Of course they would say that in order to bolster legitimacy of Biden’s win against the Republican White House incumbent Donald Trump. But the thundering takeaway which the US political class and media are bizarrely ignoring is that Russia did not interfere not in the 2020 race nor in any other election. Russia has always categorically said it is not meddling in US politics and its electoral process. Turns out that Russia is de facto vindicated in its protestations against American slander.

        The “Russiagate” nonsense was hatched by Democrats, their supportive media and intelligence agencies because they could not come to terms with the reality of why Trump beat the then establishment-ordained candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Could it have been because Clinton and the Democrat party was repudiated by popular sentiment due to perceived corruption and overseas wars? No, another “explanation” had to be found. And the US political establishment came up with the “Russian interference” narrative.

        No matter that the Mueller investigation found after 22 months of probing and hundreds of millions of taxpayer-dollars spent that there was no evidence of “Russia collusion” with the Trump campaign. Nevertheless, Mueller and the Democrats, their media and intelligence backers, persisted in the spurious notion that Russia meddled in the 2016 election and, allegedly, was continuing to meddle, purportedly with even more sophisticated, nefarious techniques.

        How can US politicians, intelligence officials and media credibly claim that Russia interfered in 2016 and in mid-term congressional elections in 2018, but now in 2020 it evidently did not? The most logical explanation is simply that Russia never did.

        Four years of hysterical American accusations against Russia have transpired to just that: bogus hysteria. US politicians, media and so-called intelligence gurus should be held to account for fabricating what is perhaps the biggest hoax ever played on the American public.

        Though, one can be sure that they won’t be held accountable in a formal way. Venal power doesn’t work like that. And the US political system has built-in layers of self-protection for the political class never to be prosecuted. But in an informal no less real way, the system is being held to account by the wider public who are increasingly holding it in contempt and distrust. The political class and their plaything media are losing the moral authority to govern. This goes beyond mere Trump Derangement Syndrome. The systematic lying and deception over alleged Russian interference perpetrated on such a grand scale has fatally damaged the credibility of American institutions. Not just in the US, but around the world too.

        Equally lamentable is the corrosive, damaging effect that the bogus hysteria has had on bilateral US-Russia relations and international tensions. Relations are at a dangerous all time low comparable to the depth of the Cold War. This has in turn sabotaged diplomatic efforts to strengthen arms controls and global security. The anti-Russia hysteria has led to the US abandonment of key nuclear weapons treaties, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and soon the New START.

        The Russophobia that has been whipped up as a political weapon against Trump over the past four years is not something that can be easily put aside. It has engendered deep-seated hostility against Russia. During the presidential debates, Joe Biden vowed that the would take a tough stand against Russia for “interfering” in US politics. The incoming administration is being mentally held hostage by its own Russophobia which was cultivated on entirely false grounds.

        It is disturbing how the US nation has been dragged into an obsession about alleged Russian malign activities, an obsession which turns out to be a mirage. Not for the first time either. Recall the Cold War Red Scares and McCarthyite witch-hunts which poisoned American society.

        The implications are daunting. How can bilateral relations with Russia be restored? How can an intelligent dialogue be conducted with a nation whose leaders are so self-deluded and irrational?

        Moreover, this is a nation whose leaders presume to have the prerogative to use overwhelming military force whenever they deem so. It is not unlike the driver of a juggernaut vehicle on a precipice who is hurtling along while out of his brain on misconceptions.

      • Japan Set To Abolish Gas Powered Cars By Mid 2030s
        Japan Set To Abolish Gas Powered Cars By Mid 2030s

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 23:30

        As if the speculative EV mania needed any more fuel thrown on its fire, Japan is joining numerous other countries – and California – in setting a date to make all new cars electric and “eco friendly” by the mid 2030’s.

        The country’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has said they are considering abolishing conventional cars and shifting purely to hybrids and electrics within the next 10 to 20 years, according to Nikkei. 

        The move is part of a broader plan for the entire country to go “zero emissions” by 2050. Vehicles made up 16% of the country’s total emissions in 2018, according to the report. An official announcement is expected later this month at a conference attended by experts and car industry executives. This will be followed by more concrete plans and timelines. 

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        “Many territories” have already said they are going to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles by 2030, the report says.

        Currently, the country is focused on making car makers improve efficiency by 30% by the end of 2030. The country does not plan on banning hybrids. Key auto makers in Japan have already offered their support: Toyota has stated they will offer an electric option for all models by 2025 and Nissan aims to raise its ratio of hybrid to electric cars from 30% to 60% by as early as 2023. 

        The U.K. already has similar legislation planned, banning ICE cars by 2030 and hybrids by 2035. California will also ban sales of new ICE cars by 2035. France has said they will do the same by 2040.

        China is considering implementing similar rules by 2035, allowing a mix of EVs and hybrids. 

      • This New Technology Will Dangerously Expand Government Spying On Citizens
        This New Technology Will Dangerously Expand Government Spying On Citizens

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 23:00

        Authored by Jack Rasmus via Counterpunch.org,

        If you’re worried about the capability of government to conduct surveillance of citizens engaged in political assembly and protest, or even just personal activity, then you should be aware the technological capability of government surveillance is about to expand exponentially.

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        The US Air Force’s Research Lab (yes, it has its own lab) has recently signed a contract to test new software of a company called SignalFrame, a Washington DC wireless tech company. The company’s new software is able to access smartphones, and from your phone jump off to access any other wireless or bluetooth device in the near vicinity. To quote from the article today in the Wall St. Journal, the smartphone is used “as a window onto usage of hundreds of millions of computers,s routers, fitness trackers, modern automobiles and other networked devices, known collectively as the ‘Internet of Things’.”

        Your smartphone in effect becomes a government listening device that detects and accesses all nearby wireless or bluetooth devices, or anything that has a MAC address for that matter. How ‘near’ is nearby is not revealed by the company, or the Air Force, both of which refused to comment on the Wall St. Journal story. But with the expansion of 5G wireless, it should be assumed it’s more than just a couple steps from your smartphone.

        One can imagine some scary scenarios with this capability in the hands of government snoops:

        • Not only would the government know your geographical location via the GPS signal to your cellphone. They’d know what you are doing. And with whom.

        • A political gathering would allow them to see all the owners of other cellphones in the vicinity of a protest or demonstration. How many are gathering at a particular street or location. The direction they might be heading. Or whether there’s an organization meeting in a hall or room and who (with a cellphone as well) might be attending.

        • If you’re driving on a winding coastal or mountain road, it would know, and could possibly access, your car’s various electronic systems to turn them off. It might access your car’s circuit board that governs your power steering when you’re driving in an area of winding roads. Or it might be able to just shut down your car’s electrical system and remotely lock all your doors. The police no longer have to engage in highway chases until capture.

        • The new tech would allow the government to access the data on your fitbit device while you’re jogging. Or worse, maybe even interfere with the signal on your heart pacemaker device.

        • The technology might be used to access your smartphone, and from there to turn on your home Alexa device to listen in and record conversations without you ever knowing. Or to listen in on your zoom conferencing on your laptop. Or maybe even worse, to shut down or bypass the safety features on your home furnace equipment. Or turn off your home security system.

        • And with 5G wireless broadband, the tracking might be extended well beyond the range of a bluetooth device. Add 5G broadband wireless to SignalFrame’s technology, and then wed that to the capability of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and you get instant processing of a massive amount of data on any targeted person or gathering!

        This problem of government surveillance on free citizen activity is not new. It took a giant leap after 9-11 with the Patriot Act and acquisition of phone data by Homeland Security and other government agencies. It was supposed to have stopped. But it hasn’t. The snoops have continued to ignore Congressional resolutions and court decisions on privacy invasion of citizens. The latest Air Force lab testing is likely just a recent ‘tip of the iceberg’ revelation. And if the Air Force is doing it, be assured so are the Army, Navy, the NSA, CIA, FBI and all the other government snoops.

        Certainly this kind of technology would be used not only by the US government. If the USA has it, you can bet other governments do too–especially China, Russia, Israel, and probably some of the Europeans as well.

        Unlike in 2001, in 2020 SignalFrame’s technology takes government surveillance to a new level–given the ubiquity of smartphones, Internet of Things (IOT) devices, digital circuit board dependent autos, and all the many household devices now with MAC wireless access addresses. And now, unlike circa 2001 and the passage of the Patriot Act (and its continuation in annual NDAA legislation), we have AI, machine learning, neural nets everywhere, and massive government data processing power.

        In short, Technology is becoming a growing tool and power in the hands of governments, to use to thwart democratic and constitutional rights–as well as to detect, apprehend, and ‘deal with’ those who protest and oppose those governments.

        The coming decade in the USA will be not only increasingly difficult economically, increasingly unstable politically, but will prove to be a period in which technology is increasingly threatening basic civil rights as well as the very foundations of Democracy itself.

      • Saudis Demand To Be Consulted Before Biden Reenters Iran Nucleal Deal
        Saudis Demand To Be Consulted Before Biden Reenters Iran Nucleal Deal

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 22:30

        After President-Elect Joe Biden told The New York Times this past week that should Iran return to compliance to the 2015 nuclear deal (particularly caps placed on enrichment) he’ll return the US to participation in the Obama-era agreement, the Saudis have registered their alarm.

        Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat said Saturday that Washington must consult the kingdom and Gulf state allies before moving forward with reentry to the JCPOA. The Sunni kingdom sees Shia Iran as its number one threat and enemy in the region. 

        Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told AFP, “Primarily what we expect is that we are fully consulted, that we and our other regional friends are fully consulted in what goes on vis a vis the negotiations with Iran.”

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        Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal with then US Vice President Joe Biden in 2011. Image: AFP via Getty

        “The only way towards reaching an agreement that is sustainable is through such consultation,” he emphasized while speaking to reporters at a security conference in Bahrain.

        “I think we’ve seen as a result of the after-effects of the JCPOA that not involving the regional countries results in a build up of mistrust and neglect of the issues of real concern and of real effect on regional security.”

        While Riyadh said it is “ready” and waiting to engage the incoming Biden administration on the issue, there’s not yet been any contacts regarding the nuclear deal.

        “We are confident that both an incoming Biden administration, but also our other partners, including the Europeans, have fully signed on to the need to have all the regional parties involved in a resolution,” the Saudi FM added.

        The most significant and direct military action of late involving the Iranians and Saudi remains the September 14, 2019 attack on the Aramco Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing facilities, which the US and Saudis blamed on Tehran ultimately ordering. However, who precisely was behind it remains somewhat shrouded in mystery.

        The major attack involved drones and missiles, based on weapons fragments produced by the Saudis, and likely came from Yemen, possibly via Iranian proxy fighters, the Houthis.

      • Minority Students Crushed By Lockdowns; 600% Increase In Math Failures, 500% English
        Minority Students Crushed By Lockdowns; 600% Increase In Math Failures, 500% English

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 22:05

        Authored by James Bovard via the American Institute for Economic Research (emphasis ours)

        In August, I reported here on how Montgomery County, Maryland, was seeking to shut down private schools as part of their Covid-19 strategy of abolishing all risk by abolishing all freedom. As more individuals have recently tested positive for Covid, the county government is responding with a new array of iron-fisted decrees. Some of the latest edicts make little or no sense, confirming the county’s nickname of LoCo Moco. 

        Gov. Larry Hogan blocked the county government’s effort to criminalize private teaching; Catholic, Jewish, and other schools have operated safely with no significant Covid outbreaks. But county schools remain shut down in large part due to the clout of the teachers union, a bulwark of political support for County Executive Marc Elrich. 

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        For at least 40 years, MoCo politicians and school officials have invoked “closing the achievement gap” as a sacred goal which justifies the sacrifice of as many taxpayers as necessary. But that goal is not as sacrosanct as assuring that teachers continue to collect full pay while taking zero risks and leaving the most vulnerable students far behind. 

        Since the county padlocked public schools earlier this year and shifted to unreliable “distance learning,” there has been a 500%+ increase in the number of black junior high students failing mathematics and a 600%+ increase in Hispanic students failing. The percentage of black elementary school students failing English increased more than 350% and the percentage of Hispanic students failing increased more than 500%. These numbers were revealed during a County Board of Education meeting on December 3; a local activist captured screenshots of the disastrous test results. Some of the data was also reported in yesterday’s Washington Post. Shutting down public schools has done more harm to black students than anything since the end of local school segregation in 1961.

        Montgomery’s results are in line with reports elsewhere that show that minority students have suffered far more harm from shutdowns justified to curtail the spread of Covid. This carnage was foreseeable. An analysis by McKinsey & Company consultants last spring estimated that if schools were entirely online until January, on average “white students would lose 6 months of learning, Hispanic students 9 months, black students 10 months and low-income students more than a year during the time school buildings have closed for the pandemic.” 

        MoCo leaders recite their devotion to “science and data” except when the data might curb their arbitrary power. C.D.C. chief Robert Redfield testified this week, “The data clearly shows us that you can operate these schools in face-to-face learning in a safe and responsible way.” Maryland State Schools Superintendent Karen Salmon urged local schools to bring back students five weeks ago but Salmon can deliver neither vanloads of votes nor armloads of cash to County Council members. The Washington Post, in an article on the success and safety of European school reopenings, noted, “Teachers unions, which have emerged as a powerful force of opposition to school reopenings in the United States, have generally been more acquiescent in Europe, pushing for safety measures rather than closures.”

        Many kids may have unnecessarily lost practically a year of their learning lives but MoCo has compensated with a maniacal devotion to mandating masks. On April 9, Montgomery County’s chief health officer Travis Gayles decreed that any store customer who failed to wear a mask would be fined $500. Gayles discouraged local residents from acquiring and wearing the most reliable protection, such as surgical masks or N95 masks, which the county said “should be reserved for health care workers.” Mandating the wearing of unreliable masks makes about as much sense as requiring everyone to wear a dunce cap with the inscription, “Save me, Big Brother!”

        On August 24, the County Council “expanded” the face mask mandate to compel everyone to cover their chins as well as their mouth or nose. (N95 masks were exempt but commoners were not supposed to be using those anyway.) Neither the Council members nor health czar Gayles revealed the secret medical data on how chins could transmit Covid. The edict was poorly publicized and mostly ignored by local residents. 

        On November 24, Gayles issued a new mask dictate: “Coverings must be worn outdoors and whenever coming into contact with individuals who are not members of their household, such as being within six feet.” Ordering people to wear masks when they walked alone outside, walked their dog, or went to the mailbox spurred ridicule on local forums. One cynic groused: “Gayles says he follows the science. The science he follows may be from a mad scientist but it’s science.” The following day, the county issued a “clarification” specifying that masks are not required if you are “Alone in your office or vehicle.” Also exempted were kids “Under the age of 18 and are engaged in vigorous sports – as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.” But the pro-exercise health guidance apparently becomes null and void on the 18th birthday. 

        Maryland has a hotline number to report any violators of statewide mask mandates, and MoCo is a rich soil for raising informants. Politicians and bureaucrats have fanned mass fears which have ripened into hatred of anyone who does not comply with the latest edict. I was recently walking along the C & O Canal Towpath, talking to two friends. None of us were masked. 

        Coming in the opposite direction was a geezer, walking slumped forward with a long white shirt, big floppy hat, and a six-foot walking stick.  He suddenly stops and points his stick at me and shouts:

        “DISTANCING!”
        “What?” I replied
        “YOU’RE NOT DISTANCING!”

        “So what are you supposed to be, an Old Testament prophet?” I said. “Great – so now we got the Prophet Isaiah casting damnation on all Towpath violators.” I should have counted my blessings that he wasn’t like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, buttonholing people and forcing them to listen to a 45-minute poem.

        Maybe I should have also felt lucky that Prophet Dude could not summon a police SWAT helicopter. Maryland has vigorously encouraged people to rat out violators and the state has no shortage of self-appointed Junior Stasi members. 

        County agents conducted 90 inspections of businesses on the night before Thanksgiving. 

        Earl Stoddard, Montgomery County’s head of emergency management, lamented to the Washington Post: “We can’t be everywhere in every store all at once.” Stoddard encouraged residents to file accusations against any business with which they had “concerns.” 

        Last week’s Black Friday sales were treated by government officials like a crime scene in progress. A long line of customers waited outside of a humongous Best Buy store – along with police cars from both the county and Rockville. Perhaps the police were equipped with long-distance Tasers to zap anyone not wearing a proper mask? 

        Businesses have no safe haven regardless of how much they have spent to protect customers and placate bureaucrats. A Harris Teeter grocery store made extensive changes after the start of the pandemic, including placing large plexiglass screens between every one of its nine self-service checkout stations. A single customer, who perhaps failed to take his Xanax that morning, complained to the Montgomery County government that he felt unsafe when he visited the store. A county inspector swooped in and threatened to shut down the grocery store unless they blocked access to half of their self-service stations. As a result, the store now sometimes has long lines of people waiting to check out – and presumably increasing their exposure to Covid while waiting. The inspector also forced the store to designate one of its two entrances as an “exit only.” One store employee feared that county inspectors could return and compel the store to dictate which direction people walk down each grocery aisle. 

        Trader Joe’s in Rockville, perhaps seeking favor with zealous inspectors, has imposed some of the tightest restrictions on shoppers since the pandemic began. There is usually a long line out front; shoppers are also required to form a single long line before checking out. Recently, a Hispanic lady pushed her grocery cart to bluntly cut the line. A number of black customers with their grocery carts were in line behind her, and a shouting match ensued with ethnic taunts flying thick and fast. The store manager raced to the scene to squelch the uproar. But this type of fracas never happened in that store prior to its “pandemic fixes.” This is another example of how unjustified government prohibitions are spurring pointless social conflicts.

        Perhaps local residents should be grateful that Gayles or County Executive Elrich have not gone as far as the California mayor who swore that anyone not wearing a mask in public was guilty of “an act of domestic terrorism.” 

        Unfortunately, all the bankrupted local businesses, all the shafted young children, and the surge in cases of attempted suicide  and mental illness are irrelevant to how MoCo scores its good deeds. As long as county officials can claim that things would have been worse without its destructive edicts, they can continue pretending to have saved humanity. Perhaps Elrich and Gayles are hoping that if they inflict enough misery on MoCo, the Biden administration will appoint them to prestigious positions to help impose a national Covid lockdown.

      • Oliver Stone: Here's Why Trump Should Pardon Snowden, Assange
        Oliver Stone: Here’s Why Trump Should Pardon Snowden, Assange

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 21:40

        Filmmaker Oliver Stone has joined the growing chorus of activists calling for President Trump to pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – without whom we wouldn’t know about intrusive government surveillance programs, the United States’ aggressive drone strike program, or that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager and his brother are apparently into ‘spirit cooking‘ with a satanic performance artist.

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        According to Stone, pardoning the pair of whistleblowers “will take the edge off his pardons for his family & loyalists by being unselfish and not self-serving. And at the least, confound his many critics — as well as future historians.”

        Second, “It will drive his enemies in #DeepState and #Media absolutely nuts!“

        “A pardon of @Snowden and #Assange would be a great shock to this world, and reflect well on @realDonaldTrump,” wrote Stone in a Thursday tweet. “Despite all the negatives he’s created, it will be seen as a purely merciful action. It will not be forgotten.”

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        On Thursday, Edward Snowden asked President Trump to pardon Assange.

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        Snowden — who released classified documents on surveillance programs — fled to Hong Kong, and later to Moscow, to seek asylum. He tweeted last month that he and his wife were applying for Russian citizenship. 

        Meanwhile, Assange faces a sentence of up to 175 years in prison if convicted of charges of conspiring to hack government computers and for violating the 1917 Espionage Act for “unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defence.” –The Hill

        https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMeanwhile for more on Oliver Stone, read: Oliver Stone, America Firster authored by Bill Kauffman via The American Conservative

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        At root, Oliver Stone is a patriot who despises the American Empire for corrupting his country, and a far cry from your run-of-the-mill Hollywood liberal.

        I first became aware of Oliver Stone when in 1986 I was watching his film Salvador with an audience of left-wing Santa Barbarians. They were enjoying this madcap cinematic indictment of Uncle Sam’s imperialist crimes in Central America—until a scene in which the rebel forces, riding to town like a Marxist cavalry in the righteous cause of The People, began executing the unenlightened. Then the boos rang down.

        Who is this guy, I wondered. My curiosity was whetted further when the P.C. reviewer in the Los Angeles Herald denounced Stone’s screenplays for earlier films: “Movies like Midnight Express, Scarface, and Year of the Dragon are such grand-scale xenophobic fever-dreams that they almost demand to be remade into operas, complete with belching smoke and lurid lighting and crimson-suited devils scurrying out of the wings to pitchfork lily-white Mother America.”

        Ah, a left-wing America Firster! 

        Not quite, as his subsequent work and his entertaining new memoir, Chasing the Light, illumine, but Oliver Stone, our most political major filmmaker, evinces a rowdily heterodox vision shaped by the unusual quartet of Jim Morrison, Sam Peckinpah, Frank Capra, and Jean-Luc Godard.

        What do you call a man who joins the Merchant Marine on a whim, runs up big pro football gambling debts, and takes the Old Right view of FDR’s foreknowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

        I’d call him an American.

        Stone was a rich kid, the son of an FDR-hating Jewish Republican who had served on Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force staff and a French Catholic party girl. He attended the Hill School, played on the tennis team, was devastated by his parents’ divorce, and then went seriously off script.

        Avid for experiences, Stone dropped out of Yale, taught in a Catholic school in Taiwan, and volunteered to fight in Vietnam. He came home with a Bronze Star, shrapnel in his ass, and a taste for “powerful Vietnamese weed.”

        Stone’s politics hadn’t changed all that much, though. He had supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 and would vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980. In later years he became more explicitly libertarian, expressing support for Ron Paul and making a film about Edward Snowden. 

        At root, Oliver Stone is a patriot who despises the American Empire for corrupting his country. JFK, his fantasia on the Deep State, echoes Dwight Eisenhower’s warning that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by “the military-industrial complex.” Platoon and Salvador bespeak an old-fangled American anti-interventionism in an age when that tendency, once the default position of ordinary Americans, is a virtual thoughtcrime. 

        Lost innocence is as common in Stone’s films as splattered blood. In Midnight Express, the Turkish prison movie to end all Turkish prison movies, protagonist Billy Hayes is a Long Island college kid just trying to make a few bucks by smuggling two kilos of hashish to sell to his friends. Heck, it’s no different than being the guy who runs out to pick up the pizza and beer at halftime! (The real Hayes, as Stone later learned, was on his fourth smuggling run and was about as innocent as Brad Davis, the deeply troubled actor who played him.)

        When his sentence is stretched from four to 30 years, Billy explodes in a Stone-penned courtroom rant that belongs in the xenophobe’s hall of fame: “For a nation of pigs it sure is funny you don’t eat ’em … I hate you, I hate your nation, and I hate your people.”

        Yikes! As the husband of an Armenian I’m not overly sensitive to slights against the Turkish nation, but this was a tad intemperate. But so was the left-wing French newspaper Liberation, which reviled Stone as “a madman of the Right.”

        A pithier America First line from Stone’s pen came in Year of the Dragon (1985), when a New York City cop (Mickey Rourke) responds to a Chinese gangster who is describing his culture’s ancient tolerance of gambling and extortion: “This is America you’re living in and it’s 200 years old, so you’d better get your clocks fixed.”

        Stone’s co-writer on Year of the Dragon was Michael Cimino, whose Oscar-winning epic The Deer Hunter was unusual for its sympathetic treatment of small-town working-class men whose church is central to their lives. Critic Pauline Kael sneered at The Deer Hunter’s “traditional isolationist message: Asia should be left to the Asians, and we should stay where we belong, but if we have to be over there we’ll show how tough we are.” A Trumpian message, on Trump’s better days. Cimino blew up his career with the sprawling Heaven’s Gate, a commercial disaster that snuffed his long-dreamt-of goal of filming Ayn Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

        Liberal Hollywood, eh? 

        Bill Kauffman is the author of 11 books, among them Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette and Ain’t My America.

      • Feds Admit $2.3 Trillion In Improper Payments
        Feds Admit $2.3 Trillion In Improper Payments

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 21:15

        Submitted by Adam Andrzejewski,

        Since 2004, twenty large federal agencies have admitted to disbursing an astonishing $2.25 trillion in improper payments. Last year, these improper payments totaled $175 billion – that’s about $15 billion per month, $500 million per day, and $1 million a minute.

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        But what exactly is an improper payment?

        Federal law defines the term as “payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.”

        When people or companies receive incorrect payments, it erodes trust and hinders the government’s ability to finance everything from defense to health care.

        Recently, auditors at OpenTheBooks.com published a 24-page oversight report analyzing why, how, and where federal agencies wasted our tax dollars last year.

        Here are the top 10 takeaways regarding improper and mistaken payments by the 20 largest federal agencies in 2019:

        1. Total Mistakes: $175 billion in estimated improper payments reported by the 20 largest federal agencies, averaging $14.6 billion per month – Total (FY2004-FY2019): $2.25 trillion.

        2. Worst Programs – $121 billion (approximately 69 percent) in improper payments occurred within three program areas – Medicaid, Medicare, and Earned Income Tax Credit.

        3. Claw Back – only $21.1 billion of the $175 billion improper payments during 2019 was recaptured — that’s only 14 cents on every dollar misspent. Five-year total: $103.6 billion recaptured/ $747.7 billion improperly spent

        4. Biggest Offenders:

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        5. Dead people: $871.9 million in mistaken payments were made to dead people. Medicaid, social security payments, federal retirement annuity payouts (pensions), and even farm subsidies were sent to dead recipients. Root cause: failure to verify death. Four-year total: $2.8 billion

        6. Ancient Americans: Six million Social Security numbers are active for people aged 112+; however, only 40 people in the world are known to be older than 112 years of age.

        7. Worst Upward Trend: Medicaid and Medicare improper payments soared from $64 billion (2012) to $88.6 billion (2017), and, in 2019, to $103.6 billion. Five-year total: $456 billion

        8. Best Turnaround: In 2018, the Education Department overpaid $6 billion to college students receiving PELL grants and student loans. In 2019, improper payments were reduced to $1.1 billion – an 85-percent reduction.

        9. Improper Income Redistribution: $17.4 billion in improper payments by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) within the Earned Income Tax Credit program. 25-percent of all payments were improper. Five-year total: $84.35 billion

        10. Purchasing Power: What can $175 billion buy? Last year, the federal government wasted the equivalent of a full year of all federal salaries, perks, and pension benefits for every employee of the federal executive agencies. A stunning example of institutionalized incompetence.

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        Justifications for their improper payments vary by agency.

        For example, Veterans Affairs (VA) says they are working on the problem and, yet, have a long way to go:

        “During FY19 testing for improper payments, VA found that many root causes of improper payments still have not been remediated. While the VA is actively working corrective actions to remediate these complex problems, VA completes its statically valid testing for Improper Payments Elimination & Recovery Act) one year in arrears…”

        The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) flat out admits that their improper payments ($17.4 billion FY2019) will continue:

        “… the IRS does not have the resources to audit every return claiming return tax credits… Without legislative change to greatly improve effective tools to administer these credits, the improper payment rate will not drastically change.”

        Over the years, improper payments is an issue that has attracted reform efforts on both sides of the aisle.

        In 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order to stop improper payments in the core programs of the federal government. Core programs provide services such as Medicare and Medicaid.

        In 2020, President Donald Trump emphasized the importance of eliminating improper payments in the President’s Budget to Congress FY2021.

        But with billions of dollars misspent every year, it’s obvious that both administrations failed to successfully address the issue of improper payments and much more needs to be done.

      • MicroStrategy Buys Another $50 Million In Bitcoin At $19,427; Bringing Total To Half A Billion
        MicroStrategy Buys Another $50 Million In Bitcoin At $19,427; Bringing Total To Half A Billion

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 20:50

        Last week, 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.

        “Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of economic empowerment and provides a way for the world to participate in a global monetary system, which aligns with the company’s purpose,” the company said in a release. Square founder Jack Dorsey, whose twitter bio only includes the hashtag #bitcoin…

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        … has been a advocate of the digital currency, saying in 2018 the cryptocurrency will eventually become the world’s “single currency.” However the founder of Twitter said it could take a long as a decade.

        Perhaps… but for others the payback from investing in bitcoin has come far sooner, most recently the publicly traded 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.

        Not content with the 100% return its stock has generated since then, on Friday MicroStrategy announced that it has bought even more Bitcoin.

        In an 8-K, the company announced that it had purchased “approximately 2,574 bitcoins for $50.0 million at an average price of approximately $19,427 per bitcoin.” As a result, as of December 4, 2020, the Company held approximately 40,824 bitcoins that were acquired at an aggregate purchase price of $475.0 million. Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor confirmed as much in a subsequent tweet:

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        And since the current market value of the company’s bitcoin holdings is currently $770 million, or a 60% return in just a few months, one can see why the stock price of MSTR is up 165% since the day it announced its first Bitcoin purchase.

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        In September, Saylor told Bloomberg that the purchase were being done because he sees the cryptocurrency as less risky than cash or gold. On Monday, Bitcoin surpassed its December 2017 record high of $19,511, and even though it neared $20,000 it wasn’t able to crack that key level, and after peaking at $19,914 has bounced around mostly in a range between $18,500 to $19,500 since.

        This brings us to a question we asked last weekend: “whereas in 2017 it was all the rage to pivot to “blockchain”, we wonder how long before every public company converts some (or all) of its cash and equivalents into bitcoin similar to MicrosStrategy and Square, in hopes of reaping a quick surge in its stock price” (we wonder how much of MSTR’s bitcoin purchase just a few days later was prompted by this rhetorical question).

        If it’s up to Saylor, we wouldn’t have long to wait: as the CEO tweeted earlier today “If you don’t fantasize about flaunting it, floating in it, flying in it, frolicking with it, fortifying it, or fighting over it, you should probably play it safe and just buy #Bitcoin.”

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      • Trump Orders Withdrawal Of Nearly All US Troops From Somalia
        Trump Orders Withdrawal Of Nearly All US Troops From Somalia

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 20:25

        President Trump has ordered the immediate withdrawal of the “majority” of American troops from Somalia, according to a Pentagon announcement made Friday. There’s an estimated 700 troops currently inside the country. 

        “The President of the United States has ordered the Department of Defense and the United States Africa Command to reposition the majority of personnel and assets out of Somalia by early 2021,” the Pentagon said.

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        US military training in Africa, Getty Images

        The statement indicated that “some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa,” however remaining troops are expected to go elsewhere within Africa Command (AFRICOM) to “allow cross-border operations”. This is parallel to how the draw down from Germany is envisioned – some troops coming home to US soil with others stationed elsewhere in Europe. 

        The American public might be forgiven for never knowing there are American troops and bases in Somalia in the first place.

        After all, the war-torn country in the Horn of Africa only sporadically hits the news when things go horribly wrong, such as with major pirate attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Aden, or last month’s death of a CIA officer reportedly during a raid on a suspected al-Shabaab bomb-maker, and then there’s the disastrous ‘Black Hawk Down’ 1993 mission wherein 18 American soldiers were killed.

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        US forces are there ostensibly to help train national Somali security forces, and to conduct covert raids and drone warfare against local and regional terrorists like al-Shabab. In 2019 alone, for example, the Trump administration conducted an unprecedented 63 airstrikes in Somalia.

        Trump is attempting a last-ditch effort to “bring our troops home” – something he emphasized heavily on the campaign trail. However, something like a full Syria pull-out would be seen as more significant, given that this theatre presents the greater potential for US entering a major regional war.

      • Goldman Sees More Chinese Bond Defaults
        Goldman Sees More Chinese Bond Defaults

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 20:00

        By Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator

        President Donald Trump has continued bashing China. This time, his administration restricted travel visas for members of the Chinese Communist Party and banned cotton imports from a military-linked firm it accused of “slave labor.”

        So far, all of these moves, including the House bill that could lead to the delisting of Chinese companies on American exchanges, are roughly in line with market expectations. They don’t touch sensitive issues like the trade deal or sanctions on major banks. And investors have largely shrugged it off, with the yuan trading at the strongest in more than two years.

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        Looking at the domestic market, the fallout from the recent onshore bond defaults seems to be lessening after the government vowed to crack down on “debt evasion”. The credit spread of AA-rated bonds over government debt has stabilized after widening in recent weeks. Thus far, the default scare hasn’t caused major funding problems or market dislocation, which suggests that policy easing is unlikely.

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        What Beijing’s trying to do is break the implicit government guarantee and moral hazard of debt without triggering systemic and contagion risks. The net effect of this “credit cleanup” strategy will be more onshore defaults next year and more differentiation among weak and strong borrowers, according to Goldman Sachs’s Kenneth Ho and Chakki Ting. 

        The strategists expect the pace of new defaults to revert to the levels of 2018 and 2019, when there was an average of three to four new defaults a month. For the offshore market, strategists expect the pace of defaults to moderate because there was less forbearance this year, predicting that the high-yield default rate will drop to 4.3% next year from 4.9% this year.

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        It looks like 2021 is going to be another bumpy ride.

      • Head Of World's Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund Forced Out Because His Wife Is Chinese
        Head Of World’s Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund Forced Out Because His Wife Is Chinese

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 19:30

        The deputy governor of the Norwegian central bank, Jon Nicolaisen, announced on Friday he was resigning because his application for renewed security clearance had been rejected because he has a Chinese wife.

        “The Norwegian Civil Security Clearance Authority informs me that the reason that I will not receive a renewed security clearance is that my wife is a Chinese citizen and resides in China, where I support her financially,” Nicolaisen said. “At the same time, they have determined that there are no circumstances regarding me personally that give rise to doubt about my suitability for obtaining a security clearance, but that this does not carry sufficient weight.”

        “I have now had to take the consequences of this,” he said as he tendered his resignation.

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        Jon Nicolaisen, head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund and deputy governor of Norway’s central bank, stepped down after being denied security clearance because he has a Chinese wife.

        The resignation takes effect immediately, according to a statement released by the central bank. It was not immediately clear who would replace him.

        In recent years, Norway has introduced stricter rules for the issuing of security clearances, making it difficult in many cases to get approval for anyone married to a person from a country with which Norway does not have security cooperation.

        Jon Nicolaisen, whose wife lives in China, has been married since 2010. He had his term at the bank extended in April, having originally been appointed in 2014. In other words for over a decade it wasn’t an issue who the central banker was married, but has suddenly become grounds for effective termination.

        In addition to taking part in setting monetary policy, Nicolaisen had been in charge of overseeing Norway’s $1.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest.

        Central Bank Governor Oeystein Olsen said Nicolaisen’s departure would be a big loss: “I will miss Jon Nicolaisen in his post as deputy governor, where he performed his duties superbly as a close colleague and competent professional,” Central Bank Governor Oeystein Olsen said in a statement.

      • 'Virtuous Hypochondria': How One Man Lost A 'Friend' Of 20 Years…
        ‘Virtuous Hypochondria’: How One Man Lost A ‘Friend’ Of 20 Years…

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 19:00

        Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

        I parted ways yesterday with a friend of more than 20 years’ standing over his sickness – and my refusal to indulge it or even pretend to ignore it.

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        This ex-friend says I should don the Holy Rag because “I might be asymptomatic” and because I ought to “show a little respect for your fellow man” and that “It’s not all about you.” He added:

        “Grow your own food and you don’t need to interact with people. But if you want the benefits of society you have to participate and conform a bit.”

        Italics added.

        So I said good-bye.

        I “have to conform a bit”? I am obliged to literally show that I (supposedly) agree with the outrageous assertion that I might be sick – i.e., “asymptomatic” – and so present an ongoing, never-ending threat to other people that requires me to wear a Face Diaper – the religious vestment of the Sickness Cult – to assuage their fears?

        I attempted to reason with this friend.

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        It was like attempting to discuss Euclid with a rooster.

        “I’m not sick,” I texted him.

        “I’ve had two friends die from it,” he texted back. “And several still sick.”

        Me: “Well, I’m not sick. Therefore, I cannot transmit sickness. Therefore, wearing a rag over my face serves no medical purpose.”

        Him: “You might be asymptomatic.”

        Me: “Okay, so you are saying that the possibility I might be sick – even though I’m not coughing or sneezing or manifesting any symptoms of sickness and so there is no evidentiary/specific reason to suppose I am in fact sick, much less contagious – obligates me to act as if I am in fact sick and contagious and to literally put on something as a ‘protective’ measure, just in case and to ease your fears?”

        “In that case, why shouldn’t you be obliged to turn in your guns (my ex-friend likes guns) since many people are quite terrified of them and fear you might use them to harm them or someone they care about?”

        “If my fear that you might be – or do – some thing is enough to impose an obligation on you, then how do you feel about being made to wear an armband or similar highly visible item indicating that you are gay (my ex-friend is homosexual) and thus a potential transmitter of AIDS?”

        “The fact is you could possibly transmit AIDs. You might spit on me. You might rape someone. These are just as possible as ‘you might be asymptomatic’ ”…

        He didn’t like that much – and that was the end of the texting and the friendship.

        I do not mourn the loss.

        Because I understand this person is not and may never have been my friend. A friend doesn’t threaten violence nor countenance its threat. Yet that is precisely what my ex-friend advocates – in a mewling, gas-lighting way – when he urges me to “wear a mask” to “show a little respect for (my) fellow man” and then says I am obliged to “conform a little bit.”

        He means obey. And not merely obey.

        I must agree.

        I must show that I agree . . . by wearing a visible accoutrement of agreement.

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        Like the wearing of an armband, in another time.

        To not wear the armband then – or the Holy Rag now – is to give visual evidence of non-agreement and that is what these creeps cannot stand.

        Not that we are “asymptomatic” and might be plague carriers but that we disagree with them. That we do not share their virtuous hypochondria and by showing that we do not share it show contempt for it.

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        My now-ex-friend supports my being made to “conform a little bit” – and you, too. They will cheer when we are hounded by the Gesundheitpolizei for not wearing the Holy Rag and – soon – refusing to allow ourselves to be injected with god-knows-what. They will support our being excommunicated from life – not allowed to transact business, buy food.

        “If you want the benefits of society you have to participate and conform a bit.”

        Such people are no friends of mine.

        The words attributed to Edward I – the “longshanks” – come to mind: “A man does good business when he rids himself of a turd.

        *  *  *

        If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.  We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!  Our donate button is here.

      • No, Low Rates Do Not Lead To Higher Earnings Multiples: What That Means For Markets
        No, Low Rates Do Not Lead To Higher Earnings Multiples: What That Means For Markets

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 18:35

        With the S&P closing Friday at a new record high just shy of 3,700, which as we showed last week translates into a Shiller CAPE ratio now above levels where it was on the eve of the crash of 1929 for the first time since the dot com bubble…

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        … even Goldman has been forced to admit that stocks around the globe are at extremely elevated valuations relative to history not just on a forward P/E multiple basis…

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        … but across all valuation metrics…

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        … with one exception: the equity risk premium, which is also used in the so-called “Fed model”, both of which boil down to a simple concept: that low interest rates (and rates are now the lowest they have been in 4000 years of history) justify – and “allow” – high earnings multiples, implying that even if stocks are extremely overvalued since rates are at historic lows, investors have no choice but to keep buying stocks as there are no alternatives.

        But is that true?

        That’s the question which Gerard Minack, of Minack Advisors, raised this week as Bloomberg’s John Authers noted: do low interest rates on their own lead to higher earnings multiples?

        Well, contrary to what Goldman, Morgan Stanley and virtually every other bank writes using the “Fed Model” as the only valuation-based justification for projecting even higher S&P500 targets in 2021 and onward (most banks predict the S&P will rise another 10-15% next year), Minack’s answer is a resounding no: it’s not rational to bid up stocks just because rates are low.

        The reason is blindingly simple to anyone whose pay doesn’t depend on goalseeking a bullish narrative, namely that “all else is not equal”, or in other words, interest rates are usually low – i.e. disinflationary – because growth is bad, and as Authers redundantly clarifies, when growth is bad that tends to be bad for equities (except, paradoxically, now when collapsing global GDP has pushed world stocks to record highs).

        Minack digs deeper to find that there is a curved relationship between rates and equities over time: when rates come down from very high levels, equity multiples tend to improve, but when rates then drop to very low levels, equity multiples fall because this generally means that the economy is mired in a recession.

        The chart below from Minack maps the CAPE on one scale against the 10-year yield on the other for every month since 1925. It shows that the relationship between the two isn’t that strong. In fact, the best fit Minack can find, excluding the bubble dot-com years, has an R-squared of only 0.12, meaning only a weak correlation:

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        As Authers points out the dot-com bubble readings, in pink, are almost off the chart — irrationally high multiples given the interest rates of the time (everyone knows what happened next). The current reading, shown in bright red, is clearly alarming as it’s the only time outside of the dot com bubble when the CAPE ratio was this high. This isn’t a well-explored end of the spectrum, obviously, but stocks do look expensive… and of course, Wall Street is quick to point out that this is justified due to the record low yields. Further bolstering the bullish case, one can extrapolate Shiller’s logic to show that one would expect the excess yield to rise further as rates get to extreme lows. If the relationship with rates held as anticipated in his chart, then the excess yield as calculated by Shiller would be roughly double what it is now (and stocks, on Shiller’s suggested methodology, would look like a screaming buy).

        What if instead of nominal one uses real yields? Minack repeats his exercise to account for inflation, looking precisely at real yields which as one can imagine, are low present, but not historically unprecedented. As Bloomberg’s Authers writes, this exercise gives a slightly better correlation, “makes the dot-com bubble look like more of an outlier and, sadly, also makes the current point look like more of an outlier.” In short, while there have been a number of observations with 10-year nominal yields below the rate of inflation in the past, this is the most expensive that stocks have ever been during such a period:

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        What is particularly notable is that not every market is an outlier like the US: the next chart, which uses nominal yields since 1987, compares CAPEs and 10-year yields for developed markets outside the U.S., emerging markets, and the U.S. While the US is clearly a bubble, stocks outside the U.S. appear to be reasonably valued given the level of interest rates. It is only U.S. stocks look wildly overpriced across most valuation metrics as even Goldman would agree:

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        And here a nuance emerges: as Authers points out, in an intriguing development, the U.S. relationship between yields and earnings multiples has started to differ from its historic pattern only in the last six years. In other words, until the end of 2013, there was a much more discernible correlation, with an R-squared of 0.38. But since the end of 2013, earnings multiples have been without exception higher than the previous relationship with interest rates would have suggested. In fact, they have never been further away. To be clear, this means that they now look unambiguously expensive, given where interest rates are, even though interest rates are so low:

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        According to Authers, we can learn two things from this chart:

        • One is that the relationship between rates and earnings multiples changed at some point early in the last decade in the U.S., presumably when investors got used to the notion of enduring “lower for longer” rates coupled with low inflation. One possibility is that this was due to the belief that the traditional relationship between rates and the economy had broken down, in other words the advent of central planning by banks broke one of the most fundamental valuation relationships.
        • The second is that whatever is driving multiples higher, it isn’t rates. As the chart shows clearly enough, rates have been on or about where they are now for nine months. Earnings have dipped and then recovered, and yet this is the most expensive that stocks have been.

        In an attempt to find out what is driving multiples, Minack next turns to the FANG stocks, which he defines as the FAAANMs (for Facebook, Amazon.com, Apple, Alphabet, Netflix and Microsoft). The key finding is that their earnings have, until now, defied slow growth that defined the developed world during the post-crisis decade, and have even defied the slump that followed the Covid shock. The rest of the S&P 500, and indeed the rest of the world, did nothing remotely similar. The following stunning chart from Minack shows the internet platform groups’ earnings, rather than their share prices.

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        Of course, soaring earnings also mean soaring stock prices (especially when one applies record PE multiples), and on Friday the NYSE Fang+ index hit a new all-time high. As Authers shows, over the last five years, its performance has dwarfed that of the S&P 500, and the MSCI all-world index. While smaller stocks are beginning to make a relative comeback, the FANGs’ share prices are as high as they have ever been in absolute terms.

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        Putting it together, while much of the world has seen corporate earnings behave just as one would expect in a world of very low interest rates (i.e., in a very sluggish economy), a tiny group of U.S. companies have managed to defy that logic completely and seen their earnings explode, dragging the US stock market higher while leaving the 494 remaining S&P companies in the dust. And now, amid growing expectations of a post-vaccine boom, earnings estimates are rising even more. That leads stocks to trade at a higher multiple of past earnings. In other words, as Authers notes, “it is earnings expectations, not rates, that have brought the market up in the last month or so, on this logic, and it would be an earnings disappointment (presumably sparked by some disappointment with distribution of the vaccine) that would bring it down again.”

        As Minack summarizes:

        In short, the US has been exceptional – relative to both its own history and other markets – by re-rating in the low-rate post-GFC cycle. The reason global equities are re-rating now is because of improving growth expectations, not because rates are low. If the rally were to correct – and I think it’s getting frothy – then the catalyst will be a growth scare, not a rate scare. Having said that, it’s a terrific combination for equities if growth does improve as expected next year and rates stay low. That combination would be more beneficial for de-rated non-US markets than the re-rated US market.

        Indeed, anywhere one turns, one can find banks pushing the argument for favoring non-U.S. equities over the U.S. – JPMorgan did that just this week, when it downgraded US stocks and upgraded Europe.

        That said, even in a world where record low rates did not justify the record high in stocks, and as we have repeatedly cautioned the last thing markets want is to find out what will happen if rates do surprise by rising, especially if they spike higher in an uncontrolled manner similar to what happened during the 2013 taper tantrum when 10Y yields soared by 150bps in months. As Authers notes, “U.S. markets have been working on the assumption that they will stay low for a while. It has been an unspoken ceteris paribus clause” and for good reason: “The sharp corrections in response to slightly higher rates in 2013 and 2018 both forced central banks into climbdowns.”

        This is also the worst case conceived by Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson who last week said that “with our economists forecasting 7.5% nominal US GDP growth next year, a 1% 10-year Treasury bond looks awfully mispriced on a 12-month view. This has implications for equity valuations, especially longer-duration ones like the Nasdaq and S&P 500.”

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        Conversely, shorter-duration cyclical and value stocks get a boost from better growth and higher interest rates – hence the rotation we have been witnessing in the equity markets from the Nasdaq to the small-cap Russell 2000 over the past few months as markets contemplate a full reopening of the economy. “We think this rotation has further to go if we are right about the economy and rates” according to Wilson.

        Of course, the question is just how high will rates eventually go in a world where the recent record injection of M2 would suggest it is just a matter of time before we experience a record inflationary spike:

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        As Authers ominously concludes, “we don’t yet know the results of an experiment in which rates rise and central banks cannot climb down because the economy is growing and inflation is back” but we may very soon have to find out.

      • Why Does Bitcoin Have Value?
        Why Does Bitcoin Have Value?

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 18:10

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

        Even after eleven years experience, and a per Bitcoin price of nearly $20,000, the incredulous are still with us. I understand why. Bitcoin is not like other traditional financial assets. Even describing it as an asset is misleading. It is not the same as a stock, as a payment system, or a money. It has features of all these but it is not identical to them. What Bitcoin is depends on its use as a means of storing and porting value, which in turn rests of secure titles to ownership of a scarce good. Those without experience in the sector look at all of this and get frustrated that understanding why it is valuable is not so easy to grasp. 

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        In this article, I’m updating an analysis I wrote six years ago. It still holds up. For those who don’t want to slog through the entire article, my thesis is that Bitcoin’s value obtains from its underlying technology, which is an open-source ledger that keeps track of ownership rights and permits the transfer of these rights. Bitcoin managed to bundle its unit of account with a payment system that lives on the ledger. That’s its innovation and why it obtained a value and that value continues to rise. 

        Consider the criticism offered by traditional gold advocates, who have, for decades, pushed the idea that sound money must be backed by something real, hard, and independently valuable. Bitcoin doesn’t qualify, right? Maybe it does. 

        Bitcoin first emerged as a possible competitor to national, government-managed money in 2009. Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper was released October 31, 2008. The structure and language of this paper sent the message: This currency is for computer technicians, not economists nor political pundits. The paper’s circulation was limited; novices who read it were mystified. 

        But the lack of interest didn’t stop history from moving forward. Two months later, those who were paying attention saw the emergence of the “Genesis Block,” the first group of bitcoins generated through Nakamoto’s concept of a distributed ledger that lived on any computer node in the world that wanted to host it.

        Here we are all these years later and a single bitcoin trades at $18,500. The currency is held and accepted by many thousands of institutions, both online and offline. Its payment system is very popular in poor countries without vast banking infrastructures but also in developed countries. And major institutions—including the Federal Reserve, the OECD, the World Bank, and major investment houses—are paying respectful attention and weaving blockchain technology into their operations.. 

        Enthusiasts, who are found in every country, say that its exchange value will soar even more in the future because its supply is strictly limited and it provides a system vastly superior to government money. Bitcoin is transferred between individuals without a third party. It is relatively low-cost to exchange. It has a predictable supply. It is durable, fungible, and divisible: all crucial features of money. It creates a monetary system that doesn’t depend on trust and identity, much less on central banks and government. It is a new system for the digital age.

        Hard lessons for hard money

        To those educated in the “hard money” tradition, the whole idea has been a serious challenge. Speaking for myself, I had been reading about bitcoin for two years before I came anywhere close to understanding it. There was just something about the whole idea that bugged me. You can’t make money out of nothing, much less out of computer code. Why does it have value then? There must be something amiss. This is not how we expected money to be reformed.

        There’s the problem: our expectations. We should have been paying closer attention to Ludwig von Mises’ theory of money’s origins—not to what we think he wrote, but to what he actually did write. 

        In 1912, Mises released The Theory of Money and Credit. It was a huge hit in Europe when it came out in German, and it was translated into English. While covering every aspect of money, his core contribution was in tracing the value and price of money—and not just money itself—to its origins. That is, he explained how money gets its price in terms of the goods and services it obtains. He later called this process the “regression theorem,” and as it turns out, bitcoin satisfies the conditions of the theorem.

        Mises’ teacher, Carl Menger, demonstrated that money itself originates from the market—not from the State and not from social contract. It emerges gradually as monetary entrepreneurs seek out an ideal form of commodity for indirect exchange. Instead of merely bartering with each other, people acquire a good not to consume, but to trade. That good becomes money, the most marketable commodity.

        But Mises added that the value of money traces backward in time to its value as a bartered commodity. Mises said that this is the only way money can have value.

