Feb 02

Today’s News 2nd February 2020

  • On The Decline In US Strategic Thinking And The Creation Of False Stereotypes
    On The Decline In US Strategic Thinking And The Creation Of False Stereotypes

    Authored by Leonid Savin via OrientalReview.com,

    In early January 2020, the RAND Corporation published its latest research report on Russia entitled “Russia’s Hostile Measures. Combating Russian Gray Zone Aggression Against NATO in the Contact, Blunt, and Surge Layers of Competition”.

    The report is made up of four chapters:

    1. Russian hostile measures in every context;

    2. The evolution and limits of Russian hostile measures;

    3. Gray zone cases and actions during high-order war; and

    4. Deterring, preventing, and countering hostile measures.

    There are also two appendices:

    1) An evolutionary history of Russia’s hostile measures; and

    2) Detailed case studies of Russia’s use of hostile measures.

    By the headings alone, it is possible to gauge the kind of psychological effect that the authors of the monograph wanted it to have. They clearly wanted to say that Russia as a political entity is aggressive – it has been that way throughout history and it will continue to be so in the future – and it is therefore vital to prevent such aggression in a variety of ways.

    It is also stated that the report was sponsored by the US Army as part of the project “Russia, European Security, and ‘Measures Short of War’” and that the research and analysis was conducted between 2015 and 2019. The purpose of the project was “to provide recommendations to inform the options that the Army presents to the National Command Authorities to leverage, improve upon, and develop new capabilities and address the threat of Russian aggression in the form of measures short of war.” In addition, the report was reviewed by the US Department of Defense between January and August 2019, and the RAND Corporation conducted seminars in European NATO member countries as part of the project. Notably, one of the first events was held in February 2016 at Cambridge University, which has become a kind of hub for visiting experts from other countries.

    From a scientific perspective, the report’s authors adhere to the classical American school – Kremlinologist George Kennan and his concepts are mentioned, as is Jack Snyder, who coined the term “strategic culture” on the basis of nuclear deterrence. The sources referred to in the footnotes are also mostly American, with the exception of a few translated texts by Russian authors (both patriots and liberal pro-Westerners) and official government bodies. But, on the whole, the report is of rather poor scientific value.

    Two interrelated topics are discussed in the first chapter that, over the last five years, the West’s military and political communities have steadfastly associated with Russia – the grey zone and hybrid warfare. It is clear that these phrases are being used intentionally, as is the term “measures”, since Western centres are trying to use the terminological baggage of the Soviet past alongside their own modern concepts, especially when it refers to military or security agencies (the term “active measures” was used by the USSR’s KGB from the 1970s onwards). It is noted that NATO officially began to use the term “hybrid warfare” with regard to Russia following the events in Crimea in 2014.

    Examples given of active measures during the Cold War include: assassination (the murder of Stepan Bandera); destabilisation (training Central and South American insurgents with Cuba in the 1980s); disinformation (spreading rumours through the German media that the US developed AIDS as a biological weapon; disseminating information about CIA sabotage efforts); proxy wars (Vietnam, Angola); and sabotage (creating panic in Yugoslavia in 1949).

    Although America’s involvement in such techniques was more sophisticated and widespread (from establishing death squads in Latin America and supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan by way of Pakistan to the Voice of America radio programmes and governing remotely during riots in Hungary and Czechoslovakia) and certain facts about the work of Soviet intelligence agencies are well known, the examples cited of measures taken by the USSR are not backed up by authoritative sources.

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    Russia’s hostile measures in Europe

    Other methods for influencing the report’s target audience are noticeable, and these have been used before to create a negative image of Russia. These include a comparison with the actions of terrorist organisations: “the shock and awe generated by the blitzkrieg-like success of Russia in Crimea and the Islamic State in Iraq generated considerable analytic excitement. A few early accounts suggested that Russia had invented a new way of war” (p. 6).

    According to the authors, the West had already clearly decided what to call Russia’s actions in 2016. With that in mind:

    “– Gray zone hostilities are nothing new, particularly for Russia.

    – Russia will continue to apply these tactics, but its goals and means are limited.

    – Deterring, preventing, or countering so-called gray zone behavior is difficult” (p. 7).

    The report also states that many articles on the subject written in 2014 and 2015 contained overly exaggerated value judgements, but, in 2017, analyses of the grey zone and hybrid warfare shifted towards a balanced and objective view of Russian power.

    This should also be queried, because a relatively large number of reports and papers on similar topics have been published since 2017. Even the US national defence and security strategies had a blatantly distorted view of both Russia and other countries.

    The only thing one can possibly agree with is the coining of the new term “hybrid un-war”, which emerged from debates in recent years. It’s true that Russia is employing certain countermeasures, from modernising its armed forces to imposing counter sanctions, but many of these are in response to provocative actions by the West or are linked to planned reforms. Evidently, the authors understand that it will be difficult to make unfounded accusations, so they are covering themselves in advance by choosing a more suitable word. Against the general backdrop, however, the reference to an “un-war” seems rather vague.

    It should be noted that the first appendix contains a list of academic literature on Soviet and Russian foreign policy that supposedly backs up the authors’ opinions on the methods of political warfare being carried out by Russia (and the USSR before it). Among the most important sources are declassified CIA reports and assessments, along with similar files from the US National Security Archive that were posted online by staff at George Washington University. Needless to say, the objectivity of documents like these is rather specific.

    The section on the institutionalisation and nature of Russian hostile measures is interesting. The authors point out that Russia has an existential fear of NATO and the West as a whole because it has been threatened by external invasion for centuries. The timeline begins in the 13th century with the Mongol invasion that ended with the destruction of Moscow, and it finishes with Germany’s invasion of the USSR and the deaths of 20 million Russians. Interestingly, the 20th century also includes the North Russia intervention by the US and its allies. Such selectivity is surprising, as if there had been no aggression from the Teutonic Order or other wars prior to the 13th century. The 18th century is excluded from the list entirely, yet it was a pivotal era for the Russian state (the Great Northern War, the wars with the Persian and Ottoman empires, the Russo-Swedish War and so on), when numerous external challenges had to be met.

    But the report then mentions NATO’s expansion to the East and America’s use of soft-power methods, including the organisation of colour revolutions in the post-Soviet space, where there were Russian client governments. Although it says in justification that NATO never threatened Russia, it emphasises that NATO’s physical infrastructure and military capabilities forced Moscow to include it on its list of national security threats.

    In addition to this, the RAND experts point out Russia’s worry over internal revolt. The report once again provides a selective timeline that includes the Decembrist revolt, colour revolutions in the post-Soviet space, and even the war in Syria, which is described as “a long-standing Russian client state” (p. 15).

    It then goes on to paraphrase Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, who said that the Kremlin fears US intervention and the Russian General Staff fears NATO intervention. It therefore follows that “[t]he perception of a threat influences behavior, even if the perceived threat is overblown or nonexistent. Whether or not one believes that worry, or even paranoia, is the primary driver behind current Russian actions in the gray zone and its preparations for high-order war, this essential element of Russian culture demands an objective and thoughtful accounting” (p. 16).

    Following this is a description of the security apparatus that carries out hostile measures. A line is drawn between the NKVD, KGB and FSB, and these are also joined by the SVR, for some reason. The armed forces are considered separately, with a focus on the GRU and special forces. And that’s it. There is no mention of the police, the public prosecutor’s office and the investigative committee or even the FSO. It is even a bit strange not to see “Russian hackers” and private military companies, which are a regular feature of such reports. It is also noted that current actions are nothing other than a “continuity of the Brezhnev Doctrine” (p. 21), which only exists in the imaginations of Western experts. The authors themselves acknowledge further on that this is how speeches by Brezhnev and Gromyko, quoted in Pravda in 1968, were interpreted by Western observers.

    On the next page, it claims that neo-nationalism is an ideological tool for Russian foreign policy! And there is another rather interesting passage further on, when the authors of the report confuse former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov with former Russian Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov. Although they mention Igor Ivanov’s name in the context of grand strategy, foreign policy and neo-nationalism in Russia, they then refer to “Ivanov’s own 2003 military doctrine and reform plan” (p. 23). And this is given as confirmation of the aggressive neo-nationalist strategy that, according to the authors, is associated with Igor Ivanov! If the authors had been more attentive, they would have discovered that, at that time, Igor Ivanov was serving as the head of the foreign ministry, while the defence minister was Sergey Ivanov. Especially as they make reference to an article by a Western author, who, in 2004, analysed the Russian defence ministry’s reform and uses the right name (Matthew Bouldin, “The Ivanov Doctrine and Military Reform: Reasserting Stability in Russia,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2004). It seems that, when compiling the report, they simply copied an additional footnote to lend extra weight, but it was the wrong one.

    It goes without saying that such a large number of errors undermines the entire content of the report. And this raises a logical question: what was the authors’ intention? To earn their money by throwing a bunch of quotes together or to try and understand the issues that exist in relations between Russia and the West?

    Judging by the number of mistakes and biased assessments, it was most probably the former. There are also traces of a clear strategic intent, however.

    This can be seen in the description of the grey zone where Russia is actively operating, because the case studies provided as examples of Russia’s activities in the grey zone are its bilateral relations with Moldova (1990–2016), Georgia (2003–2012), Estonia (2006–2007), Ukraine (2014–2016), and Turkey (2015–2016). According to the authors, then, the grey zone is independent sovereign states, including NATO members! And virtually all of them, with the exception of Turkey, are former post-Soviet countries that are in the sphere of Russia’s natural interests.

    As for the methods that Russia allegedly employs, these are all heaped together in a big pile: economic embargoes, which have been imposed by Moscow for various reasons (the ban on wine imports from Moldova and Georgia, for example), support of certain political parties, compatriot policies, and diplomatic statements and sanctions (in relation to Turkey, for example, when a Russian plane was shot down over Syria).

    Eventually, the report states: “Our five cases may not stand alone as empirical evidence, but they are broadly exemplary of historical trends. […] Russia applies hostile measures successfully but typically fails to leverage tactical success for long-term strategic gain” (p. 49).

    From this, the report concludes that:

    1. Russia consistently reacts with hostile measures when it perceives threats.

    2. Both opportunism and reactionism drive Russian behavior.

    3. Russian leaders often issue a public warning before employing hostile measures.

    4. Short- and long-term measures are applied in mutually supporting combination.

    5. Diplomatic, information, military, and economic means are used collectively.

    6. Russia emphasizes information, economic, and diplomatic measures, in that order.

    7. All arms of the government are used to apply hostile measures, often in concert.

    In their description of Russia’s actions, the RAND experts even go so far as to include resistance to the Wehrmacht in occupied Soviet territories during the Second World War, including the partisan underground, as an example of “Soviet hostile measures”, when “Soviet agents aggressively undermined the German economic program […] in the western occupied zone”! (p. 53). The report then goes on to say: “By the time the Soviets shifted to the counteroffensive, they had generated a massive, multilayered hostile-measures apparatus tailored to complement conventional military operations” (p. 53) and “[f]ull-scale sabotage, propaganda, and intelligence operations continued apace throughout the war” (p. 54). Immediately after this ludicrous statement is a paragraph on the actions of the KGB and GRU against insurgents in Afghanistan. This is then followed by an attempt to predict what Russia will do in the future.

    So, from the report we can draw the following conclusions.

    • First, it is unclear why the “hostile measures” described in the report include fairly standard practices from international experience that are also used in the West as democratic norms.

    • Second, the report contains a number of distorted facts, errors, incorrect assessments and conclusions that undoubtedly undermine its content.

    • Third, such specific content with attempts to manipulate history is clearly intended to further tarnish Russia’s image, since it will be quoted by other researchers and academics in the future, including by way of mutual citation to reinforce credibility.

    • Fourth, if the US command and NATO are going to perceive this mix of speculation, phobias and value judgements as basic knowledge, then it really could lead to a further escalation, although the hostile measures will be employed by the US and NATO.

    • Fifth, the report clearly adheres to the methodology of the liberal interventionist school, which is somewhat strange for a study that claims to be a guide to action for the military, since the US military usually adheres to the school of political realism, in accordance with which the interests of other states must be respected. And since Russia’s sphere of interests is included in the grey zone, this suggests attempts to deny Russia its geopolitical interests.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 23:30

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics
    Entertainment Culture

  • Japan Set To Release 1.2 Million Tons Of Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Ocean, Causing "Immeasurable Damage"
    Japan Set To Release 1.2 Million Tons Of Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Ocean, Causing “Immeasurable Damage”

    Just in case a global viral pandemic, whose sources are still unclear and apparently now include human feces, wasn’t enough, the global outrage meter is about to go “up to eleven” with Japan now set to flood the world’s oceans with radioactive water.

    In a move that will surely prompt a furious response from Greta Thunberg’s ghost writers (unless of course it doesn’t fit a very narrow agenda), a panel of experts advising Japan’s government on a disposal method for the millions of tons of radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant on Friday recommended releasing it into the ocean. And, as Reuters notes, based on past practice it is likely the government will accept the recommendation.

    Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, has collected nearly 1.2 million tonnes of contaminated water from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting since the plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The water is stored in huge tanks that crowd the site.

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    Tepco expects the wastewater storage tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to run out of capacity around 2022

    The panel under the industry ministry came to the conclusion after narrowing the choice to either releasing the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean or letting it evaporate – and opted for the former, even though it means that Japan’s neihgbors will now have to suffer the consequences of the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

    Previously the committee had ruled out other possibilities, such as underground storage, that lack track records of success. At the meeting, members stressed the importance of selecting proven methods and said “the government should make clear that releasing the water would have a significant social impact.”

    Japan’s neighbor, South Korea, has for much of the past decade retained a ban on imports of seafood from Japan’s Fukushima region imposed after the nuclear disaster and summoned a senior Japanese embassy official last year to explain how the Fukushima water would be dealt with. They will soon have a very unsatisfactory answer.

    The build-up of contaminated water at Fukushima has been a major sticking point in the clean-up, which is likely to last decades, especially as the Olympics are due to be held in Tokyo this summer with some events less than 60 km from the wreck plant and the Fukushima seclusion zone which will remain uninhabitable for centuries. According to Reuters, athletes are planning to bring their own radiation detectors and food to the Games.

    In 2018, the plant operator, TEPCO, apologized after admitting it lied about the cleanup efforts and that its filtration systems had not removed all dangerous material from the water – and the site was running out of room for storage tanks. Among the ludicrous proposals concocted to contain the radioactive water was an idea straight out of Game of Thrones – an underground ice wall. It did not work.

    As a result, having given up on any containment approaches, Tokyo will now literally flood the world with radioactive water. Perhaps in an attempt to mitigate the angry outcry from a world that is suddenly obsessed with a clean environment, Japan said it plans to remove all radioactive particles from the water except tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that cannot be effectively removed with current technology. While it is unclear just how Japan plans on “filtering” out radiation, we with them the best of luck with that particular PR campaign.

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    Radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture. Picture taken January 15, 2020/Reuters

    “Compared to evaporation, ocean release can be done more securely,” the committee said, pointing to common practice around the world where normally operating nuclear stations release water that contains tritium into the sea.

    Needless to say, even the locals disagree: releasing treated water into the ocean would do “immeasurable damage” to a fishing sector that has tried hard to get back to work, an industry source in the Fukushima Prefecture city of Iwaki said. The evaporation proposal has fueled similar worries in farming and ranching circles, according to a source in the rice-growing business.

    “The central government should understand the situation on the ground” and thoroughly consider its response, the source said. Even so, it appears that despite “considereding the situation on the ground”, the government is still set to go ahead with the discharge anyway.

    Why? The reason may also be the simplest one – money. According to the Nikkei, discharging the water into the Pacific is generally seen by experts as the most logical option. Evaporation was successfully used for cleanup after the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster in the U.S. But releasing water into the sea would cost less and, by ministry estimates, cut radiation exposure by more than half compared with evaporation. Of course, this is the same ministry which for months lied about the full extent of the fallout caused by the Fukushima disaster. Surely this time they are telling the truth.

    The recommendation needs to be confirmed by the head of the panel, Nagoya University Professor Emeritus Ichiro Yamamoto, and submitted to the government at a later date, which has not been set, but a hard deadline looms as the government is running out of time to make a decision. The roughly 1,000 tanks on the Fukushima Daiichi site held 1.18 million tons of water as of Dec. 12, not far from the total capacity of 1.37 million. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings expects to run out of space around 2022.

    Even before then, the most important task in decommissioning the plant – removing spent nuclear fuel – is set to begin in 2021 at reactor No. 2. The tanks take up space that will be needed for this work.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 23:00

    Tags
    Environment
    Disaster Accident

  • How Government And Media Are Prepping America For A Failed 2020 Election
    How Government And Media Are Prepping America For A Failed 2020 Election

    Authored by Whitney Webb via MintPressNews.com,

    As World War II drew to a close in Europe, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that “neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”

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    Though numerous examples in the post-World War II era have proven Russell’s point, perhaps one of the best examples was the U.S. public’s willingness to swallow lie after lie about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq due to the climate of fear that followed the September 11 attacks. Those lies, propagated by dubious intelligence, government officials and a compliant media, resulted in catastrophes – large and small, both abroad and at home.

    Today, an analogous narrative is being crafted by many of the same players – both in media and government – yet it has avoided scrutiny, even from independent media.

    Over the past several months and with a renewed zeal in just the last few weeks, anonymous intelligence officials, dubious “experts” and establishment media outlets have crafted a narrative about the coming “chaos” of the 2020 election, months before it takes place. Per that narrative, certain state actors will use specific technologies to target the “American mind” in order to undermine the coming presidential election. The narrative holds that those efforts will be so successful that the U.S. will never recover as a democracy.

    Though these anonymous government sources and their stenographers have already named the countries who will be responsible and the technologies they will use, they also admit that no evidence yet exists to back up these claims, meaning they are — at best — pure speculation.

    Headlines such as “Hackers Are Coming for the 2020 Election — And We’re Not Ready,” “Basically Every US National Security Leader Is Warning About Foreign Interference In The 2020 Election,” and “U.S. intel agencies: Russia and China plotting to interfere in 2020 election” have become increasingly common, despite no available evidence, as have warnings that the American public is defenseless against the old scourge of “fake news” and the new scourge of “deep fakes.” Some media reports have gone so far to say that actual foreign meddling isn’t even necessary as merely the fear of foreign meddling could be enough to upend the American political system beyond repair.

    Historically, the goal of such fear-inducing narratives has been the trading of civil liberties for increased security, or rather, the appearance of increased security. Yet, when the need for security is felt due to a fear that is based on government-driven speculation and not on evidence, the goal of that narrative is not about protecting the public from a real, tangible threat but instead about the consolidation of power by the very groups responsible for crafting it — in this case, the intelligence community and other key players in the national security state.

    However, what is particularly odd about this narrative surrounding imminent “chaos” and meddling in the upcoming 2020 election is the fact that, not only have the instruments of said meddling been named and described in detail, but their use in the election was recently simulated by a company with deep ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. That simulation, organized and run by the Israeli-American company Cybereason, ended with scores of Americans dead, the cancellation of the 2020 election, the imposition of martial law and a spike in fear among the American populace.

    Many of the technologies used to create that chaotic and horrific scenario in the Cybereason simulation are the very same technologies that U.S. federal officials and corporate media outlets have promoted as the core of the very toolkit that they claim will be used to undermine the coming election, such as deep fakes and hacks of critical infrastructure, consumer devices and even vehicles. 

    While the narrative in place has already laid the blame at the feet of U.S. rival states China, Russia and Iran, these very technologies are instead dominated by companies that are tied to the very same intelligence agencies as Cybereason, specifically Israeli military intelligence. 

    With intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Israel not only crafting the narrative about 2020 foreign meddling, but also dominating these technologies and simulating their use to upend the coming election, it becomes crucial to consider the motivations behind this narrative and if these intelligence agencies have ulterior motives in promoting and simulating such outcomes that would effectively end American democracy and hand almost total power to the national security state.

    Media, intelligence foreshadow tech-powered doom for 2020

    Even though the 2020 U.S. election is still months away, a plethora of media reports over the past six months (and even before then) have been raising concern after concern about how the U.S. election is still so vulnerable to foreign meddling that such meddling is essentially an inevitability.

    Part of the reason for the recent pick-up in fear mongering appears to have been the release of a joint statement issued by key members of the Trump administration last November. That statement, authored by Attorney General Bill Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, FBI Director Christopher Wray, NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs, claimed that foreign interference in 2020 was imminent despite admitting that there is no evidence of interference having taken place:

    Our adversaries want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence public sentiment and affect government policies. Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions. Adversaries may try to accomplish their goals through a variety of means, including social media campaigns, directing disinformation operations or conducting disruptive or destructive cyber-attacks on state and local infrastructure.

    While at this time we have no evidence of a compromise or disruption to election infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt the ability to tally votes, we continue to vigilantly monitor any threats to U.S. elections (emphasis added).”

    Despite the key caveat of there being no evidence at the time the statement was issued, media reports used the statement to claim that foreign interference in 2020 was imminent, such as in these reports from BuzzFeed, ABC News, and Newsweek.

    In addition to the reports that have cast the involvement of state actors — namely Russia, Iran and China — as assured despite no evidence, other reports have made the claim that this allegedly imminent interference will inevitably be successful, largely due to claims that the tactics used will rely heavily on technology that the U.S. can’t hope to successfully counter. CSO Online, an online news outlets that provides news, analysis and research on security and risk management, recently warned that “fixing America’s voting and election infrastructure problems is a long-term proposition, one that won’t be fixed in time for the election in November” while the New York Times warned of imminent chaos and that “stealthier” malevolent foreign actors had already created the foundation for “an ugly campaign season marred by hacking and disinformation.” Wired claimed last year that U.S. election security “is still hurting at every level.”

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    A trainer holds a booklet during an exercise for local election officials to simulate 2020 election scenarios in Springfield, Va. Dec. 16, 2019. Alex Brandon | AP

    In another example, Rolling Stone published an article earlier this month with the headline “Hackers Are Coming for the 2020 Election — And We’re Not Ready,” which claims that “the reality is that: “We’ve made progress since the last election — but we’re much less secure than we should be.” The article goes on to say that claim that the goal isn’t necessarily to hack voting machines or change results, but “to merely create the impression of an attack as a way to undermine our faith in the electoral process.” 

    It continues:

    The target is the minds of the American people,” says Joshua Geltzer, a former counterterrorism director on the National Security Council. “In some ways, we’re less vulnerable than we were in 2016. In other ways, it’s more.” Nearly every expert agrees on this: The worst-case scenario, the one we need to prepare for, is a situation that causes Americans to question the bedrock of our democracy — free and fair elections.”

    Well before this type of rhetoric made its way into the U.S. media, Israeli intelligence-linked tech firm Cybereason claiming in a release on its website that “messing with a voter’s mind” would have a bigger impact than changing vote totals, even before the 2016 election. That release, published by Cybereason prior to the last presidential election, was authored by the company’s CEO, Lior Div, who used to lead offensive hacking operations against nation-states for Israeli military intelligence.

    Notably, of all of these media reports, there is a clear consensus that one of the main tactics that will soon be used to meddle in the coming U.S. election will be the use of so-called “deep fakes.” Deriving its name from a combination of “deep learning” and “fake,” deep fakes involve video and audio that has been manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI) to create media that appears to be authentic, but is not. Concern about its use in the upcoming election has spurred not only a wealth of media reports on the matter but has prompted both the U.S. military and Congress to take action to limit its potential misuse.

    One thing that stands out about the media narrative regarding election meddling and deep fakes is that several news organizations have published articles that state that deep fakes will be used to undermine the 2020 election, as opposed to stating that they could be used or that they are a phenomenon worthy of attention (though some reports have taken this more measured approach). 

    The reason for this level of confidence may owe to statements made by prominent U.S. intelligence officials last year, including those made by Dan Coats, the former Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who claimed in the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment for the U.S. Intelligence Community that deep fakes and other hi-tech forms of fake media would be used to disrupt the 2020 election. Coats specifically stated: 

    Adversaries and strategic competitors probably will attempt to use deep fakes or similar machine-learning technologies to create convincing—but false—image, audio, and video files to augment influence campaigns directed against the United States and our allies and partners.” 

    Since Coats made the warning, numerous media reports have promoted the concern with little scrutiny, representing just one of the numerous times in U.S. history where narratives first authored by U.S. intelligence are subsequently promoted heavily by U.S. media, even when the claim made by intelligence officials is speculative, as it is in this case. Indeed, the narratives being promoted with respect to the 2020 election involve many of the same intelligence agencies (American and Israeli) and media outlets who promoted claims that were later proven false about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion, among other pertinent examples.

    Notably, deep fakes figured prominently and was the tool most used by malevolent hackers in Cybereason’s 2020 election simulation, which saw both video and audio-only deep fakes used to spread misinformation on national and local TV channels in order to impersonate police officers and election officials and to create fake bomb threats by posing as the terror group Daesh (ISIS). Cybereason also happens to be a partner of the organization funding the most well-known creator and producer of deep fakes in the world, an organization that — much like Cybereason itself — is openly tied to Israeli intelligence.

    Aside from deep fakes, other technologies weaponized in Cybereason’s election simulation have also been the subject of several media reports, such as the hacking of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and appliances and even the hacking of vehicles that have some form of internet connectivity.  In the Cybereason simulation, IoT hacks were used to cut power to polling stations and disseminate disinformation while vehicles were hacked to conduct terror attacks against civilians waiting in line to vote, killing several and injuring hundreds.

    Most media reports have claimed that these technologies will be part of the coming “explosion” in cyber warfare in 2020 and do not specifically link them to imminent election meddling. Others, however, have made the link to the election explicit.

    Naming the culprits in advance

    In addition to the apparent consensus on how foreign meddling will occur during the 2020 election, there is also agreement regarding which countries will be responsible. Again, this is largely based on statements made by U.S. national security officials. For instance, the joint statement issued last November by the DOJ, DOD, DHS, DNI, FBI, NSA, and CISA regarding 2020 election security, states that “Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions” before adding “at this time we have no evidence.”

    Similarly, the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment for the U.S. Intelligence Community, written by then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, names these same three countries in relation to imminent 2020 election interference and states that their interference in the 2020 election is “almost certain.” The assessment adds the following about each nation:

    • Russia: “Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians.”

    • China: “China will continue to use legal, political, and economic levers—such as the lure of Chinese markets—to shape the information environment. It is also capable of using cyber attacks against systems in the United States to censor or suppress viewpoints it deems politically sensitive.”

    • Iran: “Iran, which has used social media campaigns to target audiences in both the United States and allied nations with messages aligned with Iranian interests, will continue to use online influence operations to try to advance its interests.”

    Coats’ assessment was enough to spawn numerous stories on the imminent threat that these three nations pose to the 2020 election, with headlines such as “U.S. intel agencies: Russia and China plotting to interfere in 2020 election.”

    The vast majority of warnings regarding future election interference have come from U.S. intelligence officials with a dubious record of trustworthiness and a history of using the media to spread propaganda and disinformation, most famously through Operation Mockingbird. Most — if not all — of the recent and numerous articles on imminent interference rely heavily on claims made by the two aforementioned government documents, documents crafted by U.S. intelligence agencies for public consumption, as well as claims made by anonymous U.S. officials. 

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    A screenshot from the 2019 National Threat Assessment lists Russia, China and Iran as primary threats to the United States

    A recent New York Times article, for example, titled “Chaos Is the Point’: Russian Hackers and Trolls Grow Stealthier in 2020,” is based almost entirely on “interviews with dozens of officials and experts,” though the only government official named in the article is Shelby Pierson, the intelligence community’s election threats executive. The most quoted experts named in the article are Ben Nimmo, formerly of the hawkish, NATO-funded Atlantic Council and now with Graphika, and Laura Rosenberger, director of the neoconservative-created Alliance for Securing Democracy. The article nonetheless cites “American officials” and “current and former officials” several times to make claims about imminent election interference that paint a bleak picture of the current election season.

    A recent article from The Hill relies on the acting head of DHS, Chad Wolf, as its only source, citing Wolf’s claim that “we fully expect Russia to attempt to interfere in the 2020 elections to sow public discord and undermine our democratic institutions” amid other warnings that Wolf gave about Chinese and Iranian cyber threats to U.S. elections. Other articles, including one titled “Russia, China plan to adjust their tactics to hack, influence 2020 elections” cite only Shelby Pierson of the U.S. intelligence community as its source for that headline’s claim. Another titled “Russia isn’t the only threat to 2020 elections, says U.S. intel” cites only anonymous U.S. intelligence officials, as the headline suggests.

    Though Russia and China have consistently been named as the most likely election meddlers, reports have also been drumming up the likelihood that Iran will emerge as 2020’s foreign meddler of choice, especially in the months prior to and weeks after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani by the Trump administration. A recent “informal poll” conducted by the Washington Post asked hawkish think tank fellows, employees at companies like Raytheon and current and former federal officials if Iran would likely retaliate against the U.S. via cyberattack. The Post ran the results of the poll under the headline “Get ready for serious cyberattacks from Iran, experts say.”

    Despite the media’s numerous warnings of imminent and “serious” cyber-retaliation from Iran, the only cyberattack attributed to the country after Soleimani’s death was the vandalism of the Federal Depository Library Program website, a rather benign act that was nevertheless blasted across headlines such as “US government website hacked with pro-Iranian messages, image of bloodied Trump.” The U.S. government is quoted in that article as saying that “At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors.” 

    Also notably absent from media reports is the fact that WikiLeaks revealed in 2017 that the CIA had stockpiled a library of “stolen” cyberattack techniques produced in other nations, including Russia and Iran. Those revelations, part of the Vault 7 release, revealed that the CIA’s UMBRAGE group was capable of “misdirect[ing] attribution [for cyberattacks actually done by the CIA] by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.” In other words, the CIA was more than capable of conducting “false flag” cyber attacks and blaming them on foreign actors.

    Notably, one of the viruses being blamed on Iran for cyberattacks targeting the U.S. ahead of the 2020 election — called Shamoon — was “stolen” by the CIA’s UMBRAGE and cited in the WikiLeaks release.

    Conflict of interest-ridden Microsoft “defends democracy”

    Last year saw the tech behemoth Microsoft join the effort to blame foreign state actors, specifically Iran, for cyberattacks against the U.S. This helped to bolster assertions that had largely originated with a handful of U.S. intelligence officials and hawkish, neoconservative-aligned think tanks as media reports on Microsoft’s related claims treated the company as an independent private sector observer.

    Yet, as MintPress investigations have revealed, Microsoft has clear conflicts of interest with respect to election interference. Its “Defending Democracy” program has spawned tools like “NewsGuard” and “ElectionGuard” that it claims will help protect U.S. democracy, but — upon closer examination — instead have the opposite effect. 

    Last January, MintPress exposed NewsGuard’s neoconservative backers and how special interest groups were backing the program in an effort to censor independent journalism under the guise of the fight against “fake news.” Subsequent investigations revealed the risk that Microsoft’s ElectionGuard poses to U.S. voting machines, which it claims to make more secure and how the platform was developed by companies closely tied to the Pentagon’s infamous research branch DARPA and Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200. 

    ElecionGuard software has since been adopted by numerous voting machine manufacturers and is slated to be used in some Democratic Primary votes. Notably, the push for the adoption of ElectionGuard software has been spearheaded by the recently created Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is the federal agency tasked with overseeing election security and is headed by Christopher Krebs, a former high level Microsoft executive.

    In recent months, Microsoft has also been at the center of claims that Iran attempted to hack U.S. presidential campaigns ahead of 2020 as well as claims that Iran plans to target the U.S. power grid and other critical infrastructure with cyberattacks. 

    Last October, Microsoft penned a blog post discussing a “threat group” it named Phosphorus that they “believe originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government.” The post went on to claim that Phosphorus attempted to target a U.S. presidential campaign, which later media reports claimed was President Trump’s re-election campaign. Microsoft concluded that the attempt was “not technically sophisticated” and ultimately unsuccessful, but felt compelled to disclose it and link it to Iran’s government.

    Though it provided no evidence for the hack or its reasons for “believing” that the attack originated from Iran, media reports treated Microsoft’s declaration as proof that Iran had begun actively meddling in the 2020 election. Headlines such as “Iranian Hackers Target Trump Campaign as 2020 Threats Mount,” “Iran-linked Hackers Target Trump 2020 Campaign, Microsoft says”, “Microsoft: Iran government-linked hacker targeted 2020 presidential campaign” and “Microsoft Says Iranians Tried To Hack U.S. Presidential Campaign,” were blasted across the front pages of American media. None of the reports scrutinized Microsoft’s claims or noted the clear conflict of interest Microsoft had in making such claims due to its efforts to see its own ElectionGuard Software adopted nationwide. 

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    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discusses 740 alleged infiltration attempts by nation-state actors at a conference in Seattle, May 6, 2019. Elaine Thompson | AP

    Media reports also left out the fact that Microsoft is a major government contractor for the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon. Notably, the Trump campaign, which Microsoft said was the target of this attack, was later identified as the only major presidential campaign using Microsoft’s “AccountGuard” software, part of its dubious “Defending Democracy” program that also spawned NewsGuard and ElectionGuard. AccountGuard claims to protect campaign-linked emails and data from hackers.

    Microsoft surfaced not long after, again claiming that Iran was maliciously targeting the United States’ civilian infrastructure. This subsequent claim was first published by Wired and later covered by other outlets. Those reports cite a single person, Microsoft security researcher Ned Moran, who claimed that an Iran-backed hacking group called APT33 was targeting the U.S. “physical control systems used in electric utilities, manufacturing, and oil refineries.”

    “They’re trying to deliver messages to their adversaries and trying to compel and change their adversaries’ behavior,” Moran told Wired. Moran also stated that “Microsoft hasn’t seen direct evidence of APT33 carrying out a disruptive cyberattack rather than mere espionage or reconnaissance, it’s seen incidents where the group has at least laid the groundwork for those attacks (emphasis added).”

    Cybereason helps craft the narrative

    While U.S. intelligence officials and media outlets alike have been largely responsible for setting the narrative that imminent meddling will be conducted by Russia, China and Iran, key components of that narrative, particularly with respect to China and Iran, have been laid by Cybereason, a company that recently ran 2020 doomsday election simulations and that has close ties to the intelligence communities of both the U.S. and Israel.

    Shortly after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani earlier this month, an operation conducted in concert with Israeli intelligence, Cybereason warned that Iran could imminently retaliate with a cyber threat and quoted its own employees who explained what and how Iran would likely target in retaliation. Cybereason’s CSO Sam Curry, who actively participated in the firm’s 2020 doomsday election simulations, stated:

     This means that Iran’s “forceful revenge” response is likely to be less about the flash and all about the bang. If you have connected systems that are responsible for kinetic world effects, like ICS systems and critical infrastructure around water, energy or vital services, it’s time to pay attention. Iran and the US are engaged in Cyber brinksmanship, which means that the gloves are off as Iran picks it’s targets (emphasis added).”

    Cybereason also quoted visiting fellow for the National Security Institute and former advisor to the U.S. Secret Service (which participated in Cyberaeson’s election simulations), Anne Marie Zettlemoyer, who claimed that Iran could soon target Wall Street and critical U.S. infrastructure like the power grid:

     An attack against the financial systems can be devastating economically and weaken the confidence and viability of markets. However, we cannot ignore the physical consequences and manifestations that can come from a cyberattack, particularly against critical infrastructure like energy and industry control systems.”

    Cybereason’s claims regarding Iran’s interest in “critical infrastructure” systems likely originated with Microsoft, the claims were then parroted by the media in several reports, many of which quoted Cybereason’s Sam Curry. Curry is also a contributor to major news outlets like Forbes where he writes about Iran’s cyber warfare capabilities.

    Notably, in Cybereason’s recent allegations against Iran, it states that “it’s clear that Iran has been preparing for future geopolitical conflict by gaining access to critical infrastructure and other important operations in the United States.” It backs these claims by citing an article authored by Curry for Forbes. Following Soleimani’s death, numerous media reports, including in the UK’s The Independent and ABC News, have cited Curry as an “expert” source in claiming that Iran would retaliate with cyberattacks.

    Microsoft’s claims about foreign hackers and meddling — the evidence for which have never been made public but has been parroted as fact nonetheless — are frequently supported by Cybereason.

    Last August, Microsoft claimed to have foiled Russian attempts at hacking two Republican-affiliated think tanks and, despite providing no evidence, Cybereason’s then-senior director of intelligence services Ross Rustici was quoted as an expert in several media reports as saying that such behavior was to be expected from Russia. In one such report, Rustici stated:

    We’re very good at fighting the last war, but the Russians are very good at evolving their game. I suspect if they’re going to do a psychological operation around the elections, the way they do it will be different than what they did in 2016. How effective the defenses we’ve built for what they did in 2016 will be for those attacks is yet to be seen.”

    None of the media reports quoting Rustici mentioned Cybereason’s ties to Israeli intelligence, referring to tech firms only a “Boston-based cybersecurity company” and similar variants. Cybereason’s Intelligence Group is stuffed with former and active members of U.S. and Israeli intelligence services and has released several reports about nation-state hacking with a focus on Russia and China.

    Cybereason has also been at the forefront of claims that China has been engaged in aggressive cyberattacks against multinational companies that have also seen widespread coverage in U.S. media, despite the untransparent nature of the evidence for Cybereason’s claims. 

    In a story that received major coverage from outlets such as Fox News, Reuters, CNBC and others, Cybereason unveiled what it called “Operation Soft Cell,” an operation that stole mass troves of data from several global telecommunications companies. In each story, Cybereason is the sole source of the claim and declined to provide the name or location of any of the affected companies. The firm also claimed to have determined that the attack was likely perpetrated by someone “backed by a nation state, and is affiliated with China.” It further claimed to have debriefed and coordinated responses with U.S. intelligence. 

    In an article for Reuters, Cybereason stated that “this time as opposed to in the past we are sure enough to say that the attack originated in China” while Cybereason separately told CyberScoop that it had “found hacking tools such as a modified web shell and a remote access trojan that are commonly associated with, but not unique to, Chinese hackers.” Despite the incongruity, media reports laid the blame squarely on China, as seen in headlines such as “Chinese spies have been sucking up call records at multinational telecoms, researchers say.”

    Prior to uncovering Operation Soft Cell, Cybereason had warned on its blogs in the months and years prior that China would imminently target U.S. companies. The revelation of Operation Soft Cell — which originated exclusively with Cybereason — has been used to build the case that China is openly engaged in cyberwarfare against its rival states, like the United States, and targeting “democracy itself.”

    Best Known Deep Fake Creator is Funded by Israeli Intelligence

    While the media, and even Cybereason itself, have helped lay the foundation to blame specific state actors for 2020 election meddling well ahead of the fact, it is worth revisiting Cybereason’s “Operation Blackout” election simulation and the tactics used by the “bad actors” in that scenario. 

    That simulation, discussed in detail in the first installment of this series, saw the weaponization of specific technologies, namely deep fakes, hacks of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and hacks of vehicles, in order to target the 2020 U.S. election, resulting in the cancellation of the election and the imposition of martial law.

    Given the current narrative regarding what state actors are likely to meddle in the 2020 election — namely Russia, China and Iran — and the tactics they will allegedly use, it is important to explore the sources of the technologies weaponized per that narrative as well as in “Operation Blackout.” 

    Indeed, if there is any clear overlap between the creators of those technologies and the state actors being blamed in advance for their imminent use, it would certainly lend credibility to the claims promoted by U.S. intelligence, the media and companies like Microsoft and Cybereason.

    Yet, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the companies and state actors most involved in developing these technologies are the very ones claiming that Russia, China and Iran will use them to undermine the 2020 election.

    Take for instance the use of deep fakes. Not only have numerous media reports focused on how deep fakes will be used to meddle in the 2020 elections, but Cybereason’s doomsday election simulation saw “bad actors” rely heavily on their use to spread disinformation and even make fake bomb threats. While much has been said of the coming election and deep fakes, remarkably few reports have bothered to look at the company best known for creating viral deep fakes. 

    Canny AI has garnered considerable media attention over the past few years for its persuasive deep fake videos that have frequently gone viral. In the last year alone, the tech firm’s viral deep fakes have included a controversial video of Mark Zuckerberg where the Facebook co-founder appears to be saying “Imagine this for a second: One man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures,” as well as a video showing Richard Nixon giving a speech he never actually gave. More recently, Canny AI was behind the viral videos immediately prior to the 2019 U.K. general election that appeared to show Jeremy Corbyn and his rival Boris Johnson endorsing each other and another video that showed world leaders singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”:

    Oddly, many of the media reports that discuss these viral videos fail to mention the role of Canny AI in creating these viral deep fakes and instead only mention the organization or artists with whom Canny AI partnered to create them. For instance, the Corbyn-Johnson videos were reported to have been produced by the group Future Advocacy and artist Bill Posters, but it was actually Canny AI that created those videos for that group. Similarly, the Nixon Speech deep fake was reported by several outlets as having been solely created by MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality. However, the Boston Globe noted that “the [MIT] team worked with Canny AI, an Israeli company that does Video Dialogue Replacement, and Respeecher, a Ukrainian startup specializing in speech-to-speech synthetic voice production” to create the video.

    The Zuckerberg deep fake that Canny AI created led to lots of positive press for the company, with several media reports dubbing them as the company using “deep fakes for good” and that uses the controversial technology “responsibly.” The Zuckerberg deep fake has been cited as one of the main drivers behind Facebook’s new “deep fake” policy, which only bans some deep fake videos and has been criticized by U.S. lawmakers as insufficient. Notably, neither Facebook nor Facebook-owned Instagram ever took down Canny AI’s deep fake of Zuckerburg.

    Given the concern over deep fakes in relation to the coming election and Canny AI standing out as the main producer of deep fakes that have gone viral over the past year, it is important to point out that Canny AI has ties to a state actor with a history of election meddling: the state of Israel. 

    Indeed, Canny AI is 100 percent funded by an Israeli start-up accelerator called Xcelerator, a joint venture between Tel Aviv University and Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet (sometimes called Shabak). According to Start Up Nation Central, the Paul Singer-created organization that promotes Israeli technology start ups, Xcelerator-funded “start-ups participating in the program benefit from close mentoring from content and technology experts from the Shabak, experts from Tel Aviv University, and industry leaders. The connection to the Shabak also provides the entrepreneurs with ways to test the capabilities of their technologies and cooperation opportunities (emphasis added).”

    In addition, Xcelerator is partnered not only with Israeli intelligence directly, but also with Cybereason, the very company that explored the use of deep fakes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election that saw the election cancelled and martial law declared as well as a company that itself has deep ties to Israeli intelligence. Other notable partners of Xcelerator include NEC Corp, which has intimate ties to top Cybereason investor Softbank; Check Point Technologies, which has ties to Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200; and the Israeli start-up accelerator Team8. In previous reports published by MintPress, Team8 was discussed in detail, particularly their recent hire of former director of the NSA and former head of U.S. Cyber Command Mike Rogers, and their close ties to Paul Singer’s Start Up Nation Central, which itself has deep ties to U.S. neoconservatives.

    It is also worth noting that Xcelerator also backs an “anti-fake news” start-up called Cyabra, which has direct ties to Israel’s Mossad and offers its AI-driven “disinformation protection” to government agencies as well as politicians, particularly during election seasons. Two of Cyabra’s co-founders previously co-founded Psy-Group, which attempted to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election by weaponizing “fake news” and social media and later closed down its operations after U.S. government scrutiny into its activities began as part of the Mueller investigation. 

    Psy-Group also engaged in doxxing campaigns targeting Palesintian rights activists in the U.S. which were planned in conjunction with Ram Ben-Barak, the former deputy director of the Mossad who now advises Cyabra. Given that much of the concern ahead of the next election is related not only to deep fakes but also “fake news,” Cyabra’s rise and its clear ties to Mossad and the now defunct Psy-Group are important to note.

    Furthermore, in examining the other technologies weaponized during Cybereason’s 2020 election simulation and cited in the aforementioned media narrative regarding 2020 meddling, a pattern similar to that of Canny AI emerges. 

    Indeed, the other technologies linked to these “bad actors” and foreign meddlers — namely hacking IoT devices and hacking vehicles — are also pioneered by companies with deep ties to Israeli military intelligence, specifically Unit 8200, and Israeli tech companies that have aggressively spied on U.S. government institutions in collusion with Israeli intelligence in the past, namely Comverse (now Verint) and Amdocs.

    Hacking the Internet of Things

    In Cybereason’s doomsday election simulation, another of the tactics used was the hacking of devices and appliances connected to the internet, often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) and which includes everything from smartphones to power grid infrastructure to city traffic lights.

    While most reports on IoT hacks to date have focused on “lone wolf” or non-state-aligned actors, one company has stood out for its efforts to create a tool that would allow governments and intelligence agencies to hack these devices with ease. That company, called Toka, announced in 2018 that it planned to offer “a one-stop hacking shop for governments that require extra capability to fight terrorists and other threats to national security in the digital domain,” with “a special focus on [hacking] the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), covering tech like Amazon Echo, Nest connected home products, as well as connected fridges, thermostats and alarms.”

    The Israel-based company, which raised $12.5 million within months of launching, has since been busy marketing its services to governments around the world, most recently France where it described its product portfolio as “empower[ing] governments, Intelligence, and law enforcement agencies to enhance Homeland Security with groundbreaking cyber-intelligence and operational capabilities” during an exposition in Paris last November. 

    Even though Toka openly markets the ability to hack private consumer devices to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world, the clear threat to privacy has gone ignored by media outlets as the company has garnered nearly no media attention since it launched nearly two years ago.

    Yet, Toka is not only notable for what it offers but also for its founders and investors. Indeed, the co-founders of Toka have been described as an “all-star” team, largely because of the role of former Israeli Prime Minister and former head of Israeli military intelligence, Ehud Barak. Barak, in addition to co-founding the company, serves as its director and is also the chairman of the board of the controversial Israeli company Carbyne911, which markets software to emergency call centers in the United States. Interestingly, Cybereason’s 2020 doomsday election simulation also dealt with the hacking and weaponization of 911 call centers. Also of note is the fact that another of Carbyne911’s leadership team, former Unit 8200 commander Pinchas Buchris, is an adviser to Cybereason.

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    Toka’s top brass is a who’s who of former Israeli military and intelligence officials

    In addition to Barak, Toka was co-founded by retired Brigadier General Yaron Rosen, former Chief of the IDF’s cyber staff, where he was “the lead architect of all [IDF] cyber activities” including those executed by Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200. Rosen, who now serves as Toka’s CEO, has stated that Toka’s technology will only be sold to countries allied with the U.S. and Israel, telling Forbes that “Russia, China and ‘other enemy countries’ would never be customers.”

    Toka’s leadership and software architects are similarly tied into Israel’s national security state. Several — including the “architect” of its hacking software — previously worked for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office and developed “offensive technologies” for Israel’s head of state and other top Toka employees and executives share numerous connections to Unit 8200, other divisions of Israeli military intelligence and Unit 8200-connected tech companies like Check Point Technologies.

    Though Toka’s leadership team makes its ties to Israeli military intelligence abundantly clear, important connections also appear in examining Toka’s investors. One of the major investors in Toka is Dell technologies, one of the world’s largest technology companies that was founded by Michael Dell, a well-known pro-Israel partisan who has donated millions of dollars to the Friends of the IDF and one of the top supporters of the so-called “anti-BDS” bills that prevent publicly employed individuals or public institutions from supporting non-violent boycotts of Israel, even on humanitarian grounds. It goes without saying that a major technology company investing in a company that markets the hacking of that very technology (computers, IoT, smartphones, etc.) should be a red flag.

    With a major foot in the door through its connections to Dell, whose products are used by the private and public sectors around the world, other investors in Toka again reveal its ties to Israel’s military intelligence and the same controversial Israeli tech companies that have aggressively spied on the U.S. government in the past — Amdocs and Comverse. For instance, Entrèe Capital, a venture capital fund that is one of Toka’s main investors, is managed by Aviad Eyal and Ran Achituv. The latter, who manages Entrée’s investment in Toka and sits on Toka’s board of directors, is the founder of the IDF’s satellite-based signals intelligence unit and also a former senior Vice President at both Amdocs and Comverse Infosys (Verint).

    Another notable investor in Toka is the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, which is advised by former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, a close friend of the infamous pedophile Jeffery Epstein, whose own ties to Israeli military intelligence have been discussed in several MintPress reports. Epstein was also a close friend of Ehud Barak, co-founder and director of Toka, and invested at least $1 million in another company with close ties to Barak, Carbyne911. The remaining investors in Toka are Launch Capital, which is deeply tied to the Pritzker family — one of the wealthiest families in the U.S. with close ties to the Clintons and Obamas as well as the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby, and Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist who spent nearly three decades at VenRock, the Rockefeller family venture capital fund.

    Unit 8200 – From Hacking Cars to Protecting Them?

    Arguably the most disturbing aspect of Cybereason’s “Operation Blackout” election simulation was the hacking of vehicles that were then rammed into civilians waiting in line to vote at polling stations. In the simulation, this led to scores of dead Americans and hundreds of injuries.

    As was the case with other technologies used to undermine the 2020 election in the simulation, this technology — the hacking of vehicles — is the bread and butter of an Israeli cybersecurity firm called Upstream Security that specializes in automobiles and boasts deep ties to the country’s military intelligence service. 

    Though vehicle hacking seemed out of left field when the 2020 election simulation took place last November, media reports about the imminent dangers of “car hacking” began to emerge just a month after the exercise took place, most of which cited a December 2019 report created by Upstream. Some of those reports have warned that car hacking could be used to undermine the coming U.S. election.

    One report titled “Car Hacking Hits the Streets,” cites only Upstream’s report to claim that “In 2020, the connected-car market will reach a tipping point, with the majority of vehicles already connected to the Internet when sold in the United States, representing a large base of potential targets for attacks.” Another report, titled “New study shows just how bad vehicle hacking has gotten,” uses Upstream’s report (i.e. study) to claim that hacks of regular vehicles have exploded since 2016 and that most of the cars on U.S. roads today are vulnerable to hackers and that over 80 percent of those hacks occur remotely. 

    Neither report noted Upstream’s ties to Israeli military intelligence. Equally notable is the fact that both reports that covered the Upstream-written study say that only manufacturers can address the problem by partnering with a company like Upstream.

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    A screenshot from an Upstream promotional video

    Lucky for Upstream, they have already partnered with a slew of auto manufacturers, including Hyundai, Volvo, Renault and even U.S. auto insurance giants like Nationwide, who now number among Upstream’s most important investors. The company’s original investors are Charles River Ventures, one of Cybereason’s first investors, and Israeli venture capital firm Glilot Capital.

    Glilot Capital’s interest in Upstream is telling given the firm’s deep ties to Israel’s Unit 8200. Glilot was founded by two former Israeli military intelligence officers and has “a heavy focus on the cyber sector and the entrepreneurs who emerge from the elite Unit 8200,” according to the Jerusalem Post. Even the name of the firm is an homage to Unit 8200, as the unit’s main base is located in Glilot, near Herzliya.

    “It’s as if Americans called a VC Fort Meade Capital [the US Army base in Maryland where the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command are headquartered], some VC names are meant to be symbolic, as in our case. Glilot is the home of several of the best intelligence and technology units in the IDF, it’s where we came from and it is where we find our best entrepreneurs,” Glilot Capital co-founder Arik Kleinstein told the Jerusalem Post in 2016.

    Upstream is certainly the type of company that Glilot Capital is used to investing in. It was founded by two Israelis who both served in the IDF, with one of them serving in an elite intelligence unit. Upstream’s co-founders, Yoav Levy and Yonathan Appel, met while working at Check Point Technologies, the Unit 8200 alumni-founded company with deep ties to Israel’s military intelligence and military-industrial complex as well as the IoT hacking company Toka. Notably, Upstream recently partnered with the Japanese company Fujitsu, a longtime partner with Softbank — Cybereason’s main investor.

    Softbank has also invested heavily in another Unit 8200-founded vehicle security start-up called Argus Cyber Security, a firm known for its numerous demonstrations showing how easy it is to hack vehicles. Argus is also backed by Nadav Zafrir, the former Unit 8200 commander who now runs Team8. Argus’ CEO Ofer Ben-Noon, a former captain in Unit 8200, told Forbes in 2014 that “Everything will be hacked in every single [car] brand. It will take time, it might be weeks, months, or a couple of years, but eventually it will happen.”

    Since then, Unit 8200 alumni from Argus, Upstream and other Israeli automobile cybersecurity firms have shown media outlets around the world how much easier hacking vehicles has become in the years since Ben-Noon first made the claim. One such report from VICE includes a vehicle hacking demonstration, courtesy of a Unit 8200 alumni, and notes that “most cars today are susceptible to hacker attacks.”

    Of course, Unit 8200 isn’t the only intelligence agency known to be experts at hacking vehicles. Indeed, in 2017, WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA was capable of hacking vehicles and exploring their use in committing “undetectable assassinations.”

    “Bring down nations to their knees”

    At the Tel Aviv Cybertech Conference in 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated the following:

    Today warfare has changed dramatically…With a click of a button, you can bring down nations to their knees very rapidly if you so desire and if you’re willing to take the risks, because every system can be hacked. Our hospitals, our airplanes, our cars, our banks. The most important word here is our data banks, they can be hacked.”

    Media reports and even members of the Israeli public and private sector have openly acknowledged that Israel’s intelligence apparatus — from Unit 8200 to the Mossad — remains directly linked to many of the private technology companies founded by its former members, especially in the field of cybersecurity. Though reports on the matter often praise this merging of Israel’s public and private spheres, they rarely acknowledge the documented corruption within Unit 8200, the unit’s dark past in recruiting felons and even pedophiles to join its ranks, or the danger posed by having companies directly linked to foreign intelligence being given access to the U.S. government’s most classified and sensitive systems and data. 

    The last omission is particularly troubling given that Israeli intelligence has not only been caught aggressively using private tech companies to spy on U.S. federal agencies and networks, but also intercepting the private communications of at least two U.S. presidents and using a notorious pedophile to sexually blackmail American politicians. 

    As was mentioned in the first installment of this series, Cybereason’s CEO Lior Div offers a clear example of this worrisome bridge between Israel’s public and private sector, as Div has openly stated that he views his work at Cybereason as a “continuation” of his service to Israeli military intelligence, where he led offensive cyberattacks against other nations. 

    Given Div’s past statements and his company’s clear ties to both Israeli and U.S. intelligence, Cybereason’s simulation of the 2020 U.S. election — which involved terrorist attacks and led to the election’s cancellation and the imposition of martial law — is highly concerning. This is particularly so considering that Cybereason’s investors have direct ties to individuals who would benefit from the election’s cancellation and also considering the clear narrative that has emerged in recent months regarding how the coming election will inevitably fall victim to tech-driven “chaos” in coming months. 

    The clear overlap between Cybereason’s simulation and the intelligence-driven media narrative is clear cause for concern, especially considering that the technologies that they highlight as ultimately upending the election are dominated by the very same intelligence agencies simulating and crafting that narrative. 

    The keyword that has been used to describe the end result of both Cybereason’s simulation and the prevailing media narrative regarding the 2020 election is “chaos,” chaos so imminent, widespread and unruly that it will shake American democracy to its core. 

    What has been left unsaid, however, is that a government’s solution to “chaos” is always the imposition of “order.” This means that — whatever “chaos” ultimately ensues prior to or on election day — will result in a government response that will do much more to crush freedom and undermine democracy than any act of foreign meddling has, be it real or imagined.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 22:30

  • Mayor Of City With 6 Million People Next To Wuhan Warns Of "Significant Increase" In Coronavirus Cases This Weekend
    Mayor Of City With 6 Million People Next To Wuhan Warns Of “Significant Increase” In Coronavirus Cases This Weekend

    One month into the worst viral pandemic in decades, China appears woefully unprepared to respond appropriately and decisively to a disease that has infected over 12,000 around the globe. This became obvious after several Chinese officials recently had media interview mishaps, in which their lack of knowledge about measures to contain the coronavirus were on full display, The Epoch Times reported.

    On Jan. 29, the Beijing government sent a working team to Huanggang, a city with over 6.3 million people located just 30 miles east of the coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan in the Hubei province.

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    The team held a meeting with Tang Zhihong, chief of the city’s health commission, and Chen Mingxing, director of the city’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) accompanied the working team and recorded the meeting. When prompted with questions by the experts from Beijing, Tang couldn’t answer.

    In the CCTV video, the Beijing experts asked the current capacity of hospitals in the city. Tang kept silent. When pressed again, Tang answered: “We have an official who is in charge of this issue.”

    The experts asked what was the current number of confirmed cases in Huanggang. Tang first said it was “more than 200,” but Chen chimed in and said: “118.”

    It quickly went downhill from there: the team also asked, “How many patients are being treated in the hospitals?” Both Tang and Chen didn’t answer. This angered Chinese netizens, who commented on the news segment on social media.

    The next day, the Huanggang government announced that Tang has been dismissed from her position.

    Then, in response to the rising wave of public outrage, on January 30 the Huanggang government announced new lockdown measures.

    According to the new rule, all roads in the Huanggang municipal area would be closed at midnight Jan. 31, with physical barriers and checkpoints. No vehicles can use the roads except “those for outbreak prevention and control, medical rescue, basic needs, and emergency rescue,” while taxis will only be allowed for expectant mothers, patients of severe illness, with only a certain number of taxis are allocated to each neighborhood.

    Unfortunately, these long-overdue measures are coming too late, especially in light of recent news that up to 5 million potential carriers had already left Wuhan before the city was put under quarantine.

    This was confirmed by Hubei governor Wang, who said at a Jan. 29 press conference that the number of confirmed cases are quickly increasing in Huanggang and three other nearby cities—Xiaogang, Jingmen, and Xianning. He added that he was worried “Huanggang could become another Wuhan.”

    Echoing this dire warning, on Friday the mayor of Huanggang said that there will be a significant increase in confirmed novelcoronavirus infection cases on Saturday and Sunday in the city, as some 600-700k people returned from Wuhan to Huanggang before the Wuhan lockdown.

    And at a Jan. 30 press conference, Zhang Wenhong, leader of the outbreak response team in Shanghai, said: “Based on the current situation, this coronavirus will spread more broadly. I’m responsible for my words here and I can tell you the estimation of overseas experts are correct,” he said, without naming which experts he was referring to.

    Chinese authorities only began updating the outbreak death toll since Jan. 22. But experts from the UK and Hong Kong have estimated that the true figure of infections could reach 250,000 people in Wuhan alone by Feb. 4.

    All of this could have been prevented if it wasn’t for China’s notorious desire to preserve secrecy – as it did during the 2003 SARS epidemic – and avoid disclosing the facts of any adverse situation to avoid alarming the population.

    The outbreak was first reported by Chinese authorities on Dec. 31, 2019, but the disease first emerged in the city of Wuhan in early December. It has since spread to all Chinese provinces and regions, as well as more than 20 countries around the world. And with over 12,000 confirmed infections as of Saturday morning, Liu Yingzi, director of the Hubei health commission, said on Jan. 29 that there were more than 170,000 medical staff working on the frontlines treating coronavirus patients.

    Meanwhile, doctors from Hubei hospitals told state-run media that they lack the human resources to treat patients. Some of them have worked for more than 24 hours straight. On Jan. 22, state-run Jiangsu Television reported that an Wuhan doctor was infected with the coronavirus after treating patients for 11 days. He was under self-quarantine and told his family members that he had worked 26 hours straight, as there were too many patients at the hospital.

    On Jan. 29, Zeng Guang, the chief scientist of epidemiology at China’s CDC, made a rare candid admission about why Chinese officials cannot tell people the truth, in an interview with the state-run tabloid Global Times.

    And then there’s this, from SixthTone’s David Paulk: “The 8 people detained in Wuhan for “spreading rumors” — who we wrote about in a Jan. 2 article that was censored — were doctors trying to raise the alarm about a new SARS-like virus.” 

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    We leave the last word to Zeng, the chief scientist at China’s CDC: “The officials need to think about the political angle and social stability in order to keep their positions,” he said, which is all one needs to know about any “facts” coming out of China.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 22:00

  • The Super Bowl Is A Grift Of Epic Proportions
    The Super Bowl Is A Grift Of Epic Proportions

    Authored by Dave Zirin via The Nation,

    The Super Bowl is like prom for the 1 percent. When the big game comes to town, it’s accompanied by private jets, parties, and nonstop bottle service. That should be enough, but it never is. The bacchanalia also comes festooned with public funds for the NFL, an overwhelming police presence, and the removal of the poor. It’s a world of fun on our TVs, but it’s a wrecking ball for local communities.

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    This year the game is in Miami, and the scams are starting to seep into public consciousness. As the Miami Herald is reporting, the NFL booked 1 million dollars’ worth of rooms at the J.W. Marriott Marquis hotel and Aventura’s Turnberry resort for the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers players and coaches—and sent the city the bill.

    Even though the NFL is a gargantuan corporate operation and both teams are owned by billionaires, Miami (where 27 percent of children live below the poverty line) is on the hook for the hotel accommodations. This is just part of a $4 million welfare package with which the city has gifted NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who makes 10 times that amount in yearly salary. That $4 million does not include the costs of the police and security presence required to host the game. Rodney Barreto, the chairman of Miami’s Host Committee, said to the Herald, “These are basically things we have to do to get them to come. If we’re not doing it, another city is.”

    The police presence will be “an extraordinary deployment of law enforcement assets, even by recent standards, in keeping with heightened global tensions and fears of home-grown violence.” According to Reuters, Super Bowl LIV “is a so-called SEAR 1 event, affording it the highest level of federal resources, including explosive detection canine teams, cyber risk assessments and air security. Coordinated by the U.S. Secret Service, the security force includes operations by the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security.”

    In addition, Miami police will lead “lead a massive ground operation with thousands of officers… on foot, horseback, in boats, and in the air.”

    While the police roam the city and public dollars flow into the NFL’s coffers, the league is engaging in Kabuki theater charity: its spoonful of sugar to help the poison go down, showy presentations so it won’t look like a parasite. The league donated $100,000 to a homeless shelter that will house those displaced from Bayfront Park by the Super Bowl. This sounds nice, but the donation will actually help facilitate their removal from the streets so they’re not an eyesore, or worse, a reminder of the human costs of economic inequality. In addition, Dak Prescott, quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, is being praised for donating 100,000 bowls of Campbell’s Chunky Soup (Prescott’s sponsor) to local homeless shelters. This is the synthesis of commercialism and philanthropy that the NFL adores.

    Yet there won’t only be police and soup. There will also be protest. Residents of the historic Miami Gardens neighborhood along with the Miami-Dade NAACP will be protesting on game day at the site of the Super Bowl, HardRock Stadium, in a fight to stop Formula 1 racing on public streets. The racing circuit has been invited to Miami Gardens by HardRock Stadium and Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. F1 racing has been rejected by numerous communities because of environmental impact and traffic concerns. Ross doesn’t have such concerns about the residents in Miami Gardens, so they will be using the platform of the Super Bowl to fight back.

    They won’t be alone. While private planes will be incoming in great numbers, airport workers in Miami will be protesting low wages and expensive health insurance costs with a Super Bowl week hunger strike. They are demonstrating against their employer, the airline catering subcontractor Sky Chefs. Sky Chefs works with, among other entities, American Airlines. Their Union, Unite Here, is currently in negotiations with Sky Chefs for a living wage. One worker, Ibis Boggiano, said to the Herald, “We are sacrificing our health so that they will hear us.”

    The demonstration is called “Fast for Our Families.” On Monday, the workers were joined at a press conference by NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, who said, “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that all labor has dignity. Let’s remember, as hundreds of thousands of people descend onto Miami this week, that behind every Super Bowl party and celebration, there are men and women doing the work behind the scenes to be able to feed their families. The NFLPA is proud to stand in solidarity with airline catering this week, and shame on American Airlines for not taking action to make sure they are provided a living wage.”

    The Super Bowl more than ever is a microcosm of this country. The super-wealthy will be oozing from one heavily guarded party to the next, while the hungry hope to be seen amid the flashing lights and heard above the ceaseless din.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 21:30

  • 2016 Redux: Kremlin Warns 'Chemical Provocation' Coming As New Fighting Erupts In Aleppo
    2016 Redux: Kremlin Warns ‘Chemical Provocation’ Coming As New Fighting Erupts In Aleppo

    Amid the ongoing Russian-Syrian military offensive to liberate Idlib province from the al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, suburbs near Aleppo have been scene of intense fighting in recent days, despite government forces liberating the major northern city in December 2016, which marked a turning point in the war. 

    Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have in recent days and weeks mounted new insurgent attacks on the outskirts of the provincial capital city at a moment the Syrian Army has made huge gains into neighboring Idlib. A key reason Damascus has vowed to retake every inch of Idlib is that for years al-Qaeda has launched terrorist attacks on suburbs of Aleppo from there as civilians and the government attempt to rebuild the largely destroyed urban center. 

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    Aleppo, AFP file image.

    This latest renewed fighting in Aleppo appears a concerted effort by Turkey to use its proxy forces to repel and distract the brunt of the Syrian Army offensive on Idlib, considering on Friday President Erdogan warned he’s ready to use military force if Assad doesn’t halt Idlib operations.

    Syrian insurgents carried out at least three car bomb attacks against government forces west of Aleppo on Saturday and opened a new front northeast of the city, an attempted fight back after territorial advances by Damascus. — Jerusalem Post

    “We will not allow the regime’s cruelty towards its own people, with attacks and causing bloodshed,” Erdogan said. Ankara has been alarmed that hundreds of thousands of civilians are now trying to flee the embattled province toward the Turkish border. 

    “Turkey with complete sincerity wants Syria’s stability and security, and to this end, we will not shy away from doing whatever is necessary, including using military force.”

    Erdogan has also accused Russia of violating key agreements for a reduction in fighting in Idlib, while Moscow has cited ongoing attacks against its nearby Hmeimim airbase launched by HTS insurgents based in Idlib. Over the past years HTS and affiliate jihadist groups have also attacked civilian areas of western Aleppo. 

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    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Erdogan’s charge by pointing out Idlib is a haven for terrorists who launch attacks on civilians as well as Russian and Syrian forces. 

    Turkey has lately said it is hosting over 3 million Syrian refugees and has demanded that Europe provide more support in the form of backing Erdogan’s ‘safe zone’ plan which seeks to establish a ‘refugee city’ using annexed northern Syrian territory (which the Turkish army has recently wrested from Syrian Kurdish forces backed by the US).

    Erdogan has also recently threatened to “open the gates” of millions of refugees on Europe if it doesn’t received political support. Needless to say, we are headed toward the final Syrian war showdown over Idlib.

    Just this week the Kremlin warned that anti-government militants in Idlib are planning a major alarming new ‘chemical provocation’ in order to draw in support from external powers like the United States. 

    Russia’s TASS reported not for the first time that “Terrorists are plotting new chemical attacks to claim once again that chemical weapons are being used on the Syrian territory, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.”

    “We would also like to draw attention to diplomatic notes by the Syrian Arab Republic’s permanent mission to the UN and to media reports about terrorists plotting to organize more provocations and staged chemical incidents in Syria,” the Russian diplomat said.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 21:00

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • Senator Tom Cotton Shreds China's Official Virus Story, Warns Of "Super Laboratory" Proximity
    Senator Tom Cotton Shreds China’s Official Virus Story, Warns Of “Super Laboratory” Proximity

    Authored by Jared Harris via WesternJournal.com,

    A United States senator is casting major doubt on the Chinese government’s official story on the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, instead hinting that a biosafety laboratory working with the deadliest pathogens in the world could be the true source.

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    Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas dismantled a claim from China’s communist regime Thursday that pinned the coronavirus outbreak on a market selling dead and live animals.

    “China claimed — for almost two months — that coronavirus had originated in a Wuhan seafood market,” Cotton wrote on Twitter.

    “That is not the case.”

    In a video accompanying his post, Cotton explained that the Wuhan wet market (which Cotton incorrectly referred to as a seafood market) has been shown by experts to not be the source of the deadly contagion.

    Cotton referenced a Lancet study which showed that many of the first cases of the novel coronavirus, including patient zero, had no connection to the wet market — devastatingly undermining China’s claim.

    “As one epidemiologist said: ‘That virus went into the seafood market before it came out of the seafood market.’ We still don’t know where it originated,” Cotton said.

    “I would note that Wuhan also has China’s only bio-safety level four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

    Watch Cotton’s full comments below.

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    Cotton appears to be referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the country’s foremost virus research facility.

    The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, which is part of the institute, is located only 20 miles from the Wuhan wet market, the “official” source of the outbreak according to China.

    Snakes, bats and other animals were identified as possible originators for the coronavirus in early investigations.

    The rapid spread of the virus, which makes previous contagions like SARS and swine flu look benign by comparison, seems to lend weight to the theory that the novel coronavirus is a tailored bioweapon.

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    Ten days ago, China reported less than 300 had the virus. The country’s latest update now numbers the infected at over 11,000.

    An additional 15,000 in China are suspected of having the virus, but a reported lack of test kits prevents the government from giving an accurate number.

    When the number of infected was still low, China instituted a wide-reaching quarantine, sealing over 40 million inside cities.

    Now, the world appears to be sealing China in.

    Russia, Nepal, Mongolia and North Korea have all closed their borders with China. Even more countries are refusing Chinese nationals, including an unprecedented announcement from the administration of President Donald Trump barring entry into America for foreign nationals who have traveled to China.

    While the virus has been found in several countries around the world including America, all eyes are now on China as the outbreak there shows no signs of slowing.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 20:30

    Tags
    Environment
    Business Finance

  • Hillary Clinton For Vice President?
    Hillary Clinton For Vice President?

    Last week, Hillary Clinton dispelled rumors that she might toss her hat in the ring in a “brokered convention” to run against President Trump – telling Variety  that while she has the “urge” to run, she’s “going to support the people who are running now and do everything I can to help elect the Democratic nominee.”

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    According to The Hill‘s Douglas MacKinnon, however, Clinton may be in negotiations with former Vice President (and current frontrunner) Joe Biden, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or she may try to team up with whoever gets the Democratic nomination.

    MacKinnon writes in a Saturday Op-Ed that Clinton “would add the gravitas, delegates and, eventually, millions of votes needed to get them over the finish line on Nov. 5. I am assured that Clinton is on every shortlist for that position,” adding “If I were in Trump’s world, this scenario would send chills down my spine.“

    There is no doubt that the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of State once again is raising her profile and stepping back into the spotlight to reengage in political discussions.

    One such spotlight was provided by the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. There, aside from commenting on her presidential “urge,” Clinton not only promoted the incredibly flattering four-part Hulu documentary about her, titled “Hillary” — which premiered, coincidently, just 10 days before the Iowa caucus — but she also attended the debut of a documentary about the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. –The Hill

    Also noted is Clinton’s recent attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), calling him “not a team player” and claiming that people ‘don’t like him’ (for which she was booed by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) at a Sanders rally on Friday). Clinton also went after Facebook in lockstep with George Soros, who said that the Silicon Valley giant was conspiring with the Trump reelection campaign to win in November.

    Speaking with The Atlantic from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Clinton said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is an “authoritarian” who “intend[s] to reelect Trump.”

    MacKinnon continues:

    Beyond that, there is an ultra-positive X factor that Clinton would bring to the 2020 presidential election equation: Bill Clinton. Like him or not, approve of him or not, the former president retains one of the best political minds in the nation and would be a formidable tactician.

    The obvious question in all this is: Given her ego, would Hillary Clinton settle for being vice president when she twice was within striking distance of being president? The answer, I’m told, is an emphatic yes. The main reason are as follows.

    First, and most pressing, she wants to avenge her embarrassing loss to Trump in 2016. Becoming the running mate of the Democratic nominee would give her carte blanche to hammer the president from one corner of the nation to the other. It’s an assignment she clearly would relish. 

    Second, she still has a burning desire to make history by attaining a political “first.” If she were the nation’s first female vice president, then she could check that box — and it’s a title no one could ever take from her.

    Third, I’m told that Clinton simply is not ready to “ride off into the sunset” and believes she still can make a positive difference, especially for women. 

    But most of all, her reasons are personal — with the wounds of 2016 still open. –The Hill

    Will Clinton team up with Biden, or Bloomberg, or literally anyone to take one more bite at the apple? Only time will tell.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 20:00

    Tags
    Politics

  • Social Media Networks Vow To Censor "Misinformation" About Coronavirus
    Social Media Networks Vow To Censor “Misinformation” About Coronavirus

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    Yesterday, social media giants like Facebook and Twitter, and search engine Google announced their intentions to censor – um, crack down on – so-called “misinformation” about the coronavirus that is spreading across the globe.

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    Before we get started here, admittedly, there’s some absolutely terrible advice out there about preventing or curing coronavirus. There are some really wild stories about the origin of the virus which may or may not be true. But the issue here is that social media networks are setting themselves up as the arbiters of truth, making it seem as though the rest of us are incapable of separating good information from bad information.

    Facebook is taking action.

    Kang-Xing Jin, Facebook’s head of health, wrote:

    Our global network of third-party fact-checkers are continuing their work reviewing content and debunking false claims that are spreading related to the coronavirus. When they rate information as false, we limit its spread on Facebook and Instagram and show people accurate information from these partners. We also send notifications to people who already shared or are trying to share this content to alert them that it’s been fact-checked.

    We will also start to remove content with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities that could cause harm to people who believe them. We are doing this as an extension of our existing policies to remove content that could cause physical harm. We’re focusing on claims that are designed to discourage treatment or taking appropriate precautions. This includes claims related to false cures or prevention methods — like drinking bleach cures the coronavirus — or claims that create confusion about health resources that are available. We will also block or restrict hashtags used to spread misinformation on Instagram, and are conducting proactive sweeps to find and remove as much of this content as we can. (source)

    So, don’t worry, friends. “Independent fact-checkers” from the Ministry of Truth will protect you from conspiracy theories and false claims.

    Maarten Schenk from Lead Stories, a fact-checking organization working with Facebook, scoffed at some of the “conspiracy theories” he’s seen in a comment to CNN.

    “It always has to be something sinister,” Schenk said of the conspiracy theorists’ misinformation, which includes false claims that the virus was the creation of a government.

    Some people, Schenk said, are “not trusting the narrative about the numbers of deaths and infections.”  (source)

    To be perfectly honest, whenever someone refers to a particular view as “the narrative” I’m even less likely to trust it than I was before. And I haven’t trusted the numbers coming out of China from the very beginning, as I wrote here.

    Google is pushing back “misinformation” in search results.

    Google is bumping any site providing perceived “misinformation” back in the search results and putting “authoritative” sources on page one.

    A Google (GOOGL) spokesperson pointed CNN Business to policy changes in recent years for Google and its video platform YouTube, which are designed to surface information from authoritative sources at the top of search results. Like Facebook, the company doesn’t wipe false claims from its platforms entirely. (source)

    Having been bumped back by Google numerous times in the past, I can tell you, it’s a real blow to inbound traffic when this occurs. While you personally may not use Google, keep in mind that it is the most widely used search engine in the world, with 81.5% of the market share. If they are pushing back information – oh, of course, I mean misinformation – then most folks will never see it.

    Twitter is showing people “official channels” first.

    According to CNN, Twitter is providing people with the best possible information when they search the coronvirus hashtag.

    On Twitter, users searching for “coronavirus”in the US and other countries, including Hong Kong, Brazil, and Australia, are first prompted to visit official channels of information about the virus. In the US, Twitter directs users to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, beneath a bold headline that reads: “Know the facts.”

    A Twitter (TWTR) spokesperson told CNN Business on Tuesday that the company has not seen a coordinated increase in disinformation related to the coronavirus. In a blog post Tuesday, the company said it had seen over 15 million tweets about the coronavirus in four weeks. (source)

    But of course, as always, it goes further than that.

    Last night, Zero Hedge was quickly suspended by Twitter.

    I’ve written repeatedly that the best coverage I have seen of the coronavirus has been on Zero Hedge. They’ve done a lot of no-holds-barred reporting and broken numerous stories about the virus and its possible origins. They’ve been careful to be extremely clear about whether something is a question or a statement, and they cite numerous sources for their work.

    They’re also not afraid to be controversial.

    And this got their account suspended from Twitter last evening.

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    Shortly after they posted an article about the extremely unusual makeup of this particular coronavirus (based on a scientific study that called the makeup “unlikely to be fortuitous,” their account was suspended. I immediately thought it was because of the article that suggested we could be dealing with a bioweapon, but according to Zero Hedge, it was something else entirely.

    Twitter accused them of harassing a guy by posting his (already publicly posted) phone number and workplace. ZH reports:

    What appears to have happened is that twitter received a complaint from the website best known for publishing the discredited Steele dossier when no other media outlet would touch it, and making cat slideshows of course, Buzzfeed, in which someone called Ryan Broderick writes that Zero Hedge  “has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil.” (source)

    By all means, Twitter should certainly take the word of someone who works for a site best known for quizzes to help you figure out what kind of potato you really are to delete a news organization’s account.

    It’s also important to note that ZH didn’t post anything personal that wasn’t already publicly made available by the subject of the article himself.

    …we did not release any “personal information”: Peng Zhou (周鹏) is a public figure, and all the contact information that we presented was pulled from his publicly posted bio found on a website at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which anyone with access to the internet can pull from the following URL: http://sourcedb.whiov.cas.cn/zw/rck/201705/t20170505_4783973.html, which is also the information we used. (source)

    So who do you want filtering information for you?

    While I have seen a lot of terrible advice – drink bleach or a bottle of vinegar to “cure” coronavirus, use this essential oil and you’ll never get coronavirus, simply cut an onion in half and leave it in the room and it will absorb the coronavirus cooties, and much more quackery – I still don’t believe that social media networks and search engines should be able to filter what people see.  We are (allegedly) free individuals who can think for ourselves.

    Shouldn’t we be able to decide what we believe and what we don’t without information being engineered to fit a narrative? Shouldn’t we be able to base our pandemic preparedness plan on all the information out there?

    Instead, we’re provided with “narratives” and biased information. That’s something we here at The Organic Prepper have warned about repeatedly. If you can’t trust your intel, it makes it difficult to make informed decisions.

    This just makes it seem like there’s something to hide.

    If anything, this crackdown on any alternative views, treatments, or theories makes me even more suspicious because it’s a clearcut case of Propaganda 101.

    Propaganda is information that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

    Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies, religious organizations, the media, and individuals can also produce propaganda. (source)

    This is a technique that is as old as time.

    Whenever you see some pop-up or some “correction of misinformation” the first thing you should do is ask yourself, is what are they trying to hide? It may legitimately be bad advice (like that whole drinking bleach thing) but it may also be something more sinister.

    I don’t know about you, but now I’m even more curious and doubtful about the “narrative” than I was before. What is it, really, that they don’t want the rest of us to know?


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 19:30

  • Super (Inflation) Bowl: Ticket Prices Soar To Highest In 5 Years
    Super (Inflation) Bowl: Ticket Prices Soar To Highest In 5 Years

    Tickets for this year’s installment of the Super Bowl played on Sunday in Miami are reselling at higher prices than last year. Still, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, tickets purchased on the secondary market for any Super Bowl Game come at a high premium, as data from vendor TicketIQ shows.

    The average price of a ticket is currently at US$8,264, up from “only” US$4,972 last year. Secondary ticket prices are expected to rise in price until game day.

    Infographic: Super Bowl Tickets Resell at Lower Rates | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Another year on record when resold tickets were especially pricey was 2015. According to TicketIQ, prices may vary depending on how many tickets are released to the public each year, whether competing teams come from wealthier cities and even on how easy it is for fans to reach the Super Bowl from their respective home towns. While 3,000 tickets were available on the market on Jan 29, those numbers were significantly lower in 2018, driving up prices.

    But while ticket prices are soaring, we are reminded that last year’s Super Bowl had the lowest viewership since 2008…

    Infographic: Super Bowl LIII Draws Lowest Viewership Since 2008 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    We suspect this year may see that change (for the better).

    Go Niners!


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 19:00

    Tags
    Sports

  • Philippines Reports First Death Due To Coronavirus Outside China; 137,600 Under Observation In China
    Philippines Reports First Death Due To Coronavirus Outside China; 137,600 Under Observation In China

    Summary:

    • Death toll tops 300, 14,550 cases reported globally

    • First death outside China reported in Philippines

    • Suspected case being tested in New York City

    • 8th US case confirmed in Massachusetts

    • Vietnam, Japan, Australia limit travel to China

    • Hong Kong health-care workers threaten to strike unless border to mainland closed

    *  *  *

    Update (2200ET):  The Philippines office of the World Health Organization has reported the first death of a coronavirus victim outside of China.

    A 44-year-old male was confirmed as the second person with the 2019 novel coronavirus in the Philippines.

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    He passed away on February 1 2020.

    There are currently 114 cases worldwide (ex-China)…

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    Update (1900ET): There were 45 new deaths reported in Hubei China, sending the global death toll to 304 as China’s CDC reports 2,589 new infections, bringing China’s total to 14,380 of which Hubei Province has reported 9,074 cases (including 4109 cases in Wuhan).

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    With another 173 outside the mainland, the new global total is 14,550 as of Sunday morning in China. Additionally, there were a total of 19,544 suspected case in China (up from 17,988 yesterday), and the total number of cases under observation is now a whopping 137,594, an increase of over 19,000 from 118,478.

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    And as the number of cases and deaths continues to grow almost geometrically, there was one silver lining: the number of discharged patients jumped to 328, for the first time surpassing the number of deaths by 24.

    * * *

    Update (1645ET): The New York Times reports that NYC has yet another suspected case of the coronavirus. This is at least the third report of a suspected coronavirus patient in NYC or New Jersey.

    The scares have made the sight of people wearing masks more common throughout the Five Boroughs.

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    The suspected patient is in their 40s and recently returned from China suffering from telltale symptoms including fever, cough and shortness of breath.

    The suspected virus carrier is undergoing testing at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

    • NEW YORK CITY HEALTH DEPARTMENT TESTING PATIENT FOR CORONAVIRUS
    • NYC HEALTH OFFICIALS SUSPECT A PATIENT HAS CORONAVIRUS: NYT
    • NYC OFFICIALS AWAITING CONFIRMATION FROM FEDERAL AGENCY: NYT
    • SUSPECTED NYC CORONAVIRUS PATIENT IS AT BELLEVUE HOSPITAL: NYT

    City health officials have been bracing for a case given NYC’s large population of Chinese immigrants.

    “An individual with a travel history to China felt unwell and sought help from a medical provider who promptly contacted the Health Department,” said the health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

    NYC has already struggled with outbreaks recently, including an outbreak of measles in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community.

    Testing at the CDC will take a minimum of 36 – 48 hours, depending on testing capacity.

    That’s all we know for now.

    * * *

    Update (1400ET): The Global Times, a popular mouthpiece for the Chinese government, has acknowledged that the outbreak has reached a “critical” situation, and that many places in China would “extend” the ‘Spring Festival’ holiday.

    Just another piece of faux-sympathy as the government pushes the “full transparency” angle.

    * * *

    Update (1255ET): According to officials with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the first case of novel coronavirus has been confirmed in the state on Saturday afternoon. 

    Boston health officials said the man is in his 20s, contracted the deadly virus after he returned from a trip in Wuhan, China. 

    The Boston Public Health Commission said the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control Prevention was notified about the lab results on Friday evening.

    “He has been isolated since that time and will continue to remain isolated until cleared by public health officials,” the department said, adding that his few close contacts have been identified and are being monitored for any signs of symptoms.

    “We are grateful that this young man is recovering and sought medical attention immediately,” said the state’s public health commissioner, Monica Bharel. “Again, the risk to the public from the 2019 novel coronavirus remains low in Massachusetts.”

    Fortunately he is ‘recovering’.

    This is the eighth case of confirmed coronavirus in the US after the 7th was confirmed in the Bay Area on Friday afternoon.

    Meanwhile, Australia’s flag carrier Qantas is the latest airline to cancel flights between China after that country cracked down on foreigners who have been to Hubei traveling in the country.

    Though US has taken steps to stop foreigners who might be an infection risk from entering the country, airline employees are pushing for all American carriers to temporarily suspend all flights to and from China. The Association of Flight Attendants, representing 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines has called for “clear direction from our government to U.S. airlines to pull down all travel to China until the spread of coronavirus is contained,” in a statement shared by ABC News.

    “It is critical that any crew potentially infected through travel to and from China not be assigned to any additional flights until safely through the fourteen-day incubation period,” the statement added.

    Back in Wuhan, the government is dialing up the propaganda as public anger (which has been manipulated to focus on local officials who have been scapegoated by Beijing) crests.

    There’s more where that came from.

    * * *

    Update (1230ET): Vietnam has become the latest country to strictly limit travel with China. SCMP reports that the country has banned all passenger plane traffic to and from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

    Apparently, Vietnam, which has confirmed several cases, including at least one instances of human-to-human transmission, doesn’t think much of the WHO’s assurances. Can’t say we blame them. Meanwhile, back in China, a citizen journalist took a video of a sea of unopened boxes allegedly containing medical supplies. We’ve reported in the past that the government is largely relying on ‘volunteers’ to open boxes and sort supplies, leading to massive backlogs.

    But of course Beijing has everything under control…just so long as you don’t leave your house/apartment/whatever.

    * * *

    Since our last update Friday evening, the situation on the ground in China has reportedly gone from bad to worse. The true extent of Beijing’s ‘quarantine’ has been exposed – and not just the ridiculously oppressive tactics exercised on sick people simply out trying to buy food so they don’t starve, but the even more bizarre notion that the WHO has decided to try and validate Beijing’s response when all evidence suggests that public relations is and always will be Beijing’s No. 1 concern.

    By most recent count, total cases have eclipsed 12,000, while confirmed deaths inside China have hit 259. More than 100,000 people are still under observation, as we reported last night. The 46 new deaths announced last night (Saturday morning in China) was the largest daily death toll (that was the total from Friday) since the start of the crisis.

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    To that end, a report reportedly signed by hundreds of doctors blaming the Communist Party’s leadership for waiting a month to inform the Chinese public and the international community that the virus could spread from human-to-human contact. The leadership was apparently aware of this fact as early as mid-December, yet they actively concealed it until the situation started getting out of hand and cases were being confirmed in neighboring countries.

    China’s finance ministry has finally announced that it’s going to lift import taxes on American-made medical products needed to help combat the outbreak (it’s interesting how it took them nearly – checks notes – two months since the start of the outbreak to lift the trade-war tariffs).

    ABC News is the latest American media outlet to collect footage from Wuhan via drone. The haunting footage clearly shows the scope of the lockdown. An entire city as big as New York, with almost nobody outside or in the streets.

    This is becoming an increasingly common sight across China.

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    We got some interesting corporate news overnight: Apple announced early Saturday that it would close all of its stores and offices in China at least through Feb. 9. Already, the factories of many of its suppliers (like Foxconn) have been impacted by holiday “extensions” that will keep them closed through at least early Feb.

    As of midday on Saturday, at least 19 provinces, municipalities and regions have told businesses not to resume work before Feb. 10 at the earliest, according to CNBC, which also noted that Disney, Tesla several US airlines and myriad other American business have suspended operations in China. Hubei, the center of the outbreak, has reportedly extended its Lunar New Year holiday until Feb. 13.

    On Saturday, Huanggang, a city of 6 million people near Wuhan, has banned residents from leaving their homes in an effort to stop the coronavirus. The ban states that 1 person per family can leave every other day to buy basic needs.

    It’s the first city to declare a lockdown on par with Wuhan’s total ban of people leaving their homes. Meanwhile Huanggang’s mayor warned on Saturday that a “significant” increase in the number of confirmed cases on Saturday or Sunday.

    Here’s a video of a doctor from Huanggang saying the media won’t dare report the true infection totals from Huanggang, adding that it’s almost as bad as Wuhan.

    The scapegoating of local officials by Beijing continued on Saturday, when more than 300 party officials from Huanggang were punished for failing in their duty.

    Though we’re hearing labels like these used far less often than we were just last week, it appears the “fearmongers” and “alarmists” were once again correct to be skeptical of the information coming out of Beijing. A few days ago, Zero Hedge was declared alarmists for discussing the possibility that nCoV could metastasize into a particularly deadly seasonal illness, like the flu. The mainstream press has now apparently decided to take the warnings of epidemiologists seriously.

    When the WHO first declared that travel restrictions on China simply weren’t necessary, even as Beijing quarantined more than 50 million of its own people, we wondered how the organization could possibly expect the world to listen, considering that Russia had already closed its border with China, and dozens of countries had already imposed some kind of restriction, while more than 40 airlines had suspended routes to China.

    On Saturday morning, Australia joined the US in temporarily blocking all foreigners who have recently visited China. Japan said it would bar visitors who had been to Hubei in the last 2 weeks, or had passports issued in Hubei, according to the New York Times.

    Then we heard Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam tell the people that complete shutdown of travel to China wouldn’t be necessary. Once again, Lam was doing the leadership’s bidding to the detriment of her local popularity. By doing so, Lam has handed the workers all the ammunition they need to successfully challenge, and defeat, the city government.

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    Carrie Lam

    Thousands of Hong Kong doctors, nurses and hospital employees have voted for a strike which could begin as early as Monday. The reason? To pressure the city government to close all borders with mainland China. This isn’t the first bout of virus-related unrest to rock Hong Kong. Last week, a group of locals set fires and rioted in response to rumors that the government planned to transform a newly built housing project nearby into a quarantine, according to SCMP.

    Reports that the Hong Kong government has found 49 people from Hubei after searching about 500 hotels has only ratcheted up public anxiety. The individuals are reportedly being moved to quarantine centers.

    The pledge of action by thousands of nurses and hospital workers is picking up steam as more local unions are joining the movement. Pretty soon, Lam will have no choice but to close the border with China, which would be a major blow to global confidence in Beijing.

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    The alliance of health care workers have a few other demands: that the government make clear policies to ensure a supply of surgical masks, a halt on non-emergency services and an increase in the number of isolation wards at hospitals, as well as better support for medical practitioners and an open promise not to punish those who participate in the strike.

    Back on the mainland, local authorities have taken to using drones to ‘name and shame’ anybody who disobeys the isolation orders. Here are a few examples:

    Across China, drones are being loaded with disinfectant to spray public streets (another shock-and-awe measure with little real-world advantage).

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    Before we go, here’s a complete list of countries that have confirmed cases of the virus: Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia, Macau, Russia, France, the United States, South Korea, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Britain, Vietnam, Italy, India, the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Finland and Sweden.

    Meanwhile, Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam, Japan, France and the US has confirmed human-to-human transmission involving at least one person who hadn’t been to China.

    The timing of this outbreak could not be worse: China confirms a case of H5N1 bird flu in Hunan, prompting authorities to cull 17,828 chickens as a precaution. Though we doubt mainlanders will be seeing many stories about that.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 18:55

  • The Global Supply & Demand Shock Of The Coronavirus
    The Global Supply & Demand Shock Of The Coronavirus

    Via Global Macro Monitor,

    Our analysis of the impact of the Coronavirus is a work in progress and nobody knows the endgame.  It is still the early days of the epidemic, and its dynamics will take time to understand. The scale of the impact will depend on how contagious and lethal it reveals itself.

    There is a supply shock to global manufacturing as many factories in the world’s supply chain will be shuttered for longer, which shifts the global supply curve left, increasing-price and production pressures.  Ergo component shortages, higher prices, and lower production.

    The 2 percent decline in the U.S. stock market and collapse in bond yields are signaling a potential global aggregate demand shock that offsets the supply shock.

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    As of Friday, 10,000 cases have been confirmed by China, surpassing the total from the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic. The new virus has killed 171 people in China.

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    The epicenter of the outbreak is Wuhan, one of China’s largest manufacturing centers. Foxconn and Pegatron have operations there, as do memory manufacturers such as XMC (nor flash) and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (non-volatile memory).

    Auto producers, such as General Motors, Honda, Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler also populate the region.

    The electronics industry is poised for a cascading disruption that could change industry growth forecasts for the year. Bill McLean, president of semiconductor research firm IC Insights, said the virus has exacerbated the economic unease that has stalled semiconductor capital investment.

    “Brexit, trade issues and now the coronavirus are causing global uncertainty,” he said  at a Boston-based forum. “Uncertainty causes [businesses and consumers] to freeze.” Worldwide, semiconductor capital spending is forecast to decrease by roughly 6 percent this year, from $103.5 billion in 2019 to roughly $97.6 billion.

    Zhang Ming, an economist at government-backed think-tank the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned that the virus could push China’s economic growth below 5 per cent a year in the first quarter, reported the Financial Times. Economic consensus currently puts China’s GDP growth at 5.7 percent. That average has steadily declined since 2018, according to McLean.  — EE Times

    More than 300 of the Global Top 500 companies have a presence in Wuhan, including Microsoft and Siemens. Wuhan is located in the Hubei Province.

    Wuhan has 10 car factories, including those Honda, Renault, PSA and General Motors. The car industry represents around 20 percent of the city’s economy and employs 200,000 people directly and more than a million indirectly.

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    Here is a look at the main manufacturing regions in China.

    • China Manufacturing Distribution Breakdown

    • Electronic Industry: Mainly in Guangdong (33%), the rest in Yangtze River delta, Sichuan, Shaanxi Provinces.

    • Textile Industry: Mainly in Zhejiang (18%) and Jiangsu (20%), the rest in Fujian, Guangdong, Shandong Provinces.

    • Leather & Feather: South-East Coastal areas, Hebei, Henan, Chongqing and Ningxia provinces.

    • Metal Product: Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, Henan provinces.

    • Glass: More in Hebei, Jiangsu, some in Shandong and Guangdong provinces.

    • Ceramics: Jingdezhen in Jiangxi provinces

    • Furniture: Mainly in Guangdong and Hebei province, the rest in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing.

    • Construction: More in Shandong province, the rest in Hubei, Henan, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Beijing, Zhejiang.

    • Household Appliance: Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shandong provinces.

    • Artware & Stationary & Sporting: Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Hubei

    • Papermaking & Printing: Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian

    • Machinery Manufacturing: Dongbei Area, Hunan and Hubei provinces.

    • Petrochemical Industry: Shandong (32%), Liaoning (21%), Guangdong (15%)

    • Pharmaceutical Industry: Tianjin city, Xian city in Shanxi province

    • Food & Beverage: Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian, Hebei, Henan, Hunan, Hubei, Inner Mongolia

    • Transportation Equipment:

      • Motor & Bicycle: Taizhou city in Zhejiang province (40%)

      • Shipping/Vessel: Yangtze River delta, Pearl River Delta, Bohai Bay Areas

      • Automobile: Mainly in Jilin, Hubei, Shanghai and Yangtze River delta, the rest in Pearl River Delta, Beijing

    Most factories lose about two weeks of production in total during the Lunar Holiday but more production will be lost as the holiday has been extended.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 18:30

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Ukrainiain 'Son Of A Bitch Who Got Fired' Files Criminal Complaint Against Biden For Abuse Of Power
    Ukrainiain ‘Son Of A Bitch Who Got Fired’ Files Criminal Complaint Against Biden For Abuse Of Power

    The Ukrainian prosecutor who Joe Biden bragged about getting fired, Viktor Shokin, has filed a criminal complaint in Kiev against the former Vice President for abusing his power, according to French news outlet Les Crises (confirmed by multiple sources according to PJ Media).

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    Via Les Crises

    Shokin writes in his complaint:

    During the period 2014-2016, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine was conducting a preliminary investigation into a series of serious crimes committed by the former Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Mykola Zlotchevsky and by the managers of the company “Burisma Holding Limited “(Cyprus), the board of directors of which included, among others, Hunter Biden, son of Joseph Biden, then vice-president of the United States of America.

    The investigation into the above-mentioned crimes was carried out in strict accordance with Criminal Law and was under my personal control as the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

    Owing to my firm position on the above-mentioned cases regarding their prompt and objective investigation, which should have resulted in the arrest and the indictment of the guilty parties, Joseph Biden developed a firmly hostile attitude towards me which led him to express in private conversations with senior Ukrainian officials, as well as in his public speeches, a categorical request for my immediate dismissal from the post of Attorney General of Ukraine in exchange for the sum of US $ 1 billion in as a financial guarantee from the United States for the benefit of Ukraine.

    * * *

    Shokin says that due to “continued pressure from the Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden to oust me from the job by blackmailing the allocation of financial assistance, I, as the man who places the State interests above my personal interests, I agreed to abandon the post of Prosecutor General of Ukraine.“

    * * *

    In November, the State department released detailed accusations against the Bidens levied by Shokin and his successor, Yiury Lutsenko. In them, Shokin claims:

    “He [Shokin] became involved in a case against Mr. Mykola Zlochevsky the former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. The case was opened as a result of Mr. Zlochevsky giving himself/company permits to drill for gas and oil in Ukraine. Mr. Zlochevsky is also the owner of Burisma Holdings.”

    “Mr. Shokin stated that there are documents that list five (5) criminal cases in which Mr. Zlochevesky is listed, with the main case being for issuing illegal gas exploration permits. The following complaints are in the criminal case.

    1. Mr. Zlochevsky was laundering money
    2. Obtained assets by corrupt acts bribery
    3. Mr. Zlochevsky removed approximately twenty three million US dollars out of Ukraine without permission
    4. While seated as the Minister he approved two addition entities to receive permits for gas exploration
    5. Mr. Zlochevsky was the owner of two secret companies that were part of Burisma Holdings and gave those companies permits which made it possible for him to profit while he was the sitting Minister.

    “Mr Shokin further stated that there were several Burisma board appointments were made in 2014 as follows:

    1. Hunter Biden son of Vice President Joseph Biden
    2. Joseph Blade former CIA employee assigned to Anti-Terrorist Unit
    3. Alesksander Kwasnieski former President of Poland
    4. Devon Archer roomate to the Christopher Heinz the step-son of Mr. John Kerry United States Secretary of State

    “Mr. Shokin stated that these appointments were made by Mr. Slochevsky in order to protect himself.“

    Shokin then details how in July 2015, “US Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing. On or about September 2015 Mr. Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa where he stated that the cases were not investigated correctly and that Mr. Shokin may be corrupt.”

    “Mr. Shokin further stated that on February of 2016 warrants were placed on the accounts of multiple people in Ukraine. There were requests for information on Hunter Biden to which nothing was received.“

    “It is believed that Hunter Biden receives a salary, commission plus one million dollars.”

    “President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko [who Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees] told Mr. Shokin not to investigate Burisma as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden. Mr. Shokin was called into Mr. Poroshenko’s office and told that the investigation into Burisma and the Managing Director where Hunter Biden is on the board, has caused Joe Biden to hold up one billion dollars in US aid to Ukraine.

    “Mr. Shokin stated that on or around April of 2016 Mr. Petro Poroshenko called him and told him he had to be fired as the aid to the Ukraine was being withheld by Joe Biden. Mr. Biden told Mr. Poroshenko that he had evidence that Mr. Shokin was corrupt and needed to be fired. Mr. Shokin was dismissed in April of 2016 and the US aid was delivered within one and one half months.”

    “On a different point Mr. Shokin believes the current Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch denied his visa to travel to the US. Mr. Shokin stated that she is close to Mr. Biden. Mr. Shokin also stated that there were leaks by a person named Reshenko of the Ukrainian State Secret Service about the Manafort Black Book. Mr. Shokin stated that there is possible deceit in the Manafort Black Book.”


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 18:00

    Tags
    Law Crime

  • "Are You Humans Or Devils?" Chinese Woman Lashes Out At Authorities After Relatives Die From Virus
    “Are You Humans Or Devils?” Chinese Woman Lashes Out At Authorities After Relatives Die From Virus

    Authored by Olivia Li via The Epoch Times,

    A local from Wuhan City videotaped herself lashing out at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the way it handled the coronavirus outbreak that has killed scores of people in China, including her own relative(s). The video was recorded on Jan. 26 and has since gone viral on Chinese social media.

    There are several similar videos circulating on Chinese social media, and this woman is so far the only one who eschewed wearing a mask despite the fact that revealing her face could compromise her identity. But she did not reveal her name in the video.

    Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, is the epicenter of the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak.

    Speaking in a local dialect, she asked angrily, “Chinese Communist Party, when are you going to step down? You promised us that Chinese people will enjoy ‘moderate prosperity’ in 2020, but what have we attained [from you] so far? We lost our relative(s) [because of you]!”

    Because there is no plural form in the Chinese language, it is difficult to determine if she has lost more than one relative.

    The term “moderate prosperity” has been used in CCP propaganda since the 2000s, when Hu Jintao was leader of China. At the end of 2019, regime propaganda chief Wang Huning launched a nationwide campaign proclaiming that the country’s 2020 plan is to “secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.”

    “Tell me, what does it mean to achieve ‘moderate prosperity’?” the woman said. “What does ‘moderate prosperity’ mean to us when people have lost their lives? What on earth are you doing? What do we need such a government for? I beg you, please go away! Step Down! We need good leaders who can help us live a good life. We don’t need such a corrupt government.”

    She pointed out that China’s economic prosperity is an illusion and the coronavirus outbreak could put more pressure on the economy. In fact, China’s GDP growth rate of 6 percent in the second half of 2019 was the slowest rate of growth since 1991.

    “The soaring home prices and high cost of living have caused hardships for Chinese residents. And now so many people are dying. Everyone will get to see the economic bubble burst,” she said.

    “You should bear the consequences of your actions. Do not implicate us ordinary folk. Now we are bearing the brunt of it, and we are being sacrificed for what you have been doing!”

    She then asked, “What on earth are you? Are you humans or devils?”

    Her video has been shared by many Chinese Twitter and Facebook users. Followers of her video highly praised her tirade. Some said they particularly liked her last question, saying “What a great question, asking Party officials if they are ‘humans or devils’—it is right to the point.”

    Several followers commented, “Do not beg the CCP to step down. Overthrow the CCP.”

    One of them said, “I heard people say the CCP is on the brink of collapse. Now I really believe it is true.”

    Chinese Authorities’ Response to the Outbreak

    The first group of whistleblowers of Wuhan pneumonia alerted their social media network on Dec. 30 and 31, revealing that hospitals in Wuhan had identified several cases of SARS-like viral pneumonia.

    Wuhan police ordered those whistleblowers to meet with law enforcers at the local police department and forced them to sign an agreement that said they were “spreading rumors.”

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    Chinese medical authorities tried to downplay the severity of the outbreak and used statements such as “experts ruled out SARS,” “so far there is no clear evidence that the virus is transmitted by human-to-human contact.”

    Even when the first explicit warning was issued on Jan. 20, China’s medical expert downplayed the situation by telling the public “limited human-to-human transmission” was confirmed.

    Experts say the virus has a 14-day incubation period.

    Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 20, the prime time for containing the coronavirus, residents of Wuhan were busy with holiday shopping and meeting with relatives and friends, in preparation for the Chinese New Year. Migratory populations in the city, nearly 5 million, mostly left Wuhan before Jan. 20 for the holiday.

    As of now, the coronavirus has spread to all regions in China after Tibet recorded its first case on Jan. 30. Outside of China, more than 18 countries and regions have also reported confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including the United States, Italy, Germany, Canada, Finland, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 17:30

  • Soros Goes All In Against Mark Zuckerberg With Trump-Facebook Conspiracy Theory
    Soros Goes All In Against Mark Zuckerberg With Trump-Facebook Conspiracy Theory

    Billionaire George Soros is blaming Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for helping President Trump win the 2016 election – completely ignoring that Trump’s 2016 digital director (and 2020 campaign manager) Brad Parscale simply outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton’s team when it came to social media.

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    “Facebook helped Trump to get elected and I am afraid that it will do the same in 2020,” Soros writes in a Friday New York Times Op-Ed, recounting a private conversation he says he had last week at Davos in which he argued “here is a longstanding law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — that protects social media platforms from legal liability for defamation and similar claims. Facebook can post deliberately misleading or false statements by candidates for public office and others, and take no responsibility for them.”

    Soros then claims that there appears to be “an informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between Trump and Facebook” in which “Facebook will help President Trump to get re-elected and Mr. Trump will, in turn, defend Facebook against attacks from regulators and the media.“

    The 89-year-old Hungarian-born billionaire then argues that Parscale’s statement that Facebook ‘helped Mr. Trump’ constitutes “the beginning of a special relationship.”

    Parscale, of course, was talking about the Trump campaign’s use of Facebook – not the misleading conspiracy theory Soros is peddling. A quote from Soros’s linked ‘evidence’ reveals just that:

    Parscale said the Trump campaign used Facebook to reach clusters of rural voters, such as “15 people in the Florida Panhandle that I would never buy a TV commercial for”.

    “I started making ads that showed the bridge crumbling,” he said. “I can find the 1,500 people in one town that care about infrastructure. Now, that might be a voter that normally votes Democrat.” –The Guardian

    Soros then points to Zuckerberg’s September, 2019 Oval Office meeting with Trump, and subsequent comments made by the president, as more evidence of collusion.

    He then writes:

    Facebook’s decision not to require fact-checking for political candidates’ advertising in 2020 has flung open the door for false, manipulated, extreme and incendiary statements. Such content is rewarded with prime placement and promotion if it meets Facebook-designed algorithmic standards for popularity and engagement.

    What’s more, Facebook’s design tends to obscure the sources of inflammatory and false content, and fails to adequately punish those who spread false information. Nor does the company effectively warn those who are exposed to lies. -George Soros

    Separate of his private conversation, Soros said last week at Davos that “Facebook will work to re-elect Trump and Trump will protect Facebook,” adding “It makes me very concerned about the outcome of 2020.”

    Two days later, Hillary Clinton told The Atlantic (from the Sundance Film Festival) that Mark Zuckerberg is an “authoritarian” who “intend[s] to reelect Trump.”

    In response to Facebook’s decision to remove a slowed-down video of Nancy Pelosi meant to make her appear drunk, Hillary says: “I said, ‘Why are you guys keeping this up? This is blatantly false. Your competitors have taken it down. And their response was, ‘We think our users can make up their own minds,'” Clinton told the magazine, adding that Facebook is “not just going to reelect Trump, but intend[s] to reelect Trump.”


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 17:00

    Tags
    Politics
    Technology Internet

  • What If…?
    What If…?

    Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

    What if bears were right all along? What if it’s not different this time?

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    What if this Fed liquidity inspired rally produced precisely the kind of exuberant final thrust we often see at the end of business cycles? After all, people were really bullish in 2007, people were really bullish in 2000, both final rallies inspired by easy Fed liquidity. In 2000, the Y2k bug, in 2007 giving us the subprime mortgage crisis.

    What if this latest rally has produced exactly the same conditions we’ve seen during prior tops?

    Be clear: I’m not calling for a top here, that’s a fool’s errand. After all so far all we’ve seen is a minor pullback off of very overbought conditions. Heck, tech hasn’t even begun to correct yet.

    But yields keep dropping like a brick, as does the Baltic Dry index, small caps, transports, the banking sector never confirmed new highs, equal weight indicators suggest a major negative divergence inside a market that appears entirely held up by tech, and perhaps by only 5-10 highly valued stocks that are massively technically extended and control more market cap in a few stocks than ever before. At the same time we have a market more extended above underlying GDP than ever and now suddenly a potential trigger nobody saw coming: The coronavirus.

    Look, the track record on viruses and diseases over the past 20 years has been clear: Any market impact is temporary and/or minimal at best. Look at SARS in 2003, $SPX rallied over 20% in 2003. But the backdrop was different. The US just came out of a recession and markets had bottomed in 2002. Markets in 2003 were at the beginning of a new business cycle.

    This cycle here is old, and one could argue was merely saved again by a Fed going into full easing mode in 2019.

    But given the fact that the Fed failed to normalize in the lead up to 2018 and was stopped dead in its tracks because of a 20% market correction and was forced to go back into full easing mode the concern is that the Fed just wasted precious ammunition.

    My concern:

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

    These very concerns now suddenly very much echoed at Citi:

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

    None of us can know how this plays out, we can’t know when this virus will be contained and subsides. What we do know is that the economic impact is already real, flights are canceled, businesses are shutting down in China, etc.. To the extend that this is all temporary for a couple of weeks, fine, to the extent it drags on for months and the virus spreads quickly in other countries as well it’s not hard to imagine that a vastly richly valued market finds itself in trouble and with it: The global economy.

    Markets, except tech, pretty much gave up all their gains in January with many indices now in the red. The potential good news for investors: Markets are approaching oversold readings and could be setting up for a bounce, and a larger relief rally if the news on coronavirus shows improvement, the bad news: Tech hasn’t even begun to correct and technical patterns suggest more downside risks.

    And if bears have been right all along on the macro front, then rallies may well remain selling opportunities. And so far, strength in January has proven to be a selling opportunity on the larger market.

    For now it’s a ‘What if” and confirmation remains outstanding and won’t come easy. But clearly some of the major banks are starting to ask similar questions.

    For the technical chart review please see the market video below:

    Please be sure to watch it in HD for clarity.

    *  *  *

    To get notified of future videos feel free to subscribe to our YouTube Channel. For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 16:30

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • 'Corpses Taken Directly To Crematorium' – New Accounts Detail Grisly Operation At Wuhan's Fifth Hospital
    ‘Corpses Taken Directly To Crematorium’ – New Accounts Detail Grisly Operation At Wuhan’s Fifth Hospital

    Radio Free Asia (RFA) has tweeted a disturbing video on its Twitter account on Saturday morning detailing how those who died of coronavirus in Wuhan, the outbreak area in China, were loaded up on a bus and taken “directly to the crematorium.”

    RFA said (in a translated tweet): “[Latest Situation of Wuhan Fifth Hospital] Some Wuhan citizens entered Wuhan Fifth Hospital on February 1st and found many patients who died of pneumonia. The corpses were packed directly to the crematorium. Paramedics are busy rescuing the dying patient.”

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    RFA’s video is in line with our report from Friday that said those who died of the deadly virus were hauled off to a crematorium in Wuhan by Chinese authorities.

    DW News East Asia correspondent William Yang cited a report from the Chinese-language news outlet Initium, which said cremation facilities in Wuhan were receiving bodies directly from hospitals without proper identification and were excluded from the official record. 

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    “So, there are reasons to remain skeptical about what China has been sharing with the world because while they have been more transparent about certain things related to the virus, they continue to be sketchy and unreliable in other aspects,” said Yang.

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    “Without properly identifying these patients, which means there are patients who died from the virus but not adding to the official record. That shows the current death toll of 133 that we are seeing is way too low,” he said.

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    The closest funeral home/ alleged crematorium is right down the street from Wuhan Fifth Hospital.

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    We noted Thursday night that over 100,000 Chinese had been placed under observation for suspected coronavirus. 

    The virus has uncontrollably spread across China, forcing the Trump administration on Friday to restrict entry into the US from the outbreak area. 

    Putting the coronavirus in the context of the deadly SARS epidemic, the coronavirus pandemic has now officially exceeded SARS in cumulative cases in just two weeks.

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    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 16:00

  • The Supers Are Back: DNC Members Planning Move To Block Sanders… Again
    The Supers Are Back: DNC Members Planning Move To Block Sanders… Again

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    In 2016, many of us objected to the concerted effect of the Democratic establishment and the Democratic National Committee to rig the primary for Hillary Clinton.