        The theory of the value of money as such can trace back the objective exchange value of money only to that point where it ceases to be the value of money and becomes merely the value of a commodity…. If in this way we continually go farther and farther back we must eventually arrive at a point where we no longer find any component in the objective exchange value of money that arises from valuations based on the function of money as a common medium of exchange; where the value of money is nothing other than the value of an object that is useful in some other way than as money…. Before it was usual to acquire goods in the market, not for personal consumption, but simply in order to exchange them again for the goods that were really wanted, each individual commodity was only accredited with that value given by the subjective valuations based on its direct utility.

        Mises’ explanation solved a major problem that had long mystified economists. It is a narrative of conjectural history, and yet it makes perfect sense. Would salt have become money had it otherwise been completely useless? Would beaver pelts have obtained monetary value had they not been useful for clothing? Would silver or gold have had money value if they had no value as commodities first? The answer in all cases of monetary history is clearly no. The initial value of money, before it becomes widely traded as money, originates in its direct utility. It’s an explanation that is demonstrated through historical reconstruction.

        That’s Mises’ regression theorem.

        Bitcoin’s use value

        At first glance, bitcoin would seem to be an exception. You can’t use a bitcoin for anything other than money. It can’t be worn as jewelry. You can’t make a machine out of it. You can’t eat it or even decorate with it. Its value is only realized as a unit that facilitates indirect exchange. And yet, bitcoin already is money. It’s used every day. You can see the exchanges in real time. It’s not a myth. It’s the real deal.

        It might seem like we have to choose. Is Mises wrong? Maybe we have to toss out his whole theory. Or maybe his point was purely historical and doesn’t apply in the future of a digital age. Or maybe his regression theorem is proof that bitcoin is just an empty mania with no staying power, because it can’t be reduced to its value as a useful commodity.

        And yet, you don’t have to resort to complicated monetary theory in order to understand the sense of alarm surrounding bitcoin. Many people, as I did, just have a feeling of uneasiness about a money that has no basis in anything physical. Sure, you can print out a bitcoin on a piece of paper, but having a paper with a QR code or a public key is not enough to relieve that sense of unease.

        How can we resolve this problem? In my own mind, I toyed with the issue for more than a year. It puzzled me. I wondered if Mises’ insight applied only in a pre-digital age. I followed the speculations online that the value of bitcoin would be zero but for the national currencies into which it is converted. Perhaps the demand for bitcoin overcame the demands of Mises’ scenario because of a desperate need for something other than the dollar.

        As time passed—and I read the work of Konrad Graf, Peter Surda, and Daniel Krawisz—finally the resolution came. Bitcoin is both a payment system and a money. The payment system is the source of value, while the accounting unit merely expresses that value in terms of price. The unity of money and payment is its most unusual feature, and the one that most commentators have had trouble wrapping their heads around.

        We are all used to thinking of currency as separate from payment systems. This thinking is a reflection of the technological limitations of history. There is the dollar and there are credit cards. There is the euro and there is PayPal. There is the yen and there are wire services. In each case, money transfer relies on third-party service providers. In order to use them, you need to establish what is called a “trust relationship” with them, which is to say that the institution arranging the deal has to believe that you are going to pay.

        This wedge between money and payment has always been with us, except for the case of physical proximity.

        If I give you a dollar for your pizza slice, there is no third party. But payment systems, third parties, and trust relationships become necessary once you leave geographic proximity. That’s when companies like Visa and institutions like banks become indispensable. They are the application that makes the monetary software do what you want it to do.

        The hitch is that the payment systems we have today are not available to just anyone. In fact, a vast majority of humanity does not have access to such tools, which is a major reason for poverty in the world. The financially disenfranchised are confined to only local trade and cannot extend their trading relationships with the world.

        A major, if not a primary, purpose of developing Bitcoin was to solve this problem. The protocol set out to weave together the currency feature with a payment system. The two are interlinked in the structure of the code itself. This connection is what makes bitcoin different from any existing national currency, and, really, any currency in history.

        Let Nakamoto speak from the introductory abstract to his white paper. Observe how central the payment system is to the monetary system he created:

        A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they’ll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

        What’s very striking about this paragraph is that there is not even one mention of the currency unit itself. There is only the mention of the problem of double-spending (which is to say, the problem of inflationary money creation beyond which the protocol would otherwise permit). The innovation here, even according to the words of its inventor, is the payment network, not the coin. The coin or digital unit only expresses the value of the network. It is an accounting tool that absorbs and carries the value of the network through time and space.

        This network is the blockchain. It’s a ledger that lives in the digital cloud, a distributed network, and it can be observed in operation by anyone at any time. It is carefully monitored by all users. It allows the transference of secure and non-repeatable bits of information from one person to any other person anywhere in the world, and these information bits are secured by a digital form of property title. This is what Nakamoto called “digital signatures.” His invention of the cloud-based ledger allows property rights to be verified without having to depend on some third-party trust agency.

        The blockchain solved what has come to be known as the Byzantine generals’ problem. This is the problem of coordinating action over a large geographic range in the presence of potentially malicious actors. Because generals separated by space have to rely on messengers and this reliance takes time and trust, no general can be absolutely sure that the other general has received and confirmed the message, much less its accuracy.

        Putting a ledger, to which everyone has access, on the Internet overcomes this problem. The ledger records the amounts, the times, and the public addresses of every transaction. The information is shared across the globe and always gets updated. The ledger guarantees the integrity of the system and allows the currency unit to become a digital form of property with a title.

        Once you understand this, you can see that the value proposition of bitcoin is bound up with its attached payment network. Here is where you find the use value to which Mises refers. It is not embedded in the currency unit but rather in the brilliant and innovative payment system on which bitcoin lives. If it were possible for the blockchain to be somehow separated from bitcoin (and, really, this is not possible), the value of the currency would instantly fall to zero.

        Proof of concept

        Now, to further understand how Mises’ theory fits with bitcoin, you have to understand one other point concerning the history of the cryptocurrency. On the day of its release (January 9, 2009), the value of bitcoin was exactly zero. And so it remained for 10 months after its release. All the while, transactions were taking place, but it had no posted value above zero for this entire time.

        The first posted price of bitcoin appeared on October 5, 2009. On this exchange, $1 equaled 1,309.03 Bitcoin (which many considered overpriced at the time). In other words, the first valuation of bitcoin was little more than one-tenth of a penny. Yes, if you had bought $100 worth of bitcoin in those days, and not sold them in some panic, you would be a half-billionaire today.

        So here is the question: What happened between January 9 and October 5, 2009, to cause bitcoin to obtain a market value? The answer is that traders, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and others were trying out the blockchain. They wanted to know if it worked. Did it transfer the units without double-spending? Did a system that depended on voluntary CPU power actually suffice to verify and confirm transactions? Do the rewarded bitcoins land in the right spot as payment for verification services? Most of all, did this new system actually work to do the seemingly impossible—that is, to move secure bits of title-based information through geographic space, not by using some third party but rather peer-to-peer?

        It took 10 months to build confidence. It took another 18 months before bitcoin reached parity with the U.S. dollar. This history is essential to understand, especially if you are relying on a theory of money’s origins that speculates about the pre-history of money, as Mises’ regression theorem does. Bitcoin was not always a money with value. It was once a pure accounting unit attached to a ledger. This ledger obtained what Mises called “use value.” All conditions of the theorem are thereby satisfied.

        Final accounting

        To review, if anyone says that bitcoin is based on nothing but thin air, that it cannot be a money because it has no real history as a genuine commodity, and whether the person saying this is a novice or a highly trained economist, you need to bring up two central points.

        One, bitcoin is not a stand-alone currency but a unit of accounting attached to an innovative payment network.

        Two, this network and therefore bitcoin only obtained its market value through real-time testing in a market environment.

        In other words, once you account for the razzle-dazzle technical features, bitcoin emerged exactly like every other currency, from salt to gold, did. People found the payment system useful, and the attached accounting was portable, divisible, fungible, durable, and scarce.

        A new form of money was born. This money has all the best features of money from history but adds a weightless and spaceless payment network, one that is reliable and verified in real time, that enables the entire world to trade without having to rely on third parties. 

        But notice something extremely important here. The blockchain is not only about money. It is about any information transfers that require security, confirmations, and total assurance of authenticity. This pertains to contracts and transactions of all sorts, all performed peer-to-peer. 

        To be sure, the sector has come to be dominated by third parties that operate mainly as custodians. The crucial point is that this is a market development driven by consumer desire but it is not necessary for the functioning of the system. In addition, thousands of additional tokens have appeared that operate and compete in the crypto sector which is now worth, at the time of this writing, $560 billion in market capitalization. 

        Think of a world without essential third parties, including the most dangerous third party ever conceived of by man: the state and the central bank. Imagine that future and you begin to grasp the fullness of the implications of our future.

        Ludwig von Mises would be amazed and surprised at bitcoin. But he might also feel a sense of pride that his monetary theory of more than a century ago has been confirmed and given new life in the 21st century.

      • The NBA Is No Longer Testing For Marijuana Use
        The NBA Is No Longer Testing For Marijuana Use

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 17:45

        With marijuana getting close to being decriminalized and with predictions of over 80% of all NBA players smoking weed, the NBA looks like it has finally given up on random marijuana testing. 

        The deal appears to have been cut with the help of the NBA Players Association, who seems intent on pinning its motivation (for some reason) on Covid – which is, of course, a virus that affects the lungs.

        League spokesperson Mike Bass told NBC Sports: “Due to the unusual circumstances in conjunction with the pandemic, we have agreed with the NBPA to suspend random testing for marijuana for the 2020-21 season. And focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse.”

        One beneficiary of the new rules will likely be J.R. Smith, who said in a post game interview in 2018 that his shooting was “very green” but “not as green as that green I’m gonna hit tomorrow.”

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        Marijuana will still stay on the NBA’s banned substances list, but the league is clearly shifting away from enforcing its rules against the substance. When the league altered its rules to play at the Orlando Bubble during the pandemic, it suspended random testing for the drug for the first time. 

        NBA players had previously been required to submit to four random tests per season. “If a player tested positive for marijuana once, he was required to enter the NBA’s drug program. Twice, he would be fined $25,000 and a third time would result in a five-game suspension,” NBC Sports writes.

        And while a majority of NBA players may use marijuana, the league isn’t the only one moving away from enforcing rules about it. The MLB has also removed marijuana from its “drugs of abuse” list in December 2019 and turned its focus to opioids. 

        The NBA still may revert back to its old rules for the 2021-2022 season, but we think it’s more likely that pot rules go “up in smoke” for good. Congrats, J.R.

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      • Breakeven Inflation Is Breaking Out
        Breakeven Inflation Is Breaking Out

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 17:20

        Authored by Bryce Coward via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,

        Inflation expectations as priced by the Treasury market are hitting 18 month highs just now. As the reader can see, inflation expectations across all treasury maturities are at cycle highs.

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        This is happening coincident with growing expectations for the $908bn bipartisan stimulus deal and widespread expectations that the Fed will ease in some additional way at their next meeting 12 days from now.

        That these two events are anticipated by the market does pose some near-term downside risk for inflation expectations, since there is now room for disappointment. Even still, keeping the long game in mind is useful.

        Indeed, there exist multiple structural catalysts for inflationary pressure that haven’t existed in quite some time:

        • de-globalization

        • USD which may be under continued pressure from massive twin current account and budget deficits

        • the possibility that US oil production has peaked, or at least will not grow as it did last cycle

        • raw material (especially base metal) inflation from the acceleration of green transport and power generation trends

        • demand-pull inflation from fiscal stimulus

        Within the equity market, there are clear implications to a structural change in inflation expectations. The clearest one may be the outperformance of cyclical vs defensive stocks. In the next chart below I compare the materials sector vs the consumer staples sector (red line) and overlay 10Y inflation expectations (blue line). The bottom panel displays the correlation between the two series in green. If breakevens continue to march higher, it’s clear one wants a more cyclical tilt towards their portfolio.

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        On the other hand, cyclicality does not equal value. This is apparent in the chart below in which I plot the relative performance of Pure Value vs Pure Growth stocks overlaid on inflation expectations.

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        The correlation here is much, much less than the preceding chart. As I have argued multiple times in this blog, value as a style is highly dependent on the yield curve steepening. Because the Fed has telegraphed an inclination to push against back against higher long rates (yield curve control, forward guidance, etc.), a material and sustained steepening of the yield curve (i.e. one that lasts through the first half of 2021) doesn’t seem like a particularly high probability bet.

        At least, the bet on cyclical vs defensive is a higher probability and one that will grow if the inflationary catalysts above play out.

      • COVID Lockdowns Ordered For SoCal, San Joaquin Valley As California Sees Record 25K Cases: Live Updates
        COVID Lockdowns Ordered For SoCal, San Joaquin Valley As California Sees Record 25K Cases: Live Updates

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 17:01

        Summary:

        • Lockdown orders issued for Southern California & the San Joaquin Valley
        • NY reports another 10K+ new case, 69 deaths
        • California sees record 25K COVID cases
        • North Carolina reported 6K cases
        • US reports record COVID cases
        • US 7-day average cases at record high
        • 2.6K deaths confirmed Friday in US
        • UK to start vaccinations Dec. 14
        • Labour leader enters quarantine after staffer tests positive
        • Moscow begins COVID vaccinations Saturday
        • Cases in the Netherlands rise for 2nd straight day
        • Saudi Arabia reports fewer than 200 cases for first time in months
        • Iran 8th country to see deaths top 50K
        • Russian cases top 2.4MM, 4th highest in the world
        • More Danes infected by Mink farm mutations
        • Hong Kong to test taxi drivers as cases rise
        • Hungary sets another record for deaths

        * * *

        Update (1650ET): Following today’s record numbers and rising hospitalizations, the state is imposing stay at home orders for two of the California’s five regions: SoCal, and the San Joaquin Valley. The new orders, which will remain in place for at least three weeks, are triggered when a region’s ICU capacity drops below 15%.

        The Southern California region’s capacity was 12.5% as of Saturday and the San Joaquin Valley’s was 8.6% according to state data.

        As the LAT points out, the order will be felt across the region, but much more dramatically in suburban counties like Orange County, Ventura and Riverside, which have much less restrictive rules than Los Angeles County, which imposed its own lockdown a week ago. The Southern California region includes the following counties: Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura.

        The new rules require personal service businesses, including hair and nail salons, playgrounds, zoos, museums, aquariums and wineries, to close. Overnight, short-term stays at campgrounds will be prohibited. Restaurants must return to takeout service only. Retail businesses will be limited to just 20% of their customer capacity inside at any one time, with requirements for store officials to ensure there’s no indoor drinking or eating.

        Though, unlike Newsom’s order from earlier in the year, hiking and beach access won’t be affected.

        * * *

        Update (1625ET): In its latest update, NY Gov Andrew Cuomo reported another 10K+ new cases as the statewide positivity rate hit 4.99%.

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        He also reported another 69 deaths.

        * * *

        Update (1440ET): Saturday is shaping up to be another tough day with record numbers recorded in states across the country, while infections and hospitalizations climbed in NYC.

        Less than a day after San Francisco joined LA in ordering a new lockdown, the state of California has reported more than 25K new cases, notching a new record (that’s a +1.9%).

        Maine reported a record daily average number of cases, 265 over the last week, the state’s Center for Disease Control reported Saturday.

        North Carolina reported 6K new cases, another record at the end of week in which daily cases topped 5K on three days/. Hospitalizations also climbed to a record 2,171.

        Arizona reported 6,799 new cases on Saturday, the fourth time this week that the state recorded more than 5,000 daily Covid-19 infections. During the state’s earlier surge last summer, Arizona never hit the 5,000-a-day mark.

        * * *

        Capping off another brutal week of COVID-19 infections in the US that saw LA and SF order up new lockdowns, health authorities from across the country reported a total of 224.8K new cases on Friday, a new single-day record.

        According to the COVID Tracking Project, the US is still reported more than 1.8MM daily COVID-19 tests, while the number of currently-hospitalized patients has climbed to 101K.

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        Daily deaths eclipsed 2K yet again on Friday, though the 2.6K new deaths was just below post-springtime highs reached earlier in the week. All told, the US has confirmed 269.8K COVID-19 deaths.

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        The 7-day average for daily cases is also at record highs.

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        As far as individual states are concerned, 35 are seeing hospitalizations continue to climb, even as governors and mayors tighten restrictions in some hard hit areas (though some governors have been less willing to impose tough mandatory restrictions, arguing compliance with all social distancing rules should be voluntary).

        Notably, some of the hard-hit midwestern and plain states like ND, SD, IL & WI are seeing hospitalizations fall, though those declines are being more than compensated for by rising numbers elsewhere.

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        Regionally speaking, the South has taken over from the Midwest as the worst hit part of the US.

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        Globally, cases have exceeded 66 million, while deaths have topped 1.52 million.

        In the UK, officials have set a date – Dec. 14 – on which the first doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine will be dispensed to the highest-priority patients (a group that includes health-care workers, nursing home residents and certain ‘essential’ workers). The NHS has a goal of delivering 975 doses per site to priority patients during that week, according to a copy of a letter sent to doctors on Friday. As cases continue to recede thanks to the BoJo’s tougher restrictions, Kier Starmer, the man who replaced Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK’s opposition Labour Party, has entered self-isolation after a member of his staff tested positive.

        As daily new cases reach record highs with Russian health officials reported 28.8K new cases over the last 24 hours, Moscow kicked off widespread vaccinations of frontline workers and other high-risk people on Saturday, following a Wednesday order from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Mayor of Moscow claimed that more than 5,000 people signed up in the first five hours of registration on Friday.

        The Kremlin has resisted a broad lockdown, putting the responsibility for imposing restrictions on regional governments.

        Russia now has reported a total of more than 2.4MM cases, the fourth-most in the world, behind India (No. 3) and ahead of France (No. 5).

        Here’s more COVID-19 news from Saturday morning and overnight:

        The number of new cases in the Netherlands increased for the second day in a row. There were 6,577 new reported infections on Saturday, up from 5,921 on Friday and 5,634 on Thursday, ANP said. Measures by the Dutch government had previously lowered the daily number of cases to below 5,000 from 10,000 or more.

        Saudi Arabia’s health ministry reported 190 new cases, the first daily count below 200 in eight months (Source: Saudi Arabia).

        Iran’s confirmed virus fatalities since the start of the pandemic have topped 50K, making Iran the 8th country to pass that milestone (Source: Bloomberg).

        The nation had 321 deaths overnight, down from 347 a day earlier, while the number of new infections fell 9% in the last 24 hours to 12.15K, bringing total known cases to 1.03MM (Source: Bloomberg).

        Germany will probably start mass vaccinations by summer and conclude the majority of its immunization efforts by the fall, according to Health Minister Jens Spahn (Source: Bloomberg).

        There has been a marked increase in the number of Danes infected by a form of the coronavirus with mutations that originated in mink farms, Berlingske reported, citing SSI, the Danish government agency for fighting infectious diseases. The estimated number of cases is approaching 2,700 (Source: Bloomberg).

        Hong Kong announced a one-time mandatory test for taxi drivers beginning Dec. 9. The city has seen 100+ new cases for 2 days in a row (Source: Bloomberg).

        Hungary set another daily record for COVID related deaths, as Prime Minister Viktor Orban prepares to announce whether virus curbs will be relaxed for the holiday period (Source: Bloomberg).

        There were 36,652 new confirmed Covid-19 cases in India, taking the official case tally to 9,608,211, the Press Trust of India reports (Source: Bloomberg).

      • Snowflake CEO Earns $95 Million Per Month
        Snowflake CEO Earns $95 Million Per Month

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 16:55

        We don’t know whether or not to blame this excess on inflation and endless money printing, or just pure public market insanity. So, we’ll let the reader decide.

        Either way, it was revealed yesterday that the CEO of cloud computing company Snowflake, Frank Slootman, has a compensation package that is earning him about $95 million per month. 

        Admittedly, Slootman was in the news because Snowflake had posted a great third quarter revenue number and its stock is up more than 200% since going public just months ago in September. 

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        But his pay soon became the topic of discussion. A compensation package he accepted in April 2019 – before the IPO and before he knew how the public market would receive his company – awards him more than 13.7 million options with a strike price of $8.88, according to The Detroit News. 

        Snowflake currently trades at about $373 per share and Slootman’s entire options package could be worth about $4.5 billion once it is paid out in full in 2023. So far, Slootman has yet to exercise any of his options, which come on top of a $375,000 per year base salary.

        The company’s CFO has a similar package and is raking in options worth about $25 million per month.

        Meanwhile, Snowflake’s valuation has rocketed from $3.5 billion in October 2018 to $96 billion. 

        So the moral of the story is: if you see Frank Slootman at a bar and he offers to pick up the check – let him.

      • Is The Gold Sell-Off Over?
        Is The Gold Sell-Off Over?

        Tyler Durden

        Sat, 12/05/2020 – 16:30

        Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

        The dramatic sell-off of the last few weeks ended on Monday morning when gold spiked down to an intraday low of $1765 (silver $21.90). But in morning trading today in the European time zone gold was at $1843, up $56 from last Friday’s close, and silver at $24.28, up $1.65 on the same timescale.

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        The sell-off in paper gold was a repetition of events every November and December bar one since 2015, and the cause appeared to be the same. In the run-up to the year end, the bullion banks manage prices in a book squaring exercise, using the expiry of the December contract to squeeze out the bulls. The only exception was 2018, when they failed to push prices lower, but they still rose strongly into 2019.

        This time, an estimated 150,000 gold call options expired worthless, representing 467 tonnes of gold. The premium income must have been substantial, a welcome offset for the bullion banks’ to their book losses on Comex positions. The question now is, will the pattern of a rally through December into the New Year be repeated?

        The short position for the swaps has improved marginally as the table below indicates.

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        This snapshot, the most recent Commitment of Traders report at the time of writing, shows that the Swaps (bullion bank trading desks) recovered a net 7,895 of their shorts, still leaving them net short of 189,178 contracts. Historically, their position still remains high, despite the fall in the gold price and the reduction of their position. The next chart puts this in a monetary context.

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        It appears that the Swaps are not out of the woods yet by any means, and there is a growing threat from a tumbling dollar, which is our next chart.

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        This is important, because the Managed Money category, mainly hedge funds, look at gold as part of a pairs trade — sell dollar buy gold or buy gold sell dollar. With a net long position of 85,348 contracts, they have room to add a further 25,000 contracts to be only average net long. We will almost certainly have seen some of this buying in the Commitment of Traders’ report for last Tuesday, when the gold price rose strongly, due to be released later tonight.

        That would have increased the Swap’s net shorts, worsening their position.

        The other side of the coin is the larger forward market in London, where vaulted gold, including that of the Bank of England, has increased to record levels. Between August and October (the most recent figures), vaulted gold increased by 394.6 tonnes, split 192.3 tonnes at the BoE and 202.3 tonnes in LBMA vaults. Given the appetite for gold is increasing for the Bank’s earmarked customers and the growth in physical demand from ETFs, and not to mention the desire from unrecorded non-LMBA members for physical bars, it does not appear that the Comex short position is adequately offset in London.

        Compared with other financial assets seen to be inflation hedges, gold has been badly left behind. This is an anomaly likely to be addressed in the coming months.

      Digest powered by RSS Digest

      Dec 05

      Today’s News 5th December 2020

      • 2020: A Retrospective From 2025
        2020: A Retrospective From 2025

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 23:40

        Authored by Tom Trenchard via AmericanMind.org,

        Donald Trump and the Altogether True and Amazing Origin of the United American Counties.

        2020 marked an epoch in American history, standing alongside 1865, 1787, and 1776. First there was the COVID-19 pandemic, then there were the racial protests and riots throughout the summer, and then there was the disputed presidential election. Finally and most cataclysmically, though, 2020 witnessed the initial formation of the United American Counties (UACo) within the former United States of America. Five years later, it is only now becoming possible to assess the most important causes and consequences of this momentous development for American political society.

        As with most politically revolutionary events, the Declaration of UACo Independence was almost entirely unforeseen before it occurred, but almost inevitable in hindsight. By the early 2010s two things were clear:

        (1) Americans had become increasingly polarized in their worldviews and political beliefs; and

        (2) These polarized halves of the U.S. were increasingly sorting themselves into either urban or suburban/rural areas.

        Trump’s election in 2016 put a spotlight on these political realities; as Trump frequently boasted, the 2016 electoral map looked like a sea of red surrounding islands of blue. In 2020, that situation was essentially unchanged.

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        97% of land area in the U.S. constituted rural counties. Trump’s support within these counties was high and enthusiastic both in 2016 and 2020. Within the remaining 3% of the geographical U.S. – the big cities – anti-Trump sentiment was equally high and enthusiastic.

        The 2020 election was the perfect storm for a confrontation between these two factions. It looked like Trump was winning on election day, and then the mail-in ballots handed an apparent victory to Biden. Although widespread electoral fraud wasn’t uncovered by the protracted legal investigation that followed, the die had been cast. Trump and his supporters thought the election had been stolen, and that Trump was the legitimate president of the U.S.

        If it had only been the election dispute, tensions may have dissipated over time. Trump supporters may have learned to live with a Biden presidency, especially given GOP victories at the state level and in Congress. The problem was that the election dispute coincided with a deep polarization of worldviews and American historical narratives that had been building for decades. This polarization had proceeded to the extent of annihilating any possible common ground, rendering attempts at compromise or a “live and let live” approach impossible. We had become two Americas; and, as Lincoln had said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

        In 1861, the outcome of this intractable situation was state secession. The division at this time was between slave states and free states. In 2020, the division was not so much between states as between rural and urban counties within states. In 1861, Lincoln was able to marshal the political will, the moral justification, and the economic and military resources necessary to maintain the original constitutional union by force. In 2020, none of these factors was present: Biden proved to be no Lincoln, and the country was too exhausted from the events of 2020 to muster an extended effort to compel union through force.

        An America Altogether New

        The rapid dissemination of the Declaration of UACo Independence in December 2020 provided the motivation and justification for the formation of a new political society within the former U.S.

        Its “List of Principles” effectively encapsulated the worldview of American political conservatives and echoed the Declaration of 1776: it endorsed “the equal natural rights bestowed by God on all human beings,” “limited and local self-government,” “the traditional family begun in marriage between one man and one woman,” and “the free market economy.”

        And its “List of Grievances” against the progressive liberal orthodoxy entrenched in corrupt urban areas supplied the relevant context for separation: chief among the complaints were “the suppression of freedom of speech” through cancel culture and thought policing, “the eclipse of local self-government by distant ruling elites,” “the replacement of equality under the law with identity politics,” “the rejection of the American political tradition,” and “the introduction of policies destructive of economic freedom.”

        As the Declaration was supplying the inspiration, Trump’s team supplied the necessary perspiration by working quickly and tirelessly to rally support and official endorsement from the hundreds of counties that had supported his election to office weeks before. The rapidity with which this was accomplished was crucial to its ultimate success, and almost unbelievable in hindsight. They were aided by the establishment of efficient systems of communication running throughout the hundreds of rural and suburban counties sympathetic to the movement—the so-called “Town Crier Committees.” This system, working in conjunction with self-dubbed “Minutemen” vigilante groups, provided the coordinated resistance necessary to enforce the county endorsements of Trump’s leadership.

        The preexistence of county government and law enforcement structures aided the transition as well. Early efforts by state governors to use state police and National Guard troops to compel adherence to state laws across vast UACo areas met with such resistance, both externally and internally, that they were quickly deemed impracticable. With the adoption of the provisional Constitution for the United American Counties in January 2021 by more than 500 counties—a number that would grow to nearly 2,000 by May of that same year—the stage was set for a decision by the newly-inaugurated Biden and the areas remaining under his jurisdiction. Would he go to war with Trump’s counties and attempt to compel union as Lincoln had?

        A Separate Peace

        Many factors weighed against this decision. There was, first, the lack of the kind of moral momentum that the abolition movement had supplied in the decades leading up to the Civil War. As Lincoln had long insisted, the controversy that brought on the Civil War was the question of whether slavery was right or wrong. The seceding states took a stand for its rightness, and the Union states took a stand for its wrongness. In 2020, there was no moral controversy that would come close to this kind of stark alternative; no higher ideal that would plausibly justify shedding the blood of fellow Americans.

        Secondly, although Biden technically assumed control of the powerful U.S. military, he and his advisors were justifiably wary of issuing an immediate order to mobilize this force—a majority of whom had voted for Trump in the election—against such a widespread movement involving innumerable family connections and divided loyalties for military service members. There was the problem of supply chains for manufacturing and transportation; since these relied upon and ran directly through large swaths of UACo-controlled territory, they could be easily disrupted either by the withholding of necessary support or through sabotage.

        There was also the immense practical difficulty of fighting a war against guerilla-type forces dispersed across more than 75% of the land area of the U.S. As the British had come to realize in the American Revolutionary War, such a conflict may well have been unwinnable, despite a large disparity in raw military and economic might.

        In the face of these obstacles to compelling union through force, Biden had no choice but to negotiate with Trump. The American Friendship Accords, finalized on the anniversary of election day the year before (November 3, 2021), officially established two sovereign nations (the United American Counties and the United American Cities), averted large-scale violent conflict, and established the economic and military agreements necessary to maintain cooperation between the two new political entities at a level similar to what had existed before.

        In 2025, just five short years after the tumultuous period of 2020-21, we seem to have entered a new era of American peace and prosperity. Relieved from the incessant tension of trying to reconcile fundamentally irreconcilable worldviews under a common government, polarized American society has achieved a kind of equilibrium. Common moral and political principles are once again able to provide the foundation for productive debate and coherent public policy within both the UACo and the UACi. The freedom of economic exchange and personal movement between the two has facilitated the growth of new ties of continental friendship where before there was polarization and enmity.

        It may still be too early to pronounce judgment on the new political situation in the former U.S. But so far, looking back on 2020 seems to confirm the old proverb: It’s always darkest just before the dawn.

      • Chaos & Suspicion: The Killing Of Iran's Nuclear Scientists
        Chaos & Suspicion: The Killing Of Iran's Nuclear Scientists

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 23:20

        New details are emerging about an attack that killed Iran’s most senior nuclear scientist last Friday. Initially, it was thought that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s car was attacked by undentified gunmen armed with automatic weapons and explosives. However, a Fars news agency report on Sunday evening states that Fakhrizadeh was actually killed by a remote-controlled weapon mounted in a vehicle that subsequently exploded. Iran has blamed Israel and an opposition group in exile called Mujahedeen-e-Khalq for the attack. A senior Iranian security official has described it as “highly complex”, adding that it was carried out with “electronic devices”.

        While Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the most senior nuclear scientist to be killed in mysterious circumstances in Iran, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that he is by no means the first with Tehran holding Israel accountable for at least five assassinations.

        Infographic: Chaos & Suspicion: The Killing Of Iran's Nuclear Scientists | Statista

        You will find more infographics at Statista

        The first high-profile killing happened in early 2010 when Masoud Ali Mohammadi died after a bomb was detonated on a motorcycle when he left his home. The pattern of targeting nuclear scientists during their commute repeated itself in subsequent incidents and Majid Shahriar died when a motorcyclist attached a bomb to his car in November 2010. It remains unclear whether Darioush Rezaeineja was connected to the nuclear program but he was shot dead regardless by two gunmen on a motorcycle in July 2011. Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed a year later when assailants on a motorcycle attached magnetic bombs to his car while he was on his way to work.

        Alongside the assassinations, a chain of mysterious blasts and fires at various facilities associated with the nuclear program have added to the chaos and suspicion. These have been happening for years with reports of major incidents emerging in 2011. That year, an explosion was heard at a nuclear facility in Isfahan and a blast occurred at a steel mill linked to the nuclear program in Yasd, killing seven people. They have become more frequent in 2020 with a major explosion rocking a missile-production complex in Khojir in June, followed by a blast that destroyed a building developing advanced centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility in July.

        The fact that a presidential transition is imminent in Washington D.C. has added to the tension, particularly as Joe Biden has pledged to resurrect the 2015 nuclear deal. It is unclear whether Tehran will be receptive given recent events, however, and it has already promised to push on with its nuclear program in addition to vowing to retaliate for Fakhrizadeh’s killing. Friday’s incident is also almost certainly going to fan the flames of Iran’s regional conflict with Israel which has been going on for years, particularly in Syria. Israel has carried out airstrikes against Iranian proxies in Syria as well as against Iran’s military directly. The latest killing of a nuclear scientist may lead to a dangerous escalation in that (relatively) covert conflict.

      • NDAA Seeks To Halt Trump's Troop Withdrawals From Afghanistan & Germany
        NDAA Seeks To Halt Trump's Troop Withdrawals From Afghanistan & Germany

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 23:00

        Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

        The version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) agreed to by the House and Senate, known as the compromise version, includes provisions to block President Trump’s planned troop withdrawals in both Afghanistan and Germany.

        For Afghanistan, there is language in the bill that would block funding to reduce troop numbers in the country before the Pentagon, State Department, and the director of national intelligence assess how the drawdown would affect US security. The assessment would be required before troop numbers could drop lower than they are when the NDAA becomes law, and again if they drop below 2,000.

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        Via Zuma Press/Xinhua

        President Trump’s current plan is to bring troop numbers in Afghanistan down to 2,500 by January 15th. The US-Taliban peace deal signed in February paved the way for all US and other foreign forces to be out of the country by Spring 2021.

        Another troop drawdown President Trump’s Pentagon is planning is a reduction of forces in Germany from about 36,000 troops to 24,000. Congressional aides told The Hill that the compromise version of the NDAA includes language that would block the drawdown.

        “There is language that prevents reduction in the number of US forces stationed in Germany below 34,500 until 120 days after the secretary of Defense submits an assessment and planning regarding the implications for allies, costs, military families, deterrence and other key issues,” one of the aides said.

        The provisions to block Trump’s withdrawals could add to the controversy that is already surrounding the NDAA. On Tuesday, President Trump said he would veto the spending bill if it did not include an amendment to repeal Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

        Section 230 gives tech platforms immunity from liability for content published by third parties. Trump doubled down on his call to include the provision in a tweet on Thursday after some Republican senators voiced their objection to the idea.

      • Black Google Researcher Claims She Was Fired Because She Discovered AI Is Racist
        Black Google Researcher Claims She Was Fired Because She Discovered AI Is Racist

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 22:40

        A well-known artificial intelligence researcher at Google tweeted Wednesday that she was fired over an email expressing dismay with management over the censorship of new research. 

        Timnit Gebru, a technical co-lead of Google’s Ethical A.I. team, who researches algorithmic bias and data mining, has been an outspoken advocate for diversity in technology, claimed, in a series of tweets, she was fired for refusing to retract a research paper that outlines how A.I. discriminates against minorities and also due to a complaint in an email to colleagues. 

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        Expressing her frustrations in an email to an internal company group named Google Brain Women and Allies – Gebru criticized Google’s hiring of minorities and not doing enough to promote “responsible A.I.” 

        The email was shared by Platformer’s Casey Newton:  

        Hi friends,

        I had stopped writing here as you may know, after all the micro and macro aggressions and harassments I received after posting my stories here (and then of course it started being moderated).

        Recently however, I was contributing to a document that Katherine and Daphne were writing where they were dismayed by the fact that after all this talk, this org seems to have hired 14% or so women this year. Samy has hired 39% from what I understand but he has zero incentive to do this.

        What I want to say is stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference. The DEI OKRs that we don’t know where they come from (and are never met anyways), the random discussions, the “we need more mentorship” rather than “we need to stop the toxic environments that hinder us from progressing” the constant fighting and education at your cost, they don’t matter. Because there is zero accountability. There is no incentive to hire 39% women: your life gets worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people, you start making the other leaders upset when they don’t want to give you good ratings during calibration. There is no way more documents or more conversations will achieve anything. We just had a Black research all hands with such an emotional show of exasperation. Do you know what happened since? Silencing in the most fundamental way possible.

        Have you ever heard of someone getting “feedback” on a paper through a privileged and confidential document to H.R.? Does that sound like a standard procedure to you or does it just happen to people like me who are constantly dehumanized?

        Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from P.R. & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from P.R. & Policy besides them asking you for updates (in 2 months). A week before you go out on vacation, you see a meeting pop up at 4:30pm PST on your calendar (this popped up at around 2pm). No one would tell you what the meeting was about in advance. Then in that meeting your manager’s manager tells you “it has been decided” that you need to retract this paper by next week, Nov. 27, the week when almost everyone would be out (and a date which has nothing to do with the conference process). You are not worth having any conversations about this, since you are not someone whose humanity (let alone expertise recognized by journalists, governments, scientists, civic organizations such as the electronic frontiers foundation etc) is acknowledged or valued in this company.

        Then, you ask for more information. What specific feedback exists? Who is it coming from? Why now? Why not before? Can you go back and forth with anyone? Can you understand what exactly is problematic and what can be changed?

        And you are told after a while, that your manager can read you a privileged and confidential document and you’re not supposed to even know who contributed to this document, who wrote this feedback, what process was followed or anything. You write a detailed document discussing whatever pieces of feedback you can find, asking for questions and clarifications, and it is completely ignored. And you’re met with, once again, an order to retract the paper with no engagement whatsoever.

        Then you try to engage in a conversation about how this is not acceptable and people start doing the opposite of any sort of self reflection—trying to find scapegoats to blame.

        Silencing marginalized voices like this is the opposite of the NAUWU principles which we discussed. And doing this in the context of “responsible A.I.” adds so much salt to the wounds. I understand that the only things that mean anything at Google are levels, I’ve seen how my expertise has been completely dismissed. But now there’s an additional layer saying any privileged person can decide that they don’t want your paper out with zero conversation. So you’re blocked from adding your voice to the research community—your work which you do on top of the other marginalization you face here.

        I’m always amazed at how people can continue to do thing after thing like this and then turn around and ask me for some sort of extra DEI work or input. This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herller and I hired feminist lawyers who threatened to sue Google (which is when they backed off–before that Google lawyers were prepared to throw us under the bus and our leaders were following as instructed) and the next day I get some random “impact award.” Pure gaslighting.

        So if you would like to change things, I suggest focusing on leadership accountability and thinking through what types of pressures can also be applied from the outside. For instance, I believe that the Congressional Black Caucus is the entity that started forcing tech companies to report their diversity numbers. Writing more documents and saying things over and over again will tire you out but no one will listen.

        Timnit

        Gebru was apparently in talks with management over a possible resignation if certain conditions regarding her research paper were not met. She said those conditions, which by the way, were not stated in the public domain, were not met. The company did not give her a chance to respond with immediate termination. 

        “Apparently my manager’s manager sent an email my direct reports saying she accepted my resignation. I hadn’t resigned—I had asked for simple conditions first and said I would respond when I’m back from vacation. But I guess she decided for me 🙂 that’s the lawyer-speak,” she tweeted.

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        She continued: “I said here are the conditions. If you can meet them great I’ll take my name off this paper, if not then I can work on a last date. Then she sent an email to my direct reports saying she has accepted my resignation. So that is google for you folks. You saw it happen right here.” 

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

        Here’s a quoted email response from Gebru’s manager about her termination: 

        “Thanks for making your conditions clear. We cannot agree to #1 and #2 as you are requesting. We respect your decision to leave Google as a result, and we are accepting your resignation.

        “However, we believe the end of your employment should happen faster than your email reflects because certain aspects of the email you sent last night to non-management employees in the brain group reflect behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.

        “As a result, we are accepting your resignation immediately, effective today. We will send your final paycheck to your address in Workday. When you return from your vacation, PeopleOps will reach out to you to coordinate the return of Google devices and assets.”

        In another tweet, Gebru called out Google’s A.I. chief, Jeff Dean. She said Dean is likely the one who signed off on her firing. “He didn’t like my email to a mailing list for women & allies at brain,” she added.

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

        Gebru’s tweets about her termination came after the U.S. National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Google, accusing the company of violating labor laws. 

        The company was allegedly “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed in Section 7 of the Act,” according to the complaint filed Tuesday. 

        Since Gebru’s termination, Google employees are standing in solidarity with the fired researcher due to “unprecedented research censorship,” read the website Google Walkout For Real Change.

        “We call on Google Research to strengthen its commitment to research integrity and to unequivocally commit to supporting research that honors the commitments made in Google’s A.I. Principles,” the website said. 

        This is just the latest incident showing Google is getting too powerful.

      • Chief Medical Officer Says Canadians Who Refuse Vaccine Won't Have "Freedom To Move Around"
        Chief Medical Officer Says Canadians Who Refuse Vaccine Won't Have "Freedom To Move Around"

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 22:20

        Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

        Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer says that those who refuse to take the COVID vaccine won’t have “freedom to move around” and will have to continue to wear masks.

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        Dr. David Williams was asked if he “would make some sort of mandatory vaccination recommendation.”

        Williams acknowledged that “we can’t force someone to take a vaccine,” but when on to explain how people who didn’t take it would have their freedom of mobility severely restricted.

        “What we can do is to say sometimes for access or ease of getting into certain settings, if you don’t have vaccination then you’re not allowed into that setting without other protection materials,” said Williams.

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

        “What may be mandatory is proof of…vaccination in order to have latitude and freedom to move around…without wearing other types of personal protective equipment,” he added.

        Williams also suggested that people would be prevented from entering certain settings without having been vaccinated if there was a “risk.”

        As we previously highlighted, governments do not have to make the vaccine mandatory, they can simply make life unlivable for people who refuse to take the vaccine.

        If bars, restaurants, cinemas, sports venues, airlines, employers and others all make the vaccination a mandatory condition of service, anyone who refuses to take it will be reduced to a personal form of de facto lockdown with their social lives and mobility completely stunted.

        *  *  *

        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.

      • Citi's Corbat Concerned Working-From-Home Could Harm 'Long-Term Productivity' As Bankers Pull 7-Day Weeks
        Citi's Corbat Concerned Working-From-Home Could Harm 'Long-Term Productivity' As Bankers Pull 7-Day Weeks

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 22:00

        As Wall Street deal flow continues to rage and top JPM executives inform M&A analysts that they won’t be getting much of a Christmas break, outgoing Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat has just become the second top banker to express doubts about the shift to working from home vs. the office – at least, as far as Wall Street is concerned.

        As bankers wonder what the future might hold as far as when they’ll be returning to the office for good (if they haven’t already), Bloomberg has published a wide-ranging interview with Corbat on Friday as he prepares to hand over the reins to Jane Fraser, set to become the first woman to ever lead an American megabank.

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        During the interview, Corbat addressed reports that WFH has – counterintuitively – led to a surge in productivity as the bank’s workers pull long hours and 7-day weeks. He added that productivity like this could come with serious long-term drawbacks.

        “People talk about the productivity that comes with working remotely,” Corbat said in a televised interview for a Bloomberg Invest Talks event that aired Friday. “Well, if I worked seven days a week, 15 to 16 hours a day and I don’t take any holidays, at least for a period of time I’m going to be more productive.”

        Although he’s concerned about the “hollowing out” of workers’ skill sets, Corbat says Citi should take its time to assess how WFH impacts productivity over the long term, arguing that a final decision about WFH policies shouldn’t be made in hast.

        “I don’t want to wake up as an industry and have hollowed out our skill sets,” Corbat said. “We’ll absolutely continue to accelerate the move toward digital and, where appropriate, more remote. But I certainly wouldn’t want to see us move too quickly.”

        While Citi “absolutely” prefers its workers in the office, Corbat insisted the bank wouldn’t ask workers to come in if there safety might be in jeopardy.

        “We absolutely like to have our people in when we can have them in, but we’re not going to put them at risk,” Corbat said. “We’ve got to stay flexible and obviously we’re going through a bit of resurgence in parts of the world right now. We’ve been in the phase of tapering back.”

        But if Corbat’s comments about the long hours Citi’s bankers are pulling at home, then that would suggest that the bank has stumbled on what could be a major productivity breakthrough: how to get all of its bankers to work 1st year analyst hours.

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        If what Corbat says is true, maybe JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon should rethink his rejection of Work From Home. In actuality, it might afford his bank even more opportunities to cut costs – not only space, but head count – wringing out even greater profits.

      • "Texas Has A Lot Going For It" – Bay Area Residents Agree
        "Texas Has A Lot Going For It" – Bay Area Residents Agree

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 21:40

        Submitted by Market Crumbs,

        While California’s Silicon Valley is the epicenter of all things technology, companies based out of Texas played an important role in the rise of the personal computer as well.

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        Christopher Cantwell was even inspired to create the hit television series Halt and Catch Fire following his childhood in North Texas’s Silicon Prairie, where his father was employed as a software salesman in the 1980’s.

        Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced on Monday in its fourth quarter earnings release that it will be moving its headquarters from San Jose, California to Houston, Texas.

        “HPE’s largest U.S. employment hub, Houston is an attractive market to recruit and retain future diverse talent, and is where the company is currently constructing a state-of-the-art new campus,” HPE said. “The Bay Area will continue to be a strategic hub for HPE innovation, and the company will consolidate a number of sites in the Bay Area to its San Jose campus. No layoffs are associated with this move.”

        Texas Governor Greg Abbott thanked HPE for relocating to Houston while explaining why more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the state.

        “Hewlett Packard Enterprise joins more than 50 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the Lone Star State, including 22 in the Houston area alone,” Abbott said. “That is because Texas offers the best business climate in the nation. Our low taxes, high quality of life, top-notch workforce, and tier one universities create an environment where innovative companies like HPE can flourish.”

        HPE’s announcement comes as a number of technology founders and executives make the same move from California to Texas. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, Splunk CEO Douglas Merritt and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale are just a few of the high profile names reportedly set to make Austin their new permanent home.

        “Texas is a lot like going to California 40 to 50 years ago,” Lonsdale said. “It’s very welcoming, it’s a dynamic economy, it’s affordable. Texas has a lot going for it.”

        Even Elon Musk, who reportedly changed his driver’s license to a Texas license, has floated the idea of moving Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto to Texas. Tesla’s headquarters remains in California but the company announced in July it will build its next Gigafactory near Austin.

        “I guess a lot of people from California, if you ask them what’s the one place you would move outside of California, it’s Austin…,” Musk said. “I went to our team and said, ‘Where do you want to spend time? And where would you potentially move?’ And they were like, ‘Well, Austin is just the No. 1 choice.'”

        Data from moving company moveBuddha.com shows Texas is by far the most popular destination for those leaving the San Francisco Bay area. So far this year, 16% of outbound Bay Area residents moved to the state. That’s more than the combined total going to next two most popular states—Washington and New York, which accounted for 7.9% and 6.5% of the outbound total, respectively.

        Austin is attracting the bulk of the new Texas residents as 7% of outbound Bay Area residents are moving to the city. Two additional Texas cities made the list of the top 15 most popular destinations as Dallas and Houston ranked 8th and 12th, respectively.

        Their report shows Austin’s median value of owner occupied housing is $312,300 compared to $746,211 for all Bay Area counties. Their report shows Dallas’ and Houston’s median values stand at $169,400 and $161,300, respectively.

        Texas is cementing itself as the go-to destination for companies and individuals who want to escape the Bay Area for a lower cost of living and friendlier business climate.

      • Around The World In Two Hours? Chinese Scientists Test "Revolutionary" Hypersonic Engine
        Around The World In Two Hours? Chinese Scientists Test "Revolutionary" Hypersonic Engine

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 21:20

        Chinese scientists have built what they claim is a “revolutionary” hypersonic engine that could one day propel an airframe as fast as Mach 16, or about 12,300 mph, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), citing a new paper published in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics. 

        The flight test of the hypersonic engine was conducted in a wind tunnel in Beijing suggested unprecedented thrust, fuel efficiency, and operational stability. Scientists believe the engine could operate at Mach 16, propelling an airframe across the world in just two hours. 

        The Chinese paper, titled “The criteria for airbreathing hypersonic propulsion and its experimental verification,” says the sodramjet (short for “standing oblique detonation ramjet engine”) is an “airbreathing propulsion” system “for future aerospace flight.” It has no moving parts and uses the plane’s speed to ram air into the engine, then blended with hydrogen fuel and detonated, discharging out of the back of the engine as thrust. 

        “The Sodramjet engine model is developed with several flow control techniques and tested successfully with the hypersonic flight-duplicated shock tunnel. The experimental data show that the Sodramjet engine model works steadily, and an oblique detonation can be made stationary in the engine combustor and is controllable. This research demonstrates the Sodramjet engine is a promising concept and can be operated stably with high thermal efficiency at hypersonic flow conditions,” the scientist wrote. 

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        Sodramjet uses the sonic boom as combustion: 

        “Turning the shock wave from their enemy to their friend helped them sustain and stabilize combustion at hypersonic speed,” SCMP said. “The faster the engine flew, the more efficiently the hydrogen fuel burned. The new engine was also much smaller and lighter than previous models.”

        Researchers noted, “the US government shifted the bulk of hypersonic research from Nasa to private companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and Morrison’s idea was largely if not completely forgotten by the American defense industry. The contractors put all their resources into scramjet design and continued to suffer setbacks that eventually caused them to trail other countries.”

        All commercial aircraft today have turbofans or turboprops. The introduction of hypersonic engines for commercial aircraft might not be seen until after 2030. 

        “With reusable trans-atmospheric planes, we can take off horizontally from an airport runway, accelerate into orbit around the Earth, then reenter into the atmosphere, and finally land at an airport,” the scientist wrote. “In this way, space access will become reliable, routine, and affordable.”

        A couple of years ago, China released a rendition of a hypersonic plane that could fly from Beijing to New York in 2 hours.

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        Could the sodramjet technology be used in this future plane?

      • San Francisco Bans Smoking Inside Apartments Unless It's Weed
        San Francisco Bans Smoking Inside Apartments Unless It's Weed

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 21:00

        Authored by John Vibes via TheMindUnleashed.com,

        San Francisco city officials have banned all tobacco smoking inside apartments, due to concerns about secondhand smoke, but cannabis smoke will be permitted under the new guidelines.

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        The proposal was originally drafted to include a ban on smoking cannabis as well, but the cannabis ban was later removed from the law after pushback from activists who pointed out that the only place they are legally permitted to smoke is in the privacy of their own homes, considering that it is illegal to smoke cannabis in public. If this law passed with the cannabis provision, it would have effectively made the substance illegal in the state all over again.

        “Unlike tobacco smokers who could still leave their apartments to step out to the curb or smoke in other permitted outdoor smoking areas, cannabis users would have no such legal alternatives,” Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who wrote the amendment to exempt cannabis said, according to the Associated Press.