    Later it was revealed that the Clintons had largely taken over the DNC by taking over its debt and the DNC openly harassed and hampered Sanders at every stage.

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    Despite this effort, Sanders came close to beating Clinton, who has never forgiven him for contesting a primary that she literally bought and paid for with the DNC.

    The simmering rage was still evident recently in Clinton’s attack on Sanders and suggestion that she might not support him if he were the nominee (a suggestion that she later took back). She continued her attacks this week and it has served to remind voters, particularly younger voters, of the DNC interference with the primary election. After the scandal, the DNC pledged to reform itself and reduce the power of establishment figures and superdelegates at the convention.

    Now, however, Politico is reporting that DNC members are again discussing changing the rules to stop Sanders. This follows the selection of Clinton allies to control the convention and a shocking level of anti-Sanders bias shown by CNN at the last debate.

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    In the meantime, the DNC has been criticized for clearing the way for Michael Bloomberg by changing its rules to help him make the debates.

    Reportedly, a group of Democratic National Committee members are discussing ways to undermine Sanders and allow for a convention stop on his candidacy.

    The plan centers around the superdelegates to reverse reforms and allow them to vote on the first ballot. In other words, the supers would be brought back in to keep Sanders out.

    William Owen, a Tennessee DNC member, acknowledged the discussion and said that he does not support the effort. He noted that they agreed it could be “tough.” One would hope so. The plan would make a mockery of all of the prior statements of regret and reform after the rigged primary for Clinton. It would confirm in the mind of critics that the DNC is only interested in creating the appearance of democratic choice and only to the extent that the voters do what the establishment expects.

    “There’s talk about somehow trying to change this rule at this convention — just casual conversation, and I have participated in it some,” said Don Fowler, a former DNC chairman from South Carolina who opposed the DNC’s decision in 2018 to strip superdelegates of much of their power in the presidential nominating process.

    Fowler added, “I think it would be not in good faith if those of us who lost that fight in committee would somehow regenerate that fight in a national convention.”

    If they did, he said it would result in “the most hellacious fight you’ve ever seen at the Democratic convention.”

    In fairness to the DNC, the report only refers to a small group and it is unlikely to succeed. However, the fact that it is being discussed is alarming after the Clinton attack and the selection of Clinton allies to head the convention. The fear is that Sanders could win Iowa and come to the convention with the most votes. It would challenge the view that Biden is the unassailable nominee — just as he challenged the same view with Clinton.

    These moves are likely to only strengthen the resolve of the surging Sanders supporters.

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    Sanders is receiving the most support among young voters — an extraordinary accomplishment given his age and mainstream opposition. The Democratic Party is clearly not willing to move beyond the control and fealty extended to the Clintons. That could easily force a final reckoning at the convention over who controls the Democratic party.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 15:35

    Tags
    Politics

  • "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?": Bridgewater's 'Principles' Don't Apply To Ray Dalio
    “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?”: Bridgewater’s ‘Principles’ Don’t Apply To Ray Dalio

    Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio has been a fixture in the financial press for more than a year now as he has transitioned from running his firm to establishing himself as a media commentator and pseudo-prophet, loudly exhorting the public to heed his warnings about capitalism and its shortcomings. Economic inequality is an imminent threat to societal cohesion in the US, Dalio claims. And in a series of disorganized screeds published on LinkedIn and accompanied by charts that were presumably assembled on the fly by a team of Bridgewater analysts (since computers handle most of the actual investing at Bridgewater now), the billionaire has laid out his plan to repair the damage caused by decades of corporate greed (allegedly unleashed during the 1980s by Ronald Reagan’s free-market reforms).

    Not only is Dalio’s plan hopelessly unworkable, and not only because it hinges on the emergence of a kind of mythical technocratic champion able to bend Congress to his or her will and push through a slate of reforms that would undoubtedly infuriate corporate America, all while preventing it from doing everything in its power to undermine the administration and its economic agenda in retaliation.

    It’s unworkable because we tried all that. The answer to America’s ills isn’t more government giveaways – that’s what got us here. But politics aside, WSJ published a scathing deep dive in its weekend edition examining the turmoil at the top of Bridgewater, which has long been the subject of gossip and speculation in the industry. Dalio is 70 years old, but despite claiming that he’s not really responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations, WSJ reporters found that this isn’t true. Dalio is still very much in charge, and after a series of botched succession plans – which all fell apart because his handpicked executives eventually clashed with Dalio’s dictatorial style – it’s not exactly clear what Bridgewater’s plan is for the coming decades. 

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    Ray Dalio caricature courtesy of WSJ

    These questions are being posed at a difficult time for Bridgewater: the firm was recently the target of a harassment complaint filed by a former employee, and last year its flagship fund badly underperformed the market, during a year that was a bonanza for most investors.

    Most recently, Eileen Murray, a co-CEO of Bridgewater along with David McCormick, has announced plans to leave the company at the end of Q1. Her decision, announced in December, followed reports that she was in talks to take the top job at scandal-scarred Wells Fargo. However, that job went to former BNY chief Charlie Scharf, and it’s unclear what Murray has in mind for her next move.

    Since then, there’s reportedly been some bad blood with Dalio.

    Mr. Dalio – who is co-chairman and co-chief investment officer – at age 70 isn’t giving up real control over the business that helped him amass a $19 billion fortune. His word nearly always wins out in debates at Bridgewater on topics from management, staffing and investments to compensation, personnel and the wisdom of meeting with an autocratic head of state, say current and former employees.

    Mr. Dalio repeatedly overruled Ms. Murray on whom to hire, fire and promote, according to the current and former employees. She has told several friends she was exhausted and couldn’t do the job anymore.

    Ms. Murray is still negotiating the terms of her exit; Mr. Dalio wants to cut the value of her stake in the firm, according to some of the current and former employees. Bridgewater bars employees from independently speaking with the press.

    According to WSJ, it all goes to show that all of Dalio’s preaching about ‘radical transparency’ is just that. Talk – at least where Dalio is involved. And that’s why his senior managers never seem to pan out. Because employees at the firm, from the most junior to the most senior, understand that it’s extremely risky to challenge Dalio about anything, lest he respond thusly. Several witnesses told WSJ that Dalio mocked an underling when he objected to Dalio’s plan to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Several years ago, Mr. Dalio arranged a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss economic policy, said some of these employees. Employees expressed concerns about engaging with the autocratic leader, and Mr. Dalio told one that “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” according to people who heard the comment.

    Mr. Dalio overruled the dissenters. Indeed, Mr. Dalio went on to meet with Mr. Putin several times in person, one of the people said. Other employees believed Mr. Dalio was right to discuss economic policies with Mr. Putin.

    Representatives of Mr. Putin declined to comment, and Mr. Dalio declined to comment on the discussions. The company said it does not disclose “who Bridgewater people meet with.”

    Would you look at that: Dalio, an ardent critic of President Trump, is a friend and routine business confidant of Putin. We’d be curious to see his FBI file.

    Meanwhile, even the most senior employees like Dalio’s current co-CEO (who was just recently abandoned by Murray, his co-CEO) has reportedly complained about a kind of vindictiveness that Dalio displays toward departing employees that manifests in the form of frugality.

    Dalio has reportedly worked to reduce senior employees ‘phantom equity’ to which they are entitled upon leaving the firm. However, the senior employees denied this to WSJ.

    “He is so cheap,” Mr. McCormick told colleagues late last year, speaking about his boss, according to the contemporaneous notes of one person who heard the comment. “Not only did he want to sell the house but he wanted to get the nickels out of the couch.”

    Mr. McCormick said the attempt to reduce his stake “did not happen and I did not make that comment.” He said he has a “terrific working and personal relationship” with Mr. Dalio. He also said “I never discussed a job at BlackRock.” A company spokesman added that Mr. McCormick “never discussed with Larry about leaving Bridgewater.”

    Though as much as we might mock Dalio for his obvious hypocrisy and his laughably unimaginative plan to fix capitalism (hint, hint, hint: it involves raising taxes on the rich).

    But there’s one thing about Bridgewater that nobody can dispute. The firm remains the world’s most successful hedge fund shop, with few qualified rivals for the crown. Surrounded by a sea of fakers, imitators and interlopers who together suffered some of their worst outflows in recent memory last year, Bridgewater continues to grow, and outperform, despite the flagship fund’s lackluster performance in 2019 (it outperformed by a wide margin the year before).

    Since then, Bridgewater has delivered the biggest net gains of any hedge fund, according to a 2019 report from LCH Investments, a result due partly to Bridgewater’s large size. Its investors include endowments, public pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. It manages about $160 billion, making it the largest hedge-fund firm in the world.

    But in recent years, Bridgewater has been less than impressive. The flagship hedge fund, Pure Alpha, barely made any money last year despite a banner year for assets of all stripes, according to data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It bets on and against markets world-wide in an effort to stay ahead of macroeconomic trends.

    A smaller fund called All Weather that makes automated, computer-driven trades gained 16.6%. That lagged the 21.7% return of a Vanguard Group fund that uses a conventional mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds.

    Mr. Dalio has described the investment performance as embarrassing in meetings with staff, according to people familiar with the conversations. The company said in a statement that “we don’t know of any such comment.” It added that “while Bridgewater’s alpha last year was disappointing to Ray it was within the range of expectations.” Mr. Dalio said in a statement that “there is a waiting list to invest” in Pure Alpha, which he said made 10% in 2018 when “most assets were down.”

    While we’re sure Dalio will blast the WSJ for fabricating its reporting (he does this every time WSJ writes about him), it’s worth noting that the genius comics behind 1990s sketch comedy “Mr. Show” came up with a name for Dalio’s professed money-based value system.

    It’s called Worthington’s Law.

    It was created by David Worthington – a truly great man. Quite simply, the law stipulates that an individual’s intelligence and overall value to society increases along with his or her personal fortune. By this logic, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are two of the smartest, most honorable and beloved individuals in all of America. So are Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates.

    Oh, and Dalio, of course – but we have a feeling you figured that out already for yourself.

    But the billionaire hedge fund founder took a major hit last year when he gave $100 million to the State of Connecticut to improve its schools, step 1 in his plan to save capitalism. But Dalio’s ‘philanthropy’ was a massive PR blunder, and his reputation took a serious hit.

    Don’t be like Ray, kids. Hoard your money.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 02/01/2020 – 15:10

    Tags
    Business Finance

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 01

Today’s News 1st February 2020

  • Are The World Elite Using A Rise In Nationalism To Reassert Globalisation?
    Are The World Elite Using A Rise In Nationalism To Reassert Globalisation?

    Authored by Steven Guinness,

    Putting yourself in the mind of someone who commits an act of illegality is perhaps the only way we can begin to understand the motivation behind the transgression. A common reflex reaction to the most heinous of crimes is to simply call for the perpetrator to be removed from society and put in prison. Out of sight, out of mind. Whilst this is not an unreasonable expectation, it does not get to the root of why he or she became a criminal.

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    We can take a similar stance when it comes to globalism. If a self appointed elite who permeate institutions like the Bank for International Settlements and the IMF share a desire to concentrate world power through a centralised network of global governance, rather than simply rebel against this vision is it not equally as important to try and understand the vision from the perspective of those who created it? I would argue that to comprehend the minds of global planners it is necessary to mentally place yourself into their way of thinking.

    A couple of years ago I published an article called, Order Out of Chaos: A Look at the Trilateral Commission, where I examined some of the key motivations behind this particular institution’s goals. I quoted past members of the Commission openly rejecting national sovereignty and championing the interdependence of nations. One of those quotes was from Sadako Ogata, a former member of the Trilateral Commission’s Executive Committee, who at an event to mark 25 years of the institution remarked how ‘international interdependence requires new and more intensive forms of international cooperation to counteract economic and political nationalism‘.

    Shortly after the Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973, one of its members, Richard Gardner, wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine (the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations). In ‘The Hard Road to World Order‘, Gardner emphasised the objective of dismantling national sovereignty:

    In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.

    With Britain in the process of leaving the European Union, you could argue that one of the main planks of the Commission’s agenda has failed. If the global elite want the integration of European nations, and for the majority of those nations to be controlled through a centralised behemoth like the EU, surely seeing the UK become independent from the union goes against everything they believe in? Not necessarily.

    Back in 2014 and before globalists began touting political protectionism / nationalism as a danger to financial stability, the Trilateral Commission published a paper called,’Credible European Governance‘. Within the paper the UK’s membership of the single market is discussed, an issue which has been central to the narrative on Brexit since the referendum:

    A debate on competences has been launched by the British government on Britain’s future position in Europe where reference is made to the Single Market. Today, most EU countries accept that the euro area represents what President Van Rompuy calls the “symbolic heart of the European Union”. For the United Kingdom, the single market is the essence of the EU. Can these two visions continue to coexist within the EU, now that the euro area is surmounting its “existential crisis”?

    I asked in 2017 whether this passage in particular was not only questioning the UK’s position inside the single market, but by extension it’s membership of the European Union. It was the same paper that quoted Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union:

    People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when crisis is upon them.

    As I have discussed in previous articles, this philosophy gives credence to the theory that crisis scenarios, rather than being a detriment to the aspirations of globalists, present an opportunity to further their grip on power.

    At the latter end of 2015, just months before the EU referendum, the Commission produced another paper conceived by four David Rockefeller fellows – ‘EUROPE’S NEW NORMAL: SIMULTANEOUS CRISES THAT THREATEN TO UNRAVEL THE EU‘. The authors wrote at length about the growing distrust of ‘ever closer union‘ following the European debt crisis that originated after the collapse of Lehman Brothers:

    Many Europeans have come to suspect that the EU’s institutions have become overly powerful and some think that they have even used the latest crises for a further power grab. 

    A solution put forward by the fellows was that ‘some flow into the opposite direction might help Europeans to regain trust in the European process‘.

    This was my response published back in 2017:

    One interpretation of this remark is that countries be granted a platform to express their grievances with the European Union, perhaps even to the point of seeking renewed independence or opting to withdraw from the bloc altogether. From their own perspective the union desires a sharing of sovereignty rather than individual expressions of it. Therefore, a nation instigating a greater level of autonomy (dubbed protectionism / populism in some quarters) might eventually suffer lasting consequences given the steadfast and federalist nature of the supranational EU. Over time countries demonstrating more nationalistic tendencies could quite easily unravel into crisis. Especially if separation from the union results in a nation being compromised economically. In this scenario, might those same Europeans opposed to further integration become more receptive to the idea?

    The ultimate question then is whether the outbreak of a ‘crisis’ is organic, in the sense that it happens beyond the control of government and globalist institutions. Or whether instances such as Brexit were designed to happen to further the agenda for more power. You may ask why the UK would be permitted to leave the EU when the objective is for ‘ever closer union‘. But without Brexit and further instances of a rise in ‘populism‘, calls for reform have no traction. Crisis must either originate or be instigated to achieve the desired response from the electorate. Calling for reform inside a vacuum of no discernible unrest on a geopolitical level leaves institutions like the EU exposed to greater scrutiny.

    Moving forward to the present day, last week Chatham House published an article (Managing the rising influence of nationalism) that was part of a special report from the World Economic Forum titled, ‘Shaping a Multiconceptual World‘.

    Here, Chatham House observed that ‘the process of globalization demanded that all states adapt to being part of a shared project and subject themselves to its norms and laws‘, and that ‘the European Union became the vanguard of this process of post‑nationalism.’

    They identified that European identity was essentially anti-nationalist in nature. But the growth of nationalism witnessed throughout Europe over the past five years has distorted this belief. Combating it will require ‘investing over the coming years in the legitimacy of major international institutions such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund.’

    According to Chatham House, without investment, ‘these institutions will find they are increasingly ineffective.’ In short, the advent of a new wave of nationalism has created a narrative that global bodies will require more power to shore up both trade and economic stability now and into the future.

    At the same time this article was published, it was announced at the World Economic Forum that businessman George Soros is to launch a ‘global network of higher education‘ against nationalism, with investment of $1 billion. By coincidence or otherwise, Chatham House is involved in the initiative. Here is what Soros himself said about it:

    I believe that as a long-term strategy our best hope lies in access to quality education, specifically an education that reinforces the autonomy of the individual by cultivating critical thinking and emphasising academic freedom.

    The tide turned against open societies after the crash of 2008 because it constituted a failure of international co-operation. This in turn led to the rise of nationalism, the great enemy of open society.

    But is a resurgence of nationalism really the ‘great enemy‘ that Soros makes out, given that crisis on a global scale invariably leads to opportunity? One example is from an op-ed written by former IMF Deputy Director Mohamed A. El-Erian, who in 2017 questioned whether a rise in populism and nationalism throughout the world could be remedied by revamping the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights:

    So, do today’s anti-globalisation winds – caused in part by poor global policy coordination in the context of too many years of low and insufficiently inclusive growth – create scope for enhancing the SDR’s role and potential contributions?

    We have seen as well how the EU and the World Trade Organisation have presented proposals for the wide scale reformation of the WTO in the wake of renewed nationalism. And as regular readers will know, central banks led by the BIS and IMF are rapidly advancing plans to reform global payment systems and introduce digital currencies. These were not public considerations prior to the likes of Brexit. They only started to gather momentum after nationalism became a permanent fixture on the geopolitical landscape.

    The overriding sentiment from globalists has been that a combination of political and economic protectionism is a direct threat to financial stability. The IMF, the BIS and the World Bank have all over recent months been ramping up warnings about the dangers of an impending economic downturn. Two weeks ago the IMF’s new Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva commented at the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington:

    We have to learn the lessons of history while adapting them for our times. We know that excessive inequality hinders growth and hollows out a country’s foundations. It erodes trust within society and institutions. It can fuel populism and political upheaval.

    As well as the IMF, the start of 2020 saw the World Bank warn of a impending global debt crisis and how persistently low interest rates might not be enough to stave off a downturn. In the autumn of 2019 the BIS warned how an unsustainable rise in leveraged loans could jeopardise the financial system. The IMF joined them a few weeks later by declaring that ‘accommodative monetary policy is supporting the economy in the near-term, but easy financial conditions are encouraging financial risk-taking and are fuelling a further build-up of vulnerabilities.’

    The one issue binding all these warnings together is trade protectionism, which stems directly from the resurgence in political nationalism.

    Beyond the global economic houses, France’s President Macron said in 2018 that in relation to trade conflict, ‘economic nationalism leads to war.’ BHP boss Andrew Mackenzie said in August 2019 that the rise of nationalism presented a risk to the global economy. Even China and Russia have spoken out against the build up of trade protectionism, saying it will compromise the global economy.

    Now is the time to put yourself into the mind of a globalist. Whether it be the Innovation BIS 2025 project or the UN’s Agenda 2030 sustainability goals, what circumstances would benefit these people the most in furthering their ambitions? What would have to occur for the elite to gain widespread public support for policies that would fundamentally change our way of life? If an increased break out of trade protectionism and political populism triggered an economic collapse, would this impair the autonomy of global institutions? Or would it serve to reinvigorate them in the sense of scapegoating nationalism as being responsible for the rupture of the ‘rules based global order‘ founded after World War Two?

    From a globalist perspective, national sovereignty – the independent nation state – has no place in an interconnected world. It is an outmoded concept. The goal is always to further centralise power. But by what means exactly?

    Recall what Richard Gardner said back in 1974: ‘an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.’

    The institutions cited in this article are not ignorant to the plight of the global economy. The policies enacted since 2008, from near zero interest rates and trillions of dollars in quantitative easing measures to rising interest rates and quantitative tightening, has brought the financial system to where it is today. Central banks know perfectly well the effect their policies have on the health of economies, evidenced by comments from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell back in 2012:

    Right now, we are buying the market, effectively, and private capital will begin to leave that activity and find something else to do. So when it is time for us to sell, or even to stop buying, the response could be quite strong; there is every reason to expect a strong response.

    Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy.

    From a UK standpoint, the country’s departure from the EU may appear on the surface to be rallying against the tide of globalism. But my concern is that globalists will successfully manage to position Brexit and the spectre of a global trade conflict as causes for an economic collapse, when in fact it is monetary policy over the last twelve years which will be the primary culprit.

    Rather than heavy handedly marching into western nations and claiming their sovereignty, I would be concerned that the global elite will allow nationalist movements to fall on their own sword, and for the onset of a series of crises to consume geopolitics throughout the next decade. The job then would be to implement a whole raft of reforms and to educate the next generation on the perils of self determination.

    The realisation of a ‘new world order‘ means tearing down existing structures, or at the very least jeopardising them to the point of collapse, to facilitate the new. Out of resurgent nationalism may come a swathe of centralised directives that make today’s level of globalisation seem tame by comparison.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 23:45

  • The U.S. Cities With The Most Homeless People
    The U.S. Cities With The Most Homeless People

    Over half a million Americans are currently homeless.

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    After a period of progress and decline, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that the U.S. homeless population has increased slightly by three percent according to a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It now stands at 567,715 with 63 percent of that total living in sheltered accommodation. The national increase is primarily due to a leap in homelessness in California where it grew 16.4 percent between 2018 and 2019.

    More than half of all unsheltered homeless people in the U.S. – some 53 percent – are in California. That’s nearly nine times as many as the state with the second-highest total of unsheltered homeless which is Florida.

    Homelessness is primarily an urban issue and more than half of the homeless population is scattered across the country’s 50 biggest cities. Nearly a quarter of them live in just two cities – New York and Los Angeles. Despite its considerable homeless population, New York can at least claim that the vast majority of its rough sleepers are given sheltered accommodation with only 4.4 percent estimated to be living on the streets. The same cannot be said of the state of California where 71.7 percent of all homeless people are unsheltered.

    The infographic below also shows the top-10 worst cities for homelessness across the U.S. with New York in first place with 78,604.

    Infographic: The U.S. Cities With The Most Homeless People | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    It’s important to mention that in this comparison, the data is broken down by CoC – those are Continuums of Care that are local planning bodies coordinating responses to the issue.

    Los Angeles is in second place with over 56,000 while Seattle/King County comes third with 11,199.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 23:25

    Tags
    Social Issues

  • Has The FBI Been Lying About Seth Rich?
    Has The FBI Been Lying About Seth Rich?

    Authored by Craig Murray,

    A persistent American lawyer has uncovered the undeniable fact that the FBI has been continuously lying, including giving false testimony in court, in response to Freedom of Information requests for its records on Seth Rich. The FBI has previously given affidavits that it has no records regarding Seth Rich.

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    A Freedom of Information request to the FBI which did not mention Seth Rich, but asked for all email correspondence between FBI Head of Counterterrorism Peter Strzok, who headed the investigation into the DNC leaks and Wikileaks, and FBI attorney Lisa Page, has revealed two pages of emails which do not merely mention Seth Rich but have “Seth Rich” as their heading. The emails were provided in, to say the least, heavily redacted form.

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    Before I analyse these particular emails, I should make plain that they are not the major point. The major point is that the FBI claimed it had no records mentioning Seth Rich, and these have come to light in response to a different FOIA request that was not about him. What other falsely denied documents does the FBI hold about Rich, that were not fortuitously picked up by a search for correspondence between two named individuals?

    To look at the documents themselves, they have to be read from the bottom up, and they consist of a series of emails between members of the Washington Field Office of the FBI (WF in the telegrams) into which Strzok was copied in, and which he ultimately forwarded on to the lawyer Lisa Page.

    The opening email, at the bottom, dated 10 August 2016 at 10.32am, precisely just one month after the murder of Seth Rich, is from the media handling department of the Washington Field Office. It references Wikileaks’ offer of a reward for information on the murder of Seth Rich, and that Assange seemed to imply Rich was the source of the DNC leaks. The media handlers are asking the operations side of the FBI field office for any information on the case. The unredacted part of the reply fits with the official narrative. The redacted individual officer is “not aware of any specific involvement” by the FBI in the Seth Rich case. But his next sentence is completely redacted. Why?

    It appears that “adding” references a new person added in to the list. This appears to have not worked, and probably the same person (precisely same length of deleted name) then tries again, with “adding … for real” and blames the technology – “stupid Samsung”. The interesting point here is that the person added appears not to be in the FBI – a new redacted addressee does indeed appear, and unlike all the others does not have an FBI suffix after their deleted email address. So who are they?

    (This section on “adding” was updated after commenters offered a better explanation than my original one. See first comments below).

    The fourth email, at 1pm on Wednesday August 10, 2016, is much the most interesting. It is ostensibly also from the Washington Field Office, but it is from somebody using a different classified email system with a very different time and date format than the others. It is apparently from somebody more senior, as the reply to it is “will do”. And every single word of this instruction has been blanked. The final email, saying that “I squashed this with …..”, is from a new person again, with the shortest name. That phrase may only have meant I denied this to a journalist, or it may have been reporting an operational command given.

    As the final act in this drama, Strzok then sent the whole thread on to the lawyer, which is why we now have it. Why?

    It is perfectly possible to fill in the blanks with a conversation that completely fits the official narrative. The deletions could say this was a waste of time and the FBI was not looking at the Rich case. But in that case, the FBI would have been delighted to publish it unredacted. (The small numbers in the right hand margins supposedly detail the exception to the FOIA under which deletion was made. In almost every case they are one or other category of invasion of privacy).

    And if it just all said “Assange is talking nonsense. Seth Rich is nothing to do with the FBI” then why would that have to be sent on by Strzok to the FBI lawyer?

    It is of course fortunate that Strzok did forward this one email thread on to the lawyer, because that is the only reason we have seen it, as a result of an FOI(A) request for the correspondence between those two.

    Finally, and perhaps this is the most important point, the FBI was at this time supposed to be in the early stages of an investigation into how the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks. The FBI here believed Wikileaks to be indicating the material had been leaked by Seth Rich who had then been murdered. Surely in any legitimate investigation, the investigators would have been absolutely compelled to check out the truth of this possibility, rather than treat it as a media issue?

    We are asked to believe that not one of these emails says “well if the publisher of the emails says Seth Rich was the source, we had better check that out, especially as he was murdered with no sign of a suspect”. If the FBI really did not look at that, why on earth not? If the FBI genuinely, as they claim, did not even look at the murder of Seth Rich, that would surely be the most damning fact of all and reveal their “investigation” was entirely agenda driven from the start.

    In June 2016 a vast cache of the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks. On 10 July 2016 an employee from the location of the leak was murdered without obvious motive, in an alleged street robbery in which nothing at all was stolen. Not to investigate the possibility of a link between the two incidents would be grossly negligent. It is worth adding that, contrary to a propaganda barrage, Bloomingdale where Rich was murdered is a very pleasant area of Washington DC and by no means a murder hotspot. It is also worth noting that not only is there no suspect in Seth Rich’s murder, there has never been any semblance of a serious effort to find the killer. Washington police appear perfectly happy simply to write this case off.

    I anticipate two responses to this article in terms of irrelevant and illogical whataboutery:

    Firstly, it is very often the case that family members are extremely resistant to the notion that the murder of a relative may have wider political implications. This is perfectly natural. The appalling grief of losing a loved one to murder is extraordinary; to reject the cognitive dissonance of having your political worldview shattered at the same time is very natural. In the case of David Kelly, of Seth Rich, and of Wille Macrae, we see families reacting with emotional hostility to the notion that the death raises wider questions. Occasionally the motive may be still more mixed, with the prior relationship between the family and the deceased subject to other strains (I am not referencing the Rich case here).

    You do occasionally get particularly stout hearted family who take the opposite tack and are prepared to take on the authorities in the search for justice, of which Commander Robert Green, son of Hilda Murrell, is a worthy example.

    (As an interesting aside, I just checked his name in the Wikipedia article on Hilda, which I discovered describes Tam Dalyell “hounding” Margaret Thatcher over the Belgrano and the fact that ship was steaming away from the Falklands when destroyed with massive loss of life as a “second conspiracy theory”, the first of course being the murder of Hilda Murrell. Wikipedia really has become a cesspool.)

    We have powerful cultural taboos that reinforce the notion that if the family do not want the question of the death of their loved one disturbed, nobody else should bring it up. Seth Rich’s parents, David Kelly’s wife, Willie Macrae’s brother have all been deployed by the media and the powers behind them to this effect, among many other examples. This is an emotionally powerful but logically weak method of restricting enquiry.

    Secondly, I do not know and I deliberately have not inquired what are the views on other subjects of either Mr Ty Clevenger, who brought his evidence and blog to my attention, or Judicial Watch, who made the FOIA request that revealed these documents. I am interested in the evidence presented both that the FBI lied, and in the documents themselves. Those who obtained the documents may, for all I know, be dedicated otter baiters or believe in stealing ice cream from children. I am referencing the evidence they have obtained in this particular case, not endorsing – or condemning – anything else in their lives or work. I really have had enough of illogical detraction by association as a way of avoiding logical argument by an absurd extension of ad hominem argument to third parties.

    *  *  *

    Unlike his adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, Craig’s blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate. Subscriptions to keep Craig’s blog going are gratefully received.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 23:05

    Tags
    Law Crime

  • India Rejects That It Spent Years Pumping Fake GDP Data
    India Rejects That It Spent Years Pumping Fake GDP Data

    Just as the Indian economy expanded at a much slower pace in 2019, and electricity consumption in the country over the year plunged, there’s new criticism that Indian officials have been publishing phony economic statics to boost growth numbers.

    Overinflated GDP data started to print when the country shifted to a 2011-12 base year on Jan. 30, 2015, Bloomberg noted.

    However, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Parliament on Friday that there was no “misestimation of growth” after the country overhauled the data. 

    “Correctly specified models that account for all unobserved differences among countries, as well as differential trends in GDP growth across countries, fail to find any misestimation of growth in India or other countries,” Sitharaman said.

    “Concerns of a misestimated Indian GDP are unsubstantiated by the data and are thus unfounded.”

    Harvard’s Center for International Development Arvind Subramanian argues that the overhaul overstated GDP figures by at least two percentage points from 2012 to 2017.

    Fifty-one countries have also had over-estimated GDP growth since 2011, said Subramanian. Several advanced economies, including the U.K., Germany, and Singapore, have also been found to overestimate economic growth.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode the wave of fake GDP data from 2014 through 2017, but growth started to turn down by 2018; he has since been heavily criticized for a slumping economy.

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    GDP controversy has become a national topic in Indian newspapers, which is a big blow to Modi, who has promised to “Make India Great Again” with a $5 trillion economy.

    “People have raised issues about the dodginess of the Indian numbers, and that is a real problem,” said Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University. “Once you lose confidence in the statistical services, it creates a lot of uncertainty in the markets. From the investor’s point of view, it raises a red flag.”

    India, much like China’s fake economic data, is sliding further into an economic slump, as the consequences of pumping fake GDP numbers over the years are finally being realized.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 22:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Pepe Escobar: China's Virus Response Has Been "Breathtaking"
    Pepe Escobar: China’s Virus Response Has Been “Breathtaking”

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

    Chinese President Xi Jinping is leading a scientific ‘People’s War’ against the coronavirus…

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    President Xi Jinping formally told WHO head Tedros Ghebreyesus, at their meeting in Beijing earlier this week, that the coronavirus epidemic “is a devil and we cannot allow the devil to hide.”

    Ghebreyesus for his part could not but praise Beijing for its extremely swift, coordinated response strategy – which includes fast identification of the genome sequence. Chinese scientists have already handed over to Russian counterparts the virus genome, with snap tests able to identify it in a human body within two hours. A Russia-China vaccine is under development.

    The devil, of course, is always in the details. In a matter of a few days, at the peak of the most congested travel period of the year, China did manage to quarantine an urban environment of over 56 million people, including megalopolis Wuhan and three nearby cities. This is an absolute first in terms of public health, anytime in history.

    Wuhan, with a GDP growth of 8.5% a year, is a significant business center for China. It lies at the strategic crossroads of the Yangtze and Han rivers and at a railway crossroads as well – between the north-south axis linking Guangzhou to Beijing and the east-west axis linking Shanghai to Chengdu.

    As premier Li Keqiang was sent to Wuhan, President Xi visited the strategic southern province of Yunnan, where he extolled the immense government apparatus to boost control and sanitary prevention mechanisms to limit propagation of the virus.

    Coronavirus catches China at an extremely sensitive juncture – after the (failed) Hybrid War tactics displayed in Hong Kong; an American pro-Taiwan offensive; the trade war far from solved by a mere “phase 1” deal while more sanctions are being plotted against Huawei; and even the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, which ultimately is about targeting the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Southwest Asia (Iran-Iraq-Syria).

    The Big Picture spells out Total Information War and non-stop weaponization of the China “threat” – now even metastasized, with racist overtones, as a bio-threat. So how vulnerable is China?

    A people’s war

    For almost five years now a maximum-security biolab has been operating in Wuhan dedicated to the study of highly pathogenic micro-organisms – set up in partnership with France after the SARS epidemic. In 2017, Nature magazine was warning about the risks of dispersion of pathogenic agents out of this lab. Yet there’s no evidence this might have happened.

    In crisis management terms, President Xi has lived up to the occasion – ensuring that China fights coronavirus with nearly total transparency (after all, the internet wall remains in place). Beijing has warned the whole government apparatus in no uncertain terms not to attempt any cover-ups. A real-time webpage, in English, here, is available to everyone. Whoever is not doing enough will face serious consequences. One can imagine what awaits the party chief in Hubei, Jiang Chaoliang.

    A post that went viral all over the mainland this past Sunday states, “We in Wuhan have truly entered the stage of people’s war against the new viral pneumonia”; and many people, “mainly Communist Party members” have been confirmed as “volunteers and observers according to street units.”

    Crucially, the government directed everyone to install a “Wuhan Neighbors” applet downloaded from WeChat. That determines “our home’s quarantine address through satellite positioning, and then lock on our affiliated community organization and volunteers. Thenceforth, our social activities and information announcements would be connected to the system.”

    Theoretically, this means that “anyone who develops a fever will report their condition through the network as soon as possible. The system will immediately provide an online diagnosis, and locate and register your quarantine address. If you need to see a doctor, your community will arrange a car to send you to the hospital through volunteers. At the same time, the system will track your progress: hospitalization, treatment at home, discharge, death, etc.”

    So here we have millions of Chinese citizens totally mobilized in what’s routinely described as a “people’s war” using “high technology to fight against illness.” Millions are also drawing their own conclusions when comparing it with the use of app software to fight against the police in Hong Kong.

    The biogenetic puzzle

    Apart from crisis management, the speed of the Chinese scientific response has been breathtaking – and obviously not fully appreciated in an environment of Total Information War. Compare the Chinese performance with the American CDC, arguably the top infectious disease research agency in the world, with an $11 billion annual budget and 11,000 employees.

    During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014 – considered a maximum urgency, and facing a virus with a 90% fatality rate – the CDC took no less than two months from getting the first patient sample to identifying the complete genomic sequence. The Chinese did it in a few days.

    During the swine flu in the US in 2009 – 55 million infected Americans, 11,000 killed – the CDC took over a month and a half to come up with identification kits.

    The Chinese took only one week from the first patient sample to complete, vital identification and sequencing of coronavirus. Right away, they went for publication and deposit in the genomics library for immediate access by the whole planet. Based on this sequence, Chinese biotech companies produced validated essays within a week – also a first.

    And we’re not even talking about the now notorious building of a brand new state of the art hospital in Wuhan in record time just to treat victims of coronavirus. No victims will pay for their treatment. Additionally, Healthy China 2030, the reform of the health/development system, will be boosted.

    Coronavirus opens a true Pandora’s box on biogenetics. Serious questions remain about experiences in vivo in which the consent of “patients” will not be required – considering the collective psychosis initially developed by Western corporate media and even the WHO around coronavirus. Coronavirus could well become a pretext for genetic experiments via vaccines.

    Meanwhile, it’s always enlightening to remember Great Helmsman Mao Zedong. For Mao, the top two political variables were “independence” and “development.” That implies full sovereignty. As Xi seems determined to prove a sovereign civilization-state is able to win a scientific “people’s war,” that does not exactly spell out “vulnerability.”


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 22:25

  • China's Crackdown On Pajama-Wearers Sparks Surveillance-State Backlash
    China’s Crackdown On Pajama-Wearers Sparks Surveillance-State Backlash

    Avid Zero Hedge readers are probably aware that the Communist Party leadership has managed to construct a surveillance apparatus in the country’s largest cities that tracks its citizens with panoptic precision. Spit your gum out on the sidewalk in Beijing, and your ‘social credit score’ – a government ‘rating’ that quantifies your obedience to laws and social customs – might take a hit.

    While this system is also used for more nefarious purposes – minority Muslims in the far Western state of Xinjiang have been placed under constant surveillance as President Xi and the Party work to undermine adherence to Islam and mold the ethnic Uyghurs into obedient Communists – Beijing also uses it for more mundane purposes, like catching thieves who steal toilet paper from public restrooms.

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    But recently, the government triggered a rare backlash against the Chinese security state – a terrifying glimpse of how governments might leverage digital control to keep their people docile – when officials in a city in Eastern China launched a campaign to end “uncivilized behavior.”

    As the New York Times tells it, this campaign was basically Rudy Giuliani’s ‘broken windows’ strategy on steroids.. And on Monday, the urban management department of Suzhou, the Chinese city of six million in Anhui Province, started the controversy by publishing photos taken by street cameras of seven young residents wearing pajamas in public.

    Along with the photos, police published the names of the offenders, government ID numbers and locations where the “uncivilized behavior” took place. But residents responded that the young residents were simply being kids, and many criticized the police for their overzealousness.

    According to the NYT, the backlash was a rare moment of resistance from a population that has seemingly accepted their totalitarian rulers.

    Earlier, a government post on WeChat laid out the reasoning for shaming the pajama-wearers.

    “Uncivilized behavior refers to when people behave and act in ways that violate public order because they lack public morals,” read a post on WeChat, a common social messaging app, which has since been deleted.

    “Many people think that this is a small problem and not a big deal,” the post said. “Others believe public places are truly ‘public,’ where there is no blame, no supervision and no public pressure.”

    “This has brought about a kind of complacent, undisciplined mind set,” it concluded.

    While the use of facial recognition technology in security cameras remains taboo around the world, in China, it’s widely accepted. Powerful software allows the state security panopticon to quickly match offenders with their identities.

    Some users of Chinese social media warned that the technology should be used cautiously.

    “Facial recognition technology should be used with caution,” a user named Xiu Li De Xiao Wo wrote on Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging platform. “They should really be restricting access.”

    The Suzhou ban on pajamas in public isn’t the first time Chinese authorities tried to crack down on unacceptable dress codes. Police have also cracked down on the “Beijing bikini,” a look where men roll up their shirts and bare their belly during the hot summer months. 

    While the debate over facial recognition tech can be light-hearted at times, reports about advances in video-tracking technology have raised fears about the government or private companies engaging in this level of extreme monitoring in the US. Last weekend, the New York Times published a blockbuster story about ClearView, a company that had invented a facial-recognition technology on par with anything used in China.

    Then again, with such advanced surveillance tech at their disposal, we’re certain the Chinese authorities would have no problem identifying the source of the coronavirus outbreak, not to mention tracking all of those who might have been exposed. Though if this were true, how come so many infected victims were allowed to leave the country?


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 22:05

  • 'Cancel Culture' Attacks On "White Privilege" Will Trigger Tragedy Down The Road
    ‘Cancel Culture’ Attacks On “White Privilege” Will Trigger Tragedy Down The Road

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Being born White these days comes with a lot of excess baggage. Instead of each human being coming into existence with a clean slate, so to speak, a Caucasian newborn (who exactly qualifies as ‘White’ is another question) is brought into the world carrying the stain of its ancestors’ transgressions, of which, we are constantly reminded, are infinite and unforgivable.

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    Yes, European settlers to America were, for example, responsible for killing off a large number of the Native Indian population, as well as participating in the African slave trade. And who could forget the regrettable legacy of colonialism? At this point, I will resist the temptation to construct a scorecard based on the historical crimes of other races, many of whom were guilty of the very same crimes now being attributed to the White people.

    This sudden desire among the Liberal Inquisition to settle past historical scores with the White man, who ironically has become his own burden, is already revealing itself in radical new ways. Students at prestigious Yale University, for example, will no longer be able to attend an introductory course to Western Art History due to “student uneasiness over an idealized Western “canon” — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists,” reported the school’s newspaper.

    Perhaps the only thing surprising about Yale’s announcement is that it came so late in the day. After all, the field of mathematics, which one would think is adequately insulated from identity politics, has been accused of being built on a purely racist foundation.

    According to the new woke math currently being taught in the Seattle public school system, “Western” mathematics is being foisted upon unsuspecting students as “the only legitimate expression of mathematical identity and intelligence” in some diabolical plan to “disenfranchise people and communities of color.”

    Perhaps the best evidence that there is a concerted effort to cancel the White race from recognition for their achievements can be witnessed by a simple search on Google. Type in ‘White inventors’ and fasten your seat belt. While there is no doubt that minorities have contributed many inventions over the course of the centuries, the Google results make it look like the tinkering White man, where he appears at all, is still struggling to invent the wheel. If the world’s biggest search engine were relying solely on algorithms to provide its ‘answers’ (as opposed to the deliberate meddling of a human hand) then it seems utterly impossible that renowned ‘Caucasian’ inventors, like the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Tim Berners-Lee and Isaac Newton, to name a few, do not feature anywhere near the top of Google search results. This was a deliberate move by the Silicon Valley giant to deny White inventors their rightful place in the historical record.

    Commercial break! Watch Gillette’s stomach-churning virtue-signaling video devoted to not removing whiskers from your face but the question of ‘toxic masculinity. Ask yourself what race is portrayed as the guiltiest of displaying undesirable behavior (making advances on females, for example) in society.

    Equally shocking was the news that Goldman Sachs, of all companies, was jumping on the virtue signaling bandwagon in an apparent effort to put White executives in their rightful place, which increasingly is not at the top. Indeed, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has a plan to save corporate America from all-male, all-white corporate boards: The investment bank will decline to take a company public unless it has at least one woman or non-white member on board.

    The CBS article where this story appeared attempted to justify the move by citing a study that argues more diverse firms make “better investment decisions and scale back on aggressive risk-taking.” Well, if that were true, then Goldman Sachs would be better off asserting its commitment to the ‘free market’ as opposed to the lunatic social justice fringe. The reason is at the core of capitalist theory: those firms that fail to diversify (if it is indeed the best business model) will ultimately falter due to the market’s law of natural selection. Instead, David Solomon would rather align himself with cultural ‘progressives’ by forcefully removing White executives, many of whom are in their positions due to hard work and merit. On top of that, there is the question regarding the very constitutionality of such efforts at ‘affirmative action’ to correct perceived wrongs in the workplace.

    Curb your racism, avoid yoga and dog ownership

    Now, if all that were not enough, flickering in the background of these stories are vile racist ideas that would never be attributed to other peoples without massive fallout. For example, did you happen to know that White people participating in the seemingly benign discipline of yoga, an increasingly popular group activity for relieving stress and staying fit, are in reality supporting the vile white supremacist belief system?

    Shreena Gandhi, a religious studies professor at Michigan State, and Lillie Wolff, a self-described “anti-racist white Jewish organizer, facilitator, and healer,” co-authored an article entitled, ‘Yoga and the Roots of Cultural Appropriation.’ In it, the very imaginative authors argue that the “modern-day trend of cultural appropriation of yoga is a continuation of white supremacy and colonialism, maintaining the pattern of white people consuming the stuff of culture that is convenient and portable…”

    The madness does not stop there. Not by a long shot.

    Now if, by chance, you happen to be White, as well as a yoga enthusiast AND dog owner, you may as well just surrender to your darkest demons and sign up now for the Ku Klux Klan. I am only half joking. See, because in the minds of the social justice thought police, White people who walk their dogs around the neighborhood – pooper scooper in hand – may also signify a not so harmless breed of human. That’s because White folks tend to use dog ownership as a means to achieve “reinforced boundaries” and thus their “White privileges” in their otherwise diverse neighborhoods.

    “White residents of multicultural areas tend to overlook inequality in their neighborhoods,” writes Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston, who went on to identify the surprising “vehicle of racial segregation,” which just happens to be White man’s best friend, the dog.

    The academic relayed the heart-wrenching story of Jerry, a black homeowner in his sixties, who chanced upon a neighborhood bakery in the town of Creekridge Park, North Carolina. He stopped to chat with some dog-owning customers, who were white, in the outdoor seating area, but the staff asked him to leave – a scenario that is played over thousands of times every day at any restaurant that has an outdoor seating area.

    As Mayorga-Gallo explains it: “Jerry is a black disabled veteran who was wearing his old army uniform that day. He figures they thought he was begging for money.”

    Without providing more information on Jerry of the tattered Army uniform, like, for example, if he was in fact a panhandler, Mayorga-Gallo arrives at the White-trashing conclusion she was certainly looking for: “The dogs didn’t create the interracial boundaries at the bakery, which caters to a primarily white, middle-class clientele. In fact, the dogs presented an avenue to connect black and white neighbors. But they gave bakery staff a reason to intervene, to maintain interracial boundaries.” Now had Mayorga-Gallo taken the time to conduct her own experiment, like how a restaurant staff would react to a White beggar attempting to talk to a group of paying Black customers, I think she may have been surprised at the results. Instead, we must settle for the ‘White dog owners contribute to racial segregation’ verdict.

    For some readers, all of this may sound a bit trifling, insignificant and even humorous. That would be a mistake. This steady flow of articles, which attempt to portray White Americans as closet racists, could – at the very least – instill some level of hate aimed at the White population. In fact, that already seems to be happening. Meanwhile, by constantly eliminating the achievements of Whites, based on whatever explanation, or even removing them in the name of ‘diversity,’ this could also result in some sort of unintended backlash.

    These non-stop efforts to characterize the U.S. White majority with racism and supremacism do not stand up to scrutiny. After all, the country fought a civil war that was at least partially aimed at ending the slave trade. Later, the country passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the floodgates to people of non-European descent. While there is still room for improvement, the race situation is nowhere near the crisis levels that the media regularly ascribes to it.

    All things considered, it seems to be a recipe for disaster for the media to continually – in the tormented spirit of ‘social justice’ – to attribute racist tendencies to White Americans across the board. That is not only incredibly wrong, it is dangerous. It will end in disaster.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 21:45

    Tags
    Social Issues

  • Watch: How China Is Enforcing The Corona Quarantine By Drone
    Watch: How China Is Enforcing The Corona Quarantine By Drone

    China has found new ways to respond to coronavirus that has shut down at least two-thirds of its economy, taken offline some of the world’s largest manufacturing hubs, and quarantined more than 50 million people. 

    The country is using drones, specifically DJI drones with front-mounted speakers, to fly around towns and yell at anyone who isn’t wearing a mask. 

    It’s like something from a dystopian film, but essential to critical quarantine enforcement. 

    With confirmed cases around 10,000 in China, about 213 deaths, and tens of thousands of people with suspected coronavirus, the communist government is deploying technology to beat the “devil virus.” 

    “Staying at home is contributing to society,” a government official tells people in this video posted by Global Times, which slows a DJI drone with a front-mounted speaker flying around a rural countryside and urban areas yelling at anyone not wearing a virus mask. 

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

    Gizchina.com reports that some Chinese towns are deploying agriculture drones with 5-gallon sprayers to spray disinfectant, with hopes that the virus could be eliminated. 

    UK researchers now suggest 75,800 people are infected in Wuhan, as compared to SARS, the infection rate of coronavirus is exceptionally high. China is using advanced technology to fight a virus that could wind up collapsing its economy. 

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    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 21:25

    Tags
    Environment

  • Convex Strategies: "A Certain Dichotomy Has Come To Our Attention"
    Convex Strategies: “A Certain Dichotomy Has Come To Our Attention”

    Submitted by Convex Strategies

    A certain dichotomy has come to our attention. The whole ream of senior, past and present, central banking elites kicked off the New Year with a stream of comments about the past successes and the future challenges of monetary policy. We’ve copied in a few of their quality quotes here, but would also highly recommend that you take the time to read, in particular, Mr Bernanke’s speech/paper:

    The gist is, everything they did to save the world post GFC worked. None of the nasty side-effects came to fruition, with “the possible exception of risks to financial stability”. Further, the policies have had no impact on wealth segregation, as long as you ignore asset price inflation. Nevertheless, there is only so much monetary policy can do from here, so it might require a bit more lifting from the fiscal stimulus side to finish the job.

    If you don’t mind us saying – we find this laughable, naive and disingenuous.

    “It’s generally true that there’s much less ammunition for all the major central banks than they previously had, and I’m of the opinion that this situation will persist for some time,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times to be published Wednesday. “It’s not clear that monetary policy would have sufficient space” if it needs to combat anything worse than a “conventional recession.”

    Mark Carney, FT 8 Jan20

    “I believe that for the euro area there is some risk of Japanification, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion” if it acts comprehensively to avoid a deflationary malaise, Draghi said via a video link to the conference in San Diego. “The euro area still has space to do this, but time is not infinite,” “This is why the ECB has been consistently calling for fiscal policy to play a stronger role and capitalize” on the low rates, he said.

    Mario Draghi, Bloomberg 6 Jan20

    “Monetary policy has a meaningful role to play, it’s unlikely to be sufficient in the years ahead,” Yellen said. It “should not be the only game in town.” “We can afford to increase federal spending and cut taxes” to support the economy in a recession even though government debt has risen sharply in recent years, the former policy maker said.

    Janet Yellen, Bloomberg 6 Jan20

    “There’s been a process of going through the stages of grief about a low neutral rate. These factors are basically the hand we’ve been dealt for the next five to 10 years.”

    John Williams, WSJ 5 Jan20

    On the other hand, the BIS, the World Bank, and the IMF released year end reports filled to the gills about the concerns of unprecedented debt expansion:

    “Our results show that public debt in its various forms is the most important predictor of fiscal crises and it does matter always and everywhere.”

    IMF: Debt is Not Free 3 Jan20

    “The global economy has experienced four waves of debt accumulation over the past fifty years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging and developing economies. The latest, since 2010, has already witnessed the largest, fastest and most broad-based increase in debt in these economies. Their total debt has risen by 54 percentage points of GDP to a historic peak of almost 170 percent of GDP in 2018.”

    The World Bank, Global Waves of Debt: Causes and Consequences Jan20

    We are going to go out on a limb and suggest that it might be the unprecedented inflation (pun intended) of outstanding debt that the monetary policy nobility are missing in each and every of their senseless comments/arguments/conclusions. There is a reason they call end of cycle dislocations something like a “Debt Crisis” or “Credit Bubble” or “Default Cycle”, because debt is what matters! They don’t call it a “Slow Down in Productivity Crisis” or an “Asset Inflation Catastrophe” or a “Core PCE Deflator Bust”. You’ve heard us ask it over and over again – are central bankers idiots, or are they in on a wilful upward redistribution of wealth? Read through the above articles/speeches/papers from the elite of the elite in the central banking world and you will literally find not one mention of debt/credit/leverage. As always, the mention of it is so noticeable in its absence that it is hard to imagine it is anything other than intentional. They are the managers of a Ponzi scheme laying out every possible explanation other than what it actually is.

    The IMF and World Bank pieces, on the other hand, focus on the actual state of the world. The World Bank piece comes with a link to a spreadsheet with the data behind their wonderful charts. What we take from these pieces, in particular the World Bank book, is that historically long periods of debt accumulation end in financial crisis, notably in Emerging and Developing Economies (EMDEs). The most recent wave of debt commenced in 2010 and now has the world at all-time unprecedented levels of debt, but what really stands out is the relative increase in debt in Emerging and Developing Economies, and specifically Private sector debt, overwhelmingly from China.

    Figure 1: Global Debt

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    Figure 2: Debt in Advanced Economies

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    Figure 3: Debt in Emerging and Developing Economies

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    Other things that stand out – overall there has been no deleveraging post the 2007-2009 financial crisis; virtually all of the growth in accumulated debt in Advanced Economies has come from Government debt; the growth above trend of Private debt in EM, and particularly China, is prodigious. As we have discussed before, the end result of the extreme policy measure of the above noted Advanced Economy central bankers, aside from inflating asset prices in their own countries, was to drive debt accumulation into the developing world.

    This leads to the problem very clearly depicted in the below graph. Despite the unprecedented expansion of debt, what some might proclaim a bringing forward of demand, growth in EMDEs continues to slow.

    Figure 4: Debt to GDP vs GDP growth in Emerging and Developing Economies

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    This picture, naturally, looks even more extreme if we strip it down to just China. Referencing our distinguished central banking friends, maybe it’s not “secular stagnation”, but rather an excess of accumulated debt? I go back to our old Snickers bar analogy. You have to be a pretty undiscerning doctor if you think your prescription of Snickers bars, to pick up lagging energy in your patient, has nothing to do with his weight gain and subsequent increased lack of energy. Sadly, there appears to be no accountability for the monetary physicians that have orchestrated the current lack of fitness for economies.

    We couldn’t help ourselves and had to include the attached link to the recently created biggest Snickers bar ever – as far as we know no central bankers were involved in the making of it!

    World’s biggest Snickers bar weighs in at over 2 tons in Texas

    Figure 5: Debt to GDP vs GDP growth China

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    As ever, we have no particular insight as to what the future holds, how or when this cycle might end. Just simply that, thus far, they all end. The accumulation of debt doesn’t, per se, tell you where or when a fire might start, but rather where a spreading fire might cause the costliest damage. Again, the next three charts from the World Bank piece show that EMDEs, and in particular China, are where the combustible material has really built up in this wave.

    Figure 6: Rate of Change of Total Debt (EMDEs – Emerging Market Developing Economies)

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    Figure 7: Pct. Countries with Increase in Govt Debt, EMDEs

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    Figure 8: Pct. Countries with Increase in Private Debt, EMDEs

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    All of our central banking gurus commented on the need for greater fiscal policy support in their respective economies, and we touched last month on the growing mainstreaming of things like MMT, Modern Monetary Theory (neither modern nor a theory), but is that sort of thing a solution that will prevent/delay another EMDEs financial crisis at the end of this debt wave? Can EMDEs that rely on foreigners to hold a significant portion of their domestic government debt, and on foreign currency as a significant portion of the private debt, smooth away cyclical end debt instability by ever greater levels of fiscal spending? The soft-landing unicorn has been historically scarce, and the extremes of this cycle make us sceptical that this time the guys behind the curtain will pull the levers just right.

    Figure 10: Volatility and Correlation Comet

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    Figure 11: SGD/JPY ‘Seasons’

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    All of this leads us, yet again, to the same question: are you sufficiently confident in your defensive strategies that you are able to take sufficient risk to benefit from years like 2019? Are you catching the spectacular compounding opportunities in the up-tail, while confidently protecting the down-tail? Nobody should be satisfied with the high correlation and low returns of absolute return hedge fund strategies. Fixed income, which had a sensational 2019, still massively underperformed equities while offering increasingly little portfolio risk mitigation benefit. Should our central banking overlords continue to extend the cycle, there is no reason why asset prices can’t continue to drive ever higher. Should they fail………


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 21:05

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Race-Baiters Ruined As Poll Shows Americans' Satisfaction With Race-Relations Jumped Since Trump Elected
    Race-Baiters Ruined As Poll Shows Americans’ Satisfaction With Race-Relations Jumped Since Trump Elected

    Well this doesn’t fit the mainstream media narrative…

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    In a poll reported by Gallup’s ‘Mood of the Nation’ this week, it turns out that Americans’ satisfaction with race relations has jumped 14% since Trump’s inauguration.

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    As The Daily Caller’s David Krayden notes, the numbers on race relations seemingly fly in the face of rhetoric from progressives who not only routinely label the president as a racist and is actively or passively promoting a white supremacist agenda. Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has called the president “worse than a racist” while CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin labelled Trump a racist for calling Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters a “low IQ individual.”

    When Trump criticized the infrastructure in Baltimore and said the city was “rodent-infested” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the comments “racist.”

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    Trump has consistently noted that unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans has reached an all-time low and that minorities are benefiting from the economic boom the country is experiencing.

    Additionally, as Trump enters his re-election year, Americans are more positive on eight key issues than they were just before he took office in January 2017.

    • Gallup records double-digit increases in public satisfaction with the nation’s economy, security from terrorism, military strength and the state of race relations.

    • Satisfaction is also up by between six and nine points on crime, the position of blacks and other racial minorities, the distribution of income and wealth, and the opportunity for a person to get ahead through hard work.

    Gallup has measured Americans’ satisfaction with most of these issues each year since 2001, except from 2009 to 2011, when a more limited number of issues were rated or the question was not asked.

    Americans’ average satisfaction rating for the 27 issues Gallup  has tracked consistently since 2001 is now 47%. This is up three points from a year ago and is the highest since the January 2005 poll.

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    Today’s average satisfaction is roughly on par with the level of the early 2000s. Only in 2002 was the average for this metric substantially higher than it is today. The average 53% recorded that year reflected heightened satisfaction as Americans were in full “rally around the flag” mode shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

    One reason average satisfaction isn’t higher now than in 2001 is that satisfaction has since declined sharply on matters related to the performance of the federal government: the system of government and how well it works (down 25 points); the role the U.S. plays in world affairs (-18); and the size and power of the federal government (-12).

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    All of which suggests President Trump’s upbeat view of the nation’s economy, military strength, economic opportunity and overall quality of life will likely resonate with Americans when he delivers his State of the Union address to Congress next week.

    Sadly, for one group of Americans, the address may not go down so well, as it appears Al Sharpton and his race-baiting cronies will need to work harder to divide the nation…


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 20:45

    Tags
    Social Issues
    Politics

  • Democracy And Tyranny
    Democracy And Tyranny

    Authored by Walter Williams via Tonwhall.com,

    During President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial, we’ll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we’ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation’s two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

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    John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic when he said,

    “You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.”

    Contrast the framers’ vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.

    Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our founders held for a democracy.

    James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.”

    At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: “We are now forming a republican government. (Liberty) is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. … If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”

    John Adams reminded us: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

    John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

    Thomas Paine said, “A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.”

    The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of deciding presidential elections. That means heavily populated states can’t run roughshod over small, less-populated states.

    Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states, namely California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7% of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government “of the people.” Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.

    It’s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers’ distrust is seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights such as: Congress “shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.” When we die and if at our next destination we see anything like a Bill of Rights, we know that we’re in hell because a Bill of Rights in heaven would suggest that God couldn’t be trusted.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 20:25

    Tags
    Politics

  • California Is Building Lots To Contain "Thousands" Living In Their Cars Across The State
    California Is Building Lots To Contain “Thousands” Living In Their Cars Across The State

    Today in “news you won’t hear from liberal American news organizations”, it was reported this week that “thousands” of homeless California residents are being forced to live in their cars, amidst a growing housing crisis in the state.

    California accounts for nearly half of the country’s homeless population. Ah, the sweet success of high taxes and liberal policies. 

    Even better is the solution that some California cities are implementing to try and deal with the issue. According to a report by France 24 news, several cities are now encouraging the practice, setting up parking lots where homeless people can “more securely” spend the night. 

    France 24 news interviewed several people in one lot, including a deliveryman who doesn’t make enough money to rent his own apartment. “Each car represents someone’s home,” the report notes about this lot outside of San Diego. 

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    One former homeless man, George Harris, actually turned the idea into a business, accruing 13 minivans which he has parked in various areas around Venice Beach, that he rents each for $300 per month. Each van comes with its own mattress, he told a reporter proudly. 

    The vans have to be moved every 3 days to avoid getting towed and Harris is actually fighting the city ordinance that requires this in order to try and get permission to keep people living in vans throughout the city. Residents throughout the city seem unamused by the practice. 

    “I called the police on one of his clients because the guy was defecating and urinating,” one resident said about a van parked outside of her home.

    “Totally false,” Harris interrupted during the middle of her interview. “They make up stories about the van people.”

    You can watch the full report here:


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 20:05

  • Zerohedge Suspended On Twitter
    Zerohedge Suspended On Twitter

    First it was Facebook, then all of New Zealand; now Twitter has decided to suspend Zero Hedge.

    Just as in the prior bans, which were eventually overturned, so in this case it is unclear what prompted Twitter’s abrupt censorship: the only notification we received from twitter was the following:

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    It is news to us that this website has (ever) “engaged in the targeted harassment of someone.”

    What appears to have happened is that twitter received a complaint from the website best known for publishing the discredited Steele dossier when no other media outlet would touch it, and making cat slideshows of course, Buzzfeed, in which someone called Ryan Broderick writes that Zero Hedge  “has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil.”

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

    A few points: the article referenced by Buzz Feed, “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?”, is as the title implies, a question, and one which considering the huge significance and life or death import of the Coronavirus pandemic, has to be answered, especially since even the establishment’s Foreign Policy magazine writes bat soup, which is widely being cited and circulated by the mainstream press as the cause of the coronavirus breakout, is not the cause of the Wuhan virus. The widely read website Health.com also chimes in: “No, Coronavirus Was Not Caused by ‘Bat Soup‘”. Meanwhile, Business Insider writes “Experts think the Wuhan coronavirus jumped from bats to snakes to people. Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics.”

    So considering that Peng Zhou, who currently works at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is the Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group at the Institute, the question certainly is a reasonable one and, in a normal world, would demand an answer from the established media (assuming it wasn’t afraid of risking lucrative Chinese funding) instead of leaving it to “fringe” websites.

    The impetus to ask the question if the disease originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is especially relevant in light of social media reports such as this one which claims to “have evidence here that the outbreak originated from Wuhan P4 Research Institute. You need to find a truly patriotic journalist to publish it to the public. You can personally trust me to provide a complete chain of evidence. Thank you.”

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    So did we have a right to ask the question if there is an alternative version for the emergence of the Coronavirus pandemic, especially with hundreds if not thousands of lives at stake? Absolutely.

    As for Broderick’s statement that Peng was “accused falsely” we wonder how he knows this: did he speak to Peng? Did he get any comments? Did he get an official denial? No, he did not: as he writes, “BuzzFeed News has reached out to the scientist, whom it is declining to name.” So, it actually turns out that it is Buzzfeed that is once again presenting a false statement as fact, something Buzzfeed has been accused of doing over and over and over.

    Meanwhile, those who wonder if Dr. Zhou has any link to the possible emergence of the Coronavirus following years of experimenting with bats, we urge you to read our full article instead of relying on the hearsay of ideologically biased journalists.

    Second, and contrary to the claims presented by Buzzfeed, we did not release any “personal information”: Peng Zhou (周鹏) is a public figure, and all the contact information that we presented was pulled from his publicly posted bio found on a website at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which anyone with access to the internet can pull from the following URL: http://sourcedb.whiov.cas.cn/zw/rck/201705/t20170505_4783973.html, which is also the information we used.

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    So about Buzzfeed’s allegation, which was adopted by Twitter, that somehow we incited “targeted abuse”, here is what we said:

    Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay Dr. Peng a visit.

    To which we then added the information obtained from his own bio page on the Institute’s website:

    “Or at least start with an email: Dr Peng can be reached at peng.zhou@wh.iov.cn, and his phone# is 87197311″

    Are we then to understand that we have now reached a point the mere gathering of information, which our colleagues in the media may want to eventually do as thousands of people are afflicted daily by the Coronavirus, is now synonymous with “abuse and harassment”? According to Twitter, and certainly our competitors in the media, the answer is yes.

    In any case, we have emailed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who incidentally happens to follow zerohedge…

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    … for the answer. If we get one, we will promptly share it with our readers. We aren’t holding our breath, however, as we realize how important it is to today’s media giants not to ruffle too many Chinese feathers or lack losing access to the Chinese market. After all, who can forget the following report from the New York Times about another of our media competitors that several years ago was itself engaged in “doxing” us (yet oddly wasn’t suspended by Twitter):

    The chairman of Bloomberg L.P. said in a speech here on Thursday that the company should have reconsidered articles that deviated from its core of coverage of business news, because they jeopardized the huge sales potential for its products in the Chinese market.

    The comments by the chairman, Peter T. Grauer, represented the starkest acknowledgment yet by a senior Bloomberg executive that the ambitions of the news division should be assessed in the context of the business operation, which provides the bulk of the company’s revenue. They also signaled which of those considerations might get priority.

    Acknowledging the vast size of the Chinese economy, the world’s second-biggest after that of the United States, Mr. Grauer, said, “We have to be there.”

    “We have about 50 journalists in the market, primarily writing stories about the local business and economic environment,” Mr. Grauer said in response to questions after a speech at the Asia Society. “You’re all aware that every once in a while we wander a little bit away from that and write stories that we probably may have kind of rethought — should have rethought.”

    Bloomberg, the financial data and news company, relies on sales of its terminals, which are ubiquitous on bankers’ desks around the world, for about 82 percent of its $8.5 billion in revenue. But sales of those terminals in China declined after the company published an article in June 2012 on the family wealth of Xi Jinping, at that time the incoming Communist Party chief. After its publication, officials ordered state enterprises not to subscribe to the service. Mr. Grauer did not specifically mention the article about Mr. Xi or any other articles.

    “Being in China is very much a part of our long-term strategy and will continue to be so going forward,” Mr. Grauer said. “It occupies a lot of our thinking — Dan Doctoroff, our C.E.O.; me; Mike; and other members of our senior team.”

    Some current and former Bloomberg journalists, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they had hoped the controversy surrounding Bloomberg’s China reporting would prompt the company to reaffirm its support for investigative efforts. Mr. Grauer’s comments were met with dismay, particularly because he is regarded as close to Mr. Bloomberg and would be unlikely to voice views that were not broadly accepted at the top of the company.

    Unlike Bloomberg, or anyone else in the mainstream media, we don’t plan on “rethinking” any of our articles just to curry favor with the powerful and we certainly will continue our own “investigative efforts”, even if it means we lose some of our inbound traffic.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 19:57

  • Deciphering Davos: What The International Ruling Class Have Planned For You
    Deciphering Davos: What The International Ruling Class Have Planned For You

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

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    International Man: No matter the problem, the prescription of the Davos crowd is always more welfare, more warfare, more money printing, more taxes, and of course, more centralization of power into global institutions.

    What’s your take?

    Doug Casey: The people who attend Davos are all welfare statists. They’re not necessarily socialists, insofar as they don’t want to see government nationalize industries. Most understand how totally dysfunctional that is and that they don’t really benefit from it. Strict socialism, defined as State ownership of the means of production, is off the table. They prefer economic fascism, where a powerful State can funnel wealth to the corporations the elite own or control. They’re happy to throw some table scraps to the unwashed masses, of course. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is the best way to do that.

    Again, they’re not socialists. They’re welfare statists. Completely opportunistic and absolutely unprincipled. Despicable people, actually. Few are entrepreneurial, independent thinkers or free-market oriented. Those types would be disruptive at Davos, and if they’re ever invited, it would be only once.

    Other than celebrities, court intellectuals, and publicity-oriented multibillionaires, the attendees are almost all bureaucrats and politicians who thrive on stolen money. But it’s no longer easily visible briefcases full of cash. That’s quaint in today’s world. They steal indirectly, by making sure they benefit from state regulations, state favors, and the inflation of the currency.

    Bribes are in the form of tax-deducible donations to charitable foundations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). That’s not only much safer, but the money is vastly bigger, and the way it’s rigged adds to their prestige. Both making and taking a bribe disguises the miscreants as philanthropists and do-gooders when they use an NGO as a funnel.

    But getting back to their economic views, they’re all for “quantitative easing.” Printing money—MMT—directly benefits the stock market. It raises corporate earnings, and much of the newly created cash directly boosts the prices of shares. It’s really sweet, if you’re an insider.

    International Man: At this year’s event, climate change appears to be a big focus.

    What are your thoughts on this?

    Doug Casey: These fools love to talk about global warming, which they attribute to carbon dioxide. Their jets and limos are a small price to pay for the invaluable moral hectoring they give to the billions of hoi polloi.

    Davos people see the common man as the real problem. And perversely, the common man believes what he’s told in the media—namely, that he is the problem. Pseudo science has become a new religion. It’s become a moral crusade against carbon, the one element that’s basic to all life; it’s now more hated than uranium, plutonium, or gold. Carbon is being pursued by a lynch mob of angry chimpanzees.

    And leading the charge is Davos attendee Greta Thunberg. She’s emblematic of how thoroughly degraded this has become. Greta is a manufactured celebrity. She came out of nowhere last year; massive but completely undeserved media attention made her into one of the planet’s most famous people. It’s not just laughable, but amazing, that a high school sophomore—with no knowledge or experience—has become a world opinion leader. You may have heard her famous deranged rant, but just in case, here it is:

    She has absolutely nothing going for her but things like anger, resentment, hatred, and fanaticism. No matter. The Masters of the Universe sit there as she scolds them for their evil in destroying the world and ruining her youth.

    The silly little bitch is a frothing-at-the-mouth fanatic and suffers from several really severe psychological aberrations. She is to the world what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is to the United States. She will undoubtedly go into some multi-billion dollar NGO, where she can do a maximum of damage.

    People value urgency, sincerity, and passion. Like Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Castro, and the like, she’s got plenty. And nobody dares say a word about it, because she’s been granted the moral high ground. This augurs very poorly for the future.

    Probably the only intelligent words spoken at Davos this year came from Donald Trump, of all people, when he decried “prophets of doom,” referring to the global warming crowd.

    Climate change has been around for about four billion years. And the biggest driver of it, by far, is the sun. Not carbon dioxide, a trace gas. There’s 20 times more argon, in the atmosphere. Without the sun, earth would be a ball frozen at about two degrees above absolute zero. Not counting the effects of cosmic rays, the planet’s changes in orbit and tilt, the solar system’s rotation around the galaxy, and a score of other critical factors. But these people don’t talk about that, because those things are totally and obviously beyond our control. Best to stick with carbon, which is proving helpful in controlling the masses.

    International Man: Given the disastrous policies the Davos crowd has in the pipeline, what should the average person do?

    Doug Casey: Treat these people with the respect they deserve—which is to say, treat them like drunks discussing the weather at a cocktail party. Davos is just a social gathering for people who have a busybody streak. It would be completely unimportant except for the fact the media says it’s important.

    The only thing that surprises me about Davos is that the hustler who runs it hasn’t yet invited the Kardashians.

    *  *  *

    There’s no question the elite are eager to promote policies like negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and mass migration. These trends are in motion, and are accelerating at a rapid rate. It’s all shaping up to be a world-class disaster… That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report with Doug’s top 7 predictions—including how to survive and thrive in turbulent times. Click here to download the free PDF now.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 19:50

  • Now It's 64: Wounded US Troop Count From Iran Attack Still Growing
    Now It’s 64: Wounded US Troop Count From Iran Attack Still Growing

    It appears these injury count updates out of the Pentagon are set to become a weekly thing. But it’s of course worth recalling it all began with a “zero” injury and casualty count. By middle of this week the count jumped up to 50 troops injured in the Jan.8 Iran ballistic missile strike on Ayn al-Asad Airbase in Iraq. As we noted Wednesday the figures went from zero to 11 to 34 to 50… and who knows where from here.

    But here’s the new figure:

    The Defense Department said Thursday that 14 more U.S. service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury since the Iranian missile attack targeting U.S. forces at two Iraqi bases this month, bringing the total number to 64. 

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    Pentagon briefing by Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley.

    The Pentagon said that at this point most are considered “mild traumatic brain injuries” but that the numbers are expected to grow further.

    “All of those people were screened, and we’ve got a certain number, and then the number’s growing,” said Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    The Pentagon has repeatedly claimed the “concussion-like symptoms” didn’t immediately present themselves. 

    In the days following the ‘retaliatory strike’ avenging the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iranian state media claimed dozens of casualties were “immediately transferred out of the airbase by helicopters.” Specifically Mehr News had claimed some 80 US troops were killed in the attack. 

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    While the Pentagon has denied there were any troop deaths, it’s clear that injuries sustained by the missile impact were far more substantial than initial Pentagon and US administration statements. 

    To review, Trump’s first address to the nation following the major unprecedented attack on US forces in the wake of Soleimani’s death indicated “no casualties” and that “all is well!”. Two weeks later, the Pentagon stunned reporters by indicating 11 US troops actually suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI). In that time Trump also dismissed the reports as some troops having mere “headaches”. 

    The official ‘brain injury’ toll has continued to shoot up from there — it seems now on a weekly basis.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 19:25

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • How The Fed Created An Uncontrollable "Monster"
    How The Fed Created An Uncontrollable “Monster”

    Via Birch Gold Group,

    Like Victor Frankenstein, the Fed may have created its own monster. It’s been called many things, such as Quantitative Easing (QE), QE Lite, QE/Not QE, “Organic” Balance Sheet Growth, and more…

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    But no matter what you choose to call it, the bottom line is this:

    The Fed is growing its official balance sheet at a frantic pace to provide liquidity to various banking operations, including the repo markets.

    In fact, the balance sheet has grown about $400 billion since August, as reflected in the uptick at the far right of this chart:

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    Along with the Fed’s decision to increase its balance sheet is a rise in risky asset prices. According to a piece at Newsmax, this is raising eyebrows:

    Prices for stocks and other risky assets are also rising at a fast clip – a state of affairs that a growing chorus of investors, economists and former Fed officials say is no coincidence, and potentially a problem.

    This pattern of rising prices in risky assets is similar to what happened when the Fed initiated the first three rounds of QE.

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    The potential problem behind a pattern like this is the “monster” that the Fed is creating. Addressing the problem means answering a critical question…

    When and how does the spigot of Fed cash flow get turned off?

    Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer with Bleakley Advisory Group, thinks we will have to wait and see what happens:

    The risk is what happens when the Fed stops increasing their balance sheet… What will stocks do when that liquidity spigot stops? We’ll have to see.

    Of course, if we “wait and see”, any potential damage to the economy will already have started.

    Also keep in mind that Powell didn’t want the Fed’s “monster” to be called another round of QE, instead opting in October 2019 to label it “organic” balance sheet growth.

    But it still appears way too much like another round of QE to ignore the similarities. In fact, Richard Fisher, former President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, tied the earlier round of QE to this “organic” balance sheet growth rather succinctly:

    “Markets perceive things and they may perceive things different than what you intend,” Fisher said, pointing to a strong correlation between the increase in the size of the Fed’s balance sheet and the rise in stock prices.

    When confronted with the problem of “when to turn the spigot off,” the current President of the Dallas Fed, Richard Kaplan, said, “It’s one of several factors that I think may be exacerbating the valuation of risky assets, so as a central banker I have to be cognizant of it.”

    Other Fed officials like Neel Kashkari don’t agree, saying, “I don’t see it.”

    But the lack of consensus about this “monster” the Fed may have created only adds to the uncertainty.

    In 2013, the market didn’t respond well when the Fed signaled it would turn the spigot of cash flow off. According to an article at Investing.com:

    Then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled the central bank was preparing to slow the pace of its bond purchases as it wrapped up QE3.

    Stocks sold off and, more importantly, bond yields rose, undoing the desired effect of the Fed’s bond purchases, said Roberto Perli, founding partner and head of global policy research at Cornerstone Macro, a research firm.

    If that behavior repeats itself, who knows how that will play out? But that’s what you can expect when you’re dealing with a “monster.”

    What the future holds will depend on whether this “monster” gets out of control or not.

    Don’t Wait for the Fed “Monster” to Turn on the Economy

    As this Fed balance sheet story plays itself out, now is an ideal time to consider making your retirement resilient to major changes in the U.S. economy.

    Consider adding precious metals like gold and silver to your asset mix, which tend to perform well under uncertain conditions like those we face now.

    *  *  *

    After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 19:05

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Trump Acquittal Scheduled For Wednesday After Senate Blocks Witnesses In Impeachment Trial
    Trump Acquittal Scheduled For Wednesday After Senate Blocks Witnesses In Impeachment Trial

    Update (5:45 p.m.): The Senate has voted to not to call new witnesses in the impeachment of President Trump. The vote was 51 to 49.

    As reported earlier, leaders from both parties agreed on a Wednesday vote to acquit or convict Trump as late as Wednesday.

    Preview of Sunday morning talk shows:

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    * * *

    Update (1:20 p.m.): President Trump’s impeachment trial will be extended until Wednesday according to journalist Paul Sperry and confirmed by Fox News.

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    The news comes after the New York Times got some extra mileage out of John Bolton’s new book, which claims that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens began ‘earlier than known.’

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    Yet, despite the pressure campaign to flip undecided Republicans to the Democrats’ demand for witnesses, holdout Sen. Lisa Murkowski is now a ‘no’ on calling witnesses, virtually ensuring President Trump will be acquitted within the next week.

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    It looks like Hunter Biden can sleep well at night in his $12,000 per month Hollywood home after Politico reports that the GOP has enough Republican Senators to block witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial.

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    Democrats needed at least four Republicans to defect – two of which they found in Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine (who was mercilessly flamed by conservatives over social media) – however an 11th hour ‘no’ decision by Lamar Alexander (R-TN) means that the decision would fall to Chief Justice John Roberts in the event of a tie. And Roberts may not even have to weigh in if the fourth potential GOP defector, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, votes ‘no’ as well.

    In a Thursday night Twitter thread, Alexander says “There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter…” and that “the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.”

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    Still, Alexander argues that while Trump acted inappropriately, “the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.” He also reasons that “The framers believed that there should never, ever be a partisan impeachment. That is why the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate for conviction. Yet not one House Republican voted for these articles.”

    “If this shallow, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist,” Alexander continued. “It would create the weapon of perpetual impeachment to be used against future presidents whenever the House of Representatives is of a different political party.”

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    While the outcome will allow Republicans to put a bow on the affair, expect Democrats and their MSM amplifiers to cry foul  over the ‘rigged farce’ while parroting distributed talking points.

    And while Democrats may fume over not being able to hear from John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney and other current and former White House employees regarding Trump’s conduct with Ukraine, Republicans hoping for a nervous Hunter Biden and a CIA operative ‘whistleblower’ to take the stand, will be equally disappointed.

    Meanwhile, Susan Collins has taken a ration of flack over social media for essentially virtue signaling to the Democrats when she (likely) knew Alexander would be a ‘no’ – and the battle over Bolton and the Bidens was never going to happen.

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    Let’s see how Maine Republicans feel about Collins in November.

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    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 18:48

    Tags
    Politics

  • Thousands Of Palestinians Clash With Police In West Bank & Jordan Over Trump's 'Peace Plan'
    Thousands Of Palestinians Clash With Police In West Bank & Jordan Over Trump’s ‘Peace Plan’

    Tensions in the West Bank and Jordan Valley exploded this week as angry Palestinians protesters clashed with Israeli police in the wake of President Trump unveiling his ‘deal of the century’ Mideast peace plan on Tuesday.

    Thousands of Palestinians were reported in the streets Friday in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, where Israeli security forces responded to rock throwing and burning tires with tear gas and other riot control measures. An estimated 48 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were injured in the unrest.

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    Protests near Tayseer checkpoint, the Jordan Valley, the West Bank this week. Image via Mondoweiss. 

    Some 300 also protested in front of the US Embassy in Amman, Jordan where chants of “Death to Israel” were heard. Demonstrators carried signs reading “Down with the deal of the century” and shouted further chants of “Listen, damn Trump, Palestine is not for sale,” according to The Times of Israel. 

    There’s been similar sporadic clashes all week especially given the White House plan gives Israel ‘annexation’ rights over at least 30% of West Bank territory. This after the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas were not even privy to negotiations related to the deal, which has been rejected by both Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas. 

    The deal also controversially cuts Palestinians out of control over holy sites of the Old City in Jerusalem, while claiming to offer parts of the city’s eastern sector to serve as capital of a future Palestinian state, but only if certain “conditions are met” long term. 

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    Other protests in neighboring Jordan, where Palestinian refugees actually far outnumber Jordanian Arabs, were said to be huge in size: 

    In neighboring Jordan, thousands of people took to the streets after Friday prayers to protest the plan. Jordan, a close US ally and key player in previous peace efforts, has warned Israel against annexing territory in the West Bank under the plan. Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab countries to have signed peace agreements with Israel.

    However, Israeli police reported being surprised that Friday prayers at al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount passed without major incident. Police were prepared with significantly heightened security as over 30,000 Palestinians attended noon prayers. 

    Local media reports that “Besides the increased police presence around the Temple Mount, the IDF this week deployed extra troops to the West Bank and along the Gaza border out of concerns of increased violence over the US peace plan.”

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    But things could be ready to come to a head over the weekend, given that Netanyahu announced this week that Israel will move forward to vote Sunday to annex some 30% of all West Bank territory.

    Netanyahu said that “Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.” 

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    This means a million or so Palestinian residents could come under Israeli rule, which sparked a fierce backlash both internationally and among some members of US Congress. 

    If the Knesset move progresses, likely all of the West Bank and Gaza will explode in fresh popular unrest and anger.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 18:45

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Religion Belief
    Politics

  • Estimating The Shape Of The Coming Crisis
    Estimating The Shape Of The Coming Crisis

    Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

    We don’t know what will trigger the crisis, but a likely candidate is foreign selling of US dollars combining with a collapse in the US government’s finances. Perhaps the coronavirus will turn out to be a catalyzing black swan event, but the underlying conditions for an economic and monetary crisis already exist.

    This article looks at alternative outcomes. It concludes that the current situation bears a worrying resemblance to the collapse of John Law’s Mississippi scheme exactly 300 years ago. The key to understanding why this is so is because of the link forged between asset prices and fiat currencies. One fails, and they both fail, more rapidly than the most bearish bear might expect.

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    Introduction

    Ahead of a financial event it is a matter for educated guesswork to anticipate its course. In the last few weeks increasing signs of a global recession have been observed, telling us that the credit cycle is on the turn and a systemic crisis is due shortly. Adding to our woes, the coronavirus might turn out to be a plague of biblical proportions, at least that is the way the hype is going. If so, the economic damage will be immense.

    A prescient analyst might deduce that one of the following outcomes is therefore likely:

    1) The playbook outcome. A few banks get into trouble and are successfully rescued. Bankers become cautious in their lending and seek to withdraw loan facilities from riskier customers. A moderate recession ensues, unemployment rises, the inflation rate declines, and central banks respond by easing monetary policy. In time, the economy steadies and begins to recover. This is the neo-Keynesian expectation of economists and monetary planners employed by central banks, their government masters and the version currently believed in financial markets.

    2) A systemic breakdown. In this version, banking problems are just the start of it. After the first few banks collapse and are rescued, banking problems appear elsewhere, and it is clear the global economy is in deep trouble. In the authorities’ attempts to keep control over the situation, the expansion of base money is on a far larger scale than that witnessed following the Lehman crisis, both to fund burgeoning government deficits and to build bank reserves. After a protracted period of time, the global economy stabilises, and the immediate threat is over, at some cost to the credibility and purchasing power of currencies. A currency reset might be used in an attempt to stabilise the situation.

    3) A total collapse. A systemic breakdown leads initially to lower interest rates (already in progress), and after a brief pause to a vicious bond bear market, undermining financial asset values upon which the whole fiat money edifice is based. The unbacked nature of modern fiat money then comes into play, the principal consideration being that the collapse in bank collateral values exposes the illiquidity and bankruptcy of businesses and individuals alike. Tax income evaporates, along with all credibility in the government’s unbacked money, which eventually becomes worthless.

    In an attempt to divine the most likely outcome we must assess the importance of the moving parts and their likely sequencing.

    Cyclical considerations

    It is a mistake to regard the ending of the current credit cycle in isolation from previous cycles. In the distant past, it was valid to view the expansion of bank credit and its subsequent contraction as a purely cyclical phenomenon whereby excessive expansion is broadly wiped out by the subsequent contraction. But ever since President Hoover’s tenure, successive American governments and their central banks have attempted to contain the effects of bank credit contraction. Consequently, failures have been increasingly institutionalised.

    The piling up of failures has required further evils to maintain them. Governments have taken increasing control over free markets. Regulation has severely restricted competition in all but the newest of industries, which in turn become regulated over time. Consumers have been encouraged to spend their savings and go into debt to increase immediate consumption. Trade barriers, rightly seen as contributing to the 1930s depression, have been preserved and protectionism is now weaponised.

    Budget deficits, being twinned with trade deficits in savings-free economies, have also been increasing, notably for America under President Trump. The American government is in a debt trap only alleviated by the Fed’s forced suppression of borrowing costs. Increasingly, government funding is by overtly inflationary means.

    The evidence and consequences of inflationary financing have been hidden from the general public because statistics, particularly price inflation estimates, have been suppressed. This has allowed governments to fund themselves by expanding money quantities without apparent consequences for the general level of prices, and at the same time to give the illusion that real GDP is positive when properly adjusted for price inflation it would be negative.

    With successive cycles not being permitted to clear bad and unproductive debt, the dollar has gone from $20.77 per ounce since President Hoover’s time to nearly $1600 today. Relative to gold, that is a loss of purchasing power for the US dollar of nearly 99% over the whole epoch of non-clearing credit cycles. With increasing quantities of non-productive debt in the global economy, it is plainly naïve to think it is a process that will continue indefinitely, when the odds favouring a grand crisis, undermining the whole fiat money system, are increasing over time.

    Diligent students of history will have recognised that economic and monetary systems under the control of governments have always failed, eventually. There is no reason why this one will be different; the question is not if, but when.

    Monetary debasement

    At the core of the government illusion of control is money. Over successive credit cycles its expansion has reflected a ratchet effect, with an underlying rate of expansion being supplemented by alternate expansions and contractions of bank credit. That was the case before the Lehman crisis. At that time the rescue of the banking system involved an unprecedented expansion of the money supply. Last year, the Fed’s attempt at reducing its balance sheet was hastily abandoned when it became clear that all the post-Lehman liquidity had simply vanished.

    The fifty-year history of the money quantity is illustrated in Figure 1, which is of the fiat money quantity, a measure that includes bank reserves not in public circulation but is fiat money nonetheless.

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    The pre-banking crisis FMQ path had been growing at a long-term average rate of 5.9%, while the average rate of growth subsequent to it has been 9.6%. Despite the extra $5.6 trillion of money in the system arising from this divergence, there are signs of severe liquidity stresses with the Fed having to inject tens of billions of dollars daily into the banking system through repo operations. This is reflected in the sharp upturn in FMQ in recent months, visible in the chart.

    It should be noted that before Lehman failed, FMQ was roughly one third of GDP; today it is three-quarters. There is therefore a substantial quantity of money in the US economy surplus to normal requirements, a factor which might be crucial to the dollar’s future.

    That notwithstanding, the pressure is now on for a further increase in the acceleration of money creation, with growth in FMQ likely to rise well above 10% annualised. Instead of demands for money from the productive private sector, it has been the US Government and financial speculators who have demanded excess money in recent years. The government deficit is now officially expected to increase to over a trillion dollars while according to US Treasury TIC data foreigners appear to be losing their appetite for buying more US Treasuries.

    The drain on wholesale liquidity imposed by the government’s financing demands now combine with demands on liquidity from very large hedge funds. They have provided artificial support for the dollar by gearing up their interest rate arbitrage positions, whereby they are short of euros and yen with their negative rates, and long of the dollar and short-term US government Treasury bills and bonds to capture yield differentials.

    It is therefore becoming apparent that without further monetary expansion interest rates and government bond yields will rise, with devastating consequences for the US Government’s finances. The hedge funds would be forced by the banks to unwind their positions, selling dollars and buying euros and yen, for lack of available balance sheet reserves. Limited by Basel III rules, the shortage of dollar liquidity would drive up overnight interest rates at a time when the Federal Reserve Board would wish to reflate the economy.

    Consequently, sub-10% annualised growth in broad money is no longer tenable, without triggering a widespread government funding and financial crisis. We now stand on the edge of an acceleration of monetary inflation, leading in time to a significant fall in the dollar’s purchasing power, measured not against other currencies facing similar difficulties, but against commodities and ultimately consumer goods and services.

    Financial asset values

    Central to how a financial crisis develops is the progression of asset values. Since the development of the Greenspan put in the 1980s, it has been assumed that the Fed would always put a floor under equity markets by lowering interest rates sufficiently to do so. Starting with the containment of the 1987 stock market crash, increasing numbers of methods have been deployed, including interest rate manipulation, open market operations, and quantitative easing. Changing the level of required reserves for commercial banks has also been an important monetary tool but is no longer an option due to overriding Basel III regulations for global systemically important banks. This is why the Fed removed the distinction between required and excess reserves a few years ago.

    The principal method of monetary and asset price control remains reducing interest rates, and through them bond yields, thereby increasing the relative attraction of equities. But with the zero bound there is a theoretical limit to reducing interest rates, and dollar rates are already close to it as shown in Figure 2.

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    With the Fed Funds Rate under two per cent and the market already beginning to discount further declines, interest rate policy is unlikely to be sufficient to underwrite asset values in the next systemic and financial crisis. For this reason, many commentators think that negative rates for the dollar are increasingly likely.

    That would not necessarily help stabilise the US economy, as evidence from the Eurozone’s ECB attests. Furthermore, by putting all commodities into permanent backwardation, not only would the purchasing power of the dollar be badly undermined, but so would those of the fiat currencies that take their cue from the dollar. As a matter of fact, even current Fed Funds Rates fully discount a general time preference for goods, meaning that interest rates are at zero in real terms, or even negative already. The only piece of the monetary puzzle missing is an appreciation by complacent investors of how close markets are to a currency cliff-edge.

    Understanding how and why markets are on the brink of a significant erosion in the dollar’s purchasing power is crucial, because it defines the limit of how low interest rates can be pushed without triggering an immediate monetary crisis. We already know that current levels of interest rate suppression require the effect on prices to be suppressed by statistical method. Tip the relationship between fiat dollars and commodities just a little further, and the result will almost certainly become catastrophic for the dollar and all other currencies that sail with her.

    If the dollar suffers this fate, then an initial dip in interest rates will be followed by a significant rise, forced on a reluctant Fed by global markets refusing to fund the US deficit and choosing to liquidate their dollar positions instead.

    It would therefore appear that there are two opposing forces for investors in financial assets to consider. Currently there is a bullish hope that the current economic deterioration can be contained and an ongoing reduction in interest rates will help preserve asset values. Against that there is the threat of Fed policy failing to improve economic prospects, leading to US Treasury yields rising as markets become aware that budget deficits are spiralling out of control, to be financed entirely by monetary expansion. Muddying the waters is direct and indirect statist purchasing of equities by central banks and sovereign wealth funds, effectively binding financial assets more tightly to fiat currencies.

    How the road ends

    From the foregoing it should be clear that not only is there a financial and systemic crisis in the wings, but it cannot be resolved by central banks using the tools available to them. We can easily deduce that there will be the usual end of credit cycle systemic and financial problems, likely to involve the rescue of one or more major banks. Furthermore, the monetary debasement by central banks will be significantly greater than that following the Lehman crisis, not only because the scale of the banking problem is likely to involve far larger numbers, but because of the impossible position the US government finds itself in with respect to its own finances.

    The cliché following the Lehman crisis was kicking the can down the road. The end of that road is no longer over the hill or around a bend but is coming into view. That being the case, we can rule out the first of the three options in the introduction to this article, the playbook outcome. That leaves either a wider systemic breakdown or a total collapse. The difference between them will require success in stemming the former from evolving into the latter.

    There can be little doubt a wider systemic breakdown will lead to a fall in the purchasing powers of fiat currencies which will be impossible to conceal by statistical method. At this juncture, a political leader with a true understanding of the situation and how to resolve it will have the opportunity to do so, because the alternative to not doing so will be far worse and obvious to the wider public. But such a leader must have guts and be surrounded by others willing to take his lead. It will require the abandonment of socialising money and markets, denying responsibility for future welfare in all but the most needy cases, and a return to sound money. While things can change, there does not appear to be a ghost of a chance that such a leader exists and that he or she would be able to carry his or her colleagues.

    This leaves us with the last possible outcome, a total collapse of the neo-Keynesian paradigm and its principal tool, the fiat currency.

    The likely sequencing is as follows. After an initial easing of interest rates and fall in government bond yields, which is already under way, it becomes clear that the economy is in a far worse condition than previously thought, the productive sector and those employed in it having been impoverished of their income and savings through monetary inflation.

    Economic recovery becomes wishful thinking, followed by a realisation that government finances are deteriorating rapidly. With savers gone and consumers maxed out, the only means of financing budget deficits is by inflationary means. The currency begins its decline in either of two ways: foreigners sell it and refuse to help finance the budget deficit, or domestic depositors decide to reduce their cash in their bank accounts and buy goods instead. In the latter case, the damage comes from the public dumping of the currency, the effects of which heavily outweigh the apparent increase in demand from the rush out of money.

    If the government is lucky, its people continue to use the currency as money, despite its purchasing power continuing to decline. Even at ten times its current rate of issue seigniorage still gives the government some income. Attempts to stabilise the currency, such as by introducing price controls, only make things worse. These are the conditions that have allowed certain Latin American countries to suffer high inflation rates for prolonged periods.

    Alternatively, the currency is driven towards worthlessness. We shall dismiss a comparison with Venezuela or Zimbabwe, where corruption has been a major factor. The German experience after the First World War is a better model, when inflationary financing of government spending commenced before the war and led to the final collapse of the currency in November 1923. This suggests that a final collapse reflected in the destruction of a fiat currencies will take several years to evolve. But there are differences between the European hyperinflations of nearly a hundred years ago and the situation today.

    In America and Britain as well as in some Eurozone countries, the majority of bank deposits are not owed to individuals, because consumer credit predominates. With eighty per cent of employees in these countries typically living from paycheck to paycheck and credit card borrowing being the norm, there is a greater weighting of institutional deposits in today’s banking system than in the past. In the case of the US dollar, total checking and savings accounts of $12.15 trillion includes about $4 trillion of foreign-owned deposits through correspondent banks. Credit card issuers and other finance companies accumulate significant cash flows, and therefore deposits. Financial speculators, such as hedge funds in the interest arbitrage business also maintain significant balances as repo collateral.

    In short, deposit holder classifications are very different from those of yesteryear, so their collective attitude to money is likely to be very different. They are not in the business of spending it on goods and do not make relative value judgements in this basic sense. They are more likely to be spooked by purely financial developments. It leads us on to consider another possibility, a John Law bubble deflation and currency collapse as the model to examine.

    Law’s financing model

    John Law was a prototype Keynesian, who in 1716 obtained permission from the Duc d’Orléans, acting as Regent for Louis XV in his minority, to establish the Banque Genérale in Paris’s Place de Vendome as a private bank, capitalised with discredited state debt as a basis for issuing banknotes. He took in deposits of specie, mostly gold and silver coins. By September 1716 the bank had become so successful that it was driving other bankers out of business.

    The relationship between the Regent and Law was based on Law’s plan to restore royal finances which were in considerable difficulties. Put crudely, his plan was to profit from the inflation of his own notes in order to pay down the royal debts. Furthermore, by introducing modern banking into a financially backward France, the improvement in the economy from more effective monetary circulation in the form of his notes compared with clumsy coinage would also help restore the royal finances through higher tax revenues.

    The use of Law’s banknotes to settle taxes ensured their circulation, and specie continued to be deposited at Banque Royale in exchange for them. In accordance with Law’s plans, Banque Genérale’s balance sheet was rapidly inflating and beginning to dominate financial affairs in Paris. Law took in more discredited state debt which promised to pay a doubtful 4%, substituting it for his own notes, paying an apparently more certain 4% and including a bonus kicker of claims on Louisiana and the Canadian fur trade in France’s American colonies.

    Law’s use of discredited state debt as the foundation for his affairs had similarities with the basic functioning of today’s central banks, issuing money through quantitative easing for government debt. And it came to pass that in December 1718 Banque Generale became Banque Royale, evolving from a private bank into the state’s bank. Law now had a monopoly on France’s money.

    Concurrently, Law had acquired all the rights to trade with France’s American colonies, which became the Mississippi venture. He capitalised it by the use of partly paid subscriptions which by giving quick and substantial profits to early subscribers ensured the Mississippi shares got off to a strong start, and he further used the Banque Royale’s note issues to boost share prices even further.

    And so a bubble was born. But by late-1719 Law found it increasingly difficult to sustain the bubble. The best part of a billion livres had been created and spent in ramping the Mississippi shares. Following his appointment as Controller-General in 1720, he decreed that his banknotes were to be the only permitted currency except for small transactions and all old coins were to be handed in or seized. Clearly, he was plugging holes in an increasingly leaky vessel.

    On 22 February 1720, the Mississippi Company and the Banque Royale merged. The King sold 100,000 shares at 9,000 livres, and the shares of the merged entities subsequently began to sink. By November that year they had fallen to 3,200 livres and many of them faced further unpaid calls. In the last three months of 1720, there was no sterling price for French livres, because Law’s notes had also collapsed in value along with the Mississippi bubble.

    Today’s similarities with the Mississippi bubble

    There are important similarities developing today with the events in France almost exactly three hundred years ago, the salient points being:

    • Law implemented a similar inflation scheme to that proposed by Keynes. Both had an initially favourable economic impact, followed by a failure to sustain earlier promises. Having progressed through a number of credit cycles, Keynes’s scheme is yet to fully collapse.

    • Law used state debt as the foundation for his scheme, as do today’s central banks. The difference is the public knew Louis XV to be bankrupt. Today, markets are yet to realise this fact about modern welfare-driven economies.

    • Supported by the state, Law used the powers given to him to manipulate asset values to support his scheme, an objective now openly pursued by modern central banks and their allied sovereign wealth funds.

    • In Banque Royale Law established a prototype central bank whose twin objectives were to finance government borrowing and to issue currency. The support offered to today’s commercial banking system by central banks is ultimately intended to achieve the same end.

    • Law banished the circulation of specie as money and any other alternatives to his own banknotes. Today’s central banks exercise exactly the same monopolies in their respective jurisdictions.

    • Law was an early user of derivatives in the form of partly paid stock and options to promote and sustain asset values. The global financial system today similarly uses derivatives to support and encourage bullish speculation in financial assets.

    • By linking rising financial asset values to the purchasing power of his livre, Law ensured that the collapse of financial asset values undermined faith in the currency as well, causing it to collapse entirely in a short six-month period. Today, both central banks and sovereign wealth funds are active investors in bonds and equities, with the effect of creating a similar linkage across government bonds, equities and fiat currencies.

    Given different times and different methods, there are dissimilarities between Law’s scheme and the way those of Keynes are playing out. But it is the similarities which should ring alarm bells. Critics of inflationary financing generally assume the end of a fiat currency is marked by the general public eventually discarding it. The similarities between Keynes’s and Law’s schemes suggest a different outcome.

    By tying in financial asset values to currencies, if one fails the other will too. A loss of confidence in one immediately undermines the other. The sequencing is that a failure to sustain bond and equity prices occurs first, followed by their collapse, closely accompanied by the erosion of all faith in the currency.

    With this framework we can propose a future for both financial markets and the dollar. The Fed in a similar role to Banque Royale continues with its attempts to manipulate US Treasury bond prices higher, and therefore equity markets, as has been the situation the case since the Greenspan put. In February 1720, the King sold 100,000 shares for 9,000 livres each, netting 900,000,000 livres. It marked the top of Law’s bubble. The question is who or what will ring the bell this time.

    Today, we cannot see who outside the US banking system is going to buy ever-larger quantities of US Treasury stock, because foreigners are stalling in their appetite and domestic savers hardly exist. We should bear in mind ownership of foreign currencies is justified by trade volumes, and evidence of declining international trade firmly points to the dollar being sold. Consequently, the banks acting as agents for the Fed are going to be the only buyers, being paid by the Fed through crediting their reserves.

    At the last count foreigners and their governments owned $19.4 trillion in US securities and had about $4 trillion in bank deposits. The bubble will surely burst when the dollar begins to decline against other currencies, creating doubled losses for foreign investors and a funding crisis for US government debt. With US Treasury bond yields then rising the dollar seems certain to accelerate its decline due to mounting portfolio losses faced by foreign investors.

    That, perhaps, is where the similarity with the ending of Law’s scheme exists today: a combination of circumstances based on an official tie between financial assets and the fiat currency. Like the collapse of Law’s scheme, we can expect it to be measured in the soaring price of specie, physical gold and silver, and today perhaps decentralised issue-limited cryptocurrencies.

    This being the case, the collapse will not be drawn out as even the most bearish bears expect but could be completed by the end of this year.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/31/2020 – 18:25

    Tags
    Business Finance

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 31

Today’s News 31st January 2020

  • America's Dirtiest Little Secret Exposed
    America’s Dirtiest Little Secret Exposed

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”

    – John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

    There can only be one winner emerging from this year’s Super Bowl LIV showdown between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, but the biggest losers will be the hundreds of young girls and boys—some as young as 9 years old—who will be bought and sold for sex during the course of the big game.

    It’s common to refer to this evil practice, which has become the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns as child sex trafficking, but what we’re really talking about is rape.

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    Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

    It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.

    According to a USA Today investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”

    Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry.

    In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.

    On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period.

    It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.

    Child rape has become Big Business in America.

    This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.

    This is not a problem found only in big cities.

    It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.

    As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out, “The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”

    Don’t fool yourselves into believing that this is merely a concern for lower income communities or immigrants.

    It’s not.

    It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the U.S. These girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. They’re being lured—forced—trafficked into it. In most cases, they have no choice. Every transaction is rape.

    In order to avoid detection (in some cases aided and abetted by the police) and cater to male buyers’ demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country.

    For instance, the Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade.

    No doubt about it: this is a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.

    Every year, the girls being bought and sold gets younger and younger.

    The average age of those being trafficked is 13. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out,

    “Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.”

    “For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women who are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore,” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking.

    “They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.”

    This is America’s dirty little secret.

    But what or who is driving this evil appetite for young flesh? Who buys a child for sex?

    Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

    Catholic and Protestant churches have been particularly singled out in recent years for harboring these sexual predators. Twenty years after the clergy sex abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church, hundreds of sexual predators—priests, deacons, monks and lay people—continue to be given work assignments in proximity to children. In many cases, the abuse continues unabated.

    Although much less publicized, the sex crimes within the Protestant Church have been no less egregious. For instance, a recent expose into the Southern Baptist Church leaders by the Houston Chronicle documents over 700 child sex victims “who were molested, sent explicit photos or texts, exposed to pornography, photographed nude, or repeatedly raped by youth pastors. Some victims as young as 3 were molested or raped inside pastors’ studies and Sunday school classrooms.”

    And then you have national sporting events such as the Super Bowl, where sex traffickers have been caught selling minors, some as young as 9 years old. Yet even if the Super Bowl is not exactly a “windfall” for sex traffickers as some claim, it remains a lucrative source of income for the child sex trafficking industry and a draw for those who are willing to pay to rape young children.

    According to criminal investigator Marc Chadderdon, these “buyers”—the so-called “ordinary” men who drive the demand for sex with children—represent a cross-section of American society: every age, every race, every socio-economic background, cops, teachers, corrections workers, pastors, etc.

    And then there are the extra-ordinary men, such as Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund billionaire / convicted serial pedophile who was arrested on charges of molesting, raping and sex trafficking dozens of young girls, only to die under highly unusual circumstances.

    It is believed that Epstein operated his own personal sex trafficking ring not only for his personal pleasure but also for the pleasure of his friends and business associates. According to The Washington Post, “several of the young women…say they were offered to the rich and famous as sex partners at Epstein’s parties.” At various times, Epstein ferried his friends about on his private plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

    Men like Epstein and his cronies, who belong to a powerful, wealthy, elite segment of society that operates according to their own rules, skate free of accountability by taking advantage of a criminal justice system that panders to the powerful, the wealthy and the elite.

    Still, where did this appetite for young girls come from?

    Look around you.

    Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos, on billboards, in television ads, and in clothing stores. Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children.

    “In a market that sells high heels for babies and thongs for tweens, it doesn’t take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives,” writes Jessica Bennett for Newsweek. 

    “Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once.”

    This is what Bennett refers to as the “pornification of a generation.”

    In other words, the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators.

    Social media makes it all too easy. As one news center reported, “Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on … social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.” Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.

    Rarely do these girls enter into prostitution voluntarily. Many start out as runaways or throwaways, only to be snatched up by pimps or larger sex rings. Others, persuaded to meet up with a stranger after interacting online through one of the many social networking sites, find themselves quickly initiated into their new lives as sex slaves.

    Debbie, a straight-A student who belonged to a close-knit Air Force family living in Phoenix, Ariz., is an example of this trading of flesh. Debbie was 15 when she was snatched from her driveway by an acquaintance-friend. Forced into a car, Debbie was bound and taken to an unknown location, held at gunpoint and raped by multiple men. She was then crammed into a small dog kennel and forced to eat dog biscuits. Debbie’s captors advertised her services on Craigslist. Those who responded were often married with children, and the money that Debbie “earned” for sex was given to her kidnappers. The gang raping continued. After searching the apartment where Debbie was held captive, police finally found Debbie stuffed in a drawer under a bed. Her harrowing ordeal lasted for 40 days.

    While Debbie was fortunate enough to be rescued, others are not so lucky.

    According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 800,000 children go missing every year (roughly 2,185 children a day).

    With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon.

    For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end.

    Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed.

    Peter Landesman paints the full horrors of life for those victims of the sex trade in his New York Times article “The Girls Next Door”:

    Andrea told me that she and the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. Often, she said, she was asked to play roles: the therapist patient or the obedient daughter. Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners–toddler to age 4, 5 to 12 and teens–as well as what she called a “damage group.” “In the damage group, they can hit you or do anything they want to,” she explained. “Though sex always hurts when you are little, so it’s always violent, everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.”

    What Andrea described next shows just how depraved some portions of American society have become. “They’d get you hungry then to train you” to have oral sex. “They put honey on a man. For the littlest kids, you had to learn not to gag. And they would push things in you so you would open up better. We learned responses. Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or scared. Most of them wanted you scared. When I got older, I’d teach the younger kids how to float away so things didn’t hurt.”

    Immigration and customs enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., report that when it comes to sex, the appetites of many Americans have now changed. What was once considered abnormal is now the norm. These agents are tracking a clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet. As one agent noted, “We’ve become desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit.”

    This trend is reflected by the treatment many of the girls receive at the hands of the drug traffickers and the men who purchase them. Peter Landesman interviewed Rosario, a Mexican woman who had been trafficked to New York and held captive for a number of years. She said: “In America, we had ‘special jobs.’ Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more adventurous, harder.”

    A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men. One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry.

    Holly Austin Smith was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison.

    Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old. “I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”

    As David McSwane recounts in a chilling piece for the Herald-Tribune: “In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”

    One particular sex trafficking ring catered specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.

    This growing evil is, for all intents and purposes, out in the open.

    Trafficked children are advertised on the internet, transported on the interstate, and bought and sold in swanky hotels.

    Unfortunately, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government’s war on sex trafficking – much like the government’s war on terrorism, drugs and crime – has become a perfect excuse for inflicting more police state tactics (police check points, searches, surveillance, and heightened security) on a vulnerable public, while doing little to protect our children from sex predators.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 23:40

    Tags
    Social Issues

  • US Opens 'Humanitarian Channel' To Iran For Life-Saving Drugs & Basic Staples
    US Opens ‘Humanitarian Channel’ To Iran For Life-Saving Drugs & Basic Staples

    In a significant development which could serve to soften soaring tensions between Washington and Tehran, as well as between the US administration and increasingly frustrated European allies, the US announced Thursday the opening of a new “humanitarian aid” banking channel with the cooperation of Swiss authorities through which the sanctioned country can find relief in terms of importing badly needed medicines and staples like food. 

    Since pulling out the 2015 nuclear deal nearly two years ago, the Trump White House has faced stinging criticism from the EU over extensive and unprecedented sanctions preventing children, elderly and other common Iranians from treating curable diseases or obtaining basic life-saving drugs. The Europeans have since erected an alternative sanctions-busting payment vehicle called INSTEX, said to focus initially on humanitarian-related transactions, after the Iranians were booted from SWIFT.

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    File image via Persia Digest

    In a Thursday statement the Treasury Department said “The successful completion of these transactions provides a model for facilitating further humanitarian exports to Iran,” but also noted transactions are “subject to strict due diligence measures to avoid misuse by the Iranian regime.” It further touted that “Cancer and organ transplant patients in Iran were the first to benefit from the new channel,” per the statement.

    Switzerland is the key European country facilitating the program, which has been in the works since 2018. Reuters describes current participants as follows: 

    Geneva-based bank BCP and drugmaker Novartis took part in the pilot deal, with the humanitarian channel expected to be fully operational within weeks, a spokeswoman for the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs said.

    …Politically neutral Switzerland has been working with U.S. and Iranian authorities and selected Swiss banks and Swiss companies on the plan. The U.S. Treasury Department will provide banks involved with assurances that financial transactions can be processed without violating U.S. law.

    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin further said upon the program’s roll out that “humanitarian transactions are currently allowed under our sanctions programs, and we encourage companies to use this humanitarian mechanism” [hint: not INSTEX – Mnuchin appears to be saying].

    However, this follows months and years of the administration demanding all international companies sever ties with Iran, which has sent the economy and currency into a tailspin, and has ravaged human well-being related industries like aviation, food, transport and medicine.

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    Critics say this new US-Swiss humanitarian channel is not only too-little-too-late, but still has overly difficult and cumbersome hurdles in place which could actually further disincentivize pharmaceutical companies from doing business with Tehran.

    Bloomberg outlines some of these restrictions further: 

    In a four-page document released in October, the Treasury Department laid out the expectations of any financial entity wanting to use the Swiss banking channel. The “enhanced” due diligence includes restrictions on dealing with the Iranian central bank, which holds the nation’s forex reserves but is sanctioned.

    Requirements also include the identities of Iranian customers, balance sheets of any Iranian customers’ accounts at the bank and a list of business relationships of the Iranian entity receiving the humanitarian aid.

    That will certainly prove overly invasive even for those parties willing to test the waters. 

    And despite INSTEX still making slow progress – though beset by continued difficulties in implementation – many are already declaring the death of the Iran nuclear deal, especially following the near ‘state of war’ reality between the US and Iran after the killing of Qassem Soleimani. This also as Iran has said it’s blown past all uranium enrichment limits stipulated by the JCPOA.

    It could further be argued that the new US ‘humanitarian channel’ is itself meant to reinforce the US position that the deal is already dead. It appears Washington’s ‘saving face’ attempt to shield itself from criticism in the future, given the sanctions regimen will likely only push the population of Iran to the brink of humanitarian disaster, while simultaneously only increasing the people’s dependency on the regime. 


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 23:20

    Tags
    Politics
    Business Finance

  • Did The U.S. Just Concede Defeat In China Tech War?
    Did The U.S. Just Concede Defeat In China Tech War?

    Authored by David Goldman via AsiaTimes.com,

    The Commerce Department has abandoned long-expected rules to tighten controls on US firms’ exports to Huawei, China’s national champion in broadband technology and the world leader in 5G Internet equipment. The Wall Street Journal this morning reported that the Defense Department blocked a long-signaled change in export rules that would forbid US companies from selling components to Huawei from foreign subsidiaries if 10% of the content is derived from US technology. The Treasury Department reportedly backed the Pentagon’s objections.