        On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors for San Francisco voted 10-1 to approve the ordinance for the ban on smoking tobacco products inside of apartments. There are now 63 cities in the state of California with a ban on smoking inside apartments.

        Under the new law, the city’s Department of Public Health will first help to provide resources to help violators quit smoking, but repeat offenders could be fined up to $1,000 a day. Technically, the law does not allow tenants to be evicted for smoking violations, but a $1,000 fine would be enough to disrupt a poor person’s rent, which could get them legally evicted.

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        The mayor is expected to sign off on the ordinance next week, and the new law will go into effect 30 days after it is approved.

        The fact that tobacco products would be banned while cannabis would be allowed seems strange for many of us who grew up in an era where cigarettes were ubiquitous and cannabis was perceived as a dangerous and illegal drug that was thought to only be consumed by criminals, addicts and perhaps sometimes musicians. We now know that cannabis is actually far less dangerous than tobacco, and in the context of smoke in a shared living space, it also dissipates much quicker than cigarette smoke as well.

        Smoking is one of the leading causes of illness and death in the world. Carcinogenic, poisonous chemicals and toxic metals can all be found in modern tobacco products. These chemicals are present for many reasons ranging from taste and preservation to being purposely addictive.

        There are over 4000 of these chemicals in cigarettes and all of them are actually not even revealed to the public, they are protected under law as “trade secrets”. This means they can be putting anything they want in there without our knowledge.

        The global tobacco business is valued at over $849 billion and the World Health Organization estimates that cigarettes could kill 1 billion people in the 21st century if the current trend continues.

      • 'A Slap In My Face': LA Bar Owner Livid In After City Lets Hollywood Studio Set Up Dining Tents
        'A Slap In My Face': LA Bar Owner Livid In After City Lets Hollywood Studio Set Up Dining Tents

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 20:46

        A viral video is making the rounds which perfectly captures the anger, frustration and contempt people have for our elected officials, who flagrantly break their own COVID-19 rules when it suits them – and, as you’ll see, grant well-connected ‘elites’ privileges as regular Americans continue to be devastated by what seems like a two-tiered set of lockdown restrictions.

        In this latest example, the owner of the Pineapple Hill Grill & Saloon in Sherman Oaks, Angela M, offers heartbreaking commentary as she walks through her parking lot – revealing that while her own outdoor dining has been shut down due to heightened pandemic restrictions, a movie studio was granted permission to set up outdoor dining tents for a production.

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        “I walk into my parking lot, and obviously Mayor Garcetti has approved – this being set up for a movie company,” says Angela – who came to work to gather materials for a lockdown protest she’s organizing.

        “I’m losing everything,” she adds. “Everything I own is being taken away from me. And they set up a movie company right next to my outdoor patio.“

        People wonder why I am protesting and I have had enough. They have not given us money and they’ve shut us down. We cannot survive. The staff cannot survive. Look at this,” she says – gesturing to her patio. “Tell me that this is dangerous, but right next to me is a slap in my face.”

        “This is dangerous… We need your help. We need someone to do something about this,” she says in closing.

        Watch:

        https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe restaurant is sponsoring a Saturday protest in front of LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s house in Santa Monica.

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

      • "Beyond Repair" – Sino-US Relations Badly Damaged, Warns China State Media 
        "Beyond Repair" – Sino-US Relations Badly Damaged, Warns China State Media 

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 20:40

        What caught our attention earlier this week was a tweet from Santiago Capital’s Brent Johnson, who described markets were reflating as if “globalization” was back on the menu, further “saying it’s not.” Johnson went on to say the world is moving “towards two supply chains, not one.” 

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        Johnson’s view of a fractured global economy that is deeply bruised at the moment was reiterated by Chinese state media Thursday, who said some damage from President Trump’s trade war is “beyond repair.” 

        Reuters, quoting an editorial via the government-backed China Daily, said it viewed “worrisome signs” Washington’s decision to limit visitor visas for members of the Chinese Communist Party and their families. 

        “Even if the incoming administration has any intention of easing the tensions that have been sown, and continue being sown, some damage is simply beyond repair, as the sitting U.S. president intends,” the paper added.

        Relations between the two countries are being shifted to “a dangerous path,” the editorial warned.

        Taking a look at the gross Sino-US trade flows, notice how the trade war resulted in a rapid drop in trade between both countries starting around 2H18. 

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        Earlier this year, UN Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres, speaking to the General Assembly in September, said the world must do everything to prevent a new Cold War.

        “We are headed in a very dangerous direction,” he said.

        The question that should be asked is that if China is transforming from a trade partner to an enemy of the US. 

        It’s still unclear whether a Biden presidency would bring a dramatic shift in trade policy between both countries. This week, Biden said he would not remove existing Chinese tariffs set by the Trump administration. 

      • Why I Mask
        Why I Mask

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 20:20

        Authored by Sam Younnokis via AmericanThinker.com,

        Masks are useless as well as uncomfortable.  I believe they actually increase the odds of the wearer coming down with a case of COVID infection.  They make it hard to have intelligible conversations and hide what few smiles people may still be having.  Yet I do mask.

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        Maybe I’m just a coward, afraid to stand against the overbearing government.  As noble and even important as such a stand would be, I value more my ability to be self-reliant.  In a modern world, in an urban environment such as the one in which I live, this is at best an illusion.  I’m not growing my own food or hauling water and firewood.  Maybe that’s practical and even essential if you have raw land that you’re homesteading.  It’s pretty much impossible for most city-dwellers.  There just isn’t enough land to support us, and there are many rules about what you can do with whatever space you have.

        Don’t suggest everybody move to the countryside.  That would just destroy the countryside.

        I live in an apartment.  I pay rent, buy food at stores, work in an office.  My self-reliance consists of paying the bills myself and doing the chores myself.  I know I’m no “mountain man.”  The local health department has required stores to demand that customers wear masks while shopping.  I don’t know how zealously the stores enforce the rules.  Perhaps their business licenses depend on a high level of compliance.  I wear the mask and try to limit myself to buying essentials only — no impulse purchases.  It doesn’t fight the edicts, but it limits the time I spend in the mask.

        My office also has rules requiring masks to be worn.  Without income, I don’t have even a semblance of self-reliance.  Would I starve to death before I’d shop in a mask?  Obviously not.  If you would, perhaps you will forgive me for not sharing your dedication.  Infringements on liberty start small and grow over time.  While this is not the hill I choose to die on, I acknowledge your right to make your own choice.

        Heroism is often associated with high risk of imminent death — charging into a burning building, for example, or standing in front of a tank that you know is not going to swerve.  There are “everyday heroes” (AKA people) who get up every morning and try to get through another day without a disaster.  There are so-called “heroes” (AKA “delivery drivers”) who bring things to our homes so we can remain in social as well as physical quarantine.  I don’t claim to be any sort of hero.

        I wear a mask because it’s required in order to maintain an acceptable level of life.  I expect that this is what residents of communist countries tell themselves as they submit to every new rule.  Thoreau said we have the worst government we are willing to endure, and he was right.  Many opinionators rail against the way government is behaving, but no one calls for violence.  Too soon?  Too late?  Or is it all just opinionators making money off claiming that the world is headed for communism?  Maybe it’s a problem they don’t really want solved, since then they would need to find a “real job.”

        My country is being destroyed, and I don’t see how to save it, but I still feel as though I should do something.  Perhaps in the end, the real reason I wear a mask is shame.

      • "There Will Absolutely Be A Black Market" For COVID Vaccines, Bioethicists Warn
        "There Will Absolutely Be A Black Market" For COVID Vaccines, Bioethicists Warn

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 20:00

        The American media has already established that the initial wave of COVID-19 vaccines will almost immediately lead to massive inequalities between wealthy and poor nations, as well as among the wealthy and the poor within each individual society.

        Given that Pfizer’s vaccine is not only in limited supply, but comparatively costly due to its stringent temperature requirements for shipment and storage, some have warned that it risks becoming a “vaccine for the rich”.

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        Now, bioethicists are saying that the likelihood that a ‘black market’ for the rich and famous emerging is a virtual guarantee. Because just like black-market human organs, the COVID-19 vaccines has “life-saving properties”.

        The worst attempts to nefariously procure a vaccine may come a few months into distribution, once vaccines are available that don’t require ultra-cold storage and local pharmacies and physician practices get allotments. “There absolutely will be a black market,” said bioethicist Arthur Caplan of New York University. “Anything that’s seen as lifesaving, life-preserving, and that’s in short supply creates black markets.”

        Concierge services for wealthy clients are already being inundated with questions about when COVID vaccines will be available (even though opinion polls show many have reservations about whether the approval process has been “rushed”).

        At WorldClinic, which charges members $10,000 to $250,000 a year for 24/7 care, no patients have asked for special treatment and the clinic would not undermine its integrity by trying to secure vaccines unethically, said Lang, who was a White House physician during both the Bush and Clinton administrations. “The optics of trying to jump the line would be so bad, they don’t want to do that.” But within the broader system, he added, some people will inevitably cut in line.

        In addition to ensuring that nurses and doctors get the vaccines, members of the ACIP, a federal panel responsible for writing the rules surrounding how to distribute the vaccines has pledged to ensure that only the real “essential” workers will be prioritized to ensure that “people of color, who are often the hardest hit by the virus, get early access.”

        Members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the federal panel recommending how to distribute the vaccines, want to prioritize essential workers to help ensure people of color, who are often the hardest hit by the virus, get early access. But the predominantly white workers in the financial services industry are also considered essential, according to guidance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was referenced by ACIP, as well as executive orders from several states including New York, Illinois, Colorado, and California. Public-facing bank tellers face contagion risks in their work, but aren’t the only financial services employees included. “It was left a little bit nebulous but basically covered people who oil the movement of money, so exchanges, trading floors, trading operations, and people who keep money moving at the retail [banking] level,” said Lang. “They’re defined very broadly in New York and Illinois, because that’s where so many of our financial services industries are based.”

        Whether that will happen remains to be seen. As STAT’s sources argue, it’s a difficult problem fraught with complications.

        Bioethicists warned that as soon as vaccines start getting doled out, there will be a rush of industries trying to claim that their workers are “essential” and deserve priority – much like we saw with the lockdowns.

        Already, financial services employees – a broadly defined category that includes everything from bank tellers to investment banking analysts – are raising eyebrows and hackles from some who feel they’ve been unfairly classified as “essential”.

        The potential of industry lobbyists “redefining what an essential worker is is a very strong possibility,” said Glenn Ellis, a visiting scholar at the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health care at Tuskegee University and a narrative bioethics fellow at Harvard Medical School.

        Prioritizing essential workers is intended to give early vaccine access to those who provide a critical societal function and cannot socially distance easily, the Colorado health department said in a statement that acknowledged it can be difficult to write airtight rules. “Given the thousands of different job descriptions in the state, it is impossible to come up with a complete list for every occupation for a specific vaccine phase. Vaccine providers will need to use their best judgment about which patients may qualify for vaccination during this phase.” The California health department confirmed financial services employees, including those needed to “maintain orderly market operations,” will have early access to the vaccine as essential workers, as will people in the news media, such as reporters. State health departments in New York and Illinois did not respond to requests for comment about whether those in financial services would receive a vaccine early.

        On the flip side, it’s nice to see the medical establishment finally acknowledge the fact that, yes, the definition of what constitutes an “essential” worker is vague, fluid and hardly an inflexible concept. Beyond nurses, doctors, other medical workers, and grocery-store clerks, there’s a wide world of functions that are critical to keeping the economy humming without causing serious shortages of food or other resources (like, for example, toilet paper).

        Adding some balance to the piece, STAT adds that making the early ‘essential’ phases of vaccine distribution completely airtight comes with its own risks. Because if government agencies get too involved checking and double-checking everything, the bureaucracy would likely slow down the process.

        At a certain point, though, vigilance brings its own risks. “If you add too many inefficiencies of checking and double-checking everyone, then you put so much bureaucracy into the program, you slow things down,” he added.

        Plus, with the college admissions scandal still fresh in everyone’s mind, people in positions of power are presently hyper-aware of the risks of being caught and called out, and what it could mean for their livelihoods. That, one bioethicist said, will probably act as an effective check on abuse – at least to a degree.

        The public shame of being caught should act as a deterrent, especially if the backlash is akin to what several Hollywood celebrities and wealthy parents faced following the 2019 college admissions bribing and cheating scandal, said Bateman-House. “I can promise you, no CEO wants to be on the front page of the newspaper for giving preferential access to his college roommate,” she said. “I think a few public naming and shamings would probably tamp down some activity.”

        The piece ends with STAT’s sources claiming that the decision to supply experimental treatments to President Trump and other politicians  (Ben Carson, Chris Christie) could hurt public faith in the process by creating the impression that insiders are cutting the line. 

        While bioethicists are at it, we would love to hear their take on the ethics of governments issuing COVID-19 ‘vaccine passports’ or vaccine ID cards.

        In the end, to create a truly effective deterrent, the public must send a message to the rich and powerful that special treatment simply won’t be tolerated.

        Following the vaccine rollout, the response to the wealthy and powerful cutting the line needs to be different and fierce, he said. “Everybody has to condemn them: the media, your neighbor, your boss, everybody.”

        But what if all those people are the same ones who are cutting the line?

      • These Are The Hypocritical Government Officials Who Demand You Stay Home While They Party
        These Are The Hypocritical Government Officials Who Demand You Stay Home While They Party

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 19:40

        Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

        Little is more annoying than seeing a wealthy government official solemnly telling you to stay home, forgo time with your family, and stop working while losing tons of money in missed wages.

        Well, except for one thing. It’s more annoying when that government official is telling you to hunker down while they’re out partying in one luxurious location or another. I’d say that is far more annoying to watch those people tell us, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

        It reminds me of The Hunger Games, in which people at the Capitol enjoy frivolous pastimes while the peons in the other Districts must spend their days doing menial jobs to provide for the wealthy, lest they be beaten or killed by “Peacekeepers.”

        Here are some particularly egregious examples of hypocritical government officials who want you to sacrifice while they celebrate. The list is by no means comprehensive.

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        California Governor Gavin Newsom

        Probably the most prominent example of a “leader” abandoning any pretense of following his rules is California Governor Gavin Newsom, who was spotted dining at a fancy restaurant – like $325 per person fancy – at a birthday party for a lobbyist.

        California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was photographed attending a dinner party at the French Laundry, one of the nation’s priciest restaurants, with a group of prominent lobbyists, including several who represent the California Medical Association. The photos show no one in the large party wearing a mask.

        Newsom apologized a few days later.

        “I want to apologize to you because I need to preach and practice, not just preach and not practice, and I’ve done my best to do that,” Newsom said. (source)

        Oh and also, his kids can go to school in person at their fancy private school, while everyone else’s kids are stuck with “distance learning.”

        Newsom is self-quarantining after a student at one of his children’s schools tested positive for the coronavirus — another sore spot for critics who are frustrated that most California students are not learning in person.

        “His kids can learn in person. But yours can’t. He can celebrate birthday parties. But you can’t,” San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer (R), a potential Newsom rival in 2022, wrote on Twitter. (source)

        San Francisco Mayor London Breed

        Incidentally, the following night after Newsom got busted at French Laundry, San Francisco Mayor London Breed was caught at a birthday dinner there with 7 other people – right before she closed down dining in every restaurant in San Francisco.

        “I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that everyone act responsibly to reduce the spread of the virus,” Breed said in a statement Nov. 10. “Every San Franciscan needs to do their part so that we can start moving in the right direction again.”(source)

        Austin Mayor Steve Adler

        Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, Texas, has been busted twice flouting his own restrictions. First, he hosted 20 people at a wedding and reception for his daughter at a downtown Austin hotel. The very next day, he took 7 other people in a private jet to his timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The thing that makes this so richly ironic is that he addressed the people of Austin from Cabo on a Facebook video in which he said:

        We need to stay home if you can. This is not the time to relax. We are going to be looking really closely. … We may have to close things down if we are not careful.” (source)

        Adler maintains that neither the wedding nor the vacay broke his orders or those of the state’s governor.

        However, the city recommended that people not gather in groups larger than 10 people, and also Adler himself asked people not to travel for Thanksgiving, saying,

        “Everyday since March, I repeat that being home is the safest place for people to be,” Adler said in a statement Wednesday. “Only at our most trying moments, like around Thanksgiving, have I asked people not to travel as part of extra precautions. It is safest to stay home. However, we aren’t asking people to never venture out. We ask everyone to be as safe as possible when they do.” (source)

        New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

        Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York was forced to change his plans after he announced on the radio, for Pete’s sake, that he was having his adult daughters and his 89-year-old mother visit his home in Albany for Thanksgiving. Cuomo:

        …went on WAMC radio and told of his own Thanksgiving plans, for all to hear, as CNN noted: “My mom is going to come up and two of my girls, is the current plan. But the plans change. I have a lot of work to do between now and Thanksgiving.”

        And then in this same interview, Cuomo scolded New Yorkers again to stay home and to stay in groups of fewer than 10. (source)

        Meanwhile, he was telling other New Yorkers to skip Thanksgiving.

        “My personal advice is, you don’t have family gatherings – even for Thanksgiving,” the governor said as he listed off a number of smaller gatherings that have led to recent outbreaks across the state.

        “My personal advice is the best way to say ‘I love you,’ this Thanksgiving, the best way to say ‘I’m thankful for you,’ is to say, ‘I love you so much, I’m so thankful for you, that I don’t want to endanger you, and I don’t want to endanger our family and I don’t want to endanger our friends. So we’ll celebrate virtually,’” he added.  (source)

        New Yorkers got the Emmy Award-winning governor’s mixed message loud and clear.

        Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser

        Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington, DC ignored travel restrictions to go to Joe Biden’s victory party in Delaware, and then changed the rules for a mandatory 14-day quarantine established for peons upon her return. The Washington Post reports:

        The trip, which comes as the mayor attempts to discourage interstate travel because of the pandemic, prompted questions from reporters and derision on social media from some residents and Bowser critics.

        Bowser (D) said that she was “very proud” to attend the celebration in Wilmington and that the trip “absolutely” qualified as “essential travel” — which is exempted from the mayor’s quarantine order — because she was conducting government business on the road.

        “I do a lot of things to advance the interests of the District of Columbia. Some of them are formal and some of them are informal, but all of them are necessary,” she said…

        …Until last week, Bowser’s mayoral order on interstate travel would have required anyone who visited Delaware (and other states with more than 10 new daily coronavirus cases on average per 100,000 residents) to quarantine at home for two weeks upon returning to the District, except those whose travel was for essential purposes.

        Last week, however, Bowser replaced that order with a new one that went into effect Monday, after her trip. The new order got rid of the two-week, post-vacation quarantine that she had instituted in July. In its place, she ordered that people who wish to visit the District from high-risk states get a negative coronavirus test first (though the city will not check or enforce that requirement); residents who travel should quarantine at home — except for essential activities — until they get a negative test, generally at least three days after their trip. (source)

        It’s certainly convenient to be able to rewrite the rules at your own convenience.

        Denver Mayor Michael Hancock

        Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver, Colorado tweeted a reminder for people to “Pass the potatoes, not COVID… Stay home as much as you can, especially if you’re sick… Host virtual gatherings instead of in-person dinners. Avoid travel, if you can.”

        He tweeted that minutes before boarding a plane to spend Thanksgiving with his own family members.

        Hancock then flew off to Houston, with a connecting flight to Meridian, Mississippi. His wife, Mary Louise Lee, was already there and they would be joining their 22-year-old daughter, Janae Hancock, for Thanksgiving…

        …Apart from the outrageous timing, Hancock’s hypocrisy becomes particularly egregious when you consider a Nov. 20 letter his office received from a Colorado county public health official warning that Denver International Airport (DIA) constitutes a serious COVID-19 hazard…

        …Despite the warning, Hancock headed for the airport on Thursday and passed through the Thanksgiving crowds, tweeting a warning about COVID-19. He told his constituents to stay home and then boarded a plane, undermining critical warnings while placing others at risk, by example and directly in person. He also stood a chance of passing along COVID with the potatoes to his wife and daughter. (source)

        It’s notable that in early November, Mayor Hancock humble-bragged that he wouldn’t be hosting his usual Thanksgiving dinner for 60 people at his home.  Instead, he opted to fly across the country during a pandemic while telling everyone else to cancel their plans.

        Members of the California Legislature

        Several members of the California legislature enjoyed a trip to Hawaii to attend a conference.

        Those attending include Republican Assembly members Heath Flora of Ripon and Jordan Cunningham of Paso Robles, Republican Sen. Andreas Borgeas of Modesto, Democratic Sen. Bill Dodd of Napa, Democratic Assembly members Blanca Rubio of Baldwin Park, Mike Gipson of Carson, Jose Medina of Riverside and Wendy Carrillo of Los Angeles, as well as Chad Mayes of Rancho Mirage, who won reelection this month as unaffiliated with any political party. (source)

        They rubbed elbows with lobbyists and special interest groups while in Hawaii. The Los Angeles Times reports:

        More than half a dozen California lawmakers are among the 50 people attending a policy conference sponsored by the Independent Voter Project, a nonprofit group, at the Fairmont Kea Lani Hotel in Wailea, with some legislators’ travel expenses picked up by the hosts. The four-day conference, at which panel participants discuss various issues including how to reopen states safely amid COVID-19, began Monday.

        The annual gathering, which has seen up to 25 California lawmakers in attendance in past years, has faced criticism because it is partly financed and attended by special interests, including businesses and labor groups, that lobby legislators. (source)

        Ironically, the conference began on the same day California reinstituted its strict “purple level” restrictions for citizens of the state that aren’t legislators or governors.

        And that’s not all.

        These are but a sprinkling of the hypocritical actions of those who claim to be leaders but are showing themselves to be more along the lines of pampered despots.

        Don’t forget about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s infamous haircut, Chris Cuomo wandering around without a mask, Senator Diane Feinstein wandering around without a mask at both the Capitol building and Dulles International Airport, the mayor of San Jose dining with members of five other households, Dr. Fauci attending a baseball game with 2 guests and his mask pulled down in an otherwise empty stadium, and the “fact” that it’s okay to “protest” but not to go to church.

        It’s certainly no way to get people on board with dystopian restrictions. The fact that these so-called leaders throw caution to the wind when it comes to the rules the rest of us are expected to follow certainly lends credence to those questioning whether the government is overstepping when it’s unnecessary.

      • GOP Raises 400% More Than Democrats For Georgia Runoff
        GOP Raises 400% More Than Democrats For Georgia Runoff

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 19:20

        Despite calls by Trump supporters for Republicans to withhold votes for Georgia GOP candidates in January’s runoff election, GOP donors have been showing up big for the candidates, despite their refusal to back the president’s claims of widespread election fraud.

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        According to Bloomberg, GOP donors contributed $95 million to their party’s Senate super-pac and party election committee between election day and Nov. 23  – over four times the $18 million Democrats contributed to similar groups over the same period. Granted, that time frame excludes much of the fervor over election fraud, or the fact that Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are essentially never-Trump Republicans.

        Their Democratic opponents, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have a much higher volume of donations – albeit in far smaller amounts contributed mostly online.

        Thanks to the massive contributions, the Georgia GOP has been able to ramp up expensive advertising – with the GOP candidates having booked $161.6 million in airtime vs. $118.3 million for Democrats, which came primarily from out of state.

        Both parties are laser focused on the Georgia runoffs because the outcome will determine who controls the upper chamber. If Democrats manage to unseat both incumbents, the Senate would be split 50-50. Democrats will be able to set the agenda because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be able to break any ties.

        And big money Republicans are stepping up for the fight. The Senate Leadership Fund, a super-PAC that has ties to Majority Leader Mitch  McConnell, raised $104.2 million between Oct. 15 and Nov. 23, with $71.1 million of that amount donated after the Nov. 3 general election. -Bloomberg

        GOP donors include Blackstone Groujp co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, who gave $15 million on Nov. 12, as well as Citadel co-founder Kenneth Griffin, who put $10 million towards the race the same day. Adding to the list of megadonors who contributed after election day are investor Timothy Mellon, Steve Wynn – who each gave $5 million. In the $1 million club are Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, and real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer.

        Meanwhile, the National GOP Senatorial Committee has raised $23.9 million since Nov. 3, which include contributions from Senate Republicans’ own campaigns. A super-PAC with ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raised $104.2 million between Oct. 15 and Nov. 12 – of which $71.1 million was contributed after the election.

        WinRed’s data suggests that online donations to the two Republicans lag behind the Democrats. Using the platform, Republican donors contributed $28.6 million to Perdue and $27 million to Loeffler. Loeffler had largely self-financed her campaign before Oct. 15, loaning it $23 million while raising just $5 million.

        The national interest in the races is reflected in the grassroots giving. Of nearly $114 million raised by the two Democrats through ActBlue, 96% comes from donors outside of Georgia. For the Republican candidates, 92% of their $56 million through WinRed is from out-of-state contributions. -Bloomberg

        On the Democratic side, their Senate Majority PAC has raised $89.9 million between Oct. 15 and Nov. 12, however just $10.2 million of that came after Election Day. Big donors who contributed before the election include Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons, Eric Mindich of Eton Park Capital Management, and Bain Capital co-chairman Joshua Bekenstein – while Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Carlyle Group co-founder co-founder William Conway donated $250,000.

      • "It Was No Longer Safe For Me To Live In China": Former Chinese Communist Party Insider Breaks With Beijing
        "It Was No Longer Safe For Me To Live In China": Former Chinese Communist Party Insider Breaks With Beijing

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 19:00

        By Cai Xia, a Professor at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party from 1998 to 2012. This essay was translated from the Chinese by Stacy Mosher (Read in Chinese here).

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        When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, I was full of hope for China. As a professor at the prestigious school that educates top leaders in the Chinese Communist Party, I knew enough about history to conclude that it was past time for China to open up its political system. After a decade of stagnation, the CCP needed reform more than ever, and Xi, who had hinted at his proclivity for change, seemed like the man to lead it.

        By then, I was midway through a decades-long process of grappling with China’s official ideology, even as I was responsible for indoctrinating officials in it. Once a fervent Marxist, I had parted ways with Marxism and increasingly looked to Western thought for answers to China’s problems. Once a proud defender of official policy, I had begun to make the case for liberalization. Once a loyal member of the CCP, I was secretly harboring doubts about the sincerity of its beliefs and its concern for the Chinese people.

        So I should not have been surprised when it turned out that Xi was no reformer. Over the course of his tenure, the regime has degenerated further into a political oligarchy bent on holding on to power through brutality and ruthlessness. It has grown even more repressive and dictatorial. A personality cult now surrounds Xi, who has tightened the party’s grip on ideology and eliminated what little space there was for political speech and civil society. People who haven’t lived in mainland China for the past eight years can hardly understand how brutal the regime has become, how many quiet tragedies it has authored. After speaking out against the system, I learned it was no longer safe for me to live in China.

        THE EDUCATION OF A COMMUNIST

        I was born into a Communist military family. In 1928, at the beginning of the Chinese Civil War, my maternal grandfather joined a peasant uprising led by Mao Zedong. When the Communists and the Nationalists put hostilities on hold during World War II, my parents and much of my mother’s family fought against the Japanese invaders in armies led by the CCP.

        After the Communists’ victory, in 1949, life was good for a revolutionary family such as ours. My father commanded a People’s Liberation Army unit near Nanjing, and my mother ran an office in that city’s government. My parents forbade my two sisters and me from taking advantage of the privileges of their offices, lest we become “spoiled bourgeois ladies.” We could not ride in our father’s official car, and his security guards never ran family errands. Still, I benefited from my parents’ status and never suffered the privations that so many Chinese did in the Mao years. I knew nothing of the tens of millions of people who starved to death during the Great Leap Forward.

        All I could see was socialism’s bright future. My family’s bookshelves were stocked with Marxist titles such as The Selected Works of Stalin and Required Reading for Cadres. As a teenager, I turned to these books for extracurricular reading. Whenever I opened them, I was filled with reverence. Even though I could not grasp the complexity of their arguments, my mission was clear: I must love the motherland, inherit my parents’ revolutionary legacy, and build a communist society free of exploitation. I was a true believer.

        I gained a more sophisticated understanding of communist thought after joining the People’s Liberation Army in 1969, at age 17. With the Cultural Revolution in full swing, Mao required everyone to read six works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, including The Communist Manifesto. One utopian passage from that book left a lasting impression on me: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Although I didn’t really understand the concept of freedom at that point, those words stuck in my head.

        The People’s Liberation Army assigned me to a military medical school. My job was to manage its library, which happened to carry Chinese translations of “reactionary” works, mostly Western literature and political philosophy. Distinguished by their gray covers, these books were restricted to regime insiders for the purpose of familiarizing themselves with China’s ideological opponents, but in secret, I read them, too. I was most impressed by The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by the American journalist William Shirer, and a collection of Soviet fiction. There was a world of ideas outside of the Marxist classics, I realized. But I still believed that Marxism was the only truth.

        I left the military in 1978 and got a job in the party-run trade union of a state-owned fertilizer factory on the outskirts of the city of Suzhou. By then, Mao was dead and the Cultural Revolution was over. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, was ushering in a period of reform and opening, and as part of this effort, he was recruiting a new generation of reform-minded cadres who could run the party in the future. Each local party organization had to choose a few members to serve in this group, and the Suzhou party organization picked me. I was sent to a two-year program at the Suzhou Municipal Party School, where my fellow students and I studied Marxist theory and the history of the CCP. We also received some training in the Chinese classics, a subject we had missed on account of the disruption of education during the Cultural Revolution.

        I plowed through Das Kapital twice and learned the ins and outs of Marxist theory. What appealed to me most were Marx’s ideas about labor and value—namely, that capitalists accrue wealth by taking advantage of workers. I was also impressed by Marx’s philosophical approach, dialectical materialism, which allowed him to see capitalism’s political, legal, cultural, and moral systems as built on a foundation of economic exploitation.

        When I graduated, in 1986, I was invited to stay on as a faculty member at the school, which was short-staffed at the time. I accepted, which disappointed some of the city’s leaders, who thought I had a promising future as a party apparatchik. Instead, my new job launched my career as an academic in the CCP’s system of ideological indoctrination.

        THE STUDENT BECOMES THE MASTER

        At the top of that system sits the Central Party School in Beijing. Since 1933, it has trained generations of top-ranking CCP cadres, who run the Chinese bureaucracy at the municipal level and above. The school has close ties to the party elite and is always headed by a member of the Politburo. (Its president from 2007 to 2012 was none other than Xi.)

        In June 1989, the government cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds. Privately, I was appalled that the People’s Liberation Army had fired on college students, which ran contrary to the indoctrination I had received since my childhood that the army protected the people; only Japanese “devils” and Nationalist reactionaries killed them. Alarmed by the protests, plus the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the CCP’s top leadership decided it had to counteract ideological laxity. It ordered local party schools to send some of their teachers to the Central Party School to brush up on the party’s thinking. My school in Suzhou chose me. My brief stay at the Central Party School made me want to study there for much longer. After spending a year preparing for the entrance examinations, I was admitted to the master’s program in the school’s theory department. So devoted was I to the CCP’s line that behind my back, my classmates called me “Old Mrs. Marx.” In 1998, I received my Ph.D. and joined the school’s faculty.

        Some of my students were regular graduate students, who were taught a conventional curriculum in Marxist political theory and CCP history. But others were mid- and high-level party officials, including leading provincial and municipal administrators and cabinet-level ministers. Some of my students were members of the CCP’s Central Committee, the body of a few hundred delegates that sits atop the party hierarchy and ratifies major decisions.

        Teaching at the Central Party School was not easy. Video cameras in the classrooms recorded our lectures, which were then reviewed by our supervisors. We had to make the subject come alive for the high-level and experienced students in the class, without interpreting the doctrine too flexibly or drawing attention to its weak spots. Often, we had to come up with smart answers to tough questions asked by the officials in our classes.

        Most of their questions revolved around puzzling contradictions within the official ideology, which had been crafted to justify the real-world policies implemented by the CCP. Amendments added in 2004 to China’s constitution said that the government protects human rights and private property. But what about Marx’s view that a communist system should abolish private property? Deng wanted to “let a part of the population get rich first” to motivate people and stimulate productivity. How did that square with Marx’s promise that communism would provide to each according to his needs?

        I remained loyal to the CCP, yet I was constantly questioning my own beliefs. In the 1980s, Chinese academic circles had engaged in a lively discussion of “Marxist humanism,” a strain of Marxist thinking that emphasized the full development of the human personality. A few academics continued that discussion into the 1990s, even as the scope of acceptable discourse narrowed. I studied Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, which said that the purpose of socialism was to liberate the individual. I identified with the Marxist philosophers who stressed freedom—above all, Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse.

        Already in my master’s thesis, I had criticized the idea that people should always sacrifice their individual interests in order to serve the party. In my Ph.D. dissertation, I had challenged the ancient Chinese slogan “rich country, strong army” by contending that China would be strong only if the party allowed its citizens to prosper. Now, I took this argument a step further. In papers and talks, I suggested that state enterprises were still too dominant in the Chinese economy and that further reform was needed to allow private companies to compete. Corruption, I stressed, should be seen not as a moral failing of individual cadres but as a systemic problem resulting from the government’s grip on the economy.

        THEORY AND PRACTICE

        My thinking happened to align in part with that of Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin. Determined to develop China’s economy, Jiang sought to stimulate private enterprise and bring China into the World Trade Organization. But these policies contradicted the CCP’s long-held theories prizing the planned economy and national self-sufficiency. Since the ideology of neither Marx nor Mao nor Deng could resolve these contradictions, Jiang felt compelled to come up with something new. He called it “the Three Represents.”

        I first heard of this new theory when everyone else did. On the evening of February 25, 2000, I watched as China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast a report on the Three Represents. The party, Jiang said, had to represent three aspects of China: “the development requirements of advanced productive forces,” cultural progress, and the interests of the majority. As a professor at the Central Party School, I immediately understood that this theory presaged a significant shift in CCP ideology. In particular, the first of the Three Represents implied that Jiang was abandoning the core Marxist belief that capitalists were an exploitative social group. Instead, Jiang was opening the party to their ranks—a decision I welcomed.

        The Central Propaganda Department, the body in charge of the CCP’s ideological work, was responsible for promoting Jiang’s new theory, but they had a problem: the Three Represents had come under attack from the extreme left, which thought Jiang was going too far in wooing entrepreneurs. Hoping to skirt this dispute, the Propaganda Department chose to water down the theory. The People’s Daily published a full-page article demonstrating the correctness of the Three Represents with cross-references to texts by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Deng.

        I found this unconvincing. What was the purpose of the Three Represents if it merely restated existing ideology? I was disgusted by the superficial methods of the party’s publicity apparatus. I grew determined to reveal the true meaning of the Three Represents, a theory that in fact marked a bold departure for China. This, it turned out, would bring me into conflict with the entrenched bureaucracy of the CCP.

        THE UNLEARNED ELITES

        My opportunity to promote a proper understanding of the Three Represents arrived in early 2001, when CCTV, hearing from a colleague that I was especially interested in Jiang’s new theory, invited me to write a television program on it. I spent six months researching and writing the documentary and discussing it at length with producers at the network. My script emphasized the need for innovative new policies to meet the challenges of a new era. I stressed the same things Jiang did: that the government was now going to reduce its intervention in the economy and that the role of the party was no longer to make violent revolution against the exploitative capitalists—instead, it was to encourage the creation of wealth and balance the interests of different groups in society.

        On the afternoon of June 16, four CCTV senior vice presidents gathered in a studio in the network’s headquarters to review the three 30-minute episodes. As they watched it, their faces darkened. “Let’s stop here,” one of them said when the first episode ended.

        “Professor Cai, do you know why you were invited to produce a program on the Three Represents?” he asked.

        “The party has put forward a new ideological theory,” I replied, “and we need to publicize it.”

        The official was unmoved. “Your research and innovation can be presented at the Central Party School, but only the safest things can be shown on TV,” he said. At that point, nobody was quite sure what the Three Represents would ultimately be interpreted to mean, and he worried that my script might be out of step with the Propaganda Department’s views. “If there’s any discrepancy, the impact would be too great.”

        Another station administrator chimed in. “This year is the 80th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party!” he exclaimed. Such an anniversary demanded not a discussion of challenges facing the party but a heroic celebration of its triumphs. At that moment, I understood. The CCTV people weren’t interested in the real implications of ideology. They just wanted to make the party look good and flatter their superiors.

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        The Central Party School in Beijing, June 2019; Ben Blanchard / Reuters

        Over the next ten days, we scrambled to remake the documentary. We edited out potentially offensive words and phrases, working day and night as my script went through several political reviews by teams from across the party bureaucracy. Finally, a dozen officials arrived for one last review, during which I learned even more about the party’s hypocrisy. At one point, a high-level member of the vetting committee spoke up. In the program’s second episode, I had quoted two of Deng’s famous sayings, which are often strung together: “Poverty is not socialism; development is the hard truth.”

        “Poverty isn’t socialism?” the official asked dubiously. “So what is socialism?” His critique went on, growing louder. “And development is the hard truth? How are those two sentences related? Tell me!”

        I was dumbfounded. These were Deng’s exact words, and this senior official—the head of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, the powerful agency overseeing all broadcast media—didn’t know it? I thought immediately of Mao’s criticism of bureaucrats during the Cultural Revolution: “They don’t read books, and they don’t read newspapers.”

        AN EMPTY IDEOLOGY

        Over the course of 2001, as part of its efforts to promote Jiang’s signature theory, the Propaganda Department began work on a study outline for the Three Represents, a summary that would be issued as a Central Committee document for the entire party to read and implement. Perhaps because I had worked on the CCTV program and had given a speech on the Three Represents at an academic conference, I was asked to help.

        Along with another scholar and 18 propaganda officials, I was sent to the Propaganda Department’s training center near the foothills west of Beijing. The department had settled on a general framework for the outline, and now it was asking us to fill the framework with content. My task was to write the section on building the party.

        Drafting documents for the Central Committee is a highly confidential process. My colleagues and I were forbidden from leaving the premises or receiving guests. When the Propaganda Department convened a meeting, those who weren’t invited weren’t allowed to ask about it. We writers could eat and take walks together, but we were prohibited from discussing our work. I was the only woman in the group. At dinner, the men gossiped and cracked jokes. I found the off-color, alcohol-fueled conversation vulgar and would always slink out after a few bites of food. Finally, another participant took me aside. Talk of official business would only get us in trouble, he explained; it was safer and more enjoyable to confine the conversation to sex.

        Helping with the study outline was the most important writing assignment of my life, but it was also the most ridiculous. My job was to read through a stack of documents cataloging Jiang’s thoughts, including confidential speeches and articles intended for the party’s internal consumption. I would then extract relevant quotations and place them under various topic subheadings, annotating the source. I couldn’t add or subtract text, but I could change a period to a comma and connect one quote to another. I was amazed that the formal explanation of one of the party’s most important ideological campaigns in the post-Mao era would be little more than a cut-and-paste job.

        Because the task was so easy, I spent a lot of time waiting in boredom for my work to be vetted. One day, I sounded out another participant, a professor from Renmin University of China. “Aren’t we just creating another version of Quotations From Chairman Mao?” I asked, referring to the Little Red Book, a pocket volume of out-of-context aphorisms that circulated during the Cultural Revolution. He looked around and smiled wryly. “Don’t worry about it,” he told me. “We’re in a lovely scenic location with good food and pleasant walks. Where else could we convalesce so comfortably? Just go fetch a book to read. All that matters is that you’re here when they call you for a meeting.”

        In June 2003, a high-profile press conference was held at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, to unveil the study outline, and all of us who had helped write it were told to attend. Liu Yunshan, a Politburo member and the head of the Propaganda Department, presented the report. As he and other officials took to the stage, I felt a sinking feeling. My understanding of the Three Represents as an important pivot in the ruling party’s ideology had been completely squeezed out of the document and replaced with pablum. Remembering the lewd chatter around the dinner table every night, I felt for the first time that the system I had long considered sacred was in fact unbearably absurd.

        IDEAS FOR SALE

        My experience with the study outline taught me that the ideas the party sanctimoniously promoted were in fact self-serving tools used to deceive the Chinese people. I soon learned that they were also a way of making money. An official I came to know at the General Administration of Press and Publication, which controls the right to publish books and magazines, told me of a disturbing episode involving a turf war over publishing revenues within the CCP.

        For many years, Red Flag Press had been one of three organizations responsible for publishing the party’s educational books. In 2005, the press was in the process of publishing a routine book of readings when an official from the Central Organization Department, the powerful agency in charge of the CCP’s personnel decisions, stepped in to insist that only his department had the authority to publish such a book. He tried to get the General Administration of Press and Publication to prevent the book from being published. But Red Flag Press’s main job was precisely to publish works on ideology. To get out of this fix, the agency vetted the book in the hopes of finding problems that would justify banning it—but awkwardly, it came up empty.

        Why was the Organization Department so territorial about publishing? It all came down to money. Many departments have slush funds, which are used for the lavish enjoyment of senior officials and divided among personnel as “welfare subsidies.” The easiest way to replenish those funds is to publish books. At that time, the CCP had more than 3.6 million grassroots organizations, each of which was expected to buy a copy of a new publication. If the book was priced at ten yuan per copy, that meant a minimum of 36 million yuan in sales revenue—equivalent to more than $5 million today. Since that money was coming from the budgets of the party branches, the scheme was essentially an exercise in forcing one public entity to transfer money to another. No wonder the Organization Department promoted a new political education topic every year. And no wonder almost every institution within the CCP had a publishing arm. With nearly every unit inventing new ways to make money, venality has permeated the regime.

        Despite my growing disillusionment, I didn’t completely reject the party. Along with many other scholars inside it, I still hoped that the CCP could embrace reform and move in the direction of some form of democracy. In the later years of the Jiang era, the party started tolerating a relatively relaxed discussion of sensitive issues within the party, as long as the discussions never went public. At the Central Party School, my fellow professors and I felt free to raise deep-seated problems with China’s political system among ourselves. We talked about reducing the role of party officials in deciding administrative issues that were best handled by government officials. We discussed the idea of judicial independence, which had been written into the constitution but never really practiced.

        To our delight, the party was in fact experimenting with democracy, both within its own operations and in society at the grassroots level. I saw all of this as hopeful signs of progress. But subsequent events would only cement my disillusionment.

        ANOTHER WAY

        A key turning point came in 2008, when I took a brief but fateful trip to Spain. Visiting the country as part of an academic exchange, I learned how Spain had transitioned from autocracy to democracy after the death of its dictator, Francisco Franco, in 1975. I could not help but compare Spain’s experience to China’s. Mao died just ten months after Franco, and both countries underwent tremendous changes in the ensuing three decades. But whereas Spain quickly and peacefully made the leap to democracy and achieved social stability and economic prosperity, China accomplished only a partial transition, moving from a planned economy to a mixed economy without liberalizing its politics. What could Spain teach China?

        I came to the pessimistic conclusion that the CCP was unlikely to reform politically. For one thing, Spain’s transition was initiated by reformist forces within the post-Franco regime, such as King Juan Carlos I, who placed national interests above their personal interests. The CCP, having come to power in 1949 through violence, was deeply wedded to the idea that it had earned a permanent monopoly on political power. The party’s record, particularly its crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, demonstrated that it would not give up that monopoly peacefully. And none of the post-Deng leaders had the courage to push for political reform; they simply wanted to pass the buck to future leaders.

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        China’s Politburo Standing Committee members in Beijing, November 2012; Carlos Barria / Reuters

        I also learned that after Franco’s death, Spain quickly created a favorable environment for reform, consolidating judicial independence and expanding freedom of the press. It even incorporated opposition forces into the transition process. The CCP, by contrast, has treated demands for social and economic justice as threats to its power, suppressing civil society and restricting people’s liberties. The regime and the people have been locked in confrontation for decades, making reconciliation unthinkable.

        My newly acquired understanding of the democratic transition in Spain, along with what I already knew about those in the former Soviet bloc, led me to fundamentally reject the Marxist ideology in which I once had unshakable faith. I came to realize that the theories Marx advanced in the nineteenth century were limited by his own intellect and the historical circumstances of his time. Moreover, I saw that the highly centralized, oppressive version of Marxism promoted by the CCP owed more to Stalin than to Marx himself. I increasingly recognized it as an ideology formed to serve a self-interested dictatorship. Marxism, I began to hint in publications and lectures, should not be worshiped as an absolute truth, and China had to start the journey to democracy. In 2010, when some liberal scholars published an edited volume called Toward Constitutionalism, I contributed an article that discussed the Spanish experience.

        My vision—shared with other liberal scholars—was that China would start by implementing democracy within the party, which, over the long run, would lead to a constitutional democracy. China would have a parliament, even a real opposition party. In my heart, I worried that the CCP might violently resist such a transition, but I kept that thought to myself. Instead, when speaking with colleagues and students, I argued that such a transition would be good for China and even for the party itself, which could consolidate its legitimacy by making itself more accountable to the people. Many of the officials I taught acknowledged that the party faced problems, but they could not say so themselves. Instead, they cautiously urged me to persuade their superiors.

        THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF XI

        The problem was that at that very time, Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao, was moving in the opposite direction. In 2003, while in the process of taking over the reins of power, Hu had put forward “the Scientific Outlook on Development,” his substitute for Jiang’s Three Represents. The concept was another attempt to justify China’s mixed development model with a thin cover of Marxist-sounding ideology, and it avoided the big questions facing China. China’s breakneck development was producing social conflict as farmers’ land was seized for development and factories squeezed workers for more profits. The number of petitioners seeking redress from the government increased dramatically, and nationwide, demonstrations eventually exceeded 100,000 per year. To me, the discontent showed that it was becoming harder for China to develop its economy without liberalizing its politics.

        Hu thought otherwise. “Don’t muck up things,” he said in 2008, at a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the policy of reform and opening. I understood this to mean that the economic, political, and ideological reforms the party had made so far should be maintained but not pushed forward. Hu was defending himself against accusations from both sides: from conservatives who thought that reform had gone too far and from liberals who thought it hadn’t gone far enough. So China, under his watch, entered a period of political stagnation, a decline similar to what the Soviet Union experienced under Leonid Brezhnev.

        Thus it was with optimism that I looked to Xi when it became clear that he was going to take power. The easy reforms had all been made 30 years ago; now it was time for the hard ones. Given the reputation of Xi’s father, a former CCP leader with liberal inclinations, and the flexible style that Xi himself had displayed in previous posts, I and other advocates of reform hoped that our new leader would have the courage to enact bold changes to China’s political system. But not everyone had such confidence in Xi. The skeptics I knew fell into two categories. Both proved prescient.

        The first group consisted of princelings—descendants of the party’s founders. Xi was a princeling, as was Bo Xilai, the dynamic party chief of Chongqing. Xi and Bo rose to senior provincial and ministerial positions at almost the same time, and both were expected to join the highest body in the CCP, the Politburo Standing Committee, and were considered top contenders to lead China. But Bo fell out of the leadership competition early in 2012, when he was implicated in his wife’s murder of a British businessman, and the party’s senior statesmen backed the safe and steady Xi. The princelings I knew, familiar with Xi’s ruthlessness, predicted that the rivalry would not end there. Indeed, after Xi took power, Bo was convicted of corruption, stripped of all his assets, and sentenced to life in prison.

        The other group of skeptics consisted of establishment scholars. More than a month before the 18th Party Congress of November 2012, when Xi would be formally unveiled as the CCP’s new general secretary, I was chatting with a veteran reporter from a major Chinese magazine and a leading professor at my school who had observed Xi’s career for a long time. The two had just wrapped up an interview, and before leaving, the reporter tossed out a question: “I hear that Xi Jinping lived in the Central Party School compound for a period of time. Now he’s about to become the party’s general secretary. What do you think of him?” The professor’s lip twitched, and he said with disdain that Xi suffered from “inadequate knowledge.” The reporter and I were stunned at this blunt pronouncement.

        In spite of these negative views, I willingly suspended disbelief and put my hopes in Xi. But shortly after Xi’s ascension, I started to have my doubts. A December 2012 speech he gave suggested a reformist and progressive mentality, but other statements hinted at a throwback to the pre-reform era. Was Xi headed left or right? I had just retired from the Central Party School, but I still kept in touch with my former colleagues. Once when I was talking to some of them about Xi’s plans, one of them said, “It’s not a question of whether Xi is going left or right but rather that he lacks basic judgment and speaks illogically.” Everyone fell silent. A chill ran down my spine. With deficiencies like these, how could we expect him to lead a struggle for political reform?

        I soon concluded that we probably could not. After Xi released his comprehensive reform plan in late 2013, business and academic circles excitedly predicted that he would push ahead with major reforms. My feeling was just the opposite. The plan avoided all the key issues of political reform. China’s long-standing problems of corruption, excessive debt, and unprofitable state enterprises are rooted in party officials’ power to meddle in economic decisions without public supervision. Trying to liberalize the economy while tightening political control was a contradiction. Yet Xi was launching the biggest ideological campaign since Mao’s death to revive Maoist rule. His plan called for intensified societal surveillance and a clampdown on free expression. A ban on any discussion of constitutional democracy and universal values was shamelessly promoted under the banner of “governance, management, service, and law.”

        This trend continued with a package of legal reforms passed in 2014, which further exposed the party’s intent to use the law as a tool for maintaining totalitarian rule. At this point, Xi’s perverse tendencies and the CCP’s political regression were clear. If I once had a vague hope for Xi and the party, my illusions were now shattered. Subsequent events would only confirm that when it came to reform, Xi was taking China from stagnation to regression. In 2015, the party rounded up hundreds of defense lawyers. The next year, it launched a Cultural Revolution–style campaign against an outspoken real estate tycoon. It was my reaction to that episode that landed me in hot water.

        THE LAST STRAW

        The tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang, had increasingly come into conflict with Xi, whom he criticized for censoring Chinese media. In February 2016, a CCP website labeled Ren as “anti-party.” I didn’t know Ren personally, but his case struck me as especially disturbing because I had long relied on the principle that within the CCP, we were allowed—even encouraged—to speak freely in order to help the party correct its own mistakes. Here was a longtime party member who had been demonized for doing just that. Having lived through the Cultural Revolution, I knew that people branded with the label “anti-party” were deprived of their rights and subjected to harsh persecution. Since a defense of Ren could never be published in censored media outlets, I wrote one up and sent it to a WeChat group, hoping my friends would share it with their contacts. My article went viral.