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    In related news, the United States has backed off from earlier threats to abandon a trade deal with Great Britain if Boris Johnson’s government allowed Huawei to build part of its 5G network, The Daily Telegraph reported on January 25. The United States has demanded that Britain exclude Huawei entirely in high-profile public statements. PM Johnson and President Donald Trump discussed the issue in a January 24 telephone call

    In an apparent break from the previous US position, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told an audience at Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs on January 25 that the US might not oppose Huawei’s participation in some parts of Britain’s 5G network. Mnuchin said, “Which parts of the network it [Huawei 5G] goes into matters,” according to a tweet by the RIAA’s director Robin Niblett. “Is the Trump administration giving a sliver of manoeuvre to B Johnson?,” Niblett added.

    Mnuchin’s declaration appears to echo the Johnson government’s position that the UK can manage any prospective security threat from Huawei as long as it is restricted to “non-core” parts of the 5G network. Last year, a study by British signals intelligence concluded that any prospective security problem with Huawei was manageable. A senior Huawei official told me,

    “The Security Evaluation Centre Oversight Board looked at our source code exhaustively, and pointed out some ways we could improve. In fact, they did us an enormous favor by calling attention to less than perfect architecture. We made an enormous investment in improving the software and are confident that we will satisfy UK security concerns.”

    US technology companies, especially chip designers, sell the great majority of their products in Asia. China’s chip design and manufacturing capacity is expanding rapidly with a blank check from Beijing, and US companies fear that Huawei and other Chinese companies will retaliate against US export controls with a price war for the high-end chips that power smartphones and servers. The Pentagon and Treasury objections to the proposed export controls indicate that the balance of power in the global chip industry has shifted towards China.

    The Wall Street Journal reports:

    “Commerce officials have withdrawn proposed regulations making it harder for US companies to sell to Huawei from their overseas facilities following objections from the Defense Department as well as the Treasury Department, people familiar with the matter said. The Pentagon is concerned that if US companies can’t continue to ship to Huawei, they will lose a key source of revenue – depriving them of money for research and development needed to maintain a technological edge, the people said.”

    This appears to be an admission of defeat in the US-Chinese tech war, which in the long term is far more important than the trade war. China seeks to dominate what it calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution centered on 5G and artificial intelligence. China is investing massively in its “Made in China 2025” plan to leapfrog the West in high technology, while US support for basic R&D is barely half of its Reagan-era level in proportion to GDP.

    In April 2018 the US banned chip exports to the Chinese handset manufacturer ZTE in retaliation for violation of Iran sanctions, shutting ZTE down until President Trump negotiated a massive fine in return for resumption of deliveries. Only four months later, in August 2018, Huawei announced its Kirin chipset for smartphones, claiming better performance than Qualcomm’s market-leading product. In December 2019 Huawei began shipping smartphones with no US components. It already had shipped 5G base stations in September 2019 with zero US components. 

    In May 2019, the Commerce Department placed Huawei on the “entity list,” requiring special licenses for US sales. As the Nikkei Asian Review reported in a December 2019 cover story, Huawei began “mobilizing Asian suppliers for a production surge,” leading “a split from US technology.” Taiwanese companies who for years had begged for Huawei’s business are now flooded with orders. Taiwan has the world’s best chip foundries, and Huawei depends heavily on Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing – for the moment. Meanwhile China has hired 3,000 Taiwanese chip engineers at double pay, to build chip foundries in the mainland. 

    Other US attempts to choke off Huawei’s access to chip technology have failed. The Chinese company uses chip design technology from Britain’s ARM, owned by Japan’s Softbank. In October, ARM announced that its exports to Huawei do not violate US content rules. 

    Despite the May 2019 export restrictions and Washington’s campaign to discourage Western countries from buying Huawei’s 5G technology, the Chinese giant boosted sales by 20% during 2019. In response to the failure of earlier efforts, the Commerce Department proposed to set the threshold for US content in offshore sales to Huawei at 10%, down from the present 25%. 

    A senior Huawei official told me that although the US restrictions are making life difficult for the company, China was moving rapidly towards self-sufficiency in the most advanced computer chips. That would do more than cut off US sales to China: It would enable China to undercut American companies in the global ship market. US chipmakers depend overwhelmingly on Asian sales.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 23:00

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • 'No Blank Check For War': House Votes To Bar Trump Military Action On Iran
    ‘No Blank Check For War’: House Votes To Bar Trump Military Action On Iran

    On Thursday the Democratic-led House passed legislation to stop funding for military action in Iran and to repeal the 2002 war authorization for Iraq — which multiple administrations have based unilateral military actions on without the approval of Congress. 

    Predictably, Trump has threatened to veto both bills amid an ongoing struggle in which doves in Congress are attempting to reign in presumed executive war powers. The first bill blocks President Trump from accessing federal funds for “unauthorized military force against Iran” in a vote of 228-175, which largely came down along party lines.

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    White House file image

    The 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) came up for debate immediately on the heels of the passed Iran vote. A number of Republicans have invoked the AUMF to defend the Jan.3 assassination by drone of IRGC Quds force chief Qassem Soleimani.

    “The last thing we can do is give the Pentagon another blank check,” bill sponsor Rep. Ro Khanna of California Khanna (D) told reporters Wednesday. “The only time the Pentagon listens is where we exercise our power of the purse.”

    Ahead of the vote, Trump tweeted Wednesday:

    “Nancy Pelosi wants Congress to take away authority Presidents use to stand up to other countries and defend AMERICANS. Stand with your Commander in Chiefs!”

    Both bills are expected meet their end in the Republican-held Senate, but even if not they would be vetoed by Trump.

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    Ironically, the White House has argued that the bills actually make war with Iran “more likely” because they make it harder for Trump to take action to prevent broader conflict before it starts (i.e.- in the form of assassinating Iranian military leaders to send a strong punitive message, apparently).

    Also ironic is that Trump previously criticized former President Obama as well as his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for themselves waging non-Congressionally approved “regime change wars” in places like Libya and Syria, especially on the 2016 campaign trail.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 22:40

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • Global Governance Structure Is "Too Centralized & Too Authoritarian"
    Global Governance Structure Is “Too Centralized & Too Authoritarian”

    Authored by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    Disclaimer: I don’t have answers to everything. In fact, I probably don’t have answers to anything at all, just some thoughts on what’s wrong with the structure of governance around the world (it’s too centralized and authoritarian) and some general ideas about what direction we should head in.

    Given the increased likelihood that all sorts of things about the current paradigm will begin to fail in a more acute and undeniable manner in the years ahead, well intentioned people capable of critical thought should begin contemplating how things could be as opposed to how they are. Ideally, this will lead to increased action and experimentation, particularly at a local level. Never forget, if we don’t come up with our own ideas and perspectives for how things should be, others will be more than happy to decide for us.

    More than anything else this piece should be seen as a thought exercise of how I would try to structure things if presented with a blank slate opportunity. 

    In Part 3 of this series, I outlined a framework of sovereignty beginning with the individual, progressing to family, municipality/county, state and finally country. Though the broadest scope of decision making should always reside with the individual, the reality of social relations means some individual autonomy is relinquished as sovereign units grow to include more and more people. It’s part of human nature to expand beyond ourselves and our families into larger and more complex social relationships, but far more thought should be directed at the dangers and uncertainties that arise as these units start to include increased degrees of geography and population.

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    As you move along the units of sovereignty scale you always add complexity and individuals, but at certain levels you start piling on additional meaningful variables, such as geography (coastal, mountain, plains, etc) and various population densities (urban, suburban, rural, etc). Both these distinctions lead to meaningful differences in the needs and desires of given populations, and must be considered carefully rather than flippantly waved away in the pursuit of larger political unity. This is one reason I’ve come to conclude political life should be centered at the municipal/county level as opposed to larger units such as the state or country. It’s at this smaller unit that actual self-government is possible. Once you start adding geography and disparate masses of people you can’t properly and practically address local concerns (for more see my post: The Next Revolution by Murray Bookchin).

    While it’d be nice to stop there and proclaim we’ve solved politics by deciding local’s the way to go, it’ll never be that easy. Issues will arise and conflicts will emerge that result in larger political structures being formed. The key aspect to discuss and ponder is how should these structures look once they grow beyond the city or county level? In the modern world, many people seem to think it intuitive and appropriate that larger political units exercise greater power and authority than the smaller bodies that comprise the whole. I believe this is fundamentally wrong and must be addressed and corrected in future models of governance.

    I think we should stop viewing political constructs beyond the local level as sovereign. The individual, the family and the municipality/county can be seen as sovereign units for a few reasons. First, they check several important boxes that should be required in order to exercise ethical governance. For one, they’re generally voluntary since they offer well-defined escape routes (divorce, move to a new city). Second, there’s usually a shared geography that’s limited in scope, whether we’re talking about a concentrated metropolis or the boundaries of the more than three thousand counties that comprise the U.S. These attributes start to disappear once you leave the local level.

    Although moving from one state to another is fairly easy in the U.S. (it checks the voluntary box), it doesn’t check the other boxes. Virtually all 50 states have some mix of rural and urban; liberal and conservative; mountainous, plains, or coastal; and many states have populations that exceed certain countries. As such, we should ask whether it makes sense to place so much power in the hands of the 50 state governments, as opposed to the people at the municipal or county level. If you ask me, it makes no sense at all. Moreover, if we’re going to concentrate a great deal of power in the states, why is 50 the right number? It seems low.

    Beyond the states, putting power into a national government is far more concerning and problematic since the voluntary aspect of the union pretty much disappears. The vast majority of people on this earth are born to a certain piece of land with a particular national government, and they will live under it their entire lives. In most cases, leaving to go to one’s desired external country simply isn’t feasible or desirable for a variety of reasons. As such, at the national level you not only add the complexity of large numbers of people, diverse geography, but also a lack of exits. For all practical purposes, it is no longer a voluntary relationship at this stage. So what should we do about it?

    We can’t just pretend political unions won’t expand beyond the city or county level, in fact, I’m convinced this will always occur to some degree. As such, the real question becomes how best to structure such bonds, and the first thing to do is establish some ground rules. I’d start with the view that any issue (beyond core civil liberties) which does not require larger scale cooperation, be decided at the municipal/county level.

    For the relatively small number of issues that must be kicked up to the state or national level, the sovereign units that make up the larger body must be consulted. Directly. Via referendum. No more of this “elected representatives” deciding things for the people. They do not know best and they tend to be corrupt, unscrupulous types. We may still want to elect representatives to larger political unions for administrative tasks and crafting legislation, but the final vote on any such agreements should always be finalized and approved directly by the public.

    This is a start, but it skirts an even larger issue that must be addressed. How do we ensure larger political bonds are more voluntary and fluid? The issue of secession is a challenging one to discuss in the U.S. due to its historical association with the civil war and slavery, but it’s something that must be addressed more thoroughly. I’ve personally come to believe questions of secession should be seen as a regular and normal part of human political life. Our larger political associations, particularly at the national level, are far too rigid. While stability is important, so is flexibility.

    This really hit home for me during the Catalonia revolt of 2017. In the post, It’s Time to Question the Modern Nation-State Model of Governance, I noted:

    As things stand today, humans essentially have two choices when it comes to political life. We either accept the nation-state we’re born into and play the game to the best of our advantage, or we try to become citizens of another country with values that more align with our own. The only way to really shatter existing political power structures and form new ones is through violent revolution or war, which is an insane way of reorganizing matters of human governance. One of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s key arguments in casting the Catalan referendum as illegal is that Spain is an indivisible nation under the 1978 constitution. Let’s think about what this means in practice.

    Anyone who’s spent any time in Spain understands how culturally and linguistically distinct many of the regions are when compared to Madrid. These are differences that go back centuries and can’t be brushed off by a constitution created a few decades ago. The idea that these various regions must be part of a centralized Spain even if the people within the regions want political autonomy is ethically preposterous, as well as authoritarian and evil in every sense of the word. If done properly, human governance should always be a voluntary arrangement. If an overwhelming majority of culturally distinct people within any nation-state decide the super state is no longer working for them, they should have every right to leave. Anything else is bondage.

    If the smaller units that make up a nation decide they’ve had enough, they have no real options in the modern world. The presumption that the nation-state is eternal and unchanging is as unrealistic as it is authoritarian. As such, it’s my belief that any political union that reaches beyond the local (city or county) level be subject to regularly scheduled referendums on the union. The cities and counties that make up a state should periodically vote on whether or not they wish to continue in that relationship, and the states should do the same with regard to the federal government. It shouldn’t be some extraordinary act, but a regular affirmation or rejection of the larger union.

    When entering into a larger political union, all parties should start with the assumption nothing in this world’s permanent and this new bond will last only so long as it’s working for the smaller units involved. Any initial agreement should include an explicit understanding that regular referendums on the bond will be held in order to ensure the union remains voluntary. The length of time between referendums should be long enough to provide for a period of stability, yet short enough to allow a person who lives a full life to vote on the union several times. I think a 20 or 25 year period between such votes might make sense.

    The goal here isn’t to have nations constantly breaking apart, but rather a system that more properly distributes power and final say to the smaller units that comprise the whole. If such a system existed in these United States I doubt Washington D.C. would be as big, bloated and powerful as it is today. The simple understanding that states could easily leave in a few years if the feds pushed too hard could provide a meaningful deterrent to massive expansions of centralized control in the first place.

    The key thing is we need to shift our entire perspective. We need to view the local units as sovereign, and emphasize that the larger unions exist only at the pleasure of the smaller bodies. Secession, as well as reconstitution into new more favorable/appropriate bonds, should not be seen as unthinkable and extreme, but rather as completely normal. This shouldn’t just apply at the national level, but every step of the way. Municipalities and counties should hold regularly scheduled votes on whether to remain in their current state, join another state, or perhaps even band together to form an entirely new state. Larger political bonds should be structured in a far more fluid and voluntary manner in order for them to serve their real purpose, which is the sovereign interests of the smaller units.

    As I noted in the beginning, I don’t want anyone to think I’m presenting these thoughts as a silver bullet. Even if we implemented everything I outlined above from scratch, if humanity fails to become more conscious and ethical, it probably won’t make much of a difference.

    I also understand it’s unlikely we move to such a governance model anytime soon — or even within my lifetime — but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be discussing these things. I think it’s helpful to highlight where sovereignty should reside (locally) and how larger political bonds should be structured in a more voluntary and fluid manner. This isn’t supposed to be the final word on anything, but a thought experiment in political philosophy. I hope it sparks inspiration in the minds of those who read it, so we can carry this important conversation forward.

    *  *  *

    Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 22:20

  • "It Was The Final Bucket Of Straw" – Trump Tax Plan Sparks Middle-Class Exodus From California, New York
    “It Was The Final Bucket Of Straw” – Trump Tax Plan Sparks Middle-Class Exodus From California, New York

    Years of mismanagement by unaccountable Democrats in Sacramento has made it practically impossible to build new homes in the state of California. And even with the minimum-wage hikes, affordable homes are still few and far between.

    Over the years, we’ve closely followed the trend of frustrated Californians seeking greener (or at least cheaper) pastures in Nevada, Idaho, Texas and other states in the West, Midwest and the South, because it’s a great example of how high-tax states sacrifice economic growth for the ability to finance generous benefits to state workers, as well as other generous giveaways.

    But not only is this trend ultimately a threat to the local economy, which, to be fair, is still roaring, even if fewer and fewer residents are reaping the spoils, but just as we highlighted a few weeks back, the net population decline might cost the Golden State a few seats in Congress once the 2020 census is completed.

    While most tax-paying Americans saw their overall tax bill decline under President Trump’s tax-reform package – and American corporations pay substantially less as well – there’s no question that homeowners in blue states, a group that includes some of the most affluent people in the county, lost out. By capping how much of an individual’s property and income taxes can be written off their federal tax bill, as well as lowering the threshold for mortgages that qualify for interest deductions to $750,000 from $1 million (one reason why the luxury market in places like Greenwich has gotten whacked), Trump managed to exact his revenge on the blue-staters who supported his presidential rival back in 2016.

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    Now, Trump has said offhandedly that there’s been talk of reinstating the deductions and raising the mortgage cap. But for the most part, this seems like idle talk. The federal budget deficit has exploded, but Trump and his team are still talking up their tax-reform part 2 (though it’s likely this chatter mostly a ruse to pump the market). But suspect any tax cuts between now and November will be focused squarely on aiding the midwestern states who handed Trump the presidency.

    Since the tax-reform package was passed, what was once a trickle of blue-staters fleeing places like California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and even Texas over the past two years has become a flood.

    And after a smattering of stories detailing the gradual migration from high-cost blue states and cities like San Francisco and New York (we’ve paid close attention to the trend over the years), two WSJ banking reporters have published a deep dive on the trend, signaling its arrival as a major national issue.

    Just like Carl Icahn and David Tepper left New York and New Jersey for Florida, millions of Americans are following suit, swapping Connecticut for Florida, Nevada or Arizona.

    Two years after President Trump signed the tax law, its effects are rippling through local economies and housing markets, pushing some people to move from high-tax states where they have long lived. Parts of Florida, for example, are getting an influx of buyers from states such as New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

    Though the exact figures have probably changed since the tax reform was passed, this map helps illustrate how capping SALT and lowering threshold for mortgages impacted each state.

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    While President Trump, Secretary Mnuchin and the rest of the administration have insisted that they capped the deductions to end what they described as an unfair subsidy for blue states. The average US property tax bill in 2018 was about $3,500, according to Attom Data Solutions, a real-estate data firm cited by WSJ. But in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, hundreds of thousands of residents make annual property tax payments well above that level. In New York’s tony Westchester County, the average property tax bill is more than $17,000.

    Most of the people interviewed by WSJ said they had long considered moving to a more tax-friendly state. But for many, Trump’s tax plan was the catalyst to actually act on these impulses.

    “It was another bucket of straw on the back of the camel,” said John Lee, a wealth-management executive and longtime resident of the Sacramento, Calif., area. Mr. Lee and his wife, Tracy, moved their primary residence last winter to Incline Village, a resort community on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

    The Lees kept their California home, where one of their six adult children is living. That means they are still paying California property taxes. But Mr. Lee estimates the move to Nevada, which has no state income tax, whacked his state tax bill by 90%.

    The impact on housing markets in the ten most heavily taxed states has been impossible to ignore. The Manhattan luxury housing market is showing signs of serious distress that’s provoking anxieties among the wealthy developers who were expecting a boom in demand. According to Fitch Ratings, home-price appreciation in these states declined almost immediately after the tax reform package was passed. By comparison, home-price appreciation was steady for the 10 states with the lowest property taxes and levels of mortgage interest.

    Among Gen Xers and Boomers who have only recently achieved empty-nest status, plotting an escape from taxation hell has become a simple tenant of good retirement planning.

    Rick Bechtel, head of U.S. residential lending at TD Bank, lives in the Chicago area and said he recently went to a party where it felt like everyone was planning their moves to Florida. “It’s unbelievable to me the number of conversations that I’m listening to that begin with ‘When are you leaving?’ and ‘Where are you going?'” he said.

    Even some states known for having relatively low taxes are being affected by this trend, as some residents opt for states with no income tax, like Florida or Nevada.

    The dynamic is affecting even states typically thought to have low taxes. Mauricio Navarro and his family left Texas last year for Weston, Fla. Neither state collects its own income tax, but Mr. Navarro was paying more than $25,000 annually in property taxes in the Houston area, he said. Texas ranks among the states with the highest share of taxpayers who pay more than $10,000 in property taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

    Filling out his 2018 tax returns helped motivate him to move with his wife and two children, said Mr. Navarro, who owns a software-development business.

    “It was not that we were struggling,” he said. “It’s that we did some analysis.”

    Mr. Navarro is renting but plans to eventually buy a home in Florida. He expects his property tax bill will be lower than it was in Texas.

    Another angle to this story that wasn’t really discussed in the WSJ piece is how this migration will impact state budgets. Particularly in California’s case, many of those leaving are homeowners and taxpayers, people who bear a disproportionate burden in financing the state budget. With pension funds in Illinois already dangerously underfunded thanks to the unsustainable benefits lavished on state employees.

    A few days ago, the Chicago Tribune published an interesting editorial on the subject of pension reform that gets right to the heart of the problem:

    You and your neighbor have a decade of familiarity and own similarly comfortable homes. You drive similarly fuel-efficient family SUVs.

    You even cut your lawns in similar stripe patterns each Saturday, nodding to one another as you sweep the clippings and wrestle giant paper bags.

    But when it comes to retirement, the similarities end. Your neighbor, who pulled in a similar salary, worked for the state. You didn’t.

    The thought of retirement terrifies you as you prepare to live on a fixed 401(k) — one close to the American average of $195,000 for people close to retirement. Most of it comes from earnings that you’ve socked away over the years. Combined with a meager Social Security check, which maxes out at a little over $45,400 per year, it’ll have to last you for the rest of your life.

    Your neighbor, meanwhile, is expected to receive more than $1.5 million in pension benefits during the course of his retirement. He personally contributed less than $60,000 to the pot. He gets to retire at 56. You? 70, if you’re lucky.

    If a huge chunk of Illinois middle class decamps for Florida, what then?

    But we digress. Another issue with this new great American migration is that sometimes the transplants clash with the locals – not only because of their ultra-liberal California values, but also because they’re inconveniently driving up home prices and rents for everybody else. As more Californians flood into Nevada, the locals have greeted them with a whiff of suspicion. “I just hope all the Californians going to Nevada don’t turn Nevada into a California,” said one recent transplant.

    After watching how they bungled things in their former home state, that would indeed be a tragedy.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 22:00

    Tags
    Social Issues

  • Your Smart Vehicle Is Recording Your Every Move
    Your Smart Vehicle Is Recording Your Every Move

    Authored by Derrick Broze via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    Recent reports indicate that data gathered by automakers and tech companies could be the next front in the battle over digital privacy.

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    In early January, companies at the CES 2020 displayed their plans for making use of the surprising amounts of data gathered by newer model vehicles. Amazon, Intel, Qualcomm, and Blackberry were among the companies seeking partnerships with automakers who are also searching for methods to monetize the data gathered by their vehicles.

    Bloomberg reports that “modern cars roll out of factories packed with cellular connections, powerful processors and growing suite of sensors, including cameras, radar and microphones. That’s turning them into the next information goldmine, rivaling the data-creating capabilities of smartphones.”

    Bloomberg also notes that Intel announced a new stage of its Mobileye technology which allows for driver-assistance and Intel to gather data from cameras, chips, and sensors within the vehicle. Intel says this anonymous information is used to create detailed maps to enhance vehicle navigation systems. Intel has estimated that data gathered by vehicles will be worth as much as $3.5 billion by 2030. Bloomberg reports that consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that “up to $750 billion of value would created from car-related data by 2030.”

    As the financial incentive for automotive data increases more companies will seek to enter this emerging marketplace. However, there are already serious privacy concerns related to the data being gathered by the vehicles. In December 2019 the Washington Post investigated how much information is gathered by one single computer in a 2017 Chevy Volt. The Post writes:

    “In the 2020 model year, most new cars sold in the United States will come with built-in Internet connections, including 100 percent of Fords, GMs and BMWs and all but one model Toyota and Volkswagen. (This independent cellular service is often included free or sold as an add-on.) Cars are becoming smartphones on wheels, sending and receiving data from apps, insurance firms and pretty much wherever their makers want. Some brands even reserve the right to use the data to track you down if you don’t pay your bills.”

    To determine just how much data was being collected, the Post worked with automotive technology expert Jim Mason to catch a glimpse of what vehicle manufacturers are capable of seeing. The Post and their expert learned that the vehicle was collecting a wide range of data including vehicle location and phone call records. Mason noted that any time you plug a smart phone into a vehicle the vehicle will likely copy personal data.

    “Among the trove of data points were unique identifiers for my and Doug’s phones, and a detailed log of phone calls from the previous week. There was a long list of contacts, right down to people’s address, emails and even photos,” the Post reported.

    The vehicle also collected information on “acceleration and braking style, beaming back reports to its maker General Motors over an always-on Internet connection,” the Post added.

    “Coming next: face data, used to personalize the vehicle and track driver attention.”

    Chevrolet does not currently have a policy of informing drivers about the data being recorded and the owner’s manual does not mention data collection. A spokesman for Chevrolet owner General Motors declined to offer specific details on data collection. However, the spokesman did note that data gathered by GM falls into three categories: vehicle location, vehicle performance, and driver behavior.

    Unsurprisingly, the Post notes that with the coming 5G cellular network that promises to link cars to the internet, wireless connections will get cheaper, data more valuable, and “anything the car knows about you is fair game.”

    Data collection by smart vehicles is only one of a myriad of privacy concerns related to the coming 5G Smart Grid where cities, vehicles, phones, streetlights, and clothes are fitted with sensors as part of the Internet of Things. It’s important to become educated about the threats posed by these emerging “smart devices.”

    Only by actively fighting for and defending privacy can we hope to maintain any semblance of it.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 21:40

    Tags
    Technology Internet

  • US Boosts 'Glide Breaker' Program To Shoot Down Putin's "Invincible" Hypersonic Missiles
    US Boosts ‘Glide Breaker’ Program To Shoot Down Putin’s “Invincible” Hypersonic Missiles

    Hypersonic weapons have been the big talk at the Pentagon of late. Early this week US defense officials unveiled that America’s classified hypersonics program will undergo a “very aggressive” expansion over the course of the next year. This is to include expanded testing, including at least “four initial flight tests of prototypes for glide bombs that can fly five times the speed of sound and maneuver en route,” according Bloomberg.

    But after over the past two years both Russia and China have hyped their own advancing programs (Putin has touted that his Avangard hypersonic missile as “invincible”), which many analysts believe could be further along than the US program, the more pressing worry is how to defend against the nearly impossible to stop high-tech weapon. Hypersonic missiles, such as the kind Russia has lately tested, “are hard to stop, they can maneuver, they’re unpredictable” and “hard to detect” so “you don’t have a lot of time” to respond — Mike White, the Defense Department’s assistant director for hypersonics was quoted this week as saying.

    Toward this end, the Pentagon is pursuing experimental interceptor technology designed to take out possible incoming hypersonics.

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    Artist’s concept of a hypersonic vehicle. DARPA Image.

    The military analysis site Defense One explains of the developing program, still in its infancy:

    On Tuesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced that it had awarded $13 million to defense contractor Northrop Grumman for its Glide Breaker program, an experimental effort to develop interceptors to take out highly advanced and highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles.

    Details of the nascent Glide Breaker program remain classified, and it’s as yet likely not far along, though we profiled the new program in 2018.

    DARPA indicated that it “Intends to advance the United States’ (U.S.) means to counter hypersonic vehicles” by developing “enabling an advanced interceptor capable of engaging maneuvering hypersonic threats in the upper atmosphere.”

    Illustrating the problem that enemy hypersonics poses for US homeland defense, former Vice Chief of Staff Paul Selva explained while addressing a Strategic Deterrent Coalition conference last year:

    If you’re going Mach 13 at the very northern edge of Hudson Bay, you have enough residual velocity to hit all 48 of the continental United States and all of Alaska. You can choose [to] point it left or right, and hit Maine or Alaska, or you can hit San Diego or Key West. That’s a monstrous problem.

    Among options listed for defending against the ultra-fast hypersonics includes “exploding warheads” as well as electronic warfare.

    One missile defense analyst quoted in the Defense One report had this to say:

    It’s important to remember that these things, traveling at high speeds under a lot of thermal pressure, are far from invincible. They have a lot of vulnerabilities. You might be able to bring together a mix of different approaches, including cyber or electronic warfare effects, to take one down. 

    The Pentagon is clearly reacting to the advancing programs of China and Russia. Defense Secretary Mark Esper a week ago referenced a developing “great-power competition” with China.

    A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that the current ballistic missile defense system in the US is powerless against hypersonic missiles from China and Russia.

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    Illustration from DARPA’s ‘Glide Breaker program’.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 21:20

  • Tverberg: It Is Easy To Overreact To The Chinese Coronavirus
    Tverberg: It Is Easy To Overreact To The Chinese Coronavirus

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

    Recently, a new coronavirus has been causing many illnesses and deaths. The virus first became active in Wuhan, China, but it has already spread to the rest of China. Scattered cases have been identified around the rest of the world as well.

    There are two important questions that are already being encountered:

    • How much of an attempt should be made to limit the spread of the new virus? For example, should businesses close to prevent the spread of the virus?

    • Should this disease be publicized as being far worse than flu viruses that circulate each year and cause many deaths among the elderly and people in poor health? The median age of those dying from the new coronavirus seems to be about 75.

    Unfortunately, there aren’t easy answers. We can easily see the likely outcome of under reaction. More people might die of the disease. More people might find themselves out of work for a couple of weeks or more with the illness. We tend to be especially concerned about ourselves and our own relatives.

    The thing that is harder to see is that reacting too vigorously can have a hugely detrimental impact on the world economy. The world economy depends on international trade and tourism. China plays a key role in the world economy. Quarantines of whole regions that last for weeks and months can have a very detrimental impact on the wages of people in the area and profits of local companies. Problems with debt can be expected to spike. The greater the reaction to the coronavirus, the more likely the world economy will be pushed toward recession and job loss.

    The following are a few of my thoughts regarding possible overreaction:

    [1] The Chinese coronavirus seems to be extremely contagious, even before a person who has been exposed shows any symptoms. The only way we can be certain to contain the virus seems to be through quarantines lasting up to 14 days.

    China’s National Health Minister, Ma Xiaowei, has provided information that seems quite alarming. With the new virus, a person may become communicable shortly after he/she has been infected, but symptoms may not appear for up to 14 days. This allows the infected person to infect many others without realizing that he/she is a carrier for the disease.

    Today, the United States and many other countries screen for the virus by checking passengers arriving on planes from affected areas for fevers. Given the information provided by China’s National Health Minister, this approach seems unlikely to be sufficient to catch all of the people who may eventually come down with the disease. If a country really wants to identify all the potential carriers of the disease, it appears that a 14-day quarantine for all travelers from infected areas may be needed.

    Such a quarantine becomes administratively difficult to handle for the huge number of people who are likely to travel from China. Such a quarantine would make it impossible for pilots and other airline workers to make a living, for example. They would be spending too much of their time in quarantine to do the work needed to support themselves and their families.

    A related concern is that person-to-person transmission is very easy with the Chinese coronavirus. We don’t know for certain how many people each infected individual infects, but one estimate is that each infected person transmits the disease to an average of 2.5 other people. With this transmission rate, the number of people having the disease can be expected to grow exponentially, perhaps for several months.

    Based on these concerns, it seems to me that funds spent on trying to contain the coronavirus are likely to be largely wasted. The new Chinese virus will spread widely, regardless of attempts to contain it. At most, quarantines will slightly slow the transmission of the disease. At the same time, quarantines will be quite disruptive of commerce. They will tend to reduce both total wages and total output of goods and services of the area.

    [2] Deaths from pathogens are part of the natural cycle. They help prune back the population of the old and weak.

    We know that in ecosystems, one of the functions of naturally occurring fires is to clear out “deadwood,” to allow healthy new growth to occur. In fact, some types of seeds seem to require smoke for germination. When inadequate natural burning takes place, bushfires as seen in Australia and forest fires as seen in California become an increasing problem.

    Deaths from pathogens seem to play a similar role in human economies. This is especially the case with pathogens that especially target the weak and old. Most flu viruses have this characteristic. Early reports of deaths from the coronavirus suggest that this same pattern of targeting the old and weak is occurring with this virus as well. As noted above, the median age of those dying from the new coronavirus seems to be about 75 years.

    Since the 1940s, modern medicine has been able to develop antibiotics and vaccines to counteract the impact of many pathogens. This, of course, makes citizens happy, but it has the disadvantage of changing the population in a way that leaves the economy with a much higher percentage of elderly people and others in poor health. This higher level of elderly and medically needy people makes it easy for viruses and other pathogens to make their rounds, just as leaving deadwood on the forest floor makes it easier for fires to spread.

    With this rising population of people who cannot support themselves, tax rates for the remaining citizens tend to become very high. Young workers may become discouraged because they do not have enough income remaining after paying taxes to raise their own families. In effect, they cannot support both their young families and the many old people.

    Viewed from this unusual perspective, the operation of the Chinese coronavirus might even be considered a benefit to society as a whole. The world has overcome the impact of measles, typhoid, polio, and many other diseases. In some sense, it “needs” a new disease added to its portfolio, to replace the ones that have been mostly taken care of by modern medicine. In this way, pensions and other payments targeting the old and weak don’t become too great a burden on the young.

    [3] If the Chinese coronavirus were simply allowed to run its course, without publicity that it was in any way unusual, somewhat less than 1% of the world’s population might be expected to die. 

    To see what would happen if the Chinese coronavirus were to run its course, we might look at what happened with the Spanish Flu, back in 1918. At that time, doctors did not have a way of treating the virus and authorities downplayed concern for the disease. The US Center for Disease Control reports that 500 million people, or one-third of the world’s population, became infected. At least 50 million people (about 10% of those infected) died.

    We don’t yet know with accuracy how many of those infected will die from the current virus. A recent estimate is that about 2.3% of those who are infected will die of the disease (based on 107 dying out of 4,600 infected). If we assume that the percentage of the population that will ultimately catch the new virus is 30%, then the share of the world’s population that would be expected to die would be about [(1/3) x 2.3% = 0.76%].

    The UN estimates that the world’s population can be expected to grow by about 1.05% in 2020. If this is the case, the effect of the Chinese virus would be to sharply dampen the population increase for the year. Instead of population rising by 1.05%, it would rise by only 0.29% (= 1.05% – 0.76%), assuming all of the deaths associated with the Chinese coronavirus take place within a year. While this would be a change, it would be a fairly small, temporary change.

    All of these deaths would be tragic for the families involved but, in a way, they would be less of a problem than the deaths that took place back in 1918. At that time, mortality was high for healthy 20 to 40 year olds, making the flu particularly disruptive for families. The total percentage of the population that died was also much higher, about 3% instead of 0.76%.

    [4] A major danger of the virus seems to be one of overreaction.

    Today’s world economy is fragile. China, like other countries, has a large amount of debt. Debt defaults related to poor profits of companies closing their operations for a time and workers losing income could easily skyrocket.

    Closing down transportation from China would risk pushing the world economy into a very bad recession. In fact, simply having a very large number of people out sick from work would be expected to have an adverse impact on the economy. Spending a large amount of money on hospitalizations and face masks cannot compensate for the loss of productivity of the rest of the economy. Thus, the tendency would be toward recession in China, even if no action toward cutting off travel were taken.

    China is a huge supplier of goods to the rest of the world. In fact, in 2016, it used more energy in producing industrial output than the United States, India, Russia and Japan combined.

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    Figure 1. Chart by the International Energy Agency showing total fuel consumed (TFC) by industry, for the top five fuel consuming nations of the world.

    China’s economy has been growing very rapidly since 1990. Figure 2 shows this one way, in GDP comparisons using inflation-adjusted US dollars.

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    Figure 2. GDP of China and the United States, computed as percentages of World GDP. All amounts in 2010 US dollars, as provided by the World Bank.

    Figure 3 is similar to Figure 2, except the growth comparison is made in “2011 Purchasing Power Parity International Dollars.” This adjustment is made because typically the currencies of less developed nations float far below the dollar, in terms of what the local currency will buy. The inflation-adjusted PPP comparison compares output on a basis that is expected to be more consistent with what the local currency will really purchase.

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    Figure 3. Ratios of the GDP of China and the United States to the World GDP. All amounts in 2011 Purchasing Power Parity International Dollars, as provided by the World Bank.

    On this PPP basis, China’s GDP surpassed the US’s GDP in 2014. Figure 3 also shows that the United States has slipped from about 20% of the world’s GDP to about 15% on this basis.

    We cannot simply cut off trade with China, regardless of how bad the situation is. China is too big and too important now. The rest of the world desperately needs goods and services produced in China, in spite of what is going wrong from an illness perspective. China plays too key a role in supply chains of many kinds for the country to be left out.

    Even cutting off tourism becomes a problem. The share of China’s revenue from tourism amounted to 11% in 2018. While not all of this would drop off, even a dip would lead to lower employment in this part of its economy. Jet fuel use would drop as well.

    [5] A particular problem today is low prices for many commodities, including oil and other fossil fuels. These prices are likely to fall further, if China’s economy falters further. 

    We used to hear that the world would “run out of” oil and that oil prices would rise very high. In fact, if the people who were concerned about the issue had studied history, they would have figured out that a far more likely outcome would be “collapse.” In such a situation, prices of many commodities might fall too low. Revelation 18:11-13 provides a list of a number of commodities, including humans sold as slaves, for which prices dropped very low at the time of the collapse of ancient Babylon.

    The problem is a different squeeze than a high-price squeeze. It is more of a growing wage disparity problem, with fewer and fewer of the world’s workers being able to afford the goods and services made by the world economy. This problem feeds back to commodity prices that fall too low for producers of many types. The problem is an affordability issue, rather than one of running out. I have written about this issue many times.

    Prices of fossil fuels have been low for a very long time–essentially since late 2014. OPEC has cut back its oil production because of low oil prices. Several US natural gas producers have taken big write offs on natural gas investments. China’s coal production has remained below its 2013 level, because of low prices.

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    Figure 4. China energy production by fuel, based on 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy data. “Other Ren” stands for “Renewables other than hydroelectric.” This category includes wind, solar, and other miscellaneous types, such as sawdust burned for electricity.

    If China finds it necessary to cut back on production of goods and services for any reason (excessive sickness within China, visitors aren’t traveling to China, tariffs, customers around the world aren’t buying cars), this reduction in output would be likely to further lower the prices of commodities. More producers would go bankrupt. Countries exporting products as diverse as oil, iron ore, copper and lithium might have economic difficulties.

    Lower fossil fuel prices may lead to a cutback in their output, but it is doubtful that this cutback would be offset by an increase in the production of renewables. Falling fossil fuel prices would make the price comparison of renewables to fossil fuels look even worse than it does today. China has cut back on its subsidies for solar panels, and this has led to decreasing Chinese solar installations in both 2018 and 2019.

    [6] The best approach might just be to let the Chinese coronavirus run its course. Authorities might also discourage stories about how awful the illness is.

    Today, we seem to think that we can fix all problems. Unfortunately, this medical problem doesn’t seem to be fixable in the near-term. We should probably do as governments through the ages have done, which is not very much. We should not publicize the disease as being a whole lot worse than flu viruses in general, for example.

    We should certainly look for inexpensive treatments for the disease. For example, there seems to be an effort to examine the possibility of using existing antiviral drugs as a treatment. It seems like an effort could be made to look into ways of treating the disease at home, perhaps using supplemental oxygen for a period. In time, perhaps a vaccine can be developed.

    Individuals around the world should be encouraged to get themselves in as good health as possible, so that their own immune systems can fight off pathogens of all types, not just this particular virus. Common sense should be used in washing hands and in avoiding being with sick people. I doubt that it makes sense to encourage the use of masks, goggles and other protective devices.

    We, as individuals, cannot live forever on this earth. We also cannot spend an unlimited percentage of GDP on health care: It becomes too high-cost for most citizens. At some point, we need to call a halt to the expectation that we can fix all problems. We live in a world with limited resources. We need to start lowering our expectations, if we don’t want to make our problems worse.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 21:00

  • Rigged? China PMI Shows Services Industry Accelerated As Coronavirus Put Tens Of Millions Under Quarantine
    Rigged? China PMI Shows Services Industry Accelerated As Coronavirus Put Tens Of Millions Under Quarantine

    Over most of January, the situation in China has gone from bad to worse to worst-nightmare with factories and stores shuttered for weeks, citizens in every province under martial-law lockdowns, and coronovirus cases (and deaths) soaring at faster-than-prior-pandemic rates.

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    So it should be no surprise then that China’s Service Economy expanded at an accelerating rate in January according to the latest government-provided PMI data.

    Yes, you heard that right, against expectations of a slowdown (as would be expected with most of the nation hunkering down in terror), the National Bureau of Statistics reports that the non-manufacturing gauge improved to 54.1, compared with 53.5 the previous month (and better than the 53.0 expected).

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    Reportedly, due to the Lunar New Year holiday, the surveys were conducted between Jan. 15 and Jan. 20, rather than between the 20th and 25th of each month as normal.

    And you know how badly manipulated this survey is when the China’s National Bureau of Statistics issues an additional statement admitting that “the impact of coronavirus is not fully reflected in January’s PMI survey,” suggesting that “future trends need to be observed.”

    However, if that is the case then what is more problematic is the fact the first official indicator of the Chinese manufacturing economy in 2020 signaled the nation’s factories were struggling even before the country shut down for the Lunar New Year and the coronavirus outbreak worsened.

    We suspect, judging by the record collapse in (Dr.) Copper, that the manipulated-ly perfect 50.0 – neither expanding or contracting – will need to be adjusted for some sense of reality soon…

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    However, while the overall manufacturing survey dipped, the Steel industry PMI index surged to 47.1 from 43.1 in December.

    So to sum up – China’s worst ever epidemic, killing hundreds and putting 10s of thousands in hospital, shutting down factories, stores, and all transportation across the entire nation at one of its busiest most consumption-heavy times of year prompted a tiny drop in Manufacturing, a rise in the Services industry, and a surge in the Steel Industry!!!!

    As a reminder, Nomura economists led by Lu Ting wrote in a recent report to clients that:

    …the economic hit to China could exceed that seen during the SARS outbreak of 2003.

    Gross domestic product growth could “materially drop” this quarter from the 6% pace at the end of 2019, maybe even more than the 2 percentage point deceleration seen in the second quarter of 2003.

    Just don’t tell the survey respondents!!

    For some clarity on what is really going on – economically – here is none other than Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets, unleashing some truth in a 9 tweet thread:

    1. There’s a lot of fear everywhere, and Beijing streets and shops are almost empty. People still buy things online – for example my students and musician friends are overdosing on games and streaming, and…

    2. …one well-known musician told me last night that he did an online DJ set that attracted tens of thousands – but they buy very little that requires being near other people. What is worse, because factories will be closed, a lot of small business owners and workers, especially…

    3. ..at the bottom, will have sharply reduced income for the year, which of course means less consumption. It is hard to imagine that all of this won’t have a significant impact on consumption growth in the first and perhaps second quarters (depending on when it starts to…

    4. …subside). Some consumption might just be postponed, but some of it will be permanently lost, including much of what should have been spent during this very important holiday season (for example, this is the main time to release blockbuster movies, but all the theaters are…

    5. …closed). Also if workers are unable to earn wages for a few weeks longer than expected, that’s also permanently lost consumption. The more interesting question to me is whether all this will have much impact ultimately on the 2020 growth target of “around 6%”, which will…

    6. …be formally announced in early March. I suspect it won’t, at most driving it closer to 5.6% than 6.0%. If that’s the case, the economic impact of the coronavirus will be to increase debt even more than expected, as Beijing accelerates later in the year to make up for the…

    7. …decline in the first and second quarters. It had already decided in Q4 2019 to push forward any and every infrastructure project it could think of, but now it will simply have to find more projects. The point is that while the coronavirus will certainly have an adverse…

    8. …impact on “real” economic growth, it will probably have very little impact on aggregate economic activity for the year, which is just one more reason to reject an input measure as measuring anything useful. The main place to see evidence of the coronavirus impact is in the…

    9. …lower consumption share of GDP and the higher credit growth. Finally there are also likely to be interesting political implications, but obviously that’s not easy to write about.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 20:41

  • Elites Have Destroyed A Possible US-Russia Alliance To Contain China
    Elites Have Destroyed A Possible US-Russia Alliance To Contain China

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    There’s no need to rehash the sordid politics of the U.S.-Russia relationship since 2014. That relationship became collateral damage to gross corruption in Ukraine.

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    The U.S. and its allies, especially the UK under globalists like David Cameron, wanted to peel off Ukraine from the Russian orbit and make it part of the EU and eventually NATO.

    From Russia’s perspective, this was unacceptable. It may be true that most Americans cannot find Ukraine on a map, but a simple glance at a map reveals that much of Ukraine lies East of Moscow.

    Putting Ukraine in a Western alliance such as NATO would create a crescent stretching from Luhansk in the South through Poland in the West and back around to Estonia in the North. There are almost no natural obstacles between that arc and Moscow; it’s mostly open steppe.

    Completion of this “NATO Crescent” would leave Moscow open to invasion in ways that Napoleon and Hitler could only dream. Of course, this situation was and is unacceptable to Moscow.

    Ukraine itself is culturally divided along geographic lines. The Eastern and Southern provinces (Luhansk, Donetsk, Crimea and Dnipro) are ethnically Russian, follow the Orthodox Church and the Patriarch of Moscow, and welcome commercial relations with Russia.

    The Western provinces (Kiev, Lviv) are Slavic, adhere to the Catholic Church and the Pope in Rome, and look to the EU and U.S. for investment and aid.

    Prior to 2014, an uneasy truce existed between Washington and Moscow that allowed a pro-Russian President while at the same time permitting increasing contact with the EU. Then the U.S. and UK overreached by allowing the CIA and MI6 to foment a “color revolution” in Kiev called the “Euromaidan Revolution.”

    Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych resigned and fled to Moscow. Pro-EU protestors took over the government and signed an EU Association Agreement.

    In response, Putin annexed Crimea and declared it part of Russia. He also infiltrated Donetsk and Luhansk and helped establish de facto pro-Russian regional governments. The U.S. and EU responded with harsh economic sanctions on Russia.

    Ukraine has been in turmoil (with increasing corruption) ever since. U.S.-Russia relations have been ice-cold, exactly as the globalists intended.

    The U.S- induced fiasco in Ukraine not only upset U.S.-Russia relations, it derailed a cozy money laundering operation involving Ukrainian oligarchs and Democratic politicians. The Obama administration flooded Ukraine with non-lethal financial assistance.

    This aid was amplified by a four-year, $17.5 billion loan program to Ukraine from the IMF, approved in March 2015. Interestingly, this loan program was pushed by Obama at a time when Ukraine did not meet the IMF’s usual borrowing criteria.

    Some of this money was used for intended purposes, some was skimmed by the oligarchs, and the rest was recycled to Democratic politicians in the form of consulting contracts, advisory fees, director’s fees, contributions to foundations and NGOs and other channels.

    Hunter Biden and the Clinton Foundations were major recipients of this corrupt recycling. Other beneficiaries included George Soros-backed “open society” organizations, which further directed the money to progressive left-wing groups in the U.S.

    This cozy wheel-of-fortune was threatened when Donald Trump became president. Trump genuinely desired improved relations with Russia and was not on the receiving end of laundered aid to Ukraine.

    Hillary Clinton was supposed to continue the Obama policies, but she failed in the general election. Trump was a threat to everything the globalists, Democrats and pro-NATO elites had constructed in the 2010s.

    The globalists wanted China and the U.S. to team up against Russia. Trump understood correctly that China was the main enemy and therefore a closer union between the U.S. and Russia was essential.

    The elites’ efforts to derail Trump gave rise to the “Russia collusion” hoax. While no one disputes that Russia sought to sow confusion in the U.S. election in 2016, that’s something the Russians and their Soviet predecessors had been doing since 1917. By itself, little harm was done.

    Yet, the elites seized on this to concoct a story of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The real collusion was among Democrats, Ukrainians and Russians to discredit Trump.

    It took the Robert Mueller investigation two years finally to conclude there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians. By then, the damage was done. It was politically toxic for Trump to reach out to the Russians. That would be spun by the media as more evidence of “collusion.”

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    Russian President Vladimir Putin (l.) has recently named a new Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin (r.). This is part of a complex government reorganization designed to extend Putin’s rule beyond existing term limits. This is a setback for democracy, but may be a plus for the economy because it adds stability and continuity to Putin’s programs.

    This whirl of false charges, cover-ups, and deep state sabotage finally led to Trump’s impeachment on December 18, 2019.

    Fortunately, the Senate impeachment trial may soon be behind us with Trump’s exoneration in hand (although new impeachment charges and false accusations cannot be ruled out).

    Is the stage finally set for improved U.S.-Russia relations, relief from U.S. sanctions, and a significant increase in U.S. direct foreign investment in Russia?

    Right now, my models are telling us that Russia is one of the most attractive targets for foreign investment in the world. Just because U.S. policymakers missed the boat does not mean that investors must do the same.

    Russia is often denigrated by Wall Street analysts and mainstream economists who know little about the country. Russia is the world’s largest country by area and has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons of any country in the world.

    It has the world’s 11th largest economy at over $1.6 trillion in annual GDP, ahead of South Korea, Spain and Australia and not far behind Canada, Brazil and Italy.

    It also is the world’s third largest producer of oil and related liquids, with output of 11.4 million barrels per day, about 11% of the world’s total. The U.S. (17.8 million b/d), Saudi Arabia (12.4 million b/d) and Russia combine to provide 41% of the world’s liquid fuels. The latter two countries effectively control the world’s oil price by agreeing on output quotas.

    Russia has almost no external dollar-denominated debt and has a debt-to-GDP ratio of only 13.50% (the comparable ratio for the United States is 106%).

    In short, Russia is too big and too powerful to ignore despite the derogatory and uninformed claims of globalists. Importantly, Russia is emerging from the oil price shock of 2014-2016 and is in a solid recovery.

    The stage is now set for significant economic expansion as illustrated in the chart below from Moody’s Analytics:

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    This graphic analysis from Moody’s Analytics divides major economies into categories of Recovery, Expansion, Slowdown and Recession. Economies revolve clockwise through these four phases. The U.S. is in a Slowdown phase with some risk of Recession. Russia is in the Recovery phase heading toward Expansion. The Russian situation is the most attractive for investors because it offers cheap entry points with high returns as the Expansion phase begins.

    Russia has also gone to great lengths to insulate itself from U.S. economic sanctions. Their reserves have recovered to the $500 billion level that existed before the 2014 oil price collapse with one important difference. The dollar component of reserves has shrunk substantially while the gold component has increased to over 20%.

    With the recent surge in gold prices, Russia’s reserves get a significant boost (when expressed in dollars) because of the higher dollar value of the gold reserves. Gold cannot be hacked, frozen or seized, as is the case with digital dollar assets.

    Russia’s fortunes have been improving not only because of low debt and higher gold prices but also because of higher oil prices. The country is poised for a strong expansion, even if U.S. hostility caused by the Democrats continues.

    If Trump regains his footing after impeachment and wins a second term (which I expect), investors can expect warmer relations with Russia and an even more powerful Russian economic expansion than the one already underway.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 20:20

    Tags
    Politics

  • High Winds Knock Portion Of Trump's US-Mexico Border Wall Over
    High Winds Knock Portion Of Trump’s US-Mexico Border Wall Over

    A portion of President Trump’s $11 billion border wall with Mexico, or about $20 million per mile, blew over Wednesday from gusty winds, came crashing down on the Mexican side, reported CNN.

    Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that 130 feet stretch of the wall in Calexico, California, fell on Wednesday after high winds were present in the area.

    Pitones said the cause of the wall crashing down was due to freshly poured concrete not yet cured.

    The National Weather Service (NWS) said gusts in Calexico were up to 40 mph Wednesday, which the video below shows the wall leaning against trees adjacent to a street in Mexicali, Mexico.

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    “We are grateful there was no property damage or injuries,” said Pitones.

    CBP told USA Today in a statement that no property damage or injuries were seen during “this uncommon event.”

    “The border wall system is imperative to securing the border and is what border patrol agents have asked for and need to maintain operational control of the southern border,” CBP said.

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    The agency said construction of the wall in Calexico would continue.

    President Trump’s wall is expected to be completed in three phases.

    Trump has so far allocated $11 billion to construct 576 miles of a new “border wall system.”

    “You’re going to have a wall like no other. It’s going to be a powerful, terrific wall,” President Trump said at a rally in Milwaukee last week. “A very big and very powerful border wall is going up at a record speed, and we are fully financed now, isn’t that nice?”

    By mid-January, the government had constructed 101 miles of the border wall.

    Mexico has recently reported a 56% reduction in the number of undocumented migrants crossing the country, a sign that President Trump’s tough stance on Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has been working.

    However, there’s a huge problem: the wall can’t prevent drug-smuggling tunnels that are all too common between California and Mexico.

    The latest drug tunnel the CBP has discovered, measured a quarter-mile into the U.S. to San Diego and a half-mile into Mexico, to Tijuana.

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    CBP officials said the tunnel had a ventilation system, electricity, and even elevators.

    Wall or no wall, it’s probably a good idea to have one, so if a zombie apocalypse unfolds, people with coronavirus in Mexico can’t easily cross the U.S. border.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 20:00

  • What Does Lowest Population Growth In US History Mean For Housing?
    What Does Lowest Population Growth In US History Mean For Housing?

    Authored by Chris Hailton via Econimica blog,

    2019 saw US population growth at its lowest percentage level in US history aside from the pandemic years of 1918/1919 (when the Spanish flu took the lives of nearly 700,000 Americans).  The 0.5% annual growth meant US population grew by approx. 1.55 million persons in 2019.

    Today, I just wanted to focus on the implications of low population growth on the largest sector of the US economy, housing and in particular new housing starts.  The chart below shows annual total US population growth in millions (red line, million), the next line is the US population growth among the under 70 year old population (yellow line, million), then annual housing starts (blue line, million), and finally the Federal Reserve set federal funds rate driving interest rates (black line, %).

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    Really take a minute to check to understand these relationships…its really important.

    From 1960 to 2008, annual population growth (red line) varied from about 1.8 to 3.5 million a year and the vast majority of that growth came among the under 70 year old population (yellow line).  During this nearly five decades, housing starts (blue line) varied from about 1 to 2 million units annually, with sharp inverse swings based on the cost of money represented by the changes in the federal funds rate (black line). 

    But starting in 2008, housing starts fell below 1 million units and would remain there through 2012 despite the cost of money (federal funds rate) sitting at zero for nearly a decade.  The NAR and others suggest there is a housing shortage due to this period of significantly below trend housing starts…but if you happen to look at the red line (decelerating total population growth) and the yellow line (collapsing population growth among the under 70 year old population), perhaps something else is happening.

    70+ year-old elderly folks have the highest home ownership rates, are least likely to undertake new loans, and have the lowest labor force participation rates among the adult population at something like 1 in 10 working versus 8 in 10 among 50 year-olds.  In 2019, the 70+ population grew by about 1.3 million.  Point is, 70+ year-olds are not net home buyers but net sellers as they pay down/pay off their mortgages, downsize, move to managed care, or pass away.

    It is the annual growth of the under 70 year-old population that drives demand for new housing, that has high levels of employment, and the willingness to undertake long term mortgage debt.  In 2019, the under 70 year-old population grew by less than 300 thousand.  The 90%+ annual deceleration in the potential buyers versus a ten-fold rise in the annual growth of elderly has turned the housing market upside down.

    But last year, more new homes were started than the total population increased…something that had not happened since the early 1970’s.  The chart below shows annual starts as a percentage of annual population growth moving inverse the federal funds rate.  The sharp increase in housing starts amid a population growth slowdown is definitely noteworthy.

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    While the total annual population growth is decelerating, all the deceleration is among the under 70 year-old population (declining births, declining immigration) while the 70+ year-old population growth is still accelerating.  The chart below details the annual housing starts as a ratio of annual under 70 year-old population growth from 1960 through 2015.  Nearly 40 years of interest rate cuts have mitigated the deceleration in housing starts as a percentage of under 70 year-old population growth, until…

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    That is until now…2018 and particularly 2019 saw new housing starts surge while population growth of the under 70 year old population took another leg down.  The result was more than five new housing starts per every new under 70 year-old in the US…aka, the hockey stick chart below.

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    Now, go back and look at the first chart again.  You will notice that for the whole of the 2020’s, what projected population growth there is, is among the 70+ year-old population and, so long as the declining birth rates / total births and decelerating immigration continue, we should expect little to no growth among home buyers.  The idea that America needs more housing seems strange indeed.  Far more realistic is that the 2020’s will see a period of replacement level new housing rather than outright growth.  Of course, real estate is local.  On a micro level, there is likely to be a surge of rural inventory, and inversely, increasingly tight urban inventory in select cities.  This is due to a likely ongoing outflow of young adults from rural locales to select urban centers, in search of opportunity.  Either way, the net picture is unchanged or even worsened as urban fertility and birth rates are even lower than those seen in rural areas.

    Or, then again, maybe the Federal Reserve can just print new buyers…or add residential real estate to its already bloated balance sheet so America can keep on building…ever more…for ever fewer?


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 19:40

    Tags
    Social Issues
    Business Finance

  • Nordstrom Starts Selling Used Clothes To Broke Americans 
    Nordstrom Starts Selling Used Clothes To Broke Americans 

    Fashion retailer Nordstrom gets it: Americans are becoming poorer, and it’s time for it to capitalize on recommerce, otherwise known as reverse commerce, which basically means Nordstrom is going to sell secondhand clothing. 

    So, move over local consignment stores, and or Goodwill Industries, eBay, and The Salvation Army, there’s a new player in town, Nordstrom, that will jump into the recommerce industry on Jan. 31. 

    Nordstrom’s “See You Tomorrow” store will have a dedicated section at its New York flagship store, opens tomorrow, and will sell secondhand luxury clothes. There’s also going to be a section on the company’s website that will list a catalog of used clothing, the company said in press release, dated Jan. 30. 

    Nordstrom’s closet recommerce competitor will be The RealReal, an online and brick-and-mortar marketplace for authenticated luxury consignment, as the industry for used clothing increased to $28 billion in 2019. 

    Olivia Kim, vice president of creative projects for the retailer, said many of the brands Nordstrom carries would be resold through its “See You Tomorrow” shop. 

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    “We want to provide a unique and elevated resale shopping experience that encourages a sense of discovery and provides access to the brands our customers know and love, while giving them a convenient opportunity to participate in the circular fashion economy,” Kim said 

    She said, “so many Americans are already engaged with recommerce, whether it’s rental or retail.” 

    She added that many of the items that will be carried at “See You Tomorrow” will be sourced from Nordstrom’s inventory of returned and damaged merchandise.

    Nordstrom has partnered with Yerdle, which already handles resale for Eileen Fisher, Patagonia, and other top brands.

    Yerdle is expected to clean and repair Nordstrom products, along with handling, inventory, processing and fulfillment.

    Nordstrom’s resale items are expected to include “women’s apparel, women’s shoes, handbags, men’s apparel, accessories and shoes, children’s wear and a limited selection of jewelry and watches,” the retailer said. 

    Nordstrom is diving into the recommerce industry at a time when consumers are broke, heavily leverage with auto debt, credit cards, and student debt, but for some odd reason, are feeling very optimistic about life. 

    However, when the next recession strikes, consumers, who are already bound with insurmountable debts, will not enjoy the luxuries of purchasing new luxury goods and will have to opt for secondhand clothing at their local “See You Tomorrow.” 

     

     


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 19:20

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • 100,000 Chinese "Under Observation" As Coronavirus Deaths Soar; State Dept Issues "Do Not Travel" To China" Advisory
    100,000 Chinese “Under Observation” As Coronavirus Deaths Soar; State Dept Issues “Do Not Travel” To China” Advisory

    Summary:

    • First human-to-human transmission confirmed in US
    • 9,821 confirmed cases worldwide, 213 fatalities
    • South Korea confirms first human-to-human transmission
    • China reported largest one-day jump in fatalities on Wednesday with
    • Hong Kong warns of surgical mask shortage
    • Russia closes border
    • 6,000 quarantined aboard Italian cruise ship
    • Thailand leads with most cases outside China (14)
    • Chinese national hospitalized and quarantined in York
    • Virus arrives in India, Philippines
    • Air France suspends flights to/from mainland
    • IMF now monitoring crisis as economic fears grow
    • State Department authorizes personnel to evacuate China
    • WHO declares global pandemic
    • American Airlines pilots union files lawsuit to end travel to China
    • First 2 cases confirmed in Italy
    • Germany confirms 5th case
    • Turkish Airlines suspends China routes

    * * *

    Update (2100ET): Nearly two weeks since the start of the Coronavirus epidemic, which has now resulted in over 100,000 Chinese being placed under observation, and over 210 people dead, the US finally did the right thing when late on Thursday the U.S. State Department warned Americans not to travel to China because of the spreading coronavirus outbreak.

    “Do not travel to China due to novel coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China. On January 30, the World Health Organization has determined the rapidly spreading outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Travelers should be prepared for travel restrictions to be put into effect with little or no advance notice.  Commercial carriers have reduced or suspended routes to and from China.”

    The new travel advisory was issued hours after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency. “Those currently in China should consider departing using commercial means,” the department said in the advisory.

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    In kneejerk response, US stock index futures erased a gain of as much as 0.2%, with March Emini contracts little changed as of 9pmET, confirming the pattern we noted earlier.

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    * * *

    Update (1900ET): The NHC is reporting a total of 9,692 coronavirus cases across China, up from 7,711 yesterday, an increase of 1,982 cases, and with 15,238 new suspected cases, up by over 3,000 from 12,167 yesterday, there are now 25,060 probable cases. Additionally 213 total deaths have been confirmed, up from 170, the biggest daily increase so far.

    A total of 102,427 people are now under medical observation in China.

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    Outside of China 102 international cases were reported…

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    … including 28 cases across Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. This brings the total confirmed worldwide to 9,822.

    Putting this in the context of the deadly SARS epidemic, the coronavirus pandemic has now officially exceeded SARS in cumulative cases in just two weeks.

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    * * *

    Update (1730ET): Hubei Province has just confirmed another 42 coronavirus-related deaths for Thursday, another huge jump on par with some of the announcements from earlier in the week.

     

    At present, 5486 cases are still being treated in the hospital (among them: 804 cases of severe cases and 290 cases of critical cases). Hubei diagnosed another 1,220 cases, bringing the total number for both China and the world above 9,000, well above SARS global total. 

    Here’s the full statement, translated to English via Google:

    From 00:00 to 2400 on January 30, 2020 , Hubei Province newly added 1220 cases of pneumonia infected by new type of coronavirus (including: 378 in Wuhan, 55 in Huangshi, 31 in Shiyan, 123 in Xiangyang, Yichang 50 cases, 70 cases in Jingzhou City, 36 cases in Jingmen City, 66 cases in Ezhou City, 142 cases in Xiaogan City, 77 cases in Huanggang City, 36 cases in Xianning City, 85 cases in Suizhou City, 9 cases in Enshi Prefecture, 35 cases in Xiantao City, and Tianmen City 23 cases, 2 cases in Qianjiang City, and 2 cases in Shennongjia Forest District). There were 42 new deaths in the province (among them: 30 in Wuhan, 1 in Jingmen, 4 in Ezhou, 3 in Xiaogan, 1 in Xiantao, and 3 in Tianmen). There were 26 new hospital discharges (including: 21 in Wuhan, 2 in Xiaogan, 1 in Huanggang, and 2 in Shennongjia Forest District).

    As of 24:00 on January 30, 2020, Hubei Province has reported a total of 5806 cases of pneumonia caused by new coronavirus infections (including 2639 cases in Wuhan, 168 in Huangshi, 150 in Shiyan, 286 in Xiangyang, and 167 in Yichang. 221 cases in Jingzhou, 227 in Jingmen, 189 in Ezhou, 541 in Xiaogan, 573 in Huanggang, 166 in Xianning, 228 in Suizhou, 75 in Enshi, 90 in Xiantao, and 67 in Tianmen , 12 cases in Qianjiang City, 7 cases in Shennongjia Forest District), 116 cases have been discharged and 204 deaths (including: 159 cases in Wuhan, 1 case in Huangshi City, 1 case in Yichang City, 3 cases in Jingzhou City, and 5 cases in Jingmen City). (6 cases in Ezhou City, 9 cases in Xiaogan City, 12 cases in Huanggang City, 1 case in Xiantao City, 6 cases in Tianmen City, and 1 case in Qianjiang City). At present, 5486 cases are still being treated in the hospital (among them: 804 cases of severe cases and 290 cases of critical cases), and they are all treated in isolation at designated medical institutions. A total of 35,144 close contacts have been tracked, and 32,340 people are still under medical observation.

    Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassador to the UN is holding a press briefing, as Turkish Airlines becomes the latest to suspend flights to China (including routes to Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Xian).

    In other news, India TV is reporting a suspected coronavirus-related death, what would be the first outside China. A 22-year-old man from Tripura died in a Malaysian Hospital Thursday, according to family sources. However, this has not yet been confirmed. Earlier reports about a Thai woman dying of nCoV in India were likewise never confirmed.

    * * *

    Update (1620ET): The first two coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Italy. No word yet if there’s any connection to the cruise ship that was quarantined earlier on Thursday (health officials gave it the all-clear a few hours ago). But PM Conte has just blocked air traffic with China.

    • ITALY’S PM CONTE SAYS FIRST TWO CORONAVIRUS CASES CONFIRMED IN ITALY

    And we thought the WHO just said not to worry, because China has it all under control?

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    German authorities just confirmed a fifth case of the virus: here are the latest numbers on confirmed cases & deaths.

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    Italy has suspended air traffic. We can’t help but wonder: What is President Trump waiting for? According to Pompeo, the option is ‘under consideration.’

    * * *

    Update (1520ET): Just as the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a global emergency, the State Department authorized its personnel in China to evacuate, somewhat undercutting the WHO’s optimistic rhetoric.

    In spite of the WHO’s insistence that cutting travel links with China really isn’t necessary, the American Airlines pilots union has filed a lawsuit in Dallas seeking to force the airline to cease all travel to and from China. And the Health Ministry of Trinidad has temporarily barred Chinese tourists.

    * * *

    Update (12:40ET): Rumors that surfaced in recent days have been confirmed: the CDC said Thursday afternoon they have confirmed human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus in Chicago – meaning the US has now joined Germany, Japan, South Korea and Thailand in having confirmed human-to-human transmission outside China.

    One of the five prior cases confirmed by the CDC apparently managed to pass the virus to her husband. The new patient is the spouse of the woman being treated in Chicago. It appears there are now six cases confirmed in the US.

    The risk of infection is low, CDC said, and it’s not making recommendations to cancel plans or activities, and doesn’t recommend the need to wear facemasks at this time. The CDC still hasn’t confirmed whether carriers of the virus are contagious before showing symptoms.

    Though the US is already planning to evacuate even more American citizens from Wuhan, The notion that we won’t import at least one case of the virus through this program seems unrealistic. Meanwhile, the total number of cases worldwide has eclipsed the total from the SARS outbreak, which lasted for nearly a year.

    Stocks legged lower on the headline as investors grappled with the notion that the WHO now has no choice but to declare a global pandemic.

    During the SARS outbreak in 2003, there were zero cases of human-to-human transmission in the US.

    Over in France, a doctor has been hospitalized after treating the country’s fifth coronavirus patient.

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    The WHO has scheduled its next press conference for Thursday.

    Over in France, authorities have confirmed a 6th case of the virus, while Hong Kong has confirmed two more cases, bringing the total to 13.

    * * *

    Update (1120ET): CNBC’s Eunice Yoon is back with an update on how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the global supply chain.

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    * * *

    Update (1015ET): Bloomberg reported that the number of total cases in China has climbed past 8,000, the number of cases from the SARS outbreak (which lasted for months). However, that figure hasn’t been confirmed anywhere else.

    Instead, SCMP says the number of confirmed cases hasn’t budged since early Thursday morning. Meanwhile, Australia reported its eighth coronavirus case on Thursday, a 42-year-old Chinese national from Wuhan tested positive for the virus and was isolated in Gold Coast University Hospital. The Australian government is also in talks with Beijing to evacuate its citizens.

    As we mentioned earlier, Tang Zhihong, the head of the health commission of the central Chinese city of Huanggang, was sacked on Thursday night, according to the city’s Communist Party committee. This has morphed into a local scandal, as the scapegoating of local officials continues.

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    Tang was embarrassed when CCTV aired footage of him failing to answer key questions at a press conference. Huanggang, near the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan, has 324 confirmed cases of the illness, as of Thursday, the second-largest toll after Wuhan.

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    As worries about the economic fallout intensify, the IMF said it has started working with the WHO to monitor the crisis. The IMF Direct impact of the coronavirus outbreak is mostly on demand as people stay home during a busy time for retail and tourism, while on supply side there have been transport stoppages and workers idled, International Monetary Fund spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in Washington. Direct impact of the coronavirus outbreak is mostly on demand, as the outbreak overshadows the holiday season of leisure consumption, while on the supply side, whole factories have been idled.

    * * *

    Update (1000ET): Italians are breathing a sigh of relief. Initial tests suggest there is no coronavirus aboard the quarantined cruise ship.  A 54-year-old woman from Macau had a fever and respiratory symptoms that were suspiciously close to the virus’s symptoms. She has since been kept in isolation on board in the port of Civitavecchia, near Rome. Initial tests have cleared her, but the final results aren’t expected until later in the day. 

    In the US, American Airlines has extended cancellations of passenger flights between the US and China through March 28.

    After closing its border with China, Russia is reportedly weighing the cancellation of the Sochi Economic Forum, which is slated to begin Feb. 12.

    * * *

    Update (0920ET): Air France has acquiesced to its employees demands and confirmed that it’s suspending all flights to and from the Chinese mainland, joining a host of other airlines who have done the same thing.

    * * *

    Update (0855ET): The UK is reporting shortages of facemasks amid several virus scares, the Guardian reports. Shortages have also been reported in Hong Kong, and across China.

    On the Boots website, a six-pack of “safe & sound” surgical face masks is sold out, with a note saying they will not be receiving any further stock.

    Another product on the Boots website, a box of 50 masks, is also sold out and carries the same message about not being restocked.

    Boots said surgical face masks are available to order in stores as a special line from the pharmacy counter, adding that they are “working to make additional stock available for customers to purchase in store and on boots.com which we hope will land over the next week”.

    A branch of B&Q in London appeared to be low on stocks of face masks, with racks empty on Wednesday evening.

    Meanwhile, on amazon.co.uk, a pack of 12 “anti virus” flu surgical face masks is sold out, with the online retailer saying they do not know when, or if, the item will be back in stock, although there are other masks available on the site.

    -Source: Guardian

    And for those who can’t get their hands on a mask – we suggest you improvise.

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    Meanwhile, Vietnam said it will stop issuing visas for Chinese tourists, as have the Philippines and Russia. In China, Beijing has removed the city health commissioner in Huanggang. We suspect he may never be heard from again.

    * * *

    Update (0816ET): Hubei has reported 317 new cases as of noon Thursday local time, according to local Party Secretary Jiang Chaoliang. Hubei is the province at the epicenter of the outbreak: the virus orginated in the province’s capital, Wuhan. The most recent count put the number of confirmed cases at 7,921 and the death toll steady at 170.

    Hong Kong is reportedly struggling with a shortage of face masks. Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung said the government had bought 13 million masks, but public hospitals have been using 5x to 6x as many as normal. Hong Kong is stepping up local production at correctional facilities to keep up with demand, and another 24 million should be available at retail outlets soon

    * * *

    Update (0800ET): Has the virus come to Yorkshire?

    A Chinese national has been rushed to a hospital after taking ill at a hospital in York….

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    No cases of the virus have been confirmed in the UK so far, though there have been a handful of scares.

    Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Thursday that the first British evacuation flight could take off from Wuhan as soon as Thursday evening UK time. The flight was supposed to leave Thursday morning, but there was a delay as Chinese officials were slow to grant permission for takeoff.

    As viral outbreak turns neighbors against each other and inspired a wave of suspicion in towns and cities across China, some have chosen to seek comfort by playing children’s games.

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    * * *

    Update (0745ET): South Korea just joined Japan, Thailand and Germany (and possibly the US) in confirming a case of human-to-human viral transmission that occurred within its borders, involving one individual who hasn’t recently traveled to China.

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    South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed two more cases Thursday, bringing the total to six. However, the sixth patient to be confirmed, a 56-year-old South Korean man, was diagnosed after “coming in contact with a third patient” inside South Korea, according to CNA.

    He has been quarantined at a hospital in Seoul. The other five were diagnosed after returning from Wuhan, the city where the virus first emerged, which is now under a draconian government-imposed lockdown.

    * * *

    Update (0725ET): Following several unconfirmed scares, India has confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus. That means all three of the world’s most populous countries have now confirmed at least one case of the virus.

    And that list could soon expand. Brazil, the world’s fifth most-populous country, reported three suspected cases yesterday. Malaysia has confirmed at least 8 cases. Reports that a Thai woman died of the virus on Kolkata were never confirmed.

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    Meanwhile, here’s the most up-to-date map we could find:

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    Earlier, the White House said it had launched a task force that will meet daily to oversee the response to the coronavirus outreak that has resulted in at least five confirmed cases in the US, NBC reports. However, an expert who appeared on CNBC Thursday morning pointed out that the administration is a little behind the 8-ball.

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    If the administration wasn’t so bogged down with impeachment, maybe Trump would have more time to focus on the virus response?

    “Let’s remember we have fewer than four cases in the United States, and they’re concentrated in four states,” he said. The maximum country is Thailand, with 14 cases, he said – and the US is nowhere near that.

    Reports out of Atlanta claimed that more than 20 passengers had been quarantined at Hartsfield-Jackson airport as they undergo advanced screening for the virus.

    In other news: The Philippines has also reported its first case:  A 38-year-old female Chinese patient who arrived from Wuhan via Hong Kong on Jan. 21.

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    * * *

    Update (0710ET): Airline employees are putting their feet down and demanding that their bosses halt flights to China, as more than a dozen airlines around the world have already done.

    Air France cabin crew unions have demanded Air France stop flying to China, Reuters reports.

    “Air France is monitoring the rapidly evolving situation in real time. The health and safety of its crew remain the absolute priority,” said Air France-KLM.

    We’ve heard whispers of employee discontent before. But expect to see more to forcefully object.

    * * *

    National health officials in Beijing announced their biggest one-day jump in virus deaths and hundreds of new cases early Thursday morning (nearly 8,000 have been sickened, another 12,000 cases are suspected, and roughly 170 have died), but since then, things have been quiet.

    If the recent past is any guide, this would suggest another dump of new cases and deaths is in the offing.

    Three new cases were confirmed in Vietnam overnight. But in terms of news flow, most of the drama during the early hours of Thursday centered around Italy and Russia.

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    A map of cases hasn’t yet reflected the suspected cases in Italy.

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    With the WHO set to reconvene its emergency committee in Geneva on Thursday for the third time in a week, experts are calling on the supra-national organization to label the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern,” or PHEIC – the official designation of a global pandemic.

    The 16 independent experts on the WHO’s emergency committee will advise Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the decision and give recommendations for managing the outbreak. Earlier this week, Tedros met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing earlier in the week to discuss the situation. Twice last week, the WHO decided to hold off on declaring a public health emergency, saying it was “too soon,” according to the SCMP.

    Hitoshi Oshitani, a former regional adviser on communicable disease surveillance and response at the WHO’s Western Pacific office, told the SCMP that there is an “imminent risk” of a dangerous global outbreak.

    “I think the WHO should have declared a public health emergency of international concern earlier. They are supposed to declare PHEIC based on a risk of international spread. There was already significant risk of international spread one week ago,” Oshitani said.

    Oshitani added that controlling this new coronavirus is proving more difficult than suppressing the 2003 SARS outbreak, largely because the virus can spread via individuals who are infected, but exhibit few – or no – symptoms.

    “For Sars, patients were infectious only when they developed very severe illness. But for this virus, patients are likely to be infectious even during the incubation period. If so, rapid isolation is not enough to contain the virus,” he said.

    SARS infected 8,000 people and killed 813 worldwide. The coronavirus outbreak has already surpassed SARS in terms of the number of cases in China. Globally, the virus has already effectively tied SARS for the number of confirmed cases, though if skeptical epidemiologists are correct, the true number of cases has already far surpassed the total for SARs.

    A number of evacuation missions have been completed, as the US and Japan have flown citizens trapped in Wuhan to safety. However, Japanese officials discovered that several citizens on the flight were infected with the virus, leading to a mass quarantine. UK officials said that citizens evacuated from Wuhan must agree to spend two weeks in quarantine after returning to the UK.

    About 6,000 passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship “Costa Smeralda,” owned by the Carnival Corporation, have been confined to the vessel on Thursday amid new fears that two Chinese passengers are suspected of having coronavirus, reported Reuters.

    Two Chinese tourists, traveling from Hong Hong and, originally, from Macau, have been placed in “isolation in separate rooms of the ship’s sanitary space,” said local media outlet, ANSA. 

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    The tourist arrived in Italy on Jan. 25 and boarded the vessel in the port of Savona in Italy. The two have come down with high fevers and breathing problems. 

    “The cabin of the Hong Kong couple on the ship has been isolated and they are closed there with the doctors. They told us that it is the woman who has a very high fever, while her husband is visiting him as a precaution. We arrived in the morning, returning from Palma de Mallorca. Of course, we are a bit worried. From the ship, apart from the doctors, no one goes down and no one goes up. Someone, who has only the flu, remained in the cabin. It is a vacation that risks ending like a nightmare, we hope to go down soon,” a passenger of the ship told ANSA. 

    The cruise ship has already moored in Marseilles in France and several Spanish ports this week before docking on Thursday at Civitavecchia, north of Rome.

    Reuters notes that all passengers have been confined to the ship as tests are underway to determine if the two Chinese tourists have coronavirus. 

    Carnival shares plunged as much as 6% in pre-market Thursday after the ANSA report.

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    Now the cruise company has a difficult decision to make: those infected with coronavirus may not exhibit symptoms of the virus during the 7-10 day incubation period but can infect others at high rates. This means if the Chinese tourist test positive, they might have infected the entire ship. That many cases will likely overwhelm Italy’s ability to rapidly respond.

    Here’s a live view of the cruise ship docked at Civitavecchia.

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    Russia’s newly appointed Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Thursday signed an order to close the country’s 2,600m mile border with the Far East to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Russia joins North Korea, becoming the second country to completely shutter its border with the world’s second-largest economy. Although Russia hasn’t provided details about the plan, Russia also border China, Japan and North Korea along the Far East.

    Mishustin has also asked Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova to inform the population on a daily basis about the current situation and preventive measures, according to the Russian press.

    Both Russia and the Czech Republic have decided to suspend the granting of visas to Chinese.

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    Meanwhile, villages and apartment complexes across China are “taking the fight against a deadly viral epidemic into their own hands,” according to AFP.

    Some areas are starting to look like something out of a sectarian conflict, complete with check points and makeshift barricades. Groups of locals have constructed makeshift barricades across access roads to keep potentially-infected strangers out.

    More holiday extensions have been reported across China as economists expect that most of the country’s economy will be shuttered well into February. Bloomberg reported that at least one Chinese city and several provinces have extended the Lunar New Year holiday beyond Feb. 2 in an effort to control the spread of the virus. Shanghai, the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia and provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu have suspended business until least Feb. 10. Hubei province said its holiday will continue until Valentine’s Day.

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    In one residential compound in Beijing, “a motley stack of shared bicycles have been haphazardly woven together and wired to a wooden ladder, blocking a side gate and forcing visitors to register with guards at the main entrance.”

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    With more than 50 million people still on lockdown, resentment against the ruling party has intensified, and more Chinese are speaking out on social media, according to the NYT: “We gave up our rights in exchange for protection,” the user wrote. “But what kind of protection is it? Where will our long-lasting political apathy lead us?” That post was shared more than 7,000 times.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 19:08

  • The Oil Industry's Radioactive Secret
    The Oil Industry’s Radioactive Secret

    Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

    “All oil-field workers are radiation workers.”

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    That quote comes from a blockbuster investigation by Justin Nobel writing in Rolling Stone, who has spent more than a year and a half researching and reporting on radioactivity in fracking waste.

    When a well is drilled, it produces a ton of brine, a salty substance that comes out of the ground. Shale wells can produce as much as ten times more brine than they do oil and gas. While hydrocarbons prove to be useful, the brine needs to be hauled somewhere for disposal. Often it is reinjected into disposal wells, or, in some cases it is sent to water treatment plants.

    The problem is that the brine can be radioactive. As Nobel writes in Rolling Stone, radioactive brine may be dramatically increasing the cancer risk for people who come in contact with it. The workers who handle the waste are most obviously at risk. But there are plenty of others. The brine is used for de-icing roads, so municipalities are essentially spreading radioactivity all over roads in various parts of the country.

    Old oilfield equipment is also repurposed. Rolling Stone spoke with a Louisiana inspector who saw a child sitting on a fence that was so radioactive that someone might receive a full year’s radiation dose in a single hour.

    The oil and gas industry dismisses the risk of radioactivity in the brine, which is naturally occurring, as not something that anybody should be worrying about. However, some of the experts that Nobel interviewed argue otherwise.

    First of all, the notion that just because something exists naturally in the world somehow makes it benign, is odd.

    “Arsenic is completely natural, but you probably wouldn’t let me put arsenic in your school lunch,” one nuclear-forensics scientist told Rolling Stone.

    Second, the industry is barley regulated, if at all, when it comes to handling radioactive substances. Officials at EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sounded perplexed when Nobel presented questions to them about the risk, each indicating that they were not responsible for regulating radioactivity in the oil and gas industry.

    Nobel profiled several people who have come in contact with brine and have suffered from an array of worrying health problems.

    “The workers are going to be the canaries,” Raina Rippel of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, told Rolling Stone.

    “The radioactivity issue is not something we have adequately unpacked. Our elected leaders and public-health officials don’t have the knowledge to convey we are safe.”

    This is not just an environmental story or a public health story, but it could also be a financial one. This is a whole aspect of the oil and gas industry that is mostly unregulated, underreported and largely unknown to the public. And it could yet turn into a massive liability for the industry if local, state or the federal government ever decided to get serious about it.

    The industry would be directly impacted if it had to pay for remediation somehow, or even if the standards on the disposal of toxic brine were tightened up. It could spell financial “disaster” for oil and gas drillers if the EPA began regulating brine as a hazardous waste, one legal scholar told Rolling Stone. Reckoning with the public health fallout from radiation is not something anybody seems willing to take on at the moment.

    But as Rolling Stone notes, public awareness of the problem itself could be a big problem for the industry. Oil and gas is already starting to see its “social license to operate” erode over climate change concerns. But the threat from climate change is diffuse in both space and time. The damage from fossil fuels is somewhat abstract in that sense.

    In contrast, the extraction of toxic radioactive waste from beneath the earth, and then spreading it on roads, for example, is arguably more menacing. Or, at the very least, the direct health threat to the public is easier to understand. Certain types of cancers are cropping up, and scientists say there is a lot of evidence that points in the direction of exposure to brine and proximity to other oil and gas processes.

    It seems as if the unconventional oil and gas industry has been around forever, as if it’s a fact of life that everyone has to live with. But the story of fracking is only a little over a decade old, and with each passing year the science surrounding the health risks grows more damning. Some presidential candidates are already calling for a ban on fracking. As the evidence of radioactivity becomes more known, the momentum for a crackdown on the industry could continue to grow.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 19:00

    Tags
    Environment

  • Men More Prone To Coronavirus Infection Than Women, Study Finds
    Men More Prone To Coronavirus Infection Than Women, Study Finds

    The medical journal ‘The Lancet’ has published several pieces of cutting-edge research about the coronavirus, including the first reports that infected individuals can become contagious before symptoms appear. Now, the journal is one-upping itself by publishing research showing that men are more susceptible to the coronavirus than women.

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    According to a study of 99 patients treated in Wuhan’s Jinyintan Hospital, along with researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, men – particularly those with preexisting health problems – are more prone to the virus. It confirmed a similar finding from an earlier study.

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    The study also warned – somewhat unnecessarily – that early identification and treatment of the pneumonia-like illness was important, since complications like organ failure are common. So far, the virus has killed more than 170 people, all of them in China.

    Of the patients studied by the researchers, more than half were infected in “clusters”, a sign of just how rapidly the virus can jump from an infected person to a non-infected person.

    “We observed a greater number of men than women in the 99 cases of 2019-nCoV infection. Mers-CoV and Sars-CoV have also been found to infect more males than females,” the study said, referring to Middle East respiratory syndrome and severe acute respiratory syndrome, which are also coronaviruses.

    “The reduced susceptibility of females to viral infections could be attributed to the protection from X chromosome and sex hormones, which play an important role in innate and adaptive immunity,” it said.

    Another alarming finding from the study: The mortality rate among the group studied was 11%. While that number is well above the 2%-3% official death toll, other epidemiologists have suggested that the true death toll for the virus is closer to 11%.

    The study also offered a glimpse of the virus’s more serious symptoms. One-third of the patients studied developed organ failure and other complications. Some 17% developed acute respiratory distress syndrome.

    Given the potential consequences should the virus be left untreated, seeking care early after symptoms emerge is crucial, the researchers said. Of course, that doesn’t bode well for people in Wuhan who have reportedly been turned away from overcrowded hospitals.

    As researchers debate the genesis of the virus, a separate study of nine coronavirus patients published in The Lancet on Wednesday found that only one of them had not been to the Hunan seafood market in Wuhan where the virus has been traced to the market’s illegal trade in wild animals. Many of them worked at the market.

    And with that, the ‘bat soup’ theory lives on.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 18:40

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • Chicago Police Are Using A Facial Recognition Program That Scans Billions Of Facebook Photos
    Chicago Police Are Using A Facial Recognition Program That Scans Billions Of Facebook Photos

    Authored by Emma Fiala via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    Manhattan-based Clearview AI is collecting data from unsuspecting social media users and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is using the controversial facial recognition tool to pinpoint the identity of unknown suspects, reads a report from the Chicago Sun-Times.

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    And according to a bombshell New York Times report, it is also being used by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

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    The software’s creator, Hoan Ton-That, maintains that it is purely “an after-the-fact research tool for law enforcement, not a surveillance system or a consumer application.” However, privacy advocates are saying this technology is so intrusive and ripe for abuse its use should be immediately halted. And earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed in federal court seeking to do just that.

    Chicago attorney Scott Drury who filed the lawsuit describes CPD’s signing of a two-year, $49,875 contract with Illinois tech firm CDW Government to use Clearview AI’s software as “frightening.”

    Conversely, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi explains:

    “Our obligation is to find those individuals that hurt other people and bring them to justice. And we want to be able to use every tool available to be able to perform that function, but we want to be able to do so responsibly.”

    According to police, some CPD officials at the Crime Prevention and Information Center used the software for two months on a trial basis prior to the signing of the contract in January.

    Despite the two month trial and the contract having been signed for approximately one month, CPD spokesman Howard Ludwig has declined to explain if and when Clearview AI has been used by the department thus far. Ludgwig explained:

    “Any information about ongoing investigations can only come from cases that have been thoroughly adjudicated. We haven’t had Clearview long enough for any of the cases to have gone through the courts.”

    Clearview AI’s database includes three billion photos taken from social media and network platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. The software searches its massive database for matches after users, including CPD, upload a photo of a suspect. The user is then provided with links for each image returned in the search that the company once told Green Bay police to “run wild” with in a marketing email.

    Ton-That told the Sun-Times, “Our software links to publicly available web pages, not any private data.” It is clear he doesn’t seem to think the software poses any problems. But just this month, New Jersey’s attorney general Gurbir Grewal “put a moratorium on Clearview AI’s chilling, unregulated facial recognition software.”

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    The ACLU of New Jersey responded to the move in a tweet last Friday:

    “Technology like this opens a Pandora’s Box for constant warrantless searches, pretty much of anyone with a photo and name online.

    It’s a tool that could make an already-unequal criminal justice system truly dystopian.

    New Jersey is right to slam this Pandora’s Box shut.”

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    The ACLU also rightfully pointed out that tendency of facial recognition technology to have a bias against “people of color, women, and non-binary people.” In fact, as TMU has previously reported, self-driving cars are less likely to detect black people and artificial intelligence (AI) is sending the wrong people to jail.

    Critics of Clearview AI and facial recognition software extend far beyond those involved in the lawsuit mentioned above and the ACLU of New Jersey. In what is the one of the biggest efforts to date in the battle against the use of facial recognition technologies, 40 organizations signed a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board calling for the banning of the U.S. government’s use of such technology “pending further review.” The letter notes that this technology could be exploited and used to “control minority populations and limit dissent.”

    However, as Fast Company points out, not everyone feels the same. In fact, some view actions like the letter mentioned above “an overreaction.”

    Jon Gacek, head of government, legal, and compliance for Veritone—a company that provides technology like Clearview AI for law enforcement in both Europe and the U.S.—says all the software does is use “technology to do what police already do, except far faster and at less cost.”

    Twitter responded to the bombshell NYT report by sending a letter to Clearview AI last week. In a follow-up report, the NYT explained:

    “Twitter sent a letter this week to the small start-up company, Clearview AI, demanding that it stop taking photos and any other data from the social media website “for any reason” and delete any data that it previously collected, a Twitter spokeswoman said. The cease-and-desist letter, sent on Tuesday, accused Clearview of violating Twitter’s policies.”

    While those concerned with privacy are typically focused on their photos and data being used by social media companies for profit, the situation with Clearview AI is an excellent reminder that what we post online generally can and will be used in ways we do not consent to despite our best efforts to keep up with Terms of Service updates and checking as many “opt-out” boxes as possible.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 18:20

    Tags
    Technology Internet

  • Carter Page Sues DNC Over Steele Dossier In "Opening Salvo"
    Carter Page Sues DNC Over Steele Dossier In “Opening Salvo”

    Carter Page is suing the DNC and the Perkins Coie law firm for their roles in funding the infamous Steele dossier, which was used as the foundation for controversial surveillance warrants used by the Obama administration to spy on him during and after the 2016 US election.

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    The former Trump campaign adviser filed a lawsuit Thursday in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division, which his attorneys described as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, according to Fox News.

    “Defendants developed a dossier replete with falsehoods about numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign—especially Dr. Page. Defendants then sought to tarnish the Trump campaign and its affiliates (including Dr. Page) by publicizing this false information,” reads the lawsuit, which adds “Even the DOJ and the FISC have recognized that the false information spread by Defendants led to invalid FISA warrants against Dr. Page.“

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    Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced in a December report that the FBI made repeated errors and misrepresentations to the FISA court in the agency’s ham-handed efforts to surveil Page and those in his orbit in 2016 and 2017.

    Horowitz confirmed that the FBI’s FISA applications to monitor Page heavily relied on the dossier and news reports rooted in Steele’s unverified research.

    Just last week, the FISC released a newly declassified summary of a Justice Department assessment revealing at least two of the FBI’s surveillance applications to monitor Page lacked probable cause. -Fox News

    “This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” said attorney John Pierce on Thursday, adding “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”

    “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high. … The rule of law will prevail.“

    Page first filed a defamation suit on his own against the parties in October 2018 in federal court in Oklahoma, but that suit was dismissed in January 2019 after the judge ruled the court lacked jurisdiction over the case because neither Page nor the DNC had strong enough ties to the state.

    Page is now represented by Pierce, the global managing partner of Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP. They filed in Illinois because they allege the relationship with the firm behind the dossier, Fusion GPS, was “orchestrated” through law firm Perkins Coie’s Chicago office. The suit also claims the DNC “has a historical pattern” of making Chicago its principal place of business. –Fox News

    Read the complaint below:


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 18:00

    Tags
    Law Crime
    Politics

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 30

Today’s News 30th January 2020

  • Snakes In Suits: Are Psychopaths Running The World?
    Snakes In Suits: Are Psychopaths Running The World?

    Authored by Alanna Kelter via Collective Evolution blog,

    Often when we think of the word psychopath, we think of deranged serial killers that are hopefully locked up in prison for life.

    While there are many psychopaths who kill for reasons that are unfathomable to most of us and who are indeed in prison, there is an even greater number roaming free in our society and often using their condition to their advantage in any way possible.

    In fact, it is very likely that you know some – they might even be your colleagues.

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    Most of us do not know or work with any serial killers, at least not that we are aware of. So, what exactly is a psychopath and how can we define them? The dictionary definition is as follows:

    “A person suffering from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.”

    As you can probably tell, a lot more than just serial killers will fit into this broad definition. In fact, according to Canadian psychologist Dr. Robert Hare, a world-renowned expert on psychopathy, an estimated 1% of the Earth’s population is psychopathic and around 25% of the population of male inmates at federal correctional facilities are psychopathic.

    Psychopathic Traits

    It is important to note that, in contrast with the popular image of the ‘deranged psycho,’ psychopaths tend to be very well composed, take good care of their appearance and are very charming (think of Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho). Because of this you may have a difficult time spotting them out, as they are masters of deception and are able to fake a lot of the qualities that define regular people. Some other psychopathic traits, according to Hare’s Psychopath

    • Glib and superficial charm

    • Grandiose estimation of self

    • Need for stimulation

    • Manipulative and cunning

    • Complete lack of remorse or guilt

    • Pathological lying

    • Have a parasitic lifestyle, often latching onto and taking from others

    • Have a history of early behavioral problems

    • Overly impulsive

    • Are very irresponsible

    • Unable to accept responsibility for actions

    • Unable to commit to long-term relationships

    • History of juvenile delinquency

    • Display criminal versatility

    • Experienced a “revocation of conditional release”

    • Lacks realistic long term goals

    • History of promiscuous sexual behavior

    • Have poor behavioral controls

    • Are callous and lack empathy

    • Have a “shallow affect” (psychopaths show a lack of emotion when an emotional reaction is appropriate.)

    You can actually rate yourself to find out if you are psychopath. On each criterion, the subject is ranked on a 3-point scale: (0 = item does not apply, 1 = item applies somewhat, 2 = item definitely applies). The scores are summed to create a rank of zero to 40. Anyone who scores 30 and above is most likely a psychopath. Hare has used this test and checklist to detect which inmates are psychopaths.

    Snakes In Suits

    What many of us don’t realize is that psychopaths actually thrive in the corporate world. Hare has actually co-authored a book with Dr. Paul Babiak on this topic entitled, Snakes In Suits: Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office. Psychopaths manipulate others to accrue power, sometimes pitting them against each other in an attempt to divide and conquer. They are often attracted to bigger, dynamic corporations with very little structure or supervision. They generally don’t work well in teams because they don’t like to share information or skills and it brings them joy to watch others fail. They are addicted to power, status and money. Sound familiar?

    Sadly, the corporate world is set up to favor psychopathic traits such as fearlessness, dominant behavior and immunity to stress. Because of this, psychopaths often find themselves in these types of positions, and then have an easier time climbing the corporate ladder and obtaining positions of great power. This is where they can do real damage to society.

    Are Psychopaths Running The World?

    Not only as corporate heads do psychopaths find success in our modern-day society, but also within our governments and political system — often as front-line politicians. This may come as a shock to you, but when you really look at some of the atrocities that are taking place on our planet, and if you’ve ever wondered how things that are so inhumane could actually be happening, well, therein lies your answer.

    When you consider the war, genocide, senseless murder of civilians, treatment of the indigenous cultures of the world, chemicals in our food, air and water supply, acts of “terrorism”, war crimes and so many other unjust and cruel actions which are often instigated by our political leaders, it becomes easy to see how psychopaths actually fit the requirements for these types of roles quite well. As mentioned before they are masters of deception, pathological liars and often quite charming.

    Many soldiers go to war and because they are conditioned to believe that they are fighting an enemy in the name of peace. They do as they are told and commit these heinous acts against other human beings. The reason why so many soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder is because it is not within human nature to murder other humans, and especially innocent civilians

    We already know how many politicians are crooked, but perhaps its time to start looking at them with the psychopath checklist in mind so that we can be better equipped to protect not only ourselves but our society from their malicious acts.

    But Can’t We Help Them?

    It is natural for anyone who is an empath or those involved in spiritual work to have compassion for these individuals and feel compelled to help them overcome their psychopathic behavior. However, most research has pointed towards the understanding that psychopaths are born, not made and therefore cannot be cured. This is one of the main differences that separates sociopaths from psychopaths. Another is that sociopaths have a conscience, albeit a weak one, and will often justify something they know to be wrong. By contrast, psychopaths will believe that their actions are justified and feel no remorse for any harm done. Sociopaths are made, and have a higher likelihood of overcoming their condition. However, many of those with sociopathic behavior will find themselves in similar corporate positions.

    Hare’s research discovered that by attempting to heal or help a psychopath, you might actually be strengthening their cunning abilities, as they will find a way to manipulate you into believing that they are remorseful and understand how their actions were wrong.

    The best we can do is learn to recognize the traits of psychopaths and be sure to stay clear of their actions and behaviors to protect ourselves from the wake of their inevitable destruction.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/30/2020 – 00:05

  • After Slashing Bonuses, Deutsche Bank Delays Promised Pay Raises
    After Slashing Bonuses, Deutsche Bank Delays Promised Pay Raises

    Look on the bright side: At least you still have a job.

    After an almost unrelentingly demoralizing 2019, Deutsche Bank’s CEO is asking his bankers to make one last sacrifice for the sake of Sewing’s grand turnaround vision to keep this melting icecube intact just a little while longer.

    What’s he doing, exactly? Well, waiting few extra months for pay raises promised last year.

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    But hopefully employees don’t read too much into the delay: because of the pay raises taking effect on Jan. 1, bankers will need to wait until April Fool’s Day instead, according to Reuters and the New York Post.

    “After thorough discussions, we on the Management Board have taken the decision that, from 2020, any fixed pay adjustments in connection with the annual review or promotion process will be effective April 1 (not retroactively effective as of January 1).”

    Unsurprisingly, Sewing blamed the many scandals and penalties that have plagued Deutsche Bank, saying they’ve hastened the need for dramatic cost cuts. For context: The bank has paid out more than $20 billion in fines over the last decade.

    “We carefully assessed how this decision would impact our employees and benchmarked ourselves against peers,” Sewing said in a memo obtained by the New York Post.

    Sewing stressed that for the bank to become more competitive and avoid even more painful cutbacks, it must be run in a “disciplined manner”. Perhaps he should tell that to his predecessors who allowed the global headcount at the German giant to swell to nearly 90,000.

    “For the bank to be competitive and meet its goals for sustainable returns to shareholders it is vital that we further manage costs in a disciplined manner,” Sewing wrote. “This also relates to compensation.”

    Deutsche Bank isn’t the only European bank embracing “cost cuts” in its investment-banking unit (though DB bankers will also have to do more with less this year), and Sewing assures his staff that DB’s efforts have been “benchmarked against peers”.

    “We carefully assessed how this decision would impact our employees and benchmarked ourselves against peers,” Sewing added.

    Anybody complaining about the delay should take a second to think about what they have to be thankful for: At least they still have jobs, and will continue to be paid.

    “We will continue to compensate employees for their qualifications, experience and skills, commensurate with the requirements, size and scope of their role,” Deutsche Bank said.

    Many of their now-former colleagues aren’t so lucky.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 23:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Gun Control Folly In D.C.
    Gun Control Folly In D.C.

    Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that the homicide rate in Washington, D.C., in 2019 was higher than it was in 2018. There were 166 people killed in 2019, compared to 160 in 2018. In fact, the 2019 D.C. homicide rate is the highest number since 2008.

    But isn’t that impossible? After all, our nation’s capital has one of the strictest gun-control laws in the United States.

    The Post points out, “D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham has identified illegal firearms as a major factor fueling homicides.”

    But how is that possible? Given that the city has such strict gun-control laws, how is it possible that people are still being killed by guns?

    The answer is very simple. People who are willing to murder people don’t give a hoot about gun-control laws. Why should they? If they get caught, prosecuted, and convicted of murder, they are going to have to serve a very long jail term, maybe even life in prison. They know that. What difference does it make if a judge adds another 5 years for violating some gun-control law?

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    Clockwise starting at topleft: Glock G22, Glock G21, Kimber Custom Raptor, Dan Wesson Commander, Smith & Wesson Air Weight .357, Ruger Blackhawk .357, Ruger SP101, Sig Sauer P220 Combat.

    That’s what many in the gun-control crowd have never been able to process. They just naively assume that if possession of guns is made illegal, everyone will comply with the law.

    In making that assumption, the gun-control crowd, of course, is right. Most people will comply with the law. They don’t want to take the chance of being convicted of a felony. The problem, however, is that those are the people who oftentimes are the victims of violent crime. Thus, what a gun-control law does is disarm those people, thereby preventing them from defending themselves against people who don’t give a hoot for gun-control laws.

    The Post adds another dimension to the gun-control equation. It writes: “We also hope that Virginia — a major source of the illegal firearms that flood the District — reimposes a law to limit purchases of handguns to one a month.”

    So, you see, it’s not enough to impose strict gun control in D.C. It then becomes necessary to impose strict gun control in Virginia. Once that is accomplished, however, the guns will begin flooding in from Maryland,  which means even stricter gun control there. And let’s not forget the likelihood that smugglers from North Carolina, seeing the soaring prices of black-market guns in D.C., will begin flooding guns into D.C. by boats traveling up the Potomac. They’re going to need strict gun control in North Carolina too to ensure that gun control in D.C. works.

    In other words, to order to make D.C. a gun-free society, which is what the gun-control crowd really wants to accomplish, a strict gun-control regime will ultimately be needed all across the country. That means disarming law-abiding people in every state, thereby preventing them from defending themselves against the violent people who don’t care whether they violate gun-control laws.

    Let’s assume the gun-control crowd got its wish and that the only people who have guns are the Pentagon, the military establishment, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the TSA, the DEA, ICE, and other federal officials.

    The question then arises: Who protects the citizenry from those people? What if a national “emergency” or “crisis” involving “national security” occurs and those federal people begin rounding up American families who officials think pose a threat to “national security” and placing them in Abu Ghraib prison camps all across the nation? At that point, many American citizens will wish they still had their guns.

    But one thing is certain: Once people surrender their guns to the government, they will never make the mistake a second time because they simply will not have the opportunity to make the mistake a second time. That’s because once people give up their guns to their government, there is no possibility that the government will let them ever have their guns back.

    The real problem in America is violence, not guns. Enacting a one-per-month purchase of a handgun in Virginia, as the Post recommends, is like putting a Band-Aid on a massive hemorrhaging wound.

    There are two major ways to drastically reduce violence in America:

    (1) Legalize drugs, all of them. That would immediately put out of business all drug cartels and drug gangs. It would also drastically reduce the price of drugs, thereby reducing robberies, muggings, and thefts to get the money to pay the exorbitant black-market prices for drugs; and

    (2) Bring all the troops home from the Middle East and Afghanistan (and everywhere else), where they have been killing and injuring people and wreaking massive destructive violence on a constant level for decades. It is a virtual certainty that this culture of violence has seeped into American society, especially with what appear to be copycat killings that target people for what appears to be no rational reason.

    Let’s legalize drugs and end the Pentagon-CIA culture of violence overseas. Violence would plummet here at home, which would thereby eliminate one of the principal excuses for gun control here in the United States.

    The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental, God-given right, one that exists independently of the Second Amendment and the Constitution itself.

    It is also a key to a safer, more secure society.

    Gun control leads to higher homicides and to the possibility of federal tyranny. Too bad people in Washington, D.C., haven’t figured that out.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 23:25

  • San Francisco Poop Patrol Boss Arrested On Felony Fraud Charges Involving 'Multiple Schemes': FBI
    San Francisco Poop Patrol Boss Arrested On Felony Fraud Charges Involving ‘Multiple Schemes’: FBI

    San Francisco’s Director of Public Works was arrested on Monday by the FBI over a series of suspected pay-to-play schemes, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

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    Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru has been placed on leave following his arrest Monday by the FBI. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

    Mohammed Nuru, 57, was charged alongside San Francisco businessman Nick Bovis are alleged to have engaged in “corruption, bribery, and side deals by one of San Francisco’s highest-ranking public employees. San Francisco has been betrayed as alleged in the complaint,” according to a 75-page complaint unsealed this week.

    “The complaint alleges corruption pouring into San Francisco from around the world,” said US Attorney for the Northern District of California, David Anderson, who added that the complaint alleges “corruption, bribery and side deals from one of San Francisco’s highest-ranking public employees.”

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    Above: David Anderson, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, on Tuesday announced charges against Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru in a public corruption probe.

    Of note, the Public Works department oversees San Francisco’s ‘poop patrol,’ which pays crews making six-figure salaries to clean up after the city’s notorious homeless population.

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

    Nuru faces 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts – including an additional five years because he lied to the FBI about not keeping quiet about the investigation as originally agreed upon when he was arrested January 21st.

    The alleged actions took place in 2018 and 2019 and were documented during a long-running and broad investigation involving undercover agents, informants, and extensive wire-taps. Other figures Bovis or Nuru interacted with are described obliquely in the complaint. Anderson said he’s certain individuals will recognize themselves and encouraged them to come forward.

    “They have an opportunity to do the right thing — for San Francisco and all of us,” he said. “If they are inclined to do the right thing, they should … run to the FBI offices and disclose what they know. Or we’ll do it the other way.”

    Bovis, Nuru’s partner in several of “five schemes” outlined today, is facing 20 years in prison. Both are free on $2 million bonds and will next appear in court on Feb. 6.

    Anderson and FBI special agent in charge Jack Bennett outlined “five schemes.” The charges stem from the first and the four others are “charged to show state of mind.”

    They are: 1. The Airport Scheme; 2. The Multimillion-Dollar Mixed-Use Development Scheme; 3. The Transbay Transit Center Scheme; 4. The Bathroom Trailer and Homeless Shelter Scheme; 5. The Vacation Home Scheme. –Mission Local

    (Read about the schemes in detail here)

    It is unknown how this might affect the poop patrol.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 23:05

    Tags
    Law Crime

  • The Steele Trump-Russia Dossier Was "Completely Fabricated", Leading British Spy Expert
    The Steele Trump-Russia Dossier Was “Completely Fabricated”, Leading British Spy Expert

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    In some not so surprising news, a spy expert has come out saying what most of us already knew: the Steele dossier was completely “fabricated.”  Nigel West, one of Britain’s leading experts on espionage, was hired to examine the dossier written by his friend Christopher Steele. He concluded it was all manufactured falsehoods.

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    West, hired to examine the dossier back in 2017, quickly concluded that “there is… a strong possibility that all Steele’s material has been fabricated,” according to the Sunday Times.

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    Steele’s scandalous document, which claimed extensive ties between the then-US President-elect Donald Trump and the Kremlin, was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017 and quickly became the cornerstone of “Russiagate.” Media talking heads insisted that much of it had been corroborated. In fact, nothing was. –RT

    It took West a long time to come out with the information that the dossier was an utter fabrication.  It isn’t clear why he waited so long to reveal what most already knew anyway. Even the FBI director at the time, James Comey, described the dossier as“salacious and unverified” in testimony to Congress. But the fact that this dossier was “unverified” did not stop Comey from signing an application for a FISA warrant that the Bureau used to spy on the Trump campaign via one of its advisers, Carter Page.

    Steele himself was paid purely above-board, of course: by Fusion GPS, which was a client of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, at the direction of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

    West told RT that he was surprised Steele made such obvious errors in the dossier.  Some of the most glaring mistakes were those such as treating one particular source as an expert in three entirely different fields or making up the existence of the Russian consulate in Miami, Florida. The source in question starts out as a middle-manager at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, but is later described as an expert on cyber warfare, and later yet as an expert on money-laundering by Russian immigrants in the US, West explained.

    “On the face of it, it looked inherently improbable that this single source was as proclaimed.”

     


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 22:45

    Tags
    Politics

  • Coronavirus Could Hinder Beijing's Ability To Fulfill Phase One Trade Deal
    Coronavirus Could Hinder Beijing’s Ability To Fulfill Phase One Trade Deal

    China’s next dilemma will be fulfilling the phase one trade deal, which states they must buy $200 billion in additional products from the U.S. over two years on top of pre-trade war levels, reported the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

    The outbreak of the deadly virus has dramatically slowed China’s economy, with nearly 57 million people in 15 cities on lockdown for the next several weeks. Factories and transportation networks across much of the country are shut down, which means goods across domestic and international supply chains are not free-flowing in the country. 

    Cases of the deadly virus continue to exponentially rise, as government numbers on Tuesday night show more than 6,000 infected and 132 confirmed deaths. Comparing the deadly virus with the 2003 SARS outbreak – it’s important to note that coronavirus has already surpassed the number of infected by SARS in a few weeks, compared to the nine-month ordeal almost two decades ago. 

    Traders who spoke with SCMP had their doubts that China could hit hard targets of an additional $32 billion agriculture and $52 billion energy pledge over the next two years, mostly because the demand for the goods has collapsed. Also, countries like Brazil and Argentina have eroded U.S. market share in China over the last year with cheaper products. 

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    “There are some cities and villages essentially in lockdown, and this will completely hamper the movements of not only people, but also agricultural goods. So hogs that are supposed to be going to the slaughterhouse, will just not be transported,” said Andrei Agapi, associate pricing director for agriculture at S&P Global Platts in Singapore.

    Large swaths of the country’s industrial complex have been shut down, expected to last for the next several weeks. Currently, there’s no cure, and the spread of the virus is becoming uncontrollable, this could lead to extended shutdowns. 

    We noted Monday, Foxconn has a large manufacturing plant making Apple’s iPhones in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus outbreak, along with other facilities nearby, are currently closed until February 10. 

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    Besides major industrial hubs closed, critical transportation networks across China remain closed, which has impeded the ability of goods to move freely across the country.

    “The viral outbreak definitely throws a wrench into those [purchasing] plans, not just in terms of logistics – as major ports and transport links are closed or disrupted – but also in [terms of] policymaker attention,” said Nick Marro, global trade lead at The Economist Intelligence Unit in Hong Kong.

    Marro said the country is occupied with “mobilizing most of its resources to handle the outbreak, which is now the top item on the policy agenda. The trade war with the U.S. inevitably has to come second.“

    Agapi said private buyers who want to hedge their import purchases in the futures market might not be able to do so until February 3, when markets open. 

    “Anybody that wants to buy soybeans will not be able to hedge their crush margins on the futures exchange, and that will be an additional reason why people will just hold off on their buying,” Agapi said. “Some people are also not going to be able to come to work depending on the restrictions on travel. So in practical terms, I think that is going to lower the buying base.“

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    Carlos Casanova, an Asia-Pacific economist at Coface, said the impact of the economy coming to a halt will be felt on the largest companies with “supply chain exposures to Wuhan and other cities that are locked down. As no merchandise will be leaving soon, we anticipate some degree of disruption and payment delays.”

    Renaud Anjoran, CEO of China-focused trade and manufacturing advisory firm Sofeast, said travel bans in the country could lead to a more pronounced industrial slump, where factories could be idled for an extended period that would create further problems with the ability of some companies to purchase U.S. goods.

    Coronavirus is China’s new excuse for why they couldn’t meet hard targets in phase one trade deal.  


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 22:25

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • NYC Prof Compares Trump's Actions To "Murder Conspiracy"
    NYC Prof Compares Trump’s Actions To “Murder Conspiracy”

    Authored by Jon Street via CampusReform.org,

    New York City professor suggested on national television that President Donald Trump has engaged in a “murder conspiracy” during his ongoing senate impeachment trial. 

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    Maya Wiley, professor at the New School in New York City, made the comment Thursday during an appearance on MSNBC.

    “[W]hen you look at the obstruction, part of what House impeachment manager Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) is saying is, this is suicide for congressional oversight if we do not take action on a president who by the way just yesterday in Davos kind of rejoiced at the fact that they had all the evidence and not Congress…” Wiley said.

    The professor appears to be referencing comments in which Trump said during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland,

    “When we released that conversation all hell broke out with the Democrats. Because they said, ‘Wait a minute, this is much different than what [Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)] told us.’ So, we’re doing very well. I got to watch enough. I thought our team did a very good job,” Trump said of the first hours of the Senate impeachment trial. 

    “But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material,” Trump added. 

    Wiley then compared the president’s actions to that of a “murder conspiracy.”

    “But it’s also a murder conspiracy and the victim here is the Constitution,” Wiley said.

    WATCH:


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 22:05

    Tags
    Politics
    Law Crime

  • Coronavirus Attention "Way Overblown", Dr. Ron Paul Warns Real Danger Is Fed "Doesn't Have Control"
    Coronavirus Attention “Way Overblown”, Dr. Ron Paul Warns Real Danger Is Fed “Doesn’t Have Control”

    Dr. Ron Paul appeared Wednesday on the Quoth the Raven Podcast to speak with host Chris Irons about the coronavirus, Fed policy and gold prices heading into the election. 

    To start, Dr. Paul claimed that he thought fears about the virus were overblown. He said the virus is being reported on “way out of proportion with the amount of attention people should be giving it.”

    “The danger is way overblown. There’s no way what I’m saying is perfectly clear, I’m just going by my best and what’s happened in the past,” he said.

    When asked about the origins of the virus and whether he thought it could have been human-made, he said:

    “About whether or not it came from a laboratory or was produced deliberately, I just don’t think so.”

    “It’s all a gimmick, probably to try and sell more vaccines,” Dr. Paul commented when asked about whether or not he believed China’s data about the virus.

    Dr. Paul said he didn’t believe just as he doesn’t believe the U.S. when it came to China’s macroeconomic data. From there, Dr. Paul talked about the addiction to money printing the Fed currently has. 

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    “It’s the middle class that suffers” when the Fed destroys the money, Dr. Paul said. And when asked about whether or not its possible to even gauge risk anymore, given the amount of money printing that has taken place in the U.S., he replied that he didn’t think it was possible.  

    When speaking about the Trump administration’s policy of continuing to print money, Dr. Paul said there are “short-term benefits” but that ultimately, “the Fed doesn’t have control” of what happens in the long term.

    “They don’t have control and it just drives them nuts,” Dr. Paul says.

    “The markets are more powerful.”

    When asked about what he thought the price of gold would do heading into the November election, Dr. Paul commented: “The gold price is going up. Spending is excessive and it’s going to get worse. And it will be monetized.”

    “There’s always an excuse for gold to jump $100,” Dr. Paul concluded.

    When asked about the country’s consistent position of being at war in the middle east, Dr. Paul said it “makes him sick” when congresspeople use the constitution and freedom as an excuse to go to war.

    Finally, on the topic of the impeachment, Dr. Paul said:

    “They’re trying to impeach a President out of clear blue hatred…”

    You can listen to the full interview here:


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 21:45

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • 5 Reasons Why Big Oil Is Here To Stay
    5 Reasons Why Big Oil Is Here To Stay

    Authored by David Messler via OilPrice.com,

    The investment case for oil companies has been under attack recently. Climate change activists know that the dividends paid by the largest of these companies are among the most lucrative and stable over time, of any payers in the marketplace today. Further, they know these attacks will receive wide coverage precisely because of the criticality of the dividend stability to these companies stock price. It’s a two-fer for these folks. The only thing is…it isn’t true.

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    Dividends are the principle reason to own the shares of the major oil companies. The dividend payouts these days are yielding 4-7 percent, thanks to the depressed equity valuations of the oil majors. As you will note, this is well above most other options, like U.S. 10-year treasury notes as an example. Any threat to the dividend will absolutely bring a “dog diving under the bed in a thunderstorm” response from the typical investor. They will push the sell button lickety-split. And, of course, that’s just the response hoped for. Smart investors in these companies will pause just a moment for a second opinion. Perhaps one with some facts behind it, like you will read in this article.

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    “Sustainable” forms of energy are all the rage these days. You can’t watch a money show without hearing from the bloviator de jour about how “Green Energy” will replace traditional hydrocarbon sources in about ten-years or so. Among these worthies are the CEOs of major institutional holders, like Blackrock or Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund and other large banking and fund management companies. These leaders will freely admit they are moving toward divestiture due to the political narratives regarding climate change, stating it as a fact. The truth is they have no rational basis, but are rather yielding to the out-spoken minority “stake-holders,” who are demanding action on their part to divest “dirty energy sources.”

    As noted above in this article, we will take a closer look at the investbility of some of the biggest dividend payers on the planet. In doing this we will look past the splashy headlines that the CEO’s of these companies garner in watering-holes like Davos. Get ready for some real analysis, and prepare to sleep well at night knowing your retirement portfolio will be there when you need it.

    Climate change propaganda and misinformation

    The stimulus for this article was an article I chanced on by a climate change crisis group called the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, or IEEFA.

    A little research finds this is an organization that takes its mission as:

    “The Institute’s mission is to accelerate the transition to a diverse, sustainable and profitable energy economy.”

    Hmmm, what the heck are they talking about, you may wonder? One thing is for sure they have an agenda against the petroleum industry, making their conclusions suspicious to this reader. Now, let’s understand information can be completely accurate and still be misleading. 

    I haven’t gone back and fact-checked any of the information linked from this IEEFA article. Instead, I did my own investigation using company documents to see if I could justify my faith in the companies whose viability was being questioned. My results will be revealed in the next section of this article.

    Like most investigations that start with an agenda, the IEEFA article contains a grain of truth. This “grain” helps to anchor the disinformation that follows. To wit: many oil companies have outspent cash flows maintaining dividends over the time period measured.

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    Source

    IEEFA course provides no context here, just raw data. This can be misleading. In the discussion that follows, we will provide some context to help evaluate the concerns that we really have.

    What is the trend for the future? Are our investments safe, as safe as any stock investment can be, and are the dividends many of us rely upon to maintain our retired standard of living, likely to continue?

    That’s what I want to know, and I expect if you are reading this article, you do as well.

    Reasons why super major stocks will remain investible

    Let me offer the following points that should give you more confidence in the ability of these companies to continue earning your trust and your capital on into the future.

    1. Dividend Payout Patios (Net income/dividend)

    Ratios below 1:1 are considered “safe,” classically, but safe is a relative term. Over the past five years all of these companies with the exception of Total (NYSE:TOT) bonds sales have been the way they covered the dividend. Currently, they are in the range of or slightly above historical sub 1:1 levels.

    The context lacking in the IEEFA article, denoted by the hump in the middle of the chart above, represents the full impact of the “lower for longer” oil price. The impact of these lower price realizations, and the fact that these companies were also slow to whittle down their capex budgets, meant that the dividend was being supported by borrowing. 

    So what is the truth, if that IEEFA article is so offbase? What are these companies telling us about coverage projections going forward? Let’s look at a few cash flow projections from this cohort.

    • Based on a Brent price of $60, Shell, (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) projects free cash flows to rise from around $28 bn in 2020 to about $35 bn by 2025. With current obligations of about $16 bn for dividends, that leaves an increasingly fat amount for stock repurchases. Dividend coverage should improve consistently over this time and shareholders should lose no sleep. The check will be in the mail.

    • ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) recently has struggled to maintain a sub-1:1 cash flow to dividend ratio as my chart above shows. Currently, it is well above that and the current 5.15 percent yield notes the markets dissatisfaction with that situation. That will change and soon. With the Liza field coming on line and with break-even costs in the $30/bbl range, as much $5 bn of free cash could be generated from that project alone. XOM is on track to produce a million barrels a day from the Permian by 2025 with BE costs as low as $20/bbl. Bank America Merrill Lynch recently put out a bullish call on XOM with a price target based on increasing cash flow from these projects of $100/share.

    • Chevron (NYSE:CVX) is a dividend champion that has been increasing its dividend in recent years and lowering capex resulting in its current 0.53 coverage ratio. Market sages will tell you that the safest dividend is one that’s just been raised. CVX consistently ranks as one of the best-managed companies and has a project portfolio that will keep profits gushing in years to come. It grew cash flow by 50 percent YoY in 2018, and current management’s fiscal discipline should maintain that trend over the next few years. It currently covers capex and dividends with a $52 oil price, and has been buying back stock currently at a clip of $4 bn per annum.

    This has turned into a long article so I will skip the same type of analysis for (NYSE:BP) and (NYSE:TOT) in terms of project portfolios and capex restraint. All of these companies have redesigned their upstream projects to be cash flow positive with oil prices much lower than they are now. In this core group of Super Major energy companies, investors should sleep well at night.

    2. Stock buybacks.

    These companies are all buying back billions of dollars of their common stock every year. This decreases the total dividend payout, and makes the dividend safer for each remaining share of stock. In the past year, Shell has bought back about $12 bn worth of its stock, on a 2018 commitment of $25 bn by 2020. Shell recently announced that weaker than expected oil prices might drag this out a bit. That knocked the stock price down a bit, which I saw as a buying opportunity.

    Shell will buy another ~$3 bn in Q-1 of 2020. Do investors care if this happens by the end of 2020 or takes a quarter or two more? They shouldn’t. On the plus side, oil prices might rise more than anticipated and share repurchases could be accelerated. As you may have noted things can change rapidly in the oil market.

    3. Debt reduction.

    This is a priority for all of these companies and is being funded through free cash and assets sales with the proceeds going to debt reduction. Portfolio “high grading” is underway. It’s not perfect and sometimes it one step back for every two steps forward. Picking on Shell once again, the official target for debt to capital is 25 percent. Moving toward that goal for most of 2018, the company has taken a stutter-step higher to the 28 percent range. Part of this was due to lease costs hitting the balance sheet in late 2018. There can be no doubt that lower than anticipated oil prices has slowed this process.

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    Source

    Shell management reminds us of this regularly during the analyst calls. What matters to us is that they consider it a matter of the utmost priority. Ben Van Beurden comments in response to an analyst’s question regarding the timing of stock buybacks and debt reduction:

    “So, very clearly, we are still completely intent on buying back $25 billion of shares and we are also completely committed to strengthening the balance sheet by bringing debt down.”

    4. Diversifying the product mix to include “Green Energy.”

    Green energy or sustainable energy sources is the path to the future, or so we are repeatedly told. It is only prudent for the big oil companies to seed research and startup companies in this area. So far, none of these efforts have reached the level where they are accounted for separately on the balance sheet however, with the notable exception of LNG. Whether it’s biodiesel in Brazil, or electrical charging stations in the UK, or wind farms in the Permian, or LNG, efforts are being put forth by them all. Whether any of these can turn a profit down the road remains to be seen. For now, it is enough that the exercise is underway, as it raises their ESG profile.

    5. Investing in new technologies.

    These companies all have and are developing more AI expertise with big data. The Shells and BPs of the world all generate huge amounts of data every day. Terabytes upon terabytes of it daily. Historically, the resources to manage this information efficiently just did not exist. Now it does these companies are moving rapidly to integrate and perhaps monetize this technology.

    “AI can help find those cost reductions by tackling a range of problems. Its deployment in upstream operations could yield collective savings in capital and operating expenditures of $100 billion to $1 trillion by 2025, according to a 2018 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Most companies declined to discuss their exact spending on AI.”

    As these resources are deployed in remote locations or refineries, costs will come down as the article quoted above notes.

    Risks

    Oil prices carry the key risk to dividend sustainability over the near and medium term. As we’ve seen in a plus-$50 environment they can all make money and cover their dividends.

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    Source

    West Texas Intermediate- WTI, has fluctuated wildly in price over the last 10 years. For the last four however, it has been above $50 except for a couple of very brief periods. I’m ok with economics built on $50 oil.

    Environmental and Social Governance-ESG, risk must now be built in to the risk profile in owning these stocks. It can be thought of as replacing the old exploration risk that modern technology has reduced dramatically. When I entered the oilfield 40+ years ago, dry holes- ones with no hydrocarbon shows, ran as high as 85 percent of the exploration wells drilled. Today that ratio has more than flipped with dry holes being a rarity. Just what is the extent of this risk?

    No one really knows for sure. That said, a measure of comfort can be taken in the broad ownership of legacy oil stocks. For example, have a look at the top ten institutional holders of ExxonMobil below.

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    Source

    Your takeaway

    These are the companies that hold the trillions of retirement dollars from 401Ks and Roth IRAs. They are invested in the big oil companies for yield, stability, and to an extent growth. I don’t mind keeping company with the tens of thousands institutional holders of XOM and the other companies we’ve been discussing.

    The key takeaways for you as an investor in the big oil company dividend payers is that they are all on track to deliver the cash flow that underpins the dividends they are committed to pay.

    As investors, there is no doubt we need to keep an eye on this ESG divestiture movement. For the short term it represents little threat to the value of our investments. It is worth noting however, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth fund has endorsed companies like Shell and BP expressly. In a recent Financial Times article Norway’s Finance Minister, Siv Jensen commented that:

    “Ms Jensen said the largest oil and gas majors were given a reprieve because Norway believed such groups were “in all likelihood” the ones that would make the main investments in renewable energy in the future.”

    You have a responsibility here as well. That is the task of vetting what you read and take stock in. Ask yourself as read if there is an under-lying agenda that is masked behind the seemingly objective and forthright information being presented?

    We’ve shown here that information presented this way can be completely factual and still be misleading. Potentially with portfolio damaging consequences if acted upon. Caveat emptor! Protect your wealth!


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 21:25

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Flashback: Schiff Says John Bolton Has "Lack Of Credibility" As Resurfaced Video Clips Ruin 11th Hour Hail Mary
    Flashback: Schiff Says John Bolton Has “Lack Of Credibility” As Resurfaced Video Clips Ruin 11th Hour Hail Mary

    Several resurfaced clips concerning former national security adviser John Bolton reveal that Democrats, in particular Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said his 11th hour impeachment messiah had a “lack of credibility,” and was prone to “conspiracy theories” – and that Bolton thought there was nothing untoward about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine.

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    “This is someone who’s likely to exaggerate the dangerous impulses of the president toward belligerence, his proclivity to act without thinking, and his love of conspiracy theories,” Schiff told MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow during a March 22, 2018 appearance (via Fox News) after Bolton was named national security adviser.

    “And I’ll, you know, just add one data point to what you were talking about earlier, John Bolton once suggested on Fox News that the Russian hack of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] was a false flag operation that had been conducted by the Obama administration,” Schiff continued. “So, you add that kind of thinking to [former U.S. attorney] Joe diGenova and you have another big dose of unreality in the White House.”

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    And in another clip posted by Donald Trump Jr. from 2005, Schiff asks during the Bush administration “why we would want someone” like Bolton “with that lack of credibility.“

    Mr. Bolton has been AWOL – he’s been focused more on the next job than doing well at the last job – and particularly given the history, where we’ve had the politicization of intelligence over WMD. Why we would pick someone who the very same issue has been raised repeatedly – that is John Bolton’s politicization of the intelligence he got on Cuba and on the other issues. Why would we want someone with that lack of credibility, I can’t understand.

    As Fox News notes, “Then-Sen. Barack Obama, in 2005, echoed those arguments, calling Bolton “damaged goods” whose appointment as ambassador means “we will have less credibility and ironically be less equipped to reform the United Nations in the way that it needs to be reformed.”

    Obama separately had said that Bolton “bullies, marginalizes and undermines those who do not agree with him.” Other prominent Democrats agreed at the time.”

    Now, however, Schiff loves the guy – telling CNN on Monday that Bolton is “essential to the “search for truth.”

    “I think for the senators, and I’m just not talking about the four that have been so much the focus of attention, for every senator, Democrat and Republican, I don’t know how you can explain that you wanted a search for the truth in this trial and say you don’t want to hear from a witness who had a direct conversation about the central allegation in the articles of impeachment,” Schiff said on CNN’s “New Day.”

    Bolton himself had said in the past that he would be more than willing to lie if he felt it was in the nation’s interest.

    “If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it,” Bolton said in an interview with Fox Business in 2010. –Fox News

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    And on Wednesday, President Trump tweeted an August 2019 clip of Bolton in which he made no mention of any quid pro quo, and that battling “corruption” was a “high priority” for the White House. Bolton said that Trump’s communications with Ukraine’s new President, Volodomyr Zelensky, was “cordial.”

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    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 21:05

    Tags
    Politics

  • Thai Government Admits "Unable To Stop" Spread Of Coronavirus
    Thai Government Admits “Unable To Stop” Spread Of Coronavirus

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    At least one establishment government is finally admitting that the ruling class of the world is going to be unable to stop the spread of the coronavirus.  While globalists desperately attempt to craft a vaccine and save the day, other rulers think it could be too late.

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    According to the Daily Mail, Thailand’s government admits it’s “unable to stop” the spread of the coronavirus.  The virus has already proven deadly and could be spreading much more rapidly than mainstream media and establishment ruling classes are willing to admit. Health minister Anutin Charnvirakul said there are too many Chinese visitors to stop the virus from spreading.

    At least 22,000 people from Wuhan are believed to have visited Thailand in January alone.

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    With 14 confirmed cases of the disease, Thailand is the worst-affected nation outside of China. According to the Daily Mail‘s numbers, almost 4,600 people have caught the Wuhan coronavirus around the world so far, and 106 have died in China.

    “Our target is we will be able to detect all carriers entering Thailand and we will apply necessary measures as the situation develops,” said Charnvirakul. “Of course, we expect more people to get sick but we are able to identify all of them.”

    Countries all over the world are taking extraordinary steps to stop the coronavirus reaching their shores.

    Hong Kong today said it would stop trains and ferries, Russia and Mongolia have closed land borders with China and airport screening is in place globally.

    Thailand is screening all passengers from China at its airports and has planes on standby to retrieve an estimated 64 people who are stranded in the locked-down Hubei region. –Daily Mail

    The coronavirus has been sickening people since December 31, 2019. Unfortunately, there have also been what are called “super-spreading” events in which one person can infect multiple others before they recover, speeding up the rate of transmission.

    All you can do is arm yourself with the knowledge of how to beat a pandemic.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 20:45

  • Lindsey Graham Says Has Votes For Witnesses, "There's A Tsunami Of Evidence" Of Biden's Inappropriate Ukraine Links
    Lindsey Graham Says Has Votes For Witnesses, “There’s A Tsunami Of Evidence” Of Biden’s Inappropriate Ukraine Links

    Despite Democrats constant proclamations that Hunter Biden, who was – unarguably – paid millions to serve on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, is irrelevant to the impeachment charges against Trump and has no knowledge of the president’s conduct related to Ukraine, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham vehemently disagrees.

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    In a brief press conference this evening, Graham went ‘scroched earth’ blasting that:

    “…there’s not a scintilla of evidence that the Bidens’ connection to Ukraine was inappropriate, there’s a tsunami of evidence.”

    Graham added that while the House managers claimed this was “debunked,” the White House counsel “made a damning indictment” of what Hunter and Joe Biden allowed to happen and predicted that all 53 Republicans would vote to call Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden as a witness if Democrats get enough votes to subpoena any witnesses.

    “The only thing I know for sure, that if we call one witness, there’ll be 53 votes — not 51, not 52, but 53 — to call Hunter Biden because he’s incredibly relevant as to whether or not the president, Trump, had a reason to believe that corruption was afoot in the Ukraine,” said Graham.

    Finally the Senator warned that “if we’re gonna open this up to further enquiry, we’re going to go down the road of whether it was legitimate of the president do believe their was corruption and conflicts of interest on the Bidens’ part… and whether there is any credibility to the reports that the DNC met with Ukraine official in 2016.”

    Watch the full clip below:

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    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 20:26

    Tags
    Politics

  • Why America Needs A Trump Vs. Sanders Election
    Why America Needs A Trump Vs. Sanders Election

    Authored by Roger Simon via The Epoch Times,

    The Democratic Party presidential race these days appears to be tilting toward Sen. Bernie Sanders.

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    It could turn into a runaway if Bernie wins by solid margins in the rapidly approaching Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. His chances in the Feb. 22 Nevada Democratic caucuses, which are traditionally dominated by the unions, aren’t bad either.

    A lot of people are alarmed, not the least of whom is Hillary Clinton, who branded Bernie as “disliked” in a new documentary and is reported as having the “urge” to run herself. (When has she not?) More substantively, mainstream Democrats, even those who lean pretty far left, such as New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, are concerned they could be headed for “McGovern II”—in other words, a blowout.

    I am pleased, not just because of the potential for an electoral college Armageddon that may or may not take place, or even because such an election would quickly put the bogus impeachment trial in the rearview mirror, but because, for the first time in decades, we would have a true election of opposites.

    This wouldn’t be a so-called “uni-party” election resulting in minor differences in the tax code, as it usually does.

    Trump versus Sanders would be capitalism versus socialism!

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    And Sanders’s version of socialism is the real deal, and not socialism “lite,” amounting to a couple of instances of tweaked welfare legislation. Bernie is the man who chose to have his honeymoon in the Soviet Union and who still refuses to brand Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro a despot.

    Trump, of course, is a businessman-turned-president. There have been others, but, as never before, he is capitalism personified.

    It’s high time that something this serious, this contrasting, were put before the public. I say, bring it on.

    The battle would be epic. Sanders has remarkably devoted supporters who have been with him for two elections. His fundraising capabilities are legendary. He is the master of the grassroots, a leftwing rock star who overcame a coronary, seemingly in minutes. In a very real sense, Bernie will have deserved his nomination.

    The challenge to Trump wouldn’t be simple. Merely calling Sanders “Crazy Bernie” would not suffice. Indeed, as yesterday’s strategy, it could well backfire by seeming to trivialize important distinctions.

    Socialism is taken seriously by a large portion of America’s youth over several generations now. They have been taught that way from kindergarten through doctorate by an educational system that is largely socialistic in structure and ideology.

    The media has reinforced this viewpoint, as has the entertainment industry. Would Robert DeNiro, Rob Reiner, et al., be supporting Bernie over Donald, despite that being contrary to their class interest? Well, we know.

    Whose side would The New York Times and The Washington Post finally be on if it were Sanders versus Trump, not to mention the networks? They may have misgivings about Bernie, some of these outlets anyway, but their entrenched enmity for the president would undoubtedly prevail. They would “give socialism a shot.”

    Trump will have to counteract all this. He’ll have to explain to the public why the ”fairness” and “social justice” that’s seemingly so attractive in socialist rhetoric is misleading and that capitalism is a better way to uplift the lower and middle classes, and that societal wealth isn’t a zero-sum game.

    This won’t be easy for Donald – as a businessman, he’s a doer, not an educator – but he will have to learn how to do it, to slow down and perhaps be a bit didactic. He should explain, as Friederich Hayek did over a half-century ago, why socialism so often leads to totalitarianism.

    He owes that to all of us, especially our miseducated youth.

    Timing, however, will be on Trump’s side. This is a unique moment in history to resolve this eternal conflict, at least temporarily. Via capitalism, America has a boom economy, with salaries among the poor and middle class growing faster than for the upper classes. We are largely at peace and have been for a while.

    Trump would win this epic battle, and it will be better for the country in the long run.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 20:05

    Tags
    Politics

  • JPMorgan To Slash Hundreds Of Jobs Across Consumer Division 
    JPMorgan To Slash Hundreds Of Jobs Across Consumer Division 

    JPMorgan Chase & Co. is expected to announce several hundred layoffs in the coming weeks, according to a Bloomberg source. 

    Layoffs could be seen across the company’s consumer unit, which houses 50% of the bank’s revenue. The most affected subunits could include auto lending, home mortgages, and credit cards. 

    The cuts come at a time when JPM recorded some of the highest profits ever with $36.4 billion, due to a 56% increase in stock and bond trading in the fourth quarter, after it single-handedly triggered the repo crisis, forcing the Fed to launch ‘Not QE.’

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    The layoffs are expected to be announced on February 6th, the source said, adding that the cut will be about 1% of employees in the unit. 

    We noted Tuesday that JPM decided to keep annual bonuses flat across its investment bank segment for the 2019 year. 

    Banks around the world who are supposed to benefit from rising asset prices thanks to the central banks’ injecting unprecedented liquidity into markets – unveiled last year, the most significant round of job cuts in four years.

    Banks are slashing jobs at record speeds in response to a synchronized global slowdown and adoption of automation. 

    JPM has cut more than 7,000 jobs from the consumer unit in the four years through 2018, and it’s likely the cuts will continue. 

    Fifty banks in 2019 slashed upwards of 78,000 jobs, the most since 91,448 announced in 2015. 

    Morgan Stanley last month fired 2% of its workforce, or approximately 1,500 workers, due to slowdown fears. 

    Earlier this month, Barclays Plc slashed 100 senior staff at its investment bank unit. These cuts were primarily made in Europe and the U.S. 

    Goldman Sachs has had its fair share of layoffs and pays reduction in 2019. 


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 19:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • The Biggest Problem Facing The $2.7 Trillion Space Industry
    The Biggest Problem Facing The $2.7 Trillion Space Industry

    Authored by Michael Kern via OilPrice.com,

    The space race has begun. Private companies have exploded, soaring beyond multiple billion-dollar valuations seemingly overnight. Some of the hottest tech companies on the planet are already facing off for a piece of the pie. But there’s a looming crisis that, if not addressed, could bring the entire industry crashing down. Literally.

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    After over 60 years of space exploration, humankind has left a lot of trash behind. Already, hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris are in orbit. This is a terrifying reality, especially considering just a tiny 1mm object can have a catastrophic effect on a satellite or spacecraft.

    Holger Krag, head of the space debris office for the ESA, notes,

    “Even today we are losing satellites due to debris and it is only a matter of time before more start colliding. If we continue the way we do, 10 years from now some regions in space will be too risky to visit.”

    With companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic eyeing commercial space flight within the next few years, and even more looking to roll out an array of new private satellites, the space debris risk has never been greater. And if Krag is correct, the more crowded our orbit gets, the more dire the threat will become.

    Just last year, space companies raised over $5.8 billion dollars, Virgin Galactic launched its much-anticipated IPO, and pure-space plays spiked in trading interest. Space Angels CEO Chad Anderson sees this number going even higher in 2020, predicting that more companies are gearing up to hit the public markets. Anderson explained,

    “These companies are graduating and going from concept to scale,” Anderson said.

    “All the companies that are in space in the last 10 years are new. They’ve all entered a different point over that timeline and you need to see them graduate as, in venture capital investing, graduation rates are really important.”

    What Is Being Done About Space Debris?  

    Government organizations are currently taking the lead on the space cleanup initiative, with the U.S. Air Force, NASA and the European Space Agency dedicating sizable budgets to the effort. But some private organizations are looking to contribute, as well.

    Take Astroscale, for example. The Japanese firm is already in the construction stages of a space junk removal project, ELSA-d, that it hopes to launch by mid-2020.

    ELSA-d will consist of two separate spacecrafts. A 180-kilogram “servicer” spacecraft, and a 20-kilogram “client” spacecraft. The Servicer is equipped with proximity rendezvous technologies and a magnetic docking mechanism, while the Client has a ferromagnetic plate which enables it to be docked with. The Servicer will repeatedly release and dock the Client in a series of technical demonstrations proving the capability to find and dock with debris.

    Nobu Okada, the founder and chief executive of Japan-based company Astroscale, explains,

    “Cleaning up space is critical,” adding,

    “People know about global warming. People know about ocean clean-up. But they don’t know anything about the space debris issue.”

    Another private company looking to tackle the problem is D-Orbit. While the Italian startup hasn’t raised the funds that Astroscale has, it is still pushing forward in its ambitious mission to reduce space debris through new innovative technology. While Astroscale is dedicating much of its focus on a single project, D-Orbit is experimenting with a little bit of everything.

    D-Orbit’s flagship product is the D3, an “independent, smart motor optimized for decommissioning maneuvers.” The D3 is a preemptive end-of-life solution for satellite manufacturers which is attached to new satellites with the goal of being able to remove them from orbit quickly and safely when they have reached the end of their lifespan.

    The company is also actively cutting deals with other startups, including a Swiss startup called Astrocast that has raised about $4.2 million, including from Airbus, to deploy a constellation of 80 cube satellites for the Internet of Things, which could even compete with bigger, more expensive IOT networks like those operated by ORBCOMM.

    The Future Of Space Travel

    Take one look at any major investment website, and you’re sure to be bombarded with stories about the next big space company on the horizon. Though the billionaires of the bunch often get the most attention, none of their endeavors will be possible if the space debris crisis isn’t addressed.

    Matt Ocko, a partner at Data Collective, a San Francisco venture capital firm invested in Rocket Lab,  explains, “There needs to be pressure from the space community and governments to monitor these companies.”

    And that pressure is sure to come.

    Right now, space is still the wild west, but when government regulations start to take root, and the space junk problem becomes a full-blown crisis on the scale of global climate change, early innovators in the debris removal sector could explode.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 19:25

    Tags
    Environment
    Disaster Accident

  • Children With "Stealth" Coronavirus Infections Raise Fears Of 'Community Outbreaks'
    Children With “Stealth” Coronavirus Infections Raise Fears Of ‘Community Outbreaks’

    Over the past week, as China has shared data about the novel coronavirus with foreign partners who quickly mapped its genome as the world races to develop a vaccine for the virus which can develop into a potentially deadly case of pneumonia. But several experts, including the drug company Novartis, warned that developing a vaccine might take a year.

    In the meantime, epidemiologists are still struggling to understand the mysterious new virus (a virus that some fear was once studied as a potential biological weapon). So far, researchers have determined that the average incubation period for the virus is between five and six days. But as more cases are confirmed, researchers are finding a surprisingly large number of young people and children infected with the virus who display few or no symptoms – yet they’re still contagious.

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    Bloomberg shared the story of a 10-year-old boy from Wuhan whose entire family including his grandparents fell ill. Yet he displayed no symptoms, and wasn’t tested for the virus until both his parents insisted.

    The boy’s case was first made public by the Lancet medical journal, which received attention from the international press after publishing research on the outbreak last week. Only five members of the family, including the boy, were infected during a trip to Wuhan. They infected a sixth relative after returning to their unnamed hometown.

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    A professor of microbiology who spoke with Bloomberg said the case of the 10-year-old boy is extremely concerning because it suggests that many of those infected with the virus might be able to evade typical screening techniques. This could easily fuel a community outbreak if the original case isn’t quickly discovered.

    “You may have mild disease spreaders that would be feeding sort of a community outbreak and they don’t go to hospital because they don’t feel that bad,” said Ralph Baric, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied coronaviruses for decades and warned about their threat before the 2003 SARS outbreak.

    We already knew that patients who have contracted the virus have shown a wide range of symptoms, ranging from what presents as a mild cold, to something more akin to life-threatening walking pneumonia.

    It was “a rather unexpected finding,” Yuen and colleagues wrote. Yet it doesn’t come as a complete surprise to doctors in China trying to unravel the means and ways the new virus is spreading.

    “Children and infants’ symptoms are comparatively mild, while older people have more severe symptoms, as of our findings so far,” Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Wednesday.

    “One of the worrying things is the walking pneumonia and especially the younger kids in whom you don’t get as much of an immune reaction,” said John Nicholls, a clinical professor of pathology at the University of Hong Kong and part of the research team that isolated and characterized the SARS virus.

    As more cases of the new coronavirus appear around the world, doctors and medical research teams are rushing to try to develop a vaccine or treatments that could prevent its spread. But, as in the SARS outbreak, the most effective methods are thought to be in identifying and isolating patients soon after infection, and then tracing and isolating their potential contacts.

    Hesitant to completely close travel with China, most airports, airlines, railroads and some governments have instead opted for increasing screenings (though several airlines recently announced plans to cancel flights to China – at least for now) of travelers as their first and most important line of defense.

    But if thousands of children exhibit no symptoms, instead acting as silent carriers of the virus, this will undoubtedly complicate efforts to combat the virus’s spread, even with 56 million quarantined and transportation links between the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan temporarily severed.

    “Public health controlled SARS because SARS let it,” said Mark Denison, director of infectious diseases and and a pediatrics professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. That’s unlike influenza, where a larger portion of patients transmit the virus while they are silently incubating the infection.

    “So the question is, is this virus more SARS-like, or is it more flu-like?” Denison said. “The data suggests that it’s somewhere in the middle: that it is a more mild disease, but that there may be more transmission.”

    This could lead to a growing number of the most vulnerable patients – senior citizens and those with co-occurring health problems – contracting the virus across the world, as whole families catch the virus from asymptomatic children.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 19:05

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • Reporters Claim To Have Proof China Lying About Virus Death Toll As Total Cases Near 8,000; Another 12,000 Suspected
    Reporters Claim To Have Proof China Lying About Virus Death Toll As Total Cases Near 8,000; Another 12,000 Suspected

    Summary:

    • Death toll climbs to 170 from 132, with 7,711 cases confirmed in China and 7,814 worldwide, while the number of suspected cases has soared by 2,928 to 12,167 from 9,239 yesterday
    • Reporter claims local media has evidence Beijing lying about death toll
    • British Airways cancels flights to China
    • Trump says he spoke with Xi over the phone
    • Angry mobs spotted in Sichuan
    • CDC sending representatives to China
    • 3 Japanese aboard evac flight test positive for coronavirus

    * * *

    Update (1850ET):

    China’s NHC just released another up . China now admits to 7,771 cases across the country, Adding nearly 1,800 from 5,974 yesterday. The death toll has climbed to 170, and 170 patients have been cured. Some 31 cases were labeled “severe” and nearly 82,000 are under observation. What is perhaps most shocking is that the number of suspected cases soared by nearly 3,000 overnight from 9,239 to 12,167.

    In another major development, state media reports that the first case of coronavirus has been confirmed in Tibet. It was the only region in China with zero confirmed cases, though that streak is now over.

    In a disturbing development, three of the Japanese citizens rescued from Wuhan aboard Japan’s evac flight Wednesday have tested positive for cornavirus – so now the Japanese government is essentially importing the virus on the evacuation flight. We hope all those on the flight will be quarantined for a while given the virus’s reputation of spreading asymptomatically.

    Here’s a breakdown of all the revisions…

    • Confirmed cases +29% (from 5974 to 7711)
    • Suspected cases +32% (from: 9239 to 12167)
    • Severe cases +10% (from 1239 to 1370)
    • Death toll +29% (from 232 to 170

    …and here’s a  copy of the announcement from China’s National Health Office, translated into English via Google:

    At 04:00 on January 29, 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 1737 new confirmed cases (the first confirmed case in Tibet), 131 new severe cases, and 38 new deaths. (37 cases in Hubei and 1 in Sichuan), 21 new cases were cured and discharged, and 4148 suspected cases were added.

    As of 24:00 on January 29, the National Health and Health Commission has received a cumulative report of 7711 confirmed cases, 31 cases of severe cases, 170 death cases, and a total of 170 patients who have been cured and discharged. There were 124 cases with 12,167 suspected cases.

    At present, 88,693 close contacts have been tracked. Of the 2,364 people who were released from medical observation on the same day, a total of 81,947 people are receiving medical observation.

    A total of 25 confirmed cases were reported in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan: 10 in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 7 in the Macao Special Administrative Region, and 8 in Taiwan.

    And the updated chart…

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    In other news, as economists worry about the blowback to China’s already slowing economy, Peter Navarro said late Wednesday that the Trump administration will keep its tariffs in place no matter what happens with the outbreak.

    That’s probably why there have been so many rumors about the fraught relationship between Trump and Xi, and reports that Trump never actually spoke with the Chinese leader after claiming that they had discussed the outbreak.

    Once again, we’d like to point out that we’re ahead of this supposedly “alarmist” and “fearmongering” model (h/t @abuforlife1):

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    * * *

    Update (1720ET): The government in Hubei has announced another slate of cases and deaths.

    • CHINA’S HUBEI REPORTS 37 ADDITIONAL DEATHS FROM CORONAVIRUS
    • CHINA CORONAVIRUS DEATH TOLL RISES TO AT LEAST 169
    • CHINA’S HUBEI REPORTS 1,032 MORE CORONAVIRUS CASES FOR JAN. 29

    Meanwhile, 26,632 people are still undergoing medical observation, and another 4,334 cases are still being treated in the hospital. The CDC has just confirmed that it’s sending representatives to China to help suppress the outbreak.

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    Just look at that slope.

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    * * *

    Update (1650ET): Several epidemiologists have suggested that many of the deaths caused by the coronavirus that surfaced in Wuhan last month have probably ‘slipped through the cracks’ – either having been misdiagnosed or deliberately attributed to something else. Many suspect that Beijing is concealing the true extent of the outbreak. And now, one reporter claims that a Chinese media organization has found proof.

    The East Asia Correspondent for DW cited reports in a tweet claiming that health officials have been secretly moving some bodies directly from the hospital to the crematorium.

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    Meanwhile, research published in the Lancet, a medical journal, claimed the true mortality rate is closer to 11% (the official rate is 2%-3%).

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    If they’re lying about the death toll, then it’s likely they also know the true number of infections is much higher than the ‘official’ number. .

    * * *

    Update (1345ET): Russia is the latest country to partially restrict travel with China. Russian Newswire Interfax reports that Russia has ordered the closure of some of its rail links with its close geopolitical ally. Restrictions will begin as of Jan. 31.

    Though the number of cases outside China is climbing only slowly, the number is still climbing. There are now seven confirmed cases in Australia: four in NSW, two in Victoria and one in Queensland. In Europe, France has confirmed its fifth case.

    * * *

    Update (1150ET): During a press conference to commemorate the signing of his USMCA trade agreement, President Trump mentioned for the first time that he had spoken directly with President Xi about the coronavirus outbreak.

    “We’re very much involved with them right now on the virus that’s going around. We’re working very closely. I spoke with President Xi.”

    The president tweeted earlier this week that the US was in very close communication with China over the outbreak, and offered any assistance necessary.

    * * *

    Update (1130ET): The Global Times has confirmed another death, bringing the death toll to 133, and another ~30 cases have been confirmed on the mainland.

    * * *

    Update (0950ET): Germany’s Lufthansa and American Airlines are the latest airlines to suspend flights to China. American is cancelling flights from LAX to Shanghai and Beijing beginning Feb. 9 through late March. Other airlines that have cancelled some or all flights to China since earlier this morning include Air Canada, Lion Air, Seoul Air and a handful of others around the world.

    Asiana Airlines Jeju Air Jin Air Co Finnair Oyj Lion Air Jetstar Airways’ Singapore Ops and Air Macau have also cancelled flights.

    Representatives for Lufthansa are reportedly denying reports that it plans to suspend flights. It seems only time will tell. BBC reports that Britons who have been evacuated from Wuhan will be kept in quarantine for two weeks. Japan and the US have also evacuated citizens from Wuhan via chartered plane. Australia and New Zealand are also planning evacuations.

    Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, told the AP the UK’s steps are justified.

    “There’s always a balance between the draconian measures of public health and what people might want to do, and obviously it’s regrettable if people who turn out not to have the virus are quarantined unnecessarily,” he said.

    We’re still waiting on confirmation regarding whether the White House will ban flights into and out of China. And just like that, an already dismal outlook for the airline industry is getting worse.

    * * *

    Update (0910ET): You had to know it was coming.

    As more local governments on the mainland (including Beijing and Wuhan) mandate that facemasks be worn at all times, price gouging throughout Asia and even in certain parts of the US has become extremely common. Locals say Chinese everywhere are snapping up masks and mailing them to family in the mianland.

    Of course, stores around China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau can’t get their hands on more facemasks fast enough (Japan is reportedly preparing a shipment to assist the Chinese government). As a result, lines outside shops and factories are growing to a staggering degree.

    One line outside a factory in in Changhua City reportedly stretched for more than a kilometer (0.62 miles).

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    Lines were everywhere across China – Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau – as well as Australia, New Zealand and the US.

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    One video from Sichuan depicts an angry mob crowding the home of a family that allegedly ignored a case of the virus, allowing it to spread. The scene was reminiscent of something out of ‘Lord of the Flies’, a book that we imagine is probably banned in China.

    In Hong Kong, where SARS killed roughly 300 people back in 2003, public-transit workers are threatening to strike if the city government doesn’t widen its closures.

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    The New York Times Beijing bureau chief shared photos from across China and Hong Kong, depicting empty public transit stations and barren streets.

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    In other news, after the White House denied weighing a complete shutdown of all passenger air traffic between the US and China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has confirmed that a complete ban is, in fact, one of several options being considered.

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    Different governments have been throwing out estimates for the timeline of developing a usable vaccine for the virus. According to CNBC, the latest estimate comes from Swiss drug giant Novartis, which said finding a vaccine will take “over a year” – much longer than the timeline for developing a vaccine for SARS, 17 years ago. But clearly, the market isn’t worried, even as SocGen recommended to clients that they wait until the virus situation has “stabilized” before taking on more risk.

    Back in China, health officials in Guangdong confirmed that two Australians and one Pakistan student have contracted the virus – making them the first confirmed foreigners to contract the virus in China. Another report claims four other Pakistanis have been diagnosed in Wuhan.

    In the UK, a gathering of regional leaders from the UK and China that was set to take place in Birmingham in February has been cancelled, according to the SCMP. Following British Airways decision to close all flights to China, Germany’s Focus Magazine has reported that Lufthansa plans to follow suit.

    A few more cases have been confirmed, as the global total approaches 6,200.

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    More cases are gradually being announced as airlines and governments around the world tighten travel restrictions in response to the virus. The WHO is expected to hold a press conference shortly.

    * * *

    Update (1925ET): Though it still far outpaced all of its western rivals, China’s annual GDP growth rate decelerated to its slowest level in 29 years last year, a factor, economists said, of the destabilizing trade war with the US.

    Now, a senior economist with the Chinese government in Beijng is warning that annualized GDP growth for 2020 could dip below 5% if the virus isn’t contained. This is based on an assumption that the virus will peak before March.

    • CHINA GOVT ECONOMIST ESTIMATES THAT IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS ON CHINA’S ECONOMY COULD BE SIGNIFICANTLY BIGGER THAN THAT OF SARS OUTBREAK
    • CHINA GOVT ECONOMIST SAYS BEIJING LIKELY TO STEP UP POLICY SUPPORT FOR ECONOMY, WHICH COULD BOOST BUDGET DEFICIT TO OVER 3% OF GDP IN 2020
    • CHINA Q1 GROWTH MAY DIP BELOW 5% AS VIRUS SPREADS – GOVT ECONOMIST
    • CHINA GOVT ECONOMIST SAYS FORECAST BASED ON ASSUMPTION THAT VIRUS OUTBREAK WILL PEAK BY MID-FEBRUARY AND END BY END OF MARCH

    Remember: China’s econ data is notoriously unreliable. When they announce 7% growth, skeptics claim the reality is closer to 4%. A break below 5% could, in reality, be a break below 3%.

    Such an announcement is hardly a surprise…

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

    …but Beijing’s promise to “step up policy support for the economy” means China will embark on another round of massive fiscal stimulus (at a time when economists have been begging Germany to consider loosening its purse strings to revive a sluggish Europe).

    * * *

    As the Trump Administration denies plans to shut down all passenger air traffic to China, more airlines around the world are suspending routes, a sign that the coronavirus outbreak could do permanent damage to the industry.

    Just hours after the UK Foreign Office warned Britons against traveling to China, British Airways, Britain’s flag carrier, and its second-largest airline in the UK. British Airways operates direct flights from Heathrow to Beijing and Shanghai, but right now, passengers can’t book flights on those lines until Feb. 29. CNN called it “the most drastic action yet by a major airline” in response to the crisis. The decision comes after United Airlines said it would temporarily reduce the number of flights between the US and China.

    “We have suspended all flights to and from mainland China with immediate effect following advice from the Foreign Office against all but essential travel,” British Airways said in a statement Wednesday.

    This comes after United said Tuesday that it had seen a “significant decline in demand” and been forced it to suspend flights from Feb. 1 through Feb. 8 between its US hubs and Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai. In total, 24 round trips have been impacted between Hong Kong to San Francisco and Newark; Beijing to Dulles, O’Hare and Newark; and Shanghai to San Francisco, Newark and O’Hare.

    Some airlines have cancelled flights as far out as March.

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    American Airlines, Delta and United all extended change fee waivers through the end of February, while Hong Kong flagship carrier Cathay Pacific said it will reduce the capacity of flights to and from mainland China by half or more until the end of March.

    Finland’s Finnair is canceling three weekly flights between Helsinki and Beijing between Feb. 5 and March 29, and two weekly flights between Helsinki and Nanjing between Feb. 8 and March 29, because of the suspension of group travel by Chinese authorities. It will continue to operate flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

    There are now 5,974 cases in China, with 1,239 of whom are severely ill, according to state media on Wednesday. Initial theories, put forward by some infectious disease experts, that the mortality rate of the virus is much lower than reflected in press reports because thousands with mild cases are likely toughing it out in their homes. If anything, it looks like the virus is more lethal than we previously believed.

    And it’s certainly more infectious.

    Per the SCMP, a 48-hour span of no new nCoV infections came to an end Wednesday when Hong Kong authorities announced two more patients tested positive for the potentially deadly illness, bringing the local total to 10, as the HK government suspends high-speed rail travel between the Special Administrative Region and the mainland. The HK Department of Health said the two new patients, an elderly couple, aged 72 and 73, tested positive at Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam, and, because of their age, fall into the high-risk category of infections. More than 100 people are still in isolation in HK.

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    The situation is growing increasingly worrisome in Guangdong province, which is centered around the city of Guangzhou, the fifth-largest in China.

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    Guangzhou is at the center of a massive conurbation stretching out all the way to Shenzen, and to the other neighboring cities of Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan and several other neighboring provinces. This agglomeration is one of the largest of its kind on Earth, home to more than 100 million. City officials announced five new infections, two locals and three foreigners. With more than 270 confirmed cases, this well-connected and economically important province is behind only Hubei and Zhejiang in terms of number of cases.

    Now that several countries have copies of the coronavirus genome, the race for a workable vaccine is intensifying. Russia joined that race on Wednesday after receiving a copy of the virus genome from China, Russian state media reported on Wednesday. The US said on Tuesday that it would take three months to start initial trials for a vaccine that it’s developing, and three further months to gather data.

    In Hong Kong, infectious diseases expert Professor Yuen Kwok-yung said on Tuesday that the city’s researchers had stumbled on a vaccine, but that it would take months to test on animals and at least another year to conduct trials on humans before it could be confirmed ready for human use. Scientists in Melbourne said they grew the virus from a patient sample, which could prove a “game-changer” in combating the outbreak. It was the first time the virus had been grown in a cell culture outside China (here’s hoping it isn’t misused as a potential bioweapon).

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    After confirming the first case of human-to-human transmission in Japan, health officials in Tokyo have shared more information about the case with the press: The man did not travel to Wuhan but drove buses with tour groups from the city twice this month. The man is in his 60s and lives in Nara Prefecture, according to the Japan Times.

    Overnight, the first case of the virus in the Middle East have been confirmed in the United Arab Emirates, according to the country’s Ministry of Health and Community Protection. The 4 infected patients are members of a family that had traveled from Wuhan. In its statement, the health ministry reported the family as being in a stable condition under medical observation, according to CNBC.

    As hysteria surrounding the outbreak grows, SCMP reports that resentment toward people from Wuhan is growing across China, as provincial authorities ramp up screenings of those from Wuhan, and citizens build unauthorized roadblocks to keep strangers out of their towns.

    Meanwhile, President Xi said Wednesday that “preventing and containing the virus remains a severe and complex task,” a follow up to his claims that China would do whatever is necessary to contain the “demon” virus.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 19:01

  • Flynn's Defense Files Motion Saying His Former Legal Team "Betrayed Him"
    Flynn’s Defense Files Motion Saying His Former Legal Team “Betrayed Him”

    Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

    Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn filed a supplemental motion to withdraw his guilty plea Wednesday citing failure by his previous counsel to advise him of the firm’s ‘conflict of interest in his case’ regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act form it filed on his behalf, and by doing so “betrayed Mr. Flynn,” stated Sidney Powell, in a defense motion to the court.

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    Flynn’s case is now in its final phase and his sentencing date, which was scheduled for Jan. 28, in a D.C. federal court before Judge Emmet Sullivan was changed to Feb. 27. The change came after Powell filed the motion to withdraw his plea just days after the prosecutors made a major reversal asking for up to six months jail time. The best case scenario for Flynn, is that Judge Sullivan allows him to withdraw his guilty plea, the sentencing date is thrown-out and then his case would more than likely would head to trial.

    Powell alleged in a motion in December, 2019 that Flynn was strong-armed by the prosecution into pleading guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators regarding his conversation with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Others, close to Flynn, have corroborated the accounts suggesting prosecutors threatened to drag Flynn’s son into the investigation, who also worked with his father at Flynn Intel Group, a security company established by Flynn.

    In the recent motion Flynn denounced his admission of guilt in a declaration,

    “I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea. After I signed the plea, the attorneys returned to the room and confirmed that the [special counsel’s office] would no longer be pursuing my son.”

    He denied that he lied to the FBI during the White House meeting with then FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka. The meeting was set up by now fired FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was also fired for lying to Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigators. Strzok was fired by the FBI for his actions during the Russia investigation.

    Flynn stated:

    “When FBI agents came to the White House on January 24, 2017, I did not lie to them. I believed I was honest with them to the best of my recollection at the time. I still don’t remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Ambassador Kislyak nor do I remember if we discussed the details of a UN vote on Israel.”

    Powell Targets Flynn’s Former Legal Team

    Powell noted in Wednesday’s motion that Flynn’s former defense team at Covington & Burling, a well known Washington D.C. law firm, failed to inform Flynn that their lawyers had made “some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings.” She also reaffirmed her position in the motion that government prosecutors are continuing to withhold exculpatory information that would benefit Flynn.

    A spokesperson with Flynn’s former law firm Covington & Burling, stated in an email to SaraACarter.com that “Under the bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly even to allegations of this nature, absent the client’s consent or a court order.”

    In Powell’s motion, she stated that Covington and Burling was well aware that it had a ‘conflict of interest’ in representing Flynn after November 1, 2017. She stated in the motion it was on that day, when Special Counsel prosecutors had notified Covington that “it recognized Covington’s conflict of interest from the FARA registration.” Moreover, the government had asked Covington lawyers to discuss the discrepancy and conflict with Flynn, Powell stated in the motion.

    “Mr. Flynn’s former counsel at Covington made some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings, which the SCO amplified, thereby creating an ‘underlying work’ conflict of interest between the firm and its client,” stated Powell in the motion.

    “Government counsel specified Mr. Flynn’s liability for ‘false statements’ in the FARA registration, and he told Covington to discuss it with Mr. Flynn,” states the motion.

    “This etched the conflict in stone. Covington betrayed Mr. Flynn.”

    Powell included in her motion an email from Flynn’s former law firm Covington & Burling between his former attorney’s Steven Anthony and Robert Kelner. The email was regarding the Special Counsel’s then-charges against Paul Manafort, who had been a short term campaign manager for Trump. Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, were then faced with ‘multiple criminal violations, including FARA violations.”

    Internal Email From the motion:

    In the internal email sent to Kelner, Anthony addresses his concerns after the Manafort order was unsealed.

    I just had a flash of a thought that we should consider, among many many factors with regard to Bob Kelley, the possibility that the SCO has decided it does not have, [with regard to] Flynn, the same level of showing of crime fraud exception as it had [with regard to] Manafort. And that the SCO currently feels stymied in pursuing a Flynn-lied-to-his-lawyers theory of a FARA violation. So, we should consider the conceivable risk that a disclosure of the Kelley declaration might break through a wall that the SCO currently considers impenetrable.

    In February, 2017, then Department of Justice official David Laufman had called Flynn’s lawyers to push them to file a FARA, the motion states. In fact, it was a day after Flynn was fired as the National Security Advisor for Trump. Laufman made the call to the Covington and Burling office “to pressure them to file the FARA forms immediately,” according to the motion.

    Laufman’s push for Flynn’s FARA seemed peculiar considering, Flynn’s company ‘Flynn Intel Group’ had filed a Lobbying Registration Act in September, 2016. Former partner to Flynn Bijan Rafiekian, had been advised at the time by then lawyer Robert Kelly that there was no need for the firm to file a FARA because it was not dealing directly with a foreign country or foreign government official, as stated during his trial. In Rafiekian’s trial Kelly testified that he advised the Flynn Intel Group that by law they only needed to file a Lobbying Disclosure Act and suggested they didn’t need to file a FARA when dealing with a foreign company. In this instance it was Innova BV, a firm based in Holland and owned by the Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.

    Flynn’s former Partner’s Case Overturned, Powell Cites Case In Motion

    In September, 2019, however, in a stunning move Judge Anthony Trenga with the Eastern District of Virginia Rafiekian’s conviction was overturned. Trenga stated in his lengthy acquittal decision that government prosecutors did not make their case and the “jury was not adequately instructed as to the role of Michael Flynn in light of the government’s in-court judicial admission that Flynn was not a member of the alleged conspiracy and the lack of evidence sufficient to establish his participation in any conspiracy…”

    An important side note, Laufman continually posts anti-Trump tweets and is frequently on CNN and MSNBC targeting the administration and its policies.

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    Powell said prosecutors reversed course on their decision to not push for jail time for Flynn in early January because she said, her client “refused to lie for the prosecution” in the Rafiekian case.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 18:45

    Tags
    Law Crime

  • Watch: Biden Again Gets Physical In Tense Confrontation With Iowa Voter
    Watch: Biden Again Gets Physical In Tense Confrontation With Iowa Voter

    The latest incident went down Tuesday night in Iowa when former Iowa state representative Ed Fallon — who’s actually a well-known figure among progressives for his environmental activism — approached the former vice president to simply asked about building new pipelines and where he stands on climate change. 

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    A visibly frustrated Biden pointedly told Fallon, “go vote for someone else” and then proceeded to dress the Democrat voter down apparently on the assumption he was being trolled by a Bernie Sanders supporter. The video of the encounter wherein Biden actually gets physical with the former state rep quickly went viral.

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    In a summary of the Democratic candidate’s recent series of strange and tense run-ins with his own constituency, The Guardian aptly observed: “Biden apparently doesn’t care if you vote for him. No, really.”

    It was Biden that took the encounter from peaceful to contentious and awkward in a matter of seconds.

    Mr Biden poked and grabbed Ed Fallon, who served in Iowa’s general assembly and leads an organisation aimed at tackling the climate crisis, after the candidate pressed him about his loyalty in the election.

    In a video of the exchange, Mr Fallon asks the candidate: “I like you, and I’m going to support you if win the nomination because we have to get rid of [Donald Trump], but what are we going to do about climate change? … We have to stop building and replacing pipelines.” — The Independent

    The exchange went like this:

    “You’re asking [for] a picture of me, coming in to tell me you don’t support me, my plan,” Biden said.

    “In the general. I’m running for a primary, a caucus, that’s what I’m running for, OK,” he said pointing in the man’s chest.

    Biden then assumed the man was a Sanders supporter, to which the man replied: “I’m actually supporting Tom Steyer.”

    Steyer actually responded to the incident on Twitter. “This is no way to treat an Iowan,” he said.

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    A number of commentators also noted that like with other moments Biden got unnecessarily confrontational, his hands went straight to the man’s chest, and at one point Biden even appears to firmly poke the man in the chest with his finger.

    Liberal commentators are starting to note that this unwelcome ‘handsiness’ is a serious problem, and will continue to be. 

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    * * *

    And now a quick trip down memory lane. The Guardian notes these other incidents of the past few months: 

    “You should vote for Trump,” Biden told a protester.

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    And who can forget the “damn liar” and what sounded like “Look, fat” moment:

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    There’s this one too, which perhaps received less media attention:

    The previous month in North Carolina, Biden was dismissive of an 18-year-old member of the Sunrise Movement who expressed concern over his acceptance of Super Pac donations. “Look at my record, child,” he said.

    The same activist group, the Sunrise Movement, then later confronted Biden, who taking an immediate aggressive posture where he grabs the man by the shoulders, had this to say:

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    And it’s not just voters…

    Biden gets angry and lays hands on members of the press:

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    “Why why why why why why… You’re gettin nervous man!” Biden said. 

    Indeed Joe Biden’s campaign continues to implode. 


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 18:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 29

Today’s News 29th January 2020

  • How The U.S. Regime And Its Allies Enforce Their Smears And Their Other Lies
    How The U.S. Regime And Its Allies Enforce Their Smears And Their Other Lies

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Without enforced suppression of truth, there would be no way that the U.S. and its allied regimes could continue hiding the lies that were behind their invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Syria since 2012, and their coup against Ukraine in 2014, and also of their takeovers and attempted takeovers of other countries that had refused to be bullied by the U.S. regime into complying with its obsessive anti-Russian demands — America’s subterranean continuation of the Cold War, even after Russia had quit the Cold War in 1991.

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    All of the lies are still being propounded by the U.S. regime and remain fully enforced by suppression of the truth about these matters.

    That’s being done in all news-media except a few of the non-mainstream ones.

    So: this is about an actual Western samizdat – the West’s equivalent to the former Soviet Union’s systematic, and equally pervasive, truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not.

    (The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will be “good,” even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political lies are heavily partisan.)

    Right now, Julian Assange is rotting to death inside Britain’s equivalent to the U.S. regime’s Guantanamo Bay prison, which is Belmarsh Prison, in London. As the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia’s article on Belmarsh Prison retrospectively admits, “Between 2001 and 2002, Belmarsh Prison was used to detain a number of people indefinitely without charge or trial under the provisions of the Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, leading it to be called the ‘British version of Guantanamo Bay’.” However, only because of the case of Julian Assange is it now publicly known that this characterization of that prison is — at least for him — equally true today. And Assange is, indeed, being held there “indefinitely without charge or trial,” even after his having previously been held in various other forms of confinement, ever since at least 12 April 2012, when — being then ‘temporarily’ under house-arrest in Norfolk England, while awaiting trial on a manufactured rape-charge against him which was reluctantly abandoned by the Government only when the alleged victim refused to testify against him — Assange broadcast an interview for RT, Russian Television, an interview of the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. The U.S.-and-allied regimes’ billionaires-owned-and-controlled ‘news’-media condemned Assange for this interview, because it enabled whomever still had an open mind, amongst the Western public, to hear from one of those billionares’ destruction-targets (Nasrallah), and for Assange’s doing this on the TV-news network of the main country that America’s billionaires are especially trying to conquer, which is (and since 26 July 1945 has consistently been) Russia. The great then-independent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald headlined about that interview, at Salon on 18 April 2012, “Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics: Those who pretend to engage in adversarial journalism will invariably hate those who actually do it.” How true that was, and unfortunately still is! And Assange himself is the best example of it. Greenwald wrote:

    Let’s examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it’s perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (Kaplan/The Washington Post), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it’s an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?

    But from ‘temporary’ house-arrest there, Assange was allowed asylum by Ecuador’s progressive President Rafael Correa on 20 June 2012, to stay in London’s Ecuadoran Embassy, so as not to be seized by the UK regime to be sent to prison and probable death-without-trial in the U.S. To Correa’s shock, it turned out that Correa’s successor, Vice President Lenin Moreno, was actually a U.S. agent, who promptly forced Assange out of the Embassy, into Belmarsh prison, to die there or else become extradited to die in a U.S. prison, also without trial.

    And, for what, then, is Assange being imprisoned, and perhaps murdered? He divulged government secrets that should never even have been secrets! He raised the blanket of lies, which covers over these actually dictatorial clandestine international operations. He exposed these evil imperialistic operations, which are hidden behind (and under) that blanket of imperialists’ lies. For this, he is being martyred — a martyr for democracy, where there is no actual democracy (but only those lies).

    Here is an example:

    On December 29th, I headlined “Further Proof: U.S., UK, & France Committed War-Crime on 14 April 2018” and reported highlights of the latest Wikileaks document-dumps regarding a U.S.-UK-French operation to cover-up (via their control over the OPCW) their having committed an international war-crime when they had fired 105 missiles against Syria on 14 April 2018, which was done allegedly to punish Syria for having perpetrated a gas-attack in Douma seven days before — except that there hadn’t been any such gas-attack, but the OPCW simply lied and said that there might have been one, and that the Syrian Government might have done it! That’s playing the public for suckers.

    Back on 3 November 2019, Fox News bannered “Fox News Poll: Bipartisan majorities want some U.S. troops to stay in Syria” and reported that when citing ISIS as America’s enemy that must be defeated, 69% of U.S. respondents wanted U.S. troops to stay in Syria. But when did ISIS ever constitute a threat to U.S. national security? And under what international law is any U.S. soldier, who is inside Syria, anything other than an invader there? The answer, to both of these questions, is obviously “never” and “none.” But if you are an investor in Lockheed Martin, don’t you want Americans to be suckers about both? And, so, they are. People such as Julian Assange don’t want the public anywhere to be lied-to. Anyone who is in the propaganda-business — serving companies such as Lockheed Martin — wants the public to be suckers.

    This is the way the free market actually works. It works by lying, and in such a country the Government serves the people who have the money, and not the people who don’t. The people who don’t have the money are supposed to be lied-to. And, so, they are. But this is not democracy.

    Democracy, in fact, is impossible if the public are predominantly deceived.

    If the public are predominantly deceived, then the people who do the deceiving will be the dictators there. And if a country has dictators, then it’s no democracy. In a totally free market, only the people with the most money will have any freedom at all; everyone else will be merely their suckers, who are fooled by the professionals at doing that — lying.

    The super-rich enforce their smears, and their other lies, by hiring people to do this.

    When Barack Obama said that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation” – so that each other nation is “dispensable” – he was merely exemplifying the view that only the most powerful is indispensable, and that therefore everyone else is dispensable. Of course, this is the way that he, and Donald Trump, both have governed in the U.S. And Americans overwhelmingly endorse this viewpoint. They’re fooled by both parties, because both parties serve only their respective billionaires — and billionaires are above the law; they are the law, in America and its allied regimes. That’s the way it is.

    This is the American gospel, and it is called “capitalism.” Oddly, after Russia switched to capitalism in 1991, the American gospel switched instead to pure global conquest — über-imperialism — and the American public didn’t even blink. So: nowadays, capitalism has come to mean über-imperialism. That’s today’s American gospel. Adolf Hitler would be smiling, upon today’s Amerika.

    And as far as whistleblowers — such as Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and other champions of honesty and of democracy — are concerned: Americans agree with the billionaires, who detest and destroy such whistleblowers. Champions of democracy are shunned here, where PR reigns and real journalism is almost non-existent.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 01/29/2020 – 00:15

    Tags
    Politics

  • Freeport-McMoRan CEO Fears "Global Black Swan" As "Devil"-Virus Sparks Record Copper Collapse
    Freeport-McMoRan CEO Fears “Global Black Swan” As “Devil”-Virus Sparks Record Copper Collapse

    Freeport-McMoRan’s shares are on the cusp of a bear market as the world’s largest copper producer warned about plunging copper prices on concerns coronavirus has severely impacted China’s economy, reported Reuters. 

    Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said in an interview on Tuesday that the outbreak of coronavirus in China is a “real black swan event” for the global economy.

    China is the largest buyer of the industrial metal in the world, and with large swaths of its industrial sector shut down because of the virus and holiday, demand has collapsed, sending prices lower for the past ten sessions, the longest losing streak since 1986.

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    This is the worst 9-day drop since early 2015’s global growth scare…

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    Copper is regarded by many in the investment community as a bellwether of the global economy. With dozens of Chinese cities locked down and tens of millions of people confined to their homes, the second-largest economy in the world has ground to a halt.

    “Chinese demand accounts for about 50% of the majority of base metals and looking at the latest data regarding the coronavirus, it’s now spread quite widely,” said analyst Timothy Wood-Dow at BMO Capital in London.

    Back in 2003, the SARS outbreak led to a 10% decline of Goldman Sachs Commodity Price index and fully recovered months later.

    Adkerson’s warning of a “black swan” event for the global economy is because China is one of the largest drivers of growth in the world. If, for whatever reason, their industries or consumers go offline, it would create a massive shock that could tilt the global economy into recession. 

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    Maybe Dr. Copper is suggesting what’s next for stocks… 

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    Paging Jay Powell!


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 23:55

    Tags
    Business Finance
    Environment

  • Mercola: New Thought Police 'NewsGuard' Is Owned By Big Pharma
    Mercola: New Thought Police ‘NewsGuard’ Is Owned By Big Pharma

    Authored by Joseph Mercola via Mercola.com,

    The media is using a variety of tactics to restrict your access to the truth from websites like mine, including NewsGuard, a self-appointed internet watchdog that sells a browser plugin to rate websites on nine criteria of credibility and transparency. Before I delve further into NewsGuard and its underlying agenda, it’s important to look at who funds it.

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    NewsGuard received much of its startup funds from Publicis Groupe, a giant global communications group with divisions that brand imaging, design of digital business platforms, media relations and health care.

    Publicis Groupe’s health subsidiary, Publicis Health, names Lilly, Abbot, Roche, Amgen, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Biogen, Astra Zeneca, Sanofi, Bayer and other Big Pharma giants as clients, which gives you an idea of where its loyalties lie.

    GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has also awarded Publicis Media a healthy piece of business, and the communications group responded by creating a custom “platformGSK” to run the drug giant’s media business.

    GSK Adds $400 Million to $1.5 Billion Publicis Collaboration

    In October 2018, following a five-month review, GSK sent its $1.5 billion media account to Publicis, which beat out other media agencies vying for the account, including Omnicom’s PHD and WPP’s Group M.

    According to FiercePharma, with the creation of the “platformGSK” model, the partnership gave “Publicis Media responsibility for all offline and digital paid media strategy and planning in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. In the U.S., that includes DTC [direct to consumer] pharma work.” Further, the news outlet reported:

    “Publicis Groupe client lead Laurent Ezekiel said the agency is ‘excited to partner with them to establish a transformative client-agency relationship that will enable GSK to deliver on its ambition to become the best data-driven marketer in the industry.’”

    In January 2020, GSK awarded Publicis Media with even more business, handing over the former Pfizer Consumer Healthcare brands to Publicis. The move was decided without a review and will add Advil, Centrum, Caltrate and other Pfizer brands to platformGSK, worth an estimated $400 million. GSK holds a 68% stake in the joint venture.

    “GSK has already announced its plans to spin off the joint venture within three years and list it as standalone company on the U.K. exchange as GSK Consumer Healthcare, leaving the pharma giant to focus on medicines and vaccines,” FiercePharma reported.

    Meanwhile, Publicis also handles other Big Pharma media accounts, including Novartis. In August 2019, Publicis created NovartisONE2 to manage the pharma giant’s global media account worth $600 million.

    Publicis Funds NewsGuard

    While Publicis has been busy solidifying its strong ties with Big Pharma, it was also the lead investor among a group of 18 that helped make NewsGuard a reality.

    As of March 2018, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, the “media entrepreneurs” behind NewsGuard, had raised $6 million to launch the company, which was slated to “address the fake news crisis by hiring dozens of trained journalists as analysts to review the 7,500 news and information websites most accessed and shared in the United States … These sites account for 98% of the news articles read and shared in the English language online in the United States.”

    Once installed on your browser, NewsGuard assigns a color coded “Nutrition Label” to sites, rating them green or red in a process they said would be “completely transparent and accountable.” While first launching in the U.S., NewsGuard expanded internationally, launching in the U.K. in 2019 and rating more than 200 websites.

    The startup created controversy in January 2019 after giving Mail Online – the most read news website in the U.K. – a failing grade, stating it failed to uphold even basic standards of accuracy or accountability.

    Following backlash and apparent “discussions” with a Daily Mail executive, NewsGuard changed the rating to green, stating the site “generally maintains basic standards of accuracy and accountability” and said they were wrong.

    It was an early indication of what can go wrong when you trust a conflicted startup company to dictate what’s truth and what’s not. In January 2020, NewsGuard announced it would adopt a subscription service in the U.K. and will start charging for the service.

    At the same time, NewsGuard issued a notice to subscribers in the U.S. with an offer to sign up early for $1.95 a month to “help keep NewsGuard free for the hundreds of libraries and schools that use NewsGuard.”

    NewsGuard Is the Latest ‘Truth Arbiter’ to Deceive You

    In other words, NewsGuard is setting itself up as the self-appointed global arbiter of what information is “trustworthy” – based on nine, self-described “credibility and transparency” factors – not only for information viewed for pay on private electronic devices, but also for information accessible for free in public libraries and schools.

    Librarians will even provide instructions to patrons on how to install the NewsGuard extension on their personal computers, tablets and cell phones. If you install the plugin on your computer or cellphone, it will display its rating next to Google, Bing and other web searches as well as on articles displayed on social media. What are the nine criteria NewsGuard is using to “protect” you from fake news?

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    A score lower than 60 points gets a red rating, while higher scores get more favorable results, which is intended to provide readers with a “signal if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.”

    These icons are meant to influence readers, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. While the warnings may be enough to prevent someone from clicking these links, I believe the true intent is to bury this content entirely from search results and social media feeds.

    It is very likely Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms will use these ratings to lower the visibility of content — making nonconformist views disappear entirely.

    NewsGuard Lacks Transparency

    It’s ironic, too, that NewsGuard is citing the importance of transparency in verifying independent online news outlets and vetting online media for conflicts of interest. But who is going to verify the credibility and transparency of the verifiers, i.e., NewsGuard?

    On NewsGuard’s United States Securities and Exchange Commission Form D filed March 5, 2018, there is an option for disclosing the size of its revenue, but that box was checked, “Decline to disclose.” That’s far from the 100% transparency they’re expecting from others.

    NewsGuard also claims a Rule 506(b) exemption, which among its benefits allows for an unlimited amount of money to be raised from an unlimited number of accredited investors. In doing some digging of our own, it appears NewsGuard is backed by companies that are presently involved in, or have been in the past, advertising and marketing of pharmaceutical products, cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids.

    As noted, Publicis, NewsGuard’s lead investor, made a name for itself by promoting and strengthening big industries, including tobacco. For instance, Leo Burnett, the ad company famous for creating the Marlboro man ad campaigns that made Marlboro the best-selling cigarette in the world and led to the nicotine addiction of millions, many of whom died from smoking, is also part of Publicis.

    Are we to believe that the profit preferences of such entities will have no influence on NewsGuard’s ratings of individuals, organizations and companies that criticize the safety or effectiveness of those products? If this conflict of interest and lack of transparency concerns you I urge you to contact NewsGuard now and let your voice be heard. Click on the button below to send NewsGuard a message today.

    Overall, it appears NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competition, which likely includes yours truly and many others who empower you with information that helps you take control of your health.

    Indebted to Big Industry through its funding, it appears that NewsGuard is being positioned as a “competition eradicator” that will allow Publicis and Big Industry to maintain their undisputed reign as shapers of public opinion about health-related issues, including the safety of food, air and water, medical devices and products, prescription drugs and vaccines, as well as public health policies that endorse the use of those products. You can read more on this full-circle plan to censor media truth here.

    Watching the ‘Watchdogs’

    Some people also use Snopes as their go-to source for online fact-checking, believing it to give the unbiased and credible final word on all those widely circulated stories.

    Yet, Snopes engages in massive censorship of natural health and general promotion of industry talking points. What started as a tool to investigate urban legends, hoaxes and folklore has manifested into a self-proclaimed “definitive fact-checking resource” that’s taking on topics like whether or not vaccines can cause autism.

    Case in point: In their purported fact-checking of a “Full Measure” report by award-winning investigative reporter and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, Snopes simply spewed propaganda, not real facts, in an attempt to discredit the report and the potential vaccines-autism link.

    In the end, though, they actually ended up confirming the main point of Attkisson’s report. For this, Attkisson wrote, “Snopes gets an ‘F’ for predictable propaganda in [the] vaccine-autism debate.”

    It’s dangerous to rely on any one source or group of individuals as authorities on truth, as it sets up the path for inevitable censorship. Even under the best circumstances, everyone is subject to their own biases, but in the case of Snopes, it was founded on fabrications from the start.

    Snopes was created in 1995 by Barbara and David Mikkelson, who posed as “The San Fernardo Valley Folklore Society” in the beginning in order to gain credibility. Such a society does not exist as a legal entity, according to an investigation by the Daily Mail19 — the same Daily Mail that NewsGuard originally gave a failing ranking, only to later reverse it.

    Seventy-three percent believe the proliferation of “fake news” on the internet is a major problem, and only half feel confident that readers can get to the facts by sorting through bias. And the fact is, fake news is a real problem.

    But it’s important to do your own research before believing even “fact checked” sources like Snopes or “Internet Trust Tools” like NewsGuard, which are in fact backed and supported by industry giants.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 23:35

  • US Halts All Weapons Deliveries To Iraq As Local Demands For Troop Exit Grow
    US Halts All Weapons Deliveries To Iraq As Local Demands For Troop Exit Grow

    Upping the ante and further threatening downward spiraling US-Iraq relations, the Trump administration has now suspended all weapons deliveries to Iraq, including missile systems promised as part a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2016.

    Department of Defense officials cited security concerns over the arms deliveries, also amid recent White House threats to actually impose sanctions on the country while completely severing military ties. However, most analysts see these latest threats – which also have been tied with demands the country pay back the “billions” spent on an air base should US forces be made to leave – as but an attempt to leverage greater Baghdad dependency on Washington (and not Tehran).

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    Iraqi F-16 fighter jet file image.

    The late Monday announcement also said US training and support for Iraq’s F-16 fleet will pause. Air Force spokesman Brian Brackens said the US will begin shipments again “when the environment in Iraq is safe enough to resume.”

    The past week in Baghdad has been extremely volatile, also with multiple deaths throughout the country as protests grip major cities, following both last week’s “million man protests” demanding an immediate US troop withdrawal, as well as anti-government protests which have raged on-and-off since October. 

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    Thousands of US troops are still stationed throughout the country, but mostly concentrated in the north, in an “advise and assist” capacity. The US has made Iraq’s military completely dependent on US aid since being essentially recreated after the 2003 invasion disastrous ‘de-Baathification’ policy under Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremmer.

    Following the defeat of the ISIS ‘territorial caliphate’ however, US justification for remaining in the region has evolved.

    Though officially the mission is still defined in the name ‘anti-ISIL coalition forces,’ the reality is that the administration and Pentagon have of late emphasized a ‘counter Iran’ mission, especially following the Jan.3 assassination by drone of the IRGC’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani.  

    Many pundits have predicted the obvious: that the brazen strike on Soleimani and the commander of Iraq’s Shia paramilitary forces (PMF) Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes has only served to hastened an inevitable future American departure from the country. Some even speculate that’s what Trump may have secretly calculated all along in a “take major action” (against Iran’s top elite commander) and “get out” kind of way.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 23:15

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • The Economics Of Pandemics And Quarantines
    The Economics Of Pandemics And Quarantines

    Authored by Vincent Geloso via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    News out of Wuhan in China generated a wave of fears regarding the spread of the coronavirus. Public health organizations issued guidelines on how to minimize risks of infection and China’s government took the drastic step of sealing off Wuhan. 

    The story is unfolding in a manner very similar to the Ebola outbreak a few years back. Authorities react with strong measures such as quarantines and travel bans to restrict contagion. On its face, such measures appear – purely from the vantage point of public health issues – reasonable. However, economic theory suggests the possibility that extreme measures such as sealing off a city, a travel ban or quarantines may actually make things worse.

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    First, it is necessary to point that pandemics have, since the 19th century, fallen in importance. For example, a 2006 article in Emerging Infectious Diseases compared the influenza epidemics of 1918, 1951, 1957 and 1968 in England, Wales, Canada and the United States and found that death rates at each outbreak kept falling relative to the previous one. 

    Using a longer time horizon that has some uncertainties about case fatalities, a 2001 article in the Journal of Applied Microbiology documents a rapid collapse in influenza-related deaths (which when combined with population figures suggests a faster collapse in death rates). Other articles find that, since the 1950s, death rates from different strains of influenza have stabilized at historically low levels in spite of the fact that we live in a world with more travel, more exchange and more social connections (i.e. more chances to transmit infectious diseases). 

    And these numbers speak only to influenza. Deaths from other forms of infectious diseases are at historically low levels if they have not disappeared entirely. Thus, it is necessary to place the current situation in a historical context. This does not invalidate the idea that there are serious costs from currently observed pandemics: estimates place this figure at 0.6% of global income which is not a trivial figure especially in lower-income countries where the costs are more than twice as high.

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    But why could quarantines and travel bans be problematic?

    The answer is that it all boils down to how people affected by the public health policy responses perceive costs.

    Consider the following thought experiment constructed by Alice Mesnard and Paul Seabright in the Journal of Public Economics. People who live in areas with high prevalence of infectious diseases face costs in the form of higher risks of infection. Thus, the uninfected who understand accurately their own infection status stand to gain from migrating away. As a result, they implicitly quarantine the disease and reduce the potential for contagion. This is what Mesnard and Seabright call “first best.” 

    However, if individuals at risk are uncertain of their infection status (i.e. they either contracted the disease but are still unaware of it or they are uninfected), their decision to migrate can allow the disease to spread. The hiccup comes from these individuals in that setting of imperfect information.

    If a quarantine is applied, those at-risk individuals are stuck with the already infected. This increases their perception of costs and, by definition, lead to investing more in trying to migrate. If they are unaware that they are already sick but manage to escape the quarantine area, they spread the disease. Thus, a quarantine that is too extreme induces a behavioral response to more aggressively attempt to escape the quarantine.

    In the end, this may increase infection rates. 

    This potential backfire of public health measures suggests the possibility that milder measures might be cheaper and more effective in containing infectious diseases. For example, one article in PlosOne studied purchased flights that were missed by passengers in relation to news trends regarding infectious diseases. 

    In other words, the people who missed their flights because they feared infections. This defensive move on the part of private individuals came at a cost of $50 million over two years. The same study found however that news sources were highly inaccurate in depicting actual infectious cases, but people still responded to media reactions. 

    The authors of the paper point out that had passengers responded to actual cases of infections rather than news scares, the cost of $50 million could have been reduced to half that figure. This suggests that clearer risk communication could improve people’s understanding of their constraints. As such, individuals self-quarantine themselves and reduce the risks of contracting the disease.  

    The contrast provided above suggests that soft-handed measures are cheaper and more effective in diminishing contagion than heavy-handed measures. This is something worth bearing in mind as news keeps unfolding about the reaction of authorities in China to the outbreak of the coronavirus.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 22:55

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • Pentagon To Pursue "Very Aggressive" Expansion Of Hypersonic Weapons Testing
    Pentagon To Pursue “Very Aggressive” Expansion Of Hypersonic Weapons Testing

    Over the past couple of years Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry have greatly hyped their hypersonic weapons program, even semi-frequently releasing images and videos of hypersonic missiles prototypes in action. China too has over the past months touted that it’s testing hypersonic surface-to-surface missiles which US officials fear could significantly shift the balance of power in the Pacific region.

    And now the Pentagon has announced its own classified hypersonics program will undergo a “very aggressive” expansion over the course of the next year.

    Citing defense officials in a new report, Bloomberg reports this includes plans for at least “four initial flight tests of prototypes for glide bombs that can fly five times the speed of sound and maneuver en route,” and further extra funding and research under the newly established Hypersonics Transition Office.

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    Rendering of DARPA’s Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon Concept, via Raytheon/Defense News

    In official statements last Friday Defense Secretary Mark Esper appeared to peripherally reference the program while previewing that the next Pentagon budget proposal will be aimed at drastically increasing funding for experimental and cutting edge defense technology, surpassing the already bloated current 5-year $5 billion budget. He referenced a developing “great-power competition” with China.

    “We have significantly ramped up flight testing and other experimentation so that we can accelerate the delivery of this capability — in all its forms — to our warfighters years earlier than previously planned,” Esper said.

    Among the few specifics that Bloomberg was able to glean from top officials, include the following plans: 

    • Frequent testing efforts: Mike White, the Defense Department’s assistant director for hypersonics, said “We have plans to fly prototypes for land-, sea- and air-launched concepts being developed across our portfolio.”
    • The Navy, Army and Air Force, along with the Pentagon’s special advanced research agency, are all developing hypersonics.
    • Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are deeply involved as the prime contractors.
    • The Army is working on a “Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon”.
    • Schools like Purdue, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, and the University of Minnesota are set to receive major Congressional funding grants to pursue research into hypersonics. 

    White said this year will mark a significant transition where design and weapons concepts will “have been matured” as actual testing ramps up past the mere development phase, much of which was set in place in 2017 and 2018.

    The Pentagon is clearly reacting to the advancing programs of China and Russia, given that alarmingly these weapons “are hard to stop, they can maneuver, they’re unpredictable” and “hard to detect” so “you don’t have a lot of time” to respond — as White explained further, according to the report. 

    It must be remembered that a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that the current ballistic missile defense system in the US is powerless against hypersonic missiles from China and Russia.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 22:35

  • Mizzou Students 'Required' To Install Location-Traking App So College Can "Pinpoint" Them
    Mizzou Students ‘Required’ To Install Location-Traking App So College Can “Pinpoint” Them

    Authored by Blair Nelson and Jon Street via Campus Reform,

    New students at the University of Missouri will be required to participate in a tracking program designed to measure and enforce class attendance, according to a new report from The Kansas City Star. 

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    Despite privacy concerns, officials defended the decision as one to the benefit of students, as the school’s athletics department has already been using the same app, SpotterEdu, to track certain student-athletes.

    “A student will have to participate in this recording of attendance,” Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies at MU, said in a statement to The Kansas City Star. 

    Individual professors have to opt-in to using the app, but once they do, students in those professors’ classes will not be able to opt-out. 

    SpotterEDU, developed by a former basketball coach, is designed to monitor a user’s attendance by “pinpoint[ing] students within a classroom until they leave, providing continuous, reliable and non-invasive attendance,” according to the app’s website. While the app ensures that students are in the classroom during class times, it claims it does not track students’ locations anywhere else. 

    “We only care if students are in class during class; no GPS tracking means we can’t locate them anywhere else,” the app’s website states. 

    However, the app is not incapable of tracking students’ locations outside the classroom.

    “From labs to auditoriums our technology can expand to cover any size of space accurately and precisely,” the app’s website adds. 

    In a statement to The Washington Post, SpotterEDU chief Rick Carter said that his company works with nearly 40 schools, including major schools such as Auburn, Central Florida, Indiana, and Missouri. Most schools only use SpotterEDU to track their student-athletes; however, many colleges are starting to use the app with their student bodies, like Missouri. 

    According to the Post, colleges use the data to ensure that student-athletes who are receiving scholarships are attending classes regularly. The program emails professors automatically if a student is not in a class, or shows up more than a few minutes late. Carter told the Post that professors can look specifically at attendance patterns for “students of color” or “out of state students” for retention purposes. 

    Some in academia, though, have reservations about colleges using this technology. 

    Indiana University assistant professor Kyle M. L. Jones told the Washington Post, “These administrators have made a justification for surveilling a student population because it serves their interests, in terms of the scholarships that come out of their budget, the reputation of their programs, the statistics for the school.”

    “What’s to say that the institution doesn’t change their eye of surveillance and start focusing on minority populations, or anyone else. [Students] should have all the rights, responsibilities and privileges that an adult has. So why do we treat them so differently?”Jones said. 

    Robby Pfeifer, a  Virginia Commonwealth University student, echoed Jones’ sentiment. 

    “We’re adults,” he told the Washington Post.

    “Do we really need to be tracked? Why is this necessary? How does this benefit us? And is it just going to keep progressing until we’re micromanaged every second of the day?”

    “It embodies a very cynical view of education, that it’s something we need to enforce on students, almost against their will,” Erin Rose Glass, digital scholarship librarian at the University of California-San Diego, said, according to the Post.

    “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness…when we could be asking harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”

    Sara Baker of the ACLU of Missouri told the Kansas City Star the group has “deep privacy concerns about this.”

    “Any time you use surveillance technology, the question always is who is watching the watcher,” Baker said, adding that such technology could be used for abusive purposes “like monitoring which students are participating in protests.”


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 22:15

    Tags
    Education

  • "It's Like A Sinking Ship" – American In Wuhan Refuses Evacuation To Stay Behind With Girlfriend
    “It’s Like A Sinking Ship” – American In Wuhan Refuses Evacuation To Stay Behind With Girlfriend

    Cue the “Arrested Development” clips of Gob admitting he’s “made a huge mistake.”

    As the US prepares to begin the emergency evacuation of more than 200 Americans living in Wuhan, several Americans have refused seats on the flight to stay behind and stick out the “devil virus” outbreak with loved ones, family and friends.

    As we reported yesterday, the Boeing 767, with about 230 seats, is preparing to depart from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Tuesday (though ironically it’s set to land in California, the state with the most confirmed coronavirus cases in the US). It’s expected to be the first of several evacuation flights as the US government moves to get all of its citizens out of the virus-plagued city.

    However, there are a handful of Americans who are refusing the evacuation, mostly because they have Chinese spouses or children who wouldn’t be allowed on the flight, or because they’re reporters covering the situation on the ground.

    But the AP found one American in Wuhan who, despite not having a family or any professional reason to stay, has decided to hunker down and stick it out with his Chinese girlfriend.

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    Doug Perez

    As the death toll in the city surpasses 100, San Francisco native Doug Perez says he’s staying behind, despite harboring serious concerns for his safety. Over the past week, Perez, 28, and his girlfriend have hunkered down in their apartment, only leaving to pick up supplies.

    Recently, Perez and his gf got into a heated argument about whether they should visit a local supermarket, or just order food. She won, but unfortunately it appears that food deliveries have been cut off.

    When he tried to leave his apartment compound last week, Perez said a guard stopped him and made him turn back, making him feel like a prisoner in his own home.

    “It’s like a sinking ship,” Perez said.

    The day the lockdown was announced, Perez and his girlfriend got in a fight – “a plate was destroyed” – over whether to venture to a supermarket to buy food. His girlfriend, who doesn’t want to be named, won the argument, and the couple began ordering food online.

    The streets went quiet. They stay in every night, spending hours a day on social media checking up on the latest news and fielding calls from worried relatives.

    On Monday evening, guards barred him from leaving his apartment compound, leaving him wondering what’s next.

    “That’s kind of dawned on me, like how bad this could get,” Perez said. “Who knows what will be next week. Will it be police, will it be soldiers? Will we physically not be able to leave our building?”

    Japan, South Korea and France are also planning evacuations. A report in a UK tabloid claimed that Beijing has “blocked” the UK from airlifting its citizens out of Wuhan as the UK government comes under increasing pressure to get them out.

    Another American – a woman who declined to be identified for fear of harassment – said she has chosen to hunker down and stick it out because she has a cough and believes she would be quarantined by Chinese authorities if she even enters the airport.

    Even those Americans who have accepted the offer of a ride out of the country are struggling to figure out how they’re going to make it to the airport amid the lockdown, which has suspended all public transit and even private cars traveling on city streets.

    One American woman with an eight-year-old daughter managed to find a ride. But others might not be so lucky.

    But for Priscilla Dickey, 35, from South Burlington, Vermont, trying to get on the plane was a no-brainer because of her 8-year-old daughter, Hermione, who she worries could be vulnerable to the virus. On Monday afternoon, the consulate phoned Dickey and told her she and her daughter had seats.

    After packing a bag with three shirts and a pair of pants, Dickey stayed up until two in the morning trying to figure out how she would get to the airport amid a transportation shutdown. She “stress cleaned” her apartment in the morning, she said, before getting in an airport-bound car, waves of emotion washing over her.

    “I was feeling guilt,” Dickey said, speaking by phone on her way to the airport. “Excitement, guilt, stress — all of it.”

    But even amid a terrible crisis, there can be moments of levity, as Perez explained.

    But despite the worsening conditions, Perez says there are moments of hope. On Monday evening, residents set off fireworks, and cries of “Go Wuhan!” echoed around his apartment compound.

    Perez joined in, shouting “We are all Wuhan people!” His girlfriend cheered and his dog barked, making them feel they were “all in this together.”

    “We needed that,” Perez said. “It lifted us up a bit and gave us some hope.”

    Afterward, he and his gf presumably went back to assiduously avoid contact with other humans for fear of being infected.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 21:55

  • Top GOP Senators Say Horowitz Report "Misled Public", Demand AG Barr Declassify Some Footnotes
    Top GOP Senators Say Horowitz Report “Misled Public”, Demand AG Barr Declassify Some Footnotes

    Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

    Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee have formerly requested that Attorney General William Barr declassify four footnotes in Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s FISA abuse investigation. The letter states that the classified footnotes contradict information in Horowitz’s report that appears to have misled the public.

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    U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent the classified letter Tuesday evening and questioned the contradiction between the footnotes and what was made public by Horowitz’s team regarding the bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. 

    However, the Senator’s did not disclose what section of the December FISA report contradicts the footnotes in their findings.

    The Senator’s state in their letter to Barr that certain sections of Horowitz’s report on the FBI are misleading the public.

    Part of the classified letter, which was obtained by SaraACarter.com states:

    “We have reviewed the findings of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with regard to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and we are deeply concerned about certain information that remains classified,” the letter states.

    “Specifically, we are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes.

    This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements in a section of the report, but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.

    The American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

    Johnson and Grassley’s office noted that “for maximum public transparency, the senators wrote a separate unclassified cover letter to describe their request.”

    Full text of the unclassified letter to Barr below:

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    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 21:35

    Tags
    Politics

  • Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?
    Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?

    In light of growing speculation, most of it within less than official circles, that the official theory for the spread of the Coronavirus epidemic, namely because someone ate bat soup at a Wuhan seafood and animal market…

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    … is a fabricated farce, and that the real reason behind the viral spread is because a weaponized version of the coronavirus (one which may have originally been obtained from Canada), was released by Wuhan’s Institute of Virology (accidentally or not), a top, level-4 biohazard lab which was studying “the world’s most dangerous pathogens“, perhaps it would be a good idea for the same Wuhan Institute of Virology to remove the following “help wanted” notice, posted on November 18, 2019, according to which the institute is seeking to hire one or two post-doc fellows, who will use “bats to research the molecular mechanism that allows Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses to lie dormant for a long time without causing diseases.”

    The right candidate will:

    • Have obtained or is about to obtain a PhD in life science/biomedical related fields;
    • Have a reliable and rigorous work style, with strong independent scientific research ability and teamwork spirit;
    • Have strong English communication and writing skills, have research papers published in the international mainstream academic journals
    • Have a cell biology, immunology, genomics and other relevant background experience is preferred;

    The full job posting, which can still be found on the Wuhan Institute of Virology website can be found here (and screengrabbed below as it will be gone within a few hours).

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    And google translated:

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    Why is this notable? Because as it turns out, this is a job posting for the lab of Dr. Peng Zhou (周鹏), Ph.D., a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group. Some more on Zhou’s background from the Institute (google translated):

    He received his PhD in Wuhan Virus Research Institute in 2010 and has worked on bat virus and immunology in Australia and Singapore. In 2009 , he took the lead in starting the research on the immune mechanism of bat long-term carrying and transmitting virus in the world. So far, he has published more than 30 SCI articles, including the first and corresponding author’s Nature , Cell Host Microbe and PNAS . At present, research on bat virus and immunology is continuing, and it has received support from the National “You Qing” Fund, the pilot project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the major project of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

    Below is a list of several recent papers published by Dr. Zhou

    Which brings us to the punchline: courtesy of the Wuhan institute of virology, here is a press release from Dr. Zhou’s lab titled “How bats carry viruses without getting sick”:

    Bats are known to harbor highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola, Marburg, Hendra, Nipah, and SARS-CoV, and yet they do not show clinical signs of disease. In a paper published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe on February 22, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China find that in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, and bats can maintain just enough defense against illness without triggering a heightened immune reaction.

    “We believe there is a balance between bats and the pathogens they carry,” says senior author Peng Zhou. “This work demonstrated that in order to maintain a balance with viruses, bats may have evolved to dampen certain pathways.”

    In humans and other mammals, an immune-based over-response to one of these and other pathogenic viruses can trigger severe illness. For example, in humans, an activated STING pathway is linked with severe autoimmune diseases.

    “In human history, we have been chasing infectious diseases one after another,” says Zhou, “but bats appear to be a ‘super-mammal’ to these deadly viruses.” By identifying a weakened but not defunct STING pathway, researchers have some new insight into how bats fine-tune antiviral defenses to balance an effective, but not an overt, response against viruses.

    The authors hypothesize that this defense strategy evolved as part of three interconnected features of bat biology: they are flying mammals, have a long lifespan, and host a large viral reservoir.

    “Adaptation to flight likely caused positive selection of multiple bat innate immune and DNA damage repair genes,” Zhou says. These adaptations may have shaped certain antiviral pathways (STING, interferon, and others) to make them good viral reservoir hosts and achieve a tolerable balance.”

    And just in case, here is a google-translated press release from Jan 18, 2019 describing the achievements of Dr. Peng Zhou:

    Wuhan has the first person in the global bat immunity research: “I rushed forward with a sword”

    Changjiang Daily Financial Media May 4 hearing last month as they tied for first author made a “natural”, in recent years, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Wuhan virus after 80 young researchers Zhou Peng has been in the “natural”, “American Academy of Sciences ”And other international authoritative magazines published 28 papers, becoming academic stars. In an interview with reporters recently, he introduced that young scientists do not rely on genius to hold, but rely on “super confident”.

    It is understood that Zhou Peng is the pioneer of global bat immune system research. “Bats carry viruses but do not get sick. They have not been researched by scientists before, and certainly have specificity different from other species, but this is like you know the beginning and Ending without knowing how the story happened. “ After more than 10 years of research, Zhou Peng discovered that an antiviral immune channel called “interferon gene-stimulating protein-interferon” in the bat’s body was inhibited, so that the bat could just resist the disease without triggering a strong immune response. The results were published in Cells, Hosts and Microorganisms, which aroused the attention of the academic community.

    Zhou Peng, a student of undergraduate bioengineering, experienced SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in his junior year, which made him interested in the virus: “A small virus makes the world mess.” He was admitted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the postgraduate level, and studied under Shi Zhengli, a bat expert. Focusing on the virus carried by the bat, then I was wondering if the bat’s immune system is special. “

    After graduating from the PhD, he entered the Australian Animal Health Laboratory and became the first person in the global bat immunity research. “I went through 4 years of trial and error, groped in the dark, and hit the South Wall numerous times. I still remember a ‘darkest moment’ ‘In the local cold winter, I was holding the frostbite knee, sitting at the beach, and asking myself why this was the case.’

    He began to learn Australian jokes and inspired himself. In 2016, during postdoctoral studies at Duke University-National University of Singapore Medical School, he was concerned that a certain interferon in bats is always maintained at a high level. This paper became the cover article of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Bat Immunity “This door was opened, and more and more people in the world are paying attention to this field.” Our generation, when we were in college, watched “The Forrest Gump” and “Redemption of Shawshank” and taught us stupidity and perseverance. I I feel like I am carrying a sword and rushing forward. “

    After returning to China in 2016, Zhou Peng returned to his alma mater to become a little-known young researcher. “In the long run, bats carry the virus without getting sick. It is hoped that humans can learn how to fight the virus, but this is still far from industrialization. Far, the road ahead is long, and we must remain ‘super confident’ and continue to move forward. “(Reporter Li Jia correspondent Chen teased Li Li intern Luo Yameng)

    And here is the man, the myth, the bat-god himself: Peng Zhou.

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    Peng Zhou

    His bio (source):

    Peng Zhou, Ph.D., researcher, team leader of bat virus infection and immunity. He successively obtained bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Henan University (2004) and Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2010). During his doctorate, he was sent to the Australian Animal Health Laboratory for study. He then carried out research work at Duke-Nus Medical College in Australia and Singapore. He has long been engaged in the research of new virus epidemiology and bat antiviral immunity, revealing that bats carry SARS, MERS, and Ebola for a long time but do not have their own immune mechanisms.

    Currently he is hosting and undertaking 3 projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Special project and a major national science and technology project – a major project for the prevention and control of infectious diseases. Currently published 28 SCI papers, including Nature, Cell Host Microbe, PNAS and other articles SCI papers, including Nature, Cell Host Microbe, PNAS and other articles published by the first or corresponding author. It is at the forefront of the world in the field of bat and virus research.

    So to summarize:

    1. One of China’s top virology and immunology experts was and still works at China’s top-rated biohazard lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which some have affectionately called the real Umbrella Corp.
    2. Since 2009, Peng has been the leading Chinese scientist researching the immune mechanism of bats carrying and transmitting lethal viruses in the world.
    3. His primary field of study is researching how and why bats can be infected with some of the most nightmarish viruses in the world including Ebola, SARS and Coronavirus, and not get sick.
    4. He was genetically engineering various immune pathways (such as the STING pathway in bats) to make the bats more or less susceptible to infection, in the process potentially creating a highly resistant mutant superbug.
    5. As part of his studies, Peng also researched mutant Coronavirus strains that overcame the natural immunity of some bats; these are “superbug” Coronavirus strains, which are not resistant to any natural immune pathway, and now appear to be out in the wild.
    6. As of mid-November, his lab was actively hiring inexperienced post-docs to help conduct his research into super-Coronaviruses and bat infections.

    7. Peng’s work on virology and bat immunology has received support from the National “You Qing” Fund, the pilot project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the major project of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

    * * *

    Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay Dr. Peng a visit.

    Or at least start with an email: Dr Peng can be reached at peng.zhou@wh.iov.cn, and his phone# is 87197311.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 21:25

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • "Truth" Becomes Major Casualty In Impeachment Hearings
    “Truth” Becomes Major Casualty In Impeachment Hearings

    Authored by Jeremy Kuzmarov via Counterpunch.org,

    As in any political battle, truth has been one of the major casualties of the impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump.

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    While the Democratic impeachment managers have accused Trump repeatedly of dishonesty – often with good reason – they themselves have twisted the truth to serve their own political agenda.

    Impeachment manager Adam Schiff, for example, claimed that “more than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies” and that the military aid [which Trump subverted] was for “such essentials as sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, radar… and other support for the war effort.”

    While the military aid may have assisted the war effort, Schiff’s comments are misleading because the majority of those killed have been Eastern Ukrainians who died at the hands of the Ukrainian military that the U.S. has armed – not the Russians.

    The UN Monitoring Mission on Human Rights determined that of the approximately 13,000 people killed between April 2014 and December 2018, 3,300 of the victims were civilians, 4,000 were Ukrainian military and 5,500 “Russian-backed armed militants.”

    Thus, according to Schiff, Russia is responsible for killing 5,500 of its own men!

    Human Rights Watch found that the Ukrainian military actually caused many of the civilian deaths by “us[ing] explosive weapons with wide-area effect in populated areas, including near school buildings, in violation of international humanitarian law.”

    But this doesn’t fit with Schiff’s alarmist views about Russia, which are straight out of the 1950s McCarthy era.

    At the hearings, Schiff frequently referenced the danger of “Russian expansion” and its efforts to “remake the map of Europe” and quoted a witness who stated that “the U.S. aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

    Sounding like Ronald Reagan or any one of the most hawkish of cold warriors, this assessment has no basis in reality.

    Among other things, it ignores that Russia under Putin was the first country to offer sympathy to the U.S. following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has repeatedly pushed for better diplomatic relations.

    Schiff’s misinformation extends to his defense of Joe Biden.

    In his opening statement, Schiff claimed that Biden never wanted the “corrupt prosecutor removed in order to stop an investigation into Burisma Holdings, on whose board Biden’s son Hunter sat.”

    However, Biden has been filmed in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations bragging about his efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian government by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan if that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was not removed.

    Shokin had never actually been censured or indicted for corruption, although his successor, Yuriy Lutsenko was.

    The latter settled the case with Burisma and its chief executive Mykola Zlochevsky by allowing it to pay a $7 million fine when the company stood accused of evading $40 million in taxes – a clear victory for Burisma.

    Lutsenko did not even have a law degree and has been characterized by Ukrainian officials as a crooked political appointee of Ukraine’s former Prime-Minister Petro Poroshenko, whom Biden had cultivated close ties with.

    (For more information on this see Olivier Berrayer’s documentary, Ukraine-Gate- Inconvenient Facts.)

    Schiff and other Democratic Impeachment Managers such as Sylvia Garcia of Texas claimed that under Shokin the investigation against Burisma had lain “dormant.”

    However, Shokin told ABC News in an interview – which was conveniently never aired – that this was not true and that the case was proceeding prior to his removal in February 2016.

    The Ukraine-Gate saga has commanded a huge amount of attention and contributed to the rising fame of Schiff who has been praised in some circles for his magnificent performance.

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    By spreading misleading or outright false information about Russia and Ukraine, and drumming up anti-Russian sentiment, the consequences of the hearings, however, could be even more damaging than the Trump presidency.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 20:55

    Tags
    Politics

  • FICO Changes To Dramatically Affect Credit Scores In Effort To Reduce Defaults
    FICO Changes To Dramatically Affect Credit Scores In Effort To Reduce Defaults

    Fair Isaac, the company behind FICO credit scores, announced the rollout of a new scoring method that will dramatically shift credit scores for millions of Americans in either direction.

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    In a nutshell – ‘FICO Score 10 Suite’ is supposedly better at identifying potential deadbeats from those who can pay, and claims to be able to reduce defaults by as much as 10% among new credit cards, and nine percent on new auto loans.

    Around 40 million people with already ‘high’ scores (above 680) are likely to see their credit rise, while those with scores at or below 600 could see a dramatic drop.

    According to Fair Isaac, around 110 million people will see their scores swing an average of 20 points in either direction.

    “Consumers that have been managing their credit well … paying bills on time, keeping their balances in check are likely going to see a gain in score,” said Dave Shellenberger, VP of product management scores.

    The changes come as consumers are accumulating record levels of debt that has worried some economists but has shown no sign of slowing amid a strong economy. Consumers are putting more on their credit cards and taking out more personal loans. Personal loan balances over $30,000 have jumped 15 percent in the past five years, Experian recently  found. –Washington Post

    That said, according to WalletHub, delinquency rates are in much better shape than they were a decade ago, with 6% of consumers late on a payment in 2019 vs. around 15% in 2009. Meanwhile, the average FICO score went from bottoming out at 686 in October of 2009 to an average of 706 in September of 2019.

    As we noted in October, FICO has been talking about recalculating credit scores for some time now. According to the Wall Street Journal, anyone with “at least several hundred dollars” in their bank account and who don’t overdraw are also likely to see their scores rise. Specifically, anybody with an average balance of $400 in their bank accounts without an overdraft history over the last three months would likely get a boost. 

    And with non-revolving debt such as student and auto loans recently rising by $14.9 billion, identifying potential deadbeats is more important than ever.

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    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 20:35

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • The Establishment Doesn't Fear Trump, And It Doesn't Fear Bernie… It Fears You
    The Establishment Doesn’t Fear Trump, And It Doesn’t Fear Bernie… It Fears You

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    During the George W Bush administration it was popular in conspiracy circles to speculate that events might be orchestrated which would allow the Bush family to complete a coup against the US Constitution and hold on to power indefinitely.

    Such paranoia and suspicion of government power in the wake of the extraordinary post-9/11 advancements in Orwellian surveillance programs and unprecedented military expansionism were perfectly understandable, but predictions that the younger Bush would not cede power at the end of his second term proved incorrect. In today’s hysterical Trump-centric political environment we now see mainstream voices in mainstream outlets openly advancing the same conspiratorial speculations about the current administration, and those will prove incorrect as well.

    What these paranoid presidential prognostications get wrong is not their extreme suspicion of government, but their assumption that America’s real power structures require a certain president to be in place in order to advance depraved totalitarian agendas. As anyone paying attention knows, intense suspicion of the US government is the only sane position that anyone can possibly have; the error is in assuming that there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the same agendas carry forward from one presidential administration to the next.

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    In a sense, the conspiracy theories about a Bush coup were actually correct: the Bush administration didn’t truly end. All of its imperialist, power-serving agendas remained in place and were expanded under the apparent oversight of the following administration. The same thing happened after the Obama administration, and the same thing — whether in 2021 or 2025 — will happen after the Trump administration. The disturbing fact of the matter is that if you ignore election dates and just look at the numbers and raw data of US government behavior over the years, you can’t really tell who is president or which political party is in power at any given point in time.

    The mechanism which ensures the perpetuation of the same policies from administration to administration used to be referred to by analysts as the “deep state”, back before Trump and his supporters hijacked that term and began using it to essentially mean something like “Democrats and anyone who doesn’t like Trump”. Originally the term deep state referred not to one political party, nor to some shadowy cabal of Illuminati or Satanists or reptilians, but to the simple and undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist and tend to influence America’s official elected government. It wasn’t a conspiracy theory, it was a concept used in political analysis to describe how US government agencies and plutocrats form loose alliances with each other and with official Washington to influence government policy and behavior.

    It is inevitable that such a permanent second government would exist in the current iteration of the United States, if you think about it. It’s impossible to have a globe-spanning empire of the sort America now has without long-term plans spanning years or decades for securing control of world resources, undermining rivals, securing more compliant allies, and ensuring military and economic hegemony. If the US were a normal nation which simply minded its own affairs, a permanent government wouldn’t be necessary. But because it isn’t, one is.

    I very seldom use the term deep state anymore, because its meaning in mainstream discourse has been completely corrupted. Now when I want to point to America’s permanent unelected power structures I usually use the word “oligarchy” or “empire”, or simply “establishment”.

    This is why I haven’t been especially focused on the US presidential race, despite the Democratic primaries hitting fever pitch intensity. While I believe the race can be a useful tool for forcing establishment propagandists to expose themselves (virulent “never Trump” neocon Bret Stephens just came out in support of Trump if the Democratic nominee is anyone to the left of Pete Buttigeig, for example), the result of the 2020 election isn’t going to change a whole hell of a lot.

    This might be a bit offensive to both Trump supporters and Sanders supporters, but it’s true.

    Whenever I point out that the current administration has been advancing many longstanding agendas of the CIA and neoconservative war pigs — agendas like military expansionism, imprisoning Assange, regime change interventionism in Iran and Venezuela, and reigniting the Cold War — his supporters always come in saying “If he’s working for the establishment how come the establishment is working so hard to get rid of him, huh?”

    Well, for starters, they’re not. Nobody who can count Senate seats believes Trump will be removed from office in the current impeachment sideshow, and everyone who understood Russiagate knew it was going to dead-end at nothing. If they really wanted Trump gone they wouldn’t be pussyfooting around with a bunch of kayfabe combat that they know will never hurt him. Obviously he wasn’t the preferred 2016 choice of certain factions within the establishment, but there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the empire can tick right along with a less-than-ideal president in the White House.

    This will also hold true if Sanders miraculously makes his way through another rigged primary, and then through whatever sabotage gets thrown his way in the general election. Sure he might be able to sign a few somewhat beneficial executive orders and we probably wouldn’t see him flirting with an Iran war, but US imperialism will march on more or less unimpeded and his popular progressive domestic policies would require congress to successfully implement. At best he’d be a mild reformer who uses the bully pulpit to help spread awareness while being narrative managed on all sides by the billionaire media, and any changes he manages to squeak through which inconvenience the establishment at all will be reversed by a subsequent administration.

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    Obviously the establishment would rather have someone in the White House who doesn’t constantly put an ugly face on the empire by accidentally exposing its mechanics all the time as Trump does, and obviously it would rather have an incompetent oaf like Trump in office than someone who actively points out the evils of oligarchy and imperialism like Sanders. But the establishment which runs the US-centralized empire is not afraid of Trump, and it is not afraid of Sanders. It’s afraid of you.

    The unelected power establishment has ways of ensuring its dominance amid the comings and goings of America’s official elected government; they are perfectly capable of dealing with one man being a less than ideal steward of the empire. What they absolutely cannot deal with, at all, is the prospect of ordinary people finally rising up and using the power of their numbers to force real change. That is what they are really fighting against when they try to sabotage populist candidates: not the candidates themselves, but populism itself.

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    You wouldn’t know it from reading the billionaire media, but the Yellow Vests protests in France are still going on and have remained widespread for more than a year now. This lack of coverage is partially due to the fact that establishment narrative managers are responsible for conveying the idea that the only governments whose citizens dislike them are those which haven’t been absorbed into the imperial blob like China and Iran. But it’s also because the propagandists don’t want us getting any ideas.

    The reason the propagandists work so hard to manufacture the consent of the governed is because they absolutely do require that consent. If enough people decide that the status quo isn’t working for them and begin rising up to force it to change, there’s not really anything the establishment can do to stop them. Right now the only thing keeping people from rising up in this way is the fact that they’ve been successfully propagandized not to, and the propagandists intend to keep it that way.

    But eyes are beginning to open. If real change is coming, it will come from there. Not from electing anyone president, but from a large-scale awakening to the reality of our situation. The only thing standing in the way is a thin layer of narrative fluff.

    *  *  *

    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 my website, 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, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous 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 or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 20:15

    Tags
    Politics

  • Coronavirus Could Shock World Into Recession, Stephen Roach Warns
    Coronavirus Could Shock World Into Recession, Stephen Roach Warns

    Former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach published an op-ed on Monday (Jan. 27) via Project Syndicate and also appeared on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” to warn about how the global economy could already be in a period of vulnerability, where an exogenous shock, such as the coronavirus, could be the trigger for the next worldwide recession.

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    Roch reminds us that a shock of some sort is usually the cause of most recessions that propagates through the economy. For several years, the Federal Reserve’s tightening, which started in late 2017 and ended in the summer of 2019, slowed the global economy. Then the trade war blew up complex supply chains and weakened developed and emerging economies even more, from 1Q18 through 3Q19. These two forces opened a cycle of vulnerability for the global economy that would make it susceptible to a shock. However, it was anyone’s guess what that shock would be until now.  

    “With the world economy operating dangerously close to stall speed, the confluence of ever-present shocks and a sharply diminished trade cushion raises serious questions about financial markets’ increasingly optimistic view of global economic prospects,” Roach said via his op-ed in Project Syndicate.

    On Trading Nation, Roach said, “big shocks for weak economies” could trigger a recession.

    He cautioned that coronavirus could remain a problem in the months ahead.

    “It’s a frightening outbreak, especially when it spreads this rapidly,” he said.

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    So far, more than a dozen Chinese cities are locked down, tens of millions of people are confined to their homes, and factories and businesses are closed, as the world’s second-largest economy grinds to a halt. 

    And perhaps Roach has found the root cause of the next global recession: coronavirus.

    As he ominously concludes, it won’t take much to knock this over the edge:

    Historically, the rapid expansion of cross-border trade has been an important part of the global growth cushion that shields the world economy from all-too-frequent shocks. From 1990 to 2008, annual growth in world trade was fully 82% faster than world GDP growth.

    Now, however, reflecting the unusually sharp post-crisis slowdown in global trade growth, this cushion has shrunk dramatically, to just 13% over the 2010-19 period. With the world economy operating dangerously close to stall speed, the confluence of ever-present shocks and a sharply diminished trade cushion raises serious questions about financial markets’ increasingly optimistic view of global economic prospects.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:55

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Impeachment: The Left's Ultimate Weapon
    Impeachment: The Left’s Ultimate Weapon

    Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    In 1868, President Andrew Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act that had been enacted by Congress over his veto in 1867. Defying the law, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, without getting Senate approval, as the act required him to do.

    In his 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, John F. Kennedy made Edmund Ross one of the Senate’s “Profiles in Courage” for his decisive and heroic vote not to convict and remove Johnson.

    Repealed in 1887, the Tenure of Office Act was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

    But while the act was the lethal instrument to be used in the political assassination of a president whom the Radical Republicans meant to terminate, Stanton’s ouster was not the primary cause of their fury.