        Although most of my article simply quoted the party’s constitution and code of conduct, the Central Party School’s disciplinary committee accused me of serious errors. I faced a series of intimidating interviews in which my interrogators applied psychological pressure and laid word traps in an effort to induce a false confession of wrongdoing. It was uncomfortable, but I recognized the process as a psychological contest. If I didn’t show fear, I realized, they would lose half the battle. And so a stalemate ensued: I kept publishing, and the authorities kept calling me in for questioning. Soon, I concluded that security agencies were tapping my phone, reading my digital correspondence, and following me to see where I went and with whom I met. Retired professors from the Central Party School usually need permission only from the school to travel to Hong Kong or abroad, but now the school hinted that I had to clear such trips with the Ministry of State Security in the future.

        In April 2016, the text of a speech I had given a few months earlier at Tsinghua University—in which I argued that if ideology violates common sense, it deteriorates into lies—was published on an influential website in Hong Kong. The timing was bad: Xi had just announced that some of the free inquiry taking place at the Central Party School had gone too far and urged greater supervision of its professors. As a result, in early May, I was called in again by the school’s disciplinary committee and accused of opposing Xi. From then on, the CCP blocked me from all media in China—print, online, television. Even my name could not be published. Then, one night in July, I was summoned again to a meeting at the Central Party School, where a member of the disciplinary committee placed a foot-tall pile of documents on the table in front of me. “There’s already this much material on you,” he said. “Think it over.” It was clear that I was being warned to keep silent and that if I so much as tweeted a word, I would be subjected to disciplinary action, including reduced retirement benefits. I was indignant at my treatment, even though I understood that others had been dealt with even more harshly.

        In all my years as a member of the CCP, I had never violated a single rule, nor had I ever been called in for a reprimand. But now, I was regularly interrogated by party officials. The school’s disciplinary committee repeatedly threatened the humiliating prospect of holding a large public meeting and announcing a formal punishment. At the end of each conversation, my interrogators demanded I keep it a secret. It was all part of an underworld that couldn’t be exposed to the light of day.

        Then came a cover-up of police brutality that triggered my final break with Xi and the party. Earlier, in May 2016, Lei Yang, an environmental scientist, was on his way to the airport to pick up his mother-in-law when, in circumstances that remain murky, he died in the custody of the Beijing police. In order to evade responsibility for the crime, the police framed Lei, alleging that he had been soliciting a prostitute. His classmates from his university days, outraged at this attempt at defamation, banded together to help his family seek justice, starting a campaign that reverberated throughout China. To quell the fury, the CCP’s top leaders ordered an investigation. The prosecution agreed to an independent autopsy, and a trial was scheduled to argue the matter.

        A strange thing happened next: Lei’s parents, wife, and children were put under house arrest, and the local government offered them massive compensation, about $1 million, to give up their pursuit of the truth. When Lei’s family refused, the payment was increased to $3 million. Even after a $3 million house was thrown in, Lei’s wife insisted on clearing her late husband’s name. The government then pressured Lei’s parents, who knelt before their daughter-in-law and begged her to abandon the case. In December, prosecutors announced that they would not charge anyone for Lei’s death, and his family’s lawyer revealed that he had been forced to stand down.

        When I learned of this outcome, I sat at my desk all night, overcome with grief and anger. Lei’s death was a clear-cut case of wrongdoing, and instead of punishing the police officers responsible, their superiors had tried to use the people’s hard-earned tax money to settle the matter out of court. Officials were closing ranks rather than serving the people. I asked myself, If the CCP’s officials are capable of such despicable actions, how can the party be trusted? Most of all, I wondered how I could remain part of this system.

        After 20 years of hesitation, confusion, and misery, I made the decision to emerge from the darkness and make a complete break with the party. Xi’s great leap backward soon left me with no other choice. In 2018, Xi abolished presidential term limits, raising the prospect that I would have to live indefinitely under neo-Stalinist rule. The next summer, I was able to travel to the United States on a tourist visa. While there, I received a message from a friend telling me that the Chinese authorities, accusing me of “anti-China” activities, would arrest me if I returned. I decided to prolong my visit until things calmed down. Then the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, and flights to China were canceled, so I had to wait a little longer. At the same time, I was disgusted by Xi’s mishandling of the outbreak and signed a petition supporting Li Wenliang, the Wuhan ophthalmologist who had been harassed by police for warning his friends about the new disease and eventually died of it. I received urgent phone calls from the authorities at the Central Party School demanding that I come home.

        But the atmosphere in China was growing darker. Ren, the dissident real estate tycoon, disappeared in March and was soon expelled from the party and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Meanwhile, my problems with the authorities were compounded by the unauthorized release of a private talk I had given online to a small circle of friends in which I had called the CCP “a political zombie” and said that Xi should step down. When I sent friends a short article I had written denouncing Xi’s repressive new national security law in Hong Kong, someone leaked that, too.

        I knew I was in trouble. Soon, I was expelled from the party. The school stripped me of my retirement benefits. My bank account was frozen. I asked the authorities at the Central Party School for a guarantee of my personal safety if I returned. Officials there avoided answering the question and instead made vague threats against my daughter in China and her young son. It was at this point that I accepted the truth: there was no going back.

      • "A Keynesian Beauty Contest — But With No Beauty"
        "A Keynesian Beauty Contest — But With No Beauty"


        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 18:55

        Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington (“Cash Pennington”) hosts managing editor Ed Harrison to break down today’s dismal data on the state of the U.S. labor market. Ed and Ash put in context the non-farm payroll figures, released today, and contrast this dreadful print with the rally in U.S. equities. After reflecting on what these job numbers means for the yield curve and interest rate margins, Ed and Ash conduct an even-handed analysis of the worsening data on COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. In the intro, editor Jack Farley explores why the investors seem convinced that the adverse jobs data is actually good news for the stock market.

      • Uranium Stocks Soar: Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze
        Uranium Stocks Soar: Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 18:40

        Uranium stocks soared on Friday after House and Senate lawmakers revealed a compromise version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act. According to S&P Global, the bill effectively provides for the military to continue a policy under President-elect Joe Biden that classifies the domestic supplies of certain minerals such as uranium, graphite and lithium as vital to national security.

        Uranium companies such as Cameco rose 9.7%, Uranium Energy +10%, Energy Fuels +17%, North Short GLobal Uranium Mining +6%.

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        Even ahead of today’s NDAA announcement, the URA Uranium ETF was breaking out of an elongated bear market and downtrending channel to the upside as Larry McDonald’s latest Bear Traps report showed.

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        Even ahead of today’s announcement, Bear Traps noted that “CCJ and uranium have been fading sideways since June while the rest of the commodity space has rallied” and added that it expects uranium names “to play catch-up in the months ahead.”

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        Reminding readers that uranium has historically been a high-flying sector, the report predicts that “if the mad-mob trading FCEL and other ESG names gets ahold of uranium… Watch out.“

        As McDonald concludes “we find it more than bizarre that every commodity is ripping and uranium miners are dead in the water. Seasonally and politically, upside CCJ vol looks extremely cheap.”

        So besides a convenient way to profit from the wave of virtue-signaling sweeping passive investors (and, potentially, World War III), here is why if uranium is indeed stirring to the upside it has a long way to go:

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        Finally, for those unconvinced, below we repost McDonald’s Uranium bull case:

        * * *

        When are people going to figure out how GREEN Cameco CCJ equity is?!

        CCJ Seasonal Returns

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        Notice how when energy commodities were still rising (2011-2014) CCJ’s December and January returns were very strong. Meanwhile, every commodity stock is the metal space is up 40% in the past month, futures are ripping too yet CCJ and UXA1 are at April levels. CCJ calls are cheap, seasonality looks good, and with all these hot stocks jumping around (FCEL traded 1/2 of its market cap today) I think its only a matter of time before the mad mob finds Uranium equities… Buy the March $11 calls, put them in the drawer.

        PM on CCJ Cameco Corp

        <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

        Agree with your thesis. The space is so small and it makes so much sense. However, it would really be nice to see the spot U price catch a sustainable bid here. I am looking for a turn of the year trade in U, if not sooner. We need to see some utility to ink a relatively good sized contract to get things moving. That would be big. I am also looking for financial players to get more serious about throwing weight around in this sector. A group with decent capital at a multi-strat HF or a medium sized fund could allocate a few hundred mill and create their own reality in this sector, IMO. The order of operations would be to buy up positions in call option like U miners, then buy the U trusts trading at discounts and then hit the spot market hard. I think you would make money on all legs of that if you committed a few hundred mill to it.

        Looking at moves in some U stocks recently I wonder if this operation could be starting…

        It seemed like the whole U mining sector in Australia was up 13% on Tuesday (several names up that much). We are seeing stuff like UUUU today. And even LEU (+9.6%) which is a name I need to understand better and could have a very interesting role to play in a resurgent US nuclear sector.

        I am very excited about the potential here. With NXE and PDN.au my bit positions I am definitely liking the action, but I know we have to see U move eventually. And CCJ probably has to move too as the only “investable” name in the space if you exclude KAP.li

        It seems to me CCJ could be $12 in a hurry if it just catches a bid like many in the sector have.

        But it’s hard to argue that the better trade isn’t Uranium Participation Corp for people that can make do with the liquidity. The 17% discount to NAV is just a big deal, especially if you believe, as I do that it will be at a premium during this cycle. Risk reward is just excellent there. You are buying a discount to NAV based on a spot discount to forward, at a commodity price which is unsustainably low, at a time when the whole commodity deck has been priced higher, when even Elon Musk is flagging the need for nuclear power.

        A commodity that hasn’t moved right as the world wakes up to inflation with an actual clean energy angle to it. This could well be THE trade for 2021, IMO. I know it’s been slow to develop, but it just looks better than ever.

        Industry Expert on the Uranium Fundamentals – BULLISH CCJ Equity

        The consensus seems to be that Biden will be far more bullish for uranium than Trump has ever been in his 4 years. Biden’s $2T Infrastructure plan embraces the current nuclear reactor industry and creates a new ARPA Agency for Climate that has put the development and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors as a priority, seeking to build them cheaper and faster through technical innovation. Biden’s push for clean energy will also serve to reduce competition from coal powered plants that will be phased out sooner, and carbon-emitting gas plants as well given power grids will become more carbon sensitive, rewarding carbon-free nuclear and hydro for their climate change mitigation. Today the bipartisan US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works approved the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act designed to boost the US nuclear industry, establish a strategic Uranium Reserve, support enhancing the US nuclear fuel cycle and encourage US reactor exports worldwide. All signs are pointing towards a US nuclear renaissance if Biden Administration is to achieve its Net Zero emissions goals, as all evidence shows that intermittent renewables, solar and wind, are not able to provide the continuous 24/7 baseload carbon-free electricity needed by industry and the transition to electric transportation from cars to buses to truck transport. California has been the poster child for the failure of renewables to deliver on their early promise.  The outlook for US nuclear has never been better in the past few decades as Democrats now flip to be nuclear advocates, and with pro-nuclear Kerry nominated as Biden’s Climate Envoy, that renaissance could spread throughout the west as US rejoins Paris Climate Accord.

        Both US and Russia are also now looking to leverage their nuclear power generation capacity to produce clean hydrogen fuel, adding more value to reactors in the clean energy transition while creating a new revenue stream that will support maintaining the US fleet where already a number of utilities have applied to extend reactor operating lives to 80 years from the previous limit of 60.

        On the supply side, 2020 has seen a record uranium supply deficit due to previous mine shutdowns, flexing down by Kazakhstan, and 5-month mining suspensions at Cameco’s Cigar Lake and all of Kazakhstan’s ISR uranium mines.  Total mined supply this year will come in under 120M lbs, a level not seen since 2008. The 5-month cessation of ISR wellfield development, during what is usually Kazakhstan’s peak seasonal period for drilling and expanding wells to maintain production levels, is only now beginning to impact uranium production, and there is a high expectation that 2021 will see that supply destruction continue into Q2.  For the first time ever both Cameco and Kazatomprom have depleted their held inventory, forcing both to be active buyers in the Spot market in order to fulfill their contract delivery commitments.  With COVID-19 case numbers continuing to spike higher in Northern Saskatchewan, chances of another temporary shutdown of Cigar Lake are increasing daily.  Spot U3O8 price has responded, jumping above $34/lb in March/April then backing off to level off near $30/lb at present to create a new floor at 25% above its March low.

        Further fueling the bullish outlook for uranium was the decision by BHP to scrap its Olympic Dam mine expansion plan.  Uranium is an 8M lbs/yr by-product of that mine, which BHP simply sells primarily to traders in the Spot market.  The expansion plan was expected to add another 7-8M lbs/yr supply to Spot market.  ERA’s Ranger Mine in Australia closes permanently next month, and Orano’s COMINAK mine in Niger, West Africa, will close permanently in March of next year.  Together they will reduce 2021 supply by somewhere around 7M lbs/yr.   The only major new mine actively trying to get into production is Berkeley Energia’s Salamanca mine in Spain.  It had received all but 1 of the dozens of permits needed to begin construction before being potentially shelved due to a policy change in government.  Brazil has just begun building a small new open pit mine which is expected to produce just over 500,000 lbs per year starting in 2022. All other mine projects remain on hold, as are all mine restarts as operators wait for uranium prices to move significantly higher into the $40-$50/lb range.

        On the nuclear demand side, nuclear utilities have seen almost all of the political and trade overhangs removed that have been keeping them on the sidelines since the Section 232 Uranium Petition was served in January 2018.  They withdrew their RFP’s nearly 3 years ago, preferring to delay contracting until a long list of uncertainties were dealt with. The Section 232 morphed into the Nuclear Fuel Working Group but many of the recommendations were not actioned. Uncertainty over the Iran nuclear waivers became a major issue but that too has been resolved. The most significant uranium trade issue this year was negotiating an extension to the Russian Suspension Agreement, which Commerce and Rosatom eventually concluded successfully. The RSA was extended to at least 2040 with limits on Russian uranium imports being reduced from 20% to 15% of US nuclear fuel requirements by 2040. The last remaining political overhang is the US election outcome, as nuclear utilities do not want to enter into long term contracts until certain that they will get the support they need to keep them running under a new administration.

        While COVID-19 has had a severe impact on uranium supply, it has had an opposite effect on demand.  Continuous baseload power has been in high demand throughout the pandemic, and many nations are targeting COVID recovery infrastructure funds to rebuild their power grids with carbon-free energy to achieve their net zero emissions goals.  In just the past few months there has been a strong shift to expand nuclear power generating capacity in China, India, and most recently in Britain where PM Boris Johnson is pushing for construction of a new 3200MW Sizewell-C power plant, and the 16 x 440MW UKSMR advanced reactors that the Rolls-Royce consortium is planning to build across the UK, hoping to expand into the global market.  Advanced reactor projects have found new legs in Canada and the US.  In all there are now 72 new advanced reactor designs under development in 18 countries. Many had thought that COVID-19 would hurt the nuclear industry by reducing demand, but the outlook now seems to be that it has instead fueled a new global nuclear renaissance, just as global uranium supply is in a record deficit. Demand this year is in the order of 187M lbs (vs 120M lbs of primary mined supply) and TradeTech expects demand to rise to 220M lbs over the next 10 years.  Where the supply will come from to bring the market back into balance is the big unknown.  All the major new mines are many years away from construction, and those looking to restart, like Paladin’s Langer Heinrich and Cameco’s McArthur River, are also 2 years or more away.  Kazatomprom has extended their production flex-down through to the end of 2022.  In the 11 years I’ve been following the uranium sector, never have the fundamentals been so strong for a major uranium price recovery like what was seen in 2004-2007. “If” is no longer the question… only “When” remains open.

        COVID-19 has been sidelining nuclear fuel buyers as well, given the folks who have been engaged in a record number of reactor refuelings in 2020, under the added pressure of operating through a pandemic, are the same folks tasked with negotiating for new long term contracts with producers.  Term contracting has been very slow as utilities choose to draw down inventories, buying small quantities on Spot, deferring contracting into next year.  With Cameco, Kazatomprom and some utilities buying pounds in a depleted Spot market, the Spot price has found its floor near $30.  Once COVID begins to wane we are expecting to see a strong re-stocking cycle where utilities will over-buy to replace their cushions and acquire the new fuel needed in 2-3 years’ time. As the waiting game continues we are seeing new interest emerging in the uranium space, with some significant gains in quite a few developers and explorers over the past few weeks. I expect that to continue in what is usually a strong seasonal period from now until April/May.

        That’s a synopsis of where things stand today with respect to the Uranium bull case. A major move in uranium and related equities seems closer than ever… things move slowly in this sector… until they don’t.

      • The Plot Against Small Businesses
        The Plot Against Small Businesses

        Tyler Durden

        Fri, 12/04/2020 – 18:20

        Authored by Ash Staub via HumanEvents.,com,

        If one were to consider the upward transfer of wealth and market share to Big Business since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, one would think such economic changes were intended. After all, it’s no secret that the interests of politicians and the corporate elite align more often than not.

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        As we near a year of lockdowns and sheltering in place, the long-term effects of pandemic policy on the economy are becoming clearer. Almost every piece of legislation ostensibly designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus and protect workers has wreaked devastation on small businesses—while benefiting the largest corporations. Roughly 100,000 small businesses have permanently closed due to COVID-19, while big-box retailers, tech giants, and pharmaceutical manufacturers have seen record profits.

        America’s small businesses currently face an attack on all fronts.

        • First, there are the more visible policies (e.g., lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing requirements) that strongly discourage people from patronizing brick-and-mortar retailers and restaurants. These policies impact small businesses more than large chains and corporations. Small retailers, for example, may not have the space to effectively implement social distancing policies, and often lack an online infrastructure to support curbside pickups of retail goods.

        • Second, the cost of complying with health and safety guidelines, and the corresponding fines if businesses don’t comply, have forced businesses to incur additional expenses while their revenue declines. According to the Small Business Administration, the cost of compliance disproportionately impacts small businesses, who lack the funds and infrastructure of large corporations to adapt to new regulation. Overhauling a business to accommodate remote work, for example, requires a flexibility and an investment of resources that many small businesses simply do not have. For dine-in restaurants, the vast majority of which are small businesses, switching to outdoor dining is often not even possible given the business’s location.

        • Lastly, there are ever-evolving COVID-19 employment regulations that disproportionately expose small businesses to lawsuits and the subsequent legal expenses and damages that may result. The conspicuous absence of liability protection also disadvantages small businesses, as the largest corporations can spare the capital required to fight lawsuits and painlessly pay out any damages. For example, Publix, a large supermarket chain, has so far managed to avoid paying damages to the family of an employee who died of COVID-19 due to the fact that he wasn’t allowed to wear a mask at work.

        Despite the fact that these policies are explicitly harmful to small businesses, they can be justified on the basis of “public health” and thereby shielded from criticism. Practically unlimited regulation (that always seems to benefit the corporate elite) can be defended, because such policies are said to be designed to ensure the health and safety of the public. Opposition to these onerous restrictions can therefore be conveniently characterized as “anti-science,” or worse, reckless and/or malicious endangerment of one’s community. As a consequence, policies that explicitly disadvantage small businesses, such as the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), can be passed under the guise of public health and worker protection without raising any alarm bells.

        When considering the cumulative effects of pandemic policy, a clear pattern begins to emerge.  Every substantial piece of COVID-19 legislation enacted at the federal level has harmed small businesses while benefiting large corporations. This indicates, at the very least, a willful indifference on the part of lawmakers to the plight of small businesses, but more likely, a conscious effort to disadvantage small businesses for the advantage of Big Business.

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        THE EFFECTS OF COVID-19 LEGISLATION

        The FFCRA, passed in March of this year, requires businesses to provide two weeks of paid sick leave for quarantined employees and/or employees experiencing COVID-19 related symptoms. It also requires two weeks of paid sick leave at two-thirds the regular rate of pay for employees who need to care for quarantined individuals, such as elderly relatives or spouses. Furthermore, employers must also provide ten weeks of extended leave, also at two-thirds the regular rate of pay, for employees caring for their children due to school closures.

        The FFCRA only applies to employers with fewer than 500 employees.

        It sounds absurd, but it’s correct; the businesses most capable of providing these benefits are under no legal obligation to do so, while those most affected by the pandemic are expected to incur the FFCRA’s additional expenses. While the actual cost of paid leave is reimbursed through tax credits, there is no reimbursement for lost labor and productivity, and the subsequent disadvantage compared to large, FFCRA-exempt competitors. This is not to say that businesses should or should not provide these benefits—only to point out how the policy singles out and targets small businesses.

        And as small businesses shut down in droves, it’s difficult to justify this competitive disadvantage. 58% of small business owners say they’re worried about closing, while 100,000 small businesses have already closed. The smallest businesses are the hardest hit: 48% of businesses with 1-4 employees claim to have been severely impacted by the new COVID-era regulations.

        Furthermore, the financial burden of the FFCRA extends beyond the simple cost of compliance. As a result of the FFCRA, small businesses have been sued over violations of employment regulations at a substantially higher rate than big businesses. Despite employing 52% of the nation’s workforce, private employers with less than 500 employees (those forced to comply with the FFCRA) were the defendants in 65% of COVID-19 related employment lawsuits; employers with less than 50 employees were the defendants in 38% of lawsuits. That means the businesses least capable of contesting an employment lawsuit, much less incurring the financial burden of liability damages and legal fees, are the businesses most often sued. 

        Thus, the FFCRA has imposed financial obligations on small businesses while exempting big businesses. Small businesses are forced to pay the cost of complying with the FFCRA, while big businesses are not. Small businesses are at risk of FFCRA-related lawsuits; big businesses are not. The FFCRA clearly disadvantages small businesses, and expecting small businesses to incur the cost of the FFCRA while their revenue plummets, and their corporate competition profits, is a recipe for widespread small business bankruptcy. 

        And that is exactly what’s happening.

        This is a feature, not a bug, and calls into question the true purpose of the FFCRA. There is no good-faith reason for big businesses to be exempt from the FFCRA that would also not apply to small businesses. Furthermore, if the FFCRA really was designed to protect workers, why only cover half the workforce? Why exempt the largest employers? Are Walmart employees privy to some germ-repelling magic elixir, thereby absolving Walmart of the same responsibilities demanded of small businesses? The fact of the matter is that the FFCRA is more interested in transferring the market share of small businesses to giant corporations than protecting workers.

        Federal relief, or lack thereof, reinforces this claim. The CARES Act, the 2.2 trillion dollar federal stimulus bill passed in March, offers a lifeline to small businesses in the form of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a loan issued at a 1% interest rate. Yet the loan only covers roughly ten weeks of payroll expenses, and applications closed in early August. It is now early December, and further financial aid to small businesses has yet to be legislated. Moreover, while the CARES Act offers $349 billion in aid to small businesses, it provides upwards of $500 billion to large businesses, in effect rewarding the businesses already profiting off the pandemic, to the detriment of the small businesses suffering the most.

        Relief in the form of liability protection is also not forthcoming. The HEALS Act, a stimulus bill which would include COVID-19 liability shields for all employers, has been tied up in the Senate since July, with much of its delay attributable to opposition to its liability protections. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is among the more vocal opponents of liability shields, arguing that businesses would be “off the hook” if an employee or customer were to contract COVID-19 at a business establishment, thereby permitting businesses to neglect health precautions. “Without any ability to hold an employer [liable],” Gillibrand argues, “then you’re putting a lot of workers and a lot of Americans across the country at grave risk.”

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        Even though big businesses are actively lobbying for and would benefit from liability shields, it’s clear that withholding liability protections disproportionately impacts small businesses while favoring corporations with the most capital and access to quality legal representation. A retail giant such as Target, which has unsurprisingly profited off the pandemic, can easily afford to pay out any liability damages. Moreover, Target has the resources to contest the claim in court. But a family-owned consignment store? A single lawsuit may well bankrupt the business. And as small businesses are the defendants in a significantly larger portion of COVID-19 related lawsuits, the absence of liability shields contributes to their demise.

        Though the lack of liability protection legislation can partly be attributed to garden-variety legislative sclerosis and inefficiency, its absence disproportionately affects small businesses. The degree to which this is intentional is unclear. What is clear, however, is that Congress is well aware of the difficulties facing small businesses given the fact that small business stimulus legislation has been discussed since July, and that the lack of liability protection exacerbates these difficulties, but it has done nothing. This continued inaction as small business bankruptcies and lawsuits pile up is at the very least tantamount to indifference, and therefore tacit approval.

        Unless our policymakers are woefully incompetent, the intent of policy cannot be divorced from its effect. And the effect of COVID-19 policy on small businesses has been devastating. Relief is nonexistent, as is the case with liability shields, or inadequate, in the case of the PPP. Public health and worker/customer protection legislation is explicitly harmful to America’s small businesses in the cases of the FFCRA, lockdowns, and onerous restrictions. 

        If one were extremely charitable, the lack of liability protections can be attributed to callous indifference, and the inadequacy of the PPP can be chalked up to sclerosis and bad policy. Lockdowns and health and safety obligations have public health justifications. But the FFCRA’s targeting of small businesses is indefensible. There is no reasonable explanation for the FFCRA to not apply to Big Business other than to disadvantage small businesses.

        When considered together, these policies have demonstrably harmed small businesses while favoring big businesses. The systematic transfer of wealth and market space from small businesses to large corporations is entirely the result of government policy. Again, intent cannot be separated from effect, and the lack of persuasive arguments justifying the targeting of small businesses by policymakers can be explained in simple terms: pandemic policy was an intentional effort by policymakers to facilitate an upward transfer of wealth to Big Business at the expense of small business.

      Digest powered by RSS Digest

      Dec 03

      Today’s News 3rd December 2020

      • World Economic Forum Encourages Plebs To Eat Weeds & Drink Sewage
        World Economic Forum Encourages Plebs To Eat Weeds & Drink Sewage

        Tyler Durden

        Thu, 12/03/2020 – 02:00

        Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

        The World Economic Forum published two articles on its website which explored how people could be conditioned to get used to the idea of eating weeds, bugs and drinking sewage water in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

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        Yes, really.

        “Finding new plant-based foods is becoming increasingly urgent with the world’s population forecast to grow by two billion in the next 30 years,” states an article authored by Douglas Broom published on the official WEF website

        “While farming animals for meat generates 14.5% of total global greenhouse emissions, weeds capture carbon from the atmosphere and can therefore help to control climate change.”

        According to Broom, “Weeds can be nutritious and tasty” and are easy to grow.

        The article fails to explain why weeds such as dandelion leaves, given that they are so ubiquitous, haven’t been made a staple of western diets already.

        “The next time a panhandler approaches your car at a stoplight, point to the tasty and nutritious weeds sprouting up through cracks in the pavement and tell him, “Bon appétit!” writes Dave Blount.

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        A separate article also published on the WEF website investigates how people can be conditioned to enjoy consuming ‘food’ which on the surface sounds disgusting.

        “Responses involving culturally conditioned ideas of what is “natural” may be modified over time,” states the piece, before asking why there is a revulsion against “insect-based foods” and “drinks with ingredients reclaimed from sewage.”

        The author concludes that “desensitisation (repeated exposures)” may be effective in “reducing disgust (versus fear)” among the “general population.”

        Maybe the WEF will be satisfied when we’re all forced to eat tree bark and roots, food sources that starving peasants in Stalinist Ukraine were reduced to consuming during the Holodomor.

        And that’s the point.

        The ‘Great Reset’ is about enacting a drastic reduction in living standards for the plebs which will force them to put bugs, weeds and sewage on the menu while the Davos elites continue to feast on the finest cuisine in their ivory towers.

        *  *  *

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      • UN Says 233,000 Yemenis Dead After 6 Years Of Saudi-US Coalition Bombing
        UN Says 233,000 Yemenis Dead After 6 Years Of Saudi-US Coalition Bombing

        Tyler Durden

        Thu, 12/03/2020 – 01:00

        A grim milestone in the “forgotten war” which has close US involvement: six years after the Saudi coalition began bombing Yemen to prevent a full Houthi rebel takeover of the country, the United Nations has issued an updated official tally of the death toll.

        The UN now says an estimated 233,000 people have died as a result of the over half-decade long conflict. Most of the deaths are believed to be from ‘indirect causes’ such as collapse of societal infrastructure, disease, and lack of food and resources.

        “The war had already caused an estimated 233,000 deaths, including 131,000 from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure,” the UN’s top humanitarian office said early this week. This leaves a staggering over 100,000 direct combat deaths – likely most from aerial bombing.

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        American-supplied Saudi F-16, file image.

        Calling it an “imminent catastrophe” the UN office described that “Yemen’s complex civil war began in earnest in 2015, foisting disease, hunger and economic collapse on an already impoverished population. In 2020 the violence escalated and the hardship deepened with torrential rains, a fuel crisis, COVID-19 and desert locust infestations that are expected to cause damage and loss worth $222 million to staple crops, animals and livestock.”

        “Hostilities have directly caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties; 3,153 child deaths and 5,660 children were verified in the first five years of the conflict, and 1,500 civilian casualties were reported in the first nine months of 2020,” it added of direct combat deaths in addition to indirect casualties.

        The US-Saudi coalition had also for years imposed a full blockade on the country’s main ports, including the major Hodeidah, which is the country’s most important shipping port. Humanitarian goods were also blocked for years.

        When during the first half of the war in Syria casualties reached over 200,000 lives lost it drove international headlines and became a key talking point for those urging military intervention to oust Assad there.

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

        However, given the US and UK are direct participants on executing the war in Yemen alongside the Saudis and the UAE (including US and UK advanced weaponry being used), the tragedy of Yemen has been glaringly absent from the talking points of the Western political class.

      • COVID-19 Vaccines Pave The Way For A New Frontier In Surveillance
        COVID-19 Vaccines Pave The Way For A New Frontier In Surveillance

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 23:40

        Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

        “Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men.”

        – C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

        Like it or not, the COVID-19 pandemic with its veiled threat of forced vaccinations, contact tracing, and genetically encoded vaccines is propelling humanity at warp speed into a whole new frontier – a surveillance matrix – the likes of which we’ve only previously encountered in science fiction.

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        Those who eye these developments with lingering mistrust have good reason to be leery: the government has long had a tendency to unleash untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.

        Indeed, “we the people” have been treated like lab rats by government agencies for decades now: caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.

        You don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace, making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.

        Now this same government—which has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests (GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.) and used it against us, to track, control and trap us—wants us to fall in line as it prepares to roll out COVID-19 vaccines that owe a great debt to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for its past work on how to weaponize and defend against infectious diseases.

        The Trump Administration by way of the National Institute of Health awarded $22.8 million to seven corporations to develop artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, etc., with smart phone apps, wearable devices and software “that can identify and trace contacts of infected individuals, keep track of verified COVID-19 test results, and monitor the health status of infected and potentially infected individuals.”

        This is all part of Operation Warp Speed, which President Trump has likened to the Manhattan Project, a covert government effort spearheaded by the military to engineer and build the world’s first atomic bomb.

        There is every reason to tread cautiously.

        There is a sinister world beyond that which we perceive, one in which power players jockey for control over the one commodity that is a necessary ingredient for total domination: you.

        By you, I mean you the individual in all your singular humanness.

        Remaining singularly human and retaining your individuality and dominion over yourself—mind, body and soul—in the face of corporate and government technologies that aim to invade, intrude, monitor, manipulate and control us may be one of the greatest challenges before us.

        These COVID-19 vaccines, which rely on messenger RNA technology that influences everything from viruses to memory, are merely the tipping point.

        The groundwork being laid with these vaccines is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.

        If you were unnerved by the rapid deterioration of privacy under the Surveillance State, prepare to be terrified by the surveillance matrix that will be ushered in on the heels of the government’s rollout of this COVID-19 vaccine.

        The term “matrix” was introduced into our cultural lexicon by the 1999 film The Matrix in which Neo, a computer programmer/hacker, awakens to the reality that humans have been enslaved by artificial intelligence and are being harvested for their bio-electrical energy.

        Hardwired to a neuro-interactive simulation of reality called the “Matrix,” humans are kept inactive and docile while robotic androids gather the electricity their bodies generate. In order for the machines who run the Matrix to maintain control, they impose what appears to be a perfect world for humans to keep them distracted, content, and submissive.

        Here’s the thing: Neo’s Matrix is not so far removed from our own technologically-hardwired worlds in which we’re increasingly beholden to corporate giants such as Google for powering so much of our lives. As journalist Ben Thompson explains:

        Google+ is about unifying all of Google’s services under a single log-in which can be tracked across the Internet on every site that serves Google ads, uses Google sign-in, or utilizes Google analytics. Every feature of Google+—or of YouTube, or Maps, or Gmail, or any other service—is a flytrap meant to ensure you are logged in and being logged by Google at all times.

        Everything we do is increasingly dependent on and, ultimately, controlled by our internet-connected, electronic devices. For example, in 2007, there were an estimated 10 million sensor devices connecting human utilized electronic devices (cell phones, laptops, etc.) to the Internet. By 2013, it had increased to 3.5 billion. By 2030, it is estimated to reach 100 trillion.

        Much, if not all, of our electronic devices will be connected to Google, a neural network that approximates a massive global brain.

        Google’s resources, beyond anything the world has ever seen, includes the huge data sets that result from one billion people using Google every single day and the Google knowledge graph “which consists of 800 million concepts and billions of relationships between them.”

        The end goal? The creation of a new “human” species, so to speak, and the NSA, the Pentagon and the “Matrix” of surveillance agencies are part of the plan. As William Binney, one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA, said, “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”

        Mind you, this isn’t population control in the classic sense. It’s more about controlling the population through singularity, a marriage of sorts between machine and human beings in which artificial intelligence and the human brain will merge to form a superhuman mind.

        “Google will know the answer to your question before you have asked it,” predicts transhumanist scientist Ray Kurzweil. “It will have read every email you’ve ever written, every document, every idle thought you’ve ever tapped into a search-engine box. It will know you better than your intimate partner does. Better, perhaps, than even yourself.”

        The term “singularity”—that is, computers simulating human life itself—was coined years ago by mathematical geniuses Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann. “The ever accelerating progress of technology,” warned von Neumann, “gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”

        The plan is to develop a computer network that will exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of human beings by 2029. And this goal is to have computers that will be “a billion times more powerful than all of the human brains on earth.”

        Neuralink, a brain-computer chip interface (BCI), paves the way for AI control of the human brain, at which point the disconnect between humans and AI-controlled computers will become blurred and human minds and computers will essentially become one and the same. “In the most severe scenario, hacking a Neuralink-like device could turn ‘hosts’ into programmable drone armies capable of doing anything their ‘master’ wanted,” writes Jason Lau for Forbes.

        Advances in neuroscience indicate that future behavior can be predicted based upon activity in certain portions of the brain, potentially creating a nightmare scenario in which government officials select certain segments of the population for more invasive surveillance or quarantine based solely upon their brain chemistry.

        Case in point: researchers at the Mind Research Center scanned the brains of thousands of prison inmates in order to track their brain chemistry and their behavior after release. In one experiment, researchers determined that inmates with lower levels of activity in the area of the brain associated with error processing allegedly had a higher likelihood of committing a crime within four years of being released from prison. While researchers have cautioned against using the results of their research as a method of predicting future crime, it will undoubtedly become a focus of study for government officials.

        There’s no limit to what can be accomplished—for good or ill—using brain-computer interfaces.

        Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have created a brain-to-brain interface between lab rats, which allows them to transfer information directly between brains. In one particular experiment, researchers trained a rat to perform a task where it would hit a lever when lit. The trained rat then had its brain connected to an untrained rat’s brain via electrodes. The untrained rat was then able to learn the trained rat’s behavior via electrical stimulation. This even worked over great distances using the Internet, with a lab rat in North Carolina guiding the actions of a lab rat in Brazil.

        Clearly, we are rapidly moving into the “posthuman era,” one in which humans will become a new type of being. “Technological devices,” writes journalist Marcelo Gleiser, “will be implanted in our heads and bodies, or used peripherally, like Google Glass, extending our senses and cognitive abilities.”

        Transhumanism—the fusing of machines and people—is here to stay and will continue to grow.

        In fact, as science and technology continue to advance, the ability to control humans will only increase. In 2014, for example, it was revealed that scientists have discovered how to deactivate that part of our brains that controls whether we are conscious or not. When researchers at George Washington University sent high frequency electrical signals to the claustrum—that thin sheet of neurons running between the left and right sides of the brain—their patients lost consciousness. Indeed, one patient started speaking more slowly until she became silent and still. When she regained consciousness, she had no memory of the event.

        Add to this the fact that increasingly humans will be implanted with microchips for such benign purposes as tracking children or as medical devices to assist with our health. Such devices “point to an uber-surveillance society that is Big Brother on the inside looking out,” warns Dr. Katina Michael. “Governments or large corporations would have the ability to track people’s actions and movements, categorize them into different socio-economic, political, racial, or consumer groups and ultimately even control them.”

        As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, control is the issue.

        In fact, Facebook and the Department of Defense are working to manipulate our behavior. In a 2012 study, Facebook tracked the emotional states of over 600,000 of its users. The goal of the study was to see if the emotions of users could be manipulated based upon whether they were fed positive or negative information in their news feeds. The conclusion of the study was that “emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”

        All of this indicates a new path forward for large corporations and government entities that want to achieve absolute social control. Instead of relying solely on marauding SWAT teams and full-fledged surveillance apparatuses, they will work to manipulate our emotions to keep us in lock step with the American police state.

        Now add this warp speed-deployed vaccine to that mix, with all of the associated unknown and fearsome possibilities for altering or controlling human epigenetics, and you start to see the perils inherent in blindly adopting emerging technologies without any restrictions in place to guard against technological tyranny and abuse.

        It’s one thing for the starship Enterprise to boldly go where no man has gone before, but even Mr. Spock recognized the dangers of a world dominated by AI. “Computers make excellent and efficient servants,” he observed in “The Ultimate Computer” episode of Star Trek, “but I have no wish to serve under them.”

      • Australia To Sign Military Pact With US Ally Japan Amid Spiraling China Tensions
        Australia To Sign Military Pact With US Ally Japan Amid Spiraling China Tensions

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 23:20

        Australia is using its formative military alliances as the only leverage it has in the worsening trade spat with China which has grown into a full-blown crisis for Aussie commodities exports.

        It also comes after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to India and southeast Asian countries last month seeking to shore up coordinated regional resistance against Chinese economic and military influence and hegemony.

        “Australia plans to sign a military exchange deal with U.S. ally Japan so troops from both sides could pool their firepower if needed to counter China, which has become enmeshed in disputes with Australia over the past two weeks,” reports state-funded Voice of America.

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        Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, right, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pose with documents during a signing ceremony at Suga’s official residence in Tokyo on Nov.17. Japan Today via AP

        “Both sides said after a senior-level meeting November 17 they would sign a reciprocal access agreement next year,” VOA continues. It would allow for each to train and operate from the other’s sovereign territory.

        The agreement is seen as greatly bolstering the common readiness of a loosened defense pact known as the Quad which has as its purpose information and intelligence coordination and cooperating on military exercises. India, Japan, Australia and the US formed the group in 2007.

        Assuming the deal when signed gets successfully approved by Japan’s parliament it would mark the first time since WWII that Tokyo formally and willingly approved of inviting foreign troops to operate on its soil. Previously Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, said it would be toward the two regional militaries cooperation for “a free and open Indo-Pacific,” according to Kyodo news.

        Meanwhile a bizarre tweet from the US National Security Council after China slapped import taxes of up to 212.1% on Australian wines, which took effect last Saturday and has made Aussie wines basically unsellable in China:

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

        Weeks ago Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison flew to Tokyo to firm up details. He stated at the time that “Japan has a very special relationship with Australia.  It is not just an economic one, it is not just a trade one, it is not just a cultural and social one.  Importantly, it is a strategic one. We play a very important role together in working in the Southwest Pacific together.”

        China’s state media, which often reflects the internal government official statements of high Communist Party officials, condemned the deal, saying it “clearly targets China” and “further accelerates the confrontational atmosphere in the Asia-Pacific region.”   

        At the same time the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, which is headquartered in Japan, has issued statements praising and welcoming the impending deal.

      • Winding Up Americans
        Winding Up Americans

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 23:00

        Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

        For the last four years, Americans have become increasingly polarised – divided between Democrat crusaders who are determined to save America from becoming a racist, sexist Nazi dictatorship under Donald Trump, versus Republican crusaders who are determined to save America from becoming a liberal Marxist state under a Democratic reign.

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        This fervour has become so extreme that families can no longer meet for the holidays without a conversational blow-up. No longer are people “entitled to their opinions.” This has become a crusade between Good and Evil. (“I’m good. You’re evil.”)

        The absurd nature of this dichotomy has reached the point that even Dr. Phil is increasing his viewership by featuring disputes between siblings who are on opposite sides of the political divide and are no longer speaking to each other.

        At this point, all that remains to be done by the networks would be to air a Red versus Blue television game show in which contestants compete with their own family members to “Win the White House.”

        Until November, the great majority of Americans appear to have been hoping that the November election would end this strife one way or the other.

        My take on this has been that the opposite would happen after 3rd November. The fireworks would increase exponentially after the election. The election would be hotly contested by whomever was the apparent loser.

        This should easily have been foreseen, as the media on the right have insisted for months that the Democrat encouragement for mail-in ballots was a precursor to election fraud.

        Similarly, the media on the left have insisted for months that Donald Trump’s suggestion that he may not accept the election results meant that he was planning a coup after he (presumably inevitably) lost the election.

        And now, the battle has been met.

        It’s been estimated that 93% of all Fox watchers are Republicans and 95% of MSNBC watchers are Democrats. Since neither side watches the other’s news programme, each side is cognizant of only its own team’s heavily slanted rhetoric.

        The conservative media is awash with details of voter fraud by Democrats, whilst the liberal media states with equal conviction that Mister Trump and his lawyers have provided no details whatever.

        Therefore, those who voted Republican will conclude by watching their own “unbiased” news channel that Democrats have tried to steal the election and thereby steal control of the country.

        And those who voted Democrat will conclude by watching their own “unbiased” news channel that Republicans have tried to steal the election and thereby steal control of the country.

        But how did this get to be so bad? Americans have not been so wound up – nor so polarised – since 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War.

        Indeed, the post-election fervour is as strong as though Fort Sumter had just been fired upon.

        More importantly, what will be the outcome?

        Will the courts rule against the claims of Mister Trump?

        If so, that decision will enrage an already angry right-wing crowd, refusing to vacate the White House and defending it against the pinko mob.

        Or will the courts rule in favour of Mister Trump?

        If so, that decision will unleash nationwide riots, intent on bringing down the evil dictator.

        Either way, we can anticipate that the US will be in flames. If for any reason the level of strife is insufficient, those with deep pockets will hire squads of shills as mercenary soldiers.

        The populace will be in terror. Republican voters will beg the federal government to bring in the troops to contain Antifa and the BLM mob.

        Democratic voters will beg the federal government to bring in the troops to quell the Republican militias.

        In such an upheaval, the one thing both sides will have in common is that they will both beg for the creation of a police state.

        And the federal government will answer that call. Martial law would be declared, possibly as a “temporary measure,” until normalcy has returned.

        But what if normalcy does not return? What if pockets of violence continue to pop up all over the map with regularity?

        If that occurs, martial law would need to continue for as long as it was deemed necessary, which would be likely to translate into a permanent police state.

        At one time, the media was for the most part impartial and benign, but in recent decades it has been bought out by four large corporations. And some of those corporations own and direct both liberal and conservative networks, which would seem to be at odds with each other.

        However, they are not. Today, the objective of the media is not to offer news. It is to create strife – to pit one half of the electorate against the other. In doing so, the ruling elite have the justification to lock down the entire USA under martial law.

        Once that has been accomplished, the elite may do as they please. As in all countries where a police state has been achieved – such as Nazi Germany, Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia – once military control has been put into place nationwide, meaningful protest ends.

        In each of the above cases, the populace was whipped up into a frenzy of hate and violence against the Jews or the aristocracy or whatever other demon had been invented. But the real objective and the result were the subjugation of the populace.

        The American populace has been programmed like windup toys, with the ruling elite winding up the keys on their backs as tightly as they will go. When the levers are released, Americans will act dramatically and, in many cases, blindly.

        At this point, it’s not too late for people to stand back, take a deep breath and ask themselves if they’re not being conned into their own subjugation. But it would appear that they’ve been wound up so tightly that such objectivity is unlikely to occur.

        However, if they do not, they risk losing what remains of their once-proud democracy.

        *  *  *

        Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path that’s not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country, but accelerating quickly toward boundless decay. In the years ahead, there will likely be much less stability of any kind. 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.

      • Knoxville Embryo Reanimated After Quarter-Century On Ice For Record-Breaking Live Birth
        Knoxville Embryo Reanimated After Quarter-Century On Ice For Record-Breaking Live Birth

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 22:40

        A family in Knoxville, Tennessee is celebrating the birth of a baby girl – 27 years – almost to the day – after her embryo was frozen, according to WVLT.

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        The birth of Molly Everette Gibson broke a world record for the longest an embryo had been frozen before birth – a record previously held by Molly’s sister, Emma Wren Gibson.

        Molly was frozen on October 14, 1992, then thawed by National Embryo Donation Center Lab Director & Embryologist Carol Sommerfelt on February 10, 2020 and transferred to Tina’s uterus by NEDC President & Medical Director Dr. Jeffrey Keenan on February 12, 2020. –WVLT

        “I think this is proof positive that no embryo should ever be discarded, certainly not because it is ‘old!” said Dr. Keenan, adding “This is also a testament to the excellent embryology work of Carol Sommerfelt. She is perhaps the preeminent embryologist in the country when it comes to thawing frozen embryos. And of course, it’s a testament to how good God is, and to His infinite goodness and love.”

        According to the report, Molly and Emma are full genetic siblings.

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        “When Tina and Ben returned for their sibling transfer, I was thrilled that the remaining two embryos from the donor that resulted in Emma Wren’s birth survived the thaw and developed into two very good quality embryos for their transfer,” according to Sommerfelt. “It was even more thrilling to learn 11 days later that Tina was pregnant. I rejoiced with Tina and Ben as we all anxiously waited for the arrival of their second child … When Molly Everette was born on October 26, she was already 28 years old from the standpoint of the time the embryos had been frozen. This definitely reflects on the technology used all those years ago and its ability to preserve the embryos for future use under an indefinite time frame. It also shows the reason the NEDC mission is so important, giving all donated embryos the best chance for life.”

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        Located in Knoxville, the NEDC receives embryos from all over the United States, and serves couples seeking to become pregnant from all over the world.

      • The Real Source Of America's Frustrations
        The Real Source Of America’s Frustrations

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 22:20

        Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via The Daily Reckoning,

        It’s easy to lay America’s visible frustrations at the feet of Covid lockdowns or political polarization, but this conveniently ignores the real driver: systemic unfairness.

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        The status quo has been increasingly rigged to benefit insiders and elites as the powers of central banks and governments have picked the winners (cronies, insiders, cartels and monopolies) and shifted the losses and risks onto the losers (the rest of us).

        We now live in the world the 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat so aptly described:

        “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

        Ours is a two-tier society and economy with a broken ladder of social mobility for those trying to reach the security of the technocrat class.

        As Bastiat observed, those rigging the system to benefit themselves always create a legal system that lets them off scot-free and a PR scheme that glorifies their predation as well-deserved rewards from their enormous appetite for hard work and innovation.

        Embezzling a couple billion dollars also earns you a get out of jail free card: none of the perps in Wall Street’s skims, scams and frauds ever gets indicted, much less convicted, and none of Wall Street’s legalized looters ever goes to prison.

        And this is a fair and just system? Uh, right.

        The Roulette Wheel Is Rigged

        Meanwhile, the reality is the roulette wheel is rigged, and only chumps believe it’s a fair game. Those who know it’s rigged have essentially zero agency (control/power) or capital to demand an unrigged game or finagle their way into the elite class doing the skimming.

        The net result is soaring frustration with a patently unfair system that’s touted as the fairest in the entire world.

        The key takeaway, in my view, is that the unfairness isn’t limited to the economy, society or politics —  it’s manifesting in all three realms. It isn’t just frustration with domestic issues — the global economic order is also a source of unfairness and powerlessness.

        These are the dynamics that are tearing apart our social cohesion and that will soon start destabilizing the economy — regardless of how much “money” the Federal Reserve prints.

        How divided is America?

        Two Americas

        There is a map, courtesy of the Brookings Institute, showing the roughly 500 counties Biden won and the roughly 2,500 counties Trump won.

        This might seem like a chart of political polarization, and superficially that’s clear, but the real polarization is economic-financial: there are two economies in America, and there’s very little commonality in the two economies.

        70% of America’s economy is generated in fewer than 500 counties; the other 2,500 counties are left with the remaining 30%.

        The nation’s productive capital is even more concentrated in a few hands and regions, and since income and political power flow to capital, the financial disparity/inequality far exceeds the 70/30 split depicted in the political map.

        Ownership of capital is concentrated in the hands of the top 10%, but the concentration is actually much more limited: the top 0.1% control so much wealth/capital that they “own” virtually all the power.

        I hope it’s not a big surprise that America is now a rigidly two-tier society and economy. If you’re an executive at a big Wall Street investment bank, you can rig markets or embezzle billions, and you’ll never face any personal legal consequences such as being indicted for fraud and being imprisoned.

        But try being an employee at a local credit union and embezzle $5,000 — a prison sentence is very predictable.

        If you’re one of the 500,000+ people busted for possessing cannabis in the U.S. every year, then you’re not rich and powerful, because when the spoiled-rotten child of the rich and powerful get busted, the charges are quietly dropped, or cut to a modest fine and a misdemeanor, etc.

        “Justice”

        “Justice” is for sale in the U.S., along with rigged markets, political power, healthcare and everything else. Why should we be surprised that the economy is also two-tiered?

        The lower tier of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized: debt has been substituted for capital. Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top-tier, which owns and profits from the rising tide of debt that’s been keeping the second tier afloat for the past 20 years.

        The saying “follow the money” is only half-right — more importantly, follow the capital because income and power flow to capital. As a RAND report documents, $50 trillion has been siphoned from labor and the lower tier of the economy to the top-tier elites who own the vast majority of the capital.

        What’s missing from the political map is the staggering percentage of residents in the wealthiest 500 counties who are precariously living paycheck to paycheck, the ALICE Americans: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

        Gand financialization has richly rewarded the top 0.1% and the top 5% technocrat class that serves the elites’ interests. These elites and their capital are concentrated in urban counties, and the feedback loops are self-reinforcing: the capital in the urban counties attracts more capital and talent (skilled labor), bleeding the other 2,500 counties of skilled labor and capital.