    What truly enraged the Radical Republicans was Johnson’s resolve to be more magnanimous toward the defeated South than they meant to be. Johnson had in mind an earlier end to the military occupation of the South and a more rapid return of the seceded states to the Union.

    The story is told in the 1942 Hollywood film “Tennessee Johnson,” starring Van Heflin, which has since gone down the memory hole along with Woodrow Wilson’s White House favorite, “Birth of a Nation.”

    As historians concede, the impeachment of Johnson was about Reconstruction and who would remake the South. Would it be the Southern majority that fought and lost the war, or the victorious Yankees and the “scalawags” and “carpetbaggers” laboring alongside them?

    The triumphant Radical Republicans were not about conciliation. So severe were aspects of the occupation that Gen. Robert E. Lee reportedly said if he had known what was coming, he might not have quit fighting.

    So, too, the impeachment of Donald Trump is not really about his 10-week delay in shipping arms to Ukraine or his postponing of a visit by Ukraine’s president until he announced an investigation of Burisma Holdings and Joe and Hunter Biden.

    Even before the 2016 election, Democrats, collaborating with a like-minded media, were using the instruments of power they possess, to first prevent and then to overturn the election results of 2016.

    Russiagate, the James Comey FBI investigation, the Mueller probe — aborting a Trump presidency has always been the goal.

    Saturday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone succinctly described to the Senate the bottom line:

    “They’re asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot in an election that’s occurring in approximately nine months… They’re asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative, take that decision away from the American people.”

    To save “our democracy,” to which they pay tireless tribute, the impeachers want to ensure that the people, in a supposedly free election in 2020, are not allowed to make the same mistake they made in 2016.

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    To save our democracy, the House and half the Senate want to deny the America electorate one of the most important roles the people play in this republic — the exercise of their right to choose the head of state and commander in chief of the United States.

    Disqualifying presidential candidates whom populists favor but elites abhor is a quite common practice — in Third World countries.

    Over the weekend, we learned that John Bolton, who has offered to testify in the Senate trial, claims in his coming book that Trump made a direct link between sending military aid to Ukraine and Ukraine’s opening an investigation of the Bidens.

    This has caused some Republican senators to reconsider calling witnesses, particularly Bolton, in the impeachment trial.

    If four Republicans vote for witnesses, they will be doing the work Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi’s House failed to do in their haste to get Trump impeached by Christmas. They will be prolonging a trial set up to burn and bury their president.

    The Senate should let Trump’s defenders complete their case, as the House managers and impeachers have already done. Then allow 16 hours of questioning. Then call for the verdict.

    There is no treason, no bribery and no high crime in what the House managers allege. There is nothing in the articles of impeachment voted that rises to a level to justify removing a president.

    Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on defenseless cities and sent 2 million POWs back to the tender mercies of Stalin in Operation Keelhaul after World War II.

    JFK greenlighted the overthrow of an ally, President Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, in a coup that ended in the murder of Diem.

    LBJ ordered the wiretapping of Martin Luther King, and his White House shared the fruits of that FBI surveillance with a friendly press.

    No one was impeached.

    Why? Because Truman, JFK and LBJ were establishment favorites.

    For Trump, a phone call with a Ukrainian president saying, “Send us your Biden file and we will have a meeting,” is a political capital crime justifying democracy’s version of a death penalty.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:35

    Tags
    Politics

  • Number Of Coronavirus Cases Surpasses SARS As China Holds 60k Under 'Observation'
    Number Of Coronavirus Cases Surpasses SARS As China Holds 60k Under ‘Observation’

    Summary:

    • Japan, Germany confirm human-to-human transmission
    • US, UK warn citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to China
    • 6,049 cases confirmed; 131 deaths
    • President Xi said China is taking the “devil virus” very seriously and will contain it
    • Governors and mayors across US bracing for viral outbreaks
    • Reports that China has refused US offer of assistance, and that Beijing is withholding data from CDC
    • Thailand reports 6 new cases, bringing total number to 14

    * * *

    Update (1915ET): It’s only 8:15 am in Beijing and health officials have already confirmed more than 840 new cases in Hubei Province.

    That brings the toll to  6,049, including 263 cases deemed “severe.” The death toll has climbed to 132, according to SCMP.

    Those who have been closely comparing this outbreak with the 2003 SARS outbreak may notice that the coronavirus has achieved an important milestone. Barely a week into global response to the outbreak, the number of confirmed cases has already passed the number of SARS cases reported during the entire monthslong ordeal.

    Sars infected 5,327 people in mainland China in nine months and killed 349 people, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

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    Another 60k people are said to be under observation across China, with 20k in Hubei alone.

    Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory diseases expert who spoke with the SCMP on Tuesday, the outbreak hasn’t yet reached its peak, though he thinks the number of new cases will plateau within the next ten days.

    Back in the US, the Trump Administration is denying reports that it’s considering a total ban on passenger travel between the US and China.

    Will the fact that the coronavirus has already surpassed SARS – and is on track to achieve some of the more dire projections shared by epidemiologists – shake the market’s confidence?

    Or will a few soothing words from Jerome Powell save the day?

    * * *

    Update (1824ET): Adding additional pressure to American airlines, CNBC just reported that the White House warned airline executives that it’s considering suspending all flights between China and the US.

    This comes on the heels of United Airlines, the US carrier with the most exposure to China, which has about a dozen daily flights to Hong Kong and the mainland, said it was cancelling dozens of flights. The Chicago-based airline said it has experienced a “significant decline in demand for travel to China.”

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    Administration officials warned that this could impact flights into and out of China.

    Several countries, including the US, have been expanding airport screenings for possible virus-carrying travelers. But a complete shutdown of passenger plane traffic would be even more draconian than Hong Kong’s strict border controls implemented Tuesday.

    In a sign that the Communist Party may have overplayed its hand, more videos depicting violent clashes between Chinese citizens and police have surfaced on social media.

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    One video, likely taken somewhere in Hubei Province (where the most strict travel bans are being enforced), shows a car ramming a roadblock.

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    * * *

    Update (1750ET): Reuters just reported that Thailand has confirmed another six cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total to 14. All six are under observation in a hospital. Five of the six are members of the same CHinese family who traveled from Hubei provine to Thailand for the LNY holiday together.

    No. 6 is also a Chinese tourist.

    * * *

    Update (1710ET): Minutes ago, as dawn nears in China, state-controlled TV station CCTV reported 25 new deaths in Hubei, and another 840 new confirmed cases (and this time only 315 were in Wuhan). Of the dead, 19 died in Wuhan, 2 in Xiaogan, and 1 each in Jingmen, Ezhou, Huanggang, and Tianmen.

    Per CCTV, 3349 patients have been hospitalized in the province. More than 20,000 are still under medical observation.

    When we look back on the coronavirus outbreak, Tuesday might be the day people remember as the jumping off point for the pandemic. more than 1,000 new cases were confirmed today. And today, the death toll jumped above 100 for the first time, and possibly featured the first death from the virus outside China.

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    Across China, the tensions of the LNY cancellations, the holiday extension and the travel bans, and lockdowns, combined with a general sense of hysteria, are leading to civil unrest in some areas.

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    American officials confirmed that the first flight evacuating about 240 diplomats and other Americans from Wuhan took off without a hitch. There are still roughly 800 Americans in Wuhan, and more flights are expected – though some have elected to stay behind with family. Tuesday is also the day that officials confirmed, without a doubt, that the virus is spreading from human to human outside of China. We imagine we’ll get another dump of confirmed cases out of China around midnight, or around midday in Asia.

    In the meantime, we leave you with another disturbing video taken in a Wuhan hospital: this time, an angry patient can be seen destroying a room with a chair.

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    And if that wasn’t unsettling enough, we present…the birds…

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    And there’s plenty more where that came from.

    Meanwhile, as twitter users debate whether jokes about “bat soup” constitute a display of racism, the New York Times would like to remind readers that this virus is unequivocally humanity’s fault.

    * * *

    Update (1515ET): Virus-related newsflow slowed Tuesday afternoon, though there have been one or two interesting developments. 

    SCMP said US HHS Secretary Alex Azar (don’t get him confused with Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, the one who cut Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal) said Tuesday that he hoped the Chinese government “will take us up” on an offer of aid.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier said it was seeking information from China about the transmission rates for the virus, and the US government asked Beijing if the CDC could send a team of experts after President Trump offered China unfettered access to America’s top-notch “experts.”

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    Azar said that he had personally extended “the offer…which we do hope that the Chinese government will take us up on that CDC experts are standing by ready, willing, able to go immediately to China either on a bilateral basis or under the auspices of the World Health Organisation.”

    Reports earlier claimed that Beijing had rejected American help. While it’s not entirely clear what’s going on, it’s worth noting that the US arrested three suspected Chinese spies on Tuesday, while China accused the American Navy of more “deliberate provocations” in the South China Sea,” per SCMP.

    In other news, a few new cases of the virus have been confirmed. Three more coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the southern German state of Bavaria. Notably, it’s believed that all three cases contracted the virus from the first case discovered in Germany, more evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China. Canada confirmed another case in Vancouver after an earlier cases was treated in Toronto.

    China kept evidence of human to human transmission under wraps until last week, allowing the virus to spread unfettered for weeks before doing anything to confront it.

    Now, the CDC is asking for more information about how the virus spreads, but Beijing is being somewhat less than “transparent.”

    “The Chinese have reported evidence of transmission in the asymptomatic phase, based on data that they have reviewed. The CDC has not been given an opportunity to review that data,” Redfield said. “What we say is that we have not been able to confirm by data the impact of transmission during the asymptomatic phase.”

    The case count hasn’t budged in a few hours, though we imagine the new cases in Germany and Canada will soon be included.

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    Oddly enough, even though local authorities claimed they were shutting down air traffic out of Wuhan (except for emergency evacuations and deliveries of supplies and personnel).

    Still, a flight tracker is showing that a handful of flights departed from the Wuhan international airport on Tuesday.

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    * * *

    Update (1450ET): Governors and mayors across the US are bracing for containing any possible outbreaks of coronavirus. Earlier today, the NYC Department of Public Health warned residents that it expected the virus to eventually make its way to the largest city in America.

    In the Greater New York area, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said that the state is “continuing to closely monitor the outbreak of coronavirus in China” after the CDC confirmed several cases in the US.

    Lamont added that two suspected cases of the virus have been found in Connecticut, one in Middlesex County and one in New Haven County. Both cases are  under observation.

    Lamont urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to declare a public health emergency to guarantee that the CDC is able to access the money it needs to combat outbreaks.

    Read the full statement below:

    (HARTFORD, CT) – Governor Ned Lamont today said that the State of Connecticut is continuing to closely monitor the outbreak of coronavirus in China after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced several confirmed cases in the United States, none of which are in Connecticut.

    The Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) has two persons under investigation for the new coronavirus, one in Middlesex County who is a student at Wesleyan University and the other in New Haven County. The Wesleyan student has tested negative for corona virus. Both persons have tested positive for influenza type A and the cause of their illness is most likely the flu. As a precaution, both persons remain in isolation. DPH is awaiting final testing results for coronavirus at the CDC for the New Haven County patient. At the present time, testing for this new coronavirus strain is only available at the CDC.

    “The state is closely monitoring reported cases and remaining cautious on behalf of the public,” Governor Lamont said. “We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to provide updated information on these developments to the people of our state. We ask that the public not panic but take possible symptoms seriously and consult a healthcare professional.”

    “I want to assure all residents of Connecticut that we are taking this new virus very seriously and have been closely coordinating our response with local health departments and medical providers throughout the state,” DPH Commissioner Renée D. Coleman-Mitchell said. “So far, we have no confirmed cases of this coronavirus in Connecticut. It is also the height of the flu season, and hundreds of Connecticut residents have already been hospitalized for influenza. I want to make sure everyone takes precautions to keep themselves healthy during this season, and if you experience any symptoms such as sneezing, coughing, fever or others, please contact your doctor and get treated sooner rather than later.”

    “I urge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency so we can ensure that the Center for Disease Control is able to access the additional funding it may need to expedite the development of a vaccine and to prepare to contain any outbreak in our country,” Senator Richard Blumenthal said. “The recent coronavirus strain exploding in China has resulted in many deaths and therefore proactive steps must be taken at the federal and state levels. My office is in constant contact with Connecticut state public health officials and I stand ready to assist state officials to protect the health of Connecticut residents.”

    Connecticut is at the height of respiratory virus season. Influenza activity in Connecticut is widespread. A total of 784 influenza-associated hospitalizations have been reported since the beginning of the 2019-20 season. Seven new influenza-associated deaths were reported last week, resulting in a total of 20 influenza-associated deaths reported since the beginning of the 2019-20 season.

    CDC believes at this time that symptoms of the coronavirus may appear in as few as two days or as long as 14 days after exposure. No vaccine or specific treatment for the infection is available, however care is supportive. When person-to-person spread has occurred with MERS and SARS, it is thought to have happened via respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes, like how influenza and other respiratory pathogens spread. Spread of SARS and MERS between people has generally occurred between close contacts.

    * * *

    Update (1400ET): The UK has jumped on the bandwagon of nations that are advising their citizens to avoid traveling to China at all costs until this epidemic passes.

    According to the BBC, the UK Foreign Office has warned Britons to avoid all non-essential travel to mainland China. It also warned against all travel to Hubei Province, saying any Britons who are there should leave ASAP.

    * * *

    Update (1245ET): France has confirmed the fourth case of novel coronavirus, according to French news station BFM TV. Although the confirmation of yet another case in Europe sounds like it would add to the market’s anxieties, stocks have been drifting higher since researchers in Hong Kong announced that they had developed a vaccine for the new virus – but with one critical catch.

    They expect it will take about a year until its ready to use on humans.

    * * *

    Update (0900ET): In what might be the first coronavirus death recorded outside China and a major development in the ongoing epidemic – which the WHO has refused to label a pandemic for fear of spooking the market –  Indian health officials reportedly said Tuesday that a Thai woman who was living in Kolkata may have succumbed to the coronavirus.

    Authorities said she was hospitalized on Jan. 21 for fever, nausea and stomach problems. No cases of the virus have been confirmed, but three suspected cases in Delhi have been reported, according to News18.

    So far, the evidence that nCoV was responsible for her death is pretty slim. We now await confirmation from India’s top health officials.

    But if it’s true, it will become extremely difficult for the WHO to avoid declaring a global pandemic emergency.

    * * *

    Update (0700ET): Minutes ago, CNBC reported that the White House has held multiple meetings about the coronavirus led by Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger.

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    The consensus: The problem is getting worse, though the true extent is unclear.

    Are we about to learn about a new rash of infections inside the US? Considering that more than 100 people were under observation as recently as yesterday, we wouldn’t be surprised.

    * * *

    On Tuesday morning, China’s top health officials shared some grim statistics essentially confirming that the novel coronavirus believed to have emerged from a shady food market in Wuhan is on track to confirm some of the more dire projections shared by epidemiologists.

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    As we reported late yesterday, the death toll in China has soared past 100 while the number of confirmed cases doubled overnight. Health officials around the world have confirmed more than 4,500 cases, more than triple the number from Friday. All but a few of the deaths recorded so far have been in Wuhan or the surrounding Hubei province, per the SCMP.

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    Panic has swept across the region as border closures appear to be the overarching theme of Tuesday’s sessions. Even North Korea, which relies on China for 90% of its foreign trade, has closed the border with its patron. More than 50 million remain on lockdown in Hubei, and transit restrictions have been imposed by cities and regions around the country. An ‘extension’ of the Lunar New Year holiday is threatening GDP growth, as economists try to size up the knock-on potential impact on the global economy. The virus has now spread across China and another 17 countries/autonomous territories globally, according to BBG.

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    But the most important announcement made overnight – at least as far as global markets are concerned – was Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s decision to suspend high-speed rail and ferry service, while halving the number of flights between HK and the mainland. This news helped send US stock futures higher in early trade, after health experts yesterday urged Lam to use ‘draconian’ measures to curb the spread, for fear of a repeat of the SARS epidemic, which killed some 300 people, according to the BBC.

    “The flow of people between the two places needs to be drastically reduced” amid the outbreak, Ms Lam told the South China Morning Post.

    China, meanwhile, said it would stop individuals from traveling to Hong Kong to try and curb the virus.

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    Jiao Yahui, deputy head of the NHC’s medical administration bureau, said during a press conference Tuesday that shortages of medical supplies in Wuhan were still a serious problem.

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    CDC has issued new travel recommendations urging people to avoid all non-essential trips. Still, the WHO remained reluctant to declare the outbreak a global emergency. Instead, the international health organization’s director-general insisted that this is merely an emergency “in China”. But after yesterday’s brutal pullback in US stocks, the WHO can’t risk spooking the market.

    The big piece of evidence that the WHO is purportedly looking for is human-to-human transmission outside China. However, while several cases of H2H transmission outside China have been documented in Vietnam, Japan, as well as possibly Canada and Germany, the WHO so far has only recognized the Vietnam case.

    Zhong Nanshan, a leading expert on SARS and other communicable diseases in China, confirmed human-to-human transmission in at least one case in Wuhan and two cases in Guangdong Province.

    During a meeting in Beijing, President Xi told World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the safety of the people is his government’s first priority, and that he recognizes the situation is “very serious,” but that he’s confident his government will defeat the “devil virus,” Reuters reports.

    “This was supposed to be a time for rest, but because of the pneumonia outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus, the Chinese people right now are faced with a very serious battle,” Xi said. “This is something we take very seriously because in our view nothing matters more than people’s safety and health. That is why I myself have been personally deploying, planning, and guiding all the efforts related to containment and mitigation of the outbreak.”

    That’s ironic, considering Beijing’s sluggish response after the first cases were discovered in December. After all, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang on Tuesday spoke out against the deluge of criticism he has faced to accuse Beijing of tying his hands. This comes after President Xi and the party tried to scapegoat him and other local party officials for the crisis.

    This was supposed to be a time for rest, but because of the pneumonia outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus, the Chinese people right now are faced with a very serious battle,” Chinese President Xi Jinping tells in Beijing.

    Speaking at a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Jiao Yahui, deputy head of the NHC’s medical administration bureau, said shortage of medical supplies was a major constraint in China’s efforts to contain the outbreak and treat infected people.

    Tens of thousands of patients are under observation in China after displaying one or more symptoms of the virus. In the US, roughly 100 people are in isolation. But former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that China is obscuring the true number of cases – a suspicion that’s widely held among American infectous-disease experts.

    According to some projections, there might be up to 300,000 cases in China, and there are likely dozens of people who have died of pneumonia who in reality died from nCoV – but those deaths will never be recorded. Although China is “behaving better” than it did during the SARS outbreak, they’re still concealing information from the international community.

    “They’re still not behaving well. They’re concealing information, including the spread to health care workers, which we didn’t know until last week” Gottlieb said.

    China is already in a “full-blown epidemic.” The US will likely face some limited outbreaks, but Gottlieb said we have the tools to suppress the virus and prevent the same thing from happening in the US. The FDA, meanwhile, announced plans to advance development of “medical countermeasures” against the virus.

    Jiao said China was sending about 6,000 medical personnel to Hubei from around the country – with more than 4,000 already there and 1,800 more due to arrive by Tuesday evening – to work in Wuhan and seven other cities in the province. In Wuhan, more than 10,000 hospital beds have been made available for patients, he said, while another 100,000 are being prepared.

    In Beijing, CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported that the local government is strongly encouraging the wearing of facemasks in public. Police guarding Beijing’s public transit are wearing full hazmat suits, and anybody hoping to board a train must be wearing a mask, and must submit to a temperature check via infrared thermometer. If an individual is found to have a fever, they’re sent to a hospital to be quarantined.

    As Beijing tries to telegraph to the world that it has the situation under control, health experts have raised new questions about the government’s response. One infectious disease specialist told the NYT that they were skeptical about the Wuhan quarantine’s ability contain the virus (unsurprising considering that 5 million left the city before the lockdown began). Beijing and Guangzhou, a port city northwest of Hong Kong, have broken ground on new hospitals, mimicking the speedy construction of not one but two new hospitals in Wuhan to treat patients infected with the virus. Beijing is also reopening a hospital used to fight the SARS outbreak in 2003, while 6,000 medical staff have been sent to Hubei.

    “At this stage of the outbreak, the things that make the most difference are finding people, diagnosing people, and getting them isolated,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, an infectious diseases specialist and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “If you isolate the city, then my question and my concern is that you’re making it harder in a number of ways to do those things you need to do,” including ferrying critical supplies and ensuring that infected victims receive adequate treatment.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:33

  • California County Sticks Homeowners With $22K Bill To Clean Up Homeless Encampment
    California County Sticks Homeowners With $22K Bill To Clean Up Homeless Encampment

    A Northern California housing community will be hit with more than $22,000 in cleanup costs after the county refused to pick up the tab, according to KPIX.

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    The cleanup at the Lakewood community in Castro Valley comes more than two years after the encampment was first reported to Alameda County in October 2017, as it was unclear whether the land belonged too the County, East Bay Regional Parks or the Lakewood Home Owner’s Association.

    Turns out, it was HOA land.

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    As such, Walsh Property Management, which oversees the homeowners association, will hit each homeowner in the 75-house development with a $300 charge to cover the cleanup. Its owner, Ed Walsh, told KPIX: “There are no fences and such that would mark where the property line ended, so we were kind of hoping that it was someone else’s responsibility.”

    Walsh said Alameda County told the HOA the encampment was in fact on their property in August of 2019, almost two years after the encampment first appeared.

    The county also said the HOA is responsible to pay for the $20,000 cleanup.

    Homeowners say the delay over property lines caused more waste to pile up, making it more expensive – so the county or Walsh Property Management should pay the bill. –KPIX

    “Unfortunately this one happened to be on the association’s property,” says Walsh.

    The cleanup is expected to be done by mid-February, according to the report.

    Homeowner Cece Adams, who has lived in the Lakewood community for 16 years, is none too happy.

    “We didn’t even know it was part of our HOA,” she said, adding “No one knew it was their responsibility. I think everyone assumed it was county’s responsibility.”

    “They should have known that this was our property, and they should have taken care of it a long time ago.”


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 19:15

  • Many Planes Actually Made It Out Of Wuhan Yesterday And Today
    Many Planes Actually Made It Out Of Wuhan Yesterday And Today

    Update (1300ET): The Toronto Sun reports Coronavirus control at airports is pretty much a leap of faith.

    Just like that, more than 1,000 people on three flights from China walked into Canada without medical screening.

    If the coronavirus happens to be incubating in any one of those passengers who arrived at Pearson International Airport’s Terminal 3 on Monday, they are now mingling with Canadian residents.

    “I was asked when we got to the Canada Custom’s inspection point if I had been in Wuhan in the past 14 days or if I had a fever,” said Jerry, who with his wife, travelled from Shanghai.

    “I said no.”

    That one-word answer got him through.

    *  *  *

    As MishTalk’s Mike Shedlock detailed earlier, many planes managed to get out of Wuhan over the past few days. Let’s take a look as to where.

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    Wuhan to San Francisco Today

    Wuhan to San Francisco 00:00-06:00 – No Flights

    Wuhan to San Francisco 06:00-12:00 – No Flights

    Wuhan to San Francisco 12:00-18:00 – Three Flights to San Francisco (China South, American, Delta) are listed as “Scheduled“.

    Wuhan to San Francisco 18:00-00:00 – No Flights

    The huge problem with Flightstats is you have to click on every flight to see if it is scheduled, cancelled, unknown, landed, or in the air. There are thousands of flights per day from some Chinese cities.

    I do not believe those SFO scheduled flight left or ever will. See Addendum.

    All Departures from Wuhan Monday, January 27

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    I pieced that together from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport WUH Departures for 2020-01-27.

    I only showed confirmed landings.

    All Departures from Wuhan Tuesday, January 28

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    Escape From Wuhan

    This post is an update to Hundreds of Virus Carrying Planes Headed for US, London, Paris, Vancouver

    In that article I commented “Wuhan may be locked down. The rest of China isn’t yet.”

    This update shows it is indeed still possible to escape Wuhan, then depart from some other city to the US, Japan, Europe, or elsewhere.

    Please note that Scientists Estimate 44,000 Virus Cases, Doubling Every 6 Days

    This is confirmation that the US should have halted all planes from China long ago.

    Addendum

    This Tweet From SFO Airport Official

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

    “The flight tracking app you are looking at has not updated with the correct origin city. That flight came from Guangzhou (CAN) and not Wuhan (WUH). Flights originally were from CAN-WUH and then WUH-SFO. However flights are not stopping in WUH and going direct from CAN-SFO.”

    So SFO landing was really from CAN. The rest of the departures do seem to be from WUH.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 18:55

  • Apartment Rents Plateau As Debt-Laden Millennials Reach The Limits Of What They Can Afford
    Apartment Rents Plateau As Debt-Laden Millennials Reach The Limits Of What They Can Afford

    Generation rent is showing no signs of changing its ways.

    According to RentCafe’s year-end rent report for 2019, the national average rent capped off another year of strong growth by leveling off in December. But all evidence suggests that the average national rent will continue moving higher – despite all official gauges of inflation reflecting little or no inflation – as popular sun-belt cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas take over from Brooklyn and California as the biggest drivers of higher rents.

    This comes as more Americans are leaving places like California and New York for the sun belt, where rents are relatively inexpensive, jobs are plentiful and the weather is far more temperate.

    Nationally, the average apartment rent climbed to $1,474 in December, a 3% YoY increase (the slowest in 17 months). Dollar-for-dollar, renters are currently paying, on average, $43 a more per month than they were at the end of 2019. By comparison, the average rent increased by $45 between 2017 and 2018. After years of torrid growth, it’s no surprise the pace of rising rents has slowed: with wages still stagnant, many renters are reaching the upper bounds of what they can afford.

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    That rents are still climbing is remarkable, in part because developers building rental-focused buildings added 2.4 million apartments to the national inventory over the last decade. This, despite a shortage of single-family homes, as homeownership rates among millennials remain ten percentage points lower than Gen X, or even more.

    As we mentioned above, rents in the sun belt saw the biggest gains last year, led by Phoenix ($1,123), where rents increased by 9.6%, or $98. Second was Las Vegas ($1,107), which notched a 6% gain. In third place came Austin ($1,436), where rents tacked on another 5%, or roughly $68.

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    Unsurprisingly, Manhattan remained the priciest rental market in the country in 2019, with an average rent at year end of $4,211. San Francisco came in second at $3,688 and Boston third at $3,438.

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    On the other end of the spectrum, Toledo, Ohio, displaced Brownsville, Texas, as the most affordable small city for renters. Average rent in Toledo is just $729 a month.

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    A plurality of renters last year searched for a 2-bedroom apartment, as many millennials remain unmarried and childless heading into their 30s.

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    If you’re curious to see what the average rent was last year in your city, RentCafe maintains an average price interactive on its site.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 18:35

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 28

Today’s News 28th January 2020

  • Assange Case Exposes UK's Solitary Confinement 'Torture' Loophole
    Assange Case Exposes UK’s Solitary Confinement ‘Torture’ Loophole

    Up until last week, Julian Assange had been held in unofficial solitary confinement inside of the Belmarsh prison healthcare unit – a loophole which the UK government began using in May, according to 21st Century Wire‘s Nina Cross.

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    Thanks to outcry by fellow inmates and Assange’s legal team, Assange was moved out of the Belmarsh healthcare unit – which has been “weaponized to arbitrarily isolate and punish a prisoner.”

    Of note, more than 100 Yellow Vest protesters traveled from France on Saturday to join a demonstration outside of Belmarsh in support of Assange.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsUp until now, UK authorities had denied Assange has been held in solitary confinement – or that it’s even practiced in British prisons at all.

    Until now, Assange has been locked in a cell alone for over 22 hours a day and deprived of association with other prisoners for several months.   This is in breach of both the European Prison Rules and the British government’s own prison inspectorate human rights standards …

    …

    In an attempt to mitigate growing public outrage, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has been sending out letters in response to the influx of complaints it has been receiving regarding the abuse of Assange.  In its response it refuses to address his case and produces a list of standards and laws written for the protection of prisoners as evidence he is in ‘safe hands.’  However, anyone who has followed the continued arbitrary detention of Assange in Belmarsh will know he has been placed effectively outside the reach of laws and standards; even access to his lawyers and legal documents, normally preserved by statutory prisoner rights – has been harshly restricted, all of which has had a crippling effect on preparation for his defence in a case of historical significance. –21st Century Wire

    Meanwhile, the Brits are completely dismissing statements by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, when they claim that “prisoners are not detained in solitary confinement.”

    Moreover, Cross notes that the UK’s laughable statement that they care for all prisoners clearly ignores the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which says that Assange is being arbitrarily detained in violation of international law.

    “What’s more, the British state’s dismissing out of hand any accusations  of ‘solitary confinement’ as a falsehood or public misconception – must surely undermine the work of prison charities and scholarship in law and prison systems which exists to shed light on the consequences of solitary confinement including ill-health and suicide,” writes Cross.

    Hence, the HMPPS letter can be viewed as a public relations exercise designed to promote the image of good governance, a facade designed to mask the institution’s deployment of the very same strategy practised by the government when called upon to answer for its abuse of Assange: denial and silence.

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

    Solitary confinement, technically speaking, is described by the prison charity Penal Reform as “… when a prisoner is confined to a cell for 22 hours or more, that constitutes solitary confinement, regardless of the reason for this confinement or its name,” while the prison ombusdman confirms that the definition has nothing to do with where it is.

    “Segregated conditions are also sometimes applied outside of segregation units. Prisoners can be kept on the wing, but locked in their cells for the most of the day, and taken to shower and exercise separately from other prisoners on the wing.”  

    So what was Belmarsh doing? While official prisoner segregation is allowed under rule 45, holding Assange in the medical wing allowed them to ignore several associated laws. https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “45.—(1) Where it appears desirable, for the maintenance of good order or discipline or in his own interests, that a prisoner should not associate with other prisoners, either generally or for particular purposes, the governor may arrange for the prisoner’s removal from association accordingly.

    (2) A prisoner shall not be removed under this rule for a period of more than 3 days without the authority of a member of the board of visitors or of the Secretary of State. An authority given under this paragraph shall be for a period not exceeding one month, but may be renewed from month to month”

    By holding Assange in unofficial segregation, he was excluded from ‘the rules’ and therefore may have been worse off than if he had been officially segregated:

    “The regime for segregated prisoners (under Prison Rule 45 (YOI 49)) should be as full as possible and only those activities that involve associating with mainstream prisoners should be curtailed.” – SEG PSO

    Read the rest of the report here.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 01/28/2020 – 01:00

  • Dead President Walking?
    Dead President Walking?

    Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins via Off-Guardian.org,

    I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m a little worried about Donald Trump. I’m worried he may be on the verge of a sudden, major heart attack, or a stroke, or a fatal golfing accident.

    Food poisoning is another possibility.

    Or he could overdose on prescription medication.

    A tanning bed mishap is not out of the question.

    He could accidentally hang himself during autoerotic asphyxiation, or get shot by a lone-wolf white supremacist terrorist trying to start the RaHoWa.

    The Russians could spray him with that Novichok perfume.

    There are any number of ways he could snuff it.

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    I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but the Resistance is running out of non-lethal options for removing Donald Trump from office.

    Here they are, in no particular order…

    RESISTANCE NON-LETHAL OPTION NO. 1

    Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 1 is winning the 2020 election, which isn’t looking very promising. The Democratic Party is in shambles. According to the polls, their current front-runner is a senile, hair-sniffing, finger-sucking freak who never met a credit card company or a healthcare lobbyist he didn’t like, and who rivals even Donald Trump when it comes to incoherent babbling.

    Yes, that’s right, folks, it’s “Smilin’ Joe” Biden, vanquisher of the razor-wielding, swimming-pool-gangster “Corn Pop” to the rescue!

    As far as I’ve been able to gather, the plan is for Joe to out-“crazy” Trump (and thus win back the “bull goose loony” demographic) by going completely off his medication and having a series of scary-looking petit mal seizures on national television.

    That is, unless the impossible happens, and Biden is vanquished by Bernie Sanders (a/k/a “The Magic Socialist”), who Democratic Party bigwigs would sooner publicly immolate themselves than nominate, and who the corporate media are already accusing of being a lying, sexist. communist, crypto-Trump-loving, Jew-hating Jew.

    Sanders, it seems, has gone totally “native.”

    He’s out there, in the heart of the American darkness, like a geriatric Colonel Kurz, operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.

    According to the latest reconnaissance, he is building another “revolutionary” army of fanatical, doped-up, hacky-sacking “socialists” that he will lead into the convention in July and deliver to Biden, or Elizabeth Warren, or whichever soulless corporate puppet the party honchos eventually nominate, and then obsequiously stump for them for the next five months. (Or, who knows, maybe Michael Bloomberg will put the Democrats out of their misery and just buy the party and nominate himself.)

    The “Crush Bernie” movement is just getting started, but you can tell the Resistance isn’t screwing around. Hillary Clinton just officially launched her national “Nobody Likes Bernie” campaign at the star-studded 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

    Influential Jewish journalists like Bari Weiss and Jeffrey Goldberg, and Ronald Lauder’s newly-founded Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, have been Hitlerizing him, or, rather, Corbynizing him.

    Obama has promised to “stop him,” if necessary.

    MSNBC anchor Joy Reid brought on a professional “body language expert” to phrenologize Sanders “live” on the air … and, as I said, they’re just getting started.

    In any event, no matter who they nominate, they have no chance of winning in November.

    How could they, given the total stranglehold the Russians now have on American democracy?

    As Adam Schiff just reminded everyone, unless Donald Trump is removed from office, “we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won,” because at any moment Putin could order Trump to pressure the Ukrainian president into investigating Biden’s son’s corruption by refusing to fund the Ukrainian military’s resistance to Putin’s secret plot to occupy the entire Ukraine and use it as a covert base from which to launch an all-out thermonuclear war against the United States (which Putin already controls through his puppet, Trump, and his network of nefarious Facebook bots, which, according to this expert on NPR, are already brainwashing gullible Black people into voting for Bernie Sanders this time, or at least refusing to vote for Biden, like they refused to vote for Hillary last time … which, OK, I know, that sounds kind of racist, but we’re talking NPR here, folks. These people aren’t racists. They’re liberals!)

    OK, I got a little lost there… the point is, if the election goes ahead, and Trump doesn’t have an embolism or something, odds are, we’re looking at four more years of Putin-Nazi occupation. Which brings us to…

    NON-LETHAL OPTION NO. 2

    Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 2 is, of course, the current impeachment circus. I don’t even know where to start with this one.

    After three and a half years of corporate-media-manufactured mass hysteria and Intelligence Community propaganda designed to convince the American public that Donald Trump is a “Russian asset” (and possibly Putin’s homosexual lover) and also literally the Resurrection of Hitler, the Democrats are trying to impeach the man for something that most Americans either (a) believe is common practice among members of the political class, (b) don’t entirely understand, or (c) do, but don’t give a shit about.

    Seriously, it’s like they held a contest to see if anyone could think of something that would out-anticlimax the Mueller report, and this is what the winner came up with … an over-acted, sanctimonious snooze-fest, the stakes of which could not possibly be lower.

    Sure, the corporate media are doing their best to cover every twist and turn of the “drama” as if the fate of democracy were hanging in the balance, but everybody knows it’s a joke … or, all right, almost everybody.

    So we’re down to…

    NON-LETHAL OPTION NO. 3

    Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 3 is to whip up so much mass hysteria over “white supremacist terrorism,” “the sudden resurgence of anti-Semitism,” “the imminent Putin-Nazi Apocalypse” (which has been imminent since the summer of 2016), and other iterations of Hitler hysteria, that people can’t really even think anymore, and will join the Resistance and pour into the streets in their millions and demand Trump resign.

    The Resistance has been at this for over three years now, i.e., casting the neo-Nazi subculture that has always been part of the political landscape as a powerful, worldwide fascist movement that is going to rise up any minute and Hitlerize the entire Western world.

    It isn’t working. People aren’t buying it. OK, sure, some liberals are still buying it. But most people aren’t, not anymore.

    For example, the hysteria leading up to the recent gun rights rally in Richmond, which according to the corporate media had been infiltrated by “Nazi terrorists” who were plotting to publicly mass murder each other in a desperate attempt to finally launch the “Boogaloo,” or the “RaHoWa” … or whatever.

    Apparently, a few days before the rally, the FBI got some neo-Nazis to agree to conspire to murder some people and then violently overthrow the U.S. government with their arsenal of homemade machine guns.

    These neo-Nazi masterminds were allegedly members of “the Base,” i.e., one of these little neo-Nazi clubs that we’re all supposed to live in mortal fear of now … this one, as it turns out, run by a former (and possibly current) “security contractor.”

    The governor declared a state of emergency. Anti-Terror forces were put on alert. A “no-fly zone” was implemented, presumably to prevent the Russians from dropping a division of Putin-Nazi paratroopers onto the lawn of the Capitol. The corporate media warned that it was probably going to be a bloodbath.

    Well, the day came and went, and no Boogaloo. No bloodbath. No Putin-Nazi Apocalypse. Just a lot of gun owners and militia types parading around with their guns and gear. Antifa didn’t even show up this time … or, rather, the few “anti-fascists” that did were also armed and supporting the rally.

    And that’s the problem with Non-Lethal Option No. 3… there are only so many times you can have the corporate media scream, “THE NAZIS ARE COMING!” and then not produce any actual Nazis. The Resistance has exceeded that allotment.

    Which brings me back to where I started, and my concerns about Donald Trump, and his health, and the assorted tragic accidents that could befall him before we get to November. Because, unless you believe that the Intelligence Community (and the transnational empire it is part and parcel of) is prepared to sit by and allow Donald Trump to serve another four years as president … well, I wouldn’t be sharing any Diet Cokes or riding in any motorcades with him.

    I don’t know, maybe I’ve been reading too much of that “conspiracy theory” stuff on the Internet, but Senator Schumer’s warning to Trump back in 2017 keeps playing in my head:

    Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

    Relax, folks. I’m just kidding, of course. The Intelligence Community would never dream of doing anything … you know, illegal.

    The Community doesn’t assassinate people, and commit all sorts of other atrocities.

    That’s just a thing they do in the movies.

    In reality, they would never assassinate a president, especially not one they had been telling everyone is a “Russian asset,” and “literally Hitler,” and a “traitor,” and a “dictator,” for over three years.

    OK, those are pretty harsh words, but they probably don’t really mean all that stuff. Odds are, they’re just horsing around.

    They’re a notorious bunch of jokesters, those CIA guys.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 23:45

    Tags
    Politics

  • U.K. To Decide On Huawei 5G Equipment On Tuesday 
    U.K. To Decide On Huawei 5G Equipment On Tuesday 

    The U.K. government is expected to decide on Tuesday whether to ban Huawei 5G equipment from the country’s telecommunication networks, reported BBC News.

    Digital Minister Matt Warman said Monday that “security and resilience” of Britain’s “telecom networks are of paramount importance” in tomorrow’s decision.  

    “We welcome open trade and inward investment, however, our economy can only prosper and unleash Britain’s potential when we and our international partners are assured that our critical national infrastructure remains safe and secure,” Warman said.

    We noted earlier this month how the Trump administration was pressuring U.K. officials to outlaw Huawei 5G equipment.

    There’s speculation Monday that Prime Minister Boris Johnson could allow “core” Huawei parts in the backbone of networks.

    Johnson told reporters that he needed a communication network that benefits the economy without jeopardizing national security. 

    “We are going to come up with a solution that enables us to achieve both those objectives, and that is the way forward,” he said.

    Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told BBC on Monday that he “wondered whether it was wise” for the U.K. to become entirely reliant on China for communication equipment.

    “I would say if the decision goes the other way this week, as some of the signs seem to indicate it might, I hope there will also be some reflection in the U.S. because we have never needed the Western alliance to be stronger than now,” Hunt said.

    If Huawei 5G equipment is banned from U.K. communication networks on Tuesday, it would mean that E.E., Three, and Vodafone, would have to replace Chinese equipment already installed in the country’s networks. 

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

    Tuesday’s Huawei decision will be important for Johnson. He will either side with the Trump administration and ban the Chinese telecom from communication networks. If he allows Huawei equipment to expand in the network, then it would likely draw intense anger from Washington.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 23:25

  • Escobar: Why The New Silk Roads Are A "Threat" To US Bloc
    Escobar: Why The New Silk Roads Are A “Threat” To US Bloc

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

    Under the cascading roar of the 24/7 news cycle cum Twitter eruptions, it’s easy for most of the West, especially the US, to forget the basics about the interaction of Eurasia with its western peninsula, Europe.

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    Asia and Europe have been trading goods and ideas since at least 3,500 BC. Historically, the flux may have suffered some occasional bumps – for instance, with the irruption of 5th-century nomad horsemen in the Eurasian plains. But it was essentially steady up to the end of the 15th century. We can essentially describe it as a millennium-old axis – from Greece to Persia, from the Roman empire to China.

    A land route with myriad ramifications, through Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, linking India and China to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, ended up coalescing into what we came to know as the Ancient Silk Roads.

    By the 7th century, land routes and sea trade routes were in direct competition. And the Iranian plateau always played a key role in this process.

    The Iranian plateau historically includes Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia linking it to Xinjiang to the east, and to the west all the way to Anatolia. The Persian empire was all about land trade – the key node between India and China and the Eastern Mediterranean.

    The Persians engaged the Phoenicians in the Syrian coastline as their partners to manage sea trade in the Mediterranean. Enterprising people in Tyre established Carthage as a node between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Because of the partnership with the Phoenicians, the Persians would inevitably be antagonized by the Greeks – a sea trading power.

    When the Chinese, promoting the New Silk Roads, emphasize “people to people exchange” as one of its main traits, they mean the millenary Euro-Asia dialogue. History may even have aborted two massive, direct encounters.

    The first was after Alexander The Great defeated Darius III of Persia. But then Alexander’s Seleucid successors had to fight the rising power in Central Asia: the Parthians – who ended up taking over Persia and Mesopotamia and made the Euphrates the limes between them and the Seleucids.

    The second encounter was when emperor Trajan, in 116 AD, after defeating the Parthians, reached the Persian Gulf. But Hadrian backed off – so history did not register what would have been a direct encounter between Rome, via Persia, with India and China, or the Mediterranean meeting with the Pacific.

    Mongol globalization

    The last western stretch of the Ancient Silk Roads was, in fact, a Maritime Silk Road. From the Black Sea to the Nile delta, we had a string of pearls in the form of Italian city/emporia, a mix of end journey for caravans and naval bases, which then moved Asian products to Italian ports.

    Commercial centers between Constantinople and Crimea configured another Silk Road branch through Russia all the way to Novgorod, which was very close culturally to the Byzantine world. From Novgorod, merchants from Hamburg and other cities of the Hanseatic League distributed Asian products to markets in the Baltics, northern Europe and all the way to England – in parallel to the southern routes followed by the maritime Italian republics.

    Between the Mediterranean and China, the Ancient Silk Roads were of course mostly overland. But there were a few maritime routes as well. The major civilization poles involved were peasant and artisanal, not maritime. Up to the 15th century, no one was really thinking about turbulent, interminable oceanic navigation.

    The main players were China and India in Asia, and Italy and Germany in Europe. Germany was the prime consumer of goods imported by the Italians. That explains, in a nutshell, the structural marriage of the Holy Roman Empire.

    At the geographic heart of the Ancient Silk Roads, we had deserts and the vast steppes, trespassed by sparse tribes of shepherds and nomad hunters. All across those vast lands north of the Himalayas, the Silk Road network served mostly the four main players. One can imagine how the emergence of a huge political power uniting all those nomads would be in fact the main beneficiary of Silk Road trade.

    Well, that actually happened. Things started to change when the nomad shepherds of Central-South Asia started to have their tribes regimented as horseback archers by politico-military leaders such as Genghis Khan.

    Welcome to the Mongol globalization. That was actually the fourth globalization in history, after the Syrian, the Persian and the Arab.    Under the Mongolian Ilkhanate, the Iranian plateau – once again playing a major role – linked China to the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia in the Mediterranean.

    The Mongols didn’t go for a Silk Road monopoly. On the contrary: during Kublai Khan – and Marco Polo’s travels – the Silk Road was free and open. The Mongols only wanted caravans to pay a toll.

    With the Turks, it was a completely different story. They consolidated Turkestan, from Central Asia to northwest China. The only reason Tamerlan did not annex India is that he died beforehand. But even the Turks did not want to shut down the Silk Road. They wanted to control it.

    Venice lost its last direct Silk Road access in 1461, with the fall of Trebizond, which was still clinging to the Byzantine empire. With the Silk Road closed to the Europeans, the Turks – with an empire ranging from Central-South Asia to the Mediterranean – were convinced they now controlled trade between Europe and Asia.

    Not so fast. Because that was when European kingdoms facing the Atlantic came up with the ultimate Plan B: a new maritime road to India.

    And the rest – North Atlantic hegemony – is history.

    Enlightened arrogance

    The Enlightenment could not possibly box Asia inside its own rigid geometries. Europe ceased to understand Asia, proclaimed it was some sort of proteiform historical detritus and turned its undivided attention to “virgin,” or “promised” lands elsewhere on the planet.

    We all know how England, from the 18th century onwards, took control of the entire trans-oceanic routes and turned North Atlantic supremacy into a lone superpower game – till the mantle was usurped by the US.

    Yet all the time there has been counter-pressure from the Eurasian Heartland powers. That’s the stuff of international relations for the past two centuries – peaking in the young 21st century into what could be simplified as The Revenge of the Heartland against Sea Power. But still, that does not tell the whole story.

    Rationalist hegemony in Europe progressively led to an incapacity to understand diversity – or The Other, as in Asia. Real Euro-Asia dialogue – the de facto true engine of history – had been dwindling for most of the past two centuries.

    Europe owes its DNA not only to much-hailed Athens and Rome – but to Byzantium as well. But for too long not only the East but also the European East, heir to Byzantium, became incomprehensible, quasi incommunicado with Western Europe, or submerged by pathetic clichés.

    The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as in the Chinese-led New Silk Roads, are a historical game-changer in infinite ways. Slowly and surely, we are evolving towards the configuration of an economically interlinked group of top Eurasian land powers, from Shanghai to the Ruhr valley, profiting in a coordinated manner from the huge technological know-how of Germany and China and the enormous energy resources of Russia.

    The Raging 2020s may signify the historical juncture when this bloc surpasses the current, hegemonic Atlanticist bloc.

    Now compare it with the prime US strategic objective at all times, for decades: to establish, via myriad forms of divide and rule, that relations between Germany, Russia and China must be the worst possible.

    No wonder strategic fear was glaringly visible at the NATO summit in London last month, which called for ratcheting up pressure on Russia-China. Call it the late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s ultimate, recurrent nightmare.

    Germany soon will have a larger than life decision to make. It’s like this was a renewal – in way more dramatic terms – of the Atlanticist vs Ostpolitik debate. German business knows that the only way for a sovereign Germany to consolidate its role as a global export powerhouse is to become a close business partner of Eurasia.

    In parallel, Moscow and Beijing have come to the conclusion that the  US trans-oceanic strategic ring can only be broken through the actions of a concerted block: BRI, Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS+ and the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB), the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

    Middle East pacifier

    The Ancient Silk Road was not a single camel caravan route but an inter-communicating maze. Since the mid-1990s I’ve had the privilege to travel almost every important stretch – and then, one day, you see the complete puzzle. The New Silk Roads, if they fulfill their potential, pledge to do the same.

    Maritime trade may be eventually imposed – or controlled – by a global naval superpower. But overland trade can only prosper in peace. Thus the New Silk Roads potential as The Great Pacifier in Southwest Asia – what the Western-centric view calls the Middle East.

    The Middle East (remember Palmyra) was always a key hub of the Ancient Silk Roads, the great overland axis of Euro-Asia trade going all the way to the Mediterranean.

    For centuries, a quartet of regional powers – Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Persia (now Iran) – have been fighting for hegemony over the whole area from the Nile delta to the Persian Gulf. More recently, it has been a case of external hegemony: Ottoman Turk, British and American.

    So delicate, so fragile, so immensely rich in culture, no other region in the world has been, continually, since the dawn of history, an absolutely key zone. Of course, the Middle East was also a crisis zone even before oil was found (the Babylonians, by the way, already knew about it).

    The Middle East is a key stop in the 21st century, trans-oceanic supply chain routes – thus its geopolitical importance for the current superpower, among other geoeconomic, energy-related reasons. But its best and brightest know the Middle East does not need to remain a center of war, or intimations of war, which, incidentally, affect three of those historical, regional powers of the quartet (Syria, Iraq and Iran).

    What the New Silk Roads are proposing is wide-ranging, economic, interlinked integration from East Asia, through Central Asia, to Iran, Iraq and Syria all the way to the Eastern Mediterranean. Just like the Ancient Silk Roads. No wonder vested War Party interests are so uncomfortable with this real peace “threat.”


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 23:05

  • Emergency Evacuation Of Americans Begins From Epidemic-Stricken Chinese City
    Emergency Evacuation Of Americans Begins From Epidemic-Stricken Chinese City

    Update (Jan. 27):  The Wall Street Journal has provided an update on the emergency charter flight to evacuate Americans from the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan.

    The Boeing 767, with about 230 seats, is preparing to depart from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Tuesday for California, amid new fears that coronavirus has uncontrollably spread across the country. 

    The U.S. State Department’s rapid response operation to evacuate Americans from the region is due to the expected increase in the number of cases in the days ahead. 

    There are at least 1,000 Americans in Wuhan, and only 230 will get seats on the chartered flight. 

    We noted on Sunday that U.S. diplomats and their families were likely first on the list to receive seats.

    People with tickets told the Journal that the chartered flight is expected to land in Ontario, California.

    Vermont native Priscilla Dickie, 35, told the Journal that she and her daughter, 8, have seats on the plane but might not be able to get to the airport since transportation has come to a standstill. She said she’s 20 miles from the airport without a means of transportation.

    Benjamin Wilson told the Journal he’s preparing for the worse and hunkering down with his Wuhan native wife and 7-year-old daughter.

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    “I would consider sending my daughter, if that were an option,” Wilson said.

    “But I wouldn’t leave my wife. But if my wife and daughter could travel together, then absolutely yes.”

    A U.S. official told the Journal over the weekend that additional emergency evacuation operations would be conducted this week, which would include the bussing of Americans from the outbreak zone to other cities for outbound flights to the U.S.

    Besides the U.S., Reuters reports the following countries have already announced evacuation plans for their citizens trapped in Wuhan:

    • France expects to repatriate up to a few hundred of its 800 citizens living in the Wuhan area. Evacuees will have to spend 14 days in quarantine to avoid spreading the virus in France.

    • The German air force repatriating 90 Germans living in the area, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Monday.

    • Japan is expected to arrange charter flights as early as Tuesday for any of its citizens who wish to return from Wuhan, two sources familiar with the matter said. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said about 430 Japanese nationals have been confirmed to be in Hubei province.

    • Spain’s government is working with China and the European Union to repatriate Spanish nationals from the Wuhan area, Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said.

    • Britain is talking to international partners to find solutions to help British and other foreign nationals leave Wuhan, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

    • Canada has about 167 nationals in the Wuhan area, Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said on Monday, and eight people have sought consular assistance, which is being provided. While the minister did not rule out possible evacuations, he did not indicate there were any planned at the moment, adding that each consular request would be evaluated on a “case by case basis”.

    • Russia has been in talks with China about evacuating its nationals from Wuhan and Hubei province, Russia’s embassy in China said.

    • The Dutch government is assessing ways to evacuate 20 Dutch citizens from Wuhan, press agency ANP reported.

    • Authorities in Myanmar said they had canceled a planned evacuation of 60 students from Mandalay who were studying in Wuhan. Kyaw Yin Myint, a spokesman for the Mandalay municipal government, told Reuters that a “final decision” had been made to send them back after 14 days, once the virus’ incubation period had passed.

    The total number of confirmed cases has climbed to 2882, though the actual number of cases out there is likely much higher, as experts have warned.

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    * * *

    Update (1154ET): Yesterday it was the U.S. and Russia arranging charter flights to evacuate their citizens from the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan. 

    Now Thailand has four Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport planes on standby to airlift its citizens from the city as the coronavirus outbreak spreads uncontrollably, reported the Bangkok Post.  

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    Royal Thai Air Force Chief Maanat Wongwat told the Post that four C-130s, carrying medical teams, students, and medical professionals, are ready to take off from the Chinese city. 

    “The air force is ready” to evacuate its citizens, Wongwat said. 

    Evacuations from the city are already underway for the U.S., France, and Japan, as confirmed cases in China could exceed over 3,000 by the end of the weekend. 

    Thailand’s evacuation plan also comes as a quarter-million people across China could be infected with the deadly disease in the next several weeks. 

    At the moment, four countries have initiated evacuation plans for their citizens trapped in Wuhan. 

    * * * 

    A new report from The Wall Street Journal indicates the U.S. government is preparing an emergency charter flight to evacuate Americans from the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan. 

    The operation comes after the death toll jumped 60% on Friday night to 41, with more than 1,400 confirmed infections. 

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    China has restricted travel for 46 million people across 16 cities as the death toll surges, and the spread becomes uncontrollable. 

    New cases were also reported in Europe and Australia on Friday night. 

    In the U.S., there are 63 suspected cases, with at least three confirmed, with two reported so far in Illinois and California, and two suspected in Minnesota.

    The Journal said about 1,000 Americans reside in Wuhan, but the official number has yet to be confirmed. 

    U.S. officials have contacted known Americans in the region with an offer for a seat on a Boeing 767 jet that holds approximately 230 people. 

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    Confirmed passengers already include diplomats from the U.S. Consulate Wuhan as well as their families. 

    The Journal noted that medical personnel would be on the plane to examine passengers for potential cases of the deadly virus. 

    The emergency evacuation is planned for Sunday, but limited details were given on where the plane would land in the U.S. 

    A U.S. official told The Journal that additional emergency evacuation operations would be conducted in the coming days, which would include the bussing of Americans from the outbreak zone to other cities for outbound flights to the U.S. 

    Russia is also planning emergency evacuations of its citizens from Wuhan and Hubei province, reported RIA news agency on Saturday. 

    Emergency evacuations are coming at a time when upwards of 250,000 Chinese could contract the deadly virus in the next ten days, said Jonathan Read, a U.K. expert on the transmission and evolutionary dynamics of infectious diseases. 

    Evacuations by the U.S. are likely in response to Read’s warning that suggests the outbreak could exponentially increase in the next several weeks. 


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 22:45

    Tags
    Disaster Accident

  • California Sued After Concealing $320 Billion In Annual State Payments
    California Sued After Concealing $320 Billion In Annual State Payments

    Authored by Adam Andrzjewski, op-ed via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Just a few of the serious financial problems facing California include unfunded public employee pension promises, a potential state credit downgrade, an unprecedented homeless crisis, and a net out-migration of 912,000 residents since 2010.

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    One easy step California can take is to join every other state in the union and open up its state checkbook for review. Allowing citizens, journalists, watchdogs, academics, and public policy experts to review state spending would help the state get its fiscal house in order.

    Unfortunately, last fall, California State Controller Betty Yee (pictured) rejected our sunshine request for the state checkbook. Oddly, the rejection didn’t argue the law, but instead claimed that the controller couldn’t locate a single one of the 49 million bills she paid last year.

    This admission provides a troubling clue to California taxpayers who are wondering how and where their money is being spent. The answer is the people spending it literally don’t know. Or they at least say that don’t.

    It is of course unimaginable, and laughable, that the state that is home to Silicon Valley can’t put basic transparency tech in place. That state’s feigned tech illiteracy begs the question: What are they trying to hide?

    Taxpayers in California certainly want to know what’s happening to state funds. It shouldn’t take subpoenas and litigation to “find” up to $320 billion in annual state payments and show taxpayers how their money was spent.

    So, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com, alongside our attorneys at Cause of Action Institute, a government oversight organization, filed an open records lawsuit in Sacramento state court. Our lawsuit begins the process of forcing open the state’s line-by-line expenditures.

    We’ve never lost a state checkbook transparency fight. In 2012, we successfully sued Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka (R), and, in 2018, we sued Wyoming State Auditor Cynthia Cloud (R).

    We believe the open government movement is revolutionizing U.S. public policy and politics. Just like the microscope transformed medicine, big data is modernizing government.

    The purpose of transparency isn’t to scold state officials but to encourage accountability, trust, and better public policy. Here are just three of many critical issues facing the Golden State that could be improved by transparency:

    • State credit rating: The state auditor just issued a report saying the state’s $1.1 billion accounting system (FisCal) is so flawed that it could lead to a state credit downgrade.

    • Corruption: Controller Yee claims that 99.7 percent of all state payments were properly paid even though she told us she can’t find her receipts. Betty Yee is probably the only one of 40 million Californians who believes state government is that efficient, effective, and honest. Yee estimates the state only loses a mere 0.3 percent (less than one-third of one percent) of state dollars every year through waste, abuse, and fiscal mismanagement. The state’s myriad problems suggest this is a fantasy.

    • Homeless populations: a 2014 state proposition taxed millionaires to provide funds for mental health services. How did San Francisco — home to 7,500 homeless people — manage its funds? Last summer, we published an interactive poop map featuring 130,000 instances of human waste in the public way, which is in part connected to the state’s homeless problem

    California, a state whose $3 trillion GDP ranks it ahead of the United Kingdom, spends an enormous sum of money. The state spends more than $320 billion per year with federal taxpayers funding $106 billion of it. If taxpayers can’t follow the money, it will be hard for the state to address its mounting fiscal challenges.

    Every state across America can produce a complete checkbook of public expenditures. Are we just dreamin’ to believe that California can produce a full record too?

    *  *  *

    Adam Andrzejewski is the CEO/founder of OpenTheBooks.com, dedicated to posting all government spending online.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 22:25

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Furious Chinese Defy Censors To Mock Local Leaders Over Bungled Virus Response
    Furious Chinese Defy Censors To Mock Local Leaders Over Bungled Virus Response

    A few hours ago, the New York Times published an interesting story about how China’s population, known for assiduously self-censoring their speech online, is refusing to be silent in the face of the rapidly accelerating novel coronavirus. The deluge of critical posts, along with clever tricks to dodge censors, are making it nearly impossible for Beijing to control the narrative on the mainland.

    Earlier, we mentioned how doctors, nurses and residents in Wuhan have demanded that their “useless” mayor follow through on an offer to resign for sluggishness in confronting the outbreak. But that’s not all: though reports claimed Beijing made an effort to remove horrifying videos of the situation on the ground in Wuhan (videos that showed what appeared to be dead bodies lying in hospital hallways), according to NYT, the censors have now been completely overwhelmed.

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    Some posters evade censors by referred to President Xi as “Trump”, or by comparing the outbreak to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

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    Public anger over the handling of the outbreak has been compounded by the cancellation of the LNY holiday. Internet critics posted scathing criticisms of public officials over often minor slights, like when officials in Wuhan wore their face masks incorrectly during a press conference. 

    After Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang offered to resign over his handling of the outbreak, a commenter replied: “If the virus is fair, then please don’t spare this useless person,” according to the NYT.

    After the Hubei Gov. Wang Xiaodong delivered a news briefing on Sunday, he was brutally mocked for twice misstating the number of face masks that the province would produce to help fight the epidemic. A photo of the press conference that circulated online showed one of Wang’s partners didn’t cover his nose properly with the mask, inviting another torrent of derision.

    However, experts cited by NYT said this torrent of criticism won’t go on forever. The Communist Party doesn’t tolerate any criticism or challenge to its rule, and government censors are still scrambling to delete any articles, comments or posts that are too critical.

    “Chinese social media are full of anger, not because there was no censorship on this topic, but despite strong censorship,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times, a website that monitors Chinese internet controls. “It is still possible that the censorship will suddenly increase again, as part of an effort to control the narrative.”

    Over the weekend, President Xi and the Politburo resolved to “strengthen the guidance of public opinion,” which sounds like a signal that a crackdown will go beyond deleting quack remedies and dangerous, false rumors.

    It’s also possible that this is a Politburo strategy to focus domestic anger at local officials, scapegoating them ‘for the good of the country, and the party.’


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 22:05

  • The Four Pillars Of Economic Understanding
    The Four Pillars Of Economic Understanding

    Authored by Peter Boettke via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    It is no exaggeration to say that learning economics changed my life. In fact, I would go as far as saying the two most pivotal moments of my young adulthood was meeting my future wife at 17 and being exposed to economics at 19.  Not only pivotal, but responsible for the good fortune and happiness I have had in the intervening years. 

    Earlier this month I turned 60. I became an economics major 40 years ago after the powerful messages I learned from my teacher Dr. Hans Sennholz and the economists and ideas he alerted me to. It was simply the way he taught that excited my imagination, and my journey since that time has only fueled my curiosity and imagination since. 

    I find everything about economics fascinating — its history, its sociology, its underlying philosophical debates, and most of all its ability in the hands of a real master to render the world in all its complexity intelligible. As James Buchanan taught us, economic theory is able to lift an ordinary individual to the heights of observational genius, while a genius unarmed with economic theory will often be reduced to very ordinary if not worse in their observations of how the world works.

    Earlier this fall, I was part of a panel at the Southern Economic Association on Paul Rubin’s The Capitalism Paradox, along with Steve Horwitz and Sanford Ikeda. I have known of Ikeda since I was 19 because he was the star graduating economic student when I was first learning economics from Dr. Sennholz back at Grove City College. So, it was not surprising to me when Sandy in his comments summed up what he thought were the key ideas for teachers of economics to stress to excite the imaginations of subsequent generations of students. It was these ideas that changed my life.

    Rubin’s book is highly recommended because he offers a useful corrective by stressing the importance of social cooperation among distant and disparate people, rather than the ruthless competitive nature of market society. Yes, market competition is unrelenting and valuable. But the by-product isn’t just the delivery of goods and services at least cost, but also the network of social relationships and bonds of cooperation that are formed even among strangers. Steve Horwitz recently gave a great talk on this in Greece, and was discussed at Coordination Problem. So our panel was united in its praise for Rubin’s work.

    But, when Ikeda had his chance to summarize he placed the teaching of economics into 4 categories: Truth and Light; Beauty and Awe; Hope; and Compassion. My mind rushed back over the years to all the great teachers I have had in economics from Sennholz to Don Lavoie and Karen Vaughn, from Kenneth Boulding to James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, and from colleagues such as Israel Kirzner and Mario Rizzo at NYU to Don Boudreaux, Tyler Cowen, Chris Coyne, Peter Leeson, Russ Roberts, Vernon Smith and Virgil Storr. They all hit these different categories in their teaching and writing with different levels of emphasis and all with great effect. A few hit all four constantly and they stand out above the crowd.

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    Truth and Light

    Economics begins with the recognition of scarcity. There is certain shock value when you first are taught this idea and the notion that in our world we are constantly confronted with trade-offs, and as such notions of optimality are a function of the skill with which we as human decision-makers negotiate these trade-offs. 

    Learning economics to a considerable extent is learning about all the implications of scarcity, and thus the persistent and consistent application of opportunity cost reasoning to all human affairs. Tullock (along with Richard McKenzie) achieve this with their The New World of Economics, which was originally published during the 1970s and which I read as an undergraduate economics student at Grove City College. 

    Economics brings truth and the light to the darkness, and pierces through the fog to make sense of all human endeavors, whether in pursuit of the highest ideals or the basis of crass motives.  If you are being taught economics by Gordon Tullock, or for that matter Pete Leeson (The Invisible Hook and more recently WTF), be prepared to be shocked out of your comfortable complacency and instead learn about the logic and underlying governing dynamics of the world around you.

    Beauty and Awe

    Adam Smith sought to excite the imagination of his readers of The Wealth of Nations with two striking examples early on in the first book. We are asked to contemplate our situation in the world. We depend for our very survival on the cooperation of a great multitude of individuals, yet in our lifetime we have the occasion to make only a few close friends. Smith informs us, therefore, that we cannot rely on their benevolence to help us in our daily struggle for existence.  We must appeal to their own self-love. It is not, as he says, from the benevolence of the butcher, the baker and the brewer that we can procure our dinner, but with regard to their self-love.

    Let that sink in; we require institutions that will enable us to engage in productive specialization, realize mutual gains from exchange, and achieve peaceful social cooperation among distant and disparate people. Smith hammers this point home with his example of the common woolen coat that exists on the back of the day laborer. He traces out the great multitude of individuals involved in this complex division of labor that must coordinate their activity with one another in order to produce even this simple product. Leonard Read and Milton Friedman would later use the story of a pencil to similar effect.

    And how is that achieved? Friedrich Hayek’s great contribution was to show how the price system through the knowledge generating, utilization and communication functions can produce this complex web of interdependent relationships among economic actors near and far. Hayek even used the phrase “marvel” to shake his professional colleagues out of their complacency about the beauty and awe of the complex coordination of a free market economy.

    The scientific imagination is piqued either through a sense of awe or a sense of urgency. Economics is capable of both, and we do a disservice to our students when we don’t expose them to both. My colleague Chris Coyne’s work in the field of post-war reconstruction (After War) as well as humanitarian aid (Doing Bad By Doing Good) demonstrates to his readers that getting the economics right is really a matter of life and death in the real-world. But this understanding of the urgency is based on a sense of awe at the power of the price system. 

    This is reflected in important ways in Russ Roberts’ trilogy, The Choice, The Invisible Heart and The Price of Everything. Recently I made a post about the beautiful patterns of nature and the analogy to the market that Alfred Marshall draws in his Principles of Economics, and I think watching the rhythmic movement of the pendulum and the pattern produced is helpful to economics students to think about the complex pattern of economic relationships formed through the guidance of the price system. 

    Prices guide us, profits lure us, and losses discipline us in our decisions, and property rights provide the institutional infrastructure required for all of this to take place. James Buchanan taught us that the number one job of the economics teacher was to develop an appreciation in their students of the spontaneous order of the market so that our students could become informed participants in the democratic process of collective decision-making. In developing that appreciation, it helps to teach them about the mystery of the mundane. 

    Hope

    But, learning economics and economic history teaches us even more; it teaches us about the “Great Escape” as Angus Deaton has dubbed it, as through the expansion of trade, refinements in the division of labor, technological innovations, and adoption of rules of the economic game that cultivate these developments rather than hinder them, humanity was able to get beyond the Malthusian struggle and the oppression of crushing poverty. Economics teaches us hope in the betterment of the human condition.

    Entrepreneurs in the private sector act on price signals to constantly seek out deals by buying low and selling high, and in doing so bring mutual gains from trade. But these entrepreneurs are also constantly on the lookout for cost saving technologies in production or improvements in the delivery mechanism to consumers of their goods and services. And, don’t ever forget the innovations they introduce and the discovery of new products and new services that better satisfy the demands of consumers. Hope in the form of improved living conditions is born out of individuals being able to bet on ideas and bring those bets to life.

    Hope is also a function of finding changes in the rules that will ease the costs of transacting and encourage the discovery of new opportunities for mutual gains from trade. Thus, public entrepreneurs can, and have, made tremendous improvements in the lives of millions (billions) by introducing changes in policy and more importantly in the legal and political structure that unleashes the creative powers of a free civilization as Hayek talks about in The Constitution of Liberty.  

    In recent years, perhaps nobody has documented this message of hope from economics better than Deirdre McCloskey in her Bourgeois trilogy. These are advanced texts, but the basic message is accessible to everyone. And, I would argue that as economic teachers, it is imperative that you communicate. Tyler Cowen in his recent Arrow Lecture asks whether Economic Growth is a Moral Imperative; he answers in the affirmative. It would be valuable to have your students watch this discussion.

    Compassion

    And, finally, economic teaching should stress how economic progress doesn’t result in gains only for the wealthy, but lifts the least advantaged from their previous precarious situation through material betterment. As Milton Friedman used to say, all ships rise in a rising tide. But it goes deeper than this empirical observation.

    Economics as a tool of social criticism — perhaps its second most important role — is a rational method for assessing alternative policies and even economic systems. The strict adherence to value freedom in the analysis means that the economist takes the ends of the advocate as given, and limits their critical analysis to the effectiveness of the chosen means by the advocate to the achievement of the stated ends of the advocate for the policy or system. 

    If the goal is to help the least advantaged get affordable housing, and the means chosen is rent control, then the economists examines the logic of choice, and the situational logic of that means/ends relationship. We study the structure of incentives and the flow of information embodied in those structures and the ability of the system to produce the desired results. This has been the economist’s way from the classical political economists to the modern textbook economics.

    The much maligned Econ 101 is actually couched in these terms for anyone who wants to read closely, rather than assume that economists are engaged in normative theorizing parading as positive analysis.

    The great economists from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith were all passionately concerned with the status of the least advantaged among us. Economics teaches with great compassion about the less fortunate, and focuses energy on the institutional remedies that will open up opportunities and eradicate barriers. 

    As Lionel Robbins persuasively argued to my mind in The Theory of Economic Policy, the great British Classical Political Economists developed their theories in a manner that co-evolved with the development of British institutions of liberalism — private property, freedom of contract, rule of law. What must not be forgotten in all of this is that these liberal political economists, again reflected strongly in Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty as well as in various writings of James Buchanan, sought a system of government that exhibited neither discrimination nor domination. It is a system designed to eliminate privileges, and to recognize the rights of all as dignified equals before the law.

    I honestly think that this message of economics — truth and light; beauty and awe; hope; and compassion — can excite the imagination of every generation to explore the intricacies of economic theory, and study in detail both the history of this fascinating discipline and the practical history of economies throughout the world. 

    We have to bring our students the truth and the light, but we also must instill in them a sense of beauty and awe at the complex coordination of the market, communicate the message of hope in our quest to improve the human condition, and speak to concerns and express our compassion for the least advantaged in our common cause of living in a society that grants freedom and dignity to all. As my colleague Virgil Storr (and Ginny Choi) establish in their recent book, Does the Market Corrupt Our Morals?, the answer is NO, it doesn’t. In fact, commercial society provides the foundation for our moral learning and improvement in our social relationships with one another.

    With the increasing attacks on Econ 101, it is time for a renewed commitment by teachers to communicating to this generation the best of what is to be learned from economics.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 21:45

  • Vermont Introduces Bill To Add Emojis To License Plates
    Vermont Introduces Bill To Add Emojis To License Plates

    The fine folks in Vermont, responsible for bringing us bright ideas like maple syrup chugging, Bernie Sanders and occasionally the baggie of low quality Canadian marijuana, could be adding another national trend to their resume: license plates with emojis. 

    The state’s distinctive green license plates could wind up being even more noticeable thanks to new legislation being introduced in the state that could allow emojis on license plates, according to the NY Post.

    State Rep. Rebecca White has introduced the bill, which would allow drivers to add one of six emojis to their plate when registering a vehicle in Vermont. The symbols would be added to the plate’s registration number and would not replace any letters or numbers assigned by the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles. 

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    “As long as they’re appropriate, I’m all for it,” said Mary-Jo Roldan to NBC News.

    There were over 3000 common emojis at the time the bill was introduced and the bill doesn’t say which ones drivers would be able to choose from. 

    Local residents seem to be ecstatic over the idea. Vermont resident Pam Buck, of Weathersfield, said: “I guess it’s an OK idea. I wouldn’t say it’s good. I wouldn’t say it’s bad. It’s not hurting anybody.”

    Queensland, Australia passed similar legislation in 2019, allowing emoticons on state registered plates. The plates cost drivers $336 each. Drivers in Australia have the option to select from the laughing, smiling, wink, “love” or sunglasses emojis to put on their plates.

    Vermont has not yet put a price on the proposed vanity plates. 


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 21:25

  • Congress Now Funding "Controversial" Geoengineering 'Plan B' To Spray Particles In The Sky To Cool Earth
    Congress Now Funding “Controversial” Geoengineering ‘Plan B’ To Spray Particles In The Sky To Cool Earth

    Authored by Matt Agorist via TheFreeThoughtProject.com,

    It was reported this month that the top climate change scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has received $4 million in funding from Congress along with permission to study two highly controversial geoengineering methods in an attempt to cool the Earth.

    According to Science Magazine, David Fahey, director of the Chemical Sciences Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, told his staff last week that the federal government is ready to examine the science behind “geoengineering” – or what he dubbed a “Plan B” for climate change.

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    What could possibly go wrong?

    Before we go any further, it is important to point out to new readers that we are not a satire site. We are not a conspiracy theory site. The information you are about to read is factually accurate and 100% real despite the ostensible ‘skeptics’ who claim otherwise.

    Over the past several years, the “conspiracy theory” of spraying particles into the sky to cool the Earth has become more mainstream. It came to a head last year when CNBC put out a video titled How Bill Gates-Funded Solar Geoengineering Could Help End Climate Change. 

    The video is nothing short of an infomercial for chemtrails. It is truly bizarre how this subject has moved from the fringes of conspiracy circles and into the mainstream and no one is even batting an eye. Now that Bill Gates has endorsed and funded it, the world is suddenly open to the idea of attempting to modify the planet’s weather by spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to block out the sun.

    Now, the government is throwing their hat into the mix as well. This “Plan B” approach is two pronged, according to NOAA.

    One is to inject sulfur dioxide or a similar aerosol into the stratosphere to help shade the Earth from more intense sunlight. It is patterned after a natural solution: volcanic eruptions, which have been found to cool the Earth by emitting huge clouds of sulfur dioxide.

    The second approach would use an aerosol of sea salt particles to improve the ability of low-lying clouds over the ocean to act as shade.

    The Free Thought Project has reported on the first method before when Harvard scientists began talking about doing it. Harvard scientists announced that they will attempt to replicate the climate-cooling effect of volcanic eruptions with a world-first solar geoengineering experiment, last year. The university announced in July of 2019 that it has created an external advisory panel to examine the potential ethical, environmental and geopolitical impacts of this geoengineering project, which has been developed by the university’s researchers.

    Known as the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), the experiment will spray calcium carbonate particles high above the earth to mimic the effects of volcanic ash blocking out the sun to produce a cooling effect. This appears to be the same as NOAA’s “Plan B.”

    Naturally, there are many critics of geoengineering.

    The idea of geoengineering the planet has become so controversial that the government will soon be referring to it by a different name in a likely attempt to distract. Fahey recommended changing the nomenclature from geoengineering to “climate intervention,” which he described as a “more neutral word.”

    This is exactly like renaming the U.S. Department of War to the Department of Defense.

    As not to be too controversial, however, Fahey emphasized that this is not an approval to begin geoengineering. Rather, it is a move by the US to prepare for the possibility that it may do this one day.

    “Geoengineering is this tangled ball of issues and science is only one of them,” he said.

    “One of the things I’m interested in doing is let’s separate the science out,” he added. The idea is to give policymakers a clear view of how a hurry-up bid to save the planet would work.

    This type of talk is concerning to many people, including environmental groups, who say such efforts are a dangerous distraction from addressing the only permanent solution to climate change: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

    The idea of injecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the earth also seems outright futile considering what scientists are trying to mimic – volcanic eruptions. If we look at the second largest eruption of the 20th century, Mount Pinatubo, which erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere. Scientists from the USGS estimated that this 20 million tons only lowered the temperature of the planet by about 1°F (0.5°C) and this only lasted a year because the particles eventually fell to back to Earth.

    While this talk of geoengineering may sound like something out of a dystopian science fiction movie, the reality is that it has long been on the table of governments and think tanks from around the world. In fact, just last November, a study published in Environmental Research Letters, talked about doing the exact same thing—geoengineering and planes spraying particulates into the atmosphere to curb global warming.

    What’s more, that study echoed the sentiments of then-CIA director John Brennan when he addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in 2016, detailing a similar process of spraying chemical particulates in the atmosphere to cool the planet.

    At the meeting, Brennan addressed instability and transnational threats to global security at a meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his long-winded talk of threats to US interests and how the largely CIA-created ISIL threat is impacting the world, Brennan brought up the topic of geoengineering.

    Another example is the array of technologies—often referred to collectively as geoengineering—that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat, in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.

    Brennan went on to echo the calls from some scientists who have called for aerial spraying.

    An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels. The process is also relatively inexpensive—the National Research Council estimates that a fully deployed SAI program would cost about $10 billion yearly.

    Again, this is not some conspiracy theory. Watch him say all of this in the video below starting at the 12:05 marker.

    The extent to which Brennan talked about stratospheric aerosol injection shows that he and the CIA have likely been considering this for some time.

    Although we are hearing more and more talk about geoengineering, it has been around for a very long time and not just in the realm of conspiracy theories. In fact, scientists have already suggested that it could be going on right now, unintentionally.

    Researchers with NOAA previously suggested that contrails from airplanes may be inadvertently geoengineering the skies.

    Chuck Long is a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. At the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in 2015, Long and his team released their paper, “Evidence of Clear-Sky Daylight Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering?” The analysis found that vapor from airplanes may be altering the climate through accidental geoengineering.

    To be clear, no one here is claiming to be an expert on climate change or the effects of geoengineering. But one thing is clear and it’s the fact that there is still much to be debated and learned before humans deliberately begin altering Earth’s climate. Aside from doing nothing to curb carbon emissions, if we are so quick to jump on this method, it could set off a chain reaction that could prove to be catastrophic.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 21:05

    Tags
    Environment

  • "Prices Start To Sink At Record Paces" – Manhattan Luxury Home Prices Plunge To 2013 Levels
    “Prices Start To Sink At Record Paces” – Manhattan Luxury Home Prices Plunge To 2013 Levels

    Luxury home prices in Manhattan continue to decline, pressured by Bill de Blasio’s “Mansion Tax” and the capping of SALT deductions included in President Trump’s tax deal. Prices of these luxury homes, which constitute the top 20% of the market, fell to their lowest levels since 2013, according to a new report via StreetEasy. 

    Luxury homes, priced at or above $3,816,835, dropped 6.1% in the fourth quarter over the previous year. Sellers are beginning to accept a declining market that has shifted to buyers — where prices are being negotiated to the low end – in return, this has created downward momentum in prices. 

    StreetEasy said inventory soared last quarter by 12.2% over the previous year, with at least 4,354 luxury homes sitting on the market.

    “With so much new construction saturating the Manhattan real estate market, we were bound to see prices start to sink at record paces,” said StreetEasy Economist Nancy Wu. 

    “This is happening across all price points and boroughs, as prospective buyers wait out the market from the comfort of their rentals. Market dynamics in 2020 will continue to favor the buyer across all price tiers, and many sellers will have to face the fact that if they want to sell, it may very well be for less than their initial asking price,” Wu said. 

    For all homes in the borough, the StreetEasy Manhattan Price Index fell 3.7% last quarter over the prior year, to $1,086,217. Inventory for homes in the district rose 3%, with homes staying on the market for at least 96 days, ten more than the prior year. The report notes that it’s a buyer’s market as inventory continues to build. 

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    The Median Asking Price Per Square Footage (PPSF) for Manhattan homes jumped 80% from $1,000 in 2010 to $1,800 in 2015 – has since declined 14% to $1,550. 

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    Total Sales Inventory for Manhattan homes has been surging in the last five years. 

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    With a decade-long economic boom starting to wane as the Federal Reserve cuts rates three times and injects hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency funds into REPO markets, sparking potential blow-off tops in stocks– everybody’s anxieties about a persistent slowdown could continue to weigh on luxury real estate in New York and elsewhere. 


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Fed Policy And The Wuhan Coronavirus
    Fed Policy And The Wuhan Coronavirus

    Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek,

    When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Abe Maslow, the same fellow who developed the “hierarchy of needs” paradigm in human psychology, popularized that phrase to warn scientific researchers about the perils of using tools inappropriate to the task at hand.

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    It is an especially relevant observation when it comes to Federal Reserve monetary policy, since the hammer of interest rates is the central bank’s chief tool. Balance sheet expansion, such as that used to combat recent repo market tensions, also rattle around in their toolbox, of course. But rate policy is their go-to implement to achieve the goals of stable prices and economic expansion.

    With this week’s FOMC meeting and Chair press conference, the Fed’s hammer will see a fresh test, and one for which it is hardly suitable: addressing the growing global economic uncertainty around the Wuhan coronavirus. As we outlined last week in our review of a Davos panel on the subject, any vaccine is at best months away. In the interim, China is aggressively moving to quarantine entire cities and limiting mass gatherings. Cases are cropping up around the world, and while the illness seems to be less deadly than SARS it is spreading more quickly at present.

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    Capital markets are beginning to discount the possibility that the Fed will use their interest rate hammer to offset growing economic uncertainty caused by the outbreak:

    #1: 2-year Treasury yields broke to below 1.5% on Thursday to 1.486% and closed Friday at 1.495%, which we interpret as a response to concerns about near term global growth. Why that’s an important development.

    • 2-years are keenly sensitive to market opinion about future rate policy.
    • This is the first time they are below 1.5% since September/October’s global bond rally related to fears over US-China trade talks and recession worries.
    • Yields here are now just below the current 1.50% – 1.75% benchmark for Fed Funds, implying that the central bank will cut interest rates.

    #2: Fed Funds Futures have moved noticeably in the last week, with increasing odds for a 2H 2020 rate cut (or two):

    • Futures discount stable Fed Funds through Q1. The odds that rates remain unchanged through the March meeting have not budged in the last week and run 84% – 86%.
    • The story changes when you look at the odds around the June 2020 FOMC meeting. A week ago the probability of a rate cut by then was 14%; now it is 25%.
    • Last week’s trend to higher expectations for a 2020 rate cut increase as you look at September’s contracts. A week ago, the odds that rates would be lower than today were 37%; now they are 50%.
    • Fast forward to the December 2020 meeting (chart below, courtesy of the CME FedWatch Tool), and the odds that the Fed cuts rates this year rose last week to 68% from 54%. Moreover, the probability that the Fed cuts by 50 basis points or more rose from 17% to 30% last week.

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    In summary: it is far too early to tell what effect the coronavirus may have on the global/US economy, but markets are increasingly assuming the economic effects of this public health crisis will inform US central bank policy. While the Fed’s rate tool obviously plays no role in finding a treatment or vaccine for the coronavirus, investors expect the FOMC will do its best to inoculate the US economy against its effects. It is, however, still a hammer…


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:25

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • China Virus Cases Almost Double Overnight, Deaths Top 100 As North Korea Closes Border
    China Virus Cases Almost Double Overnight, Deaths Top 100 As North Korea Closes Border

    Summary

    • 4,295 4,515 Cases confirmed worldwide
    • 106 Dead worldwide
    • 2714 Cases in Hubei (up 1291 overnight – a stunning 91% surge)
    • 100 Dead in Hubei (up 24 overnight – a 24% surge)
    • North Korea closes Chinese border.
    • German reports first case
    • US raises travel alert for China to Level 3 (2nd highest).

    Global cases:

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    An exponential increase:

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    Update (2000ET): According to the Health Commission of Hubei Province, there was a massive jump in cases and deaths overnight in China. The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in China has soared to 106 while nearly 1,300 new cases have been confirmed, authorities said Tuesday.

    The health commission in central Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, said 24 more people had died from the virus and 1,291 more people were infected, raising the total number of confirmed cases to more than 4,000 nationwide.

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    Source: BNO

    Additionally, KCNA reports that North Korea has officially closed its border crossing with China to prevent Coronavirus from entering the country.

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    Source: BNO

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    Update (1830ET): While China currently has about 3,000 total cases as reported earlier, according to the latest report from China’s Center for Disease Control, the real number of infections may be substantially higher, because as of Jan 26 (the update for Jan 27 is due shortly) some 30,453 people are currently under observation for the coronavirus. Needless to say, it is very likely that a substantial number of these people will end up positive for the disease, even as the total of people under observation grows by thousands every single day.

    Earlier in the day, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, China’s Hubei Province, is opening up 100,000 hospital beds in an effort to contain the disease, the province’s vice governor announced on Jan. 27. In a press conference on Jan. 27 evening, Hubei vice governor Yang Yunyan said authorities have designated 112 medical institutions to treat patients with the deadly novel coronavirus, according to Chinese state media. They have freed up around 100,000 hospital beds in the province, with 3,000 of them in Wuhan city alone, where the disease first broke out. As the Epoch Times observes, “The urgency and scale of the authorities’ orders have raised fears that the outbreak has spread far more widely than authorities admit.”

    Meanwhile, in the latest news on the coronavirus global spread, Germany’ DPA news agency reported that the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Germany. According to the infectious diseases task force of the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority, the male patient from the district of Starnberg is clinically in “good condition” and is being monitored while in isolation. Those who have been in close contact with him have been informed and infection control measures have been implemented. Naturally, the Task Force and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) have said they consider the infection risk to the Bavarian population to be low.

    Finally, looking at the US where so far 5 cases have been confirmed, late on Monday the Maryland Department of Health confirmed a state resident was being tested for possibly having the coronavirus. They say the person is in “good condition” as they await results from the CDC laboratory. Similarly, the San Diego County Health Department also said it was investigating a possible case of the coronavirus. Test samples from the patient have been sent to the Centers for Disease Control for confirmation.

    * * *
    Update (1415): The novel coronavirus has arrived in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, according to local health officials cited by Reuters and the Bangkok Post.

    The virus has now been detected in a total of 17 countries/autonomous regions…

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    Fears that the outbreak will take a sizable chunk out of global GDP have festered amid reports that China’s “manufacturing nerve center” is shutting down as Beijing “extends” the Lunar New Year holiday, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

    During the CDC press conference on Monday (which we covered in full below) the State Department announced an updated travel warning advising US citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Hubei province, where the virus is believed to have originated, and to take necessary precautions when traveling in China.  While the warning maintained a Level 3 for China as a whole, the State Department raised the advisory to Level 4 for Hubei, the most severe warning possible.

    Though it doesn’t exactly take a genius-level intellect to ascertain that now isn’t a great time to travel to virus-plagued Hubei.

    * * *

    Update (1150ET): Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the Director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), spoke on behalf of the CDC. During the press conference, she said that the US had identified 110 people who are under observation and being tested for the virus. While 5 cases have already been identified in the US, another 32 have definitively tested negative.

    Though a vaccine remains elusive, the Messonnier said the CDC had developed a diagnostic test that can quickly confirm cases of the virus. So far, CDC researchers have seen no signs of “mutation” in the virus. If the virus does mutate, as Chinese scientists suggested it might, that could create problems for those trying to develop the exam. On Friday, a “blueprint” for the test was uploaded and shared with the world. All governments can now follow this blueprint to develop their own tests..

    Right now, the CDC is focused on providing tests to “priority” states (presumably, Cali, Washington, Arizona and Illinois, the states where cases have been confirmed). But soon they will expand the program to supply governments in need.

    The CDC has also uploaded the entire genome of the virus from the first two cases. From what the CDC can tell so far, the virus doesn’t appear to be “mutating”, as some Chinese officials had suggested.

    Messonnier stressed that this is a “rapidly changing situation” both here and abroad, adding that the virus has spread to 16 countries from China.

    “Our thoughts are with the people on the front lines of this emerging health threat in China,” she said.

    US airports are now screening passengers from Wuhan. The purpose of this is not just preventative: It’s intended to educate passengers about symptoms of the virus, and how to mitigate risk of infection while traveling abroad. The CDC recommends that travelers avoid all non-essential travel to Hubei province, and that anybody traveling to China should take certain precautions.

    Returning travelers with symptoms may be asked to take precautionary measures.

    Battered US stocks briefly spiked when Messonnier said that although a handful of cases have been identified in the US, the overall general health risk to the community remains “low at this time.” Still, she caveated this by insisting that the situation remains very much in flux.

    Meanwhile, in China, more indications of the economic fallout from the outbreak have emerged: Zheijang, the country’s fourth-largest province by GDP, won’t allow companies to return to work until Feb. 8. Shanghai, an independent municipality within the province, announced similar measures earlier. The potential costs here in terms of lost productivity could measure in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

    * * *

    Update (1030ET): Chinese state media have just confirmed that Beijing has suffered its first confirmed death from the novel coronavirus. They also confirmed 8 new confirmed cases.

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    Macau has just confirmed its seventh case.

    The total number of confirmed cases has climbed to 2882, though the true number of cases out there is likely much higher, as experts have warned.

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    * * *

    Update(1000ET): US stocks are deep in the red Monday morning, on track for their worst day in four months, thanks to the fact that the market and the world realized over the weekend that the extremely infectious novel coronavirus has overwhelmed China’s capacity to contain it.

    And right on time, here comes President Trump, with a weak attempt to pump the market.

    Minutes ago, the president tweeted that the US had offered China “any help that is necessary”, while advising that the US is “strongly on watch” for signs that the virus is spreading.

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    Unfortunately, the reaction in the market was muted, and stocks remain slightly above their session lows.

    * * *

    Update (0700ET): Chinese health officials have confirmed an additional fatality tied to the virus.

    Here’s the latest roundup from Chinese state media:

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    Meanwhile, the FT reports that OPEC and its allies are weighing deeper production cuts in response to the fallout from the virus, which has hammered oil prices. The Brent international benchmark tumbled below $60 a barrel on Monday. The cartel’s next meeting is set for early March in Vienna.

    As the world enters panic mode, a team of analysts at JP Morgan assured their clients that the epidemic – which will likely soon qualify as a pandemic assuming the WHO changes course – is merely an “interruption to the narrative” and that the fallout would be confined to China and the broader region – not the entire planet.

    Meanwhile, Australia has confirmed its fifth case of the virus: a 21-year-old woman who arrived in Australia on the last flight out of Wuhan to Sydney. In the UK, 52 people have been tested for the virus, but no cases have been confirmed, per ITV.

    Earlier, we mentioned that Chinese scientists had reversed their earlier findings and determined that the Hunan Fish Market in Wuhan was, in fact, the epicenter of the outbreak (it’s believed that the market’s trade in wild animals, like bats and snakes, is to blame). Bloomberg has offered a clarification, reporting that the market is one of several sources being investigated.

    With US stocks still on track for a brutal open, investors around the world are turning to Jay Powell and the FOMC, which will meet later this week.

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    Investors who dismissed the threat to their P&Ls posed by China’s coronavirus outbreak are suddenly realizing that they’ve made a grave miscalculation. What few Asian markets were open on Monday (most were closed for the LNY holiday) saw equities tank, and in the US, futures are pointing to a steep drop at the open – a sign that the market has found the excuse it needed to give back some of its torrid January gains.

    With so much going on – the Bolton revelations, the deaths of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, the busiest week of earnings season, and the upcoming Fed meeting – the virus remains the most dominant theme – and with good reason.

    As we reported late last night, the number of confirmed cases in China has tripled over the weekend. Health officials have confirmed 2,804 cases in China, where the deal toll has climbed to 80 – giving the virus a roughly 5% mortality rate. Over the weekend, we joked that the scapegoating was already beginning, citing a rash of public outrage directed at health officials and Wuhan, as well as the city’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang.

    In typically communist fashion, Zhou accepted responsibility for botching the initial response to the virus, and said he and the local party chief, Ma Guoqiang, would be willing to step down to quiet the public outrage. The government is scrambling to build not one, but two new hospitals in under two weeks to house coronavirus patients in Wuhan, yet doctors and nurses claim that they are still struggling with a shortage of supplies, even after local officials implored neighboring provinces to send assistance. Shortages of everything from beds to facemasks to personnel are still hurting the city’s ability to treat new cases. That lockdown has obviously interfered with shipments of new supplies.

    Zhou also conceded that information about the virus was not disclosed in a “timely manner”. In reality, Chinese officials waited a whole month to inform the world about the outbreak after the first cases were discovered in early December. According to the FT, this was a “rare instance of self-criticism” by a senior local party official.

    During a press conference on Sunday, Wang Xiaodong said in a press conference that the government was reinforcing medical supplies, but he triggered even more public anger as he Wang corrected himself twice about the number of face masks being made available in the province, initially putting the number at 10.8 billion, then changed it to 1.8 billion before correcting himself again to say that the real number was 1.8 million masks. Public anger was also directed at Wang because he neglected to wear a face mask during the presser, while Mayor Zhou appeared to wear his mask upside down. 

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    After appointing Premier Li Keqiang to head the party’s committee to oversee the crisis response over the weekend, Li arrived in Wuhan on Monday, the SCMP reports. In a PR coup for the government, reporters followed Li as he visited patients and medical personnel fighting on the front lines of the outbreak and delivered some inspired speeches.

    “You are trying every means to save lives,” Li told medical staff at Jinyintan hospital, one of the designated institutions in Wuhan for treating infected patients. “When you are putting your efforts to save lives, you have to protect yourselves too.”

    Li will apparently remain on the ground in the province, where he will direct the effort to combat the virus’s spread.

    But the Chinese premier wasn’t the only major figure to travel to Wuhan on Monday: The WHO director-general is traveling to the city to try and assess the situation on the ground in Wuhan after meeting with senior officials in Beijing.

    Wuhan Mayor Zhou’s announcement over the weekend that roughly 5 million people had already left Wuhan before the lockdown began made it seem like combating the virus’s spread at this point would be virtually impossible. In Beijing on Monday, He Qinghua, the first-degree inspector of the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, confirmed what many – including on CNBC reporter – suspected. In addition to the 11 million ‘official’ residents of Wuhan, the city is also host to millions of migrant workers from the countryside. Almost all of those workers have already returned home, threatening to spread the virus across China’s impoverished rural areas where awareness of prevention strategies is minimal.

    To fight this, China must mobilize a “grass roots” campaign of party officials.

    “The awareness [of prevention and control] is relatively low in the countryside. We will need to fill the gap of this weak link,” He said. “The most important thing now is mobilizing our cadres at the grass-roots level so we can do better in our prevention and control work at the community level.”

    Here’s the latest roundup of cases, courtesy of the SCMP, which has consistently maintained the most accurate figures.

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    Even though researchers reportedly cast doubt on the virus’s connection to the Wuhan food market illegally trading in wild animals, scientists on Monday said they had, in fact, found evidence of the virus at the market. A strain of the virus was isolated from samples taken at the market. The strain was isolated from environmental samples taken from the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan. A phot of the virus, known as 2019-nCoV, can be found below.

    Per the SCMP, the virus was detected in 35 of the 585 environmental samples collected on Jan. 1 and Jan. 12, with 33 of the positive samples taken from the market’s western zone, where the wildlife trading business was concentrated.

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    Outside of the mainland, Taiwan reported its fifth case on Monday.

    Several neighboring countries announced precautions to prevent the virus from crossing over from China: Mongolia has closed all educational institutions until at least March 2, and has closed its border with China to all pedestrian and vehicle crossings. Kazakhstan has suspended its 72-hour visa-free program for holders of Chinese passports. In Myanmar, the United Wa State Army, a political group for the Wa people, said it would shut down all entertainment in the autonomous territory, while imposing strict border checks on all outsiders. The group has also barred all large public gatherings and instructed the population to cease eating wild animals.

    In Seoul, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Monday that his administration was preparing a “complete enumeration” of people entering the country from Wuhan. And any travelers entering the country from China will need to fill out a ‘health questionnaire’. Even Iran is taking precautions, prohibiting Chinese and people from Southeast Asia from bringing food into the country. Russian tour operators have stopped selling tours in China, and are only bringing Russian citizens back from the country.

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    According to Feng Luzhao, a researcher with the Chinese CDC, insisted that the most effective way to stop the spread of the disease would be to reduce travel.

    “[We have decided] to extend the Lunar New Year holidays because [we want] to encourage people to stay home and avoid going to areas where infection may be prevalent and places with large crowds of people,” Feng said. “[We believe] this can help curb the spread of the disease.”

    To try and stop the spread, China has ordered an ‘extension’ of the Lunar New Year Holiday, with several manufacturing hubs and other centers of industry deciding to stay closed into February.

    Meanwhile, more health researchers in China are warning that the state is woefully undercounting the number of cases. A researcher at HKU med school announced that his new estimate for active cases in China is closer to 25,000.

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    Over in the US, a fifth case of coronavirus was confirmed in Arizona. With the trajectory of the virus confirming the worst fears of epidemiologists, we suspect this won’t be the last case in the US.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:22

  • Impeachment: Trump Team Nails Bidens, Burisma, And Obama's Hot-Mic Moment With Russia
    Impeachment: Trump Team Nails Bidens, Burisma, And Obama’s Hot-Mic Moment With Russia

    President Trump’s defense team cut straight to the heart of the impeachment on Monday, insisting that Democrats have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bidens didn’t engage in textbook corruption in Ukraine – and that President Trump’s request to investigate it was out of line.

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    Former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, a recent addition to the White House communications team, walked the Senate through the entire malarkey for 30 minutes, including Hunter Biden’s ‘nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst’ board seat at Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.

    “All we are saying is that there was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue, and that is enough,” said Bondi, who noted that Hunter Biden was paid over $83,000 per month to sit on Burisma’s board even though he had zero experience in natural gas or Ukrainian relations while his father was Vice President and in charge of Ukraine policy for the United States.

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    Even CNN had to give it to the Trump team… 

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    Trump attorney Eric Herschmann said that Democrats have been “circling the wagons” to protect the Bidens – and are refusing to investigate the Bidens, claiming without conducting an investigation that all allegations against them are ‘debunked.’

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    Herschmann then laid into former President Obama, who was caught on a hot mic asking Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” until after his election.

    Attorney Jay Sekulow argued that Democrats have been trying to “interfere with the President’s capability to govern” since he was elected.

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:05

    Tags
    Politics

  • "Ground Zero" For China's Virus – Hubei Province Prepares 100,000 Hospital Beds
    “Ground Zero” For China’s Virus – Hubei Province Prepares 100,000 Hospital Beds

    Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,

    The epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, China’s Hubei Province, is opening up 100,000 hospital beds in an effort to contain the disease, the province’s vice governor announced on Jan. 27.

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    At least 17 cities in the province have been placed under a lockdown, stranding tens of millions of people amid the Chinese New Year holiday, the country’s peak migration season.

    Thousands have been infected with the deadly virus.

    In a press conference on Jan. 27 evening, Hubei vice governor Yang Yunyan said authorities have designated 112 medical institutions to treat patients with the deadly novel coronavirus, according to Chinese state media. They have freed up around 100,000 hospital beds in the province, with 3,000 of them in Wuhan city alone, where the disease first broke out.

    The urgency and scale of the authorities’ orders have raised fears that the outbreak has spread far more widely than authorities admit.

    Another 24 medical centers will be mobilized to assist with patients who exhibit symptoms and are suspected to have the virus. More doctors and health workers have arrived in Hubei in order to relieve the exhaustion of frontline medical staff, Yang said.

    Authorities have extended the national New Year holiday by another three days to Feb. 2, in order to prevent large crowds from gathering, which could lead to more infections, according to a statement by the cabinet-like State Council. All schools in China, from kindergarten to college level, will have their spring terms pushed back indefinitely until further notice.

    So far, all provinces and regions except Tibet has reported infections.

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    Source: BNO

    The country’s vice premier Li Keqiang arrived in Wuhan on Monday to coordinate efforts to contain the disease, as the Chinese regime came under growing pressure. The event, marking the first visit from senior Chinese Communist Party officials to the city since the outbreak began, came two days after Chinese leader Xi Jinping set up a “central leading team” to handle the situation. Li had been named head of the group.

    Xi has called the outbreak a “grave situation.”

    According to Wang Jiangping, vice director of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, hospitals in Hubei need 100,000 protective suits daily, but there are only about 40 such suppliers nationwide, with a total production capacity of 30,000.

    “There’s a very acute conflict between supply and demand,” he said, adding that medical workers are also in urgent need for other supplies such as surgical masks.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 19:45

  • California Couple Charged With $910 Million Alternative Energy Tax Credit Ponzi Scheme
    California Couple Charged With $910 Million Alternative Energy Tax Credit Ponzi Scheme

    The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought charges against a couple for orchestrating a $1 billion ponzi scheme involving alternative energy tax credits.

    Unfortunately, that couple isn’t Elon Musk and Grimes.

    Instead, it’s California based Jeffrey and Paulette Carpoff. The SEC alleges that the couple raised about $910 million from 17 investors between 2011 and 2018 by offering securities in the form of investment contracts through their two solar generator companies, C Solar Solutions and DC Solar Distribution. 

    The couple is also being charged in a parallel criminal case by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern District of California.

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    Jeffrey Paulette

    The SEC complaint states that “The Carpoffs allegedly promised investors tax credits, lease payments, and profits from the operation of mobile solar generators. In reality, the complaint alleges, most of the generators were never manufactured, and the vast majority of the purported lease revenue paid to investors in fact came from new investor funds.”

    It is also alleged that the Carpoffs “arranged for investors to receive false documents, including financial statements, lease arrangements, and generator certifications” and that “throughout the scheme, the Carpoffs siphoned off investor funds and used at least $140 million of investor money to fund their lavish lifestyle, which included 150 luxury and sports cars, dozens of properties, and a share in a private jet service.”

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    Daniel Michael, Chief of the Enforcement Division’s Complex Financial Instruments Unit said: “While the Carpoffs’ pitch to investors seemed new and innovative, their alleged fraud was old and simple. This case is a reminder that fraudsters often try to lure investors by associating themselves with trendy technologies.”

    Like electric powered cars?

    Regardless, the SEC charges the couple with violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and seeks injunctive relief, disgorgement, and civil penalties

    We highlighted this couple back in summer of 2019, noting that among those ripped off was Warren Buffett, who was taken for a cool $300 million. In 2016, new investor money accounted for $50 million of the company’s claim of $55 million in revenue, according to a former employee.

    “Within a short time, we were doing over $60 million in sales,” Jeff had told Inc. magazine in a December 2018 interview.

    It’s also worth noting that in addition to interviewing Carpoff, Inc. magazine has also recently featured both Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes on its cover. 

     

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 19:25

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • "Surveillance Capitalism": A Summary Of Critics
    “Surveillance Capitalism”: A Summary Of Critics

    Authored by Darren Brady Nelson via The Mises Institute,

    The size and activities of Google, and other Big Tech companies, has increasingly grabbed the attention of many on the ideological left, center, and right. (This is putting to one side the shortcomings of these particular categories.)

    • On the Right, this has meant allegations of Google’s bias against conservatives.

    • In the center, it has included allegations of Google’s power against competition.

    • On the Left, it has meant allegations of Google’s exploitation of just about everybody.

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    The latter came to the fore again last year in the wake of Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff’s book entitled The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (January 2019). The Amazon entry for this book in part reads:

    “[T]he first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior.”

    As a starting point, one ought to be skeptical of any explicit or implied claims of “game changers” and “new economics.” One ought also to be suspicious of any explicit or implied assertion that “out-of-control” capitalism is, once again, the problem and that the solution, yet again, is government “in greater control.” Finally, one’s BS detector ought to be on high alert when reading such doublespeak as ascribes to capitalism the hallmarks of statism—i.e., “powerful,” “control,” and, of course, “surveillance.”

    What the Left Is Saying

    Sam Biddle quickly gives away the anticapitalist agenda of those on the Left in his article for The Intercept (February 2019) by favorably “drawing comparisons to seminal socioeconomic investigations like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Karl Marx’s Capital.” He also interviewed Zuboff, who explained that Google and others are “just secretly scraping your private experience as raw material, and [selling] predictions of what you’re gonna do.” And Zuboff alarmingly concluded: “These are bald-faced interventions in the exercise of human autonomy,…the ‘right to the future tense’,…[and] the very material essence of the idea of free will.”

    In another interview, this time by John Laidler of the Harvard Gazette (March 2019), Zuboff expanded on this:

    I define surveillance capitalism as the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. These data are then computed and packaged as prediction products and sold into behavioral futures markets. 

    She also boldly asserted that: “this [is] actually a new variant of capitalism,” which supposedly “has now spread beyond the tech companies to new surveillance-based ecosystems in virtually every economic sector” and purportedly “arose in the era of a neoliberal consensus around the superiority of self-regulating companies and markets.”

    Katie Fitzpatrick starts her review of Zuboff’s book for The Nation (April 2019) with more subtle anticapitalism than Biddle did:

    By resisting Go365 [a health monitoring app], the West Virginia teachers waged two battles at once: They fought in the trenches of state austerity and on the front lines of private digital surveillance.

    Although Fitzpatrick doesn’t mention Marx as Biddle did, she uses Marxist language throughout to describe “earlier capitalism” and “surveillance capitalism,” such as “exploitation,” “surplus,” and “extraction,” not to mention postmodern statist concepts such as “free will illusion,” “individual freedom chaos,” and “conditioned social engineering.” She revealingly concluded, and lamented that Zuboff did not, that:

    The problem with surveillance capitalism is as much the capitalism as it is the surveillance.

    Two new attempts to regulate “the problem” of “surveillance capitalism,” and thus “capitalism” as well, come from Europe and California. Regarding the former, the Financial Times (FT) reported on December 2019 that “the EU’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR], [was] six years in the making before coming into force in May 2018.” They also, as the mainstream media (MSM) almost always does, inappropriately mixed in plenty of subjective prostatism opinions, such as: “There is no doubt that GDPR has already done a lot of good” and “But GDPR is deficient in several respects.…It should be looking to reshape data markets, rather than just regulate them as they are.”

    Slate reported on similar regulations that recently passed in California, and they wasted no time with subtleties, putting their opinion right in the subtitle: “Thanks, California!” (December 2019). They then described how

    The California Consumer Privacy Act [CCPA] essentially empowers consumers [starting on New Year’s Day 2020] to access the personal data that companies have collected on them, to demand that it be deleted, and to prevent it from being sold to third parties.

    They also optimistically opine:

    Since it’s a lot more work to create a separate infrastructure just for California residents to opt out of…, these requirements will transform the internet for everyone.

    As if that were not enough, they start, as the FT did for GDPR, the process of lobbying for more market intervention: “The law is vague on how much power and transparency companies must offer to consumers in this process.”

    What the Center Is Saying

    In an article for Truth on the Market, Alec Stapp states his thesis in the title itself: “Any Way You Measure It, Warren Is Wrong to Claim “Facebook and Google Account for 70% of All Internet Traffic” (October 2019). In countering Senator Elizabeth Warren’s statistic about Facebook and Google’s combined 70 percent market share of traffic, Stapp provides the following alternative stats: 20 percent of volume; 21 percent of time; 38 percent of connections; 33 percent of referrals; 32 percent of all advertising; and 59 percent of online advertising. And he, very importantly, notes that online advertising prices have fallen 42 percent over the past decade as volume has increased.

    Adam Candeub and Mark Epstein address a key legal question about Google, and others, such as Facebook and Twitter, in an article for City Journal asking the question, “Platform or Publisher?” (May 2018). They write: “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content…but the law was not intended to facilitate political censorship.” They also importantly note that Section 230 was a response to a judicial decision, under the common law, that concluded that

    utilizing technology and the manpower to delete objectionable content made [one] more like publisher[s] than…newsstands, bookstores, and libraries.

    Michael Dougherty provides some further background to Section 230 in the National Review (June 2019). He writes that it was passed: “in part to allow Internet services…to block pornography…[and not be] treated in the law as publishers…[which are] liable for whatever libels and slanders users posted on them.” Section 230: “allows proprietors of websites and forums to set standards—to edit and moderate their content without becoming a publisher of them.” But also, Section 230: “is now the legal remit under which social-media giants shadow-ban, block, and censor conservative speech.”

    What the Right Is Saying

    In his article entitled “Google Marxism” (December 2019), Michael Rectenwald asserted that there is nowadays a “Google Archipelago,” which “is guided by a left authoritarianism.” He described this as: “the most developed set of technological apparatuses for disciplinary and governmental power and control in the world,” including “The principals of what I call Big Digital—the purveyors of mega-data services, media, cable, and internet services, social media platforms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, apps, and the developing Internet of Things.” He thus warned that “Socialism has always had global pretensions. Only Google Marxism is capable of creating it, albeit in corporate socialist form.”

    William Anderson has also written about Google for the Mises Institute on a number of occasions over the years, including in the context of woke capitalism (July 2019), economy bureaucratization (July 2018) and antitrust law (December 2005). Regarding the latter, he wrote: “Google’s search policies are decidedly left-wing,” but “[n]o one is forced to use the Internet at all and, thus, can avoid Google altogether if that is their choice.” Nevertheless, Anderson warned, “The vagueness of Antitrust Law makes it easy for government to heap abuse upon those firms that are out of favor at any given time, as no real legal proof is needed for the courts to act against the alleged monopolist.” And he added: “despite the millions of dollars that the company’s leaders and employees have raised for the Democrats, it is doubtful that many Democrats would be willing to stand up for a firm that is accused of being a monopolist.”

    Writing for Antiwar.com (August 2018), Justin Raimondo reminded that: “The Communications Decency Act immunizes these companies against any [common law] torts,” and that “[t]his two-tiered system is responsible for the cartel-like conditions enjoyed by Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the rest of the Silicon Valley crowd.” He added that, this plus “[t]he vast wealth poured into this new technology by investors buoyed by historically low interest rates, has resulted in the enrichment of Big Data beyond the dreams of Croesus.” The result is that “In recognition of [these] government-granted privileges…the Lords of the Internet have agreed to become the regime’s enforcers.”

    Conclusion

    These organizations that allegedly practice “surveillance capitalism” have become seemingly inescapable in our modern economy. This has led to a host of critics attempting to identify and explain the many ways that organizations like Facebook and Google have become damaging to our everyday lives and freedoms.

    Many of these critics get it wrong, though.

    On the Left, the reports and commentary about Google’s so-called surveillance capitalism were more about the capitalism than the surveillance. As they’ve done many times in the past (such as during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) of the late 2000s, the Dot-com collapse of the early 2000s, and the Microsoft dominance of the 1990s), they call for failed and selfish markets to be heavily regulated or even replaced by successful and selfless government. And emotion-laden stories, from the edges of the bell curve, are once again trotted out to bolster their case.

    In the center, there is largely an acceptance of the mixed economy (of markets and government) as it currently stands, and, in at least two cases, some pushback on further government intervention. Although these two do not seem to grasp the significance, they imply that government may be the source of a “market structure,” resulting in “market power,” and that regardless of that, “market conduct” includes “market performance” resulting in falling prices. (For more on structure-conduct-performance, see Regulated Monopolies are not “Natural,” April 2018.)

    Some conservatives get closer to the mark in their concern for free speech and the potential for abuse of government power through crony capitalism.

    Yet, only the free market critics cut through to the most important problem—namely that the state’s antitrust legislation has provided legal advantages against competitors while providing legal immunity to these firms. The size and power of the “surveillance capitalists” has allowed the industry to escape the brunt of antitrust legislation. Many of their competitors have not been so lucky, and this an unfair advantage, to say the least. Meanwhile, as Raimondo notes, federal law protects these firms from being called to account in the civil courts.

    The result is a legal landscape that favors some at the expense of others. But as Anderson concludes, no one is forced to use the services of these firms, so claims of “monopoly” are questionable. Ultimately, it is this lack of true monopoly that illustrates the weakness of many claims that government action is necessary to rein in firms that are powerful precisely because so many voluntarily use their services.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 19:05

    Tags
    Technology Internet

  • San Francisco Activates Emergency Operations Center To Prepare For Coronavirus 
    San Francisco Activates Emergency Operations Center To Prepare For Coronavirus 

    Increasing fears of coronavirus spreading across the U.S. have resulted in San Francisco Mayor London Breed to activate the city’s emergency operations center, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. 

    “It’s, so we have a centralized location and process to prepare for what we need to do, to share public information, and to take any action if necessary,” said Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Breed.

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    So far, there have been no confirmed cases in the Bay Area, but there are new reports that at least ten people have been tested for the deadly virus in Alameda County. 

    On Monday, the CDC said 110 people are under observation and being tested for the virus across the U.S. While 5 cases have already been confirmed, another 32 have tested negative.

    The emergency center is also coming online one day before a Boeing 767, filled with 230 Americans, is expected to depart from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Tuesday for California. 

    There are more than 1,000 Americans trapped in the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan, in which the U.S. State Department launched an emergency evacuation operation over the weekend. 

    The plane is expected to land in Ontario, California, which is about 400-miles south of the Bay Area.

    The CDC has stepped up screening for air travelers for the deadly virus arriving from Asia at West Coast airports. 

    San Francisco activating its emergency center comes at a time when the University of Hong Kong’s med school revealed during a Monday presser that the deadly virus has likely infected more than 44,000 people in China. Meanwhile, Professor Neil Ferguson, at least the second UK academic to publicly share his projections, said over the weekend that 100,000 people could already be infected with the virus around the world, according to the Guardian.

    If the coronavirus continues to spread across the world at its current rate, then it could become a global epidemic in the weeks or months ahead. It seems Bay Area officials are taking no chances with immediate preparations for the worst possible outcome. 


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 18:45

    Tags
    Environment
    Disaster Accident

  • The Three Countries Vying For Ultimate Power In The Middle East
    The Three Countries Vying For Ultimate Power In The Middle East

    Authored by Yossef Bodansky via OilPrice.com,

    Two notable deaths in early January 2020 pushed the greater Middle East to increased tension and instability.

    There emerges a growing risk, as a result, of a sudden discrete action — by design or by accident — which could spark a major confrontation nobody really wants yet everybody dreads.

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    First came the target killing by the US of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the revered commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) Quds Force (who was promoted posthumously from major general), and several Iranian, Iraqi, and Lebanese seniors at the Baghdad airport.

    Then came the death from cancer of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id al Said, who for five decades was the highly respected “responsible adult” and “voice of reason” of the greater Middle East.

    Tehran interprets Soleimani’s target killing to be a major milestone in the US determination to resist and block, by force if necessary, the Iranian surge in the region. Hence, Tehran itself resolved to accelerate the implementation of the decision, made months beforehand, to banish the US from the region even at the risk of escalation and war.

    Immediately after Soleimani’s death, a shaken Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamene‘i, Iran’s “Supreme Leader”, instructed the Iranian High Command to minimize direct and largely symbolic retaliation and revenge. Instead, Iran would now focus on an accelerated and intensified implementation of the anti US campaign.

    The crux of the campaign was to make the US presence untenable through the aggregate impact of a multitude of proxy strikes on US facilities and interests, terrorism against US targets, and the destabilizing of local authorities to the point they would no longer be able or willing to host US facilities and personnel. Unfortunately for the Supreme Leader, this surge would take place without Soleimani’s intimate knowledge of the regional dynamics and the tight control he exercised over Iran’s proxies.

    Hence, several players would try to exploit the uncertain times in order to push their own respective and explosive agendas, thus adding to the confusion.

    The main engine of escalation and exacerbation of tension would be the determination of “the Middle Eastern Entente” of Iran, Turkey, and Qatar, originally consolidated in March 2019, to capitalize on the current situation and circumstances in order to maximize their gains against both the Arab world and the great powers involved in the region.

    In early 2020, the leaders of the Middle Eastern Entente asserted their new policies. In his January 17, 2020, sermon, Ayatollah Ali Khamene‘i noted that God was guiding Iran’s ascent against the US.

    “That a nation has the power and spirit to slap an arrogant, aggressive global power is a sign of God’s power. Therefore, that day too is a Day of Allah.”

    Rather than avenge Soleimani’s death, he reiterated, “the main punishment (for the US) will be expulsion from the region”. On the same day, Turkish Pres. Reçep Tayyip Erdo?an’s soulmate, ?brahim Karagül, declared the arrival of a new era for Turkey. “The era of ‘defensive politics’ is over for Turkey! This is the rise of a superpower. … Turkey confined to its borders cannot survive.” During a recent visit to Tehran, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani concurred that unless the US demonstrated restraint in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East as a whole, drastic measures would have to be taken in order to guarantee security and stability for the entire region.

    The overall situation had become fraught with danger because of the concurrent passing of Sultan Qaboos. For decades, Qaboos relied on his own wisdom and knowledge, as well as Oman’s unique Ibadite school of Islam (neither Sunni nor Shi’ite, but dates to soon after the death of Prophet Mohammed), in order to become a most trusted mediator and messenger. His discreet intervention helped prevent and contain many conflicts and crises from escalating out of control because he and his judgement were trusted by all.

    Sultan Qaboos’ successor, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq, is an experienced diplomat, and well respected. But it may take a long time before he can fill his cousin’s huge shoes regionally. In the meantime, the absence of channels of communication engenders mutual mistrust and expedites inclination to act on worst case scenarios.

    And all the while, the unfolding megatrends in the greater Middle East, especially in the Arab world, continue and intensify.

    Most important, the demise of the modern Arab nation-state now appears to have become irreversible. While governments remain in place and leaders make decisions and implement policies, the “modern Arab nation-state” is, in fact, no more. Ultimately, even the Arab leaders themselves are cognizant of the development as reflected in the tepid and confused reaction to the popular riots in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan.

    The internal stability and working of even the most important of states are unraveling. The crux is not the riots which attract media attention. The key is the transformation of society and the economy.

    There is a growing disengagement of the grassroots from central governance. Instead, there emerges a growing reliance on regional, popular, and blood related frameworks: minorities, tribes, and urban extended families. Significantly, these sub state frameworks have saved the grassroots from the state level fratricidal carnage and foreign interventions of the recent decades.

    There is no way the grassroots could accept the dismantling of their own lifesaving socioeconomic frameworks and agree to return to dependence on, and trust in, the state level frameworks which have failed them so badly. Consequently, the quest for localized self-sufficiency — both social and economic — severely undermines the legitimacy and power of the modern state.

    Since in most areas the traditional tribal and minority habitats cross modern borders, the awakened localized entities ignore borders. The genie of secessionism and localized identities is out of the lantern, never to return back in.

    The most important Arab states — Saudi Arabia and Egypt — show major internal cracks emanating from profound perceived delegitimization and mistrust of the ruling élites by the grassroots.

    In Saudi Arabia, the erratic reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin ‘Abd al’Aziz al Sa’ud has united many in the region against the House of al Sa’ud. The radicalized northwest of Saudi Arabia (as well as southern Jordan) gravitates around the leadership of Islamist clerics. The economic powerhouse of the Hijaz is wrestling Islamic leadership from the House of al Saud; the oil rich Shi’ite east has regional identity (jointly with the Shi’ite majorities in the other Gulf states) which is pronouncedly pro-Iranian; and, most important, the bedouin tribes of Nejd, long the bedrock of support of the House of al Sa’ud, now reject their oath of allegiance and gravitate to the regional north south axis led by the Shamari Nation.

    While some of these entities are hostile to each other, their common quest to rid themselves of the al Sa’ud reign is significantly stronger.

    In Egypt, the intensifying struggles of the rapidly growing population (which is expected to cross the 100 million mark in 2020) over scarce and dwindling vital resources — basic food, Nile water, electricity, etc. — have morphed into the emergence of regional powercenters defined by ethnicity (mainly in rural areas), and narrow, localized interests (mainly in urban centers).

    The Nubian, Beja, and Dom rural people of southern Egypt fight the encroachment of Arab farmers and reallocation of Nile water; and the Arab rural communities of the Delta fight the communities of central Egypt over the use of Nile water.

    There are intensifying bitter disputes between the urban clusters of Asyut, Cairo, and Alexandria over scarce electricity; disputes which stifle the economy, diminishing food supplies for the sprawling poor, who lack of housing and infrastructure, and, overall, diminishes their hopes for having families and normal life. Again, the friction and traditional mistrust of key groupings are put aside in pursuit of a common goal: namely, to undermine the power and influence of the Cairo élites.

    The potential collapse of Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt removes the sole balancing element they represented for the catastrophic condition of most other Arab states: Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and increasingly Jordan. All these states are consumed by fratricidal multielement carnage which has fractured and alienated their key population groupings to a point that reconciliation and coexistence may no longer be possible.

    The attempts at governance and democratic reforms, formulating constitutions and running elections, are all exercises in futility because the grassroots are adamantly against the return to the state level frameworks which have so recently betrayed them and wrought so much suffering and losses.

    The undermining and unraveling of the modern states are made worse by foreign interventions of the United States, which is making strenuous efforts through military and economic pressure to impose central rule over the distraught populace; and by a multitude of competing proxies, mainly Iran led, but also Turkey and Qatar led, undertaken to further their own regional interests and to take sides in the spreading fratricidal strife and carnage.

    Also of paramount significance are the recent demonstrations and riots in non Arab Iran.

    Unlike the demonstrations of the past decade, which were largely driven by economic hardships and ensuing government crackdowns, the current wave of demonstrations adds to the socioeconomic despair a distinct awakening of Iran’s minorities who rebel against the powers of the Persian dominated central Government. Concurrently, genuine and widespread nationalistic patriotism burst into the open in the massive funeral processions of Soleimani. As has happened throughout history, Iranians put their differences aside and rallied behind the banner to defend their motherland against external threats.

    This demonstration of spontaneous grassroots patriotism is not lost on the chauvinistic elements in Tehran and convinces them to focus on furthering nationalistic external initiatives in order to not only further Iran’s historic interests and aspirations, but to also reduce the internal discontent over the socioeconomic near collapse of Iran.

    For the “Middle Eastern Entente” of Iran, Turkey, and Qatar, these regional dynamics constitute both opportunities and threats. On the one hand, other weakened states in the region have thus far proven incapable of resisting the surge of the trio into regional preeminence. On the other hand, there rises from the ashes of the states and the plight of the fractured populace a vindictive radicalism which is a combination of militant Sunni Islamism and lust for blood revenge for all the torment of the past decade or so.

    Hence, the Middle Eastern Entente escalates and intensifies the drive for regional power and dominance, both together and separately.

    The three powers are pushing hard to transform the region irreversibly in their favor before there emerges a new Arab Sunni force to be reckoned with. A great priority of the three powers is suppressing the Fertile Crescent of Minorities (which includes Israel), because once it becomes viable, it will constitute anew the regional buffer separating between the aspirant foreign powers of Turkey and Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab heartlands.

    The Middle Eastern Entente fears the ascent of the minorities as a key outcome of the prevailing collapse of the modern Arab states.

    Hence, the trio has resolved to move fast, push hard, and take major risks.

    Most important is the close cooperation with radical Islamist forces — including Sunni entities — on account of common foes and despite contradictory objectives. Turkey is supporting jihadist forces from Syria, Iraq, all the way to Libya, Somalia, and Yemen; Iran sponsors a multitude of Sunni jihadists in Iraq Syria, Libya, Yemen and the HAMAS Islamic Jihad; and Qatar helps with funding and equipping all of them. Indeed, during the formal introduction of the new commander of the Quds Force, Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaani, he spoke in front of a row of flags of the IRGC and their predominantly Shi’ite formal allies and proxies. For the first time, the HAMAS flag was prominently displayed, a testimony of HAMAS’s formal joining of the Iranian army of proxies under the command of the Quds Force.

    There is a formal division of labor between the members of the Middle Eastern Entente.

    Iran focuses on the on land corridor to the shores of the Mediterranean by controlling the entire territory between western Iran and the Mediterranean; on controlling both shores of the Persian Gulf by empowering the Shi’ite populated oil rich areas; and on dominating the key choke points of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el Mandeb (the latter from Yemen).

    Turkey focuses on establishing a security zone in northern Syria and Iraq by suppressing the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq (while Iran suppresses its own Kurds); on exploiting the plight and ambitions of Jordan’s Hashemites in order to dominate the Hijaz and the Red Sea (also through Turkish presence in Somalia and Sudan); on increasing presence in the Persian Gulf by building bases in Qatar; and, through the recent agreement with the Western supported jihadist propped up “government” in Libya, on carving the eastern Mediterranean and separating Israel, Egypt and Cyprus from the Balkans and Europe.

    Meanwhile, in the absence of Sultan Qaboos, there are no open channels of communications between the warring sides, no attempts to reconcile and/or mediate are made, and there are no viable efforts to calm things down.

    Into this explosive mix enters the Israel factor.

    Both Turkey and Iran have declared their commitment to liberating Jerusalem and destroying Israel as an important objective in their ascent to regional and all Islamic prominence. In recent months, both Turkey and Iran made concrete contingency planning to capitalize on the growing tension between Israel and HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, HizbAllah, and the Islamist forces in Jordan and the West Bank in order to intervene directly in the fighting with the declared objective to destroy Israel. The scope of the Iranian military preparations for such a confrontation is profound. Meanwhile, Qatar keeps a door open and coordinates with Israel the support for the HAMAS controlled Gaza Strip.

    However, rhetoric notwithstanding, there is great apprehension about a major war with Israel.

    Consequently, Iran and its proxies and allies remain grudgingly inclined to absorb the damage and casualties inflicted by Israel’s “Campaign Between Wars”: the ceaseless bombings of and raids on Iranian and Iran proxy strategic facilities and storage sites in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

    That said, there is strong resolve in both Tehran and Ankara to not give up on, or even alter, their ultimate strategic regional push, irrespective of the costs. There is growing willingness to intervene directly in regional conflagrations, to employ ever larger proxy forces, and, should the need arise, even national military forces. Such higher profile interventions, and thus also risk taking, are visible from Libya to Yemen, to the Persian Gulf, and particularly in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.

    Both Iran and Turkey continue to push hard, cognizant that they might spark an escalation of significant magnitude. The contingency plans of both countries include concrete preparations for the total destruction of the region’s energy resources and infrastructure in case of a major conflict. Both countries also threaten Israeli vital interests (including Islamist takeovers of Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula) and increase the threat to the Israeli civilian rear (mainly by proxies like HizbAllah and HAMAS), cognizant that Israel is extremely sensitive to civilian casualties.

    Meanwhile, there is a major realignment of the great powers in the region.

    The US — largely irrelevant, if powerful — is grudgingly leaving the greater Middle East. The exit process started long before the Iranian decision to banish the US in cooperation with Turkey. The US no longer needs the region’s hydrocarbons because the US is self-sufficient and exporting. The tension with Europe and East Asia reduces the US interest in guaranteeing their energy supplies.

    Moreover, control of the region’s oil market is not sufficient to guarantee US dominance over the global energy economy on account of the Russia led camp. With lavish US military and technological supplies and aid, Israel is strong enough to defend itself and its vital interests, but not enough to start a major regional war which could ensnare the US if something went wrong. Under such conditions, the imperative for the US to remain entangled in such a volatile region has diminished.

    Enter the coalition of Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which has revived the historic Silk Road system of alliances and interests throughout the Eastern Hemisphere.

    Their anti US strategy bolsters the standing of the Middle Eastern Entente. While both Russia and the PRC exercise strong support for vanquished state governments (mainly Syria and Iraq), theirs is a very pragmatic regional approach which accepts the collapse of the modern state system and focuses instead on reliance on the Fertile Crescent of Minorities (that includes Israel) for regional stabilization.

    There is a division of labor in the Middle East between the PRC and Russia with the former responsible for economic and development issues, and the latter for security matters. The PRC and its protégés do need the region’s oil and gas badly, and are thus committed to preventing a conflict which would set the region literally aflame. Russia’s bitter historic enmity toward Iran and Turkey affects the Russian readiness to tolerate their reckless excesses. At the same time, Russia benefits from the relentless anti US drive of both Iran and Turkey.

    Hence, both the PRC and Russia maintain very delicate balancing with the Middle Eastern Entente.

    The PRC and Russia are determined to neither have a confrontation over the trio’s respective vital interests, nor tolerate their strategic ascent to preeminence over the entire region because this would eclipse or challenge the great power dominance by both the PRC and Russia. As well, both Russia and the PRC have excellent relations with Israel, and thus emerge as the sole viable channels between Iran and Turkey, and their pursuit of regional interests, and Israel in the hope of passing messages, defusing faceoffs and crises: thus preventing a major eruption from happening.

    Ultimately, the profound, if latent, conflict between Russia and the PRC on the one hand and the Middle Eastern Entente on the other over which will be the real master of the greater Middle East is bound to dominate all long term relations and add to the regional friction and instability.

    Thus, there is growing possibility that a miscalculated move, an operational accident, or an unintended infliction of excessive civilian casualties could spark an immediate regionwide eruption and a major explosion nobody would be able to contain.

    The indigenous grassroots’ hatreds, tensions, frustration, and despair which have been building and intensifying for close to a decade, and especially since 2016, would then burst into the open. Then, nobody would be able to do anything but wait until the carnage and flames have exhausted themselves.

    And so we wait …


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 01/27/2020 – 18:25

    Tags
    Politics

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Jan 27

Today’s News 27th January 2020

  • Dead Hand: Russian Real-Life Doomsday Machine
    Dead Hand: Russian Real-Life Doomsday Machine

    Submitted by SouthFront,

    The existing system of international relations and arms control treaties is slowly, but steadily crumbling. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is dead, with both Washington and Moscow publicly developing previously banned short-to-medium range missiles. The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is also moving towards its end in 2021, and it is likely that New START will not be renewed. The United States, China and Russia are developing hypersonic weapons, which are not limited by any existing arms control treaties. The major powers are preparing for a possible global conflict. The dismantlement of the system of international treaties is another factor increasing military tensions around the world.

    Russia is actively working towards restoring lost Soviet capabilities and developing new strategic deterrence projects. One of them is the Dead Hand, also known as the Perimeter. This Cold War-era automatic nuclear weapons-control system is one of the most protected secrets and most important deterrence tools of the USSR and Russia.

    The Dead Hand is the last line of deterrence in the event of a crippling nuclear strike. It entered into service in 1985, shortly after a major escalation in 1983, which had almost led to war between the US and the Soviet Union. It has been likened to a real-life doomsday machine. Upon activation and determination of an ongoing nuclear strike, the system sends out command missiles with special warheads that pass encrypted launch commands to all nuclear weapon carriers of the sea, air and ground components of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces.

    In peacetime conditions, the system slumbers, waiting for a turn-on command or an alarm signal from the missile attack early-warning system. It has a human “firewall,” for example, an on-duty officer who would switch it into the fully automated mode. Therefore, there is no risk of an accidental or unauthorized missile launch. Having received a command or signal about missiles being launched from the territory of other countries, this Dead Hand goes into an automated combat mode. Through a wide-scale sensor network, it monitors signs of an incoming nuclear strike.

    The decision to launch command missiles is made by an autonomous control and command system – a complex pseudo-artificial intelligence system. The system receives and analyzes a variety of information about seismic activity, radiation, atmospheric pressure, and the intensity of chatter on military radio frequencies. It monitors telemetry from the observation posts of the strategic missile force and data from early warning systems.

    Before launching, the system reportedly checks for four conditions:

    1. Once the system is activated it first determines if a nuclear explosion has taken place on Russian territory;

    2. If this is determined, the system will then check the communication link with the General Staff operation center;

    3. If a connection is established the system will After some time – from 15 minutes to 1 hour – passing without any further signs of an attack, it will assume that a number of the officials with the authority to give the order to strike are still alive  and the system will shut down;

    4. If the General Staff operation center does not respond, the system sends a request to Kazbek, the automatic system for command and control of the Strategic Nuclear Forces. If there is no response there either, the system automatically transfers launch authority to the command bunker personnel and launches the retaliatory strike.

    All of the channels through which the Dead Hand receives its information are backed up multiple times, to remove the possibility of false information being fed to it.

    According to openly available data, the Dead Hand is an integral part of the “Zveno” system of air command posts, the development of which was carried out in the Soviet Union. The “Zveno” includes the airborne command and control post on the Il-86VKP aircraft, airborne radio relay on the Il-76RT aircraft, silo-based command missiles ‘Perimeter’ and mobile command missiles ‘Gorn’. In a period of threat, three Il-86VKPs would have the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff respectively on board. The Il-86VKP is able to launch an 8 km long antenna, which not even impulses from nuclear explosions can affect. Using this antenna the aircraft can transmit commands to launch all the country’s intercontinental missiles even if all underground command posts are destroyed by the aggressor’s nuclear strike. The radio relay aircraft Il-76RT would transmit commands to launch missiles in distant regions, including those deployed on submarines. In this way, the Dead Hand guarantees a devastating retaliatory strike in the event of communications disruption and the destruction of command posts after the first-strike surprise nuclear attack by the enemy. Its command missiles launch their warheads into space, where no hostile satellite or nuclear explosions can reach them and from there “wake up” nuclear forces to strike the aggressor.

    The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 led to a deep social and economic crisis on the territory of the former Soviet republics. The Russian Armed Forces also entered a period of crisis. In 1995, the Dead Hand was removed from combat duty. After the start of the ‘Putin era’ and the restoration of proper funding for the Russian Armed Forces in the 2000s,  national security once again became one of the key priorities of the Russian leadership. In 2011, it was officially confirmed that the Dead Hand had been put on combat duty. The successful test launch of the 15Yu75 missile took place in Plesetsk in 2016. Furthermore, the Dead Hand is also being modernized. In December 2019, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced plans to sign a contract for the new Sirena-M missile complex. The Sirena-M is the most modern variant of the “command missile system” and “command missile” for the Dead Hand. The tests of the Sirena-M missile, which is based on the first version of the Topol intercontinental ballistic missile, began in 1990. All of them were carried out successfully. The Sirena-M system will enter service in the period up to 2025.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 23:25

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • CIA Waterboarding Architect Confirms Sadistic Role Of 'The Preacher'
    CIA Waterboarding Architect Confirms Sadistic Role Of ‘The Preacher’

    One of the architects of the US government’s waterboarding program, known as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” confirmed the role of a CIA officer known only as “the Preacher,” who would provoke detainees on a deeply religious level while working to extract information from them.

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    According to James Mitchell – one of three men authorized by the CIA to conduct waterboarding during America’s war on terror – said last Thursday during a pre-trial hearing at Guantánamo Bay, that the Preacher “would at random times put one hand on the forehead of a detainee, raise the other high in the air, and in a deep Southern drawl say things like, ‘Can you feel it, son? Can you feel the spirit moving down my arm, into your body?’“

    According to The Guardian, Mitchell confirmed the chilling description written in his memoir, Enhanced Interrogation – confirming the Preacher’s role at CIA black sites during testimony at a pre-trial hearing in the case against five defendants charged in the September 11, 2001 attacks, including mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

    Mitchell, together with his friend and business partner, Bruce Jessen – who is due to testify next week – have been the public face of the US torture programme for five years, settling out of court in 2017 in a civil suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three prisoners.

    Almost everyone else involved in the extensive programme, involving a network of black sites around the world, has remained in the shadows. In terms of legality, it is still the dark side of the moon.

    Defence lawyers at the Guantánamo military commission hearings have asked to examine 52 witnesses. They have so far been permitted to question only two, Mitchell and Jessen.

    James Connell, representing defendant Ammar al-Baluchi, lost his patience on Thursday when prosecutors objected that he was asking Mitchell about events he had not directly witnessed.

    “He’s the only witness we’ve got. The government has blocked all the CIA witnesses,” Connell complained. –The Guardian

    According to the report, government prosecutors changed classification rules four days before the current pre-trial hearing, amending them on Monday in order to reclassify facts which defense attorneys were forced to scramble to reframe before the next day of questioning. The Guardian suggests that “The longer the hearings have continued, the clearer it has become that the Mitchell and Jessen partnership was just a small part of the infrastructure of torture, with its own bureaucracy and personal rivalries. In his testimony, Mitchell railed repeatedly against the “middle management” who he believed was plotting against him.”

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    Giving evidence at a military commission on Guantánamo Bay, James Mitchell gave a detailed account of the 2002 decision to interrogate suspected al-Qaida leaders using water boarding and other techniques.

    Mitchell became embroiled in a vicious turf war with a rival, the CIA chief of interrogations, for mastery of the “enhanced programme”. Each sought to use their links to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to get the other removed from their post. In that struggle the detainees were used as bargaining counters. The two men had them tortured for training or demonstration purposes.

    In the courtroom this week, the interrogations chief has been referred to by the code NX2. Mitchell calls him the “new sheriff”, but it has been reported his real name was Charlie Wise, who had honed his craft carrying out interrogations for the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s. He apparently died of a heart attack in 2003, just weeks after being dismissed.

    According to declassified cables and courtroom testimony, Wise set up his own training programme, and took his students to a black site in Afghanistan, codenamed Cobalt, to practise their techniques on Ammar al-Baluchi and other prisoners. During that training, Baluchi was repeatedly slammed against a wall, suffering brain trauma as a result. –The Guardian

    The CIA used an unsanctioned waterboard at the Cobalt site, according to defense attorneys, who say it was used on at least one detainee.

    After the existence of the CIA’s main interrogation center was revealed by the New York Times, it was forced to close down in 2002 – after which “high value detainees” were transferred to a new site in Poland, codenamed Blue, and which was run by Wise.

    Read the rest of the report here.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 23:00

    Tags
    Politics

  • Virtue Signaling Is A Cheap Investment For Goldman Sachs
    Virtue Signaling Is A Cheap Investment For Goldman Sachs

    Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Goldman Sachs has made a major stand for diversity by declaring that they are going to start “refusing IPOs if all directors are white straight men”. This is unusual because most diversity pushes come from the mainstream media or companies that offer concrete consumer products and need to market themselves by connecting feelings or political leanings to their product. Normally, big international finance and banking stays as neutral as possible, having to work with actually diverse groups of people across the globe. Finance does not demand any sort of emotional bond with the public at-large for positive brand recognition. So, this bold move by Goldman Sachs is a huge leap forward for proponents of race-based employment but ultimately it appears to be a means of distracting mainstream journalists from the company’s questionable past.

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    Firstly, when talking about corporations taking moral stands we should never forget the dirty  past of these multinational giants. Volkswagen for example, was a creation of the Nazis that went on to “fight” on the side of a Democratic West Germany as a symbol of how great capitalism is. Now they are more than happy to show themselves as an SJW/LGBT organization. Why is this so? Because businesses serve any master who comes to them with money and if the current status quo in Germany is rainbow gay then VW will orient its sexuality to said status quo. If there was to be a Nationalism/Nazi takeover of Germany in the upcoming years VW would somehow “find the courage” to remember their “heritage”. This is not to demonize Volkswagen as all big multinationals do exactly the same thing. This logic, of course, applies to Goldman Sachs as well.

    In fact, for the foreseeable future this new diversity policy only applies to the Western World. Ikea catalogues in the West are full of gay couples, in Russia they have only nuclear families and in Saudi Arabia they feature only men. When push comes to shove and money is at play morality in business becomes flexible. Goldman Sachs even admitted that “it intends to eventually expand its board-diversity mandate beyond the U.S. and Europe”. By eventually they mean, at the point in time when being diverse becomes cool/trendy in those countries, which could be the day after never. Goldman Sachs with this move is just trying go play ball in the West where their financial world currently sits.

    Secondly, it is always best to be skeptical of any sort of corporate philanthropy and morality not just because they will lick any boot presented to them but because their hypocrisy is rampant. If we remember back to the Greek Debt Crisis of just a few years ago, our TV screens were filled with images of young people fighting with police in Athens as employment for those in their 20s was approaching zero. Furthermore, the elderly and many state employees were seeing a lot of their social securities/guarantees dry up right in front of their eyes and it is very possible that Goldman Sachs is directly to blame for all this.

    As The Nation writer Robert B. Reich put it

    “The investment bank (Goldman Sachs) made millions by helping to hide the true extent of the debt, and in the process almost doubled it.“

    Additionally, and also relatively recently, the US Department of Justice found Goldman Sachs liable for their role in the 2008 (subprime) financial crisis in the United States, which had a lot of international blowback as well affecting economies globally. According to Business Insider up to 10,000,000 homes were lost between 2006-2014 as a result of the crisis that Goldman Sachs bears partial responsibility for.

    Meaning that when it comes to the real life suffering of millions of Americans and Greeks (and beyond) who lost their jobs, homes, or social safety net, Goldman Sachs doesn’t give a damn. Forcing a handful of diversity hires (even if these were demonstrably proven to be a boon for society) would be one drop of generous blessing in a canyon of financial sins.

    Large companies and media organizations are quick to throw relatively tiny amounts of money at charity, but completely unwilling to do anything to actually help society. This attempt at mandating diversity (only in the West) is a 21st century means of playing ball and playing up to certain people’s current moral absolutes of the month. If they really and truly wanted to put a human face to a massive financial giant they could at least pull some sorts of stunts or projects that would get thousands of Greek youth into the workforce, better the lives of an untold number of Greek elderly or try to find a viable way to get millions of Americans into homes they can afford thus partially undoing the 2008 crisis.

    But that will never happen. Diversity is a word used for virtue signaling, which costs nothing and impresses the exact type of people who don’t care about the millions of diverse Americans who lost their homes. Diversity is our strength because it gets results while requiring zero actual action.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 22:35

  • Elizabeth Holmes, Too Broke To Pay Her Lawyers, Phones In Her Defense In Fraud Lawsuit
    Elizabeth Holmes, Too Broke To Pay Her Lawyers, Phones In Her Defense In Fraud Lawsuit

    How quickly the tables can turn…

    Disgraced former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes literally phoned in her defense in an Arizona fraud lawsuit after her civil lawyers quit due to non-payment. 

    Holmes still maintains a team of “high caliber” attorneys for her criminal case in San Jose federal court, according to Bloomberg. But in the concurrent civil suit taking place in Phoenix, Holmes was forced to dial into an audio feed without a lawyer on Thursday, telling the judge she wouldn’t make any arguments.

    The hearing, which ended without a decision, was to try and determine whether or not the case should advance as a class action. The judge asked Holmes at the beginning of the hearing if she wanted to make any arguments and Holmes said she was relying on the arguments made by attorneys for her co-defendants. 

    The lawyers representing her in Arizona quit back in September, claiming Holmes hasn’t paid them. As Bloomberg notes, “it’s highly unusual for a defendant of Holmes’s stature in such a suit to not be represented by an attorney, prompting some speculation on her financial situation.”

    After Theranos collapsed, Holmes agreed to a $500,000 fine to resolve a civil securities fraud case and also settled an investor suit for an undisclosed sum. On top of that, she had to shell out for legal fees.

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    Bill Portanova, a former prosecutor turned defense lawyer, speculates that Holmes is likely trying to create a warchest of resources for her criminal case, stating: “If there’s only so much money to go around, staying out of prison is always priority number one, period. Lawsuits seek only money, not imprisonment.”

    Holmes hasn’t let on publicly about any financial hardships. However, her former lawyer in Arizona, John C. Dwyer, said he was concerned about her finances when he withdrew from the case. 

    Dwyer wrote in a filing: “Ms. Holmes has not paid Cooley for any of its work as her counsel of record in this action for more than a year. Given Ms. Holmes’s current financial situation, Cooley has no expectation that Ms. Holmes will ever pay it for its services as her counsel.”

    Experts suggest Holmes may have had to put down a sizeable down payment to retain a top-flight criminal defense team. 

    “It’s possible that she paid Williams & Connolly a large retainer up front that its lawyers are now ‘earning,’” one former federal prosecutor said. 

    In San Jose, she is fighting charges that she knew the company’s blood tests were inaccurate and unreliable and that she misrepresented the capabilities of the company’s testing machines to doctors, patients and investors.

    In the Arizona case, customers are claiming that Theranos and one-time partner Walgreens, took samples of their blood when they knew the testing was still in development. As a result, some customers received unnecessary or potentially harmful treatments or didn’t see medical help for treatable illnesses. 

    Holmes had an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion before the collapse of Theranos. 


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 22:10

    Tags
    Law Crime

  • PPE For A Pandemic: A Guide To Personal Protective Equipment And Masks
    PPE For A Pandemic: A Guide To Personal Protective Equipment And Masks

    Authored by Cat Ellis via The Organic Prepper blog,

    One of the problems with prepping for a pandemic is getting accurate information. When there’s a potential for a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease, people panic. Governments do what they can to minimize panic. This includes protective measures, like restricting travel. It can also mean controlling the release of information. We saw this with the West African Ebola outbreak, and we may be seeing it again with the Wuhan coronavirus.

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    Daisy reported on this earlier in her article, The Numbers for the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak Just Don’t Add Up. The official numbers released from China on confirmed infected and the low number of fatal outcomes compared to government response of locking down entire cities of millions of people under quarantine and health care workers seen in full hazmat gear seems incongruous.

    Governments try to manage pandemic panic

    Ebola was a top media story in 2014, as it spread from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The public tuned in to hear the regular CDC updates from then CDC Director, Tom Frieden.

    There was huge public outrage when several health care providers and volunteers from the US became ill and were transported back to the US for medical care. A nurse from Maine was quarantined in New Jersey before being released to Maine. Maine also sought to keep her in quarantine for observation. However, she was ultimately permitted to remain at home during her observation, in spite of the protests from her neighbors.

    Then, it happened. The first case of Ebola in the US was confirmed in a traveler from Liberia, Thomas Eric Duncan. Two nurses contracted Ebola while caring for Mr. Duncan. One nurse had even boarded a plane for a vacation before being diagnosed. Tensions rose steeply as President Obama appointed Ron Klain, as his Ebola Response Coordinator. The media dubbed Klain Obama’s “Ebola Czar”.

    Klain, a Fannie Mae lobbyist with had no medical background, was known for his unique ability to circumnavigate government bureaucracy and government regulations. Within weeks of Klain’s appointment to Ebola Czar, the Associated Press released a statement that was sent to editors that there would be no more stories on Ebola cases unless it also involved a major upset or delay, as happened with a cruise ship being turned away from port. Ebola was, essentially, out of the news.

    Of course, that Ebola outbreak continued for over a year. But, you wouldn’t have known that by watching your regularly scheduled evening news.

    Is China downplaying the Wuhan Coronavirus threat?

    Downplaying the seriousness of a threat is nothing new. It’s much easier to manage information than to manage a panicked population. Unfortunately, it also puts people at risk. Saudi Arabia is a perfect example of this. When the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) first broke out, Saudi Arabia minimized the risk in its official reports. This led to a spread of MERS that didn’t need to happen.

    A lot of questions surround the Wuhan coronavirus. There are the usual questions, such as how fast it is spreading, and how deadly it is. Then, there are other questions. Questions about why are millions of people under quarantine if there isn’t a significant threat? Why are health care workers being photographed moving patients wearing full-on hazmat gear? How legitimate are these photos anyway? Are they even from this outbreak?

    We can’t know for sure, and uncertainty is the problem. Speculation is often a pointless exercise at best, and fear-mongering at worst. However, it is fair to have a certain amount of skepticism when it comes to anything to do with the Chinese government. They are already masters at manipulating and controlling their media.

    As reported in Daisy’s article mentioned above, there are currently 900 confirmed cases worldwide with 26 fatalities. This is a mortality rate of just 2.88%. This is up by less than 1% from my article 2 days ago, Wuhan Virus Hits the US, What Preppers Need to Know. The overwhelming majority of these fatalities are reported to have been older men with a host of serious pre-existing conditions. Today, there was one fatality in a previously healthy man in his 30s.

    Maybe I’m missing something, but if the risk of death from Wuhan coronavirus is still under 3%, that’s just not scary. Sure, it’s highly contagious. But, “highly contagious” does not automatically mean “highly fatal.” However, the response we have seen by the Chinese government, such as putting over 20 million people in quarantine, (now it’s 30 million) seems to be a bit of overkill.

    There is, however, some precedence for these measures. China is opting to treat this outbreak as a Grade A infectious disease, as it did with SARS, because it is more effective to prevent its spread.

    Currently, however, the new virus will be treated as a Grade A infectious disease, which requires the strictest prevention and control measures, including mandatory quarantine of patients and medical observation for those who have had close contact with patients, according to the commission.

    At present, only two infectious diseases — bubonic plague and cholera — are classified as Grade A infectious diseases in China.

    Wang Yuedan, an immunology professor at Peking University, said managing the new disease as Grade A will greatly help in its control and prevention. Some other serious infectious diseases, such as SARS, are also classified as Grade B infectious diseases, but have been managed as Grade A infectious diseases during their outbreaks, Wang said.

    This is prudent, since we do not yet know if that relatively low mortality rate is accurate, or if it will continue to increase. And if it does, we certainly do not know by how much. The rationale at work here is that it is better to take extreme precautions now, rather than wait for proof that this virus is far more deadly than it appears at the moment.

    I would love to believe that the Chinese government has taken these actions simply out of an abundance of caution. At the same time, this is China we’re talking about. A little, healthy skepticism is warranted.

    Regardless of whether China is just being proactive, or if China actually is hiding the real risk, there will eventually be another major pandemic. Rather than wait for a deadly disease to visit your neighborhood, you should get prepped for a pandemic in advance.

    Personal Protective Equipment

    One easy thing you can do to prepare for a deadly pandemic is to have a solid supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) on hand. PPE prevents the spread of disease. These are items like facemasks, protective gloves, and so on that act as a barrier between you and pathogens.

    The following PPE will allow you to create your own DIY hazmat suit. Please pay attention to sizing. All of these products were in stock and available within two to ten days from Amazon at the time of publication but please be aware that products are selling out extremely quickly right now.

    Apron – Disposable Polypropylene

    This goes on over everything else. If you just have scrubs, put this over your scrubs. If you have a suit, put this on over your suit. You want multiple layers of protection, and this is an easy-to-dispose option. (Disposal and decontamination options are important to consider.)

    Base layer (Scrubs)

    This is your base layer. Scrubs are made from durable fabric that stands up to the extra-harsh laundry chemicals used in hospitals. The fabric used is often treated to be antimicrobial.

    Boot/Shoe Protectors

    Shoe covers can protect shoes an boots from spills, if they are waterproof. Not all are. The boot/shoe protectors linked to above are waterproof.

    Duct Tape

    Duct tape has so many uses, I’m sure you already have some. You should, however, also keep some duct tape in your medical supplies. Use duct tape to tape down all seams of your chosen suit (example, where wrists meet gloves, where hood meets goggles, etc)

    Encapsulated Suit

    An encapsulated suit completely covers the body. While it covers the face, it still requires a respirator. It acts as a barrier against air, moisture, and water vapor, and it has taped seams to protect against spills. This was intended for industrial purposes, such as spraying pesticides. It isn’t cheap either. However, it offers more protection than either the Tyvek or Tychem suits.

    Goggles

    In the absence of a complete face shield, goggles will protect your eyes from being splashed with infected fluids, as well as from disinfectant chemicals. Goggles can fog up, so make sure you get some that resist fogging.

    Nitrile Protective Gloves

    These nitrile gloves are 9-mil thick and provide greater protection to your hands than cheaper, 4-mil gloves. However, it is better to wear a two-pair thickness.

    Outer Protective Gloves

    These go over your nitrile gloves. These provide another layer of protection but could impede any fine work you might need your fingertips for. Wear these when lifting a contagious person to move to another bed, stripping a bed of soiled linens, etc.

    Protective Hood

    This hood provides extra protection to the face. It can be worn over or underneath a mask but does not replace a respirator. Wear goggles over this hood and tape all along the seams between the goggles and the hood.

    Respirator masks: N95 or P100 and extra P100 filters

    N95 filters are disposable masks that will filter out particulates and aerosols. This level of protection was used by doctors working with SARS. Make sure you are using them correctly.

    The P100 mask is a reusable mask. The P100 filters are an even more secure filter than the N95 filters. Here’s an article on selecting the right respirator masks.

    Rubber Boots

    Rubber boots will protect your feet and lower legs against standing in or being splashed by contaminated fluids.

    Tyvek Suit

    Tyvek suits offer more protection than scrubs, but less protection than a Tychem or encapsulated suit. These protect against many irritants and chemicals, and is often worn when doing pest extermination, asbestos removal, etc. They may not provide as much protection as other suits, but they are a cost effective way to add more protection.

    Tychem Suit

    This type of coverall offers more protection than the Tyvek suit. It is designed to withstand more caustic chemicals than a Tyvek suit. However, like Tyvek suits, it was intended for chemical and industrial applications, not medical. Still, it offers another layer of protection from potentially infected fluids.

    For more specific information of PPE and preparing for a pandemic, please check out my book, Prepping for a Pandemic. That link is to the kindle version, as Amazon has been having a near impossible time keeping the paperback version in stock.

    Is All That PPE Stuff Necessary?

    My current opinion, which is subject to change as newer data becomes available, is that a full DIY hazmat suit is probably overkill for the Wuhan coronavirus. If we get better information and find out that 2019-nCoV has a much higher mortality rate than the current 3%, I’ll be dusting off my PPE supplies.

    For now, carrying an N95 mask on you to prevent inhaling the virus if you thought you were at risk should be sufficient. Handwashing, hand sanitizers (if handwashing is not available), and nitrile gloves would also go a long way to reducing the spread of this or any contagious illness.

    The idea here is, however, not to prep for just one possible pandemic disease, but for a range of potential pandemics. We don’t know what kinds of new and emerging diseases we might face. PPE, however, provides us with extra physical barriers between us and potentially deadly pathogens, whatever they may be.

    And even if this coronavirus ends up not living up to all the media hype, still, by all means, stock up on PPE. It’s not like there’s a shelf life on things like rubber boots, goggles, or scrubs. At some point, even if it isn’t 2019-nCoV, there will be some emerging disease that does become the next great pandemic. When that happens, these supplies will be hard to come by and 10 times the price.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 21:45

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • US Confirms At Least 1 Injured In Missile Attack 'Direct Hit' On Embassy In Baghdad
    US Confirms At Least 1 Injured In Missile Attack ‘Direct Hit’ On Embassy In Baghdad

    update: A US offical has confirmed to CNN that a total of three rockets struck the US Embassy in Baghdad Sunday evening. And importantly, the US has further confirmed one injured in the attack.

    There’s still been no claim of responsibility, however the State Department pointed the finger at Iran-backed militias, following over a dozen similar prior rocket attacks on the diplomatic compound since September: “The security situation remains tense and Iranian-backed armed groups remain a threat. So, we remain vigilant,” a spokesperson said. Other regional outlets are citing US defense officials to say one of the Katyusha rockets scored a direct hit on a dining facility or cafeteria at the embassy, which would be a first. 

    There are unconfirmed reports that more US personnel may be injured from the attack:

    The attack injured some embassy staff, Al Arabiya reported. One rocket hit an embassy cafeteria at dinner time while two others landed near by, a security source said.

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    Local media reports claimed a US military response against Iran-backed Shia Iraqi militias is imminent, yet this is also unconfirmed. 

    Meanwhile, an Al Jazeera correspondent observed that US jets were active over Baghdad in the hours following the attack, but that the uptick in flyovers has since ceased. 

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    Former Deputy Prime Minister Hoshyar Zebari called it an act of an “unruly militia” and confirmed the following details in a Tweet, though the Pentagon has yet to give official statement: “The Embassy restaurant or canteen was damaged and burned. This is a very dangerous game by #PMF uncontrolled factions to galvanize the tense situation. It must stop,” he stated, in reference to the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). 

    Needless to say, the potential for the White House ordering a significant response in the coming hours or days remains high. 

    * * *

    At least three rockets slammed into the US Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone during the night hours of Sunday, the AFP news agency reported.

    In total five Katyusha rockets were launched on the heavily fortified embassy compound, with three reportedly making a direct hit on the embassy campus, and at least one scoring a direct hit on the embassy dining hall. It’s unclear whether there are any casualties, which have not been reported. Iraq’s caretaker prime minister denied that there were any casualties. 

    Personnel at the compound were given “duck and cover” and “seek shelter” inbound projectiles warning during and following the attack, which is suspected to have been conducted by Iraqi Shia Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

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    There were initially conflicting reports of the actual extent of the damage, or whether the unguided rockets reached the embassy itself. 

    At least one Iraqi official said there was a direct hit of one of the missiles on the US embassy, which some reports said ignited a fire in the dining hall; however, US sources did not immediately issue a confirmation or denial.

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    US embassy inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, via the AFP.

    Iraqi sources have confirmed the attack, but not the US diplomatic officials themselves:

    Later Iraq’s security forces said in a statement that five rockets hit the high-security Green Zone with no casualties. It did not mention the US embassy.

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    Iraq’s prime minister confirmed 5 rockets were launched and hit inside the Green Zone:

    “Five Katyusha rockets hit the Green Zone without causing any casualties,” the Iraqi military communications center said in a statement. The Green Zone is a fortified area in the capital where diplomatic offices, as well as government buildings, are located.

    The Iraqi Commander in Chief, caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi, issued a separate statement shortly after, condemning the act of “aggression,” noting that the missiles fell “inside the US embassy compound.”

    Though not the first time the US Embassy in Baghdad has been target of Iran-backed militia rocket fire in the country, the incident comes as tensions and anti-American sentiment are ready to explode.

    Over the past days hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, possibly over a million, have demonstrated in the streets demanding all US forces exit. 


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 21:26

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • "Had She Picked Bernie Sanders It Would Have Been Tougher": Trump In 2018 Audio
    “Had She Picked Bernie Sanders It Would Have Been Tougher”: Trump In 2018 Audio

    Authored by Jon Queally via CommonDreams.org,

    A nearly 90-minute audio recording of a private dinner that took place with numerous individuals and President Donald Trump in 2018 was made public Saturday evening by the legal team of Lev Parnas, a close associate of the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, in which the president can be heard saying “take her out” in reference to former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch — a key witness in the impeachment trial now in the U.S. Senate.

    Trump also says in the recording that he was relieved that he didn’t have to face off against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 election. “Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would have been tougher. He was the only one I didn’t want her to pick,” Trump is heard saying. 

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    The recording, according to CNN,

    was made by another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, and shared with Parnas shortly after the dinner, according to Bondy. Fruman’s attorney declined to comment.

    Only the first three minutes of the tape include visuals, and Trump can be seen briefly when he approaches the rectangular dining table set with red bouquets of flowers. The remaining portion of the recording is only audio.

    The conversation involving Ukraine begins about 40 minutes into the 1-hour-and-24-minute recording. During that discussion, Trump asks a person who appears to be Parnas how long Ukraine would “last in fight against Russia.” Parnas says “without us, not very long,” and another person chimes in, “about 30 minutes.” Months later, Trump would try to cut off military aid to Ukraine.

    In its reporting, VICE notes the “five wildest things” Trump had to say during the conversation — a discussion at one point he can clearly be heard saying is “off the record.”

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    Among the items deemed the wildest was a comment Trump made about current 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In the recording, Trump said he was glad former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t pick Sanders as her 2020 running mate — citing his tough stance on U.S. trade policy.

    “Because [Sanders’] a big trade guy,” said Trump. “You know he basically says we’re getting screwed on trade. And he’s right.”

    “Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would’ve been tougher. He’s the only one I didn’t want her to pick,” Trump told the people in the room.

    * * *

    The full audio recording as released by VICE (Trump begins speaking at approximately 2:28):


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 21:20

  • Das Warns 'Prepare For Turbulence In Emerging Markets'
    Das Warns ‘Prepare For Turbulence In Emerging Markets’

    Authored by Satyajit Das, op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

    Encouraging trends in emerging markets belie their volatility since the taper tantrum of 2013, when the Federal Reserve signaled it was pulling back on quantitative easing. Further turbulence is likely, despite the improving outlook for advanced economies, easing trade tensions and accommodative monetary policy.

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    The International Monetary Fund estimates that growth in developing countries fell to 3.7% last year, the slowest pace since 2009 and well below the IMF’s July 2019 forecast of 4.1%. An expected rebound to 4.4% this year assumes highly uncertain recoveries in stressed economies such as Argentina, Iran and Turkey, as well as in countries where growth has slowed significantly — China, Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa among them.

    Rising friction in the Middle East, if sustained, could result in higher energy prices and supply disruptions for developing countries. India, which recently downgraded growth for the 2020-21 fiscal year to 5%, the slowest pace in a decade, imports more than 70% of its oil needs. A price rise of $10 per barrel widens the current account deficit by 0.4 % of gross domestic product. Every increase of 10% adds 0.2% to the rate of inflation, which is already above the Reserve Bank of India’s 4% target.

    Higher borrowing costs and a stronger U.S. currency due to haven demand would hurt developing countries. Between 2010 and 2018, low exchange-rate volatility and high interest-rate differentials caused non-bank financial institutions in emerging markets to double their U.S. dollar-denominated debt to $3.7 trillion. Much of this is unhedged.

    Further geopolitical risks include North Korea’s missile-rattling, challenges in Hong Kong and Taiwan to Beijing’s assertions of authority, and China’s territorial maritime disputes with its neighbors. Japan and South Korea are contesting matters arising from World War II. India’s proposed changes to citizenship laws and the status of Kashmir is fomenting domestic unrest and tensions with predominantly Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh.

    Meanwhile, the spread of a new virus that originated in China threatens to depress retail sales and tourism in Asia, helping to bring a global stock rally to a halt last week.

    These stresses exacerbate long-term structural problems. The early 2000s and the period immediately following the global financial crisis saw a synchronized acceleration of growth across the world. But advanced economies have slowed and their long-term potential rate of expansion has fallen.

    The latest IMF estimates released last week have growth in advanced economies stabilizing at 1.6% in 2020-21, compared with 2.3% in 2018 and 0.1 percentage point lower than in its October forecast. Underlying this stagnation is the flagging potency of debt-fueled growth, flat productivity, limited policy options, and unfavorable demographics. Emerging economies cannot rely on historic demand for exports to drive future expansion.

    Despite the U.S.-China phase one trade agreement, conflicts won’t abate. Sino-American trade tensions alone will cumulatively reduce the level of global GDP by 0.8% by 2020. The Trump administration also has trade disputes with the European Union, Australia, India and Vietnam, among others. France and the U.S. are trying to de-escalate threatened tariffs on champagne and cheese in retaliation for a digital tax affecting Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc.

    Trade volume growth fell to about 1% in 2019, the weakest level since 2012. The retreat from a rules-based trade system and the weaponizing of trade interdependence will damage everyone.

    In the past 20 years, China, a crucial driver of emerging markets, went from a 10th to two-thirds the size of the U.S. economy, assisted by trade within the WTO framework. Today, China’s blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co. relies on chips designed in America while advanced economies benefit from its cheaper and often cutting-edge 5G technology. Three-quarters of the world’s smartphones, mostly made in emerging markets, use Google’s Android mobile operating system. American restrictions hurt developing nations as well as consumers in advanced economies.

    In a world of limited demand, irrespective of leadership or ideology, governments everywhere face a mounting anti-globalization backlash. Nationalist agendas and a shift to autarky – closed economies – will persist. A return to strong growth in trade and cross-border capital flows seems unlikely.

    This affects developing-world economic models. Lower-income nations focused on export-oriented industries, such as textiles and manufacturing, exploiting cheap costs. Now, weak demand and trade disputes limit this option. Higher-income developing countries face technology transfer restrictions that affect improvements in productivity. 

    Meanwhile, automation decreases the advantages of low-skilled, cheap labor and offshoring. Bringing manufacturing home to advanced economies decreases companies’ exposure to disruption, currency fluctuation and political interference. The failure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” strategy reflects these shifts. India has failed to produce the 1 million new jobs per month needed to absorb new entrants into the workforce. Indian Railways recently received 23 million applications for 90,000 vacancies.

    Slower growth creates a dangerous feedback loop. Dissatisfaction with improving ordinary lives can prompt civil unrest. Countries rich in scarce resources, or having large internal markets such as China, India, and Indonesia, may muddle through.

    Others will struggle. Rising nationalism and protectionism are likely outcomes, and will only deepen the wedge between advanced and emerging economies. It will make an interesting if rough ride ahead for investors.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 20:55

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Schiff 'Demands' Bolton As Witness After "Explosive Revelation" Manuscript Leaked To NYT
    Schiff ‘Demands’ Bolton As Witness After “Explosive Revelation” Manuscript Leaked To NYT

    Surprise!

    After White House lawyers’ brief rebuttal (less than 3 hours) managed to tear apart Rep. Schiff and the House Managers’ 20-plus-hour ‘odyssey’ in the Senate impeachment trial, is anyone surprised that – right at the last minute – a ‘bombshell’ is leaked to the media that promises – as always – “this time we got him.”

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    This time, The New York Times reports that President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton alleges in his forthcoming book that the president explicitly told him”

    “[Trump] wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens.”

    Bolton also wrote that several top cabinet officials had knowledge of Trump’s demands, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr, as well as acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, according to NYT.

    The leak – if true –  contradicts Trump’s claim that he never tied the hold-up of Ukrainian aid to his demands for investigations into Burisma corruption surrounding Hunter Biden’s exorbitant pay for doing sweet F.A.

    Of course, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer instantly responded to the NYT story, tweeting:

    “John Bolton has the evidence. It’s up to four Senate Republicans to ensure that John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, and the others with direct knowledge of President Trump’s actions testify in the Senate trial.”

    And The House Managers were even stronger in tone, demanding Bolton as witness…

    House Managers Statement on New York Times Report on John Bolton Washington, DC

    Today, the House Managers in the impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump – Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Jason Crow, and Sylvia Garcia– issued the following joint statement:

    “Today’s explosive revelation that President Trump personally told former National Security Advisor John Bolton that he would continue the freeze on military aid to Ukraine until that country agreed to his political investigations confirms what we already know. There can be no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense and therefore must be called as a witness at the impeachment trial of President Trump.

    “Senators should insist that Mr. Bolton be called as a witness, and provide his notes and other relevant documents. The Senate trial must seek the full truth and Mr. Bolton has vital information to provide. There is no defensible reason to wait until his book is published, when the information he has to offer is critical to the most important decision Senators must now make — whether to convict the President of impeachable offenses.

    “During our impeachment inquiry, the President blocked our request for Mr. Bolton’s testimony. Now we see why. The President knows how devastating his testimony would be, and, according to the report, the White House has had a draft of his manuscript for review. President Trump’s cover-up must come to an end.

    “Americans know that a fair trial must include both the documents and witnesses blocked by the President – that starts with Mr. Bolton.”

    Sarah Tinsley, a Bolton spokeswoman, declined to comment on the accuracy of the report regarding the ambassador’s manuscript.

    “The ambassador transmitted a hard-copy draft of his manuscript to the White House for pre-publication review by the National Security Council,” she said in an telephone interview.

    “The ambassador has not passed the manuscript to anyone else, only the NSC.”

    So another internal White House leak?

    And this comes just hours after Schiff proclaimed magnanimously that while their witness calls were all relevant, White House lawyers’ call for Hunter Biden as a witness would never stand, because he was “irrelevant.”

    Schiff told NBC’s Chuck Todd that the president’s defense “doesn’t have the right” to call “irrelevant witnesses or witnesses who aren’t fact witnesses” within the trial, again signaling that he is unwilling to trade testimony from Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in exchange for other administration witnesses.

    “It’s not a question of what I’m afraid of. I’m not afraid of anything. It’s a question of: Should the trial be used as a vehicle to smear his opponent … or is it to get to the truth?” Schiff added.

    Which is odd given Ukraine’s meddling in the 2016 election – which is a “debunked conspiracy theory” according to Schiff et al.

    There’s just one thing – it’s not, as none other than Politico noted in Jan 2017…

    Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

    So will there be a ‘quid pro quo’ or Biden’s testimony for Bolton’s testimony?

    Trump on Wednesday told reporters in Davos, Switzerland, that he didn’t want Bolton to testify before the Senate.

    “The problem with John is it’s a national security problem,” Trump said.

    “He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive and then I have to deal on behalf of the country?”

    He added:

    “It’s going to be very hard. It’s going to make the job very hard.”

    And cue the “Donald Trump is done” proclamations…


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 20:30

    Tags
    Politics

  • China Futures Crash, Oil & Yuan Plunge As CoV-Contagion Spreads
    China Futures Crash, Oil & Yuan Plunge As CoV-Contagion Spreads

    Update (2020ET): China’s FTSE A50 Futures have collapsed over 5% in early trading and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is collapsing…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    And Treasury yields are plunging…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    *  *  *

    While gold is spiking higher and stocks are getting hammered lower after a weekend of ugly headlines surrounding the lethality and spread of the novel coronovirus, the Saudis are desperately talking down the crash in crude oil prices…

    Brent is back below $60 and WTI has crashed to almost a $51 handle…

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    Saudi Arabia is “closely monitoring” the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on oil markets, but so far sees the crisis having a “very limited impact” on global demand, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman says in a statement.

    Current market impact on oil, “primarily driven by psychological factors and extremely negative expectations adopted by some market participants, despite its very limited impact on global oil demand.”

    It seems that “psychological” impact is sending gold higher…

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    And stocks lower… Dow futures down over 300 points, back below 29,000…

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    And S&P futures back below the key 3,300 level…

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    And while cash Treasury markets remain closed, long bond futures are spiking higher (implying around a 7-9bps plunge in yields)…

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    And Yuan is plunging too…

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    Source: Bloomberg

    We assume futures will all be green by tomorrow’s cash open as soothing words and excess liquidity are spread liberally across the so-called markets all night.

    But, as we noted earlier, while the headlines may all sound very pessimistic, history has shown that a subsequent market recovery from such events is V-shaped and sudden. How soon that happens though will depend on how long the uncertainty lasts before the outbreak is contained and fears of a global pandemic subside. It’s clear we’re still at least a few days away from that upturn in sentiment, and potentially a few weeks.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 20:27

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Some Practical Questions About The Coronavirus Epidemic
    Some Practical Questions About The Coronavirus Epidemic

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Restrictions that allow a significant number of people to move about, either with official approval or unsanctioned “black market” activity, cannot stop the spread of contagious diseases.

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    Like everyone else, I’ve been reading the mainstream media reports on the Coronavirus epidemic. I haven’t found any information about the practicalities that immediately occur to me, such as:

    1. When public transportation is halted and commerce grinds to a halt as people avoid public places and gatherings, thousands of employees no longer go to work. Who pays their wages while the city is locked down? The employers? Then who compensates the employers, since their income has also gone to zero?

    Does China have a universal unemployment insurance system that can quickly issue payments to all people who are no longer going to work and getting a paycheck from an employer?

    What about the thousands of migrant workers who don’t have regular employers? Who pays them? If they’re technically not officially sanctioned residents of the city, they don’t exist in government records.

    2. If people idled by the lockdown are supposed to live off savings, what about all the marginal workers with few resources? What are they going to live on once their meager savings are gone?

    3. Given the choice of obeying the lockdown rules and starving or slipping out of the city to find paid work somewhere else, how many migrant workers will choose to slip away?

    4. Unlike the developed West, many people in China still have ancestral villages to return to, rural towns where their grandparents or or other close relatives live. If work has dried up and you’re fearful of catching a potentially lethal virus, wouldn’t it make sense to slip out of the city and make your way back to the village where you can hunker down until the epidemic blows over?

    Since people who caught the virus may not know they’re a carrier, how will this migration not spread the disease to rural areas with few medical resources?

    5. The typical city has about a week’s supply of food, fuel, etc. at best. If the lockdown runs longer than a few days, scarcities of essentials will ignite hoarding, and remaining supplies will be snapped up.

    Since the city’s residents need food, fuel, etc., it must be brought in regardless of the lockdown. This brings outside workers into the city and provides residents desperate to flee avenues to escape the lockdown. Every individual involved in this system is potentially exposed to the virus or is a potential asymptomatic carrier of the virus leaving the city.

    These realities leave officials with an impossible choice: either truly isolate the city, which isn’t possible for more than a few days, or allow the stupendous flow of goods required to sustain millions of city residents, thereby creating uncontrollable avenues for the virus to spread beyond the city as transport workers and those fleeing the lockdown travel to other cities.

    6. The only way to end a contagion is to identify every carrier of the disease and immediately isolate them in full hazmat mode, and then track down every individual they had contact with during the incubation/asymptomatic period of the disease–up to two weeks–and isolate all these individuals until they either develop the disease or pass through the crisis unharmed.

    This was the basic procedure used to end the SARS epidemic in 2003. As this article from the The New England Journal of Medicine explains (Another Decade, Another Coronavirus, (via correspondent Cheryl A.), the Wuhan Coronavirus shares characteristics with SARS and cannot be dismissed as just another run-of-the-mill flu virus.

    During this process of isolating / quarantining everyone with the disease and everyone they had close contact with, all healthcare workers caring for these people must also remain isolated from the general populace lest they become infected and spread the disease outside the quarantine.

    Treating people in crowded hospitals where hundreds of people are coming and going and moving freely into the rest of the city won’t stop a contagion from spreading.

    If the only way to end a contagion is to identify every carrier of the disease and immediately isolate them, and then track down every individual they had contact with during the incubation/asymptomatic period of the disease–is this even possible in China now?

    Please study the map below before claiming it’s still possible.

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    7. China is making a big show about sending 1,000 doctors to Wuhan, but precisely what medical treatments are available for this virus, how effective are these treatments, and do they require a physician to be administered? If the answers are: there are no effective targeted medical treatments for this virus, and doctors are not required to administer what is available, then why expose a scarce resource–physicians–to the disease since they really can’t do much to halt it or heal the patients?

    Isn’t sending 1,000 doctors to Wuhan more a PR move than anything else? And if it’s basically a PR stunt to appear to be “doing something,” doesn’t that call the entire official response into question?

    If there is no targeted treatment available, then the recovery of the patient is a function of their immune system. Building tent hospitals that are porous–healthcare workers returning home after their shift, relatives visiting the stricken, workers moving supplies in and out of other facilities, etc.–will do little to isolate carriers and potential carriers. And since complete isolation is the only way to stem the contagion, these porous tent hospitals won’t do much to limit the contagion.

    8. Are the travel bans on tours and other travel restriction measures 100%, in other words, not a single individual is being allowed in or out? If the travel restrictions are haphazard, then what’s stopping asymptomatic carriers of the virus from traveling freely around the world?

    There are many other practical questions about the epidemic and China’s response that aren’t being addressed in the conventional media. While we don’t know precisely how contagious and lethal the virus is at this point–and it could mutate into a more contagious and lethal variation within a carrier at any moment–we do know complete isolation of every carrier and everyone they had close contact with is the only way to end the contagion.

    We also know cities can’t truly be isolated for longer than a few days, and we know people can’t live without food, water, fuel, etc. and money to buy these essentials. We also know that restrictions that allow a significant number of people to move about, either with official approval or unsanctioned “black market” activity, cannot stop the spread of contagious diseases.

    *  *  *

    My recent books:

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    (Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

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    Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

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    If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 20:05

    Tags
    Labor

  • Senate Dems Slam Pompeo's "Insulting & Contemptuous" Comments About NPR Reporter
    Senate Dems Slam Pompeo’s “Insulting & Contemptuous” Comments About NPR Reporter

    A group of five Senate Democrats – including one who was nearly jailed for corruption – have written a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemning his “insulting and contemptuous” off-the-record comments to NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly.

    Kelly broke the story on Friday after she decided to ignore her commitment to keeping Pompeo’s comments off the record because he was mean to her. On her podcast and radio program, she shared the recorded interview with Pompeo, as well as her account of their post-interview off-the-record meeting, where purportedly swore at her for asking questions about his handling of the Ukraine situation when the interview was supposed to be about Iran. At one point, Pompeo had an aide confront Kelly with a blank map and ask her to correctly identify Ukraine. She claims she identified it correctly, while Pompeo claims she pointed to Bangladesh.

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    Sen. Bob Menendez

    New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, whose initial corruption trial in late 2017 was deadlocked after a jury couldn’t reach a verdict, prompting the DoJ to drop its prosecution, tweeted a copy of the mercifully brief letter Saturday afternoon.

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

    Not only did they condemn Pompeo’s initial alleged conduct, they also expressed “profound disappointment and concern” over the “irresponsible” statement issued by the State Department refuting Kelly’s claims. They even went so far as to bring up Jamal Khashoggi, and by doing so, implicitly compared the Trump Administration to the Saudi regime regarding its treatment of the press.

    Aside from Menendez, the letter was also signed by Sens. Tim Kaine, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker.

    While it’s true that journalists are routinely jailed and killed around the world for their reporting, it’s also true that journalist murders are virtually nonexistent in the US.

    That is, unless you believe the ‘conspiracy theories’ about Michael Hastings.

    The most high-profile killing of an American journalist happened when a former news station employee shot her on camera as an act of deranged vengeance for perceived slights.

    But sure, Pompeo’s decision to drop a couple of f-bombs in front of a female reporter is absolutely tantamount to the vicious slaying of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudis consulate in Istanbul. Sounds reasonable to us.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 19:40

    Tags
    Politics

  • Containing The Huawei 'Virus'?
    Containing The Huawei ‘Virus’?

    Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

    The deadly virus originating out of the central Chinese city of Wuhan is making headlines, and well it should. There’s the potential for this new coronavirus to spread rapidly from China to the rest of Asia and the West.

    The virus attacks victims’ immune systems, compromising their health and threatening their very existence. At this writing, there are over 600 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with at least one in the state of Washington in the United States, and 17 deaths in China.

    The Huawei Contagion

    But there’s another high-risk contagion that has spread much further and deeper into many nations of the world, with very serious consequences as well. I’m talking about Huawei, of course, and its drive to be the main source of 5G telecommunication equipment for the world.

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    As I’ve written before, the China-based company is the biggest network equipment and phone infrastructure provider on earth. Its equipment is at the very heart of communications systems in countries across Europe and Asia, as well as in several Western states in the United States.

    Unfortunately, as many are aware, Huawei gear itself is the infection, compromising networks and phone systems with built-in spyware. This enables the company to record, gather, and alter data of all stripes, from the mundane to the top secret, and send it home to Beijing.

    The global equipment provider’s violations range far and wide in their damage to the national security, as well as economic viability, of every nation in which their network equipment operates. In medical terms, the “Huawei virus” undermines nations’ immune system, lowers its ability to defend itself in a variety of critical areas, including trade and foreign policy.

    In fact, Huawei was the catalyst of the U.S.–China trade war and the threat it poses to U.S. sovereignty is reflected in President Donald Trump’s very hard line against it. That also explains why Washington identified Huawei as a national security threat last November.

    There Are No Coincidences

    Of course, Huawei’s behavior isn’t breaking news. Meng Wanzhou, the CFO and daughter of the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei, has been under house arrest in Canada since late 2018. She was taken into custody for allegedly violating U.S. trade sanctions against Iran through a shell company based in Hong Kong.

    Coincidentally, Meng’s arrest in Canada at the request of the U.S. government was the same day that Trump was in talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

    Was the timing of Meng’s arrest coincidence? Perhaps, but probably not. “In politics,” as the saying goes, “there are no coincidences.”

    It’s much more likely, therefore, that Trump wanted to let Beijing know just how serious the United States is about stopping its predatory practices.

    Imagine the words that must have passed between them as Beijing learned of the arrest of one of the top officers of its flagship company. The conversation must have been quite animated, to say the least. It’s also probable that in that moment, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership realized that it wasn’t dealing with Barack Obama anymore.

    That’s also why Beijing’s detention of two Canadians shortly thereafter can only be seen in the context of retaliation against Canada for Meng’s arrest.

    Blacklisting Huawei

    Although Meng, her father, and even the Chinese regime continue to deny the charge of Iran sanctions violations, investigations by both the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government have found, without doubt, that such is the case. Those investigations, which confirmed that Huawei acts as an agent of the CCP, resulted in the U.S. Commerce Department blacklisting Huawei from buying parts from U.S. companies without special permission.

    This is the context behind Meng’s trial for extradition to the United States, which began this month. If China was expecting the United States to drop the charges against Huawei if they signed the Phase One deal, they’re likely to be disappointed.

    Leveraging such quid pro quos is business as usual for Beijing. However, as China is finding out, that’s not how the Trump administration works. The United States is determined to rollback Huawei’s—that is, China’s—penetration and influence in the world, and especially with regard to U.S. allies.

    More to the point of the matter, Meng’s extradition to the United States would almost certainly result in a conviction. It would have to. If she were to be acquitted, it would discredit the global campaign against Huawei and Beijing’s predatory trade practices that the United States is so ardently pursuing.

    The Cost of Banning Huawei

    If a conviction occurs, how serious will Beijing be about fulfilling its side of the Phase One deal? It wouldn’t be a surprise if China backed out of the deal; doubts of its ability to meet the terms already exist.

    If that happened, the United States could ban Huawei from the American banking system, severely hindering its ability to do business. That option is already been considered and remains on the table.

    China, on the other hand, may be engaged in bit of messaging as well. Huawei’s legal department issued what looks like a thinly veiled threat when chief legal officer Song Liuping stated that, “Banning a company like Huawei, just because we started in China—this does not solve cyber security challenges.”

    The meaning of this statement seems rather clear: Beijing is threatening cyberattacks against the United States if the case against Meng goes forward and/or results in a conviction and further actions against Huawei.

    The cost of containing Huawei may well be the unwinding of Phase One, which may have been Beijing’s plan all along.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 19:15

  • Iran Declares It's Passed Low Uranium Enrichment Threshold For A Nuke
    Iran Declares It’s Passed Low Uranium Enrichment Threshold For A Nuke

    Iran’s Deputy Atomic Energy Organization Director Ali Asghar Zarean made a key, provocative announcement on Saturday, saying the Islamic Republic has now passed the low uranium enrichment threshold for a nuke. 

    “At the moment, if (Iranian authorities) make the decision, the Atomic Energy Organization, as the executor, will be able to enrich uranium at any percentage,” Ali Asghar Zarean said, according to Reuters. 

    Specifically he declared the agency had surpassed 1,200 kg. of low level enriched uranium, following early last month Iran’s leaders declaring they consider the program under “no limitations” following the Qassem Soleimani assassination.

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    Nuclear power plant in Iran. Image source: Tasnim News Agency via Wikimedia Commons

    The Saturday announcement also comes nearly two weeks after European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal – Germany, France and Britain – said they are moving to trigger the JCPOA’s dispute resolution mechanism formally declaring Tehran is in breach, which could bring UN sanctions. 

    A report in The Jerusalem Post underscores how dire the situation is after this latest threshold has been reached:

    If true, the news could substantially accelerate the point at which Israel and the US might need to decide if they will intervene militarily before Iran develops a nuclear weapon.

    However, none of this necessarily means Iran has moved to take the final step of weaponizing and delivering the material. Leadership in Tehran has continually emphasized its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes. 

    The 1,200kg would still have to be enriched to 90% weaponized uranium for a weapon. Combined with the challenges of a delivery method, Israeli defense officials say it could take up to a year to develop a nuke if the Iranians were to move on it now, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

    To compare to pre-2015 nuclear deal levels, Iran had much more uranium yet never enriched it past the 20% level. It remains to be seen whether Iran’s newest announcement is a possible bluff, or an attempt at sowing disinformation to intimidate Washington — still a distinct possibility which awaits IAEA or other international scientific confirmation.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 18:50

    Tags
    Politics

  • Romney Sides With Democrats: 'Very Likely I'll Be In Favor Of Witnesses'
    Romney Sides With Democrats: ‘Very Likely I’ll Be In Favor Of Witnesses’

    Utah Sen. Mitt Romney (R) says it’s “very likely” that he will side with Congressional Democrats over calling witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial against President Trump – however he says he will table the decision until Trump’s defense team has concluded their opening arguments.

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    “I think it’s very likely I’ll be in favor of witnesses, but I haven’t made a decision finally yet and I won’t until the testimony is completed,” Romney said Saturday following the first full day of Trump’s team’s arguments, according to CNN.

    The Utah Senator was mum on whether he thought Trump’s team was effective, saying “I just don’t have any comments on the process or the evidence until the trial is over.”

    Three weeks ago Romney expressed interest in hearing testimony from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, saying earlier this month “I would like to hear from John Bolton and other witnesses, but at the same time I’m comfortable with the Clinton impeachment model when we have opening arguments first and then we have a vote on whether to have witnesses.”

    Democrats need four Republicans to vote with them in favor of subpoenas for witnesses or new evidence in order to extend the trial and gather new information.

    There are only maybe four, realistically, who would vote in favor of calling witnesses who could testify against the President. That short list includes Romney, relative moderates Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and endangered senators up for reelection like Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado.

    Collins and Murkowski have also signaled that they’re open to hearing from witnesses, should they feel it’s needed after opening arguments. –CNN

    According to the report, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked efforts by Democrats to push for an initial deal on witnesses and documents until after opening statements and questioning.

    McConnell now says that calling witnesses would raise constitutional concerns – suggesting that he’s in lockstep with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who says “this needs to end.”


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 18:25

    Tags
    Politics

  • CTA And Managed Futures Primer
    CTA And Managed Futures Primer

    Authored and courtesy of Ryan Fitzmaurice and Christian Lawrence of Rabobank

    Summary

    • Global markets are becoming increasingly intertwined as systematic flows from CTAs and passive investments gain more and more market share from active discretionary managers.
    • Equity markets have passed an inflection point with passive investing AUM surpassing active investments for the first time in history. This has major ramifications for asset price action.
    • CTAs typically implement similar trend and momentum strategies across asset classes using liquid futures contracts in fixed income, equity, commodities, and FX markets
    • The majority of CTAs are doing the same thing but perhaps on different timeframes or with different leverage profiles.

    The “Long and short of it” rationale…

    On these pages is the first release of “The long and short of it“ – a new series of reports from RaboResearch focusing on cross asset and systematic investing. Given this is the first cross-asset report of its kind from RaboResearch, we will begin the series with a number of primers covering a range of topics from systematic CTA flows to factor investing and beyond. Of course, cross-asset analysis is nothing new but shifts in the structure of the market and the rise of systematic trading and passive investment have major implications for more traditional forms of asset management and in turn for market price action.

    In short, the idea behind our cross-asset reports is to tie together different asset classes in a world where no market is an island and reflexivity and interconnectedness are key. The core thesis behind our analysis is that global markets are becoming increasingly intertwined as systematic flows from more ‘rules based’ investors such as CTAs (Commodity Trading Advisors) and passive investments such as index funds and smart beta ETFs gain more and more market share from active discretionary managers. In fact, as of summer of last year, passive investments surpassed active investments in the equity space for the first time in history and this trend shows no sign of letting up. We are certainly not suggesting that active management is disappearing altogether, but discretionary management is certainly losing market share and the rise of passive investment is shaping the structure of markets. While it is not the case that the rise of passive investment is the root cause of the continued decline of volatility over recent years, it has been a key part of the vicious/virtuous cycle that continues to compress financial market volatility despite rising real world risks. Indeed, a flood of liquidity from central banks and monetary policy that seemingly provides somewhat of a backstop to asset prices, coupled with a changing regulatory landscape are probably the main drivers behind the structural short volatility dynamic we see across markets. That environment, alongside advances in technology and computing power, have helped the proliferation and success of passive investment which in turn has helped suppress volatility further.

    That said, while passive investment has risen, so has systematic ‘rules based’ investing and it is in this area that we can extract some valuable insights that allow for more accurate forecasting and more successful risk management.

    It is not just equity markets that have undergone this transformation – other asset classes have followed suit, and given the rules-based nature of these funds and strategies, trading behavior and market flows are becoming more predictable for astute market practitioners. While our aim is to cover the wide universe of systematic strategies – our initial focus will be on CTAs given our deep understanding and knowledge of this particular “strategy”.

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    In our view, forecasting and understanding market flows from CTAs can provide a strong edge in today’s highly systematized markets and our goal here is to help our readers understand these dynamics to help navigate market risks more effectively. As the name suggests, CTAs have long been key in understanding price action in commodity markets but their role in other asset classes is still important. Even for markets such as the government bonds and FX, while at first glance it might appear the futures market is so small in comparison to the cash market as to be irrelevant, in fact, the futures market is highly leveraged and so the volumes at stake are much larger than the notional amounts imply – at the margin there can be some valuable information gleaned from CTA positioning and flows. Of course, the US Treasury market and the FX market are two of the deepest, most liquid markets in the world and US Treasuries are heavily impacted by structural dynamics such as regulatory requirements, but at the margin, even in this market, CTA flows can provide some interesting insights. These two markets are the most extreme example but for smaller markets, the role of CTA flows can be significant. Furthermore, CTAs are one of the most dynamic categories of traders in their approach and therefore can be a powerful force on the margin and especially when looking at shorter term moves where there is no clear fundamental catalyst at play. At the very least, readers should understand what it is that CTAs do, the strategies that they employ, and their potential market impact across sectors and asset classes.

    To that end, in “The long and short of it” reports we will look to highlight “crowded” trades, forecast weekly flows using a theoretical CTA model, and identify key market inflection points where we expect the herd of CTAs will likely reverse positions.

    CTAs and Managed Futures

    As previously noted, CTA stands for commodity trading advisor, however, that is a bit of a misnomer given that CTAs trade not only commodities but also other major asset classes spanning the global futures markets. CTAs or “Managed Futures” programs as they are also known, are often dressed up as a magic black box full of secret sauce but they typically  implement similar trend and momentum strategies across fixed income, equities, commodities, and FX markets. Indeed, despite fancy pitch books suggesting otherwise – most CTAs are doing the same thing but perhaps on different timeframes or with different leverage profiles. While a full understanding of CTA strategies is well beyond the scope of this primer – what we will say is that the strategies generally trigger off of price movements such as moving average crossovers or percentage returns over a predetermined lookback period and no fundamental inputs or information is taken into account. The fact of the matter is that there is only so many ways to trade trend or momentum which results in herd-like behavior. This is very apparent when looking at the correlation of publicly available CTA funds and Managed Futures programs which is quite high as is clear from the chart below. It is precisely this herd-like behaviour that can move markets in the short-term and especially in a “short” covering or “long” liquidation scenario when the “crowd” is caught wrong-footed in the market and forced to reverse positions. We will look to capitalize on this behaviour in our new “Long and short of it” report and we detail in the pages below exactly how we intend to do that.

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    The Rise and Fall

    While CTAs have been around for decades, they rose to the forefront after the global financial crisis of 2008 when they performed extremely well in the face of sharply falling markets and then gained further fanfare in 2014 after another standout year. Since then, however, market conditions have been sub-optimal for this type of strategy given the low interest rate environment, central bank intervention, and a host of other factors which have led to poor performance and investor outflows. Further compounding the struggle for CTAs has been the fact that global equity markets have performed extremely well over this same period. This steady increase in equities with very little in the way of sustained pullbacks has led investors to pull money out of actively managed funds and into passive index funds that generally cost a fraction of the fees that active managers charge. While this strategy has largely worked up until now, it is worth remembering that most of these passive investments have only existed during periods of low interest rates, low volatility, and generally stable markets while CTAs, on the other hand, have traded through many market cycles. The real test for passive investing will come when the current trading regime changes, as it always does. When it does in fact change, we suspect CTAs will rise to the forefront yet again and investor dollars will follow as they have in the past. For this reason, we see CTAs as a powerful force with the potential to gain more market share and influence as we look ahead and especially if the slowdown in US and global economic activity that our own Philip Marey, Rabobank’s Senior US Strategist, is forecasting for 2020 is realized.

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    Market flows

    Despite the reduction in assets under management in recent years, CTAs and “Managed Futures” programs continue to play a very dominant role in terms of speculative positioning in global futures markets which is quite apparent from the charts included below. Figure 6 overlays the positioning from our theoretical CTA trading model for both WTI Crude oil and Soybeans with the corresponding positioning data from the “Managed Money” category of the CFTC’s Commitment of Traders report.

    For clarity – our theoretical CTA trading model is a proprietary quantitative model that is run in real-time across asset classes. The model incorporates various asset-weighted trend and momentum strategies that include volatility adjusted position sizing and daily rebalancing – modelling the behaviour of real-money CTA funds. The model uses historical price data for signal generation and no fundamental inputs are incorporated.

    Back-testing our model has shown it to be a good fit to reality and it has performed especially well at key inflection points. To be clear, the CTA model is not expected to account for all of the variations in positioning from the “Managed Money” crowd given that CTAs only make up a portion of the traders included in the category but the fit implies that the role of CTAs in this category is absolutely critical. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is especially true in commodities markets where our CTA model tracks the speculative positioning data extremely well as can be seen in Figure 6 below. The same can be said for other asset classes as well, however, the data can be a bit noisier given the large number of players involved as well as the nuances of each sector.

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    Given that our CTA model is a good fit to the realized behavior of “Managed Money” futures traders, we can use it to predict weekly trading flows, identify “crowded” trades, and perhaps most importantly, detect key areas where CTAs are likely to reverse direction. On top of our CTA model, we will also use other tools such as correlation analysis to identify key positions that CTAs currently hold. An example of this can be seen in Figure 7 below, running correlations of CTA performance against equity indices implies that CTAs accumulated a sizable “long” position through November and December of 2019 and are now starting the new year off with outsized exposure to global equities given the strong positive correlations to the aggregate CTA index.

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    Looking Forward

    We have focused on providing a primer on the role CTAs play in financial markets and how they can be used to provide insights as to potential direction of price action across asset classes. This is just the first in a series of primers that cover topics we think can provide additional insight into market dynamics and give our readers an edge in navigating financial markets. Going forward, we will publish more primers covering our new toolkit including risk premium strategies, factor investing, volatility strategies, smart Beta ETFs, as well as other systematic trading programs. More importantly, we will of course update our readers with the results of our models both in terms of forecasts and risk signals.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 18:13

  • Kobe Bryant Dies In Helicopter Crash
    Kobe Bryant Dies In Helicopter Crash

    Update (1745ET): The local sheriff has confirmed that the death toll from the helicopter crash that killed Bryant has been raised to nine

    * * *

    Update (1600ET): According to TMZ, Bryant’s daughter Gianna was aboard and perished in the crash near Las Virgenes Rd. and Willow Glen St. around 10 a.m, behind the home of Kourtney Kardashian. ESPN reports that they were on their way to a basketball game.

    Bryant is survived by his wife Vanessa and their three other daughters, Natalia, Bianca and newborn Capri.

    President Trump has offered his condolences on Sunday. 

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    Meanwhile, it appears that Bryant’s helicopter was in a holding pattern before crashing.

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    Update (1540ET): Just hours after the crash, false rumors are already being reported as facts. Reports that all of Bryant’s four daughters were with him in the helicopter have been confirmed to be untrue.

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    This is why journalists need to confirm their information with multiple sources instead of just running with whatever somebody tells them.

    * * *

    TMZ has confirmed that basketball legend Kobe Bryant – one of the biggest sports stars in the world – died Sunday morning in a helicopter crash over Calabasas, a tiny city in LA County known as a haven for celebrities. He was 41.

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    Though many online wished that news of his death was fake or some kind of sick joke…

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    …several local news outlets have confirmed the story.

    The cause of the crash is under investigation.

    Per TMZ, Kobe has famously used a helicopter to travel for years, even when he was still playing with the LA Lakers. He was known for commuting from his home in Newport Beach to the Staples Center in his Sikorsky S-76 chopper. Kobe was traveling with at least three other people in his private chopper when it went down.

    Local news reported that Malibu deputies responded to what appears to be the scene of the crash, though both TMZ and the LA County Police Twitter feed described the crash as occurring over Calabasas. The tweets didn’t name any of the victims.

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    The LA Times confirmed that the crash happened at around 10 am PT (1 pm ET). The crash ignited a brush fire that made it nearly impossible for rescue personnel to reach the aircraft. They also confirmed that the model of the chopper was a Sikorsky S-76, the same model as Kobe’s private chopper.

    Many have turned to Bryant’s twitter account, hoping he’ll fire off a tweet letting the world know it was just a hoax. But his last tweet, sent 16 hours ago (before this morning’s crash), praises Lebron James, the new star of Bryant’s old team, the Lakers. Bryant was a huge part of what made the Lakers one of the most dominant franchises in the NBA. On Saturday, James passed Bryant on the NBA’s all-time scoring list.

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    Bryant is survived by his wife Vanessa, and their four daughters, Gianna, Natalia and Bianca and their newborn Capri.

    2020 has been one incredibly strange year – and it’s still January.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 17:46

    Tags
    Disaster Accident

  • "The Fed Is Trying To Stop Global Economic Contagion", Martin Armstrong Warns
    “The Fed Is Trying To Stop Global Economic Contagion”, Martin Armstrong Warns

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Legendary geopolitical and financial analyst Martin Armstrong says, “The Fed is trapped. If it stops (injecting money into the repo market by billions of dollars daily), interest rates will rise.”

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    Armstrong goes on to explain,

    “The Bank of Japan came out and said we’re going to buy government bonds unlimited. They, too, are trying to prevent interest rates from rising…

    The ECB cannot afford rates to go up…

    This is a global contagion that’s developing, and it’s pretty serious. The rise in interest rates has tremendous implications all the way around the globe…

    Interest rates are rising because there is increased risk – period.”

    The big risk, according to Armstrong, is global governments, including the U.S. Armstrong says,

    “You have to understand, at some point in time, capital begins to figure out who is the greatest risk, and the risk is government. At that stage in the game, when that point is reached, then you have shifts. The capital will move from public types of investments, such as government bonds and things of that nature, and then will move into the private sector. That’s equities, and that can be gold and real estate in different places. You try to go to tangible assets.”

    So, what could go wrong with the Fed trapped in the repo market and cannot stop liquefying bad debt? Armstrong says,

    “What can go wrong is that they lose the game. They are doing this to try to prevent interest rates from rising. If they did not do this, the short term rate would be up dramatically.”

    What could go wrong is the Fed can continue to fuel the repo market with cheap money and interest rates can rise anyway? Armstrong says,

    “Correct. They have already lost control, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing this…

    They are trying to keep rates down. If the Fed loses, rates are going to go up, and you are going to see this in the Treasury auctions. Then it won’t matter what the Fed is trying to do in the repo market. You will see this stress in the Treasury auctions, and the government will have to start paying higher prices. This is what’s going to take place.”

    In closing, Armstrong says, “The central banks are losing power…”

    “That’s what my new book “Manipulating the World Economy” is all about. It’s about all the manipulations. Governments have tried to control it, and they are losing it on every possible level.

    This is like the last ditch effort, the last hurrah or last battle for the central banks. If the Fed loses, you are talking about central banks can no longer function in controlling the economy, inflation or anything.”

    Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with renowned financial and geopolitical analyst Martin Armstrong.

    *  *  *

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

    There is some free information, analysis and articles on ArmstrongEconomics.com. Armstrong’s new book “Manipulating the World Economy” is temporarily sold out. If you want to know when the stock of Armstrong’s new book is replenished, you can keep checking by clicking here. There is also other research and analysis you can purchase by Martin Armstrong by clicking here.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 17:35

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Is The Market Underestimating Euro Area Inflation?
    Is The Market Underestimating Euro Area Inflation?

    Authored by Tony Small, Morgan Stanley strategist

    Core and headline inflation data in the euro area finished 2019 above the ECB’s forecasts, as seasonally adjusted measures of underlying inflation climbed to their highest levels since 2013. Many leading indicators suggest that the upside evident in underlying inflation at the end of last year could continue in 2020. Early January commentary from multiple ECB officials suggests that optimism is slowly building within the Governing Council.

    Despite the near-term improvement and cautious optimism from some within the ECB, markets remain decidedly sceptical that the move is sustainable. The ECB’s preferred market-based measure, the five-year five-year euro inflation swap, remains stuck near 1.3% (below seasonally adjusted underlying measures for only the second time since the GFC).

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    And according to Bloomberg, median and average forecaster expectations for end-2020 euro area GDP growth, CPI and 10-year Bund yields stand at or near 18-month lows.

    Now we know you’re probably saying to yourself, not another euro area reflation story. We get it, we promise – but give us a few to make our case.

    We think there’s a real possibility in 2020 that the markets’ expectations for a rebound in euro area growth and a steady move higher in core inflation measures may prove too pessimistic. This could lead markets to reassess everything – from bank stocks to the outright levels of both inflation breakevens and Bund yields and finally the ECB’s current monetary policy stance.

    Over the last couple of years, core inflation has been running well below what existing levels of wage growth and the European Commission future price expectation series for the consumer, services, retail and construction sectors would normally imply. At the same time, a softer manufacturing sector has offset resilient domestic demand and services inflation, but some of that drag may be starting to subside.

    In recent months our European and global economics teams have been highlighting the stabilisation and improvement in euro area manufacturing PMIs, upside data surprises across many regions of the globe and an acceleration in European soft data indicators, particularly in Germany, where the latest ZEW expectations survey rose to its highest level since 2015 and the manufacturing and services PMIs surprised strongly to the upside in January.

    The better-than-expected data, especially in the euro area, have prompted our European economists to note potential upside risks to their forecast for just a soft rebound in euro area growth in 2020. Importantly, they’re not alone.

    The account of the ECB Governing Council’s December 2019 monetary policy meeting had perhaps the most cautiously optimistic tone beneath the surface that we’ve seen in the last couple of years. Members highlighted the reduced uncertainty associated with geopolitical and trade tensions, a significant reduction in euro area recession probabilities, a notable rise in euro area surprise indices and a “solid upward move in underlying inflation” (when excluding volatile package holiday prices in the euro area’s largest economy and measures incorporating the cost of owner-occupied housing, which aren’t included in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices). At the recent January 2020 Governing Council meeting, the cautious optimism continued, as the ECB softened its assessment of downside risks to growth from “somewhat less pronounced” to “less pronounced”.

    Many of our strategy teams at Morgan Stanley have embraced the idea that markets may be priced for too much pessimism in Europe. Our European equity strategists turned positive on European and UK equities in 4Q19, our European bank strategists initiated a high-conviction overweight on the SX7E banks index towards the end of 2019, and our cross-asset strategy team sees greater value in European equities relative to US equities. Finally, we on the European rates strategy team have been biased towards higher Bund yields since the end of 3Q19.

    We realise that many investors will look askance at the idea of European reflation given how often it has failed to materialise. Something to keep in the back of one’s mind, however, is that a new wave of leaders has emerged across the continent, with non-traditional attitudes towards fiscal spending and a strong desire to thoughtfully and thoroughly consider issues including climate change, a banking union and broader euro area fiscal integration.

    Policies like the European Commission’s Green New Deal could lead to a wave of investment, lifting Europe’s productivity, potential GDP and nominal growth and inflation. In the meantime, there just may be some signs that euro area reflation is finally on its way.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 16:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 26

Today’s News 26th January 2020

  • Is Another Black Death On The Way?
    Is Another Black Death On The Way?

    Authored by Eric Margolis,

    Plagues from the east are nothing new…

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    The Black Death and other epidemics arrived in Europe from China during the 1300’s, killing a large percentage of its population. Much of this pestilence came from rats that stowed away on merchant ships coming from the east.

    At the end of World War I, another pandemic, wrongly called the Spanish flu, killed an estimated 18 to 50 million people in Europe and North America.

    Seventeen years after the SARS virus killed some 800 people in China and Canada and terrified the entire world, a new plague threatens the West: the Wuhan Coronavirus.

    Officially named 2019-nCoV, the new virus has so far infected over 800 people in China. This latest plague erupted in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, population 11 million, which is located on the Yangtze River and is an important hub for national communications.

    Like SARS, the Wuhan virus is believed to have come from a live animal market that specializes in exotic animals from the Himalayas or China’s remote mountain regions. Serving exotic animals at dinner parties is a big status symbol in China. Sometimes they are even served while still alive. Dog meat is a favorite in northern China.

    SARS was believed to have come from civet cats. As a result, thousands of these felines were brutally killed. But it was later determined the virus originated from bats, then spread to other captive animals. Bat soup is another Chinese delicacy.

    Keeping large numbers of captive animals crammed together in cages with poor ventilation and no cleaning is an ideal vector for viral diseases. Each year, China consumes 730 million pigs. Fifty percent of China’s factory farmed pigs have so far contracted lethal swine flu. Rising living standards have boosted demand for pork.

    I have seen how China raises and transports pigs. It’s a nightmare of brutality and inhuman behavior. No wonder so many of these intelligent sensitive animals fall ill and die. Swine fever could be payback for China’s terrible cruelty to pigs.

    And it’s not just China. Pigs in North America are treated almost as badly. A lady where I live was actually jailed and prosecuted for having given water to a truckload of thirsty, starving, terrified pigs on the way to the slaughterhouse.

    In North America, animals destined for slaughter are packed together and then dosed with heavy antibiotics to combat communicable diseases from over-crowding and mistreatment. These same antibiotics then enter our food chain, causing us ever growing viral resistance.

    When the SARS epidemic erupted in South China 17 years ago, the Chinese communist party tried to hush up the crisis, allowing infected people to travel to North America and Europe.

    This time, China did the right thing by jumping hard on the epidemic: shutting down all air, sea and land communications with the greater Wuhan region and 14 smaller cities – right in the middle of China’s huge new year celebrations when over 400 million people return to their homes. The epidemic could not have come at a worse time.

    Some Wuhan residents have already flown to other parts of Asia and North America. Simply checking incoming air travellers for fever will not prevent the virus from spreading or identify passengers who have contracted and are developing the illness.

    A better solution would be to quarantine all people arriving from Central China and even bar airlines coming from there until we better understand the new virus. We stop so-called ‘terrorists’ and Muslims from flying to our shores. Why not potentially infective people?

    China must also be pressed to cease its dangerous, inhumane trade in exotic wild animals and urged to treat all animals with humanity and care. China is a major cause of species loss. Aside from a few brave animal rights groups, there is very little consciousness of our animal neighbors in China nor understanding that animals are sentient beings with emotions similar to those of humans. The Chinese are one of the most intelligent people on earth. Yet when it comes to animals, all they see is walking food.

    As I’ve seen on my travels across China, it has made great strides in public sanitation and cleanliness as well as planting trees. Now, it’s time to stop abusing animals or the plagues will keep coming.


    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 01/26/2020 – 00:00

    Tags
    Environment

  • TEPCO Proposes 44-Year Plan To Decommission Fukushima No. 2 Nuclear Plant
    TEPCO Proposes 44-Year Plan To Decommission Fukushima No. 2 Nuclear Plant

    About a decade ago, a powerful earthquake triggered a 15-meter tsunami that disabled the power supply and cooling of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. 

    The accident led to nuclear cores of three reactors to meltdown, causing widespread radiation release, along with the evacuation of thousands of people within a 30-kilometer radius. 

    Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO) is the operator of the nuclear power plant, released a statement last week detailing how it would take 44 years to decommission Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant, reported The Japan Times. 

    Fukushima No. 2 plant is South of No.1 and North of No.3, which suffered a catastrophic triple meltdown in the March 2011 incident. 

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    TEPCO outlines how the decommissioning process will be conducted in four phases: taking ten years for phase one, 12 years for phase two, and 11 years for both phase three and four. 

    “TEPCO will survey radioactive contamination at the nuclear plant in the first stage, clear equipment around nuclear reactors in the second, remove the reactors in the third and demolish the reactor buildings in the fourth,” the Times said. 

    By the end of phase four, so approximately 2064, a total of 9,532 spent nuclear fuel units from the plant will have been delivered to a local fuel reprocessing plant. 

    Japan’s Economy and Industry Ministry proposed last month that TEPCO could gradually release massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water being stored at the power plant.

    In a December 2019 proposal, the ministry suggested a “controlled release” of the contaminated water into the Pacific. Another option via the ministry was allowing the radioactive water to evaporate, or a combination of the two methods.

    The government is stepping up the pressure on TEPCO to do something as Fukushima’s ‘radioactive water crisis’ worsens. The problem is that TEPCO is running out of room to store the contaminated water.

    But the ministry insisted that the controlled release of the contaminated water into the sea would be the best option because it would “stably dilute and disperse” the water from the plant, while also allowing the government and TEPCO to more easily monitor the operation.

    And as we have reported, the Japanese fishing industry isn’t the only party that objects to the government’s plan. South Korea has also complained to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

    The Fukushima nuclear disaster is nowhere close to being resolved. Reactors released iodine-131, cesium-134, and cesium-137. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years. 


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 23:30

    Tags
    Disaster Accident
    Environment

  • Did China Steal Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponize It
    Did China Steal Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponize It

    Submitted by Great Game India

    Last year a mysterious shipment was caught smuggling Coronavirus from Canada. It was traced to Chinese agents working at a Canadian lab. Subsequent investigation by GreatGameIndia linked the agents to Chinese Biological Warfare Program from where the virus is suspected to have leaked causing the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak.

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    Coronavirus Bioweapon – How Chinese agents stole Coronavirus from Canada and weaponized it into a Bioweapon

    The Saudi SARS Sample

    On June 13, 2012 a 60-year-old Saudi man was admitted to a private hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a 7-day history of fever, cough, expectoration, and shortness of breath. He had no history of cardiopulmonary or renal disease, was receiving no long-term medications, and did not smoke.

    Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki isolated and identified a previously unknown coronavirus from his lungs. After routine diagnostics failed to identify the causative agent, Zaki contacted Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for advice. 

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    Abnormalities on Chest Imaging of the Saudi patient infected with Coronavirus. Shown are chest radiographs of the patient on the day of admission (Panel A) and 2 days later (Panel B) and computed tomography (CT) 4 days after admission (Panel C).

    Fouchier sequenced the virus from a sample sent by Zaki. Fouchier used a broad-spectrum “pan-coronavirus” real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method to test for distinguishing features of a number of known coronaviruses known to infect humans.

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    This undated file image released by the British Health Protection Agency shows an electron microscope image of a coronavirus, part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS, which was first identified in the Middle East. HANDOUT/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    This Coronavirus sample was acquired by Scientific Director Dr. Frank Plummer of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg directly from Fouchier, who received it from Zaki. This virus was reportedly stolen from the Canadian lab by Chinese agents.

    The Canadian Lab

    Coronavirus arrived at Canada’s NML Winnipeg facility on May 4, 2013 from the Dutch lab. The Canadian lab grew up stocks of the virus and used it to assess diagnostic tests being used in Canada. Winnipeg scientists worked to see which animal species can be infected with the new virus.

    Research was done in conjunction with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s national lab, the National Centre for Foreign Animal Diseases which is housed in the same complex as the National Microbiology Laboratory.

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    The National Microbiology Lab (The Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health) on Arlington St. in Winnipeg. Wayne Glowacki/Winnipeg Free Press Oct.22 2014

    NML has a long history of offering comprehensive testing services for coronaviruses. It isolated and provided the first genome sequence of the SARS coronavirus and identified another coronavirus NL63 in 2004.

    This Winnipeg based Canadian lab was targeted by Chinese agents in what could be termed as Biological Espionage.

    Chinese Biological Espionage

    In March 2019, in mysterious event a shipment of exceptionally virulent viruses from Canada’s NML ended up in China. The event caused a major scandal with Bio-warfare experts questioning why Canada was sending lethal viruses to China. Scientists from NML said the highly lethal viruses were a potential bio-weapon.

    Following investigation, the incident was traced to Chinese agents working at NML. Four months later in July 2019, a group of Chinese virologists were forcibly dispatched from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML). The NML is Canada’s only level-4 facility and one of only a few in North America equipped to handle the world’s deadliest diseases, including Ebola, SARS, Coronavirus, etc.

    Xiangguo Qiu – The Chinese Bio-Warfare Agent

    The NML scientist who was escorted out of the Canadian lab along with her husband, another biologist, and members of her research team is believed to be a Chinese Bio-Warfare agent Xiangguo Qiu. Qiu was the head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies Section in the Special Pathogens Program at Canada’s NML.

    Xiangguo Qiu is an outstanding Chinese scientist born in Tianjin. She primarily received her medical doctor degree from Hebei Medical University in China in 1985 and came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. Later on, she was affiliated with the Institute of Cell Biology and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health of the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, not engaged with studying pathogens.

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    Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, the Chinese Biological Warfare Agent working at the National Microbiology Laboratory, Canada

    But a shift took place, somehow. Since 2006, she has been studying powerful viruses in Canada’s NML. The viruses shipped from the NML to China were studied by her in 2014, for instance (together with the viruses Machupo, Junin, Rift Valley Fever, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever and Hendra).

    Infiltrating the Canadian Lab

    Dr. Xiangguo Qiu is married to another Chinese scientist – Dr. Keding Cheng, also affiliated with the NML, specifically the “Science and Technology Core”. Dr. Cheng is primarily a bacteriologist who shifted to virology. The couple is responsible for infiltrating Canada’s NML with many Chinese agents as students from a range of Chinese scientific facilities directly tied to China’s Biological Warfare Program, namely:

    1. Institute of Military Veterinary, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Changchun
    2. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu Military Region
    3. Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hubei
    4. Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing

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    Sources say Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were escorted from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg on July 5, 2019. Since then, the University of Manitoba has ended their appointments, reassigned her graduate students, and cautioned staff, students and faculty about traveling to China. (Governor General’s Innovation Awards)

    All of the above four mentioned Chinese Biological Warfare facilities collaborated with Dr. Xiangguo Qiu within the context of Ebola virus, the Institute of Military Veterinary joined a study on the Rift Valley fever virus too, while the Institute of Microbiology joined a study on Marburg virus. Noticeably, the drug used in the latter study – Favipiravir – has been earlier tested successfully by the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, with the designation JK-05 (originally a Japanese patent registered in China already in 2006), against Ebola and additional viruses.

    However, the studies by Dr. Qiu are considerably more advanced and apparently vital for the Chinese biological weapons development in case Coronavirus, Ebola, Nipah, Marburg or Rift Valley fever viruses are included therein.

    The Canadian investigation is ongoing and questions remain whether previous shipments to China of other viruses or other essential preparations, took place from 2006 to 2018, one way or another.

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    Dr. Gary Kobinger, former chief of special pathogens (right), and Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, research scientist (second from right) met with Dr. Kent Brantly and Dr. Linda Mobula, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the physician who administered ZMapp to Brantly in Liberia when he was infected with Ebola during the 2014-16 outbreak. (Submitted by Health Canada)

    Dr. Xiangguo Qiu also collaborated in 2018 with three scientists from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Maryland, studying post-exposure immunotherapy for two Ebola viruses and Marburg virus in monkeys; a study supported by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

    The Wuhan Coronavirus

    Dr. Xiangguo Qiu made at least five trips over the school year 2017-18 to the above mentioned Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which was certified for BSL4 in January 2017. Moreover, in August 2017, the National Health Commission of China approved research activities involving Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses at the Wuhan facility.

    Coincidentally, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is located only 20 miles away from the Huanan Seafood Market which is the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak dubbed the Wuhan Coronavirus.

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    The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is located just about 20 miles away from the Huanan Seafood Market, the epicenter of Coronavirus outbreak

    The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is housed at the Chinese military facility Wuhan Institute of Virology linked to China’s Biological Warfare Program. It was the first ever lab in the country designed to meet biosafety-level-4 (BSL-4) standards – the highest biohazard level, meaning that it would be qualified to handle the most dangerous pathogens. 

    In January 2018, the lab was operational ‘for global experiments on BSL-4 pathogens,’ wrote Guizhen Wu in the journal Biosafety and Health. ‘After a laboratory leak incident of SARS in 2004, the former Ministry of Health of China initiated the construction of preservation laboratories for high-level pathogens such as SARS, coronavirus, and pandemic influenza virus,’ wrote Guizhen Wu.

    Coronavirus Bioweapon

    The Wuhan institute has studied coronaviruses in the past, including the strain that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis, and dengue. Researchers at the institute also studied the germ that causes anthrax – a biological agent once developed in Russia.

    “Coronaviruses (particularly SARS) have been studied in the institute and are probably held therein,” said Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biowarfare. He said. “SARS is included within the Chinese BW program, at large, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.”

    James Giordano, a neurology professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow in Biowarfare at the U.S. Special Operations Command, said China’s growing investment in bio-science, looser ethics around gene-editing and other cutting-edge technology and integration between government and academia raise the spectre of such pathogens being weaponized. 

    That could mean an offensive agent, or a modified germ let loose by proxies, for which only China has the treatment or vaccine. “This is not warfare, per se,” he said. “But what it’s doing is leveraging the capability to act as global saviour, which then creates various levels of macro and micro economic and bio-power dependencies.”

    China’s Biological Warfare Program

    In a 2015 academic paper, Shoham – of Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies – asserts that more than 40 Chinese facilities are involved in bio-weapon production.

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    China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences actually developed an Ebola drug – called JK-05 — but little has been divulged about it or the defence facility’s possession of the virus, prompting speculation its Ebola cells are part of China’s bio-warfare arsenal, Shoham told the National Post.

    Ebola is classified as a “category A” bioterrorism agent by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meaning it could be easily transmitted from person to person, would result in high death rates and “might cause panic.” The CDC lists Nipah as a category C substance, a deadly emerging pathogen that could be engineered for mass dissemination.

    China’s Biological Warfare Program is believed to be in an advanced stage that includes research and development, production and weaponization capabilities. Its current inventory is believed to include the full range of traditional chemical and biological agents with a wide variety of delivery systems including artillery rockets, aerial bombs, sprayers, and short-range ballistic missiles.

    Weaponizing Biotech

    China’s national strategy of military-civil fusion has highlighted biology as a priority, and the People’s Liberation Army could be at the forefront of expanding and exploiting this knowledge.

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    The PLA is pursuing military applications for biology and looking into promising intersections with other disciplines, including brain science, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence. Since 2016, the Central Military Commission has funded projects on military brain science, advanced biomimetic systems, biological and biomimetic materials, human performance enhancement, and “new concept” biotechnology.

    In 2016, an AMMS doctoral researcher published a dissertation, “Research on the Evaluation of Human Performance Enhancement Technology,” which characterized CRISPR-Cas as one of three primary technologies that might boost troops’ combat effectiveness. The supporting research looked at the effectiveness of the drug Modafinil, which has applications in cognitive enhancement; and at transcranial magnetic stimulation, a type of brain stimulation, while also contending that the “great potential” of CRISPR-Cas as a “military deterrence technology in which China should “grasp the initiative” in development.

    In 2016, the potential strategic value of genetic information led the Chinese government to launch the National Genebank, which intends to become the world’s largest repository of such data. It aims to “develop and utilize China’s valuable genetic resources, safeguard national security in bioinformatics, and enhance China’s capability to seize the strategic commanding heights” in the domain of Biotechnology Warfare.

    Chinese military’s interest in biology as an emerging domain of warfare is guided by strategists who talk about potential “genetic weapons” and the possibility of a “bloodless victory.”


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 23:00

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma
    War Conflict

  • The 'Golden Age Of Plastic'? Banks Are Quietly Raising Credit Limits For Freespending Borrowers
    The ‘Golden Age Of Plastic’? Banks Are Quietly Raising Credit Limits For Freespending Borrowers

    Credit-card lenders are calling it the ‘Golden Age of Plastic’. But that’s mostly because they’re the ones hoarding all the gold.

    Gloom-and-doom economists who have portended the imminent collapse of the American consumer (we don’t want to name names) might have a reason to put off their calls for a downturn of epic proportions just a little bit longer. Because at a time when the American consumer is already leveraged to the hilt, and when credit data suggests some are finally biting the bullet and curbing spending to pay it down, lenders have hit on a novel strategy to boost growth.

    And that strategy is, according to Bloomberg, raising certain borrowers’ credit limits without a request from the borrower. In other words, some consumers are waking up to notices or emails from their credit-card lenders informing them that their credit limits have just been raised – sometimes by a wide margin.

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    Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank told BBG that the company’s resistance to unsolicited credit-limit hikes is a “radical theology” because it goes above and beyond post-crisis safeguards. But now that lenders are being pressed to keep showing revenue growth at a time of record excess, Capital One has changed its mind with the explicit goal of trying to convince consumers to borrow more that they can afford to pay back – or at least not all at once.

    Of course, while debt-fueled spending registers as growth in the all-important consumption metrics, there will eventually come a time when they debt must either be repaid, or written off.

    “It’s like putting a sandwich in front of me and I haven’t eaten all day,” said D’Ante Jones, a 27-year-old rapper known as D. Maivia in Houston who was close to hitting the ceiling on his Chase Freedom card when JPMorgan Chase & Co. nearly doubled his spending limit a year ago without consulting him. He soon borrowed much more. “How can I not take a bite out of it?”

    Banks insist that they raise credit limits “carefully”, and that they limit reckless borrowing.

    But at this point, anybody who does make the mistake of carrying a balance is going to get hurt.

    As we pointed out last month, something strange happened after the Fed started cutting interest rates again last year. While lenders were quick to lower the deposit rates they paid out to customers, interest rates on credit cards and other loans climbed, while the rates on credit cards hit all-time highs. It’s a trend we’ve documented before.

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    Revolving credit outstanding (i.e. credit card debt) cooled in the fall after a surge in July and a near record surge in August. And total outstanding credit-card borrowing hit a record $880 billion at the end of September, according to the New York Fed…

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    …but the problem here is that this is a double-edged sword. Because if American consumers really are finally cutting back on their spending to pay down debt, this would be bad news for the consumer-dependent economy.

    Ironically, around the same time that Bloomberg published their story, Discover saw its biggest crash since the financial crisis on the highest Q4 charge-off rate in history.

    So maybe giving irresponsible borrowers even more rope to hang themselves with wasn’t the best strategy.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 22:30

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Chinese Government Forces TV Host Who Popularized Eating Bats To Apologize
    Chinese Government Forces TV Host Who Popularized Eating Bats To Apologize

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    The Chinese government forced the host of a TV show which popularized eating bats to apologize in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak, which scientists have linked to the consumption of wild animals.

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    Bat soup is a delicacy in some areas of China and was known to be sold at the illegal animal market in Wuhan blamed for being the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

    A show called Beauty Eats Bats which originally launched in 2016 was blamed for re-invigorating the trend of eating bats across the country, prompting the Chinese Communist Party to demand that its female host discourage the consumption of bats.

    The woman featured in the clip took to social media to profusely apologize for her role in encouraging the consumption of bats and encouraged everyone to start washing their hands more.

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    The video shows the woman breaking apart the corpse of a boiled bat, dipping its wing in sauce and eating it.

    Meanwhile, the scale of the coronavirus outbreak continues to escalate.

    56 million Chinese citizens have now been quarantined, with Chinese authorities claiming that around 1300 people have been infected so far.

    However, according to one hospital worker in Wuhan, the government is lying and over 100,000 people have actually been infected.

    The Wall Street Journal reported today that the United States will send a chartered flight to evacuate all of its citizens and diplomats out of Wuhan.

    According to official figures, the virus has killed 41 people, although many suspect this number to be far higher.

    Meanwhile, it’s probably a good idea for Chinese citizens to stop eating bats and other wild animals that are vectors for disease.

    *  *  *

    My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 22:00

  • This Is How China Is Hiding The True Number Of Coronavirus Deaths
    This Is How China Is Hiding The True Number Of Coronavirus Deaths

    As the world’s cortisol and stomach acid levels rise every hour in parallel with the number of officially reported Coronavirus infections (and deaths), which as of Saturday morning was roughly 1,400…

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    Source: Johns Hopkins GIS and Data.

    … the world has an unpleasant flashback to 2003 when for weeks Beijing would lie and hide the full extent of the SARS epidemic to avoid risking a social panic. To be sure, this time China has done its best to pretend it has learned from the past and it is so transparent, even President Xi Jinping warned that the country is facing a “grave situation”, and that the spread of the deadly virus is accelerating  after holding a special government meeting on the Lunar New Year public holiday.