        Where’s the Leadership?

        America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide. Our leadership’s “plan” is benign neglect: just send a monthly stipend of bread and circuses to all the disempowered, decapitalized households, urban and rural, so they can stay out of trouble and not bother the elites’ continued pillaging.

        There’s a lot of big talk about rebuilding infrastructure and the Green New Deal, but our first question must always be: cui bono, to whose benefit?

        How much of the spending will actually be devoted to changing the rising imbalances between the haves and the have-nots, the ever-richer who profit from rising debt and the ever more decapitalized debt-serfs who are further impoverished by rising debt?

        People don’t want to just get by, they want an opportunity to acquire capital in all its forms, an opportunity to contribute to their communities, to make a difference, to earn respect and pride.

        That our “leadership” reckons bread and circuses is what the strip-mined bottom 90% want is beyond pathetic. How that plays out is anyone’s guess, but the pendulum swing to an extreme at the other end of the spectrum is already baked in.

        I just hope it doesn’t end in disaster.

      • LA County Mayor Says Not Wearing A Mask Is "Act Of Domestic Terrorism"
        LA County Mayor Says Not Wearing A Mask Is “Act Of Domestic Terrorism”

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 22:00

        A Los Angeles County public official was quoted by the Los Angeles Daily News as saying those who defy the public health order to wear a mask in public in response to the virus pandemic are guilty of an “act of domestic terrorism.”

        “If it were up to me, anybody not wearing a mask when they are out in public would be arrested … That’s an act of domestic terrorism and should be treated like one,” Lancaster, California, Mayor Rex Parris, recently said.

        Parris’ comment comes as his small town of 156,000, located in northern Los Angeles County, is in a county where cases on Monday recorded the worst day thus far of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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        It’s perfectly understood for Parris to be frustrated considering the virus pandemic is ravaging the county, though equating non-compliant folks as domestic terrorism is absurd. 

        Parris’ attitude should come as no surprise to readers as the county; nevertheless, the state, has enforced strict restrictions in recent weeks. 

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

        … so, by definition, California Governor Gavin Newsom is a domestic terrorist? 

        As a reminder to readers, a “revolutionary” study was published last week that demonstrates mask-wearing does very little to mitigate the spread of the virus.

      • "This Gives Some Hope" – Japanese Study Finds 98% Of COVID Patients Still Have Antibodies 6 Months Later
        “This Gives Some Hope” – Japanese Study Finds 98% Of COVID Patients Still Have Antibodies 6 Months Later

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 21:40

        In another example of how COVID-19 research has painted a complex, and sometimes conflicting, picture of the virus and the ability of the human immune system to fight it off, a team of researchers at Japan’s Yokohama City University published research showing that antibodies in COVID-19 patients persist for six months or more, even amid a preponderance of reports warning about the risk of reinfection for many particularly vulnerable patients.

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        A Japanese research team said Wednesday that it has detected neutralizing antibodies in 98% of people six months after they were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Another study performed in the UK found that antibodies found evidence that antibody levels start to degrade within six months.

        The team, led by Yokohama City University professor Takeharu Yamanaka, is already planning to conduct a follow-up study to see whether these people will still have such antibodies a year after their infections.

        But in the survey data released Wednesday, researcher checked blood samples from 376 people who had already recovered – the largest study of its type in Japan. The samples were collected six months after the patients were infected.

        According to a report on the study published by Nippon, Yamanaka said that “in general, people with neutralizing antibodies are believed to carry a low risk of reinfection…This gives some hope” for the effectiveness of the vaccines that are soon to be delivered to the public.

        As the west prepares to roll out the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations, scientists will be watching closely for more data to try an ascertain whether COVID-19 can truly be defeated, or whether it might morph into a flu-like seasonal infection.

      • Russia Deploys Missiles To Islands Claimed By Japan After Tense US Navy Standoff
        Russia Deploys Missiles To Islands Claimed By Japan After Tense US Navy Standoff

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 21:20

        Last week there was a somewhat under-reported but major incident in the Sea of Japan wherein the Russian Navy formally charged a US destroyer with violating the sovereign waters of the Russian Federation. The incident involved a Russian warship ‘chasing’ the destroyer off while threating to ram the vessel. But the US denied that its USS John McCain violated Russian waters, noting that it doesn’t recognize the Kremlin’s expansionist interpretation of waters in and near Peter the Great Bay, where the encounter happened. 

        “We warn the US not to repeat the violation. We reserve the right to respond in the future,” a Russian Foreign Ministry statement vowed last Friday. The Kremlin’s latest dramatic announcement of a new missile deployment to the region appears related and by design meant to further the threat against the United States.

        “The Russian military on Tuesday announced the deployment of state-of-the-art air defense missiles to the Pacific islands claimed by Japan,” the Associated Press reports.

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        A settlement called Gorny on the island of Iturup, part of the Kuril Islands. Image source: TASS/Moscow Times

        “Russia’s Eastern Military District said in a statement that the S-300V4 air defense missile systems have entered combat duty on the Kuril Islands, adding punch to the shorter range Tor M2 missile systems deployed there earlier,” it details.

        Specifically the deployment is said to be on Iturup, which is among the four southernmost Kuril islands which the Soviet Union annexed during the final days of WWII. Japan, however, refers to them as part of its Northern Territories. The status of ownership of the islands, which Russia de facto currently controls, is still unresolved after 75 years following the Russo-Japanese war and as a treaty regarding their status is still being negotiated with President Putin. 

        The island has already been subject to military build-up with small operational bases, but the deployment of surface-to-air missiles is considered a major new provocation. There’s little doubt it’s in relation to the US Navy’s “freedom of navigation” operations in the area, which Russia says are intent on violating its maritime rights.

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        Meanwhile Japan’s Foreign Ministry has protested the new development, saying in a statement Wednesday: “We are constantly gathering information about the Russian military’s actions in the Northern Territories,” according to TASS. 

        “On December 1, the Japanese Embassy in Russia lodged a protest with the Russian Foreign Ministry, noting that such actions can reinforce Russian military capabilities and are incompatible with our country’s position on these islands,” the ministry said.

      • Biden's COVID "Supply Commander" Is Bad Medicine
        Biden’s COVID “Supply Commander” Is Bad Medicine

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 21:00

        Authored by Bradley Thomas via The Mises Institute,

        Included in his plans to fight the coronavirus, presumptive president-elect Joe Biden has pledged to appoint “a fully empowered supply commander in charge of filling in the gaps” in the production and supply of “essential” items needed to fight the virus.

        On his website, Biden elaborates on his plan, declaring that his “supply commander” would “take command of the national supply chain for essential equipment, medications, and protective gear.”

        This very Soviet-sounding position is necessary, Biden insists, because “We can no longer leave this to the private sector.”

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        Leaving aside Biden & Company’s laughable assertion that America’s medical industry reflects any sort of unfettered laissez-faire operation, his proposal for a centralized, command-driven medical “supply chain” under the direction of a government commander betrays a stunning ignorance of the complex and interconnected patterns of production and exchange that make up the economy.

        As George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux explained in an April 2020 article published by the American Institute for Economic Research, “The first reality is that, in our modern economy nearly every productive enterprise is connected to every other productive enterprise. This connectedness is the phenomenon alluded to by the term ‘supply chain.'”

        But this term, however, is “highly misleading,” Boudreaux wrote. “Today’s economy is not a series of supply chains running side by side with each other, each largely distinct from, and independent of, the others.”

        “Instead of a collection of distinct supply chains,” he continued, “our modern economy is a single globe-spanning web of interconnectedness. Within this web every output is the product of countless inputs and each kind of input typically is used to produce countless different kinds of outputs.”

        The complex nature of this process of deploying a dizzying array of scarce resources with alternative uses for use in different finished products does not occur in cleanly separated and hermetically sealed “supply chains.”

        “This web of interconnectedness—the complexity of which is beyond human comprehension—is indispensable for our modern mass prosperity. Yet its existence—its ‘everything-is-connected-in-some-way-to-everything-else’ reality—means that there are no objective and clear lines separating ‘critical supplies’ from ‘uncritical’ ones,” Boudreaux added.

        To help clarify the interconnectedness of our economy, Leonard Read’s classic 1958 essay “I, Pencil” can prove instructive.

        When asking what will be considered “essential equipment, medications, and protective gear,” we must further examine the inputs required to produce these items.

        Read highlighted how the pencil requires cedar wood from Oregon, which in turn requires saws and trucks and ropes to transport the raw wood to the sawmill in California, which itself requires steel for its equipment along with electricity, land, concrete, and countless other inputs. And that is just the tip of the iceberg for the wood. The lead itself, the rubber for the eraser, and the lacquer for the finish each likewise require many inputs from around the world, all necessary in order to complete the pencil.

        Now imagine just how complex the processes are for producing medications, medical equipment, and protective gear. And the inputs required to produce these items will also require other inputs. If we trace back the process far enough for items like medicine and medical equipment, the list of raw materials, capital goods, labor, etc. that need to be diverted from other uses, the list would become unfathomable—certainly so for any single “supply commander.”

        Moreover, not just the production process itself, but also the distribution and storage of such “essential” goods to hundreds of millions of people and healthcare workers across the nation will require substantial resources.

        Importantly, nearly every resource directed to the production and distribution of these “essential” items will have alternative uses for which they will no longer be available. The result is that the “supply chains” for each and every one of these alternative products and inputs will be impacted, for instance in the form of shortages or inflated prices.

        How many of these impacted items would also be considered “essential,” but for noncovid purposes? For instance, other lifesaving medicines or critical medical supplies, or food supplies? And to what degree?

        No central authority could possibly know this; indeed, the top-down “supply commander” model could end up doing more harm than good.

        Too often, progressives and other interventionists view an unhampered market as “chaos,” something needing to be reined in under the direction of a wise central planner, or “commander.””

        However, the impulse to default to centralizing economic decision-making over such a complex ecosystem as the economy is a threat not just to our liberty, but to our well-being. The need for market prices based on private property to freely function and efficiently direct scarce resources to where they are needed most becomes even more critical in times of emergency.

      • Americans Panic Bought Guns On Black Friday  
        Americans Panic Bought Guns On Black Friday  

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 20:40

        Americans panic bought guns during the Thanksgiving Day weekend, gun-related background checks on Black Friday posted the fourth-highest total on record, according to FBI data.  

        The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) showed while 186,645 checks were completed the day after Thanksgiving, recording the fourth-highest total on record, it was down about 8% from 2019.  

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        Black Friday is usually one of the busiest days of the year for gun stores, but the rush to buy weapons and ammo was sparked earlier this year following the coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest, and the prospects of a Biden presidency – translating into more than 32 million background checks so far this year. 

        Internet searches for “black Friday gun sales” soared on Nov. 27. 

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        Searches for “gun sales” surged ahead of Nov. 27.

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        Last month, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) released a report that indicated October saw the most gun purchases of any October on record.

        Mark Oliva, a spokesman for NSFF, told the Washington Free Beacon that Biden’s election performance triggered the last buying binge of weapons even after unprecedented demand surges in March and June. 

        “I think that people are looking at the Biden gun-control plan, at what he said he wants to do,” Oliva said. “People are concerned and they’re buying firearms and want to buy while they can still buy them.”

        He said Biden’s plan to ban weapons online sales and his gun-registration-and-tax-scheme had motivated buyers to purchase now and ask questions later. 

        While Americans flocked to brick-and-mortar guns stores on Black Friday, they avoided other retailers as visits to physical stores fell 52.1% from last year. 

      • The Attack Of The Watermelons
        The Attack Of The Watermelons

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 20:20

        Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

        It’s been said that some environmental activists are like watermelons – green on the outside, but red on the inside.
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        Red, meaning communism.

        That’s probably true in some cases, but I don’t want to tar the overall environmental movement. Most simply want a clean future that their kids and grandkids can live in. We all do.

        The wealthier a society becomes, the more it can afford to focus on issues like the environment. Much of the world is too busy trying to survive.

        In important respects, environmentalism is largely vanity. It’s the wealthy who obsess about it. But as you’ll see shortly, the science doesn’t support climate alarmism.

        In important respects, environmentalism is largely vanity. It’s the wealthy who obsess about it.

        The hue and cry to ban fossil fuels and end fracking is nonetheless in full swing. A Biden administration would only amplify it.

        A Climate “Czar”

        The Biden team has already named Establishment figure John Kerry its climate change “czar.”

        That’s fine, it’s mostly politics. The Democratic Party is committed to the politics of climate change.

        But once you ban fossil fuels (or make major strides in that direction), one is immediately confronted with the need for alternative sources of energy.

        The obvious choices are solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind and nuclear.

        To be clear, all of those alternatives involve proven technology. I have visited the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington. It generates a lot of electricity.

        Meanwhile, I have a large solar panel array on the farm.

        My main residence is not far from the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire. All those systems avoid fossil fuels, but they work well and produce power.

        That’s not the issue. The issue is: Are these energy alternatives scalable, feasible and politically popular enough to power the United States?

        The short answer is no.

        Too Many Obstacles

        The Grand Coulee Dam is a monumental and inspiring work of engineering and construction genius. But, the idea of building new dams on rivers is environmentally objectionable and politically incorrect. The trend today is to remove existing dams, not build new ones.

        The same can be said for nuclear power. The move is toward closing and disassembling existing nuclear plants, not building new ones.

        Geothermal generation is feasible, but not scalable. That leaves wind and solar. The growth potential there is likewise limited for reasons explained below…

        A significant flaw in the solar power narrative is the idea of climate change and the increasing use of solar power as a non-carbon alternative.

        Climate Change Is Real, But…

        Don’t get me wrong, climate change is real.

        I lived on Long Island Sound for eleven years. It’s a beautiful body of water with a rocky shoreline on the Connecticut side. The reason it’s rocky is because it was a glacier in the last Ice Age, which ended about 11,700 years ago.

        Going from a glacier to a place you can swim is climate change. But, it took millennia. It did not happen in ten years.

        Climatology is one of the most complex and difficult branches of science. If ever there was a field that called for humility in forecasting, this is it.

        But the propaganda is relentless.

        Is the Earth Actually Cooling?

        Most serious scientists understand that the rhetoric and the data don’t match. Privately they say that the earth may not be warming right now; it may actually be cooling.

        They also say that the causes of any change probably have nothing to do with CO2 emissions, but are more likely related to solar cycles and possibly volcanic activity.

        The alarmism springs from climate models that reflect the biases of their programmers. They bear little relation to the actual record. There’s no scientific basis for the alarmism that elites and the media have been pushing.

        The legitimate science of climate change has been hijacked by globalists aided and abetted by contributors like George Soros and an army of paid-off scientific lackeys and corrupt journalists as a means to pursue global governance, global taxation and global regulation.

        I know that sounds conspiratorial. But if you follow the evidence, you’ll find that it’s legitimate.

        Clean Energy Means Dirty Energy

        At the end of the day, the idea that wind, solar and hydro energy are “carbon free” is nonsense.

        For example, Tesla electric vehicle batteries are charged using electricity from utilities that burn coal in many cases. Large wind generators are constructed of tubular steel and fiberglass, both of which are carbon intensive in their manufacture.

        Hydroelectric dams are massive construction projects involving square miles of excavation and millions of cubic yards of concrete with steel reinforcement. Solar panels are made using poisonous chemicals.

        These are not reasons to oppose these technologies. They are reasons to doubt the “carbon free” mantra of their supporters.

        I have practical experience with solar energy. I built the largest non-commercial off-grid solar panel array in New England on my farm there. I’m obviously not against solar.

        But a system like that is quite expensive and almost completely non-economic. My solar array is a lot more expensive than the local power company when all costs are considered.

        It’s true I get “free” electricity (if you ignore capital costs and occasional maintenance costs), but I won’t live long enough to recoup my investment relative to commercial electricity rates.

        Solar power is a “use it or lose it” energy source.

        If you’re not in a desert climate, good luck with the weather. Solar output drops to zero when the weather is rainy, snowy or even densely clouded. Oh, by the way, there’s no solar power at night.

        The reason I built the solar power system had to do with the possibility of the power grid going out. It was not about economics; it was about survival.

        Natural gas is carbon-based but is relatively cheap and clean. It’s a good alternative for those worried about carbon-emissions but not ready to embrace the Green New Deal.

        Green Energy: A Luxury Good

        “Green” energy is increasingly a luxury good in a world of cheap oil. It’s a luxury of the rich who can afford to endure its inefficiencies. It’s moral preening. But most people can’t afford its costs.

        I’m not saying that green energy is bogus or that it doesn’t have a future. It does. But right now it’s more of a niche than a mass market phenomena with high-growth potential. It’s essentially a fetish of the richer nations.

        Bottom line, be skeptical about the Green New Deal. And be wary of rich people who do push it. It’s a lot more about these people advertising their virtue than actual science.

      • US Offers $5 Million For Info On China's 'Flagrant' N.Korea Sanctions Violations
        US Offers $5 Million For Info On China’s ‘Flagrant’ N.Korea Sanctions Violations

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 20:00

        The Trump administration has with only weeks to go till Biden’s inauguration in January launched a new sanctions enforcement related initiative regarding North Korea that allows individuals or officials to report violations for a monetary reward.

        The State Department published its new website DPRKrewards.com on Tuesday which offers up to $5 million for specific information leading to the “disruption” of “persons engaged in certain activities that support North Korea.”

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        Via NK state media

        With such a large sum it appears they are certainly hoping to attract potential internal regime whistleblowers or even intentioned defectors. But the whole project is squarely aimed at Beijing as part of Trump’s pressure campaign.

        Upon unveiling the violations reporting website, the State Department blasted China for multiple major sanctions violations regarding the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK. It was pointed out that China continues to host at least 20,000 North Korean workers in contravention of UN resolutions. 

        “Lifting sanctions and pumping more revenue into the DPRK while its missile and nuclear production facilities continue to hum is something we will never do,” a State Dept. official for North Korea said.

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        The statement described specifically:

        “The examples of this chronic failure are numerous, growing and worrying.”

        He said that US vessels provided information to Beijing 46 times since 2019 about North Korean fuel-smuggling in Chinese waters, and in the past year observed 555 cases of North Korean shipments of coal of other sanctioned exports to China.

        “On none of these occasions did the Chinese authorities act to stop these illicit imports. Not once,” the US official added.

        The new website identifies potential violations as including “…money laundering, exportation of luxury goods to North Korea, specified cyber-activity and actions that support WMD proliferation.

        This lashing out at China for its enabling and ‘looking the other way’ on North Korea comes as the Trump White House has promised to keep up the pressure on Beijing down to the last days before the presidential transition.

      • Post-George Floyd, A Wave Of "Anti-Racist" Teaching Sweeps K-12 Schools Targeting "Whiteness"
        Post-George Floyd, A Wave Of “Anti-Racist” Teaching Sweeps K-12 Schools Targeting “Whiteness”

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 19:40

        By John Murawski of RealClearInvestigations

        The notices to parents began arriving fast and furious in the weeks after the death of George Floyd in late May.

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        Megyn Kelly: The former Fox News anchor, who now has her own podcast, says she’s pulling her three kids from their New York City schools. “It’s out of control, on so many levels. They have gone off the deep end.”

        In dramatic, urgent language, K-12 schools across the country – both public and private – professed solidarity with Black Lives Matter and vowed to dismantle white supremacy, as they scrambled to introduce anti-racist courses and remake themselves into racism-free zones.

        The president of the Lower Merion School Board on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line declared to families: “We need to eradicate white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in all of our institutions.”

        In Maine, a coastal public school district where 3.7% of the 2,100 students are African American or Hispanic, the superintendent declared war on “the intentional barriers white people have built to harm Black people.” The top administrator added: “We grieve for all of the Black lives taken by white supremacy.”

        Educators at the prestigious Brentwood College School in Los Angeles, have made more changes to the curriculum this year than any other in the private school’s nearly five decade history. Teachers are introducing critical race theory, which views U.S. history through the prism of racial conflict, and assigning readings from Ibram X. Kendi, the academic and author who contends race-neutral policies are the bulwark of the “White ethnostate.”

        As part of the makeover, Brentwood School leaders have rolled out a fresh theme this year for fifth graders: “Identity and Power.”

        “While some view these recent shifts as indoctrination, we see them as opportunities for engagement,” Brentwood’s head of school, Mike Riera, wrote to families this fall, acknowledging the growing resistance from some parents. “Will we overstep in some areas? Possibly. Will we understep in others? Possibly.”

        The nation’s K-12 schools have been incrementally adopting multiculturalism and ethnic studies for decades, but such courses have been the exception rather than the rule. This summer’s Black Lives Matter protests have sparked new level of commitment, a newfound urgency, and a new trend: anti-racist pedagogy.

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        Fabienne Doucet: “What’s really different now – and this has been decades in coming – is talking explicitly about whiteness,” the advocate says. “Sometimes you need to go too far to get there or else we might not go far enough.”

        If administrators deliver on their promises, the sweeping changes underway will introduce new courses, shift hiring priorities, rebalance student demographics, redirect stipends and scholarships, revise conduct standards – in many ways modeling K-12 educational philosophy on the social justice values endorsed by many universities and, increasingly, corporations.

        The changes come at an unprecedented time when many schools are struggling to offer basic instruction under covid restrictions.

        Fabienne Doucet, a New York University professor of early childhood education and urban education, said this momentum has been building for decades and the culture now appears primed to understand race in America from the moral perspective of the Black Lives Matter movement.

        “What’s really different now – and this has been decades in coming – is talking explicitly about whiteness,” Doucet said, citing a term that academics and activists use to critique the cultural, political and economic dominance exercised by Europeans and their descendants.

        Doucet, who’s on leave from NYU and working as a program officer at the William T. Grant Foundation in New York, acknowledged that some of the content of anti-racist pedagogy may seem militant to those hearing it for the first time. But, she said, it serves an important purpose: chronicling the nation’s history from all perspectives, even if those perspectives conflict with one another.

        “Sometimes you need to go too far to get there or else we might not go far enough,” Doucet said. “I’m less anxious about overshooting than not ever getting there because the stakes are so high.”

        The rapid and radical changes in public and private schools have triggered a backlash among some parents who find the anti-racist message to be anti-white and anti-American, and those who say it’s historically inaccurate, inflammatory and divisive.

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        From the website of No Left Turn in Education, which is seeking to mobilize parents around the country to reverse the woke juggernaut. 

        Parents are forming Instagram sites, and at least one group calling itself No Left Turn in Education is seeking to mobilize parents around the country to reverse the woke juggernaut. The parents swap examples from their schools, but many are keeping incognito for fear of being accused of racism or other repercussions; indeed, several parents interviewed for this article didn’t want their names to be used.

        Their concern is that the edgy, new educational materials indoctrinate pupils with identity politics and leftist ideology, and leave no room for discussion.  

        “They are using very positive words like diversity, equity and inclusivity to mislead you, but the message behind these words is horrifying,” said Elana Yaron Fishbein, a suburban Philadelphia mom who created the No Left Turn in Education organization. “They are grouping and stereotyping human beings by skin color, and they are attributing characteristics to your personality based on skin color.”

        Some parents say that immersing students in the concepts of white privilege, structural racism and whiteness should be balanced out with “viewpoint diversity.” They want their kids not only to be exposed to multiple perspectives but also to be able to freely critique anti-racist materials, and to form their own opinions

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        Elana Yaron Fishbein of No Left Turn in Education: “They are grouping and stereotyping human beings by skin color, and they are attributing characteristics to your personality based on skin color.”

        Jerome Eisenberg, a Los Angeles developer of apartments whose middle-school daughter attends the Brentwood School, said it’s irresponsible to introduce American history to uninformed students from the single perspective of race. 

        “It’s just wrong to present this [material] as true to children who have no other background in U.S. history,” Eisenberg said. “It causes me consternation that bright line American heroes like Jefferson and Lincoln are cast as bad guys.”

        Among the protesting parents: Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News anchor who now has her own podcast. On a recent episode, she said she was so put off by what she saw as a radical turn in K-12 education that she’s pulling her three kids from their schools in New York City.

        “It’s out of control, on so many levels,” Kelly said. “They have gone off the deep end.”

        She read from an article that she said was circulated among the school diversity group, which included Kelly and other parents, and was recommended by the group to be circulated to all the faculty.

        “I’m tired of White people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravity, snuffing out Black life with no consequences,” Kelly read, quoting a June piece by Nahliah Webber, the executive director of the Orleans Public Education Network. “They gleefully soak in their White-washed history that downplays the holocaust of Indigenous, Native peoples and Africans in the Americas. They happily believe their all-White spaces exist as a matter of personal effort and willingly use violence against Black bodies to keep those spaces white.”

        Advocates of anti-racist pedagogy say that the insistence on viewpoint diversity rings hollow to activists who have been trying to diversify the curriculum for decades.

        “How is it that when you’re talking about a Eurocentric curriculum, there isn’t this request that the story of Christopher Columbus be presented through multiple lenses?” said Julia Jordan-Zachery, the chair of the Africana Studies Department at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. “It begs the question of why do we now insist on viewpoint diversity?”

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        Nahliah Webber, Orleans Public Education Network: “I’m tired of White people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravity, snuffing out Black life with no consequences. They gleefully soak in their White-washed history that downplays the holocaust of Indigenous, Native peoples and Africans in the Americas.”
        opennola.org/about/
         

        Educators are overwhelmingly progressive on social justice issues. This summer the EdWeek Research Center found that 81% of the nation’s teachers, principals and district leaders support the Black Lives Matter movement, compared to 67% of the general population as surveyed separately by the Pew Research Center.  The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ labor union, was among the numerous professional educator organizations that issued a statement in support of Black Lives Matter in response to “the crisis of anti-Blackness.”

        The K-12 changes are already taking shape. Some institutions, such as Hopkins School in Connecticut and Princeton Day School in New Jersey, are segregating faculty and staff into “affinity groups” – such as Latinx or “White Consciousness” – while holding discussions about racism and white privilege. Others, such as Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, are spending nearly half-a-million dollars for “anti-racist system audits” conducted by outside consultants.

        The $46,300-a-year Hopkins School, the third oldest independent school in the United States, is revamping its courses “to incorporate a social justice lens, de-center Anglo-European voices,” focus instruction on race and identity, fund student activism and projects, and add a stand-alone course on social justice.

        Buffalo Public Schools, where whites account for 22% of enrolled students, this fall adopted Black Lives Matter-themed lessons plans that ask students in grades 2-4 if there are any similarities between the coronavirus epidemic today and the supposedly intentional spread of smallpox to the Native Americans, described as an 18th-century form of “biological warfare.” Middle and high schoolers are taught to think of Western justice as “punitive” and the justice meted out in traditional societies as “restorative/empathetic.” One of the included documents for instructors states: “All white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism.”

        While some urban public school districts, including those in Chicago, New York City and Washington D.C., have been integrating social justice and anti-racism into their core curricula for years, at many schools administrators and teachers are new to the game and playing catch-up. To fill the need, professional educator organizations and advocacy groups are posting K-12 teaching materials online for teachers to use in their classrooms.

        The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, has posted an entire page of BLM teaching resources, while Black Lives Matter is also disseminating educational materials.

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        From the National Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action Starter Kit

        Anti-racist materials present a mix of themes – an emphasis on liberation and resistance movements, critiques of whiteness and systemic racism that come from critical race theory, and an introduction to other social justice causes. At times, the readings and lessons can take an unapologetic, even confrontational, stance toward America’s past and present. But unlike Black History Month, there are few if any mentions of African Americans who defied the color barrier as athletes, artists, inventors, scientists or soldiers.

        The NEA teaching themes include Justice for George [Floyd] Day, Transgender Day of Remembrance, Globalism and Collective Value, Queer Organizing Behind the Scenes, Unapologetically Black Day and Student Activist Day. A link to social justice math used in Seattle Public Schools teaches data analysis and mathematical modeling through examples of police brutality and excessive use of force.

        “Racism is perpetuated by silence – and silence is complicity,” one NEA teacher instruction reads. “Being ‘colorblind’ often serves as a pretense to downplay the significance of race, deny the existence of racism, and erase the experience of students of color.”

        The BLM materials starting at the early childhood level are rooted in such guiding principles as empathy, loving engagement and diversity, as well as trans affirming, queer affirming and disrupting the Western nuclear family societal norm to celebrate extended families, nontraditional families and villages that “collective care for one another.” Elementary school activities introduce kids to community activism, the visual symbols of the LGBT movement, advocating for people with physical disabilities, and a creating a communal activism mural.

        An elementary school-level proposed activity called “Match the Action” teaches children to identify different forms of resistance: boycotts, protests, rallies, marches, sit-ins, walkouts, petitions, etc. A proposed activity for middle schoolers reads: “Think about the names of people who are no longer with us who you wish you could talk to. Activists, leaders, elders, people who have been murdered by police.”

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        Fatima Morrell: An “emancipation pedagogy” that empowers black pupils by “problematizing the Eurocentric perspective.”

        Fatima Morrell, an associate superintendent at Buffalo Public Schools, describes her district’s approach to education as an “emancipation pedagogy” that empowers black pupils by “problematizing the Eurocentric perspective” and by authentically representing the African American experience, which allows black students see themselves reflected in the curriculum and realize their human potential.

        Buffalo’s schools have been incorporating these concepts for the past five years, she said, but the introduction of Black Lives Matter-themed lessons this fall alarmed some parents. Morrell said she talked to concerned parents by phone, and Buffalo school officials held a virtual town hall via Zoom in September; school district officials plan to hold three more town halls to address concerns and explain changes to the curriculum, she said.

        Morrell, who oversees the district’s Office of Culturally & Linguistically Responsive Initiatives, said many parents wrongly assumed that Buffalo schools were advocating for defunding the police. Some of the parental anger, she said, came from a “historically dark place.”

        “When you teach from a black or brown voice about the legacy of enslavement, it has a very different tone and tenor,” Morrell explained during the Zoom virtual town hall. “One of the misconceptions is that this is about white hate, and it couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

        Buffalo students learn about the BLM movement, and focus on such themes as “I Love My Hair,” “Unapologetically Black,” “Understanding My Family’s History,” “What Is Community?” and “Mass Incarceration.” They learn about the late civil rights giant John Lewis and the concept of making a positive difference through protest and activism. And they complete a Jim Crow-era literacy test administered to black voters in Alabama.  

        They also learn about the concepts of racist, not racist, and antiracist, as defined by Kendi, who is quoted: “There is no neutrality in the racism struggle. … The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.”

        One of the lessons for students in grades seven and eight, based on The New York Times’ 1619 Project, asks: “Why isn’t slavery considered/or included as a cause to the American Revolution? Possible Responses: our founding is pure/righteous, protect the narrative.”

        In grades 11 and 12, students are asked to pick an assignment for their final project. One option is to write a rap about police brutality, compose a poem on inequality, draft a prose piece on systemic racism, or “Create a collage on a poster board that connects to any specific example related to the Black/Brown Genocide.”

        This pedagogy runs counter to the educational philosophy of Ian Rowe, who has run single-sex charter schools in New York City for the past decade and is the co-founder of Vertex Partnership Academies, which is opening charter schools in the South Bronx in 2022 that will primarily attract black and Hispanic students.

        Rowe, who is also a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that anti-racist pedagogy glosses over inconvenient facts, like Africans’ role in the global slave trade, and promotes a defeatist philosophy fixated on racial oppression, subjugation and injustice.  

        “It taps into white guilt and black people’s sense that someone else is responsible for these problems that I have,” Rowe said. “The way this stuff plays out, if you are a low-income black kid, after a while you really start to believe it. You develop a very skewed version of the country, where you believe everyone is hostile to your efforts and that white supremacy is so strong that you don’t have the ability to control your own destiny.”

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        Jeff Porter: Urges white families in his Maine school district to open their minds and consider how they contribute to structures of oppression.

        Some of today’s most vocal converts to anti-racist pedagogy previously regarded the nation’s racial reckoning from the perspective of their whiteness, before they experienced an epiphany. That’s what happened to Jeff Porter, the superintendent of Maine School Administrative District #51, which serves the towns of Cumberland and North Yarmouth, after he went through mandatory diversity and equity training this past summer with an outside organization called Community Change, Inc.

        “I also recognize that some of the terminology may have felt confrontational, such as ‘white majority’ and ‘white supremacy,’” Porter wrote to parents this summer. “When I first went through training on this subject I was very much taken aback by this language as well and felt personally attacked as a racist.”

        Porter described himself as a “life-long Mainer” whose family’s farming roots in Aroostook County go back to his great-great-grandfather.

        “To think because I am white and have always lived here would mean that I somehow contribute to a ‘white supremecist’ [sic] culture was deeply troubling and insulting,” Porter wrote. “I had never before considered myself in this way.”

        But Porter urged the white families in the school district to open their minds and consider how they contribute to structures of oppression.

        “However, I now fully understand that this language is an accurate (and necessary) depiction of the long historical reality of race in this country, whether we want to accept it or not,” Porter declared. “The facts speak for themselves: America has a 400-year-old history of discrimination and oppression of African-Americans that must be acknowledged if we are ever to truly live up to the ideals to which our nation was founded.”

      • Defunding Police Backfires In Minneapolis As Shootings, Homicides, And Carjackings Surge
        Defunding Police Backfires In Minneapolis As Shootings, Homicides, And Carjackings Surge

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 19:20

        Minneapolis has transformed into an inner-city warzone in six months, just like Baltimore and Detroit, with violent crime surging to levels not seen in decades after millions of dollars in police budget cuts. 

        Minneapolis, or as some say, “Murderapolis,” has witnessed an explosion in homicides and carjacking this year as a severe shortage of police officers has resulted in dwindling patrols.

        Minneapolis City Council members defunded the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) back in June, with council members on Monday planning to cut an additional $8 million in police funding and transfer it to other services, a move that could undermine public safety. 

        In November, more than 500 people were shot this year across the dangerous metro area, the most in 15 years, the local Star Tribune reported. Homicides have also erupted to levels not seen since the 1990s. 

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        Source: Star Tribune

        Minneapolis enjoyed years of falling crime rates, that all changed in May after the police killing of George Floyd, which triggered violent protests across the city and nationwide. Police data shows shootings and homicides jumped 64% this year compared with the four-year average. So far, 74 homicides have been recorded, the third-highest total in the city’s history.

        “The streak of violence since the summer stretched across the city, but as ever, Black and Latino neighborhoods have borne the brunt of the suffering. 

        The increase this year is mainly driven by an increase in the number of adult victims — especially Black men, who account for roughly 40% of all gunshot victims. But it’s young people who continue to make up a disproportionate share of the victims, and some of the suspects. Through Oct. 13, the last date for which reliable data are available, the number of young gunshot victims was up about 44% compared with the four-year average. The city has also recorded 22 fatal shootings of victims under age 25, twice as many as all of last year.” – Star Tribune 

        And while the pandemic has led to widespread job losses among the inner-city communities – the latest surge of violent crime, besides shootings and homicides, that is, violent carjackings has seen an unprecedented 537% surge in November over last year, the local Star Tribune pointed out in a separate report. 

        “The numbers are staggering,” a Minneapolis police spokesperson told the paper. “It defies all civility and any shred of common human decency.”

        Police have blamed the latest wave in carjackings on “small groups of marauding teens” but said adults had been arrested as well for the car theft. 

        As violent crime spirals out of control across the metro, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo have criticized City Council members for their move to defund police. 

        Frey called the latest plan by council members to defund the police “irresponsible and untenable,” adding that he supports alternative forms of policing in inner-city communities. He said slashing the number of officers on the street would be disastrous for public safety. 

        Who could have seen that coming?

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        And there it is, cutting police budgets appears to be backfiring for this liberal-run city.

      • Democratic Austin Mayor Urged Citizens "Not To Relax… Stay Home" While Vacationing In Cabo
        Democratic Austin Mayor Urged Citizens “Not To Relax… Stay Home” While Vacationing In Cabo

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 19:00

        George Orwell’s Animal Farm gave us the useful phrase “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

        That book was written as an allegorical warning against communism, but, as PJMedia’s Bryan Preston details below, since COVID struck Democrats tend to use it as a how-to.

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        The latest case in point is Austin Mayor Steve Adler. Back in November, he told Austin to stay home to stay safe. But he wasn’t at home at all when he said this.

        Statesman.com’s Tony Plohetski reports the details that in early November, as health officials warned of a impending COVID-19 spike, Austin Mayor Steve Adler hosted an outdoor wedding and reception with 20 guests for his daughter at a trendy hotel near downtown.

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        The next morning, Adler and seven other wedding attendees boarded a private jet bound for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where they vacationed for a week at a family timeshare.

        One night into the trip, Adler addressed Austin residents in a Facebook video:

        “We need to stay home if you can. This is not the time to relax. We are going to be looking really closely. … We may have to close things down if we are not careful.”

        In hosting the wedding and traveling internationally, Adler said he broke neither his own order or those established by Gov. Greg Abbott.

        But at the time, the city was recommending people not gather in groups of more than 10, and the day after Adler’s departure, Austin’s health authority warned that “it’s important that we drive the (COVID-19) numbers down in advance of Thanksgiving.”

        As he pressed the public to help stop the spread of the virus in recent weeks, Adler had not previously disclosed details of his private actions. He gave no indication in his Facebook video that he was outside the city as he discussed Austin’s rising number of cases and reviewed the number of hospital patients.

        In an interview this week with the American-Statesman, the mayor said he and his family put hours of consideration into how to hold an intimate event and vacation as safely as possible. He said he consulted with interim health director Dr. Mark Escott prior to the wedding at the Hotel St. Cecilia, just east of South Congress Avenue, and established rules to ensure guests’ safety. The 20 attendees had to undergo a rapid COVID-19 test and maintain social distancing, he said.

        Adler added that masks were distributed, although he acknowledged that guests were “probably not” wearing them all the time.

        “At that point, I am with my family group and people who just tested,” he said. “It is not perfect. Obviously, there are infections that could happen, but I think all of us should be minimizing risks as best we can.”

        In a media briefing the day after Adler’s party left for Cabo on Mexico’s Pacific coast, Escott told the public:

        “If you’re going out to a restaurant, go out with your family, the people who live in your household, not with family and friends outside your household and start to decrease those travels outside of your home that are not necessary.”

        A month later, City Hall insiders and political operatives have quietly started questioning the actions of Adler, a Democrat serving his second term, as officials across the country have been found breaking their own rules or recommendations.

        The situation underscores the greater-than-normal scrutiny on public officials during the pandemic as they issue public pleas for people to take coronavirus precautions and balance other demands in their personal lives.

        Political opponents often are standing guard to capitalize on any misstep or hint of hypocrisy.

        Adler has been involved heavily in the city’s COVID-19 response, taking what many considered a bold and politically risky step in March of canceling the South by Southwest Festival, a premier event and economic boon for the city, days before the first local cases were confirmed. He has appeared on national TV cable shows discussing the city’s measures to help stop the spread of the virus.

        Adler said his conduct is different from other officials because he did not behave in a way that was inconsistent with his message at the time. He added that his actions did not violate his regulations.

        “Everyday since March, I repeat that being home is the safest place for people to be,” Adler said in a statement Wednesday. “Only at our most trying moments, like around Thanksgiving, have I asked people not to travel as part of extra precautions. It is safest to stay home. However, we aren’t asking people to never venture out. We ask everyone to be as safe as possible when they do.”

        The rate of people testing positive in Austin was less than 4% but started climbing after Adler was in Mexico. New cases rose dramatically as Thanksgiving neared.

        Adler said his daughter wanted a much larger wedding but, due to the pandemic, downsized to mostly parents and siblings, some of whom flew into Austin. The event also included a Seattle-based wedding photographer.

        “She, like so many other brides, was having to make adjustments in order to stay compliant with the orders from the health director here in Austin and the orders I issued as mayor,” he said. “My daughter and my family are no exception.”

        Under Texas Department of Health guidelines, wedding planners are urged to hold events outside but are not subject to an occupancy limit. Indoor weddings must have a 75% occupancy cap.

        At the time, Austin was under Stage 3 recommendations, meaning that people should avoid gatherings of more than 10 people and only higher risk people were urged to avoid non-essential travel.

        Adler said the eight people with whom he traveled to Mexico operated as a “COVID pod,” meaning that they had all agreed to the same safety guidelines.

        “There was no recommendation for people not to travel during that period of time,” he said.

        “Someone could look at me and say, ‘He traveled.’ But what they could not say is that I traveled at a time when I was telling other people not to travel.”

        Adler said that he does not believe he took a test upon his return to Austin but “generally quarantined.”

        The U.S. in March limited inbound land crossings from Mexico to essential travel, but the prohibition did not prevent citizens from returning home. And while the U.S. outbreak has prompted many countries, including much of Europe, to ban American travelers, air travel to Mexico has been allowed during the pandemic, making it one of the few countries that has continued to allow American tourists without stringent restrictions.

        Days before Thanksgiving, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans to “avoid all travel to Mexico” because of the spiking coronavirus infections.

        It seems, once again, that The Simpsons traveled in their time machine…

        PJMedia’s Bryan Preston  sums it all up perfectly: It’s leadership 101.

        Don’t ask your folks to do anything you’re not willing to do yourself. Set the example and then live it. Basic. But how many elected Democrats have thrown this whole idea out and violated their own edicts while also shutting down churches and businesses but leaving other similar but politically-approved crowd-magnets open, and also by the way shutting down schools not because the kids there are at risk, but because the teachers’ unions demand the schools be shut down?

        We’re gonna need a spreadsheet to keep track of all of ’em.

      • AI Just Solved A 50-Year-Old Mystery That Could "Dramatically" Change How We Fight Cancer
        AI Just Solved A 50-Year-Old Mystery That Could “Dramatically” Change How We Fight Cancer

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 18:40

        On the day our technological AI overlords decide to finally end the human race, we will be able to tout the feather in our cap that at one point they helped us solve some of the world’s toughest mysteries. 

        Such was the case with a science problem that the medical and scientific community has been struggling with for more than 5 decades. The problem of “mapping the three-dimensional shapes of the proteins that are responsible for diseases from cancer to Covid-19” appears to now have a solution – thanks to AI.

        Google’s Deepmind now says it has created a program called AlphaFold that can solve the mapping problems in “a matter of days”, according to a new report from The Independent. If it works as claimed, the solution will have arrived “decades” before it was expected, the piece notes. 

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        Of the 200 million known proteins, only a small amount are understood. The task of figuring out how each individual protein works is time consuming and expensive. This development could dramatically move our understanding forward further, and faster. 

        DeepMind claims that “AlphaFold determined the shape of around two-thirds of the proteins with accuracy comparable to laboratory experiments.”

        The 14th Community Wide Experiment on the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP14) partnered with Google for the project. The group is comprised of scientists who have been working on a solution for protein mapping since 1994, more than 25 years. 

        Dr John Moult, chair of CASP14, commented: “Proteins are extremely complicated molecules, and their precise three-dimensional structure is key to the many roles they perform, for example the insulin that regulates sugar levels in our blood and the antibodies that help us fight infections.”

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        He continued: “Even tiny rearrangements of these vital molecules can have catastrophic effects on our health, so one of the most efficient ways to understand disease and find new treatments is to study the proteins involved. There are tens of thousands of human proteins and many billions in other species, including bacteria and viruses, but working out the shape of just one requires expensive equipment and can take years.”

        Nobel Laureate and Professor Venki Ramakrishnan said: “This computational work represents a stunning advance on the protein-folding problem, a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology. It has occurred decades before many people in the field would have predicted. It will be exciting to see the many ways in which it will fundamentally change biological research.”

        The next step will be submitting a paper detailing the findings for peer-review. 

      • Creator Of The Bond VIX: It All Comes Crashing Down After 2025
        Creator Of The Bond VIX: It All Comes Crashing Down After 2025

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 18:26

        By Harley Bassman, creator of the MOVE index, aka the “VIX for bonds”

        The lack of (CPI) inflation should not distract anyone from recognizing that our financial economy is presently overwhelmed by too much debt, both public and private; and it is beneath the cloak of systemic risk management that the Federal Reserve (FED) flipped on their printing press to support an alphabet soup of asset purchase programs.

        And while I do not begrudge most of the FEDs actions to offer relief from both the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and the COVID pandemic, what we all must recognize is that the financial remediation of these two crises have pulled forward the day of reckoning for how to fund the promise of Social Security and Medicare for the retiring Baby Boomer demographic.

        The political game of “kick the can” for managing the two largest strands of our social safety net has reached an end; about a decade sooner than hoped. We are at a crossroads where one path is well trodden by financial history, and the other newly paved by an economic Pied Piper. But her siren song has been too sweet, and we are turning to the perfidy of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

        Here we consider the reason and consequence of this dangerous road.

        Only Congress can legally “spend” money (Fiscal Policy), and since they would not offer sufficient support in response to the GFC, the FED stepped in with (Monetary Policy) Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP), also known as Quantitative Easing (QE), as their most potent tool. These assets landed on the FED’s balance sheet.

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        While indeed much has changed over the past decade, sometimes to the point where facts do not exist, what has remained constant are the rules for double entry bookkeeping, where every asset must be paired with a liability.

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        Thus, the assets on the FED’s ledger are paid for by the creation of Money; an incongruity since by law the FED cannot “spend” money.

        A Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) and QE were supposed to be interim measures that would be reversed upon an economic recovery; a progression always followed in the past. However, FED attempts at normalization were thwarted by the 2013 bond “taper tantrum” and the late 2018 equity tizzy.

        The FED recognized that there are only two ways out of a debt crisis – either default or inflate with the caveat that inflation is simply a slow-motion default.

        Since the market would not allow the FED to reduce its balance sheet via asset sales (or even the slow bleed of letting bonds mature), the alternate solution was to create inflation as a way to reduce the value of debt.

        The FEDs dog-eared play book posited that if they increased the supply of Money (M2), and the economy held constant (Quantity), then Prices must rise (inflation) to keep the equation in balance.

        GDP = Money * Velocity = Price * Quantity

        Such a pity that Velocity collapsed, almost fully offsetting the increase (printing) of Money.

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        But do not toss out your economic textbooks just yet, as the seeming lack of inflation from the FEDs money-printing is a David Copperfield style illusion.

        While CPI inflation barely registers a pulse, asset inflation is rampant. The Case-Shiller Index of residential housing is up 63% from its December 2011 low, and is 23% above its previous peak in June 2006. Gold kissed 2000 in August, an alltime high. And, of course, the S&P 500 is a five-bagger from early 2009.

        Notice how much of our national wealth is held by the Top 1%. While a 3%-point increase over the previous peaks may seem small, let me assure you that 3% of a huge number is an extremely large number. Strangely, income distribution held steady. If FED  policies favored the wealthy, and their share of wealth increased, why did their share of income not rise in a similar fashion ?

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        Wealth concentration increased despite a static distribution of income because the affluent do not spend additional income. The Velocity of money declined because the dollars the FED created went into asset purchases instead of hourly wages where those funds would be recycled back into the economy.

        A recent FED study reported that nearly 40% of US households do not have cash on hand to cover a $400 emergency expense (car repair or broken appliance). Surely funds directed to these households would soon be spent (recycled). Velocity is a measure of recycled spending; financial asset purchases are static.

        I am loath to offer the topic of politics on these pages, if only because half my readers would soon use a hardcopy version for lining their bird cage.

        But as a public policy comment, middle-class citizens should be mad as hell that Government resources were directed at policies that widened the wealth gap. I will stipulate this was NOT the intention of the FED; and that Fiscal policies by both parties have been grossly insufficient.

        Thus, the trumpets have blared for the salve of Modern Monetary Theory.

        As a reminder, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) advocates suggest that Governments that create their own fiat currency can borrow so long as there is spare capacity in the economy. In a nutshell, deficits do not matter until debt capacity is reached, which will be signaled by rising inflation.

        Never mind that nary an agency has created a predictive model for inflation; at best one can back test a few variables, but these models collapse in real time. Neither the FED, the CBO, nor the major Wall Street banks have successfully modeled inflation – as such, our policy makers will only dial back a debt binge after inflation occurs. This sort of risk management is akin to racing a car down a foggy lane and not hitting the brakes until after one slams into a tree.

        But MMT has arrived as a confluence of events are making economic demands on the Government that cannot be denied by a political class whose priority is reelection. The combination of a COVID support package, perhaps Millennial relief of college debt, and most important, the promise to Baby Boomers to fund Social Security (SS) will draw bipartisan votes in favor of a MMT-fiscal expansion.

        Let’s be clear, MMT was coming with or without COVID, no matter who was elected President, but recent events have accelerated the process.

        The high-end for a COVID relief package is tagged at $3Tn, and the notion of forgiving all college debt would cost $1.68Tn. But this is my bar bill at the club compared to the funding gap to support Social Security.

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        The chart above borrows from a scholarly report by James Moore, PhD. It shows the total US Treasury debt outstanding while the lines are the projected Social Security deficit. From the Social Security Trustees (SST), the orange line is their base-case while the gray line represents the SST’s high-risk scenario. Both were calculated using historical assumptions for interest rates, inflation, and economic growth.

        The red line is the result of using current market-based inputs for interest rates and inflation. Notice how this estimate was between the SSTs base-case and high-risk scenarios until 2010, but impact of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) exploded the future liability.

        In case I was too coy, let’s link these thoughts. The US Government has run a cumulative deficit over the past 100 years of $22.7Tn; in contrast, to fully fund Social Security using current metrics would cost an additional $45.6Tn. Unless eligibility or benefits are significantly altered, some form of debt issuance that rhymes with MMT will be required.

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        The chart from the CBO offers a similar outlook as a percent of GDP. Notice the steep increase from 2030 to 2050 starts near 100% of GDP instead of closer to 40% of GDP before the GFC and COVID. These two events accelerated an already challenging decision process.

        Here is the main point: This past decade’s money printing was used to purchase assets; this next decade’s money printing will be used to fund an expansive Fiscal policy which will funnel money into the hands of people who will spend it. Thus, the Velocity of money will increase and produce inflation.

        By 2026 all of the Baby Boomers will qualify for Social Security, and the Millennials will be the largest voting cohort. Both will demand Fiscal support which can only be funded via MMT budgeted borrowing. The most prescient bond bulls (Lacy Hunt, David Rosenberg, Albert Edwards) have noted that the FED’s money creation has been a self-defeating process that may reduce rates further, with the caveat that direct monetization of fiscal spending could lead to inflation. In other words, direct funding the US Treasury.