    After staying largely silent in public about the outbreak since it first emerged in central China last month, Xi on Saturday convened a special meeting of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, calling for a more centralized response to the epidemic and asserting personal responsibility in addressing the crisis.

    “When an epidemic breaks out, a command is issued. It is our responsibility to prevent and control it,” Xi said, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. He called for the new high-level committee to “address concerns within and outside the country,” indirectly referencing mounting global concern about the epidemic, which Mr. Xi described as a “grave situation” that was accelerating. “We definitely can win the battle to contain the epidemic,” he vowed.

    That remains to be seen: as reported earlier, in China – which has put over 56 million people on lockdown quarantine – the coronavirus has killed at least 41 people and infected over 1,400 in China. Ominously, a UK researcher predicted that the Coronavirus would infect over 250,000 people in China in under two weeks, which has sparked a renewed fear that China will once again try to underrepresent the true severity of the diseases until it is too late.

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    A patient at the Zhongnan Hospital of China’s Wuhan University

    The problem is that even as China theatrically pretends to be so forthright about the extent of the epidemic – if only to avoid panic and chaos over allegations it is again hiding the full impact of the disease – it is doing precisely that, and now we know just how it is doing that: instead of putting down coronavirus as the cause of death for an unknown number of Wuhan casualties, China’s coroners and hospitals merely ascribe death to “viral pneumonia”, case closed.

    Here’s how the WSJ describes this treacherous “bait and switch”:

    A 53-year-old fitness trainer died on Wednesday after checking into a hospital in Wuhan a little more than a week earlier, said his niece. His family had expected the death certificate to reflect the deadly coronavirus, because as his condition deteriorated, his doctors told his family he was suffering from an untreatable virus in his lungs.

    Instead, it recorded “severe pneumonia” as the cause of death, she said. The relatives of two other people who died in separate hospitals in Wuhan this week also described similar situations, saying the causes of death had been given as “viral pneumonia.”

    Why did the hospital do this? Because as the relatives of all three now dead people said, the deceased hadn’t been included in China’s official count of 41 deaths attributed to coronavirus.

    And that’s how China is suppressing the full extent of nCoV’s lethality, and keeping the mortality rate of the coronavirus artificially low: “There are likely to be many times more cases in Wuhan than officially confirmed,” said Neil Ferguson, a disease modeler at Imperial College London, who echoed the forecast of Jonathan Read, and estimated as many as 4,000 people may have been infected in Wuhan. “Clearly, the hospitals are overwhelmed.”

    What’s worse is that if there are indeed 4,000 injected already, then the previously discussed catastrophic forecast of 250,000 cases by Feb 4 may be overly optimistic by half.

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    The official numbers are far lower of course: on Saturday morning, local time, the number of confirmed global infections had risen to at least 1,438, nearly doubling from the previous day. Comically, China has said it would hold officials accountable for any delays or omissions in reporting cases: so far such threats appear to have had precisely zero impact on anyone.

    Others have confirmed as much: as the WSJ reports, “some Chinese media with reporters on the ground in Wuhan have said they have found cases that weren’t included in the official reporting. Caixin, a business journal, reported in early January that a doctor in Wuhan had been infected, 11 days before officials confirmed that medical staff had been infected. The Beijing News, a newspaper, reported this week that many patients weren’t officially labeled as carrying the new virus, even though their doctors and nurses said they were.”

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    Medical staff work to sterilize a hospital in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 24

    That said, there may be a legitimate reason why the real number is being underreported, and it has to do with the flood of actual cases which is just too much for local doctors to keep up: China state-run TV cited doctors in Wuhan who said the number of patients with fever was too many to be treated and patients hospitalized couldn’t get the pathogenic test in time, because the samples needed to be sent to the provincial offices of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

    That will soon change: China’s health ministry updated its protocol for identifying infections on Thursday with a simplified process for registering cases as suspected or confirmed. An earlier version, viewed by the Journal, required several steps of testing before a patient could be called a suspected case.

    Yet despite these mitigating circumstances, it appears that the underlying incentive is to underreport the true extent of the epidemic for as long as possible.

    One woman, a 63-year-old retiree in Wuhan, died on Tuesday, her nephew told the WSJ. The death certificate, viewed by the Journal, shows the cause of death as “pneumonia obtained from the community.” Doctors at the hospital that treated her told the family she had the new coronavirus, the nephew said, but she wasn’t counted as a case. The instance has also been reported by the Beijing News.

    In another case, a 72-year-old former doctor was in the hospital for three days before he died on Tuesday, his nephew said. The doctors told the family he had caught viral pneumonia, he said. The niece said her uncle, the fitness trainer, first noticed symptoms of what he thought was a common cold in early January, which he believed he had caught at a banquet. He didn’t pay much attention initially, but a few days later, he decided to go to the hospital after seeing blood when he coughed. His niece said he had never been to the food market believed to be the epicenter of the virus.

    “The doctor told us repeatedly that he caught the viral pneumonia that no medicine could treat,” she said. A patient’s immune system is the only defense, she said the family was told. “But after he died, the death certificate only said ‘severe pneumonia,’” she said, adding that she had expected the record to reflect the newly detected coronavirus.

    The uncle was transferred to the infectious diseases unit on Wednesday, the niece said. Hours later, the family was informed that his condition was critical. Two days after her uncle died, China’s health ministry released the profiles of 39 deaths in Hubei due to the new virus, with two deaths listed in other provinces. She couldn’t find her uncle on the list.

    As hundreds if not thousands of Wuhan residents die due to “severe pneumonia” instead of coronavirus, one can’t help but wonder if once the true cause of death is reported, instead of a 4% mortality rate as calculated by Dr. Jonathan Read, the Coronavirus epidemic won’t be in double digits – SARS was 11% – making this one of the most deadly epidemics in history.

    Incidentally, here is a reminder of what happened when China’s attempts to cover up the full extent of the 2003 SARS epidemic were exposed:

    A Chinese doctor who exposed the cover-up of China’s SARS outbreak in 2003 has been barred from traveling to the United States to collect a human rights award, a friend of the doctor and a human rights group said this week.

    The doctor, Jiang Yanyong, a retired surgeon in the People’s Liberation Army, was awarded the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award by the New York Academy of Sciences. His army-affiliated work unit, Beijing’s Hospital 301, denied him permission to travel to the award ceremony in September, Hu Jia, a Chinese rights promoter who is a friend of Dr. Jiang’s, said Thursday.

    Dr. Jiang rose to international prominence in 2003, when he disclosed in a letter circulated to international news organizations that at least 100 people were being treated in Beijing hospitals for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. At the time, the Chinese medical authorities were asserting that the entire nation had only a handful of cases of the disease.

    The revelation prompted China’s top leaders to acknowledge that they had provided false information about the epidemic. The health minister and the mayor of Beijing were removed from their posts.

    Surely this time is different.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 21:44

  • 20,000 US Troops Have Surged Into Mideast Since Last Spring To 'Counter Iran'
    20,000 US Troops Have Surged Into Mideast Since Last Spring To ‘Counter Iran’

    The Associated Press reports a staggering surge of US troops into the Middle East since last Spring: “Over the past eight months, the United States has poured more than 20,000 additional troops into the Middle East to counter the escalating threat from Iran that peaked with the recent missile attack on American forces in Iraq.”

    This despite President Trump’s multiple prior pledges to “bring the troops home” especially related to Syria and Iraq. Following the Soleimani assassination and subsequent Iranian ballistic missile retaliation on Ayn al-Assad airbase, where Friday it was reported that 34 soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries (a dramatically increased figure up from the prior 11), this trend in force build-up looks to continue. Here’s breakdown of the staggering numbers via the AP:

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    The top commander for US forces in the Middle East told a gathering of Marines and sailors during a speech aboard the USS Bataan on Thursday they could be there for “quite a while”.

    Gen. Frank McKenzie addressed the question of any near-term potential draw down of the extra forces: “we’ll work that out as we go ahead,” he said.

    Underscoring the Iran constitutes a serious “threat” he admitted: 

    “I’m not sure how long you’re going to stay in the theater. We’ll work that out as we go ahead. Could be quite a while, could be less than that, just don’t know right now.”

    On the Iran threat specifically, he said further, “I do believe that they are deterred right now, at least from state-on-state actions by our response. And so I think that while that threat remains, I think we’re in a period where they’re certainly not seeking to escalate anything.”

    Ironically Gen. McKenzie’s words were given a day before possibly up to one million Iraqis protested across the country Friday demanding an end of America’s military presence. 

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    An initial AP report merely put the anti-American forces protest at a mere “hundreds” – yet widely circulated photographs showed at least hundreds of thousands:

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    Later, international reports acknowledged that hundreds of thousands were protesting in major cities, especially Baghdad, after a call to action by popular Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

    “Get Out America” signs were featured in the massive street protests:

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    Though hard to confirm, a top official with the Iraqi Federal Police Forces Jaffar al-Batat has announced that the total number of demonstrators who came out Friday against the US occupation exceeded one million.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 21:30

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • Martenson: The Risk Of A True Pandemic Is Higher Than We're Being Told
    Martenson: The Risk Of A True Pandemic Is Higher Than We’re Being Told

    Via PeakProsperity.com,

    OK, there’s a LOT of uncertainty and confusing/conflicting information currently circulating right now about the new coronavirus outbreak that has suddenly erupted out of Wuhan, China.

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    What’s really going on? What exactly is the ‘coronavirus’?

    And most important: How worried do we need to be?

    Given the poor communication so far by government health organizations and the media, the severity of the situation and the risk to public health, Chris Martenson filmed this important explanatory video hours ago.

    Dr. Martenson’s PhD is in the field of pathogenic biology, so he understands the nature of this virus more than your average scientist.

    In the video below, Chris explains the virus in layman’s terms, why the contagion we’re seeing is likely to spread substantially from here, and why the actions being taken so far by public health officials to contain the threat are woefully insufficient.

    It’s important, maybe soon critical, to be well-informed on this outbreak. The ten minutes you spend watching this video may be the most important thing you do today:

    After viewing, be sure to take prudent steps to secure the safety of your family’s health. Most measures are straightforward and inexpensive — there’s a huge upside to preparing now and a huge downside to delaying, so get busy.

    Those interested can continue to follow our updated coverage on the coronavirus here.

    Hopefully, authorities manage to contain this outbreak faster than it currently appears they will. But don’t bet your life on it.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 21:00

    Tags
    Social Issues
    Health Medical Pharma

  • Yale Cancels Prestigious Art History Course For Being "Too White"
    Yale Cancels Prestigious Art History Course For Being “Too White”

    A story and “justification” so absurd and absolutely bonkers that we sincerely wish this was The Onion and not from the oldest college daily newspaper in the United States and at one of the nation’s most elite Ivy League schools: 

    Yale will stop teaching a storied introductory survey course in art history, citing the impossibility of adequately covering the entire field — and its varied cultural backgrounds — in one course.

    Decades old and once taught by famous Yale professors like Vincent Scully, “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present” was once touted to be one of Yale College’s quintessential classes. But this change is the latest response to student uneasiness over an idealized Western “canon” — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists.

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    Avoid your eyes, according to Yale. Restoration work being done on Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” via The Boston Globe

    So that’s it, apparently: the great masterpieces recognized as such by the entire world for generations are now tainted by their supposed “whiteness” and must be censored by the Robespierre-like mob of the “woke”. 

    It’s not merely that the Western Civilization-focused “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present” class has been deleted, but the entire concept of “Western art” itself will be a focus of criticism in the multiple new ‘more culturally sensitive’ classes that will replace it. 

    The Yale Daily News continues:

    This spring, the final rendition of the course will seek to question the idea of Western art itself — a marked difference from the course’s focus at its inception. Art history department chair and the course’s instructor Tim Barringer told the News that he plans to demonstrate that a class about the history of art does not just mean Western art. Rather, when there are so many other regions, genres and traditions — all “equally deserving of study” — putting European art on a pedestal is “problematic,” he said.

    Clearly, it also sounds like students who happen to favor the Western and European greats will be set up for de-platforming and ridicule.   

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    Yale campus. Image via Yale News

    How long before the beautiful centuries-old campus buildings themselves will be “discovered” as part of the Western tradition of architecture? Will they survive the decades to come as the “purge” grows ever fiercer and more anti-intellectual?

    In the name of “diversity” it appears assigning any level of uniqueness to a work of art which happens to have emerged from the medieval or renaissance or early modern period will immediately be shamed by the ‘woke mob’.

    This follows other Yale departments in prior years attempting to purge “decolonize” their programs, especially in the English/Literature Department. We wonder how long the title “English Department” itself will be allowed to stand. 


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 20:30

  • Coronavirus Kills Man In Shanghai As China Confirms Nearly 2,000 Cases
    Coronavirus Kills Man In Shanghai As China Confirms Nearly 2,000 Cases

    Summary

    • First nCoV death reported in Shanghai
    • South Korea confirms third case
    • Toronto health officials to announce first ‘presumptive case’ of coronavirus in Canada
    • 1975 Cases Worldwide; 56 deaths (still about a 3% mortality rate)
    • 18 Chinese cities – 56 million people – quarantined
    • President Xi said China faces a ‘grave situation’ as the spread is ‘accelerating’
    • US and Russia planning evacuation of citizens from Wuhan
    • Australia and Malaysia join the list of global nations with nCoV cases, in addition to France, Pakistan, Singapore, the US and Nepal
    • Chinese President Xi Jinping empowered local governments and said teams from Beijing will be sent to severely impacted areas to strengthen front-line prevention and containment
    • The US and France chartered planes to evacuate diplomats and nationals in containment zones
    • The director of the CDC says she expects cases of human-to-human transmission in the US
    • China banned all domestic tour groups immediately and overseas group tours from Jan 27
    • Starbucks and China said they were closing some stores in China
    • Wuhan is building a second emergency hospital, this one with 1300 beds
    • 3 doctors in Beijing who visited Wuhan are confirmed to have the virus

    * * *

    Update (1934): Let the scapegoating begin.

    Whispers about the top brass in Beijing and their displeasure with the local authorities on the ground in Wuhan have been circulating for at least a day. Now, the South China Morning Post has confirmed that President Xi is planning to throw local health officials under the bus.

    In order for it to look like China’s leaders were simply caving to the public’s demands, doctors and the state-controlled press have lined up to criticize Wuhan’s top brass for not foreseeing and moving to prevent the severe shortages of supplies, workers and space that is now prompting China to build two massive hospitals in the span of 10 days. Doctors and journalists on the scene in Wuhan are calling for the local leaders – who were not named in the SCMP story – to “immediately step down”.

    It’s early Sunday morning in Beijing, and with the new day comes a new batch of disheartening reports: Hubei province reported 13 new deaths, and the first death was reported in Henan province, bringing the total number of virus-linked deaths outside Wuhan to three.

    More alarmingly, Chinese state media has reported a death from the virus in Shanghai. The reports have since been corroborated by the Western press.

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    In such a densely populated city, it’d be difficult to imagine a virus with this much infectious potential would spread like wildfire. It would be like Wuhan, but worse.

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    In an attempt to make it look like Beijing is taking responsibility for the sluggish response (remember, China basically did nothing for three weeks after the first cases became symptomatic), Hu Xijin, the editor of the state-controlled Global Times, tweeted that China should have been better prepared for the outbreak.

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    More Chinese cities are limiting or closing public transit, with Tianjin preparing to shut down all inter-province shuttle buses starting…Monday.

    Some discrepancies have appeared in the tally of case: The WHO is saying it has confirmed 1,320 cases, while the SCMP. New coronavirus scares have emerged in India, where nearly 100 people are under observation, according to India Today. Seven people are reportedly showing symptoms of the virus. Russia has reported several suspected cases in Moscow, South Korea just confirmed its third case, and Toronto health officials have confirmed their first case.

    For some reason, the WHO number is significantly short of the numbers being reported by the Western press: Reuters has just confirmed another death, bringing the total to 56, and the total number of confirmed cases at 1,975.

    • DEATH TOLL FROM CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK IN CHINA AT 56 AS OF JAN 25 – STATE MEDIA – [RTRS]
    • TOTAL NUMBER OF CONFIRMED CORONAVIRUS CASES IN CHINA AT 1,975 AS OF JAN 25- STATE MEDIA – [RTRS]

    Will we have 2,500 cases confirmed by tomorrow afternoon? Or will there be even more?

    * * *
    Update (1723ET): Canadian news website Global News is reporting that Toronto health officials are about to announce that a “presumptive case” of coronavirus has been confirmed at Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital.

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    Two cases of the virus have been confirmed in the US, but after several scares, no cases have yet been confirmed in Mexico, although testing is still underway for a trio of cases in Jalisco.

    * * *

    Update (1530ET): Now that the market is closed, local authorities apparently feel it’s safe to start dribbling out the real numbers. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases soared on Saturday as China confirmed roughly 500 new cases. The number of cases outside China has also grown as Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia have all confirmed new cases. Meanwhile, another death has been confirmed, bringing the total to 42.

    According to the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper that has been keeping probably the most comprehensive tally of confirmed nCoV cases around the world, put the total number at 1,497 Saturday afternoon in New York. Three doctors in Beijing who visited Wuhan have been confirmed to have the virus.

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    During a meeting of China’ Politburo on Saturday, President Xi not only urged disparate ethnic groups to work together and suppress the virus, but added that the “grave situation” seemed to be “accelerating,” according to the BBC and SCMP.

    “Party committees and governments at different levels have to make proper plans to contain the virus under the guidance of the Central Committee,” he was quoted as saying.

    “Hubei province has to regard virus prevention work as the most important task, and enforce stricter measures to stop the virus from spreading inside the province and spilling out into other areas. Isolation treatment should be provided for all infected patients.”

    As we mentioned earlier, Beijing has dispatched medics and other medically-trained PLA soldiers to Wuhan and other cities to help the overwhelmed hospitals. This headline passed without much scrutiny from the Western media, but we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the situation on the ground is closer to a PLA takeover of all the hospitals in Wuhan. In China, one doesn’t simply send in the PLA to ‘help with the logistics’.

    Why wouldn’t China want to tell the world that its massive military machine has temporarily taken over hospitals in the hot zone? Well, we’ll let you figure that one out.

    As for Wuhan, it’ll soon be under complete lock down: Beginning Sunday private vehicles will be banned from its streets. To enforce that kind of a ban, one would need more than just the local police.

    All events have been canceled, travel into and out of the city has been shut down, and, as we showed below, crude roadblocks have been set up to essentially seal off the city – a city of 11 million people – off from the rest of China. At least some form of travel restrictions are in place in some 18 cities in central Hubei. Restrictions include cutting off access to public transit and highways. Already, the economic fallout from the outbreak is being estimated in percentage points of local GDP, as we’ve previously discussed. The disruption of the holiday travel season will hammer China’s tourism industry, possibly even worse than 17 years ago during the SARS outbreak. 

    Horrifying images of patients infected with the virus have popped up on Twitter.

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    As the situation grows increasingly serious, the senior Communist Party leadership, which has formed a group of top officials to oversee the crisis response, is giving local authorities carte blanche to take any necessary action to ensure hospitals remain fully staffed and supplied. There has reportedly been talk of punishing local officials who may have been slow to respond to the crisis during its early days.

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    After confirming its fifth case, Hong Kong has declared a state of emergency – the highest tier of public alert, according to the HKFP.

    “Today I declare the lifting of the response level to emergency,” chief executive Carrie Lam told reporters. She is under pressure to limit arrivals from the Chinese mainland. Right now, anybody arriving from the mainland in Hong Kong must sign a”health declaration form”, though it’s not clear how that will stop patients carrying the virus who may be asymptomatic.However, schools in the city will not reopen until at least Feb. 17 and transportation to and from Wuhan will be canceled until further notice. On the mainland, tour groups have been cancelled until at least mid-week. Oh, and so much for that mask ban Lam declared that the city will invest necessary to prevent the spread of disease, including increasing the supply of surgical masks after several cases of extreme price gouging were reported.

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    South Korea, which has confirmed at least two cases of the virus, said Saturday that it would declare all of China a “coronavirus watch zone” as local public health officials work to protect the public and suppress the virus. Several dozen people have already been tested for the virus in SK and come back negative, per Korea Times.

    What a way to kick off the four-day lunar new year holiday.

    * * *

    As we move into Saturday evening on the ground in Wuhan, it’s becoming increasingly obvious to the broader global community that China’s authoritarian government has failed to contain this viral outbreak.

    Chinese authorities expanded the travel restrictions on Saturday to cover 56 million Chinese, Al Jazeera reports. At least 18 cities in central Hubei are now dealing with at least some level of travel restrictions.

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    Unsurprisingly, some of the roadblocks remind us of ‘Mad Max’.

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    In Wuhan, the situation looks grim. The number of confirmed cases is exploding: another 300 were announced on Saturday, while the death toll is steady at 41. Yesterday, videos flooded western social media (after being assiduously removed from Weibo and the rest of the Chinese Internet) purporting to show bodies piling up in hallways in Wuhan, with rumors that a doctor had succumbed to the virus.

    Those rumors have now been confirmed: A doctor who worked at a hospital in Wuhan, China, where coronavirus patients are being treated died Saturday morning, according to the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, a two-year-old Chinese girl has become the youngest to be diagnosed with the virus.

    Doctor Liang Wudong, of the ENT department of Hubei Xinhua Hospital, died Saturday while fighting on the front lines to suppress the virus.

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    As it has all week, the South China Morning Post has kept an up-to-date running total of the confirmed cases & deaths. As of 10 am ET on Saturday, the total number stood at exactly 1400.

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    A map of the various cases shows the spread, though even the most up-to-date maps by Western news agencies appear to already be out of date, including this one by BBG.

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    Though China has pledged transparency, some suspect that the true tally of cases within Wuhan is much higher. With the epidemic spiraling out of control, President Xi called a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, a group of China’s top leaders, to discuss a response to the virus. At the meeting, the Communist Party set up a group to manage the response to the virus. The group will comprise members of the Party’s Central Committee, while being directed by the Standing Committee. During the meeting, President Xi said various ethnic groups must work together to contain the spread of the deadly virus. Xi also ordered party authorities to ensure that there are enough medical supplies in Wuhan – the capital of Hubei province and a city of 11 million five times the size of London and bigger than any US city.

    “Party committees and governments at different levels have to make proper plans to contain the virus under the guidance of the Central Committee,” he was quoted as saying.

    China’s National Health Commission announced on Saturday a nationwide plan to identify suspected cases of the deadly virus on trains, airplanes and buses. Inspection stations will be set up and passengers with suspected pneumonia will be “immediately transported” to a medical center. In the city of Haikou, the authorities said they would set up a 14-day observation center for all tourists who came from Hubei. They will not be allowed to leave the hotels where they are staying. At least 450 additional military and medical personnel have been deployed in Hubei to help with the situation.

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    Following reports last night of a suspected case in Sydney, Australian authorities have confirmed the first case of the virus. Yesterday, several cases were also identified in France. But that’s not all: Malaysia has confirmed that three cases of the virus have been detected. Japan is now up to three cases, all Chinese nationals, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

    Interfax reported Saturday afternoon that seven suspected cases of the virus have been detected in Moscow. The individuals are all said to be suffering from high temperatures. These would be the first confirmed cases in Russia after a nCoV scare involving a Chinese national in St. Petersburg was found to be negative, per TASS.

    Following reports that the virus may have originated from people eating bats or rats, the party has ordered more inspections of agricultural products, and has temporarily banned the trade in wild animals. It has also shut down movie theaters, LNY-related events and other mass gatherings across the country, warning that people should avoid coming together en mass until the outbreak is contained.

    Qinghai province in northwestern China confirmed its first case on Saturday, leaving Tibet as the only administrative area of China that remains virus-free.

    In Wuhan, the horror stories are getting worse: One woman told the SCMP that her husband was turned away by several hospitals despite coughing up blood, a sign of very advanced pneumonia.

    “I have nothing. No protective clothing, only a raincoat, and I am standing outside the hospital in the rain,” said the woman, who gave her name as Xiaoxi.

    “I am desperate, I have lost count of time and days. I don’t know if we will both live to see the new year.”

    The rapid rise in the number of cases doesn’t necessarily mean the outbreak is getting worse, according to a spokesman from the WHO. Instead, it could reflect better monitoring and intervention by government authorities. As far as determining the severity of the epidemic, it’s still too early to say.

    “It’s still too early to draw conclusions about how severe the virus is because, at the beginning of any outbreak, you would focus more on the severe cases,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization in Geneva.

    Video from inside Wuhan, a city that has been nearly entirely sealed off from the outside world, the situation appears increasingly dire.

    A lot of attention has been paid in the Western press about the effort to build a new, 1,000 bed hospital in Wuhan as the city’s current health-care infrastructure has been completely overwhelmed. They’re hoping to finish the building in under a week, an astonishing pace. State media reported Saturday that a second hospital will also be built.

    Foreign governments including the US and Russia are hatching plans to air-lift their citizens out of Wuhan. This could include journalists covering the outbreak, meaning the flow of information out of the city could soon slow to a trickle. Meanwhile, scientists are scrambling to determine the virus’s infectious potential before victims start showing symptoms. If it’s confirmed that the virus spreads in this way, than that would make full containment virtually impossible.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 20:01

  • 'Shifty' Schiff: Warmongering Stooge Of The Deep State
    ‘Shifty’ Schiff: Warmongering Stooge Of The Deep State

    Authored by Daniel Lazare via AntiWar.com,

    All the usual suspects are praising Adam Schiff’s marathon two-and-a-half-hour Senate speech on Wednesday to the skies.

    Neocon columnist Jennifer Rubin calls it “a grand slam” in the Washington Post.

    Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin describes it as “dazzling” on CNN. 

    Hillary Clinton: “Every American should watch this”

    John Legend: “This is brilliantly argued and so compelling. Watch if you have time. Call your senators. Everyone says the outcome is predetermined. But make sure your senators hear from you if you’re moved by this. Thank you, Congressman Schiff, for standing up for what’s right.”

    Debra Messing: “I am in tears. Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our country.”

    New York Times columnist Gail Collins says it was “a great job” and that Schiff is “a rock star” for pulling it off.

    But in fact it was the opposite

    a fear-mongering, sword-rattling harangue that will not only raise tensions with Russia for no good reason, but sends a chilling message to dissidents at home that if they deviate from Russiagate orthodoxy by one iota, they’ll be driven from the fold.

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    What is that orthodoxy?

    It’s that Russia invaded poor innocent Ukraine in 2014, that it interfered in the US presidential election in 2016 in order to hurt Hillary Clinton and propel Donald Trump into the White House, and that it’s now trying to smear Joe Biden merely because he had allowed his son to take a high-paying job with a notorious Ukrainian oligarch at a time when he was supposedly heading up the Ukrainian anti-corruption effort.

    As Schiff put it with regard to Donald Trump’s famous July 25 phone call urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into Biden’s activities:

    “This investigation was related to a debunked conspiracy theory alleging that Ukraine not Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. This narrative propagated by the Russian intelligence services contends that Ukraine sought to help Hillary Clinton and harm then-candidate Trump…. This tale is also patently false and, remarkably, it is precisely the inverse of what the US intelligence community’s unanimous assessment was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping and systemic fashion in order to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.”

    So even though the Financial Times reported during the 2016 election campaign that the threat of a Trump victory was spurring “Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they have never attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election,” articles like that are now down the memory hole because Schiff says they’re Russian propaganda that US intelligence agencies have determined to be false.

    The same goes for arguments that it’s actually NATO’s aggressive expansion to the east that has led to a needless buildup of tensions, not Russia’s drive to the west. Recent examples include an article in the National Interest arguing that NATO has “empowered some of the most historically anti-Russian elements in that region – Ukrainian Banderites [i.e. followers of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera], Polish nationalists, Balkan Islamists” – elements that, not unreasonably, have sparked Russia’s worst fears – or one in the Nation stating that NATO’s drang nach osten is “the primary cause for the new and very dangerous Cold War.”

    Articles like those are verboten as well because they go counter to the new line that Russia is entirely to blame. Declared Schiff:

    “Russia is not a threat … to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so again.”

    As for Biden, a New York Times editorial said about his son’s unfortunate new job back in 2015:

    “Sadly, the credibility of Mr. Biden’s [anti-corruption] message may be undermined by the association of his son with a Ukrainian natural-gas company, Burisma Holdings, which is owned by a former government official suspected of corrupt practices…. Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, has been under investigation in Britain and in Ukraine. It should be plain to Hunter Biden that any connection with a Ukrainian oligarch damages his father’s efforts to help Ukraine. This is not a board he should be sitting on.”

    We must all put such sentiments behind us now Russia is seeking to “weaponize” such information, according to Schiff, and deploy it “against Mr. Biden just like it did against Hillary Clinton in 2016 when Russia hacked and released emails from her presidential campaign.” If Russia wants to weaponize it, then it’s best for the rest of us not to breathe a word of it lest people think we’ve been weaponized as well.

    Bottom line: we must impeach Trump, according to Schiff’s epic presentation, not only because he’s overstepped his proper constitutional bounds, but because he’s part of a grand Russian conspiracy to spread disinformation, undercut US security, undermine faith in US intelligence agencies, and “remake the map of Europe by dent of military force.” In order to counter this all-encompassing threat, it is our patriotic duty to do the opposite by believing the CIA and redoubling US defense. If anyone tells us that Biden was guilty of a flagrant conflict of interest, we must stop up our ears because that’s what Moscow wants us to think. If anyone says that the entire Russian-interference narrative is just a silly conspiracy theory based on a paucity of facts and an abundance of paranoid speculation, we must do likewise because it’s just the Kremlin trying to worm its way into our minds.

    When in doubt, just remember to bleat: America good, Russia baa-aa-aad.

    But while it would be nice to dismiss this as a joke, it’s not. Schiff’s emergence as leader of the Democratic impeachment drive means that the party is re-grouping along the most retrograde Cold War lines. As reckless and appalling as Trump’s behavior is in the Persian Gulf, the emerging Democratic worldview is shaping up as no less extreme. Because it sees Russia as mounting a multi-pronged offensive, the clear implication is that the US must respond in kind. This means more troops deployments, more forces mobilized to counter Russian threats from Venezuela to the Middle East, more TV talking heads going on and on about this or that Kremlin conspiracy, and more labelling of people like Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein as Russian assets.

    Remember, this is the Los Angeles neocon who backed the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, and Saudi Arabia’s unprovoked war against Yemen, an assault that, since March 2015, has cost 100,000 lives and brought half the country to the brink of starvation. He supported Obama’s war in Libya and called for the establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria and relies on arms manufacturers and military contractors for major financial support.

    But while Bernie supporters may have thought that Democrats were edging away from such views, they’re plainly in the wrong. Schiff’s new-found prominence shows that the neocons are back in the saddle. Impeachment advocates should be careful of what they wish for because the anti-Trump forces are turning out to be no less dangerous than those helping him to remain.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 20:00

    Tags
    Politics

  • New Research Casts Doubt Coronavirus Epidemic Started At Wuhan Food Market
    New Research Casts Doubt Coronavirus Epidemic Started At Wuhan Food Market

    Although practically all of the western media reports from the city of Wuhan have claimed that the city’s hospitals have been completely overwhelmed by cases of pneumonia as more cases of the Wuhan coronavirus are confirmed, the South China Morning Post reports that a team of researchers at Wuhan’s Jinyintan hospital have retraced the movements of the first individual who was diagnosed with the virus, and determined that he had no links to a shady seafood market selling live snakes and bats for human consumption.

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    Amazingly, SCMP caveated its report by claiming that other patients among the earliest cases had “continuous exposure to the market,” which was shut down on Jan. 1 by Wuhan authorities over fears that its trade in wild animals was linked to the viral outbreak. Authorities have since banned the selling of live animals at markets.

    The researchers, seven of whom work at Wuhan’s Jinyintan hospital, designated for patients with the illness, revealed on Friday in The Lancet medical journal that symptoms of the new disease were first reported on December 1 – much earlier than the Wuhan government’s initial announcement on December 31 of 27 cases of the pneumonia-like infection.

    According to the report, the first patient had no exposure to the Huanan seafood market which was shut down on January 1 over fears – later confirmed – that the new virus was linked to its trade in wild animals. The researchers added that none of the patient’s family had developed fever or any respiratory symptoms. There was also no epidemiological link between the first patient and the later cases, they found.

    The researchers analysed data from 41 patients with confirmed infections who had showed an onset of symptoms up to January 2. Six of those patients died, putting the fatality rate of the group at 15 per cent. The researchers noted that clinical presentations of the patients greatly resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome.

    The first patient to die from the new coronavirus had continuous exposure to the market before he was admitted to hospital with a seven-day history of fever, cough and breathing difficulties, according to their report.

    Doctors also identified 13 other patients who had no contact with the market, which helps build the case for human to human transmission.

    The absence of a link to the seafood market is one of the indicators for human-to-human transmission of the virus and the researchers identified another 13 patients who also had no direct exposure to the market.

    “Taken together, evidence so far indicates human transmission for 2019-nCoV,” the report said. “We are concerned that 2019-nCoV could have acquired the ability for efficient human transmission,” the researchers added, along with a strong recommendation for precautions such as fit-tested N95 respirators and other personal protective equipment.

    Much to Beijing’s chagrin, a team of Chinese scientists on Friday revealed that symptoms of the virus first emerged as early as Dec. 1, much earlier than the Wuhan government’s initial announcement of the first 27 cases on Dec. 31. The notion that the virus may have been transmitted to humans via consuming bats, rats, badgers or snakes was widely reported in the Western press, even by CNN.

    Though the possibility of zoonotic transmission hasn’t been entirely ruled out, these researchers apparently believed that there’s reason to doubt that the fish market was the source of the virus. However, the situation is still very much in flux, and it remains true that some of the other patients did have contact with the market.

    Either way, do the researchers findings lend more credence to the other conspiracy theory about the virus’s origin? Wuhan reportedly has two labs that participate in China’s bio-warfare program, as Radio Free Asia first reported, and a handful of US outlets, including the Washington Times, have picked up the story.

    Was CoV manufactured by the real-world equivalent of Umbrella Corp?


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 19:30

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • Rabobank: What If… The Protectionists Are Right And The Free Traders Are Wrong?
    Rabobank: What If… The Protectionists Are Right And The Free Traders Are Wrong?

    Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank

    “When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!” (Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 4, The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill)

    What if… the protectionists are right and the free traders are wrong?

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    2020 starts with markets feeling optimistic due to a US-China trade deal and a reworked NAFTA in the form of the USMCA. However, the tide towards protectionism may still be coming in, not going out.

    The intellectual appeal of the basis for free trade, Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, where Portugal specializes in wine, and the UK in cloth, is still clearly there. Moreover, trade has always been a beneficial and enriching part of human culture. Yet the fact is that for the majority of the last 5,000 years global trade has been highly-politicized and heavily-regulated. Indeed, global free-trade only began following the abolition of the UK Corn Laws in 1846, which reduced British agricultural tariffs, brought in European wheat and corn, and allowed the UK to maximize its comparative advantage in industry. Yet it took until 1860 for the UK to fully embrace free trade, and even then the unpalatable historical record is that during this ‘golden age’, the British:

    Destroyed the Indian textile industry to benefit their own cloth manufacturers;

    • Started the Opium Wars to balance UK-China trade by selling China addictive drugs;
    • Ignored the Irish Potato Famine and continued to allow Irish wheat exports;
    • Forced Siam (Thailand) to open up its economy to trade with gunboats (as the US did with Japan); and
    • Colonized much of Africa and Asia.

    As we showed back in ‘Currency and Wars’, after an initial embrace of free trade, the major European powers and Japan saw that their relative comparative advantage meant they remained at the bottom of the development ladder as agricultural producers, an area where prices were also being depressed by huge US output; meanwhile, the UK sold industrial goods, ran a huge trade surplus, and ruled the waves militarily. This was politically unsustainable even though the UK vigorously backed the intellectual concept of free trade given it was such a winner from it.

    Regardless, the first flowering of free trade collapsed back into nationalism and protectionism – bloodily so in 1914. Free trade was tried again from 1919 – but burned-out even more bloodily in the 1930s and 1940s. After WW2, most developed countries had moderately free trade – but most developing countries did not. We only started to reembrace global free trade from the 1990s onwards when the Cold War ended – and here it is under stress again. In short, only around 100 years in a total of 5,000 years of civilization has seen real global free trade, it has failed twice already, and it is once again coming under pressure.

    What are we getting wrong? Perhaps that Ricardo’s theory has major flaws that don’t get included in our textbooks, as summarized in this overlooked quote

    “It would undoubtedly be advantageous to the capitalists of England…[that] the wine and cloth should both be made in Portugal [and that] the capital and labour of England employed in making cloth should be removed to Portugal for that purpose.” Which is pretty much what happens today! However, Ricardo adds that this won’t happen because “Most men of property [will be] satisfied with a low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations,” which is simply not true at all! In other words, his premise is flawed in that:

    • It is atemporal in assuming countries move to their comparative advantage painlessly and instantly;
    • It assumes full employment when if there is unemployment a country is better off producing at home to reduce it, regardless of higher cost;
    • It assumes capital between countries is immobile, i.e., investors don’t shift money and technology abroad. (Which Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’, Book IV, Chapter II also assumes doesn’t happen, as an “invisible hand” keeps money invested in one’s home country’s industry and not abroad: we don’t read him correctly either.);
    • It assumes trade balances under free trade – but since when has this been true? Rather we see large deficits and inverse capital flows, and so debts steadily increasing in deficit countries;
    • It assumes all goods are equal as in Ricardo’s example, cloth produced in the UK and wine produced in Portugal are equivalent. Yet some sectors provide well-paid and others badly-paid employment: why only produce the latter?

    As Ricardo’s theory requires key conditions that are not met in reality most of the time, why are we surprised that most of reality fails to produce idealised free trade most of the time? Several past US presidents before Donald Trump made exactly that point. Munroe (1817-25) argued: “The conditions necessary for Free Trade’s success – reciprocity and international peace – have never occurred and cannot be expected”. Grant (1869-77) noted “Within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade”.

    Yet arguably we are better, not worse, off regardless of these sentiments – so hooray! How so? Well, did you know that Adam Smith, who we equate with free markets, and who created the term “mercantile system” to describe the national-protectionist policies opposed to it, argued the US should remain an agricultural producer and buy its industrial goods from the UK? It was Founding Father Alexander Hamilton who rejected this approach, and his “infant industry” policy of industrialization and infrastructure spending saw the US emerge as the world’s leading economy instead. That was the same development model that, with tweaks, was then adopted by pre-WW1 Japan, France, and Germany to successfully rival the UK; and then post-WW2 by Japan (again) and South Korea; and then more recently by China, that key global growth driver. Would we really be better off if the US was still mainly growing cotton and wheat, China rice and apples, and the UK was making most of the world’s consumer goods? Thank the lack of free trade if you think otherwise!

    Yet look at the examples above and there is a further argument for more protectionism ahead. Ricardo assumes a benign global political environment for free trade. Yet what if the UK and Portugal are rivals or enemies? What if the choice is between steel and wine? You can’t invade neighbours armed with wine as you can with steel! A large part of the trade tension between China and the US, just as between pre-WW1 Germany and the UK, is not about trade per se: for both sides, it is about who produces key inputs with national security implications – and hence is about relative power. This is why we hear US hawks underlining that they don’t want to export their highest technology to China, or to specialize only in agricultural exports to it as China moves up the value-chain. It also helps underline why for most of the past 5,000 years trade has not been free. Indeed, this argument also holds true for the other claimed benefit of free trade: the cross-flow of ideas and technology. That is great for friends, but not for those less trusted.

    Of course, this doesn’t mean liked-minded groups of countries with similar-enough or sympathetic-enough economies and politics should avoid free trade: clearly for some states it can work out nicely – even if within the EU one could argue there are also underlying strains. However, it is a huge stretch to assume a one-size-fits-all free trade policy will always work best for all countries, as some would have it. That is a fairy tale. History shows it wasn’t the case; national security concerns show it can never always be the case; and Ricardo argues this logically won’t be the case.

    Yet we need not despair. The track record also shows that global growth can continue even despite protectionism, and in some cases can benefit from it. That being said, should the US resort to more Hamiltonian policies versus everyone, not just China, then we are in for real financial market turbulence ahead given the role the US Dollar plays today compared to the role gold played for Smith and Ricardo! But that is a whole different fairy tale…


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 19:00

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • "We All Knew About Epstein" Admits Cindy McCain – Who Did Nothing About It
    “We All Knew About Epstein” Admits Cindy McCain – Who Did Nothing About It

    Sen. John McCain’s widow says “everyone” knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, but were “afraid” to do anything about it.

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    “Epstein was hiding in plain sight,” said McCain, during an appearance at the State of the World 2020 conference in Florida, according to the Washington Examiner.

    “We all knew about him. We all knew what he was doing, but we had no one that was — no legal aspect that would go after him. They were afraid of him. For whatever reason, they were afraid of him.”

    McCain said a girl from her daughter’s high school was one of Epstein’s victims and that she hopes Epstein “is in hell.”

    Epstein’s massive wealth and his connections to powerful politicians and celebrities allowed him to continue trafficking young women and girls long after many had exposed his devious interests.

    Dr. Barbara Sampson, the New York City medical examiner, said Epstein died by suicide at a Manhattan federal detention facility last August. His death and the circumstances surrounding it have created controversy after the former medical examiner of New York, Dr. Michael Baden, told 60 Minutes that he believes Epstein was murdered. –Washington Examiner


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 18:30

    Tags
    Social Issues

  • Two Iran War Votes In House Will Seek To Halt Trump Preemptive Strikes
    Two Iran War Votes In House Will Seek To Halt Trump Preemptive Strikes

    Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

    While most of the focus in Congress  is on the impeachment, Congress has still found time to advance some votes relevant to the potential war with Iran, and are set for some such votes next week.

    Two votes are planned in the House, and expected on Thursday. One is from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) prohibiting any funding for a war in Iran without Congressional authorization. The second will attempt to reveal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

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    Image via BBC

    The 2002 AUMF was meant to authorize the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. With the Hussein government long gone, many have questioned the relevance of the AUMF, though the administration has at times claimed it authorizes other wars, including military action against ISIS in “Syria or elsewhere.”

    The votes are seen not only as a rebuke of Trump’s unilateral action against Iran but a win for House progressives, who have spent years seeking limits on presidential authority. The Trump administration has claimed the 2002 AUMF legally justifies military action against the Islamic State group “in Syria or elsewhere.” — Defense News

    While the Iraq AUMF isn’t directly related to a possible Iran War, repealing it would go a long way toward Congress reasserting its war-making powers, and emphasizing that the authorizations aren’t open-ended after the intended war is long over, allowing them to be reinterpreted indefinitely for other operations.

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    The Senate is not expected to take up any of the Iran War votes this week, though the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be given a briefing from the State Department on the matter. The State Department had previously canceled this briefing weeks ago.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 18:00

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • "Thermonuclear, Pandemic-Level Bad" – Harvard Epidemiologist Warns Viral Outbreak Might Get A Lot Worse
    “Thermonuclear, Pandemic-Level Bad” – Harvard Epidemiologist Warns Viral Outbreak Might Get A Lot Worse

    As we’ve stepped up our coverage of the nCoV coronavirus outbreak over the past week, some on Twitter have published what we feel are exaggerated criticisms accusing us of fearmongering.

    While we understand that the information we’ve shared can be distressing, we’d like to take a moment to remind readers that all of the information and research we have cited is legitimate, having originally been conducted by credible epidemiologists, like the UK’s Jonathan Read. The fact is, the Chinese government hasn’t been nearly as “transparent” as it promised, and it seems like the more we learn about the true scope of this outbreak, the more concerned we become.

    The reality is that – as the Architect told Neo in “The Matrix: Reloaded” – denial is the most predictable of human responses. And while the world’s public health authorities certainly still have time to get their arms around this outbreak before it becomes a massive, global pandemic with deadly consequences, the WHO’s dithering response the other day (asserting that they don’t yet have enough evidence of human-to-human secondary transmission to declare a global health emergency) certainly doesn’t inspire confidence.

    Now that we have that out of the way – let’s move on to Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, a public health scientist on the faculty at Harvard.

    A few days ago, Dr. Feigl-Ding tweeted that he was “really, deeply worried about this new coronavirus outbreak” because the virus seemed to have an”upward infection trajectory curve much steeper than SARS.”

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    On Friday, the doctor, a well-respected epidemiologist who has worked as an advisor to the World Health Organization, tried his hand at a few projections based on an infection rate much higher than the RO (r-naught) rating of 1.4-2.5 recently estimated by the WHO. As we explained last night, when determining the infectious potential of a virus, arguably the most important variable is RO. This represents the average number of secondary cases resulting from every new infection in an entirely susceptible population.

    Of course, government interventions and more vigilant hygiene practices once the public is aware of the threat will help lower the virus’s r-naught variable. But remember, nCoV (the WHO’s name for the virus) has already been quietly spreading among the people of Wuhan for weeks. And as Dr. Feigl-Ding explains, early evidence would suggest that nCoV is contagious before symptoms appear.

    Last night, we published the findings of a team of UK epidemological researchers led by Jonathan Read. Read published a paper with four colleagues that estimates transmission parameters for the Wuhan coronavirus and calculates that the true R0 of 2019-nCoV is between 3.6-4.0 or roughly the same as SARS, and reaches a conclusion about spread of the coronavirus epidemic that is frankly terrifying. With an r-naught of 3.8, the virus could eventually cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in China alone.

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    In fact, it’s not simply terrifying: With an r-naught of 3.8, this virus could be “thermonuclear, pandemic level bad.”

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    As Dr. Feigl-Ding goes on to explain, using Read’s findings as a jumping-off point, the 4,000 number being kicked around by some scientists as the true number of viral cases in Wuhan might be much too low. By early Feb., the doctor warns that nearly a quarter of a million Chinese could be infected.

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    To be sure, these findings should be taken with a grain of salt. They are based on a set of assumptions that could change as scientists learn more about the virus. But as things stand, it appears that nCoV has a higher infectious potential than other coronaviruses, meaning it will be more difficult to contain. And the possibility of an unchecked pandemic on par with the 1918 Spanish flu shouldn’t be ruled out yet.

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    Even if we assume a much lower r-naught, like, say, 2.8, which is just above the upper band of the WHO’s estimates, the results could still be “pretty bad”.

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    Based on the above thread, the situation might seem especially dire. But as Dr. Feigl-Ding explains later, actions like China’s mass quarantine of 46 million and other public-health precautions should help to contain the virus and reduce its ability to spread.

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    Now, Feigl-Ding’s critics have pointed out that this is only one estimate, and that Read and his team have already revised down their r-naught calculation.

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    The doctor repeatedly said as much during the thread, but we suppose there’s something about people tweeting in all-caps that some find extremely off-putting.

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    And of course this isn’t 1918 – medical technology is far more advanced. In the event of a mass infection, a vaccine could be found to save the day. But that doesn’t mean we should simply dismiss the more dire projections out of hand. This virus could still leave thousands dead before it peters out.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 17:35

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • The 1%: Illinois' Pension Millionaires
    The 1%: Illinois’ Pension Millionaires

    Authored by Austin Berg via IllinoisPolicy.org,

    More than 129,000 Illinois public pensioners will see expected payouts of $1 million or more during retirement.

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    Illinois is home to a small, powerful and protected class of wealth.

    Their profits are immense. They bear little to no risk. And the state’s social safety net has been gutted to pay for their privileges, which are closely guarded by politicians.

    Sound familiar?

    These are Illinois’ pension millionaires.

    Among the state’s 12.7 million residents, they constitute the 1%.

    More than 129,000 Illinois public retirees will collect estimated payouts of more than $1 million each over the course of their retirements, according to new analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute.

    No public-sector worker should be personally shamed for getting a great deal. Those who choose a life of public service deserve honor and praise.

    At the same time, it’s crucial that Illinoisans understand these retirement benefits and call for reform. They have resulted in cuts to core services and constant calls for tax hikes across the state for more than two decades. They’re also pushing the pension funds toward insolvency.

    Extreme payouts and early retirements are the norm across Illinois’ five state-run retirement systems:

    • More than 22,000 retirees in the State Universities Retirement System (43%) will receive an expected lifetime payout of more than $1 million, with 42% retiring before their 60th birthday.

    • More than 31,000 retirees in the State Employees’ Retirement System (51%) will receive an expected lifetime payout of more than $1 million, with half retiring before age 60.

    • Nearly 75,000 retirees in the Teachers’ Retirement System (68%) will receive an expected lifetime payout of more than $1 million, with more than half retiring before age 60.

    • The remaining pension millionaires at the state level are spread across the Judges’ Retirement System (nearly 900, or 94%) and the General Assembly Retirement System (more than 200, or 67%).

    Meanwhile, the average 401(k) balance nationwide for people aged 60 to 69 is $195,500, according to CNBC.

    These numbers can be difficult to believe. So they’re often spun. There are four common “buts” used to justify the status quo:

    1) But these benefits attract top talent

    In fact, these benefits have made important fields like teaching much less attractive in Illinois. That’s because in order to pay for the extreme benefits promised in the past, new teachers are enrolled in an unfair “Tier 2” retirement plan that is so lousy it will likely result in a lawsuit when the first Tier 2 worker vests on Jan. 1, 2021.

    2) But these workers don’t get Social Security

    In fact, almost all state employees in SERS are eligible for Social Security benefits on top of their pensions, which average $1.7 million for career workers.

    For other public retirees in Illinois, trading million-dollar payouts for a Social Security check would be a serious downgrade. The average Social Security benefit for 2019 is $17,532 per year. And the earliest anyone can qualify for Social Security is age 62, with the full retirement age pegged at 67 for anyone born after 1960.

    3) But workers paid into the system

    The average state worker or teacher in Illinois retires before age 60, takes home a lifetime pension benefit of more than $1 million and contributes less than 10% of that amount to the system – the rest is covered by taxpayers.

    4) But politicians underfunded the system

    Illinois pensions were underfunded because they were overpromised. Like a teenage barback trying to front a monthly payment on a Lamborghini, state politicians have kicked the can, borrowed and lied to keep up appearances. Illinois state and local governments now spend the most in the nation – about double the national average – on pensions as a share of their budgets. Consider that the state spends about one-third less today, adjusted for inflation, than it did in the year 2000 on core services including child protection, state police and college money for poor students. During that time, pension spending increased 501%.

    Paying more is not an option.

    Backing reforms for a fair pension system should be the No. 1 priority for Illinois state lawmakers. And other states can show them how.

    A pension constitutional amendment in Illinois that matches states such as Hawaii and Michigan would allow for changes to retirement ages, capping maximum pensionable salaries, and doing away with guaranteed permanent benefit increases in favor of a true cost-of-living adjustment pegged to inflation. All of this can be done without cutting a dime from the checks of current retirees. These changes to “future” benefits have been enacted in Arizona, where they had support from union leaders who realized pensions were in peril.

    If Illinoisans work together, commonsense pension reform can ensure state government works for everyone.

    Not just the 1%.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 17:10

    Tags
    Social Issues
    Labor

  • Iran's Fars News Knocked Off Web By US Treasury Order
    Iran’s Fars News Knocked Off Web By US Treasury Order

    Iran’s well-known state media outlet Fars News Agency says US sanctions have knocked it off the internet. As of Friday and into early Saturday the en.farsnews.com domain remained inaccessible while the outlet says it quickly alternately established English content on https://en.farsnews.ir/, which remains live. 

    Iran says the US Treasury Department shut down international access to its English news site due to new regulations related to US sanctions.

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    It’s not the first time state-linked Iranian media outlets have had access to Western audiences blocked, with PressTV complaining in recent months about being blocked on YouTube and other popular social media sites; however it’s less common for their domains to be blocked. 

    Fars outlet issued a Farsi language tweet Friday which reads according to a translation: 

    “From an hour ago, audience access to the Fars News Agency site has encountered a problem due to being placed on America’s sanctions list, and the technical part of [this] News Agency is working to create access for the audience on the farsnews.ir domain.”

    It further said administrators of its state-controlled site were notified Friday that it was being shut down after the US Treasury Department ordered the drastic action it due to sanctions violations. 

    Fars has since erected a separate domain for its now blocked English language site.

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    As Iran’s PressTV describes further:

    The news agency said that it had received an email from the server company, which explicitly said that the blockage is due to an order by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and its inclusion in the list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN).

    The agency attached to its post a screenshot of its website with the message “www.farsnews.com’s server IP address could not be found.” 

    In the wake of the Jan.8 Iranian ballistic missile attack on Ayn al-Asad airbase in Iraq, Iranian media outlets were slammed by western analysts for “spreading disinformation” — which initially included claims of multiple American troop deaths and a totally obliterated base. 

    But in reality both sides could be blamed for sowing war propaganda and disinformation, given the US side initially said “no casualties” — later revised to 11 traumatic brain injuries, and days ago dramatically updated to 34 total head injuries. 


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 16:45

    Tags
    Politics

  • Digital Currency: What Do The Global Banking Elite Want?
    Digital Currency: What Do The Global Banking Elite Want?

    Authored by Steven Guinness,

    Amidst the annual spectacle of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Bank for International Settlements this week announced that multiple central banks have created a group that will ‘assess potential cases for central bank digital currencies‘.

    Here is the press release from the BIS in full:

    The Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Sveriges Riksbank and the Swiss National Bank, together with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), have created a group to share experiences as they assess the potential cases for central bank digital currency (CBDC) in their home jurisdictions.

    The group will assess CBDC use cases; economic, functional and technical design choices, including cross-border interoperability; and the sharing of knowledge on emerging technologies. It will closely coordinate with the relevant institutions and forums – in particular, the Financial Stability Board and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI).

    The group will be co-chaired by Benoît Cœuré, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, and Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and Chair of the CPMI. It will include senior representatives of the participating institutions.

    As with every other recent development in regards to CBDC’s, the BIS stand at the heart of the issue. The new central bank grouping comes just over six months after the BIS first established an Innovation Hub for central banks (also known as Innovation BIS 2025) with the objective being to ‘foster international collaboration on innovative financial technology within the central banking community‘.

    With the agenda to introduce central bank digital currency gathering further momentum, now would be as good a time as any to ask what the global banking elite are seeking to achieve over the short to medium term.

    In 2019 I published around a dozen articles on the subject of digital currency, examining the latest speeches from central bankers and the actions they were taking to formulate the foundations for a cashless society. The Innovation BIS 2025 project is a important pillar to the aspirations of the financial elite. By 2025 they are targeting the completion of reformed payment systems in the UK, the U.S and beyond, systems that will possess the capability to interface directly with Fintech firms that specialise in blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT). Both blockchain and DLT would be essential for the roll out of a fully fledged CBDC network.

    During a speech at the Central Bank of Ireland in March 2019, BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens stated plainly what a CBDC future would look like:

    Like cash, a CBDC could and would be available 24/7, 365 days a year. At first glance, not much changes for someone, say, stopping off at the supermarket on the way home from work. He or she would no longer have the option of paying cash. All purchases would be electronic.

    To avoid confusion, there are two variants of CBDC that are regularly discussed by central bank officials. The first is a wholesale CBDC, which would be used to facilitate payments exclusively between financial sector firms. The second option, a retail CBDC, would be for  use by the general public.

    To quote Carstens from the same speech he made in Ireland:

    A CBDC would allow ordinary people and businesses to make payments electronically using money issued by the central bank. Or they could deposit money directly in the central bank, and use debit cards issued by the central bank itself.

    This would be a significant departure from the traditional model of commercial banks digitising the money held in people’s bank accounts. To way up the likelihood of this scenario, let’s examine what the International Monetary Fund have been saying.

    Former Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who is now President of the European Central Bank, addressed the Singapore Fintech Festival in November 2018 and hinted at how the future composition of a CBDC could look:

    If digital currencies are sufficiently similar to commercial bank deposits— then why hold a bank account at all?

    What if, instead, central banks entered a partnership with the private sector—banks and other financial institutions—and said: you interface with the customer, you store their wealth, you offer interest, advice, loans. But when it comes time to transact, we take over.

    Banks and other financial firms, including startups, could manage the digital currency. Much like banks which currently distribute cash.

    In this reality, central banks would, according to Lagarde, ‘retain a sure footing in payments‘. By extension, they would also retain autonomy over an all digital financial system.

    The IMF expanded on Lagarde’s speech in December 2019 with the publication of an article called, ‘Central Bank Digital Currencies: 4 Questions and Answers‘. Co-written by Tobias Adrian, the Financial Counsellor and Director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, it asserts that the IMF is now gradually helping countries ‘develop policies‘ as they ‘consider CBDC options and seek advice.’

    One of those options is a public-private partnership, which IMF staffed have termed as a ‘synthetic CBDC‘. In the summer of 2019 Mark Carney first raised the prospect of a ‘Synthetic Hegemonic Currency‘ that could be provided by the public sector ‘through a network of central bank digital currencies‘. This would ultimately be at the expense of the world reserve status of the dollar.

    The synthetic CBDC model as envisioned by the IMF would see private sector firms like JP Morgan and Barclays issuing digital coins to the general population. Banks would continue ‘innovating and interfacing with customers‘, whilst central banks would ‘provide trust to the system by requiring that coins be fully backed with central bank reserves and by supervising the coin issuers.’ This is worth keeping in mind because as the article confirms, such a set up would ‘preserve the comparative advantages of each participant.’ In other words, global financial institutions and the central banks operating beneath them would work hand in hand with Fintech developers rather than be in competition, creating a state / private lock in that every citizen would be bound by due to the abolition of cash.

    The coins the IMF refer to are known as ‘Stablecoins‘, which central bankers routinely discussed throughout 2019. Stablecoins are regarded as a form of crypocurrency, and differ from the likes of Bitcoin in that issuers of the coins would back them using a basket of established fiat currencies. The theory is that this would give the coins stability in terms of their valuation. Stablecoins would be all digital with blockchain and distributed ledger technology central to their make up, meaning payments would be instantaneous across borders.

    A few days after the IMF’s article, Lael Brainard of the Federal Reserve addressed an event held in Frankfurt, Germany in honour of Benoit Coeure’s departure from the European Central Bank (the same Benoit Coeure who has now begun his new role heading up the Innovation Hub at the BIS).

    This was an important speech because between the lines Brainard set the scene for how central banks could take advantage of the rise in stablecoins. She talked of how the emergence of crypto technology has raised ‘important questions for central banks‘, and that the ‘prospect of global stablecoin payment systems has intensified the interest in central bank digital currencies.’

    Facebook’s Libra project is cited by central banks as the bellwether of stablecoins. Whilst Libra has yet to launch, implementation would give it the title of a global stablecoin used throughout multiple different jurisdictions. For Brainard and her colleagues, this brings into question the level of regulation and safeguards that they deem necessary for stablecoins to be rolled out world wide. Without them, Brainard warned, ‘stablecoin networks at global scale may put consumers at risk‘ as well as the financial system as a whole.

    There are also questions related to the implications of a widely used stablecoin for financial stability. If not managed effectively, liquidity, credit, market, or operational risks, alone or in combination, could trigger a loss of confidence and run-like behaviour.

    Chief amongst the risks raised are money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and it is here where the distinction between a permissioned and permissionless stablecoin network becomes apparent. Central bankers openly advocate for a permissioned network where access must be granted by participants. A permissionless network, according to Brainard, ‘may be more vulnerable to money laundering and terrorist financing.’

    One solution mooted by Brainard would be for coordinated regulatory action rather than individual nations determining how stablecoins would be allowed to function. In Brainard’s words, ‘any global payments network should be expected to meet a high threshold of legal and regulatory safeguards before launching operations.’

    Elites have been fashioning for decades the narrative that global problems are too large and complex in scale to be remedied at the national level. Their argument has been that more centralisation of powers and the diminishment of the nation state is required to bring about order out of chaos. The seeming regulatory vacuum surrounding stablecoins has given central banks the platform to gradually begin cementing central bank digital currency as a safer alternative, primarily because they would be a ‘direct liability of the central bank.’

    As the debate continues around digital currency, the Federal Reserve are quietly progressing with plans to introduce a new payments system called ‘FedNow‘. This will be a platform where users would be able to ‘send and receive payments immediately and securely 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.’

    The biggest selling point of digital currency is the convenience factor of national and cross border payments being settled and available without delay. I suspect this is where the banking elite want people to focus their attention, as opposed to how a digital currency network that incorporates central banks and selected private sector players would result in the end of tangible assets.

    If you believe what central bankers are saying, then the concept of CBDC’s remain at the investigative stage. Sweden continues to lead the way with the development of an e-krona. The Riksbank has now procured a technology supplier to begin an e-krona test pilot, with the leading objective being to ‘broaden the bank’s understanding of the technological possibilities for the e-krona.’

    With the Riksbank being part of the new central bank group working through the BIS, and the IMF admitting that they are now assisting countries in devising policies around digital currency, we are witnessing just how closely they are all collaborating with one another.

    One question is whether stablecoins will be used as a stalking horse for CBDC’s, taking them beyond a mere concept. Financial instability has always been an opportunity for the global elite. Stablecoins without sufficient regulatory oversight create an opening for central banks to step in further down the line.

    Something to ponder also is how faith could be lost with future stablecoin providers. BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens has said before that trust can be compromised in four particular ways – currency devaluations, hyperinflation, wide-scale payment system disruptions and bank defaults. Naturally, Carstens has positioned central banks as the institutions that can rectify such conflict, even though it has been proven that throughout history it is their policies that have created economic instability leading to collapse.

    In relation to what Carstens said about compromising trust, three months prior to the EU referendum Bank of England official Ben Broadbent made a very telling comment in a speech appropriately titled, ‘Central banks and digital currencies‘, about the necessity for currency degradation before the public demand a solution to the traditional monetary model.

    Degrade a currency sufficiently, via hyperinflation and collapse of the banking system, and people will eventually look for alternatives. But that’s generally the sort of thing that has to happen. Almost always, these currency substitutions occur only once the existing currency has become deeply compromised. Even then, the thing people naturally reach for is an existing, trusted currency – often the US dollar – rather than some entirely new unit of account. 

    When currency substitution has occurred naturally it’s almost always done so only after the incumbent currency has been debauched by hyperinflation.

    I have warned extensively over the past couple of years of the risk of a global trade conflict triggering higher inflation, the devaluation of currencies such as sterling and the raising of interest rates. It is what would occur afterwards that is of more concern. Would people look to central banks as the saviours in a crisis scenario, giving them licence to digitise all assets through a network of CBDC’s?

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    As ever, central banks will require sustained geopolitical conflict to shape the future design of the financial system. They are already headlong in devising that very system through the reformation of global payment systems. But with distractions in the shape Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency still dominating the discourse, potentially up to 2025, how many are even aware of what the central banks are planning?


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 01/25/2020 – 16:20

    Tags
    Business Finance

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Jan 25

Today’s News 25th January 2020

  • Poland's Disgraceful Denial Over Holocaust Commemoration
    Poland’s Disgraceful Denial Over Holocaust Commemoration

    Via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    There was good reason why Polish President Andrzej Duda was prevented from addressing the Holocaust memorial event in Israel this week. The organizers anticipated he would use the event to make ugly and foolish accusations against Russia for having alleged complicity in the Nazi genocide.

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    On being refused the opportunity to make such a speech, Duda then decided to cancel his attendance altogether. Such is the thin-skin of Polish sensitivity.

    Nearly 50 world leaders participated in the fifth World Holocaust Forum held at the Yad Vashem remembrance center in Jerusalem. This year’s event had added significance because it coincided with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.

    Lest we forget, it was the Soviet Red Army which liberated Auschwitz and the other main Nazi extermination camps, which were all predominantly located in Poland.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin was among a handful of leaders who were given the privilege to address the forum. Other speakers included U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prince Charles and Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

    By what presumption did the Polish leader think he had a right to speak at the forum over the dozens of other dignitaries who were not given the privilege to make an address? Not being indulged by the organizers, President Duda went into an infantile huff.

    The background to this spat was the furious reaction from Poland’s nationalist politicians after President Putin reminded the country last month that it has a certain share of blame along with Germany’s Nazi regime for having perpetrated the Holocaust during the World War II.

    In his speech at the Holocaust forum this week, Putin did not mention Poland by name, but he reiterated the indisputable fact that European countries – at least sections of their political class – had collaborated with the German Third Reich in carrying out the Final Solution which led to millions of deaths among Jews, Slavs, Roma and Soviet citizens.

    To be sure, millions of Polish Jews and non-Jews were exterminated by the Nazi genocidal machine. And, yes, thousands of Polish citizens heroically resisted the Nazi occupiers.

    Nevertheless, the Polish political leadership during the 1930s flirted with Hitler and his regime right up to the start of the war on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Polish leadership also concurred with the anti-Semitic policies of the Third Reich. Anti-Jewish pogroms were rife in Poland during the late 1930s.

    Poland has always been apt to deny its involvement in Nazi crimes. But in recent years, under the ruling nationalist party, the habit of denial has become frenzied. In 2018, the Warsaw government introduced a new law which forbade anyone accusing Poland of past complicity in the Nazi Holocaust. That move sparked international criticism for what many saw as an attempt to launder Poland’s dirty past.

    Last year, the Polish government launched sharp criticism at the U.S. media company Netflix over a film about the Nazi death camps. The Poles objected to the depiction of the camps being situated in Poland, insisting that the territory was not Polish at the time but rather “Nazi-occupied Poland”. That’s absurd hairsplitting to avoid reality.

    At least when France’s President Macron addressed the Holocaust forum this week, he acknowledged the shameful role his country played under the collaborationist Vichy regime in transporting tens of thousands of French Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz.

    There is no way that the current Polish leadership would ever have the integrity or maturity to make similar acknowledgement. Because these vain Polish nationalists are too obsessed with a mental affliction of Russophobia and the need to re-write history in order to burnish their country’s sordid past.

    In a recent opinion article, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had the effrontery to accuse Russia of falsifying history. He disparaged “Soviet history” which, he said, claims the Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz and the death camps, as well as the rest of Poland from Nazi oppression.

    That’s not “Soviet history”. It is objective, documented history.

    Morawiecki wrote: “In reality, it was the alliance between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939 that paved the way for the start of World War II. The Third Reich would not have been able to rebuild German military capability without the Soviet supply of natural resources and military cooperation. It would not have been able to defeat Poland and France so easily, nor would it have had so much freedom in preparing the devastating machinery of the Holocaust.”

    What this refers to is the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact which was signed on August 23, 1939. Moscow did so, expediently and under duress, in order to keep the Nazi war machine at bay while it built up its defenses. The Soviet Union was all the more forced into such a tactical expedience of non-aggression because the other European powers had for years constantly rebuffed appeals from Moscow for a wider security pact against Nazi Germany. Britain, France and Poland had all entered into non-aggression pacts with Hitler long before the Soviets did. The Europeans permitted Nazi Germany to remilitarize the Rhineland in 1936, annex Austria in the same year, and invade Czechoslovakia in 1938. It was a policy of collusion, giving Hitler a “free hand” to go on the rampage across Europe. Arguably, they wanted Nazi Germany to attack the dreaded Communist Soviet Union.

    However, what the Polish premier is claiming in his opinion piece is that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression deal signed one week before the start of the World War II allowed the Third Reich to “rebuild German military capability”. He then says this enabled Hitler to “defeat Poland and France so easily”. That’s quite an achievement for an ad hoc pact that was only one week old.

    More preposterously, Morawiecki goes on to claim that the inchoate Soviet dalliance with Nazi Germany prepared the “devastating machinery of the Holocaust”.

    The Final Solution carried out in the Polish death centers only got underway after the January 1942 Wannsee Conference near Berlin chaired by Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler. By that time, Nazi Germany was already six months into its war against the Soviet Union – a war that resulted in up to 27 million Soviet deaths.

    How Polish leaders can make out that the Soviet Union was involved in enabling the Holocaust is a feat of intellectual dishonesty and immense historical corruption.

    Remembering the Holocaust, the World War II and its causes is of crucial importance. It was a product of fascism, European collusion and cynical appeasement. If we can’t accurately delineate and learn from the causes of history, then we are at the mercy of repeating the same mistakes and horrors.

    The irrational anti-Russia sentiments of Poland’s nationalist politicians, as well as their desire to sanitize the past, make their revisionism a disgrace and a danger to the present world.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 23:45

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • U.S. Presidential Partisan Divide Hits Record High
    U.S. Presidential Partisan Divide Hits Record High

    With an 89 percent approval rating from Republicans and 7 percent approval rating from Democrats, President Trump has set a new high for partisan divide in 2019 with an 82-point gap between Republican and Democrat approval, according to Gallup.

    Infographic: U.S. Presidential Partisan Divide Hits Record High | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The new record in polarization beats Trump’s 2018 partisan approval gap by three points, with other scores from former President Obama’s 2012 and 2016 years and George W. Bush in 2004 rounding out the top five.

    There’s no question Trump’s latest partisan divide is greatly influenced by his ongoing impeachment trial, which began in the Senate on Tuesday. Those in favor of impeaching Trump fall almost exactly in line with his approval ratings, with 89 percent of Democrats and only 8 percent of Republicans believing he should be removed from office, according to a recent CNN poll.

    The approval rating divide highlights a decades-long trend in increasing polarization. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton each averaged approval ratings from the opposite party of 23 percent and 27 percent, respectively, which were both the first time in modern history a president had under 30 percent. Barack Obama averaged 13 percent among Republicans, making him the first to average under 20 percent. Now, Donald Trump has averaged just under 8 percent among Democrats in his first three years, which would make him the first president under 10 percent approval rating with the opposition party.

    As Jonathan Turley notes, this leaves us in truly uncharted territory that defies conventional political analysis. Indeed, that may be the most lasting legacy of this president in reframing our political equations and understandings.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 23:25

    Tags
    Politics

  • How China Overtook The US As The World's Major Trading Partner
    How China Overtook The US As The World’s Major Trading Partner

    Authored by Iman Ghosh via VisualCapitalist.com,

    In 2018, trade accounted for 59% of global GDP, up nearly 1.5 times since 1980.

    Over this timeframe, international trade has transformed significantly – not just in terms of volume and composition, but also in terms of the countries that the rest of the world leans on for their most important trade relationships.

    Now, a critical shift is occurring in the landscape, and it may surprise you to learn that China has already usurped the U.S. as the world’s most dominant trading partner.

    Trading Places: A Global Shift

    Today’s animation comes from the Lowy Institute, and it pulls data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) database on bilateral trade flows, to determine whether the U.S. or China is a bigger trading partner for each country from 1980 to 2018.

    The results are stark: before 2000, the U.S. was at the helm of global trade, as over 80% of countries traded with the U.S. more than they did with China. By 2018, that number had dropped sharply to just 30%, as China swiftly took top position in 128 of 190 countries.

    The researchers pinpoint China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization as a major turning point in China’s international trade relationships. The dramatic shift that followed is clearly demonstrated in the visualization above—between 2005 and 2010, a number of countries tipped towards Chinese influence, especially in Africa and Asia.

    Over time, China’s dominance has grown dramatically. It’s no wonder then, that China and the U.S. have a contentious trade relationship themselves, as both nations battle it out for first place.

    A Tale of Two Economies

    The United States and China are competitors in many ways, but to be successful they must rely on each other for mutually beneficial trade. However, it’s also the major issue on which they are struggling to reach a common ground.

    The U.S. has been vocal about negotiating more balanced trade agreements with China. In fact, a mid-2018 poll shows that 62% of Americans consider their trade relationship with China to be unfair.

    Since 2018, both parties have faced a fraught relationship, imposing major tariffs on consumer and industrial goods—and retaliations are reaching greater and greater heights:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    While a delicate truce has been reached at the moment, the trade war has caused a significant drag on global growth, and the World Bank estimates it will continue to have an effect into 2021.

    At the same time, China’s sphere of influence continues to grow.

    One Belt, One Road, One Trade Direction?

    China seems to have a finger in every pie. The nation is financing a flurry of megaprojects across Asia and Africa—but one broader initiative stands above the rest.

    China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) Initiative, planned for a 2049 completion, is advancing at a furious pace. In 2019 alone, Chinese companies signed contracts worth up to $128 billion to start Chinese large-scale infrastructure projects in various countries.

    While building new highways and ports abroad is beneficial for Chinese financiers, OBOR is also about creating new markets and trade routes for Chinese goods in Asia. Recent research found that the OBOR program’s infrastructure expansion and logistics performance improvements led to positive effects on China’s exports.

    Nevertheless, it’s clear the new infrastructure network is already transforming global trade, possibly cementing China’s position as the world’s major trading partner for years to come.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 23:05

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Students Suffer "Separation Anxiety" After Schools Take Smartphones During Class
    Students Suffer “Separation Anxiety” After Schools Take Smartphones During Class

    Smartphones continue to be one of the biggest distractions that teachers of all levels have to deal with in the classroom. 

    Now, according to the WSJ, teachers are dealing with a consequence that nobody ever could have imagined when taking kids phones in order to provide a distraction-free learning environment: separation anxiety. 

    Teachers across the US are comparing notes on what the best ways to manage this anxiety are. Some of them allow students to physically hold their phones in pouches that they can’t open during class. Others let students charge their phones at stations in class instead of having to leave them alone in their lockers. 

    Some teachers even offer extra credit to students for being able to part with their phones during class. 

    South Bronx Early College Academy Charter School had to find a way to stop students from sneaking out of class to their locker to check their phones. They took the route of buying foamlike pouches that won’t unlock without a special magnet. 

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    The school lets students decorate their pouches and personalize them to “make them as cool as humanly possible for something that’s restricting them from their device,” according to the school’s principal, Brian Blough. 

    Blough says students were “fiending” the first few weeks waiting to have their pouches unlocked after the school day. 

    Other students tried to pry open and cut their pouches open. Eighth-grader Olamide Oladitan simply said: “It didn’t work.”

    He eventually gave up on trying to figure out a way to open his pouch. “I didn’t like it because I really wanted to get to my phone, but at the same time I didn’t hate it because it helped me get better grades,” he admitted, likely begrudgingly. 

    YouTube eve shows some “hacks” to try and get the pouches open, including one video that shows people lighting the pouches on fire. 

    Other schools, like High Point Academy Fort Worth in Texas, use apps that track how much students touch their phone during school hours. Students can earn points and rewards for not touching their phones during school hours, including Starbucks drinks and credits that allow them to drop their worst test scores. 

    Teacher Jayne Lawrence says the app works better than taking the phone. “The quickest way here to burn a relationship is to take something from them,” she commented.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Joseph Riffle in Fairborn, Ohio took a different approach with his students. The school allows them to make their own policy when it comes to phones, so he set up a charging station in the front of the room that allows his students to look at his phones from afar.

    “The expectation was you turn in and you plug in,” he said.

    But other schools say confiscating phones at the beginning of the school day is the only way to block all phone related distractions. Some schools threaten to put their students’ phones in a locked “cell block” to try and get students to comply with school policies. 

    At DREAM Charter School in New York, the school ditched collecting every phone in favor of a reward system that allows students to hold their phone instead of keeping it in a locked pouch. The students earn credits for good grades and “persisting through challenges”. 

    Roosevelt High School in Seattle saw a positive response from parents when it said it was going to require students to lock their cell phones away from the day. Parents sent the school “thank you notes and e-mails” after the policy change. 

    Delaney Ruston, a parent who once made a film about families and screen time called “Screenagers” said: “Some teachers were feeling like the bad guy and others were feeling like it was a free-for-all.”


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 22:45

    Tags
    Education

  • OPCW Investigator Testifies At UN That No Chemical Attack Took Place In Douma, Syria
    OPCW Investigator Testifies At UN That No Chemical Attack Took Place In Douma, Syria

    Authored by Ben Borton via TheGrayZone.com,

    In testimony before the United Nations Security Council, former OPCW inspection team leader and engineering expert Ian Henderson stated that their investigation in Douma, Syria suggested no chemical attack took place. But their findings were suppressed.

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    A former lead investigator from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has spoken out at the United Nations, stating in no uncertain terms that the scientific evidence suggests there was no gas attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.

    The dissenter, Ian Henderson, worked for 12 years at the international watchdog organization, serving as an inspection team leader and engineering expert. Among his most consequential jobs was assisting the international body’s fact-finding mission (FFM) on the ground in Douma.

    He told a UN Security Council session convened on January 20 by Russia’s delegation that OPCW management had rejected his group’s scientific research, dismissed the team, and produced another report that totally contradicted their initial findings.

    “We had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred,” Henderson said, referring to the FFM team in Douma.

    The former OPCW inspector added that he had compiled evidence through months of research that “provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.”

    Western airstrikes based on unsubstantiated allegations by foreign-backed jihadists

    Foreign-backed Islamist militants and the Western government-funded regime-change influence operation known as the White Helmets accused the Syrian government of dropping gas cylinders and killing dozens of people in the city of Douma on April 7, 2018. Damascus rejected the accusation, claiming the incident was staged by the insurgents.

    At the time, Douma was controlled by the extremist Salafi-jihadist militia Jaysh al-Islam, which was created and funded by Saudi Arabia and formerly allied with Syria’s powerful al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

    The governments of the United States, Britain, and France responded to the allegations of a chemical attack by launching airstrikes against the Syrian government on April 14. The military assault was illegal under international law, as the countries did not have UN authorization.

    Numerous OPCW whistleblowers and leaks challenge Western government claims

    In May 2019, an internal OPCW engineering assessment was leaked to the public. The document, authored by Ian Henderson, said the “dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders” in Douma “were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft,” adding that there is “a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft.”

    After reviewing the leaked report, MIT professor emeritus of Science, Technology and International Security Theodore Postol told The Grayzone, “The evidence is overwhelming that the gas attacks were staged.” Postol also accused OPCW leadership of overseeing “compromised reporting” and ignoring scientific evidence.

    In November, a second OPCW whistleblower came forward and accused the organization’s leadership of suppressing countervailing evidence, under pressure by three US government officials.

    WikiLeaks has published numerous internal emails from the OPCW that reveal allegations that the body’s management staff doctored the Douma report.

    As the evidence of internal suppression grew, the OPCW’s first director-general, José Bustani, decided to speak out. “The convincing evidence of irregular behavior in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had,” Bustani stated.

    “I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing,” the former OPCW head concluded.

    OPCW whistleblower testimony at UN Security Council meeting on Douma

    On January 20, 2020, Ian Henderson delivered his first in-person testimony, alleging suppression by OPCW leadership. He spoke at a UN Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on the fact-finding mission report on Douma.

    (Video of the session follows at the bottom of this article, along with a full transcript of Henderson’s testimony.)

    China’s mission to the UN invited Ian Henderson to testify in person at the Security Council session. Henderson said in his testimony that he had planned to attend, but was unable to get a visa waiver from the US government. (The Trump administration has repeatedly blocked access to the UN for representatives from countries that do not kowtow to its interests, turning UN visas into a political weapon in blatant violation of the international body’s headquarters agreement.)

    Henderson told the Security Council in a pre-recorded video message that he was not the only OPCW inspector to question the leadership’s treatment of the Douma investigation.

    “My concern, which was shared by a number of other inspectors, relates to the subsequent management lockdown and the practices in the later analysis and compilation of a final report,” Henderson explained.

    Soon after the alleged incident in Douma in April 2018, the OPCW FFM team had deployed to the ground to carry out an investigation, which it noted included environmental samples, interviews with witnesses, and data collection.

    In July 2018, the FFM published its interim report, stating that it found no evidence of chemical weapons use in Douma. (“The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties,” the report indicated.)

    “By the time of release of the interim report in July 2018, our understanding was that we had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred,” Henderson told the Security Council.

    After this inspection that led to the interim report, however, Henderson said the OPCW leadership decided to create a new team, “the so-called FFM core team, which essentially resulted in the dismissal of all of the inspectors who had been on the team deployed to locations in Douma and had been following up with their findings and analysis.”

    Then in March 2019, this new OPCW team released a final report, in which it claimed that chemical weapons had been used in Douma.

    “The findings in the final FFM report were contradictory, were a complete turnaround with what the team had understood collectively during and after the Douma deployments,” Henderson remarked at the UN session.

    “The report did not make clear what new findings, facts, information, data, or analysis in the fields of witness testimony, toxicology studies, chemical analysis, and engineering, and/or ballistic studies had resulted in the complete turn-around in the situation from what was understood by the majority of the team, and the entire Douma [FFM] team, in July 2018,” Henderson stated.

    The former OPCW expert added, “I had followed up with a further six months of engineering and ballistic studies into these cylinders, the result of which had provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.”

    US government pressure on the OPCW

    The US government responded to this historic testimony at the UN session by attacking Russia, which sponsored the Arria-Formula meeting.

    Acting US representative Cherith Norman Chalet praised the OPCW, aggressively condemned the “Assad regime,” and told the UN that the “United States is proud to support the vital, life-saving work of the White Helmets” – a US and UK-backed organization that collaborated extensively with ISIS and al-Qaeda and have been involved in numerous executions in Syrian territory occupied by Islamist extremists.

    The US government has a long history of pressuring and manipulating the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the George W. Bush administration threatened José Bustani, the first director of the OPCW, and pressured him to resign.

    In 2002, as the Bush White House was preparing to wage a war on Iraq, Bustani made an agreement with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein that would have permitted OPCW inspectors to come to the country unannounced for weapons investigations. This infuriated the US government.

    Then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Bustani in 2002 that US Vice President Dick “Cheney wants you out.” Bolton threatened the OPCW director-general, stating, “You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you… We know where your kids live.”

    Attacking the credibility of Ian Henderson

    While OPCW managers have kept curiously silent amid the scandal over their Douma report, an interventionist media outlet called Bellingcat has functioned as an outsourced press shop, aggressively defending the official narrative and attacking its most prominent critics, including Ian Henderson.

    Bellingcat is funded by the US government’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and is part of an initiative bankrolled by the British Foreign Office.

    Following Henderson’s testimony, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins tried to besmirch the former OPCW engineer’s credibility by implying he was being used by Russia. Until 2019, Higgins worked at the Atlantic Council, a pro-war think tank financed by the American and British governments, as well as by NATO.

    Supporters of the OPCW’s apparently doctored final report have relied heavily on Bellingcat to try to discredit the whistleblowers and growing leaks. Scientific expert Theodor Postol, who debated Higgins, has noted that Bellingcat “have no scientific credibility at any level.” Postol says he even suspects that OPCW management may have relied on Bellingcat’s highly dubious claims in its own compromised reporting.

    Higgins has no expertise or scientific credentials, and even The New York Times acknowledged in a highly sympathetic piece that “Higgins attributed his skill not to any special knowledge of international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing video games, which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.”

    In his testimony before the UN Security Council, Ian Henderson stressed that he was speaking out in line with his duties as a scientific expert.

    Henderson said he does not even like the term whistleblower and would not use it to describe himself, because, “I’m a former OPCW specialist who has concerns in an area, and I consider this a legitimate and appropriate forum to explain again these concerns.”

    Russia’s UN representative added that Moscow had also invited the OPCW director-general and representatives of the organization’s Technical Secretariat, but they chose not to participate in the session.

    *  *  *

    Video of the UN Security Council session on the OPCW’s Douma report

    Ian Henderson’s testimony begins at 57:30 in this official UN video:

    Transcript: Testimony by OPCW whistleblower Ian Henderson at the UN Security Council

    “My name is Ian Henderson. I’m a former OPCW inspection team leader, having served for about 12 years. I heard about this meeting and I was invited by the minister, councilor of the Chinese mission to the UN. Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances around my ESTA visa waiver status, I was not able to travel. I thus submitted a written statement, to which I will now add a short introduction.

    I need to point out at the outset that I’m not a whistleblower; I don’t like that term. I’m a former OPCW specialist who has concerns in an area, and I consider this a legitimate and appropriate forum to explain again these concerns.

    Secondly, I must point out that I hold the OPCW in the highest regard, as well as the professionalism of the staff members who work there. The organization is not broken; I must stress that. However the concern I have does relate to some specific management practices in certain sensitive missions.

    The concern of course relates to the FFM investigation into the alleged chemical attack on the 7th of April in Douma, in Syria. My concern, which was shared by a number of other inspectors, relates to the subsequent management lockdown and the practices in the later analysis and compilation of a final report.

    There were two teams deployed; one team, which I joined shortly after the start of field deployments, was to Douma in Syria; the other team deployed to country X.

    The main concern relates to the announcement in July 2018 of a new concept, the so-called FFM core team, which essentially resulted in the dismissal of all of the inspectors who had been on the team deployed to locations in Douma and had been following up with their findings and analysis.

    The findings in the final FFM report were contradictory, were a complete turnaround with what the team had understood collectively during and after the Douma deployments. And by the time of release of the interim report in July 2018, our understanding was that we had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred.

    What the final FFM report does not make clear, and thus does not reflect the views of the team members who deployed to Douma — in which case I really can only speak for myself at this stage — the report did not make clear what new findings, facts, information, data, or analysis in the fields of witness testimony, toxicology studies, chemical analysis, and engineering, and/or ballistic studies had resulted in the complete turn-around in the situation from what was understood by the majority of the team, and the entire Douma team, in July 2018.

    In my case, I had followed up with a further six months of engineering and ballistic studies into these cylinders, the result of which had provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.

    This needs to be properly resolved, we believe through the rigors of science and engineering. In my situation, it’s not a political debate. I’m very aware that there is a political debate surrounding this.

    Perhaps a closing comment from my side is that I was also the inspection team leader who developed and launched the inspections, the highly intrusive inspections, of the Barzah SSRC facility, just outside Damascus. And I did the inspections and wrote the reports for the two inspections prior to, and the inspection after the chemical facility, or the laboratory complex at Barzah SSRC, had been destroyed by the missile strike.

    That, however, is another story altogether, and I shall now close. Thank you.”


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 22:25

    Tags
    Politics

  • Palm Beach Real Estate Is On Fire…Except Homes Around Trump's Mar-a-Lago Resort
    Palm Beach Real Estate Is On Fire…Except Homes Around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort

    Luxury homes in South Florida have been selling like hot cakes – mostly because mansion taxes and the capping of SALT deductions have pushed many from Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states to the tax-friendly environment of Florida.

    “I’ve been selling real estate for 34 years,” said real estate broker Rob Thomson, a Mar-a-Lago club member and the owner of Waterfront Properties & Club Communities, who spoke with Bloomberg. “This is the longest bull run of my career.”

    He said mansions, small homes, and empty lots have been in high demand, thanks to the state’s income tax rate of 0%, along with the region’s vast amount of wealth.

    Thomson said while the Miami Metropolitan Area, from Miami to West Palm Beach/Palm Beach, is booming – there’s a section of residential real estate — within a ½ mile of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club that has gone cold.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Ten homes remain unsold within a four-block radius of Mar-a-Lago have been sitting on the market for an extended period.

    One of the properties is located at 1090 South Ocean Blvd. has been listed since 2016; with a listing price of $6.95 million, according to Zillow, down 26.5% from an initial $9.5 million. Four other listings have been sitting on the market since 2018; seven have already seen significant reductions in price.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    There’s certainly a cloud of negativity over properties close to Mar-a-Lago – it’s a massive contrast to the eight luxury Palm Beach homes that sold in 4Q19, with an average listing time of 191 days, said Douglas Elliman Realty LLC.

    “The fact that they’re all being marketed at the same time, nearby, is not natural,” said Jonathan Miller, the CEO of Miller Samuel. “A cluster of listings, especially at the high end, is not likely to reflect a positive condition” in the market.

    Brokers in Palm Beach had different explanations for the unsold homes around the resort, and all said it did not correlate with the president.

    Paulette Koch, a broker with Corcoran Group, said the listed homes around the resort are “all coincidental,” adding that, “you can get a group of people who all want to sell [at once] for varying reasons.”

    One broker said Trump’s constant appearance at his resort is nothing but positivity for the region. Jeff Cloninger, a broker for Sotheby’s, said the benefits of the president in Palm Beach is the added security.

    Another pointed out that homes around Mar-a-Lago are directly under a flight path of planes, and noise is so loud, it has deterred many from buying houses near the resort.

    Miller has a different explanation for the unsold homes: “It’s not uncommon to have clusters of people around a celebrity or notable name trying to cash in. In other words, Trump might not be a deterrent, but he also might not be the draw they think he is. It’s more about these listings being overpriced.”


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 22:05

  • Don't Mess With The U.S. (Financially)
    Don’t Mess With The U.S. (Financially)

    Authored by Jim Rickards via The Daily Reckoning blog,

    I’ve been documenting financial warfare in my articles for years, but it still doesn’t get the mainstream attention it deserves.

    Because as you’ll see below, it can directly impact your wealth.

    Financial warfare tools include account seizures and freezes, expulsion from global payment systems, secondary fines and penalties on banks that do business with targeted entities, embargoes, tariffs and many other impositions.

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    These tools are amplified by the unique role of the U.S. dollar, which is the currency behind 60% of global reserves, 80% of global payments and almost 100% of transactions in oil.

    The U.S. controls the banks and payments systems that process dollar transactions. This leaves the U.S. well positioned to impose dollar-related sanctions.

    Much has been made of the recent killing of Iranian terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani. Many say it was an act of war. But guess what, folks?

    We’ve been in a full-scale war with Iran for two years now. It’s just that most people don’t realize it.

    It’s not a kinetic war with troops, missiles and ships (except Iran’s use of terrorist bombs and the U.S.’ use of drones). And it’s severely damaged the Iranian economy, which has led to protests against the regime.

    From the U.S. side, it’s a financial war. People need to stop thinking about financial sanctions as an extension of trade policy, for example.

    This is warfare. It’s just a different form of warfare.

    It’s critical to understand that financial war is not a sideshow. It may actually be the main event in today’s deeply connected and computerized world.

    North Korea is also the current target of a U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign, where harsh sanctions are applied to a wide range of banks, companies and individuals.

    As with Iran, sanctions have been instrumental in destabilizing the regime and bringing North Korea to the bargaining table to discuss its nuclear weapons programs.

    Now, Iraq is the latest country to feel the sting of U.S. dollar sanctions.

    Following the killing of Soleimani on Iraqi soil, Iraq threatened to expel all U.S. troops from Iraq. Trump answered in two parts.

    He said U.S. troops would not leave until Iraq repaid the U.S. for building bases and other infrastructure in Iraq. Trump also warned that Iraq’s access to its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York could be terminated.

    That would make it impossible for Iraq to purchase and sell oil in dollars. It could also cause Iraq to lose access to about $3 billion currently held in that account.

    Iraq has heard the U.S. threats loud and clear. As of now, U.S. troops are still in Iraq and not planning to leave anytime soon.

    The fact that Iraqi policy could be conditioned without a shot being fired shows the raw power of financial warfare.

    The trouble is private businesses and investors can get caught in the crossfire of financial warfare.

    According to one survey, last year saw a 42% increase in cyberattacks on private companies around the world (attributable to foreign governments).

    About 20% of businesses reported daily attacks, many in the banking and financial services sectors. Only 6% of businesses in the survey claimed they weren’t targeted by a cyberattack in 2019.

    You as an investor trying to mind your own business or build wealth or expand your portfolio may get caught in the crossfire of a financial war. So you have to take that into account in your portfolio allocations and risk management.

    In today’s world, everyone’s a potential casualty of financial warfare.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 21:45

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Business Finance
    Politics

  • The Once Dead Art Of Flower-Arranging Re-Ignites So Gen Z Can "Impress Their Instagram Followers"
    The Once Dead Art Of Flower-Arranging Re-Ignites So Gen Z Can “Impress Their Instagram Followers”

    Flower arranging, outside of traditional florists, used to just be limited to housewives in the 1950s. Now, thanks to Instagram, the practice is coming back in style, attracting a younger crowd that seeks to impress their social media followers.

    For instance, Sage, a flower shop in South London, has seen a “huge increase” in interest from young people since they’ve opened, according to The Guardian. The shop offers monthly bouquet and vase arranging classes. 

    The shop’s co-founder, Iona Matheison said: “It’s young people in their mid-20s to mid-30s that are coming. It’s super popular and they’re fully booked.”

    Helena Willcocks is the 31 year old founder of The Allotment Florist, which hosts arranging workshops in West Yorkshire and London for about 60 pounds, per person, per hour and a half. She said: “It’s definitely becoming more popular, especially with younger people. In the last year we have seen a 30% increase in the number of people coming. It’s a trendy thing to do. It’s obvious by who is booking them.”

    The reigniting of arranging’s popularity could be coming from two places. First, there’s the recent pride in being a “plant parent” that we have written about here on Zero Hedge before. Also, there’s the desire to impress ones Instagram followers. 

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    Emma Weaver, founder of Palais, said: “Flower arranging is so colourful and immediate and that’s how we’re seeing life these days, in these bright coloured squares.”

    George Plumptre, chief executive of the National Garden Scheme said:  “Flower arranging can be hugely therapeutic and creative. It provides a wonderful sense of wellbeing.”

    Willcocks echoed Weaver’s sentiments: “Is Instagram a factor? Oh yeah, 100%, depressingly. People want to photograph their work, in fact they want to photograph the whole way through,” she says. “I try to encourage them to not be on their phones but be surrounded by flowers.”

    But not all attendees are social media attention seekers. Amy Montague, a 33 year old from Nottingham, said: “It’s a creative outlet from my work in online consultancy and it’s relaxing.”

    Arranging now incorporates numerous materials other than flowers and the new wave of floristry is said to be more artistic and less boring than traditional bouquets. Weaver commented: “It’s very sculptural. We use anything from melted plastics to bespoke metal frames and do a lot of carpentry alongside more traditional flower arranging. We are putting the two together and making it more of an art form.”

    “This is art through the medium of flowers, as opposed to the old grandma thing.”


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 21:25

  • Are The Underlying Mechanics Of The Largest Gold ETF A Cause For Concern
    Are The Underlying Mechanics Of The Largest Gold ETF A Cause For Concern

    Submitted by Jan Nieuwenhuijs from Voima Insights,

    Are the underlying mechanics of the largest gold ETF a cause for concern?

    Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) are an important element in the global gold market. The largest gold ETF is the “SPDR Gold Trust,” which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange Arca (NYSE Arca) under the symbol “GLD.” In this article, we will examine how GLD works to understand its role in the gold market and its impact on the gold price.

    Introduction

    In general, ETFs are funds that hold and track the price of assets like a commodity or stock market index. But unlike normal funds, ETFs are conveniently traded on stock exchanges. ETF securities represent shares of ownership in the fund. In the case of GLD, shareholders own a segment of the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the fund, which mainly holds physical gold. So, owners of GLD shares don’t own the gold itself, but a slice of the fund. As with other derivatives, GLD provides exposure to the price of the underlying asset.

    The stock exchange is referred to as the secondary market. Here, existing shares of an ETF can be traded by all types of investors. In the primary market, ETF shares are created and redeemed by “Participating Dealers.” It’s mainly through the creation and redemption process of shares that the ETF price tracks the price of the associated asset. Let us have a look at how this works with GLD.

    The Mechanics Of GLD

    Primary market participants for GLD include (from the prospectus dated August 9, 2019):

    • The Trustee BNY Mellon Asset Servicing, which is responsible for the day-to-day administration of “the Trust” (the Fund).

    • The Custodian HSBC Bank plc (there can be sub-custodians), which stores Good Delivery gold bars for the Trust in London.

    • The Sponsor World Gold Trust Services, LLC, a subsidiary of the World Gold Council, which oversees the performance of the Trustee and the Custodian.

    • The Authorized Participants, which are the institutions authorized to create and redeem GLD shares at the Trustee. (With other ETFs, these are called the Participating Dealers.) At this moment, the Authorized Participants are Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co., Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp., Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, RBC Capital Markets, LLC, UBS Securities LLC, and Virtu Financial BD LLC.

    One GLD share represents 0.1 ounce of gold. (Put differently, the value of one GLD share is equal to the value of 0.1 ounce of gold. And actually, at the time of writing, it’s a little less than 0.1 ounce, for reasons to be explained below.)

    The price of GLD is set by supply and demand on the exchange where it’s traded (NYSE Arca), just like the gold price is set by supply and demand of gold in the London Bullion Market. For this article, when I mention the gold price, I refer to the spot gold price in London.

    The GLD share price tracks the gold price, mainly through arbitrage. When, for example, the price of GLD trades at a premium to the gold price, an Authorised Participant (AP) can collect a profit. The AP can buy gold, deposit the gold at the Trustee, which creates shares in return for the AP, who can sell these on the stock market. This process will drive up the gold price and lower the price of GLD. APs will jump the arbitrage opportunity until the gap is closed. Naturally, the arbitrage works the other way around when GLD trades at a discount to the gold price. In this situation, APs will redeem shares at the Trustee to get gold out that they can sell in the London Bullion Market.

    Below you can see a simplified graph I have made of the creation and redemption process of GLD shares.

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    GLD securities can only be created or redeemed in a “Basket” of 100,000 shares. Because one share represents 0.1 ounce, 10,000 fine troy ounces (about 25 Good Delivery bars) are required for creating 100,000 shares of the Trust. Vice versa, 100,000 shares are required for redeeming (withdrawing) 10,000 fine troy ounces from the Trust.

    Over time small amounts of the Trust’s gold are sold to pay for the Custodian’s storage fees and the Trustee’s expenses. This gradual selling is the reason why one GLD share represents less than 0.1 ounce of gold, and this amount continuously declines. The day GLD was launched, one share represented 0.1 ounce; at the time of writing, one share represents 0.094 ounce. As a consequence, currently, APs need to deposit less than 10,000 ounces at the Trustee in order to create 100,000 shares and will receive less than 10,000 ounces when redeeming 100,000 shares.

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    In the chart above, you can see that the gold price and the level of GLD inventory are correlated. The chart suggests that buyers and sellers of GLD contribute to the directional trend of the gold price. Consider, for example, when the spot gold price went up and at the same time GLD inventory swelled. The APs must have been buying gold and creating shares. Their incentive for creating shares was likely that the GLD price (occasionally) was trading at a premium to the spot gold price.

    However, the prospectus reads that the APs can also “act for their own accounts or as agents for broker-dealers, custodians and other securities market participants that wish to create or redeem Baskets.” And, “Shareholders who are not Authorized Participants will only be able to redeem their Shares through an Authorized Participant.” Implying, if you own less than 100,000 GLD shares, you can’t redeem for gold. But, if you are well connected to one of the APs, and you own a Basket of 100,000 shares or a multitude of that, you can redeem for gold.

    In many countries, certain investment funds are not allowed to own commodities outright but are allowed to own regulated securities like GLD. These funds might be forced to buy GLD or a similar ETF if they want some exposure to the gold price. These funds can be sizable, and GLD’s secondary market might, therefore, be illiquid for them. On request, APs can buy or sell (create or redeem) shares for such clients in the primary market. To give you an idea of the gold trade’s extent, observe that in 2019 the average daily gold trading volume in the London Bullion Market was $45 billion. For comparison, the average daily trading volume in GLD at NYSE Arca was $1 billion.

    Whether it’s arbitrage, or providing liquidity for institutional clients, when APs create (redeem) shares, this gives upward (downward) pressure on the spot gold price, and increases (decreases) GLD inventory.

    Myths and Risks

    There is always much hyperbole in the gold space, and when it comes to GLD, it’s no different. For years, rumors have been circulating that GLD isn’t backed by physical gold. Although the bar list of GLD is online, and twice a year, a highly respected auditor inspects the gold (click here to the view most recent audit report). Chances are very slim that the gold isn’t there.

    Furthermore, the prospectus reads, “Creation of Baskets may only be made after the requisite gold is deposited in the allocated account of the Trust. … All of the Trust’s gold is fully allocated at the end of each business day.” According to my analysis, the gold is there.  

    Still, I wouldn’t buy GLD if I didn’t have to. When it comes to owning gold, one significant rationale is that gold is the only universally accepted financial asset without counterparty risk. Gold protects your purchasing power and offers insurance on your savings because it’s a physical element. As such, it can’t be printed out of thin air (inflate) or be late with its payments (default).

    Gold is truly independent of the financial system. Every insurance product created by the financial system—whether that be a sovereign bond, a fiduciary currency, a futures contract, a credit default swap, etc.—has counterparty risk. Since all major financial institutions are nowadays connected, risk contagion is guaranteed. An insurance against the financial system is, therefore, ideally to be found outside the financial system, namely, in gold.

    As financial expert Simon Mikhailovich puts it:

    Buying an insurance policy against failure of the insurance industry from an insurance company is nonsense. If the insured event occurred, the company that sold the policy would fail and the policy would be worthless. 

    So why would you own GLD? Sure, it offers exposure to the spot gold price. But when things go haywire, GLD exposes you to many counterparties, which would be BNY Mellon Asset Servicing (Trustee), which is a division of The Bank of New York Mellon, HSBC (Custodian), potential sub-custodians (The Bank of England, ICBC Standard Bank, JPMorgan, Scotiabank, and UBS), NYSE Arca, and the Authorized Participants. Owning GLD is like owning a gold derivative with as much counterparty risk as possible.

    Not surprisingly, the GLD prospectus reads like an endless disclaimer. On page 11, it states, “the Custodian will not be liable for any delay in performance … of any of its obligations … beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God…”. And on page 13, “In the event of the insolvency of the Custodian, a liquidator may seek to freeze access to the gold held in all of the accounts held by the Custodian, including the Trust Allocated Account.”

    The problem with all the counterparties involved with GLD is that they don’t primarily deal with gold. These are the biggest banks in the world, and if any branch of these banks fails, it can have consequences for the entire entity, and GLD will potentially suffer too. In my view, it’s best to store gold outside of the financial system.

    *  *  *

    The views expressed on Voima Insight are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official views or position of Voima Gold. Stay up to date, subscribe to Voima Insight—click here


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 21:05

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • "No, No America" – Mass Protests Erupt In Baghdad Demanding U.S. Troops Withdraw 
    “No, No America” – Mass Protests Erupt In Baghdad Demanding U.S. Troops Withdraw 

    Al Jazeera English is reporting that thousands of Iraqi protesters have hit the street in Baghdad after the influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for a “million-strong” march to demand the withdraw of U.S. coalition forces from the country. 

    NBC News Tehran Bureau Chief & correspondent Ali Arouzi said hundreds of thousands of protesters marched across Baghdad on Friday, demanding U.S. troops leave the country and close all military bases and embassies.  

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    Protestors held signs that read “no, no to America” and “no, no to occupation” amid a sea of nationalism and anti-Americanism erupting across the country’s capital. 

    Others were heard on loudspeakers blasting the phrase: “Death to America. Death to Israel.”

    The presence of U.S. coalition forces in the country has become a hot subject since President Trump launched a drone attack on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killing both, earlier this month near Baghdad International Airport.

    The Green Zone, the International Zone of Baghdad and home of the U.S. embassy, has been peppered with rocket attacks since the killing of Soleimani. 

    Iraq’s parliament voted to expel all foreign troops, including 5,000 U.S. forces from the country, and asked the government to cancel assistance from the U.S.-led coalition that has been working with the Iraqi Army in the eradication of ISIS. 

    A senior U.S. official said Thursday that the Trump administration has yet to hold talks with Iraq about U.S. troops exiting the country. 

    Several weeks ago, President Trump threatened severe sanctions against Iraq if its parliament enforced a law that would expel U.S. troops from the country. 

    “We have a very extraordinarily expensive airbase, that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” Trump told reporters.

    Twitter users have documented Friday’s massive protest, and Aurora Intel said: “the main street being used in #Baghdad, #Iraq for the protests) and using 4 people per m2 this meets a rough estimate of 600000 people able to be at this protest, if i’ve got the right location.” 

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    Here are other social media accounts detailing the protest: 

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    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 20:45

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • Professors Donate To Democrats Over Republicans By A 95:1 Ratio, New Study Finds
    Professors Donate To Democrats Over Republicans By A 95:1 Ratio, New Study Finds

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Diversity in hiring is the top priority of most colleges and universities. However, the effort to hire more women, minorities, and LGBT individuals notably lacks one group: ideological diversity.

    It is well-known that most faculty are composed of an overwhelming majority of liberal and democratic members. However, this view, while generally accepted, is largely anecdotal. Now a new study by Heterodox Academy Director of Research Sean Stevens and Brooklyn College Professor Mitchell Langbert claims to have put hard numbers on that lack of diversity.

    In reviewing records with the Federal Election Commission, they say that they found that professors gave to Democrats over Republicans by a 95:1 ratio.

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    The researchers looked at 2,301 political donations and found that 2,081 went to Democrats while just 22 went to Republicans. Only nine professors gave to both parties.

    An earlier study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a 10:4 ratio. Business Management Associate Professor Mitchell Langbert reviewed the party affiliations of 8,688 professors at 51 of the top 60 liberal arts colleges listed in U.S. News and World Report’s 2017 rankings.

    These studies magnify concerns for those of us who have objected to increasing speech regulation on campuses — restrictions that have seem to be more often applied to conservative students and speakers. Indeed, academics have at times been at the heart of such attacks on the free speech rights of conservatives on campus. In one incident at the California State University where assistant professor of public health professor Greg Thatcher is shown on a videotape wiping out the pro-life statements written in chalk by members of Fresno State Students for Life.  

    Perhaps the most unnerving controversy involved the confrontation of Feminist Studies Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young with pro-life advocates on campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Miller-Young led her students in attacking the pro-life display, stealing their display, and then committing battery on one of the young women.  She was convicted and sentenced for the crime.  Despite the shocking conduct of Miller-Young and the clear violation of the most fundamental values for all academics in guaranteeing free speech and associational rights, the faculty overwhelmingly supported Miller-Young and the university decided not to impose any meaningful discipline. Faculty and student defenders attacked the pro-life advocates and one even referred to them as “terrorists” who did not deserve free speech.  Miller-Young should have been fired but was instead lionized by faculty and students.

    A recent study found at Harvard found that only 35 percent of conservative students felt free to share their views on campuses. That chilling effect is the result of not just open hostility to conservative voices on campus but a striking lack of diversity among academics in terms of ideology.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 20:25

    Tags
    Social Issues
    Politics
    Education

  • Asia Panics: Virus Masks Sell Out As Prices Skyrocket Amid Coronavirus Fears
    Asia Panics: Virus Masks Sell Out As Prices Skyrocket Amid Coronavirus Fears

    We mentioned on Thursday how worldwide internet search volumes for “virus mask” had erupted this week as the spread of coronavirus becomes uncontrollable across Asia. The World Health Organization (WHO) has yet to declare an international virus alarm as the evolution of the epidemic broadens.

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    New reports suggest virus masks and hand sanitizers are in short supply in some regions of Asia, reported the South China Morning Post.

    Pharmacies across Hong Kong on Friday afternoon sold out of masks that prevent the wearer from contracting the deadly virus.

    The most popular respirator is the 3M N95 Medical Mask that has sold out in many pharmacies across Hong Kong. Any remaining N95 masks have been sold for as much as HK$60 (about $7.75) per unit, a massive +700% mark, considering the masks usually sell for less than HK$7.77 ($1).

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    Taiwan this week banned the export of masks for the next month while the government stockpiles reserves.

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    Across Macao, residents have been hit with mask rations; only ten per customer is allowed who can present pharmacies with a valid government ID card.

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    So far, more than 900 cases have been confirmed with 26 dead. China has restricted travel for +40 million people. The spread of the virus has broadened from China, now seen in the U.S., Australia, Russia, Mexico, Scotland, Ireland, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Macao, India, Japan, and South Korea.

    As we noted Thursday, Americans started googling “virus mask” after the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Seattle earlier this week. People in Washington, Hawaii, California, District of Columbia, and Massachusetts googled it the most.

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    Americans also searched “n95 mask,” and were also curious where they could purchase these respirators. Many searched “n95 mask cvs,” “n95 mask home depot,” and “n95 mask target.”

    And already, some N95 masks have sold out on Amazon. It seems as the virus continues to spread around the world at an alarming rate – virus masks, especially the N95 – are becoming a hot commodity. Bullish on virus mask.

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    As far as world epidemics and the global stock market performance, here’s a chart showing what could happen next: 

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    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 20:05

  • Guggenheim: 10 Macro Themes To Watch In 2020
    Guggenheim: 10 Macro Themes To Watch In 2020

    Scott Minerd, Chairman of Investments and Global CIO, and Guggenheim’s Macroeconomic and Investment Research Group analyze the 10 macroeconomic trends likely to shape monetary policy and investment performance this year.

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    Among their major themes:

    1. Household net worth gains will continue to support consumption, the main driver of growth for the U.S. economy, even with business investment contracting and the manufacturing sector experiencing a recession.

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    2. The housing market will contribute positively to U.S. economic growth. Mortgage rates have come down a full percentage point over the past year, helping home sales and construction recover, a trend which will continue into 2020.

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    3. We forecast the Federal Reserve balance sheet, which has been a key driver of markets in recent years, will grow at a much slower pace in 2020, which could undercut the “QE-lite” market narrative.

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    4. A tight labor market will further depress corporate profit margins in 2020. In an environment of limited pricing power, businesses are struggling to pass on higher labor costs, resulting in declining profitability that should weigh on hiring and investment plans.

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    5. Corporate defaults will rise as debt burdens weigh on the credit markets. In today’s corporate credit markets, which include more below-investment grade-rated debt and more BBB-rated debt (the lowest IG rating) than ever before, it is unsustainable for firms to operate with historically high leverage without a rise in defaults.

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    6. Credit rating downgrades will add headwinds to business investment. Weak earnings growth and a continued increase in leverage has resulted in more credits being downgraded than upgraded by the ratings agencies. Lower ratings will make it costlier to take on additional debt curtail business hiring and investment.

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    7. The Fed’s “soft-landing” may prove elusive, as momentum in the labor market will fade as the pool of unemployed workers continues to shrink and economic growth cools. Historically, once the two-year change in the unemployment rate turns positive, the economy enters a recession.

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    8. Consumer confidence will hinge on the health of the labor market. For confidence to rise from here, the economy will need to somehow create jobs at a faster pace in 2020, which seems like a tall order given an unemployment rate at a 50-year low.

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    9. Historically high wealth and income inequality will fuel popular support for economically disruptive policies such as a wealth tax, higher corporate tax rates, universal basic income, and Medicare for all, increasing policy uncertainty.

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    10. The 2020 election will be more consequential for the economy than any election in the past. Spurred by social media, 24-hour cable news, and high political polarization, consumers are making economic decisions based on political developments.

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    *  *  *

    Download full pdf here…


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 19:45

    Tags
    Business Finance
    Labor

  • Lindsey Graham Attacks, Then Protects Bidens – Will Oppose Any Attempts To Call As Impeachment Witnesses
    Lindsey Graham Attacks, Then Protects Bidens – Will Oppose Any Attempts To Call As Impeachment Witnesses

    Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spent a good portion of Thursday and Friday theatrically railing against the Bidens and their relationships in Ukraine – only to staunchly oppose any efforts to call them as impeachment witnesses during the ongoing Senate trial of President Trump, stating “this needs to end.”

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    “I don’t want to call Hunter Biden. I don’t want to call Joe Biden. I want someone to look at this when this is done,” said Graham, adding “To my Republican friends, you may be upset about what happened in the Ukraine with the Bidens but this is not the venue to litigate that.“

    “I don’t think it’s wrong for us to look at the Biden connection in the Ukraine, the $3 million given to the vice president’s son by the most corrupt company in the Ukraine,” he said, adding “To my Republican friends, you may be upset about what happened in the Ukraine with the Bidens but this is not the venue to litigate that.”