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        This is a quibble that deserves a push. In the same way that one “borrows beer” at a party, having the Treasury wash their issuance through Wall Street dealers to the FED’s QE balance sheet is still “money printing”. The key difference is how those funds are used. Presently the FED’s asset purchases have coincided with reduced Velocity which dampened inflation; this will change when Fiscal money is directed toward those who will spend it upon receipt.

        Modern Monetary Theory is nonsense; the excessive creation of a fiat currency (eventually) leads to inflation. If it did not, I can assure you there would be a shelf of books detailing such miracles over the past five thousand years of recorded history. “Stop eating when you are fat” is not a healthy diet.

        Not to go native on you, but don’t you wonder why the Old Testament called for a trumpet to be sounded on the tenth day of the seventh month every 50 years for a Jubilee where all debts were cancelled ?

        While it may take longer than I expect for the final denouement, mark this as the moment our political class shirked their duty to make the hard decisions.

        Investment advice:

        Don’t panic (yet) as MMT will be terrific for the first number of years. There will be a “sugar high” as expansive Fiscal policy transfuses money to those who will spend it. Similar to how corporate earnings expanded with the 2017 tax cut, so too should earnings enjoy the tailwind from Fiscal support to those who tend to spend.

        College debt relief will initially increase retail sales, but will ultimately migrate towards home sales as this is the household formation demographic.

        Developed Market (DM) Equities should do well, especially when the dividend yield for most DM Indices exceeds their Central Bank controlled rate.

        I love Mortgage REITs despite a nice rally; their dividend yield is still ~9%. This payout should be stable if the FED keeps its promise of ZIRP until 2023.

        Other ways of riding the FEDs rate suppression coattails can be sourced via well-managed BDCs and Muni CEFs that employ financial leverage. For CEFs, pay particular attention to the Undistributed Net Investment Income (UNII) as a deficit here usually presages a distribution cut.

        I think it’s “safe in the pool” until 2023-25, then it will be adult swim only. This is why I own long-dated options to protect against rising interest rates – a product outlined in “Pigs Can Fly” – January 28, 2020, and I will detail again soon.

        “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it…the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie.” – Joseph Goebbels

        You know my rejoinder: “It’s never different this time.”

      Digest powered by RSS Digest

      Dec 02

      Today’s News 2nd December 2020

      • The Digital 'Iron Curtain' Descends
        The Digital ‘Iron Curtain’ Descends

        Tyler Durden

        Wed, 12/02/2020 – 00:05

        Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

        What is a ‘digital Iron Curtain’?

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        It is when Big Digital, as Professor Michael Rectenwald terms these western Tech Goliaths, become ‘governmentalities’, using a word originally coined by Michel Foucault to refer to the means by which the ‘governed’ (i.e. ‘we the people’) assimilate, and reflect outwardly, a mental attitude desired by the élites: “One might point to masking and social distancing as instances of what Foucault meant by his notion of governmentality”, Rectenwald suggests.

        And what is that desired ‘mentality’?

        It is to embrace the transfiguration of American and European identity and way-of-life. The presumptive U.S. President Elect, the European élites, and top ‘woke’ élites moreover, are publicly committed to such “transformation”: “Now we take Georgia, then we change the world,” (Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, declared, celebrating Joe Biden’s ‘victory’); “Trump’s defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of far-right populisms also in Europe”, claimed Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council.

        In short, the ‘Iron Curtain’ descends when supposedly private enterprises (Big Digital) mutually inter-penetrate with – and then claim – the State: No longer the non-believer facing this coming metamorphosis is to be persuaded – he can be compelled. Regressive values held on identity, race and gender quickly slipped into a ‘heresy’ labelling. And as the BLM activists endlessly repeat: “Silence is no option: Silence is complicity”.

        With the advent of Silicon Valley ideology’s ubiquitous ‘reach’, the diktat can be achieved through weaponising ‘Truth’ via AI, to achieve a ‘machine learning fairness’ that reflects only the values of the coming revolution – and through AI ‘learning’ mounting that version of binary ‘truth’, up and against an adversarial ‘non-truth’ (its polar opposite). How this inter-penetration came about is through a mix of early CIA start-up funding; connections and contracts with state agencies, particularly relating to defence; and in support for propaganda campaigns in service to ‘governmentalist’ narratives.

        These U.S. Tech platforms have, for some time, become effectively fused into the ‘Blue State’ – particularly in the realms of intelligence and defence – to the extent that these CEOs no longer see themselves as state ‘partners’ or contractors, but rather, as some higher élite leadership, precisely shaping and directing the future of the U.S. Their objective however, is to advance beyond the American ‘sphere’, to a notion that such an élite oligarchy eventually would be directing a future ‘planetary governance’. One, in which their tech tools of AI, analytics, robotics and machine-learning, would become the mathematical and digital scaffold around whose structure, the globe in all its dimensions is administered. There would be no polity – only analytics.

        The blatant attempt by Big Tech platforms and MSM to write the narrative of the 2020 Facebook and Twitter U.S. Election – coupled with their campaign to insist that dissent is either the intrusion of enemy disinformation, ‘lies’ coming from the U.S. President, or plain bullsh*t – is but the first step to re-defining ‘dissenters’ as security risks and enemies of the good.

        The mention of ‘heresy and disinformation’ additionally plays the role of pushing attention away from the gulf of inequality between smug élites and skeptical swathes of ordinary citizenry. Party élites might be notoriously well-known for unfairly enriching themselves, but as fearless knights leading the faithful to battle, élites can become again objects of public and media veneration – heroes who can call believers ‘once more unto the breach!’.

        The next step is already being prepared – as Whitney Webb notes:

        A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UK’s signal intelligence agency, GCHQ, which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be “propaganda”, [and that] raise concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development – and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved.

        Similar efforts are underway in the U.S., with the military recently funding a CIA-backed firm … to develop an AI algorithm aimed specifically at new websites promoting “suspected” disinformation related to the Covid-19 crisis, and the U.S. military–led Covid-19 vaccination effort known as Operation Warp Speed …

        The Times reported that GCHQ “has begun an offensive cyber-operation to disrupt anti-vaccine propaganda being spread by hostile states” and “is using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic State” to do so … The GCHQ cyber war will not only take down “anti-vaccine propaganda”, but will also seek to “disrupt the operations of the cyberactors responsible for it, including encrypting their data so they cannot access it and blocking their communications with each other.”

        The Times stated that “the government regards tackling false information about inoculation as a rising priority as the prospect of a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus draws closer,” suggesting that efforts will continue to ramp up as a vaccine candidate gets closer to approval.

        This larger pivot toward treating alleged “anti-vaxxers” as “national security threats” has been ongoing for much of this year, spearheaded in part by Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, a member of the UK government’s Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force, which is part of the UK government’s Commission for Countering Extremism.

        Ahmed told the UK newspaper The Independent in July that “I would go beyond calling anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists to say they are an extremist group that pose a national security risk.” He then stated that “once someone has been exposed to one type of conspiracy it’s easy to lead them down a path where they embrace more radical world views that can lead to violent extremism … Similarly, a think tank tied to U.S. intelligence argued in a research paper published just months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis that “the U.S. ‘anti-vaxxer’ movement would pose a threat to national security in the event of a ‘pandemic with a novel organism.’”

        Just to be clear, it is not just the ‘Five Eyes’ Intelligence Community at work – YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided this week to remove a Ludwig von Mises Institute video, with more than 1.5 million views, for challenging aspects of U.S. policy on the Coronavirus.

        What on earth is going on? The Mises Institute as ‘extremist’, or purveyor of enemy disinformation? (Of course, there are countless other examples.)

        Well, in a word, it is ‘China’. Maybe it is about fears that China will surpass the U.S. economically and in Tech quite shortly. It is no secret that the U.S., the UK and Europe, more generally, have botched their handling of Covid, and may stand at the brink of recession and financial crisis.

        China, and Asia more generally, has Covid under much better control. Indeed, China may prove to be the one state likely to grow economically over the year ahead.

        Here’s the rub: The pandemic persists. Western governments largely have eschewed full lockdowns, whilst hoping to toggle between partial social-distancing, and keeping the economy open – oscillating between turning the dials up or down on both. But they are achieving neither the one (pandemic under control), nor the other (saving themselves from looming economic breakdown). The only exit from this conundrum that the élites can see is to vaccinate everyone as soon as possible, so that they can go full-steam on the economy – and thus stop China stealing a march on the West.

        But 40%-50% of Americans say they would refuse vaccination. They are concerned about the long term safety for humans of the new mRNA technique – concerns, it seems, that are destined to be rigorously de-platformed to make way for the “required” saturation of pro-vaccine messaging across the English-speaking media landscape.

        There is no evidence, yet, that either the Moderna or the Pfizer experimental vaccine prevented any hospitalizations or any deaths. If there were, the public has not been told. There is no information about how long any protective benefit from the vaccine would persist. There is no information about safety. Not surprisingly there is public caution, which GCHQ and Big Digital intend to squash.

        The digital Iron Curtain is not just about America. U.S. algorithms, and social media, saturate Europe too. And Europe has its ‘populists’ and state ‘deplorables’ (currently Hungary and Poland), on which Brussels would like to see the digital ‘Curtain’ of denigration and political ostracism descend.

        This month, Hungary and Poland vetoed the EU bloc’s €1.8 trillion budget and recovery package in retaliation for Brussel’s plan effectively to fine them for violating the EU’s ‘rule of law’ principles. As the Telegraph notes, “Many European businesses are depending on the cash and, given the ‘second wave’ of coronavirus hitting the continent, Brussels fears that the Visegrád Group allies” could hold a recovery hostage to their objections to the EU ‘rule-of-law’ ‘fines’).

        What’s this all about? Well, Orbán’s justice minister has introduced a series of constitutional changes. Each of them triggering ‘rule-of-law’ disputes with the EU. The most contentious amendment is an anti-LGBT one, stating explicitly that the mother is a woman, the father is a man. It will add further restrictions for singles and gay couples adopting children, and it will confine gender transition to adults.

        Orbán’s veto is yet more evidence of a new Iron Curtain descending down the spine of – this time – Europe. The ‘Curtain’ again is cultural, and has nothing to do with ‘law’. Brussels makes no secret of its displeasure that many Central and Eastern European member-states will not sign up to ‘progressive’ (i.e. woke) values. At its root lies the tension that “whilst Western Europe is de-Christianising, Europe’s central and eastern states are re-Christianising – the faith having been earlier a rallying point against communism”, and now serving as the well-spring to these states’ post-Cold War emerging identity. (It is not so dissimilar to some ‘Red’ American conservative constituencies that also are reaching back to their Christian roots, in the face of America’s political polarisation.)

        These combined events point to a key point of inflection occurring in the western polity: A constellation of state and state-extended apparatuses has openly declared war on dissent (‘untruths’), foreign ‘disinformation’ and opinion unsupported by their own ‘fact-checking’.

        It takes concrete form through Big Digital’s quiet sanctioning and punitive policing of online platforms, under the guise of tackling abuse; through nation-wide mandatory re-education and training programmes in anti-racism and critical social theory in schools and places of work; by embedding passive obedience and acquiescence amongst the public through casting anti-vaxxers as extremists, or as security risks; and finally, by mounting a series of public spectacles and theatre by ‘calling out’ and shaming sovereigntists and cultural ‘regressives’, who merit being ‘cancelled’.

        In turn, it advances an entire canon of progressivism rooted in critical social theory, anti-racism and gender studies. It has too its own revisionist history (narratives such as the 1619 Project) and progressive jurisprudence for translation into concrete law.

        But what if half of America rejects the next President? What if Brussels persists with imposing its separate progressive cannon? Then the Iron Curtain will descend with the ring of metal falling onto stone. Why? Precisely because those adhering to their transformative mission see ‘calling out’ transgressors as their path to power – a state in which dissent and cultural heresy can be met with enforcement (euphemistically called the ‘rule of law’ in Brussels). Its’ intent is to permanently keep dissenters passive, and on the defensive, fearing being labelled ‘extremist’, and through panicking fence-sitters into acquiescence.

        Maintaining a unified western polity may no longer be possible under such conditions. Should the losers in this struggle (whomsoever that may be), come to fear being culturally overwhelmed by forces that see their way-of-being as a heresy which must be purged, we may witness a powerful turn towards political self-determination.

        When political differences become irreconcilable, the only (non-violent) alternative might come to be seen to lie with the fissuring of political union.

      • New NATO Strategy Deems China #2 Enemy Behind Russia Over Next Decade
        New NATO Strategy Deems China #2 Enemy Behind Russia Over Next Decade

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 23:45

        NATO has previewed a new study that calls for major reform and provides a proposed outline for its future long term strategy entitled “NATO 2030 – United for a New Era”. The report is raising eyebrows given its focus on the rise of China, which it says should be considered the Atlantic military alliance’s number two enemy and rival over the next decade. 

        The report compiled by a committee of NATO exports advances 138 proposals to reform NATO along these lines. According to one NATO diplomat cited in Reuters, “China is no longer the benign trading partner that the West had hoped for. It is the rising power of our century and NATO must adapt.”

        Specifically it calls for NATO maintaining a decisive technological edge over China, which itself has been undergoing a major reform of its military and intelligence capabilities, rapidly modernizing both under a long term plan of President Xi Jinping. 

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        NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said just ahead of the report’s publication, “China is investing massively in new weapons. It is coming closer to us, from the Arctic to Africa. China does not share our values… and tries to intimidate other countries,” according to statements at a Monday news conference. 

        Yet Stoltenberg also tried to temper what Beijing will no doubt see as a hostile posture, also saying at the briefing, “China is not our adversary. Its rise presents an important opportunity for our economies and trade. We need to engage with China on issues such as arms control and climate change. But there are also important challenges to our security.”

        An unnamed official source in Brussels was further cited in Russia’s TASS as saying, “The report recommends establishing special structures, which must guarantee NATO’s technical dominance over China and protect the member states from China establishing an economic control over their strategic sectors of economy.”

        The report also “notes the necessity to prevent China from establishing control over the key commodity sources, including new-generation ones, in the third countries, in Africa in particular,” according to the TASS source. Lithium was offered was one prime example as essential to development of advanced electronics and communications in the future.

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        Chinese PLA Army during joint exercises in Russia, 2018. Via AP

        Meanwhile on Tuesday China responded preemptively to the much anticipated report, with the Foreign Ministry saying Europe and America’s “coercive diplomacy” are damaging good relations. The statement underscored that China’s defense spending per capita is actually lower than many countries within NATO.

        “The common values of all mankind that China advocates and adheres to are peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom. I don’t know if these six words can also be recognized by NATO member states. Is this a value that we should hold together?” FM spokesperson Hua Chunying asserted.

      • Politics, Positivism, & The Science Of Tyranny
        Politics, Positivism, & The Science Of Tyranny

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 23:25

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

        “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

        – Philip K. Dick

        There is nothing worse than the politicization of science. If there is one thing that 2020 has taught us it is that we live within this basic framework.

        Science is nothing today if not political.

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        But it’s beyond even that. This is a framework of experts in all major intellectual arenas, be it economics, psychology, diet or health. And they have all been tied in some basic way to public safety and the role of government in administering that goal, supposedly for the betterment of all of us.

        Now, the use of science and the scientific method is perfectly applicable when illuminating underlying physical laws of the universe. But it is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

        And politics is nothing if not obsessed with ends rather than means.

        The problem, however, is that positivism, of which the scientific method is the implementation of said philosophy, ultimately has limited application in the real world.

        This is because it rejects the illumination of truth through the use of intellect and logic, relying solely on experience.

        Because positivism cannot create hypotheses, only test them. The process of generating hypotheses is known as a priori — the deriving of knowledge from that which has come before, some but not all of which derived from the results of positivist methodology, i.e. experiment and experience.

        A priori arguments rely on intellectual rigor and logic to produce hypotheses based on what is known. Experimentation, via positivism, i.e. the scientific method, is then used to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ said hypothesis.

        From Theory to Theorem

        To give an example. The Gibbs Free Energy equation was derived from an a priori set of postulates built on the proven theorems through which mathematics were derived.

        In short, we built math through logic and reason, a priori, and men like Gibbs used those mathematical tools to derive their equations which govern the way matter interacts.

        Where positivism comes in is in testing Gibbs’ equation to see if it, indeed, holds up to scrutiny. And under very specific boundary conditions it does.

        Theory? A priori. Practice and application? Positivism.

        This distinction is truly the most important thing that needs to be interjected back into our political discourse. Hell, I’d like it to come back into our scientific discourse, c.f. the nonsense about dark matter, global warming etc.

        The problem we have today with modern liberalism, especially those in the sciences, is this misapplication of positivism to subjects where variables are explicitly beyond its ability to control for.

        This is why appeals to ‘believe all scientists’ and ‘science has spoken’ are, at best, specious, even if they have the veneer of truth to them. Because when you set up an experiment without proper controls none of the conclusions you draw from it are defensible.

        They may point you to inquire further, certainly, and that is an unqualified good thing in the search for truth. But it cannot be a bludgeon by which that search for truth ends simply because someone got their intellectual cookie either.

        In the down and dirty world of politics hastily drawn conclusions from poorly-controlled ‘science’ can be used to write really provocative headlines capable of swaying public opinion.

        Again, I point you to both theories about dark matter and global warming.

        Because we live in an age of experts it is easy to do this and create both mass hysteria as well as arm marginally if not wholly untrained people with bad arguments about how to craft policy.

        Worse, now we’ve unleashed them on Twitter to ensure no real conversation is possible.

        Manufacturing Consent

        Listen very carefully to most political arguments that start with, “the data suggests” or “experts say” and what you most likely will hear is someone talking out of their ass but appearing to have facts on their side.

        Because using positivism in the social sciences is just inappropriate. In medicine it’s the great frontier and by definition is difficult to get any kind of definitive answer from.

        Once you’ve done real science, like I have, and have had your ass kicked by simple systems like an electroplating bath or a groundwater sample you realize that our knowledge of the subtle chemistry of human beings is at best, hubris.

        So, undergirding any policy discussion with “what the science says” isn’t just dishonest it’s dangerous.

        Because, in essence, it’s all a giant appeal to authority logical fallacy. My argument is right because He said so. The whole of ‘science as policy’ industry is nothing more than that.

        And when you factor in the corrupting nature of government funding of science picking winners and losers for grant money, you really have to question what it is you think you know about just about everything you’ve ever been told.

        Now, I’m not being reductionist here in saying we shouldn’t use ‘science’ no matter how specious to inform policy.

        Quite the contrary. I accept that politics has to deal with time pressures after all, certainly in a fluid situation like a pandemic. But, at the same time, we have to be cognizant of its limitations and use it only to support basic human rights principles.

        Conversely, that means we explicitly don’t use them as an excuse to trample human rights out of fear, ignorance or good ol’ fashioned opportunity.

        Politics is where the philosophy and science meet and, at times, explode.

        For more than 100 years Progressives and ‘leftists’ of various stripes have appealed to science to engineer a better society through the misapplication of the scientific method to build their arguments.

        They have pursued this to the exclusion of all other considerations to ‘prove’ to the world that the community as a whole is always bettered by the suppression of the individual through shared policy goals and ill-defined/ever expanding definitions of human rights.

        And because they are driven ideologically and not intellectually they ignore any and all failures of the policies adopted in the name of their stated goals.

        Black Communist Swans

        The former U.S.S.R. was the original ‘technocracy’ built on these ideas. Today’s leftists still think it got a bad rap. It’s pathetic.

        But they can’t give it up because they just know that if they run just one more experiment with slightly different rules, controlling these variables this time, the outcome will be different.

        Welcome to the arguments of the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It’s no different than the Cultural one or the Bolshevik one or the French one.

        This is a fundamental misapplication of positivist thinking: asserting your hypothesis is correct when the ‘data’ tells you it’s wrong. You don’t get to keep back-fitting the data to fit the hypothesis and call that proof.

        That’s the absolute antithesis of ‘science.’

        And even then, the data is clear. Communism doesn’t work.

        But I know that because Mises rigorously deconstructed all forms of collectivism a priori in his seminal work, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis published in 1922.

        The 20th century experiments in communism and other flavors of socialism all support Mises’ conclusions, again derived a priori from first principles of human behavior. Do we really need another one?

        Communism — and all forms of collectivism — destroys capital, wastes time and its adherents kill millions in their quest to find the perfect system. But they are chasing their own tails begging a question that was already answered a priori.

        There really was a black swan on the horizon.

        If not for the vast mineral wealth in the form of oil and gas the U.S.S.R. wouldn’t have lasted half as long as it did. And even then all it took was an oil price war in the 1980’s to bring it down.

        FYI, there’s a lesson in there for other nakedly tyrannical petrostates, including those enlightened ones in Scandinavia. When the oil runs out Norwegians I hope you have something else to export other than lutefisk.

        While here in the U.S. a similar technocracy was built slowly through the corruption of the institutions of education, politics and culture, all using the same positivist arguments.

        But ‘Science’ Says…

        Modern leftists pride themselves on believing in the rationality of science. Many going so far as to discount all religion and culture as nothing more than quaint customs of the mouth-breathing rubes in flyover country.

        And with COVID-19 we’ve reached the height of this practice of imbuing scientists with a god-like knowledge of what we should do given any thorny political problem.

        That’s why pseudo-intellectuals and midwits in white suburbia bought into the lies of Anthony Fauci, while ignoring the flip-flopping of him, the CDC, the WHO, and every other ‘expert.’

        This science worship neatly bypasses politicians you don’t like to support whatever argument you want to believe. It doesn’t matter that it’s now just as much a religion as Christianity or Islam.

        If the high priest of ‘science’ says masks are necessary on Tuesdays but not Thursdays then they simply go along with it because the alternative is admitting that your priests are just hucksters with fancy government titles.

        It also absolves people of the responsibility of making the hard decisions. The experts have all that worked out.

        Which brings me to what actually started this blog post.

        One of these true high priests of ‘scientism,’ the straight-out-of-central-casting Neil Degrasse Tyson opined recently on RT about how disappointed he was with humanity over not coming together over COVID-19.

        “I thought that when the coronavirus landed that we would’ve all banded together and say: ‘We’re all human and that’s a common enemy, like an alien invasion. We’ve all seen it in the movies. We got to be together on this one.’ But it didn’t happen to my great disappointment in our species.”

        At this late date for a guy like Mr. Tyson to go on thinking COVID-19 was such an existential threat to humanity as an alien invasion is really stunning.

        I thought this guy was supposed to be smart? Like really smart?

        It’s like he’s forgotten that Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which I’m sure he read, wasn’t an operating manual for society but rather a warning of where this fetishization of official smart people leads.

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        I may just be some ‘deplorable’ boob living in the sticks of N. Florida, but last I checked more people are alive today than there were at the beginning of this pandemic.

        Or maybe my understanding of math isn’t sufficient to handle a number as big as 7.7 billion.

        Or that, according to the U.S. government’s population clock, a baby is born every 8 seconds on this planet and a person dies every 10. Now, with my admittedly only 3 years of college level calculus, I may not be as qualified as Mr. Tyson to judge the validity of 10 being greater than 8, so forgive my arrogance in thinking this.

        But this seems like pretty strong evidence that COVID-19 isn’t a threat to humanity as a whole.

        Further, I’m just a lowly degreed chemist and not an ‘astrophysicist’ like Mr. Tyson so maybe there’s something else I’m missing here.

        The Reality Bomb

        This false equivalence of an alien invasion we would all willingly fight is not the same as a virus with a slightly elevated risk of death versus the annual flu. This is the very definition of ‘not intellectually rigorous.’

        In fact it’s the opposite. It is purposefully deceptive and manipulative emotional blackmail that should be beneath the contempt of a ‘scientist’ of Mr. Tyson’s stature.

        He goes on further:

        “I don’t mind political fights. Political fights are fine when you’re talking about policy and legislation. But you should never have a political fight about…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals,” Tyson said, adding that doing so is a “recipe for disaster.”

        Now this I agree somewhat with, which is why I consider this more like Coronapocalypse: The Movie and not a true existential threat to humanity which required any kind of policy decision which sparked this political fight he’s crying crocodile tears over.

        Because, and I’m sure Mr. Tyson would agree with this if he were a scientist, there is little “…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals…” about COVID-19 which has been properly discussed in the public sphere.

        And yet very polarizing policies are in place depriving people of not only their rights, which he seems cavalier to, but also their future prosperity.

        Since the ‘science’ has been used by governments assume a level of control over our movements and activities far beyond the scope of what the ‘science’ has shown. And since when the science isn’t settled shouldn’t we settle back on first principles to minimize human suffering along all vectors, not just the one variable, virus transmission, we think we’re controlling, especially for most people the survival rate is greater than 99.9%?

        And even this position undermines the basic framework of human rights by placing some cost/benefit analytic overlay on society giving the social engineers more credit than they deserve.

        On the best of days in the simplest physical systems, getting objectively true data from any experiment is a painstakingly difficult work. Reviewing it and assessing its validity in relation to known physical laws of the universe is even harder work. Thinking that somehow we can use this to craft global policy is frankly, prima facia evidence of psychosis devoid of empathy.

        At best, this is the role commentators like Mr. Tyson are supposed to fill to keep us grounded in the humility of our ignorance.

        But it’s clear from his positions Mr. Tyson has forgotten that basic point.

        But what should I have expected from someone who continues to support scientifically unproven junk like dark matter, which we’ve never found any evidence of, and CO2-induced global warming, which openly denies the magnetic and electrical interplay between the earth and the sun on our climate.

        And these are his chosen fields of study.

        But this is what comes when one school of thought, positivism, corrupts both the science and the politics in a feedback loop of granted favors and the open suppression of a priori arguments.

        Because that’s where we are today and it will get worse before it improves. Our society has become post-rational.

        By that line of reasoning I was wrong in my opening thesis statement. There is something worse than the politicization of science, the denial that it’s even possible.

        *  *  *

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      • Bill Gross' Neighbor Calls Him "Angry Billionaire With Short Fuse", Says Friends Offered "Condolences" When 'Bond King' Moved In
        Bill Gross’ Neighbor Calls Him “Angry Billionaire With Short Fuse”, Says Friends Offered “Condolences” When ‘Bond King’ Moved In

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 23:05

        Bill Gross’s civil court battle with his neighbor, tech entrepreneur Mark Towfiq – the two men are suing one another for alleged harassment after a feud over a garden sculpture spiraled out of control – continued this week, with Towfiq telling the jury (since that’s what this has come to) that he feared he was in for trouble as soon as he learned that Gross was interested in the home next door.

        Describing Gross as an “angry billionaire with a short fuse,” Towfiq testified that an acquaintance working at Pimco had offered his “condolences” when Towfiq told him Gross might be his new neighbor, before regaling him with stories about Gross’s antics at PIMCO.

        Gross’s lawyers cross-examined Towfiq as well as Patrick Boyd, identified in the Bloomberg report on the hearing only as the former owner of the home.

        For those who haven’t been following the story, the two Laguna Beach neighbors are embroiled in a nasty feud with Towfiq suing Gross for harassment for allegedly blasting ear-splitting music from his state of the art sound system that reportedly drowned out the sound of the ocean and the Pacific Coast Highway.

        Since being forced out of PIMCO, a firm he co-founded back in the 1970s, Gross has cultivated a reputation as a loose cannon who won’t hesitate to terrorize those whom he believes have wronged him. Court filings in his divorce told of the billionaire using fart spray and rotting fish to make a home he had shared with his ex-wife unlivable.

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        When Towfiq texted Gross to ask him to turn the music down, Gross reportedly replied that Towfiq must ‘drop the complaint’ about a yard sculpture Gross had installed, or else the nightly “concerts” would continue.

        Gross’s lawyer, Jill Basinger, told Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knill that she aimed to prove Towfiq was “obsessed” with Gross and his girlfriend, Amy Schwartz, a former professional tennis player, “and has been stalking him at all hours.”

        Basinger drew attention to the fact that Towfiq appeared to be ‘concerned’ about Gross moving in even before the billionaire had bought the property.

        “I’d seen the news of how he’d treated his family, his employees,” Towfiq said, referring to the many reports about Gross (some of which were originally published by the Wall Street Journal). Basinger also brought up a lawsuit where another former neighbor had allegedly sued Towfiq, though apparently the neighbor had actually sued the city for granting Towfiq certain building permits. Towfig said when he notified Patrick Boyd, the previous owner of Gross’s home, about some construction related debris left behind, Boyd had warned him to clean it up because he didn’t want to piss off Gross.

        “I had told him that he had left a bunch of pipes in the side yard and he said, ‘I don’t want an angry billionaire with a short fuse to be upset with me,’ or something like that,” Towfiq said.

        In an affidavit filed with the court, Boyd said he was “alarmed” to learn that Towfiq had security cameras pointed at his backyard, which allowed him to spot Gross as he toured the property, long before he bought the house. “It was also a bit unsettling to learn Mr. Towfiq was keeping track of my guests in the backyard,” Boyd said in the filing. Towfiq insisted he only began taping Gross’s property after police suggested he “document” the loud music Gross allegedly played to terrorize him.

        “Taking videos and pictures on my own property seems like a fundamental right,” he said.

        Towfiq also revealed that he had been a PIMCO client for a few years before Gross left the firm, between 2008 and 2012. Testimony is set to continue tomorrow, but the fact that this case is still going on is almost as shocking as anything that’s been revealed so far. Gross is notorious for his puckishness and pigheadedness in legal disputes. It’s almost hard to believe this all started because of a garden statue.

      • Iran Suspects Exiled Cult Was Involved In Assassination Of Top Scientist
        Iran Suspects Exiled Cult Was Involved In Assassination Of Top Scientist

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 22:45

        Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

        Iran continues to release details surrounding the killing of its top scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. On Monday, a senior Iranian official said a controversial group of Iranian exiles based in Albania could have been involved in the assassination.

        “We have some clues but surely the ‘Monafeghin’ group was involved and the criminal element behind it is the Zionist regime and Mossad,” Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, told state TV.

        The “Monafeghin” refers to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition led by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). The MEK is a controversial group widely considered to be a cult, and up until 2012, was designated as a terrorist group by the US government.

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        Rudy Giuliani speaks during a rally for the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Warsaw on Feb. 13, 2019. AFP/Getty Images

        For their part, the MEK denied any role in Fakhrizadeh’s death. The MEK released a statement and rejected Iran’s claim as “rancor and lies.” The group said the accusation was “nothing new” since they’ve been implicated in previous assassinations of Iranian scientists.

        Between 2007 and 2012, five scientists were killed inside Iran. Although never officially acknowledged, the attacks have been attributed to Israel. In February 2012, anonymous US officials told NBC News that the MEK carried out these attacks.

        The NBC story said the MEK is “financed, trained and armed” by Israel’s secret service. Later that year, in September 2012, then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton ordered the MEK to be removed from the US terror list after giving heaps of money to US officials.

        The MEK started as a Marxist-Islamist group that was founded in the 1960s and opposed the US-backed Shah. Throughout the 1970s, the MEK killed scores of the Shah’s police force, and the group played a role in the 1979 revolution. After the revolution, the MEK was at odds with the Ayatollah and opposed the new Islamist government, staging attacks against the Mullahs.

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        After being forced out of Iran in the 1980s, the MEK was welcomed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, who gave the group refuge at a military base known as Camp Ashraf. From the base, the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and sided with Hussein in the brutal eight-year Iran-Iraq war. For these reasons, it is believed the MEK has little to no support inside Iran today.

        After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US government commissioned a report on the MEK from inside their former headquarters at Camp Ashraf. The report concluded that the MEK has “many of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.”

        The MEK is now based in Albania and has a presence in France. In July, the group’s leader Maryam Rajavi held the MEK’s annual Free Iran conference virtually from her compound known as Ashraf 3 in Tirana, Albania. The event featured speeches from several former and current US officials, including President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, a MEK favorite. Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) were the only sitting members of Congress to speak at the conference.

        US officials are paid well for attending MEK events. President Trump’s Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao collected $50,000 from the MEK for a five-minute speech in 2015. Although he was missing from the latest conference, Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton has collected hefty sums from the MEK. Records show the MEK has paid Bolton at least $180,000 for speeches over the years.

      • D.C. Metro Faces Massive Cuts To Rail, Bus Service; A Third Of All Workers To Be Terminated
        D.C. Metro Faces Massive Cuts To Rail, Bus Service; A Third Of All Workers To Be Terminated

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 22:25

        It’s not just New York that is facing draconian cuts to its mass transit infrastructure and workforce as the city slides into financial ruin: the country’s capital is doing everything it can to catch up. Facing a hole in the budget of nearly a half-billion dollars, the general manager of Washington D.C’s Metro is proposing massive budget cuts to rail and bus service that would take effect this summer.

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        General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said in September that without more federal help, big cuts would be needed. Since then things have only gone from bard to worse and as WJLA reports, overall rail ridership is down more than 85% most weekdays, while bus ridership is less than half what it was in 2019.

        Among the things Wiedefeld is proposing for Metrorail:

        • Closing 19 stations – Archives, Arlington Cemetery, Cheverly, Clarendon, Cleveland Park, College Park, East Falls Church, Eisenhower Avenue, Federal Center SW, Federal Triangle, Greensboro, Grosvenor-Strathmore, Judiciary Square, McLean, Morgan Boulevard, Mount Vernon Square, Smithsonian, Van Dorn Street, Virginia Square-GMU
        • Eliminating rail service on Saturday and Sunday
        • Having trains run only every half hour on each line. Stations served by two lines would have trains every 15 minutes as would Red Line stations between Silver Spring and Medical Center
        • Closing rail stations early at 9 p.m. weekdays
        • Reintroducing “turnbacks” where not all Red and Yellow line trains go to the end of the line, and only having Silver Line service run between Ashburn (when it opens) and Ballston

        In addition, Metrobus would also face big cuts. Wiedefeld is proposing only having a total of 41 bus routes. Those routes would be longer, covering the same territory that 60 bus lines currently cover.

        Wiedefeld said overall bus service would be about 45% of pre-COVID-19 levels, adding that bus service would actually be added on weekends to try to make up for having no weekend rail service. And although Wiedefeld has been trying to minimize the number through buyouts and negotiations with the union to not give salary increases next year, he says thousands of jobs would be cut under his proposal.

        “We’re looking at roughly 2400 hundred positions that we have to eliminate on top of the 1400 that we’re eliminating right now in [current] budget,” he said. “So that’s roughly 3800 positions, almost a third of our entire workforce. So that’s extremely difficult.”

        Metro has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in fare money from riders after the pandemic caused ridership numbers to plummet. Although Wiedefeld expects some riders to come back next year, he doesn’t think it will be nearly enough to avoid big cuts. He expects rail and bus ridership combined in the fiscal year 2022 — which runs from July 1, 2021, until June 30, 2022 – to be about 34 percent of what it was pre-pandemic.

        Most of Metro’s fare revenue money comes from rail ridership, which is also the ridership that has been hurt the most by the pandemic. A higher percentage of bus riders have continued riding than rail riders.

        Wiedefeld says there are potential ways the need for such severe cuts would be minimized. They include if a vaccine is successful and if Congress passes a bill to provide relief money as it did much earlier in the pandemic.

        If passed the cuts would take effect July 1.

        Wiedefeld is also proposing using $250 million in money that Metro had planned to use on maintenance for capital budget costs instead.

        Mayor Bowser provided the following statement in a tweet:

        WMATA’s deeply troubling proposal is another reminder of the critical need for federal stimulus to revive our economy and to preserve our way of life. Not too long ago with our partners in the region and our federal government, we put Metro on the right track to meet the needs of residents and visitors alike. Regardless of party or ideology, we must once again come together to save Metro.

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      • One-World Currency Included In The "Endgame" Reset
        One-World Currency Included In The “Endgame” Reset

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 22:05

        Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

        The idea the world would be better served with a single “World Currency” has been growing and looms as a real possibility in the near future. Many people see this as a major part of the “endgame” or something that will constitute a needed reset to a global economy and financial system that has gone off track. Throughout history, before an economic collapse, the masses and society tend to believe things are financially stable. Only after the economy goes over the edge of an abyss and is in free-fall does reality set in. It is not by accident that blinders have been placed upon us but it is the result of distractions being thrown in our path by those wishing to hold onto their power over us. It is wise to remember that when things do become critical, those in power will not be kind to us but that we will be thrown under the bus without a thought.

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        Over the last one hundred years, equity markets have been a primary tool used by the public to measure the economy. In some ways, the stock markets have become a kind of switch the elites can push at any given time to energize the masses distracting them from the dangers lurking in their economic future. When markets rise despite warnings from negative fiscal indicators, the masses become optimistic. During every upswing of stocks the elites claim they see the “green shoots” of prosperity, however, these shoots seem to always turn brown and die. We have been leaping from one recession to another even though central banks claim they now hold the key to generating true and honest growth. The truth is the current stock market bolstered by easy money and stock buybacks is a poor reflection of the real economy and what is happening in many areas across a broad swath of the world.

        History indicates that establishment economists trained and educated in the ivory towers of academia are perhaps the most useless of all analysts and perpetually wrong. Only independent analysts have ever been able to predict anything of value when it comes to our economic future and that is because they have the advantage of not being blinded by the propaganda and brainwashed by lies flowing from those in control. Time and time again it has been proven the appearance of prosperity means nothing if the fundamentals do not support the optimism. A bullish stock market, a high dollar index, and low unemployment mean nothing and are unsustainable if generated by false methods and fiat money. We have seen time and time again throughout history that fundamentals matter. 

        The markets cannot hide from true price discovery forever. The stock market with its boom and bust cycles has proven to be a false indicator of what is really unfolding. Manipulation by the central banks has rendered this indicator of economic health useless. The problem we face is the horrible options in fiat money, massive debt, and the growth of international businesses have all come together in an explosive way. The banking elites are positioning themselves to avoid blame for this disaster while the rest of us are being sold on the most elaborate recovery con-game ever conceived and perpetuated by those with the most to gain.

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        Magazine Cover Touting Worry Currency

        Those in charge of our financial machinery have indicated to the public their desire for more power. This means creating a truly global centralized economic system and a highly controlled world currency framework dominated by a select cult of banking oligarchs. This would, in effect makes the rest of the human race their slaves.

        Over the years, many articles have  referred to a 1988 write-up in the financial magazine ‘The Economist’ titled “Get ready for a world currency by 2018.” It outlined the framework for a global currency system administered by the International Monetary Fund. This new system was and is floated on the premise that only by erasing all national economic sovereignty can true stability be obtained. It requires governments to borrow from the world central banking authority, rather than printing currency to finance their infrastructure programs.

        This dovetails with efforts to create such a system under the total control of the IMF which should raise the concern of every American. We are hearing more warnings and witnessing a push to destabilize the dollar as the reserve currency by China and several other countries. It is also occurring as Orwellian governments float the idea of going cashless as a way to gain further control over our lives.

        For years the IMF has been openly discussing the ascension of the SDR to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency. Many developing nations that are deep in debt are already asking for help from the IMF due to volatility across the world and the BRICS are pushing hard to remove the dollar as the world reserve. This makes it a question of when such a currency reset will occur and in its wake bury the majority of the middle-class and poor throughout America. There is no way around it, the elites are positioned and merely waiting for a geopolitical disaster or catastrophe so overwhelming that when the time arrives they can portray themselves as our saviors during the chaos.

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        American Dollar Constitutes Bulk Of Reserves

        The demise of the dollar harkens back to when President Nixon severed its tie to gold. First, it’s crucial to understand that at the very core of our global economy is a financial system dominated by the U.S. dollar which has been deemed the reserve currency.  The USD is unique in that it grants the U.S. the privilege of having a national currency which at the same time serves as the global reserve currency. This was solidified toward the end of World War II with the Bretton Woods agreement, which was accepted because the U.S. agreed to offer sovereign nations holding dollars a right to exchange these dollars for gold at a fixed price, however, with Nixon’s action in 1971, the USD became a fiat currency backed by nothing, the supply of which can be arbitrarily altered and manipulated by a group of unelected bureaucrats in charge of the Federal Reserve. This money system represents the most powerful tool on the planet.

        The new world order and globalization pushed by many world leaders and the rich elite that tout “larger, more cooperative governments under one financial unit will benefit us all” feeds into the world currency scenario. Many Americans are oblivious to the fact we gain a great deal by our status of the dollar being the reserve currency by which all others tend to be measured. This means we have a great deal to lose if it is dethroned and stand to suffer the most if the dollar declines in value. Those who will be crucified are the middle-class Americans whose wealth is locked into or are holding long-term USD bonds thinking they are a safe investment.

        Currently, a huge mismatch exists between the use of the dollar in the global financial system and the U.S. share of the world economy. This is why China, Russia, and several other countries that are acutely aware of this have been taking major steps to transition to a more multi-polar currency world. This is also why we should prepare and expect that in coming years the world will adopt a completely different global financial system from the one chaotically birthed in the 1970s and when this occurs the USD will lose its total dominance on the world stage, resulting in major implications for America. While many people see this coming, several opinions exist as to how it will unfold and while we engage in speculation, nobody really knows what the world financial system will look like ten or twenty years down the road.

        Few of us who continue to cherish freedom can get excited about transitioning away from the USD and being placed under the thumb of the IMF or an oppressive nation-state currency controlled by a country like China. That is why many of us think the dollar will be ripped from us during a time of crisis when Americans are open to accepting any solution offered to them as a way to ease their woes. While people point to cryptocurrencies as an option we should remember politics plays a massive role in how this all unfolds. To Americans, the fate of dollar-dominated assets and their value when the dust finally settles should be a huge concern but most Americans fail to grasp the implications.

        It is my contention the transition to a world currency will take a far greater toll on paper assets than tangible goods. While recognizing the flaws of the dollar and our current system I have come to believe the other fiat currencies such as the euro and yen hold even less merit. This includes cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Regardless, in the end, we should expect to be told and not given an option as to what is coming.

      • Not Just Newsom: San Francisco, San Jose Mayors Busted Violating Own COVID Guidelines
        Not Just Newsom: San Francisco, San Jose Mayors Busted Violating Own COVID Guidelines

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 21:45

        The mayors of San Francisco and San Jose both attended gatherings in violation of their own COVID-19 health protocols – and San Jose’s Sam Liccardo initially lied about it.

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        On Nov. 7, the day after California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) was busted dining at the French Laundry, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Yountville, San Francisco Mayor London Breed dined there the very next night with seven other people to celebrate socialite Gorretti Lo Lui’s 60th birthday.

        It’s unclear how many households attended, but state guidelines at the time “strongly discouraged” social gatherings and capped them at three housholds.

        “I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that everyone act responsibly to reduce the spread of the virus,” Breed said three days later, adding “Every San Franciscan needs to do their part so that we can start moving in the right direction again.”

        Meanwhile, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo apologized on Tuesday for attending a thanksgiving dinner in violation of California health protocols.

        “Eight of us representing five households sat around three distanced tables in our own family groups on the back patio,” Liccardo said in a statement, adding “We wore masks when not eating.”

        Just one day prior to attending his family Thanksgiving celebration, Liccardo urged his more than 33,000 Twitter followers to cancel “big gatherings this year” and noted the importance of following safety protocols, even with friends and family.

        “Cases are spiking,” he wrote. “We’re letting our guard (and masks) down with family and friends.” –NBC Bay Area

        When a journalist from NBC Bay Area first asked Liccardo about his plans, a spokesperson for the mayor said on Thanksgiving that he was spending the holiday at home. The next day, the Mayor’s office reached out to correct the information.

        “I understand my obligation as a public official to provide exemplary compliance with the public health orders, and certainly not to ignore them,” wrote Liccardo, adding “I commit to do better.”

        Leading by example apparently isn’t in California Democrats’ wheelhouse.

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      • "That's A Dire Warning": Dalio's Chart Hints At What Beijing Is Really Up To
        “That’s A Dire Warning”: Dalio’s Chart Hints At What Beijing Is Really Up To

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 21:25

        By Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator

        Another day, another stock record. The S&P 500 soared to a fresh all-time high on Tuesday, while the yield curve steepened on optimism about more fiscal stimulus and the imminent deployment of vaccines. The seeming disconnect between financial markets and the economy is kind of surreal, considering that 11 million people remain unemployed and the virus is spiraling out of control.

        The fact that U.S. policy makers are still pedal-to-the-metal with monetary stimulus stands in sharp contrast to China, where officials have set their sights on an exit from loose policy. Consider recent events:

        • Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, described China’s property market as the biggest “gray rhino” – an obvious yet ignored financial risk.

        • Guo also pledged to impose “special and innovative regulatory measures” on financial technology behemoths such as Jack Ma’s Ant Group. The recent regulation changes have essentially put these fin-tech companies under the similar supervision umbrella as traditional banks to avoid excessive leverage.

        • Beijing has allowed a number of SOEs to default, breaking the implicit government guarantee.

        • PBOC Governor Yi Gang vowed to avoid monetizing government debt. In addition, officials have said low interest rates contributed to social inequality.

        Clearly, there’s a sense of urgency to address financial risks and close the gap between markets and the economy. In the meantime, the buzz in Beijing is that the financial industry should serve the real economy and people.

        What China is doing makes perfect sense in the context of the big economic cycle described by Ray Dalio. In his latest essay published Tuesday, Bridgewater’s founder showed that China is in the midst of a debt bubble and the beginning of widening wealth gap. Apparently, China wants to tackle both before it’s too late.

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        In contrast, the U.S. has passed the peak of its economic power, settling into the stage of money printing after the burst of the debt bubble, according to Dalio.

        “It is in this stage when there are bad financial conditions and intensifying conflict,” wrote Dalio. “Classically this stage comes after periods of great excesses in spending and debt and the widening of wealth and political gaps and before there are revolutions and civil wars. United States is at a tipping point in which it could go from manageable internal tension to revolution and/or civil war.”

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        That’s a dire warning. Apparently, President Xi Jinping is trying to avoid the same path.

      • Watch: Obama Casually Admits His Drone Strikes Killed "Inordinate Amount" Of Innocent Civilians
        Watch: Obama Casually Admits His Drone Strikes Killed “Inordinate Amount” Of Innocent Civilians

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 21:05

        Barack Obama is on his book tour for A Promised Land now four years after leaving office. During his latest interview days ago on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert he was asked about his vastly expanded drone strikes (setting a record far and above that of the prior Bush administration) as a preferred method of taking out America’s ‘enemies’. But it’s very well-documented that drone strikes actually killed just as many or more civilians than terrorists in the process.

        The former Democratic president still can’t shake his legacy as the “drone president” given he still holds the record for number of ordered kill missions. Now it appears he’s simply embracing the label. This latest interview may have sealed this legacy – indeed it could be his own Madeleine Albright “we think the price is worth it” moment.

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        In the interview Obama admits that saying “collateral damage” is basically the nicer sanitized way of saying “it killed people who were innocent and not just targets”.

        So he basically casually acknowledged on national TV that he killed a lot of innocent people. And then this incredibly awkward line: 

        “The problem with the drone program was not that it caused an inordinate amount of civilian casualties, although even 1 civilian casualty is tragic. But the drones probably had less collateral damage.”

        As journalist Eoin Higgins noted there was “Zero pushback from Colbert here as Obama defends his drone war in pretty revolting terms.”

        And Glenn Greenwald, who spent years covering Obama’s drone killings when he was at The Guardian had this to say…

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        Here’s the section his book, where the former president actually attempts to present himself as the well-intentioned ‘savior’ of those victims he ordered killed:

        In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.

        Further into the interview he said that killing by “machinery” was becoming “too easy”. He says he had to impose what he called internal controls to remind the military and drone operators “this is isn’t target practice”.

        Meanwhile, NatSec insider architects of Obama’s drone policies and secretive ‘kill list’ are baaaaaack…

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        In the end Obama’s book and interview remarks on drone strikes are full of cringeworthy levels of self-justification and rationalization for killing what many human rights studies have estimated to be multiple hundreds.

      • 109 "1 Percent" Days So Far This Year: What 2020's Equity Vol Says About December
        109 “1 Percent” Days So Far This Year: What 2020’s Equity Vol Says About December

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 20:45

        By Jessica Rabe of DataTrek

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        The S&P 500 has moved more than 1 percent up or down on 108 trading days so far this year (109 with Tuesday’s 1.1% move), or almost half the time. That’s our fundamental benchmark of how much investors “feel” volatility, as any one-day move greater than 1 pct to the upside or downside is +1 standard deviation from the S&P’s mean daily return back to 1958. For reference, there is typically one +/-1 pct day/week in normal times. Here is an update for 2020’s count on a quarterly and annual basis:

        • Q1 2020: 30 one percent days versus the Q1 average of 13 since 1958 (first full year of data).
        • Q2 2020: 38 one percent days compared to the Q2 average of 13.
        • Q3 2020: 21 one percent days versus the Q3 average of 13.
        • Q4 2020 QTD through today: 19 one percent days versus the Q4 average of 14.
        • 2020 YTD: 108 one percent days, more than double the whole-year average of 53 over the last 6 decades.

        Bottom line: the S&P has only registered 100 or more “plus-one percent days” seven times including this year over the past +6 decades, or just 11 percent of the time. Therefore, we looked at what happens in December relative to returns and volatility amid these rare years of elevated equity market churn. Here are the results, clustered into 3 periods:

        Period #1:

        1974 (115 one percent days total, -25.9 pct total return):

        • December: 10 one percent days, down -2.0 pct on a price basis

        Comment: This disappointing performance came after another painful year (1973, S&P down 14.3 pct) amid the Saudi Oil Embargo and resultant energy crisis. Despite the Federal Reserve cutting rates in Q4 1974, the S&P still had elevated volatility (should be about 4 one percent days a month) and a negative performance that December. It was not until 1975 that volatility abated (80 one percent days) and the index rebounded 37 pct.

        Period #2:

        2000 (103 one percent days, -9.0 pct total return):

        • December: 10 one percent days, up 0.4 pct

        2001 (107 one percent days, -11.9 pct total return):

        • December: 6 one percent days, up 0.8 pct

        2002 (126 one percent days, -22.0 pct total return):

        • December: 9 one percent days, down -6.0 pct

        Comment: a slew of shocks that were both economic (Dot Com Bubble Burst) and geopolitical (domestic terror attack and international oil shock) created sharply negative returns and magnified volatility for three consecutive years in the early 2000s. While the S&P managed to end higher slightly in December 2000 and 2001, it had a rough December 2002 amid growing tensions with Iraq and a slow economic recovery from the 2001 recession. It took until 2003 (+28.4 pct total return and 83 one percent days) for volatility to trend lower and performance to start snapping back.

        Period #3:

        2008 (134 one percent days, -36.6 pct total return):

        • December: 15 one percent days, up 0.8 pct

        2009 (118 one percent days, +25.9 pct total return):

        • December: 5 one percent days, up 1.8 pct

        Comment: that unusually high number of one percent days in December 2008 contributed to the quarterly record of 50 in Q4 2008. That’s because the Federal government did not pass the landmark recovery bill for the Financial Crisis until February 2009, or one month before the market bottomed. Nevertheless, the S&P still had a positive return that December ahead of the change in power to end gridlock the next month in January 2009. The S&P also had a positive return in December 2009 after an especially volatile year as the Fed cut rates.

        Bottom line: 4 out of the 6 years with especially volatile returns (+100 one percent days) saw the S&P have a positive performance in December with still mostly above average number of one percent days for the month. That’s a small sample size, however, so the greater message is that a series of both economic and geopolitical shocks usually lead to weak performance in December during these types of years (i.e. 1974 and 2002). While we recognize valuations – like in the early 2000s – are lofty, we think the current dynamic most mirrors the 2008/2009 experience. Yes, there was no pandemic back then, but there are finally highly effective vaccines on the way. Additionally, the Fed remains accommodative, and even if lawmakers can’t come to an agreement on a CARES Act II as they return to Congress, President-elect Joe Biden has the opportunity after he is Inaugurated in January.

        That said, with the S&P already up double digits for the year (+12.1 pct), we understand why some investors want to lighten up. History shows that even if the S&P is usually positive during December in particularly volatile years like 2020, returns are mostly mild (+0.4 pct to +1.8 pct). But for those still bullish, the data is in your favor for a little more upside to end the year.

      • Dalio: The United States Is At A Tipping Point That Could Lead To Revolution Or Civil War
        Dalio: The United States Is At A Tipping Point That Could Lead To Revolution Or Civil War

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 20:28

        It was almost exactly ten years ago that we first predicted that the Fed’s “moronic” QE which has sparked an unprecedented class, income and wealth divide, “positions US society one step closer to civil war if not worse.” This prompted Time magazine to mock our forecast, although we doubt the author, currently at Bloomberg where pretty much every financial op-ed writer eventually ends up, is laughing today after an almost identical assessment of the current situation, if ten years delayed, was published by a far more “respected” by the likes of Time commentator, Ray Dalio.

        In the latest installment of his ongoing series on the changing world order published on his LinkedIn page, Dalio finally turned to ground zero in what will be the conflict of the 21st century – class and power struggles – and mused if the U.S. is at a tipping point that could move it from what he says is “manageable” tension to a full-blown revolution.

        “People and politicians are now at each other’s throats to a degree greater than at any time in my 71 years,” Dalio wrote noting that disorder is rising in a number of countries. “How the U.S. handles its disorder will have profound implications for Americans, others around the world, and most economies and markets.”

        “It is in this stage when there are bad financial conditions and intensifying conflict,” wrote Dalio. “Classically this stage comes after periods of great excesses in spending and debt and the widening of wealth and political gaps and before there are revolutions and civil wars. United States is at a tipping point in which it could go from manageable internal tension to revolution and/or civil war.”

        The founder of Bridgewater urged his readers to think about class issues that can become inflamed during stressful periods, as the struggle over wealth and power tends to be the “biggest thing affecting most people in most countries through time”, Bloomberg recapped. 

        “One timeless and universal truth that I saw went back as far as I studied history, since before Confucius around 500 BC, is that those societies that draw on the widest range of people and give them responsibilities based on their merits rather than privileges are the most sustainably successful because they find the best talent to do their jobs well, they have diversity of perspectives, and they are perceived as the most fair, which fosters social stability,” Dalio wrote.

        We doubt that the pervasive cancel cultures that permeates US society today, or the ubiquitous central planning by the Federal Reserve coupled with manipulated central markets to promote a socialist agenda and to allocated capital and talent as the government sees fit, in the process bypassing capitalism, will allow US society to every again claim to be fair or merit-based.

        Below are some of the key quotes from Dalio’s essay:

        • “How people are with each other is the primary driver of the outcomes they get.”
        • “The United States is at a tipping point in which it could go from manageable internal tension to revolution and/or civil war.”
        • “To be clear, I am not saying that the United States or other countries are inevitably headed that way; however, I am saying that now is an especially important time to know and watch the markers in order to understand the full range of possibilities for the period ahead.”
        • “The lessons and warnings of history are clear if one looks for them, most people don’t look for them because most people learn from their experiences and a single lifetime is too short to give them those lessons and warnings that they need.”
        • “I cannot overstate the importance of class struggles relative to individual struggles. We, especially those in the United States, which is a “melting pot,” tend to think more of individual struggles and not give adequate attention to class struggles. I didn’t fully realize its importance until I did my extensive study of history.”
        • “While I love that the United States is the country where these class distinctions matter least, people’s classes still matter in the U.S. and they matter a lot more during stressful times when class conflicts intensify.”
        • “When wars—civil or external—happen you will have to decide whether you want to be in them or get out of them. When in doubt get out. You can always get back in, but you might not be able to get out.”
        • “You individually, and those who are leading, need to have a realistic understanding of the circumstances you are in, the range of possibilities that exist given these circumstances, and how to make decisions to produce the best possible outcomes given these circumstances.”
        • “You also need to be very adaptable in order to do the things you might need to do that are outside your current range of possibilities.”
        • “You can have a better future if you put deferred gratification ahead of immediate gratification”

        His full essay “The Archetypical Cycle of Internal Order and Disorder“, can be found here.

      • "Superforecasters" Now See 90% Odds 200 Million Americans Will Be Vaccinated By October
        “Superforecasters” Now See 90% Odds 200 Million Americans Will Be Vaccinated By October

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 20:05

        With Moderna officially filing for expedited approval from the FDA yesterday, and Pfizer following up by announcing early Tuesday in the New York morning, With vaccine newsflow driving trading activity for yet another week, the team of analysts at Goldman Sachs has produced another handy guide to new developments in the race for a global vaccine.

        Like the last update, Goldman’s latest piece focuses on where the top performers are in the process, and which countries and regions have a step up in the race to ‘reserve’ precious resources.

        One interesting addition to this week’s chartbook is a summary of the ‘outlook’ for achieving ‘widespread vaccination’ in different parts of the world, featuring notable quotes from Dr. Fauci and Matt Hancock (the secretary of health in the UK).

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        The team started with an update on the status of the three leading western projects, along with the vaccine from Russia’s Gamaleya Institute.

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        Before continuing on to some of the other top-tier projects that have released new data or information about trial enrollment etc.

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        Here’s where things stand in the US, UK and EU as far as vaccine makers and their projections are concerned.

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        The researchers also broke down the various supply agreements between governments and manufacturers.

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        In the west, the deals have primarily been structured in the form of purchase options.

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        For at least the second week in a row, Goldman analysts say, public opinion polling has shown rising “demand” for a vaccine – that is, more people are allegedly willing to take the vaccine as soon as it’s available than a month ago, as authorities attempts to shore up the “credibility” of COVID vaccines appear to be bearing some fruit.

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        Finally, a team of superforecasters consulted by Goldman see a 71% chance that 25 million Americans – presumably mostly health-care workers, cops and other stuff – will be vaccinated by Jan. 21.

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        The odds that these vaccination milestones will be delayed until Q2 2021 are seen as pretty small, in the low-single-digits, percentage-wise. Meanwhile, the odds that 200 million Americans will be vaccinated by the start of Q4 are supposedly as high as 90%.

        With so much still unknown, and companies like Pfizer and UPS scrambling to build special packages to ship the dry ice necessary to preserve and transport the Pfizer vaccine.

        We’ll need to revisit these predictions a year from now and see how they worked out.

         

      • A "Titanic Taper Tantrum"? JPMorgan Expects Bond Demand To Tumble By $600BN In 2021
        A “Titanic Taper Tantrum”? JPMorgan Expects Bond Demand To Tumble By $600BN In 2021

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 19:45

        Two weeks we showed a concerning chart from Bank of America according to which after monetizing virtually all net Treasury issuance in 2020, the Fed’s monetization of debt in 2021 would shrink drastically, and as a result, “Treasury supply will significantly outstrip Fed purchases”, and this is even without factoring in the possibility of another major fiscal stimulus.

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        This prompted us to ask whether another “crisis” would spontaneously emerge in the coming months to greenlight another massive expansion in the Fed’s QE; and why not – after all we are now well past the point where there is even a trace of monetary prudence with global central banks set to double their balance sheets in just two years :

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        But let’s (naively) assume there are no major changes to the Fed’s current monetization of $80BN in Treasurys every month. What does that mean for supply and demand for both Treasurys and the broader bond universe, and by extension, equilibrium bond prices?

        To answer that question, JPMorgan quant Nick Panigirtzoglou looked at bond supply and demand in 2021 and projected that while there will be a substantial decline in global bond supply next year, he anticipates an even more dramatic drop in bond demand, largely driven by a reduction in G4 central bank purchases.

        Starting with supply, in 2021 JPMorgan sees bond supply declining by just over $1 trillion “largely due to a decline in spread product supply where our credit strategists see an effective halving of net issuance in US HG corporate bonds from nearly $1tr in 2020 to around $450bn in 2021. By contrast, government supply looks set to decline only marginally, as a decline in government bond issuance outside the US is largely offset by an increase in US Treasury issuance. This in turn arises from the fact that this year’s funding of the deficit came largely in the form of T-bills in 1H20, with the Treasury gradually increasing bond issuance from May onward.” However, in 2021, JPM expects a $670bn contraction in T-bills outstanding which together with the deficit are set to be absorbed by $2.8tr of bond supply, vs. $2.29tr T-bill supply and $1.75tr of bond supply in 2020.

        Meanwhile, on the demand side, “the biggest shift this year has been the central bank QE response.” Among the G4 (US, Euro area, Japan, UK) central banks, bond purchases look set to reach $5.1tr in 2020, driven by the aggressive expansion in Fed QE in late March to provide liquidity coupled with the expansion of ECB purchases in early April. However, for 2021, JPM sees central bank QE impulse declining to around $3.6tr, largely as a continuation of the Fed’s current pace in 2021 will still see a reduction in overall purchases given the aggressive nature of the initial response. And while the largest US bank expects the Fed to provide some further stimulus at the December meeting, it expects this to come in the form of an extension of the average maturity of its Treasury purchases rather than an increase in the pace. As for the ECB, JPM sees a modest increase overall relative to 2020, expecting a €500bn expansion in the PEPP programme in Dec20 and another €250bn expansion in 2H21. Elsewhere, the BoE has already announced a £150bn expansion for 2021, while net buying by the BoJ should be around ¥30tr in JGBs. “Overall, this means we see a deterioration in bond demand from G4 central banks of around $1.5tr in 2021 relative to this year”, according to the Panigirtzoglou.

        To be sure, other sources will also be a major supply/demand wildcard as follows:

        • G4 commercial banks were the second largest source of bond demand in 2020 after central banks, with purchases of around $1.5tr. For 2021, JPM pencils in a 1/3rd decline in commercial bank demand in 2021, or a deterioration in bond demand of around $500bn to $1 trillion.
        • Foreign official demand (i.e., reserve managers), as measured by the IMF’s COFER data, suggest that FX reserves contracted by around $310bn in 1Q20 as many central banks responded to the pandemic by supporting their currencies. Two thirds of this decline, or around $200bn, was reversed in 2Q20. JPM calculations suggest a continuation of gradual reserve accumulation in 2H20, bringing overall bond demand from FX reserve managers to around $20bn for this year. For 2021, a continuation of a modest dollar depreciation centred could see a gradual accumulation of reserves and the bank pencils in an $80bn increase in bond demand vs. 2020.
        • G4 pension funds and insurance companies bought around $270b of bonds in 1H20, broadly consistent with an annualized pace of around $540bn and in-line with the previous year’s pace. In principle, the strong gains in equities in 2H20 could arguably have seen an increase in the pace of bond purchases. However, while the recovery of equities has helped reduce funding deficits of US defined benefit pension funds to a level where they are little changed YTD. Looking ahead, JPM pencils in a modest increase in pension fund bond demand of around $100bn in 2021 vs. this year.
        • Finally, retail investors are currently tracking an annualized demand pace of around $340bn, which however masks significant outlaws in 1Q20 of $180bn, after which bond fund inflows reached nearly $500bn, broadly consistent with its average over the past decade. JPM pencils in a similar $500bn bond fund demand backdrop for 2021, which would imply an increase in bond demand of around $160bn.

        Putting it all together, JPMorgan  now sees a nearly $1.7 trillion deterioration in global bond demand and a $1 trillion decline in global bond supply, or around $600bn deterioration in the supply/demand balance for 2021.

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        Of course, less demand can quickly turn into more demand if the price is lower (yield higher), and according to JPM this deterioration in the supply/demand imbalance “implies upward pressure on bond yields next year of just over 20bp based on the relationship between annual changes in excess supply and global agg yields over the past decade, effectively reversing a third of this year’s decline.”

        Obviously this begs the question of how much of the above is already priced in; alternatively one can also ask a market which has habituated to Fed intervention how much excess QE (or maturity extension, or yield curve control) is priced into today’s 10Y yield of 0.93%. Because while JPM’s sanguine conclusion that a $600 billion shortfall in demand can be offset with a simple 20bps increase in yields would surely be taken advantage of by the Fed which is certainly eager to steepen the yield curve to give struggling domestic banks some more bang for the NIM buck. And yet we doubt it because the moment the Fed’s unveils new forward guidance indicating that not only is more QE not coming but the current $80BN/monthly is set to shrink, we expect surge in bond yields.

        Why? Because that’s precisely what happened in May 2013 when Bernanke unleashed the infamous taper tantrum. That’s when yields soared by 150 bps, sparking a cascade of VaR shocks as the market freaked out. Well, back then it was just QE3 that was being tapered: considering that the size and scope of the current QE is far, far greater, we can only imagine just how dire the “titanic taper tantrum of 2021” will be.

      • GOP Plaintiffs Ask SCOTUS To Block Pennsylvania Certification
        GOP Plaintiffs Ask SCOTUS To Block Pennsylvania Certification

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 19:25

        Authored by Simon Veazey via The Epoch Times,

        The Republican plaintiffs who are challenging legislation that allowed mail-in ballots from all comers in Pennsylvania, today filed a request to the Supreme Court to block the state from certifying the election.

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        The state Supreme Court had dismissed the case on Nov. 28, overturning a temporary block on election certification issued by a lower court.

        Challenging that ruling, the emergency application for injunction, dated Dec. 1, asks the Supreme Court to prohibit the Pennsylvania governor and secretary of state from “taking official action to tabulate, compute, canvass, certify, or otherwise finalize the results of the election.”

        “To the extent that the above-prohibited actions have already taken place, petitioners seek an injunction to restore the status quo ante, compelling respondents to nullify any such actions already taken, until further order of this court,” says the petition.

        The emergency application essentially asks the court to put a temporary hold on certifying the state election pending the filing of a full writ of certiorari – asking the court to review the lower court decisions.

        The case was filed by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and others. They claim that an act passed last year by the state legislature that allows voting by mail without excuse violated the state constitution.

        The state Supreme Court dismissed the case with prejudice, saying that the lawsuit had not been filed in a “timely manner,” since the act in question was signed into law on Oct. 31, 2019.

        That ruling, however, appears to leave open the broader merits of the case – that the law, Act 77, requires an amendment to the state constitution.

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        In this screenshot from the RNC’s livestream of the 2020 Republican National Convention, Pennsylvania congressional nominee Sean Parnell addresses the virtual convention on Aug. 24, 2020. (Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

        One of the plaintiffs, Republican congressional candidate Sean Parnell, told KDKA on Nov. 30:

        “While we believe that Act 77 is certainly a state issue, we also believe that there are very important federal questions nested within it. So what we’re doing is we’re looking to appeal to the Supreme Court on those federal questions.”

        The petition, filed with Judge Samuel A. Alito, poses two questions for the Supreme Court to answer:

        1. Can a state violate its own constitutional restrictions without violating the U.S. constitutional clauses relating to elections and due process?

        2. And did the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution “by dismissing with prejudice the case below, on the basis of laches, thereby foreclosing any opportunity for petitioners to seek retrospective and prospective relief for ongoing constitutional violations?”

        The state Supreme Court said on Nov. 28 that the petitioners waited until days before the county of boards of election were required to certify the election results, which could “result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters” who voted by mail.

        “It is beyond cavil that petitioners failed to act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim,” the court wrote.

        Parnell told KDKA that it was a “Catch-22” situation.

         “Had I filed it earlier, I would have probably not been able to bring the case into court because I wouldn’t have had legal standing,” he said.

        “So they would have probably said, ‘Well, the harm that you’re alleging is speculative.’”

        Parnell said that the case was not about whether mail-in ballots are good or bad per se, but about state constitutional procedure.

        “Democrat or Republican, if the citizen learns that his law is unconstitutional, it’s our duty and responsibility as citizens to challenge that law,” he said, noting that he was being criticized by some Republicans for his actions.

        The lawsuit is filed against the state, the majority Republican general assembly, Gov. Tom Wolf, and Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.

        In the state Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice Thomas Saylor issued a separate opinion agreeing to reverse the preliminary injunction. However, Saylor said he believes the Republican petitioners should still be able to argue their case about the constitutional validity of Act 77.

        “I find that the relevant substantive challenge raised by appellees presents troublesome questions about the constitutional validity of the new mail-in voting scheme,” Saylor wrote.

        Shortly after the appeal was filed, Senator Ted Cruz issued a statement in support:

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      • Facebook Says It Will Provide The "Authoritative Information" On COVID Vaccines
        Facebook Says It Will Provide The “Authoritative Information” On COVID Vaccines

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 19:05

        No sooner did we just get finishing penning a piece about how the British Army is being used to fight “anti-vaccine” protests and vaccine “disinformation” – including by “work[ing] closely with social media companies” – than Mark Zuckerberg has also thrown his hat into the fray.

        The Facebook CEO has said he wants to provide platform users with “authoritative information about Covid-19 vaccines,” according to CNBC. The company has “already reached out to the Biden administration,” Zuckerberg has said. We don’t know about you, but we already feel safer and more informed…

        Meanwhile, “authoritative” is a great word choice. 

        On a livestream with Dr. Anthony Fauci this week, Zuckerberg said: “There’ll be a few important things that we can do together. We’re already planning a push around authoritative information about the vaccines.”

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        He did not clarify on how he planned on distributing the information, but if it’s anything like how Facebook informed its users on how to vote, it will be a non-stop bludgeoning of banners, alerts and messages that will completely override what little true “user experience” is left on Facebook, between the ads. 

        Recall, we also wrote hours ago that the British Army’s Information Warfare Unit is being deployed to deal with “anti-vaccine propaganda” heading into the rollout of the vaccine overseas. Some in the country have said they will refuse the vaccine and will do the same for the children. Others have called it a “mass sterilization program”. Other Brits simply “feel the Government is wielding too much power,” the Daily Mail noted. 

        The U.K. is also launching a probe into “vaccine disinformation”, including an investigation into (of course) Russia. 

        A U.K. Cabinet Office spokesman said late last week:  “As we edge closer to a vaccine we continue to work closely with social media companies and other organizations to anticipate and mitigate any emerging anti-vax narratives and promote authoritative sources of information.”

        We’re sure the Biden administration will do the same and anoint Facebook as its official Covid press secretary. 

      • Texas, California See Record COVID Numbers, SF Mayor Hints At Another Lockdown: Live Updates
        Texas, California See Record COVID Numbers, SF Mayor Hints At Another Lockdown: Live Updates

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 18:51

        Summary:

        • Texas, California see record numbers
        • Cuomo says hospital capacity expansion a “top priority”
        • France to prioritize vaccinating nursing home residents
        • San Francisco warns new measures coming as soon as this week
        • Denmark announces new restrictions
        • The Netherlands sees decline in new cases
        • US hospitalizations hit new record
        • Vietnam halts international flights
        • Ireland begins reopening Tuesday
        • CureVac chairman says vaccine will be ready in Q1

        * * *

        Update (1820ET): We’re getting some more dire numbers out of the US, as cases look set to surge in today’s nationwide tally following a new record in daily cases in Texas, and a record hospitalization tally in California.

        California has a record 9,049 patients hospitalized with the virus after only recently exceeding levels from July. Now that California’s hospitalizations are back in record territory, the state is already acting, moving more counties into its most dire ‘purple’ designation, while Gov Gavin Newsom hints at another lockdown. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed hinted at another lockdown, warning that more-stringent measures may be coming as soon as this week.

        In Texas, officials reported 15,182 new cases, and 170 new deaths, raising the tally to 21,549 deaths.

        New Jersey reported 90 deaths, by far the most in more than six months. The state now has 15,254 lab-confirmed virus fatalities and 1,829 with an untested but probable link.

        Meanwhile, the CDC has voted on a protocol for prioritizing the distribution of the first batches of COVID-19 vaccines.

        * * *

        Update (1310ET): As coronavirus hospitalizations in the US hit new highs, virus-related hospitalizations in New York jumped by 242 in one day, the most since early April. There were 3,774 hospitalizations on Monday, and 66 virus-related deaths, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday during a briefing via conference call.

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        Cuomo reminded New Yorkers that hospital capacity is a “top priority” and that orders have already been given to increase the number of available beds as hospitalizations in the state surge. These include a backup facility on Staten Island.

        New York City is urging older adults and those with underlying health conditions to stay home and refuse any guests in order to moderate the spread of the virus. City hospitalizations have doubled in recent weeks and are now 1,100, the highest since June. The seven-day average of daily reported cases has climbed to 1,685, the highest since May. A month ago, the daily case average was 621. The percentage of people testing positive continues to climb, to a seven-day average of 4.14%.

        It’s evening in Western Europe, and Denmark has become the latest country to impose new restrictions that will hit the greater Copenhagen area and take effect next week. Denmark is struggling to contain the latest surge in cases, while in the Netherlands, right next door, authorities revealed that new cases dropped 8% over the past week, attributing their success to the COVID-19 measures.

        * * *

        As warnings about a “long dark winter” ahead intensify, with the NYT once again quoting scientists projecting death tolls and case tallies several times larger than what we have seen already, hospitalizations in the US have hit a new record high with more than 96k patients admitted to hospitals around the country.

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        However, even as daily tests now top 2 million, the number of new cases in the US is still falling, continuing an incipient trend that started just before the Thanksgiving holiday.

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        Source: COVID Tracking Project

        Still, the alarming surge in hospitalizations over the past month would suggest that higher death tolls might be in store, as rural hospitals are overwhelmed by the crush of severely ill patients.

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        Meanwhile, the biggest news on the vaccine front has to do with Pfizer’s latest vaccine development: the company has officially filed for emergency use approval in the EU on Tuesday – after making the same request of authorities in the US last week.

        Outside the US, Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered the country’s aviation authority to halt international commercial flights after health authorities reported the country’s first local cases in almost three months, according to a posting on the government’s website. The premier – who added that  “rescue” flights bringing Vietnamese home from abroad should continue – instructed the Ho Chi Minh City government to quickly trace and isolate everyone who came in contact with those who tested positive this week.

        Here’s a roundup of COVID news from around the world and in the US:

        Ireland, one of the first countries in western Europe to return to lockdown in late October, began reopening its economy on Tuesday. Non-essential stores welcomed shoppers back. Restaurants will reopen later this week, as well as bars serving food. Bars that only serve drinks will remain closed (Source: Bloomberg).

        Jean Stephenne, chairman of German biotech company CureVac NV, said he is confident the company’s Covid vaccine will be ready in the first quarter of 2021, and there is no reason to suggest its efficiency won’t match that of rivals. “We’re running a few months behind Pfizer, but confident on prospect for February-March,” he said (Source: Bloomberg).

      • SpaceX Starlink User TOS Declares Mars As 'Free Planet'
        SpaceX Starlink User TOS Declares Mars As ‘Free Planet’

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 18:45

        Authored by Mike Brown via Inverse.com

        Starlink’s beta test is requiring participants to recognize Mars as a “free planet.”

        It’s an unusual bit of fine print, and the implications go far beyond securing good internet on Earth.

        SpaceX’s internet connectivity constellation Starlink, which began forming in May 2019, has started inviting interested fans to the “Better Than Nothing” beta test. While the final version aims to offer gigabit download speeds at low latency to anyone with a view of the sky, the beta is offering more like 50 to 150 megabits per second – hence the humble-brag test name.

        But the Starlink terms of service, as spotted by Twitter account “WholeMarsBlog” and confirmed by Reddit moderator “Smoke-away,” require users to agree that “no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.”

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        Starlink’s dish design. SpaceX

        Under section nine of the terms, SpaceX explains how services provided around the Earth or Moon will follow the law as governed by the state of California in the United States. But for Mars, the story changes a bit:

        “For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

        The comments highlight one of SpaceX’s biggest ambitions for the coming decades: to send the first humans to Mars and ultimately establish a city by 2050.

        To achieve that goal, the firm is developing the Starship, a fully-reusable rocket measuring around 400 feet tall when paired with the booster. SpaceX wants to send the first cargo ships to the Red Planet in the next few years.

        Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, has commented before about the sort of government he’d like to see emerge on the planet. In a March 2018 interview, he predicted the city would operate on some sort of direct democracy. He compared it to the early United States, where representative democracy was most logical due to the sheer size of the nascent state.

        “Everyone votes on every issue and that’s how it goes,” Musk explained. “There’s a few things I’d recommend. Keep laws short. […] Something suspicious is going on if there’s long laws.”

        Not everyone follows Musk’s logic. Jim Pass, CEO of the Astrosociology Research Institute, told Inverse in April 2019 that he believed the determiner will be who is sponsoring the settlement. A religious organization could lead to a theocracy, whereas military types may lead to a more autocratic structure.

        Like other features of the “Better Than Nothing” beta, it’s possible that Starlink’s terms right now don’t make it to the final version. The company is expected to start offering services in the United States and Canada by 2020, before moving to a larger breadth of the populated world by 2021.

        The Inverse analysis – As with many of Musk’s projects, it seems Starlink includes some tongue-in-cheek references, too.

        Another joke was spotted in the new Android app by Reddit user “joehalfrack.” In the app, an animated character called Dishy attempts to help. The easter egg, seemingly a reference to Microsoft Office’s much-hated “Clippy” assistant, is an example of the sort of references Musk likes to make, whether in his company’s products or on his personal Twitter account.

        It’s difficult to imagine Starlink’s terms trumping international laws and treaties, but if the clause was designed to draw attention to the service it worked — how many other satellite broadband providers do you know that have people sharing their terms of service on Twitter?

      • How Many COVID-19 Vaccines Has Trump's Operation Warpspeed Secured?
        How Many COVID-19 Vaccines Has Trump’s Operation Warpspeed Secured?

        Tyler Durden

        Tue, 12/01/2020 – 18:25

        Moderna has reported some more good news from its trials, stating that its Covid-19 vaccine candidate has a final efficacy of just over 94 percent with nobody who received it during trials falling severely ill. That has paved the way for the company to apply for emergency usage authorization in the U.S. and Europe. That puts Moderna around a week behind Pfizer and BioNTech who already took that step with their own vaccine that emerged from trials with an efficacy of 95 percent.

        With the pandemic worsening and the race to roll out the first vaccine heating up, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that governments around the world have already reserved close to 10 billion doses before a single candidate has even reached the market. 2.6 billion further doses are under negotiation or reserved as optional expansions of existing deals. The findings come from Duke University who have been aggregating and analyzing publicly available data on vaccine procurement and manufacturing.

        The research shows that the U.S. had secured 1.01 billion doses from six different companies up to November 20 which represents the highest quantity of any government apart from India which has made agreements for 1.6 billion.

        Infographic: How Many Covid-19 Vaccine Doses Has The U.S. Secured? | Statista

        You will find more infographics at Statista

        Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna both account for 100 million U.S. doses each while the U.S. is also set for 500 million doses of the vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.

        It offers 70 percent protection according to trials, though it is believed this can be increased to 90 percent by tweaking the dose. The rest of the U.S. supply is made up of candidates that have not reported detailed testing results and it includes vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and Sanofi-GSK.

      Digest powered by RSS Digest

      Dec 01

      Today’s News 1st December 2020

      • America's Future Is Liberal Fascism Sporting A Smiley Shirt And Armed With A Syringe
        America’s Future Is Liberal Fascism Sporting A Smiley Shirt And Armed With A Syringe

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 23:50

        Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

        The globalists responsible for engineering a medical tyranny across much of the Western world have something valuable to teach right-wing nationalists and would-be fascists, and that is you don’t sell your damaged product out of the barrel of a machine gun, but rather dripping from the end of a syringe that promises to end all pain and misery.

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        Patrick Henry, one of America’s more outspoken Founding Fathers, famously remarked “give me liberty or give me death” when the life of his nation was on the line.

        Today, America’s famous battle cry has been replaced by a masked and muffled gasp that advises, without hope of a second opinion, “give me lockdowns and keep me safe.”

        So terrified is the American public of catching a virus that comes with a 99 percent survival rate that they are willing to forego Thanksgiving, the great national holiday commemorating – with no loss of irony – their Pilgrim ancestors’ collective courage to overcome the wild, hostile conditions of their new land.

        It must be said that no fascist party has ever been so adept when it came to sealing the collective fate of their people to a common enemy. That’s because the threat facing mankind today, or so we are told, is not some nefarious ideology, like communism, or even a terrorist organization that the masses can be rallied to fight. Rather, the threat is a microscopic contagion that is capable of invading every nook and cranny of our lives. Already the age of manly handshakes is over, replaced by an emasculated majority, while an entire generation of youth now looks at their fellow human beings as infernal germ factories.

        And unlike a traditional enemy that can be seen, attacked and eventually defeated, the coronavirus – we have been oddly forewarned – will make landfall again and again, while regularly morphing with comic book abilities into an increasingly deadlier villain. In this landless battle, only the medical authorities are decorated as heroes, while the people, lacking the professional credentials, are forced to be passive and helpless onlookers, their freedom of movement severely constrained. More importantly, the forces of nationalism have become irrelevant; only a globalist, one-world-order response can defeat this pandemic.

        There is very good reason to suspect, however, that either the science on all of this is half-baked, or we the people are being intentionally duped on a grand scale. In fact, it’s probably a little bit of both. First, relying on nothing more than empirical evidence, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that there is no existential emergency confronting mankind. If there were, we would expect to see decomposing bodies piling up in the streets, like in the medieval times during the Black Plague. This would be especially the case among the homeless population, which is certainly not practicing social distancing etiquette as they pass around open containers on street corners.

        Nor does there seem to be any massive queuing up at hospitals for emergency treatment. In fact, as early as April, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told President Trump that the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort deployed to New York City by the federal government to help fight the coronavirus outbreak was “no longer needed”. Cuomo said the need for the support vessel “didn’t reach the levels that had been projected.” And I am certainly not the only one who has noticed that Covid cases seem to fluctuate curiously with the political climate.

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        Let’s not forget that the overwhelming majority of Covid ‘victims’ recover nicely at home, according to no less of an authority than Anthony Fauci. At the same time, many people who acquire the disease are asymptomatic and never even knew they were infected. Children, meanwhile, seem amazingly impervious to the virus. That is not to say that there has been no sign of a virus this winter season. Of course there has been, just like every year. But while Covid cases may be on the rise in some places, and invisible in others, the death rate from this illness remains low and tumbling, predominantly hitting elderly people already suffering from comorbidities.

        There are other reasons to be suspicious that what we are dealing with is not a first-class medical emergency, but rather something much more sinister. Like maybe an excuse for rolling out a Western-made vaccine that carries a microchip implant with tracking technology? Such a claim will sound less fantastic when it is realized that it has already been developed.

        It is no secret that just one month before Covid-19 made its dramatic landfall in the United States, purportedly from Wuhan, China, MIT researchers announced a new method for recording a patient’s vaccination history: storing the smartphone-readable data under the skin at the same time a vaccine is administered.

        “By selectively loading microparticles into microneedles, the patches deliver a pattern in the skin that is invisible to the naked eye but can be scanned with a smartphone that has the infrared filter removed,” MIT News reported.

        “The patch can be customized to imprint different patterns that correspond to the type of vaccine delivered.”

        Would it surprise anyone to know that the research was funded largely by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the same family venture that now provides the bulk of funding to the World Health Organization?

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

        Then, in September 2019, ID2020, a San Francisco-based biometric company that counts Microsoft as one of its founding members, announced a new project that involves the “exploration of multiple biometric identification technologies for infants” that is based on “infant immunization.”

        We could continue here with a long list of other disturbing technologies that would effectively turn people into walking antennae for the rest of their lives, but the point is hopefully clear: although many people might be willing to accept a vaccine against Covid-19, they probably do not want the extra technological add-ons that people like Bill Gates, a man with zero medical qualifications, seem extremely anxious to include.

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        So what can Americans expect next? How about ‘Freedom Passes’ that Britons may need before they are able to return to some semblance of normalcy?

        According to the Daily Mail, “Britons are set to be given Covid ‘freedom passes’ as long as they test negative for the virus twice in a week, it has been suggested…To earn the freedom pass, people will need to be tested regularly and, provided the results come back negative, they will then be given a letter, card or document they can show to people as they move around.”

        And this is what they call a “return to normalcy.”

        Personally, I call those plans the approach of fascism. And for those who doubt that it could not happen in America should heed the words of the late sagacious comedian George Carlin, who once quipped that “when fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jackboots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts.” Had Carlin been alive today to see the tremendous mess we’ve inherited, he would most likely have included a syringe in the neo-fascist’s toolkit.

      • South Korean Duck Farm Suffers Outbreak Of "Highly Pathogenic" H5N8 Bird Flu
        South Korean Duck Farm Suffers Outbreak Of “Highly Pathogenic” H5N8 Bird Flu

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 23:30

        As COVID-19 cases slow after reaching a worldwide peak, eliciting a warning from WHO chief Dr. Tedros that people living in hard-hit areas shouldn’t get too complacent, a strain of “highly contagious” Avian bird flu has apparently traveled from Europe to South Korea.

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        A few days after an outbreak of bird flu led to a culling of more than 10,000 birds in northern England – though authorities were quick to reassure the public that there was no risk to the food supply – South Korean authorities have discovered an outbreak of a “highly contagious” H5N8 bird flu on a duck farm in the southwestern part of the country.

        The outbreak, which occurred in the town of Girin-ri, roughly 300 kilometers from Seoul, killed 19,000 ducks.

        There are six other poultry farms within a radius of three kilometers (1.9 miles) from the farm where the infected ducks were found, and all are being inspected.

        Nearly 20k ducks died, and some 392k chickens and ducks at a total of six farms were killed, to prevent the spread of the disease, the ministry also said.

        Authorities have already issued an order to stop any activities at poultry and livestock facilities, while freezing the movement of poultry products across the country for 48 hours. The blockage will last seven days for poultry farms in Jeongeup, as well as for farms within a radius of 10 kilometers from the site of the outbreak 30 days. The national alert level over the spread of bird flu has been raised to a “serious hazard.”.

        The same strain of bird flu emerged in populations in Germany early this year.  It hit several of Europe’s largest poultry producers located in Germany and elsewhere. While scientists believe the pathogen – while highly contagious – isn’t contagious to humans, at one point scientists in China said the same thing about COVID-19.

      • Iranian Nuclear Program Gains Steam Following Assassination Of "Nuclear Soleimani" Near Tehran
        Iranian Nuclear Program Gains Steam Following Assassination Of “Nuclear Soleimani” Near Tehran

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 23:10

        Submitted by SouthFront,

        US President Donald Trump is apparently set to slam the door and go to great lengths to show love to his friends in Tel Aviv before withdrawing from the White House.

        On November 27, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent Iranian professor of physics and quantum field theorist, was assassinated near the Iranian capital of Tehran. Formally, Fakhrizadeh was the head of its Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, while Israel and the U.S. insist that he headed the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

        Israeli media even called Fakhrizadeh “the Nuclear Soleimani” referring to the commander of the Iranian Qods Force, who was assassinated by a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020. That assassination almost led to a US-Iranian war and the White House even swallowed a ballistic missile strike on its bases in Iraq, while Iranian air defense forces accidentally shot down an airliner near Tehran. Fortunately, a larger war was avoided, but the region entered into a new spiral of tensions between the Israeli-US bloc and Iranian-led forces. The November assassination did not trigger an immediate military response from Tehran, but there are little doubts that it will also have negative consequences for regional stability.

        According to US and Israeli media, the development of the Iranian nuclear program requires the following factors: time, money and specialists.

        1. Iran has already had a lot of time.

        2. Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” was intended to target the ‘money’ factor, but Iran’s so-called resistance economy survived despite the pressure.

        3. Now, the US and Israel once again turned to the ‘specialists’ factor of this formula and they have capabilities to conduct politically-motivated assassinations as a part of what they call the ‘deterrence campaign’ against Iran.

        Initial reports say that the car of Fakhrizadeh was targeted by a car bomb explosion and then was subjected to gunmen fire at Absard city. According to the Iranian Defense Ministry, Fakhrizadeh “was severely wounded in the course of the clashes between his security team and terrorists and was transferred to a hospital,” where he later succumbed to his wounds. Later it appeared in the unofficial version of events, claims that the attackers used a remotely-controlled machine gun that was installed in the trunk of a Nisan pickup. Then, the pickup and the gun were detonated. The Iranian Fars News report insists that the entire attack lasted for only 3 minutes and that no gunmen were involved.

        The assassination demonstrates the particular gaps in the security of such prominent and high-ranking persons. It is no secret that the life of Fakhrizadeh was under threat for years, but he still moved around the country with a small security team with only two cars, and his car was not even armored. This posture may be partly explained by the cult of martyrdom on the all levels of Iranian society and the fact that Iranian officials are pretty close to ordinary people, especially in comparison with other Middle Eastern states. These factors allow the current political regime in Iran to resist unprecedented sanctions, political and even military pressure from its opponents, but at the same time creates additional security difficulties.

        Immediately after the assassination, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Army were put on high alert and top Iranian officials vowed to take revenge for the attack. Also, on November 29, the Iranian Parliament decided to speed up the consideration of the bill that supposes to increase the level of uranium enrichment. As a “double urgency”, it was ratified with 232 votes from a total of 246 MPs attending the session. The final vote on the adoption of the law may take place on December 2. The bill states that Iran would now produce at least 120kg of uranium enriched to 20% per year. In comparison, the Iranian nuclear deal, from which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew, allowed Iran to enrich uranium to a maximum of 3.67%. In addition, under the bill in consideration, the government will have to put in operation one thousand additional centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordo nuclear facilities within a year. The bill also supposes an immediate return to the project for the reconstruction of the Arak nuclear reactor, which existed before the signing of the nuclear deal. Therefore, instead of slowing down the Iranian nuclear program, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh led to a public increase of the Iranian activity in the field. The United States and Israel will likely call these actions a great threat to global security and state that they are obliged to respond to the growing Iranian threat.

        The only question is what do the Israeli and US leadership expect? Did they really believe that after the years of resistance and regional standoffs, that the Iranians would surrender after an assassination of one of their scientists?

      • Sun Ejects Biggest Solar Flare In Years Ahead Of Active Cycle  
        Sun Ejects Biggest Solar Flare In Years Ahead Of Active Cycle  

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 22:50

        On Sunday, SpaceWeather said the sun’s solar explosion was measured as an M4.4-category eruption, which produced a shortwave radio blackout over some parts of Earth and a bright coronal mass ejection (CME). 

        “Remarkably, the flare was even bigger than it seemed. The blast site is located just behind the sun’s southeastern limb, so the explosion was partially eclipsed by the body of the sun. 

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        “X-rays and UV radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth’s atmosphere, producing a shortwave radio blackout over the South Atlantic… Ham radio operators and mariners may have noticed strange propagation effects at frequencies below 20 MHz, with some transmissions below 10 MHz completely extinguished,” SpaceWeather said on its website.

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        A coronagraph video via the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) shows the massive burst of electromagnetic radiation ejecting from the sun. 

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        SpaceWeather said the flare and an associated CME were not Earth-facing but erupted behind the sun’s southeastern limb. This is good news because the explosion was partially eclipsed by the body of the sun. If the flare were Earth-facing, it would’ve likely been an X-class event, meaning it could’ve resulted in widespread radio blackouts, downed power grids, and disrupted communication networks. 

        The last decade of solar activity has been on the decline, though the latest flare-up in activity could suggest a new busy cycle is about to start. 

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        In 2017, we noted that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) planned for a massive solar event that would be strong enough to take down the power grids.

        There has also been a couple of notable solar flare events in the last three years:

        With the Earth entering what appears to be an active solar period that could last through 2025 – this would present many challenges for the new digital economy as remote working has been kicked into hyperdrive because of the virus pandemic. Solar flares can disrupt satellite-based communications networks, as show below:

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        SpaceWeather warns that from Dec. 1-2, Sunday’s M4.4-class solar flare might sideswipe Earth’s magnetic field. 

        “The hidden sunspot that produced this major event will rotate onto the Earthside of the sun during the next day or two,” according to SpaceWeather. “Then its ability to spark geomagnetic storms will be greatly increased.” 

        An active solar cycle could be bad news for the digital economy as disruptions sparked by solar flares could create massive economic damage. 

      • After AZN Hack Accusation, Kim Jong Un Given COVID Vaccine By China
        After AZN Hack Accusation, Kim Jong Un Given COVID Vaccine By China

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 22:30

        Authored by Harry Kazianis via 19fortyfive.com

        North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and “multiple other high-ranking officials within the Kim family and leadership network” have been vaccinated for Coronavirus “within the last two to three weeks” thanks to a vaccine candidate supplied by the Chinese government, according to two Japanese intelligence sources. Both officials spoke to 19FortyFive under the condition that their names not be identified.

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        The news comes on the heels of reports in Reuters that North Korea is suspected to have tried to hack into the computer networks of drugmaker AstraZeneca, part of what appears to be a wide-ranging campaign to secure any and all COVID-19 vaccine data it can through illegal cyberattacks.

        North Korea’s COVID-19 Crisis Intensifies

        While the leadership of North Korea may have found a way to try and protect themselves from the dangers of Coronavirus, many parts of the country are being impacted dramatically, compounding ongoing economic challenges brought on through international sanctions, decades-long food insecurity issues, and the landing of three typhoons several months ago.

        With an antiquated and poorly resourced healthcare system that is in no shape to tackle a pandemic, North Korea has resorted to cutting itself off from the outside world since January when the so-called “hermit kingdom” sealed its borders in an attempt to keep out the virus. To this day, Pyongyang claims to not have any “confirmed” cases of COVID-19 in the country, although, has admitted to “suspected” cases.

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        Kim Jong Un Meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

        In recent days, multiple outlets have reported that various cities in North Korea—including Pyongyang, the capital—have been placed on lockdown due to COVID-19 concerns. The Kim regime has also instituted a ban on fishing and salt production in North Korean waters, executed an official for breaking anti-virus regulations, and instituted a shoot to kill order if anyone attempts to enter the country illegally.

        Is the Vaccine Safe?

        While neither source would confirm which company in China was the manufacturer of the Coronavirus vaccine given to the North Korean leadership, there are “at least 3-4 different Chinese vaccines in play including a whole inactivated virus vaccine from Sinovac and an adenovirus 5 vectored vaccine from CanSinoBio,” explained Dr. Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine.

        Of special note is a vaccine being crafted by Sinophram Group, which according to the chair of the company, has been used by nearly one million people within China.

        While clearly the number of vaccine candidates and vaccinations point to tremendous progress in what is surely a record-setting pace, questions remain over the effectiveness and safety of these vaccines, as no phase three trial data has been published on any Chinese vaccines as of now.

        “So far, it’s looking as though the COVID-19 virus spike protein is a pretty soft target so it’s quite possible some of those vaccines may work,” noted Dr. Hotez. “The problem is we don’t have much if any insight on their quality control and assurance and fidelity of clinical testing, which is the truly hard part of vaccines. Given that China is probably the world’s largest producer of vaccines—some estimates say 5 billion doses annually of different vaccines—and likely the supplier of North Korea historically, the fact that they are providing COVID vaccines for DPRK is not a surprise.”

        Kim’s Dilemma: What if the Vaccine Isn’t Effective?

        With the speed at which China and many drug manufacturers around the world are developing, testing, and deploying COVID-19 vaccines, there is a chance a vaccine candidate may not have the intended effectiveness vaccines vetted for much longer time frames have. What happens if Kim, eager to protect himself, his family, and top aides, are vaccinated with a Chinese version that ultimately is not effective? Can they be revaccinated with something provided by another vendor? At least for now, according to various experts I spoke to, there is no clear answer.

        “There is no data I’m aware of looking at boosting with different vaccines. That needs to be studied,” explained Dr. Hotez.  “My guess is that it will likely be ok depending on which vaccine was the prime and which one was the boost, but it needs to be studied.”

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        Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2: This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab.

        “The short answer is that we do not know whether revaccination with a more effective vaccine would be protective,” explained William John Moss, a Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, International Health and Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “However, I think it is likely that individuals could be revaccinated and derive protection from a more effective vaccine. The worst-case scenario would be that an initial vaccine could result in a less than ideal immune response that does not confer protection against Covid-19 but interferes with the response to a second vaccine. This will depend on the nature and magnitude of the immune responses elicited by the partially effective vaccine.”

        One More Way North Korea Is Dependent on China

        With North Korea’s existence as a country owed in large part due to massive subsidies in food and fuel thanks to China, it would seem Pyongyang is now indebted to Beijing even more, especially if China were to provide Coronavirus vaccine to the entire population, a situation that seems very possible. Such a move would be in Beijing’s interest, as it would want to avoid any large Coronavirus outbreaks that could lead to massive refugee flows coming into China or any internal instability in North Korea. And while the Kim regime may not feel comfortable relying even more heavily on China, they simply may have no choice—and be forced to follow Beijing’s lead more closely—at least for now.

        “North Korea’s total population is a tiny drop in the Chinese bucket. Xi’s government could take care of the entire country if it desires. A decision to do so also would affirm a new closeness to the bilateral relationship,” explained Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute, based in Washington, D.C.

        “Looking after Kim’s health should gain Beijing extra attention in Pyongyang for its views, though Kim still isn’t going to surrender anything unnecessarily.”

        “Even though Kim’s government has sought to reduce the DPRK’s economic and political dependence on China, that dependence and acquiescence still applies in high-priority situations. In other words, on crucial matters Pyongyang will do what Beijing wants,” noted Ted Galen Carpenter, a Senior Fellow also at the CATO Institute and longtime North Korea watcher.

      • 'The Wuhan Files': CNN Publishes Leaked Report Showing China Downplayed COVID-19 Outbreak
        ‘The Wuhan Files’: CNN Publishes Leaked Report Showing China Downplayed COVID-19 Outbreak

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 22:10

        CNN has just published the first of what might be a series of reports on a cache of new documents purporting to prove that the information disseminated by Chinese government officials was markedly different from the numbers, assessments and projections being shared with top-level officials. While that doesn’t prove China lied to the public, it’s definitely not a good look (not that any rational person takes China’s COVID numbers at face value).

        Reports dating from early February show that the number of cases reported in the province was at times 3x larger than what the public was being told.

        A whistleblower who worked in the Chinese health care system provided 117 pages of internal documents from Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention to CNN. The report analyzes data collected between Oct. 2019 and April 2020.

        For example, on Feb. 10, Chinese officials reported 2,478 new confirmed cases, making the total worldwide number reach beyond 40,000. But in a file labeled “internal document, please keep confidential,” the Hubei Provincial CDC recorded 5,918 new cases on that date, with 2,345 “confirmed cases,” 1,772 “clinically diagnosed cases” and 1,796 “suspected cases.”

        The documents also “reveal what appears to be an inflexible health care system constrained by top-down bureaucracy and rigid procedures that were ill-equipped to deal with the emerging crisis,” according to CNN.

        According to data from early March, the average time between symptom onset and confirmed diagnosis was 23.3 days. Three months later, China’s State Council released a White Paper saying the Chinese government had always published information related to the epidemic in a “timely, open and transparent fashion.”

        The leak comes Monday evening, just hours before clocks pass midnight on Dec. 1: “It was clear they did make mistakes – and not just mistakes that happen when you’re dealing with a novel virus – also bureaucratic and politically-motivated errors in how they handled it.”

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        But perhaps the most intriguing finding from the report is the fact that influenza cases mysteriously spiked in Hubei Province right around this time last year. The outbreak wasn’t centered around Wuhan, but it emerged in the neighboring cities of Yichang and Xianning. The outbreak wasn’t widely reported before now, even though the instance of cases was 20x higher than the prior year, according to the documents.

        At the same time that the virus is believed to have first emerged, the documents show another health crisis was unfolding: Hubei was dealing with a significant influenza outbreak. It caused cases to rise to 20 times the level recorded the previous year, the documents show, placing enormous levels of additional stress on an already stretched health care system.

        The influenza “epidemic,” as officials noted in the document, was not only present in Wuhan in December, but was greatest in the neighboring cities of Yichang and Xianning. It remains unclear what impact or connection the influenza spike had on the Covid-19 outbreak. And while there is no suggestion in the documents the two parallel crises are linked, information regarding the magnitude of Hubei’s influenza spike has still yet to be made public.

        As an important caveat, we most note: While this information wasn’t noted in the mainstream press, outlets like the Epoch Times – which has been widely derided as a purveyor of COVID ‘conspiracies’ – reported on a surge in “COVID-like” infections happening around the same time months ago.

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        CNN also noted that the revelations are coming as the US and EU are pushing China to cooperate fully with a WHO investigation, and indeed the agency just announced the other day that it’s sending another team comprising scientists of various nationalities on a more detailed fact-finding mission to investigate the “origins” of the pandemic.

        Still, we can’t help but wonder how a low-level bureaucrat would not only manage to abscond with such a highly classified report, but then manage to leak it to CNN, a news organization staffed primarily by English-speaking reporters (though to be sure there are undoubtedly Chinese language experts in its employ) – all without China’s all-seeing surveillance state catching wind of what’s happening. The origins of the leak, and the lack of detail devoted to explaining how CNN got this information, suggest that there’s something more at work here. Could this be another Intel leak to favored reporters trying to turn the public’s ire back on China – they lied to us! – as the long, dark winter Biden has promised finally begins?