    (See comments at 16:57 and 19:44)

    “I feel pretty confident, though I don’t know it for a fact, that the defense team is going to want to call its witnesses, including but not limited to the Bidens, [and] as a fact witness the whistleblower,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA).

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), meanwhile, has left the door open to calling the Bidens to appear, saying “When you get to that issue, I can’t imagine that only the witnesses that our Democratic colleagues would want to call would be called.”


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 19:25

    Tags
    Politics

  • Tankers Idle At Libyan Ports As Oil Exports Dry Up
    Tankers Idle At Libyan Ports As Oil Exports Dry Up

    Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

    Ten oil tankers capable of carrying some 8 million barrels of oil are idling near some of Libya’s oil export terminals, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed on Thursday, as the Libyan port blockade entered an ugly sixth day.

    Groups loyal to eastern strongman General Khalifa Haftar blocked virtually all exports from the African oil producer, and when storage reaches maximum capacity, it will result in a complete loss of all of Libya’s 1.2 million barrels per day of oil production and exports.

    “Shutdown of all affected oil fields will result in a loss of crude oil production of 1.2 million b/d and daily financial losses of approximately $77 million,” Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Monday, confirming that nearly all of the OPEC member’s production will be lost due to the blockade.

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    File image of oil tanker at Ras Lanuf, Libya. Source: Reuters

    This is the largest outage on the oil market since the September attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, yet it has failed to move oil prices higher.

    Market participants are largely ignoring the Libyan outage and are focused on the prospects of global oil demand growth this year and the pace of supply increase from non-OPEC producers, primarily the United States, Brazil, Guyana, and Norway.

    In addition, the new fear on the market, the outbreak of a coronavirus in China, could cut oil demand and push oil prices down by nearly $3 a barrel, Goldman Sachs said earlier this week.

    “However while markets are obsessing over virus developments, they seem to be ignoring a number of oil supply risks in the market, which in aggregate would far outweigh the demand impact from the Wuhan virus,” ING strategists said on Thursday.  

    According to ING’s estimates, the current outages around the world sum up to around 1.4 million bpd, “which would be more than enough to shift the global market into deficit over 1H20,” said Warren Patterson, ING’s Head of Commodities Strategy and Senior Commodities Strategist Wenyu Yao.  

    “While the market may shrug at supply losses from Libya, it would be more difficult for the market to ignore large Iraqi supply losses if they became a reality, as Iraq is OPEC’s second-largest producer,” they noted.  


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 19:05

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • San Francisco's First Transgender Halfway House Opens
    San Francisco’s First Transgender Halfway House Opens

    The city of San Francisco opened its first low-income transgender and gender non-conforming halfway house as part of the city’s Our Trans Home SF program, which offers help with case management, rental subsidies and finding affordable housing, according to the Bay Area Reporter

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    Jane Cordova cleans the windowsill in her new room at the Trans Home SF apartment, which overlooks the cable car route. Photo: Rick Gerharter (via the Bay Area Reporter).

    Funded with a $2.3 million allocation from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development and the Office of Transgender Initiatives, the ‘Trans Home’ on Washington Street will provide a ‘safe shelter and supportive services for 13 new residents, who will share a three-story building with 13 bedrooms, three kitchens and a common living space,’ according to the report.

    The apartments, which have mirror floor plans, feature wood floors throughout and original moldings and other decorative details. In the second-floor flat, the right side front room has a covered over tile fireplace and mantel, while the back room features a built-in wall cabinet with glass-paneled doors.

    Each bedroom will have a locked door for the privacy of the residents. They will be asked to abide by a set of rules appropriated from the ones Larkin Street uses with its youth tenants. After three violations, the residents will be asked to leave, said Newman. –Bay Area Reporter

    Residents will be allowed to live in the house rent-free for a year while receiving assistance with finding a longer-term place to live, according to the report.

    “I think it is great. I love the location,” said Trans Home’s first resident, 60-year-old Jane Cordova, adding “I like to cook … I am the mother of the house.”

    Come February Jane Cordova will move out of a shelter for LGBT adults in San Francisco’s Mission district for her own room in a Chinatown apartment. The scalloped windows in her bedroom will look out onto the city’s famed cable car line, which stops mere feet away.

    Cordova, 60, a transgender woman, is the first resident selected for the Trans Home SF on Washington Street, the city’s first transitional housing program for transgender and gender-nonconforming adults. The program aims to provide apartments for 12 individuals age 25 and older who will be able to live rent-free for a year as they receive support in landing a job, enrolling in school, and saving money to move into their own apartment. –Bay Area Reporter

    “Housing affordability and homelessness continue to impact our most marginalized communities, including our trans community members, who are 18 times more likely to experience homelessness,” said Mayor London Breed in a Thursday ribbon-cutting ceremony.

    “Increasing housing and ensuring equity across our City is my top priority, which is why I am so proud to open San Francisco’s first Trans Home on Washington Street. This new program will provide trans people with the safety and support they as they find a permanent home in San Francisco,” she added.

    While there are some shelters across the nation who serve the homeless LGBTQ community, temporary housing for members of the community can be especially difficult.

    Even in San Francisco — a city historically seen as a place where trans people would converge — one of every two trans San Franciscans have experienced homelessness.

    The space is part of the Our Trans Home SF program, an initiative that supports hundreds of members of the TGNC community by offering help with case management, rental subsidies and housing navigation. –NY Daily News

    Transgender respondents surveyed in 2015 revealed that 70% feel they have been mistreated in some form or another because of their gender orientation – including being evicted from shelters, physically attacked, verbally harassed or sexually assaulted.

    “The new program in San Francisco is clearly filling a void that exists in in safe and affirming spaces for transgender people,” said Sarah McBride, Human Rights Campaign national press secretary in a statement to the Daily News, adding “For far too many transgender people who are struggling with housing insecurity, safe and affirming-shelter remains out of reach.”

    McBride is “absolutely hopeful” that other cities will follow suit.

    “There are a number of different steps that hat can and should be taken to address both housing and security for the trans community, and also the specific fear around discrimination in short-term living shelters,” she said, adding “And that includes the need for cities, states and our federal government to pass clear protections from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in employment, housing, public spaces and government funding.”

    Eight residents have already been selected to live in Trans House, while five more will join once the third-floor units are open.

    In October, the city awarded $1.15 million to two nonprofits to provide direct rental subsidies to transgender and gender-nonconforming people in their homes or to help them find housing.

    “The ongoing housing crisis in our city continues to impact our most marginalized communities including our trans community,” read a statement from Breed. “Meanwhile the community continues to be under constant attack by the federal administration who is attempting to legalize discrimination and erase transgender people. The Our Trans Home SF program is a vital step forward in assuring our trans community is housed, safe, and can thrive in San Francisco.”


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 18:45

    Tags
    Social Issues

  • The Richmond Rally Is A Perfect Example Why You Can't Trust The Media To Provide Reliable Intel
    The Richmond Rally Is A Perfect Example Why You Can’t Trust The Media To Provide Reliable Intel

    Authored by Terry Trahan via The Organic Prepper blog,

    If you’ve been watching the news in the last few days, you are sure to be aware of the Gun Rights Rally held in Richmond, VA. And, depending on which news you watch, your ideas of what happened, who attended, what the rally was about, and how it proceeded could be radically different than the person next to you at work.

    On one side, it was a show of force or terrorism by ‘white nationalists’, militias, supremacists, etc…

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    And on the other, it was a diverse and peaceful rally to show the state government of the Commonwealth of VA to not intrude further on Constitutional Rights.

    And while I definitely fall on the side of the latter, I cannot think of a better real-time example of the value of not just information, but trusting the sources, evaluating bias, and the value of collecting information from other, opposing sources and viewpoints in order to make good decisions for your survival in the urban area.

    The value of good intelligence

    In the USE&E approach, information and intelligence (in the military sense, not the intellectual sense) are some of the most valuable things we can have. It helps us make decisions, lets us see what may be happening in our world that we need to prepare for, and gives us a view of enemies, allies, neutral parties, resources, and other things to make our lives better.

    The first rule of intelligence gathering is to listen to it all, but believe none of it until you can verify it independently. This is especially true when you are inclined to trust the source.

    A popular saying in old journalism schools is; “If your mother says she loves you, verify it with three sources.” This goes double for life-saving or actionable intel. As much as you might like a radio host, you should take their information at face value until you can get it from a few different sources.

    There are a few reasons why.

    What is the reason for the information?

    In a mass media endeavor, information is not the prime reason for a show. Advertisers are.

    There is a certain alternative host that is known as the greatest water filter salesman in history, and this is for a reason. No matter what knowledge he puts out, his primary job is delivering for advertisers.

    It doesn’t mean his information is wrong or right, it means you need to take it for what it is, and get other, corroborating stories that will either prove or disprove it.

    Look out for willful disinformation and propaganda

    The next category is watching out for willful disinformation. This is probably the most common and rampant occurrence when seeking sources. The cause is usually easy to see if you can maintain a neutral viewpoint as you are consuming the news or information.

    Mostly, it is doled out as half-truths dressed up as the full truth in order to advance an agenda, make someone look good or bad, or distract you from seeing the whole picture. The worst of it plays into your biases to keep you docile, or even worse, thinking that you are doing something worthwhile when in reality, you are just being kept busy and out of the way.

    A nasty side effect is that you will usually share the disinformation, thus spreading it to different people, and roping them into that loop. This takes advantage of the normal human instinct to share what we find important and helpful with those close to us.

    On a smaller scale, like work, for example, most of us have experience with the coworker that will half-lie for their own benefit, file false HR grievances to sabotage the competition, or various other acts using information as a weapon. This is the same thing I was talking about above, just on a different scale.

    The final category is outright propaganda used to steer a population or a person into a false belief or false action.

    We can see examples of this all around us, and the mainstream media’s behavior over the last few years can be used as a model to learn about this.

    Why you have to watch out for bad intel

    Now, after all of that, here is why I find it important to talk about this. As mentioned above, information is a currency all it’s own. It enables us to make proper decisions and act when needed.

    But there are other reasons that looking at these things is important. Time is the most valuable resource we have. We need to spend our time wisely, and wasting it on false information is dangerous. It takes our time away from things that will really help us in the world we live in and makes us waste even more time worrying about things that do not matter. Neither of these things makes our lives better or our prepping worthwhile.

    Another reason is that we need to watch against being guided or steered into harmful action, or inaction that benefits others but not ourselves.

    The main reason, however, is the need to make the decisions for the lives we live now, and the lives we want to live in the future. If we continuously follow rabbit trails, swallow unproven conspiracies, let media inflame and enrage us, we are not living and preparing for our lives. We are reacting to others and living for them.

    In the end, prepping and surviving requires us to act in our own best interest. We cannot do that if we do not have clear sight and a calm mind. We cannot help others if we do not know what is actually happening.

    We cannot make allies and find helpers if we have a false picture of who to trust or believe.

    In this case, we can become our own worst enemies. We are the only ones that can deceive ourselves to the point of danger. The more information we can trust, the less we can be susceptible to fooling ourselves based on what others try to shovel us.

    Be skeptical.

    Sometimes it is obvious that we are seeing a piece of disinformation, and sometimes it plays on a blindspot we have. Many of the false “be aware of this” viral posts on Facebook take advantage of our lack of knowledge of criminal behavior. Like the posts recently warning women about the zip tying of windshield wipers as a prelude to being abducted. If you don’t know how this actually happens, you will be worried about a false problem, and not looking for real danger signs, thus making you less safe.

    In the future, I will be talking about warning networks, neighborhood networks, how to set up varying networks locally, and things to pay attention to in an urban environment to stay safe and prepared. We will also discuss various tricks of the trade and ways to get by. But none of that information will help if you cannot trust the sources you receive your information from.

    Be skeptical.

    Be realistic.

    Trust your gut.

    Be discerning.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 18:25

  • UK Researcher Predicts Over 250,000 Chinese Will Have Coronavirus In Ten Days
    UK Researcher Predicts Over 250,000 Chinese Will Have Coronavirus In Ten Days

    When it comes to estimating the human capital and potential fallout from a highly contagious epidemic, arguably the most important variable is the R0 (“R-naught”) value of the disease, which represents the average number of secondary cases arising from an average primary case in a entirely susceptible population. That’s the technical definition, a simpler one is that the R0, or basic reproductive number, of a contagious disease is the number of cases that a case of the disease generates over the course of its infectious period in a susceptible population. The higher this number, the more dangerous the disease, the more lethal the outcome.

    Some indicative R0s are 0.9 – 2.1 for the common flu while the 1918-1919 pandemic-causing Spanish flu was estimated to have ranged from 1.4 – 2.8, with a mean of 2. Some other notable R0s are shown below, and note that SARS was between 2 and 5:

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    So what about the R0 of 2019-nCoV, also known as the coronavirus that has claimed over three dozen lives in China and infected (at least) 1,000 people? Naturally, since the disease is most active in China which is notoriously opaque especially when it comes to matters that can cause a mass panic, the best one can do is guess, and that’s what the World Health Organization did yesterday when it issued a statement on the coronavirus epidemic with the following projection:

    Human-to-human transmission is occurring and a preliminary R0 estimate of 1.4-2.5 was presented. Amplification has occurred in one health care facility. Of confirmed cases, 25% are reported to be severe. The source is still unknown (most likely an animal reservoir) and the extent of human-to-human transmission is still not clear.

    Needless to say, while 2.5 is quite high, and in line with that of the Spanish flu epidemic  which infected about half a billion people back in 1918, killing as many as 100 million before it eventually fizzled out, the real coronavirus R0 number may end up being far higher. That is the working hypothesis of Jonathan Read, a UK expert on the transmission and evolutionary dynamics of infectious diseases, who has published a paper with four colleagues that estimates transmission parameters for the Wuhan coronavirus, calculates that the R0 of 2019-nCoV to be between 3.6-4.0 or roughly the same as SARS, and reaches a conclusion about spread of the coronavirus epidemic that is frankly terrifying.

    In “Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV: early estimation of epidemiological parameters and epidemic predictions“, Reed et al, write that with an R0 of between 3.6 and 4.0, roughly 72-75% of transmissions “must be prevented by control measures for infections to stop increasing.”

    This is a major problem because Reed estimates that only 5.1% of infections in Wuhan are identified (as of Jan 24), “indicating a large number of infections in the community, and also reflecting the difficulty in detecting cases of this new disease.” Furthermore, since all of this is happening in China which is not known for making the most socially-beneficial decisions under pressure, there is an ominous possibility that Reed is actually overly optimistic.

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    Reed wastes no time to get to his terrifying conclusion which is that if no change in control or transmission happens, then further outbreaks will occur in other Chinese cities, “and that infections will continue to be exported to international destinations at an increasing rate.”

    As a result, in 10 days time, or by February 4, 2020, Reed‘s model predicts the number of infected people in Wuhan to be greater than 250 thousand (with an prediction interval, 164,602 to 351,396);

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    Epidemic predictions for (A) Wuhan, (B) selected Chinese cities and (C) selected countries. Estimated detected cases are also plotted for Wuhan.

    After Wuhan, the cities with the largest outbreaks elsewhere in China are expected to be Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Chengdu.

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    Predicted epidemic sizes (number of currently infected individuals) in selected cities on 4 February 2020 assuming no change in transmissibility from current time to 4 February.

    Reed also predicts that by 4 Feb 2020, the countries at greatest risk of importing infections through air travel are Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Vietnam. In short: much of Asia will infected, and from there, the rest of the world awaits.

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    Connectivity of Wuhan to other cities and provinces in mainland China, based on total commercial airline traffic from Wuhan in January 2017.

    Critically, Reed’s model alleges that Beijing was woefully late in its response and that recently imposed “travel restrictions from and to Wuhan city are unlikely to be effective in halting transmission across China; with a 99% effective reduction in travel, the size of the epidemic outside of Wuhan may only be reduced by 24.9% on 4 February.”

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    Effect of imposing travel restrictions from/to Wuhan on 23 Jan 2020 onwards on the number of infections in other Chinese cities

    Reed’s prediction is in line with other modelling studies of travel restrictions, which find that reducing travel only serves to delay the epidemic reaching other locations, rather than suppressing the spread entirely. Still, it is important to note that his model only considered air travel, and did not consider the potential impact of travel restrictions relating to land transportation.

    That said, Reed admits there is a chance that he is wrong, largely due to using flawed assumptions:

    Our findings are critically dependent on the assumptions underpinning our model, and the timing and reporting of confirmed cases, and there is considerable uncertainty associated with the outbreak at this early stage.

    Yet even with these caveats in mind, Reed’s work suggests that a basic reproductive number for this 2019-nCoV outbreak is materially, perhaps catastrophically higher compared to other emergent coronaviruses, “suggesting that containment or control of this pathogen may be substantially more difficult.”

    Even assuming that most of Reed’s assumptions are overly harsh and pessimistic, his summary leaves little hope that the Coronavirus epidemic will be contained any time soon:

    “We are still in the early days of this outbreak and there is much uncertainty in both the scale of the outbreak, as well as key epidemiological information regarding transmission. However, the rapidity of the growth of cases since the recognition of the outbreak is much greater than that observed in outbreaks of either SARS or MERS-CoV. This is consistent with our higher estimates of the reproductive number for this outbreak compared to these other emergent coronaviruses, suggesting that containment or control of this pathogen may be substantially more difficult.”

    Finally, while Reed makes no observations on the potential mortality associated with nCoV, one can make a broad observation: late on Friday, China’s Hubei province reported 15 additional coronavirus deaths, which added to the previously reported 26 casualties, bringing the total to 41. And with roughly 1,100 confirmed cases, this means that the mortality rate of the diseases has just jumped from roughly 2.5% to 4%. Which means that if Reed is correct, and if 250,000 people in Hubei alone will be infected by February 4, no less than 10,000 Chinese people will be dead in the next 2-3 weeks.

    What happens after that – with China effectively paralyzed by fear and the economy grinding to a halt as nobody leave their home – is anyone’s guess.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 18:12

  • Absurdistan: MO Librarians Face Year In Jail For Not Banning "Prurient" Books
    Absurdistan: MO Librarians Face Year In Jail For Not Banning “Prurient” Books

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, your finances, and your prosperity.

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    Which specific body parts can women expose before being sex offenders?

    After installing fiberglass insulation, Tilli Buchanan and her husband stripped off their shirts in the garage for safety reasons.

    They didn’t want to track any of the debris into the house. While walking topless to the shower, Tilli’s stepchildren saw her bare chested.

    Two years later, the children’s biological mother reported the incident to authorities.

    Tilli was charged with “child sex abuse” under Utah criminal code 76-9-702.5(2)(a)(ii)(B) for exposing “the female breast below the top of the areola. . .”

    Rather than argue that this specific incident was not sexual, Tilli opted to challenge the entire law.

    She claimed that the law is unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. She and her husband were in the exact same state of undress, but she was charged with a crime, and he was not.

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    What has unfolded in the courts is a lengthy and ridiculous discussion about male and female body parts, and what constitutes lewdness.

    Unfortunately for Tilli, the judge ruled against her, and she could face prison time, plus ten years on the sex offender registry.

    Click here to read the full ruling.

    *  *  *

    Missouri bill proposes imprisonment for librarians who don’t ban books

    A Missouri bill would create “community oversight boards,” (i.e. censorship boards) to decide what books are appropriate for certain ages.

    The bill says children should not have access to any book which includes descriptions of sexual content that “appeals to the prurient interest of minors.”

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    And according to the bill, sexual content includes even mere mentions of nudity.

    Bear in mind– we’re not just talking about the Game of Thrones books, which are pretty clearly intended for adult audiences.

    This applies to even classics like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, and of course, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. 

    There are dozens more.

    The ban would be in effect at all town libraries across the state. And if librarians don’t aggressively enforce the book ban, they could face a year in prison.

    Just imagine A YEAR IN PRISON because some eighth grader was reading Shakespeare.

    What’s even more interesting is that the bill doesn’t seem to think violence is inappropriate.

    So the murder of two children in Lord of the Flies would be fine, but not the innocent skinny-dipping in the lagoon.

    Click here for the full story.

    *  *  *

    County threatens to demolish Amish homes for code violations

    Amish people are exercising their religious freedom to live a simple life without any technology. And most state and local governments tend to leave them alone.

    But for some reason, a Michigan county decided to pick a fight with the local Amish community.

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    County officials posted notices on several Amish houses that their homes were unfit for human occupation because they did not have modern plumbing.

    The county says unless they are brought up to code, the houses will be demolished.

    Click here for the full story.

    *  *  *

    12 years in prison for possession of phone

    Willie Nash was booked on a misdemeanor charge and spent some time in a Mississippi jail.

    During the booking process, the jail staff failed to take the man’s phone.

    Willie clearly didn’t know that there was a ban on phones, or else didn’t think it was a huge deal, because he asked a jailer to charge the phone for him.

    The jailer confiscated the phone, reported the incident, and Willie was charged with possession of a phone in jail.

    In Mississippi, the possession of a phone while in jail carries a prison sentence of 3 to 15 YEARS.

    The judge, feeling especially lenient, magnanimously opted to sentence the man to a patry TWELVE years instead of the maximum fifteen.

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    For having a phone. Because the jail staff’s failure during booking.

    Willie appealed, and the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that the twelve year sentence was perfectly reasonable.

    Click here for the full story.

    *  *  *

    And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 17:45

    Tags
    Law Crime

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 24

Today’s News 24th January 2020

  • Turkey Demands Greece "Demilitarize" 16 Aegean Islands Amid Gas Drilling Dispute
    Turkey Demands Greece “Demilitarize” 16 Aegean Islands Amid Gas Drilling Dispute

    At a moment tensions are soaring over Turkey’s expansive East Mediterranean claims, and after starting early last summer it began sending oil and gas exploration and drilling ships off Cyprus’ coast, Ankara is demanding that Greece “demilitarize” its islands in the Aegean Sea, reports Bloomberg. 

    The demand from Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, who formally requested Greece move to withdraw armed forces and weaponry from 16 Aegean islands near Turkey on Wednesday, is rich given it’s Turkey that’s been provocatively sending warships and military jets to accompany illegal gas drilling in the area, something lately condemned by the EU.

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    Greek islands file image (Lemnos)

    “Greece, arming 16 out of 23 islands with non-military status, in violation of agreements in the Aegean sea, should act in accordance with international law,” said Defense Minister Akar, cited in state-run Anadolu Agency. “We expect Greece to act in line with international law and the agreements it has signed,” he added. 

    Though becoming increasingly internationally isolated over the drilling issue in EU-member Cyrpus’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Turkey has remained unmoved and at times is positively boastful about it. 

    Not shying away from admitting Turkish maritime claims now stretch from Cypriot waters all the way to Libya (based on a controversial recent maritime boundary ‘deal’ signed with the Tripoli Government of National Accord), Akar further had this to say according to state media: 

    In addition to the fight against terrorism, Turkey’s activities are ongoing in the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean, off Cyprus, and Libya, Akar said, adding that they are carried out in accordance with international law and the territorial integrity of the countries.

    Turkey is a guarantor country for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and is committed to fulfilling its responsibilities, he said.

    “The Cyprus issue is our national issue. Whatever we need to do there, we’ve done so far and will continue to do so. We will continue to protect the rights of both our own and Cypriot brothers,” he added.

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    Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, via Anadolu Agency

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for the past half-year been sending warships near Cypriot waters in order to ward off foreign competition to oil and gas research, according to Cypriot officials, also seeking to bar Cypriot ships and planes from freely traversing its own European recognized waters. 

    But Erdogan is also bumping up against other Mediterranean countries’ plans in the region — notably Israel and Egypt as well, at a moment he’s engaged in multiple crises both domestic and related to the West — even as Turkey has long sought EU membership.

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    Greece’s recognized waters and Exclusive Economic Zone (above) vs. Turkey’s proposed and expansive maritime claims (blue, below), with areas it now demands Athens must “demilitarized” in red.

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    And the above has since extended out to here via deal signed with Tripoli’s GNA:

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    Turkey has in the past demanded that Cyprus formally recognize the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (since 1974) and allow it to share revenues from Cypriot gas exploration. 

    Furthermore Turkey has laid claim to a waters extending a whopping 200 miles from its coast, brazenly asserting ownership over a swathe of the Mediterranean that even cuts into Greece’s exclusive economic zone.


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 01/24/2020 – 01:00

    Tags
    Environment
    Politics

  • They Killed King For The Same Reason They Killed Kennedy
    They Killed King For The Same Reason They Killed Kennedy

    Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    Amidst all the anti-Russia brouhaha that has enveloped our nation, we shouldn’t forget that the U.S. national-security establishment — specifically the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI — was convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent who was spearheading a communist takeover of the United States.

    This occurred during the Cold War, when Americans were made to believe that there was a gigantic international communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world.

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    The conspiracy, they said, was centered in Moscow, Russia — yes, that Russia!

    That was, in fact, the justification for converting the federal government to a national-security state type of governmental structure after the end of World War II. The argument was that a limited-government republic type of governmental structure, which was the nation’s founding governmental system, was insufficient to prevent a communist takeover of the United States. To prevail over the communists in what was being called a “Cold War,” it would be necessary for the federal government, they said, to become a national-security state so that it could wield the same type of sordid, dark-side, totalitarian-like practices that the communists themselves wielded and exercised.

    The conviction that the communists were coming to get us became so predominant, primarily through official propaganda and indoctrination, especially in the nation’s public (i.e., government) schools, that the matter evolved into mass paranoia. Millions of Americans became convinced that there were communists everywhere. Americans were exhorted to keep a careful watch on everyone else, including their neighbors, and report any suspicious activity, much as Americans today are exhorted to do the same thing with respect to terrorists.

    Some Americans would even look under their beds for communists. Others searched for communists in Congress and within the federal bureaucracies, even the Army, and Hollywood as well. One rightwing group became convinced that even President Eisenhower was an agent of the Soviet government.

    In the midst of all this national paranoia, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the CIA became convinced that King was a communist agent. When King began criticizing U.S. interventionism in Vietnam, that solidified their belief that he was a communist agent. After all, they maintained, wouldn’t any true-blue American patriot rally to his government in time of war, not criticize or condemn it? Only a communist, they believed, would oppose his government when it was committed to killing communists in Vietnam.

    Moreover, when King began advocating for civil rights, especially in the South, that constituted additional evidence, as far as the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon were concerned, that he was, in fact, a communist agent, one whose mission was to foment civil strife in America as a prelude to a communist takeover of America. How else to explain why a black man would be fighting for equal rights for blacks in nation that purported to be free?

    The website kingcenter.org points out:

    After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict saying, “There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband Martin Luther King Jr…. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal governments were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband.”

    And why not? Isn’t it the duty of the U.S. national-security state to eradicate threats to national security? What bigger threat to national security than a person who is supposedly serving as an agent for the communists and also as a spearhead for an international communist conspiracy to take over the United States?

    State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after the federal government was converted into a national-security state. As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual that trained its agents in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA’s role in state-sponsored assassinations.

    In 1954, the CIA targeted the democratically elected president of Guatemala for assassination because he was reaching out to Russia in a spirt of peace, friendship, and mutual co-existence. In 1960-61, the CIA conspired to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the head of the Congo because he was perceived to be a threat to U.S. national security. In the early 1960s, the CIA , in partnership with the Mafia, the world’s premier criminal organization, conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, a country that never attacked or invaded the United States. In 1973, the U.S. national-security state orchestrated a coup in Chile, where its counterparts in the Chilean national-security establishment conspired to assassinate the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, by firing missiles at his position in the national palace.

    The mountain of circumstantial evidence that has accumulated since November 1963 has established that foreign officials weren’t the only ones who got targeted as threats to national security. As James W. Douglas documents so well in his remarkable and profound book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, the U.S. national-security establishment also targeted President John F. Kennedy for a state-sponsored assassination as well.

    Why did they target Kennedy?

    For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination — they concluded that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national security.

    After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of “defense” contractors and sub-contractors.

    That’s when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy’s fate. That’s also what had sealed the fate of President Arbenz in Guatemala and what would seal the fate of President Allende in Chile. (See FFF’s bestselling book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. Also see FFF’s bestselling book The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger and his recently published The Kennedy Autopsy 2.”)

    But what many people often forget is that one day after his Peace Speech at American University, Kennedy delivered a major televised address to the nation defending the civil rights movement, the movement that King was leading.

    What better proof of a threat to national security than that — reaching out to the communist world in peace and friendship and then, one day later, defending a movement that the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced was a spearhead for the communist takeover of the United States?

    The loss of both Kennedy and King constituted conclusive confirmation that the worst mistake in U.S. history was to abandon a limited-government republic type of governmental system in favor of a totalitarian governmental structure known as a national-security state. A free nation does not fight communism with communist tactics and an omnipotent government. A free nation fights communism with freedom and limited government.

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    There is no doubt what both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. would have thought about a type of totalitarian-like governmental structure that has led our nation in the direction of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, sanctions, embargoes, regime-change operations, and massive death, suffering, and destruction, not to mention the loss of liberty and privacy here at home.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 23:45

    Tags
    Politics

  • The Future We Deserve: Your App-Enabled Dildo Or Butt Plug Could Be Spying On You
    The Future We Deserve: Your App-Enabled Dildo Or Butt Plug Could Be Spying On You

    Modern times come with modern problems, undoubtedly. 

    And look no further for proof of that than a recent C|Net write up detailing how some internet enabled sex toy manufacturers may not be taking privacy as seriously as one might like – especially given the sensitive nature of the types of data it is collecting.

    And enabled sex toys are big business. In November of last year, we highlighted how one Nevada brothel was using sex robots and internet-enabled toys to help “satisfy” its customers. 

    Sex was on full display at the CES in Las Vegas last week, with all types of internet enabled toys on display. Almost all of these toys connect to apps, which then, in turn, collect data. There are apps that monitor orgasms, save vibration patterns and let you connect with your long-distance partner’s toy. 

    And while some in the industry are taking security seriously, the rest of the products are “all over the map”, according to Nicole Schwartz, a researcher for Internet of Dongs (yes, that is actually her company’s name). 

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    She said: “Two out of three of these companies are not conscientious about security. The ones you are going to see at CES are obviously a little more tech-minded, so you’re seeing a particularly biased section of the market.” 

    Back in 2016, when the industry was still budding, Brad Haines founded Internet of Dongs after discovering just how bad security was for sex-toy apps. “It was rather terrifying at the beginning, just how bad it was, This was an industry that never had to deal with connectivity before. There’s no one around to say, ‘That doesn’t seem like a good idea,'” he said.

    The device isn’t so much the issue – the app software is where compromises are “more likely” to happen, he notes.

    And it isn’t just software that can be compromised that users have to worry about, it’s companies’ misuse of their data. One company, Hong Kong-based Hytto, was accused of “secretly stor[ing] and monitor[ing] the personal data of users of its Lush vibrator — including the time and date of use — without their consent.”

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    The company’s chief marketing officer responded: “We don’t sell our users’ data, and we only use it for customer service issues, and we wipe those logs regularly.”

    We bet you do. 

    Soum Rakshit, CEO of another internet enabled sex toy company, MysteryVibe said: “We have no profiles, because we strongly believe nothing is unhackable. A lot of people spend months debating the color of a product. If we can give security the same level of design importance, then we won’t have to worry about it later. The biggest selling point is it saves you time and money if you do it in the beginning.” 

    Internet of Dongs researcher Schwartz offered several things you can do if you’re in the market for a toy and want to do your research: “Check their website and see — do they require you to create an account? Do they talk about security? Are they specific at all — do they say things like ‘We encrypt everything’?” 

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    The consequences of playing it fast and loose (no pun intended) with data are real. They led sex tech company We-Vibe into a lawsuit that ultimately cost them $3.75 million in 2016. 

    And this isn’t the only risk that internet-enabled sex toy owners take on. Last September, we also wrote about criminals were hacking these devices and sexually assaulting people using them.

    Welcome to the future we all deserve. 


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 23:25

    Tags
    Technology Internet

  • The American Chaos Machine – Mad Policies For A Mad World
    The American Chaos Machine – Mad Policies For A Mad World

    Authored by US Army Major (ret.) Danny Sjursen, via TomDispatch.com,

    In March 1906, on the heels of the U.S. Army’s massacre of some 1,000 men, women, and children in the crater of a volcano in the American-occupied Philippines, humorist Mark Twain took his criticism public. A long-time anti-imperialist, he flippantly suggested that Old Glory should be redesigned “with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.”

    I got to thinking about that recently, five years after I became an antiwar dissenter (while still a major in the U.S. Army), and in the wake of another near-war, this time with Iran. I was struck yet again by the way every single U.S. military intervention in the Greater Middle East since 9/11 has backfired in wildly counterproductive ways, destabilizing a vast expanse of the planet stretching from West Africa to South Asia.

    Chaos, it seems, is now Washington’s stock-in-trade. Perhaps, then, it’s time to resurrect Twain’s comment – only today maybe those stars on our flag should be replaced with the universal symbol for chaos.

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    After all, our present administration, however unhinged, hardly launched this madness. President Trump’s rash, risky, and repugnant decision to assassinate Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani on the sovereign soil of Iraq was only the latest version of what has proven to be a pervasive state of affairs. Still, that and Trump’s other recent escalations in the region do illustrate an American chaos machine that’s gone off the rails. And the very manner — I’m loathe to call it a “process” — by which it’s happened just demonstrates the way this president has taken American chaos to its dark but logical conclusion.

    The Goldilocks Method

    Any military officer worth his salt knows full well the importance of understanding the basic psychology of your commander. President George W. Bush liked to call himself “the decider,” an apt term for any commander. Senior leaders don’t, as a rule, actually do that much work in the traditional sense. Rather, they hobnob with superiors, buck up unit morale, evaluate and mentor subordinates, and above all make key decisions. It’s the operations staff officers who analyze problems, present options, and do the detailed planning once the boss blesses or signs off on a particular course of action. 

    Though they may toil thanklessly in the shadows, however, those staffers possess immense power to potentially circumscribe the range of available options and so influence the future mission. In other words, to be a deft operations officer, you need to know your commander’s mind, be able translate his sparse guidance, and frame his eventual choice in such a manner that the boss leaves a “decision briefing” convinced the plan was his own. Believe me, this is the actual language military lifers use to describe the tortured process of decision-making.

    In 2009, as a young captain, fresh out of Baghdad, Iraq, I spent two unfulfilling, if instructive, years enmeshed in exactly this sort of planning system. As a battalion-level planner, then assistant, and finally a primary operations officer, I observed this cycle countless times. So allow me to take you “under the hood” for some inside baseball. I — and just about every new staff officer — was taught to always provide the boss with three plans, but to suss out ahead of time which one he’d choose (and, above all, which one you wanted him to choose). 

    Confident in your ability to frame his choices persuasively, you’d often even direct your staffers to begin writing up the full operations order before the boss’s briefing took place. The key to success was what some labeled the Goldilocks method. You’d always present your commander with a too-cautious option, a too-risky option, and a “just-right” course of action. It nearly always worked. 

    I did this under the command of two very different lieutenant colonels. The first was rational, ethical, empathetic, and tactically competent. He made mission planning easy on his staff. He knew the game as well as we did and only pretended to be fooled. He built relationships with his senior operations officers over the course of months, thereby revealing his preferred methods, tactical predilections, and even personal learning style. Then he’d give just enough initial guidance — far more than most commanders — to set his staff going in a reasonably focused fashion.

    Unfortunately, that consummate professional moved on to bigger things and his replacement was a sociopath who gave vague, often conflicting guidance, oozed insecurity in briefings, and had a disturbing penchant for choosing the most radical (read: foolhardy) option around. Sound familiar? It should! 

    Still, military professionals are coached to adapt and improvise and so we did. As a staff we worked to limit his range of options by reverse-ordering the choices we presented him or even lying about nonexistent logistical limitations to stop him from doing the truly horrific. 

    And as recent events remind us, such exercises play out remarkably similarly, no matter whether you’re dealing at a battalion level (perhaps 400 to 700 troops) or that of this country’s commander-in-chief (more than two million uniformed service personnel). The behind-the-scenes war-gaming of the boss, the entire calculus, remains the same, whether the options are ultimately presented by a captain (me, then) or — as in the recent decision to assassinate Iranian Major General Suleimani — Mark Milley, the four-star general at the helm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    Soon after President Trump’s egregious, a-strategic, dubiously legal, unilateral execution of a uniformed leader of a sovereign country, reports surfaced describing his convoluted decision-making process. Perhaps predictably, it appears that The Donald took his military staff by surprise and chose the most extreme measure they presented him with — assassinating a foreign military figure. Honestly, that this president did so should have surprised no one. That, according to a report in the New York Times, his generals were indeed surprised strikes me as basic dereliction of duty (especially given that, seven months earlier, Trump had essentially given the green light to such a future assassination — the deepest desire, by the way, of both his secretary of state and his then-national security advisor, John Bolton). 

    At this point in their careers, having played out such processes at every possible level for at least 30 years, his generals ought to have known their boss better, toiled valiantly to temper his worst instincts, assumed he might choose the most extreme measure offered and, when he did so, publicly resigned before potentially relegating their soldiers to a hopeless new conflict. That they didn’t, particularly that the lead briefer Milley didn’t, is just further proof that, 18-plus years after our latest round of wars began, such senior leaders lack both competence and integrity.

    Bush, Obama, and the Chaos Machine’s Tragic Foundations

    The current commander-in-chief could never have expanded America’s wars in the Greater Middle East (contra his campaign promises) or unilaterally drone-assassinated a foreign leader, without the militaristic foundations laid down for him by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. So it’s vital to review, however briefly, the chaotic precedents to the rule of Donald Trump. 

    Guided by a coterie of neoconservative zealots, Bush the Younger committed the nation to the “original sin” of expansive, largely unsanctioned wars as his chosen response to the 9/11 attacks. It was his team that would write the playbook on selling an ill-advised, illegal invasion of Iraq based on bad intelligence and false pretenses. He also escalated tensions with Iran to the brink of war by including the Islamic Republic in an imaginary “axis of evil” (with Iraq and North Korea) after invading first one of its neighbors, Afghanistan, and then the other, Iraq, while imposing sanctions, which froze the assets of Iranians allegedly connected to that country’s nuclear program. He ushered in the use of torture, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, illegal domestic mass surveillance, and drone attacks over the sovereign airspace of other countries — then lied about it all. That neither Congress, nor the courts, nor his successor held him (or anyone else) accountable for such decisions set a dangerous new standard for foreign policy.

    Barack Obama promised “hope and change,” a refreshing (if vague) alternative to the sins of the Bush years. The very abstraction of that slogan, however, allowed his supporters to project their own wants, needs, and preferred policies onto the future Obama experiment. So perhaps none of us ought to have been as surprised as many of us were when, despite slowly pulling troops out of Iraq, he only escalated the Afghan War, continued the forever wars in general (even returning to Iraq in 2014), and set his own perilous precedents along the way.

    It was, after all, Obama who, as an alternative to large-scale military occupations, took Bush’s drone program and ran with it. He would be the first president to truly earn the sobriquet “assassin-in-chief.” He made selecting individuals for assassination in “Terror Tuesday” meetings at the White House banal and put his stamp of approval on the drone campaigns across significant parts of the planet that followed — even killing American citizens without due process. Encouraged by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he also launched a new regime-change war in Libya, turning that land into a failed state filled with terror groups, a decision which, he later admitted, added up to a “shit show.” After vacillating for a couple years, he also mired the U.S., however indirectly, in the Syrian civil war, empowering Islamist factions there and worsening that already staggering humanitarian catastrophe.

    In response to the sudden explosion of the Islamic State — an al-Qaeda offshoot first catalyzed by the Bush invasion of Iraq and actually formed in an American prison in that country — its taking of key Iraqi cities and smashing of the American-trained Iraqi army, Obama loosed U.S. air power on them and sent American troops back into that country. He also greatly expanded his predecessor’s nascent military interventions across the African continent. There, too, the results were largely tragic and counterproductive as ethnic militias and Islamic terror groups have spread widely and civil warfare has exploded. 

    Finally, it was Obama who first sanctioned, supported, and enabled the Saudi terror bombing of Yemen, which, even now, remains perhaps the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. So it is that, from Mali to Libya, Syria to Afghanistan, every one of Bush’s and Obama’s military forays has sowed further chaos, startling body counts, and increased rates of terrorism. It’s those policies, those results, and the military toolbox that went with them that Donald J. Trump inherited in January 2017.

    The Trumpian Perfect Storm

    During the climax to the American phase of a 30-year war in Vietnam, newly elected President Richard Nixon, a well-established Republican cold warrior, developed what he dubbed the “madman theory“ for bringing the intractable U.S. intervention there to a face-saving conclusion. The president’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, recalled Nixon telling him:

    “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ and [North Vietnamese leader] Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

    It didn’t work, of course. Nixon escalated and expanded the war. He briefly invaded neighboring Cambodia and Laos, secretly (and illegally) bombed both countries, and ramped up air strikes on North Vietnam. Apart from slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents, however, none of this had a notable effect on the ultimate outcome. The North Vietnamese called his bluff, extending the war long enough to force an outright American withdrawal less than four years later. Washington lost in Southeast Asia, just as today it’s losing in the Greater Middle East.

    So it was, with the necessary foundations of militarism and hyper-interventionism in place, that Donald Trump entered the White House, at times seemingly intent on testing out his own personal “fire and fury” version of the madman theory. Indeed, his more irrational and provocative foreign policy incitements, including pulling out of the Paris climate accords, spiking a working nuclear deal with Iran, existentially threatening North Korea, seizing Syrian oil fields, sending yet more military personnel into the Persian Gulf region, and most recently assassinating a foreign leader seem right out of some madman instruction manual. And just like Nixon’s stillborn escalations, Trump’s most absurd moves also seem bound to fail.

    Take the Suleimani execution as a case in point. An outright regional war has (so far) been avoided, thanks not to the “deal-making” skills of that self-styled “stable genius” in the White House but to Iran’s long history of restraint. As retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently put it: “The leadership in Tehran is far more rational than the leadership in Washington.” 

    In fact, Trump’s unprecedented assassination order backfired at every level. He even managed briefly to unite a divided Iranian nation, caused the Iraqi government to demand a full U.S. troop withdrawal from that country, convinced Iran to end its commitment to restrain its enrichment of uranium, and undoubtedly incentivized both Tehran and Pyongyang not to commit to, or abide by, any future nuclear deals with Washington.

    If George W. Bush and Barack Obama sowed the seeds of the American chaos machine, Donald Trump represents the first true madman at the wheel of state, thanks to his volatile temperament, profound ignorance, and crippling insecurity.

    The Rapture as Foreign Policy

    All of which raises another disturbing question: What if this administration’s chaos-sowing proves an end in itself, one that coheres with the millenarian fantasies of sections of the Republican Christian Right? After all, several key figures on the Trump team — notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence — explicitly view the Middle East as evangelical Christians. Like a disturbing 73% of evangelicals (or 20% of the U.S. population), Pompeo and Pence believe that the Rapture (that is, the prophesied Christian end of the world) is likely to unfold in this generation and that a contemporary conflict in Israel and an impending war with Iran might actually be trigger events ushering in just such an apocalypse.  

    Donald Trump is, by all indications, far too self-serving, self-absorbed, and cynical to adhere to the eschatological blind-faith of the two Mikes. He clearly believes only in Donald Trump. And yet what a terrible irony it would be if, due to his perfect-storm disposition, he unwittingly ends up playing the role of the very Antichrist those evangelicals believe necessary to usher in end-times.

    Given the foundations set in place for Trump by George W. Bush and Barack Obama and his capacity to throw caution to the wind, it’s hard to imagine a better candidate to play that role.

    *  *  *

    Danny Sjursen, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now lives in Lawrence, Kansas. He has written a memoir of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vets Chris Henriksen and Keegan Ryan Miller. 


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 23:05

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • Vail Resorts Season-To-Date Skier Visits Plunge 7.8%
    Vail Resorts Season-To-Date Skier Visits Plunge 7.8%

    Maybe the consumer is too broke to ski this year? 

    A day at Vail Resorts, that is, if you rent skis and purchase a lift ticket, could cost upwards of $300 per day. And that doesn’t include lodging! 

    All said and done, a heavily indebted consumer, or let’s say a broke millennial, could spend upwards of $500 per day on ski rental, lift ticket, and lodging (ex. food expenses). 

    A typical visit to Vail isn’t just one day but rather a weekend trip. So, the consumer might spend upwards of $1,500 – all charged to their credit cards with an average rate of 17%. 

    The consumer has had to make some tough choices at the start of the 2020 ski season – it comes down to debt servicing payments, like student debt, auto loans, and credit cards, or experience a weekend at Vail. The holiday hangover, where consumers loaded up their credit cards with holiday purchases, might be another reason why they can’t afford to ski. The exact causes are unknown.  

    Vail Resorts reported Friday that the ski season, which started on January 05, was off to a very slow start compared to the beginning of last season. 

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    Season-to-date skier visits were down 7.8% compared with the first several weeks of the opening ski season last year. 

    The report said season-to-date lift ticket revenue was up 0.40% over the same period. 

    Ski school revenue was up 2%, and dining revenue was down 3% over the first several weeks compared to last year.

    Retail/rental revenue for North American resorts and ski area store locations was also down 1.8%. 

    Commenting on the start of a possible disastrous ski season is Rob Katz, Chief Executive Officer, who said: 

    “Relative to the strong conditions in the prior year, the 2019/2020 North American ski season got off to a slower start, impacting both our local and destination guest visitation in the pre-holiday period through December 19, 2019.

    “Given the strong conditions last year, the initial guidance for the fiscal year 2020 incorporated the possibility of a slower start to the season.”

    So if it’s a $300 to $500 per day or upwards of $1,500 for the weekend for a Vail trip, does the broke consumer really have that much to spend? So far, the answer to the question at the start of the season is no. 


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 22:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • The Debate Is Over: In Two Months "Not QE" Officially Becomes QE 4
    The Debate Is Over: In Two Months “Not QE” Officially Becomes QE 4

    While Neel Kashkari may be theatrically appealing to the intellect of “QE conspiracists” – which as of today in addition to Robert Kaplan, Larry Kudlow and James Gorman also includes as per the chart below Bank of America, in addition to any other person with an even modest understanding of monetary policy…

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    … to explain to him how the Fed is moving prices with its $60BN in monthly purchases of T-Bills (something we did last week), an key development is coming that will make all such debates moot: in a few months the Fed’s “Not QE” will officially become “QE 4.”

    The reason: following an update to BMO’s bill supply forecasts, the bank’s rates strategist Jon Hill sees a great likelihood that the Fed will need to reduce its “demand burden” on the bill market, i.e., there won’t be enough Bills available for the Fed to monetize without it distorting the market, and will extend the purchase program to include short coupons in the process officially ending any debate whether the Fed’s manipulation of the market under the guise of saving repo, is “Not QE”, because it is limited to Bills and thus no duration is taken out of the market, or is “QE 4”, in which the Fed purchases at least some coupon securities in addition to Bills.

    Once the Fed makes the shift, BMO expects the monthly sizes of $60 bn, or $30 bn post assumed taper, would be composed of both bills and short coupons, “helping to reduce expected pressure in the bill market. “

    At this point, Hill puts 75% odds on this change occurring by mid-March, meaning that any farcical “debate” whether the Fed’s injection of anywhere between $60 and $100BN in liquidity each month into the equity market, is or isn’t QE, will very soon be mercifully over.

    What if BMO is wrong, and the Fed does not adjust purchases to include short coups? In that case, the Canadian banks foresees a $321 billion reduction in bill supply in Q2 2020…

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    … which would be the largest quarterly drop in privately available outstandings on record.

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    Furthermore, Hill predicts that that the Treasury’s introduction of 20-year supply would also marginally contribute to reduced Q2 bill issuance.

    This squeeze is driven more by the Fed’s purchase program, rather than a sudden shift in the Treasury Department’s cash needs. Indeed, a look at borrowing needs less net coupon issuance shows Q2 2020 will be -$236 bn, essentially in line with -$229 bn in Q2 2019. In other words, what makes Q2 2020 different is the full consequences of the Fed’s footprint in the bill market.

    It is also worth noting that that these figures reflect BMO’s assumption that the Fed tapers their “reserve management program” (and soon, QE-4) from $60 billion per month to $30 billion per month in mid-March, so if the tapering does not occur, the squeeze will be that much more.

    Now, “why doesn’t the Fed stop their Bill (and soon Note) Purchases earlier?” one may ask? The short answer, according to Hill, is that the system still requires reserve injections – after all anything less and the equity market will crack – and the Fed wants to gradually reduce its repo footprint. While repo take-up from the Fed has fallen by $80 bn since year-end, there remains nearly $200 bn in demand. Since the beginning of December, the combined reserve management purchases plus repo injections has been approximately $400 bn.

    As a result, in BMO’s baseline scenario, the bill purchase program will total $390BN by the time it is unwound (before it returns again, of course). This will continue to displace demand for Fed repo operations, but not at a sufficient pace as to allow for a full stop of the reserve management purchases before Q2. Instead, and as we predicted last October, the most prudent policy adjustment per Hill, appears to be expanding the program to include short coupons in the next couple months

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    One key question which may be asked by all those who still don’t get the nuance of the debate among the “Not QE” and “QE” crowd, is “what’s the hesitation for the Fed buying coupons in addition to bills?”

    The answer is simple: by focusing only on T-bill purchases, the Fed was given a semantic loophole, and was able to fall back on Powell’s October 2019 vow that “in no sense is this QE”, since it’s easier to make the argument because it does not directly drive long-end yields down (of course, as we explained the mere continued injection of up to $100BN in liquidity each month is all the market cares about). This would also be the case if they only purchased coupons maturing in one year
    or less.

    The second reason why the Fed is reluctant to expand purchases to include short coupons is the way they have signaled their reaction function on the topic. According to BMO, “in the current framework, it appears that they would need to actually observe liquidity impairment in bills before tweaking the program details.” One reason not mentioned by BMO is that with the Fed officially set to transition to QE, it will no longer be possible for Powell to evade a discussion over the new round of monetary easing – i.e., QE4 – and the cascade of question why this is happening when unemployment is 3.5%,  when wage growth is 3.0%, and when the US economy is nowhere near a crisis like the one that launched the original QE. Unless, of course, the US is very near a crisis, and the Fed knows much more than it is letting on…

    The last question: “If the Fed pivoted to short coupons, when would they announce the change?”

    In terms of timing, the focus on disconnecting the reserve management purchases from true monetary policy makes
    it unlikely (though not impossible) that the announcement would come at an FOMC meeting. Instead, our focus will
    be on the upcoming operational announcements – the next one is February 13 at 3:00 PM ET.
    If the FOMC wanted to signal that a pivot into short coupons was imminent, we see two primary avenues: Powell’s
    press conference on January 29 (he’s sure to receive a question or two on the topic) and the January meeting Minutes
    which will be released on February 19.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 22:25

  • General Dynamics Releases New Video Of Its Next-Generation Assault Rifle
    General Dynamics Releases New Video Of Its Next-Generation Assault Rifle

    General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, tweeted a new video of its next-generation assault rifle. 

    Defense Blog said General Dynamics is developing the weapon for the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon – Automatic Rifle (NGSR-AR) program. 

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

    The NGSR-AR is expected to replace the M249 squad automatic weapon, while the NGSW-R (Rifle) will replace M4 carbine. 

    NGSR-AR and NGSW-R are expected to replace the current field weapons in the next several years. 

    These new weapons are expected to include “sophisticated technologies such as ballistic calculation, intelligent targeting and tracking capabilities, wireless communication and advanced camera-based capabilities,” said Defense Blog. 

    We’ve noted before, NGSR-AR and NGSW-R’s firepower will be able to shoot at much greater distances, able to penetrate the world’s most advanced body armor. The weapons are expected to be lightweight and have reduced acoustic and flash signature.

    Last week, the Special Operation Command (USSOCOM) granted Sig Sauer a safety certification for its new MG 338 Machine Gun, 338 Norma Mag Ammunition, and Next Generation Suppressors.

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    Last year, Textron Systems’ AAI Corporation delivered its next-generation machine gun to the Army that chambers a telescoped round between 6.5mm and 6.8mm and is expected to be another weapon that could replace either the M249 or M4 carbine. 

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    The Pentagon, flush with new cash from President Trump’s $2 trillion military spending spree, is expected to fully outfit combat troops with next-generation weapons in the next 2-4 years. 

     


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 22:05

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • $180 Billion Asset Manager: "There Is No Way Out, Fed Policies Can No Longer Be Exited Without Provoking The Next Crisis"
    $180 Billion Asset Manager: “There Is No Way Out, Fed Policies Can No Longer Be Exited Without Provoking The Next Crisis”

    When just over three years ago, TCW’s Chief Investment Officer in Fixed Income, Tad Rivelle, who oversees roughly $180BN in assets, or more than Jeff Gundlach, stated that we are now living through the third consecutive asset bubble in a row, “the central bankers’ bubble” which followed the dot com and housing bubbles…

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    … he naturally caused a stir as back then he was still one of the first established professionals to confirm and admit that this particular “tinfoil conspiracy theory” website had been right all along: the market’s performance was entirely due to the Fed, and that the longer the Fed’s “emergency” measures continued, the more locked in the central bank would be as the reverse process, namely price discovery without Fed intervention, would result in a catastrophic crisis that could even lead to global war.

    A few years later, Tad Rivelle’s then shocking report would have barely registered, as it is now common knowledge that every single market is distorted beyond comprehension due to Fed policies (with a handful of idiots still pretending that’s not true), and while everyone knows that continued central bank intervention will only make the ensuing final crash that much greater, nobody has any idea how to detach the Fed from capital markets.

    Which brings us to Rivelle’s latest note, which while far less controversial this time, still manages to hit the nail on the head with punchlines which once again excoriates the “free market” for becoming more centrally planned than the USSR had ever hoped to become.

    We urge everyone to read it.

    * * *

    The Fed Continues to Continue to Pretend

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>In his seminal work, The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam wrote how rather than being dazzled by the extraordinary resumes of the Kennedy cabinet, then Vice President Johnson remarked he’d feel a whole lot better had just a single one of them ever run for something practical, such as local sheriff. There is no denying the erudition of the modern central banker, but practically speaking, a decade and more has passed since the financial crisis, and crisis era policies are not only still with us – they have been expanded. The $60 billion per month that the Fed is now purchasing for its balance sheet is a new record rate of asset accumulation. It’s no denying: QE played a pivotal role in the bull market in everything. Yet, virtually everyone, everywhere sees the conundrum: growth fostered by rising leverage can never be sustainable. And yet, unsustainable monetary policy continues for the simple reason that ending it would bring consequences that no one can accept.

    The intended consequences of the last decade’s worth of Fed policies are obvious for all to behold. It is the unintended consequences, those that undermine the sustainability of the current asset price regime that are of most interest here.

    In the land that monetary policy forgot, when a worker worked, he received his paycheck, from which he freely consumed. Any surplus – or savings – was added to his pool of “loanable funds” which would then be auctioned out to a willing “bidder,” say a bank, a mutual fund, or a rental income opportunity. But when the 2008 crisis hit, market clearing levels for loanable funds were exorbitant. Credit was priced out of reach for all but the most pristine (prudent) borrowers, asset prices were in free fall, and a financial system that had built an excess of leverage was at risk of implosion.

    So it was with the best of intentions, the Fed initiated a suite of policies that included QE. Technocratic justifications aside, QE enabled the “printing” of new loanable funds. Unlike the worker who had to provide something of value in exchange for receipt of his loanable funds, the Fed simply conjured new funds from the electronic ether, thereby massively diluting the existing private sector pool of loanable funds. Predictably, bank deposit rates tanked, credit spreads tightened and cap rates were yanked downwards.

    Of course, an asset price inflation spurred on by an expansion of credit is exactly what Dr. Bernanke initially ordered up, though you may recall that he never intended the artificial expansion in loanable funds to be a permanent policy. That all changed with the 2013 “taper tantrum” and was reinforced by the 2018 abortive attempt by the Powell Fed to “normalize” rates and balance sheet so slowly that it was supposed to be like watching “paint dry.” Policies implemented as a response to crisis now can’t be exited without provoking the next crisis.

    Monetary policies have long since become more problem than solution. This ought not to be such a surprise as the supply side of any economy will invariably configure itself to meet its demand side. And those activities spurred by artificially cheap credit will disappear once that credit is repriced. Raising rates and normalizing the Fed’s balance sheet would now be tantamount to pulling the pegs out from the bottom of the Jenga tower. Fundamentally, you can’t exit a Potemkin economy without forcing changes in the kind and quantities of demand. But, that, of course, would force the supply side to adjust. In other words, we’d have recession.

    Exhibit 1: Fed Policies Have Lifted P/E Multiples, Yet Aggregate Profits Have Stagnated

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    * NIPA pretax profits for U.S. companies adjusted for inventory valuation (IVA) and capital consumption (CC Adj.)
    Source: BEA, Bloomberg, IMF, national central banks, TCW

    Absent a crisis, faith in the power of monetary tools to foster a healthy configuration of labor and capital has long been severely misplaced. But market forces are powerful precisely because they are rooted in practical realities. Economics is always about the management of scarcity and while expansions in the supply of credit may shift who gets to buy what resources from whom and when, the plain fact is that a scarce commodity remains so regardless of whether interest rates are high or low. While we may be glossing over notions of relative scarcity versus absolute scarcity, an approachable example, say the supply of oceanfront homes, can serve to illustrate the point.

    In the example, market forces must necessarily balance the number of people who can buy oceanfront real estate to match the scarcity of oceanfront homes. These constraints can and do, at different times, take the form of high mortgage rates, home price, or loan underwriting standards. And if sales of oceanfront homes were languishing for some reason, the Fed could “stimulate” activity by lowering mortgage rates.

    Yet while the Fed can print new loanable funds it can’t add to the supply of oceanfront real estate. So when access to such real estate is no longer limited by say high mortgage rates, home prices will necessarily rise so that a proper rationing mechanism remains in place for the scarce commodity. Indeed, is this not an apt metaphor for what has happened to the price of much U.S. real estate across many metropolitan areas?

    While a card carrying Keynesian would point out that rising real estate prices is “obviously” stimulative because higher prices spur such activities as home improvement adding revenue to the construction trades, one has to wonder: an instructive critique of this way of thinking can be found in the entertaining 19th century treatise by Bastiat on the fallacy of the “broken window.” Wherever you might come down on the argument, the basic point is that trying to fool Mr. Market works about as well as trying to fool Mother Nature. If monetary policy were the key to an earthly prosperity, surely all nations would have bootstrapped themselves by the simple artifice of helicopter money.

    Indeed, rather than igniting an economic boom, cheap and abundant credit have, instead, fostered an elevation in asset prices relative to fundamentals. For instance, enterprise profits for corporate America have gone more or less nowhere for five years (Exhibit 1), but through the magic of share repurchases, higher EPS has helped lift stock prices. In a similar vein, covenant lite loans have enabled private equity to purchase businesses at high multiples all the while retaining an abundance of optionality vis-à-vis the loan/noteholder that has been unprecedented. In short, the right side of the corporate balance sheet can be profoundly altered by central bank policy, but long-term growth is a function of businesses operating more effectively, a reality that shows itself not on the right but rather on the left side of the balance sheet. Operational improvements work best when the incentives to do so are market based – not when credit is artificially cheap.

    Exhibit 2: Covenant-Lite Loans As % of All Newly Issued Institutional Loans

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    Source: LCD, S&P Global Market Intelligence

    And, this brings us full circle to the reality of the past decade: credit binges are always popular because while the benefits of leverage come today, the costs of bad debt come tomorrow. Improving a business or learning a skill requires dedication and hard work. Monetary “stimulus” offers a siren like promise of effortless prosperity yet ignores the reality that credit binges always sow the seeds of their future destruction.

    If this sounds a tad abstract, consider September 15 last. On that day, the normally dull as dishwater overnight repo lending rate soared to an astonishing 10% annualized rate. A shocked Fed felt compelled to “do something,” which these days invariably means adding still further to the pool of loanable funds. The size of the add (via the Fed’s T-bill purchases and expansion of its repo facility) has been nearly a cool half-trillion, well over half of the total size of the Fed’s pre-crisis balance sheet. The Fed justified adding this tidal wave of liquidity notwithstanding its characterization that what happened was a mere “technical” glitch in the repo market. Technical, really? A practical take is that the market is talking to the best and brightest minds in central banking, and the Fed doesn’t like what it’s hearing: the repo market wants to clear at rates above the Fed’s IOER fiat rate, which, if allowed to do so, would likely invert the front-end of the yield curve. Inverting curves sounds a bit too much like ending a credit binge, leading to recession, and so the Fed’s response function is to “veto” (Latin for “I forbid”) the market’s signal. Now, who’s fooling whom?

    And, so the Fed continues to continue to pretend the cycle need never end. But markets will be what they must be, and investors must face the consequences of the last decade’s credit binge…tomorrow.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 21:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Audio: Harvey Weinstein Threatens Actress Over Massage; Accuser Breaks Down In Tears For 'Letting Him Rape Her'
    Audio: Harvey Weinstein Threatens Actress Over Massage; Accuser Breaks Down In Tears For ‘Letting Him Rape Her’

    Journalist Ronan Farrow has released an audio recording of Harvey Weinstein threatening actress Amber Guttierez with missing out on ‘big opportunities’ if she didn’t trust her and do “relaxing things” with him such as “Massages” and “something fun,” that her career would suffer.

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    “If you want to spend time with me I will mentor you, I will teach you or whatever but you have to, you know, relax with me, have fun, enjoy,” Weinstein can be heard on the covert recording used in a failed 2015 sting orchestrated by the NYPD.

    “What things?” asks Guttierez.

    “Nothing, just relaxing things. Massages, something fun,” Weinstein replies.

    After the back-and-forth continues, the disgraced movie mogul says “If you do not trust me, then we have no reason to do anything and you will lose big opportunities.”

    In a second recording, Weinstein accuser Lucia Evans describes how she allowed Weinstein to overpower her – recalling ‘giving up’ in a 2004 incident at his Miramax office in Tribeca.

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    “I tried to struggle away but he’s a big guy, you know?” Evans told Farrow when she called him before the journalist released his bombshell report on Weinstein.

    “So he overpowered me but I don’t know if I, along the process, I think I just sort of gave up,” she added, while breaking into tears.

    “Right? Like that’s where I feel like… if he 1000 percent forced me and I was like screaming and like fighting him to the death I would feel like a little more proud of this whole situation but I think.”

    Weinstein will return to court in Manhattan on Tuesday for his ongoing trial for five counts of sexual assault. If convicted on all of them, he faces life in prison.

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    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 21:25

    Tags
    Human Interest

  • China's Cultural "Group-Think" Is Worth Exploring
    China’s Cultural “Group-Think” Is Worth Exploring

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

    For decades China has been pushing its people towards a more “homogeneous way of thinking.” This article is focused on exploring some of the cultural “group-think” countries tend to breed into their population. This is especially true in a country like China where the controlling party assumes the role of plotting society’s course “for the greater good.” I’m very concerned that governments across the world will up their game when it comes to shaping public opinion. Across the world, all the new technology available is rapidly tightening the noose around the neck of individual thought.

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    China’s Cultural And “Group Think”

    Reducing political descent was a core principle of the cultural revolution led by Mao Tse-tung. The Red Guards formed by his youthful followers conducted a mass purge of the “undesirables.” They then went on to send the young intellectuals living in the cities into the countryside to be “re-educated” through hard manual labor. This is an example of how propaganda can turn a population to a single focus and direction which causes its members can march in lockstep. With this in mind, it has only been in the last couple of  years that the narrative of China being a threat to America has been bantered about. Before that America was busy patting itself on its back for bringing a backward China into the modern world.

    Recently a person commenting on another article wrote;

    I have worked in China several times over the years and the rate of change has been incredible. In 1976, state store shelves were nearly empty, later, huge multistory department stores were packed with Western-style goods and customers. But, the people were not totally happy. The Chinese have been described as bandits with a thin patina of civilization.  They are as greedy as the West used to be for social progress.

    Younger Americans seem to seek after this Chinese ‘miracle,’ thinking that Communism is responsible for the wealth increase.  In reality, it is Communism with a capitalist bent. When this slows down we will be “equal.”  Then America will follow China back to individualism and populism as was common in an earlier China and the West.

    This person may or may not have a good grasp of where things are headed. With this in mind, trying to understand and learn about different cultures is important. The world is at a place in its development where individuals may soon lose their ability to influence the path forward. This means our future is becoming more concentrated in the hands of a few. These elite have assumed the role of leading and shaping society. The problem with this is these so-called leaders will most likely be quick to place their best interest solidly in front of those they govern.

    We get a rather different view of China and its people from these videos posted online from two young well-grounded fellas that have lived there for a while. It is a bit different from what has been portrayed over the last few decades by mainstream media. Below are a slew of their videos currently on YouTube. In their videos, they give their take on the area from a boots on the ground perspective rather than an economist view from an ivory tower. This means they seem to look at the Chinese and its current culture from the bottom up rather than the top down. I highly recommend this “ADVChina” series. It is more or less an Adventure Travel show on motorbikes, while it may not be super polished, it is real.

    * This video gives their take on China’s lack of interest and sensitivity to other cultures. 

    * China has a phrase, and it’s “mei ban fa”. You will hear this everywhere you go. Can you fix this? This is very important in understanding the Chinese “no solution I don’t care attitude.”

    * In this video, the guys give their take on China’s “Belt and Road” initiative which they see as problematic and declare it will be a failure.

    * Ghost City-Inside The China Housing Bubble (very important-7 minutes in) they explain this deck of cards. If you listen closely you can almost hear the empty buildings deteriorating in the distance.

    * Living in Japan versus China

    * The secrets of Chinese HOTELS

    * Collectivism vs. Individualism is a major mental block for people in different countries. They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both and why China will beat America

    * The fellas talk about China’s dystopian social credit system which we have heard so much about.

    Without a doubt, China is far less polarized and divided than America where people seem unable to agree on much of anything. The Chinese people, however, appear far more accepting and less willing to take responsibility for much of anything. Individuality runs strong in the human animal, there are pros and cons about the fact we can agree on so little. This is why so many people desire to create a homogeneous society. This is perhaps the most ancient, universal, and subconscious goal that leaders have sought to achieve. This idea stands as a utopian goal where humanity can flourish without strife and conflict.

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    Forced group-think is evident in how China treats the millions of its citizens that do not make an effort to march in step. It is also why many Americans recoil at the thought of it happening here. The ruling Communist Party in China has built “re-education camps” in an attempt to bring these people into the “modern, civilized” world promote what the government calls “ethnic unity” but in simpler terms, the apparent goal is to force detainees to embrace the Chinese communist party and an effort to fully control the hearts and minds of its population. Much of this is aimed at the ethnic minorities of Uighurs in the western region of Xinjiang.

    China’s Great Fire Wall which is considered the largest, most extensive and most advanced Internet censorship regime in the world censors content critical of the Chinese government or contrary to Communist Party policy is key to this suppression. Another is that people simply “disappear” in China and their families are left with little or no information as to where they have gone. The term “group-think” is sometimes associated with George Orwell. He wrote about how the power of groupthink tends to be infectious. Shades of this are exposed in the videos.  I contend that China’s culture suffers from a kind of deteriorating mental efficiency. This includes a reduced ability to deal with reality and moral judgments due to in-group pressures to think as one.

    It is becoming clear the desire for achieving harmony, conformity, and cohesiveness through group-think comes at a cost. The advantage of allowing diversity is that it increases the competition of ideas and brings out the best in people. If you don’t want every place and every person to be exactly alike it means learning to accept that humanity is by nature fragmented and rejecting the idea we would be drastically better off is society was one homogeneous group. We do not need to be indoctrinated into thinking alike but must learn to be more tolerant.

    The overriding advantage of a fragmented world is that it offers a competitive environment for economic, social, and judicial systems. All of these play huge roles in our culture and have been the driving force of human progress. Circling back to the issue of the above videos, if you take a gander at one or more, you might find they give you a bit more hope that things here in America are not nearly as bad as we are often led to believe.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 21:05

  • Pharma Founder Gets 66 Months For Bribing Doctors To Overprescribe Deadly Opioids
    Pharma Founder Gets 66 Months For Bribing Doctors To Overprescribe Deadly Opioids

    Millions of Americans who lived through the financial crisis probably recall that not a single executive of a major investment bank was jailed in the aftermath, despite running organizations seemingly dedicated to perpetuating a criminal fraud on nearly every counterparty and client.

    But when Americans look back at the opioid crisis, they’ll remember that at least one executive of a major opioid manufacturer and distributor was sentenced to a fairly weighty sentence – five-and-a-half years (66 months) in federal prison – for an illegal kickback scheme that effectively involved bribing doctors to prescribe potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. That’s right: Packaged under the name brand Subsys, Insys sold a painkiller made from the same ultra-powerful synthetic opioid responsible for tens of thousands of deaths across America.

    According to the FT, which, in partnership with PBS’s Frontline, is producing a documentary on the opioid crisis, John Kapoor, the founder of Insys, was sentenced to prison time on Thursday after being prosecuted under the RICO act – a law adopted decades ago to help the DoJ prosecute the mafia.

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    Kapoor

    Kapoor joins seven other Insys executives who have already received jail time for their role in the company’s illegal shenanigans, which included uses “ruthless” sales tactics to encourage doctors to prescribe more of their drug. Several doctors who took money from the company in exchange for kickbacks transparently disguised as speaking fees are also either being prosecuted, or have already been sentenced to jail time.

    Earlier on Thursday, Alec Burlakoff, Insys’s former head of sales and one of the government’s key cooperating witnesses accepted a sentence of 26 months in prison. The jail sentences were handed down despite a long tradition of allowing big pharma to skate by with fines that often amounted to a slap on the wrist.

    Subsys was approved by the FDA to target so-called “breakthrough pain”, something experienced by many patients with advanced cancer. But most of the doctors Insys targeted weren’t oncologists. The company encouraged them to prescribe the drug “off label” – meaning not for its approved purpose – to treat normal chronic pain.

    Kapoor is a serial entrepreneur who immigrated to the US from India in his early 20s. The fentanyl spray that was the company’s main product was approved in 2012.

    Under the company’s kick-back scheme, doctors who prescribed large quantities of the drug could earn up to $125,000 a year in speaking fees.

    The company depended on sales associates whom Kapoor described as “PHD” – “poor, hungry and desperate” or “poor, hungry and dumb.” One of the sales reps who got mixed up in the prosecution was a former stripper, a detail from the investigation that was widely covered in the press.

    Kapoor’s insistence that the company meticulously track the ROI from its illegal kickback scheme is what eventually did him in. Prosecutors managed to get their hands on a spreadsheet calculating the return on investment for every dollar spent on doctor “honorariums”. Kapoor insisted that, for every dollar a doctor received, they must bring in at least $2 in sales for Insys.

    Kapoor’s legal team insisted that their client was unfairly portrayed as a “caricature of a mob boss” by the prosecution. But the firm’s “callous culture” was exemplified by a sales video featuring a “rapping bottle of Subsys” encouraging doctors to raise the dose for their patient’s – effectively encouraging them to accidentally overdose and kill their own patients.

    Burlakoff, who played the rapping Subsys bottle in the video, told the press that the video was a big part of the incriminating evidence against him. He now regrets participating in it, even though he thought it was ‘cool’ at the time.

    Fred Wyshak, the prosecutor who handled the Insys case, gained notoriety for prosecuting the mob, and having a hand in the conviction of Whitey Bulger, the former Boston crime boss who was murdered while serving a life sentence last year


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 20:45

  • The Empire's War On Oppositional Journalism Continues To Escalate
    The Empire’s War On Oppositional Journalism Continues To Escalate

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Journalist Glenn Greenwald has been charged by the Bolsonaro government in Brazil with the same prosecutorial angle used by the US to target WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

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    Per The New York Times:

    Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.”

    For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.

    Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app. The complaint charged six other individuals, including four who were detained last year in connection with the cellphone hacking.

    This argument is essentially indistinguishable from the argument currently being used by the Trump administration in charging Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. The US Department of Justice alleges that Assange attempted to provide Private Manning with advice and assistance in covering her tracks while leaking documents she already had access to, therefore making Assange party to a conspiracy against the United States.

    It is not surprising that Brazil is advancing the same war on journalism we’ve been seeing in the US, UK, Australia and France. With the election of the overtly fascist Jair Bolsonaro in October 2018 (an election whose corrupt foundations were exposed by Greenwald’s reporting with The Intercept Brasil), the Brazilian government moved into full alignment with the the US-centralized empire, which was why his inauguration was enthusiastically celebrated by characters like Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu.

    In exactly the same way we saw a coordination between the US, UK, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia to immobilize, and then silence, and then imprison Julian Assange, we are seeing a uniform movement toward silencing oppositional journalism throughout the entire US-centralized empire. This is because a rising China and the increasing coziness of the cluster of nations which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob greatly imperil the USA’s position as the unipolar global dominator, meaning that the empire needs to quickly shore up global control in order to avoid being surpassed and replaced by other power structures.

    In order to accomplish this there’s going to have to be a lot of nefarious behavior. A lot of military escalations, a lot of CIA coups, a lot of bullying and subversion, and a whole lot of propaganda to grease the wheels of public consent. Such large, frantic, flailing movements can be easily exposed by a free press, which is precisely why the free press is being clamped down upon now. The empire is setting all these legal precedents against oppositional journalism because it fully intends to use those precedents in the future. It fully intends to use those legal precedents in the future because it knows it’s going to have to make things ugly.

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    This is all being done to prevent the public from gaining a clear understanding of what’s really going on in their world, because if the public had a clear understanding of what’s going on in their world, the empire would forever lose its ability to control them and rule them.

    Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The imperialists understand this. The public, by and large, do not. And the imperialists intend to keep it that way.

    Glenn Greenwald has spent the last three years being falsely smeared as a stooge of authoritarian governments while he was actually doing more damage to an authoritarian government than all of his critics combined. Public trust in oppressive institutions (like the oppressive institutions that empire loyalists have been protecting by smearing Greenwald as a Kremlin agent and a Putin puppet) can be severely weakened by the exposure of their dark underbellies to the light of truth.

    The imperialists know this, and they are determined not to allow it to continue. Hence their persecution of Assange, and hence their persecution of Greenwald.

    *  *  *

    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 my website, 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, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous 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 or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 20:25

    Tags
    Entertainment Culture

  • Libya's Haftar Threatens To Target Civilian Planes, Declares Blanket 'No Fly Zone'
    Libya’s Haftar Threatens To Target Civilian Planes, Declares Blanket ‘No Fly Zone’

    With the world’s attention focused on the Coronavirus outbreak and to a lesser extent on Trump’s impeachment trial, the war in Libya just got a lot more scary in terms of the potential for mass civilian death.

    Incredibly, Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) just threatened to shoot down civilian planes after days ago declaring a ‘no fly zone’ over Tripoli following increased Turkish intervention. The BBC reports the unambiguous and shocking declaration as follows: 

    Gen Haftar’s spokesman, Ahmad al-Mesmari, said in a statement on Wednesday that “any military or civilian aircraft, regardless of its affiliation, flying over the capital will be destroyed”.

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    File image via Middle East Monitor 

    In the past days Haftar has accused Turkey, which has lately openly transferred both Turkish national army troops as well as Syrian FSA mercenaries into Tripoli to fight on behalf of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, of using the Libyan capital’s only functioning international airport as a military base. 

    It appears the LNA is saying it will consider even commercial flights as ‘fair game’ because it’s alleging Turkey and the GNA are using civilian aviation in a ‘human shield’ capacity. 

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    The BBC has further details as follows:

    The GNA branded the strikes a “flagrant threat” to the safety of air traffic and a “new violation” of a ceasefire agreed earlier this month.

    Gen Haftar’s forces did not immediately respond to the accusations, but did say they had shot down a Turkish drone after it took off from the airport.

    Mitiga is a former military airbase which has been used by civilian planes since Tripoli’s international airport was damaged in fighting in 2014.

    Pro-Haftar officials have also charged that Mitiga international airport has become a drone headquarters, and further that foreign troops are disembarking there. 

    On Wednesday Mitiga airport was forced to suspend all flights for hours after it was rocked by six surface-fired missiles by LNA militia which for months has been laying siege to Tripoli. The LNA said it was targeting foreign drones (operated by Turkey) which have been used to attack its own troops.

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    The AFP reported Thursday that after announcing indefinite closure of the airport, the GNA “decided to restore air traffic at Mitiga Airport” according to a statement published on Facebook. However, the status remains anything but clear. 

    The GNA said it plans to notify the UN Security Council of the Haftar military statement, which constitutes threat of a war crime. 

    Needless to say this is a major escalation which won’t help Haftar’s bid to curry favor within international bodies like the UN, which currently backs the Tripoli GNA.

    Haftar has rejected recent international attempts for a ceasefire, recently at summits in Moscow and Berlin. 

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    Should his forces actually do the unthinkable and down a civilian airplane, his own backers (like the UAE, Egypt, and Russia) would be forced to cut all political and military support.

    And likely more external assistance would pour in to the Tripoli GNA, alongside Turkey’s already substantial and growing military help. 


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 20:05

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • Localism In The 2020s, Part 3 – Scaling Politics
    Localism In The 2020s, Part 3 – Scaling Politics

    Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    Read Part 1 here – The 2nd Amendment Sanctuary Movement

    Read Part 2 here – Facial Recognition, Psilocybin, And Beyond

    Today’s post will outline a framework through which I’ve come to view politics, as well as life in general. It will identify and examine various units of sovereignty as they exist in the contemporary U.S., since that’s the political system I’m most familiar with. Nevertheless, the overall framework should prove useful to people living all over the world.

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    Let’s start from the beginning. The most basic and meaningful unit of sovereignty is the individual, followed by the family, the municipality/county, the state (California, New York, Texas, etc) and finally the federal government (Washington D.C.). It’s my view that within a healthy society the scope of governance should decline as you add more and more individuals to the mix. It’s at the most basic unit of sovereignty (the individual), where authority over most of life’s decisions should reside. This runs the gamut from the really big decisions, such as what sort of work to do, who to marry, what religion (if any) to believe in; to the completely mundane, such as what to eat for breakfast.

    As a person starts to add more members to their daily life in the form of a family (spouse and children), a wide range of complexities are added to the equation which call for a more expansive approach to individual agency. You suddenly find yourself sharing an intimate existence with people who are not you, and who’ll invariably have conflicting views on a wide variety of subjects, both significant and trivial. Compromise becomes necessary in the pursuit of a harmonious coexistence amongst spouses, as well as within the larger family unit, and you start to relinquish a certain degree of individual sovereignty.

    It’s important to note that the creation of a family by consenting adults tends to be a voluntary choice by which individuals agree to put some of their more selfish proclivities to the side in order to create a cohesive, expansive unit. Since the decision to form a family is in most cases voluntary, the decision to relinquish some measure of individual sovereignty is likewise voluntary. While it’s not romantic to consider the transition from an individual-centric lifestyle to a family-focused one in the context of politics and governance, it can be quite helpful.

    After the family, the next major unit of sovereignty is found at the municipal or county level. At this stage, a significantly larger number of humans have been added to the structure, ranging from thousands to millions depending on where you live. Unless you reside in the smallest of towns, this unit will consist of countless people you don’t personally know and never will. Nevertheless, a common geography will almost always lead to some level of coordination and decision-making for stuff that applies to and affects the larger unit.

    What this means in practice should be determined by those living in the communities themselves. As anyone who’s travelled extensively around the U.S. knows, distinct cities and counties tend to have very different vibes and attitudes about all sorts of life issues, and in some cases counties bordering one another even within the same state demonstrate dramatic differences. It’s important to accept this as perfectly normal and healthy, just as two neighboring families can have distinct views on all sorts of issues and still get along just fine. Each family runs their affairs as they deem appropriate.

    Moving further up the scale, political units beyond the municipality/county level in the U.S. consist of the 50 states. This is where things start getting far more complex, as you begin adding millions if not tens of millions of additional people of very diverse opinions and geography under the umbrella of a much larger governance structure. In the case of the U.S., some of these states are as large, in terms of population and economy, as entire countries. After that, there’s the dreaded federal government, which covers an unwieldly large and diverse political unit of 325 million people.

    It seems one major source of our current problems stems from an improper understanding and delegation of sovereignty along the scale of our existing political units. For example, as you move up the scale from individual, to family, to city/county, then state and finally country, you add more and more people as well as geography, and the bonds become more complex and impersonal. The political relationships also tend to become less voluntary as you move up the scale, which is meaningful. For example, it’s relatively easy and common to get up and move from one city to another, but changing national citizenship is a major ordeal which most people never consider let alone consummate.

    The nature of sovereignty and politics under this framework is that as the unit expands to more individuals, some degree of individual sovereignty is relinquished each step of the way. Equally significant, is as the units grow the voluntary nature of the relationship starts to fade. Since a political unit becomes less voluntary as it scales, the larger the unit, the less authority it should have to exercise political power in relation to the smaller, more voluntary units. Does anyone reading this actually think they have as much capacity to first understand the issues and then impact decision making in Washington D.C. as they do at the local level? As political relationships become less voluntary and fluid (lack of clear exists), the proper scope of governance should decline.

    Specifically, whatever can be done at the municipal/county level, should be done at the municipal/county level, with the larger state only chiming in when it’s absolutely necessary for decisions that require larger scale coordination. This same principle should be applied to the relationship between the states themselves and Washington D.C. What requires no input or assistance from the country-level political unit should be left to the smaller units as appropriate. Only the small number of issues that require national coordination should be considered at the country level, and even then there should be direct input from the smaller units in the form of referendums.

    The men whom the people ought to choose to represent them are too busy to take the jobs. But the politician is waiting for it. He’s the pestilence of modern times. What we should try to do is make politics as local as possible. Keep the politicians near enough to kick them. The villagers who met under the village tree could also hang their politicians to the tree. It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”

    – G. K. Chesterton

    The spirit of the U.S. Constitution is based upon this general idea, though I place more emphasis on the municipal/county level vs. the states. A good example of the proper role of the federal government as outlined in the founding document is the Bill of Rights. These consist of what are seen as inalienable individual rights that should never be infringed upon across the country irrespective of where you reside within the smaller political units. The principle here isn’t to create a structure whereby Washington D.C. is in charge of micromanaging the everyday lives of people across the land, but rather the opposite. It’s a principle aimed at preventing the micromanagement of individual sovereignty by making certain core rights unassailable.

    Though we pay lip service to checks and balances, decentralization of power and a defense of core civil liberties explicit in the U.S. Constitution, we most certainly do not live these ideals in reality. The big elephant in the room that many people still refuse to talk about is that the U.S. in 2020 is an imperial oligarchy, and an imperial oligarchy is a system defined by gross concentrations of power and centralization. Much of the frustration in the county can be traced to this state of affairs. We’ve been losing control of our individual lives and communities in order to feed the insatiable beast of empire, and worst of all, we’ve been convinced that the answer is to fight each other for this centralized power so at least our team can be in charge of the bossing around.

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    This is a twisted and deranged mindset guaranteed to end in tyranny of one flavor or another, civil conflict, or both. Nothing good can come of it, which is why I firmly believe we need to turn in the opposite direction.

    We need to turn away from Washington D.C. and focus on the smaller units of sovereignty outlined in this post, specifically the individual, the family and the municipality/county. These relationships tend to be more intimate, manageable and voluntary and, as such, should be were political life is centered. This what localism means to me.

    *  *  *

    Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 19:45

  • Russiagate Spy Paid $1 Million By Obama Was WaPo Deep Throat
    Russiagate Spy Paid $1 Million By Obama Was WaPo Deep Throat

    Stephan Halper, the longtime CIA and FBI operative who conducted espionage on the 2016 Trump campaign, was feeding information to Washington Post reporter David Ignatius through his handler, according to The Federalist, which describes his actions as “more evidence that the intelligence community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories.”

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    According to a court filing by Michael Flynn’s defense team, Halper’s ‘handler’ in the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), Col. James Baker, “regularly lunched with the Washington Post reporter.“

    (Also leaking to Ignatius was Christopher Steele)

    As we noted in May of 2018, Halper was paid over $1 million by the Obama administration through the Office of Net Assessment – nearly half of which came during ‘Russiagate’ – in which he not only surveilled multiple Trump campaign aides, he was involved in an effort to tie General Flynn to a Russian academic, Svetlana Lokhova, as part of a smear campaign.

    Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian-born English citizen and Soviet-era scholar, told The Federalist that she only realized the significance of her communications with and about Ignatius following the filing of attorney Sidney Powell’s reply brief in the Michael Flynn case.

    In last week’s court filing, Powell highlighted how the CIA, FBI, Halper, and possibly James Baker used the unnamed and unaware Lokhova and the complicit Ignatius to destroy Flynn. This James Baker is not the one who worked under James Comey at the FBI, but a James Baker in the Department of Defense Office of National Assessment. –The Federalist

    Powell wrote:

    Stefan Halper is a known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI. He was paid exorbitant sums by the FBI/CIA/DOD through the Department of Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment in 2016. His tasks seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent) Flynn met at an official dinner at Cambridge University when he was head of DIA in 2014. Flynn has requested the records of Col. James Baker because he was Halper’s ‘handler’ in the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, and ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post Reporter David Ignatius. Baker is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn’s calls to Ignatius. The defense has requested the phone records of James Clapper to confirm his contacts with Washington Post reporter Ignatius—especially on January 10, 2017, when Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of ‘take the kill shot on Flynn.’ It cannot escape mention that the press has long had transcripts of the Kislyak calls that the government has denied to the defense.

    Lokhova sued Halper and multiple MSM outlets for defamation after Halper-fuelled rumors that she was a Russian spy who had ‘honeypotted’ Flynn, which were first promoted by Lokhova’s mentor at Cambridge University – Professor Christopher Andrew, who wrote in the London Sunday Times in February 2017 that her brief meeting with Flynnn during a 2015 dinner event was the beginning of the former National Security Adviser’s relationship with a Russian spy.

    Prior to Andrew’s article, other outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the New York Times had published rumors of a Flynn connection to a supposed Russian spy, however Lokhova had no clue it was her until she was outed.

    “Halper had been pushing the story that I was a Russian spy and Flynn’s mistress since December of 2016,” Lokhova told The Federalist. “The New York Times’ Mathew Rosenberg told me a source had been circulating these stories since December 2016,” she said, adding “but they held the story until they could find a second source and someone at the Cambridge dinner.”

    In his book “The Plot Against the President,” Lee Smith confirms that the story about a Flynn-Lokhova intrigue was circulated to the press starting in December 2016.

    But it wasn’t until the Wall Street Journal published its March 17, 2017, article suggesting she had inappropriate contacts with Flynn that Lokhova discovered the earlier article Andrew had written about her for the Sunday Times, Lokhova said. Before then, within days of February 28, 2017, several journalists reached out to her for comment, including two working for the Wall Street Journal, but Lokhova didn’t know why.

    She also didn’t comprehend who the inquiring journalists were at the time. That remained true even after her mentor and unknown betrayer, Andrew, wrote Lokhova telling her that “David Ignatius of Washington Post is in UK at moment. I’ve known him for years and trust him. I’ve given him your email and he accepts that if you don’t wish to respond, that an end to it.” –The Federalist

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    Via The Federalist

    It is unknown what Andrew meant by Ignatius’s “inside track,” however the above email was sent to Lokhova just one month after Ignatus reported the illegally leaked details of Flynn’s conversation with Russia’s ambassador – leading to his firing.

    Read the rest of the report here.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 19:44

    Tags
    Law Crime

  • Worldwide Searches For 'Virus Mask' Erupt Amid Deadly Outbreak 
    Worldwide Searches For ‘Virus Mask’ Erupt Amid Deadly Outbreak 

    As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases at 830 with 25 deaths, worldwide Google searches for “virus mask” have erupted ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. 

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    The deadly virus is causing alarm because of how easily it spreads between people. So far, there are no drugs, known at the moment, that can prevent human to human transmission. 

    Videos are surfacing on social media, showing people in China dropping dead as authorities have locked down seven cities in an unprecedented effort to contain the outbreak. 

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    Worldwide searches for “virus mask” have surged in the last five days as cases of the deadly virus have spread from China to the U.S., Singapore, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. 

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    Top regions for “virus mask” searches are in Singapore, China, Macao, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. 

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    Other related global queries are “n95 mask,” “buy n95 mask,” “wuhan,” “wuhan virus,” and “where to buy n95 mask.” 

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    More related global queries include “china virus,” “3m n95 mask,” “n95 respirator mask,” “n95 respirator,” and “chinese virus.” 

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    Google searches for “n95 mask,” a medical respirator designed to protect the wearer from liquid and airborne particles contaminating the face, was the most searched across the world, and in Macao, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and the Philippines over the last five days.  

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    Since the first coronavirus case was confirmed just north of Seattle on Tuesday, searches for “virus mask” across the U.S. have exploded. People in Washington, Hawaii, California, District of Columbia, and Massachusetts Googled it the most. 

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    On related queries within the U.S. – many searched “n95 mask,” and where to buy the surgical respirator. Some searches include”n95 mask cvs,” “n95 mask home depot,” and “n95 mask target.”

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    It seems the global run on surgical masks has started as the deadly virus spreads across the world. 

    As far as world epidemics and the global stock market performance, here’s a chart showing what could happen next: 

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    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 19:25

  • Coronavirus Death Toll Hits 25 As Beijing Confirms 830 Patients Infected
    Coronavirus Death Toll Hits 25 As Beijing Confirms 830 Patients Infected

    Summary:

    • 8 Chinese cities, more than 23 million people, effectively under quarantine

    • Multiple cases across the world – from Scotland to Singapore and USA

    • 830 Infected in mainland China according to Chinese officials (Mainland China: 830 Taiwan: 1 Macau: 2 Hong Kong: 2 Vietnam: 2 Thailand: 3 Singapore: 1 Japan: 1 South Korea: 1 US: 1). 

    • 25 Dead (following 1st death outside Wuhan)

    • WHO says “not the time to declare a global health emergency”

    • Patient in Texas recently traveled to Wuhan

    • WHO estimates coronavirus is about as contagious as the Spanish flu, more than twice as infectious as the common flu. 

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    * * *

    Update (1920ET): As Friday begins in Beijing, Chinese state media has announced that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in mainland China has climbed to 830, while the number of deaths has climbed to 25. As Beijing expands its efforts to crack down on the virus ahead of the LNY holiday, media reports claim that Beijing has requested the closing of all indoor activities involving more than 100 people.

    Meanwhile, more disturbing videos out of Wuhan are circulating online as reports about a growing number of sick health-care workers circulate in the Hong Kong press.

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    In other news, US lawmakers are set to be briefed on the virus Friday morning.

    * * *

    Update (1750ET): Japan’s health ministry confirmed a second case of coronavirus on Friday, reported Reuters.

    The infected man who lives in Wuhan, China, traveled to Japan on Sunday — has been hospitalized in Tokyo, the health ministry said in a statement.

    Details are limited at the moment. There was no mention of how many people the infected man came in contact with before being quarantined. New reports out of the UK are claiming that 14 people are now being tested for the virus after earlier reports said 3 people in Scotland were under quarantine as suspected carriers of the virus.

    Meanwhile, the number of cities in Hubei province facing a travel ban/lockdown/quarantine has been expanded to eight: Wuhan, Huanggang, Ezhou, Chibi, Xiantao, Qianjiang, Zhijiang and Lichuan.

    SCMP has also released some more details about the first death outside of Hubei: An 80-year-old man died in the town of Hebei after spending two months in Wuhan visiting relatives.

    Back in Wuhan, ride-share company Didi has suspended its service, as China’s finance ministry announced that 1 billion yuan ($144 million) would be used by Hubei authorities to halt the spread of the illness.

    Also, in the latest sign that the regime in Beijing hasn’t kept its promise of complete transparency, the SCMP reports that health-care workers in Wuhan are getting sick at a rate that is faster than previously revealed. Initially, Chinese authorities insisted that health care workers weren’t being sickened, indicating that the virus didn’t spread via human to human contact. But we’ve since learned that this was a lie.

    Fifteen cases of the coronavirus have been officially reported among health care workers in the city, though doctors say the real number is much higher.

    Just as we expected, the situation in Wuhan has gotten so out of hand that videos of health-care workers collapsing from exhaustion are circulating online.

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    If it seems like every person who managed to escape Wuhan is carrying the virus, here’s one possible explanation: the WHO estimated that the coronavirus has a Ro (a measure of how contagious a virus is) of 2, equivalent to the Spanish flu that sickened 500 million during the first half of the 20th century. The common flu, by comparison, has a Ro of 0.9.

    * * *

    Update (1600ET): Markets recovered on Thursday after the WHO declined to label the coronavirus as a global pandemic threat (though we suspect they might change their view once the market has closed).

    But now that Beijing’s shock-and-awe approach to containing the viral panic appears to have convinced health officials that the virus won’t make it to the next generation of transmission, it’s worth remembering that Beijing’s attempt to quarantine more than 20 million people was hardly comprehensive.

    For examples, look at this Vice story, which claims one woman evaded airport checks by taking medication that lowered a fever. According to Vice, the Chinese embassy in Paris is hoping to speak with her after she visited a Michelin-starred restaurant and shared the whole experience on WeChat.

    The warning came after one woman from Wuhan took medicine to bring down her temperature to avoid detection as she boarded a flight to France, where she dined at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

    The woman was heavily criticized for her actions after she posted photos and details of her trip on WeChat. On Wednesday night the Chinese embassy in France responded with a warning and asked the woman to contact their emergency phone number.

    Some people won’t let the risk of contagion spoil their holiday plans.

    * * *

    Update (1530ET): 7News reports that an individual suspected of coronavirus infection has been quarantined in Sydney.

    * * *

    Update (1510ET): Investigators are reportedly examining another potential case of coronavirus in Texas’s Brazos County.

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    The patient recently traveled from Wuhan and is reportedly suffering from symptoms similar to those who have been infected by the virus .

    Meanwhile, a passenger at LAX has been quarantined after showing symptoms of the virus. That patient arrived at LAX from Mexico City and exhibited “disturbing” symptoms, according to health officials, per Fox 5.

    This development comes a day after Los Angeles County public health officials said it was “very possible” the area will see at least one patient, given the number of people traveling between the Southland and China.

    *  *  *

    Update (1325ET): The World Health Organization, after a second day of meetings, have decided AGAINST declaring an international virus alarm. The panel was reportedly split on the decision and may revise the decision but for now states that “now is not the time” to declare an emergency.

    “Make no mistake: This is an emergency in China,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

    “But it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one.”

    *  *  *

    Update (1300ET): CNBC’s Eunice Yoon just provided a shocking update to the status of the deadly virus in China:

    “7 cities and 23 million people are effectively under quarantine.”

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    The cities under effective martial law – with all travel in, around, and out halted – are Wuhan, Huanggang, Zhijiang, Ezhou, Qianjiang, Chibi, and Xiantao.

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    That is more people quarantined than the population of Florida (21.6m).

    Outside of China, cases keep appearing (map does not include recent cases in Scotland and Ireland):

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    *  *  *

    Update (1150ET): If you haven’t cancelled those tickets to Wuhan yet, you might want to hold off: The State Department has just reverted its safety warning on travel to China to “exercise caution” from “reconsider your travel plans”.

    Clearly, somebody in the Chinese government complained, and with US stocks deep in the red, it seems the Trump Administration was perceptive.

    After all, the point is to convince the public not to panic.

    * * *

    Update (1130ET): As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases nears 650 (the latest count put the number at 647), the US State Department has decided to reassure Americans that they are ‘safe’ from the virus.

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    China has nearly competed its quarantine of four cities in Hubei, even as experts warn it won’t be enough. As millions prepared to travel, George Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, warned the Chinese public to stay home during the holiday season, warning that this was a “crucial time” to stop the virus. 

    With 444 confirmed cases, Wuhan remains the epicenter of the epidemic. Reports about another virus-related death are circulating on social media, along with a terrifying video of first-responders in full-body gear treating an individual who had seemingly collapsed in the middle of the road.

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    That’s not exactly reassuring.

    Meanwhile, in Wuhan, shortages of medical supplies and facemasks are already prompting hospitals, universities and charities to reach out to the surrounding area for donations.

    But sure – everything is under control.

    * * *

    Update (1045ET): Just in case you had plans to celebrate LNY at a fish market in Wuhan, the US government has published a travel warning advising Americans to ‘reconsider traveling to China’ amid the latest viral outbreak.

    • U.S. URGES TRAVELERS TO RECONSIDER CHINA VISITS DUE TO VIRUS

    Even if you made it to Wuhan at this point, one might encounter difficulties trying to enter the city, especially as a foreigner.

    * * *

    Update (0950ET): The BBC is reporting that a suspected case of coronavirus has been detected in Scotland.

    Note: These are only suspected cases – not yet confirmed.

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    If confirmed, this would be the first case of the virus in the UK, and would indicate another intrusion into the developed world, this time in Europe.

    The UK Health Secretary said Friday morning that the coronavirus is “increasingly likely” to hit Britain, the Times of London reports.

    According to CNN, the number of coronavirus cases confirmed around the world has climbed to 622 (once again, the graphic below is ever-so-slightly out of date):

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    And the scramble for facemasks continues, with Hong Kong stores swiftly running out of stock, and black-market sellers engaging in widespread gouging of terrified customers.

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    * * *

    Update (0935ET): India’s foreign office said Thursday that an Indian nurse in Saudi Arabia has been diagnosed with the Wuhan coronavirus.

    “About 100 Indian nurses mostly from Kerala working at Al-Hayat hospital have been tested and none except one nurse was found infected by Corona virus,” tweeted Vellamvelly Muraleedharan, Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, on Thursday.

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    Cases have also been reported in Russia, Hong Kong and Macau, in addition to all of the countries listed below:

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    Saudi Arabia’s economy depends on millions of migrant workers, a group that includes many Indians.

    * * *

    Update (0841ET): Beijing says the number of confirmed Wuhan cases in China has climbed to 634, bringing the global total to 641.

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    Here’s a breakdown of cases by region (though it might be slightly out of date, it gets the point across):

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    In keeping with China’s insistence that the Wuhan virus is far less deadly than the 2003 SARS outbreak, the SCMP reports that almost half of the 17 people who have succumbed to the virus so far were aged 80 or older, and most of them had pre-existing health conditions. All of those who died, 13 men and four women so far, were from the central province of Hubei, and were treated in hospitals in its capital, Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak. Chinese authorities have quarantined most of the biggest sources in the province.

    Here’s some more information on the victims, including the types of illnesses they faced:

    At least nine of those who died had pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease. Eight were in their eighties, two in their seventies, five in their sixties and one man was in his fifties. The youngest woman was 48 and had a pre-existing condition.

    One 89-year-old man, surnamed Chen, had a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease and other conditions. He began experiencing symptoms on January 13, including difficulty breathing but not fever. Five days later, he was admitted to the Wuhan Union Hospital with severe breathing difficulties, and tested positive for pneumonia. He died the following evening.

    The 48-year-old woman, surnamed Yin, had suffered from diabetes and had also had a stroke. She first had a fever, aches and pains on December 10 and her condition slowly deteriorated. She was treated at two hospitals in Wuhan before she died on Monday.

    Officials in Beijing have been cautious about making definitive statements about the origins and characteristics of the disease, including its incubation period, saying more investigation was needed.

    “There’s still a need for further study of the virus over time,” said Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, at a press briefing on Wednesday.

    “As for the impact on younger people, according to current epidemiology and what we know right now, they really aren’t susceptible,” he said.

    Patients as young as 15 have been infected with the pneumonia-like virus, according to Wuhan health officials. There are now more than 570 confirmed cases, including some reported in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Thailand.

     

    * * *

    Update (0800ET): CNA, an English-language news website based across Asia, has just reported that Singapore has confirmed the first case of the Wuhan coronavirus.

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    In a media briefing on Thursday evening, the Ministry of Health said the carrier is a 66-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan. The man arrived in Singapore with his family on Jan. 20 after flying in from Guangzhou via China Southern. The man reported having a soar throat on the flight, but no fever.

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    Earlier, St. Petersburg reportedly confirmed its third case of the Wuhan virus.

    The man traveled to Singapore General on Wednesday, and was immediately placed in isolation. He tested positive for the virus at 6 pm local time on Thursday. Singaporean authorities have already begun a contact tree, and are isolating all those with whom the suspect had contact.

    The diagnosis is just the latest indication that, even as more Chinese cities cancel LNY celebrations, too many Chinese, including Chinese from Wuhan, have already traveled abroad. And the week-long holiday doesn’t even start until Saturday.

    This live NYT map of confirmed Wuhan cases appears to be out-of-date, despite having just been updated.

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    The number of confirmed cases is closer to 600. Still, it gets the point across.

    * * *

    Update (0700ET): Beijing is reportedly planning to quarantine a third city in Hubei Province, where the coronavirus outbreak originated, while a fourth city in the province is planning to shut down train travel.

    Media reports claim that Chibi, a city with half a million Chinese, will be quarantined like Wuhan and Huanggang. Meanwhile, Ezhou, a city with 1 million people in Hubei, is seeing some transportation shut down.

    Meanwhile, officials in Beijing have joined several other Chinese cities in cancelling Chinese New Year celebrations.

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    Conflicting report are alternatively claiming that Ezhou and Chibi will be the third Chinese city to face a quarantine. Does that mean officials are planning to quarantine the entire province?

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    There have also been reports about a third patient being identified in St. Petersburg, while other cities, including Hong Kong, stock up on facemask supplies.

    * * *

    As cases of the new coronavirus popped up around the globe, Chinese health officials managed to assuage the worries of the public, and the market, by insisting that the new, deadly coronavirus that emerged late last month in Wuhan had been ‘contained’ and that the outbreak would swiftly die down.

    Despite imposing some draconian travel bans, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this isn’t going to happen. Even after quarantining an entire city of 11 million people – Wuhan is the 7th largest city in China and larger than any US city – experts are warning that it’s too late: The cat is already out of the bag.

    But that won’t stop Beijing from trying: Now that Wuhan has been effectively cut off, Chinese officials announced another city-wide quarantine on Thursday: Huanggang city, which is in Hubei province and situated close to Wuhan, will suspend outbound train and bus services, as well as all bus services within the city effective Friday. All public places, including movie theaters, have been ordered to close until further notice, practically guaranteeing that the quarantine will take a bite out of GDP. Though even after authorities cut off all flights, Reuters reports that a few airlines were still running flights out of Wuhan.

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    As the SCMP pointed out, Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak, is five times larger than London.

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    The decision comes as more than 600 cases of the virus have now been confirmed. The death toll has been steady since yesterday at 17, as the WHO ponders whether to label the outbreak as a global pandemic risk.

    Chinese state broadcasters shared images of Wuhan’s ghostly transport hubs, including the Hankou rail station, with all gates barred or blocked. Highway toll booths were shutting down as guards patrolled major highways. Inside the city, residents crowded into hospitals and rushed to buy up essential supplies from supermarkets and gas stations.

    Interestingly, at least one Western journalist is reporting from Wuhan. We imagine Beijing allowed ABC access to the city to try and calm the growing panic in the West.

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    As more barriers rise, one well-known public health expert known for his work on the SARS outbreak warned that the quarantines likely wouldn’t be enough to stop the virus from becoming a global pandemic, according to the New York Times.

    Dr. Guan Yi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong who visited Wuhan earlier this week, warned there was a potential for the virus to spread rapidly despite the controls put in place Thursday morning.

    “We have a chance to have a pandemic outbreak,” said Dr. Guan, who was part of the team that identified the coronavirus that caused the deadly SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003. SARS infected more than 8,000 people and killed nearly 800.

    Dr. Guan also told Caixin, an influential Chinese magazine known for investigative reports, that he had traveled to Wuhan earlier in the week hoping to help track the virus’s animal source and control the epidemic. But he left, he said, feeling “powerless, very angry.”

    Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who advised the Chinese government and the World Health Organization during the SARS outbreak, said that infected people outside Wuhan would continue to spread the disease.

    “The horse is already out of the barn,” he said.

    Another expert warned that there could already be as many as 4,000 cases of coronavirus in Wuhan, meaning that the vast majority of infections likely haven’t yet been reported.

    Meanwhile, regulators around the world are scrambling to cut off flights from Wuhan (even though Beijing has supposedly cut off all rail and plane travel out of the city): The Philippines is the latest country to cut off flights from the city. The country’s Civil Aeronautics Board added that flights from elsewhere in China would be placed under ‘strict monitoring’, according to CNN Philippines. Manila, the Philippines’ crowded capital city, has started handing out 100,000 face masks.

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    The director of the country’s Civil Aeronautics Board explained that, even though Beijing is quarantining entire cities, it’s up to the Philippines to take their own steps to curb the outbreak.

    “When you look at the seriousness of the outbreak, Wuhan should be the focus of attention,” CAB Executive Director Carmelo Arcilla told reporters.

    “Even if they lift it, we have to look at our side first and make our own assessment. So our assessment is different from theirs, I mean, even their decision is different from ours,” Arcilla said.

    Experts have warned that quarantining an entire city of 11 million would be virtually impossible. But the nabobs in Beijing refuse to be deterred: Videos circulating on social media show Chinese police setting up barricades across roads leading out of the city. Anybody in Wuhan who had New Year’s travel plans should probably cancel them and ask for a refund.

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    After a suspected case of coronavirus was discovered in Macau yesterday, officials in the special autonomous region warned that they might close all casinos in the territory, a move that would spoil the vacation plans of millions of Chinese planning to travel to Macau for the Chinese New Year. A second case was reportedly discovered on Thursday.

    Across the world, a mildly risk-off mood is once again dominating markets. That means US stocks are one outbreak headline away from deeper declines.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 19:22

  • The "Twin Threats" Facing Big Oil
    The “Twin Threats” Facing Big Oil

    Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

    The global oil and gas industry is facing the “twin threats” of the loss of profitability and the loss of social acceptability as the climate crisis continues to worsen. The industry is not adequately responding to either of those threats, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

    “Oil and gas companies have been proficient at delivering the fuels that form the bedrock of today’s   energy system; the question that they now face is whether they can help deliver climate solutions,” the IEA said.

    The report, whose publication was timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, critiques the oil industry for not doing enough to plan for the transition. The IEA said that companies are spending only about 1 percent of their capex on anything outside of their core oil and gas strategy. Even the companies doing the most are only spending about 5 percent of their budgets on non-oil and gas investments.

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    There are some investments here and there into solar, or electric vehicle recharging infrastructure, but by and large the oil majors are doing very little to overhaul their businesses. The top companies only spent about $2 billion on solar, wind, biofuels and carbon capture last year.

    Before even getting to the transition risk due to climate change, the oil industry was already facing questions about profitability. Over the past decade the free cash flow from operations at the five largest oil majors trailed the total sent to shareholders by about $200 billion. In other words, they cannot afford to finance their operations and also keep up obligations to shareholders. Something will have to change.

    But, of course, as climate policy begins to tighten, oil demand growth will slow and level off. Most analysts say that it won’t require a big hit to demand in order for the financial havoc to really begin to devastate the balance sheets of the majors. Demand only needs to stop growing.

    The IEA said there are things the industry can do right now – and should have done a long time ago. Roughly 15 percent of the energy sector’s total greenhouse gas emissions comes from upstream production. “Reducing methane leaks to the atmosphere is the single most important and cost-effective way for the industry to bring down these emissions,” the IEA said. But, the Permian is flaring more gas than ever, and methane leaks at every stage of the extraction and distribution process. Drillers have promises improvements, but the industry’s track record to date is not good.

    Meanwhile, the IEA also noted that while attention is often focused on the oil majors, national oil companies (NOCs) account for more than half of global oil production. The majors only account for about 15 percent.

    It is one thing for ExxonMobil or Chevron to face an existential crisis – which, absent an attempt to transition to a low-carbon business, they certainly do – but it’s an entirely different thing for the NOCs who will struggle to deal with the energy transition. The threat from the energy transition is not just to a specific business, but to whole governments and entire populations. “Some are high performing, but many are poorly positioned to adapt to changing global energy dynamics,” the IEA said. “None of the large NOCs have been charged by their host governments with leadership roles in renewables or other noncore areas.”

    Ultimately, the report from the IEA should be worrying for the industry. The agency itself has faced criticism for not being more at the forefront of calling for a clean energy transition, and its forecasts for renewables have consistently undershot actual improvements for renewable technologies. The agency also continues to call for more upstream oil and gas investment. In other words, the IEA is somewhat conservative, and has been slow to recognize major shifts in the energy sector.

    As such, the majors should probably take note when the IEA says something like “the transformation of the energy sector can happen without the oil and gas industry.” They can drag their feet, and will become increasingly ravaged by policy change and a deterioration in their core business. Or, they could proactively transform themselves, as the IEA says they should. Solutions to climate change “cannot be found within today’s oil and gas paradigm,” the agency said.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 19:05

    Tags
    Business Finance
    Environment

  • US To Deploy Anti-Missile Systems In Iraq As Trump Downplays Troop Injuries As "Headaches"
    US To Deploy Anti-Missile Systems In Iraq As Trump Downplays Troop Injuries As “Headaches”

    President Trump was dismissive of widespread reports of eleven US soldiers sustaining head injuries as a result of the Jan.8 Iranian ballistic missile attack on Ayn al-Asad airbase in Iraq. At least eight had been airlifted to a medical facility in Germany for possible “traumatic brain injuries”, which the Pentagon and administration kept mum about in the days following. 

    While fielding questions at Davos on Wednesday, Trump downplayed what he likened as mere “headaches” when pressed about the issue and the administration’s evolving narrative, which initially emphasized “no US casualties” as a result of the Iranian attack.

    Trump explained at the news conference his view that the injuries were “not very serious,” and added that “I heard they had headaches.” This prompted some veterans groups to reportedly say Trump is “somewhat out of touch” with the seriousness of it.

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    Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing for a ‘likely’ deployment of anti-air defense systems to Iraq in order to provide greater protection for US forces against future Iranian missile threats. 

    In the wake of the Iranian assault, a number of pundits and officials questioned why there weren’t anti-air defenses already in place.

    According to FOX:

    Fox News previously reported that the U.S. military didn’t shoot down any of Iran’s ballistic missiles because there was no missile defense system in position.

    A senior Pentagon official told Fox News that they believed an Iranian missile attack was “unlikely.” U.S. officials say a Patriot air defense system will now likely be deployed.

    There is a worldwide shortage of Patriots. Some units are currently bogged down protecting bases in Saudi Arabia.

    Patriots are also currently deployed in defense of US assets, especially expensive military aircraft, around bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE.

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    US Army Patriot missile battery file image.

    These defensive systems could be placed in Iraq at a time when the entire question of a future US military presence there is in doubt, given Iraq’s parliament is moving to expel the Americans. 

    Trump recently threatened sanctions on its uneasy ally should Baghdad go through with it. Washington fears ‘Iranian expansion’ and entrenchment should it bring the troops home. 


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 01/23/2020 – 18:45

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

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