        Or perhaps something more sinister?

      • The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse
        The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 21:50

        Authored by Graeme Wood via The Atlantic,

        A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news…

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        Peter Turchin, one of the world’s experts on pine beetles and possibly also on human beings, met me reluctantly this summer on the campus of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he teaches. Like many people during the pandemic, he preferred to limit his human contact. He also doubted whether human contact would have much value anyway, when his mathematical models could already tell me everything I needed to know.

        But he had to leave his office sometime. (“One way you know I am Russian is that I cannot think sitting down,” he told me. “I have to go for a walk.”) Neither of us had seen much of anyone since the pandemic had closed the country several months before. The campus was quiet. “A week ago, it was even more like a neutron bomb hit,” Turchin said. Animals were timidly reclaiming the campus, he said: squirrels, woodchucks, deer, even an occasional red-tailed hawk. During our walk, groundskeepers and a few kids on skateboards were the only other representatives of the human population in sight.

        The year 2020 has been kind to Turchin, for many of the same reasons it has been hell for the rest of us. Cities on fire, elected leaders endorsing violence, homicides surging—­­to a normal American, these are apocalyptic signs. To Turchin, they indicate that his models, which incorporate thousands of years of data about human history, are working.

        (“Not all of human history,” he corrected me once. “Just the last 10,000 years.”) He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an “age of discord,” civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced.

        In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.

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        The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions. His models, which track these factors in other societies across history, are too complicated to explain in a nontechnical publication. But they’ve succeeded in impressing writers for nontechnical publications, and have won him comparisons to other authors of “megahistories,” such as Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat had once found Turchin’s historical model­ing unpersuasive, but 2020 made him a believer: “At this point,” Douthat recently admitted on a podcast, “I feel like you have to pay a little more attention to him.”

        Diamond and Harari aimed to describe the history of humanity. Turchin looks into a distant, science-fiction future for peers. In War and Peace and War (2006), his most accessible book, he likens himself to Hari Seldon, the “maverick mathematician” of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, who can foretell the rise and fall of empires. In those 10,000 years’ worth of data, Turchin believes he has found iron laws that dictate the fates of human societies.

        The fate of our own society, he says, is not going to be pretty, at least in the near term. “It’s too late,” he told me as we passed Mirror Lake, which UConn’s website describes as a favorite place for students to “read, relax, or ride on the wooden swing.” The problems are deep and structural—not the type that the tedious process of demo­cratic change can fix in time to forestall mayhem. Turchin likens America to a huge ship headed directly for an iceberg: “If you have a discussion among the crew about which way to turn, you will not turn in time, and you hit the iceberg directly.”

        The past 10 years or so have been discussion. That sickening crunch you now hear—steel twisting, rivets popping—­­is the sound of the ship hitting the iceberg.

        “We are almost guaranteed” five hellish years, Turchin predicts, and likely a decade or more. The problem, he says, is that there are too many people like me. “You are ruling class,” he said, with no more rancor than if he had informed me that I had brown hair, or a slightly newer iPhone than his. Of the three factors driving social violence, Turchin stresses most heavily “elite overproduction”—­the tendency of a society’s ruling classes to grow faster than the number of positions for their members to fill. One way for a ruling class to grow is biologically—think of Saudi Arabia, where princes and princesses are born faster than royal roles can be created for them. In the United States, elites over­produce themselves through economic and educational upward mobility: More and more people get rich, and more and more get educated. Neither of these sounds bad on its own. Don’t we want everyone to be rich and educated? The problems begin when money and Harvard degrees become like royal titles in Saudi Arabia. If lots of people have them, but only some have real power, the ones who don’t have power eventually turn on the ones who do.

        In the United States, Turchin told me, you can see more and more aspirants fighting for a single job at, say, a prestigious law firm, or in an influential government sinecure, or (here it got personal) at a national magazine. Perhaps seeing the holes in my T-shirt, Turchin noted that a person can be part of an ideological elite rather than an economic one. (He doesn’t view himself as a member of either. A professor reaches at most a few hundred students, he told me. “You reach hundreds of thousands.”) Elite jobs do not multiply as fast as elites do. There are still only 100 Senate seats, but more people than ever have enough money or degrees to think they should be running the country. “You have a situation now where there are many more elites fighting for the same position, and some portion of them will convert to counter-elites,” Turchin said.

        Donald Trump, for example, may appear elite (rich father, Wharton degree, gilded commodes), but Trumpism is a counter-elite movement. His government is packed with credentialed nobodies who were shut out of previous administrations, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes because the Groton-­Yale establishment simply didn’t have any vacancies. Trump’s former adviser and chief strategist Steve Bannon, Turchin said, is a “paradigmatic example” of a counter-elite. He grew up working-class, went to Harvard Business School, and got rich as an investment banker and by owning a small stake in the syndication rights to Seinfeld. None of that translated to political power until he allied himself with the common people. “He was a counter-elite who used Trump to break through, to put the white working males back in charge,” Turchin said.

        Elite overproduction creates counter-elites, and counter-elites look for allies among the commoners. If commoners’ living standards slip—not relative to the elites, but relative to what they had before—they accept the overtures of the counter-elites and start oiling the axles of their tumbrels. Commoners’ lives grow worse, and the few who try to pull themselves onto the elite lifeboat are pushed back into the water by those already aboard. The final trigger of impending collapse, Turchin says, tends to be state insolvency. At some point rising in­security becomes expensive. The elites have to pacify unhappy citizens with handouts and freebies—and when these run out, they have to police dissent and oppress people. Eventually the state exhausts all short-term solutions, and what was heretofore a coherent civilization disintegrates.

        Turchin’s prognostications would be easier to dismiss as barstool theorizing if the disintegration were not happening now, roughly as the Seer of Storrs foretold 10 years ago. If the next 10 years are as seismic as he says they will be, his insights will have to be accounted for by historians and social scientists—assuming, of course, that there are still universities left to employ such people.

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        Peter Turchin, photographed in Connecticut’s Natchaug State Forest in October. The former ecologist seeks to apply mathematical rigor to the study of human history. (Malike Sidibe)

        Turchin was born in 1957 in Obninsk, Russia, a city built by the Soviet state as a kind of nerd heaven, where scientists could collaborate and live together. His father, Valen­tin, was a physicist and political dissident, and his mother, Tatiana, had trained as a geologist. They moved to Moscow when he was 7 and in 1978 fled to New York as political refugees. There they quickly found a community that spoke the household language, which was science. Valen­tin taught at the City University of New York, and Peter studied biology at NYU and earned a zoology doctorate from Duke.

        Turchin wrote a dissertation on the Mexican bean beetle, a cute, ladybug­like pest that feasts on legumes in areas between the United States and Guatemala. When Turchin began his research, in the early 1980s, ecology was evolving in a way that some fields already had. The old way to study bugs was to collect them and describe them: count their legs, measure their bellies, and pin them to pieces of particle­board for future reference. (Go to the Natural History Museum in London, and in the old storerooms you can still see the shelves of bell jars and cases of specimens.) In the ’70s, the Australian physicist Robert May had turned his attention to ecology and helped transform it into a mathematical science whose tools included supercomputers along with butterfly nets and bottle traps. Yet in the early days of his career, Turchin told me, “the majority of ecologists were still quite math-phobic.”

        Turchin did, in fact, do fieldwork, but he contributed to ecology primarily by collecting and using data to model the dynamics of populations—for example, determining why a pine-beetle population might take over a forest, or why that same population might decline. (He also worked on moths, voles, and lemmings.)

        In the late ’90s, disaster struck: Turchin realized that he knew everything he ever wanted to know about beetles. He compares himself to Thomasina Coverly, the girl genius in the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia, who obsessed about the life cycles of grouse and other creatures around her Derbyshire country house. Stoppard’s character had the disadvantage of living a century and a half before the development of chaos theory. “She gave up because it was just too complicated,” Turchin said. “I gave up because I solved the problem.”

        Turchin published one final monograph, Complex Population Dynamics: A Theoretical / Empirical Synthesis (2003), then broke the news to his UConn colleagues that he would be saying a permanent sayonara to the field, although he would continue to draw a salary as a tenured professor in their department. (He no longer gets raises, but he told me he was already “at a comfortable level, and, you know, you don’t need so much money.”) “Usually a midlife crisis means you divorce your old wife and marry a graduate student,” Turchin said. “I divorced an old science and married a new one.”

        Turchin’s prognostications would be easier to dismiss as barstool theorizing if they weren’t playing out now, roughly as he foretold 10 years ago.

        One of his last papers appeared in the journal Oikos. “Does population ecology have general laws?” Turchin asked. Most ecologists said no: Populations have their own dynamics, and each situation is different. Pine beetles reproduce, run amok, and ravage a forest for pine-beetle reasons, but that does not mean mosquito or tick populations will rise and fall according to the same rhythms. Turchin suggested that “there are several very general law-like propositions” that could be applied to ecology. After its long adolescence of collecting and cataloging, ecology had enough data to describe these universal laws—and to stop pretending that every species had its own idiosyncrasies. “Ecologists know these laws and should call them laws,” he said. Turchin proposed, for example, that populations of organisms grow or decline exponentially, not linearly. This is why if you buy two guinea pigs, you will soon have not just a few more guinea pigs but a home—and then a neighborhood—full of the damn things (as long as you keep feeding them). This law is simple enough to be understood by a high-school math student, and it describes the fortunes of everything from ticks to starlings to camels. The laws Turchin applied to ecology—and his insistence on calling them laws—­generated respectful controversy at the time. Now they are cited in textbooks.

        Having left ecology, Turchin began similar research that attempted to formulate general laws for a different animal species: human beings. He’d long had a hobby­ist’s interest in history. But he also had a predator’s instinct to survey the savanna of human knowledge and pounce on the weakest prey. “All sciences go through this transition to mathematization,” Turchin told me. “When I had my midlife crisis, I was looking for a subject where I could help with this transition to a mathematized science. There was only one left, and that was history.”

        Historians read books, letters, and other texts. Occasionally, if they are archaeologically inclined, they dig up potsherds and coins. But to Turchin, relying solely on these methods was the equivalent of studying bugs by pinning them to particleboard and counting their antennae. If the historians weren’t going to usher in a mathematical revolution themselves, he would storm their departments and do it for them.

        “There is a longstanding debate among scientists and philosophers as to whether history has general laws,” he and a co-author wrote in Secular Cycles (2009). “A basic premise of our study is that historical societies can be studied with the same methods physicists and biologists used to study natural systems.” Turchin founded a journal, Cliodynamics, dedicated to “the search for general principles explaining the functioning and dynamics of historical societies.” (The term is his coinage; Clio is the muse of history.) He had already announced the discipline’s arrival in an article in Nature, where he likened historians reluctant to build general principles to his colleagues in biology “who care most for the private life of warblers.” “Let history continue to focus on the particular,” he wrote. Cliodynamics would be a new science. While historians dusted bell jars in the basement of the university, Turchin and his followers would be upstairs, answering the big questions.

        To seed the journal’s research, Turchin masterminded a digital archive of historical and archaeological data. The coding of its records requires finesse, he told me, because (for example) the method of determining the size of the elite-aspirant class of medieval France might differ from the measure of the same class in the present-day United States. (For medieval France, a proxy is the membership in its noble class, which became glutted with second and third sons who had no castles or manors to rule over. One American proxy, Turchin says, is the number of lawyers.) But once the data are entered, after vetting by Turchin and specialists in the historical period under review, they offer quick and powerful suggestions about historical phenomena.

        Historians of religion have long pondered the relationship between the rise of complex civilization and the belief in gods—especially “moralizing gods,” the kind who scold you for sinning. Last year, Turchin and a dozen co-authors mined the database (“records from 414 societies that span the past 10,000 years from 30 regions around the world, using 51 measures of social complexity and 4 measures of supernatural enforcement of morality”) to answer the question conclusively. They found that complex societies are more likely to have moralizing gods, but the gods tend to start their scolding after the societies get complex, not before. As the database expands, it will attempt to remove more questions from the realm of humanistic speculation and sock them away in a drawer marked answered.

        One of Turchin’s most unwelcome conclusions is that complex societies arise through war. The effect of war is to reward communities that organize themselves to fight and survive, and it tends to wipe out ones that are simple and small-scale. “No one wants to accept that we live in the societies we do”—rich, complex ones with universities and museums and philosophy and art—“because of an ugly thing like war,” he said. But the data are clear: Darwinian processes select for complex socie­ties because they kill off simpler ones. The notion that democracy finds its strength in its essential goodness and moral improvement over its rival systems is likewise fanciful. Instead, democratic societies flourish because they have a memory of being nearly obliterated by an external enemy. They avoided extinction only through collective action, and the memory of that collective action makes democratic politics easier to conduct in the present, Turchin said. “There is a very close correlation between adopting democratic institutions and having to fight a war for survival.”

        Also unwelcome: the conclusion that civil unrest might soon be upon us, and might reach the point of shattering the country. In 2012, Turchin published an analysis of political violence in the United States, again starting with a database. He classified 1,590 incidents—riots, lynchings, any political event that killed at least one person—from 1780 to 2010. Some periods were placid and others bloody, with peaks of brutality in 1870, 1920, and 1970, a 50-year cycle. Turchin excludes the ultimate violent incident, the Civil War, as a “sui generis event.” The exclusion may seem suspicious, but to a statistician, “trimming outliers” is standard practice. Historians and journalists, by contrast, tend to focus on outliers—­because they are interesting—and sometimes miss grander trends.

        Certain aspects of this cyclical view require relearning portions of American history, with special attention paid to the numbers of elites. The industrialization of the North, starting in the mid-19th century, Turchin says, made huge numbers of people rich. The elite herd was culled during the Civil War, which killed off or impoverished the southern slaveholding class, and during Reconstruction, when America experienced a wave of assassinations of Republican politicians. (The most famous of these was the assassination of James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, by a lawyer who had demanded but not received a political appointment.) It wasn’t until the Progressive reforms of the 1920s, and later the New Deal, that elite overproduction actually slowed, at least for a time.

        This oscillation between violence and peace, with elite over­production as the first horseman of the recurring American apocalypse, inspired Turchin’s 2020 prediction. In 2010, when Nature surveyed scientists about their predictions for the coming decade, most took the survey as an invitation to self-promote and rhapsodize, dreamily, about coming advances in their fields. Turchin retorted with his prophecy of doom and said that nothing short of fundamental change would stop another violent turn.

        Turchin’s prescriptions are, as a whole, vague and unclassifiable. Some sound like ideas that might have come from Senator Elizabeth Warren—tax the elites until there are fewer of them—while others, such as a call to reduce immigration to keep wages high for American workers, resemble Trumpian protectionism. Other policies are simply heretical. He opposes credential-­oriented higher education, for example, which he says is a way of mass-producing elites without also mass-­producing elite jobs for them to occupy. Architects of such policies, he told me, are “creating surplus elites, and some become counter-elites.” A smarter approach would be to keep the elite numbers small, and the real wages of the general population on a constant rise.

        How to do that? Turchin says he doesn’t really know, and it isn’t his job to know. “I don’t really think in terms of specific policy,” he told me. “We need to stop the runaway process of elite overproduction, but I don’t know what will work to do that, and nobody else does. Do you increase taxation? Raise the minimum wage? Universal basic income?” He conceded that each of these possibilities would have unpredictable effects. He recalled a story he’d heard back when he was still an ecologist: The Forest Service had once implemented a plan to reduce the population of bark beetles with pesticide—only to find that the pesticide killed off the beetles’ predators even more effectively than it killed the beetles. The intervention resulted in more beetles than before. The lesson, he said, was to practice “adaptive management,” changing and modulating your approach as you go.

        Eventually, Turchin hopes, our understanding of historical dynamics will mature to the point that no government will make policy without reflecting on whether it is hurtling toward a mathematically pre­ordained disaster. He says he could imagine an Asimovian agency that keeps tabs on leading indicators and advises accordingly. It would be like the Federal Reserve, but instead of monitoring inflation and controlling monetary supply, it would be tasked with averting total civilizational collapse.

        Historians have not, as a whole, accepted Turchin’s terms of surrender graciously. Since at least the 19th century, the discipline has embraced the idea that history is irreducibly complex, and by now most historians believe that the diversity of human activity will foil any attempt to come up with general laws, especially predictive ones. (As Jo Guldi, a historian at Southern Methodist University, put it to me, “Some historians regard Turchin the way astronomers regard Nostradamus.”) Instead, each historical event must be lovingly described, and its idiosyncrasies understood to be limited in relevance to other events. The idea that one thing causes another, and that the causal pattern can tell you about sequences of events in another place or century, is foreign territory.

        One might even say that what defines history as a humanistic enterprise is the belief that it is not governed by scientific laws—that the working parts of human societies are not like billiard balls, which, if arranged at certain angles and struck with a certain amount of force, will invariably crack just so and roll toward a corner pocket of war, or a side pocket of peace. Turchin counters that he has heard claims of irreducible complexity before, and that steady application of the scientific method has succeeded in managing that complexity. Consider, he says, the concept of temperature—­something so obviously quantifiable now that we laugh at the idea that it’s too vague to measure. “Back before people knew what temperature was, the best thing you could do is to say you’re hot or cold,” Turchin told me. The concept depended on many factors: wind, humidity, ordinary human differences in perception. Now we have thermometers. Turchin wants to invent a thermometer for human societies that will measure when they are likely to boil over into war.

        Eventually, Turchin hopes, no government will make policy without reflecting on whether it is hurtling toward a mathematically preordained disaster.

        One social scientist who can speak to Turchin in his own mathematical argot is Dingxin Zhao, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago who is—incredibly—­also a former mathematical ecologist. (He earned a doctorate modeling carrot-weevil population dynamics before earning a second doctorate in Chinese political sociology.) “I came from a natural-science background,” Zhao told me, “and in a way I am sympathetic to Turchin. If you come to social science from natural sciences, you have a powerful way of looking at the world. But you may also make big mistakes.”

        Zhao said that human beings are just much more complicated than bugs. “Biological species don’t strategize in a very flexible way,” he told me. After millennia of evolutionary R&D, a woodpecker will come up with ingenious ways to stick its beak into a tree in search of food. It might even have social characteristics—an alpha woodpecker might strong-wing beta woodpeckers into giving it first dibs on the tastiest termites. But humans are much wilier social creatures, Zhao said. A woodpecker will eat a termite, but it “will not explain that he is doing so because it is his divine right.” Humans pull ideological power moves like this all the time, Zhao said, and to understand “the decisions of a Donald Trump, or a Xi Jinping,” a natural scientist has to incorporate the myriad complexities of human strategy, emotion, and belief. “I made that change,” Zhao told me, “and Peter Turchin has not.”

        Turchin is nonetheless filling a historiographical niche left empty by academic historians with allergies not just to science but to a wide-angle view of the past. He places himself in a Russian tradition prone to thinking sweeping, Tolstoyan thoughts about the path of history. By comparison, American historians mostly look like micro-historians. Few would dare to write a history of the United States, let alone one of human civilization. Turchin’s approach is also Russian, or post-Soviet, in its rejection of the Marxist theory of historical progress that had been the official ideology of the Soviet state. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, so too did the requirement that historical writing acknowledge international communism as the condition toward which the arc of history was bending. Turchin dropped ideology altogether, he says: Rather than bending toward progress, the arc in his view bends all the way back on itself, in a never-­ending loop of boom and bust. This puts him at odds with American historians, many of whom harbor an unspoken faith that liberal democracy is the end state of all history.

        Writing history in this sweeping, cyclical way is easier if you are trained outside the field. “If you look at who is doing these megahistories, more often than not, it’s not actual historians,” Walter Scheidel, an actual historian at Stanford, told me. (Scheidel, whose books span millennia, takes Turchin’s work seriously and has even co-written a paper with him.) Instead they come from scientific fields where these taboos do not dominate. The genre’s most famous book, Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), beheld 13,000 years of human history in a single volume. Its author, Jared Diamond, spent the first half of his career as one of the world’s foremost experts on the physiology of the gall­bladder. Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist who studies how children acquire parts of speech, has written a megahistory about the decline of violence across thousands of years, and about human flourishing since the Enlightenment. Most historians I asked about these men—and for some reason megahistory is nearly always a male pursuit—used terms like laughingstock and patently tendentious to describe them.

        Pinker retorts that historians are resentful of the attention “disciplinary carpet­baggers” like himself have received for applying scientific methods to the humanities and coming up with conclusions that had eluded the old methods. He is skeptical of Turchin’s claims about historical cycles, but he believes in data-driven historical inquiry. “Given the noisiness of human behavior and the prevalence of cognitive biases, it’s easy to delude oneself about a historical period or trend by picking whichever event suits one’s narrative,” he says. The only answer is to use large data sets. Pinker thanks traditional historians for their work collating these data sets; he told me in an email that they “deserve extraordinary admiration for their original research (‘brushing the mouse shit off moldy court records in the basement of town halls,’ as one historian put it to me).” He calls not for surrender but for a truce. “There’s no reason that traditional history and data science can’t merge into a cooperative enterprise,” Pinker wrote. “Knowing stuff is hard; we need to use every available tool.”

        Guldi, the Southern Methodist University professor, is one scholar who has embraced tools previously scorned by historians. She is a pioneer of data-driven history that considers timescales beyond a human lifetime. Her primary technique is the mining of texts—for example, sifting through the millions and millions of words captured in parliamentary debate in order to understand the history of land use in the final century of the British empire. Guldi may seem a potential recruit to cliodynamics, but her approach to data sets is grounded in the traditional methods of the humanities. She counts the frequency of words, rather than trying to find ways to compare big, fuzzy categories among civilizations. Turchin’s conclusions are only as good as his databases, she told me, and any database that tries to code something as complex as who constitutes a society’s elites—then tries to make like-to-like comparisons across millennia and oceans—will meet with skepticism from traditional historians, who deny that the subject to which they have devoted their lives can be expressed in Excel format. Turchin’s data are also limited to big-­picture characteristics observed over 10,000 years, or about 200 lifetimes. By scientific standards, a sample size of 200 is small, even if it is all humanity has.

        Yet 200 lifetimes is at least more ambitious than the average historical purview of only one. And the reward for that ambition—­­in addition to the bragging rights for having potentially explained everything that has ever happened to human beings—includes something every writer wants: an audience. Thinking small rarely gets you quoted in The New York Times. Turchin has not yet attracted the mass audiences of a Diamond, Pinker, or Harari. But he has lured connoisseurs of political catastrophe, journalists and pundits looking for big answers to pressing questions, and true believers in the power of science to conquer uncertainty and improve the world. He has certainly outsold most beetle experts.

        If he is right, it is hard to see how history will avoid assimilating his insights—if it can avoid being abolished by them. Privately, some historians have told me they consider the tools he uses powerful, if a little crude. Clio­dynamics is now on a long list of methods that arrived on the scene promising to revolutionize history. Many were fads, but some survived that stage to take their rightful place in an expanding historiographical tool kit. Turchin’s methods have already shown their power. Cliodynamics offers scientific hypotheses, and human history will give us more and more opportunities to check its predictions—­revealing whether Peter Turchin is a Hari Seldon or a mere Nostradamus. For my own sake, there are few thinkers whom I am more eager to see proved wrong.

      • Islamists On Motorcycles Mount 'Most Violent Attack On Civilians This Year' In Nigeria
        Islamists On Motorcycles Mount ‘Most Violent Attack On Civilians This Year’ In Nigeria

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 21:30

        The United Nations has called the horrific terrorist attack in Nigeria over the weekend the “most violent direct” assault on civilians this year.

        Farmers that were working their fields in remote villages near Maiduguri, which is the capital of Nigeria’s Borno state – where Islamist militant faction Boko Haram has long been at war with the Nigerian government – when a large group of armed men on motorcycles swept through the area and killed everyone in sight. 

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        A moto-taxi used by a Nigerian regular soldier on the lookout for Boko Haram insurgents. Image source: The Vintagent

        It happened Saturday afternoon and began hitting international press on Sunday, when the death toll steadily climbed throughout the day as investigators went through the appalling crime scene. The death toll now stands at over 110 civilians killed.

        Though there weren’t immediate claims of responsibility, Boko Haram and a related splinter group the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), are being widely blamed by authorities. 

        France24 and the AP described summary executions of rice farmers:

        The attack was staged Saturday in a rice field in Garin Kwashebe, a Borno community known for rice farming, on the day residents of the state were casting votes for the first time in 13 years to elect local government councils, though many didn’t go to cast their ballots. 

        The farmers were reportedly rounded up and summarily killed by armed insurgents. 

        Malam Zabarmari, a leader of a rice farmers association in Borno state, confirmed the massacre to The Associated Press. 

        “Armed men on motorcycles led a brutal attack on civilian men and women who were harvesting their fields,” a statement from the local UN humanitarian office said.

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        Funerals for the slain, via AFP

        “At least 110 civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack,” it added. There are also reports that woman were kidnapped from the village during the raid.

        “The incident is the most violent direct attack against innocent civilians this year. I call for the perpetrators of this heinous and senseless act to be brought to justice,” UN representative Edward Kallon said.

        Boko Haram has in recent years been known to use motorcycles to gain quick entry to cities and villages to carry out terror attacks. The Nigerian Army has responded with their own motorcycle units to more swiftly and effectively hunt down the terrorists, especially in remote country roads.

      • "A Good Start" – Ron Paul Praises Flynn Pardon, Urges Trump To "Right Obama's Terrible Wrongs"
        “A Good Start” – Ron Paul Praises Flynn Pardon, Urges Trump To “Right Obama’s Terrible Wrongs”

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 21:10

        Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

        Last week President Trump granted a “full pardon” to Gen. Michael Flynn, his first National Security Advisor. In a White House statement announcing the pardon, the Administration pointed out that the relentless pursuit of Flynn was a partisan effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

        The pursuit of Flynn was spearheaded by people who refused to accept the results of the 2016 election and worked to undermine the peaceful transfer of power, said the White House. These same people are the ones accusing Trump of undermining the election by challenging what appears to be serious voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.

        That is called “projection.”

        The White House statement also cites partisans in politics, the media, and the Deep State which sought to prevent Trump from being elected, to prevent him from taking office once elected, and to remove him on false pretenses once in office.

        In order to push the false narrative that Trump was somehow elected due to the intervention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the coup-masters had to make it appear that a high-ranking official was involved in monkey business with the Russians. Flynn was the unlucky victim of their smear machine, accused of “Russia collusion” over an innocent telephone call with the then-Russian Ambassador in Washington during the transition to a Trump Administration.

        Yet when Joe Biden’s transition people bragged recently that Biden was connecting with foreign officials before inaugurated, the media praised it as a welcome return of the “experts” to foreign policy.

        While it is very good news that President Trump is in the mood to pardon those victims of the warmongering Deep State, I very much hope that he is only warming up. It would be a great tragedy if other Deep State victims are left to suffer for their non-crimes.

        Tweeting about her legislation that calls for charges against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange to be dropped and the Espionage Act reformed, US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard told President 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.”

        My good friend Rep. Thomas Massie, a Ron Paul Institute Board Member, is a co-sponsor of Rep. Gabbard’s legislation, making it a real bipartisan effort to restore the rule of law in the United States and to rein in the Beltway warmongers.

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        Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are not criminals. They are heroes for telling us the truth about what criminals in government were doing in our name and with our money.

        The fact is we were lied into war over and over again. While those wars were profitable for the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex, they snuffed out the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people overseas and robbed our own children and grandchildren of trillions of dollars wasted on neocon lies. And meanwhile, as Ed Snowden showed us, the intelligence community declared us the enemy and set up an elaborate internal spy network that would make the East German Stasi green with envy.

        President Trump: you have the incredible opportunity to right the terrible wrongs perpetrated by the Obama/Biden Administration. History will smile kindly upon you if you also grant full pardon to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – and any other truth-teller who faces persecution for exposing the Deep State warmongers.

      • "It's Really Bad" – Almost One-Third Of Small Businesses In NY, NJ Have Closed 
        “It’s Really Bad” – Almost One-Third Of Small Businesses In NY, NJ Have Closed 

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 20:50

        Here comes the next recession as nearly one-third of small businesses in New York and New Jersey remain closed since the virus pandemic began earlier this year. 

        The NYPost outlines small business data from Opportunity Insights and New Jersey Business & Industry Association paint a troubling outlook for the rest of 2020 into 2021. 

        Opportunity Insights’ TrackingTheRecovery.Org, a Harvard database that monitors economic activity for the US, currently says 27.8% of small businesses in New York remain closed. The same goes for New Jersey, where 31.2% of small businesses had not reopened. 

        The New Jersey Business & Industry Association reports similar figures with 28% of New Jersey’s small businesses have closed up shop this year.

        With top federal health officials on Sunday warning about a post-Thanksgiving spike in COVID-19, the reemergence of the virus in New York and New Jersey, along with stricter social distancing measures, means that more small businesses may be decimated in the months ahead. 

        “It’s really bad,” Eileen Kean, New Jersey state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told the Star-Ledger.

        “And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey, the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through the winter,” Kean said. 

        “It’s devastating how many restaurants have shuttered and jobs have been lost,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of NYC Hospitality Alliances. 

        “And with the infection rate rising and the looming threat of indoor dining closing again, many more will close unless the government provides adequate support to these small businesses,” Rigie said.

        On top of the small business closures in both states, 300,000 New Yorkers have filed a formal change of address notices with the U.S. Postal Service from March 1 to October 31. The rapid population decline suggests consumption at small businesses will continue to suffer well into 2021. 

        This all means that New York City’s economic recovery will lag the rest of the country. As explained by Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, the city’s recovery might not be seen until 2025:

        “This is an event that struck right at the heart of New York’s comparative advantages,” Zandi said. “Being globally oriented, being stacked up in skyscrapers and packed together in stadiums: the very thing that made New York the pandemic undermined New York, was upended by it.”

      • Killing The Future: COVID Madness Will Lead To Half A Million Fewer US Births In 2021
        Killing The Future: COVID Madness Will Lead To Half A Million Fewer US Births In 2021

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 20:30

        Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

        Research has concluded that the US will experience 500,000 fewer births in 2021, as couples choose not to have children because of the coronavirus fallout.

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        The findings by the Brookings Institute were published last week in the Wall Street Journal, which noted that there will be “between 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in the U.S. next year, compared with a drop of 44,172 last year.”

        The numbers equate to a 13% drop from the 3.8 million babies born in 2019.

        The “analysis, partly based on what happened following the 2007-2009 recession, is that weaker job prospects equate to fewer births,” the report further notes.

        “Women will have many fewer babies in the short term, and for some of them, a lower total number of children over their lifetimes,” the research, previously previewed in the Summer, noted.

        The US birthrate is already at its lowest level on record, and according to clinics, there has been a 50% jump in requests for birth control since the beginning of the pandemic, and a 40% increase in requests for Plan B.

        CDC research notes that the birth rate in the US has been below replacement level since 1971. It is now a problem across all major racial groups including Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic Asians. All have below replacement birth levels.

        A recent survey from the Guttmacher Institute discovered that 34% of women able to have babies in the US have made a decision to either delay having a child, or to just have fewer children because of COVID.

        Analysts say this will have a long and profound impact on the economy for many years to come, as the US could be falling into a so called ‘Fertility trap’ where there are fewer women around to have babies, resulting in smaller families, and low population growth reducing economic growth.

        All of this results in increased pessimism and a downward spiral that is difficult to break.

        It will also mean that in the near future there will be a huge mismatch between the amounts of younger and older people in the country.

        Indeed, by 2034 Americans over age 65 are expected to outnumber those under 18 for the first time in the history of the nation.

        Unless it is stopped now, the COVID madness, the lockdowns, the panic, the social engineering will not only causing irrevocable damage to our collective psyche, societal morale, and cultural richness, it will also destroy future prosperity and literally deny life to millions along the way.

        But perhaps that was the endgame all along?

      • US Billionaires Have Gained $1 Trillion Since The Pandemic Started
        US Billionaires Have Gained $1 Trillion Since The Pandemic Started

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 20:10

        American billionaires haven’t been just immune to the pandemic, they have been thriving in it, drastically increasing their collective wealth. An analysis by Chuck Collins at the Institute for Policy Studies found that American billionaires have been their wealth grow by $1 trillion since March of this year – more than 34 percent. That was not the case during the 2008 financial crisis when it took Forbes’ 400 richest people three years to recoup their losses from the Great Recession. Collins’ findings highlight a wealth gain by a mere 650 individuals that, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, seems obscene at a time when nearly 7 million Americans are at risk of eviction when moratoriums expire at the end of the year.

        Infographic: U.S. Billionaires Gained $1 Trillion Since The Pandemic Started | Statista

        You will find more infographics at Statista

        There are 650 billionaires on the list, out of which 47 are new arrivals with 11 dropping out due to death or financial decline. There were numerous impressive financial gains among notable billionaires on the lit with Jeff Bezos growing his fortune by $69.4 billion between March 17 and November 24. The Amazon boss and richest man on the planet is now with $182.4 billion. The most impressive gain on the list was recorded by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk who has seen his fortune experience a meteoric rise. In the above period, his weath surged a whopping 414 percent, climbing from “just” $24.6 billion to $126.2 billion, making him the world’s second richest man after Bezos.

        Illustrating the gulf in financial inequality in the U.S. today, the analysis states that U.S. billionaires own $4 trillion, 3.5 percent of all privately held wealth in the country. Billionaire wealth is now twice the amount of wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of all American households combined, approximately 160 million people.

      • Pennsylvania Lawmakers Formally Introduce Resolution To Dispute 2020 Elections Results
        Pennsylvania Lawmakers Formally Introduce Resolution To Dispute 2020 Elections Results

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 19:50

        Just as we previewed over the weekend, Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania on Monday introduced a resolution to dispute the results of the 2020 election.

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        As The Epoch Times’ Ivan Pentchoukov reports, the text of the resolution, first previewed in a memo on Nov. 27, states that the executive and judicial branches of the Keystone State’s government usurped the legislature’s constitutional power to set the rules of the election.

        “Officials in the Executive and Judicial Branches of the Commonwealth infringed upon the General Assembly’s authority under the Constitution of the United States by unlawfully changing the rules governing the November 3, 2020, election in the Commonwealth,” the resolution (pdf) states.

        The resolution calls on the secretary of the Commonwealth to withdraw the “premature certification” of the presidential election and delay certifying other races, declares the 2020 election to be in dispute, and urges the U.S. Congress “to declare the selection of presidential electors in this Commonwealth to be in dispute.”

        Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly said in a statement, “A number of compromises of Pennsylvania’s election laws took place during the 2020 General Election. The documented irregularities and improprieties associated with mail-in balloting, pre-canvassing, and canvassing have undermined our elector process and, as a result, we cannot accept certification of the results in statewide races.”

        They added, “We believe this moment is pivotal and important enough that the General Assembly needs to take extraordinary measures to answer these extraordinary questions. We also believe our representative oversight duty as Pennsylvania’s legislative branch of government demands us to re-assume our constitutional authority and take immediate action.”

        The proposed text lists three steps taken by the judicial and executive branches to change the rules of the election.

        First, on Sept. 17, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court “unlawfully and unilaterally” extended the deadline by which mail ballots could be received, mandated that ballots without a postmark would be treated as timely, and allowed for ballots without a verified voter signature to be accepted, the resolution says.

        Second, on Oct. 23, upon a petition from the secretary of the commonwealth, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that signatures on mail-in ballots need not be authenticated.

        And third, on Nov. 2, the secretary of the commonwealth “encouraged certain counties to notify party and candidate representatives of mail-in voters whose ballots contained defects,” the resolution says.

        All of the changes are contrary to the Pennsylvania Election Code, which requires mail-in ballots to be received at 8 p.m. on Election Day, mandates that signatures on the mail-in ballots be authenticated, and forbids the counting of defective mail-in ballots.

        The resolution also lists a variety of election irregularities and potential fraud, including the issues brought up by witnesses during the hearing before the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee on Nov. 25.

        “On November 24, 2020, the Secretary of the Commonwealth unilaterally and prematurely certified results of the November 3, 2020 election regarding presidential electors despite ongoing litigation,” the resolution states.

        “The Pennsylvania House of Representatives has the duty to ensure that no citizen of this Commonwealth is disenfranchised, to insist that all elections are conducted according to the law, and to satisfy the general public that every legal vote is counted accurately.”

        Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, said Friday that the GOP-controlled state legislature will make a bid to reclaim its power to appoint the state’s electors to the Electoral College, saying they could start the process on Nov. 30.

        “So, we’re gonna do a resolution between the House and Senate, hopefully today,” he told Steve Bannon’s War Room on Friday.

      • Beijing "Unexpectedly" Injects $30 Billion Into Financial System, Sparking Doubts About True State Of China's Economy
        Beijing “Unexpectedly” Injects $30 Billion Into Financial System, Sparking Doubts About True State Of China’s Economy

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 19:30

        Back in late 2019, we were frequently greeted by headlines such as this, indicating that PBOC was periodically making “unexpected” liquidity injections, which made sense in light of China’s ongoing economic slowdown:

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        … and:

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        Fast forward one year, when China’s economy is supposedly growing at a blistering pace thanks the massive credit injections following the covid pandemic – or so Beijing and various PMI surveys would would indicate, with the November NBS manufacturing PMI overnight rising to 52.1 from 51.4 in October (all sub-indexes in the NBS manufacturing PMI survey implied stronger growth momentum in November) while the NBS non-manufacturing PMI rising further to 56.4 from 56.2 in October on the back of stronger services and construction PMIs….

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        … and yet the same telltale signs that not all is well with China’s economy are back, with Bloomberg posting a deja vu report this morning that China “unexpectedly” – there’s that word again – added yet another injection in the form of medium-term funding to the financial system on Monday “as the central bank sought to ease liquidity tightness in the final weeks of the year.” Perhaps China’s economy is not nearly as strong as the “pristine” indicators would make us believe?

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        Specifically, the People’s Bank of China offered 200 billion yuan ($30 billion) of the medium-term lending facility at an unchanged rate of 2.95%, according to a statement Monday at the same time that Beijing reported the latest blistering PMI numbers.

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        The latest injection came just two weeks after the central bank offered 800 billion yuan of the funds, which were already more than enough to offset the 600 billion yuan that were due this month.

        “The MLF injection is a surprise,” said Zhaopeng Xing, a markets economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group. “It shows the central bank aims to ensure liquidity without using broader easing measures like a reserve-ratio cut, when the demand for medium-term cash surged.”

        Curiously, even as Chinese post-pandemic economic recovery is blowing away expectations, widespread concerns over tighter cash supply have sent China’s benchmark sovereign yield to its highest level since May 2019 earlier in November… <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

        … resulting in record wide spreads between US and Chinese 10Y yields.

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        The latest MLF injection came as the PBOC also added 150 billion yuan of 7-day reverse repurchase agreements on Monday.

        Even more curious is the consensus explanation for the sharp rise in Chinese yields: according to Bloomberg, “the central bank’s drip-feed approach to offering funding has compounded” the lack of liquidity “indicating Beijing wouldn’t want to loosen monetary policy much more amid a growth rebound.”

        But if the economy is so strong, which does China even need more liquidity: after all, the 10Y yield is – in theory – rising because of higher inflation expectations over the horizon, and yet the PBOC feels compelled to enter the market “unexpectedly” every other week to prevent sentiment from turning sour.

        Maybe what’s going on is that the liquidity squeeze is the real story, and the so-called economic recovery is the latest goalseeked lie out of Beijing.

        Recall that China is already facing a major funding squeeze, with the nation’s banks grappling with a $900 billion funding gap this month and next because of a need to repay at least 3.7 trillion yuan of short-term interbank debt and purchase 1 trillion yuan of newly issued government bonds. Also, 600 billion yuan of previously offered MLF loans will mature in December. The recent “unexpected” default of several SOE companies has added to the stress, with non-bank financial institutions finding it hard to fund themselves in the interbank market.

        Rabobank’s Michael Every put it best when discussing the quantum states of the global newslow (China’s economy surging in one collapse of the wave function; China’s economy desperate for liquidity in the other), writing the following:

        China’s economy continues to power ahead, with bumper net exports and capital inflows and industrial profits all being recorded: and yet the PBOC just had to inject CNY200bn (USD30bn) in MLF a month ahead of the end of the year to ease liquidity tightness, and that on the back of CNY800bn two weeks ago. Yes, this is gross not net: but why the need for so much PBOC help when everything is going so well? Perhaps because Chinese banks are still trying to repay CNY3.7 trillion of short-term interbank debt and purchase CNY1 trillion of government bonds and repay maturing MLF injections,…and are worrying about SOE bond defaults.

        As Every rhetorically summarizes “everything is going so well though: there just isn’t any cash as a result” and concludes with a bad quantum physics pun: “Isn’t the most dangerous part of the Heisenberg below the water?“

        How much longer can Beijing pretend that the economy is remarkably strong… if only there was a few hundred billion more in liquidity sloshing around. Probably at least until the January inauguration event. After that, non-quantum reality may finally have to reassert itself.

      • Trump COVID Advisor Dr. Scott Atlas Resigns From White House
        Trump COVID Advisor Dr. Scott Atlas Resigns From White House

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 19:23

        With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris having already assembled their own parallel White House coronavirus task force staffed almost entirely with Obama Administration vets, Dr. Scott Atlas, the so-called “anti-Fauci” who has reportedly become President Trump’s go-to advisor on all coronavirus-related topics, has decided to resign.

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        According to Fox News, Dr. Atlas has resigned from his post Monday evening. The move comes as Gov Gavin Newsom warns of “dramatic, arguably drastic” new lockdown-like restrictions coming to the Golden State (which represents one-fifth of the American economy, and roughly 1/8th of the US population).

        Fox News exclusively obtained a copy of Dr. Atlas’s resignation letter, which was dated Dec. 1. In the letter, Dr. Atlas touted the Trump administration’s work on the coronavirus pandemic, while wishing “all the best” to Biden and his team.

        “I am writing to resign from my position as Special Advisor to the President of the United States,” Atlas said, thanking him for “the honor and privilege to serve on behalf of the American people.” “I worked hard with a singular focus—to save lives and help Americans through this pandemic,” Atlas wrote, adding that he “always relied on the latest science and evidence, without any political consideration or influence.”

        “As time went on, like all scientists and health policy scholars, I learned new information and synthesized the latest data from around the world, all in an effort to provide you with the best information to serve the greater public good,” Atlas wrote. “But, perhaps more than anything, my advice was always focused on minimizing all the harms from both the pandemic and the structural policies themselves, especially to the working class and the poor.”

        Atlas, who had been criticized for opposing lockdowns in defiance of “science” (Dr. Robert Redfield once warned that “everything he says is false”), warned in his letter that “although some may disagree with those recommendations, it is the free exchange of ideas that lead to scientific truths, which are the very foundation of a civilized society.” “Indeed, I cannot think of a time where safeguarding science and the scientific debate is more urgent,” he said.

        Before his arrival, “that expertise had not been present”, Dr. Atlas added.

        Atlas, who spoke with the president on Monday, joined the administration in August, and was considered a Special Government Employee serving on a 130-day detail. That detail is set to expire this week, and it’s probably safe to say that Biden hasn’t invited Dr. Atlas back to serve in his administration.

      • America's New Normal – Silent, Obedient Consent
        America’s New Normal – Silent, Obedient Consent

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 19:10

        Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

        Yesterday we took advantage of another beautiful Fall day in Cape May. We decided to check out the Cape May Lighthouse State Park. It is at the very end of Cape May. It is an example of what the government can do right – Preserve a natural habitat without glitz or commercialization. It is just miles of wetlands and walking trails. The lighthouse, built in 1859 by the U.S. Army is still functioning today. Two previous lighthouses succumbed to the sea. It is a majestic structure, reaching 157 feet into the sky

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        On the beach, not far from the lighthouse, is Battery 223. It is a crumbling concrete structure from World War II which was designed to protect against invasion by German forces. The structure was built with six-foot thick reinforced concrete walls and a thick blast proof roof; the entire building was covered with earth. The 6-inch guns had a nine-mile range. It is an interesting relic from our past. The dilapidated condition struck me as symbolic of our crumbling empire.

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        Once you walked into the nature preserve, a feeling of calm and peacefulness overwhelms you. Swans and ducks glide across the salt water ponds enjoying a feast of minnows. It’s nature at its most pristine. Just quiet and beauty.

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        The walking trails wind throughout the nature preserve. They are well maintained and pristine. No trash. No beer bottles strewn about. Visitors are respectful of this place. A feeling of calm engulfs you as you venture along the trails.

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        But, alas, I couldn’t write a post without acknowledging the human reality I witnessed walking along these trails on a stunningly beautiful sunny 58 degree day in late November. The four of us were unmasked, because masks don’t work and certainly aren’t necessary outside while walking.

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        As we were driving to the park, I noticed a few bike riders on the side of the road wearing masks while biking. I thought to myself – WTF. That is completely idiotic. Then we began walking along the miles of trails. The park was moderately busy, but you passed someone every few minutes.

        Sadly, I would estimate that 80% of the people we passed on the trails were masked and fearful of us unmasked hooligans. I can only imagine their thoughts as they wondered why we were risking their lives by being so careless.

        I was disgusted by the lack of critical thought exhibited by these people. I might have understood if it was only people over 70 years old wearing the masks, but most of these people were young. They have virtually a zero risk of dying from this flu. They have virtually a zero risk of catching it on a walking trail at a State park. But, they obediently and silently do as they are told by their overlords.

        I am saddened by how easily the totalitarians have been able to use fear, propaganda, lies and misinformation to turn the vast majority of Americans into compliant sheep. It is so clear to me that this engineered flu panic is nothing more than another chapter in the scheme to enslave global populations under the thumb of global elitist billionaires who want to control us and enrich themselves.

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        V’s speech to the citizens of London captures the essence of what is happening and will happen unless the masses come to their senses.

        “Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told…if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

        I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you order. He promised you peace. And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”

        – V speech to London, V for Vendetta

        These thoughts did not ruin my day, but they are constantly bubbling below the surface as I observe the downward spiral of this country. Hopefully, the Cape May Lighthouse beacon will represent the shining light of truth that will help us avert a historical shipwreck of epic proportions.

      • UAE Condemns "Heinous" Killing Of Iran Scientist In Rare Break From Israel-Gulf Axis
        UAE Condemns “Heinous” Killing Of Iran Scientist In Rare Break From Israel-Gulf Axis

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 18:50

        Last Friday’s assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is putting immense strain on the newly ‘normalized’ ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. 

        The UAE late on Sunday issued a statement strongly denouncing the attack that it called a “crime” that could destabilize the region. This after Tehran has vowed to retaliate, yet without giving details of what form this might take.

        The UAE “condemns the heinous assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which could further fuel conflict in the region,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said, as cited in Bloomberg.

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        Cleric holding an image of slain nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, via PBS.

        “The state of instability our region is currently going through, and the security challenges it faces, drive us all to work towards averting acts that could lead to escalation and eventually threaten the stability of the entire region,” it added.

        Signed on September 15, the ‘Abraham Accords’ opened up formal diplomatic relations and economic dealings between Israel and the tiny oil-rich Gulf country for the first time in history.

        Bahrain was also involved, and Sudan is said to be the next Arab League member to normalize ties, with the State Department now urging Saudi Arabia to follow.

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        As Bloomberg notes of the significance of the UAE condemning this latest attack:

        “The denunciation late Sunday was significant both because of the historically strained relations between Sunni Gulf Arab states and Shiite Iran, and the fact that Tehran has blamed the attack on Israel, which recently signed a normalization deal with the UAE.”

        Jordan is also the latest regional voice to condemn the brazen assassination which occurred east of Tehran last week.

        Some current and former diplomats in the West have also condemned the killing, widely suspected to have Israeli or even US intelligence involvement, as it sets a precedented that could open tit-for-tat illegal assassinations as a modus operandi for score settling among rival powers in the region.

      • Georgia's Raffensperger Suddenly Concerned About "Illegal" Out Of State Votes
        Georgia’s Raffensperger Suddenly Concerned About “Illegal” Out Of State Votes

        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 18:30

        Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) – who President Trump last Thursday called an “enemy of the people” for allegedly making some type of “deal” with Democratic operative Stacey Abrams over ballot harvesting – said on Monday that he’s suddenly concerned with progressive groups trying to sign up new voters in advance of a Jan. 5 Senate runoff which could flip the GOP-controlled chamber blue.

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        “These third-party groups have a responsibility to not encourage illegal voting. If they do so, they will be held responsible,” said Raffensperger, who added that his office is allegedly investigating efforts by America Votes, Vote Forward and the New Georgia Project to encourage people living outside Georgia to register to vote in the state.

        Raffensperger also said his office has launched several investigations into accusations of fraud committed during the November election.

        On Thursday, President Trump slammed Raffensperger – telling reporters: “You’re not allowed to harvest, but I understand the secretary of state, who is really an enemy of the people, the secretary of state, and whether he’s Republican or not, this man, what he’s done, supposedly he made a deal and you’ll have to check this, where she is allowed to harvest but in other areas they’re not allowed.”

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        Stacey Abrams – the failed GA gubernatorial candidate who failed to concede – has been credited with helping to register 800,000 people to vote in Georgia for the 2020 election, though she claims it wasn’t done through ballot harvesting, a process by which an individual will collect ballots from voters and turn them in.

        Biden ‘won’ Georgia by 12,670 votes.

        Meanwhile, the odds of Democrats gaining control of the Senate are currently at 29% according to PredictIt.

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      • Liquidity Reversal: The Rotation Trade Speed Bump
        Liquidity Reversal: The Rotation Trade Speed Bump


        Tyler Durden

        Mon, 11/30/2020 – 18:25

        Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison is joined by editor Jack Farley to evaluate the value rotation trade and the challenges it will face in the coming months. As November comes to a close – a month that saw record-breaking appreciation in value stocks, cyclicals, and small-caps – Ed and Jack analyzes how rising COVID-19 hospitalizations will impact economic behavior. They then look at liquidity going forward, and how monetary conditions will affect markets over the next few months, incorporating Ed’s interview with Michael Howell and Jack’s upcoming interview with Teddy Vallee. Ed and Jack close by discussing the Government Accountability Office’s report on incorrect jobless claims data, as well as GM’s partial back-pedaling out of its deal with controversial electric vehicle manufacturer Nikola.

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